Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 26

"I wonder if my 'Cain' has got safe to England. I have written since about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas, (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft--it is as old as the hills in Italy,) called 'The Vision of of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' with this motto--

"'A Daniel come to _judgment_, yea, a Daniel: I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.'

"In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his preface and his other demerits.

"I am just got to the pa.s.s where Saint Peter, hearing that the royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, rises up, and, interrupting Satan's oration, declares _he_ will change places with Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while _he_ has the keys thereof.

"I must go and ride, though rather feverish and chilly. It is the ague season; but the agues do me rather good than harm. The feel after the _fit_ is as if one had got rid of one's body for good and all.

"The G.o.ds go with you!--Address to Pisa.

"Ever yours.

"P.S. Since I came back I feel better, though I stayed out too late for this malaria season, under the thin crescent of a very young moon, and got off my horse to walk in an avenue with a Signora for an hour. I thought of you and

'When at eve thou rovest By the star thou lovest.'

But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and yet it was a _new_ woman, (that is, new to me,) and, of course, expected to be made love to. But I merely made a few common-place speeches. I feel, as your poor friend Curran said, before his death, 'a mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be const.i.tutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy."

LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.

"October 6. 1821.

"By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of *

* *'s impudent antic.i.p.ation of the Apotheosis of George the Third.

I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please 'our puir hill folk.'

"By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My _ague_ bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause.

I ride--I am not intemperate in eating or drinking--and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be const.i.tutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree.

"How do _you_ manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I _can_ drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don't exhilarate--it makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of _it_ without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of _salts_--I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.[58] But one can't take _them_ like champagne.

"Excuse this old woman's letter; but my _lemancholy_ don't depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there.

"Yours," &c.

[Footnote 58: It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects that Dryden always took physic when about to write any thing of importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part;--in short," &c. &c.

On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits, some curious facts and ill.u.s.trations have been, with his usual research, collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."]

LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, October 9. 1821.

"You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr.

Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left that city.

"Don't forget to send me my first act of 'Werner' (if Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers)--send it by the post (to Pisa); and also cut out Harriet Lee's 'German's Tale' from the 'Canterbury Tales,'

and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.

"By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me have proofs of them _all_ again--I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question!--The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the 'Vampire?' Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so.

"Send--Faber's Treatise on the Cabiri.

"Sainte Croix's Mysteres du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently).

"A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in russia). I _have_ one; but as it was the last gift of my sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like to keep it in good order. Don't forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old,--that is to say, the _Old_ Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a _boy_, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.

"Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place trash,--unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very well be, for 'tis time it should."

LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.

"October 20. 1821.

"If the errors _are_ in the MS. write me down an a.s.s: they are _not_, and I am content to undergo any penalty if they be. Besides, the _omitted_ stanza (last but one or two), sent _afterwards_, was that in the MS. too?

"As to 'honour,' I will trust no man's honour in affairs of barter.

I will tell you why: a state of bargain is Hobbes's 'state of nature--a state of war.' It is so with all men. If I come to a friend, and say, 'Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,'--he either does it, or says that he can't or won't; but if I come to Ditto, and say, 'Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or MSS., or books, or pictures, or, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,'

what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he _hums_, he _ha's_,--he _humbugs_, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because _it is_ a bargain. This is in the blood and bone of mankind; and the same man who would lend another a thousand pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him for half its value if he could help it. It is so: there's no denying it; and therefore I will have as much as I can, and you will give as little; and there's an end. All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can't bite them.

"I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. and such other public men as I recollect to have been acquainted with, for I knew most of them more or less. I will do what I can to prevent your losing by my obsequies.

"Yours," &c.

LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.

"Ravenna, October 21. 1821.

"I shall be (the G.o.ds willing) in Bologna on Sat.u.r.day next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing to follow.

"The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription of all my friends' relations and connections here into Tuscany, on account of our late politics; and where they go, I accompany them.

I merely remained till now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and to give time for my furniture, &c. to precede me. I have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and tables, and a mattress for the week to come.

"If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like; (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is s.p.a.cious: it is on the Arno;) and I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences, at your command, as also their owner. If you could do this, we may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or if you are going by another road, we shall meet at Bologna, I hope.

I address this to the post-office (as you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo di _San Marco_. If you arrive first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday at farthest.

"I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is in London _incog._ according to my latest advices from those climes.

"It is better than a l.u.s.tre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster in the farce ('Love laughs at Locksmiths'), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the terrier, who 'caught a halfpenny in his mouth,' were all 'gone dead,' but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school.

But 'so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us make the most of our remainder.