Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 30

"December 12. 1821.

"My dear Sh.e.l.ley,

"Enclosed is a note for you from ----. His reasons are all very true, I dare say, and it might and may be of personal inconvenience to us. But that does not appear to me to be a reason to allow a being to be burnt without trying to save him. To save him by any means but _remonstrance_ is of course out of the question; but I do not see why a _temperate_ remonstrance should hurt any one. Lord Guilford is the man, if he would undertake it. He knows the Grand Duke personally, and might, perhaps, prevail upon him to interfere.

But, as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it will be useless. Make any use of my name that you please.

"Yours ever," &c

LETTER 474. TO MR. MOORE.

"I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude to of the Auto da Fe. Sh.e.l.ley's allusion to his 'fellow-serpent' is a buffoonery of mine. Goethe's Mephistofilus calls the serpent who tempted Eve 'my aunt, the renowned snake;' and I always insist that Sh.e.l.ley is nothing but one of her nephews, walking about on the tip of his tail."

TO LORD BYRON.

"Two o'clock, Tuesday Morning.

"My dear Lord,

"Although strongly persuaded that the story must be either an entire fabrication, or so gross an exaggeration as to be nearly so; yet, in order to be able to discover the truth beyond all doubt, and to set your mind quite at rest, I have taken the determination to go myself to Lucca this morning. Should it prove less false than I am convinced it is, I shall not fail to exert myself in _every way_ that I can imagine may have any success. Be a.s.sured of this.

"Your Lords.h.i.+p's most truly,

"P.S. To prevent _bavardage_, I prefer going in person to sending my servant with a letter. It is better for you to mention nothing (except, of course, to Sh.e.l.ley) of my excursion. The person I visit there is one on whom I can have every dependence in every way, both as to authority and truth."

TO LORD BYRON.

"Thursday Morning.

"My dear Lord Byron,

"I hear this morning that the design, which certainly had been in contemplation, of burning my fellow-serpent, has been abandoned, and that he has been condemned to the galleys. Lord Guilford is at Leghorn; and as your courier applied to me to know whether he ought to leave your letter for him or not, I have thought it best since this information to tell him to take it back.

"Ever faithfully yours,

"P.B. Sh.e.l.lEY."

LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

"Pisa, January 12. 1822.

"My dear Sir Walter,

"I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own my ingrat.i.tude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I left England (and it is not for all the usual term of transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure; and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest; whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of our virtuous purpose.

"I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friends.h.i.+p; for you went out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem,--I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,--and, indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there could not be two who _could_ and _would_ have done this at the time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations. The very _tardiness_ of this acknowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can a.s.sure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt were the only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just then: and that, of those three, I had never seen _one_ at all--of the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other _two_ had been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; _one_, indeed, with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &c.' in the true gospel manner, and I can a.s.sure you that they have burnt down to my very heart.

"I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that 'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and, 2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'

but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of _whom could_ you be _jealous_?'--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are _not_ the man. To me those novels have so much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them by heart.

"January 27. 1822.

"I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got 'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this time you are half a grandfather--a young one, by the way. I have heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart's personal and mental charms, and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel Scotts as there are Scots' novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere wish of

"Yours ever most affectionately, &c.

"P.S. Why don't you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.

As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few exceptions 'of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains.

But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland, which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was sent to drink goat's _fey_ in 1795-6, in consequence of a threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so, good night--and the G.o.ds be with your dreams!

"Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps, recollect having seen me in town in 1815.

"I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am fond of Guillin) is a _mermaid_; it is my _crest_ too, and with precisely the same curl of tail. There's concatenation for you:--I am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the summer. I know _you_ like the sea too."

LETTER 476. TO ----.[73]

"Pisa, February 6. 1822.

"'Try back the deep lane,' till we find a publisher for the 'Vision;' and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon see that the booksellers _will_ publish them, even if we opposed them. That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I ought to give way on that account. I know nothing of Rivington's 'Remonstrance' by the 'eminent Churchman;' but I suppose he wants a living. I once heard of a preacher at Kentish Town against 'Cain.'

The same outcry was raised against Priestley, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, and all the men who dared to put t.i.thes to the question.

"I have got S----'s pretended reply, to which I am surprised that you do not allude. What remains to be done is to call him out. The question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive journey to no purpose.

"You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you.

"I apply to you, as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie.

Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner; having no other object which could bring me to that country except to settle quarrels acc.u.mulated during my absence.

"By the last post I transmitted to you a letter upon some Rochdale toll business, from which there are moneys in prospect. My agent says two thousand pounds, but supposing it to be only one, or even one hundred, still they may be moneys; and I have lived long enough to have an exceeding respect for the smallest current coin of any realm, or the least sum, which, although I may not want it myself, may do something for others who may need it more than I.

"They say that 'Knowledge is Power:'--I used to think so; but I now know that they meant '_money_:' and when Socrates declared, 'that all he knew was, that he knew nothing,' he merely intended to declare, that he had not a drachm in the Athenian world.

"The _circulars_ are arrived, and circulating like the vortices (or vortexes) of Descartes. Still I have a due care of the needful, and keep a look out ahead, as my notions upon the score of moneys coincide with yours, and with all men's who have lived to see that every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his _touch_-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I p.r.o.nounce my firm belief, that _Cash_ is _Virtue_.

"I cannot reproach myself with much expenditure: my only extra expense (and it is more than I have spent upon myself) being a loan of two hundred and fifty pounds to ----; and fifty pounds worth of furniture, which I have bought for him; and a boat which I am building for myself at Genoa, which will cost about a hundred pounds more.

"But to return. I am determined to have all the moneys I can, whether by my own funds, or succession, or lawsuit, or MSS. or any lawful means whatever.