Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 38

These fellows always forget Christ in their Christianity, and what he said when 'the tower of Siloam fell.'

"To-day is the 9th, and the 10th is my surviving daughter's birth-day. I have ordered, as a regale, a mutton chop and a bottle of ale. She is seven years old, I believe. Did I ever tell you that the day I came of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of ale? For once in a way they are my favourite dish and drinkable, but as neither of them agree with me, I never use them but on great jubilees--once in four or five years or so.

"I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley as living in my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen times since I came to Genoa, or near it.

"Yours ever," &c.

LETTER 506. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Genoa, 10bre 25. 1822.

"I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but 'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say that, upon the _whole_, that is, the whole of the _half_ which I have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry'

the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,--a _Satire_ on _abuses_ of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that.

Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:--no, no; she will go to Little's poems and Rousseau's _romans_ for that, or even to the immaculate De Stael. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ca ira!_

"Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the usual _et cetera_.

"My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my safe pilotage off a lee sh.o.r.e, to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave them among the breakers.

"As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in, but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Sh.e.l.ley! how we would have laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at various things which are grave in the suburbs!

"You are all mistaken about Sh.e.l.ley. You do not know how mild, how tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.

"I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (_solus_, or, at most, _c.u.m sola_) this spring, and writing, when I have studied the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and voyages in my mind. The busts[92] are finished: are you worthy of them?

"Yours, &c. N.B.

"P.S. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from me. I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their business. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, I believe, will go to England in the spring.

"Count Gamba's family, the father and mother and daughter, are residing with me by Mr. Hill (the minister's) recommendation, as a safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house, and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate.

"Since I have read the Quarterly, I shall erase two or three pa.s.sages in the latter six or seven cantos, in which I had lightly stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much.

"Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter, as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him; he is a stiff, st.u.r.dy, conscientious man, and I like him; he is such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill-will for declining the Don Juans.

"Have you aided Madame de Yossy, as I requested? I sent her three hundred francs. Recommend her, will you, to the Literary Fund, or to some benevolence within your circles."

[Footnote 92: Of the bust of himself by Bartollini he says, in one of the omitted letters to Mr. Murray:--"The bust does not turn out a good one,--though it may be like for aught I know, as it exactly resembles a superannuated Jesuit." Again: "I a.s.sure you Bartollini's is dreadful, though my mind misgives me that it is hideously like. If it is, I cannot be long for this world, for it overlooks seventy."]

LETTER 507. TO LADY ----.

"Albaro, November 10. 1822.

"The Chevalier persisted in declaring himself an ill-used gentleman, and describing you as a kind of cold Calypso, who lead astray people of an amatory disposition without giving them any sort of compensation, contenting yourself, it seems, with only making _one_ fool instead of two, which is the more approved method of proceeding on such occasions. For my part, I think you are quite right; and be a.s.sured from me that a woman (as society is const.i.tuted in England) who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover, but will sooner or later find a tyrant; and this is not the man's fault either, perhaps, but is the necessary and natural result of the circ.u.mstances of society, which, in fact, tyrannise over the man equally with the woman; that is to say, if either of them have any feeling or honour.

"You can write to me at your leisure and inclination. I have always laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that a man and a woman make far better friends.h.i.+ps than can exist between two of the same s.e.x; but _these_ with this condition, that they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. Lovers may, and, indeed, generally _are_ enemies, but they never can be friends; because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of self in all their speculations.

"Indeed, I rather look upon love altogether as a sort of hostile transaction, very necessary to make or to break matches, and keep the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties concerned.

"Now, as my love perils are, I believe, pretty well over, and yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this advantage, that we may both fall to loving right and left through all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that amiable pa.s.sion which are its inseparable attendants.

"Believe me," &c.

END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.