Life of Lord Byron Volume II Part 4

"Newstead Abbey, August 20. 1811.

"Sir,

"The witnesses shall be provided from amongst my tenants, and I shall be happy to see you on any day most convenient to yourself. I forgot to mention, that it must be specified by codicil, or otherwise, that my body is on no account to be removed from the vault where I have directed it to be placed; and in case any of my successors within the entail (from bigotry, or otherwise) might think proper to remove the carca.s.s, such proceeding shall be attended by forfeiture of the estate, which in such case shall go to my sister, the Honble Augusta Leigh and her heirs on similar conditions. I have the honour to be, sir,

"Your very obedient, humble servant,

"BYRON."

In consequence of this last letter, a proviso and declaration, in conformity with its instructions, were inserted in the will. He also executed, on the 28th of this month, a codicil, by which he revoked the bequest of his "household goods and furniture, library, pictures, sabres, watches, plate, linen, trinkets, and other personal estate (except money and securities) situate within the walls of the mansion-house and premises at his decease--and bequeathed the same (except his wine and spirituous liquors) to his friends, the said J.C.

Hobhouse, S.B. Davies, and Francis Hodgson, their executors, &c., to be equally divided between them for their own use;--and he bequeathed his wine and spirituous liquors, which should be in the cellars and premises at Newstead, unto his friend, the said J. Becher, for his own use, and requested the said J.C. Hobhouse, S.B. Davies, F. Hodgson, and J.

Becher, respectively, to accept the bequest therein contained, to them respectively, as a token of his friends.h.i.+p."

The following letters, written while his late losses were fresh in his mind, will be read with painful interest:--

LETTER 59. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead Abbey, Notts., August 12. 1811.

"Peace be with the dead! Regret cannot wake them. With a sigh to the departed, let us resume the dull business of life, in the certainty that we also shall have our repose. Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that being tolerable--The best friend of my friend Hobhouse, Matthews, a man of the first talents, and also not the worst of my narrow circle, has perished miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam, always fatal to genius:--my poor school-fellow, Wingfield, at Coimbra--within a month; and whilst I had heard from _all three_, but not seen _one_.

Matthews wrote to me the very day before his death; and though I feel for his fate, I am still more anxious for Hobhouse, who, I very much fear, will hardly retain his senses: his letters to me since the event have been most incoherent. But let this pa.s.s; we shall all one day pa.s.s along with the rest--the world is too full of such things, and our very sorrow is selfish.

"I received a letter from you, which my late occupations prevented me from duly noticing.--I hope your friends and family will long hold together. I shall be glad to hear from you, on business, on common-place, or any thing, or nothing--but death--I am already too familiar with the dead. It is strange that I look on the skulls which stand beside me (I have always had _four_ in my study) without emotion, but I cannot strip the features of those I have known of their fleshy covering, even in idea, without a hideous sensation; but the worms are less ceremonious.--Surely, the Romans did well when they burned the dead.--I shall be happy to hear from you, and am yours," &c.

LETTER 60. TO MR. HODGSON.

"Newstead Abbey, August 22. 1811.

"You may have heard of the sudden death of my mother, and poor Matthews, which, with that of Wingfield, (of which I was not fully aware till just before I left town, and indeed hardly believed it,) has made a sad chasm in my connections. Indeed the blows followed each other so rapidly that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh, at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.--I shall now wave the subject,--the dead are at rest, and none but the dead can be so.

"You will feel for poor Hobhouse,--Matthews was the 'G.o.d of his idolatry;' and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one could refuse him pre-eminence. I knew him most intimately, and valued him proportionably; but I am recurring--so let us talk of life and the living.

"If you should feel a disposition to come here, you will find 'beef and a sea-coal fire,' and not ungenerous wine. Whether Otway's two other requisites for an Englishman or not, I cannot tell, but probably one of them.--Let me know when I may expect you, that I may tell you when I go and when return. I have not yet been to Lanes. Davies has been here, and has invited me to Cambridge for a week in October, so that, peradventure, we may encounter gla.s.s to gla.s.s. His gaiety (death cannot mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter.

"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before. Your anxiety about the critique on * *'s book is amusing; as it was anonymous, certes it was of little consequence: I wish it had produced a little more confusion, being a lover of literary malice. Are you doing nothing? writing nothing? printing nothing? why not your Satire on Methodism? the subject (supposing the public to be blind to merit) would do wonders. Besides, it would be as well for a destined deacon to prove his orthodoxy.--It really would give me pleasure to see you properly appreciated. I say _really_, as, being an author, my humanity might be suspected.

Believe me, dear H., yours always."

LETTER 61. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead, August 21. 1811.

"Your letter gives me credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer, and yet I do not feel relieved by it; but an indifferent person would think me in excellent spirits. 'We must forget these things,' and have recourse to our old selfish comforts, or rather comfortable selfishness. I do not think I shall return to London immediately, and shall therefore accept freely what is offered courteously--your mediation between me and Murray. I don't think my name will answer the purpose, and you must be aware that my plaguy Satire will bring the north and south Grub Streets down upon the 'Pilgrimage;'--but, nevertheless, if Murray makes a point of it, and you coincide with him, I will do it daringly; so let it be ent.i.tled 'By the Author of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' My remarks on the Romaic, &c., once intended to accompany the 'Hints from Horace,' shall go along with the other, as being indeed more appropriate; also the smaller poems now in my possession, with a few selected from those published in * *'s Miscellany. I have found amongst my poor mother's papers all my letters from the East, and one in particular of some length from Albania. From this, if necessary, I can work up a note or two on that subject. As I kept no journal, the letters written on the spot are the best. But of this anon, when we have definitively arranged.

"Has Murray shown the work to any one? He may--but I will have no traps for applause. Of course there are little things I would wish to alter, and perhaps the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on London's Sunday are as well left out. I much wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's character with mine, and that, in sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the t.i.tle-page. When you have made arrangements as to time, size, type, &c. favour me with a reply. I am giving you an universe of trouble, which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for my scepticism at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so much more like an attack than a defence, that, haply, it might better be omitted:--perpend, p.r.o.nounce. After all, I fear Murray will be in a sc.r.a.pe with the orthodox; but I cannot help it, though I wish him well through it. As for me, 'I have supped full of criticism,' and I don't think that the 'most dismal treatise' will stir and rouse my fell of hair' till 'Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.'

"I shall continue to write at intervals, and hope you will pay me in kind. How does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blackett's posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite of your Ionian friend and myself, who would have saved him from Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine subject for subscription and biography; and Pratt, who makes the most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than five families of distinction.

"I am sorry you don't like Harry White: with a great deal of cant, which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate.

"You did not know M.: he was a man of the most astonis.h.i.+ng powers, as he sufficiently proved at Cambridge, by carrying off more prizes and fellow-s.h.i.+ps, against the ablest candidates, than any other graduate on record; but a most decided atheist, indeed noxiously so, for he proclaimed his principles in all societies. I knew him well, and feel a loss not easily to be supplied to myself--to Hobhouse never. Let me hear from you, and believe me," &c.

The progress towards publication of his two forthcoming works will be best traced in his letters to Mr. Murray and Mr. Dallas.

LETTER 62. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Newstead Abbey, Notts., August 23. 1811.

"Sir,

"A domestic calamity in the death of a near relation has. .h.i.therto prevented my addressing you on the subject of this letter.--My friend, Mr. Dallas, has placed in your hands a ma.n.u.script poem written by me in Greece, which he tells me you do not object to publis.h.i.+ng. But he also informed me in London that you wished to send the MS. to Mr. Gifford. Now, though no one would feel more gratified by the chance of obtaining his observations on a work than myself, there is in such a proceeding a kind of pet.i.tion for praise, that neither my pride--or whatever you please to call it--will admit. Mr. G. is not only the first satirist of the day, but editor of one of the princ.i.p.al reviews. As such, he is the last man whose censure (however eager to avoid it) I would deprecate by clandestine means. You will therefore retain the ma.n.u.script in your own care, or, if it must needs be shown, send it to another. Though not very patient of censure, I would fain obtain fairly any little praise my rhymes might deserve, at all events not by extortion, and the humble solicitations of a bandied about MS. I am sure a little consideration will convince you it would be wrong.

"If you determine on publication, I have some smaller poems (never published), a few notes, and a short dissertation on the literature of the modern Greeks (written at Athens), which will come in at the end of the volume.--And, if the present poem should succeed, it is my intention, at some subsequent period, to publish some selections from my first work,--my Satire,--another nearly the same length, and a few other things, with the MS. now in your hands, in two volumes.--But of these hereafter. You will apprize me of your determination. I am, Sir, your very obedient," &c.

LETTER 63. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead Abbey, August 25. 1811.

"Being fortunately enabled to frank, I do not spare scribbling, having sent you packets within the last ten days. I am pa.s.sing solitary, and do not expect my agent to accompany me to Rochdale before the second week in September; a delay which perplexes me, as I wish the business over, and should at present welcome employment.

I sent you exordiums, annotations, &c. for the forthcoming quarto, if quarto it is to be: and I also have written to Mr. Murray my objection to sending the MS. to Juvenal, but allowing him to show it to any others of the calling. Hobhouse is amongst the types already: so, between his prose and my verse, the world will be decently drawn upon for its paper-money and patience. Besides all this, my 'Imitation of Horace' is gasping for the press at Cawthorn's, but I am hesitating as to the _how_ and the _when_, the single or the double, the present or the future. You must excuse all this, for I have nothing to say in this lone mansion but of myself, and yet I would willingly talk or think of aught else.

"What are you about to do? Do you think of perching in c.u.mberland, as you opined when I was in the metropolis? If you mean to retire, why not occupy Miss * * *'s 'Cottage of Friends.h.i.+p,' late the seat of Cobbler Joe, for whose death you and others are answerable? His 'Orphan Daughter' (pathetic Pratt!) will, certes, turn out a shoemaking Sappho. Have you no remorse? I think that elegant address to Miss Dallas should be inscribed on the cenotaph which Miss * * * means to st.i.tch to his memory.

"The newspapers seem much disappointed at his Majesty's not dying, or doing something better. I presume it is almost over. If parliament meets in October, I shall be in town to attend. I am also invited to Cambridge for the beginning of that month, but am first to jaunt to Rochdale. Now Matthews is gone, and Hobhouse in Ireland, I have hardly one left there to bid me welcome, except my inviter. At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at seventy? It is true I am young enough to begin again, but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of life? It is odd how few of my friends have died a quiet death,--I mean, in their beds.

But a quiet life is of more consequence. Yet one loves squabbling and jostling better than yawning. This _last word_ admonishes me to relieve you from yours very truly," &c.

LETTER 64. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead Abbey, August 27. 1811.

"I was so sincere in my note on the late Charles Matthews, and do feel myself so totally unable to do justice to his talents, that the pa.s.sage must stand for the very reason you bring against it. To him all the men I ever knew were pigmies. He was an intellectual giant. It is true I loved W. better; he was the earliest and the dearest, and one of the few one could never repent of having loved: but in ability--ah! you did not know Matthews!

"'Childe Harold' may wait and welcome--books are never the worse for delay in the publication. So you have got our heir, George Anson Byron, and his sister, with you.

"You may say what you please, but you are one of the _murderers_ of Blackett, and yet you won't allow Harry White's genius. Setting aside his bigotry, he surely ranks next Chatterton. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how little he was known; and at Cambridge no one thought or heard of such a man till his death rendered all notice useless. For my own part, I should have been most proud of such an acquaintance: his very prejudices were respectable. There is a sucking epic poet at Granta, a Mr. Townsend, _protege_ of the late c.u.mberland. Did you ever hear of him and his 'Armageddon?' I think his plan (the man I don't know) borders on the sublime: though, perhaps, the antic.i.p.ation of the 'Last Day' (according to you Nazarenes) is a little too daring: at least, it looks like telling the Lord what he is to do, and might remind an ill-natured person of the line,

'And fools rush in where angels fear to tread.'