Life of Lord Byron Volume II Part 6

"I have shown my respect for your suggestions by adopting them; but I have made many alterations in the first proof, over and above; as, for example:

"Oh Thou, in _h.e.l.las_ deem'd of heavenly birth, &c. &c.

"Since _shamed full oft_ by _later lyres_ on earth, Mine, &c.

"Yet there _I've wander'd_ by the vaunted rill;

and so on. So I have got rid of Dr. Lowth and 'drunk' to boot, and very glad I am to say so. I have also sullenised the line as heretofore, and in short have been quite conformable.

"Pray write; you shall hear when I remove to Lancs. I have brought you and my friend Juvenal Hodgson upon my back, on the score of revelation. You are fervent, but he is quite _glowing_; and if he take half the pains to save his own soul, which he volunteers to redeem mine, great will be his reward hereafter. I honour and thank you both, but am convinced by neither. Now for notes. Besides those I have sent, I shall send the observations on the Edinburgh Reviewer's remarks on the modern Greek, an Albanian song in the Albanian (_not Greek_) language, specimens of modern Greek from their New Testament, a comedy of Goldoni's translated, _one scene_, a prospectus of a friend's book, and perhaps a song or two, _all_ in Romaic, besides their Pater Noster; so there will be enough, if not too much, with what I have already sent. Have you received the 'Noetes Atticae?' I sent also an annotation on Portugal. Hobhouse is also forthcoming."

LETTER 70. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead Abbey, Sept. 23. 1811.

"_Lisboa_ is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best.

Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I have _h.e.l.las_ and _Eros_ not long before, there would be something like an affectation of Greek terms, which I wish to avoid, since I shall have a perilous quant.i.ty of _modern_ Greek in my notes, as specimens of the tongue; therefore Lisboa may keep its place. You are right about the 'Hints;' they must not precede the 'Romaunt;' but Cawthorn will be savage if they don't; however, keep _them_ back, and _him_ in _good humour_, if we can, but do not let him publish.

"I have adopted, I believe, most of your suggestions, but 'Lisboa'

will be an exception to prove the rule. I have sent a quant.i.ty of notes, and shall continue; but pray let them be copied; no devil can read my hand. By the by, I do not mean to exchange the ninth verse of the 'Good Night.' I have no reason to suppose my dog better than his brother brutes, mankind; and _Argus_ we know to be a fable. The 'Cosmopolite' was an acquisition abroad. I do not believe it is to be found in England. It is an amusing little volume, and full of French flippancy. I read, though I do not speak the language.

"I _will_ be angry with Murray. It was a book-selling, back shop, Paternoster-row, paltry proceeding, and if the experiment had turned out as it deserved, I would have raised all Fleet Street, and borrowed the giant's staff from St. Dunstan's church, to immolate the betrayer of trust. I have written to him as he never was written to before by an author, I'll be sworn, and I hope you will amplify my wrath, till it has an effect upon him. You tell me always you have much to write about. Write it, but let us drop metaphysics;--on that point we shall never agree. I am dull and drowsy, as usual. I do nothing, and even that nothing fatigues me.

Adieu."

LETTER 71. TO MR. DALLAS.

"Newstead Abbey, Oct. 11. 1811.

"I have returned from Lancs., and ascertained that my property there may be made very valuable, but various circ.u.mstances very much circ.u.mscribe my exertions at present. I shall be in town on business in the beginning of November, and perhaps at Cambridge before the end of this month; but of my movements you shall be regularly apprised. Your objections I have in part done away by alterations, which I hope will suffice; and I have sent two or three additional stanzas for both '_Fyttas_' I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.

"Instead of tiring yourself with _my_ concerns, I should be glad to hear _your_ plans of retirement. I suppose you would not like to be wholly shut out of society? Now I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off, where your family would have the advantage of very genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile affluence; where _you_ would meet with men of information and independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, a.s.semblies, &c. &c., which bring people together. My mother had a house there some years, and I am well acquainted with the economy of Southwell, the name of this little commonwealth.

Lastly, you will not be very remote from me; and though I am the very worst companion for young people in the world, this objection would not apply to _you_, whom I could see frequently. Your expenses, too, would be such as best suit your inclinations, more or less, as you thought proper; but very little would be requisite to enable you to enter into all the gaieties of a country life. You could be as quiet or bustling as you liked, and certainly as well situated as on the lakes of c.u.mberland, unless you have a particular wish to be _picturesque_.

"Pray, is your Ionian friend in town? You have promised me an introduction.--You mention having consulted some friend on the MSS.--Is not this contrary to our usual way? Instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage!!!!!' as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to enquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might. I have heard nothing of Murray, whom I scolded heartily.

Must I write more notes?--Are there not enough?--Cawthorn must be kept back with the 'Hints.'--I hope he is getting on with Hobhouse's quarto. Good evening. Yours ever," &c.

Of the same date with this melancholy letter are the following verses, never before printed, which he wrote in answer to some lines received from a friend, exhorting him to be cheerful, and to "banish care." They will show with what gloomy fidelity, even while under the pressure of recent sorrow, he reverted to the disappointment of his early affection, as the chief source of all his sufferings and errors, present and to come.

"Newstead Abbey, October 11. 1811.

"'Oh! banish care'--such ever be The motto of _thy_ revelry!

Perchance of _mine_, when wa.s.sail nights Renew those riotous delights, Wherewith the children of Despair Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care.'

But not in morn's reflecting hour, When present, past, and future lower, When all I loved is changed or gone, Mock with such taunts the woes of one, Whose every thought--but let them pa.s.s-- Thou know'st I am not what I was.

But, above all, if thou wouldst hold Place in a heart that ne'er was cold, By all the powers that men revere, By all unto thy bosom dear, Thy joys below, thy hopes above, Speak--speak of any thing but love.

"'Twere long to tell, and vain to hear The tale of one who scorns a tear; And there is little in that tale Which better bosoms would bewail.

But mine has suffer'd more than well 'Twould suit Philosophy to tell.

I've seen my bride another's bride,-- Have seen her seated by his side,-- Have seen the infant which she bore, Wear the sweet smile the mother wore, When she and I in youth have smiled As fond and faultless as her child;-- Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain, Ask if I felt no secret pain.

And I have acted well my part, And made my cheek belie my heart, Return'd the freezing glance she gave, Yet felt the while _that_ woman's slave;-- Have kiss'd, as if without design, The babe which ought to have been mine, And show'd, alas! in each caress Time had not made me love the less.

"But let this pa.s.s--I'll whine no more.

Nor seek again an eastern sh.o.r.e; The world befits a busy brain,-- I'll hie me to its haunts again.

But if, in some succeeding year, When Britain's 'May is in the sere,'

Thou hear'st of one, whose deepening crimes Suit with the sablest of the times, Of one, whom Love nor Pity sways, Nor hope of fame, nor good men's praise, One, who in stern Ambition's pride, Perchance not Blood shall turn aside, One rank'd in some recording page With the worst anarchs of the age, Him wilt thou _know_--and, _knowing_, pause, Nor with the _effect_ forget the cause."

The antic.i.p.ations of his own future career in these concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, to awaken more of horror than of interest, were we not prepared, by so many instances of his exaggeration in this respect, not to be startled at any lengths to which the spirit of self-libelling would carry him. It seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the ambition to be, himself, the dark "sublime he drew," and that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavoured to fancy, where he could not find, in his own character, fit subjects for his pencil.

It was about the time when he was thus bitterly feeling and expressing the blight which his heart had suffered from a _real_ object of affection, that his poems on the death of an _imaginary_ one, "Thyrza,"

were written;--nor is it any wonder, when we consider the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touching and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs;--a confluence of sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and warmed in their pa.s.sage through his fancy, and forming thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling. In retracing the happy hours he had known with the friends now lost, all the ardent tenderness of his youth came back upon him. His school-sports with the favourites of his boyhood, Wingfield and Tattersall,--his summer days with Long[28], and those evenings of music and romance which he had dreamed away in the society of his adopted brother, Eddlestone,--all these recollections of the young and dead now came to mingle themselves in his mind with the image of her who, though living, was, for him, as much lost as they, and diffused that general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent in these poems. No friends.h.i.+p, however warm, could have inspired sorrow so pa.s.sionate; as no love, however pure, could have kept pa.s.sion so chastened. It was the blending of the two affections, in his memory and imagination, that thus gave birth to an ideal object combining the best features of both, and drew from him these saddest and tenderest of love-poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real feeling touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore.

The following letter gives some further account of the course of his thoughts and pursuits at this period:--

LETTER 72. TO MR. HODGSON.

"Newstead Abbey, Oct. 13. 1811.

"You will begin to deem me a most liberal correspondent; but as my letters are free, you will overlook their frequency. I have sent you answers in prose and verse[29] to all your late communications, and though I am invading your ease again, I don't know why, or what to put down that you are not acquainted with already. I am growing nervous (how you will laugh!)--but it is true,--really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically _nervous_. Your climate kills me; I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless; I have very seldom any society, and when I have, I run out of it. At 'this present writing,' there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to write this grumbling letter.--I don't know that I sha'n't end with insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness, as Scrope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner. I must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament would suit me well,--any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed verb '_ennuyer_.'

"When shall you be at Cambridge? You have hinted, I think, that your friend Bland is returned from Holland. I have always had a great respect for his talents, and for all that I have heard of his character; but of me, I believe he knows nothing, except that he heard my sixth form repet.i.tions ten months together, at the average of two lines a morning, and those never perfect. I remembered him and his 'Slaves' as I pa.s.sed between Capes Matapan, St. Angelo, and his Isle of Ceriga, and I always bewailed the absence of the Anthology. I suppose he will now translate Vondel, the Dutch Shakspeare, and 'Gysbert van Amstel' will easily be accommodated to our stage in its present state; and I presume he saw the Dutch poem, where the love of Pyramus and Thisbe is compared to the _pa.s.sion_ of _Christ_; also the love of _Lucifer_ for Eve, and other varieties of Low Country literature. No doubt you will think me crazed to talk of such things, but they are all in black and white and good repute on the banks of every ca.n.a.l from Amsterdam to Alkmaar.

"Yours ever, B."

[Footnote 28: See the extract from one of his journals, vol. i. p. 94.]

[Footnote 29: The verses in vol. ii. p. 73.]

"My poesy is in the hands of its various publishers; but the 'Hints from Horace,' (to which I have subjoined some savage lines on Methodism, and ferocious notes on the vanity of the triple Editory of the Edin. Annual Register,) my '_Hints_,' I say, stand still, and why?--I have not a friend in the world (but you and Drury) who can construe Horace's Latin or my English well enough to adjust them for the press, or to correct the proofs in a grammatical way.

So that, unless you have bowels when you return to town (I am too far off to do it for myself), this ineffable work will be lost to the world for--I don't know how many _weeks._

"'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' must wait till _Murray's_ is finished. He is making a tour in Middles.e.x, and is to return soon, when high matter may be expected. He wants to have it in quarto, which is a cursed unsaleable size; but it is pestilent long, and one must obey one's bookseller. I trust Murray will pa.s.s the Paddington Ca.n.a.l without being seduced by Payne and Mackinlay's example,--I say Payne and Mackinlay, supposing that the partners.h.i.+p held good. Drury, the villain, has not written to me; 'I am never (as Mrs. Lumpkin says to Tony) to be gratified with the monster's dear wild notes.'

"So you are going (going indeed!) into orders. You must make your peace with the Eclectic Reviewers--they accuse you of impiety, I fear, with injustice. Demetrius, the 'Sieger of Cities,' is here, with 'Gilpin Homer.' The painter[30] is not necessary, as the portraits he already painted are (by antic.i.p.ation) very like the new animals.--Write, and send me your 'Love Song'--but I want 'paulo majora' from you. Make a dash before you are a deacon, and try a _dry_ publisher.

"Yours always, B."

[Footnote 30: Barber, whom he had brought down to Newstead to paint his wolf and his bear.]