Life of Lord Byron Volume II Part 25

there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is.

Well,--have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say 'Virtue is its own reward,'--it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be _something_;--and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty--and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,--ay, and woman too. Give _me_ a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague--yellow fever--and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wis.h.i.+ng without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic.

"No more reflections--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of--

'Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd.'

At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance could equal the events--

'quaeque ipse ...vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.'

"To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever.

"Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too,--who seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not married--has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife?

Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony.

All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W. and S. have both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls _off_ a man's temples in that state.

"Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow, for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and * * * * * Mem. too, to call on the Stael and Lady Holland to-morrow, and on * *, who has advised me (without seeing it, by the by) not to publish 'Zuleika;' I believe he is right, but experience might have taught him that not to print is _physically_ impossible. No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life _read_ a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently;--better print, and they who like may read, and if they don't like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they have, at least, _purchased_ the right of saying so.

"I have declined presenting the Debtors' Pet.i.tion, being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third--I don't know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it _con amore_;--one must have some excuse to one's self for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. 'Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me;'--and then, I have 'drunk medicines,' not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.

"Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli Pacha's lion in the Morea,--who followed the Arab keeper like a dog,--the fondness of the hyaena for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione!--There was a 'hippopotamus,' like Lord L----l in the face; and the 'Ursine Sloth' hath the very voice and manner of my valet--but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again--took off my hat--opened a door--_trunked_ a whip--and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should hate to see one _here_:--the sight of the _camel_ made me pine again for Asia Minor. 'Oh quando te aspiciam?'

"November 16.

"Went last night with Lewis to see the first of Antony and Cleopatra. It was admirably got up, and well acted--a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden, Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her s.e.x--fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!--coquettish to the last, as well with the 'asp' as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not '_words things_?' and such '_words_' very pestilent '_things_' too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra, after securing him, says, 'yet go--it is your interest,' &c.--how like the s.e.x! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

"To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty miles to meet Madame * *! I once travelled three thousand to get among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_ folios. I have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I won't hear it, as well as read.

"Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I pa.s.sed together; when _he_ talked, and _we_ listened, without one yawn, from six till one in the morning.

"Got my seals * * * * * * Have again forgot a plaything for _ma pet.i.te cousine_ Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last 'Giaour,'

and 'The Bride of Abydos.' He won't like the latter, and I don't think that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from * *. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart,--bitter diet!--Hodgson likes it better than 'The Giaour,' but n.o.body else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the circ.u.mstances which are the groundwork make it * * * heigh-ho!

"To-night I saw both the sisters of * *; my G.o.d! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be painful.[89] One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.

[Footnote 89:

"Earth holds no other like to thee, Or, if it doth, in vain for me: For worlds I dare not view the dame Resembling thee, yet not the same."

THE GIAOUR.

"Nov. 17.

"No letter from * *; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says, 'Why should a _living man_ complain?' I really don't know, except it be that a _dead man_ can't; and he, the said patriarch, _did_ complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that pious prologue, 'Curse--and die;' the only time, I suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter from Lord Holland on 'The Bride of Abydos,' which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don't deserve any quarter. Yet I _did_ think, at the time, that my cause of enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I had not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I would suppress even the memory;--but people, now they can't get it, make a fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.

"George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me, George pro Scoto,--and very right too. If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set me up as a compet.i.tor. Even if I had my choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the _kings_ he ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry and prose. The British Critic, in their Rokeby Review, have presupposed a comparison, which I am sure my friends never thought of, and W.

Scott's subjects are injudicious in descending to. I like the man--and admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls _Entusymusy_. All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good. Many hate his politics--(I hate all politics); and, here, a man's politics are like the Greek _soul_--an [Greek: eidolon], besides G.o.d knows what _other soul_; but their estimate of the two generally go together.

"Harry has not brought _ma pet.i.te cousine_. I want us to go to the play together;--she has been but once. Another short note from Jersey, inviting Rogers and me on the 23d. I must see my agent to-night. I wonder when that Newstead business will be finished. It cost me more than words to part with it--and to _have_ parted with it! What matters it what I do? or what becomes of me?--but let me remember Job's saying, and console myself with being 'a living man.'

"I wish I could settle to reading again,--my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into _reality_;--a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through ... yes, yes, through. I have had a letter from Lady Melbourne--the best friend I ever had in my life, and the cleverest of women.

"Not a word from * *. Have they set out from * *? or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws? If so--and this silence looks suspicious, I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out my iron.' I am out of practice--but I won't begin again at Manton's now.

Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever since I began to feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise.

"What strange tidings from that Anakim of anarchy--Buonaparte! Ever since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally time-servers, when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a 'Heros de Roman' of mine--on the Continent; I don't want him here. But I don't like those same flights--leaving of armies, &c. &c. I am sure when I fought for his bust at school, I did not think he would run away from himself. But I should not wonder if he banged them yet. To be beat by men would be something; but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty b.o.o.bies of regular-bred sovereigns--O-hone-a-rie!--O-hone-a-rie! It must be, as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick-lipped and thick-headed _Autrichienne_ brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept by Barras. I never knew any good come of your young wife, and legal espousals, to any but your 'sober-blooded boy' who 'eats fish' and drinketh 'no sack.' Had he not the whole opera? all Paris? all France?

But a mistress is just as perplexing--that is, _one_--two or more are manageable by division.

"I have begun, or had begun, a song, and flung it into the fire. It was in remembrance of Mary Duff, my first of flames, before most people begin to burn. I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do nothing, and--fortunately there is nothing to do. It has lately been in my power to make two persons (and their connections) comfortable, _pro tempore_, and one happy, _ex tempore_,--I rejoice in the last particularly, as it is an excellent man[90]. I wish there had been more inconvenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then there had been more merit. We are all selfish--and I believe, ye G.o.ds of Epicurus! I believe in Rochefoucault about _men_, and in Lucretius (not Busby's translation) about yourselves. Your bard has made you very _nonchalant_ and blest; but as he has excused _us_ from d.a.m.nation, I don't envy you your blessedness _much_--a little, to be sure. I remember, last year, * * said to me, at * *, 'Have we not pa.s.sed our last month like the G.o.ds of Lucretius?' And so we had. She is an adept in the text of the original (which I like too); and when that b.o.o.by Bus.

sent his translating prospectus, she subscribed. But, the devil prompting him to add a specimen, she transmitted him a subsequent answer, saying, that 'after perusing it, her conscience would not permit her to allow her name to remain on the list of subscribblers.' Last night, at Lord H.'s--Mackintosh, the Ossulstones, Puysegur, &c. there--I was trying to recollect a quotation (as _I_ think) of Stael's, from some Teutonic sophist about architecture. 'Architecture,' says this Macoronico Tedescho, 'reminds me of frozen music.' It is somewhere--but where?--the demon of perplexity must know and won't tell. I asked M., and he said it was not in her: but P----r said it must be _hers_, it was so _like_. H. laughed, as he does at all 'De l'Allemagne,'--in which, however, I think he goes a little too far. B., I hear, condemns it too.

But there are fine pa.s.sages;--and, after all, what is a work--any--or every work--but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two, every day's journey? To be sure, in Madame, what we often mistake, and 'pant for,' as the 'cooling stream,' turns out to be the '_mirage_'

(critice _verbiage_); but we do, at last, get to something like the temple of Jove Ammon, and then the waste we have pa.s.sed is only remembered to gladden the contrast.

"Called on C * *, to explain * * *. She is very beautiful, to my taste, at least; for on coming home from abroad, I recollect being unable to look at any woman but her--they were so fair, and unmeaning, and _blonde_. The darkness and regularity of her features reminded me of my 'Jannat al Aden.' But this impression wore off; and now I can look at a fair woman, without longing for a Houri. She was very good-tempered, and every thing was explained.

"To-day, great news--'the Dutch have taken Holland,'--which, I suppose, will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames. Five provinces have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation, conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the d.a.m.nable quags of this will-o'-the-wisp abode of Boors. It is said Bernadotte is amongst them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown) Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time. Two to one on the new dynasty!

"Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for 'The Giaour' and 'The Bride of Abydos.' I won't--it is too much, though I am strongly tempted, merely for the _say_ of it. No bad price for a fortnight's (a week each) what?--the G.o.ds know--it was intended to be called poetry.

"I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last--this being Sabbath, too. All the rest, tea and dry biscuits--six _per diem_, I wish to G.o.d I had not dined now!--It kills me with heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams;--and yet it was but a pint of bucellas, and fish.[91] Meat I never touch,--nor much vegetable diet. I wish I were in the country, to take exercise,--instead of being obliged to cool by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little accession of flesh,--my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the devil always came with it,--till I starved him out,--and I will _not_ be the slave of _any_ appet.i.te. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head--how it aches?--the horrors of digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner agrees with him?

"Mem. I must write to-morrow to 'Master Shallow, who owes me a thousand pounds,' and seems, in his letter, afraid I should ask him for it[92];--as if I would!--I don't want it (just now, at least,) to begin with; and though I have often wanted that sum, I never asked for the repayment of 10_l._ in my life--from a friend. His bond is not due this year, and I told him when it was, I should not enforce it. How often must he make me say the same thing?

"I am wrong--I did once ask * * * [93] to repay me. But it was under circ.u.mstances that excused me _to him_, and would to any one. I took no interest, nor required security. He paid me soon,--at least, his _padre_. My head! I believe it was given me to ache with. Good even.

[Footnote 90: Evidently, Mr. Hodgson.]

[Footnote 91: He had this year so far departed from his strict plan of diet as to eat fish occasionally.]

[Footnote 92: We have here another instance, in addition to the munificent aid afforded to Mr. Hodgson, of the generous readiness of the poet, notwithstanding his own limited means, to make the resources he possessed available for the a.s.sistance of his friends.]

[Footnote 93: Left blank thus in the original.]

"Nov. 22. 1813.

"'Orange Boven!' So the bees have expelled the bear that broke open their hive. Well,--if we are to have new De Witts and De Ruyters, G.o.d speed the little republic! I should like to see the Hague and the village of Brock, where they have such primitive habits. Yet, I don't know,--their ca.n.a.ls would cut a poor figure by the memory of the Bosphorus; and the Zuyder Zee look awkwardly after 'Ak-Denizi.' No matter,--the bluff burghers, puffing freedom out of their short tobacco-pipes, might be worth seeing; though I prefer a cigar or a hooka, with the rose-leaf mixed with the milder herb of the Levant. I don't know what liberty means,--never having seen it,--but wealth is power all over the world; and as a s.h.i.+lling performs the duty of a pound (besides sun and sky and beauty for nothing) in the East,--_that_ is the country. How I envy Herodes Atticus!--more than Pomponius. And yet a little _tumult_, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an _aventure_ of any lively description. I think I rather would have been Bonneval, Ripperda, Alberoni, Hayreddin, or Horuc Barbarossa, or even Wortley Montague, than Mahomet himself.

"Rogers will be in town soon?--the 23d is fixed for our Middleton visit.

Shall I go? umph!--In this island, where one can't ride out without overtaking the sea, it don't much matter where one goes.

"I remember the effect of the _first_ Edinburgh Review on me. I heard of it six weeks before,--read it the day of its denunciation,--dined and drank three bottles of claret, (with S.B. Davies, I think,) neither ate nor slept the less, but, nevertheless, was not easy till I had vented my wrath and my rhyme, in the same pages, against every thing and every body. Like George, in the Vicar of Wakefield, 'the fate of my paradoxes'

would allow me to perceive no merit in another. I remembered only the maxim of my boxing-master, which, in my youth, was found useful in all general riots,--'Whoever is not for you is against you--_mill_ away right and left,' and so I did;--like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all men's anent me. I did wonder, to be sure, at my own success--

"'And marvels so much wit is all his own,'

as Hobhouse sarcastically says of somebody (not unlikely myself, as we are old friends);--but were it to come over again, I would _not_. I have since redde[94] the cause of my couplets, and it is not adequate to the effect. C * * told me that it was believed I alluded to poor Lord Carlisle's nervous disorder in one of the lines. I thank Heaven I did not know it--and would not, could not, if I had. I must naturally be the last person to be pointed on defects or maladies.