Life of Lord Byron Volume III Part 2

lines,--_only_ amplifying, in its re-statement, an epigram (by the by, no epigram except in the _Greek_ acceptation of the word) into a _roman_. I wonder the Couriers, &c. &c., have not translated that part of the Moniteur, with additional comments.

"The Princess of Wales has requested Fuseli to paint from 'The Corsair,'--leaving to him the choice of any pa.s.sage for the subject: so Mr. Locke tells me. Tired, jaded, selfish, and supine--must go to bed.

"_Roman_, at least _Romance_, means a song sometimes, as in the Spanish.

I suppose this is the Moniteur's meaning, unless he has confused it with 'The Corsair.'

"Albany, March 28.

"This night got into my new apartments, rented of Lord Althorpe, on a lease of seven years. s.p.a.cious, and room for my books and sabres. _In_ the _house_, too, another advantage. The last few days, or whole week, have been very abstemious, regular in exercise, and yet very _un_well.

"Yesterday, dined _tete-a-tete_ at the Cocoa with Scrope Davies--sat from six till midnight--drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, neither of which wines ever affect me. Offered to take Scrope home in my carriage; but he was tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him on his knees praying to I know not what purpose or paG.o.d. No headach, nor sickness, that night nor to-day. Got up, if any thing, earlier than usual--sparred with Jackson _ad sudorem_, and have been much better in health than for many days. I have heard nothing more from Scrope. Yesterday paid him four thousand eight hundred pounds, a debt of some standing, and which I wished to have paid before. My mind is much relieved by the removal of that _debit_.

"Augusta wants me to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused _every_ body else, but I can't deny her any thing;--so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel--eat a crocodile.' Let me see--Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.--every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this _couplet_ quarrel to no purpose. I shall laugh if Augusta succeeds.

"Redde a little of many things--shall get in all my books to-morrow.

Luckily this room will hold them--with 'ample room and verge, &c. the characters of h.e.l.l to trace.' I must set about some employment soon; my heart begins to eat _itself_ again.

"April 8.

"Out of town six days. On my return, find my poor little paG.o.d, Napoleon, pushed off his pedestal;--the thieves are in Paris. It is his own fault. Like Milo, he would rend the oak[4]; but it closed again, wedged his hands, and now the beasts--lion, bear, down to the dirtiest jackall--may all tear him. That Muscovite winter _wedged_ his arms;--ever since, he has fought with his feet and teeth. The last may still leave their marks; and 'I guess now' (as the Yankees say) that he will yet play them a pa.s.s. He is in their rear--between them and their homes. Query--will they ever reach them?

[Footnote 4: He adopted this thought afterwards in his Ode to Napoleon, as well as most of the historical examples in the following paragraph.]

"Sat.u.r.day, April 9. 1814.

"I mark this day!

"Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. 'Excellent well.' Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes--the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too--Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise--Charles the Fifth but so so--but Napoleon, worst of all. What!

wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to give up what is already gone!! 'What whining monk art thou--what holy cheat?' 'Sdeath!--Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The 'Isle of Elba' to retire to!--Well--if it had been Caprea, I should have marvelled less. 'I see men's minds are but a parcel of their fortunes.'

I am utterly bewildered and confounded.

"I don't know--but I think _I_, even _I_ (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's.

But, after all, a crown may be not worth dying for. Yet, to outlive _Lodi_ for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead!

'Expende--quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more _carats_. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil:--the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat.

"Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'

"April 10.

"I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I never am long in the society even of _her_ I love, (G.o.d knows too well, and the devil probably too,) without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.[5] Even in the day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it. _Per esempio_,--I have not stirred out of these rooms for these four days past: but I have sparred for exercise (windows open) with Jackson an hour daily, to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me. The more violent the fatigue, the better my spirits for the rest of the day; and then, my evenings have that calm nothingness of languor, which I most delight in. To-day I have boxed one hour--written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte--copied it--eaten six biscuits--drunk four bottles of soda water--redde away the rest of my time--besides giving poor * * a world of advice about this mistress of his, who is plaguing him into a phthisic and intolerable tediousness. I am a pretty fellow truly to lecture about 'the sect.' No matter, my counsels are all thrown away.

[Footnote 5: "As much company," says Pope, "as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better, and would rather be employed in reading than in the most agreeable conversation."]

"April 19. 1814.

"There is ice at both poles, north and south--all extremes are the same--misery belongs to the highest and the lowest only,--to the emperor and the beggar, when unsixpenced and unthroned. There is, to be sure, a d.a.m.ned insipid medium--an equinoctial line--no one knows where, except upon maps and measurement.

"'And all our _yesterdays_ have lighted fools The way to dusty death.'

I will keep no further journal of that same hesternal torch-light; and, to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume, and write, in _Ipecacuanha_,--'that the Bourbons are restored!!!'--'Hang up philosophy.' To be sure, I have long despised myself and man, but I never spat in the face of my species before--'O fool! I shall go mad.'"

The perusal of this singular Journal having made the reader acquainted with the chief occurrences that marked the present period of his history--the publication of The Corsair, the attacks upon him in the newspapers, &c.--there only remains for me to add his correspondence at the same period, by which the moods and movements of his mind, during these events, will be still further ill.u.s.trated.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Sunday, Jan. 2. 1814.

"Excuse this dirty paper--it is the _pen_ultimate half-sheet of a quire. Thanks for your book and the Ln. Chron., which I return. The Corsair is copied, and now at Lord Holland's; but I wish Mr.

Gifford to have it to-night.

"Mr. Dallas is very _perverse_; so that I have offended both him and you, when I really meaned to do good, at least to one, and certainly not to annoy either.[6] But I shall manage him, I hope.--I am pretty confident of the _Tale_ itself; but one cannot be sure. If I get it from Lord Holland, it shall be sent.

"Yours," &c.

[Footnote 6: He had made a present of the copyright of "The Corsair" to Mr. Dallas, who thus describes the manner in which the gift was bestowed:--"On the 28th of December, I called in the morning on Lord Byron, whom I found composing 'The Corsair.' He had been working upon it but a few days, and he read me the portion he had written. After some observations, he said, 'I have a great mind--I will.' He then added that he should finish it soon, and asked me to accept of the copyright. I was much surprised. He had, before he was aware of the value of his works, declared that he never would take money for them, and that I should have the whole advantage of all he wrote. This declaration became morally void when the question was about thousands, instead of a few hundreds; and I perfectly agree with the admired and admirable author of Waverley, that 'the wise and good accept not gifts which are made in heat of blood, and which may be after repented of.'--I felt this on the sale of 'Childe Harold,' and observed it to him. The copyright of 'The Giaour'

and 'The Bride of Abydos' remained undisposed of, though the poems were selling rapidly, nor had I the slightest notion that he would ever again give me a copyright. But as he continued in the resolution of not appropriating the sale of his works to his own use, I did not scruple to accept that of 'The Corsair,' and I thanked him. He asked me to call and hear the portions read as he wrote them. I went every morning, and was astonished at the rapidity of his composition. He gave me the poem complete on New-year's day, 1814, saying, that my acceptance of it gave him great pleasure, and that I was fully at liberty to publish it with any bookseller I pleased, independent of the profit."

Out of this last-mentioned permission arose the momentary embarra.s.sment between the n.o.ble poet and his publisher, to which the above notes allude.]

TO MR. MURRAY.

["Jan. 1814.]

"I will answer your letter this evening; in the mean time, it may be sufficient to say, that there was no intention on my part to annoy you, but merely to _serve_ Dallas, and also to rescue myself from a possible imputation that _I_ had other objects than fame in writing so frequently. Whenever I avail myself of any profit arising from my pen, depend upon it, it is not for my own convenience; at least it never has been so, and I hope never will.

"P.S. I shall answer this evening, and will set all right about Dallas. I thank you for your expressions of personal regard, which I can a.s.sure you I do not lightly value."

LETTER 155. TO MR. MOORE.

"January 6. 1814.

"I have got a devil of a long story in the press, ent.i.tled 'The Corsair,' in the regular heroic measure. It is a pirate's isle, peopled with my own creatures, and you may easily suppose they do a world of mischief through the three cantos. Now for your dedication--if you will accept it. This is positively my last experiment on public _literary_ opinion, till I turn my thirtieth year,--if so be I flourish until that downhill period. I have a confidence for you--a perplexing one to me, and, just at present, in a state of abeyance in itself.

"However, we shall see. In the mean time, you may amuse yourself with my suspense, and put all the justices of peace in requisition, in case I come into your county with 'hackbut bent.'

"Seriously, whether I am to hear from her or him, it is a _pause_, which I shall fill up with as few thoughts of my own as I can borrow from other people. Any thing is better than stagnation; and now, in the interregnum of my autumn and a strange summer adventure, which I don't like to think of, (I don't mean * *'s, however, which is laughable only,) the ant.i.thetical state of my lucubrations makes me alive, and Macbeth can 'sleep no more:'--he was lucky in getting rid of the drowsy sensation of waking again.