February 18. 1821. "The news are that the Neapolitans have broken a bridge, and slain four pontifical carabiniers, whilk carabiniers wished to oppose. Besides the disrespect to neutrality, it is a pity that the first blood shed in this German quarrel should be Italian. However, the war seems begun in good earnest : for, if the Neapolitans kill the Pope's carabiniers, they will not be more delicate towards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a short time there will be news o' thae craws,' as Mrs. Alison Wilson says of Jenny Blane's unco cockernony' in the Tales of my Landlord,'

In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Lap

lander

"Et tous les lieux

Où sont ses yeux,
Font la Zone brûlante.'

This is Moore's,

"And those eyes make my climate, wherever I roam.' But I am sure that Moore never saw it; for this was published in Grimm's Correspondence in 1813, and I knew Moore's by heart in 1812. There is also another, but an antithetical coincidence

"Le soleil luit,

Des jours sans nuit
Bientôt il nous destine;

1 ["Lord Byron's connexion with the Gambas led to his becoming mixed up, to a much greater extent than we were till now aware of, in the Carbonari politics. He contributed large sums of money to the conspiring patriots: his house became a regular rendezvous for insurrectionary consultations, and, such was his imprudence, a complete magazine of arms and ammunition. His biographer seems to consider this "devotion to the sacred cause of human freedom," as almost enough to cover more sins than could ever be laid to his charge: we, however, are of the old school in many respects, and in none more decidedly than in the firm belief, that the

Mais ces longs jours
Seront trop courts,

Passés près de Christine.'

This is the thought reversed, of the last stanza of the ballad on Charlotte Lynes, given in Miss Seward's Memoirs of Darwin, which is pretty-I quote from memory of these last fifteen years.

not.

"For my first night I'd go

To those regions of snow,
Where the sun for six months never shines;
And think, even then,

He too soon came again,

To disturb me with fair Charlotte Lynes.' 2

To-day I have had no communication with my Carbonari cronies; but, in the mean time, my lower apartments are full of their bayonets, fusils, cartridges, and what I suppose that they consider me as a depôt, to be sacrificed, in case of accidents. It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object-the very poetry of politics. Only think- -a free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus. I reckon the times of Cæsar (Julius) free; because the commotions left every body a side to take, and the parties wards, it was all prætorian and legionary were pretty equal at the set out. But, afterbusiness and since!-we shall see, or, at least, some will see, what card will turn up. It is best to hope, even of the hopeless. The Dutch did more than these fellows have to do, in the Seventy Years' War.

man who, on any pretext, takes a part, voluntarily, in a war with which the service of his own country has nothing to do, incurs moral guilt of a deep and heinous dye." Quart. Rev. 1831.]

2["At a convivial meeting of Lichfield gentlemen, most of whom could make agreeable verses, it was proposed that every person in company should give a ballad or epigram on the lady whose health he drank. Mr. Vyse toasted Miss Lynes, and taking out his pencil, wrote the stanzas extempore."- Seward's Life of Dr. Darwin.]

ET. 33.

489

"Still blowing away. A. has sent me some news to-day. The war approaches nearer and nearer. Oh those scoundrel sovereigns! Let us but see them beaten - let the Neapolitans but have the pluck of the Dutch of old, or the Spaniards of now, or of the German Protestants, the Scotch Presbyterians, the Swiss under Tell, or the Greeks under Themistocles-all small and solitary nations (except the Spaniards and German Lutherans), and there is yet a resurrection for Italy, and a hope for the world.

"February 20. 1821.

"The news of the day are, that the Neapolitans are full of energy. The public spirit here is certainly well kept up. The Americani' (a patriotic society here, an under branch of the Carbonari') give a dinner in the Forest in a few days, and have invited me, as one of the Ci. It is to be in the Forest of Boccacio's and Dryden's 'Huntsman's Ghost;' and, even if I had not the same political feelings, (to say nothing of my old convivial turn, which every now and then revives,) I would go as a poet, or, at least, as a lover of poetry. I shall expect to see the spectre of Ostasio degli Onesti' (Dryden has turned him into Guido Cavalcanti — an essentially different person, as may be found in Dante) come thundering for his prey in the midst of the festival. At any rate, whether he does or no, I will get as tipsy and patriotic as possible.

"Within these few days I have read, but not written.

February 23. 1821. "Almost ditto with yesterday-rode, &c. -visited-wrote nothing-read Roman History.

"Had a curious letter from a fellow, who informs me that the Barbarians are ill-disposed towards me. He is probably a spy, or an impostor. But be it so, even as he says. They cannot bestow their hostility on one who loathes and execrates them more than I do, or who will oppose their views with more zeal, when the opportunity offers.

66

66 February 24. 1821.

Rode, &c. as usual. The secret intelligence arrived this morning from the frontier to the C. is as bad as possible. The plan has missed the Chiefs are betrayed, military, as well as civil-and the Neapolitans not only have not moved, but have declared to the P.government, and to the Barbarians, that they know nothing of the matter !!!

Thus the world goes; and thus the Italians are always lost for lack of union among themselves. What is to be done here, between the two fires, and cut off from the Nn. frontier, is not decided. My opinion was,-better to rise than be taken in detail; but how it will be settled now, I cannot tell. Messengers are despatched to the delegates of the other cities to learn their resolutions. I always had an idea that it would be bungled; but was willing to hope, and am so still. Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture freely for their freedom; and have so repeated to them (some of the Chiefs here) half an hour ago. I have two thousand five hundred scudi, better than five hundred pounds, in the house, which I offered to begin with.

66

too! and in spite of remonstrances. The consequence was, that the young men of the ball took it up, and were near throw ing the Vice-legate out of the window. servants, seeing the scene, withdrew, and he after them. His reverence Monsignore ought to know, that these are not times for the predominance of priests over decorum. Two minutes more, two steps further, and the whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.

66

Such is the spirit of the day, and these fellows appear not to perceive it. As far as the simple fact went, the young men were right, servants being prohibited always at these festivals.

"Yesterday wrote two notes on the 'Bowles and Pope' controversy, and sent them off to Murray by the post. The old woman whom I relieved in the forest (she is ninetyfour years of age) brought me two bunches of violets. Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus.' I was much pleased with the present. An English woman would have presented a pair of worsted stockings, at least, in the month of February. Both excellent things; but the former are more elegant. The present, at this season, reminds one of Gray's stanza, omitted from his elegy:— "Here scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.' As fine a stanza as any in his elegy. I wonder that he could have the heart to omit it. S

"Last night I suffered horribly—from an indigestion, I believe. I never sup- that is, never at home. But, last night, I was prevailed upon by the Countess Gamba's per

1 In another paper-book.

2 [Stanza 158

"Thus in the East they are extremely strict,

And wedlock and a padlock mean the same," &c.] ["This stanza was printed in some of the early

suasion, and the strenuous example of her brother, to swallow, at supper, a quantity of boiled cockles, and to dilute them, not reluctantly, with some Imola wine. When I came home, apprehensive of the consequences, I swallowed three or four glasses of spirits, which men (the venders) call brandy, rum, or hollands, but which gods would entitle spirits of wine, coloured or sugared. All was pretty well till I got to bed, when I became somewhat swollen, and considerably vertiginous. I got out, and mixing some soda-powders, drank them off. This brought on temporary relief. I returned to bed; but grew sick and sorry once and again. Took more soda-water. At last I fell into a dreary sleep. Woke, and was ill all day, till I had galloped a few miles. Query— was it the cockles, or what I took to correct them, that caused the commotion? I think both. I remarked in my illness the complete inertion, inaction, and destruction of my chief mental faculties. I tried to rouse them, and - and this is the Soul!!! I yet could not should believe that it was married to the body, if they did not sympathise so much with each other. If the one rose, when the other fell, it would be a sign that they longed for the natural state of divorce. But as it is, they seem to draw together like post-horses. "Let us hope the best-it is the grand possession."

CHAPTER XLIII.

1821.

LETTER TO MOORE CONCERNING THE MEMOIR AND THE PROJECTED JOURNAL.— MADAME DE STAEL. ANECDOTES OF MONK LEWIS. CAPTAIN WHITBY.- LOVE OF WRITING.-BARRY CORNWALL.-THE OLD DRAMATISTS.-MRS. CENTLIVRE AND CONGREVE.LETTERS CONCERNING THE REPRESENTATION OF MARINO FALIERO, — PLAN OF DON JUAN. BELZONI.-LETTER ON BOWLES'S STRICTURES UPON POPE. — GEORGE BANKES.-TURNER'S TRAVELS.— BOWLES AND CAMPBELL. — -POPE'S HOMER

AND COWPER'S.-POPE'S CHARACTER OF SPORUS. PORTRAIT OF MADAME GUICCIOLI, ALLEGRA.-JOHN SCOTT.DEATH OF KEATES. — THE CENCI. — ANECDOTES. -OVERTHROW OF THE CARBONARI.

DURING the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of the follow

editions, but was afterwards omitted, because Gray thought (and in my own opinion very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines, however, are în themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation.” -MATTHIAS.]

ing series were written. The reader must, therefore, be prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.

LETTER 404. TO MR. Moore.

"Ravenna, January 2. 1821.

"Your entering into my project for the Memoir, is pleasant to me. But I doubt (contrary to me my dear Made Mac F**, whom I always loved, and always shallnot only because I really did feel attached to her personally, but because she and about a dozen others of that sex were all who stuck by me in the grand conflict of 1815) - but I doubt, I say, whether the Memoir could appear in my lifetime; and, indeed, I had rather it did not; for a man always looks dead after his Life has appeared, and I should certes not survive the appearance of mine. The first part I cannot consent to alter, even although Madame de Stael's opinion of B.C. and my remarks upon Lady C.'s beauty (which is surely great, and I suppose that I have said so at least, I ought) should go down to our grandchildren in unsophisticated naked

1 of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the "Detached Thoughts: "-"Lewis was a good man, a clever man, but a bore a damned bore-one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially, Madame de Stael or Hobhouse, for example But I liked Lewis; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set; I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before, to pilot him: I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrafied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress; all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words.

491

laudable sincerity, that I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rousseau, &c. 2 and that she could not help it through decency. Now, I have not forgotten this, but I have been generous,―as mine acquaintance, the late Captain Whitby, of the navy, used to say to his seamen (when married to the gunner's daughter')-two dozen and let you off easy.' The 'two dozen' were with the cat-o'-nine tails; the 'let you off easy' was rather his own opinion than that of the patient.

"My acquaintance with these terms and practices arises from my having been much conversant with ships of war and naval heroes in the year of my voyages in the Mediterranean. Whitby was in the gallant action off Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a disciplinarian. When he left his frigate, he left a parrot, which was taught by the crew the following sounds-(it must be remarked that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett the actor, in voice, face, and figure, and that he squinted).

"I would give many a sugar cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!

2 [" Rousseau-Voltaire — our Gibbon—and De Stael, Leman ! these names are worthy of thy shore," &c. Works, p. 565.]

The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an answer, will best explain what follows: "With respect to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord **** and myself had been (about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly periodical in its appearance. Lord, as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has a very sly, dry, and pithy

+[Probably Lord John Russell, whose " Essay on the English Government and Constitution" had recently appeared.]

now and then, like * * * *, and then, if I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing, which you describe in your friend, I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

"I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme for I am as serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing. As to matters here, they are high and mighty-but not for paper. It is much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders, (every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,) there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour through Europe. There is nothing like habit in these things.

"I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless honour comes unlooked for,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within the year.

"Yours, &c.

"Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they open all letters. Will you set me right about your curst Champs Elysées?'-are they' és' or 'ées' for the adjective? I know nothing of French, being all Italian. Though I can read and understand French, I never attempt to speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the Memoirs cut what you please."

LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, January 4. 1821.

"I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. 1 Of what I have read of his works I liked the Dramatic Sketches, but thought his Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I know not what affectation of Wordsworth, and Moore, and myself, all mixed up into a

way of putting sound truths upon politics and manners; and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman's) wife-Comment, Monsieur,-sans y être obligé !' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the execu tive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work, is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."

kind of chaos. I think him very likely to produce a good tragedy, if he keep to a natural style, and not play tricks to form harlequinades for an audience. As he (Barry Cornwall is not his true name?) was a schoolfellow of mine, I take more than common interest in his success, and shall be glad to hear of it speedily. If I had been aware that he was in that line, I should have spoken of him in the preface to Marino Faliero. He will do a world's wonder if he produce a great tragedy. I am, however, persuaded, that this is not to be done by following the old dramatists, who are full of gross faults, pardoned only for the beauty of their language, but by writing naturally and regularly, and producing regular tragedies, like the Greeks; but not in imitation, — merely the outline of their conduct, adapted to our own times and circumstances, and of course no chorus.

-

"You will laugh, and say, 'Why don't you do so?' I have, you see, tried a sketch in Marino Faliero; but many people think my talent essentially undramatic,' and I am not at all clear that they are not right. If Marino Faliero don't fall- in the perusal - I shall, perhaps, try again (but not for the stage); and, as I think that love is not the principal passion for tragedy (and yet most of ours turn upon it), you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is love, furious, criminal, and hapless, it ought not to make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes.

"If you want to have a notion of what I am trying, take up a translation of any of the Greek tragedians. If I said the original, it would be an impudent presumption of mine; but the translations are so inferior to the originals, that I think I may risk it. Then judge of the simplicity of plot,' &c. and do not judge me by your old mad dramatists, which is like drinking usquebaugh and then proving a fountain. Yet after all, I suppose that you do not mean that spirits is a nobler clement than a clear spring bubbling in the sun? and this I take to be the difference between the Greeks and those turbid mountebanks — always excepting Ben Jonson, who

[" Mirandola," the tragedy here alluded to, was brought out at Covent Garden Theatre, with considerable success, in January 1821.]

2 [Bryan Walter Procter. "I told Lord Byron," says Captain Medwin, "that I had had a letter from Procter, and that he had been jeered on Mirandola' not having been included in his (Lord B.'s) enumeration of the dramatic pieces of the day, and that he added, he had been at Harrow with him. Ay,' said Lord Byron, I remember the name: he was in the lower school, in such a class. They stood Farrer, Procter, Jocelyn!''']