ET. 33. SECOND LETTER ON BOWLES. 501 very uncommon in states out of their independence. Believe Yours ever and truly. pletely blonde and fair Italy; yet not an English fairness, but more like a Swede or a Norwegian. Her figure, too, particularly the bust, is uncommonly good. It must be Holmes: I like him be cause he takes such inveterate likenesses. There is a war here; but a solitary traveller, with little baggage, and nothing to do with politics, has nothing to fear. Pack him up in the Diligence. Don't forget." LETTER 417. TO MR. HOPPNER. Ravenna, April. 3. 1821. "Thanks for the translation. I have sent you some books, which I do not know whether you have read or no-you need not return them, in any case. I enclose you also a letter from Pisa. I have neither spared trouble nor expense in the care of the child; and as she was now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the servants -and as a man living without any woman at the head of his house cannot much attend to a nursery — I had no resource but to place her for a time (at a high pension too) in the convent of Bagna-Cavalli (twelve miles off), where the air is good, and where she will, at least, have her learning advanced, and her morals and religion inculcated. I had also another reason;-things were and are in such a state here, that I had no reason to look upon my own personal safety as particularly insurable; and I thought the infant best out of harm's way, for the present. 66 It is also fit that I should add that I by no means intended, nor intend, to give a natural child an English education, because with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education and a portion of five or six thousand pounds, she might and may marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity. I have now explained my notions as to the place where she now is it is the best I could find for the present; but I have no prejudices in its favour. "I do not speak of politics, because it seems a hopeless subject, as long as those scoundrels are to be permitted to bully 1 With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of his daughter's education, that notwithstanding the many advantages she was sure to derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs. Shelley, his apprehensions, lest her feeling upon religious subjects might me, "P. S. There is a report here of a change in France; but with what truth is not yet known. the best opinion' of her country women; and P. S.- My respects to Mrs. H. I have at my tinie of life, (three and thirty, 22d January, 1821,) that is to say, after the life I have led, a good opinion is the only rational one which a man should entertain of the whole sex-up to thirty, the worst possible opinion a man can have of them in general, the better for himself. Afterwards, it is a matter of no importance to them, nor to him either, what opinion he entertains—his day is over, or, at least, should be. You see how sober I am become." "Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.' "You know my opinion of that secondhand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry,- because it is of no school. I read Cenci-but, besides that I think the subject essentially undramatic, I am not an admirer of our old dramatists as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and poetry. As to my drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being as free as I have been with yours. 66 I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to see. I have heard nothing of mine, and do not know that it is yet published. I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead -or that he was alive and so sensitive-I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing. You want me to undertake a great poem I have not the inclination nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference - not to life, for we love it by instinct - but to the stimuli of life, increases. Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many reasons, -some public, some personal. My respects to Mrs. S. "Yours ever. [Keats died at Rome in February, 1821, whither he had gone for the benefit of his health. His complaint was a consumption, under which he had lingered for some time; but his death was accelerated by a cold caught in his voyage to Italy. At the time of his death he had just completed his twenty-fourth year. "A loose, slack, not weil-dressed youth met me," says Coleridge, "in a lane I sent you by last postis a large packet, which will not do for publication (I suspect), being, as the apprentices say, damned low.' I put off also for a week or two sending the Italian scrawl which will form a note to it. The reason is that, letters being opened, I wish to bide a wee.' "Well, have you published the Tragedy? and does the Letter take? "Is it true, what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome1 of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it, though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying, and suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. I know, by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced the English Bards, &c.) knocked me down but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of claret, and began an answer, finding that there was nothing in the article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an honourable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article for all the honour and glory in the world, though I by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats upon. "You see the Italians have made a sad business of it-all owing to treachery and disunion amongst themselves. It has given me great vexation. The execrations heaped upon the Neapolitans by the other Italians are quite in unison with those of the rest of Europe. "Yours, &c. JOHN KEATS.-CARBONARI. health, spring probably; so I have lowered my diet and taken to Epsom salts. "As you say my prose is good, why don't you treat with Moore for the reversion of the Memoirs?-conditionally, recollect; not to be published before decease. He has the permission to dispose of them, and I advised him to do so." "Ravenna, April. 28. 1821. "You cannot have been more disappointed than myself, nor so much deceived. I have been so at some personal risk also, which is not yet done away with. However, no time nor circumstances shall alter my tone nor my feelings of indignation against tyranny triumphant. The present business has been as much a work of treachery as of cowardice, though both may have done their part. If ever you and I meet again, I will have a talk with you upon the subject. At present, for obvious reasons, I can write but little, as all letters are opened. In mine they shall always find my sentiments, but nothing that can lead to the oppression of others. 66 You will please to recollect that the Neapolitans are nowhere now more execrated than in Italy, and not blame a whole people for the vices of a province. That would be like condemning Great Britain because they plunder wrecks in Cornwall. "And now let us be literary;-a sad falling off, but it is always a consolation. If Othello's occupation be gone,' let us take to the next best; and, if we cannot contribute to make mankind more free and wise, we may amuse ourselves and those who like it. What are you writing? I have been scribbling at intervals, and Murray will be publishing about now. "Lady Noel has, as you say, been dangerously ill, but it may console you to learn that she is dangerously well again. "I have written a sheet or two more of Memoranda for you; and I kept a little Journal for about a month or two, till I had filled the paper-book. I then left it off, as "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c. &c. ? I had not, when I wrote, seen this pamphlet, as he supposes, but had merely heard from some friends, that his pen had "run a-muck" in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its career. It may be sufficient to say of the use to which both Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles thought it worth their while to apply my name in this controversy, that, as far as my own knowledge of the subject extended, I was disposed to agree with neither of the extreme opinions into which, as 503 things grew busy, and, afterwards, too gloomy to set down without a painful feeling. This I should be glad to send you, if I had an opportunity; but a volume, however small, don't go well by such posts as exist in this Inquisition of a country. "I have no news. As a very pretty woman said to me a few nights ago, with the tears in her eyes, as she sat at the harpsichord, Alas! the Italians must now return to making operas.' I fear that and maccaroni are their forte, and motley their only wear.' However, there are some high spirits among them still. Pray write. "And believe me, &c." LETTER 422. TO MR. Moore. Ravenna, May 3. 1821. "Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours of this day, with the lines. They are sublime, as well as beautiful, and in your very best mood and manner. They are also but too true. However, do not confound the scoundrels at the heel of the boot with their betters at the top of it. I assure you that there are some loftier spirits. "Nothing, however, can be better than your poem, or more deserved by the Lazzaroni. They are now abhorred and disclaimed nowhere more than here. We will talk over these things (if we meet) some day, and I will recount my own adventures, some of which have been a little hazardous, perhaps. So, you have got the Letter on Bowles?? I do not recollect to have said any thing of you that could offend, - certainly, nothing intentionally. As for *, I meant him a compliment. I wrote the whole off-hand, without copy or correction, and expecting then every day to be called into the field. What have I said of you? I am sure I forget. It must be something of regret for your approbation of Bowles. And did you not approve, as he says? Would I had known that before! I would have given him some more gruel. My intention was to it appeared to me, my distinguished friends had diverged; -neither with Lord Byron in that spirit of partisanship which led him to place Pope above Shakspeare and Milton, nor with Mr. Bowles in such an application of the "principles " of poetry as could tend to sink Pope, on the scale of his art, to any rank below the very first. Such being the middle state of my opinion on the question, it will not be difficult to understand how one of my controversial friends should be as mistaken in supposing me to differ altogether from his views, as the other was in taking for granted that I had ranged myself wholly on his side. make fun of all these fellows; but how I succeeded, I don't know. "As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic Cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, if you please, but I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain of burnt brick-work. now wears, and will trample them to ashes with for their servility. I have risked myself with the others here, and how far I may or may not be compromised is a problem at this moment. Some of them, like Craigengelt, would tell all, and more than all, to save themselves.' But, come what may, the cause was a glorious one, though it reads at present as if the Greeks had run away from Xerxes. Happy the few who have only to reproach themselves with believing that these rascals were less rascaille' than they proved! The Murray has written to me but once, - Here in Romagna, the efforts were necesthe day of its publication, when it seemed sarily limited to preparations and good inprosperous. But I have heard of late from tentions, until the Germans were fairly engaged England but rarely. Of Murray's other pub-in equal warfare as we are upon their very lications (of mine), I know nothing, -nor whether he has published. He was to have done so a month ago. I wish you would do something, or that we were together. "Ever yours and affectionately, 66 "B." It was at this time that he began, under the title of " Detached Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows: 66 Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. which I have kept in the course of my living, I began one about three months ago, and carried it on till I had filled one paper-book (thinnish), and two sheets or so of another. I then left off, partly because I thought we should have some business here, and I had furbished up my arms and got my apparatus ready for taking a turn with the patriots, having my drawers full of their proclamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms of their hidden weapons, of most calibres, and partly because I had filled my paper-book. "But the Neapolitans have betrayed themselves and all the worid; and those who would have given their blood for Italy can now only give her their tears. "Some day or other, if dust holds together, I have been enough in the secret (at least in this part of the country) to cast perhaps some little light upon the atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy into barbarism: at present, I have neither the time nor the temper. However the real Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at the heel of the boot, which the Hun ["No saint in the course of his religious warfare," says Boswell," was more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves than Johnson. He said one day, talk frontiers, without a single fort or hill nearer than San Marino. Whether 'hell will be paved with those 'good intentions,' I know not; but there will probably be good store of Neapolitans to walk upon the pavement, whatever may be its composition. Slabs of lava from their mountain, with the bodies of their own damned souls for cement, would be the fittest causeway for Satan's Corso."" "Ravenna, May 10, 1921 "I HAVE just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr. Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good humour. He is to write, and you to publish, what you please, motto and subject. I desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course, after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will not publish my defence of Gilchrist : it would be brutal to do so after his urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon Gilchrist. You may tell him what I say there of his Missionary (it is praised, as ing to an acquaintance on this subject, * Sir, hell is paved with good intentions.'"-Life, vol. v. p. 305. ed. 1835.' it deserves). However, and if there are any passages not personal to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of my first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all, don't let any thing be added which can personally affect Mr. Bowles. To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron, at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if I am not mistaken, "In the enclosed notes, of course what I feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in readsay of the democracy of poetry cannot applying these sentences, such as alone can convey to Mr. Bowles, but to the Cockney and water any adequate notion of the proud, generous washing-tub schools. pleasure that must have been felt in writing them. "I hope and trust that Elliston won't be permitted to act the drama. Surely he might have the grace to wait for Kean's return before he attempted it; though, even then, I should be as much against the attempt as The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer of samphire on the cliff, "half way down." Whatever judgment, however, may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature, too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for the reader. [The" Letter to Mr. Murray on Mr.Bowles's Strictures upon the Life and Writings of Pope" being printed entire at the end of this Volume, most of Mr. Moore's extracts are omitted.] ["Memoirs by James Earl Waldegrave, K. G."] In the ex "Poor Scott is now no more. ercise of his vocation, he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly. Athough several years my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the grammar-schule' (or, as the Aberdonians pronounce it, squeel') of New Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely in his capacity of editor a few years ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. The moment was too tempting for many friends and for all enemies. At a time when all my relations (save one) fell from me like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my few friends became still fewer-when the whole periodical press (I mean the daily and weekly, not the literary press) was let loose against me in every shape of reproach, with the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of The Courier' and 'The Examiner,' the paper of which Scott had the direction was neither the last, nor the least vituperative. Two years ago I met him at Venice, when he was bowed in griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the bitterness of domestic privation. He was then earnest with me to return to England; and on my telling him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he replied to me, that he and others had been greatly misled; and that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to excite them.'Scott is no more, but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very considerable talents, and of great acquirements. He had made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy at some appointment which he had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevented the further extension (unless by a 2 ["Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II., by Horace Walpole, Lord Orford."] |