abbey,―besides being an assurance of that one day (many years hence, I trust), into the bargain.

"I am sorry to perceive, however, by the close of your letter, that even you have not escaped the 'surgit amari,' &c. and that your damned deputy has been gathering such dew from the still vext Bermoothes 'or rather vexatious. Pray, give me some items of the affair, as you say it is a serious one; and, if it grows more so, you should make a trip over here for a few months, to see how things turn out. I suppose you are a violent admirer of England by your staying so long in it. For my own part, I have passed, between the age of one-and-twenty and thirty, half the intervenient years out of it without regretting any thing, except that I ever returned to it at all, and the gloomy prospect before me of business and parentage obliging me, one day, to return to it again, —at least, for the transaction of affairs, the signing of papers, and inspecting of children.

"I have here my natural daughter, by name Allegra,—a pretty little girl enough, and reckoned like papa.* Her mamma is English,—but it is a long story, and there's an end. She is about twenty months old. "I have finished the first Canto (a long one, of about 180 octaves) of a poem in the style and manner of Beppo,' encouraged by the good success of the same. It is called 'Don Juan,' and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not -at least, as far as it has yet gone too free for these very modest days. However, I shall try the experiment, anonymously, and if it don't take, it will be discontinued. It is dedicated to S** in good, simple, savage verse, upon the ****'s politics, and the way he got them. But the bore of copying it out is intolerable; and if I had an amanuensis he would be of no use, as my writing is so difficult to decipher.

"My poem's Epic, and is meant to be

Divided in twelve books, each book containing

With love and war, a heavy gale at sea

A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning—
New characters, &c. &c.

This little child had been sent to him by its mother about four or five months before, under the care of a Swiss nurse, a young girl not above nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect unfit to have the charge of such an infant, without the superintendence of some more experienced person. "The child, accordingly,” says my informant, "was but ill taken care of;-not that any blame could attach to Lord Byron, for he always expressed himself most anxious for her welfare, but because the nurse wanted the necessary experience. The poor girl was equally to be pitied; for, as Lord Byron's household consisted of English and Italian men servants, with whom she could hold no converse, and as there was no other female to consult with and assist her in her charge, nothing could be more forlorn than her situation proved to be."

Soon after the date of the above letter, Mrs. Hoppner, the lady of the Consul-General, who had, from the first, in compassion both to father and child, invited the little Allegra occasionally to her house, very kindly proposed to Lord Byron to take charge of her altogether, and an arrangement was accordingly concluded upon for that purpose.

The above are two stanzas, which I send you as a brick of my Babel, and by which you can judge of the texture of the structure.

"In writing the Life of Sheridan, never mind the angry lies of the humbug Whigs. Recollect that he was an Irishman and a clever fellow, and that we have had some very pleasant days with him. Don't forget that he was at school at Harrow, where, in my time, we used to show his namee-R. B. Sheridan, 1765,— -as an honour to the walls. Remember * *. Depend upon it that there were worse folks going, of that gang, than ever Sheridan was.

"What did Parr mean by haughtiness and coldness?' I listened to him with admiring ignorance, and respectful silence. What more could a talker for fame have?-they don't like to be answered. It was at Payne Knight's I met him, where he gave me more Greek than I could carry away. But I certainly meant to (and did) treat him with the most respectful deference.

be

"I wish you a good night, with a Venetian benediction, 'Benedetto te, e la terra che ti fara! May you be blessed, and the earth which you will make !'—is it not pretty? You would think it still prettier if you had heard it, as I did two hours ago, from the lips of a Venetian girl, with large black eyes, a face like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno-tall and energetic as a Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming in the moonlight-one of those women who may made any thing. I am sure if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it where I told her,—and into me, if I offended her. I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder that I don't in that case. I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me.† * * Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may come yet. There are others more to be blamed than ****, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly."

LETTER 323.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, September 24, 1818.

"In the one hundredth and thirty-second stanza of Canto fourth, the stanza runs in the manuscript

and not lost,' which is nonsense, as what losing a scale means, I know not; but leaving an unbalanced scale, or a scale unbalanced, is intelligible.* Correct this, I pray,-not for the public, or the poetry, but I do not choose to have blunders made in addressing any of the deities so seriously as this is addressed.

"P.S. In the translation from the Spanish, alter

Yours, &c.

to

"What does is not me.

"To a mighty squadron grew.

thy waters wasted them' mean (in the Canto)? That Consult the MS. always.

"I have written the first Canto (180 octave stanzas) of a poem in the style of Beppo, and have Mazeppa to finish besides.

"In referring to the mistake in stanza 132, I take the opportunity to desire that in future, in all parts of my writings referring to religion, you will be more careful, and not forget that it is possible that in addressing the Deity a blunder may become a blasphemy; and I do not choose to suffer such infamous perversions of my words or of my intentions.

"I saw the Canto by accident."

LETTER 324.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, January 20, 1819.

"The opinions which I have asked of Mr. H. and others were with regard to the poetical merit, and not as to what they may think due to the cant of the day, which still reads the Bath Guide, Little's Poems, Prior, and Chaucer, to say nothing of Fielding and Smollet. If published, publish entire, with the above-mentioned exceptions; or you may publish anonymously, or not at all. In the latter event, print 50 on my account, for private distribution. Yours, &c.

"I have written to Messrs. K. and H. to desire that they will not erase more than I have stated.

"The second Canto of Don Juan is finished in 206 stanzas."

"You will do me the favour to print privately (for private distribution) fifty copies of Don Juan.' The list of the men to whom I wish it to be presented, I will send hereafter. The other two poems

* This correction, I observe, has never been made,—the passage still remaining, unmeaningly,

"Lost the unbalanced scale."

+ This passage also remains uncorrected.

had best be added to the

collective edition: I do not approve of their being published separately. Print Don Juan entire, omitting, of course, the lines on Castlereagh, as I am not on the spot to meet him. I have a second Canto ready, which will be sent by and by. By this post, I have written to Mr. Hobhouse, addressed to your care.

6

Yours, &c. "P.S. I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my own self-love and Poeshie;' but I protest. If the poem has poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is leather and prunello,' and has never yet affected any human production pro or con.' Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases. As to the cant of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons. If you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles Second writers; in short, something of most who have written before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. Read him-most of you don't—but do- and I will forgive you : though the inevitable consequence would be that you would burn all I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain. I wrong Claudian, who was a poet, by naming him with such fellows; but he was the ultimus Romanorum,' the tail of the comet, and these persons are the tail of an old gown cut into a waistcoat for Jackey; but being both tails, I have compared the one with the other, though very unlike, like all similies. I write in a passion and a sirocco, and I was up till six this morning at the Carnival but I protest, as I did in my former letter."

:

LETTER 326.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, February 1, 1819.

"After one of the concluding stanzas of the first Canto of Don Juan,' which ends with (I forget the number)

"To have

when the original is dust,

A book, a d-d bad picture, and worse bust,

insert the following stanza :

"What are the hopes of man, &c.

"I have written to you several letters, some with additions, and some upon the subject of the poem itself, which my cursed puritanical committee have protested against publishing. But we will circumvent them on that point. I have not yet begun to copy out the second Canto, which is finished, from natural laziness, and the discouragement of the milk and water they have thrown upon the first. I say all this to them as to you, that is, for you to say to them, for I will have nothing underhand. If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced;

but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality—the first time I ever heard the word from any body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain that it is the most moral of poems; but if people won't discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine. I have already written to beg that in any case you will print fifty for private distribution. I will send you the list of persons to whom it is to be sent afterwards.

"Within this last fortnight I have been rather indisposed with a rebellion of stomach, which would retain nothing (liver, I suppose), and an inability, or fantasy, not to be able to eat of any thing with relish but a kind of Adriatic fish called 'scampi,' which happens to be the most indigestible of marine viands. However, within these last two days, I am better, and very truly yours."

LETTER 327.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, April 6, 1819.

"The second Canto of Don Juan was sent, on Saturday last, by post, in four packets, two of four, and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas, octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments, except those mentioned about Castlereagh and * * * *. You sha'n't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail: but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine.

a

call

"So you and Mr. Foscolo, &c. want me to undertake what you great work?' an Epic Poem, I suppose, or some such pyramid. I'll try no such thing; I hate tasks. And then seven or eight years!' God send us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one's years can't be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a ditcher. And works, too!-is Childe Harold nothing? You have 'divine' poems, is it nothing to have written a human one? without any of your worn-out machinery. Why, man, I could have spun the thoughts of the four Cantos of that poem into twenty, had I wanted to book-make, and its passion into as many modern tragedies. Since you want length, you shall have enough of Juan, for I'll make fifty Cantos.

so many

"And Foscolo, too! Why does he not do something more than the Letters of Ortis, and a tragedy, and pamphlets? He has good fifteen years more at his command than I have what has he done all that time? -proved his genius, doubtless, but not fixed its fame, nor done his

utmost.

"Besides, I mean to write my best work in Italian, and it will take me nine years more thoroughly to master the language; and then if my fancy exist, and I exist too, I will try what I can do really. As to the estimation of the English which you talk of, let them calculate what it is worth, before they insult me with their insolent condescension.