Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at
Ravenna. The result of this visit was a determination, on his part, to
come and live at Pisa; and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung'
Arno for him. But the material part of my visit consists in a message
which he desires me to give you, and which, I think, ought to add
to your determination--for such a one I hope you have formed--of
restoring your shattered health and spirits by a migration to these
'regions mild of calm and serene air'.
He proposes that you should come out and go shares with him and me,
in a periodical work, to be conducted here; in which each of the
contracting parties should publish all their original compositions and
share the profits. He proposed it to Moore, but for some reason it was
never brought to bear. There can be no doubt that the _profits_ of
any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, must, from various,
yet co-operating reasons, be very great. As for myself, I am for the
present only a sort of link between you and him, until you can know
each other, and effectuate the arrangement; since (to entrust you with
a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron) nothing
would induce me to share in the profits, and still less, in the
borrowed splendour of such a partnership. You and he, in different
manners, would be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but
in the same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and success. Do not
let my frankness with you, nor my belief that you deserve it more than
Lord Byron, have the effect of deterring you from assuming a station
in modern literature which the universal voice of my contemporaries
forbids me either to stoop or to aspire to. I am, and I desire to be,
nothing.
I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a remittance for your
journey; because there are men, however excellent, from whom we would
never receive an obligation, in the worldly sense of the word; and I
am as jealous for my friend as for myself. But I suppose that I shall
at last make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the
many obligations he has conferred on me. I know I need only ask.
I think I have never told you how very much I like your _Amyntas_; it
almost reconciles me to translations. In another sense I still demur.
You might have written another such a poem as the _Nymphs_, with no
access of efforts. I am full of thoughts and plans, and should do
something, if the feeble and irritable frame which incloses it was
willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great
things. Before this you will have seen _Adonais_. Lord Byron, I
suppose from modesty, on account of his being mentioned in it, did
not say a word of _Adonais_, though he was loud in his praise of
_Prometheus_, and, what you will not agree with him in, censure of
the _Cenci_. Certainly, if _Marino Faliero_ is a drama, the _Cenci_
is not--but that between ourselves. Lord Byron is reformed, as far
as gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and sentimental Italian
lady, who is as much attached to him as may be. I trust greatly to his
intercourse with you, for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his
conduct is. He has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker
of aristocracy wants to be cut out.