"La Mira, Venice, July 10. 1817.
"Murray, the Mokanna of booksellers, has contrived to send me
extracts from Lalla Rookh by the post. They are taken from some
magazine, and contain a short outline and quotations from the two
first Poems. I am very much delighted with what is before me, and
very thirsty for the rest. You have caught the colours as if you
had been in the rainbow, and the tone of the East is perfectly
preserved. I am glad you have changed the title from 'Persian
Tale.'
"I suspect you have written a devilish fine composition, and I
rejoice in it from my heart; because 'the Douglas and the Percy
both together are confident against a world in arms.' I hope you
won't be affronted at my looking on us as 'birds of a feather;'
though on whatever subject you had written, I should have been very
happy in your success.
"There is a simile of an orange-tree's 'flowers and fruits,' which
I should have liked better if I did not believe it to be a
reflection on * * *.
"Do you remember Thurlow's poem to Sam--'_When_ Rogers;' and that
d----d supper of Rancliffe's that ought to have been a _dinner_?
'Ah, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight.' But
"My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee!
"Here's a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
"Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
"Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
'Tis to thee that I would drink.
"With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour,
Should be--peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore.
"This should have been written fifteen moons ago--the first stanza
was. I am just come out from an hour's swim in the Adriatic; and I
write to you with a black-eyed Venetian girl before me, reading
Boccacio.
"Last week I had a row on the road (I came up to Venice from my
casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe)
with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave
him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who
dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He
first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry. I wheeled
round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He
grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate
slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued,
and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the
carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with
his immediate remains, if he did not hold his tongue. He held it.
"Monk Lewis is here--'how pleasant!'[5] He is a very good fellow,
and very much yours. So is Sam--so is every body--and amongst the
number,
"Yours ever,
"B.
"P.S. What think you of Manfred?"
[Footnote 5: An allusion (such as often occurs in these letters) to an
anecdote with which he had been amused.]
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