"Palazzo Mocenigo, Canal Grande,
"Venice, June 1. 1818.
"Your letter is almost the only news, as yet, of Canto fourth, and
it has by no means settled its fate,--at least, does not tell me
how the 'Poeshie' has been received by the public. But I suspect,
no great things,--firstly, from Murray's 'horrid stillness;'
secondly, from what you say about the stanzas running into each
other[21], which I take _not_ to be _yours_, but a notion you have
been dinned with among the Blues. The fact is, that the terza rima
of the Italians, which always _runs_ on and in, may have led me
into experiments, and carelessness into conceit--or conceit into
carelessness--in either of which events failure will be probable,
and my fair woman, 'superne,' end in a fish; so that Childe Harold
will be like the mermaid, my family crest, with the fourth Canto
for a tail thereunto. I won't quarrel with the public, however, for
the 'Bulgars' are generally right; and if I miss now, I may hit
another time:--and so, the 'gods give us joy.'
"You like Beppo, that's right. I have not had the Fudges yet, but
live in hopes. I need not say that your successes are mine. By the
way, Lydia White is here, and has just borrowed my copy of 'Lalla
Rookh.'
"Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you
might expect from his situation. He is a good man, with some
poetical elements in his chaos; but spoilt by the Christ-Church
Hospital and a Sunday newspaper,--to say nothing of the Surrey
gaol, which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When
I saw 'Rimini' in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at
bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that
his style was a system, or _upon system_, or some such cant; and,
when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless: so I said no more
to him, and very little to any one else.
"He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound
barbarisms to be _old_ English; and we may say of it as Aimwell
says of Captain Gibbet's regiment, when the Captain calls it an
'old corps,'--'the _oldest_ in Europe, if I may judge by your
uniform.' He sent out his 'Foliage' by Percy Shelley * * *, and, of
all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by Self-love
upon a Night-mare, I think this monstrous Sagittary the most
prodigious. _He_ (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has
persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks
Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor
Fitzgerald said of _himself_ in the Morning Post) for _Vates_ in
both senses, or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the
translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and
says so?--Did you read his skimble-skamble about * * being at the
head of his own _profession_, in the _eyes_ of _those_ who followed
it? I thought that poetry was an _art_, or an _attribute_, and not
a _profession_;--but be it one, is that * * * * * * at the head of
_your_ profession in _your_ eyes? I'll be curst if he is of _mine_,
or ever shall be. He is the only one of us (but of us he is not)
whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take Scott, Campbell,
Crabbe, or you, or me, or any of the living, and throne him;--but
not this new Jacob Behmen, this * * * * * * whose pride might have
kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted as his
_soi-disant_ poetry.
"But Leigh Hunt is a good man, and a good father--see his Odes to
all the Masters Hunt;--a good husband--see his Sonnet to Mrs.
Hunt;--a good friend--see his Epistles to different people;--and a
great coxcomb and a very vulgar person in every thing about him.
But that's not his fault, but of circumstances.[22]
"I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan but that of
_Savage_. Recollect, however, that the life of such a man may be
made far more amusing than if he had been a Wilberforce;--and this
without offending the living, or insulting the dead. The Whigs
abuse him; however, he never left them, and such blunderers deserve
neither credit nor compassion. As for his creditors,--remember,
Sheridan _never had_ a shilling, and was thrown, with great powers
and passions, into the thick of the world, and placed upon the
pinnacle of success, with no other external means to support him in
his elevation. Did Fox * * * _pay his_ debts?--or did Sheridan take
a subscription? Was the * *'s drunkenness more excusable than his?
Were his intrigues more notorious than those of all his
contemporaries? and is his memory to be blasted, and theirs
respected? Don't let yourself be led away by clamour, but compare
him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of
principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and
with none in talent, for he beat them all _out_ and _out_. Without
means, without connection, without character, (which might be false
at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation,) he beat
them all, in all he ever attempted. But alas, poor human nature!
Good night--or rather, morning. It is four, and the dawn gleams
over the Grand Canal, and unshadows the Rialto. I must to bed; up
all night--but, as George Philpot says, 'it's life, though, damme,
it's life!' Ever yours, B.
"Excuse errors--no time for revision. The post goes out at noon,
and I sha'n't be up then. I will write again soon about your _plan_
for a publication."
[Footnote 21: I had said, I think, in my letter to him, that this
practice of carrying one stanza into another was "something like taking
on horses another stage without baiting."]
[Footnote 22: I had, in first transcribing the above letter for the
press, omitted the whole of this caustic, and, perhaps, over-severe
character of Mr. Hunt; but the tone of that gentleman's book having, as
far as himself is concerned, released me from all those scruples which
prompted the suppression, I have considered myself at liberty to restore
the passage.]
* * * * *
During the greater part of the period which this last series of letters
comprises, he had continued to occupy the same lodgings in an extremely
narrow street called the Spezieria, at the house of the linen-draper, to
whose lady he devoted so much of his thoughts. That he was, for the
time, attached to this person,--as far as a passion so transient can
deserve the name of attachment,--is evident from his whole conduct. The
language of his letters shows sufficiently how much the novelty of this
foreign tie had caught his fancy; and to the Venetians, among whom such
arrangements are mere matters of course, the assiduity with which he
attended his Signora to the theatre, and the ridottos, was a subject of
much amusement. It was with difficulty, indeed, that he could be
prevailed upon to absent himself from her so long as to admit of that
hasty visit to the Immortal City, out of which one of his own noblest
titles to immortality sprung; and having, in the space of a few weeks,
drunk in more inspiration from all he saw than, in a less excited state,
possibly, he might have imbibed in years, he again hurried back, without
extending his journey to Naples,--having written to the fair Marianna to
meet him at some distance from Venice.
Besides some seasonable acts of liberality to the husband, who had, it
seems, failed in trade, he also presented to the lady herself a handsome
set of diamonds; and there is an anecdote related in reference to this
gift, which shows the exceeding easiness and forbearance of his
disposition towards those who had acquired any hold on his heart. A
casket, which was for sale, being one day offered to him, he was not a
little surprised on discovering them to be the same jewels which he had,
not long before, presented to his fair favourite, and which had, by some
unromantic means, found their way back into the market. Without
enquiring, however, any further into the circumstances, he generously
repurchased the casket and presented it to the lady once more,
good-humouredly taxing her with the very little estimation in which, as
it appeared, she held his presents.
To whatever extent this unsentimental incident may have had a share in
dispelling the romance of his passion, it is certain that, before the
expiration of the first twelvemonth, he began to find his lodgings in
the Spezieria inconvenient, and accordingly entered into treaty with
Count Gritti for his Palace on the Grand Canal,--engaging to give for
it, what is considered, I believe, a large rent in Venice, 200 louis a
year. On finding, however, that, in the counterpart of the lease brought
for his signature, a new clause had been introduced, prohibiting him not
only from underletting the house, in case he should leave Venice, but
from even allowing any of his own friends to occupy it during his
occasional absence, he declined closing on such terms; and resenting so
material a departure from the original engagement, declared in society,
that he would have no objection to give the same rent, though
acknowledged to be exorbitant, for any other palace in Venice, however
inferior, in all respects, to Count Gritti's. After such an
announcement, he was not likely to remain long unhoused; and the
Countess Mocenigo having offered him one of her three Palazzi, on the
Grand Canal, he removed to this house in the summer of the present year,
and continued to occupy it during the remainder of his stay in Venice.
Highly censurable, in point of morality and decorum, as was his course
of life while under the roof of Madame * *, it was (with pain I am
forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong
career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so
unrestrainedly and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of the
state of his mind on leaving England I have already endeavoured to
convey some idea, and, among the feelings that went to make up that
self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate, was
an indignant scorn of his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought they
had done him. For a time, the kindly sentiments which he still harboured
towards Lady Byron, and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that all would
yet come right again, kept his mind in a mood somewhat more softened and
docile, as well as sufficiently under the influence of English opinion
to prevent his breaking out into such open rebellion against it, as he
unluckily did afterwards.
By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron, his last link
with home was severed; while, notwithstanding the quiet and unobtrusive
life which he had led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found, no
cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character;--the same
busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at home
having, with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into exile. To
this persuasion, for which he had but too much grounds, was added all
that an imagination like his could lend to truth,--all that he was left
to interpret, in his own way, of the absent and the silent,--till, at
length, arming himself against fancied enemies and wrongs, and, with the
condition (as it seemed to him) of an outlaw, assuming also the
desperation, he resolved, as his countrymen would not do justice to the
better parts of his nature, to have, at least, the perverse satisfaction
of braving and shocking them with the worst. It is to this feeling, I am
convinced, far more than to any depraved taste for such a course of
life, that the extravagances to which he now, for a short time, gave
loose, are to be attributed. The exciting effect, indeed, of this mode
of existence while it lasted, both upon his spirits and his genius,--so
like what, as he himself tells us, was always produced in him by a state
of contest and defiance,--showed how much of this latter feeling must
have been mixed with his excesses. The altered character too, of his
letters in this respect cannot fail, I think, to be remarked by the
reader,--there being, with an evident increase of intellectual vigour, a
tone of violence and bravado breaking out in them continually, which
marks the high pitch of re-action to which he had now wound up his
temper.
In fact, so far from the powers of his intellect being at all weakened
or dissipated by these irregularities, he was, perhaps, at no time of
his life, so actively in the full possession of all its energies; and
his friend Shelley, who went to Venice, at this period, to see him[23],
used to say, that all he observed of the workings of Byron's mind,
during his visit, gave him a far higher idea of its powers than he had
ever before entertained. It was, indeed, then that Shelley sketched out,
and chiefly wrote, his poem of "Julian and Maddalo," in the latter of
which personages he has so picturesquely shadowed forth his noble
friend[24]; and the allusions to "the Swan of Albion," in his "Lines
written among the Euganean Hills," were also, I understand, the result
of the same access of admiration and enthusiasm.
In speaking of the Venetian women, in one of the preceding letters,
Lord Byron, it will be recollected, remarks, that the beauty for which
they were once so celebrated is no longer now to be found among the
"Dame," or higher orders, but all under the "fazzioli," or kerchiefs, of
the lower. It was, unluckily, among these latter specimens of the "bel
sangue" of Venice that he now, by a suddenness of descent in the scale
of refinement, for which nothing but the present wayward state of his
mind can account, chose to select the companions of his disengaged
hours;--and an additional proof that, in this short, daring career of
libertinism, he was but desperately seeking relief for a wronged and
mortified spirit, and
"What to us seem'd guilt might be but woe,"--
is that, more than once, of an evening, when his house has been in the
possession of such visitants, he has been known to hurry away in his
gondola, and pass the greater part of the night upon the water, as if
hating to return to his home. It is, indeed, certain, that to this least
defensible portion of his whole life he always looked back, during the
short remainder of it, with painful self-reproach; and among the causes
of the detestation which he afterwards felt for Venice, this
recollection of the excesses to which he had there abandoned himself was
not the least prominent.
The most distinguished and, at last, the reigning favourite of all this
unworthy Harem was a woman named Margarita Cogni, who has been already
mentioned in one of these letters, and who, from the trade of her
husband, was known by the title of the Fornarina. A portrait of this
handsome virago, drawn by Harlowe when at Venice, having fallen into the
hands of one of Lord Byron's friends after the death of that artist, the
noble poet, on being applied to for some particulars of his heroine,
wrote a long letter on the subject, from which the following are
extracts:--
"Since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni, you shall be told
it, though it may be lengthy.
"Her face is the fine Venetian cast of the old time; her figure,
though perhaps too tall, is not less fine--and taken altogether in
the national dress.
"In the summer of 1817, * * * * and myself were sauntering on
horseback along the Brenta one evening, when, amongst a group of
peasants, we remarked two girls as the prettiest we had seen for
some time. About this period, there had been great distress in the
country, and I had a little relieved some of the people. Generosity
makes a great figure at very little cost in Venetian livres, and
mine had probably been exaggerated as an Englishman's. Whether they
remarked us looking at them or no, I know not; but one of them
called out to me in Venetian, 'Why do not you, who relieve others,
think of us also?' I turned round and answered her--'Cara, tu sei
troppo bella e giovane per aver' bisogna del' soccorso mio.' She
answered, 'If you saw my hut and my food, you would not say so.'
All this passed half jestingly, and I saw no more of her for some
days.
"A few evenings after, we met with these two girls again, and they
addressed us more seriously, assuring us of the truth of their
statement. They were cousins; Margarita married, the other single.
As I doubted still of the circumstances, I took the business in a
different light, and made an appointment with them for the next
evening. In short, in a few evenings we arranged our affairs, and
for a long space of time she was the only one who preserved over me
an ascendency which was often disputed, and never impaired.
"The reasons of this were, firstly, her person;--very dark, tall,
the Venetian face, very fine black eyes. She was two-and-twenty
years old, * * * She was, besides, a thorough Venetian in her
dialect, in her thoughts, in her countenance, in every thing, with
all their _naïveté_ and pantaloon humour. Besides, she could
neither read nor write, and could not plague me with
letters,--except twice that she paid sixpence to a public scribe,
under the piazza, to make a letter for her, upon some occasion when
I was ill and could not see her. In other respects, she was
somewhat fierce and 'prepotente,' that is, over-bearing, and used
to walk in whenever it suited her, with no very great regard to
time, place, nor persons; and if she found any women in her way,
she knocked them down.
"When I first knew her, I was in 'relazione' (liaison) with la
Signora * *, who was silly enough one evening at Dolo, accompanied
by some of her female friends, to threaten her; for the gossips of
the villeggiatura had already found out, by the neighing of my
horse one evening, that I used to 'ride late in the night' to meet
the Fornarina. Margarita threw back her veil (fazziolo), and
replied in very explicit Venetian, '_You_ are _not_ his _wife_: _I_
am _not_ his _wife_: you are his Donna, and _I_ am his _Donna_:
your husband is a _becco_, and mine is another. For the rest, what
_right_ have you to reproach me? If he prefers me to you, is it my
fault? If you wish to secure him, tie him to your
petticoat-string.--But do not think to speak to me without a reply,
because you happen to be richer than I am.' Having delivered this
pretty piece of eloquence (which I translate as it was related to
me by a bystander), she went on her way, leaving a numerous
audience with Madame * *, to ponder at her leisure on the dialogue
between them.
"When I came to Venice for the winter, she followed; and as she
found herself out to be a favourite, she came to me pretty often.
But she had inordinate self-love, and was not tolerant of other
women. At the 'Cavalchina,' the masked ball on the last night of
the carnival, where all the world goes, she snatched off the mask
of Madame Contarini, a lady noble by birth, and decent in conduct,
for no other reason, but because she happened to be leaning on my
arm. You may suppose what a cursed noise this made; but this is
only one of her pranks.
"At last she quarrelled with her husband, and one evening ran away
to my house. I told her this would not do: she said she would lie
in the street, but not go back to him; that he beat her, (the
gentle tigress!) spent her money, and scandalously neglected her.
As it was midnight I let her stay, and next day there was no moving
her at all. Her husband came, roaring and crying, and entreating
her to come back:--_not_ she! He then applied to the police, and
they applied to me: I told them and her husband to _take_ her; I
did not want her; she had come, and I could not fling her out of
the window; but they might conduct her through that or the door if
they chose it. She went before the commissary, but was obliged to
return with that 'becco ettico,' as she called the poor man, who
had a phthisic. In a few days she ran away again. After a precious
piece of work, she fixed herself in my house, really and truly
without my consent; but, owing to my indolence, and not being able
to keep my countenance, for if I began in a rage, she always
finished by making me laugh with some Venetian pantaloonery or
another; and the gipsy knew this well enough, as well as her other
powers of persuasion, and exerted them with the usual tact and
success of all she-things; high and low, they are all alike for
that.
"Madame Benzoni also took her under her protection, and then her
head turned. She was always in extremes, either crying or laughing,
and so fierce when angered, that she was the terror of men, women,
and children--for she had the strength of an Amazon, with the
temper of Medea. She was a fine animal, but quite untameable. _I_
was the only person that could at all keep her in any order, and
when she saw me really angry (which they tell me is a savage
sight), she subsided. But she had a thousand fooleries. In her
fazziolo, the dress of the lower orders, she looked beautiful;
but, alas! she longed for a hat and feathers; and all I could say
or do (and I said much) could not prevent this travestie. I put the
first into the fire; but I got tired of burning them, before she
did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure--for they did
not at all become her.
"Then she would have her gowns with a _tail_--like a lady,
forsooth; nothing would serve her but 'l'abita colla _coua_,' or
_cua_, (that is the Venetian for 'la cola,' the tail or train,) and
as her cursed pronunciation of the word made me laugh, there was an
end of all controversy, and she dragged this diabolical tail after
her every where.
"In the mean time, she beat the women and stopped my letters. I
found her one day pondering over one. She used to try to find out
by their shape whether they were feminine or no; and she used to
lament her ignorance, and actually studied her alphabet, on purpose
(as she declared) to open all letters addressed to me and read
their contents.
"I must not omit to do justice to her housekeeping qualities. After
she came into my house as 'donna di governo,' the expenses were
reduced to less than half, and every body did their duty
better--the apartments were kept in order, and every thing and
every body else, except herself.
"That she had a sufficient regard for me in her wild way, I had
many reasons to believe. I will mention one. In the autumn, one
day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a
heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril--hats blown away, boat
filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night
coming, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a tight struggle,
I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo palace, on the Grand
Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and
the long dark hair, which was streaming, drenched with rain, over
her brows and breast. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and
the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin tall figure, and
the lightning flashing round her, and the waves rolling at her
feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the
Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living
thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me
safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected,
but calling out to me--'Ah! can' della Madonna, xe esto il tempo
per andar' al' Lido?' (Ah! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go
to Lido?) ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the
boatmen for not foreseeing the 'temporale.' I am told by the
servants that she had only been prevented from coming in a boat to
look after me, by the refusal of all the gondoliers of the canal to
put out into the harbour in such a moment; and that then she sat
down on the steps in all the thickest of the squall, and would
neither be removed nor comforted. Her joy at seeing me again was
moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress
over her recovered cubs.
"But her reign drew near a close. She became quite ungovernable
some months after, and a concurrence of complaints, some true, and
many false--'a favourite has no friends'--determined me to part
with her. I told her quietly that she must return home, (she had
acquired a sufficient provision for herself and mother, &c. in my
service,) and she refused to quit the house. I was firm, and she
went threatening knives and revenge. I told her that I had seen
knives drawn before her time, and that if she chose to begin, there
was a knife, and fork also, at her service on the table, and that
intimidation would not do. The next day, while I was at dinner, she
walked in, (having broken open a glass door that led from the hall
below to the staircase, by way of prologue,) and advancing straight
up to the table, snatched the knife from my hand, cutting me
slightly in the thumb in the operation. Whether she meant to use
this against herself or me, I know not--probably against
neither--but Fletcher seized her by the arms, and disarmed her. I
then called my boatmen, and desired them to get the gondola ready,
and conduct her to her own house again, seeing carefully that she
did herself no mischief by the way. She seemed quite quiet, and
walked down stairs. I resumed my dinner.
"We heard a great noise, and went out, and met them on the
staircase, carrying her up stairs. She had thrown herself into the
canal. That she intended to destroy herself, I do not believe; but
when we consider the fear women and men who can't swim have of deep
or even of shallow water, (and the Venetians in particular, though
they live on the waves,) and that it was also night, and dark, and
very cold, it shows that she had a devilish spirit of some sort
within her. They had got her out without much difficulty or damage,
excepting the salt water she had swallowed, and the wetting she had
undergone.
"I foresaw her intention to refix herself, and sent for a surgeon,
enquiring how many hours it would require to restore her from her
agitation; and he named the time. I then said, 'I give you that
time, and more if you require it; but at the expiration of this
prescribed period, if _she_ does not leave the house, _I_ will.'
"All my people were consternated. They had always been frightened
at her, and were now paralysed: they wanted me to apply to the
police, to guard myself, &c. &c. like a pack of snivelling servile
boobies as they were. I did nothing of the kind, thinking that I
might as well end that way as another; besides, I had been used to
savage women, and knew their ways.
"I had her sent home quietly after her recovery, and never saw her
since, except twice at the opera, at a distance amongst the
audience. She made many attempts to return, but no more violent
ones. And this is the story of Margarita Cogni, as far as it
relates to me.
"I forgot to mention that she was very devout, and would cross
herself if she heard the prayer time strike.
"She was quick in reply; as, for instance--One day when she had
made me very angry with beating somebody or other, I called her a
_cow_ (_cow_, in Italian, is a sad affront). I called her 'Vacca.'
She turned round, courtesied, and answered, 'Vacca _tua_,
'celenza' (_i.e._ eccelenza). '_Your_ cow, please your Excellency.'
In short, she was, as I said before, a very fine animal, of
considerable beauty and energy, with many good and several amusing
qualities, but wild as a witch and fierce as a demon. She used to
boast publicly of her ascendency over me, contrasting it with that
of other women, and assigning for it sundry reasons. True it was,
that they all tried to get her away, and no one succeeded till her
own absurdity helped them.
"I omitted to tell you her answer, when I reproached her for
snatching Madame Contarini's mask at the Cavalchina. I represented
to her that she was a lady of high birth, 'una Dama,' &c. She
answered, 'Se ella è dama _mi_ (_io_) son Veneziana;'--'If she is a
lady, I am a Venetian.' This would have been fine a hundred years
ago, the pride of the nation rising up against the pride of
aristocracy: but, alas! Venice, and her people, and her nobles, are
alike returning fast to the ocean; and where there is no
independence, there can be no real self-respect. I believe that I
mistook or mis-stated one of her phrases in my letter; it should
have been--'Can' della Madonna cosa vus' tu? esto non é tempo per
andar' a Lido?'"
[Footnote 23: The following are extracts from a letter of Shelley's to a
friend at this time.
"Venice, August, 1818.
"We came from Padua hither in a gondola; and the gondolier, among
other things, without any hint on our part, began talking of Lord
Byron. He said he was a 'Giovanotto Inglese,' with a 'nome
stravagante,' who lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of
money.
"At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron. He was delighted to see
me, and our first conversation of course consisted in the object of
our visit. He took me in his gondola, across the Laguna, to a long,
strandy sand, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we
disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along
the sands, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his
own wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, with great
professions of friendship and regard for me. He said that if he had
been in England, at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have
moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. He talked
of literary matters,--his fourth Canto, which he says is very good,
and indeed repeated some stanzas, of great energy, to me. When we
returned to his palace, which is one if the most magnificent in
Venice," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 24: In the preface also to this poem, under the fictitious
name of Count Maddalo, the following just and striking portrait of Lord
Byron is drawn:--
"He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would
direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his
degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a
comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects
that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human
life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of
other men, and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the
former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys
upon itself for want of objects which it can consider worthy of
exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word
to express the concentred and impatient feelings which consume him; but
it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for
in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and
unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more
serious conversation is a sort of intoxication. He has travelled much;
and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in
different countries."]
* * * * *
It was at this time, as we shall see by the letters I am about to
produce, and as the features, indeed, of the progeny itself would but
too plainly indicate, that he conceived, and wrote some part of, his
poem of 'Don Juan;'--and never did pages more faithfully and, in many
respects, lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and
passion that, like the wrack of autumn, swept across the author's mind
in writing them. Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of
attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this
moment, could have suggested, or been capable of, the execution of such
a work. The cool shrewdness of age, with the vivacity and glowing
temperament of youth,--the wit of a Voltaire, with the sensibility of a
Rousseau,--the minute, practical knowledge of the man of society, with
the abstract and self-contemplative spirit of the poet,--a
susceptibility of all that is grandest and most affecting in human
virtue, with a deep, withering experience of all that is most fatal to
it,--the two extremes, in short, of man's mixed and inconsistent nature,
now rankly smelling of earth, now breathing of heaven,--such was the
strange assemblage of contrary elements, all meeting together in the
same mind, and all brought to bear, in turn, upon the same task, from
which alone could have sprung this extraordinary poem,--the most
powerful and, in many respects, painful display of the versatility of
genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder at and
deplore.
I shall now proceed with his correspondence,--having thought some of the
preceding observations necessary, not only to explain to the reader much
of what he will find in these letters, but to account to him for much
that has been necessarily omitted.
* * * * *