"Ravenna, August 1. 1819.
[Address your Answer to Venice, however.]
"Don't be alarmed. You will see me defend myself gaily--that is, if
I happen to be in spirits; and by spirits, I don't mean your
meaning of the word, but the spirit of a bull-dog when pinched, or
a bull when pinned; it is then that they make best sport; and as my
sensations under an attack are probably a happy compound of the
united energies of these amiable animals, you may perhaps see what
Marrall calls 'rare sport,' and some good tossing and goring, in
the course of the controversy. But I must be in the right cue
first, and I doubt I am almost too far off to be in a sufficient
fury for the purpose. And then I have effeminated and enervated
myself with love and the summer in these last two months.
"I wrote to Mr. Hobhouse, the other day, and foretold that Juan
would either fall entirely or succeed completely; there will be no
medium. Appearances are not favourable; but as you write the day
after publication, it can hardly be decided what opinion will
predominate. You seem in a fright, and doubtless with cause. Come
what may I never will flatter the million's canting in any shape.
Circumstances may or may not have placed me at times in a situation
to lead the public opinion, but the public opinion never led, nor
ever shall lead, me. I will not sit on a degraded throne; so pray
put Messrs. * * or * *, or Tom Moore, or * * * upon it; they will
all of them be transported with their coronation.
"P.S. The Countess Guiccioli is much better than she was. I sent
you, before leaving Venice, the real original sketch which gave
rise to the 'Vampire,' &c.--Did you get it?"
* * * * *
This letter was, of course (like most of those he addressed to England
at this time), intended to be shown; and having been, among others,
permitted to see it, I took occasion, in my very next communication to
Lord Byron, to twit him a little with the passage in it relating to
myself,--the only one, as far as I can learn, that ever fell from my
noble friend's pen during our intimacy, in which he has spoken of me
otherwise than in terms of kindness and the most undeserved praise.
Transcribing his own words, as well as I could recollect them, at the
top of my letter, I added, underneath, "Is _this_ the way you speak of
your friends?" Not long after, too, when visiting him at Venice, I
remember making the same harmless little sneer a subject of raillery
with him; but he declared boldly that he had no recollection of having
ever written such words, and that, if they existed, "he must have been
half asleep when he wrote them."
I have mentioned the circumstance merely for the purpose of remarking,
that with a sensibility vulnerable at so many points as his was, and
acted upon by an imagination so long practised in self-tormenting, it is
only wonderful that, thinking constantly, as his letters prove him to
have been, of distant friends, and receiving from few or none equal
proofs of thoughtfulness in return, he should not more frequently have
broken out into such sallies against the absent and "unreplying." For
myself, I can only say that, from the moment I began to unravel his
character, the most slighting and even acrimonious expressions that I
could have heard he had, in a fit of spleen, uttered against me, would
have no more altered my opinion of his disposition, nor disturbed my
affection for him, than the momentary clouding over of a bright sky
could leave an impression on the mind of gloom, after its shadow had
passed away.
* * * * *