"Bennet Street, August 22. 1813.
"As our late--I might say, deceased--correspondence had too much of
the town-life leaven in it, we will now, 'paulo majora,' prattle a
little of literature in all its branches; and first of the
first--criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the
boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see
a milling in that polite neighbourhood. Made. de Staël Holstein has
lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile
Teutonic adjutant,--kilt and killed in a coffee-house at
Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must
be,--but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers
could--write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a
grievance--and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes
her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not
very charitably) from prior observation.
"In a 'mail-coach copy' of the Edinburgh, I perceive The Giaour is
second article. The numbers are still in the Leith smack--_pray,
which way is the wind?_ The said article is so very mild and
sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey _in love_;--you
know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has
been, for several _quarters, éperdument amoureux_. Seriously--as
Winifred Jenkins says of Lismahago--Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy)
'has done the handsome thing by me,' and I say _nothing_. But this
I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in
this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad
figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By the by, I was
called _in_ the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent
upon carnage, and,--after a long struggle between the natural
desire of destroying one's fellow-creatures, and the dislike of
seeing men play the fool for nothing,--I got one to make an
apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever
after. One was a peer, the other a friend untitled, and both fond
of high play;--and one, I can swear for, though very mild, 'not
fearful,' and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the
thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane. They both
conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of _pain_ as
soon as I could.
"There is an American Life of G.F. Cooke, _Scurra_ deceased, lately
published. Such a book!--I believe, since Drunken Barnaby's
Journal, nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and
tap-room--drams and the drama--brandy, whisky-punch, and,
_latterly_, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather
marvellous,--first, that a man should live so long drunk, and,
next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some
very laughable things in it, nevertheless;--but the pints he
swallowed, and the parts he performed, are too regularly
registered.
"All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts
of the plague are very perplexing--not so much for the thing itself
as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places,
even from England. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in
all probability, be as foolishly spent on shore as in the ship; but
one like's to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully
empty; but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with my
perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;--not stay, if I can help
it, but where to go?[77] Sligo is for the North;--a pleasant place,
Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a muff, or
else tumbling into one's neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief! If the
winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it
inflict upon your solitary traveller?--Give me a _sun_, I care not
how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as
easily made as your Persian's.[78] The Giaour is now a thousand and
odd lines. 'Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,' eh,
Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,
"BN.
"P.S. I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted
letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the
brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more
serious, and entirely new, scrape than any of the last twelve
months,--and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can
neither live with nor without these women.
"I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left
Newstead, you reside near it. Did you ever see it? _do_--but don't
tell me that you like it. If I had known of such intellectual
neighbourhood, I don't think I should have quitted it. You could
have come over so often, as a bachelor,--for it was a thorough
bachelor's mansion--plenty of wine and such sordid
sensualities--with books enough, room enough, and an air of
antiquity about all (except the lasses) that would have suited
you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had
built myself a bath and a _vault_--and now I sha'n't even be buried
in it. It is odd that we can't even be certain of a _grave_, at
least a particular one. I remember, when about fifteen, reading
your poems there, which I can repeat almost now,--and asking all
kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not
dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see
him--and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical
propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with that
volume. Adieu--I commit you to the care of the gods--Hindoo,
Scandinavian, and Hellenic!
"P.S. 2d. There is an excellent review of Grimm's Correspondence
and Made. de Staël in this No. of the E.R. Jeffrey, himself, was my
critic last year; but this is, I believe, by another hand. I hope
you are going on with your _grand coup_--pray do--or that damned
Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of his poem in
MS., and he really surpasses every thing beneath Tasso. Hodgson is
translating him _against_ another bard. You and (I believe,
Rogers,) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be referred to as
judges between the twain,--that is, if you accept the office.
Conceive our different opinions! I think we, most of us (I am
talking very impudently, you will think--_us_, indeed!) have a way
of our own,--at least, you and Scott certainly have."
[Footnote 77: One of his travelling projects appears to have been a
visit to Abyssinia:--at least, I have found, among his papers, a letter
founded on that supposition, in which the writer entreats of him to
procure information concerning "a kingdom of Jews mentioned by Bruce as
residing on the mountain of Samen in that country. I have had the
honour," he adds, "of some correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Buchanan and
the reverend and learned G.S. Faber, on the subject of the existence of
this kingdom of Jews, which, if it prove to be a fact, will more clearly
elucidate many of the Scripture prophecies; ... and, if Providence
favours your Lordship's mission to Abyssinia, an intercourse might be
established between England and that country, and the English ships,
according to the Rev. Mr. Faber, might be the principal means of
transporting the kingdom of Jews, now in Abyssinia, to Egypt, in the way
to their own country, Palestine."]
[Footnote 78:
"A Persian's Heav'n is easily made--
'Tis but black eyes and lemonade."
]
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