"April 22. 1823.
"My dear Count ---- (if you will permit me to address you so
familiarly), you should be content with writing in your own language,
like Grammont, and succeeding in London as nobody has succeeded since
the days of Charles the Second and the records of Antonio Hamilton,
without deviating into our barbarous language,--which you understand
and write, however, much better than it deserves.
"My 'approbation,' as you are pleased to term it, was very sincere,
but perhaps not very impartial; for, though I love my country, I do
not love my countrymen--at least, such as they now are. And, besides
the seduction of talent and wit in your work, I fear that to me there
was the attraction of vengeance. I have _seen_ and _felt_ much of
what you have described so well. I have known the persons, and the
re-unions so described,--(many of them, that is to say,) and the
portraits are so like that I cannot but admire the painter no less
than his performance.
"But I am sorry for you; for if you are so well acquainted with life
at your age, what will become of you when the illusion is still more
dissipated? But never mind--_en avant!_--live while you can; and that
you may have the full enjoyment of the many advantages of youth,
talent, and figure, which you possess, is the wish of
an--Englishman,--I suppose, but it is no treason; for my mother was
Scotch, and my name and my family are both Norman; and as for myself,
I am of no country. As for my 'Works,' which you are pleased to
mention, let them go to the Devil, from whence (if you believe many
persons) they came.
"I have the honour to be your obliged," &c. &c.
During this period a circumstance occurred which shows, most
favourably for the better tendencies of his nature, how much allayed
and softened down his once angry feeling, upon the subject of his
matrimonial differences, had now grown. It has been seen that his
daughter Ada,--more especially since his late loss of the only tie of
blood which he could have a hope of attaching to himself,--had become
the fond and constant object of his thoughts; and it was but natural,
in a heart kindly as his was, that, dwelling thus with tenderness
upon the child, he should find himself insensibly subdued into a
gentler tone of feeling towards the mother. A gentleman, whose sister
was known to be the confidential friend of Lady Byron, happening at
this time to be at Genoa, and in the habit of visiting at the house
of the poet's new intimates, Lord Byron took one day an opportunity,
in conversing with Lady ----, to say, that she would render him an
essential kindness if, through the mediation of this gentleman and
his sister, she could procure for him from Lady Byron, what he had
long been most anxious to possess, a copy of her picture. It having
been represented to him, in the course of the same, or a similar
conversation, that Lady Byron was said by her friends to be in a
state of constant alarm lest he should come to England to claim his
daughter, or, in some other way, interfere with her, he professed his
readiness to give every assurance that might have the effect of
calming such apprehensions; and the following letter, in reference to
both these subjects, was soon after sent by him.