"Ravenna, August 2. 1821.
"I had certainly answered your last letter, though but briefly, to
the part to which you refer, merely saying, 'damn the controversy;'
and quoting some verses of George Colman's, not as allusive to you,
but to the disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me
to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.
"Your Berlin drama [44] is an honour, unknown since the days of
Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor of Morocco' was represented by the
Court ladies, which was, as Johnson says, 'the last blast of
inflammation' to poor Dryden, who could not bear it, and fell foul
of Settle without mercy or moderation, on account of that and a
frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.
"Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is
there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be
reserved for posterity?
"I know S * * well--that is to say, I have met him occasionally at
Copet. Is he not also touched lightly in the Memoranda? In a review
of Childe Harold, Canto 4th, three years ago, in Blackwood's
Magazine, they quote some stanzas of an elegy of S * *'s on Rome,
from which they say that I _might_ have taken some ideas. I give
you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which
gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the
nonce by a correspondent--perhaps himself. The fact is easily
proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no
translation--at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
or saw, either translation or original.
"I remember having some talk with S * * about Alfieri, whose merit
he denies. He was also wroth about the Edinburgh Review of Goethe,
which was sharp enough, to be sure. He went about saying, too, of
the French--'I meditate a terrible vengeance against the French--I
will prove that Molière is no poet[45].'
"I don't see why you should talk of 'declining.' When I saw you,
you looked thinner, and yet younger, than you did when we parted
several years before. You may rely upon this as fact. If it were
not, I should say _nothing_, for I would rather not say unpleasant
_personal_ things to anyone--but, as it was the pleasant _truth_, I
tell it you. If you had led my life, indeed, changing climates and
connections--_thinning_ yourself with fasting and
purgatives--besides the wear and tear of the vulture passions, and
a very bad temper besides, you might talk in this way--but _you_! I
know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to
look better and to be better, in all respects. You are a * * *,
and, what is perhaps better for your friends, a good fellow. So,
don't talk of decay, but put in for eighty, as you well may.
"I am, at present, occupied principally about these unhappy
proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place here on account of
politics. It has been a miserable sight to see the general
desolation in families. I am doing what I can for them, high and
low, by such interest and means as I possess or can bring to bear.
There have been thousands of these proscriptions within the last
month in the Exarchate, or (to speak modernly) the Legations.
Yesterday, too, a man got his back broken, in extricating a dog of
mine from under a mill-wheel. The dog was killed, and the man is in
the greatest danger. I was not present--it happened before I was
up, owing to a stupid boy taking the dog to bathe in a dangerous
spot. I must, of course, provide for the poor fellow while he
lives, and his family, if he dies. I would gladly have given a
much greater sum than that will come to that he had never been
hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.
"Yours, &c.
"You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
gazettes in England some months ago. I only saw them, by Murray's
bounty, the other day. They call me 'Plagiary,' and what not. I
think I now, in my time, have been accused of _every_ thing.
"I have not given you details of little events here; but they have
been trying to make me out to be the chief of a conspiracy, and
nothing but their want of proofs for an _English_ investigation has
stopped them. Had it been a poor native, the suspicion were enough,
as it has been for hundreds.
"Why don't you write on Napoleon? I have no spirits, nor 'estro' to
do so. His overthrow, from the beginning, was a blow on the head to
me. Since that period, we have been the slaves of fools. Excuse
this long letter. _Ecco_ a translation literal of a French epigram.
"Egle, beauty and poet, has two little crimes,
She makes her own face, and does _not_ make her rhymes.
"I am going to ride, having been warned not to ride in a particular
part of the forest, on account of the ultra-politicians.
"Is there no chance of your return to England, and of _our_
Journal? I would have published the two plays in it--two or three
scenes per number--and, indeed, _all_ of mine in it. If you went
to England, I would do so still."
[Footnote 44: There had been, a short time before, performed at the
Court of Berlin a spectacle founded on the Poem of Lalla Rookh, in which
the present Emperor of Russia personated Feramorz, and the Empress,
Lalla Rookh.]
[Footnote 45: This threat has been since acted upon;--the critic in
question having, to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced
Molière to be a "farceur."]
* * * * *
About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa,
received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in
consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the
following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble
friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is
always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his
opinions of another.
"Ravenna, August 7. 1821.
"I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord
Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake
at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible,
mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to
you.
"Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted, to see me. He has in
fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the
reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of
liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and
seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting
there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to
Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either
side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great
haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a
convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for
life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the
laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is
far severer than that of England.
"Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of
debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was
consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for
this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which
he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.
Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting
details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a
letter. Fletcher is here, and--as if, like a shadow, he waxed and
waned with the substance of his master--has also revived his good
looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest
of flaxen locks has put forth.
"We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and,
as usual, differed--and I think more than ever. He affects to
patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of
mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have
been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the
pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp
and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he
gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself
read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.
"Ravenna, August 15. 1821.
"We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide
the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have
accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:--Lord Byron gets
up at two--breakfasts--we talk, read, &c. until six--then we ride
at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the
morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval
between my rising and his to you.
"Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect--in genius, in
temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection
with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives
in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now
about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to
purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he
seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a
virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy,
and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not
fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.
"He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed,
little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those
Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might
exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
persuade them to adopt his views. He has made _me_ write a long
letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
friend's mistress--but it seems destined that I am always to have
some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
language the most infernal _patois_ that you can imagine. He would
be in every respect better among the Tuscans.
"He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and
sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the
second canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of
the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled: it
fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached,--of
producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
new. * * * *
"I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons
in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is
a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think
the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,--I being the weaker.
I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed.
What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * *
"Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count
Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced,
with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;--a miserable
pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all
of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters
of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet--a
fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or
three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever
saw.
"Wednesday, Ravenna.
"I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La
Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her
answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have
reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of
a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me,
is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, la vostra bontà mi
fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? _Non
partite da Ravenna senza Milord._' Of course, being now, by all the
laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
liberty on _my parole_ until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall
reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if Lord Byron
is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for
receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same
situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her.
Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that
there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the
great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon
returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * *
"We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting
at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards
my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to
get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that
without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his
old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly
hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading
consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the
short interval of temptation that will be left him."
* * * * *