"Verona, November 6. 1816.
"My dear Moore,
"Your letter, written before my departure from England, and
addressed to me in London, only reached me recently. Since that
period, I have been over a portion of that part of Europe which I
had not already seen. About a month since, I crossed the Alps from
Switzerland to Milan, which I left a few days ago, and am thus far
on my way to Venice, where I shall probably winter. Yesterday I was
on the shores of the Benacus, with his _fluctibus et fremitu_.
Catullus's Sirmium has still its name and site, and is remembered
for his sake: but the very heavy autumnal rains and mists prevented
our quitting our route, (that is, Hobhouse and myself, who are at
present voyaging together,) as it was better not to see it at all
than to a great disadvantage.
"I found on the Benacus the same tradition of a city, still visible
in calm weather below the waters, which you have preserved of Lough
Neagh, 'When the clear, cold eve's declining.' I do not know that
it is authorised by records; but they tell you such a story, and
say that the city was swallowed up by an earthquake. We moved
to-day over the frontier to Verona, by a road suspected of
thieves,--'the wise _convey_ it call,'--but without molestation. I
shall remain here a day or two to gape at the usual
marvels,--amphitheatre, paintings, and all that time-tax of
travel,--though Catullus, Claudian, and Shakspeare have done more
for Verona than it ever did for itself. They still pretend to
show, I believe, the 'tomb of all the Capulets'--we shall see.
"Among many things at Milan, one pleased me particularly, viz. the
correspondence (in the prettiest love-letters in the world) of
Lucretia Borgia with Cardinal Bembo, (who, _you say_, made a very
good cardinal,) and a lock of her hair, and some Spanish verses of
hers,--the lock very fair and beautiful. I took one single hair of
it as a relic, and wished sorely to get a copy of one or two of the
letters; but it is prohibited: _that_ I don't mind; but it was
impracticable; and so I only got some of them by heart. They are
kept in the Ambrosian Library, which I often visited to look them
over--to the scandal of the librarian, who wanted to enlighten me
with sundry valuable MSS., classical, philosophical, and pious. But
I stick to the Pope's daughter, and wish myself a cardinal.
"I have seen the finest parts of Switzerland, the Rhine, the Rhone,
and the Swiss and Italian lakes; for the beauties of which, I refer
you to the Guidebook. The north of Italy is tolerably free from the
English; but the south swarms with them, I am told. Madame de Staël
I saw frequently at Copet, which she renders remarkably pleasant.
She has been particularly kind to me. I was for some months her
neighbour, in a country house called Diodati, which I had on the
Lake of Geneva. My plans are very uncertain; but it is probable
that you will see me in England in the spring. I have some business
there. If you write to me, will you address to the care of Mons.
Hentsch, Banquier, Geneva, who receives and forwards my letters.
Remember me to Rogers, who wrote to me lately, with a short account
of your poem, which, I trust, is near the light. He speaks of it
most highly.
"My health is very endurable, except that I am subject to casual
giddiness and faintness, which is so like a fine lady, that I am
rather ashamed of the disorder. When I sailed, I had a physician
with me, whom, after some months of patience, I found it expedient
to part with, before I left Geneva some time. On arriving at Milan,
I found this gentleman in very good society, where he prospered for
some weeks: but, at length, at the theatre he quarrelled with an
Austrian officer, and was sent out by the government in twenty-four
hours. I was not present at his squabble; but, on hearing that he
was put under arrest, I went and got him out of his confinement,
but could not prevent his being sent off, which, indeed, he partly
deserved, being quite in the wrong, and having begun a row for
row's sake. I had preceded the Austrian government some weeks
myself, in giving him his congé from Geneva. He is not a bad
fellow, but very young and hot-headed, and more likely to incur
diseases than to cure them. Hobhouse and myself found it useless to
intercede for him. This happened some time before we left Milan. He
is gone to Florence.
"At Milan I saw, and was visited by, Monti, the most celebrated of
the living Italian poets. He seems near sixty; in face he is like
the late Cooke the actor. His frequent changes in politics have
made him very unpopular as a man. I saw many more of their
literati; but none whose names are well known in England, except
Acerbi. I lived much with the Italians, particularly with the
Marquis of Breme's family, who are very able and intelligent men,
especially the Abate. There was a famous improvvisatore who held
forth while I was there. His fluency astonished me; but, although I
understand Italian, and speak it (with more readiness than
accuracy), I could only carry off a few very common-place
mythological images, and one line about Artemisia, and another
about Algiers, with sixty words of an entire tragedy about Etocles
and Polynices. Some of the Italians liked him--others called his
performance 'seccatura' (a devilish good word, by the way)--and all
Milan was in controversy about him.
"The state of morals in these parts is in some sort lax. A mother
and son were pointed out at the theatre, as being pronounced by the
Milanese world to be of the Theban dynasty--but this was all. The
narrator (one of the first men in Milan) seemed to be not
sufficiently scandalised by the taste or the tie. All society in
Milan is carried on at the opera: they have private boxes, where
they play at cards, or talk, or any thing else; but (except at the
Cassino) there are no open houses, or balls, &c. &c.
"The peasant girls have all very fine dark eyes, and many of them
are beautiful. There are also two dead bodies in fine
preservation--one Saint Carlo Boromeo, at Milan; the other not a
saint, but a chief, named Visconti, at Monza--both of which
appeared very agreeable. In one of the Boromean isles (the Isola
bella), there is a large laurel--the largest known--on which
Buonaparte, staying there just before the battle of Marengo, carved
with his knife the word 'Battaglia.' I saw the letters, now half
worn out and partly erased.
"Excuse this tedious letter. To be tiresome is the privilege of old
age and absence: I avail myself of the latter, and the former I
have anticipated. If I do not speak to you of my own affairs, it is
not from want of confidence, but to spare you and myself. My day is
over--what then?--I have had it. To be sure, I have shortened it;
and if I had done as much by this letter, it would have been as
well. But you will forgive that, if not the other faults of
"Yours ever and most affectionately,
"B.
"P.S. November 7. 1816.
"I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful--beats even
Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a
degree, insisting on the fact--giving a date (1303), and showing a
tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with
withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden,
once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation
struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as
their love. I have brought away a few pieces of the granite, to
give to my daughter and my nieces. Of the other marvels of this
city, paintings, antiquities, &c., excepting the tombs of the
Scaliger princes, I have no pretensions to judge. The gothic
monuments of the Scaligers pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am I,'
and ever yours."
* * * * *
It must have been observed, in my account of Lord Byron's life previous
to his marriage, that, without leaving altogether unnoticed (what,
indeed, was too notorious to be so evaded) certain affairs of gallantry
in which he had the reputation of being engaged, I have thought it
right, besides refraining from such details in my narrative, to suppress
also whatever passages in his Journals and Letters might be supposed to
bear too personally or particularly on the same delicate topics.
Incomplete as the strange history of his mind and heart must, in one of
its most interesting chapters, be left by these omissions, still a
deference to that peculiar sense of decorum in this country, which marks
the mention of such frailties as hardly a less crime than the commission
of them, and, still more, the regard due to the feelings of the living,
who ought not rashly to be made to suffer for the errors of the dead,
have combined to render this sacrifice, however much it may be
regretted, necessary.
We have now, however, shifted the scene to a region where less caution
is requisite;--where, from the different standard applied to female
morals in these respects, if the wrong itself be not lessened by this
diminution of the consciousness of it, less scruple may be, at least,
felt towards persons so circumstanced, and whatever delicacy we may
think right to exercise in speaking of their frailties must be with
reference rather to our views and usages than theirs.
Availing myself, with this latter qualification, of the greater latitude
thus allowed me, I shall venture so far to depart from the plan hitherto
pursued, as to give, with but little suppression, the noble poet's
letters relative to his Italian adventures. To throw a veil altogether
over these irregularities of his private life would be to afford--were
it even practicable--but a partial portraiture of his character; while,
on the other hand, to rob him of the advantage of being himself the
historian of his errors (where no injury to others can flow from the
disclosure) would be to deprive him of whatever softening light can be
thrown round such transgressions by the vivacity and fancy, the
passionate love of beauty, and the strong yearning after affection which
will be found to have, more or less, mingled with even the least refined
of his attachments. Neither is any great danger to be apprehended from
the sanction or seduction of such an example; as they who would dare to
plead the authority of Lord Byron for their errors must first be able to
trace them to the same palliating sources,--to that sensibility, whose
very excesses showed its strength and depth,--that stretch of
imagination, to the very verge, perhaps, of what reason can bear without
giving way,--that whole combination, in short, of grand but disturbing
powers, which alone could be allowed to extenuate such moral
derangement, but which, even in him thus dangerously gifted, were
insufficient to excuse it.
Having premised these few observations, I shall now proceed, with less
interruption, to lay his correspondence, during this and the two
succeeding years, before the reader:--