"Venice, Jan. 2. 1817.
"Your letter has arrived. Pray, in publishing the third Canto, have
you _omitted_ any passages? I hope _not_; and indeed wrote to you
on my way over the Alps to prevent such an incident. Say in your
next whether or not the _whole_ of the Canto (as sent to you) has
been published. I wrote to you again the other day, (_twice_, I
think,) and shall be glad to hear of the reception of those
letters.
"To-day is the 2d of January. On this day _three_ years ago The
Corsair's publication is dated, I think, in my letter to Moore. On
this day _two_ years I married, ('Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth,'--I sha'n't forget the day in a hurry,) and it is odd
enough that I this day received a letter from you announcing the
publication of Childe Harold, &c. &c. on the day of the date of
'The Corsair;' and I also received one from my sister, written on
the 10th of December, my daughter's birth-day (and relative chiefly
to my daughter), and arriving on the day of the date of my
marriage, this present 2d of January, the month of my birth,--and
various other astrologous matters, which I have no time to
enumerate.
"By the way, you might as well write to Hentsch, my Geneva banker,
and enquire whether the _two packets_ consigned to his care were or
were not delivered to Mr. St. Aubyn, or if they are still in his
keeping. One contains papers, letters, and all the original MS. of
your third Canto, as first conceived; and the other, some bones
from the field of Morat. Many thanks for your news, and the good
spirits in which your letter is written.
"Venice and I agree very well; but I do not know that I have any
thing new to say, except of the last new opera, which I sent in my
late letter. The Carnival is commencing, and there is a good deal
of fun here and there--besides business; for all the world are
making up their intrigues for the season, changing, or going on
upon a renewed lease. I am very well off with Marianna, who is not
at all a person to tire me; firstly, because I do not tire of a
woman _personally_, but because they are generally bores in their
disposition; and, secondly, because she is amiable, and has a tact
which is not always the portion of the fair creation; and, thirdly,
she is very pretty; and, fourthly--but there is no occasion for
further specification. So far we have gone on very well; as to the
future, I never anticipate--_carpe diem_--the past at least is
one's own, which is one reason for making sure of the present. So
much for my proper _liaison_.
"The general state of morals here is much the same as in the Doges'
time; a woman is virtuous (according to the code) who limits
herself to her husband and one lover; those who have two, three, or
more, are a little _wild_; but it is only those who are
indiscriminately diffuse, and form a low connection, such as the
Princess of Wales with her courier, (who, by the way, is made a
knight of Malta,) who are considered as overstepping the modesty of
marriage. In Venice, the nobility have a trick of marrying with
dancers and singers; and, truth to say, the women of their own
order are by no means handsome; but the general race, the women of
the second and other orders, the wives of the merchants, and
proprietors, and untitled gentry, are mostly _bel' sangue_, and it
is with these that the more amatory connections are usually formed.
There are also instances of stupendous constancy. I know a woman of
fifty who never had but one lover, who dying early, she became
devout, renouncing all but her husband. She piques herself, as may
be presumed, upon this miraculous fidelity, talking of it
occasionally with a species of misplaced morality, which is rather
amusing. There is no convincing a woman here that she is in the
smallest degree deviating from the rule of right or the fitness of
things in having an _amoroso_. The great sin seems to lie in
concealing it, or having more than one, that is, unless such an
extension of the prerogative is understood and approved of by the
prior claimant.
"In another sheet, I send you some sheets of a grammar, English and
Armenian, for the use of the Armenians, of which I promoted, and
indeed induced, the publication. (It cost me but a thousand
francs--French livres.) I still pursue my lessons in the language
without any rapid progress, but advancing a little daily. Padre
Paschal, with some little help from me, as translator of his
Italian into English, is also proceeding in a MS. Grammar for the
_English_ acquisition of Armenian, which will be printed also, when
finished.
"We want to know if there are any Armenian types and letter-press
in England, at Oxford, Cambridge, or elsewhere? You know, I
suppose, that, many years ago, the two Whistons published in
England an original text of a history of Armenia, with their own
Latin translation? Do those types still exist? and where? Pray
enquire among your learned acquaintance.
"When this Grammar (I mean the one now printing) is done, will you
have any objection to take forty or fifty copies, which will not
cost in all above five or ten guineas, and try the curiosity of the
learned with a sale of them? Say yes or no, as you like. I can
assure you that they have some very curious books and MSS., chiefly
translations from Greek originals now lost. They are, besides, a
much respected and learned community, and the study of their
language was taken up with great ardour by some literary Frenchmen
in Buonaparte's time.
"I have not done a stitch of poetry since I left Switzerland, and
have not, at present, the _estro_ upon me. The truth is, that you
are _afraid_ of having a _fourth_ Canto _before_ September, and of
another copyright, but I have at present no thoughts of resuming
that poem, nor of beginning any other. If I write, I think of
trying prose, but I dread introducing living people, or
applications which might be made to living people. Perhaps one day
or other I may attempt some work of fancy in prose, descriptive of
Italian manners and of human passions; but at present I am
preoccupied. As for poesy, mine is the _dream_ of the sleeping
passions; when they are awake, I cannot speak their language, only
in their somnambulism, and just now they are not dormant.
"If Mr. Gifford wants _carte blanche_ as to The Siege of Corinth,
he has it, and may do as he likes with it.
"I sent you a letter contradictory of the Cheapside man (who
invented the story you speak of) the other day. My best respects to
Mr. Gifford, and such of my friends as you may see at your house. I
wish you all prosperity and new year's gratulation, and am
"Yours," &c.
* * * * *
To the Armenian Grammar, mentioned in the foregoing letter, the
following interesting fragment, found among his papers, seems to have
been intended as a Preface:--
"The English reader will probably be surprised to find my name
associated with a work of the present description, and inclined to give
me more credit for my attainments as a linguist than they deserve.
"As I would not willingly be guilty of a deception, I will state, as
shortly as I can, my own share in the compilation, with the motives
which led to it. On my arrival at Venice, in the year 1816, I found my
mind in a state which required study, and study of a nature which should
leave little scope for the imagination, and furnish some difficulty in
the pursuit.
"At this period I was much struck--in common, I believe, with every
other traveller--with the society of the Convent of St. Lazarus, which
appears to unite all the advantages of the monastic institution, without
any of its vices.
"The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion, the
accomplishments, and the virtues of the brethren of the order, are well
fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction that 'there is
another and a better' even in this life.
"These men are the priesthood of an oppressed and a noble nation, which
has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the
Greeks, without the sullenness of the former or the servility of the
latter. This people has attained riches without usury, and all the
honours that can be awarded to slavery without intrigue. But they have
long occupied, nevertheless, a part of 'the House of Bondage,' who has
lately multiplied her many mansions. It would be difficult, perhaps, to
find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the
Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those
of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny--and it has been
bitter--whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of
the most interesting on the globe; and perhaps their language only
requires to be more studied to become more attractive. If the Scriptures
are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was
placed--Armenia, which has paid as dearly as the descendants of Adam for
that fleeting participation of its soil in the happiness of him who was
created from its dust. It was in Armenia that the flood first abated,
and the dove alighted. But with the disappearance of Paradise itself may
be dated almost the unhappiness of the country; for though long a
powerful kingdom, it was scarcely ever an independent one, and the
satraps of Persia and the pachas of Turkey have alike desolated the
region where God created man in his own image."
* * * * *