"Venice, March 25. 1817.
"I have at last learned, in default of your own writing (or _not_
writing--which should it be? for I am not very clear as to the
application of the word _default_) from Murray, two particulars of
(or belonging to) you; one, that you are removing to Hornsey, which
is, I presume, to be nearer London; and the other, that your Poem
is announced by the name of Lalla Rookh. I am glad of it,--first,
that we are to have it at last, and next, I like a tough title
myself--witness The Giaour and Childe Harold, which choked half the
Blues at starting. Besides, it is the tail of Alcibiades's
dog,--not that I suppose you want either dog or tail. Talking of
tail, I wish you had not called it a '_Persian Tale_'[130] Say a
'Poem' or 'Romance,' but not 'Tale.' I am very sorry that I called
some of my own things 'Tales,' because I think that they are
something better. Besides, we have had Arabian, and Hindoo, and
Turkish, and Assyrian Tales. But, after all, this is frivolous in
me; you won't, however, mind my nonsense.
"Really and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of
self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; and I have no doubt
you will--I am sure you _can_. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a
devil of a pucker; and _I_ am not at your elbow, and Rogers _is_. I
envy him; which is not fair, because he does not envy any body.
Mind you send to me--that is, make Murray send--the moment you are
forth.
"I have been very ill with a slow fever, which at last took to
flying, and became as quick as need be.[131] But, at length, after
a week of half-delirium, burning skin, thirst, hot headach,
horrible pulsation, and no sleep, by the blessing of barley water,
and refusing to see any physician, I recovered. It is an epidemic
of the place, which is annual, and visits strangers. Here follow
some versicles, which I made one sleepless night.
"I read the 'Christabel;'
Very well:
I read the 'Missionary;'
Pretty--very:
I tried at 'Ilderim;'
Ahem;
I read a sheet of 'Marg'ret of _Anjou_;'
_Can you_?
I turn'd a page of * *'s 'Waterloo;'
Pooh! pooh!
I look'd at Wordsworth's milk-white 'Rylstone Doe:'
Hillo!
&c. &c. &c.
"I have not the least idea where I am going, nor what I am to do. I
wished to have gone to Rome; but at present it is pestilent with
English,--a parcel of staring boobies, who go about gaping and
wishing to be at once cheap and magnificent. A man is a fool who
travels now in France or Italy, till this tribe of wretches is
swept home again. In two or three years the first rush will be
over, and the Continent will be roomy and agreeable.
"I stayed at Venice chiefly because it is not one of their 'dens of
thieves;' and here they but pause and pass. In Switzerland it was
really noxious. Luckily, I was early, and had got the prettiest
place on all the Lake before they were quickened into motion with
the rest of the reptiles. But they crossed me every where. I met a
family of children and old women half-way up the Wengen Alp (by the
Jungfrau) upon mules, some of them too old and others too young to
be the least aware of what they saw.
"By the way, I think the Jungfrau, and all that region of Alps,
which I traversed in September--going to the very top of the
Wengen, which is not the highest (the Jungfrau itself is
inaccessible) but the best point of view--much finer than
Mont-Blanc and Chamouni, or the Simplon I kept a journal of the
whole for my sister Augusta, part of which she copied and let
Murray see.
"I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of introducing the
Alpine scenery in description: and this I sent lately to Murray.
Almost all the _dram. pers._ are spirits, ghosts, or magicians,
and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may
suppose what a Bedlam tragedy it must be: make him show it you. I
sent him all three acts piece-meal, by the post, and suppose they
have arrived.
"I have now written to you at least six letters, or lettered, and
all I have received in return is a note about the length you used
to write from Bury Street to St. James's Street, when we used to
dine with Rogers, and talk laxly, and go to parties, and hear poor
Sheridan now and then. Do you remember one night he was so tipsy
that I was forced to put his cocked hat on for him,--for he could
not,--and I let him down at Brookes's, much as he must since have
been let down into his grave. Heigh ho! I wish I was drunk--but I
have nothing but this d----d barley-water before me.
"I am still in love,--which is a dreadful drawback in quitting a
place, and I can't stay at Venice much longer. What I shall do on
this point I don't know. The girl means to go with me, but I do not
like this for her own sake. I have had so many conflicts in my own
mind on this subject, that I am not at all sure they did not help
me to the fever I mentioned above. I am certainly very much
attached to her, and I have cause to be so, if you knew all. But
she has a child; and though, like all the 'children of the sun,'
she consults nothing but passion, it is necessary I should think
for both; and it is only the virtuous, like * * * *, who can afford
to give up husband and child, and live happy ever after.
"The Italian ethics are the most singular ever met with. The
perversion, not only of action, but of reasoning, is singular in
the women. It is not that they do not consider the thing itself as
wrong, and very wrong, but _love_ (the _sentiment_ of love) is not
merely an excuse for it, but makes it an _actual virtue_, provided
it is disinterested, and not a _caprice_, and is confined to one
object. They have awful notions of constancy; for I have seen some
ancient figures of eighty pointed out as amorosi of forty, fifty,
and sixty years' standing. I can't say I have ever seen a husband
and wife so coupled.
"Ever, &c.
"P.S. Marianna, to whom I have just translated what I have written
on our subject to you, says--'If you loved me thoroughly, you would
not make so many fine reflections, which are only good _forbirsi i
scarpi_,'--that is, 'to clean shoes withal,'--a Venetian proverb of
appreciation, which is applicable to reasoning of all kinds."
[Footnote 130: He had been misinformed on this point,--the work in
question having been, from the first, entitled an "Oriental Romance." A
much worse mistake (because wilful, and with no very charitable design)
was that of certain persons, who would have it that the poem was meant
to be epic!--Even Mr. D'Israeli has, for the sake of a theory, given in
to this very gratuitous assumption:--"The Anacreontic poet," he says,
"remains only Anacreontic in his Epic."]
[Footnote 131: In a note to Mr. Murray, subjoined to some corrections
for Manfred, he says, "Since I wrote to you last, the _slow_ fever I wot
of thought proper to mend its pace, and became similar to one which I
caught some years ago in the marshes of Elis, in the Morea."]
* * * * *