(always my aversion) occurs a thousand times in these Essays; and, it seems, is to be an excuse for all kinds of discontent. This young man can know nothing of life; and, if he cherishes the disposition which runs through his papers, will become useless, and, perhaps, not even a poet, after all, which he seems determined to be. God help him! no one should be a rhymer who could be any thing better. And this is what annoys one, to see Scott and Moore, and Campbell and Rogers, who might have all been agents and leaders, now mere spectators. For, though they may have other ostensible avocations, these last are reduced to a secondary consideration. * *, too, frittering away his time among dowagers and unmarried girls. If it advanced any serious affair, it were some excuse; but, with the unmarried, that is a hazardous speculation, and tiresome enough, too; and, with the veterans, it is not much worth trying, unless, perhaps, one in a thousand.

"If I had any views in this country, they would probably be parliamentary. But I have no ambition ; at least, if it would any, beaut Cæsar aut nihil.' My hopes are limited to the arrangement of my affairs, and settling either in Italy or the East (rather the last), and drinking deep of the languages and literature of both. Past events have unnerved me; and all I can now do is to make life an amusement, and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crowns and sceptres, what is it? Vide Napoleon's last twelvemonth. It has completely upset my system of fatalism. I thought, if crushed, he would have fallen, whenfractus illabitur orbis,' and not have been pared away to gradual insignificance; that all this was not a mere jeu of the gods, but a prelude to greater changes and mightier events. But men never advance beyond a certain point; and here we are, retrograding, to the dull, stupid old system, balance of Europe-poising straws upon kings' noses, instead of wringing them off! Give me a republic, or a despotism of one, rather than the mixed government of one, two, three. A republic!-look in the history of the Earth-Rome, Greece, Venice, France, Holland, America, our short (eheu!) Commonwealth, and compare it with what they did under masters. The Asiatics are not qualified to be republicans, but they have the liberty of demolishing despots, which is the next thing to it. To be the first man not the Dictator not the Sylla, but the Washington or the Aristides the leader in talent and truth-is next to the Divinity! Franklin, Penn, and, next to these, either

"Here are two confounded proofs from for the soul of me, I can't look over that the printer. I have looked at the one, but 'Giaour' again, at least, just now, and at this hour-and yet there is no moon. have partly discussed an ensemble expedition. "Ward talks of going to Holland, and we It must be in ten days, if at all, if we wish to be in at the Revolution. And why not? ** is distant, and will be at * still more distant, till spring.

No one else, ex

cept Augusta, cares for me; no ties-no bene-se non, ch' importa? Old William of trammels andiamo dunque · se torniamo, Orange talked of dying in the last ditch' of his dingy country. It is lucky I can swim, or I suppose I should not well weather the I have heard hyænas first. But let us see. and jackalls in the ruins of Asia; and bullfrogs in the marshes; besides wolves and angry Mussulmans. Now, I should like to listen to the shout of a free Dutchman.

"Alla! Viva! For ever! Hourra! Huzza! - which is the most rational or musical of

these cries? Orange Boven,' according to the Morning Post.

'No dreams last night of the dead, nor the living; so I am firm as the marble, founded as the rock,' till the next earthquake.

un

"Ward's dinner went off well. There was not a disagreeable person there less I offended any body, which I am sure I could not by contradiction, for I said little, and opposed nothing. Sharpe (a man of elegant mind, and who has lived much with the best-Fox, Horne Tooke, Windham, Fitzpatrick, and all the agitators of other times and tongues,) told us the particulars of his last interview with Windham, a few days before the fatal operation which sent

that gallant spirit to aspire the skies.'1 Windham,― the first in one department of oratory and talent, whose only fault was his refinement beyond the intellect of half his hearers, - Windham, half his life an active participator in the events of the earth, and one of those who governed nations, - he regretted, and dwelt much on that regret,

1 [Mr. Windham's death took place in 1810, in consequence of a contusion of the hip, produced by a fall, while

exerting himself to save the valuable library of his friend Mr. North, from the flames.]

that he had not entirely devoted himself to literature and science!!!' His mind certainly would have carried him to eminence there, as elsewhere;-but I cannot comprehend what debility of that mind could suggest such a wish. I, who have heard him, cannot regret any thing but that I shall never hear him again. What! would he have been a plodder? a metaphysician?— perhaps a rhymer? a scribbler? Such an exchange must have been suggested by illness. But he is gone, and Time shall not look upon his like again.'

"I am tremendously in arrear with my letters, - except to **, and to her my thoughts overpower me:- my words never compass them. To Lady Melbourne I write with most pleasure—and her answers, so sensible, so tactique- I never met with half her talent. If she had been a few years younger, what a fool she would have made of me, had she thought it worth her while, -and I should have lost a valuable and most agreeable friend. Mem. a mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and, when it is over, any thing but friends.

66

I have not answered W. Scott's last letter, but I will. I regret to hear from others, that he has lately been unfortunate in pecuniary involvements. He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of bards. I should place Rogers next in the living list (I value him more as the last of the best school) — Moore and Campbell both third Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge—the rest, ot Too thus:

W. SCOTT.

ROGERS.

MOORE. CAMPBELL.

beam o'er the face of the waters'—'When he who adores thee'-'Oh blame not'and 'Oh breathe not his name’– are worth all the Epics that ever were composed. "** [Rogers] thinks the Quarterly will attack me next. Let them. I have been peppered so highly' in my time, both ways, that it must be cayenne or aloes to make me taste. I can sincerely say, that I am not very much alive now to criticism. Butin tracing this - I rather believe that it proceeds from my not attaching that importance to authorship which many do, and which, when young, I did also. One gets tired of every thing, my angel,' says Valmont. The 'angels' are the only things of which I am not a little sick- but I do think the preference of writers to agents—the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others - -a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness. Who would write, who had any thing better to do? 'Action- action-action' said Demosthenes: Actions-actions,' I say, and not writing, - least of all, rhyme. Look at the querulous and monotonous lives of the ‘ 'genus ;'. - except Cervantes, Tasso, Dante, Ariosto, Kleist (who were brave and active citizens), Eschylus, Sophocles, and some other of the antiques also- what a worthless, idle brood it is!

"12, Mezza Notte.

"Just returned from dinner with Jackson

I

(the Emperor of Pugilism) and another of the select, at Crib's, the champion's. drank more than I like, and have brought away some three bottles of very fair claret

for I have no headach. We had Tom Crib up after dinner ;-very facetious, though somewhat prolix. He don't like his situation wants to fight again-pray Pollux (or Castor, if he was the miller) he may! Tom has been a sailor- a coal-heaver and some other genteel profession, before he took to the cestus. Tom has been in action at sea, and is now only three-and-thirty. A great man! has a wife and a mistress, and conversations well-bating some sad omissions and misapplications of the aspirate. Tom is an old friend of mine; I have seen some of his best battles in my nonage. He is now a publican, and, I fear, a sinner; — for Mrs. Crib is on alimony, and Tom's daughter lives with the champion. This Tom told me,- Tom, having an opinion of my morals, passed her off as a legal spouse. Talking of her, he said, she was the truest of women'-from which I immediately inferred she could not be his wife, and so it turned out.

"Awoke a little feverish, but no headach -no dreams neither, thanks to stupor! Two letters; one from ****, the other from Lady Melbourne-both excellent in their respective styles. ****'s contained also a very pretty lyric on concealed griefs;' if not her own, yet very like her. Why did she not say that the stanzas were, or were not, of her composition? I do not know whether to wish them hers or not. I have no great esteem for poetical persons, particularly women; they have so much of the 'ideal' in practics, as well as ethics.

"I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff, &c. &c. &c. &c. 1

"Lord Holland invited me to dinner today; but three days' dining would destroy me. So, without eating at all since yesterday, I went to my box at Covent Garden.

“Saw * * * * looking very pretty, though quite a different style of beauty from the other two. She has the finest eyes in the world, out of which she pretends not to see, and the longest eyelashes I ever saw, since Leila's and Phannio's Moslem curtains of the light. She has much beauty,-just enough, but is, I think, méchante.

I have been pondering on the miseries of separation, that-oh how seldom we see those we love! yet we live ages in moments, when met. The only thing that consoles me during absence is the reflection that no mental or personal estrangement, from ennui or disagreement, can take place; and when people meet hereafter, even though many changes may have taken place in the mean time, still, unless they are tired of each other, they are ready to reunite, and do not blame

1 This passage has been already extracted.

2 ["Ah deere ladye, said Robin Hood, thou
That art both Mother and May,

I think it was never man's destinye
To die before his day."

Ballad of Robin Hood.] 3 [The following is the passage to which Lord Byron alludes:-"Greece, the mother of freedom and of poetry in the west, which had long employed only the antiquary, the artist, and the philologist, was at length destined,

each other for the circumstances that severed them.

"Saturday 27. (I believe-or rather am in doubt, which is the ne plus ultra of mortal faith.) "I have missed a day; and, as the Irishman said, or Joe Miller says for him, 'have gained a loss,' or by the loss. Every thing is settled for Holland, and nothing but a cough, or a caprice of my fellow-traveller's, can stop us. Carriage ordered, funds prepared, and, probably, a gale of wind into the bargain. N'importe I believe, with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood, By our Mary, (dear name!) thou art both Mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before this day.' Heigh for Helvoetsluys, and so forth!"

66

To-night I went with young Henry Fox to see Nourjahad,' a drama, which the Morning Post hath laid to my charge, but of which I cannot even guess the author. I wonder what they will next inflict upon me. They cannot well sink below a melodrama; but that is better than a satire, (at least, a personal one,) with which I stand truly arraigned, and in atonement of which I am resolved to bear silently all criticisms, abuses, and even praises, for bad pantomimes never composed by me, without even a contradictory aspect. I suppose the root of this report is my loan to the manager of my Turkish drawings for his dresses, to which he was more welcome than to my name. suppose the real author will soon own it, as it has succeeded; if not, Job be my model, and Lethe my beverage!

I

“**** has received the portrait safe; and, in answer, the only remark she makes upon it is, indeed it is like' — and again, 'indeed it is like.' With her the likeness covered a multitude of sins; for I happen to know that this portrait was not a flatterer, but dark and stern, even black as the mood in which my mind was scorching last July, when I sat for it. All the others of me, like most portraits whatsoever, are, of course, more agreeable than nature.

"Redde the Edinburgh Review of Rogers. He is ranked highly; but where he should be. There is a summary view of us allMoore and me among the rest; and both

after an interval of many silent and inglorious ages, to awaken the genius of a poet. Full of enthusiasm for those perfect forms of heroism and liberty which his imagination had placed in the recesses of antiquity, he gave vent to his impatience of the imperfections of living men and real institutions, in an original strain of sublime satire, which clothes moral anger in imagery of an almost horrible grandeur; and which, though it cannot coincide with the estimate of reason, yet could only flow from that worship of perfection which is the soul of all true poetry."- Edinb. Rev. vol. xxii. p. 37.].

His

(the first justly) praised-though, by implication (justly again) placed beneath our memorable friend. Mackintosh is the writer, and also of the critique on the Stael.' grand essay on Burke, I hear, is for the next number. But I know nothing of the Edinburgh, or of any other Review, but from rumour; and I have long ceased — indeed, I could not, in justice, complain of any, even though I were to rate poetry, in general, and my rhymes in particular, more highly than I really do. To withdraw myself from myself (oh that cursed selfishness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all; and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself. If I valued fame, I should flatter received opinions, which have gathered strength by time, and will yet wear longer than any living works to the contrary. But, for the soul of me, I cannot and will not give the lie to my own thoughts and doubts, come what may. If I am a fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

66

All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise, in which, from the description, I see nothing very tempting. My restlessness tells me I have something within that 'passeth show.' It is for Him, who made it, to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates, yet burns, this frail tenement; but I see no such horror in a 'dreamless sleep,' and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not render tiresome. How else 'fell the angels,' even according to your creed? They were immortal, heavenly, and happy, as their apostate Abdiel is now by his treachery. Time must decide; and eternity won't be the less agreeable or more horrible because one did not expect it. In the mean time, I am grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils-grace à Dieu et mon bon tempérament.

"Two days missed in my log-book; hiatus haud deflendus. They were as little worth recollection as the rest; and, luckily, laziness or society prevented me from notching them.

among

'Sunday, I dined with the Lord Holland in St. James's Square. Large party them Sir S. Romilly and Lady R3. — General Sir Somebody Bentham, a man of science and talent, I am told Horner — the Horner, an Edinburgh Reviewer, an excellent speaker in the Honourable House,' very pleasing, too, and gentlemanly in company, as far as I have seen — Sharpe Philips of Lancashire - Lord John Russell, and others, 'good men and true.' Holland's society is very good; you always see some one or other in it worth knowing. Stuffed myself with sturgeon, and exceeded in champagne and wine in general, but not to confusion of head. When I do dine, I gorge like an Arab or a Boa snake, on fish and vegetables, but no meat. I am always better, however, on my tea and biscuit than any other regimen, and even that sparingly.

1 ["In the last Edinburgh Review you will find two articles of mine, one on Rogers, and the other on Madame de Stael: they are both, especially the first, thought too panegyrical. I like the praises which I have bestowed on Lord Byron, and Thomas Moore.

I

am convinced of the justness of the praises given to Madame de Stael."- Mackintosh's Life, vol. ii. p. 266.]

2 [Francis Horner, Esq. member of parliament for St. Mawes. He died in 1817. See post, note to Letter 268.]

3 [Now Sir George Philips, bart., so created in 1828. Sir George was, for several years, member of parliament for Kidderminster.]

Why does Lady H. always have that damned screen between the whole room and the fire? I, who bear cold no better than an antelope, and never yet found a sun quite done to my taste, was absolutely petrified, and could not even shiver. All the rest, too, looked as if they were just unpacked, like salmon from an ice-basket, and set down to table for that day only. When she retired, I watched their looks as I dismissed the screen, and every cheek thawed, and every nose reddened with the anticipated glow.

I

Saturday, I went with Harry Fox to Nourjahad; and, I believe, convinced him, by incessant yawning, that it was not mine. I wish the precious author would own it, and release me from his fame. The dresses are pretty, but not in costume ;-Mrs. Horn's, all but the turban, and the want of a small dagger (if she is a sultana), perfect. I never saw a Turkish woman with a turban in my life- nor did any one else. The sultanas have a small poniard at the waist. The dialogue is drowsy- the action heavy the scenery fine the actors tolerable. can't say much for their seraglio — Teresa, Phannio, or ****, were worth them all. "Sunday, a very handsome note from Mackintosh, who is a rare instance of the union of very transcendent talent and great good nature. To-day (Tuesday) a very pretty billet from M. la Baronne de Stael Holstein. She is pleased to be much pleased with my mention of her and her last work in my notes. 1 I spoke as I thought. Her works are my delight, and so is she herself, forhalf an hour. I don't like her politics least, her having changed them; had she been qualis ab incepto, it were nothing. But she is a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them together, intellectually ; — she ought to have been a man. She flatters me very prettily in her note; but I know it. The reason that adulation is not displeasing is, that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie, to make us their friend ::- that is their con

cern.

at

"** is, I hear, thriving on the repute of a pun which was mine (at Mackintosh's dinner some time back), on Ward, who was asking, how much it would take to re-whig him? I answered that, probably, he must first, before he was re-whigged, be re-warded.' This foolish quibble, before the Stael and

1 [In one of the notes to the Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron had referred the reader to a passage in "De l'Allemagne," on the analogy between painting and poetry.]

66

Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella 3, which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours! without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress a girl of twenty- -a peeress that is to be, in her own rightan only child, and a savante, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess mathematician - a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.

-a

"Wednesday, December 1. 1813. "To-day responded to La Baronne de Stael Holstein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance - through Moore of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times - much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on qualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again; — the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't

2 His cousin, the present Lord Byron.

3 Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron.

P