Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

"Now, he says, that he encouraged my return to Ravenna, to see 'in quanti piedi di acqua siamo,' and he has found enough to drown him in. In short,

Ce ne fut pas le tout; sa femme se plaignit-
Proce-La parentés se joint en excuse et dit
Que du Docteur venoit tout le mauvais ménage;
Que cet homme étoit fou, que sa femme étoit sage.
On fit casser le mariage.'

followed. Dr. Moore's account is in some respects falso and in all foolish and flippant. None of the chronicles (and I have consulted Sanuto, Sandi, Navagero, and an anonymous Siege of Zara, besides the histories of Laugier, Dara, Sismondi, &c.) state, or even hint, that he begged his life; they merely say that he did not deny the conspiracy. He was one of their great men,-comIt is but to let the women alone, in the way of conflict, mander at the siege of Zara,-beat 80,000 Hungarians, for they are sure to win against the field. She returns killing 8000, and at the same time kept the town he was to her father's house, and I can only see her under great dor at Genoa, Rome, and finally Doge, where he fell for besieging in order,-took Capo d'Istria,-was ambassarestrictions-such is the custom of the country. The reiations behaved very well;-I offered any settle-treason, in attempting to alter the government, by what ment, but they refused to accept it, and swear she sha'n't Sanuto calls a judgment on him for, many years before, live with G. (as he has tried to prove her faithless,) but (when Podesta and Captain of Treviso,) having knocked down a bishop, who was sluggish in carrying the host at that he shall maintain her; and, in fact, a judgment to this effect came yesterday. I am, of course, in an awk-a procession. He saddles him,' as Thwackum did Square, with a judgment;' but he does not mention ward situation enough. whether he had been punished at the time for what still more so in an age of papal power and glory. Sawould appear very strange, even now, and must have been nuto says, that Heaven took away his senses for this buffet, and induced him to conspire. Però fu permesso che il Faliero perdette l' intelletto,' &c.

"I have heard no more of the carabiniers who protested against my liveries. They are not popular, those same soldiers, and, in a small row, the other night, one was siain, another wounded, and divers put to flight, by some of the Romagnuole youth, who are dexterous, and somewhat liberal of the knife. The perpetrators are not discovered, but I hope and believe that none of my ragamuffins were in it, though they are somewhat savage, and secretly armed, like most of the inhabitants. It is their way, and saves sometimes a good deal of litigation. "There is a revolution at Naples. If so, it will probably leave a card at Ravenna in its way to Lombardy. "Your publishers seem to have used you like mine. Murray has shuffled, and almost insinuated that my last productions are dull. Dull, sir!-damme, dull! I believe he is right. He begs for the completion of my tragedy on Marino Faliero, none of which is yet gone to England. The fifth act nearly completed, but it is dreadfully long -40 sheets of long paper, 4 pages each-about 150 when printed; but so full of pastime and prodigality' that I think it will do.

"Pray send and publish your Poem upon me; and don't be afraid of praising me too highly. I shall pocket my blushes.

"Not actionable !-Chantre d'enfer !*—by * * that's 'a speech,' and I won't put up with it. A pretty title to give a man for doubting if there be a such place!

"So my Gail is gone-and Miss Mahony won't take money. I am very glad of it-I like to be generous free of expense. But beg her not to translate me.

"Oh, pray tell Galignani that I shall send him a screed of doctrine if he don't be more punctual. Somebody regularly detains two, and sometimes four, of his messengers by the way. Do, pray, entreat him to be more precise. News are worth money in this remote kingdom of the Ostrogoths.

"Pray, reply. I should like much to share some of your Champagne and La Fitte, but I am tor Italian for Paris in general. Make Murray send my letter to you it is full of epigrams! Yours, &c."

[blocks in formation]

of the Drama I have founded upon this extraordinary "I do not know what your parlour-boarders will think event. The only similar one in history is the story of Agis, King of Sparta, a prince, with the commons against the aristocracy, and losing his life therefor. But it shall be sent when copied.

6

"I should be glad to know why your Quartering Re. viewers, at the close of the Fall of Jerusalem,' accuse me of Manicheism? a compliment to which the sweetener of The Poem they review is very noble; but could they not one of the mightiest spirits' by no means reconciles me. do justice to the writer without converting him into my religious antidote? I am not a Manichean, nor an Anychean. I should like to know what harm my 'poeshies' have done? I can't tell what people mean by making me a hobgoblin."

LETTER CCCCXLVI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, August 31, 1820. "I have 'put my soul into the tragedy, (as you if it:) but you know that there are d-d souls as well as trage dies. Recollect that it is not a political play, though it may look like it: it is strictly historical. Read the history and judge.

"Ada's picture is her mother's. I am glad of it-the mother made a good daughter. Send me Gifford's opinion, and never mind the Archbishop. I can neither send you away, nor give you a hundred pistoles, nor a better taste: I send you a tragedy, and you asked for 'facetious epistles; a little like your predecessor, who advised Dr. Prideaux to 'put some more humour into his Life of Mahomet.'

"Bankes is a wonderful fellow. There is hardly one of my school or college contemporaries that has not turned out more or less celebrated. Peel, Palmerston, Bankes Hobhouse, Tavistock, Bob Mills, Douglas Kinnaird, &e &c. have all talked and been talked about.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

"We are here going to fight a little next month, if the Huns don't cross the Po, and probably if they do. I cant say more now. If any thing happens, you have matter for a posthumous work in MS.; so pray be civil. Depend upon it, there will be savage work, if once they begin here. The French courage proceeds from vanity, the German from phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism and opium, the Spanish from pride, the English from coolness, the Durch from obstinacy, the Russian from insensibility, but the In lian from anger; s you see that they will spare nottung.'

LETTER CCCCXLVII.

TO MR. MOORE.

ples, all Italy will be behind them. The dogs-the wolvas -may they perish like the host of Sennacherib! If you want to publish the Prophecy of Dante, you never will have a better time."

LETTER CCCCXLIX.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 11, 1820. "Here is another historical note for you. I want to be as near truth as the Drama can be.

"Ravenna, August 31, 1820. "D-n your 'mezzo cammin. -you should say 'the prime of life, a much more consolatory phrase. Besides, it is not correct. I was born in 1788, and consequently am but thirty-two. You are mistaken on another point. The 'Sequin Box' never came into requisition, nor is it likely to do so. It were better that it had, for then a man is not bound, you know. As to reform, I did reform-what would you have? Rebellion lay in his way, and he found a. I verily believe that nor you, nor any man of poetical temperament, can avoid a strong passion of some kind. It is the poetry of life. What should I have known or writ-in ten, had I been a quiet, mercantile politician, or a lord in waiting? A man must travel and turmoil, or there is no "What Gifford says is very consolatory, (of the First existence. Besides, I only meant to be a Cavalier Servente, and had no idea it would turn out a romance, in the Act.) English, sterling genuine English, is a desideratum among you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; Anglo fasition. "However, I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy-though Heaven knows how I retain it: I hear none but from more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at my valet, and his is Nottinghamshire; and I see none What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their mu

"Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself,✦ answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have been introduced to me. Let me have a proof of it, that I may cut its lava into some shape.

seums and saloons-and some hack **, , en passant? Now, all, but jargon. Even your **** is terribly stilted and I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy affected, with 'very, very' so soft and pamby. freshest and least influenced by strangers,-have seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions, and am almost inoculated into a family. This is to see men and things as they are. "You say that I called you 'quiet't—I don't recollect any thing of the sort. On the contrary you are always iners of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

"Ravenna, September 7, 1820. "In correcting the proofs you must refer to the manuscript, because there are in it various readings. Pray attend to this, and choose what Gifford thinks best. Let me hear what he thinks of the whole.

"Oh! if ever I do come among you again, I will give you such a 'Baviad and Mæviad!' not as good as the old, but even better merited. There never was such a set as your ragamuffins, (I mean not yours only, but every body's.) What with the Cockney's, and the Lakers, and the follow

uttermost decline and degradation of literature. I can't think of it without all the remorse of a murderer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to crush them!"

[blocks in formation]

LETTER CCCCLI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"You speak of Lady **'s illness: she is not of those who die the amiable only do; and those whose death would do good live. Whenever she is pleased to return, it may be presumed she will take her 'divining rod' along with her: it may be of use to her at home, as well as to "Ravenna, Sept. 21, 1820. the 'rich man' of the Evangelists. "So you are at your old tricks again. This is the se "Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to Eng-cond packet I have received unaccompanied by a single land. They may say what they please, any loathsome line of good, bad, or indifferent. It strange that you have abuse but that. Contradict it. never forwarded any farther observations of Gifford's. How "My last letters will have taught you to expect an ex-am I to alter or amend, if I hear no farther? or does this plosion here: it was primed and loaded, but they hesitated silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to to fire the train. One of the cities shirked from the league. be repaired? if the last, why do you not say so at once, I cannot write more at large for a thousand reasons. Our instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late 'puir hill folk' offered to strike, and raise the first banner, you must out with the truth. but Bologna paused; and now 'tis autumn, and the sea"Yours, &c. son half over. 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! The Huns are "P. S. My sister tells me, that you sent to her to inon the Po; but if once they pass it on their way to Na-quire where I was, believing in my arrival, 'driving a cur

I had congratulated him upon arriving at what Dante calls the "mez 30 cammin' of life, the age of thirty-three.

↑ I had mistaken the concluding words of his letter of the 9th of June.

Moore

See notes to Marino Faliero.

It had been reported that he had arrived in London to attend the Queen's trial.

rick, &c. &c. into Palace-yard. Do you think me a cox-parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon comb or a madman, to be capable of such an exhibition? Italy. The letter to Julia very good indeed. I do not My sister knew me better, and told you, that could not be despise ******; but if she knit blue-stockings me. You might as well have thought me entering on 'a instead of wearing them, it would be better. You are pale horse,' like Death in the Revelations."

LETTER CCCCLII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 23, 1820. "Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send me a proof (with the Latin) of my Hints from Horace: it has now the nonum premature in annum complete for its production, being written at Athens in 1811. I have a notion that, with some omissions of names and passages, it will do; and I could put my late observations for Pope among the notes, with the date of 1820, and so on. As far as versification, goes, it is good; and on looking back to what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times. If I can trim it for present publication, what with the other things you have of mine, you will have a volume or two of variety at least, for there will be all measures, styles, and topics, whether good or no. I am anxious to hear what Gifford thinks of the tragedy;| pray let me know. I really do not know what to think myself.

"If the Germans pass the Po, they will be treated to a mass out of the Cardinal de Retz's Breviary. * 's a fool, and could not understand this: Frere will. It is as pretty a conceit as you would wish to see on a summer's day.

taken in by that false, stilted, trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are all humbastic, (I don't except my own-no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language;) but it is neither English nor poetry. Time will show.

"I am sorry Gifford has made no farther remarks beyond the first Act: does he think all the English equally sterling as he thought the first? You did right to send the proofs: I was a fool; but I do really detest the sight of proofs: it is an absurdity; but comes from laziness.

"You can steal the two Juans into the world quietly tagged to the others. The play as you wil-the Dante too; but the Pulci I am proud of: it is superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did in my life. I wrote the play from beginning to end, and not a single scene without interruption, and being obliged to break my head. off in the middle; for I had my hands full, and too, just then; so it can be no great shakes-I mean th you hke. play; and the head too, if

"P. S. Politics here still savage and uncertain. However, we are all in our bandaliers' to join the 'Highlanders if they cross the Forth,' i. e. to crush the Austrians they pass the Po. The rascals!-and that dog Liverpool, to say their subjects are happy! If ever I come back, I'll work some of these ministers.

if

⚫Sept. 29. "I open my letter to say that on reading more of the four volumes on Italy, where the author says 'declined an introduction,' I perceive (horresco referens) it is written "Nobody here believes a word of the evidence against by a WOMAN!!! In that case you must suppress my

say

the Queen. The very mob cry shame against their note and answer, and all I have said about the book and the writer. I never dreamed of it until now, in my countrymen, and that for half the money spent upon the trial, any testimony whatever may be brought out of extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say that I am sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind Italy. This you may rely upon as fact. I told you as What I would have said to one of the other sex you know much before. As to what travellers report, what are tra vellers? Now I have lived among the Italians-not already. Her book too (as a she book) is not a bad one; Florenced, and Romed, and galleried, and conversationed but she evidently don't know the Italians, or rather don't it for a few months, and then home again; but been of like them, and forgets the causes of their misery and their families, and friendships, and feuds, and loves, and fligacy, (Matthews and Forsyth are your men for the truth councils, and correspondence, in a part of Italy least and tact,) and has gone over Italy in company—always known to foreigners,—and have been among them of all a bad plan: you must be alone with people to know them classes, from the Conte to the Contadine; and you may Montague, and by whom? by Algarotti? well. Ask her, who was the 'descendant of Lady M. W be sure of what I say to you.

LETTER CCCCLII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Yours, &c."

"Ravenna, September 28, 1820.

pro

won't

and you I suspect that in Marino Faliero, yours like the politics which are perilous to you in these times; but recollect that it is not a political play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France, England, and so forth. All I have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

"I thought that I had told you long ago, that it never was intended nor written with any view to the stage. I "Your Angles in general know little of the Italians have said so in the preface too. It is too long and too who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA regular for your stage, the persons too few, and the unity treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been too much observed. It is more like a play of Alfieri's composed of the best company. How could they?-out than of your stage, (I say this humbly in speaking of that of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest great man;) but there is poetry, and it is equal to Man-men? fred, though I know not what esteem is held of Manfred.

"Mitchell's Aristophanes is excellent. Send me the rest of it.

"I have now been nearly as long out of England as I was there during the time I saw you frequently. I came "These fools will force me to write a book about Italy home July 14th, 1811, and left again April 25th, 1816: so myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about that Sept. 28th, 1820, brings me within a very few months assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling-and of the same duration of time of my stay and my absence.a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount In course, I can know nothing of the public taste and of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or feelings, but from what I glean from letters, &c. Both won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, seem to be as bad as possible. according to circumstances or place. For instance, I am "I thought Anastasius excellent: did I not say so? living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and Forsyth, and make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;—and

[blocks in formation]

I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary because he is a man of genius; and, next, because he is places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of it an Italian, and therefore the best judge of Italics. Be as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is true sides, that there are those here, who, if he did, would live to think on 't but that would not awake my bones: I should be sorry if it would, were they once at rest."

LETTER CCCCLIV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 6o, 1820. "You will have now received all the Acts, corrected, of the Marino Faliero. What you say of the 'bet of 100 guineas' made by some one who says that he saw me last week reminds me of what happened in 1810; you can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an odd one.

'He's more an antique Roman than a Dane ;'

that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than of the
modern Italian. Though 'somewhat,' as Dugald Dal-
getty says
'too wild and salvage,' (like 'Ronald of the
Mist,') 't is a wonderful man, and my friends Hobhouse
and Rose both swear by him; and they are good judges
of men and of Italian humanity.

'Here are in all two worthy voices gain'd :'

Gifford says it is good sterling genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian. Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me, besides the incalculable one of being dead from one to two centures, and having been both born blackguards. (which ARE such attractions to the gentle living reader ;) let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have-that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it. I claim no more.

In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the Alfred my old school and form-fellow, (for we were within two of each other, he the higher, though both very near the top of our remove,) Peel, the Irish secretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he thought, in St. "I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's spitting James'-street, but we passed without speaking. He menat Bertram; that's national-the objection, I mean. The tioned this, and it was denied as impossible; I being then Italians and French, with those 'flags of abomination,' in Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to their pocket-handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every his brother a person on the opposite side of the way: where else-in your face almost, and therefore object to -There,' said he is the man whom I took for Byron. it on the stage as too familiar. But we who spit nowhere His brother instantly answered, 'Why it is Byron, and but in a man's face when we grow savage-are not no one else.' But this is not all :-I was seen by some likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir body to write down my name among the inquirers after Giles Overreachthe king's health, then attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly as I could make out, I was ill of a strong fever at Patras, caught in the marshes near Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face; he Olympia, from the malaria. If I had died there, this spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the would have been a new ghost story for you. You can ground when they are in a rage. Again, he does not in easily make out the accuracy of this from Peel himself, fact despise Bertram, though he affects it,—as we all do, who told it in detail. I suppose you will be of the opinion of Lucretius, who (denies the immortality of the soul, but) asserts that from the 'flying off of the surfaces of bodies, these surfaces or cases, like the coats of an onion, are sometimes seen entire when they are separated from it, so that the shapes and shadows of both the dead and living are frequently beheld.'

'Lord! thus I spit at thee and at thy counsel!'

when angry with one we think our inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way, (although not afraid of death;) and recollect that he suspected and hatred Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow: he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.

"So there's argument for you.

"The Doge repeats;-true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is

"But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats also seen? I do not disbelieve that we may be two by some unconscious process, to a certain sign, but which of these two I happen at present to be, I leave you to decide. I always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his only hope that t' other me behaves like a gemman.

"I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am accurate in my recollection of what he told me; for I do n't like to say such things without authority.

mind. His speeches are long;-true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough, too, God knows:-look into any of them.

"I am not sure that I was not spoken with; but this also you can ascertain. I have written to you such letters "I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also that I stop. "Yours, &c. to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in "P. S. Last year (in June, 1819) I met at Count straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian, who asked me if I knew I never met but three men who would have held out a Lord Byron? I told him no, (no one knows himself, you finger to me: one was yourself, the other William Bankes, know.) Then,' says he, 'I do; I met him at Naples and the other a nobleman long ago dead: but of these the the other day.' I pulled out my card and asked him if first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted that was the way he spelled his name: he answered, yes. it; the second from good-will-but I was not in need of I suspect that it was a blackguard navy surgeon, who Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I had, attended a young travelling madam about, and passed, (though I love and esteem him ;)—and the third himself for a lord at the posthouses. He was a vulgar dog quite of the cockpit order-and a precious representative I must have had of him, if it was even so; but I don't know. He passed himself off as a gentleman, and squired about a Countess ** (of this place) then at Venice, an ugly, battered woman, of bad morals even for Italy."

LETTER CCCCLV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 8o, 1820. "Foscolo's letter is exactly the thing wanted; firstly, |

[ocr errors]

"So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncertainty of five pounds. I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, although† you probably have.

"P. S. Foscolo's Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians, now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly. If I find it takes, I will reprint it here. The Italians think as highly

• The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original.
† See Letter 259.

of Foscolo as they can of any man, divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the Lugano Gazette.

"We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first falling on to do unutterable things. They are a great world in chaos, or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came paradise, and out of hell-I don't know what; but the Devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know.

"You need never favour me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review: for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their

covers.

"To be sure I took in the Editor of the British finely. He fell precisely into the glaring trap laid for him. It was inconceivable how he could be so absurd as to imagine us serious with him.

Grand Chancellor, a separate office, (although important): it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero. It is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died the Ten made a law that all the future Doges should be buried with their families, in their own churches, one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his ancestral Doges, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it.

"As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram, pers, they having been real existences. "I omitted Foscolo in my list of living Venetian worthies in the notes, considering him as an Italian in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to canto 4th of Childe Harold.

Excuse

"Recollect, that if you put my name to 'Don Juan' in "The French translation of us!!! cimè¦ oimè !—and these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian the German; but I do n't understand the latter, and his right of my daughter in chancery, on the plea of its con-long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. taining the parody;-such are the perils of a foolish jest. haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is I was not aware of this at the time, but you will find it decided as yet. correct, I believe; and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it slip. Now I prefer my child to a poem at any time, and so should you, as having half a dozen. "Let me know your notions.

*If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reign of John and Henry, and gave it to my daughter. It was also the name of Charlemagne's sister. It is in an early chapter of Genesis, as the name of the wife of Lamech; and I suppose Ada is the feminine of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family, for which reason I gave it to my daughter."

LETTER CCCCLVI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sbre 120, 1820.
"By land and sea carriage a considerahle quantity of
books have arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but
'medio de fonte leporum, surgit amari aliquid,' &c. &c.;
which, being interpreted, means,

* I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray;
But why not send Scott's Monastery?

the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioc-
colo to see 'bating the rest of the same author, and an
occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers
of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's
** poetry, and three novels, by God knows whom, except
that there is Peg ***'s name to one of them-a spin-
ster whom 1 thought we had sent back to her spinning.
Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, and
welcome.

"I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott's Monastery.-You are too liberal in quantity, and some. what careless of the quality, of your missives. All the Quarterlies (four in number) I had had before from you, and two of the Edinburgh; but no matter, we shall have new ones by-and-by. No more Keats, I entreat :-flay him alive; if some of you do n't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.

"I don't feel inclined to care farther about' Don Juan.' What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day? She had read it in the French, and paid me some compliments, with due DRAWBACKS, upon it. I answered that what she said was true, but that I suspected it would live longer than Childe Harold.-Ah but, (said she,) 'I would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an IMMORTALITY of Don Juan! The truth is that it is TOO TRUE, and the women hate many things which strip off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, as it would rob them of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not hate De Grammont's Memoirs for the same reason: even Lady✶✶ used to abuse them.

"Rose's work I never received. It was seized at Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with their two hundred thousand men, that they dare not let such a volume as his circulate."

LETTER CCCCLVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 16o, 1820. "The Abbot has just arrived; many thanks; as also for the Monastery-when you send it!!!

"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want "The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for them, having travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank me, for an ancestor of mine by the mother's side, Sir J. the author of the Profligate' for his (or her) present. Pray Gordon of Gight, the handsomest of his day, died on a send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly scaffold at Aberdeen for his loyalty to Mary, of whom he good. There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon was an imputed paramour as well as her relation. His my tables that I am ashamed to look at them. I say fate was much commented on in the Chronicles of the nothing against your parsons, your Smith's, and your times. If I mistake not, he had something to do with her Croly's-it is all very fine-but pray dispense me from escape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there. But the pleasure. Instead of poetry, if you will favour me this you will know better than I.

with a few soda-powders, I shall be delighted: but all "I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. I prose (bating travels and novels NOT by Scott) is wel-saw it in my way to England, in 1798, being then ten come, especially Scott's Tales of My Landlord, and so on. years of age. My mother, who was as haughty as Luci"In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may as be well to fer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line say that 'Benintende' was not really of the Ten, but merely from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as she dis

« FöregåendeFortsätt »