Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 36

LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Pisa, July 6. 1822.

"I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael to _Raphael_ in the _scene_ itself throughout, for I have only had time to do so in the list of the dramatis personae, and _scratch out all the pencil-marks_, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given the '_Vision of Quevedo Redivivus_' to John Hunt, which will relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his _own_ risk, as it is at his own desire. Give him the _corrected_ copy which Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.

"Yours," &c.

LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Pisa, July 8. 1822.

"Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps, better not publish in the same volume the _Po_ and _Rimini_ translation.

"I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the 'Vision of Judgment,' which you will hand over to him. Also the 'Pulci,'

original and Italian, and any _prose_ tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work, to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in your care, except the volume now in the press, and the ma.n.u.script purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as they are wanted.

"With regard to what you say about your 'want of memory,' I can only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.

"It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission from my dictatress to continue it,--_provided always_ it was to be more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,"

&c.

LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.

"Pisa, July 12. 1822.

"I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an answer to _that_ point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray's hands, he and the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy, having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have _that_ again, or a _copy_ correct.

"I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Iris.h.i.+sm committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money, could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual to pretend to surpa.s.s him; and therefore I have sent but the above sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.[82]

"Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I have promised to contribute; and in the first number the 'Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' will probably appear, with other articles.

"Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray, answer _this_ letter immediately.

"Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him handsomely--any lyrical, _irical_, or what you please.

"Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertis.e.m.e.nt says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been disposing of money in Ireland 'sans authority of the Committee.' I suppose it will end in Callaghan's calling out the Committee, the chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.

"When you can spare time from _duetting, coquetting_, and claretting with your Hibernians of both s.e.xes, let me have a line from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition of your new poesy."

[Footnote 82: "Received from Mr. Henry Dunn the sum of two hundred Tuscan crowns (for account of the Right Honourable Lord Noel Byron), for the purpose of a.s.sisting the Irish poor.

"Thomas Hall.

"Leghorn, 9th July, 1822. Tuscan crowns, 200."]

LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.

"Pisa, August 8. 1822.

"You will have heard by this time that Sh.e.l.ley and another gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a _month_ yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice _now_, when he can be no better for it.[83]

"I have not seen the thing you mention[84], and only heard of it casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some advertis.e.m.e.nts, fourteen s.h.i.+llings, which is too much to pay for a libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.

"With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a good while ago, some remarks [85] on their review of Don Juan, but saying very little about themselves, and these were _not_ published. If you think that I ought to follow your example[86](and I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little I _did_ write (and never published) at Murray's;--it contained much more about Southey than about the Blacks.

"If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I should not care much about publis.h.i.+ng _my Memoir now_, should it be necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in _that_ case, I should like to look over the _press_ myself. Let me know what you think, or whether I had better _not_;--at least, not the second part, which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.

"I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and a.s.sault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.

"What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's line, 'Let me have a _barrack_--a fig for the _clergy_?' This seems to have been his reverence's motto. * * *

"Yours," &c.

[Footnote 83: In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has been omitted to avoid repet.i.tions, he says on the same subject, "You were all mistaken about Sh.e.l.ley, who was, without exception, the _best_ and least selfish man I ever knew." There is also another pa.s.sage in the same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:--"I have received your sc.r.a.p, with Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like him--always kind and ready to oblige his old friends."]

[Footnote 84: A book which had just appeared, ent.i.tled "Memoirs of the Right Hon. Lord Byron."]

[Footnote 85: The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been already given in this work.]

[Footnote 86: It had been a.s.serted in a late Number of Blackwood, that both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that Magazine.]

LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.

"Pisa, August 27. 1822.

"It is boring to trouble you with 'such small gear;' but it must be owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My reasons, like Vellum's, 'are threefold:'--First, I doubt the accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second, I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an obnoxious politician's name in their lists; and third, I feel pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not coming forward with the others in her distresses.

"It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis. All I want is to know if the Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit my subscription (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs, more or less,) to the Committee at Paris.

"The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim off to my schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence to sh.o.r.e again--about three miles, or better, in all. As it was at mid-day, under a broiling sun, the consequence has been a feverish attack, and my whole skin's coming off, after going through the process of one large continuous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I have suffered much pain; not being able to lie on my back, or even side; for my shoulders and arms were equally St. Bartholomewed. But it is over,--and I have got a new skin, and am as glossy as a snake in its new suit.

"We have been burning the bodies of Sh.e.l.ley and Williams on the sea-sh.o.r.e, to render them fit for removal and regular interment.

You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate sh.o.r.e, with mountains in the background and the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and frankincense gave to the flame. All of Sh.e.l.ley was consumed, except his _heart_, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved in spirits of wine.

"Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died at North Cray!

and the virtuous De Witt was torn in pieces by the populace! What a lucky * * the Irishman has been in his life and end.[87] In him your Irish Franklin est mort!

"Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he and I think it somewhat shabby in _you_ not to contribute. Will you become one of the _properrioters_? 'Do, and we go snacks.' I recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.