Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) by Thomas Moore

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LIFE
OF
LORD BYRON:

WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. VI.

NEW EDITION.

1854.

CONTENTS OF VOL. VI.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, with NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from
February, 1823, to his Death in April, 1824

APPENDIX

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES IN PROSE.

REVIEW OF WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. 1807

REVIEW OF GELL'S GEOGRAPHY OF ITHACA, AND ITINERARY OF GREECE. 1811

PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES. 1812, 1813

FRAGMENT. 1816

LETTER TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ON THE REV. W.L. BOWLES'S STRICTURES ON
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF POPE. 1821

OBSERVATIONS UPON "OBSERVATIONS" OF THE REV. W.L. BOWLES ON THE
POETICAL CHARACTER OF POPE; IN A SECOND LETTER TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ.
1821

NOTICES OF THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

* * * * *

LETTER 508. TO MR. MOORE.

"Genoa, February 20. 1823.

"My Dear Tom,

"I must again refer you to those two letters addressed to you at
Passy before I read your speech in Galignani, &c., and which you do
not seem to have received.[1]

[Footnote 1: I was never lucky enough to recover these two letters,
though frequent enquiries were made about them at the French
post-office.]

"Of Hunt I see little--once a month or so, and then on his own
business, generally. You may easily suppose that I know too little of
Hampstead and his satellites to have much communion or community with
him. My whole present relation to him arose from Shelley's unexpected
wreck. You would not have had me leave him in the street with his
family, would you? and as to the other plan you mention, you forget
how it would _humiliate_ him--that his writings should be supposed to
be dead weight![1] Think a moment--he is perhaps the vainest man on
earth, at least his own friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were
in other circumstances, I might be tempted to take him down a peg;
but not now,--it would be cruel. It is a cursed business; but neither
the motive nor the means rest upon my conscience, and it happens that
he and his brother _have_ been so far benefited by the publication in
a pecuniary point of view. His brother is a steady, bold fellow, such
as _Prynne_, for example, and full of moral, and, I hear, physical
courage.

[Footnote 1: The passage in one of my letters to which he here refers
shall be given presently.]

"And _you_ are _really_ recanting, or softening to the clergy! It
will do little good for you--it is _you_, not the poem, they are at.
They will say they frightened you--forbid it, Ireland!

"Yours ever,

"N.B."

Lord Byron had now, for some time, as may be collected from his
letters, begun to fancy that his reputation in England was on the
wane. The same thirst after fame, with the same sensitiveness to
every passing change of popular favour, which led Tasso at last to
look upon himself as the most despised of writers[1], had more than
once disposed Lord Byron, in the midst of all his triumphs, if not to
doubt their reality, at least to distrust their continuance; and
sometimes even, with that painful skill which sensibility supplies,
to extract out of the brightest tributes of success some omen of
future failure, or symptom of decline. New successes, however, still
came to dissipate these bodings of diffidence; nor was it till after
his unlucky coalition with Mr. Hunt in the Liberal, that any grounds
for such a suspicion of his having declined in public favour showed
themselves.

[Footnote 1: In one of his letters this poet says:--"Non posso negare
che io mi doglio oltramisura di esser stato tanto disprezzato dal
mondo quanto non e altro scrittore di questo secolo." In another
letter, however, after complaining of being "perseguitato da molti
piu che non era convenevole," he adds, with a proud prescience of his
future fame, "Laonde stimo di poter mene ragionevolmente richiamare
alla posterita."]

The chief inducements, on the part of Lord Byron, to this unworthy
alliance were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of
his friend Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to join him in Italy; and, in
the next, a desire to avail himself of the aid of one so experienced,
as an editor, in the favourite project he had now so long
contemplated, of a periodical work, in which all the various
offspring of his genius might be received fast as they sprung to
light. With such opinions, however, as he had long entertained of Mr.
Hunt's character and talents[1], the facility with which he now
admitted him--_not_ certainly to any degree of confidence or
intimacy, but to a declared fellowship of fame and interest in the
eyes of the world, is, I own, an inconsistency not easily to be
accounted for, and argued, at all events, a strong confidence in the
antidotal power of his own name to resist the ridicule of such an
association.

[Footnote 1: See Letter 317. p. 103.]

As long as Shelley lived, the regard which Lord Byron entertained for
him extended its influence also over his relations with his friend;
the suavity and good-breeding of Shelley interposing a sort of
softening medium in the way of those unpleasant collisions which
afterwards took place, and which, from what is known of both parties,
may be easily conceived to have been alike trying to the patience of
the patron and the vanity of the dependent. That even, however,
during the lifetime of their common friend, there had occurred some
of those humiliating misunderstandings which money
engenders,--humiliating on both sides, as if from the very nature of
the dross that gives rise to them,--will appear from the following
letter of Shelley's which I find among the papers in my hands.

TO LORD BYRON.

"February 15. 1823.

"My dear Lord Byron.

"I enclose you a letter from Hunt, which annoys me on more than one
account. You will observe the postscript, and you know me well enough
to feel how painful a task is set me in commenting upon it. Hunt had
urged me more than once to ask you to lend him this money. My answer
consisted in sending him all I could spare, which I have now
literally done. Your kindness in fitting up a part of your own house
for his accommodation I sensibly felt, and willingly accepted from
you on his part, but, believe me, without the slightest intention of
imposing, or, if I could help it, allowing to be imposed, any heavier
task on your purse. As it has come to this in spite of my exertions,
I will not conceal from you the low ebb of my own money affairs in
the present moment,--that is, my absolute incapacity of assisting
Hunt farther.

"I do not think poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is worth
very much; but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I should be
happy to be responsible for any engagement he may have proposed to
you. I am so much annoyed by this subject that I hardly know what to
write, and much less what to say; and I have need of all your
indulgence in judging both my feelings and expressions.

"I shall see you by and by. Believe me

"Yours most faithfully and sincerely,

"P.B. SHELLEY."

Of the book in which Mr. Hunt has thought it decent to revenge upon
the dead the pain of those obligations he had, in his hour of need,
accepted from the living, I am luckily saved from the distaste of
speaking at any length, by the utter and most deserved oblivion into
which his volume has fallen. Never, indeed, was the right feeling of
the world upon such subjects more creditably displayed than in the
reception given universally to that ungenerous book;--even those the
least disposed to think approvingly of Lord Byron having shrunk back
from such a corroboration of their own opinion as could be afforded
by one who did not blush to derive his authority, as an accuser, from
those facilities of observation which he had enjoyed by having been
sheltered and fed under the very roof of the man whom he maligned.

With respect to the hostile feeling manifested in Mr. Hunt's work
towards myself, the sole revenge I shall take is, to lay before my
readers the passage in one of my letters which provoked it; and which
may claim, at least, the merit of not being a covert attack, as
throughout the whole of my remonstrances to Lord Byron on the subject
of his new literary allies, not a line did I ever write respecting
either Mr. Shelley or Mr. Hunt which I was not fully prepared, from
long knowledge of my correspondent, to find that he had instantly,
and as a matter of course, communicated to them. That this want of
retention was a fault in my noble friend, I am not inclined to deny;
but, being undisguised, it was easily guarded against, and, when
guarded against, harmless. Besides, such is the penalty generally to
be paid for frankness of character; and they who could have flattered
themselves that one so open about his own affairs as Lord Byron would
be much more discreet where the confidences of others were concerned,
would have had their own imprudence, not his, to blame for any injury
that their dependence upon his secrecy had brought on them.

The following is the passage, which Lord Byron, as I take for
granted, showed to Mr. Hunt, and to which one of his letters to
myself (February 20.) refers:--

"I am most anxious to know that you mean to emerge out of the
Liberal. It grieves me to urge any thing so much against Hunt's
interest; but I should not hesitate to use the same language to
himself, were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every
possible way but this--I would give him (if he would accept of it)
the profits of the same works, published separately--but I would
_not_ mix myself up in this way with others. I would _not_ become a
partner in this sort of miscellaneous '_pot au feu_,' where the bad
flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be,
if I were _you_, alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible."

While on the subject of Mr. Hunt, I shall avail myself of the
opportunity it affords me of introducing some portions of a letter
addressed to a friend of that gentleman by Lord Byron, in consequence
of an appeal made to the feelings of the latter on the score of his
professed "friendship" for Mr. Hunt. The avowals he here makes are, I
own, startling, and must be taken with more than the usual allowance,
not only for the particular mood of temper or spirits in which the
letter was written, but for the influence also of such slight casual
piques and resentments as might have been, just then, in their
darkening transit through his mind,--indisposing him, for the moment,
to those among his friends whom, in a sunnier mood, he would have
proclaimed as his most chosen and dearest.

LETTER 509. TO MRS. ----.

"I presume that you, at least, know enough of me to be sure that I
could have no intention to insult Hunt's poverty. On the contrary, I
honour him for it; for I know what it is, having been as much
embarrassed as ever he was, without perceiving aught in it to
diminish an honourable man's self-respect. If you mean to say that,
had he been a wealthy man, I would have joined in this Journal, I
answer in the negative. * * * I engaged in the Journal from good-will
towards him, added to respect for his character, literary and
personal; and no less for his political courage, as well as regret
for his present circumstances: I did this in the hope that he might,
with the same aid from literary friends of literary contributions
(which is requisite for all journals of a mixed nature), render
himself independent.

"I have always treated him, in our personal intercourse, with such
scrupulous delicacy, that I have forborne intruding advice which I
thought might be disagreeable, lest he should impute it to what is
called 'taking advantage of a man's situation.'

"As to friendship, it is a propensity in which my genius is very
limited. I do not know the _male_ human being, except Lord Clare, the
friend of my infancy, for whom I feel any thing that deserves the
name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships. I did not even
feel it for Shelley, however much I admired and esteemed him, so that
you see not even vanity could bribe me into it, for, of all men,
Shelley thought highest of my talents,--and, perhaps, of my
disposition.

"I will do my duty by my intimates, upon the principle of doing as
you would be done by. I have done so, I trust, in most instances. I
may be pleased with their conversation--rejoice in their success--be
glad to do them service, or to receive their counsel and assistance
in return. But as for friends and friendship, I have (as I already
said) named the only remaining male for whom I feel any thing of the
kind, excepting, perhaps, Thomas Moore. I have had, and may have
still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in _life_, who are
like one's partners in the waltz of this world--not much remembered
when the ball is over, though very pleasant for the time. Habit,
business, and companionship in pleasure or in pain, are links of a
similar kind, and the same faith in politics is another." * * *

LETTER 510. TO LADY ----.

"Genoa, March 28. 1823.

"Mr. Hill is here: I dined with him on Saturday before last; and on
leaving his house at S. P. d'Arena, my carriage broke down. I walked
home, about three miles,--no very great feat of pedestrianism; but
either the coming out of hot rooms into a bleak wind chilled me, or
the walking up-hill to Albaro heated me, or something or other set me
wrong, and next day I had an inflammatory attack in the face, to
which I have been subject this winter for the first time, and I
suffered a good deal of pain, but no peril. My health is now much as
usual. Mr. Hill is, I believe, occupied with his diplomacy. I shall
give him your message when I see him again.

"My name, I see in the papers, has been dragged into the unhappy
Portsmouth business, of which all that I know is very succinct. Mr.
H---- is my solicitor. I found him so when I was ten years old--at my
uncle's death--and he was continued in the management of my legal
business. He asked me, by a civil epistle, as an old acquaintance of
his family, to be present at the marriage of Miss H----. I went very
reluctantly, one misty morning (for I had been up at two balls all
night), to witness the ceremony, which I could not very well refuse
without affronting a man who had never offended me. I saw nothing
particular in the marriage. Of course I could not know the
preliminaries, except from what he said, not having been present at
the wooing, nor after it, for I walked home, and they went into the
country as soon as they had promised and vowed. Out of this simple
fact I hear the Debats de Paris has quoted Miss H. as 'autrefois tres
liee avec le celebre,' &c. &c. I am obliged to him for the celebrity,
but beg leave to decline the liaison, which is quite untrue; my
liaison was with the father, in the unsentimental shape of long
lawyers' bills, through the medium of which I have had to pay him ten
or twelve thousand pounds within these few years. She was not pretty,
and I suspect that the indefatigable Mr. A---- was (like all her
people) more attracted by her title than her charms. I regret very
much that I was present at the prologue to the happy state of
horse-whipping and black jobs, &c. &c.; but I could not foresee that
a man was to turn out mad, who had gone about the world for fifty
years, as competent to vote, and walk at large; nor did he seem to me
more insane than any other person going to be married.

"I have no objection to be acquainted with the Marquis Palavicini, if
he wishes it. Lately I have gone little into society, English or
foreign, for I had seen all that was worth seeing in the former
before I left England, and at the time of life when I was more
disposed to like it; and of the latter I had a sufficiency in the
first few years of my residence in Switzerland, chiefly at Madame de
Stael's, where I went sometimes, till I grew tired of _conversazioni_
and carnivals, with their appendages; and the bore is, that if you go
once, you are expected to be there daily, or rather nightly. I went
the round of the most noted soirees at Venice or elsewhere (where I
remained not any time) to the Benzona, and the Albrizzi, and the
Michelli, &c. &c. and to the Cardinals and the various potentates of
the Legation in Romagna, (that is, Ravenna,) and only receded for the
sake of quiet when I came into Tuscany. Besides, if I go into
society, I generally get, in the long run, into some scrape of some
kind or other, which don't occur in my solitude. However, I am pretty
well settled now, by time and temper, which is so far lucky, as it
prevents restlessness; but, as I said before, as an acquaintance of
yours, I will be ready and willing to know your friends. He may be a
sort of connection for aught I know; for a Palavicini, of _Bologna_,
I believe, married a distant relative of mine half a century ago. I
happen to know the fact, as he and his spouse had an annuity of five
hundred pounds on my uncle's property, which ceased at his demise;
though I recollect hearing they attempted, naturally enough, to make
it survive him. If I can do any thing for you here or elsewhere, pray
order, and be obeyed."

LETTER 511. TO MR. MOORE.

"Genoa, April 2. 1823.

"I have just seen some friends of yours, who paid me a visit
yesterday, which, in honour of them and of you, I returned
to-day;--as I reserve my bear-skin and teeth, and paws and claws, for
our enemies.

"I have also seen Henry F----, Lord H----'s son, whom I had not
looked upon since I left him a pretty, mild boy, without a neckcloth,
in a jacket, and in delicate health, seven long years agone, at the
period of mine eclipse--the third, I believe, as I have generally one
every two or three years. I think that he has the softest and most
amiable expression of countenance I ever saw, and manners
correspondent. If to those he can add hereditary talents, he will
keep the name of F---- in all its freshness for half a century more,
I hope. I speak from a transient glimpse--but I love still to yield
to such impressions; for I have ever found that those I liked longest
and best, I took to at first sight; and I always liked that
boy--perhaps, in part, from some resemblance in the less fortunate
part of our destinies--I mean, to avoid mistakes, his lameness. But
there is this difference, that _he_ appears a halting angel, who has
tripped against a star; whilst I am _Le Diable Boiteux_,--a
soubriquet, which I marvel that, amongst their various _nominis
umbrae_, the Orthodox have not hit upon.

"Your other allies, whom I have found very agreeable personages, are
Milor B---- and _epouse_, travelling with a very handsome companion,
in the shape of a 'French Count' (to use Farquhar's phrase in the
Beaux Stratagem), who has all the air of a _Cupidon dechaine_, and is
one of the few specimens I have seen of our ideal of a Frenchman
_before_ the Revolution--an old friend with a new face, upon whose
like I never thought that we should look again. Miladi seems highly
literary,--to which, and your honour's acquaintance with the family,
I attribute the pleasure of having seen them. She is also very
pretty, even in a morning,--a species of beauty on which the sun of
Italy does not shine so frequently as the chandelier. Certainly,
English-women wear better than their continental neighbours of the
same sex. M---- seems very good-natured, but is much tamed, since I
recollect him in all the glory of gems and snuff-boxes, and uniforms,
and theatricals, and speeches in our house--'I mean, of peers,'--(I
must refer you to Pope--who you don't read and won't appreciate--for
that quotation, which you must allow to be poetical,) and sitting to
Stroeling, the painter, (do you remember our visit, with Leckie, to
the German?) to be depicted as one of the heroes of Agincourt, 'with
his long sword, saddle, bridle, Whack fal de, &c. &c.'

"I have been unwell--caught a cold and inflammation, which menaced a
conflagration, after dining with our ambassador, Monsieur Hill,--not
owing to the dinner, but my carriage broke down in the way home, and
I had to walk some miles, up hill partly, after hot rooms, in a very
bleak, windy evening, and over-hotted, or over-colded myself. I have
not been so robustious as formerly, ever since the last summer, when
I fell ill after a long swim in the Mediterranean, and have never
been quite right up to this present writing. I am thin,--perhaps
thinner than you saw me, when I was nearly transparent, in 1812,--and
am obliged to be moderate of my mouth; which, nevertheless, won't
prevent me (the gods willing) from dining with your friends the day
after to-morrow.

"They give me a very good account of you, and of your nearly
'Emprisoned Angels.' But why did you change your title?--you will
regret this some day. The bigots are not to be conciliated; and, if
they were--are they worth it? I suspect that I am a more orthodox
Christian than you are; and, whenever I see a real Christian, either
in practice or in theory, (for I never yet found the man who could
produce either, when put to the proof,) I am his disciple. But, till
then, I cannot truckle to tithe-mongers,--nor can I imagine what has
made _you_ circumcise your Seraphs.

"I have been far more persecuted than you, as you may judge by my
present decadence,--for I take it that I am as low in popularity and
book-selling as any writer can be. At least, so my friends assure
me--blessings on their benevolence! This they attribute to Hunt; but
they are wrong--it must be, partly at least, owing to myself; be it
so. As to Hunt, I prefer _not_ having turned him to starve in the
streets to any personal honour which might have accrued from such
genuine philanthropy. I really act upon principle in this matter, for
we have nothing much in common; and I cannot describe to you the
despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems
incapable or unwilling to do any thing further for himself,--at
least, to the purpose. It is like pulling a man out of a river who
directly throws himself in again. For the last three or four years
Shelley assisted, and had once actually extricated him. I have since
his demise,--and even before,--done what I could: but it is not in my
power to make this permanent. I want Hunt to return to England, for
which I would furnish him with the means in comfort; and his
situation _there_, on the whole, is bettered, by the payment of a
portion of his debts, &c.; and he would be on the spot to continue
his Journal, or Journals, with his brother, who seems a sensible,
plain, sturdy, and enduring person." * *

The new intimacy of which he here announces the commencement, and
which it was gratifying to me, as the common friend of all, to find
that he had formed, was a source of much pleasure to him during the
stay of his noble acquaintances at Genoa. So long, indeed, had he
persuaded himself that his countrymen abroad all regarded him in no
other light than as an outlaw or a show, that every new instance he
met of friendly reception from them was as much a surprise as
pleasure to him; and it was evident that to his mind the revival of
English associations and habitudes always brought with it a sense of
refreshment, like that of inhaling his native air.

With the view of inducing these friends to prolong their stay at
Genoa, he suggested their taking a pretty villa called "Il Paradiso,"
in the neighbourhood of his own, and accompanied them to look at it.
Upon that occasion it was that, on the lady expressing some
intentions of residing there, he produced the following impromptu,
which--but for the purpose of showing that he was not so "chary of
his fame" as to fear failing in such trifles--I should have thought
hardly worth transcribing.

"Beneath ----'s eyes
The reclaim'd Paradise
Should be free as the former from evil;
But, if the new Eve
For an apple should grieve,
What mortal would not play the devil?"[1]

[Footnote 1: The Genoese wits had already applied this threadbare
jest to himself. Taking it into their heads that this villa (which
was also, I believe, a Casa Saluzzo) had been the one fixed on for
his own residence, they said "Il Diavolo e ancora entrato in
Paradise."]

Another copy of verses addressed by him to the same lady, whose
beauty and talent might well have claimed a warmer tribute from such
a pen, is yet too interesting, as descriptive of the premature
feeling of age now stealing upon him, to be omitted in these pages.

"TO THE COUNTESS OF B----.

1.

"You have ask'd for a verse:--the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny,
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.

2.

"Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well;
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.

3.

"I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I _now_ merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.

4.

"My life is not dated by years--
There are _moments_ which act as a plough,
And there is not a furrow appears
But is deep in my soul as my brow.

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