Part 24
"D----n your 'mezzo cammin[79]'--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 it.' 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 written, had I been a quiet, mercantile politician, or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence. Besides, I only meant to be a Cavalier Servente, and had no idea it would turn out a romance, in the Anglo fashion.
"However, I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy--more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting. What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their museums and saloons--and some hack * *, _en passant_? Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy 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 [80]'--I don't recollect any thing of the sort. On the contrary, you are always in scrapes.
"What think you of the Queen? I hear Mr. Hoby says, 'that it makes him weep to see her, she reminds him so much of Jane Shore.'
"Mr. Hoby the bootmaker's heart is quite sore, For seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane Shore; And, in fact, * *
Pray excuse this ribaldry. What is your poem about? Write and tell me all about it and you.
"Yours, &c.
"P.S. Did you write the lively quiz on Peter Bell? It has wit enough to be yours, and almost too much to be any body else's now going. It was in Galignani the other day or week."
[Footnote 79: I had congratulated him upon arriving at what Dante calls the "mezzo cammin" of life, the age of thirty-three.]
[Footnote 80: I had mistaken the concluding words of his letter of the 9th of June.]
* * * * *
LETTER 383. TO MR. MURRAY.
"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.
"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 the 'rich man' of the Evangelists.
"Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to England. They may say what they please, any loathsome abuse but that. Contradict it.
"My last letters will have taught you to expect an explosion here: it was primed and loaded, but they hesitated to fire the train. One of the cities shirked from the league. I cannot write more at large for a thousand reasons. Our 'puir hill folk' offered to strike, and raise the first banner, but Bologna paused; and now 'tis autumn, and the season half over. 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!' The Huns are on the Po; but if once they pass it on their way to Naples, all Italy will be behind them. The dogs--the wolves--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 384. 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.
"Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself[81], in 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.
"What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first act). English, sterling _genuine English_, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I _hear_ none but from my valet, and his is _Nottinghamshire_: and I _see_ none but in your new publications, and theirs is _no_ language at all, but jargon. Even your * * * * is terribly stilted and affected, with '_very, very_' so soft and pamby.
"Oh! if ever I do come amongst 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 Cockneys, and the Lakers, and the _followers_ of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very 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!"
[Footnote 81: The angry note against English travellers appended to this tragedy, in consequence of an assertion made by some recent tourist, that he (or as it afterwards turned out, she) "had repeatedly declined an introduction to Lord Byron while in Italy."]
* * * * *
LETTER 385. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, Sept. 14. 1820.
"What! not a line? Well, have it your own way.
"I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped in Paris. The fools believe me in your infernal country, and have not sent on their gazettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen.
"I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks, because I have received none, except on the first act. Yours, &c.
"P.S. Do, pray, beg the editors of papers to say any thing blackguard they please; but not to put me amongst their arrivals. They do me more mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can do."
* * * * *
LETTER 386. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, Sept. 21. 1820.
"So you are at your old tricks again. This is the second packet I have received unaccompanied by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is strange that you have never forwarded any further observations of Gifford's. How am I to alter or amend, if I hear no further? or does this silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to be repaired? If the last, why do you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late you must out with the truth.
"Yours, &c.
"P.S. My sister tells me that you sent to her to enquire where I was, believing in my arrival, _driving a curricle_, &c. &c. into Palace-yard. Do you think me a coxcomb or a madman, to be capable of such an exhibition? My sister knew me better, and told you, that could not be me. You might as well have thought me entering on 'a pale horse,' like Death in the Revelations."
* * * * *
LETTER 387. 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 prematur 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 amongst 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.
"Nobody here believes a word of the evidence against the Queen. The very mob cry shame against their countrymen, and say, that for half the money spent upon the trial, any testimony whatever may be brought out of Italy. This you may rely upon as fact. I told you as much before. As to what travellers report, what _are travellers_? Now I have _lived_ among the Italians--not _Florenced_, and _Romed_, and galleried, and conversationed it for a few months, and then home again; but been of their families, and friendships, and feuds, and loves, and councils, and correspondence, in a part of Italy least known to foreigners,--and have been amongst them of all classes, from the Conte to the Contadine; and you may be sure of what I say to you.
"Yours," &c.
* * * * *
LETTER 388. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, Sept. 28. 1820.
"I thought that I had told you long ago, that it never was intended nor written with any view to the stage. I have said so in the preface too. It is too long and too regular for your stage, the persons too few, and the _unity_ too much observed. It is more like a play of Alfieri's than of your stage (I say this humbly in speaking of that great man); but there is poetry, and it is equal to Manfred, though I know not what esteem is held of Manfred.
"I have now been nearly as long _out_ of England as I was there during the time I saw you frequently. I came home July 14th, 1811, and left again April 25th, 1816: so that Sept. 28th, 1820, brings me within a very few months of the same duration of time of my stay and my absence. In course, I can know nothing of the public taste and feelings, but from what I glean from letters, &c. Both seem to be as bad as possible.
"I thought _Anastasius excellent_: did I not say so? Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and Forsyth, and parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon Italy. The Letter to Julia very good indeed, I do not despise * * * * * *; but if she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them, it would be better. _You_ are taken in by that false stilted trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are _all bombastic_ (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 further 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 will--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 off in the middle; for I had my hands full, and my head, too, just then; so it can be no great shakes--I mean the play; and the head too, if you like.
"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 if they cross 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.
"Sept. 29.
"I opened 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 by a WOMAN!!! In that case you must suppress my note and answer, and all I have said about the book and the writer. I never dreamed of it until now, in my extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say that I am sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind. What I would have said to one of the other sex you know already. Her book too (as a _she_ book) is not a bad one; but she evidently don't know the Italians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the _causes_ of their misery and profligacy (_Matthews_ and _Forsyth_ are your men for truth and tact), and has gone over Italy in _company_--_always_ a _bad_ plan: you must be _alone_ with people to know them well. Ask her, who was the '_descendant of Lady M.W. Montague_,' and by whom? by Algarotti?
"I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won't 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.
"Your Angles in general know little of the _Italians_, who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been composed of the best company. How could they?--out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest men?
"Mitchell's Aristophanes is excellent. Send me the rest of it.
"These fools will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling--and '_a wild justice_,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or _won't_ reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according to circumstances or place. For instance, I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;--and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is true 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 389. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, 8bre 6°, 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.
"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. James's Street, but we passed without speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two afterward, he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way:--'There,' said he, 'is the man whom I took for Byron.' His brother instantly answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' But this is not all:--I was _seen_ by somebody to _write down my name_ amongst the enquirers after the 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 Olympia, from the _malaria_. If I had died there, this would have been a new ghost story for you. You can easily make out the accuracy of this from Peel himself, 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.'
"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 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 don't like to say such things without authority.
"I am not sure that I was _not spoken_ with; but this also you can ascertain. I have written to you such letters that I stop.
"Yours, &c.
"P.S. Last year (in June, 1819), I met at Count Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian who asked me 'if I knew Lord Byron?' I told him _no_ (no one knows himself, _you_ know). 'Then,' says he, 'I do; I met him at Naples the other day.' I pulled out my card and asked him if that was the way he spelt his name: he answered, _yes_. I suspect that it was a blackguard navy surgeon, who attended a young travelling madam about, and passed himself for a lord at the post-houses. He was a vulgar dog--quite of the cock-pit 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 390. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, 8bre 8°, 1820.
"Foscolo's letter is exactly the thing wanted; firstly, because he is a man of genius; and, next, because he is an Italian, and therefore the best judge of Italics. Besides,
"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 Dalgetty says, 'too wild and sa_l_vage' (like 'Ronald of the Mist'), 'tis 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 centuries, 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.
"I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's _spitting_ at Bertram; _that's_ national--the objection, I mean. The Italians and French, with those 'flags of abomination,' their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every where else--in your face almost, and therefore _object_ to it on the stage as _too familiar_. But we who _spit_ nowhere--but in a man's face when we grow savage--are not likely to feel this. Remember _Massinger_, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach--
"Lord! _thus_ I _spit_ at thee and at thy counsel!
Besides, Calendaro does _not_ spit in Bertram's face; he spits _at_ him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, he _does not in fact despise_ Bertram, though he affects it--as we all do, 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 hated 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 always obliged to recur to the _cause_ uppermost in his 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 return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. I never met but three men who would have held out a finger to me: one was yourself, the other William Bankes, and the other a nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was the only one who offered it while I _really_ wanted it; the second from good will--but I was not in need of Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I had (though I love and esteem him); and the _third_ --------.[82]
"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, and 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 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.