by Lord Byron
So much for this, my dear B. I can only say I should much like to see you at Newstead. The former I hope I shall at all events, as you must not be shabby, but come to Cambridge as you promised. Are you staying at Newstead now for any time? I saw George Byron in Town for one day, and he promised to call or write again, but has not done either, so I begin to think he has gone back to Lisbon. I think it is impossible not to like him; he is so good-natured and natural. We talked much of you; he told me you were grown very thin; as you don’t complain, I hope you are not the worse for being so, and I remember you used to wish it. Don’t you think it a great shame that George B. is not promoted? I wish there was any possibility of assisting him about it; but all I know who could do any good with you present Ministers, I don’t for many reasons like to ask. Perhaps there may be a change bye and bye.
Fred Howard is married to Miss Lambton. I saw them in town in their way to Castle Howard. I hope he will be happy with all my heart; his kindness and friendship to us last year, when Col. Leigh was placed in one of the most perplexing situations that I think anybody could be in, is never to be forgotten. I think he used to be a greater favourite with you than some others of his family. Mrs. F.H. is very pretty, very young (not quite 17), and appears gentle and pleasing, which is all one can expect [to discover from] a very slight acquaintance.
Now, my dearest Byron, pray let me hear from you. I shall be daily expecting to hear of a Lady Byron, since you have confided to me your determination of marrying, in which I really hope you are serious, being convinced such an event would contribute greatly to your happiness, provided her Ladyship was the sort of person that would suit you; and you won’t be angry with me for saying that it is not every one who would; therefore don’t be too precipitate. You will wish me hanged, I fear, for boring you so unmercifully, so God bless you, my dearest Bro.; and, when you have time, do write. Are you going to amuse us with any more Satires? Oh, English Bards! I shall make you laugh (when we meet) about it.
Ever your most affectionate Sis. and Friend,
A.L.
177 — To To Francis Hodgson
Newstead Abbey, Sept. 3, 1811.
My Dear Hodgson, — I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why disturb the sweet and sound sleep that “knows no waking”?
“Post Mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil … quæris quo jaceas post obitum loco? Quo non Nata jacent.”
As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell; “Argal” (I argue like the gravedigger) why are not all men Christians? or why are any? If mankind may be saved who never heard or dreamt, at Timbuctoo, Otaheite, Terra Incognita, etc., of Galilee and its Prophet, Christianity is of no avail: if they cannot be saved without, why are not all orthodox? It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judæa, and leave the rest of the world — Negers and what not — dark as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that God will damn men for not knowing what they were never taught? I hope I am sincere; I was so at least on a bed of sickness in a far-distant country, when I had neither friend, nor comforter, nor hope, to sustain me. I looked to death as a relief from pain, without a wish for an after-life, but a confidence that the God who punishes in this existence had left that last asylum for the weary.
I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. Talk of Galileeism? Show me the effects — are you better, wiser, kinder by your precepts? I will bring you ten Mussulmans shall shame you in all goodwill towards men, prayer to God, and duty to their neighbours. And is there a Talapoin, or a Bonze, who is not superior to a fox-hunting curate? But I will say no more on this endless theme; let me live, well if possible, and die without pain. The rest is with God, who assuredly, had He come or sent, would have made Himself manifest to nations, and intelligible to all.
I shall rejoice to see you. My present intention is to accept Scrope Davies’s invitation; and then, if you accept mine, we shall meet here and there. Did you know poor Matthews? I shall miss him much at Cambridge.
Byron’s opinions were not newly formed, as is shown by the following letter to Ensign Long (see Letters, vol. i. p. 73, note 2 [
Southwell, Ap: 16th, 1807.
“Your Epistle, my dear Standard Bearer, augurs not much in favour of your new life, particularly the latter part, where you say your happiest Days are over. I most sincerely hope not. The past has certainly in some parts been pleasant, but I trust will be equalled, if not exceeded by the future. You hope it is not so with me.
“To be plain with Regard to myself. Nature stampt me in the Die of Indifference. I consider myself as destined never to be happy, although in some instances fortunate. I am an isolated Being on the Earth, without a Tie to attach me to life, except a few School-fellows, and a score of females. Let me but ‘hear my fame on the winds’ and the song of the Bards in my Norman house, I ask no more and don’t expect so much. Of Religion I know nothing, at least in its favour. We have fools in all sects and Impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one understands, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for Inspiration, and style themselves Evangelicals? However enough on this subject. Your piety will be aghast, and I wish for no proselytes. This much I will venture to affirm, that all the virtues and pious Deeds performed on Earth can never entitle a man to Everlasting happiness in a future State; nor on the other hand can such a Scene as a Seat of eternal punishment exist, it is incompatible with the benign attributes of a Deity to suppose so.
“I am surrounded here by parsons and methodists, but, as you will see, not infected with the mania. I have lived a Deist, what I shall die I know not; however, come what may, ridens moriar.
“Nothing detains me here but the publication, which will not be complete till June. About 20 of the present pieces will be cut out, and a number of new things added. Amongst them a complete Episode of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil, some Odes from Anacreon, and several original Odes, the whole will cover 170 pages. My last production has been a poem in imitation of Ossian, which I shall not publish, having enough without it. Many of the present poems are enlarged and altered, in short you will behold an ‘Old friend with a new face.’ Were I to publish all I have written in Rhyme, I should fill a decent Quarto; however, half is quite enough at present. You shall have all when we meet.
“I grow thin daily; since the commencement of my System I have lost 23 lbs. in my weight (i.e.) 1 st. and 9 lbs. When I began I weighed 14 st. 6 lbs., and on Tuesday I found myself reduced to 12 st. 11 lb. What sayest thou, Ned? do you not envy? I shall still proceed till I arrive at 12 st. and then stop, at least if I am not too fat, but shall always live temperately and take much exercise.
“If there is a possibility we shall meet in June. I shall be in Town, before I proceed to Granta, and if the ‘mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain.’ I don’t mean, by comparing you to the mountain, to insinuate anything on the Subject of your Size. Xerxes, it is said, formed Mount Athos into the Shape of a Woman; had he lived now, and taken a peep at Chatham, he would have spared himself the trouble and made it unnecessary by finding a Hill ready cut to his wishes.
“Adieu, dear Mont Blanc, or rather Mont Rouge; don’t, for Heaven’s sake, turn Volcanic, at least roll the Lava of your indignation in any other Channel, and not consume Your’s ever,
Byron.
“Write Immediately.”
Byron lived to modify these opinions, as is shown by the following passages from his Detached Thoughts:
“If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it we
re for — not to have lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.
“Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body — in dreams, for instance; — incoherently and madly, I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should not act separately, as well as jointly, who can pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state ‘a soul which drags a carcass,’ — a heavy chain, to be sure; but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our future life will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to Revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong; and when the world is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here; — but the whole thing is inscrutable.”
“It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.”
“Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms.”
“Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.
........
........
Quæris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?
Quo non nata jacent.”
In the Comicorum Græcorum Sententiæ, id est (p. 219, ed, Henricus Stephanus, MDLXIX.) it is quoted as a leonine verse:
Plautus gives it thus (Bacchides, iv. 7):
“Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur.”
“Les Européens les ont appelés talapoins, probablement du nom de l’éventail qu’ils tiennent à la main, lequel s’appelle talapat, qui signifie feuille de palmier.”
Possibly Byron knew the word through Voltaire (Dial. xxii., André des Couches à Siam);
“A. des C.:
Combien avez-vous de soldats?
Croutef.:
Quatre-vingt mille, fort médiocrement payés.
A. des C.:
Et de talapoins?
Cr.:
Cent vingt-mille, tous fainéans et trés riches,” etc.
178 — to R.C. Dallas
Newstead Abbey, September 4th, 1811.
My dear Sir, — I am at present anxious, as Cawthorn seems to wish it, to have a small edition of the Hints from Horace published immediately, but the Latin (the most difficult poem in the language) renders it necessary to be very particular not only in correcting the proofs with Horace open, but in adapting the parallel passages of the imitation in such places to the original as may enable the reader not to lose sight of the allusion. I don’t know whether I ought to ask you to do this, but I am too far off to do it for myself; and if you condescend to my school-boy erudition, you will oblige me by setting this thing going, though you will smile at the importance I attach to it.
Believe me, ever yours,
Byron.
The following letter from Cawthorn shows that considerable progress had been made with the printing of the poem, and that Byron also contemplated another edition of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. The advice of his friends led him to abandon both plans; but his letter to Cawthorn, printed below, is evidence that in September he was still at work on Hints from Horace:
“24, Cockspur Street, Aug. 22’d, 1811.
“My Lord, — Mr. Green the Amanuensis has finished the Latin of the Horace, and I shall be happy to do with it as your Lordship may direct, either to forward it to Newstead, or keep it in Town. Would it not be better to print a small edition seperate (sic), and afterwards print the two satires together? This I leave to your Lordship’s consideration. Four Sheets of the Travels are already printed, and one of the plates (Albanian Solain) is executed. I sent it Capt. H[obhouse] yesterday to Cork, to see if it meets his approbation. The work is printed in quarto, for which I may be in some measure indebted to your Lordship, as I urged it so strongly. I shall be extremely sorry if Capt. H. is not pleased with it, but I think he will. Your Lordship’s goodness will excuse me for saying how much the very sudden and melancholy events that have lately transpired — I regret — Capt. Hobhouse has written me since the decease of Mr. Mathews. I am told Capt. H. is very much affected at it. I have received some drawings of costumes from him, which I am to deliver to your Lordship. Is it likely we shall see your Lordship in Town soon?
“I have the honour to be your Lordship’s
“Most respectful and greatly obliged Servt.,
“James Cawthorn.
“If a small edition is printed of ‘Horace’ for the first” [words erased] “that, and I think in all probability the ‘E. Bards’ will want reprinting about March next, when both could be done together. Do not think me too sanguine.”
A few days later, Byron writes to Cawthom as follows:
“Newstead Abbey, September 4th, 1811.
“More notes for the ‘Hints’! You mistake me much by thinking me inattentive to this publication. If I had a friend willing and able to correct the press, it should be out with my good will immediately. Pray attend to annexing additional notes in their proper places, and let them be added immediately.
“Yours, etc.,
“Byron.”
179 — to John Murray
Newstead Abbey, Notts., Sept. 5, 1811.
Sir, — The time seems to be past when (as Dr. Johnson said) a man was certain to “hear the truth from his bookseller,” for you have paid me so many compliments, that, if I was not the veriest scribbler on earth, I should feel affronted. As I accept your compliments, it is but fair I should give equal or greater credit to your objections, the more so as I believe them to be well founded. With regard to the political and metaphysical parts, I am afraid I can alter nothing; but I have high authority for my Errors in that point, for even the Æneid was a political poem, and written for a political purpose; and as to my unlucky opinions on Subjects of more importance, I am too sincere in them for recantation. On Spanish affairs I have said what I saw, and every day confirms me in that notion of the result formed on the Spot; and I rather think honest John Bull is beginning to come round again to that Sobriety which Massena’s retreat had begun to reel from its centre — the usual consequence of unusual success. So you perceive I cannot alter the Sentiments; but if there are any alterations in the structure of the versification you would wish to be made, I will tag rhymes and turn stanzas as much as you please. As for the “Orthodox,” let us hope they will buy, on purpose to abuse — you will forgive the one, if they will do the other. You are aware that any thing from my pen must expect no quarter, on many accounts; and as the present publication is of a nature very different from the former, we must not be sanguine.
You have given me no answer to my question — tell me fairly, did you show the MS. to some of your corps?
I sent an introductory stanza to Mr. Dallas, that it might be forwarded to you; the poem else will open too abruptly. The Stanzas had better be numbered in Roman characters, there is a disquisition on the literature of the modern Greeks, and some smaller poems to come in at the close. These are now at Newstead, but will be
sent in time. If Mr. D. has lost the Stanza and note annexed to it, write, and I will send it myself. — You tell me to add two cantos, but I am about to visit my Collieries in Lancashire on the 15th instant, which is so unpoetical an employment that I need say no more.
I am, sir, your most obedient, etc., etc.,
Byron.
“London, Sept. 4, 1811, Wednesday.
“My Lord, — An absence of some days, passed in the country, has prevented me from writing earlier in answer to your obliging letter. I have now, however, the pleasure of sending under a separate cover, the first proof sheet of your Lordship’s Poem, which is so good as to be entitled to all your care to render perfect. Besides its general merit, there are parts, which, I am tempted to believe, far excel anything that your Lordship has hitherto published, and it were therefore grievous indeed, if you do not condescend to bestow upon it all the improvement of which your Lordship’s mind is so capable; every correction already made is valuable, and this circumstance renders me more confident in soliciting for it your further attention.
“There are some expressions, too, concerning Spain and Portugal, which, however just, and particularly so at the time they were conceived, yet as they do not harmonize with the general feeling, would so greatly interfere with the popularity which the poem is, in other respects, so certainly calculated to excite, that, in compassion to your publisher, who does not presume to reason upon the subject, otherwise than as a mere matter of business, I hope your Lordship’s goodness will induce you to obviate them, and, with them, perhaps, some religious feelings which may deprive me of some customers amongst the Orthodox.
“Could I flatter myself that these suggestions were not obtrusive, I would hazard another, in an earnest solicitation that your Lordship would add the two promised Cantos, and complete the Poem. It were cruel indeed not to perfect a work which contains so much that is excellent; your Fame, my Lord, demands it; you are raising a Monument that will outlive your present feelings, and it should therefore be so constructed as to excite no other associations than those of respect and admiration for your Lordship’s Character and Genius.