Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  Lewis called. It is a good and good-humoured man, but pestilently prolix and paradoxical and personal. If he would but talk half, and reduce his visits to an hour, he would add to his popularity. As an author he is very good, and his vanity is ouverte, like Erskine’s, and yet not offending.

  Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella, which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours! — without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress — a girl of twenty — a peeress that is to be, in her own right — an only child, and a savante, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess — a mathematician — a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.

  “It does the very highest honour to his moral character, which, I think, stands higher than that of any other conspicuous Englishman now alive. Probity, independence, humanity, and liberality breathe through every word; considered merely as a composition, accuracy, perspicuity, discretion, and good taste are its chief merits; great originality and comprehension of thought, or remarkable vigour of expression, it does not possess.”

  The death of his wife, October 29, 1818, so affected Romilly’s mind that he committed suicide four days later.

  “Romilly,” said Lord Lansdowne to Moore (Memoirs, etc., vol. ii. p. 211), “was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself; when he lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up.”

  “For an eloquent passage in the latest work of the first female writer of this, perhaps of any, age, on the analogy (and the immediate comparison excited by that analogy) between ‘painting and music,’ see vol. iii. cap. 10, De l’Allemagne.”

  The passage is as follows (Part III. chap, x.):

  “Sans cesse nous comparons la peinture à la musique, et la musique à la peinture, parceque les émotions que nous eprouvons nous révèlent des analogies où l’observation froide ne verroit que des différences,” etc., etc.

  The following is Madame de Staël’s “very pretty billet:”

  “Argyll St., No. 31.

  “Je ne saurais vous exprímer, my lord, à quel point je me trouve honorée d’être dans une note de votre poëme, et de quel poëme! il me semble que pour la première fois je me crois certaine d’un nom d’avenir et que vous avez disposé pour moi de cet empire de reputation qui vous sera tous les jours plus soumis. Je voudrais vous parler de ce poëme que tout le monde admire, mais j’avouerai que je suis trop suspecte en le louant, et je ne cache pas qu’ une louage de vous m’a fait épreuver un sentiment de fierté et de réconaissance qui me rendrait incapable de vous juger; mais heureusement vous êtes au dessus du jugement.

  “Donnez moi quelquefois le plaisir de vous voir; il-y-a un proverbe français qui dit qu’un bonheur ne va jamais sans d’autre.

  “de Staël.”

  “Byron,” writes Sir Walter Scott, in a hitherto unpublished note, “occasionally said what are called good things, but never studied for them. They came naturally and easily, and mixed with the comic or serious, as it happened. A professed wit is of all earthly companions the most intolerable. He is like a schoolboy with his pockets stuffed with crackers.

  “No first-rate author was ever what is understood by a great conversational wit. Swift’s wit in common society was either the strong sense of a wonderful man unconsciously exerting his powers, or that of the same being wilfully unbending, wilfully, in fact, degrading himself. Who ever heard of any fame for conversational wit lingering over the memory of a Shakespeare, a Milton, even of a Dryden or a Pope?

  Johnson is, perhaps, a solitary exception. More shame to him. He was the most indolent great man that ever lived, and threw away in his talk more than he ever took pains to embalm in his writings.

  It is true that Boswell has in great measure counteracted all this. But here is no defence. Few great men can expect to have a Boswell, and none ought to wish to have one, far less to trust to having one. A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest only that his valet may occasionally show off in them; no, nor yet strut about in them in his chamber, only that his valet may puff him and his finery abroad.

  What might not he have done, who wrote Rasselas in the evenings of eight days to get money enough for his mother’s funeral expenses? As it is, what has Johnson done? Is it nothing to be the first intellect of an age? and who seriously talks even of Burke as having been more than a clever boy in the presence of old Samuel?”

  “Nothing was more tiresome than Lewis when he began to harp upon any extravagant proposition. He would tinker at it for hours without mercy, and repeat the same thing in four hundred different ways. If you assented in despair, he resumed his reasoning in triumph, and you had only for your pains the disgrace of giving in. If you disputed, daylight and candle-light could not bring the discussion to an end, and Mat’s arguments were always ditto repeated.”

  Wednesday, December 1st, 1813

  To-day responded to La Baronne de Stael Holstein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance — through Moore — of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times — much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on qualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again; — the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don’t think him deeply versed in life; — he is the bigot of virtue (not religion), and enamoured of the beauty of that “empty name,” as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are the centre of circles, wide or narrow — the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three are gathered together — must be, and as even Johnson was; but, withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring “the right to the expedient” might excuse.

  To-morrow there is a party of purple at the “blue” Miss Berry’s. Shall I go? um! — I don’t much affect your blue-bottles; — but one ought to be civil. There will be, “I guess now” (as the Americans say), the Staels and Mackintoshes — good — the — — s and — — s — not so good — the — — s, etc., etc. — good for nothing. Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning, Lady Charlemont, will be there. I hope so; it is a pleasure to look upon that most beautiful of faces.

  Wrote to H.: — he has been telling that I — — — I am sure, at least, I did not mention it, and I wish he had not. He is a good fellow, and I obliged myself ten times more by being of use than I did him, — and there’s an end on’t.

  Baldwin is boring me to present their King’s Bench petition. I presented Cartwright’s last year; and Stanhope and I stood against the whole House, and mouthed it valiantly — and had some fun and a little abuse for our opposition. But “I am not i’ th’ vein” for this business. Now, had — — been here, she would have made me do it. There is a woman, who, amid all her fascination, always urged a man to usefulness or glory. Had she remained, she had been my tutelar genius.

  Baldwin is very importunate — but, poor fellow, “I can’t get out, I can’t get out — said the starling.” Ah, I am as bad as that dog Sterne, who preferred whining over “a dead ass to relieving a living mother” — villain — hypocrite — slave — sycophant! but I am no better. Here I cannot stimulate myself to a speech for the sake of these unfortunates, and three words
and half a smile of — — had she been here to urge it (and urge it she infallibly would — at least she always pressed me on senatorial duties, and particularly in the cause of weakness) would have made me an advocate, if not an orator. Curse on Rochefoucault for being always right! In him a lie were virtue, — or, at least, a comfort to his readers.

  George Byron has not called to-day; I hope he will be an admiral, and, perhaps, Lord Byron into the bargain. If he would but marry, I would engage never to marry myself, or cut him out of the heirship. He would be happier, and I should like nephews better than sons.

  I shall soon be six-and-twenty (January 22d., 1814). Is there any thing in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

  “Oh Gioventu!

  Oh Primavera! gioventu dell’ anno.

  Oh Gioventu! primavera della vita.”

  Strato

  For Brutus only overcame himself, And no man else hath honour by his death.

  ...

  Octavius

  According to his virtue let us use him, With all respect and rites of burial.

  Julius Cæsar, act v. sc. 5.

  “As rising on its purple wing

  The insect-queen of Eastern spring

  O’er emerald meadows of Kashmeer

  Invites the young pursuer near,” etc.

  To line 389 is appended this note:

  “The blue-winged butterfly of Kashmeer, the most rare and beautiful of the species.”

  Sunday, December 5th

  Dallas’s nephew (son to the American Attorney-general) is arrived in this country, and tells Dallas that my rhymes are very popular in the United States. These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears — to be redde on the banks of the Ohio! The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind was from an extract, in Cooke the actor’s life, from his journal, stating that in the reading-room at Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. To be popular in a rising and far country has a kind of posthumous feel, very different from the ephemeral éclat and fête-ing, buzzing and party-ing compliments of the well-dressed multitude. I can safely say that, during my reign in the spring of 1812, I regretted nothing but its duration of six weeks instead of a fortnight, and was heartily glad to resign.

  Last night I supped with Lewis; and, as usual, though I neither exceeded in solids nor fluids, have been half dead ever since. My stomach is entirely destroyed by long abstinence, and the rest will probably follow. Let it — I only wish the pain over. The “leap in the dark” is the least to be dreaded.

  The Duke of — — called. I have told them forty times that, except to half-a-dozen old and specified acquaintances, I am invisible. His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person; but I am content to think so at a distance, and so — I was not at home.

  Galt called. — Mem. — to ask some one to speak to Raymond in favour of his play. We are old fellow-travellers, and, with all his eccentricities, he has much strong sense, experience of the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a good-natured philosophical fellow. I showed him Sligo’s letter on the reports of the Turkish girl’s aventure at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it. Murray has a copy. I thought it had been unknown, and wish it were; but Sligo arrived only some days after, and the rumours are the subject of his letter. That I shall preserve, — it is as well. Lewis and Gait were both horrified; and L. wondered I did not introduce the situation into The Giaour. He may wonder; — he might wonder more at that production’s being written at all. But to describe the feelings of that situation were impossible — it is icy even to recollect them.

  The Bride of Abydos was published on Thursday the second of December; but how it is liked or disliked, I know not. Whether it succeeds or not is no fault of the public, against whom I can have no complaint. But I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination — from selfish regrets to vivid recollections — and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory. Sharpe called, but was not let in, which I regret.

  Saw [Rogers] yesterday. I have not kept my appointment at Middleton, which has not pleased him, perhaps; and my projected voyage with [Ward] will, perhaps, please him less. But I wish to keep well with both. They are instruments that don’t do in concert; but, surely, their separate tones are very musical, and I won’t give up either.

  It is well if I don’t jar between these great discords. At present I stand tolerably well with all, but I cannot adopt their dislikes; — so many sets. Holland’s is the first; — every thing distingué is welcome there, and certainly the ton of his society is the best. Then there is Madame de Stael’s — there I never go, though I might, had I courted it. It is composed of the — — s and the — — family, with a strange sprinkling, — orators, dandies, and all kinds of Blue, from the regular Grub Street uniform, down to the azure jacket of the Littérateur?

  To see — — and — — sitting together, at dinner, always reminds me of the grave, where all distinctions of friend and foe are levelled; and they — the Reviewer and the Reviewée — the Rhinoceros and Elephant — the Mammoth and Megalonyx — all will lie quietly together. They now sit together, as silent, but not so quiet, as if they were already immured.

  I did not go to the Berrys’ the other night. The elder is a woman of much talent, and both are handsome, and must have been beautiful. To-night asked to Lord H.’s — shall I go? um! — perhaps.

  Morning, two o’clock.

  Went to Lord H.’s — party numerous — milady in perfect good humour, and consequently perfect. No one more agreeable, or perhaps so much so, when she will. Asked for Wednesday to dine and meet the Stael — asked particularly, I believe, out of mischief to see the first interview after the note, with which Corinne professes herself to be so much taken. I don’t much like it; she always talks of myself or herself, and I am not (except in soliloquy, as now,) much enamoured of either subject — especially one’s works. What the devil shall I say about De l’Allemagne? I like it prodigiously; but unless I can twist my admiration into some fantastical expression, she won’t believe me; and I know, by experience, I shall be overwhelmed with fine things about rhyme, etc., etc. The lover, Mr. — — [Rocca], was there to-night, and C — — said “it was the only proof he had seen of her good taste.” Monsieur L’Amant is remarkably handsome; but I don’t think more so than her book.

  C — — [Campbell] looks well, — seems pleased, and dressed to sprucery. A blue coat becomes him, — so does his new wig. He really looked as if Apollo had sent him a birthday suit, or a wedding-garment, and was witty and lively. He abused Corinne’s book, which I regret; because, firstly, he understands German, and is consequently a fair judge; and, secondly, he is first-rate, and, consequently, the best of judges. I reverence and admire him; but I won’t give up my opinion — why should I? I read her again and again, and there can be no affectation in this. I cannot be mistaken (except in taste) in a book I read and lay down, and take up again; and no book can be totally bad which finds one, even one reader, who can say as much sincerely.

  Campbell talks of lecturing next spring; his last lectures were eminently successful. Moore thought of it, but gave it up, — I don’t know why. — — had been prating dignity to him, and such stuff; as if a man disgraced himself by instructing and pleasing at the same time.

  Introduced to Marquis Buckingham — saw Lord Gower — he is going to Holland; Sir J. and Lady Mackintosh and Horner, G. Lamb, with I know not how many (Richard Wellesley, one — a clever man), grouped about the room. Little Henry Fox, a very fine boy, and very promising in mind and manner, — he went away to bed, before I had time to talk to him. I am sure I had rather hear him than all the savans.

  “Read English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, by Lord Byron. It is well written. His Lordsh
ip is rather severe, perhaps justly so, on Walter Scott, and most assuredly justly severe upon Monk Lewis.”

  “In general I do not draw well with literary men. Not that I dislike them, but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication. There are several exceptions, to be sure; but then they have always been men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, etc., or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, etc. But your literary every-day man and I never went well in company, especially your foreigner, whom I never could abide, — except Giordani, and — and — and (I really can’t name any other); I do not remember a man amongst them whom I ever wished to see twice, except, perhaps, Mezzophanti, who is a Monster of Languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking Polyglott, and more — who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel as universal Interpreter. He is, indeed, a Marvel, — unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues of which I have a single oath (or adjuration to the Gods against Postboys, Savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, Gondoliers, Muleteers, Cameldrivers, Vetturini, Postmasters, post-horses, post-houses, post-everything) and Egad! he astounded me even to my English.”

  On this passage Sir Walter Scott makes the following note:

  “I suspect Lord Byron of some self-deceit as to this matter. It appears that he liked extremely the only first-rate men of letters into whose society he happened to be thrown in England. They happened to be men of the world, it is true; but how few men of very great eminence in literature, how few intellectually Lord B.’s peers, have not been men of the world? Does any one doubt that the topics he had most pleasure in discussing with Scott or Moore were literary ones, or had at least some relation to literature?

  “As for the foreign literati, pray what literati anything like his own rank did he encounter abroad? I have no doubt he would have been as much at home with an Alfieri, a Schiller, or a Goethe, or a Voltaire, as he was with Scott or Moore, and yet two of these were very little of men of the world in the sense in which he uses that phrase.