Dec. 15, 1813.
Your very kind letter is the more agreeable, because, setting aside
talents, judgment, and the
laudari a laudato
, etc., you have been
on the spot; you have seen and described more of the East than any of
your predecessors—I need not say how ably and successfully; and (excuse
the bathos) you are one of the very few men who can pronounce how far my
costume (to use an affected but expressive word) is correct. As to
poesy, that is, as "men, gods, and columns," please to decide upon it;
but I am sure that I am anxious to have an observer's, particularly a
famous observer's, testimony on the fidelity of my manners and dresses;
and, as far as memory and an oriental twist in my imagination have
permitted, it has been my endeavour to present to the Franks, a sketch
of that of which you have and will present them a complete picture. It
was with this notion, that I felt compelled to make my hero and heroine
relatives, as you well know that none else could there obtain that
degree of intercourse leading to genuine affection; I had nearly made
them rather too much akin to each other; and though the wild passions of
the East, and some great examples in Alfieri, Ford, and Schiller (to
stop short of antiquity), might have pleaded in favour of a copyist, yet
the time and the north (not Frederic, but our climate) induced me to
alter their consanguinity and confine them to cousinship. I also wished
to try my hand on a female character in Zuleika, and have endeavoured,
as far as the grossness of our masculine ideas will allow, to preserve
her purity without impairing the ardour of her attachment.
As to criticism, I have been reviewed about a hundred and fifty
times—praised and abused. I will not say that I am become indifferent
to either eulogy or condemnation, but for some years at least I have
felt grateful for the former, and have never attempted to answer the
latter. For success equal to the first efforts, I had and have no hope;
the novelty was over, and the "Bride," like all other brides, must
suffer or rejoice for and with her husband. By the bye, I have used
"bride" Turkishly, as affianced, not married; and so far it is an
English bull, which, I trust, will be at least a comfort to all
Hibernians not bigotted to monopoly. You are good enough to mention your
quotations in your third volume. I shall not only be indebted to it for
a renewal of the high gratification received from the two first, but for
preserving my relics embalmed in your own spices, and ensuring me
readers to whom I could not otherwise have aspired.
I called on you, as bounden by duty and inclination, when last in your
neighbourhood; but I shall always take my chance; you surely would not
have me inflict upon you a formal annunciation; I am proud of your
friendship, but not so fond of myself as to break in upon your better
avocations. I trust that Mrs. Clarke is well; I have never had the
honour of presentation, but I have heard so much of her in many
quarters, that any notice she is pleased to take of my productions is
not less gratifying than my thanks are sincere, both to her and you; by
all accounts I may safely congratulate you on the possession of "a
bride" whose mental and personal accomplishments are more than poetical.
P. S.—Murray has sent, or will send, a double copy of the
Bride
and
Giaour
; in the last one, some lengthy additions; pray accept
them, according to old custom, "from the author" to one of his better
brethren. Your Persian, or any memorial, will be a most agreeable, and
it is my fault if not an useful present. I trust your third will be out
before I sail next month; can I say or do anything for you in the
Levant? I
now in all the agonies of equipment, and full of schemes,
some impracticable, and most of them improbable; but I mean to fly
"freely to the green earth's end,"
though not quite so fast as
Milton´s sprite.
P. S. 2nd.—I have so many things to say.—I want to show you Lord
Sligo's letter to me detailing, as he heard them on the spot, the
Athenian account of our adventure (a personal one), which certainly
first suggested to me the story of
The Giaour
. It was a strange
and not a very long story, and his report of the reports (he arrived
just after my departure, and I did not know till last summer that he
knew anything of the matter) is not very far from the truth. Don't be
alarmed. There was nothing that led further than to the water's edge;
but one part (as is often the case in life) was more singular than any
of the
Giaour's
adventures. I never have, and never should have,
alluded to it on my own authority, from respect to the ancient proverb
on Travellers.
Dr. Clark, in October, 1814, was a candidate for the
Professorship of Anatomy, and Byron went to Cambridge to vote for his
friend. Writing to Miss Tayler, Hodgson (
Memoir
, vol. i. p. 292)
adds a postscript:
"I open my letter to say that when Lord Byron went to give his vote
just now in the Senate House, the young men burst out into the most
rapturous applause."
The next day he writes again:
"I should add that as I was going to vote I met him coming away, and
presently saw that something had happened, by his extreme paleness and
agitation. Dr. Clark, who was with him, told me the cause, and I
returned with B. to my room. There I begged him to sit down and write
a letter and communicate this event, which he did not feel up to, but
wished I would. So down I sate, and commenced my acquaintance
with Miss Milbanke by writing her an account of this most pleasing
event, which, although nothing at Oxford, is here very unusual indeed."
The following was Miss Milbanke's answer (
ibid
., pp. 296, 297),
dated, "Seaham, November 25, 1814:"
"Dear Sir,—It will be easier for you to imagine than for me to
express the pleasure which your very kind letter has given me. Not
only on account of its gratifying intelligence, but also as
introductory to an acquaintance which I have been taught to value, and
have sincerely desired. Allow me to consider Lord Byron's friend as
not 'a stranger,' and accept, with my sincerest thanks, my best wishes
for your own happiness.
I am, dear sir, your faithful servant,
A. I. MlLBANKE."
The Spirit in Milton´s
Comus, a Mask
(lines 1012,
1013), says:
"I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earth´s end."
List of Letters
Contents
378—to Leigh Hunt
Dec. 22, 1813.
My Dear Sir,—I am indeed "in your debt,"—and, what is still worse, am
obliged to follow
royal
example (he has just apprised
his
creditors that they must wait till the next meeting), and intreat your
indulgence for, I hope, a very short time. The nearest relation and
almost the only friend I possess, has been in London for a week, and
leaves it tomorrow with me for her own residence. I return immediately;
but we meet so seldom, and are so
minuted
when we meet at all,
that I give up all engagements till
now
, without reluctance. On
my return, I must see you to console myself for my past disappointment.
I should feel highly honoured in Mr. B.'s permission to make his
acquaintance, and
there
you are in
my
debt; for it is a
promise of last summer which I still hope to see performed. Yesterday I
had a letter from Moore; you have probably heard from him lately; but if
not, you will be glad to learn that he is the same in heart, head, and
health.
List of Letters
Contents
379—to John Murray
December 27, 1813.
Lord Holland is laid up with the gout, and would feel very much obliged
if you could obtain, and send as soon as possible, Madame D'Arblay's (or
even Miss Edgeworth's) new work. I know they are not out; but it is
perhaps possible for your
Majesty
to command what we cannot with
much suing purchase, as yet. I need not say that when you are able or
willing to confer the same favour on me, I shall be obliged. I would
almost fall sick myself to get at Madame D'Arblay's writings.
P. S.—
were talking to-day of the American E'n of a certain
unquenchable memorial of my younger days
. As it can't be helped now,
I own I have some curiosity to see a copy of transatlantic typography.
This you will perhaps obtain, and one for yourself; but I must beg that
you will not
import more
, because,
seriously
, I
do
wish
to have that thing forgotten as much as it has been forgiven.
If you send to the
Globe
E'r, say that I want neither excuse nor
contradiction, but merely a discontinuance of a most ill-grounded
charge. I never was consistent in any thing but my politics; and as my
redemption depends on that solitary virtue, it is murder to carry away
my last anchor.
English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers
.
List of Letters
Contents
Chapter VIII—Journal: November 14, 1813-April 19, 1814
If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!—heigho!
there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is.
Well,—I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this
life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have
made a good use of. They say "Virtue is its own reward,"—it certainly
should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better
part of life is over, one should be
something
;—and what am I?
nothing but five-and-twenty—and the odd months. What have I seen? the
same man all over the world,—ay, and woman too. Give
me
a
Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves
one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague—yellow
fever—and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time
close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind
your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me
there,—provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the
interval. I wish one was—I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never
set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it—and repenting. I
begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for
the nation, and not for the individual;—but, on my principle, this
would not be very patriotic.
No more reflections.—Let me see—last night I finished "Zuleika," my
second Turkish Tale. I
the composition of it kept me alive—for
it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of:
"Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd."
1
At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I
have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of
expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;—
what romance
could equal the events:
"quæque ipse......vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui."
2
Henry Byron
called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She
will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the
prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of
a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,—yet I
don't like to think so neither: and though older, she is not so clever.
Dallas
before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis
, too,—who
seems out of humour with every thing.
What can be the matter? he is not married—has he lost his own mistress,
or any other person's wife? Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be
married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has
talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing
companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I
never see any one much improved by matrimony. All my coupled
contemporaries are bald and discontented. W[ordsworth] and S[outhey]
have both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a
good deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls
off
a
man's temples in that state.
Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the
seals of myself and ——
. too, to call on the Stael and Lady Holland
to-morrow, and on ——, who has advised me (without seeing it, by the
by) not to publish "Zuleika;"
I believe he is right, but experience
might have taught him that not to print is
physically
impossible.
No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life
read
a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is
a horrible thing to do too frequently;—better print, and they who like
may read, and if they don't like, you have the satisfaction of knowing
that they have, at least,
purchased
the right of saying so.
I
declined presenting the Debtors' Petition
, being sick of
parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever
becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third—I don't
know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it
con
amore
;—one must have some excuse to one's self for laziness, or
inability, or both, and this is mine. "
, villanous company, hath
been the spoil of me;"
—and then, I "have drunk medicines," not to
make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.
Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli
Pacha's lion in the Morea,—who followed the Arab keeper like a
dog,—the fondness of the hyæna for her keeper amused me most. Such a
conversazione! —There was a "hippopotamus," like Lord Liverpool in the
face; and the "Ursine Sloth" had the very voice and manner of my
valet—but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my
money again—took off my hat—opened a door—
trunked
a whip—and
behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on
earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should
hate to see one
here:
— the sight of the
camel
made me
pine again for Asia Minor.
"Oh quando te aspiciam?
"
"Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed."
Pope's
Eloisa to Abelard
, lines 9, 10.
Virgil,
Æneid
, ii. 5:
". ... quœque ipse miserrima vidi
Et quorum pars magna fui."
The Rev. Henry Byron, second son of the Rev. and Hon.
Richard Byron, and nephew of William, fifth Lord Byron, died in 1821.
His daughter Eliza married, in 1830, George Rochford Clarke. Byron's
"niece Georgina" was the daughter of Mrs. Leigh.
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), intended by his father
for the diplomatic service, was educated at Westminster and Christ
Church, Weimar, and Paris. He soon showed his taste for literature. At
the age of seventeen he had translated a play from the French, and
written a farce, a comedy called
The East Indian
(acted at Drury
Lane, April 22, 1799), "two volumes of a novel, two of a romance,
besides numerous poems" (
Life, etc., of M. G. Lewis
, vol. i. p.
70). In 1794 he was attached to the British Embassy at the Hague. There,
stimulated (
ibid
., vol. i. p. 123) by reading Mrs. Radcliffe's
Mysteries of Udolpho
, he wrote
Ambrosio, or the Monk
. The
book, published in 1795, made him famous in fashionable society, and
decided his career. Though he sat in Parliament for Hindon from 1796 to
1802, he took no part in politics, but devoted himself to literature.
The moral and outline of
The Monk
are taken, as Lewis says in a
letter to his father (
Life, etc.
, vol. i. pp. 154-158), and as
was pointed out in the
Monthly Review
for August, 1797, from
Addison's "Santon Barsisa" in the
Guardian
(No. 148). The book
was severely criticized on the score of immorality. Mathias (
Pursuits
of Literature
, Dialogue iv.) attacks Lewis, whom he compares to John
Cleland, whose
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
came under the
notice of the law courts:
"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?"
An injunction was, in fact, moved for against the book; but the
proceedings dropped.
Lewis had a remarkable gift of catching the popular taste of the day,
both in his tales of horror and mystery, and in his ballads. In the
latter he was the precursor of Scott. Many of his songs were sung to
music of his own composition. His
Tales of Terror
(1799) were
dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was
in love. To his
Tales of Wonder
(1801) Scott, Southey, and others
contributed. His most successful plays were
The Castle Spectre
(Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and
Timour the Tartar
(Covent
Garden, April 29, 1811).
In 1812, by the death of his father, "the Monk" became a rich man, and
the owner of plantations in the West Indies. He paid two visits to his
property, in 1815-16 and 1817-18. On the voyage home from the last visit
he died of yellow fever, and was buried at sea. His
Journal of a West
Indian Proprietor
, published in 1834, is written in sterling
English, with much quiet humour, and a graphic power of very high order.
Among his
Detached Thoughts
Byron has the following notes on
Lewis:
"Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: 'I will bet you,
Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum—I will bet you what you owe me as
Manager, for my
Castle Spectre.'
'I never make
large bets,' said Sheridan, 'but I will lay you a
very small one. I will bet you
what it is worth!'"
"Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some words upon
that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the
following epigram upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice:
"'For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.'"
Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and
his air sentimental; being asked why? he replied 'that when people
said anything
kind to him, it affected him deeply, and just now
the Duchess had said something so kind to him' —here tears began to
flow again. 'Never mind, Lewis,' said Col. Armstrong to him, 'never
mind—don't cry,
she could not mean it.'
"Lewis was a good man—a clever man, but a bore—a damned bore, one
may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the
ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially—Me. de
Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a
Man had he been better set, I don't mean
personally, but less
tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to
everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride
out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go
before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards
evening, and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes
to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch, over which I
had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him
nearly into the river instead of on the
moveable bridge which
incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the
diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage
than it received in its leaders, who were
terrasséd by the
charge. Thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming and was
obliged to bring to, to his distant signals of distance and distress.
All the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man
of many words. Poor fellow, he died a martyr to his new riches— of a
second visit to Jamaica.
'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
that is
'I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!'
"Lewis said to me, 'Why do you talk
Venetian (such as I could
talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual
Italian?' I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood,
if possible. 'It may be so,' said Lewis, 'but it sounds to me like
talking with a
brogue to an
Irishman.'"
In a MS. note by Sir Walter Scott on these passages from Byron's
Detached Thoughts
, he says,
"Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and
were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and
boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well
and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed
round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark
folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or
dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the
features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into
that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice
affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis? Why, that
picture is like a man.' He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis's head was
at his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a
child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that
he wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense. He had the
finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever heard—finer than Byron's.
Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as
a man of talent or a man of fortune. He had always dukes and duchesses
in his mouth, and was particularly fond of any one who had a title.
You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he
had been all his life in good society.
He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His
father and mother lived separately. Mr. Lewis allowed his son a
handsome income; but reduced it more than one half when he found that
he gave his mother half of it. He restricted himself in all his
expenses, and shared the diminished income with his mother as before.
He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature.
I had a good picture drawn me, I think by Thos. Thomson, of Fox, in
his latter days, suffering the fatigue of an attack from Lewis. The
great statesman was become bulky and lethargic, and lay like a fat ox
which for sometime endures the persecution of a buzzing fly, rather
than rise to get rid of it; and then at last he got up, and heavily
plodded his way to the other side of the room."
Referring to Byron's story of Lewis near the Brenta, Scott adds,
"I had a worse adventure with Mat Lewis. I had been his guide from the
cottage I then had at Laswade to the Chapel of Roslin. We were to go
up one side of the river and come down the other. In the return he was
dead tired, and, like the Israelites, he murmured against his guide
for leading him into the wilderness. I was then as strong as a poney,
and took him on my back, dressed as he was in his shooting array of a
close sky-blue jacket, and the brightest red pantaloons I ever
saw on a human breech. He also had a kind of feather in his cap. At
last I could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure we must both
have made, at which my rider waxed wroth. It was an ill-chosen hour
and place, for I could have served him as Wallace did Fawden—thrown
him down and twisted his head off. We returned to the cottage weary
wights, and it cost more than one glass of Noyau, which he liked in a
decent way, to get Mat's temper on its legs again."
The Bride of Abydos
was originally called
Zuleika
.
The petition, directed against Lord Redesdale's Insolvent
Debtors Act, was presented by Romilly in the House of Commons, November
11, 1813, and by Lord Holland in the House of Lords, November 15, 1813.