Henry IV.
, Part I. act in. sc. 3.
List of Journal Entries
Contents
November 16th, 1813
last night with Lewis to see the first of
Antony and
Cleopatra
. It was admirably got up, and well acted —a salad of
Shakspeare and Dryden. Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her
sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the
devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony.
After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him
for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head?
not Tully tell Brutus
it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the
Philippics? and are not "
words things
?"
and such
"
words
" very pestilent "
things
" too? If he had had a
hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up
there) apiece—though, after all, he might as well have pardoned him,
for the credit of the thing. But to resume—Cleopatra, after securing
him, says, "yet go—it is your interest," etc.—how like the sex! and
the questions about Octavia—it is woman all over.
To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton —to travel sixty
miles to meet Madame De Stael! I once travelled three thousand to get
among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and
talks
folios. I have read her books—like most of them, and delight in the
last; so I won't hear it, as well as read.
Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should
have had more polish—less force—just as much verse, but no
immortality—a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as
his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as
long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is
that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales,
though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall
never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when
he
talked, and
we
listened, without one yawn, from six
till one in the morning.
Got my seals ——. Have again forgot a play-thing for
ma petite
cousine
Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will
bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last
"
Giaour
" and "
The Bride of Abydos
" He won't like the
latter, and I don't think that I shall long. It was written in four
nights to distract my dreams from ——. Were it not thus, it had never
been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have
gone mad, by eating my own heart,—bitter diet;—Hodgson likes it better
than "
The Giaour
" but nobody else will,—and he never liked the
Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray,
that
would never
have been published, though the circumstances which are the ground-work
make it —— heigh-ho!
To-night I saw both the sisters of ——; my God! the youngest so like! I
thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was
with me in Lady H.'s box. I
those likenesses—the mock-bird, but
not the nightingale—so like as to remind, so different as to be painful
.
One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.
Antony and Cleopatra
was revived at Covent Garden,
November 15, 1813, with additions from Dryden's
All for Love, or the
World Well Lost
(1678). "Cleopatra" was acted by Mrs. Fawcit; "Marc
Antony" by Young. (See for the allusions, act v. se. 2, and act i. sc.
3.)
"But words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
Don Juan
, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii.
"——-my weal, my woe,
My hope on high—my all below;
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same."
The Giaour
.
List of Journal Entries
Contents
November 17th, 1813
No letter from ——; but I must not complain.
respectable Job says,
"Why should a
living man
complain?"
I really don't know,
except it be that a
dead man
can't; and he, the said patriarch,
did
complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his
wife recommended that pious prologue,"Curse—and die;" the only time, I
suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a
most kind letter from Lord Holland on "
The Bride of Abydos
,"
which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both,
from whom I don't deserve any quarter. Yet I
did
think, at the
time, that my cause of enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad
I was wrong, and wish I had not been in such a hurry with that
confounded satire, of which I would suppress even the memory;—but
people, now they can't get it, make a fuss, I verily believe, out of
contradiction.
Ellis
and Murray have been talking something about Scott and
me, George
pro Scoto
,—and very right too. If they want to depose
him, I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had
my choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the
kings
he ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the
monarch-makers in poetry and prose. The
British Critic
, in their
Rokeby Review, have presupposed a comparison which I am sure my friends
never thought of, and W. Scott's subjects are injudicious in descending
to. I like the man—and admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls
Entusymusy
. All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good.
Many hate his politics—(I hate all politics); and, here, a man's
politics are like the Greek
soul
—an
Greek: eidolon
, besides
God knows what
other soul
; but their estimate of the two
generally go together.
Harry has not brought
ma petite cousine
. I want us to go to the
play together;—she has been but once. Another short note from Jersey,
inviting Rogers and me on the 23d. I must see my agent to-night. I
wonder when that Newstead business will be finished. It cost me more
than words to part with it—and to
have
parted with it! What
matters it what I do? or what becomes of me?—but let me remember Job's
saying, and console myself with being "a living man."
I wish I could settle to reading again,—my life is monotonous, and yet
desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy,
and burnt it because the scene ran into
reality
;—a novel, for
the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the
thought always runs through, through ... yes, yes, through. I have had a
letter from Lady Melbourne—the best friend I ever had in my life, and
the cleverest of women.
Not a word from ——[Lady F. W. Webster], Have they set out from ——?
or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws?
so—and
this silence looks suspicious—I must clap on my "musty morion" and
"hold out my iron."
I am out of practice—but I won't begin again at Manton's now. Besides,
I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but
then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever since I began to
feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise.
strange tidings from that Anakim of anarchy—Buonaparte
!
Ever since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally
time-servers, when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a
Héros de
Roman
of mine—on the Continent; I don't want him here. But I don't
like those same flights—leaving of armies, etc., etc. I am sure when I
fought for his bust at school, I did not think he would run away from
himself. But I should not wonder if he banged them yet. To be beat by
men would be something; but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty
boobies of regular-bred sovereigns—O-hone-a-rie!—O-hone-a-rie! It must
be, as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick-lipped and thick-headed
Autrichienne
brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept
by Barras. I
knew any good come of your young wife, and legal
espousals, to any but your "sober-blooded boy" who "eats fish" and
drinketh "no sack."
Had he not the whole opera? all Paris? all
France? But a mistress is just as perplexing—that is,
one
—two
or more are manageable by division.
I have begun, or had begun, a song, and flung it into the fire.
was
in remembrance of Mary Duff
, my first of flames, before most people
begin to burn. I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do
nothing, and—fortunately there is nothing to do. It
lately been in
my power to make two persons (and their connections) comfortable,
pro
tempore
, and one happy,
ex tempore
,—I rejoice in the last
particularly, as it is an excellent man
. I wish there had been more
convenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then there
had been more merit. We are all selfish—and I believe, ye gods of
Epicurus! I
in Rochefoucault about
men
, and in Lucretius
(not Busby's translation) about yourselves
. Your bard has made you
very
nonchalant
and blest; but as he has excused
us
from
damnation, I don't envy you your blessedness much—a little, to be sure.
I remember, last year, —— [Lady Oxford] said to me, at —— [Eywood],
"Have we not passed our last month like the gods of Lucretius?" And so
we had. She is an adept in the text of the original (which I like too);
and when that booby Bus. sent his translating prospectus, she
subscribed. But, the devil prompting him to add a specimen, she
transmitted him a subsequent answer, saying, that "after perusing it,
her conscience would not permit her to allow her name to remain on the
list of subscribblers."
night, at Lord H.'s—Mackintosh, the
Ossulstones, Puységur
, etc., there—I was trying to recollect a
quotation (as
I
think) of Stael's, from some Teutonic sophist
about architecture. "Architecture," says this Macoronico Tedescho,
"reminds me of frozen music." It is somewhere—but where?—the demon of
perplexity must know and won't tell. I asked M., and he said it was not
in her: but Puységur said it must be
hers
, it was so
like
.
H. laughed, as he does at all "
De l'Allemagne
"—in which,
however, I think he goes a little too far. B., I hear, contemns it too.
But there are fine passages;—and, after all, what is a work—any—or
every work—but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two,
every day's journey? To be sure, in Madame, what we often mistake, and
"pant for," as the "cooling stream," turns out to be the "
mirage
"
(criticè
verbiage
); but we do, at last, get to something like the
temple of Jove Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only
remembered to gladden the contrast.
Called on C—, to explain ——. She is very beautiful, to my taste, at
least; for on coming home from abroad, I recollect being unable to look
at any woman but her—they were so fair, and unmeaning, and
blonde
. The darkness and regularity of her features reminded me
of my "Jannat al Aden." But this impression wore off; and now I can look
at a fair woman, without longing for a Houri. She was very
good-tempered, and every thing was explained.
To-day, great news—"the Dutch have taken Holland,"—which, I suppose,
will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames. Five provinces
have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation,
conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation
and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags of
this will-o'-the-wisp abode of Boors. It is said Bernadotte is amongst
them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown)
Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time. Two to one
on the new dynasty!
Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for
The Giaour
and
The Bride of Abydos
. I won't—it is too much, though I am
strongly tempted, merely for the
say
of it. No bad price for a
fortnight's (a week each) what?—the gods know—it was intended to be
called poetry.
I
dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday
last—this being Sabbath, too. All the rest, tea and dry biscuits—six
per diem
. I wish to God I had not dined now!—It kills me with
heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was but a pint of
Bucellas, and fish
. Meat I never touch,—nor much vegetable diet. I
wish I were in the country, to take exercise,—instead of being obliged
to
cool
by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a
little accession of flesh,—my bones can well bear it. But the worst is,
the devil always came with it,—till I starved him out,—and I will
not
be the slave of
any
appetite. If I do err, it shall be
my heart, at least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head—how it
aches?—the horrors of digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner
agrees with him?
. I must write to-morrow to "Master Shallow, who owes me a thousand
pounds,"
and seems, in his letter, afraid I should ask him for it
;—as if I would!—I don't want it (just now, at least,) to begin
with; and though I have often wanted that sum, I never asked for the
repayment of £10 in my life—from a friend. His bond is not due this
year, and I told him when it was, I should not enforce it. How often
must he make me say the same thing?
I
wrong—I did once ask ——
to repay me. But it was under
circumstances that excused me
to him
, and would to any one. I
took no interest, nor required security. He paid me soon,—at least, his
padre
. My head! I believe it was given me to ache with. Good even.
"Wherefore doth a living man complain?"
(
Lam
. iii. 39).
George Ellis (1753-1815), a contributor to the
Rolliad
and the
Anti-Jacobin
, and "the first converser"
Walter Scott "ever knew."
"I dare not fight; but I will wink, and hold out mine iron."
Henry V
., act ii. sc. I.
Byron was not always, even at Harrow, attached to
Buonaparte, for, if we may trust Harness, he "roared out" at a
Buonapartist schoolfellow:
"Bold Robert Speer was Bony's bad precursor.
Bob was a bloody dog, but Bonaparte a worser."
His feeling for him was probably that which is expressed in the
following passage from an undated letter, written to him by Moore:
"We owe great gratitude to this thunderstorm of a fellow for clearing
the air of all the old legitimate fogs that have settled upon us, and
I sincerely trust his task is not yet over."
Ticknor (
Life
, vol. i. p. 60) describes Byron's reception of the
news of the battle of Waterloo:
"After an instant's pause, Lord Byron replied, 'I am damned sorry for
it;' and then, after another slight pause, he added, 'I didn't know
but I might live to see Lord Castlereagh's head on a pole. But I
suppose I shan't now.'"
Byron's liking for Buonaparte was probably increased by his dislike of
Wellington and Blucher. The following passages are taken from the
Detached Thoughts
(1821):
"The vanity of Victories is considerable. Of all who fell at Waterloo
or Trafalgar, ask any man in company to name you ten off hand.
They will stick at Nelson: the other will survive himself. Nelson
was a hero, the other is a mere Corporal, dividing with Prussians
and Spaniards the luck which he never deserved. He even—but I hate
the fool, and will be silent."
"The Miscreant Wellington is the Cub of Fortune, but she will never
lick him into shape. If he lives, he will be beaten; that's certain.
Victory was never before wasted upon such an unprofitable soil as this
dunghill of Tyranny, whence nothing springs but Viper's eggs."
"I remember seeing Blucher in the London Assemblies, and never saw
anything of his age less venerable. With the voice and manners of a
recruiting Sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero; just as if
a stone could be worshipped because a man stumbled over it."
Henry IV
., Part II. act iv. se. 3.
Mary Duff, his distant cousin, who lived not far from the
"Plain-Stanes" of Aberdeen, in Byron's childhood. She married Mr. Robert
Cockburn, a wine-merchant in Edinburgh and London.
The first is, perhaps, Dallas; the second probably is
Francis Hodgson, to whom he gave, from first to last, £1500.
"L'intérêt est l'ame de l'amour-propre, de sorte que comme le corps,
privé de son ame, est sans vue, sans ouïe, sans connoissance, sans
sentiment, et sans mouvement; de même l'amour-propre, séparé, s'il le
faut dire ainsi, de son intérêt, ne voit, n'entend, ne sent, et ne se
remue plus," etc., etc.
(Rochefoucault, Lettre à Madame Sablé). The passage in Lucretius
probably is
De Rerum Naturâ
, i. 57-62.
"Monsieur de Puységur," says Lady H. Leveson Gower (Letters of
Harriet, Countess of Granville, vol. i. p. 23), "is really
concentré into one wrinkle. It is the oldest, gayest, thinnest,
most withered, and most brilliant thing one can meet with. When there
are so many young, fat fools going about the world, I wish for the
transmigration of souls. Puységur might animate a whole family."
The phrase, of which Byron was in search, is Goethe's,
eine erstarrte
Musik
(Stevens's
Life of Madame de Staël
, vol. ii. p. 195).
That the poet sometimes dined seems evident from the
annexed bill:
| Lord Byron |
|
To M. Richold |
|
> |
| 1813 |
|
£ |
s. |
d. |
| Balance of last bill |
|
0 |
13 |
10 |
| Aug. 9 |
To dinner bill |
1 |
6 |
0 |
| 10 |
To do. do. |
4 |
13 |
6 |
| 11 |
To do. do. |
1 |
4 |
0 |
| 14 |
To do. do. |
1 |
6 |
0 |
| 15 |
To share of do. |
4 |
4 |
6 |
| 16 |
To dinner bill |
1 |
6 |
0 |
| 17 |
To do. do. |
1 |
6 |
6 |
| 19 |
To do. do. |
1 |
2 |
6 |
| 20 |
To share of do. |
4 |
19 |
0 |
| 21 |
To dinner bill |
1 |
1 |
6 |
| 22 |
To do. do. |
1 |
2 |
0 |
| 23 |
To do. do. |
1 |
2 |
0 |
| 25 |
To do. do. |
1 |
9 |
0 |
| 26 |
To dinner bill |
1 |
1 |
6 |
| 27 |
To do. do. |
1 |
8 |
6 |
| Sept. 2 |
To do. do. |
1 |
4 |
0 |
| 3 |
To do. do. |
1 |
2 |
0 |
| 4 |
To do. do. |
1 |
11 |
0 |
| 5 |
To do. do. |
1 |
6 |
6 |
| 7 |
To do. do. |
5 |
7 |
0 |
| 9 |
To do. do. |
1 |
6 |
6 |
| 26 |
To do. do. |
1 |
9 |
0 |
| Nov. 14 |
To do. do. |
1 |
0 |
6 |
| 21 |
To do. do. |
0 |
19 |
0 |
| Total |
|
44 |
11 |
10 |