["Are you not near the Luddites? By the Lord! if there's a row, but I'll be among ye! How go on the weaversthe breakers of frames-the Lutherans of politics-the reformers? ..... There's an amiable chanson for you!-all impromptu. I have written it principally to shock your neighbour who is all clergy and loyalty-mirth and innocence-milk and water."Lord Byron to Mr. Moore, Dec. 24. 1816.] ["And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming, Guitars, and every other sort of strumming."- Beppo. See antè, p. 145.] ["I went to most of the ridottos, &c., and though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I found the sword wearing out the scabbard, though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-nine."-Lord Byron to Mr. Moore, Feb. 28, 1817.] ["I have been ill with a slow fever, which at last took to flying, and became as quick as need be. But, at length, after TO MR. MURRAY. March, 1817. To hook the reader, you, John Murray, Have publish'd "Anjou's Margaret," Which won't be sold off in a hurry (At least, it has not been as yet); And then, still further to bewilder 'em, Without remorse you set up "Ilderim;" So mind you don't get into debt, Because as how, if you should fail, These books would be but baddish bail. And mind you do not let escape These rhymes to Morning Post or Perry, And get me into such a scrape! For, firstly, I should have to sally, All in my little boat, against a Galley; And, should I chance to slay the Assyrian wight, Have next to combat with the female knight. March 25, 1817. EPISTLE FROM MR. MURRAY TO DEAR Doctor, I have read your play a week of half delirium, burning skin, thirst, not headach, horrible pulsation, and no sleep, by the blessing of barley water, and refusing to see my physician, I recovered. It is an epidemic of the place. Here are some versicles, which I made one sleepless night."-Lord Byron to Mr. Moore, March 25, 1817.] 5 [The "Missionary" was written by Mr. Bowles; "Ilderim" by Mr. Gally Knight; and " Margaret of Anjou" by Miss Holford.] 6[For some particulars relating to Dr. Polidori see Moore's "Notices." "I never," says Lord Byron, "was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill-humour, and vanity of this young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment. Therefore use your interest for him, for he is improved and improvYou want a civil and delicate declension' for the medical tragedy? Take it."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Aug. 21, 1817.] able. Purges the eyes and moves the bowels, To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses, I like your moral and machinery; It is not that I am not sensible Are drugs-mere drugs, sir-now-a-days. My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. There's Byron too, who once did' better, I write in haste; excuse each blunder; The Quarterly—Ah, sir, if you Short compass what -but, to resume: The room's so full of wits and bards, Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards, And others, neither bards nor wits My humble tenement admits All persons in the dress of gent., A party dines with me to-day, All clever men, who make their way: Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton, and Chantrey, Are all partakers of my pantry. They 're at this moment in discussion On poor De Staël's late dissolution. Her book, they say, was in advance Pray Heaven, she tell the truth of France! [The fourth canto of "Childe Harold."] No great things, to be sure,— You could hardly begin with a less work; For the pompous rascallion, Who don't speak Italian Nor French, must have scribbled by guesswork. You can make any loss up With "Spence" and his gossip, A work which must surely succeed; Then you 've General Gordon, Who girded his sword on, To serve with a Muscovite master, And help him to polish A nation so owlish, They thought shaving their beards a disaster. For the man, "poor and shrewd,"2 A compact without more delay, Still extant in Venice; But please, sir, to mention your pay. Venice, January 8, 1818. [On the birth of this child, the son of the British viceconsul at Venice, Lord Byron wrote these lines. They are in no other respect remarkable, than that they were thought worthy of being metrically translated into no less than ten different languages; namely, Greek, Latin, Italian (also in the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan. The original lines, with the different versions above mentioned, were printed, in a small neat volume, in the seminary of Padua; from which we take the following: GREEK. Φρὴν πυκνὴ Πατρὸς καὶ Μητέρος ἀγλαὸν είδος Οφρα δὲ παντὶ βίω η όλβιος, απεν ἐξαννού LATIN. Magnanimos Patris verset sub pectore sensus, ITALIAN. Del Padre il senno, e il bel materno aspetto Sia la Mama, bel Putelo. E 1 talento del Papa GERMAN. Aus des Kindes Auge strahlet FRENCH. Sois en tout fortuné, semillant Jouvenceau, Porte dans les festins la valeur de Rizzo, Porte au barreau l'esprit que fait briller ton père, Et pour vaincre?-au boudoir sois beau comme ta mère. SPANISH. Si á la gracia materna el gusto ayuntas STANZAS TO THE PO. 2 RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls, 3 What if thy deep and ample stream should be 2 [About the middle of April, 1819, Lord Byron travelled from Venice to Ravenna, at which last city he expected to find the Countess Guiccioli. The above stanzas, which have been as much admired as any thing of the kind he ever wrote, were composed, according to Madame Guiccioli's statement, during this journey, and while Lord Byron was actually sailing on the Po. In transmitting them to England, in May, 1820, he says,-" They must not be published: pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions." They were first printed in 1824.] 3 [Ravenna-acity to which Lord Byron afterwards declared himself more attached than to any other place, except Greece. He resided in it rather more than two years, "and quitted it," says Madame Guiccioli, "with the deepest regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils: he was continually performing generous actions: many families owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed; his arrival was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity." In the third canto of "Don Juan," Lord Byron has pictured the tranquil life which, at this time, he was leading: "Sweet hour of twilight!-in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore "The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng, What do I say -a mirror of my heart? Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my passions long. Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever; Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away. But left long wrecks behind, and now again, Borne in our old unchanged career, we move; Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main, And I to loving one I should not love. The current I behold will sweep beneath Her native walls, and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat. She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee, Full of that thought: and, from that moment, ne'er Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,- That happy wave repass me in its flow! The wave that bears my tears returns no more: But that which keepeth us apart is not Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot, As various as the climates of our birth. A stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd By the black wind that chills the polar flood. My blood is all meridian; were it not, I had not left my clime, nor should I be, In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot, A slave again of love, at least of thee. "Tis vain to struggle-let me perish young. 1["So, the prince has been repealing Lord Fitzgerald's forfeiture? Ecco un' sonetto! There, you dogs! there's a sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an' ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was a very noble piece of principality."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray.1 2 ["Would you like an epigram-a translation? It was written on some Frenchwoman, by Rulhières, I believe."Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Aug. 12. 1819.] When lovers parted A few years older, For whom they sigh! They pluck Love's feather From out his wing He'll stay for ever, But sadly shiver Without his plumage, when past the Spring. 3 [A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ra venna when he wrote these Stanzas, says," They were composed, like many others, with noiew of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a momeat of suffering. He peared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit had been painfully excited by some circumstances which ap Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song was labouring under an access of fever."] 4 [V. L.-" That sped his Spring."] [V. L." One last embrace, then, and bid good-night."] except among the initiated, because my friend Hobhouse has foamed into a reformer, and, I greatly fear, will subside into Newgate."-Lord Byron to Mr. Moore.] 4 These lines were written on reading in the newspapers, that Lady Byron had been patroness of a ball in aid of some charity at Hinckley. |