such anti-odontalgic or chemical articles, as heretofore, ad libitum,' upon being reimbursed for the same.

3dly. That you shall not send me any modern, or (as they are called) new publications, in English whatsoever, save and excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or reasonably presumed to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Gifford, Joanna Baillie, Irving (the American), Hogg, Wilson (Isle of Palms man), or any especial single work of fancy which is thought to be of considerable merit; Voyages and Travels, provided that they are neither in Greece, Spain, Asia Minor, Albania, nor Italy, will be welcome. Having travelled the countries mentioned, I know that what is said of them can convey nothing farther which I desire to know about them. No other English works whatsoever.

"4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever- -no Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.

5thly. That you send me no opinions whatsoever, either good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any work, or works, of mine, past, present, or to come.

"6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you and me pass through the medium of the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, my friend and trustee, or Mr. Hobhouse, as 'alter ego,' and tantamount to myself during my absence

or presence.

"Some of these propositions may at first seem strange, but they are founded. The quantity of trash I have received as books is incalculable, and neither amused nor instructed. Reviews and magazines are at the best but ephemeral and superficial reading: who thinks of the grand article of last year in any given Review? In the next place, if they regard myself, they tend to increase egotism. If favourable, I do not deny that the praise elates, and if unfavourable, that the abuse irritates. The latter may conduct me to inflict a species of satire which would neither do good to you nor to your friends: they may smile now, and so may you; but if I took you all in hand, it would not be difficult to cut you up like gourds. I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years old, and I know little as yet, in three-and-thirty, which should prevent me from making all your ribs gridirons for your hearts, if such were my propensity: but it is not; therefore let me hear none of your provocations. If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice, I shall hear of it from my legal friends.

For the rest, I merely request to be left in ignorance.

"The same applies to opinions, good, bad, or indifferent, of persons in conversation or correspondence. These do not interrupt, but they soil the current of my mind. I am sensitive enough, but not till I am troubled; and here I am beyond the touch of the short arms of literary England, except the few feelers of the polypus that crawl over the channels in the way of extract.

"All these precautions in England would be useless; the libeller or the flatterer would there reach me in spite of all; but in Italy we know little of literary England, and think less, except what reaches us through some garbled and brief extract in some miserable gazette. For two years (excepting two or three articles cut out and sent to you by the post) I never read a newspaper which was not forced upon me by some accident, and know, upon the whole, as little of England as you do of Italy, and God knows that is little enough, with all your travels, &c. &c. &c. The English travellers know Italy as you know Guernsey: how much is that?

"If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires notice, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird will let me know; but of praise I desire to hear nothing.

"You will say, 'to what tends all this?" I will answer THAT ;-to keep my mind free and unbiassed by all paltry and personal irritabilities of praise or censure to let my genius take its natural direction, while my feelings are like the dead, who know nothing and feel nothing of all or aught that is said or done in their regard.

"P. S.-I have taken these resolutions | not from any irritation against you or yours, but simply upon reflection that all reading, either praise or censure, of myself has done me harm. When I was in Switzerland and Greece, I was out of the way of hearing either, and how I wrote there! — In Italy I am out of the way of it too; but latterly,

partly through my fault, and partly through your kindness in wishing to send me the newest and most periodical publications, I have had a crowd of Reviews, &c. thrust upon me, which have bored me with their jargon, of one kind or another, and taken off my attention from greater objects. You have also

ET. 33.

sent me a parcel of trash of poetry, for no reason that I can conceive, unless to provoke me to write a new English Bards." Now this I wish to avoid; for if ever I do, it will be a strong production; and I desire peace, as long as the fools will keep their nonsense out of my way."1

LETTER 457. TO MR. MOORE.

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"September 27. 1821. "It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS. overture, but I send it now, and it may be restored; or, at any rate, you may keep the original, and give any copies you please. I send it, as written, and as I read it to you- I have no other copy. By last week's two posts, in two packets, I sent to your address, at Paris, a longish poem upon the late Irishism of your countrymen in their reception of the King. Pray, have you received it? It is in the high Roman fashion,' and full of ferocious phantasy. As you could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of the same nest), I have ;but I hope still that I have done justice to his great men and his good heart. As for Castlereagh you will find it laid on with a trowel. I delight in your 'fact historical' is it a fact? "Yours, &c.

1 It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty, but thwarting obstructions and distractions, which are at present thrown across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and pretenders, with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded all the walks of literature. Nor is it only the writers of the day that suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart ;- the readers also, from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) "the superficies of too many things presented to them at once," come to lose by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as the palate becomes confused in trying

533

have been restored long ago, as I was ready to give back Lady Melbourne's in exchange. These latter are in Mr. Hobhouse's custody with my other papers, and shall be punctually restored if required. I did not choose before to apply to Lady Cowper, as her mother's death naturally kept me from intruding upon her feelings at the time of its occurrence. Some years have now elapsed, and it is essential that I should have my own epistles. They are essential as confirming that part of the Memoranda' which refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.

"You need not be alarmed; the 'fourteen years's will hardly elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of life to speculate upon. So your calculation will not be in so much peril, as the 'argosie' will sink before that time, and the pound of flesh' be withered previously to your being so long out of a return.

"I also wish to give you a hint or two (as you have really behaved very handsomely to Moore in the business, and are a fine fellow in your line) for your advantage. If by your own management you can extract any of my epistles from Lady Caroline Lamb they ing of course the names and all such circummight be of use in your collection (sinkstances as might hurt living feelings, or those love occasionally. of survivors); they treat of more topics than

"I will tell you who may happen to have some letters of mine in their possession: Lord Powerscourt, some to his late brother; Mr. Long of-(I forget his place) - but the father of Edward Long of the Guards, who was drowned in going to Lisbon early in 1809; Miss Elizabeth Pigot, of Southwell, Notts (she may be Mistress by this time, for she had a year or two more than I): they were not love-letters, so that you might have them without scruple. There are, or might be, some to the late Rev. J. C. Tattersall, in the hands of his brother (half-brother) Mr. Wheatley, who resides near Canterbury, I

various wines, so the public taste declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed multiply.

2 The lines "Oh Wellington," which I had missed in their original place at the opening of the third canto, and took for granted that they had been suppressed by his publisher.

3 He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr. Murray's letters, that, as his Lordship's "Memoranda " were not to be published in his lifetime, the sum now paid for the work, 21002., would most probably, upon a reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount ultimately to no less than 80007.

think. There are some of Charles Gordon, now of Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are probably destroyed or inaccessible. * *

"I mention these people and particulars merely as chances. Most of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of little import, many of them written when very young, and several at school and college.

"Peel (the second brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman's) another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the voyager); your friend R. C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury; Hobhouse you were already aware of.

I have gone through this long list of

"The cold, the faithless, and the dead,'

because I know that, like the curious in fish-sauce,' you are a researcher of such things.

"Besides these, there are other occasional ones to literary men and so forth, complimentary, &c. &c. &c. not worth much more than the rest. There are some hundreds, too, of Italian notes of mine, scribbled with a noble contempt of the grammar and dictionary, in very English Etruscan; for I speak Italian very fluently, but write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree.”

1 To all the persons upon this list who were accessible, application has, of course, been made,—with what success it is in the reader's power to judge from the communications that have been laid before him. Among the companions of the poet's boyhood there are (as I have already had occasion to mention and regret) but few traces of his youthful correspondence to be found; and of all those who knew him at that period, his fair Southwell correspondent alone seems to have been sufficiently endowed with the gift of second-sight to anticipate the Byron of a future day, and foresee the compound interest that Time and Fame would accumulate on every precious

foregoing note, one was a letter intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the funds, of which the following

are extracts:

Ravenna, Marza Imo, 1821.

"I have received your message, through my sister's letter, about English security, &c. &c. It is considerate, (and true, even,) that such is to be found-but not that I Mr. * *, for his own views and shall find it. purposes, will thwart all such attempts till he has accomplished his own, viz. to make me lend my fortune to some client of his choosing.

"At this distance-after this absence, and with my utter ignorance of affairs and business- with my temper and impatience, I have neither the means nor the mind to resist. Thinking of the funds as I do, and wishing to secure a reversion to my sister and her children, I should jump at most expedients.

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'What I told you is come to pass-the Neapolitan war is declared. Your funds

will fall, and I shall be in consequence ruined. That's nothing—but my blood relations will be so. You and your child are provided for. Live and prosper - I wish so much to

both.

means.

Live and prosper — you have the I think but of my real kin and kindred, who may be the victims of this accursed bubble.

scrap of the young bard which she hoarded. On the whole, however, it is not unsatisfactory to be able to state that, with the exception of a very small minority (only one of whom is possessed of any papers of much importance, every distinguished associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very outset to the close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially to communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him, -- trusting, as I am willing to flatter myself, that they confided these treasures to one, who, if not able to do full justice to the memory of their common friend, would, at least, not willingly suffer it to be dishonoured in his hands.

Ær. 33.

Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is forwarded.

66

I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs, or on any other subject."

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The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper :- Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir G. Crewe, Bart., the principal steward." These verses are full of strong and indignant feeling, every stanza concluding pointedly with the words "Charity Ball," and the thought that predominates through the whole may be collected from a few of the opening

lines:

"What matter the pangs of a husband and father,
If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,
And the Saint patronises her 'Charity Ball.'

"What matters a heart, which though faulty was

feeling,

Be driven to excesses which once could appal

That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,

66

535

I should, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-in-law, not so much for her heritage, but from my natural antipathy. But the indulgence of this natural desire is too much to expect from the Providence who presides over old women. I bore you with all this about lives, because it has been put in my way by a calculation of insurances which Murray has sent me. I really think you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable time.

"A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel :

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.'

"In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his preface and his other demerits.

"I am just got to the pass where Saint

September-no- October 1. 1821.

"I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great length, to Paris and London. I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London.

"I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong enough to give Murray much chance of realising his thirteens again. I hardly should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon him as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo - so as to provide for us all my bones with a splendid and larmovante edition, and you with double what is extractable during my lifetime.

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I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way accident) you will survive me. The difference of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing. I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to longevity. My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the other at fortyfive; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else, says that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least, an old stager.

LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.

"October 6. 1821.

"By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of Southey's impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third. I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please 'our puir hill folk.'

"By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My ague bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause. I ride-I am not intemperate in eating or drinking and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree.

"How do you manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don't exhilarate

it makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of it without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of salts-I mean in the afternoon, after their effect. 2 But one can't take them like champagne.

"Excuse this old woman's letter; but my lemancholy don't depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there. "Yours, &c."

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LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, October 9. 1821.

"You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr. Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left that city.

"Don't forget to send me my first act of 'Werner' (if Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers) — send it by the post (to Pisa); and also cut out Harriet Lee's German's

1 [Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment appeared in the year 1821. See Works, p. 512.]

2 It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects that Dryden always took physic when about to write anything of importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I have a grand design, I ever

Tale,' from the Canterbury Tales,' and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.

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By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me have proofs of them all again - I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question! - The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Arme nian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the Vampire?' Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so.

"Send-Faber's Treatise on the Cabiri. "Sainte Croix's Mystères du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently).

"A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in russia). I have one; but as it was the last gift of my sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like to keep it in good order. Don't forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old,that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recol lected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.

66

Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst commonplace trash,—unless something starts up actual merit, which may very well be, for 'tis time it should."

LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.

of

"October 20. 1821.

"If the errors are in the MS., write me down an ass: they are not, and I am content to undergo any penalty if they be. Besides, the omitted stanza (last but one or two), sent afterwards, was that in the MS. too?

"As to honour,' I will trust no man's honour in affairs of barter. I will tell you why: a state of bargain is Hobbes's state of nature- - a state of war.' It is so with

take physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part; -in short," &c. &c. On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits, some curious facts and illustrations have been with his usual research, collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."