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Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org
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Some of
“Recollect that I will have nothing to do with it, except as far as it
may secure the copyright to yourself. I will have no bargain but with the English
booksellers, and I desire no interest out of that country. Now, that’s fair and open,
and a little handsomer than your
* * * dodging silence, to see what would
come of it. You are an excellent fellow,
“With regard to the price,
* * * I fixed none, but left it to five hundred should be only conditional; and for my own sake, I wish it to be added, only in case of your
selling a certain number, that number to be fixed by yourself. I hope this is fair. In every thing of this kind there
must be risk; and till that be past, in one way or the other, I would not willingly add to
it, particularly in times like the present. And pray always recollect that nothing could
mortify me more—no failure on my own part—than having made you lose by any purchase from
me.
“So you and
divine’
poems, is it nothing to have written a human one? without any of
your worn-out machinery. Why, man, I could have spun the thoughts of the Four Cantos of
that poem into twenty, had I wanted to book-make, and its passion into as many modern
tragedies. Since you want length, you shall have enough of Juan
“Now to business; * * * * * I say unto you, verily, it is not so; or,
as the foreigner said to the waiter, after asking him to bring a glass of water, to which
the man answered, ‘I will, sir,’—‘You
* * * will!—G—d
d—n,—I say, you mush!’ And I will submit this to the decision
of any person or persons to be appointed by both, on a fair examination of the
circumstances of this as compared with the preceding publications. So, there’s for
you. There is always some row or other previously to all our publications: it should seem
that, on approximating, we can never quite get over the natural antipathy of author and
bookseller, and that more particularly the ferine nature of the latter must break
forth.
“You offer 1500 guineas for the new canto: I won’t take it. I ask
two thousand five hundred guineas for it, which you will either give or not, as you think
proper. It concludes the poem, and consists of 144 stanzas. The notes are numerous, and
chiefly written by
* * * longer: very true, and when
they shorten them, I will lengthen mine, and ask less. You shall submit the MS. to
whole to the preceding, I will not appeal from their award, but burn
the manuscript, and leave things as they are.
“I once wrote from the fulness of my mind and the love of fame (not as
an
” end, but as a means, to obtain that
influence over men’s minds which is power in itself and in its consequences), and now
from habit and from avarice; so that the effect may probably be as different as the
inspiration. I have the same facility, and indeed necessity, of composition, to avoid
idleness (though idleness in a hot
We select the following for their variety, as well as throwing much light on
“In writing thus to him, I had more particularly in recollection a
fancy of this kind respecting myself, which he had, not long before my present visit to him
at Venice, taken into his head. In a ludicrous, and now, perhaps, forgotten
* * *
On seeing this doggerel, my noble friend,—as I might, indeed, with a little more
thought, have anticipated,—conceived the notion that I meant to throw ridicule on his whole
race of poetic heroes, and accordingly, as I learned from persons then in frequent
intercourse with him, flew out into one of his fits of half humorous rage against me. This
he now confessed himself, and, in laughing over the circumstance with me, owned that he had
even gone so far as, in his first moments of wrath, to contemplate some little retaliation
for this perfidious hit at his heroes. ‘But when I recollected,’ said he,
‘what pleasure it would give the whole tribe of blockheads and Blues to see you
and me turning out against each other, I gave up the idea.
’ He was, indeed, a
striking instance of what may be almost invariably observed, that they who best know how to
wield the weapon of ridicule themselves, are the most alive to its power in the hands of
others. I remember, one day,—in the year 1813, I think,—as we were conversing together
about critics and their influence on the public, ‘For my part,’ he
exclaimed, ‘I don’t care what they say of me, so they don’t
’ ‘Oh, you need not fear that,’—I
answered, with something, perhaps, of a half suppressed smile on my features,—‘nobody
could quiz quiz me.you.’ ‘
’ he replied, clenching his hand at me, and looking, at the same
time, with comic earnestness into my face.You could,
you villain!
“On the day preceding that of my departure from Venice, my noble host,
on arriving from La Mira to dinner, told me, with all the glee of a schoolboy who had been
just granted a holiday, that, as this was my last evening, the
” Only a
book,’ he answered, ‘from which I am trying to
’ Though in thus imputing to himself
premeditated plagiarism, he was, of course, but jesting, it was, I am inclined to think,
his practice, when engaged in the composition of crib,
as I do wherever I can;—and that’s the way I get the character of an original
poet.’ On taking it up and looking into it, I exclaimed., ‘Ah, my old
friend,
The following is an odd expression of
“I wish you good night, with a Venetian benediction,
‘
” earth which you will make’—is it not pretty? You would think it still prettier if you had heard it,
as I did two hours ago, from the lips of a Venetian girl, with large black eyes, a face
like me, if I offended her. I like this kind of animal, and
am sure that I should have preferred
The following are miscellaneous extracts from his lordship’s letters and journals.
“Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,—worldly,
social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,—does there mingle a certain sense of doubt
and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is—a retrospect to the past, leading
to a prognostication of the future. (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.) Why
is this? or these?—I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of
giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a precipice—the higher, the more
awful, and the more sublime; and, therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable
sensation; at least,
” Hope is; and what Hope
is there without a deep leaven of Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as Hope? and,
if it were not for Hope, where would the Future be?—in hell. It is useless to say where the Present is, for most of us know; and as for the Past, what predominates in memory?—Hope baffled.
Ergo, in all human affairs, it is Hope—Hope—Hope.
“I have been thinking over, the other day, on the various comparisons,
good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals, English and
foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turning over a foreign one lately,—for I
have made it a rule latterly never to
” search for any thing of the
kind, but not to avoid the perusal, if presented by chance. To begin, then: I have seen
myself compared personally or poetically, in English, French, German
(as interpreted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to oft have I heard of thee, my
’ in
Speaking of
“Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
rudeness?—actually cement a sort of connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had
the Hunts
” prospered, would not in all probability have continued. As
it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame,
money, and the usual et cetera. My original motives I already
explained (in the letter which you thought proper to show): they are the true ones, and I
abide by them, as I tell you, and I told bore,’ which I don’t remember. Had their
“Of
” humiliate him—that his writings should be supposed to be
dead weight! Think a moment—he is perhaps the vainest man on earth, at least his own
friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were in other circumstances, I might be tempted to
take him down a peg; but not now,—it would be cruel. It is a cursed business; but neither
the motive nor the means rest upon my conscience.
Curious idea of constancy.
“Six-and-twenty years ago
” she—heaven knows what she did. In the year 1814, the first
annunciation of the Definitive Treaty of peace (and tyranny) was developed to the
astonished Milanese by the arrival of Col. * * * *, who, flinging himself
full length at the feet of Madame * * * *, murmured forth, in half-forgotten
Irish Italian, eternal vows of poveroWas there ever such
virtue?
’ (that was her very word) and, being now a widow, gave him apartments
in her palace, reinstated him in all the rights of wrong, and held him up to the admiring
world as a miracle of incontinent fidelity, and the unshaken
We quote the ensuing as an instance of that moral perversion which was the
great ingredient in all
“You have given me a screed of metaphor and what not about
” Pulcigoing without clothes, like our Saxon ancestors.
’ Now, the Saxons did not go without clothes; and, in the next place, they are
not my ancestors, nor yours either; for mine were Norman, and yours, I take it by your
name, were Gael. And, in the next, I differ from you about the
‘refinement’ which has banished the comedies of Sheridan acted to
the thinnest houses? I know (as ex-committed)
that ‘decent a writer as need be, and not only her play would be damned, but
she too.
’ He alluded to ‘indecent writer—at least in
his first canto, as you will have perceived by this time.
A principle which sets out so erroneously cannot but be false in its
conclusions. It seems such a strange rule of action to say, “Because others have done
wrong, so will I.
” Indelicacy was the reigning fault in the ages to which he
alludes: such is not the case with ours. It is, we grant, unfair to try these our predecessors
by our own rigid rules of decorum; but bad must that taste be which would oppose the opinion of
its own time, merely to recall the admitted errors of the past.
We now close these pages. We cannot agree with their palliating sophistry; we think much of their detail had better have been omitted; but we must add, we know few biographical works so full of entertainment and interest. It is a great mental and moral study; but the instruction drawn from it must depend on the reader.