As I find you have been good enough to remember me in sundry
letters to these parts of the world, and as it may be possible that my repeated
acknowledgments may have been, in the press of matter, put off, like Dr. Drowsy’s sermons, to a better
opportunity, I have discovered at last an excuse for writing to you, without
having anything to tell which can interest you, or to be of any other service
than the disburdening of my conscience by duly registering the above thanks for
your attentions. I verily believe
| MR. HOBHOUSE’S TOUR IN ITALY. | 389 |
If any one writes a book of travels without telling the truth about the masters and the subjects in this most unfortunate country, he deserves more than damnation and a dull sale, and I trust you will take care he has a niche—forgive the word—in your temple of infamy, the Quarterly. I heard that Champion Scott* was collecting five hundred pounds worth of news for Longman in these parts. If
* This was John Scott, author of ‘Sketches of Manners, Scenery, &c, in the French Provinces, Switzerland, and Italy,’ afterwards killed in a duel in consequence of a quarrel arising out of some articles in Blackwood’s Magazine. |
| 390 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY |
I saw this the moment I crossed the Alps, and, in spite of bad and inveterate habit, shut my journal at once. There is a wide field of glory open for any and for all answering the above description; but it would perhaps be almost impossible to find the requisite variety of acquirement and talent in one individual. The work should be done, like a cyclopede dictionary, by departments. I don’t mean North and South, East and West, though that is no bad plan, but by subjects—literature, antiquities, manners, politics, &c. We have nothing, really nothing, except Mr. Forsyth’s sketch, which, so far as it goes, is a most extraordinary performance. I have tried it by the best test—that is, by putting it into the hands of one or two Italians, who owned, with a sigh, indeed, the unhappy resemblance.
A word or two on my own movements, because they interest you. I shall set out with your ‘Childe’ in about three weeks, from Venice, and shall proceed as fast as bad roads and surly postillions will allow, to Milan, Turin. Lyons, Paris, Calais, according to the post book, to London.
Your new acquisition is a very fine finish to the three cantos
already published, and, if I may trust to a taste vitiated—I say it
without affectation—by an exclusive attention and attachment to that
school of ancient and obsolete poetry of which your friend Mr. Gifford furnished us with the last
specimen in his ‘Baviad,” it is the best of all his lordship’s
productions. The world will not, to be sure, find that freshness and novelty
which is to be discovered only at the opening of a mine. The metal, whatever
may be its quantity or quality, must in some degree cease to surprise and
delight as it continues to be worked, and nothing more can be hoped than that
it should not become less valuable by being more plentiful. In spite of
similes, however, it is possible that all other readers may agree with my
simple self in liking this fourth
canto better than anything Lord B. has ever written. I must confess
I feel an affection for it more than ordinary, as part of it was begot, as it
were, under my own eyes; for some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning
| THORWALDSEN’S BUST OF BYRON. | 391 |
“In vain would flattery steal a wreath from fame, And Rome’s best sculptor only half succeed, If England owned no share in Byron’s name Nor hailed the laurel she before decreed.” |
