by Thomas Moore
“BYRON.”
So early as the autumn of this year, a fifth edition of The Giaour was required; and again his fancy teemed with fresh materials for its pages. The verses commencing “The browsing camels’ bells are tinkling,” and the four pages that follow the line, “Yes, love indeed is light from heaven,” were all added at this time. Nor had the overflowings of his mind even yet ceased, as I find in the poem, as it exists at present, still further additions, — and, among them, those four brilliant lines, —
“She was a form of life and light, That, seen, became a part of sight, And rose, where’er I turn’d mine eye, The Morning-star of memory!”
The following notes and letters to Mr. Murray, during these outpourings, will show how irresistible was the impulse under which he vented his thoughts.
“If you send more proofs, I shall never finish this infernal story— ‘Ecce signum’ — thirty-three more lines enclosed! to the utter discomfiture of the printer, and, I fear, not to your advantage.
“B.”
“Half-past two in the morning, Aug. 10. 1813.
“Dear Sir,
“Pray suspend the proofs, for I am bitten again, and have quantities for other parts of the bravura.
“Yours ever, B.
“P.S. — You shall have them in the course of the day.”
LETTER 130. TO MR. MURRAY.
“August 26. 1813.
“I have looked over and corrected one proof, but not so carefully (God knows if you can read it through, but I can’t) as to preclude your eye from discovering some omission of mine or commission of your printer. If you have patience, look it over. Do you know any body who can stop — I mean point — commas, and so forth? for I am, I hear, a sad hand at your punctuation. I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month. It is now fearfully long, being more than a Canto and a half of Childe Harold, which contains but 882 lines per book, with all late additions inclusive.
“The last lines Hodgson likes. It is not often he does, and when he don’t he tells me with great energy, and I fret and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel, and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself.
“I was quite sorry to hear you say you stayed in town on my account, and I hope sincerely you did not mean so superfluous a piece of politeness.
“Our six critiques! — they would have made half a Quarterly by themselves; but this is the age of criticism.”
The following refer apparently to a still later edition.
LETTER 131. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Stilton, Oct. 3. 1813.
“I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof to be sent to Aston. — Among the lines on Hassan’s Serai, not far from the beginning, is this —
“Unmeet for Solitude to share.
Now to share implies more than one, and Solitude is a single gentleman; it must be thus —
“For many a gilded chamber’s there, Which Solitude might well forbear;
and so on. — My address is Aston Hall, Rotherham.
“Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a Stilton cheese from me for your trouble. Ever yours, B.
“If the old line stands let the other run thus —
“Nor there will weary traveller halt, To bless the sacred bread and salt.
“Note. — To partake of food — to break bread and taste salt with your host, ensures the safety of the guest; even though an enemy, his person from that moment becomes sacred.
“There is another additional note sent yesterday — on the Priest in the Confessional.
“P.S. — I leave this to your discretion; if any body thinks the old line a good one or the cheese a bad one, don’t accept either. But, in that case, the word share is repeated soon after in the line —
“To share the master’s bread and salt;
and must be altered to —
“To break the master’s bread and salt.
This is not so well, though — confound it!”
LETTER 132. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Oct. 12. 1813.
“You must look The Giaour again over carefully; there are a few lapses, particularly in the last page.— ‘I know ’twas false; she could not die;’ it was, and ought to be— ‘I knew.’ Pray observe this and similar mistakes.
“I have received and read the British Review. I really think the writer in most points very right. The only mortifying thing is the accusation of imitation. Crabbe’s passage I never saw; and Scott I no further meant to follow than in his lyric measure, which is Gray’s, Milton’s, and any one’s who likes it. The Giaour is certainly a bad character, but not dangerous; and I think his fate and his feelings will meet with few proselytes. I shall be very glad to hear from or of you, when you please; but don’t put yourself out of your way on my account.”
LETTER 133. TO MR. MOORE.
“Bennet Street, August 22. 1813.
“As our late — I might say, deceased — correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, ‘paulo majora,’ prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first — criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood. Made. de Staël Holstein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant, — kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be, — but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could — write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance — and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.
“In a ‘mail-coach copy’ of the Edinburgh, I perceive The Giaour is second article. The numbers are still in the Leith smack — pray, which way is the wind? The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love; — you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several quarters, éperdument amoureux. Seriously — as Winifred Jenkins says of Lismahago — Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) ‘has done the handsome thing by me,’ and I say nothing. But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By the by, I was called in the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and, — after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one’s fellow-creatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for nothing, — I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after. One was a peer, the other a friend untitled, and both fond of high play; — and one, I can swear for, though very mild, ‘not fearful,’ and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane. They both conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of pain as soon as I could.
“There is an American Life of G.F. Cooke, Scurra deceased, lately published. Such a book! — I believe, since Drunken Barnaby’s Journal, nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and tap-room — drams and the drama — brandy, whisky-punch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous, — first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless; — but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are too regularly registered.
“All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very perplexing — not so much for the thing itself as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places, even from England. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly spent on shore as in the ship; but one like’s to have one’s choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; but not the worse for that. I
am really puzzled with my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do; — not stay, if I can help it, but where to go? Sligo is for the North; — a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one’s ears and nose in a muff, or else tumbling into one’s neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief! If the winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller? — Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as easily made as your Persian’s. The Giaour is now a thousand and odd lines. ‘Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,’ eh, Moore? — thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,
“BN.
“P.S. I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape than any of the last twelve months, — and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women.
“I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left Newstead, you reside near it. Did you ever see it? do — but don’t tell me that you like it. If I had known of such intellectual neighbourhood, I don’t think I should have quitted it. You could have come over so often, as a bachelor, — for it was a thorough bachelor’s mansion — plenty of wine and such sordid sensualities — with books enough, room enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except the lasses) that would have suited you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had built myself a bath and a vault — and now I sha’n’t even be buried in it. It is odd that we can’t even be certain of a grave, at least a particular one. I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there, which I can repeat almost now, — and asking all kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see him — and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with that volume. Adieu — I commit you to the care of the gods — Hindoo, Scandinavian, and Hellenic!
“P.S. 2d. There is an excellent review of Grimm’s Correspondence and Made. de Staël in this No. of the E.R. Jeffrey, himself, was my critic last year; but this is, I believe, by another hand. I hope you are going on with your grand coup — pray do — or that damned Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of his poem in MS., and he really surpasses every thing beneath Tasso. Hodgson is translating him against another bard. You and (I believe, Rogers,) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be referred to as judges between the twain, — that is, if you accept the office. Conceive our different opinions! I think we, most of us (I am talking very impudently, you will think — us, indeed!) have a way of our own, — at least, you and Scott certainly have.”
LETTER 134. TO MR. MOORE.
“August 28. 1813.
“Ay, my dear Moore, ‘there was a time’ — I have heard of your tricks, when ‘you was campaigning at the King of Bohemy.’ I am much mistaken if, some fine London spring, about the year 1815, that time does not come again. After all, we must end in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, &c., and kissing one’s wife’s maid. Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour to-morrow — that is, I would a month ago, but, at present, * * *
“Why don’t you ‘parody that Ode?’ — Do you think I should be tetchy? or have you done it, and won’t tell me? — You are quite right about Giamschid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within this half hour. I am glad to hear you talk of Richardson, because it tells me what you won’t — that you are going to beat Lucien. At least tell me how far you have proceeded. Do you think me less interested about your works, or less sincere than our friend Ruggiero? I am not — and never was. In that thing of mine, the ‘English Bards,’ at the time when I was angry with all the world, I never ‘disparaged your parts,’ although I did not know you personally; — and have always regretted that you don’t give us an entire work, and not sprinkle yourself in detached pieces — beautiful, I allow, and quite alone in our language, but still giving us a right to expect a Shah Nameh (is that the name?) as well as gazels. Stick to the East; — the oracle, Staël, told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing but S * *’s unsaleables, — and these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don’t interest us, and yours will. You will have no competitor; and, if you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a ‘voice in the wilderness’ for you; and if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalising, and pave the path for you.
“I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal — something like, only more philanthropical than, Cazotte’s Diable Amoureux. It would require a good deal of poesy, and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make much of. If you want any more books, there is ‘Castellan’s Moeurs des Ottomans,’ the best compendium of the kind I ever met with, in six small tomes. I am really taking a liberty by talking in this style to my ‘elders and my betters;’ — pardon it, and don’t Rochefoucault my motives.”
LETTER 135. TO MR. MOORE.
“August — September, I mean — 1. 1813.
“I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, and three vols. on Turkish Literature, not yet looked into. The last I will thank you to read, extract what you want, and return in a week, as they are lent to me by that brightest of Northern constellations, Mackintosh, — amongst many other kind things into which India has warmed him, for I am sure your home Scotsman is of a less genial description.
“Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me— ‘Stap my vitals, Tarn! thou art a very impudent person;’ and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you talk thus.
“‘The Giaour’ I have added to a good deal; but still in foolish fragments. It contains about 1200 lines, or rather more — now printing. You will allow me to send you a copy. You delight me much by telling me that I am in your good graces, and more particularly as to temper; for, unluckily, I have the reputation of a very bad one. But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company. It may be, and would appear to a third person, an incredible thing, but I know you will believe me when I say, that I am as anxious for your success as one human being can be for another’s, — as much as if I had never scribbled a line. Surely the field of fame is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it. Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have passed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there’s a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I send you (which return per post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine, which will let you into the origin of ‘The Giaour.’ Write soon. Ever, dear Moore, yours most entirely, &c.
“P.S. — This letter was written to me on account of a different story circulated by some gentlewomen of our acquaintance, a little too close to the text. The part erased contained merely some Turkish names, and circumstantial evidence of the girl’s detection, not very important or decorous.”
LETTER 136. TO MR. MOORE.
“Sept. 5. 1813.
“You need not tie yourself down to a day with Toderin
i, but send him at your leisure, having anatomised him into such annotations as you want; I do not believe that he has ever undergone that process before, which is the best reason for not sparing him now.
“* * has returned to town, but not yet recovered of the Quarterly. What fellows these reviewers are! ‘these bugs do fear us all.’ They made you fight, and me (the milkiest of men) a satirist, and will end by making * * madder than Ajax. I have been reading Memory again, the other day, and Hope together, and retain all my preference of the former. His elegance is really wonderful — there is no such thing as a vulgar line in his book.
“What say you to Buonaparte? Remember, I back him against the field, barring Catalepsy and the Elements. Nay, I almost wish him success against all countries but this, — were it only to choke the Morning Post, and his undutiful father-in-law, with that rebellious bastard of Scandinavian adoption, Bernadotte. Rogers wants me to go with him on a crusade to the Lakes, and to besiege you on our way. This last is a great temptation, but I fear it will not be in my power, unless you would go on with one of us somewhere — no matter where. It is too late for Matlock, but we might hit upon some scheme, high life or low, — the last would be much the best for amusement. I am so sick of the other, that I quite sigh for a cider-cellar, or a cruise in a smuggler’s sloop.
