Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  “You are out about the third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and have no thought of recommencing.

  “I cannot well explain to you by letter what I conceive to be the origin of Mrs. Leigh’s notion about ‘Tales of my Landlord;’ but it is some points of the characters of Sir E. Manley and Burley, as well as one or two of the jocular portions, on which it is founded, probably.

  “If you have received Dr. Polidori as well as a parcel of books, and you can be of use to him, be so. I never was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill humour, and vanity of that young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment, in which he has been aided by a little subsequent experience, and may turn out well. Therefore, use your government interest for him, for he is improved and improvable.

  “Yours,” &c.

  LETTER 285. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “La Mira, near Venice, June 18. 1817.

  “Enclosed is a letter to Dr. Holland from Pindemonte. Not knowing the Doctor’s address, I am desired to enquire, and, perhaps, being a literary man, you will know or discover his haunt near some populous churchyard. I have written to you a scolding letter — I believe, upon a misapprehended passage in your letter — but never mind: it will do for next time, and you will surely deserve it. Talking of doctors reminds me once more to recommend to you one who will not recommend himself, — the Doctor Polidori. If you can help him to a publisher, do; or, if you have any sick relation, I would advise his advice: all the patients he had in Italy are dead — Mr. * *’s son, Mr. Horner, and Lord G * *, whom he embowelled with great success at Pisa.

  “Remember me to Moore, whom I congratulate. How is Rogers? and what is become of Campbell and all t’other fellows of the Druid order? I got Maturin’s Bedlam at last, but no other parcel; I am in fits for the tooth-powder, and the magnesia. I want some of Burkitt’s soda-powders. Will you tell Mr. Kinnaird that I have written him two letters on pressing business, (about Newstead, &c.) to which I humbly solicit his attendance. I am just returned from a gallop along the banks of the Brenta — time, sunset. Yours,

  “B.”

  LETTER 286. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “La Mira, near Venice, July 1. 1817.

  “Since my former letter, I have been working up my impressions into a fourth Canto of Childe Harold, of which I have roughened off about rather better than thirty stanzas, and mean to go on; and probably to make this ‘Fytte’ the concluding one of the poem, so that you may propose against the autumn to draw out the conscription for 1818. You must provide moneys, as this new resumption bodes you certain disbursements. Somewhere about the end of September or October, I propose to be under way (i.e. in the press); but I have no idea yet of the probable length or calibre of the Canto, or what it will be good for; but I mean to be as mercenary as possible, an example (I do not mean of any individual in particular, and least of all, any person or persons of our mutual acquaintance) which I should have followed in my youth, and I might still have been a prosperous gentleman.

  “No tooth-powder, no letters, no recent tidings of you.

  “Mr. Lewis is at Venice, and I am going up to stay a week with him there — as it is one of his enthusiasms also to like the city.

  “I stood in Venice on the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ &c. &c.

  “The ‘Bridge of Sighs’ (i.e. Ponte de’i Sospiri) is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state. It has two passages: the criminal went by the one to judgment, and returned by the other to death, being strangled in a chamber adjoining, where there was a mechanical process for the purpose.

  “This is the first stanza of our new Canto; and now for a line of the second: —

  “In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier, Her palaces, &c. &c.

  “You know that formerly the gondoliers sung always, and Tasso’s Gierusalemme was their ballad. Venice is built on seventy-two islands.

  “There! there’s a brick of your new Babel! and now, sirrah! what say you to the sample?

  “Yours, &c.

  “P.S. I shall write again by and by.”

  LETTER 287. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “La Mira, near Venice, July 8. 1817

  “If you can convey the enclosed letter to its address, or discover the person to whom it is directed, you will confer a favour upon the Venetian creditor of a deceased Englishman. This epistle is a dun to his executor, for house-rent. The name of the insolvent defunct is, or was, Porter Valter, according to the account of the plaintiff, which I rather suspect ought to be Walter Porter, according to our mode of collocation. If you are acquainted with any dead man of the like name a good deal in debt, pray dig him up, and tell him that ‘a pound of his fair flesh’ or the ducats are required, and that ‘if you deny them, fie upon your law!’

  “I hear nothing more from you about Moore’s poem, Rogers, or other literary phenomena; but to-morrow, being post-day, will bring perhaps some tidings. I write to you with people talking Venetian all about, so that you must not expect this letter to be all English.

  “The other day, I had a squabble on the highway, as follows: I was riding pretty quickly from Dolo home about eight in the evening, when I passed a party of people in a hired carriage, one of whom, poking his head out of the window, began bawling to me in an inarticulate but insolent manner. I wheeled my horse round, and overtaking, stopped the coach, and said, ‘Signor, have you any commands for me?’ He replied, impudently as to manner, ‘No.’ I then asked him what he meant by that unseemly noise, to the discomfiture of the passers-by. He replied by some piece of impertinence, to which I answered by giving him a violent slap in the face. I then dismounted, (for this passed at the window, I being on horseback still,) and opening the door desired him to walk out, or I would give him another. But the first had settled him except as to words, of which he poured forth a profusion in blasphemies, swearing that he would go to the police and avouch a battery sans provocation. I said he lied, and was a * *, and if he did not hold his tongue, should be dragged out and beaten anew. He then held his tongue. I of course told him my name and residence, and defied him to the death, if he were a gentleman, or not a gentleman, and had the inclination to be genteel in the way of combat. He went to the police, but there having been bystanders in the road, — particularly a soldier, who had seen the business, — as well as my servant, notwithstanding the oaths of the coachman and five insides besides the plaintiff, and a good deal of paying on all sides, his complaint was dismissed, he having been the aggressor; — and I was subsequently informed that, had I not given him a blow, he might have been had into durance.

  “So set down this,— ‘that in Aleppo once’ I ‘beat a Venetian;’ but I assure you that he deserved it, for I am a quiet man, like Candide, though with somewhat of his fortune in being forced to forego my natural meekness every now and then.

  “Yours, &c. B.”

  LETTER 288. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, July 9, 1817.

  “I have got the sketch and extracts from Lalla Rookh. The plan, as well as the extracts, I have seen, please me very much indeed, and I feel impatient for the whole.

  “With regard to the critique on ‘Manfred,’ you have been in such a devil of a hurry, that you have only sent me the half: it breaks off at page 294. Send me the rest; and also page 270., where there is ‘an account of the supposed origin of this dreadful story,’ — in which, by the way, whatever it may be, the conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a better origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him.

  “You say nothing of Manfred’s luck in the world; and I care not. He is one of the best of my misbegotten, say what they will.

  “I got at last an extract, but no parcels. They will come, I suppose, some time or other. I am come up to Venice for a day or two to bathe, and am
just going to take a swim in the Adriatic; so, good evening — the post waits. Yours, &c.

  “B.

  “P.S. Pray, was Manfred’s speech to the Sun still retained in Act third? I hope so: it was one of the best in the thing, and better than the Colosseum. I have done fifty-six of Canto fourth, Childe Harold; so down with your ducats.”

  LETTER 289. TO MR. MOORE.

  “La Mira, Venice, July 10. 1817.

  “Murray, the Mokanna of booksellers, has contrived to send me extracts from Lalla Rookh by the post. They are taken from some magazine, and contain a short outline and quotations from the two first Poems. I am very much delighted with what is before me, and very thirsty for the rest. You have caught the colours as if you had been in the rainbow, and the tone of the East is perfectly preserved. I am glad you have changed the title from ‘Persian Tale.’

  “I suspect you have written a devilish fine composition, and I rejoice in it from my heart; because ‘the Douglas and the Percy both together are confident against a world in arms.’ I hope you won’t be affronted at my looking on us as ‘birds of a feather;’ though on whatever subject you had written, I should have been very happy in your success.

  “There is a simile of an orange-tree’s ‘flowers and fruits,’ which I should have liked better if I did not believe it to be a reflection on * * *.

  “Do you remember Thurlow’s poem to Sam— ‘When Rogers;’ and that d —— d supper of Rancliffe’s that ought to have been a dinner? ‘Ah, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight.’ But

  “My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea; But, before I go, Tom Moore, Here’s a double health to thee!

  “Here’s a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And whatever sky’s above me, Here’s a heart for every fate.

  “Though the ocean roar around me, Yet it still shall bear me on; Though a desert should surround me, It hath springs that may be won.

  “Were’t the last drop in the well, As I gasp’d upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, ’Tis to thee that I would drink.

  “With that water, as this wine, The libation I would pour, Should be — peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore.

  “This should have been written fifteen moons ago — the first stanza was. I am just come out from an hour’s swim in the Adriatic; and I write to you with a black-eyed Venetian girl before me, reading Boccacio.

  “Last week I had a row on the road (I came up to Venice from my casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe) with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry. I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued, and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains, if he did not hold his tongue. He held it.

  “Monk Lewis is here— ‘how pleasant!’ He is a very good fellow, and very much yours. So is Sam — so is every body — and amongst the number,

  “Yours ever,

  “B.

  “P.S. What think you of Manfred?”

  LETTER 290. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “La Mira, near Venice, July 15. 1817.

  “I have finished (that is, written — the file comes afterwards) ninety and eight stanzas of the fourth Canto, which I mean to be the concluding one. It will probably be about the same length as the third, being already of the dimensions of the first or second Cantos. I look upon parts of it as very good, that is, if the three former are good, but this we shall see; and at any rate, good or not, it is rather a different style from the last — less metaphysical — which, at any rate, will be a variety. I sent you the shaft of the column as a specimen the other day, i.e. the first stanza. So you may be thinking of its arrival towards autumn, whose winds will not be the only ones to be raised, if so be as how that it is ready by that time.

  “I lent Lewis, who is at Venice, (in or on the Canalaccio, the Grand Canal,) your extracts from Lalla Rookh and Manuel, and, out of contradiction, it may be, he likes the last, and is not much taken with the first, of these performances. Of Manuel, I think, with the exception of a few capers, it is as heavy a nightmare as was ever bestrode by indigestion.

  “Of the extracts I can but judge as extracts, and I prefer the ‘Peri’ to the ‘Silver Veil.’ He seems not so much at home in his versification of the ‘Silver Veil,’ and a little embarrassed with his horrors; but the conception of the character of the impostor is fine, and the plan of great scope for his genius, — and I doubt not that, as a whole, it will be very Arabesque and beautiful.

  “Your late epistle is not the most abundant in information, and has not yet been succeeded by any other; so that I know nothing of your own concerns, or of any concerns, and as I never hear from any body but yourself who does not tell me something as disagreeable as possible, I should not be sorry to hear from you: and as it is not very probable, — if I can, by any device or possible arrangement with regard to my personal affairs, so arrange it, — that I shall return soon, or reside ever in England, all that you tell me will be all I shall know or enquire after, as to our beloved realm of Grub Street, and the black brethren and blue sisterhood of that extensive suburb of Babylon. Have you had no new babe of literature sprung up to replace the dead, the distant, the tired, and the retired? no prose, no verse, no nothing?”

  LETTER 291. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, July 20. 1817.

  “I write to give you notice that I have completed the fourth and ultimate Canto of Childe Harold. It consists of 126 stanzas, and is consequently the longest of the four. It is yet to be copied and polished; and the notes are to come, of which it will require more than the third Canto, as it necessarily treats more of works of art than of nature. It shall be sent towards autumn; — and now for our barter. What do you bid? eh? you shall have samples, an’ it so please you: but I wish to know what I am to expect (as the saying is) in these hard times, when poetry does not let for half its value. If you are disposed to do what Mrs. Winifred Jenkins calls ‘the handsome thing,’ I may perhaps throw you some odd matters to the lot, — translations, or slight originals; there is no saying what may be on the anvil between this and the booking season. Recollect that it is the last Canto, and completes the work; whether as good as the others, I cannot judge, in course — least of all as yet, — but it shall be as little worse as I can help. I may, perhaps, give some little gossip in the notes as to the present state of Italian literati and literature, being acquainted with some of their capi — men as well as books; — but this depends upon my humour at the time. So, now, pronounce: I say nothing.

  “When you have got the whole four Cantos, I think you might venture on an edition of the whole poem in quarto, with spare copies of the two last for the purchasers of the old edition of the first two. There is a hint for you, worthy of the Row; and now, perpend — pronounce.

  “I have not received a word from you of the fate of ‘Manfred’ or ‘Tasso,’ which seems to me odd, whether they have failed or succeeded.

  “As this is a scrawl of business, and I have lately written at length and often on other subjects, I will only add that I am,” &c.

  LETTER 292. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “La Mira, near Venice, August 7, 1817

  “Your letter of the 18th, and, what will please you, as it did me, the parcel sent by the good-natured aid and abetment of Mr. Croker, are arrived. — Messrs. Lewis and Hobhouse are here: the former in the same house, the latter a few hundred yards distant.

  “You say nothing of Manfred, from which its failure may be inferred; but I think it odd you should not say so at once. I know nothing, and hear absolutely nothing, of any body or any thing i
n England; and there are no English papers, so that all you say will be news — of any person, or thing, or things. I am at present very anxious about Newstead, and sorry that Kinnaird is leaving England at this minute, though I do not tell him so, and would rather he should have his pleasure, although it may not in this instance tend to my profit.

  “If I understand rightly, you have paid into Morland’s 1500 pounds: as the agreement in the paper is two thousand guineas, there will remain therefore six hundred pounds, and not five hundred, the odd hundred being the extra to make up the specie. Six hundred and thirty pounds will bring it to the like for Manfred and Tasso, making a total of twelve hundred and thirty, I believe, for I am not a good calculator. I do not wish to press you, but I tell you fairly that it will be a convenience to me to have it paid as soon as it can be made convenient to yourself.

  “The new and last Canto is 130 stanzas in length; and may be made more or less. I have fixed no price, even in idea, and have no notion of what it may be good for. There are no metaphysics in it; at least, I think not. Mr. Hobhouse has promised me a copy of Tasso’s Will, for notes; and I have some curious things to say about Ferrara, and Parisina’s story, and perhaps a farthing candle’s worth of light upon the present state of Italian literature. I shall hardly be ready by October; but that don’t matter. I have all to copy and correct, and the notes to write.