by Thomas Moore
LETTER 311. TO MR. MOORE.
“Venice, March 16. 1818.
“My dear Tom,
“Since my last, which I hope that you have received, I have had a letter from our friend Samuel. He talks of Italy this summer — won’t you come with him? I don’t know whether you would like our Italian way of life or not.
“They are an odd people. The other day I was telling a girl, ‘You must not come to-morrow, because Margueritta is coming at such a time,’ — (they are both about five feet ten inches high, with great black eyes and fine figures — fit to breed gladiators from — and I had some difficulty to prevent a battle upon a rencontre once before,)— ‘unless you promise to be friends, and’ — the answer was an interruption, by a declaration of war against the other, which she said would be a ‘Guerra di Candia.’ Is it not odd, that the lower order of Venetians should still allude proverbially to that famous contest, so glorious and so fatal to the Republic?
“They have singular expressions, like all the Italians. For example, ‘Viscere’ — as we would say, ‘My love,’ or ‘My heart,’ as an expression of tenderness. Also, ‘I would go for you into the midst of a hundred knives.’— ‘Mazza ben,’ excessive attachment, — literally, ‘I wish you well even to killing.’ Then they say (instead of our way, ‘Do you think I would do you so much harm?’) ‘Do you think I would assassinate you in such a manner?’— ‘Tempo perfido,’ bad weather; ‘Strade perfide,’ bad roads, — with a thousand other allusions and metaphors, taken from the state of society and habits in the middle ages.
“I am not so sure about mazza, whether it don’t mean massa, i.e. a great deal, a mass, instead of the interpretation I have given it. But of the other phrases I am sure.
“Three o’ th’ clock — I must ‘to bed, to bed, to bed,’ as mother S * * (that tragical friend of the mathematical * * *) says.
“Have you ever seen — I forget what or whom — no matter. They tell me Lady Melbourne is very unwell. I shall be so sorry. She was my greatest friend, of the feminine gender: — when I say ‘friend,’ I mean not mistress, for that’s the antipode. Tell me all about you and every body — how Sam is — how you like your neighbours, the Marquis and Marchesa, &c. &c.
“Ever,” &c.
LETTER 312. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, March 25. 1818.
“I have your letter, with the account of ‘Beppo,’ for which I sent you four new stanzas a fortnight ago, in case you print, or reprint.
“Croker’s is a good guess; but the style is not English, it is Italian; — Berni is the original of all. Whistlecraft was my immediate model! Rose’s ‘Animali’ I never saw till a few days ago, — they are excellent. But (as I said above) Berni is the father of that kind of writing, which, I think, suits our language, too, very well; — we shall see by the experiment. If it does, I shall send you a volume in a year or two, for I know the Italian way of life well, and in time may know it yet better; and as for the verse and the passions, I have them still in tolerable vigour.
“If you think that it will do you and the work, or works, any good, you may put my name to it; but first consult the knowing ones. It will, at any rate, show them that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 313. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, April 11. 1818.
“Will you send me by letter, packet, or parcel, half a dozen of the coloured prints from Holmes’s miniature (the latter done shortly before I left your country, and the prints about a year ago); I shall be obliged to you, as some people here have asked me for the like. It is a picture of my upright self done for Scrope B. Davies, Esq.
“Why have you not sent me an answer, and list of subscribers to the translation of the Armenian Eusebius? of which I sent you printed copies of the prospectus (in French) two moons ago. Have you had the letter? — I shall send you another: — you must not neglect my Armenians. Tooth-powder, magnesia, tincture of myrrh, tooth-brushes, diachylon plaster, Peruvian bark, are my personal demands.
“Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times, Patron and publisher of rhymes, For thee the bard up Pindus climbs, My Murray.
“To thee, with hope and terror dumb, The unfledged MS. authors come; Thou printest all — and sellest some — My Murray.
“Upon thy table’s baize so green The last new Quarterly is seen, But where is thy new Magazine, My Murray?
“Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine The works thou deemest most divine — The ‘Art of Cookery,’ and mine, My Murray.
“Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist, And Sermons to thy mill bring grist! And then thou hast the ‘Navy List,’ My Murray.
“And Heaven forbid I should conclude Without ‘the Board of Longitude,’ Although this narrow paper would, My Murray!”
LETTER 314. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, April 12. 1818.
“This letter will be delivered by Signor Gioe. Bata. Missiaglia, proprietor of the Apollo library, and the principal publisher and bookseller now in Venice. He sets out for London with a view to business and correspondence with the English booksellers: and it is in the hope that it may be for your mutual advantage that I furnish him with this letter of introduction to you. If you can be of use to him, either by recommendation to others, or by any personal attention on your own part, you will oblige him and gratify me. You may also perhaps both be able to derive advantage, or establish some mode of literary communication, pleasing to the public, and beneficial to one another.
“At any rate, be civil to him for my sake, as well as for the honour and glory of publishers and authors now and to come for evermore.
“With him I also consign a great number of MS. letters written in English, French, and Italian, by various English established in Italy during the last century: — the names of the writers, Lord Hervey, Lady M.W. Montague, (hers are but few — some billets-doux in French to Algarotti, and one letter in English, Italian, and all sorts of jargon, to the same,) Gray, the poet (one letter), Mason (two or three), Garrick, Lord Chatham, David Hume, and many of lesser note, — all addressed to Count Algarotti. Out of these, I think, with discretion, an amusing miscellaneous volume of letters might be extracted, provided some good editor were disposed to undertake the selection, and preface, and a few notes, &c.
“The proprietor of these is a friend of mine, Dr. Aglietti, — a great name in Italy, — and if you are disposed to publish, it will be for his benefit, and it is to and for him that you will name a price, if you take upon you the work. I would edite it myself, but am too far off, and too lazy to undertake it; but I wish that it could be done. The letters of Lord Hervey, in Mr. Rose’s opinion and mine, are good; and the short French love letters certainly are Lady M.W. Montague’s — the French not good, but the sentiments beautiful. Gray’s letter good; and Mason’s tolerable. The whole correspondence must be well weeded; but this being done, a small and pretty popular volume might be made of it. — There are many ministers’ letters — Gray, the ambassador at Naples, Horace Mann, and others of the same kind of animal.
“I thought of a preface, defending Lord Hervey against Pope’s attack, but Pope — quoad Pope, the poet — against all the world, in the unjustifiable attempts begun by Warton and carried on at this day by the new school of critics and scribblers, who think themselves poets because they do not write like Pope. I have no patience with such cursed humbug and bad taste; your whole generation are not worth a Canto of the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man, or the Dunciad, or ‘any thing that is his.’ — But it is three in the matin, and I must go to bed. Yours alway,” &c.
LETTER 315. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, April 17. 1818.
“A few days ago, I wrote to you a letter, requesting you to desire Hanson to desire his messenger to come on from Geneva to Venice, because I won’t go from Venice to Geneva; and if this is not done, the messenger may be damned, with him who mis-sent him. Pray reiterate my request.
“With
the proofs returned, I sent two additional stanzas for Canto fourth: did they arrive?
“Your Monthly reviewer has made a mistake: Cavaliere, alone, is well enough; but ‘Cavalier’ servente’ has always the e mute in conversation, and omitted in writing; so that it is not for the sake of metre; and pray let Griffiths know this, with my compliments. I humbly conjecture that I know as much of Italian society and language as any of his people; but, to make assurance doubly sure, I asked, at the Countess Benzona’s last night, the question of more than one person in the office, and of these ‘cavalieri serventi’ (in the plural, recollect) I found that they all accorded in pronouncing for ‘cavalier’ servente’ in the singular number. I wish Mr. * * * * (or whoever Griffiths’ scribbler may be) would not talk of what he don’t understand. Such fellows are not fit to be intrusted with Italian, even in a quotation.
“Did you receive two additional stanzas, to be inserted towards the close of Canto fourth? Respond, that (if not) they may be sent.
“Tell Mr. * * and Mr. Hanson that they may as well expect Geneva to come to me, as that I should go to Geneva. The messenger may go on or return, as he pleases; I won’t stir: and I look upon it as a piece of singular absurdity in those who know me imagining that I should; — not to say malice, in attempting unnecessary torture. If, on the occasion, my interests should suffer, it is their neglect that is to blame; and they may all be d —— d together.
“It is ten o’clock and time to dress.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 316. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 23. 1818.
“The time is past in which I could feel for the dead, — or I should feel for the death of Lady Melbourne, the best, and kindest, and ablest female I ever knew, old or young. But ‘I have supped full of horrors,’ and events of this kind have only a kind of numbness worse than pain, — like a violent blow on the elbow or the head. There is one link less between England and myself.
“Now to business. I presented you with Beppo, as part of the contract for Canto fourth, — considering the price you are to pay for the same, and intending to eke you out in case of public caprice or my own poetical failure. If you choose to suppress it entirely, at Mr. * * * *’s suggestion, you may do as you please. But recollect it is not to be published in a garbled or mutilated state. I reserve to my friends and myself the right of correcting the press; — if the publication continue, it is to continue in its present form.
“As Mr. * * says that he did not write this letter, &c. I am ready to believe him; but for the firmness of my former persuasion, I refer to Mr. * * * *, who can inform you how sincerely I erred on this point. He has also the note — or, at least, had it, for I gave it to him with my verbal comments thereupon. As to ‘Beppo,’ I will not alter or suppress a syllable for any man’s pleasure but my own.
“You may tell them this; and add, that nothing but force or necessity shall stir me one step towards places to which they would wring me.
“If your literary matters prosper let me know. If ‘Beppo’ pleases, you shall have more in a year or two in the same mood. And so ‘Good morrow to you, good Master Lieutenant.’ Yours,” &c.
LETTER 317. TO MR. MOORE.
“Palazzo Mocenigo, Canal Grande,
“Venice, June 1. 1818.
“Your letter is almost the only news, as yet, of Canto fourth, and it has by no means settled its fate, — at least, does not tell me how the ‘Poeshie’ has been received by the public. But I suspect, no great things, — firstly, from Murray’s ‘horrid stillness;’ secondly, from what you say about the stanzas running into each other, which I take not to be yours, but a notion you have been dinned with among the Blues. The fact is, that the terza rima of the Italians, which always runs on and in, may have led me into experiments, and carelessness into conceit — or conceit into carelessness — in either of which events failure will be probable, and my fair woman, ‘superne,’ end in a fish; so that Childe Harold will be like the mermaid, my family crest, with the fourth Canto for a tail thereunto. I won’t quarrel with the public, however, for the ‘Bulgars’ are generally right; and if I miss now, I may hit another time: — and so, the ‘gods give us joy.’
“You like Beppo, that’s right. I have not had the Fudges yet, but live in hopes. I need not say that your successes are mine. By the way, Lydia White is here, and has just borrowed my copy of ‘Lalla Rookh.’
“Hunt’s letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you might expect from his situation. He is a good man, with some poetical elements in his chaos; but spoilt by the Christ-Church Hospital and a Sunday newspaper, — to say nothing of the Surrey gaol, which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When I saw ‘Rimini’ in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, or upon system, or some such cant; and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless: so I said no more to him, and very little to any one else.
“He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to be old English; and we may say of it as Aimwell says of Captain Gibbet’s regiment, when the Captain calls it an ‘old corps,’— ‘the oldest in Europe, if I may judge by your uniform.’ He sent out his ‘Foliage’ by Percy Shelley * * *, and, of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by Self-love upon a Night-mare, I think this monstrous Sagittary the most prodigious. He (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of himself in the Morning Post) for Vates in both senses, or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so? — Did you read his skimble-skamble about * * being at the head of his own profession, in the eyes of those who followed it? I thought that poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession; — but be it one, is that * * * * * * at the head of your profession in your eyes? I’ll be curst if he is of mine, or ever shall be. He is the only one of us (but of us he is not) whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take Scott, Campbell, Crabbe, or you, or me, or any of the living, and throne him; — but not this new Jacob Behmen, this * * * * * * whose pride might have kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted as his soi-disant poetry.
“But Leigh Hunt is a good man, and a good father — see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt; — a good husband — see his Sonnet to Mrs. Hunt; — a good friend — see his Epistles to different people; — and a great coxcomb and a very vulgar person in every thing about him. But that’s not his fault, but of circumstances.
“I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan but that of Savage. Recollect, however, that the life of such a man may be made far more amusing than if he had been a Wilberforce; — and this without offending the living, or insulting the dead. The Whigs abuse him; however, he never left them, and such blunderers deserve neither credit nor compassion. As for his creditors, — remember, Sheridan never had a shilling, and was thrown, with great powers and passions, into the thick of the world, and placed upon the pinnacle of success, with no other external means to support him in his elevation. Did Fox * * * pay his debts? — or did Sheridan take a subscription? Was the * *’s drunkenness more excusable than his? Were his intrigues more notorious than those of all his contemporaries? and is his memory to be blasted, and theirs respected? Don’t let yourself be led away by clamour, but compare him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and with none in talent, for he beat them all out and out. Without means, without connection, without character, (which might be false at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation,) he beat them all, in all he ever attempted. But alas, poor human nature! Good night — or rather, morning. It is four, and the dawn gleams over the Grand Canal, and unshadows the Rialto. I must to bed; up all night — but, as George Philpot says, ‘it’s life, though, damme, it
’s life!’ Ever yours, B.
“Excuse errors — no time for revision. The post goes out at noon, and I sha’n’t be up then. I will write again soon about your plan for a publication.”
During the greater part of the period which this last series of letters comprises, he had continued to occupy the same lodgings in an extremely narrow street called the Spezieria, at the house of the linen-draper, to whose lady he devoted so much of his thoughts. That he was, for the time, attached to this person, — as far as a passion so transient can deserve the name of attachment, — is evident from his whole conduct. The language of his letters shows sufficiently how much the novelty of this foreign tie had caught his fancy; and to the Venetians, among whom such arrangements are mere matters of course, the assiduity with which he attended his Signora to the theatre, and the ridottos, was a subject of much amusement. It was with difficulty, indeed, that he could be prevailed upon to absent himself from her so long as to admit of that hasty visit to the Immortal City, out of which one of his own noblest titles to immortality sprung; and having, in the space of a few weeks, drunk in more inspiration from all he saw than, in a less excited state, possibly, he might have imbibed in years, he again hurried back, without extending his journey to Naples, — having written to the fair Marianna to meet him at some distance from Venice.
Besides some seasonable acts of liberality to the husband, who had, it seems, failed in trade, he also presented to the lady herself a handsome set of diamonds; and there is an anecdote related in reference to this gift, which shows the exceeding easiness and forbearance of his disposition towards those who had acquired any hold on his heart. A casket, which was for sale, being one day offered to him, he was not a little surprised on discovering them to be the same jewels which he had, not long before, presented to his fair favourite, and which had, by some unromantic means, found their way back into the market. Without enquiring, however, any further into the circumstances, he generously repurchased the casket and presented it to the lady once more, good-humouredly taxing her with the very little estimation in which, as it appeared, she held his presents.
