Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  “I have here my natural daughter, by name Allegra, — a pretty little girl enough, and reckoned like papa. Her mamma is English, — but it is a long story, and — there’s an end. She is about twenty months old.

  “I have finished the first Canto (a long one, of about 180 octaves) of a poem in the style and manner of ‘Beppo’, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is called ‘Don Juan’, and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not — at least, as far as it has yet gone — too free for these very modest days. However, I shall try the experiment, anonymously, and if it don’t take, it will be discontinued. It is dedicated to S * * in good, simple, savage verse, upon the * * * *’s politics, and the way he got them. But the bore of copying it out is intolerable; and if I had an amanuensis he would be of no use, as my writing is so difficult to decipher.

  “My poem’s Epic, and is meant to be Divided in twelve books, each book containing With love and war, a heavy gale at sea — A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning — New characters, &c. &c.

  The above are two stanzas, which I send you as a brick of my Babel, and by which you can judge of the texture of the structure.

  “In writing the Life of Sheridan, never mind the angry lies of the humbug Whigs. Recollect that he was an Irishman and a clever fellow, and that we have had some very pleasant days with him. Don’t forget that he was at school at Harrow, where, in my time, we used to show his name — R.B. Sheridan, 1765, — as an honour to the walls. Remember * *. Depend upon it that there were worse folks going, of that gang, than ever Sheridan was.

  “What did Parr mean by ‘haughtiness and coldness?’ I listened to him with admiring ignorance, and respectful silence. What more could a talker for fame have? — they don’t like to be answered. It was at Payne Knight’s I met him, where he gave me more Greek than I could carry away. But I certainly meant to (and did) treat him with the most respectful deference.

  “I wish you a good night, with a Venetian benediction, ‘Benedetto te, e la terra che ti fara!’— ‘May you be blessed, and the 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 Faustina’s, and the figure of a Juno — tall and energetic as a Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming in the moonlight — one of those women who may be made any thing. I am sure if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it where I told her, — and into me, if I offended her. I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder that I don’t in that case. I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me * * Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may come yet. There are others more to be blamed than * * * *, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly.”

  LETTER 323. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, September 24. 1818.

  “In the one hundredth and thirty-second stanza of Canto fourth, the stanza runs in the manuscript —

  “And thou, who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!

  and not ‘lost,’ which is nonsense, as what losing a scale means, I know not; but leaving an unbalanced scale, or a scale unbalanced, is intelligible. Correct this, I pray, — not for the public, or the poetry, but I do not choose to have blunders made in addressing any of the deities so seriously as this is addressed.

  “Yours, &c.

  “P.S. In the translation from the Spanish, alter

  “In increasing squadrons flew,

  to —

  To a mighty squadron grew.

  “What does ‘thy waters wasted them’ mean (in the Canto)? That is not me. Consult the MS. always.

  “I have written the first Canto (180 octave stanzas) of a poem in the style of Beppo, and have Mazeppa to finish besides.

  “In referring to the mistake in stanza 132. I take the opportunity to desire that in future, in all parts of my writings referring to religion, you will be more careful, and not forget that it is possible that in addressing the Deity a blunder may become a blasphemy; and I do not choose to suffer such infamous perversions of my words or of my intentions.

  “I saw the Canto by accident.”

  LETTER 324. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, January 20. 1819.

  “The opinions which I have asked of Mr. H. and others were with regard to the poetical merit, and not as to what they may think due to the cant of the day, which still reads the Bath Guide, Little’s Poems, Prior, and Chaucer, to say nothing of Fielding and Smollet. If published, publish entire, with the above-mentioned exceptions; or you may publish anonymously, or not at all. In the latter event, print 50 on my account, for private distribution.

  “Yours, &c.

  “I have written to Messrs. K. and H. to desire that they will not erase more than I have stated.

  “The second Canto of Don Juan is finished in 206 stanzas.”

  LETTER 325. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, January 25. 1819.

  “You will do me the favour to print privately (for private distribution) fifty copies of ‘Don Juan.’ The list of the men to whom I wish it to be presented, I will send hereafter. The other two poems had best be added to the collective edition: I do not approve of their being published separately. Print Don Juan entire, omitting, of course, the lines on Castlereagh, as I am not on the spot to meet him. I have a second Canto ready, which will be sent by and by. By this post, I have written to Mr. Hobhouse, addressed to your care.

  “Yours, &c.

  “P.S. I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my own self-love and ‘Poeshie;’ but I protest. If the poem has poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is ‘leather and prunello,’ and has never yet affected any human production ‘pro or con.’ Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases. As to the cant of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons. If you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles Second writers; in short, something of most who have written before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. Read him — most of you don’t — but do — and I will forgive you; though the inevitable consequence would be that you would burn all I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain. I wrong Claudian, who was a poet, by naming him with such fellows; but he was the ‘ultimus Romanorum,’ the tail of the comet, and these persons are the tail of an old gown cut into a waistcoat for Jackey; but being both tails, I have compared the one with the other, though very unlike, like all similes. I write in a passion and a sirocco, and I was up till six this morning at the Carnival: but I protest, as I did in my former letter.”

  LETTER 326. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, February 1. 1819.

  “After one of the concluding stanzas of the first Canto of ‘Don Juan,’ which ends with (I forget the number) —

  “To have ... ... when the original is dust, A book, a d —— d bad picture, and worse bust,

  insert the following stanza: —

  “What are the hopes of man, &c.

  “I have written to you several letters, some with additions, and some upon the subject of the poem itself, which my cursed puritanical committee have protested against publishing. But we will circumvent them on that point. I have not yet begun to copy out the second Canto, which is finished, from natural laziness, and the discouragement of the milk and water they have thrown upon the first. I say all this to t
hem as to you, that is, for you to say to them, for I will have nothing underhand. If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced; but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality — the first time I ever heard the word from any body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain that it is the most moral of poems; but if people won’t discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine. I have already written to beg that in any case you will print fifty for private distribution. I will send you the list of persons to whom it is to be sent afterwards.

  “Within this last fortnight I have been rather indisposed with a rebellion of stomach, which would retain nothing, (liver, I suppose,) and an inability, or fantasy, not to be able to eat of any thing with relish but a kind of Adriatic fish called ‘scampi,’ which happens to be the most indigestible of marine viands. However, within these last two days, I am better, and very truly yours.”

  LETTER 327. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, April 6. 1819.

  “The second Canto of Don Juan was sent, on Saturday last, by post, in four packets, two of four, and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas, octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments, except those mentioned about Castlereagh and * * * *. You sha’n’t make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail: but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine.

  “So you and Mr. Foscolo, &c. want me to undertake what you call a ‘great work?’ an Epic Poem, I suppose, or some such pyramid. I’ll try no such thing; I hate tasks. And then ‘seven or eight years!’ God send us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one’s years can’t be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a ditcher. And works, too! — is Childe Harold nothing? You have so many ‘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, for I’ll make fifty Cantos.

  “And Foscolo, too! Why does he not do something more than the Letters of Ortis, and a tragedy, and pamphlets? He has good fifteen years more at his command than I have: what has he done all that time? — proved his genius, doubtless, but not fixed its fame, nor done his utmost.

  “Besides, I mean to write my best work in Italian, and it will take me nine years more thoroughly to master the language; and then if my fancy exist, and I exist too, I will try what I can do really. As to the estimation of the English which you talk of, let them calculate what it is worth, before they insult me with their insolent condescension.

  “I have not written for their pleasure. If they are pleased, it is that they chose to be so; I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will I make ‘Ladies’ books ‘al dilettar le femine e la plebe.’ I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not for their ‘sweet voices.’

  “I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without any search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason or judgment, beyond the caprice of their good pleasure, threw down the image from its pedestal; it was not broken with the fall, and they would, it seems, again replace it, — but they shall not.

  “You ask about my health: about the beginning of the year I was in a state of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of stomach that nothing remained upon it; and I was obliged to reform my ‘way of life,’ which was conducting me from the ‘yellow leaf’ to the ground, with all deliberate speed. I am better in health and morals, and very much yours, &c.

  “P.S. I have read Hodgson’s ‘Friends.’ He is right in defending Pope against the bastard pelicans of the poetical winter day, who add insult to their parricide, by sucking the blood of the parent of English real poetry, — poetry without fault, — and then spurning the bosom which fed them.”

  It was about the time when the foregoing letter was written, and when, as we perceive, like the first return of reason after intoxication, a full consciousness of some of the evils of his late libertine course of life had broken upon him, that an attachment differing altogether, both in duration and devotion, from any of those that, since the dream of his boyhood, had inspired him, gained an influence over his mind which lasted through his few remaining years; and, undeniably wrong and immoral (even allowing for the Italian estimate of such frailties) as was the nature of the connection to which this attachment led, we can hardly perhaps, — taking into account the far worse wrong from which it rescued and preserved him, — consider it otherwise than as an event fortunate both for his reputation and happiness.

  The fair object of this last, and (with one signal exception) only real love of his whole life, was a young Romagnese lady, the daughter of Count Gamba, of Ravenna, and married, but a short time before Lord Byron first met with her, to an old and wealthy widower, of the same city, Count Guiccioli. Her husband had in early life been the friend of Alfieri, and had distinguished himself by his zeal in promoting the establishment of a National Theatre, in which the talents of Alfieri and his own wealth were to be combined. Notwithstanding his age, and a character, as it appears, by no means reputable, his great opulence rendered him an object of ambition among the mothers of Ravenna, who, according to the too frequent maternal practice, were seen vying with each other in attracting so rich a purchaser for their daughters, and the young Teresa Gamba, not yet sixteen, and just emancipated from a convent, was the selected victim.

  The first time Lord Byron had ever seen this lady was in the autumn of 1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at the house of the Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array, and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. At this time, however, no acquaintance ensued between them; — it was not till the spring of the present year that, at an evening party of Madame Benzoni’s, they were introduced to each other. The love that sprung out of this meeting was instantaneous and mutual, though with the usual disproportion of sacrifice between the parties; such an event being, to the man, but one of the many scenes of life, while, with woman, it generally constitutes the whole drama. The young Italian found herself suddenly inspired with a passion of which, till that moment, her mind could not have formed the least idea; — she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became its slave. If at the outset, too, less slow to be won than an Englishwoman, no sooner did she begin to understand the full despotism of the passion than her heart shrunk from it as something terrible, and she would have escaped, but that the chain was already around her.

  No words, however, can describe so simply and feelingly as her own, the strong impression which their first meeting left upon her mind: —

  “I became acquainted (says Madame Guiccioli) with Lord Byron in the April of 1819: — he was introduced to me at Venice, by the Countess Benzoni, at one of that lady’s parties. This introduction, which had so much influence over the lives of us both, took place contrary to our wishes, and had been permitted by us only from courtesy. For myself, more fatigued than usual that evening on account of the late hours they keep at Venice, I went with great repugnance to this party, and purely in obedience to Count Guiccioli. Lord Byron, too, who was averse to forming new acquaintances, — alleging that he had entirely renounced all attachments, and was unwilling any more to expose himself to their consequences, — on being requested by the countess Benzoni to allow himself to be presented to me, refused, and, at last, only assented from a desire to oblige her.

  “
His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so different and so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression upon me. From that evening, during the whole of my subsequent stay at Venice, we met every day.”

  LETTER 328. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Venice, May 15. 1819.

  “I have got your extract, and the ‘Vampire.’ I need not say it is not mine. There is a rule to go by: you are my publisher (till we quarrel), and what is not published by you is not written by me.

  “Next week I set out for Romagna — at least, in all probability. You had better go on with the publications, without waiting to hear farther, for I have other things in my head. ‘Mazeppa’ and the ‘Ode’ separate? — what think you? Juan anonymous, without the Dedication; for I won’t be shabby, and attack Southey under cloud of night.

  “Yours,” &c.

  In another letter on the subject of the Vampire, I find the following interesting particulars: —

  TO MR. —— .

  “The story of Shelley’s agitation is true. I can’t tell what seized him, for he don’t want courage. He was once with me in a gale of wind, in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St. Gingo. We were five in the boat — a servant, two boatmen, and ourselves. The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can’t swim. I stripped off my coat, made him strip off his, and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being myself an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him — unless we got smashed against the rocks, which were high and sharp, with an awkward surf on them at that minute. We were then about a hundred yards from shore, and the boat in peril. He answered me with the greatest coolness, ‘that he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself, and begged not to trouble me.’ Luckily, the boat righted, and, bailing, we got round a point into St. Gingo, where the inhabitants came down and embraced the boatmen on their escape, the wind having been high enough to tear up some huge trees from the Alps above us, as we saw next day.