Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  “June 8. 1822.

  “You give me no explanation of your intention as to the ‘Vision of Quevedo Redivivus,’ one of my best things: indeed, you are altogether so abstruse and undecided lately, that I suppose you mean me to write ‘John Murray, Esq., a Mystery,’ — a composition which would not displease the clergy nor the trade. I by no means wish you to do what you don’t like, but merely to say what you will do. The Vision must be published by some one. As to ‘clamours,’ the die is cast: and ‘come one, come all,’ we will fight it out — at least one of us.”

  LETTER 497. TO MR. MOORE.

  “Montenero, Villa Dupoy, near Leghorn, June 8. 1822.

  “I have written to you twice through the medium of Murray, and on one subject, trite enough, — the loss of poor little Allegra by a fever; on which topic I shall say no more — there is nothing but time.

  “A few days ago, my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at Harrow,) better than any (male) thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately. * * * Do you recollect, in the year of revelry 1814, the pleasantest parties and balls all over London? and not the least so at * *’s. Do you recollect your singing duets with Lady * *, and my flirtation with Lady * *, and all the other fooleries of the time? while * * was sighing, and Lady * * ogling him with her clear hazel eyes. But eight years have passed, and, since that time, * * has * * * * * *; — has run away with * * * * *; and mysen (as my Nottinghamshire friends call themselves) might as well have thrown myself out of the window while you were singing, as intermarried where I did. You and * * * * have come off the best of us. I speak merely of my marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I have been much more happy, on the whole, since, than I ever could have been with * *.

  “I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful transcription of the impartial Galignani. I suppose the long and short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won’t, for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was irresistible; and I can’t blame him, knowing what human nature is. I shall make but one remark: — what does he mean by elaborate? The whole volume was written with the greatest rapidity, in the midst of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of ‘Lara,’ which, you know, was written amidst balls and fooleries, and after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the sovereigns. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a merit, but it is a fact.

  “Yours ever and truly, N.B.

  “P.S. You see the great advantage of my new signature; — it may either stand for ‘Nota Bene’ or ‘Noel Byron,’ and, as such, will save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron, and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, ‘She was determined to send or take something which I had about me to America.’ There is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you! However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much from their enthusiasm for my ‘Poeshie,’ as their belief in my dislike to the English, — in which I have the satisfaction to coincide with them. I would rather, however, have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.”

  LETTER 498. TO MR. ELLICE.

  “Montenero, Leghorn, June 12. 1822.

  “My dear Ellice,

  “It is a long time since I have written to you, but I have not forgotten your kindness, and I am now going to tax it — I hope not too highly — but don’t be alarmed, it is not a loan, but information which I am about to solicit. By your extensive connections, no one can have better opportunities of hearing the real state of South America — I mean Bolivar’s country. I have many years had transatlantic projects of settlement, and what I could wish from you would be some information of the best course to pursue, and some letters of recommendation in case I should sail for Angostura. I am told that land is very cheap there; but though I have no great disposable funds to vest in such purchases, yet my income, such as it is, would be sufficient in any country (except England) for all the comforts of life, and for most of its luxuries. The war there is now over, and as I do not go there to speculate, but to settle, without any views but those of independence and the enjoyment of the common civil rights, I should presume such an arrival would not be unwelcome.

  “All I request of you is, not to discourage nor encourage, but to give me such a statement as you think prudent and proper. I do not address my other friends upon this subject, who would only throw obstacles in my way, and bore me to return to England; which I never will do, unless compelled by some insuperable cause. I have a quantity of furniture, books, &c. &c. &c. which I could easily ship from Leghorn; but I wish to ‘look before I leap’ over the Atlantic. Is it true that for a few thousand dollars a large tract of land may be obtained? I speak of South America, recollect. I have read some publications on the subject, but they seemed violent and vulgar party productions. Please to address your answer to me at this place, and believe me ever and truly yours,” &c.

  About this time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist, who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the following account of his noble sitter: —

  “On the day appointed, I arrived at two o’clock, and began the picture. I found him a bad sitter. He talked all the time, and asked a multitude of questions about America — how I liked Italy, what I thought of the Italians, &c. When he was silent, he was a better sitter than before; for he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for Childe Harold. In about an hour our first sitting terminated, and I returned to Leghorn, scarcely able to persuade myself that this was the haughty misanthrope whose character had always appeared so enveloped in gloom and mystery; for I do not remember ever to have met with manners more gentle and attractive.

  “The next day I returned and had another sitting of an hour, during which he seemed anxious to know what I should make of my undertaking. Whilst I was painting, the window from which I received my light became suddenly darkened, and I heard a voice exclaim ‘è troppo bello!’ I turned, and discovered a beautiful female stooping down to look in, the ground on the outside being on a level with the bottom of the window. Her long golden hair hung down about her face and shoulders, her complexion was exquisite, and her smile completed one of the most romantic-looking heads, set off as it was by the bright sun behind it, which I had ever beheld. Lord Byron invited her to come in, and introduced her to me as the Countess Guiccioli. He seemed very fond of her, and I was glad of her presence, for the playful manner which he assumed towards her made him a much better sitter.

  “The next day, I was pleased to find that the progress which I had made in his likeness had given satisfaction, for, when we were alone, he said that he had a particular favour to request of me — would I grant it? I said I should be happy to oblige him; and he enjoined me to the flattering task of painting the Countess Guiccioli’s portrait for him. On the following morning I began it, and, after, they sat alternately. He gave me the whole history of his connection with her, and said that he hoped it would last for ever; at any rate, it should not be his fault if it did not. His other attachments had been broken off by no fault of his.

  “I was by this time sufficiently intimate with him to answer his question as to what I thought of him before I had seen him. He laughed much at the idea which I had formed of him, and said, �
�Well, you find me like other people, do you not?’ He often afterwards repeated, ‘And so you thought me a finer fellow, did you?’ I remember once telling him, that notwithstanding his vivacity, I thought myself correct in at least one estimate which I had made of him, for I still conceived that he was not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He said the thought was new to him, and that he would make use of it.

  “Lord Byron, and all the party, left Villa Rossa (the name of their house) in a few days, to pack up their things in their house at Pisa. He told me that he should remain a few days there, and desired me, if I could do any thing more to the pictures, to come and stay with him. He seemed at a loss where to go, and was, I thought, on the point of embarking for America. I was with him at Pisa for a few days; but he was so annoyed by the police, and the weather was so hot, that I thought it doubtful whether I could improve the pictures, and, taking my departure one morning before he was up, I wrote him an excuse from Leghorn. Upon the whole, I left him with an impression that he possessed an excellent heart, which had been misconstrued on all hands from little else than a reckless levity of manners, which he took a whimsical pride in opposing to those of other people.”

  LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Pisa, July 6. 1822.

  “I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael to Raphael in the scene itself throughout, for I have only had time to do so in the list of the dramatis personæ, and scratch out all the pencil-marks, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given the ‘Vision of Quevedo Redivivus’ to John Hunt, which will relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his own risk, as it is at his own desire. Give him the corrected copy which Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.

  “Yours,” &c.

  LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Pisa, July 8. 1822.

  “Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps, better not publish in the same volume the Po and Rimini translation.

  “I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the ‘Vision of Judgment,’ which you will hand over to him. Also the ‘Pulci,’ original and Italian, and any prose tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work, to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in your care, except the volume now in the press, and the manuscript purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as they are wanted.

  “With regard to what you say about your ‘want of memory,’ I can only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.

  “It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission from my dictatress to continue it, — provided always it was to be more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,” &c.

  LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.

  “Pisa, July 12. 1822.

  “I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an answer to that point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray’s hands, he and the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy, having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have that again, or a copy correct.

  “I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money, could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual to pretend to surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.

  “Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I have promised to contribute; and in the first number the ‘Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,’ will probably appear, with other articles.

  “Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray, answer this letter immediately.

  “Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him handsomely — any lyrical, irical, or what you please.

  “Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been disposing of money in Ireland ‘sans authority of the Committee.’ I suppose it will end in Callaghan’s calling out the Committee, the chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.

  “When you can spare time from duetting, coquetting, and claretting with your Hibernians of both sexes, let me have a line from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition of your new poesy.”

  LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.

  “Pisa, August 8. 1822.

  “You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a month yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it.

  “I have not seen the thing you mention, and only heard of it casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.

  “With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in Galignani’s extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a good while ago, some remarks on their review of Don Juan, but saying very little about themselves, and these were not published. If you think that I ought to follow your example(and I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little I did write (and never published) at Murray’s; — it contained much more about Southey than about the Blacks.

  “If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins’s book, I should not care much about publishing my Memoir now, should it be necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in that case, I should like to look over the press myself. Let me know what you think, or whether I had better not; — at least, not the second part, which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.

  “I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much
of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.

  “What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift’s line, ‘Let me have a barrack — a fig for the clergy?’ This seems to have been his reverence’s motto. * * *

  “Yours,” &c.

  LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.

  “Pisa, August 27. 1822.

  “It is boring to trouble you with ‘such small gear;’ but it must be owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My reasons, like Vellum’s, ‘are threefold:’ — First, I doubt the accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second, I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an obnoxious politician’s name in their lists; and third, I feel pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not coming forward with the others in her distresses.