Part 35 (2/2)

TO JOHN MURRAY

_No bid for sweet voices_

Venice, 6 _April_, 1819.

The second canto of Don Juan was sent, on Sat.u.r.day 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.... You shan'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 d.a.m.ned cutting and slas.h.i.+ng. 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, etc., 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'! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion into as many modern tragedies. Since you want _length_, you shall have enough of _Juan_, for I'll make fifty cantos....

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 fullness of my mind, from pa.s.sion, 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, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without my search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason or judgement, 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 ... 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.--

PS. I have read Hodgson's '_Friends_'. He is right in defending Pope against the b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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.

TO THE SAME

_The cemetery at Bologna_

Bologna, 7 _June_, 1819.

... I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the grave-digger in _Hamlet_. He has a collection of capuchins'

skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them, said, 'This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at forty--one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime, and then boiled it. Here it is, teeth and all, in excellent preservation. He was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went, he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively, you might have taken him for a dancer--he joked--he laughed--oh! he was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!'

He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three thousand persons.

In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess Bartorini, dead two centuries ago: he said that, on opening her grave, they had found her hair complete, and 'as yellow as gold'. Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna; for instance:--

'_Martini Luigi Implora pace.'

'Lucrezia Picini Implora eterna quiete_.'

Can anything be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this they _implore_! There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise from the grave--'_implora pace_'. I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall'. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carca.s.s back to your soil. I would not even feed your worms, if I could help it.

So, as Shakespeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk, who died at Venice (see _Richard II_), that he, after fighting

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