Volume II Part 67 (1/2)

My Dear Webster,--I am, you know, a detestable correspondent, and write to no one person whatever; you therefore cannot attribute my silence to any thing but want of good breeding or good taste, and not to any more atrocious cause; and as I confess the fault to be entirely mine--why--you will pardon it.

I have ordered a copy of the 'Giaour' (which is nearly doubled in quant.i.ty in this edition) to be sent, and I will first scribble my name in the t.i.tle page. Many and sincere thanks for your good opinion of book, and (I hope to add) author.

Rushton shall attend you whenever you please, though I should like him to stay a few weeks, and help my other people in forwarding my chattels.

Your taking him is no less a favor to me than him; and I trust he will behave well. If not, your remedy is very simple; only don't let him be idle; honest I am sure he is, and I believe good-hearted and quiet. No pains has been spared, and a good deal of expense incurred in his education; accounts and mensuration, etc., he ought to know, and I believe he does.

I write this near London, but your answer will reach me better in Bennet Street, etc. (as before). I am going very soon, and if you would do the same thing--as far as Sicily--I am sure you would not be sorry. My sister, Mrs. L. goes with me--her spouse is obliged to retrench for a few years (but _he_ stays at home); so that his _link boy_ prophecy (if ever he made it) recoils upon himself.

I am truly glad to hear of Lady Frances's good health. Have you added to your family? Pray make my best respects acceptable to her Ladys.h.i.+p.

Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear from you as soon and as fully as you please. Ever most truly yours,

BYRON.

322.--To Thomas Moore.

Bennet Street, August 22, 1813.

As our late--I might say, deceased--correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, _paulo majora_, prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first--criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood [1].

Mad'e. de Stael Holstein has lost one of her young barons [2], who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,--kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be,--but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could--write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance--and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.

In a ”mail-coach copy” of the _Edinburgh_ [3] I perceive _The Giaour_ is second article. The numbers are still in the Leith smack--_pray which way is the wind?_ The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey _in love_ [4];--you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several _quarters, eperdument amoureux_. Seriously--as Winifred Jenkins [5]

says of Lismahago--Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) ”has done the handsome thing by me,” and I say _nothing_. But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By the by, I was call'd _in_ the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and--after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one's fellow-creatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for nothing,--I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after [6].

One was a peer, the other a friend unt.i.tled, and both fond of high play;--and one, I can swear for, though very mild, ”not fearful,” and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane. They both conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of _pain_ as soon as I could.

There is an American _Life_ of G. F. Cooke [7], _Scurra_ deceased, lately published. Such a book!--I believe, since _Drunken Barnaby's Journal_ [8] nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and tap-room--drams and the drama--brandy, whisky-punch, and, _latterly_, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous,--first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless;--but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are too regularly registered.

All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very perplexing--not so much for the thing itself as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places, even from England. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly spent on sh.o.r.e as in the s.h.i.+p; but one likes to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;--not stay, if I can help it, but where to go? Sligo is for the North;--a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a m.u.f.f, or else tumbling into one's neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief! If the winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller?--Give me a _sun_, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and _my_ Heaven is as easily made as your Persian's [9].

_The Giaour_ is now a thousand and odd lines. ”Lord f.a.n.n.y spins a thousand such a day,” [10] eh, Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,

BYRON.

P. S.--I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant s.e.x; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, sc.r.a.pe [11] than any of the last twelve months,--and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women.

I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left Newstead, you reside near it. Did you ever see it? _do_--but don't tell me that you like it. If I had known of such intellectual neighbourhood, I don't think I should have quitted it. You could have come over so often, as a bachelor,--for it was a thorough bachelor's mansion--plenty of wine and such sordid sensualities--with books enough, room enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except the la.s.ses) that would have suited you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had built myself a bath and a _vault_--and now I sha'n't even be buried in it. It is odd that we can't even be certain of a _grave_, at least a particular one. I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there, which I can repeat almost now,--and asking all kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see him--and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with that volume. Adieu--I commit you to the care of the G.o.ds--Hindoo, Scandinavian, and h.e.l.lenic!

P.S. 2d.--There is an excellent review of Grimm's _Correspondence_ and Madame de Stael in this No. of the _E[dinburgh] R[eview]_ [12]. Jeffrey, himself, was my critic last year; but this is, I believe, by another hand. I hope you are going on with your _grand coup_--pray do--or that d.a.m.ned Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of his poem in MS., and he really surpa.s.ses every thing beneath Ta.s.so. Hodgson is translating him _against_ another bard. You and (I believe Rogers,) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be referred to as judges between the twain,--that is, if you accept the office. Conceive our different opinions! I think we, most of us (I am talking very impudently, you will think--_us_, indeed!) have a way of our own,--at least, you and Scott certainly have.

[Footnote 1: The fight, in which Harry Harmer, ”the Coppersmith”