TO THOMAS MOORE, March 25, 1812

Know all men by these presents, that you, Thomas Moore, stand indicted--no--invited, by special and particular solicitation, to Lady Caroline Lamb's to-morrow evening, at half-past nine o'clock, where you will meet with a civil reception and decent entertainment. Pray, come--I was so examined after you this morning, that I entreat you to answer in person,

Believe me, etc.

TO THOMAS MOORE May 8, 1812

I am too proud of being your friend, to care with whom I am linked in your estimation, and, God knows, I want friends more at this time than at any other. I am 'taking care of myself' to no great purpose. If you knew my situation in every point of view, you would excuse apparent and unintentional neglect. I shall leave town, I think; but do not you leave it without seeing me. I wish you, from my soul, every happiness you can wish yourself; and I think you have taken the road to secure it. Peace be with you! I fear she has abandoned me.

Ever, etc.

TO THOMAS MOORE May 20, 1812

On Monday, after sitting up all night, I saw Bellingham launched into eternity, and at three the same day I saw ------ [Caroline Lamb?] launched into the country. I believe, in the beginning of June, I shall be down for a few days in Notts. If so, I shall beat you up en passant with Hobhouse, who is endeavouring, like you and every body else, to keep me out of scrapes.

I meant to have written you a long letter, but I find I cannot. If any thing remarkable occurs, you will hear it from me--if good; if bad, there are plenty to tell it. In the mean time, do you be happy.

Ever yours, etc.

P.S.--My best wishes and respects to Mrs. Moore;--she is beautiful. I may say so even to you, for I was never more struck with a countenance.

TO LADY CAROLINE LAMB [Undated.]

I never supposed you artful: we are all selfish,--nature did that for us. But even when you attempt deceit occasionally, you cannot maintain it, which is all the better; want of success will curb the tendency. Every word you utter, every line you write, proves you to be either sincere or a fool. Now as I know you are not the one, I must believe you the other. I never knew a woman with greater or more pleasing talents, general as in a woman they should be, something of everything, and too much of nothing. But these are unfortunately coupled with a total want of common conduct. For instance, the note to your page--do you suppose I delivered it? or did you mean that I should? I did not of course.

Then your heart, my poor Caro (what a little volcano!), that pours lava through your veins; and yet I cannot wish it a bit colder, to make a marble slab of, as you sometimes see (to understand my foolish metaphor) brought in vases, tables, etc., from Vesuvius, when hardened after an eruption. To drop my detestable tropes and figures, you know I have always thought you the cleverest, most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous, fascinating little being that lives now, or ought to have lived 2000 years ago. I won't talk to you of beauty; I am no judge. But our beauties cease to be so when near you, and therefore you have either some, or something better. And now, Caro, this nonsense is the first and last compliment (if it be such) I ever paid you. You have often reproached me as wanting in that respect; but others will make up the deficiency.

Come to Lord Grey's; at least do not let me keep you away. All that you so often say, I feel. Can more be said or felt? This same prudence is tiresome enough; but one must maintain it, or what can one do to be saved? Keep to it.

TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, St. James's Street, July 6,1812

Sir,

I have just been honoured with your letter.--I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the 'evil works of my nonage,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your praise; and now, waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities: he preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I thought the Lay. He said his own opinion was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you more particularly the poet of Princes, as they never appeared more fascinating than in Marmion and the Lady of the Lake. He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both--so that (with the exception of the Turks and your humble servant) you were in very good company. I defy Murray to have exaggerated his Royal Highness's opinion of your powers, nor can I pretend to enumerate all he said on the subject; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman.

This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, 'no business there.' To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very fortunately and sincerely,

Your obliged and obedient servant, BYRON

P.S.--Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, and just after a journey.

TO LADY MELBOURNE, Cheltenham, September 13, 1812

My dear Lady M.,

The end of Lady B[essborough]'s letter shall be the beginning of mine. 'For Heaven's sake do not lose your hold on him.' Pray don't, I repeat, and assure you it is a very firm one 'but the yoke is easy, and the burthen is light,' to use one of my scriptural phrases.

So far from being ashamed of being governed like Lord Delacour or any other Lord or master, I am always but too happy to find one to regulate or misregulate me, and I am as docile as a dromedary, and can bear almost as much. Will you undertake me? If you are sincere (which I still a little hesitate in believing), give me but time, let hers retain her in Ireland--the 'gayer' the better. I want her just to be sufficiently gay that I may have enough to bear me out on my own part. Grant me but till December, and if I do not disenchant the Dulcinea and Don Quichotte, both, then I must attack the windmills, and leave the land in quest of adventures. In the meantime I must, and do write the greatest absurdities to keep her 'gay,' and the more so because the last epistle informed me that 'eight guineas, a mail, and a packet could soon bring her to London,' a threat which immediately called forth a letter worthy of the Grand Cyrus or the Duke of York, or any other hero of Madame Scudery or Mrs. Clarke.

Poor Lady Bessborough! with her hopes and her fears. In fact it is no jest for her, or indeed any of us. I must let you into one little secret--her folly half did this. At the commencement she piqued that 'vanity' (which it would be the vainest thing in the world to deny) by telling me she was certain I was not beloved, 'that I was only led on for the sake of etc. etc.' This raised a devil between us, which now will only be laid, I really do believe, in the Red Sea; I made no answer, but determined, not to pursue, for pursuit it was not, but to sit still, and in a week after I was convinced--not that [Caroline] loved me, for I do not believe in the existence of what is called Love--but that any other man in my situation would have believed that he was loved.

Now, my dear Lady M., you are all out as to my real sentiments. I was, am, and shall be, I fear, attached to another, one to whom I have never said much, but have never lost sight of, and the whole of this interlude has been the result of circumstances which it may be too late to regret. Do you suppose that at my time of life, were I so very far gone, that I should not be in Ireland, or at least have followed into Wales, as it was hinted was expected. Now they have crossed the Channel, I feel anything but regret. I told you in my two last, that I did not 'like any other, etc. etc.' I deceived you and myself in saying so; there was, and is one whom I wished to marry, had not this affair intervened, or had not some occurrences rather discouraged me. When our drama was 'rising' ('I'll be d--d if it falls off,' I may say with Sir Fretful), in the 5th Act, it was no time to hesitate. I had made up my mind to bear the consequences of my own folly; honour, pity, and a kind of affection all forbade me to shrink, but now if I can honourably be off, if you are not deceiving me, and if she does not take some accursed step to precipitate her own inevitable fall (if not with me, with some less lucky successor!--if these impossibilities can be got over, all will be well. If not--she will travel.

As I have said so much, I may as well say all. The woman I mean is Miss Milbanke; I know nothing of her fortune, and I am told that her father is ruined, but my own will, when my Rochdale arrangements are closed, be sufficient for both. My debts are not 25,000 pounds, and the deuce is in it, if with R[ochdale] and the surplus of N[ewstead], I could not contrive to be as independent as half the peerage.

I know little of her, and have not the most distant reason to suppose that I am at all a favourite in that quarter. But I never saw a woman whom I esteemed so much. But that chance is gone, and there's an end.

Now, my dear Lady M., I am completely in your power. I have not deceived you as to ------ [Caroline Lamb]. I hope you will not deem it vanity, when I soberly say that it would have been want of gallantry, though the acme of virtue, if I had played the Scipio on this occasion. If through your means, or any means, I can be free, or at least change my fetters, my regard and admiration would not be increased, but my gratitude would. In the meantime, it is by no means unfelt for what you have already done.

To Lady B[essborough] I could not say all this, for she would with the best intentions make the most absurd use of it. What a miserable picture does her letter present of this daughter! She seems afraid to know her, and, blind herself, writes in such a manner as to open the eyes of all others.

I am still here in Holland's house, quiet and alone, without any wish to add to my acquaintances. Your departure was, I assure you, much more regretted than that of any of your lineals or collaterals, so do not you go to Ireland, or I shall follow you o'er 'flood and fen,' a complete Ignis fatuus--that is I, the epithet will not apply to you, so we will divide the expression; you would be the light, and I the fool.

I send you back the letter, and this fearful ream of my own. Lady Caroline is suspicious about our counter-plots, and I am obliged to be as treacherous as Talleyrand, but remember that treachery is truth to you; I write as rarely as I can, but when I do, I must lie like George Rose. Your name I never mention when I can help it; and all my amatory tropes and figures are exhausted.

I have a glimmering of hope. I had lost it--it is renewed--all depends on it; her worst enemy could not wish her such a fate as now to be thrown back upon me.

Yours ever most truly,

P.S.--Dear Lady M.,--Don't think me careless. My correspondence since I was sixteen has not been of a nature to allow of any trust except to a lock and key, and I have of late been doubly guarded. The few letters of yours, and all others in case of the worst, shall be sent back or burnt. Surely after returning the one with Mr. L[amb's]'s message, you will hardly suspect me of wishing to take any advantage; that was the only important one in behalf of my own interests. Think me bad if you please, but not meanly so. Lady B.'s under another cover accompanies this.

TO LADY MELBOURNE, Cheltenham, September 18, 1812

My dear Lady Melbourne,

I only wish you thought your influence worth a 'boast,' I should ask, when it is the highest compliment paid to myself. To you it would be none, for (besides the little value of the thing) you have seen enough to convince you how easily I am governed by anyone's presence, but you would be obeyed even in absence. All persons in this situation are so, from having too much heart, or too little head, one or both. Set mine down according to your calculations. You and yours seem to me much the same as the Ottoman family to the faithful; they frequently change their rulers, but never the reigning race. I am perfectly convinced if I fell in love with a woman of Thibet, she would turn out an emigree cousine of some of you.

You ask, 'Am I sure of myself?' and I answer no, but you are, which I take to be a much better thing. Miss M[ilbanke] I admire because she is a clever woman, an amiable woman, and of high blood, for I have still a few Norman and Scotch inherited prejudices on the last score, were I to marry. As to love, that is done in a week (provided the lady has a reasonable share); besides, marriage goes on better with esteem and confidence than romance, and she is quite pretty enough to be loved by her husband, without being so glaringly beautiful as to attract too many rivals. She always reminds me of 'Emma' in the modern Griselda, and whomever I may marry, that is the woman I would wish to have married. It is odd enough that my acquaintance with Caroline commenced with a confidence on my part about your niece; C. herself (as I have often told her) was then not at all to my taste, nor I (and I may believe her) to hers, and we shall end probably as we began. However, if after all 'it is decreed on high,' that, like James the fatalist, I must be hers, she shall be mine as long as it pleases her, and the circumstances under which she becomes so, will at least make me devote my life to the vain attempt of reconciling her to herself. Wretched as it would render me, she should never know it; the sentence once past, I could never restore that which she had lost, but all the reparation I could make should be made, and the cup drained to the very dregs by myself, so that its bitterness passed from her.

In the meantime, till it is irrevocable, I must and may fairly endeavour to extricate both from a situation which, from our total want of all but selfish considerations, has brought us to the brink of the gulf. Before I sink I will at least have a swim for it, though I wish with all my heart it was the Hellespont instead, or that I could cross this as easily as I did ye other. One reproach I cannot escape. Whatever happens hereafter, she will charge it on me, and so shall I, and I fear that

The first step or error none e'er could recall,
And the woman once fallen for ever must fall
Pursue to the last the career she begun,
And be false unto many, as faithless to one.

Forgive one stanza of my own sad rhymes; you know I never did inflict any upon you before, nor will again.

What think you of Lady Bessborough's last? She is losing those brilliant hopes expressed in the former epistle. I have written three letters to Ireland and cannot compass more, the last to Lady B. herself, in which I never mentioned Lady C.'s name nor yours (if I recollect aright), nor alluded to either. It is an odd thing to say, but I am sure Lady B. will be a little provoked, if I am the first to change, for, like the Governor of Tilbury Fort, although 'the Countess is resolved,' the mother intenerisce un poco, and doubtless will expect her daughter to be adored (like an Irish lease) for a term of 99 years. I say it again, that happy as she must and will be to have it broken off anyhow, she will hate me if I don't break my heart; now is it not so? Laugh--but answer me truly.

I am sorry that Caroline sends you extracts from my epistles. I deserve it for the passage I showed once to you, but remember that was in the outset, and when everything said or sung was exculpatory and innocent and what not. Moreover, recollect what absurdities a man must write to his idol, and that 'garbled extracts' prove nothing without the context; for my own part I declare that I recollect no such proposal of an epistolary truce, and the gambols at divers houses of entertainment with ye express, etc., tend ye rather to confirm my statement. But I cannot be sure, or answerable for all I have said or unsaid, since 'Jove' himself (some with Mrs. Malaprop would read Job) has forgotten to 'laugh at our perjuries.' I am certain that I tremble for the trunkfuls of my contradictions, since, like a minister or a woman, she may one day exhibit them in some magazine or some quartos of villainous memories written in her 7000th love-fit.

Now, dear Lady M., my paper spares you.

Believe me, with great regard, Yours ever,
B.

P.S;--In your last you say you are 'surrounded by fools;' Why then 'motley's the only wear.'

Oh that I were a fool, a motley fool;
I am ambitious of a motley coat.

Well, will you answer, 'Thou shalt have one.'

Chi va piano va sano,
E chi va sano va lontano.

[He who goes quietly, goes healthily,
And he who goes healthily, goes a long way.]

My progress has been 'lontano,' but alas! ye 'sano' and 'piano' are past praying for.

TO MR. WILLIAM BANKES, Cheltenham, September 28, 1812

My dear Bankes,

. . . . You heard that Newstead is sold--the sum 140,000 pounds; sixty to remain in mortgage on the estate for three years, paying interest, of course. Rochdale is also likely to do well--so my worldly matters are mending. I have been here some time drinking the waters, simply because there are waters to drink, and they are very medicinal, and sufficiently disgusting. In a few days I set out for Lord Jersey's, but return here, where I am quite alone, go out very little, and enjoy in its fullest extent the dolce far niente. What you are about I cannot guess, even from your date;--not dauncing to the sound of the gitourney in the Halls of the Lowthers? one of whom is here, ill, poor thing, with a phthisic. I heard that you passed through here (at the sordid inn where I first alighted) the very day before I arrived in these parts. We had a very pleasant set here; at first the Jerseys, Melbournes, Cowpers, and Hollands, but all gone; and the only persons I know are the Rawdons and Oxfords, with some later acquaintances of less brilliant descent.

But I do not trouble them much: and as for your rooms and your assemblies 'they are not dreamed of in our philosophy!!'--Did you read of a sad accident in the Wye t' other day? A dozen drowned; and Mr. Rossoe, a corpulent gentleman, preserved by a boat-hook or an eel-spear, begged, when he heard his wife was saved--no--lost--to be thrown in again!!--as if he could not have thrown himself in, had he wished it; but this passes for a trait of sensibility. What strange beings men are, in and out of the Wye! . . .

Ever yours most affectionately,
Byron [in Greek].

TO LADY MELBOURNE, Eywood, Presteign, November 6, 1812

. . . . Seriously (and I am very serious), I have so completely rendered a renewal with C. next to impossible, that you will at least give me credit for sincerity; and to mend the matter, all this is infinitely more to my taste than the A[nnabella] scheme, to which my principal inducement was the tie to yourself, which I confess would have delighted me.

I have had a tremulous letter from Mrs. [George] L[amb], who is in a panic about C. This I have answered, and announced, as a simple piece of information, that I have taken a seat in Herefordshire, an intimation which, with 'Lady Blarney's' marginal notes, will have a miraculous effect on the arrival of Pandora (and her boxes of evil for all her acquaintance) at Tixal.

So, a new accusation of imposition! At M[iddleton], and before--my memory really fails me--I never laughed at P. (by the bye, this is an initial which might puzzle posterity when our correspondence bursts forth in the 20th century), nor can I possibly pronounce where all was 'proper' who was the 'properest,' but I am sure no one can regret the general propriety half so much as I do.

Though we are very quiet, and wish to remain so as much as C. and others may permit, yet we are also determined to abide by our Articles, and not to relinquish a single right (read 'wrong' instead, if you like) which devolves to the conquerors on such occasions. As to the Lady Blarney, though I expected some absurd dissatisfaction on her part, I own it provokes me. 'Unfair!' Who could act fairly with people who are sending couriers, and threatening to follow them? As to C., she will find her in fits for the winter, without me to help her, depend upon it; and unless Providence sends another illness and journey, it is all over with my successor. I guess at Webster (who is now in Parliament, and will be in town more) as the first essay; but I doubt the Bart. himself as somewhat of the coldest. Besides, he must sacrifice his senatorial duties, and do nothing else but attend to his perplexities, which will be manifold.

I presume that I may now have access to the lower regions of Melbourne House, from which my ascent had long excluded me. I doubt if C. and I will be on speaking terms; and it is on the whole much better we should not, but I trust the taciturnity is not to be general. Your threatened visit of C. to this place would have no effect in this quarter, all being secure. I shall go to Middleton shortly after the 12th inst.; address your answer there, or to Cheltenham. I hope to find you at M[iddleton].

You see, nothing makes me unmindful of you, and I feel but too much obliged by your reciprocal remembrance.

Ever, my dear Lady M., Yrs. most affectionately,
B.

TO THOMAS MOORE, June 22, 1813

Yesterday I dined in company with Stael, the 'Epicene,' whose politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool--a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory--talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a pension.

Murray, the ava(Greek letter) of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the Universal Visitor? Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and--though I hate prating of the beggarly elements--his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

I don't know what to say about 'friendship.' I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am 'too old;' but nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than

Yours, etc.

TO LADY MELBOURNE, July 6, 1813

Dear Lady M[elbourne], Since I wrote ye enclosed I have heard a strange story of C.'s scratching herself with glass, and I know not what besides; of all this I was ignorant till this evening. What I did, or said to provoke her I know not. I told her it was better to waltz; 'because she danced well, and it would be imputed to me, if she did not'--but I see nothing in this to produce cutting and; besides, before supper I saw her, and though she said, and did even then a foolish thing, I could not suppose her so frantic as to be in earnest. She took hold of my hand as I passed, and pressed it against some sharp instrument, and said, 'I mean to use this.' I answered, 'Against me, I presume?' and passed on with Lady R[ancliffe], trembling lest Lord Y. or Lady R. should overhear her; though not believing it possible that this was more than one of her, not uncommon, bravadoes, for real feeling does not disclose its intentions, and always shuns display. I thought little more of this, and leaving the table in search of her would have appeared more particular than proper--though, of course, had I guessed her to be serious, or had I been conscious of offending I should have done everything to pacify or prevent her. I know not what to say, or do. I am quite unaware of what I did to displease; and useless regret is all I can feel on the subject. Can she be in her senses? Yet I would rather think myself to blame--than that she were so silly without cause.

I really remained at Lady H[eathcote's] till 5, totally ignorant of all that passed. Nor do I now know where this cursed scarification took place, nor when--I mean the room--and the hour.

TO THOMAS MOORE, 4 Benedictine Street, St. James's, July 8, 1813

I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that unfortunate epistle. If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from you in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine. God he knows what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as indifferent to mortals as the nonchalant deities of Lucretius), that you are the last person I want to offend. So, if I have,--why the devil don't you say it at once, and expectorate your spleen?

Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay against Suicide, which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself;--as a sermon by Blinkensop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist. Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you begun or finished a poem? If you won't tell me what I have done, pray say what you have done, or left undone, yourself. I am still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you think I sha'n't cogitate about you afterwards. I shall give the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where the plague is rife,--without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to save you from infection.

The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfort,--for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other. I presume the illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wherever you are) by this time. We are just recovering from tumult and train oil, and transparent fripperies, and all the noise and nonsense of victory. Drury Lane had a large M. W., which some thought was Marshal Wellington; others, that it might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the vicinity of the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves. I leave this to the commentators to illustrate. If you don't answer this, I sha'n't say what you deserve, but I think I deserve a reply. Do you conceive there is no Post-Bag but the Twopenny? Sunburn me, if you are not too bad.

TO THOMAS MOORE, July 13, 1813

Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said--I know not what--but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;--though I don't see how a man with a beautiful wife--his own children, quiet--fame--competency and friends, (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with any thing.

Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined--remember I say but inclined--to be seriously enamoured with Lady A[delaide] F[orbes]--but this ----- has ruined all my prospects. However, you know her; is she clever, or sensible, or good-tempered? either would do--I scratch out the will. I don't ask as to her beauty--that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.

I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word--'nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they.' Now, what are you doing?--writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edit my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated 'Lazaretto,' Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo--one can die any where.

There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fete. The Regent and ----- are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene--there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to spare. The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.

P.S.--The Stael last night attacked me most furiously--said that I had 'no right to make love--that I had used ---- barbarously--that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and had been all my life.' I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before. Let me hear from you anon.

TO THOMAS MOORE, July 25, 1813

I am not well versed enough in the ways of single woman to make much matrimonial progress.

I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley for this last week. My head aches with the vintage of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as their dregs. I met your friends the Daltons:--she sang one of your best songs so well, that, but for the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; he reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more musical in soul, perhaps. I wish to God he may conquer his horrible anomalous complaint. The upper part of her face is beautiful, and she seems much attached to her husband. He is right, nevertheless, in leaving this nauseous town. The first winter would infallibly destroy her complexion,-- and the second, very probably, every thing else.

I must tell you a story. Morris (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the Prince's coldness to his old wassailers. D'Israeli (a learned Jew) bored him with questions--why this? and why that? 'Why did the Prince act thus?'-- 'Why, sir, on account of Lord -----, who ought to be ashamed of himself.'--'And why ought Lord ----- to be ashamed of himself?'--'Because the Prince, sir----'--'And why, sir, did the Prince cut you?'--'Because, G--d d--mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.'--'And why did you stick to your principles?'

Is not this last question the best that was ever put, when you consider to whom? It nearly killed Morris. Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as Goldsmith said about the peas, it was a very good joke when I heard it--as I did from an ear-witness--and is only spoilt in my narration.

The season has closed with a dandy ball;--but I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and Frere and Mackintosh, where I shall drink your health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence till 'too much canaries' wash away my memory, or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the opposite side of the table. Canning has disbanded his party by a speech from his . . .--the true throne of a Tory. Conceive his turning them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them think for themselves. 'I have led my ragamuffins where they are well peppered. There are but three of the 150 left alive', and they are for the Townsend (query, might not Falstaff mean the Bow Street officer? I dare say Malone's posthumous edition will have it so) for life.

Since I wrote last, I have been into the country. I journeyed by night--no incident, or accident, but an alarm on the part of my valet on the outside, who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a glow-worm in the second figure of number XIX--mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern. I can only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to me whenever we passed any thing--no matter whether moving or stationary. Conceive ten miles, with a tremor every furlong. I have scribbled you a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellarians of the post from peeping. You once complained of my not writing;--I will 'heap coals of fire upon your head' by not complaining of your not reading. Ever, my dear Moore, your'n (isn't that the Staffordshire termination?)

Byron

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 miaora, 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. Made. de Stael Holstein has lost one of her young barons, 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, 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;--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 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. One was a peer, the other a friend untitled, 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, Scurrq deceased, lately published. Such a book!--I believe, since Drunken Barnaby's Journal, 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 shore as in the ship; 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 muff, or else tumbling into one's neck-cloth 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. The Giaour is now a thousand and odd lines. 'Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day', eh, Moore!-- thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it.

Yours ever,
Byron

TO THOMAS MOORE, August 28, 1813

Ay, my dear Moore, 'there was a time'--I have heard of your tricks, when 'you was campaigning at the King of Bohemy.' I am much mistaken if, some fine London spring, about the year 1815, that time does not come again. After all, we must end in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, etc., and kissing one's wife's maid. Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour tomorrow--that is, I would a month ago, but, at present, . . .

Why don't you 'parody that Ode?'--Do you think I should be tetchy? or have you done it, and won't tell me?-- You are quite right about Giamschid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within this half hour. I am glad to hear you talk of Richardson, because it tells me what you won't--that you are going to beat Lucien. At least tell me how far you have proceeded. Do you think me less interested about your works, or less sincere than our friend Ruggiero? I am not--and never was. In that thing of mine, the English Bards, at the time when I was angry with all the world, I never 'disparaged your parts,' although I did not know you personally; -- and have always regretted that you don't give us an entire work, and not sprinkle yourself in detached pieces-- beautiful, I allow, and quite alone in our language, but still giving us a right to expect a Shah Nameh (is that the name?) as well as gazelles. Stick to the East;--the oracle, Stael, told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing but Southey's unsaleables,--and these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't interest us, and yours will: You will have no competitor; and, if you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a 'voice in the wilderness' for you; and if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalising, and pave the path for you.

I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal--something like, only more philanthropical than, Cazotte's Diable Amoureux. It would require a good deal of poesy, and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make much of. If you want any more books, there is 'Castellan's Moeurs des Ottomans', the best compendium of the kind I ever met with, in six small tomes. I am really taking a liberty by talking in this style to my 'elders and my betters;'--pardon it, and don't Rochefoucault my motives.

TO THOMAS MOORE, August--September, I mean--1, 1813

I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, and three vols. on Turkish literature, not yet looked into. The last I will thank you to read, extract what you want, and return in a week, as they are lent to me by that brightest of Northern constellations, Mackintosh,--amongst many other kind things into which India has warmed him; for I am sure your home Scotsman is of a less genial description.

Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me--'Stap my vitals, Tam! thou art a very impudent person;' and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you talk thus.

The Giaour I have added to a good deal; but still in foolish fragments. It contains about 1200 lines, or rather more--now printing. You will allow me to send you a copy. You delight me much by telling me that I am in your good graces, and more particularly as to temper; for, unluckily, I have the reputation of a very bad one. But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company. It may be, and would appear to a third person, an incredible thing, but I know you will believe me when I say, that I am as anxious for your success as one human being can be for another's,--as much as if I had never scribbled a line. Surely the field of fame is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it. Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have passed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there's a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I send you (which return per-post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine, which will let you into the origin of The Giaour. Write soon. Ever, dear Moore, yours most entirely, etc.

P.S.--This letter was written to me on account of a different story circulated by some gentlewomen of our acquaintance, a little too close to the text. The part erased contained merely some Turkish names, and circumstantial evidence of the girl's detection, not very important or decorous.

TO LADY MELBOURNE, September 5, 1813

Dear Lady Melbourne,

I return you the plan of A[nnabella]'s spouse elect, of which I shall say nothing because I do not understand it; though I dare say it is exactly what it ought to be. Neither do I know why I am writing this note, as I mean to call on you, unless it be to try your 'new patent pens' which delight me infinitely with their colours. I have pitched upon a yellow one to begin with.

Very likely you will be out, and I must return all the annexed epistles. I would rather have seen your answer. She seems to have been spoiled--not as children usually are--but systematically Clarissa Harlowed into an awkward kind of correctness, with a dependence upon her own infallibility which will or may lead her into some egregious blunder. I don't mean the usual error of young gentlewomen, but she will find exactly what she wants, and then discover that it is much more dignified than entertaining.

[The second page of this letter is lost.]

TO LADY MELBOURNE, Aston Hall, Rotherham, September 21, 1813

My dear Lady Melbourne,

My stay at Cambridge was very short,- but feeling feverish and restless in town I flew off, and here I am on a visit to my friend Webster, now married, and (according to ye Duke of Buckingham's curse) 'settled in ye country.' His bride, Lady Frances, is a pretty, pleasing woman, but in delicate health, and, I fear, going--if not gone--into a decline. Stanhope and his wife--pretty and pleasant too, but not at all consumptive--left us to-day, leaving only ye family, another single gentleman, and your slave. The sister, Lady Catherine, is here too, and looks very pale from a cross in her love for Lord Bury (Lord Alb[emarl]e's son); in short, we are a society of happy wives and unfortunate maidens. The place is very well, and quiet, and the children only scream in a low voice, so that I am not much disturbed, and shall stay a few days in tolerable repose.

W[ebster] don't want sense, nor good nature, but both are occasionally obscured by his suspicions, and absurdities of all descriptions; he is passionately fond of having his wife admired, and at the same time jealous to jaundice of everything and everybody. I have hit upon the medium of praising her to him perpetually behind her back, and never looking at her before his face; as for her, I believe she is disposed to be very faithful, and I don't think anyone now here is inclined to put her to the test. W[ebster] himself is, with all his jealousy and admiration, a little tired; he has been lately at Newstead, and wants to go again. I suspected this sudden penchant, and soon discovered that a foolish nymph of the Abbey, about whom fortunately I care not, was the attraction. Now if I wanted to make mischief I could extract much good perplexity from a proper management of such events; but I am grown so good, or so indolent, that I shall not avail myself of so pleasant an opportunity of tormenting mine host, though he deserves it for poaching. I believe he has hitherto been unsuccessful, or rather it is too astonishing to be believed.

He proposed to me, with great gravity, to carry him over there, and I replied with equal candour, that he might set out when he pleased, but that I should remain here to take care of his household in the interim--a proposition which I thought very much to the purpose, but which did not seem at all to his satisfaction. By way of opiate he preached me a sermon on his wife's good qualities, concluding by an assertion that in all moral and mortal qualities, she was very like 'Christ!!!' I think the Virgin Mary would have been a more appropriate typification; but it was the first comparison of the kind I ever heard, and made me laugh till he was angry, and then I got out of humour too, which pacified him, and shortened the panegyric.

Lord Petersham is coming here in a day or two, who will certainly flirt furiously with Lady F[rances], and I shall have some comic Iagoism with our little Othello. I should have no chance with his Desdemona myself, but a more lively and better dressed and formed personage might, in an innocent way, for I really believe the girl is a very good, well-disposed wife, and will do very well if she lives, and he himself don't tease her into some dislike of her lawful owner.

I passed through Hatfield the night of your ball. Suppose we had jostled at a turnpike!! At Bugden I blundered on a Bishop; the Bishop put me in mind of ye Government-- the Government of the Governed--and the governed of their indifference towards their governors, which you must have remarked as to all parties. These reflections expectorated as follows--you know I never send you my scribblings--and when you read, you will wish I never may:

'Tis said Indifference marks the present time,
Then hear the reason--though 'tis told in rhyme--
A king who can't, a Prince of Wales who don't,
Patriots who sha'n't, and Ministers who won't,
What matters who are in or out of place,
The Mad, the Bad, the Useless, or the Base?

You may read the 2nd couplet so, if you like,

A King who cannot, and a Prince who don't,
Patriots who would not, ministers who won't.

I am asked to stay for the Doncaster races, but I am not in plight, and am a miserable beau at the best of times; so I shall even return to town; or elsewhere; and in the meantime ever am

Yours, dear Lady Me.,
B.

P.S.--If you write, address to B[enne]t Street; were I once gone, I should not wish my letters to travel here after me, for fear of accidents.

TO THOMAS MOORE, September 27, 1813

Thomas Moore,

(Thou wilt never be called 'true Thomas,' like he of Ercildoune,) why don't you write to me?--as you won't, I must. I was near you at Aston the other day, and hope I soon shall be again. If so, you must and shall meet me, and go to Matlock and elsewhere, and take what, in flash dialect, is poetically termed 'a lark,' with Rogers and me for accomplices. Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to Southey--the best-looking bard I have seen for some time. To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, and a man of talent, and all that, and--there is his eulogy.

----- read me part of a letter from you. By the foot of Pharaoh, I believe there was abuse, for he stopped short, so he did, after a fine saying about our correspondence, and looked--I wish I could revenge myself by attacking you, or by telling you that I have had to defend you--an agreeable way which one's friends have of recommending themselves by saying--'Ay, ay, I gave it Mr. Such-a-one for what he said about your being a plagiary, and a rake, and so on.' But do you know that you are one of the very few whom I never have the satisfaction of hearing abused, but the reverse;--and do you suppose I will forgive that?

I have been in the country, and ran away from the Doncaster races. It is odd,--I was a visitor in the same house which came to my sire as a residence with Lady Carmarthen (with whom he adulterated before his majority--by the by, remember she was not my mamma,)--and they thrust me into an old room, with a nauseous picture over the chimney, which I should suppose my papa regarded with due respect, and which, inheriting the family taste, I looked upon with great satisfaction. I stayed a week with the family, and behaved very well--though the lady of the house is young, and religious, and pretty, and the master is my particular friend. I felt no wish for any thing but a poodle dog, which they kindly gave me. Now, for a man of my courses not even to have coveted, is a sign of great amendment. Pray pardon all this nonsense, and don't 'snub me when I'm in spirits.'

Ever Yours.
BN.

TO LADY MELBOURNE October 8, 1813

My dear Lady M.,

I have volumes, but neither time nor space. I have already trusted too deeply to hesitate now; besides, for certain reasons, you will not be sorry to hear that I am anything but what I was. Well then, to begin, and first, a word of mine host.--He has lately been talking at, rather than to, me before the party (with the exception of the women) in a tone, which as I never use it myself, I am not particularly disposed to tolerate in others. What he may do with impunity, it seems, but not suffer, till at last I told him that the whole of his argument involved the interesting contradiction that 'he might love where he liked, but that no one else might like what he ever thought proper to love,' a doctrine which, as the learned Partridge observed, contains a 'non sequitur' from which I, for one, begged leave as a general proposition to dissent. This nearly produced a scene with me, as well as another guest, who seemed to admire my sophistry the most of the two; and as it was after dinner, and debating time, might have ended in more than wineshed, but that the devil, for some wise purpose of his own, thought proper to restore good humour, which has not as yet been further infringed.

In these last few days I have had a good deal of conversation with an amiable person, whom (as we deal in letters and initials only) we will denominate Ph. Well, these things are dull in detail. Take it once, I have made love, and if I am to believe mere words (for there we have hitherto stopped), it is returned. I must tell you the place of declaration, however, a billiard room. I did not, as C. says: 'kneel in the middle of the room,' but, like Corporal Trim to the Nun, 'I made a speech,' which as you might not listen to it with the same patience, I shall not transcribe. We were before on very amicable terms, and I remembered being asked an odd question, 'how a woman who liked a man could inform him of it when he did not perceive it.' I also observed that we went on with our game (of billiards) without counting the hazards; and supposed that, as mine certainly were not, the thoughts of the other party also were not exactly occupied by what was our ostensible pursuit. Not quite, though pretty well satisfied with my progress, I took-- a very imprudent step with pen and paper, in tender and tolerably turned prose periods (no poetry even when in earnest). Here were risks, certainly: first, how to convey, then how would it be received? It was received, however, and deposited not very far from the heart which I wished it to reach when, who should enter the room but the person who ought at that moment to have been in the Red Sea, if Satan had any civility. But she kept her countenance, and the paper; and I my composure as well as I could. It was a risk, and all had been lost by failure; but then recollect how much more I had to gain by the reception, if not declined, and how much one always hazards to obtain anything worth having. My billet prospered, it did more, it even (I am this moment interrupted by the Marito, and write this before him, he has brought me a political pamphlet in MS. to decypher and applaud, I shall content myself with the last; oh, he is gone again), my billet produced an answer, a very unequivocal one too, but a little too much about virtue, and indulgence of attachment in some sort of etherial process, in which the soul is principally concerned, which I don't very well understand, being a bad metaphysician; but one generally ends and begins with platonism, and, as my proselyte is only twenty, there is time enough to materialize. I hope nevertheless this spiritual system won't last long, and at any rate must make the experiment. I remember my last case was the reverse, as Major O'Flaherty recommends, 'we fought first and explained afterwards.'

This is the present state of things: much mutual profession, a good deal of melancholy, which, I am sorry to say, was remarked by 'the Moor,' and as much love as could well be made, considering the time, place and circumstances.

I need not say that the folly and petulance of [Webster] has tended to all this. If a man is not contented with a pretty woman, and not only runs after any little country girl he meets with, but absolutely boasts of it; he must not be surprised if others admire that which he knows not how to value. Besides, he literally provoked, and goaded me into it, by something not unlike bullying, indirect to be sure, but tolerably obvious: 'he would do this, and he would do that,' 'if any man,' etc. etc., and he thought that every 'woman' was his lawful prize, nevertheless. Oons! who is this strange monopolist? It is odd enough, but on other subjects he is like other people, on this he seems infatuated. If he had been rational, and not prated of his pursuits, I should have gone on very well, as I did at Middleton. Even now, I shan't quarrel with him if I can help it; but one or two of his speeches have blackened the blood about my heart, and curdled the milk of kindness. If put to the proof, I shall behave like other people, I presume.

I have heard from A[nnabella], but her letter to me is melancholy, about her old friend Miss My's departure, etc. etc. I wonder who will have her at last; her letter to you is gay you say; that to me must have been written at the same time: the little demure nonjuror!

I wrote to C[aroline] the other day, for I was afraid she might repeat last year's epistle, and make it circular among my friends. Good evening, I am now going to billiards.

Ever yrs.,
B.

P.S. 6 o'clock. This business is growing serious, and I think Platonism in some peril. There has been very nearly a scene, almost an hysteric, and really without cause, for I was conducting myself with (to me) very irksome decorum. Her expressions astonish me, so young and cold as she appeared. But these professions must end as usual, and would I think now, had 'L'occasion' been not wanting. Had any one come in during the tears, and consequent consolation, all had been spoiled; we must be more cautious, or less larmoyante.

P.S. second, 10 o'clock. I write to you, just escaped from claret and vocification on G--d knows what paper. My landlord is a rare gentleman. He has just proposed to me a bet that he, for a certain sum, 'wins any given woman, against any given homme including all friends present,' which I declined with becoming deference to him, and the rest of the company. Is not this, at the moment, a perfect comedy?

I forgot to mention that on his entrance yesterday during the letter scene, it reminded me so much of an awkward passage in 'The Way to Keep Him' between Lovemore, Sir Bashful, and my Lady, that, embarrassing as it was, I could hardly help laughing. I hear his voice in the passage; he wants me to go to a ball at Sheffield, and is talking to me as I write. Good night. I am in the act of praising his pamphlet.

I don't half like your story of Corinne, some day I will tell you why, if I can, but at present, good night.

TO LADY MELBOURNE Newstead Abbey, October 10, 1813

My dear Lady M.,

I write to you from the melancholy mansion of my fathers, where I am dull as the longest deceased of my progenitors. I hate reflection on irrevocable things, and won't now turn sentimentalist.

[Webster] alone accompanied me here (I return to-morrow to [Aston]). He is now sitting opposite; and between us are red and white Cham[pagn]e, Burgundy, two sorts of Claret, and lighter vintages, the relics of my youthful cellar, which is yet in formidable number and famous order. But I leave the wine to him, and prefer conversing soberly with you.

Ah! if you knew what a quiet Mussulman life (except in wine) I led here for a few years. But no matter.

Yesterday I sent you a long letter, and must recur to the same subject which is uppermost in my thoughts. I am as much astonished, but I hope not so much mistaken, as Lord Ogleby at the denouement or rather commencement of the last week. It has changed my views, my wishes, my hopes, my everything, and will furnish you with additional proof of my weakness. Mine guest (late host) has just been congratulating himself on possessing a partner without passion. I don't know, and cannot yet speak with certainty, but I never yet saw more decisive preliminary symptoms.

As I am apt to take people at their word, on receiving my answer, that whatever the weakness of her heart might be, I should never derive further proof of it than the confession, instead of pressing the point, I told her that I was willing to be hers on her own terms, and should never attempt to infringe upon the conditions. I said this without pique, and believing her perfectly in earnest for the time; but in the midst of our mutual professions, or, to use her own expression, 'more than mutual,' she bursts into an agony of crying, and at such a time, and in such a place, as rendered such a scene particularly perilous to both--her sister in the next room, and [her husband] not far off. Of course I said and did almost everything proper on the occasion, and fortunately we restored sunshine in time to prevent anyone from perceiving the cloud that had darkened our horizon.

She says she is convinced that my own declaration was produced solely because I perceived her previous penchant, which by-the-bye, as I think I said to you before I neither perceived nor expected. I really did not suspect her of a predilection for anyone, and even now in public, with the exception of those little indirect, yet mutually understood--I don't know how and it is unnecessary to name, or describe them--her conduct is as coldly correct as her still, fair, Mrs. L[amb]-like aspect.

She, however, managed to give me a note and to receive another, and a ring before [Webster's] very face, and yet she is a thorough devotee, and takes prayers, morning and evening, besides being measured for a new Bible once a quarter.

The only alarming thing is that [Webster] complains of her aversion from being beneficial to population and posterity. If this is an invariable maxim, I shall lose my labour. Be this as it may, she owns to more than I ever heard from any woman within the time, and I shan't take [Webster's] word any more for her feelings than I did for that celestial comparison, which I once mentioned. I think her eye, her change of colour, and the trembling of her hand, and above all her devotion, tell a different tale.

Good night. We return to-morrow, and now I drink your health; you are my only correspondent, and I believe friend.

Ever yours,
B.

TO LADY MELBOURNE Newstead Abbey, October 17, 1813

My dear Lady M.,

The whole party are here--and now to my narrative. But first I must tell you that I am rather unwell, owing to a folly of last night. About midnight, after deep and drowsy potations, I took it into my head to empty my skull cup, which holds rather better than a bottle of claret, at one draught, and nearly died the death of Alexander--which I shall be content to do when I have achieved his conquests. I had just sense enough left to feel that I was not fit to join the ladies, and went to bed, where, my valet tells me, that I was first convulsed, and afterwards so motionless, that he thought, 'Good night to Marmion,' I don't know how I came to do so very silly a thing; but I believe my guests were boasting, and 'company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.' I detest drinking in general, and beg your pardon for this excess. I can't do so any more.

To my theme. You were right. I have been a little too sanguine as to the conclusion--but hear. One day, left entirely to ourselves, was nearly fatal--another such victory, and with Pyrrhus we were lost--it came to this. 'I am entirely at your mercy. I own it. I give myself up to you. I am not cold--whatever I seem to others; but I know that I cannot bear the reflection hereafter. Do not imagine that these are mere words. I tell you the truth--now act as you will.' Was I wrong? I spared her. There was a something so very peculiar in her manner--a kind of mild decision--no scene--not even a struggle; but still I know not what, that convinced me that she was serious. It was not the mere 'No,' which one has heard forty times before, and always with the same accent; but the tone, and the aspect--yet I sacrificed much--the hour two in the morning-- ----- away--the Devil whispering that it was mere verbiage, etc. And yet I know not whether I can regret it--she seems so very thankful for my forbearance--a proof, at least, that she was not playing merely the usual decorous reluctance, which is sometimes so tiresome on these occasions.

You ask if I am prepared to go 'all lengths.' If you mean by 'all lengths' anything including duel, or divorce? I answer, Yes. I love her. If I did not, and much too, I should have been more selfish on the occasion before mentioned. I have offered to go away with her, and her answer, whether sincere or not, is 'that on my account she declines it.' In the meantime we are all as wretched as possible; he scolding on account of unaccountable melancholy; the sister very suspicious, but rather amused--the friend very suspicious too (why I know not), not at all amused--il Marito something like Lord Chesterfield in De Grammont, putting on a martial physiognomy, prating with his worthy ally; swearing at servants, sermonizing both sisters; and buying sheep; but never quitting her side now; so that we are in despair. I am very feverish, restless, and silent, as indeed seems to be the tacit agreement of everyone else. In short I can foresee nothing--it may end in nothing; but here are half a dozen persons very much occupied, and two, if not three, in great perplexity; and, as far as I can judge, so we must continue.

She don't and won't live with him, and they have been so far separate for a long time; therefore I have nothing to answer for on that point. Poor thing--she is either the most artful or artless of her age (20) I ever encountered. She owns to so much, and perpetually says, 'Rather than you should be angry,' or 'Rather than you should like anyone else, I will do whatever you please'; 'I won't speak to this, that, or the other if you dislike it,' and throws, or seems to throw, herself so entirely upon my discretion in every respect, that it disarms me quite; but I am really wretched with the perpetual conflict with myself. Her health is so very delicate; she is so thin and pale, and seems to have lost her appetite so entirely, that I doubt her living much longer. This is also her own opinion. But these fancies are common to all who are not very happy; if she were once my wife, or likely to be so, a warm climate should be the first resort, nevertheless, for her recovery.

The most perplexing--and yet I can't prevail upon myself to give it up--is the caressing system. In her it appears perfectly childish, and I do think innocent; but it really puzzles all the Scipio about me to confine myself to the laudable portion of these endearments.

What a cursed situation I have thrust myself into! Potiphar (it used to be O[xford]'s name) putting some stupid question to me the other day, I told him that I rather admired the sister, and what does he? but tell her this; and his wife too, who a little too hastily asked him 'if he was mad?' which put him to demonstration that a man ought not to be asked if he was mad, for relating that a friend thought his wife's sister a pretty woman. Upon this topic he held forth with great fervour for a customary period. I wish he had a quinsey.

Tell L[or]d H[ollan]d that Clarke is the name, and Craven Street (No. forgotten) the residence--may be heard of at Trin. Coll.--excellent man--able physician--shot a friend in a duel (about his sister) and I believe killed him professionally afterwards. Lord H. may have him for self or friends. I don't know where I am going -- my mind is a chaos. I always am setting all upon single stakes, and this is one. Your story of the Frenchman Matta, in 'Grammont,' and the Marquis. Heigh ho! Good night. Address to Aston.

Ever yrs.,
B.

P.S. My stay is quite uncertain -- a moment may overturn everything; but you shall hear -- happen what may -- nothing or something.

TO THOMAS MOORE December 8, 1813

Your letter, like all the best, and even kindest things in this world, is both painful and pleasing. But, first, to what sits nearest. Do you know I was actually about to dedicate to you, -- not in a formal inscription, as to one's elders, -- but through a short prefatory letter, in which I boasted myself your intimate, and held forth the prospect of your poem; when, lo! the recollection of your strict injunctions of secrecy as to the said poem, more than once repeated by word and letter, flashed upon me, and marred my intents. I could have no motive for repressing my own desire of alluding to you (and not a day passes that I do not think and talk of you), but an idea that you might, yourself, dislike it. You cannot doubt my sincere admiration, waving personal friendship for the present, which by the by, is not less sincere and deep rooted. I have you by rote and by heart; of which ecce signum! When I was at Aston, on my first visit, I have a habit, in passing my time a good deal alone, of -- I won't call it singing, for that I never attempt except to myself -- but of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh breathe not,' ' When the last glimpse,' and 'When he who adores thee,' with others of the same minstrel; -- they are my matins and vespers. I assuredly did not intend them to be overheard, but, one morning, in comes, not La Donna, but Il Marito, with a very grave face, saying, 'Byron, I must request you won't sing any more, at least of those songs.' I stared, and said, 'Certainly, but why?' -- 'To tell you the truth,' quoth he, 'they make my wife cry, and so melancholy, that I wish her to hear no more of them.'

Now, my dear M., the effect must have been from your words, and certainly not my music. I merely mention this foolish story to show you how much I am indebted to you for even my pastimes. A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases -- at least in composition. Though I think no one equal to you in that department, or in satire, -- and surely no one was ever so popular in both, I am certainly of the opinion that you have not yet done all you can do, though more than enough for anyone else. I want, and the world expects, a longer work from you; and I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of your own powers, which I cannot account for, and which must be unaccountable, when a Cossack like me can appall a cuirassier. Your story I did not, could not, know,--I thought only of a Peri. I wish you had confided in me, not for your sake, but mine, and to prevent the world from losing a much better poem than my own, but which, I yet hope, this clashing will not even now deprive them of. Mine is the work of a week, written, why I have partly told you, and partly I cannot tell you by letter--some day I will.

Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with you. The success of mine is yet problematical; though the public will probably purchase a certain quantity, on the presumption of their own propensity for The Giaour and such 'horrid mysteries.' The only advantage I have is being on the spot; and that merely amounts to saving me the trouble of turning over books which I had better read again. If your chamber was furnished in the same way, you have no need to go there to describe--I mean only as to accuracy--because I drew it from recollection.

This last thing of mine may have the same fate, and I assure you I have great doubts about it. But, even if not, its little day will be over before you are ready and willing. Come out--'screw your courage to the sticking-place.' Except the Post Bag (and surely you cannot complain of a want of success there), you have not been regularly out for some years. No man stands higher,--whatever you may think on a rainy day, in your provincial retreat. 'Aucun homme, dans aucune langue, n'a ete peut-etre, plus completement le poete du coeur et le poete des femmes. Les critiques lui reprochent de n'avoir represente le monde ni tel qu'il est, ni tel qu'il doit etre; mais les femmes repondent qu'il l'a representre tel qu'elles le desirent.' --I should have thought Sismondi had written this for you instead of Metastasio.

Write to me, and tell me of yourself. Do you remember what Rousseau said to some one--'Have we quarrelled? you have talked to me often, and never once mentioned yourself.'

P.S.--The last sentence is an indirect apology for my egotism,--but I believe in letters it is allowed. I wish it was mutual. I have met with an odd reflection in Grimm; it shall not--at least the bad part--be applied to you or me, though one of us has certainly an indifferent name--but this it is:--'Many people have the reputation of being wicked, with whom we should be too happy to pass our lives.' I need not add it is a woman's saying--a Mademoiselle de Sommery's.

JOURNAL, BEGUN NOVEMBER 14, 1813

If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!--heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well,--I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say 'Virtue is its own reward,'--it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be something;--and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty--and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,--ay, and woman too. Give me a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague--yellow fever--and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic.

No more reflections.--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of--

At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance could equal the events--

To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever. Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too,--who seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not married--has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife? Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony. All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W[ordsworth] and S[outhey] have both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls off a man's temples in that state, . .

Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and ----- Mem. too, to call on the Stael and Lady Holland to-morrow, and on, ----- who has advised me (without seeing it, by the by) not to publish 'Zuleika;' I believe he is right, but experience might have taught him that not to print is physically impossible. No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life read a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently;--better print, and they who like may read, and if they don't like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they have, at least, purchased the right of saying so.

I have declined presenting the Debtors' Petition, being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third--I don't know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it con amore;--one must have some excuse to one's self for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. 'Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me;'--and then, I 'have drunk medicines,' not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.

Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli Pacha's lion in the Morea,--who followed the Arab keeper like a dog,--the fondness of the hyaena for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione!--There was a 'hippopotamus,' like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the 'Ursine Sloth' had the very voice and manner of my valet--but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again--took off my hat--opened a door--trunked a whip--and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should hate to see one here:--the sight of the camel made me pine again for Asia Minor. Oh quando le aspiciam?

November 16

Went last night with Lewis to see the first of Antony and Cleopatra. It was admirably got up, and well acted--a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden. Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex--fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!--coquettish to the last, as well with the 'asp' as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not 'words things?' and such 'words' very pestilent 'things' too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra, after securing him, says, 'yet go--it is your interest,' etc.--how like the sex! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty miles to meet Madame De Stael! I once travelled three thousand to get among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and talks folios. I have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I won't hear it, as well as read.

Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when he talked, and we listened, without one yawn, from six till one in the morning.

Got my seals--Have again forgot a plaything for ma petite cousine Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last Giaour, and The Bride of Abydos. He won't like the latter, and I don't think that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from -----. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart,--bitter diet;--Hodgson likes it better than The Giaour, but nobody else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, that would never have been published, though the circumstances which are the ground-work make it--heigh-ho!

To-night I saw both the sisters of -----; my God! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be painful. One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.

Nov. 17

No letter from -----; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says, 'Why should a living man complain?' I really don't know, except it be that a dead man can't; and he, the said patriarch, did complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that pious prologue, 'Curse--and die ;' the only time, I suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter from Lord Holland on The Bride of Abydos, which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don't deserve any quarter. Yet I did think, at the time, that my cause of enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I had not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I would suppress even the memory;--but people, now they can't get it, make a fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.

George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me, George pro Scoto,--and very right too. If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had my choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the kings he ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry and prose. The British Critic, in their Rokeby Review, have presupposed a comparison which I am sure my friends never thought of, and W. Scott's subjects are injudicious in descending to. I like the man--and admire his works-- to what Mr. Braham calls Entusymusy. All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good. Many hate his politics--(I hate all politics); and, here, a man's politics are like the Greek soul--an [image - in Greek], besides God knows what other soul; but their estimate of the two generally go together.

Harry has not brought ma petite cousine. I want us to go to the play together;--she has been but once. Another short note from Jersey, inviting Rogers and me on the 23d. I must see my agent to-night. I wonder when that Newstead business will be finished. It cost me more than words to part with it--and to have parted with it! What matters it what I do? or what becomes of me?--but let me remember Job's saying, and console myself with being 'a living man.'

I wish I could settle to reading again,--my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into reality;--a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through . . . yes, yes, through. I have had a letter from Lady Melbourne--the best friend I ever had in my life, and the cleverest of women.

Not a word from ----- [Frances Webster?]. Have they set out from -----? or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws? If so--and this silence looks suspicious--I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out my iron.' I am out of practice--but I won't begin again at Manton's now. Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever since I began to feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise.

What strange tidings from that Anakim of anarchy--Buonaparte! Ever since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally time-servers, when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a Heros de Roman of mine--on the Continent; I don't want him here. But I don't like those same flights--leaving of armies, etc. etc. I am sure when I fought for his bust at school, I did not think he would run away from himself. But I should not wonder if he banged them yet. To be beat by men would be something; but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty boobies of regular-bred sovereigns--O-hone-a-rie!--O-hone-a-rie! It must be, as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick-lipped and thick-headed Autrichienne brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept by Barras. I never knew any good come of your young wife, and legal espousals, to any but your 'sober-blooded boy' who 'eats fish' and drinketh 'no sack.' Had he not the whole opera? all Paris? all France? But a mistress is just as perplexing--that is, one--two or more are manageable by division.

I have begun, or had begun, a song, and flung it into the fire. It was in remembrance of Mary Duff, my first of flames, before most people begin to burn. I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do nothing, and--fortunately there is nothing to do. It has lately been in my power to make two persons (and their connections) comfortable, pro tempore, and one happy, ex tempore,--I rejoice in the last particularly, as it is an excellent man. I wish there had been more inconvenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then there had been more merit. We are all selfish--and I believe, ye gods of Epicurus! I believe in Rochefoucault about men, and in Lucretius (not Busby's translation) about yourselves. Your bard has made you very nonchalant and blest; but as he has excused us from damnation, I don't envy you your blessedness much--a little, to be sure. I remember, last year, ------ said to me, at -----, 'Have we not passed our last month like the gods of Lucretius?' And so we had. She is an adept in the text of the original (which I like too); and when that booby Bus. sent his translating prospectus, she subscribed. But, the devil prompting him to add a specimen, she transmitted him a subsequent answer, saying, that 'after perusing it, her conscience would not permit her to allow her name to remain on the list of sub-scribblers.' Last night, at Lord H.'s--Mackintosh, the Ossulslones, Puysegur, etc. there--I was trying to recollect a quotation (as I think) of Stael's, from some Teutonic sophist about architecture. 'Architecture,' says this Macoronico Tedescho, 'reminds me of frozen music.' It is somewhere--but where?--the demon of perplexity must know and won't tell. I asked M.,and he said it was not in her: but Puysegur said it must be hers, it was so like. H. laughed, as he does at all De l'Allemagne,--in which, however, I think he goes a little too far. B., I hear, contemns it too. But there are fine passages;--and, after all, what is a work--any--or every work--but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two, every day's journey? To be sure, in Madame, what we often mistake, and 'pant for,' as the 'cooling stream,' turns out to be the 'mirage' (critice verbiage); but we do, at last, get to something like the temple of Jove Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only remembered to gladden the contrast.

Called on C-----, to explain--She is very beautiful, to my taste, at least; for on coming home from abroad, I recollect being unable to look at any woman but her--they were so fair, and unmeaning, and blonde. The darkness and regularity of her features reminded me of my 'Jannat al Aden.' But this impression wore off; and now I can look at a fair woman, without longing for a Houri. She was very good-tempered, and every thing was explained.

To-day, great news--'the Dutch have taken Holland,'--which, I suppose, will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames. Five provinces have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation, conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags of this will-o'-the-wisp abode of Boors. It is said Bernadotte is amongst them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown) Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time. Two to one on the new dynasty!

Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos I won't--it is too much, though I am strongly tempted, merely for the say of it. No bad price for a fortnight's (a week each) what?--the gods know--it was intended to be called poetry.

I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last--this being Sabbath, too: All the rest, tea and dry biscuits--six per diem. I wish to God I had not dined now!--It kills me with heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams;--and yet it was but a pint of bucellas, and fish. Meat I never touch,--nor much vegetable diet. I wish I were in the country, to take exercise,--instead of being obliged to cool by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little accession of flesh,--my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the devil always came with it,--till I starved him out,--and I will not be the slave of any appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head--how it aches?--the horrors of digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner agrees with him?

Mem. I must write to-morrow to 'Master Shallow, who owes me a thousand pounds,' and seems, in his letter, afraid I should ask him for it;--as if I would!--I don't want it (just now, at least,) to begin with; and though I have often wanted that sum, I never asked for the repayment of 10 pounds in my life--from a friend. His bond is not due this year, and I told him when it was, I should not enforce it. How often must he make me say the same thing?

I am wrong--I did once ask ----- to repay me. But it was under circumstances that excused me to him, and would to any one. I took no interest, nor required security. He paid me soon,--at least, his padre. My head! I believe it was given me to ache with. Good even.

Nov. 22, 1813

'Orange Boven!' So the bees have expelled the bear that broke open their hive. Well,--if we are to have new De Witts and De Ruyters, God speed the little republic! I should like to see the Hague and the village of Brock, where they have such primitive habits. Yet, I don't know,--their canals would cut a poor figure by the memory of the Bosphorus; and the Zuyder Zee look awkwardly after 'Ak-Denizi.' No matter,--the bluff burghers, puffing freedom out of their short tobacco-pipes, might be worth seeing; though I prefer a cigar or a hooka, with the rose-leaf mixed with the milder herb of the Levant. I don't know what liberty means,--never having seen it,--but wealth is power all over the world; and as a shilling performs the duty of a pound (besides sun and sky and beauty for nothing) in the East,--That is the country. How I envy Herodes Atticus!--more than Pomponius. And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an aventure of any lively description. I think I rather would have been Bonneval, Ripperda, Alberoni, Hayreddin, or Horuc Barbarossa, or even Wortley Montague, than Mahomet himself.

Rogers will be in town soon?--the 23d is fixed for our Middleton visit. Shall I go? umph!--In this island, where one can't ride out without overtaking the sea, it don't much matter where one goes.

I remember the effect of the first Edinburgh Review on me. I heard of it six weeks before,--read it the day of its denunciation,--dined and drank three bottles of claret, (with S. B. Davies, I think,) neither ate nor slept the less, but, nevertheless, was not easy till I had vented my wrath and my rhyme, in the same pages, against every thing and every body. Like George, in the Vicar of Wakefield, 'the fate of my paradoxes' would allow me to perceive no merit in another. I remembered only the maxim of my boxing-master, which, in my youth, was found useful in all general riots,--'Whoever is not for you is against you--mill away right and left,' and so I did;--like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all men's anent me. I did wonder, to be sure, at my own success--

And marvels so much wit is all his own,

as Hobhouse sarcastically says of somebody (not unlikely myself, as we are old friends);--but were it to come over again, I would not. I have since redde the cause of my couplets, and it is not adequate to the effect. C----- told me that it was believed I alluded to poor Lord Carlisle's nervous disorder in one of the lines. I thank Heaven I did not know it--and would not, could not, if I had. I must naturally be the last person to be pointed on defects or maladies.

Rogers is silent,--and, it is said, severe. When he does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as his poetry. If you enter his house--his drawing-room--his library--you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his existence. Oh the jarrings his disposition must have encountered through life!

Southey, I have not seen much of. His appearance is Epic; and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed to their authorship. His manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation;--posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present, he has a party, but no public--except for his prose writings. The life of Nelson is beautiful. . . .

Moore has a peculiarity of talent, or rather talents,--poetry, music, voice, all his own; and an expression in each, which never was, nor will be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still higher flights in poetry. By the by, what humour, what--every thing, in the Post-Bag! There is nothing Moore may not do, if he will but seriously set about it. In society, he is gentlemanly, gentle, and, altogether, more pleasing than any individual with whom I am acquainted. For his honour, principle, and independence, his conduct to speaks 'trumpet-tongued.' He has but one fault--and that one I daily regret--he is not here.

Nov. 23

Ward--I like Ward. By Mahomet! I begin to think I like every body:--a disposition not to be encouraged;--a sort of social gluttony that swallows every thing set before it. But I like Ward. He is piquant; and, in my opinion, will stand very high in the House, and every where else, if he applies regularly. By the by, I dine with him to-morrow, which may have some influence on my opinion. It is as well not to trust one's gratitude after dinner. I have heard many a host libelled by his guests, with his burgundy yet reeking on their rascally lips.

I have taken Lord Salisbury's box at Covent Garden for the season; and now I must go and prepare to join Lady Holland and party, in theirs, at Drury Lane, questa sera.

Holland doesn't think the man is Junius; but that the yet unpublished journal throws great light on the obscurities of that part of George the Second's reign.--What is this to George the Third's? I don't know what to think. Why should Junius be yet dead? If suddenly apoplexed, would he rest in his grave without sending his [soul -- in Greek] to shout in the ears of posterity, 'Junius was X. Y. Z., Esq., buried in the parish of -----. Repair his monument, ye churchwardens! Print a new edition of his Letters, ye booksellers!' Impossible,--the man must be alive, and will never die without the disclosure. I like him;--he was a good hater.

Came home unwell and went to bed,--not so sleepy as might be desirable.

Tuesday morning

I awoke from a dream!--well! and have not others dreamed? --Such a dream!--but she did not overtake me. I wish the dead would rest, however. Ugh! how my blood chilled,--and I could not wake--and--and--heigho!

Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard,
Than could the substance of 'ten thousand -----s,
Arm'd all in proof, and led by shallow -----.

I do not like this dream,--I hate its 'foregone conclusion.' And am I to be shaken by shadows? Ay, when they remind us of--no matter--but, if I dream thus again, I will try whether all sleep has the like visions. Since I rose, I've been in considerable bodily pain also; but it is gone, and now, like Lord Ogleby, I am wound up for the day.

A note from Mountnorris--I dine with Ward;--Canning is to be there, Frere and Sharpe, perhaps Gifford. I am to be one of 'the five' (or rather six), as Lady ----- said a little sneeringly yesterday. They are all good to meet, particularly Canning, and Ward, when he likes. I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals.

No letters to-day;--so much the better,--there are no answers. I must not dream again;--it spoils even reality. I will go out of doors, and see what the fog will do for me. Jackson has been here: the boxing world much as usual;--but the club increases. I shall dine at Crib's to-morrow. I like energy--even animal energy--of all kinds; and I have need of both mental and corporeal. I have not dined out, nor, indeed at all, lately: have heard no music--have seen nobody. Now for a plunge--high life and low life. Amant alterna Camaenae!

I have burnt my Roman--as I did the first scenes and sketch of my comedy--and, for aught I see, the pleasure of burning is quite as great as that of printing. These two last would not have done. I ran into realities more than ever; and some would have been recognised and others guessed at.

Redde the Ruminator--a collection of Essays, by a strange, but able, old man (Sir Egerton Brydges), and a half-wild young one, author of a poem on the Highlands, called Childe Alarique. The word 'sensibility' (always my aversion) occurs a thousand times in these Essays; and, it seems, is to be an excuse for all kinds of discontent. This young man can know nothing of life; and, if he cherishes the disposition which runs through his papers, will become useless, and, perhaps, not even a poet, after all, which he seems determined to be. God help him! no one should be a rhymer who could be any thing better. And this is what annoys one, to see Scott and Moore, and Campbell and Rogers, who might have all been agents and leaders, now mere spectators. For, though they may have other ostensible avocations, these last are reduced to a secondary consideration. -----, too, frittering away his time among dowagers and unmarried girls. If it advanced any serious affair, it were some excuse; but, with the unmarried, that is a hazardous speculation, and tiresome enough, too; and, with the veterans, it is not much worth trying, unless, perhaps, one in a thousand.

If I had any views in this country, they would probably be parliamentary. But I have no ambition; at least, if any, it would be aut Caesar aut nihil. My hopes are limited to the arrangement of my affairs, and settling either in Italy or the East (rather the last), and drinking deep of the languages and literature of both. Past events have unnerved me; and all I can now do is to make life an amusement, and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crowns and sceptres, what is it? Vide Napoleon's last twelvemonth. It has completely upset my system of fatalism. I thought, if crushed, he would have fallen, when fractus illabitur orbis) and not have been pared away to gradual insignificance; that all this was not a mere jeu of the gods, but a prelude to greater changes and mightier events. But men never advance beyond a certain point; and here we are, retrograding, to the dull, stupid old system,--balance of Europe--poising straws upon kings' noses, instead of wringing them off! Give me a republic, or a despotism of one, rather than the mixed government of one, two, three. A republic!--look in the history of the Earth--Rome, Greece, Venice, France, Holland, America, our short (eheu!) Commonwealth, and compare it with what they did under masters. The Asiatics are not qualified to be republicans, but they have the liberty of demolishing despots, which is the next thing to it. To be the first man--not the Dictator--not the Sylla, but the Washington or the Aristides--the leader in talent and truth--is next to the Divinity! Franklin, Penn, and, next to these, either Brutus or Cassius--even Mirabeau--or St. Just. I shall never be any thing, or rather always be nothing. The most I can hope is, that some will say, 'He might, perhaps, if he would.'

12, midnight

Here are two confounded proofs from the printer. I have looked at the one, but for the soul of me, I can't look over that Giaour again,--at least, just now, and at this hour--and yet there is no moon.

Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly discussed an ensemble expedition. It must be in ten days, if at all, if we wish to be in at the Revolution. And why not? ----- is distant, and will be at -----, still more distant, till spring. No one else, except Augusta, cares for me; no ties--no trammels-- andiamo dunque--se torniamo, bene--se non, ch' importa? Old William of Orange talked of dying in 'the last ditch' of his dingy country. It is lucky I can swim, or I suppose I should not well weather the first. But let us see. I have heard hyaenas and jackalls in the ruins of Asia; and bull-frogs in the marshes; besides wolves and angry Mussulmans. Now, I should like to listen to the shout of a free Dutchman.

Alla! Viva! For ever! Hourra! Huzza!--which is the most rational or musical of these cries? 'Orange Boven,' according to the Morning Post.

Wednesday, 24

No dreams last night of the dead, nor the living; so--I am 'firm as the marble, founded as the rock,' till the next earthquake.

Ward's dinner went off well. There was not a disagreeable person there--unless I offended any body, which I am sure I could not by contradiction, for I said little, and opposed nothing. Sharpe (a man of elegant mind, and who has lived much with the best--Fox, Horne Tooke, Windham, Fitzpatrick, and all the agitators of other times and tongues,) told us the particulars of his last interview with Windham, a few days before the fatal operation which sent 'that gallant spirit to aspire the skies.' Windham,--the first in one department of oratory and talent, whose only fault was his refinement beyond the intellect of half his hearers,--Windham, half his life an active participator in the events of the earth, and one of those who governed nations,--he regretted,--and dwelt much on that regret, that 'he had not entirely devoted himself to literature and science!!!' His mind certainly would have carried him to eminence there, as elsewhere;--but I cannot comprehend what debility of that mind could suggest such a wish. I, who have heard him, cannot regret any thing but that I shall never hear him again. What! would he have been a plodder!? a metaphysician?--perhaps a rhymer? a scribbler? Such an exchange must have been suggested by illness. But he is gone and Time 'shall not look upon his like again.'

I am tremendously in arrear with my letters,--except to -----, and to her my thoughts overpower me:--my words never compass them. To Lady Melbourne I write with most pleasure her answers, so sensible, so tactique--I never met with half her talent. If she had been a few years younger, what a fool she would have made of me, had she thought it worth her while,--and I should have lost a valuable and most agreeable friend. Mem. a mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and, when it is over, any thing but friends.

I have not answered W. Scott's last letter,--but I will. I regret to hear from others, that he has lately been unfortunate in pecuniary involvements. He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of bards. I should place Rogers next in the living list (I value him more as the last of the best school)--Moore and Campbell both third--Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge--the rest, [hoi polloi in Greek]---thus:--

There is a triangular Gradus ad Parnassum!--the names are too numerous for the base of the triangle. Poor Thurlow has gone wild about the poetry of Queen Bess's reign--c'est dommage. I have ranked the names upon my triangle more upon what I believe popular opinion, than any decided opinion of my own. For, to me, some of Moore's last Erin sparks--'As a beam o'er the face of the waters'--'When he who adores thee'--'Oh blame not'--and 'Oh breathe not his name'--are worth all the Epics that ever were composed.

Rogers thinks the Quarterly will attack me next. Let them. I have been 'peppered so highly' in my time, both ways, that it must be cayenne or aloes to make me taste. I can sincerely say, that I am not very much alive now to criticism. But--in tracing this--I rather believe that it proceeds from my not attaching that importance to authorship which many do, and which, when young, I did also. 'One gets tired of every thing, my angel,' says Valmont. The 'angels' are the only things of which I am not a little sick--but I do think the preference of writers to agents--the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others--a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness. Who would write, who had any thing better to do? 'Action--action--action'--said Demosthenes: 'Actions--actions,' I say,- and not writing,--least of all, rhyme. Look at the querulous and monotonous lives of the 'genus ;'--except Cervantes, Tasso, Dante, Ariosto, Kleist (who were brave and active citizens), Aeschylus, Sophocles, and some other of the antiques also--what a worthless, idle brood it is!

12, Mezza Notte

Just returned from dinner with Jackson (the Emperor of Pugilism) and another of the select, at Crib's, the champion's. I drank more than I like, and have brought away some three bottles of very fair claret--for I have no headache. We had Tom Crib up after dinner;--very facetious, though somewhat prolix. He don't like his situation--wants to fight again--pray Pollux (or Castor, if he was the miller) he may! Tom has been a sailor--a coal-heaver--and some other genteel profession, before he took to the cestus. Tom has been in action at sea, and is now only three-and-thirty. A great man! has a wife and a mistress, and conversations well--bating some sad omissions and misapplications of the aspirate. Tom is an old friend of mine; I have seen some of his best battles in my nonage. He is now a publican, and, I fear, a sinner;--for Mrs. Crib is on alimony, and Tom's daughter lives with the champion. This Tom told me,--Tom, having an opinion of my morals, passed her off as a legal spouse. Talking of her, he said, 'she was the truest of women'--from which I immediately inferred she could not be his wife, and so it turned out.

These panegyrics don't belong to matrimony;--for, if 'true,' a man don't think it necessary to say so; and if not, the less he says the better. Crib is the only man except -----, I ever heard harangue upon his wife's virtue; and I listened to both with great credence and patience, and stuffed my handkerchief into my mouth, when I found yawning irresistible--By the by, I am yawning now--so, good night to thee.--[Greek]

Thursday, November 26

Awoke a little feverish, but no headache--no dreams neither, thanks to stupor! Two letters; one from -----, the other from Lady Melbourne--both excellent in their respective styles. -----'s contained also a very pretty Lyric on 'concealed griefs;' if not her own, yet very like her. Why did she not say that the stanzas were, or were not, of her composition? I do not know whether to wish them hers or not. I have no great esteem for poetical persons, particularly women; they have so much of the 'ideal' in practics, as well as ethics.

I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Coe.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject--to me--and contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother's faux pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their house not far from the Plainstanes at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in our way.

How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke--it nearly choked me--to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or remember pitying her sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory--her brown, dark hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see her now; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months. . . .

I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well acquainted with my childish penchant, and had sent the news on purpose for me,--and thanks to her!

Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus, others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.

Lord Holland invited me to dinner to-day; but three days' dining would destroy me. So, without eating at all since yesterday, I went to my box at Covent Garden.

Saw ----- looking very pretty, though quite a different style of beauty from the other two. She has the finest eyes in the world, out of which she pretends not to see, and the longest eyelashes I ever saw, since Leila's and Phannio's Moslem curtains of the light. She has much beauty,--just enough,--but is, I think, mechante.

I have been pondering on the miseries of separation, that--oh how seldom we see those we love! yet we live ages in moments, when met. The only thing that consoles me during absence is the reflection that no mental or personal estrangement, from ennui or disagreement, can take place; and when people meet hereafter, even though many changes may have taken place in the mean time, still, unless they are tired of each other, they are ready to reunite, and do not blame each other for the circumstances that severed them.

Saturday 27, (I believe--or rather am in doubt, which is the ne plus ultra of mortal faith.)

I have missed a day; and, as the Irishman said, or Joe Miller says for him, 'have gained a loss,' or by the loss. Every thing is settled for Holland, and nothing but a cough, or a caprice of my fellow-traveller's, can stop us. Carriage ordered, funds prepared, and, probably, a gale of wind into the bargain. N'importe--I believe, with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood, 'By our Mary, (dear name!) thou art both Mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before his day.' Heigh for Helvoetsluys, and so forth!

To-night I went with young Henry Fox to see Nourjahad, a drama, which the Morning Post hath laid to my charge, but of which I cannot even guess the author. I wonder what they will next inflict upon me. They cannot well sink below a melodrama; but that is better than a satire, (at least, a personal one,) with which I stand truly arraigned, and in atonement of which I am resolved to bear silently all criticisms, abuses, and even praises, for bad pantomimes never composed by me, without even a contradictory aspect. I suppose the root of this report is my loan to the manager of my Turkish drawings for his dresses, to which he was more welcome than to my name. I suppose the real author will soon own it, as it has succeeded; if not, Job be my model, and Lethe my beverage!

----- has received the portrait safe; and, in answer, the only remark she makes upon it is, 'indeed it is like'--and again, 'indeed it is like.' With her the likeness 'covered a multitude of sins;' for I happen to know that this portrait was not a flatterer, but dark and stern,--even black as the mood in which my mind was scorching last July, when I sat for it. All the others of me, like most portraits whatsoever, are, of course, more agreeable than nature.

Redde the Edinburgh Review of Rogers. He is ranked highly; but where he should be. There is a summary view of us all--Moore and me among the rest; and both (the first justly) praised--though, by implication (justly again) placed beneath our memorable friend. Mackintosh is the writer, and also of the critique on the Stael. His grand essay on Burke, I hear, is for the next number. But I know nothing of the Edinburgh, or of any other Review, but from rumour; and I have long ceased--indeed, I could not, in justice, complain of any, even though I were to rate poetry, in general, and my rhymes in particular, more highly than I really do. To withdraw myself from myself (oh that cursed selfishness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all; and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself. If I valued fame, I should flatter received opinions, which have gathered strength by time, and will yet wear longer than any living works to the contrary. But, for the soul of me, I cannot and will not give the lie to my own thoughts and doubts, come what may. If I am a fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise,--in which, from the description, I see nothing very tempting. My restlessness tells me I have something 'within that passeth show.' It is for Him, who made it, to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates, yet burns, this frail tenement; but I see no such horror in a 'dreamless sleep,' and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not render tiresome. How else 'fell the angels,' even according to your creed? They were immortal, heavenly, and happy, as their apostate Abdiel is now by his treachery. Time must decide; and eternity won't be the less agreeable or more horrible because one did not expect it. In the mean time, I am grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils--grace a Dieu et mon bon temperament.

Tuesday, 30th

Two days missed in my log-book;--hiatus haud deflendus. They were as little worth recollection as the rest; and, luckily, laziness or society prevented me from notching them.

Sunday, I dined with the Lord Holland in St. James's Square. Large party--among them Sir S. Romilly and Lady Ry.--General Sir Somebody Bentham, a man of science and talent, I am told--Horner--the Horner, an Edinburgh Reviewer, an excellent speaker in the 'Honourable House,' very pleasing, too, and gentlemanly in company, as far as I have seen--Sharpe--Philips of Lancashire--Lord John Russell, and others, 'good men and true.' Holland's society is very good; you always see some one or other in it worth knowing. Stuffed myself with sturgeon, and exceeded in champagne and wine in general, but not to confusion of head. When I do dine, I gorge like an Arab or a Boa snake, on fish and vegetables, but no meat. I am always better, however, on my tea and biscuit than any other regimen, and even that sparingly.

Why does Lady H. always have that damned screen between the whole room and the fire? I, who bear cold no better than an antelope, and never yet found a sun quite done to my taste, was absolutely petrified, and could not even shiver. All the rest, too, looked as if they were just unpacked, like salmon from an ice-basket, and set down to table for that day only. When she retired, I watched their looks as I dismissed the screen, and every cheek thawed, and every nose reddened with the anticipated glow.

Saturday, I went with Harry Fox to Nourjahad; and, I believe, convinced him, by incessant yawning, that it was not mine. I wish the precious author would own it, and release me from his fame. The dresses are pretty, but not in costume;--Mrs. Horn's, all but the turban, and the want of a small dagger (if she is a sultana), perfect. I never saw a Turkish woman with a turban in my life--nor did any one else. The sultanas have a small poniard at the waist. The dialogue is drowsy--the action heavy--the scenery fine--the actors tolerable. I can't say much for their seraglio--Teresa, Phannio, or ------, were worth them all.

Sunday, a very handsome note from Mackintosh, who is a rare instance of the union of very transcendent talent and great good nature. To-day (Tuesday) a very pretty billet from M. la Baronne de Stael Holstein. She is pleased to be much pleased with my mention of her and her last work in my notes. I spoke as I thought. Her works are my delight, and so is she herself, for--half an hour. I don't like her politics--at least, her having changed them; had she been qualis ab incepto, it were nothing. But she is a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them together, intellectually;--she ought to have been a man. She flatters me very prettily in her note;--but I know it. The reason that adulation is not displeasing is, that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie, to make us their friend:--that is their concern.

----- is, I hear, thriving on the repute of a pun which was mine (at Mackintosh's dinner some time back), on Ward, who was asking, 'how much it would take to re-whig him?' I answered that, probably, 'he must first, before he was re-whigged, be re-warded.' This foolish quibble, before the Stael and Mackintosh, and a number of conversationers, has been mouthed about, and at last settled on the head of -----, where long may it remain!

George is returned from afloat to get a new ship. He looks thin, but better than I expected. I like George much more than most people like their heirs. He is a fine fellow, and every inch a sailor. I would do any thing, but apostatise, to get him on in his profession.

Lewis called. It is a good and good-humoured man, but pestilently prolix and paradoxical and personal. If he would but talk half, and reduce his visits to an hour, he would add to his popularity. As an author he is very good, and his vanity is ouverte, like Erskine's, and yet not offending.

Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella, which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours!--without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress--a girl of twenty--a peeress that is to be, in her own right--an only child, and a savante, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess--a mathematician--a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.

Wednesday, December 1, 1813

To-day responded to La Baronne de Stael Holstein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance--through Moore--of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times--much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on qualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again;--the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't think him deeply versed in life;--he is the bigot of virtue (not religion), and enamoured of the beauty of that 'empty name,' as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are the centre of circles, wide or narrow--the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three are gathered together--must be, and as even Johnson was; but, withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring 'the right to the expedient' might excuse.

To-morrow there is a party of purple at the 'blue' Miss Berry's. Shall I go? um!--I don't much affect your blue-bottles;--but one ought to be civil. There will be, 'I guess now' (as the Americans say), the Staels and Mackintoshes--good--the -----s and -----s --not so good--the -----s, etc., etc.--good for nothing. Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning, Lady Charlemont, will be there. I hope so; it is a pleasure to look upon that most beautiful of faces.

Wrote to H.:--he has been telling that I -----. I am sure, at least, I did not mention it, and I wish he had not. He is a good fellow, and I obliged myself ten times more by being of use than I did him,--and there's an end on't.

Baldwin is boring me to present their King's Bench petition. I presented Cartwright's last year; and Stanhope and I stood against the whole House, and mouthed it valiantly--and had some fun and a little abuse for our opposition. But 'I am not i' th' vein' for this business. Now, had ----- been here, she would have made me do it. There is a woman, who, amid all her fascination, always urged a man to usefulness or glory. Had she remained, she had been my tutelar genius.

Baldwin is very importunate--but, poor fellow, 'I can't get out, I can't get out--said the starling.' Ah, I am as bad as that dog Sterne, who preferred whining over 'a dead ass to relieving a living mother'--villain--hypocrite--slave--sycophant! but I am no better. Here I cannot stimulate myself to a speech for the sake of these unfortunates, and three words and half a smile of ----- had she been here to urge it (and urge it she infallibly would--at least she always pressed me on senatorial duties, and particularly in the cause of weakness) would have made me an advocate, if not an orator. Curse on Rochefoucault for being always right! In him a lie were virtue,--or, at least, a comfort to his readers.

George Byron has not called to-day; I hope he will be an admiral, and, perhaps, Lord Byron into the bargain. If he would but marry, I would engage never to marry myself, or cut him out of the heirship. He would be happier, and I should like nephews better than sons.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty (January 22d, 1814). Is there any thing in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five

Oh Gioventu!
Oh Primavera! gioventu dell' anno.
Oh Gioventu! primavera della vita.

Sunday, December 5

Dallas's nephew (son to the American Attorney-general) is arrived in this country, and tells Dallas that my rhymes are very popular in the United States. These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears--to be redde on the banks of the Ohio! The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind, was from an extract, in Cooke the actor's life, from his journal, stating that in the reading-room at Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. To be popular in a rising and far country has a kind of posthumous feel, very different from the ephemeral eclat and feteing, buzzing and party-ing compliments of the well-dressed multitude. I can safely say that, during my reign in the spring of 1812, I regretted nothing but its duration of six weeks instead of a fortnight, and was heartily glad to resign.

Tonight I supped with Lewis; and, as usual, though I neither exceeded in solids nor fluids, have been half dead ever since. My stomach is entirely destroyed by long abstinence, and the rest will probably follow. Let it--I only wish the pain over. The 'leap in the dark' is the least to be dreaded.

The Duke of ----- called. I have told them forty times that, except to half-a-dozen old and specified acquaintances, I am invisible. His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person; but I am content to think so at a distance, and so--I was not at home.

Galt called.--Mem.--to ask some one to speak to Raymond in favour of his play. We are old fellow-travellers, and, with all his eccentricities, he has much strong sense, experience of the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a good-natured philosophical fellow. I showed him Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it. Murray has a copy. I thought it had been unknown, and wish it were; but Sligo arrived only some days after, and the rumours are the subject of his letter. That I shall preserve,--it is as well. Lewis and Galt were both horrified; and L. wondered I did not introduce the situation into The Giaour. He may wonder;--he might wonder more at that production's being written at all. But to describe the feelings of that situation were impossible--it is icy even to recollect them.

The Bride of Abydos was published on Thursday the second of December; but how it is liked or disliked, I know not. Whether it succeeds or not is no fault of the public, against whom I can have no complaint. But I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination--from selfish regrets to vivid recollections--and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory. Sharpe called, but was not let in--which I regret.

Saw [Rogers] yesterday. I have not kept my appointment at Middleton, which has not pleased him, perhaps; and my projected voyage with [Ward] will, perhaps, please him less. But I wish to keep well with both. They are instruments that don't do in concert; but, surely, their: separate tones are very musical, and l won't give up either,

It is well if I don't jar between these great discords. At present I stand tolerably well with all, but I cannot adopt their dislikes;--so many sets. Holland's is the first;--every thing distingue is welcome there, and certainly the ton of his society is the best. Then there is Madame de Stael's--there I never go, though I might, had I courted it. It is composed of the -----s and the ----- family, with a strange sprinkling,--orators, dandies, and all kinds of Blue, from the regular Grub Street uniform, down to the azure jacket of the Litterateur. To see ----- and ----- sitting together, at dinner, always reminds me of the grave, where all distinctions of friend and foe are levelled; and they--the Reviewer and Reviewee--the Rhinoceros and Elephant--the Mammoth and Megalonyx--all will lie quietly together. They now sit together, as silent, but not so quiet, as if they were already immured.

l did not go to the Berrys' the other night. The elder is a woman of much talent, and both are handsome, and must have been beautiful. To-night asked to Lord H.'s--shall I go? um!--perhaps.

Morning, two o'clock

Went to Lord H.'s--party numerous--milady in perfect good humour and consequently perfect. No one more agreeable, or perhaps so much so, when she will. Asked for Wednesday to dine and meet the Stael--asked particularly, I believe, out of Mischief to see the first interview after the note, with which Corinne professes herself to be so much taken. I don't much like it; she always talks of myself or herself, and I am not (except in soliloquy, as now,) much enamoured of either subject--especially one's works. What the devil shall I say about De l'Allemagne? I like it prodigiously; but unless I can twist my admiration into some fantastical expression, she won't believe me; and I know, by experience, I shall be overwhelmed with fine things about rhyme, etc., etc. The lover, Mr. -----[Rocca], was there to-night, and C---- said 'it was the only proof he had seen of her good taste.' Monsieur L'Amant is remarkably handsome; but I don't think more so than her book.

C----- [Campbell] looks well,--seems pleased, and dressed to sprucery. A blue coat becomes him,--so does his new wig. He really looked as if Apollo had sent him a birthday suit, or a wedding-garment, and was witty and lively. He abused Corinne's book, which I regret; because, firstly, he understands German, and is consequently a fair judge; and, secondly, he is first-rate, and, consequently, the best of judges. I reverence and admire him; but I won't give up my opinion--Why should I? I read her again and again, and there can be no affectation in this. I cannot be mistaken (except in taste) in a book I read and lay down, and take up again; and no book can be totally bad which finds one, even one reader, who can say as much sincerely.

Campbell talks of lecturing next spring; his last lectures were eminently successful. Moore thought of it, but gave it up,--I don't know why. ----- had been prating dignity to him, and such stuff; as if a man disgraced himself by instructing and pleasing at the same time.

Introduced to Marquis Buckingham--saw Lord Gower--he is going to Holland; Sir J. and Lady Mackintosh and Horner, G. Lamb, with I know not how many (Richard Wellesley, one--a clever man), grouped about the room. Little Henry Fox, a very fine boy, and very promising in mind and manner,--he went away to bed, before I had time to talk to him. I am sure I had rather hear him than all the savans.

Monday, Dec. 6

Murray tells me that Croker asked him why the thing was called the Bride of Abydos? It is a cursed awkward question, being unanswerable. She is not a bride, only about to be one; but for, etc., etc., etc.

I don't wonder at his finding out the Bull; but the detection ----- is too late to do any good. I was a great fool to make it, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman.

Campbell last night seemed a little nettled at something or other, I know not what. We were standing in the ante-saloon, when Lord H. brought out of the other room a vessel of some composition similar to that which is used in Catholic churches, and, seeing us, he exclaimed, 'Here is some incense for you.' Campbell answered--'Carry it to Lord Byron, he is used to it.'

Now, this comes of 'bearing no brother near the throne.' I, who have no throne, nor wish to have one now, whatever I may have done, am at perfect peace with all the poetical fraternity: or, at least, if I dislike any, it is not poetically, but personally. Surely the field of thought is infinite; what does it signify who is before or behind in a race where there is no goal? The temple of fame is like that of the Persians, the universe; our altar, the tops of mountains. I should be equally content with Mount Caucasus, or Mount Anything; and those who like it, may have Mount Blanc or Chimborazo, without my envy of their elevation.

I think I may now speak thus; for I have just published a poem, and am quite ignorant whether it is likely to be liked or not. I have hitherto heard little in its commendation, and no one can downright abuse it to one's face, except in print. It can't be good, or I should not have stumbled over the threshold, and blundered in my very title. But I began it with my heart full of -----, and my head of orientalities (I can't call them isms), and wrote on rapidly.

This journal is a relief. When I am tired--as I generally am--out comes this, and down goes every thing. But I can't read it over; and God knows what contradictions it may contain. If I am sincere with myself (but I fear one lies more to one's self than to any one else), every page should confute, refute, and utterly abjure its predecessor.

Another scribble from Martin Baldwin the petitioner; I have neither head nor nerves to present it. That confounded supper at Lewis's has spoiled my digestion and my philanthropy. I have no more charity than a cruet of vinegar. Would I were an ostrich, and dieted on fire irons,--or any thing that my gizzard could get the better of.

To-day saw Ward. His uncle is dying, and W. don't much affect our Dutch determinations. I dine with him on Thursday, provided l'oncle is not dined upon, or peremptorily bespoke by the posthumous epicures before that day. I wish he may recover--not for our dinner's sake, but to disappoint the undertaker, and the rascally reptiles that may well wait, since they will dine at last.

Gell called--he of Troy--after I was out. Mem.--to return his visit. But my Mems. are the very land-marks of forgetfulness;--something like a light-house, with a ship wrecked under the nose of its lantern. I never look at a Mem. without seeing that I have remembered to forget. Mem.--I have forgotten to pay Pitt's taxes, and suppose I shall be surcharged. 'An I do not turn rebel when thou art king'--oons! I believe my very biscuit is leavened with that impostor's imposts.

Lady Melbourne returns from Jersey's to-morrow;--I must call. A Mr. Thomson has sent a song, which I must applaud. I hate annoying them with censure or silence;--and yet I hate lettering.

Saw Lord Glenbervie and his Prospectus, at Murray's, of a new Treatise on Timber. Now here is a man more useful than all the historians and rhymers ever planted. For, by preserving our woods and forests, he furnishes materials for all the history of Britain worth reading, and all the odes worth nothing.

Redde a good deal, but desultorily. My head is crammed with the most useless lumber. It is odd that when I do read, I can only bear the chicken broth of--any thing but Novels. It is many a year since I looked into one, (though they are sometimes ordered, by way of experiment, but never taken,) till I looked yesterday at the worst parts of the Monk. These descriptions ought to have been written by Tiberius at Caprea--they are forced--the philtered ideas of a jaded voluptuary. It is to me inconceivable how they could have been composed by a man of only twenty--his age when he wrote them. They have no nature--all the sour cream of cantharides. I should have suspected Buffon of writing them on the death-bed of his detestable dotage. I had never redde this edition, and merely looked at them from curiosity and recollection of the noise they made, and the name they have left to Lewis. But they could do no harm, except ....

Called this evening on my agent--my business as usual. Our strange adventures are the only inheritances of our family that have not diminished.

I shall now smoke two cigars, and get me to bed. The cigars don't keep well here. They get as old as a donna di quaranti anni in the sun of Africa. The Havannah are the best;--but neither are so pleasant as a hooka or chiboque. The Turkish tobacco is mild, and their horses entire--two things as they should be. I am so far obliged to this Journal, that it preserves me from verse,--at least from keeping it. I have just thrown a poem into the fire (which it has relighted to my great comfort), and have smoked out of my head the plan of another. I wish I could as easily get rid of thinking, or, at least, the confusion of thought.

Tuesday, December 7

Went to bed, and slept dreamlessly, but not refreshingly. Awoke, and up an hour before being called; but dawdled three hours in dressing. When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),--sleep, eating, and swilling--buttoning and unbuttoning--how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

Redde the papers and tea-ed and soda-watered, and found out that the fire was badly lighted. Lord Glenbervie wants me to go to Brighton--um!

This morning, a very pretty billet from the Stael about meeting her at Ld. H.'s to-morrow. She has written, I dare say, twenty such this morning to different people, all equally flattering to each. So much the better for her and those who believe all she wishes them, or they wish to believe. She has been pleased to be pleased with my slight eulogy in the note annexed to The Bride. This is to be accounted for in several ways,--firstly, all women like all, or any, praise; secondly, this was unexpected, because I have never courted her; and, thirdly, as Scrub says, those who have been all their lives regularly praised, by regular critics, like a little variety, and are glad when any one goes out of his way to say a civil thing; and, fourthly, she is a very good-natured creature, which is the best reason, after all, and, perhaps, the only one.

A knock--knocks single and double. Bland called. He says Dutch society (he has been in Holland) is second-hand French; but the women are like women every where else. This is a bore: I should like to see them a little unlike; but that can't be expected.

Went out--came home--this, that, and the other--and 'all is vanity, saith the preacher,' and so say I, as part of his congregation. Talking of vanity, whose praise do I prefer? Why, Mrs. Inchbald's, and that of the Americans. The first, because her Simple Story and Nature and Art are, to me, true to their titles; and, consequently, her short note to Rogers about The Giaour delighted me more than any thing, except the Edinburgh Review. I like the Americans, because I happened to be in Asia, while the English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers were redde in America. If I could have had a speech against the Slave Trade in Africa, and an epitaph on a dog in Europe (i.e. in the Morning Post), my vertex sublimis would certainly have displaced stars enough to overthrow the Newtonian system.

Friday, December 10, 1813

I am ennuye beyond my usual tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don't find that society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself--and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps -----; but it would be a good thing for George, on the other side, and no bad one for me; but I won't be tempted.

I have had the kindest letter from Moore. I do think that man is the best-hearted, the only hearted being I ever encountered; and, then, his talents are equal to his feelings.

Dined on Wednesday at Lord H.'s--the Staffords, Staels, Cowpers, Ossulstones, Melbournes, Mackintoshes, etc., etc.--and was introduced to the Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford,--an unexpected event. My quarrel with Lord Carlisle (their or his brother-in-law) having rendered it improper, I suppose, brought it about. But, if it was to happen at all, I wonder it did not occur before. She is handsome, and must have been beautiful--and her manners are b.

The Stael was at the other end of the table, and less loquacious than heretofore. We are now very-good friends; though she asked Lady Melbourne whether I had really any bonhommie. She might as well have asked that question before she told C. L. 'c'est un demon.' True enough, but rather premature, for she could not have found it out, and so--she wants me to dine there next Sunday.

Murray prospers, as far as circulation. For my part, I adhere (in liking) to my Fragment. It is no wonder that I wrote one--my mind is a fragment.

Saw Lord Gower, Tierney, etc. in the square. Took leave of Lord Gower, who is going to Holland and Germany. He tells me that he carries with him a parcel of Harolds and Giaours, etc., for the readers of Berlin, who, it seems, read English, and have taken a caprice for mine. Um!--have I been German all this time, when I thought myself Oriental?

Lent Tierney my box for to-morrow; and received a new comedy sent by Lady C. A.--but not hers. I must read it, and endeavour not to displease the author. I hate annoying them with cavil; but a comedy I take to be the most difficult of compositions, more so than tragedy.

Galt says there is a coincidence between the first part of The Bride and some story of his--whether published or not, I know not, never having seen it. He is almost the last person on whom any one would commit literary larceny, and I am not conscious of any witting thefts on any. of the genus. As to originality, all pretensions are ludicrous,--'there is nothing new under the sun.'

Went last night to the play. Invited out to a party, but did not go;--right. Refused to go to Lady -----'s on Monday;--right again. If I must fritter away my life, I would rather do it alone. I was much tempted;--C----- looked so Turkish with her red turban, and her regular, dark, and clear features. Not that she and I ever were, or could be, any thing; but I love any aspect that reminds me of the 'children of the sun.'

To dine to-day with Rogers and Sharpe, for which I have some appetite, not having tasted food for the preceding forty-eight hours. I wish I could leave off eating altogether.

Sunday, December 12

By Galt's answer, I find it is some story in real life, and not any work with which my late composition coincides. It is still more singular, for mine is drawn from existence also.

I have sent an excuse to Madame de Stael. I do not feel sociable enough for dinner to-day;--and I will not go to Sheridan's on Wednesday. Not that I do not admire and prefer his unequalled conversation; but--that 'but' must only be intelligible to thoughts I cannot write. Sheridan was in good talk at Rogers's the other night, but I only stayed till nine. All the world are to be at the Stael's to-night, and I am not sorry to escape any part of it. I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. Went out--did not go to the Stael's but to Ld. Holland's. Party numerous--conversation general. Stayed late--made a blunder--got over it--came home and went to bed, not having eaten. Rather empty, but fresco, which is the great point with me.

Monday, December 13, 1813

Called at three places--read, and got ready to leave town to-morrow. Murray has had a letter from his brother bibliopole of Edinburgh, who says, 'he is lucky in having such a poet'--something as if one was a pack-horse, or 'ass, or any thing that is his:' or, like Mrs. Packwood, who replied to some inquiry after the Odes on Razors,--'Laws, sir, we keeps a poet.' The same illustrious Edinburgh bookseller once sent an order for books, poesy, and cookery,-with this agreeable postscript--'The Harold and Cookery are much wanted.' Such is fame, and, after all, quite as good as any other 'life in others' breath.' 'Tis much the same to divide purchasers with Hannah Glasse or Hannah More.

Some editor of some magazine has announced to Murray his intention of abusing the thing 'without reading it.' So much the better; if he redde it first, he would abuse it more. Allen (Lord Holland's Allen--the best informed and one of the ablest men I know--a perfect Magliabecchi--a devourer, a Helluo of books, and an observer of men,) has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished and never-to-be published Letters. They are full of oaths and obscene songs. What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity--all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay! It seems strange; a true voluptuary will never abandon his mind to the grossness of reality. It is by exalting the earthly, the material, the physique of our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, by forgetting them altogether, or, at least, never naming them hardly to one's self, that we alone can prevent them from disgusting.

December 14, 15, 16

Much done, but nothing to record. It is quite enough to set down my thoughts,--my actions will rarely bear retrospection.

December 17, 18

Lord Holland told me a curious piece of sentimentality in Sheridan. The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him and other hommes marquans, and mine was this:--'Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggar's Opera), the best farce (the Critic--it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.' Somebody told S. this the next day, and on hearing it he burst into tears!

Poor Brinsley! if they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said these few, but most sincere, words than have written the Iliad or made his own celebrated Philippic. Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more than to hear that he had derived a moment's gratification from any praise of mine, humble as it must appear to 'my elders and my betters.'

Went to my box at Covent Garden to-night; and my delicacy felt a little shocked at seeing S-----'s mistress (who, to my certain knowledge, was actually educated, from her birth for her profession) sitting with her mother, 'a three-piled b--d, b--d-Major to the army,' in a private box opposite. I felt rather indignant; but, casting my eyes round the house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distinguished old and young Babylonians of quality;--so I burst out a laughing. It was really odd; Lady ----- divorced--Lady ----- and her daughter, Lady -----, both divorceable--Mrs.-----, in the next the like, and still nearer -----! What an assemblage to me, who know all their histories. It was as if the house had been divided between your public and your understood courtesans;--but the intriguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. On the other side were only Pauline and her mother, and, next box to her, three of inferior note. Now, where lay the difference between her and mamma, and Lady ----- and daughter? except that the two last may enter Carleton and any other house, and the two first are limited to the opera and b---- house. How I do delight in observing life as it really is!--and myself, after all, the worst of any. But no matter--I must avoid egotism, which, just now, would be no vanity.

I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called The Devil's Drive, the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk.

Redde some Italian, and wrote two Sonnets on -----. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise--and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much, that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the metaphysical, whining dotard never could.

January 16, 1814

To-morrow I leave town for a few days. I saw Lewis to-day, who is just returned from Oatlands, where he has been squabbling with Mad. de Stael about himself, Clarissa Harlowe, Mackintosh, and me. My homage has never been paid in that quarter, or we would have agreed still worse. I don't talk--I can't flatter, and won't listen, except to a pretty or a foolish woman. She bored Lewis with praises of himself till he sickened--found out that Clarissa was perfection, and Mackintosh the first man in England. There I agree, at least one of the first--but Lewis did not. As to Clarissa, I leave to those who can read it to judge and dispute. I could not do the one, and am, consequently, not qualified for the other. She told Lewis wisely, he being my friend, that I was affected, in the first place; and that, in the next place, I committed the heinous offence of sitting at dinner with my eyes shut, or half shut. I wonder if I really have this trick. I must cure myself of it, if true. One insensibly acquires awkward habits, which should be broken in time. If this is one, I wish I had been told of it before. It would not so much signify if one was always to be checkmated by a plain woman, but one may as well see some of one's neighbours, as well as the plate upon the table.

I should like, of all things, to have heard the Amabaean eclogue between her and Lewis--both obstinate, clever, odd, garrulous, and shrill. In fact, one could have heard nothing else. But they fell out, alas!--and now they will never quarrel again. Could not one reconcile them for the 'nonce?' Poor Corinne--she will find that some of her fine sayings won't suit our fine ladies and gentlemen.

I am getting rather into admiration of [Lady C. Annesley], the youngest sister of Lady F. [Webster]. A wife would be my salvation. I am sure the wives of my acquaintances have hitherto done me little good. Catherine is beautiful, but very young, and, I think, a fool. But I have not seen enough to judge; besides, I hate an esprit in petticoats. That she won't love me is very probable, nor shall I love her. But, on my system, and the modern system in general, that don't signify. The business (if it came to business) would probably be arranged between papa and me. She would have her own way; I am good-humoured to women, and docile; and, if I did not fall in love with her, which I should try to prevent, we should be a very comfortable couple. As to conduct, that she must look to. But if I love, I shall be jealous;--and for that reason I will not be in love. Though, after all, I doubt my temper? and fear I should not be so patient as becomes the bienseance of a married man in my station. Divorce ruins the poor femme, and damages are a paltry compensation. I do fear my temper would lead me into some of our oriental tricks of vengeance, or, at any rate, into a summary appeal to the court of twelve paces. So 'I'll none on't,' but e'en remain single and solitary;--though I should like to have somebody now and then to yawn with one.

Ward, and, after him, -----, has stolen one of my buffooneries about Mme. de Stael's Metaphysics and the Fog, and passed it, by speech and letter, as their own. As Gibbet says, 'they are the most of a gentleman of any on the road.' W. is in sad enmity with the Whigs about this Review of Fox (if he did review him);--all the epigrammatists and essayists are at him. I hate odds, and wish he may beat them. As for me, by the blessing of indifference, I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better nor worse for a people than another. I shall adhere to my party, because it would not be honourable to act otherwise; but, as to opinions, I don't think politics worth an opinion. Conduct is another thing:--if you begin with a party, go on with them. I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference on the subject altogether.

Feb. 18

Better than a month since I last journalised:--most of it out of London and at Notts., but a busy one and a pleasant, at least three weeks of it. On my return, I find all the newspapers in hysterics, and town in an uproar, on the avowal and republication of two stanzas on Princess Charlotte's weeping at Regency's speech to Lauderdale in 1812. They are daily at it still;--some of the abuse good, all of it hearty. They talk of a motion in our House upon it--be it so.

Got up--redde the Morning Post containing the battle of Buonaparte, the destruction of the Custom-house, and a paragraph on me as long as my pedigree, and vituperative, as usual.

Hobhouse is returned to England. He is my best friend, the most lively, and a man of the most sterling talents extant.

The Corsair has been conceived, written, published, etc. since I last took up this journal. They tell me it has great success;--it was written con amore, and much from existence. Murray is satisfied with its progress; and if the public are equally so with the perusal, there's an end of the matter.

Nine o'clock

Been to Hanson's on business. Saw Rogers, and had a note from Lady Melbourne, who says, it is said I am 'much out of spirits.' l wonder if I really am or not? I have certainly enough of 'that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart,' and it is better they should believe it to be the result of these attacks than of the real cause; but--ay, ay, always but, to the end of the chapter.

Hobhouse has told me ten thousand anecdotes of Napoleon, all good and true. My friend H. is the most entertaining of companions, and a fine fellow to boot.

Redde a little--wrote notes and letters, and am alone, which Locke says is bad company. 'Be not solitary, be not idle.'--Um!--the idleness is troublesome; but I can't see so much to regret in the solitude. The more I see of men, the less I like them. If I could but say so of women too, all would be well. Why can't I? I am now six-and-twenty; my passions have had enough to cool them; my affections more than enough to wither them,--and yet--and yet--always yet and but--'Excellent well, you are a fishmonger--get thee to a nunnery.'--'They fool me to the top of my bent.'

Midnight

Began a letter, which I threw into the fire. Redde--but to little purpose. Did not visit Hobhouse, as I promised and ought. No matter, the loss is mine. Smoked cigars.

Napoleon!--this week will decide his fate. All seems against him; but I believe and hope he will win--at least, beat back the invaders. What right have we to prescribe sovereigns to France? Oh for a Republic! 'Brutus, thou sleepest.' Hobhouse abounds in continental anecdotes of this extraordinary man; all in favour of his intellect and courage, but against his bonhommie. No wonder;--how should he, who knows mankind well, do other than despise and abhor them?

The greater the equality, the more impartially evil is distributed, and becomes lighter by the division among so many--therefore, a Republic!

More notes from Madame de Stael unanswered--and so they shall remain. I admire her abilities, but really her society is overwhelming--an avalanche that buries one in glittering nonsense--all snow and sophistry.

Shall I go to Mackintosh's on Tuesday? um!--I did not go to Marquis Lansdowne's, nor to Miss Berry's, though both are pleasant. So is Sir James's,--but I don't know--I believe one is not the better for parties; at least, unless some regnante is there.

I wonder how the deuce any body could make such a world; for what purpose dandies, for instance, were ordained --and kings--and fellows of colleges--and women of 'a certain age'--and many men of any age--and myself, most of all!....

Is there any thing beyond?--who knows? He that can't tell. Who tells that there is? He who don't know. And when shall he know? perhaps, when he don't expect, and generally when he don't wish it. In this last respect, however, all are not alike: it depends a good deal upon education,--something upon nerves and habits--but most upon digestion.

Saturday, Feb 19

Went to Waite's. Teeth are all right and white; but he says that I grind them in my sleep and chip the edges. That same sleep is no friend of mine, though I court him sometimes for half the twenty-four.

February 20

Got up and tore out two leaves of this Journal--I don't know why. Hodgson just called and gone. He has much bonhommie with his other good qualities, and more talent than he has yet had credit for beyond his circle.

An invitation to dine at Holland House to meet Kean. He is worth meeting, and I hope, by getting into good society, he will be prevented from falling like Cooke. He is greater now on the stage, and off he should never be less. There is a stupid and underrating criticism upon him in one of the newspapers. I thought that, last night, though great, he rather under-acted more than the first time. This may be the effect of these cavils; but I hope he has more sense than to mind them. He cannot expect to maintain his present eminence, or to advance still higher, without the envy of his green-room fellows, and the nibbling of their admirers. But, if he don't beat them all, why then--merit hath no purchase in 'these coster-monger days.'

I wish that I had a talent for the drama; I would write a tragedy now. But no,--it is gone. Hodgson talks of one,--he will do it well;--and I think Moore should try. He has I wonderful powers, and much variety; besides, he has lived and felt. To write so as to bring home to the heart, the heart must have been tried,--but, perhaps, ceased to be so. While you are under the influence of passions, you only feel, but cannot describe them,--any more than, when in action, you could turn round and tell the story to your next neighbour! When all is over,--all, all, and irrevocable,--trust to memory--she is then but too faithful.

Went out, and answered some letters, yawned now and then,-- and redde the Robbers. Fine,--but Fiesco is better; and Alfieri and Monti's Aristodemo best. They are more equal than the Tedeschi dramatists.

Answered--or rather acknowledged--the receipt of young Reynolds's poem, Safie. The lad is clever, but much of his thoughts are borrowed,--whence, the Reviewers may find out: I hate discouraging a young one; and I think;--though wild and more oriental than he would be, had he seen the scenes where he has placed his tale,--that he has much talent, and, certainly, fire enough.

Received a very singular epistle; and the mode of its conveyance, through Lord H.'s hands, as curious as the letter itself. But it was gratifying and pretty.

Sunday, February 27

Here I am, alone, instead of dining at Lord H.'s, where I was asked,--but not inclined to go any where. Hobhouse says I am growing a loup garou,--a solitary hobgoblin. True;--'I am myself alone.' The last week has been passed in reading--seeing plays--now and then visitors--sometimes yawning and sometimes sighing, but no writing,--save of letters. If I could always read, I should never feel the want of society. Do I regret it?--um!--'Man delights not me,' and only one woman--at a time.

There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman,--some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them--which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet,--I always feel in better humour with myself and every thing else, if there is a woman within ken. Even Mrs. Mule, my fire-lighter,--the most ancient and withered of her kind,--and (except to myself) not the best-tempered--always makes me laugh,--no difficult task when I am 'i' the vein.'

`Heigho! I would I were in mine island!--I am not well and yet I look in good health. At times, I fear, 'I am not in my perfect mind;'--and yet my heart and head have stood many a crash, and what should ail them now? They prey upon themselves, and I am sick--sick--'Prithee, undo this button--why should a cat, a rat, a dog have life--and thou no life at all?' Six-and-twenty years, as they call them, why, I might and should have been a Pasha by this time. 'I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun.'...

Sunday, March 6

On Tuesday last dined with Rogers,--Madame de Stael, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Erskine, and Payne Knight, Lady Donegal, and Miss R. there. Sheridan told a very good story of himself and Madame de Recamier's handkerchief; Erskine a few stories of himself only. She is going to write a big book about England, she says;--I believe her. Asked by her how I liked Miss Edgeworth's thing, called Patronage, and answered (very sincerely) that I thought it very bad for her, and worse than any of the others. Afterwards thought it possible Lady Donegal, being Irish, might be a patroness of Miss Edgeworth, and was rather sorry for my opinion, as I hate putting people into fusses, either with themselves or their favourites; it looks as if one did it on purpose. The party went off very well, and the fish was very much to my gusto. But we got up too soon after the women; and Mrs. Corinne always lingers so long after dinner that we wish her in--the drawing-room.

To-day Campbell called, and while sitting here in came Merivale. During our colloquy, C. (ignorant that Merivale was the writer) abused the 'mawkishness of the Quarterly Review of Grimm's Correspondence.' I (knowing the secret) changed the conversation as soon as I could; and C. went away, quite convinced of having made the most favourable impression on his new acquaintance. Merivale is luckily a very good-natured fellow, or God he knows what might have been engendered from such a malaprop. I did not look at him while this was going on, but I felt like a coal--for I like Merivale, as well as the article in question.

Asked to Lady Keith's to-morrow evening--I think I will go;--but it is the first party invitation I have accepted this 'season,' as the learned Fletcher called it, when that youngest rat of Lady -----'s cut my eye and cheek open with a misdirected pebble--'Never mind, my Lord, the scar will be gone before the season;' as if one's eye was of no importance in the mean time.

Lord Erskine called, and gave me his famous pamphlet with a marginal note and corrections in his handwriting. Sent it to be bound superbly, and shall treasure it.

Sent my fine print of Napoleon to be framed: It is framed-- and the Emperor becomes his robes as if he had been hatched in them.

March 7

Rose at seven--ready by half-past eight--went to Mr. Hanson's, Bloomsbury Square--went to church with his eldest daughter, Mary Anne (a good girl), and gave her away to the Earl of Portsmouth. Saw her fairly a countess--congratulated the family and groom (bride)--drank a bumper of wine (wholesome sherris) to their felicity, and all that--and came home. Asked to stay to dinner, but could not. At three sat to Phillips for faces. Called on Lady Melbourne--I like her so well, that I always stay too long. (Mem. to mend of that.) - ..(???)

Passed the evening with Hobhouse, who has begun a poem, which promises highly;--wish he would go on with it. Heard some curious extracts from a life of Morosini, the blundering Venetian, who blew up the Acropolis at Athens with a bomb, and be damned to him! Waxed sleepy--just come home--must go to bed, and am engaged to meet Sheridan to-morrow at Rogers's.

Queer ceremony that same of marriage--saw many abroad, Greek and Catholic--one, at home, many years ago. There be some strange phrases in the prologue (the exhortation), which made me turn away, not to laugh in the face of the surpliceman. Made one blunder, when I joined the hands of the happy ' rammed their left hands, by mistake, into one another. Corrected it, bustled back to the altar-rail, and said 'Amen.' Portsmouth responded as if he had got the whole by heart; and, if any thing, was rather before the priest. It is now midnight and....

March 10, Thor's Day

On Tuesday dined with Rogers,--Mackintosh, Sheridan, Sharpe,--much talk, and good,--all, except my own little prattlement. Much of old times--Horne Tooke--the Trials evidence of Sheridan, and anecdotes of those times, when I, alas! was an infant. If I had been a man, I would have made an English Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

Set down Sheridan at Brookes's,--where, by the by, he could not have well set down himself, as he and I were the only drinkers. Sherry means to stand for Westminster, as Cochrane (the stock-jobbing hoaxer) must vacate. Brougham is a candidate. I fear for poor dear Sherry. Both have talents of the highest order, but the youngster has yet a character. We shall see, if he lives to Sherry's age, how he will pass over the redhot ploughshares of public life: I don't know why, but I hate to see the old ones lose; particularly Sheridan, notwithstanding all his mechancete.

Received many, and the kindest, thanks from Lady Portsmouth, pere and mere, for my match-making. I don't regret it, as she looks the countess well, and is a very good girl. It is odd how well she carries her new honours. She looks a different woman, and high-bred, too. I had no idea that I could make so good a peeress.

Went to the play with Hobhouse. Mrs. Jordan superlative in Hoyden, and Jones well enough in Foppington. What plays! what wit!--helas! Congreve and Vanbrugh are your only comedy. Our society is too insipid now for the like copy. Would not go to Lady Keith's. Hobhouse thought it odd. I wonder he should like parties. If one is in love, and wants to break a commandment and covet any thing that is there, they do very well. But to go out amongst the mere herd, without a motive, pleasure, or pursuit--'sdeath! 'I'll none of it.' He told me an odd report,--that I am the actual Conrad, the veritable Corsair, and that part of my travels are supposed to have passed in privacy [piracy?]: Um!--people sometimes hit near the truth; but never the whole truth. H. don't know what I was about the year after he left the Levant; nor does any one--nor--nor--nor--however, it is a lie--but, 'I doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth!'

I shall have letters of importance to-morrow. Which -----, or -----? heigho! . . . ------ is in my heart, ----- in my head, ----- in my eye, and the single one, Heaven knows where. All write, and will be answered. 'Since I have crept in favour with myself, I must maintain it;' but l never 'mistook my person,' though I think others have.

----- called to-day in great despair about his mistress, who has taken a freak of -----. He began a letter to her, but was obliged to stop short--I finished it for him, and he copied and sent it. If he holds out, and keeps to my instructions of affected indifference, she will lower her colours. If she don't, he will, at least, get rid of her, and she don't seem much worth keeping. But the poor lad is in love--if that is the case, she will win. When they once discover their power, finita e la musica.

Sleepy, and must go to bed.

Tuesday, March 15

Dined yesterday with Rogers, Mackintosh, and Sharpe. Sheridan could not come. Sharpe told several very amusing anecdotes of Henderson, the actor. Stayed till late, and came home, having drunk so much tea, that I did not get to sleep till six this morning. R. says I am to be in this Quarterly--cut up, I presume, as they 'hate us youth.' N'importe. As Sharpe was passing by the doors of some debating society (the Westminster Forum), in his way to dinner, he saw rubricked on the walls Scott's name and mine--'Which the best poet?' being the question of the evening; and I suppose all the Templars and would-bes took our rhymes in vain in the course of the controversy. Which had the greater show of hands, I neither know nor care; but I feel the coupling of the names as a compliment, --though I think Scott deserves better company.

Wedderburn Webster called--Lord Erskine, Lord Holland, etc., etc. Wrote ----- to the Corsair report. She says she don't wonder, since 'Conrad is so like.' It is odd that one, who knows me so thoroughly, should tell me this to my face. However, if she don't know, nobody can.

Mackintosh is, it seems, the writer of the defensive letter in the Morning Chronicle. If so, it is very kind, and more than I did for myself.

Told Murray to secure for me Bandello's Italian Novels at the sale to-morrow. To me they will be nuts. Redde a satire on myself, called 'Anti-Byron,' and told Murray to publish it if he liked. The object of the author is to prove me an atheist and a systematic conspirator against law and government. Some of the verse is good; the prose I don't quite understand. He asserts that my 'deleterious works' have had 'an effect upon civil society, which requires,' etc., etc., etc., and his own poetry. It is a lengthy poem, and a long preface, with an harmonious title-page. Like the fly in the fable, I seem to have got upon a wheel which makes much dust; but, unlike the said fly, I do not take it all for my own raising.

A letter from Bella, which I answered. I shall be in love with her again, if I don't take care.

I shall begin a more regular system of reading soon.

Thursday, March 17

I have been sparring with Jackson for exercise this morning; and mean to continue and renew my acquaintance with the muffles. My chest, and arms, and wind-are in very good plight, and I am not in flesh. I used to be a hard hitter, and my arms are very long for my height (5 feet 8 1/2 inches). At any rate, exercise is good, and this the severest of all; fencing and the broad-sword never fatigued me half so much.

Redde the Quarrels of Authors (another sort of sparring)-- a new work, by that most entertaining and researching writer, Israeli; They seem to be an irritable set, and I wish myself well out of it. 'I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat.' What the devil had I to do with scribbling? It is too late to inquire, and all regret is useless. But, an it were to do again,--I should write again, I suppose. Such is human nature, at least my share of it;--though I shall think better of myself, if I have sense to stop now. If I have a wife, and that wife has a son--by any body--I will bring up mine heir in the most anti-poetical way--make him a lawyer, or a pirate, or--any thing. But, if he writes too, I shall be sure he is none of mine, and cut him off with a Bank token. Must write a letter--three o'clock.

Sunday, March 20

I intended to go to Lady Hardwicke's, but won't. I always begin the day with a bias towards going to parties; but, as the evening advances, my stimulus fails, and I hardly ever go out--and, when I do, always regret it. This might have been a pleasant one;--at least, the hostess is a very superior woman. Lady Lansdowne's to-morrow--Lady Heathcote's Wednesday. Um!--I must spur myself into going to some of them, or it will look like rudeness, and it is better to do as other people do--confound them!

Redde Machiavel, parts of Chardin, and Sismondi, and Bandello--by starts. Redde the Edinburgh, 44, just come out. In the beginning of the article on Edgeworth's Patronage, I have gotten a high compliment, I perceive. Whether this is creditable to me, I know not; but it does honour to the editor, because he once abused me. Many a man will retract praise; none but a high-spirited mind will revoke its censure, or can praise the man it has once attacked. I have often, since my return to England, heard Jeffrey most highly commended by those who know him for things independent of his talents. I admire him for this--not because he has praised me (I have been so praised elsewhere and abused, alternately, that mere habit has rendered me as indifferent to both as a man at twenty-six can be to any thing), but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under the relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other, would have had the liberality to act thus; none but a great soul dared hazard it. The height on which he stands has not made him giddy;--a little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter. As to the justice of his panegyric, that is matter of taste. There are plenty to question it, and glad, too of the opportunity.

Lord Erskine called to-day. He means to carry down his reflections on the war--or rather wars--to the present day. I trust that he will. Must send to Mr. Murray to get the binding of my copy of his pamphlet finished, as Lord E. has promised me to correct it, and add some marginal notes to it. Any thing in his handwriting will be a treasure, which will gather compound interest from years. Erskine has high expectations of Mackintosh's promised History. Undoubtedly it must be a classic, when finished.

Sparred with Jackson again yesterday morning, and shall to-morrow. I feel all the better for it, in spirits, though my arms and shoulders are very stiff from it. Mem. to attend the pugilistic dinner:--Marquess Huntley is in the chair.

Lord Erskine thinks that ministers must be in peril of going out. So much the better for him. To me it is the same who are in or out;--we want something more than a change of ministers, and some day we will have it.

I remember, in riding from Chrisso to Castri (Delphos), along the sides of Parnassus, I saw six eagles in the air. It is uncommon to see so many together; and it was the number--not the species, which is common enough--that excited my attention.

The last bird I ever fired at was an eaglet, on the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto, near Vostitza. It was only wounded, and I tried to save it, the eye was so bright; but it pined, and died in a few days; and I never did since, and never will, attempt the death of another bird. I wonder what put these two things into my head just now? I have been reading Sismondi, and there is nothing there that could induce the recollection.

I am mightily taken with Braccio di Montone, Giovanni Galeazzo, and Eccelino. But the last is not Bracciaferro (of the same name), Count of Ravenna, whose history I want to trace. There is a fine engraving in Lavater, from a picture by Fuseli, of that Ezzelin, over the body of Meduna, punished by him for a hitch in her constancy during his absence in the Crusades. He was right--but I want to know the story.

Tuesday, March 22

Last night, party at Lansdowne House. To-night, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's--deplorable waste of time, and something of temper. Nothing imparted--nothing acquired--talking without ideas:--if any thing like thought in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho!--and in this way half London pass what is called life. Tomorrow there is Lady Heathcote's--shall I go? yes--to punish myself for not having a pursuit.

Let me see--what did I see? The only person who much struck me was Lady Stafford's eldest daughter, Lady Charlotte Leveson. They say she is not pretty. I don't know--every thing is pretty that pleases; but there is an air of soul about her--and her colour changes--and there is that shyness of the antelope (which I delight in) in her manner so much, that I observed her more than I did any other woman in the rooms, and only looked at anything else when I thought she might perceive and feel embarrassed by my scrutiny. After all, there may be something of association in this. She is a friend of Augusta's, and whatever she loves I can't help liking.

Her mother, the Marchioness, talked to me a little; and I was twenty times on the point of asking her to introduce me to sa fille, but I stopped short. This comes of that affray with the Carlisles.

Earl Grey told me laughingly of a paragraph in the last Moniteur, which has stated, among other symptoms of rebellion, some particulars of the sensation occasioned in all our government gazettes by the 'tear' lines,--only amplifying, in its re-statement, an epigram (by the by, no epigram except in the Greek acceptation of the word) into a roman. I wonder the Couriers, etc., etc., have not translated that part of the Moniteur, with additional comments.

The Princess of Wales has requested Fuseli to paint from The Corsair,--leaving to him the choice of any passage for the subject: so Mr. Locke tells me. Tired, jaded, selfish, and supine--must go to bed.

Roman, at least, Romance, means a song sometimes, as in the Spanish. I suppose this is the Moniteur's meaning, unless he has confused it with The Corsair.

Albany, March 28

This night got into my new apartments, rented of Lord Althorpe, on a lease of seven years. Spacious, and room for my books and sabres. In the house, too, another advantage. The last few days, or whole week, have been very abstemious, regular in exercise, and yet very unwell.

Yesterday, dined tete-a-tete at the Cocoa with Scrope Davies--sat from six till midnight--drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, neither of which wines ever affect me. Offered to take Scrope home in my carriage; but he was tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him on his knees praying to I know not what purpose or pagod. No headache, nor sickness, that night nor to-day. Got up, if any thing, earlier than usual--sparred with Jackson ad sudorem, and have been much better in health than for many days. I have heard nothing more from Scrope. Yesterday paid him four thousand eight hundred pounds, a debt of some standing, and which I wished to have paid before. My mind is much relieved by the removal of that debit....

April 10

I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I never am long in the society even of her I love, ( God knows too well, and the Devil probably too, ) without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library. Even in the day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it. Per esempio,--I have not stirred out of these rooms for these four days past: but I have sparred for exercise ( windows open ) with Jackson an hour daily, to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me. The more violent the fatigue, the better my spirits for the rest of the day; and then, my evenings have that calm nothingness of languor, which I most delight in. To-day I have boxed one hour-- written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte--copied it --eaten six biscuits--drunk four bottles of soda water--redde away the rest of my time--besides giving poor ----- a world of advice about this mistress of his, who is plaguing him into a phthisic and intolerable tediousness. I am a pretty fellow truly to lecture about "the sect." No matter, my counsels are all thrown away.

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