part-one day to delight us again, when both she and her poet are restored to freedom.

66

66

'Of your works I have only seen "Rome" and the Lives of Haydn and Mozart," and the brochure on Racine and Shakespeare." The "Histoire de la Peinture” I have not yet the good fortune to possess. There is one part of your observations in the pamphlet which I shall venture to remark upon; it regards Walter Scott. You say that "his character is little worthy of enthusiasm," at the same time that you mention his productions in the manner they deserve. I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character, and I can assure you, that his character is worthy of admiration,— that of all men he is the most open, the most honourable, the most amiable. With his politics I have nothing to do; they differ from mine, which renders it difficult for me to speak of them. But he is perfectly sincere in them, and sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile. I pray you therefore to correct or soften that passage. You may perhaps attribute this officiousness of mine to a false affectation of candour, as I happen to be a writer also. Attribute

it to what motive you please, but believe the truth. I say that Walter Scott is as nearly a thorough good man as man can be, because I know it by experience to be the case.

If you do me the favour of an answer, may I request a speedy one because it is possible (though not yet decided) that circumstances may conduct me once more to Greece. My present address is Genoa, where an answer will reach me in a short time, or be forwarded to me wherever I may be. I beg you to believe me, with a lively recollection of our brief acquaintance, and the hope of one day renewing it, your ever obliged and obedient humble servant,

'NOEL BYRON.

'P.S.-I make no excuse for writing to you in English,

as I understand you are well acquainted with that language.

À Monsieur H. Beyle,

'Rue de Richelieu, No. 63, à Paris.'

In March, 1818, Beyle writes thus to a friend who was anxious that he should become a candidate for office :

'Without hating anyone, I have always been exquisitely abhorred by half of my official relations, &c. &c. To conclude, I like Italy. I pass from seven o'clock to midnight every evening in listening to music; the climate does the rest. Do you know that during the last six weeks we have been at 14° of Reaumur? Do you know that at Venice one lives like a gentleman for nine lire a day, and that the Venetian lira is fifty centimes. I shall live a year or two

longer at Milan, then as much at Venice, and then in 1821, pressed by misfortune, I shall go to Cularo; I shall sell the apartment, for which I was offered 10,000 francs this year, and I shall try my fortune at Paris.'

By a strange coincidence of untoward events, which could not have been so much as guessed when this plan of life was sketched, he was eventually compelled to adhere to it. His father died in the course of the following year (June, 1819), and left him less than half of the 100,000 francs on which he had calculated; and in July, 1820, he writes to announce 'the greatest misfortune that could happen to him,'-'the hardest blow he had ever received in his life.' A report had got about, and was generally credited at Milan, that he was a secret agent of the French Government. • It has been circulating for six months. I observed that many

persons tried to avoid saluting me: I cared little about this, when the kind Plana wrote me the letter which I enclose. I am not angry with him; yet here is a terrible blow. For, after all, what is this Frenchman doing here? Milanese simplicity will never be able to comprehend my philosophic life, and that I live here, on five thousand francs, better than at Paris on twelve thousand.' He had partly himself to blame for this disagreeable position; for he was fond of mystifying people by playing tricks with his name, or by adopting odd names and signatures, as well as by giving counterfeit, shifting, and contradictory descriptions of his birth, rank, and profession. Madame Ancelot (Les Salons de Paris) relates that he made it a condition, on accepting an invitation to one of her soirées, that he should come under any name he chose. He was announced as M. Cæsar Bombay, and mystified her friends by describing himself as purveyor of cotton nightcaps and stockings to the army, which, he said, was a higher and more useful vocation than man of letters. In his 'Mémoires d'un Touriste,' he assumes the character of an ironmaster.

'When,' says M. Colomb, he had to give his address to a tailor or bootmaker, it was rarely that he gave his real name. This led to quid pro quos which amused him. Thus he was inquired for by turns under the names of Bel, Beil, Bell, Lebel, &c. As to his profession, it depended on the caprice of the moment. At Milan he gave himself out for a superior officer of dragoons who had obtained his discharge in 1814, and son of a general of artillery. All these little inventions were but jokes; he never derived any advantage from them beyond a little amusement.'

This excuse might have been partially admissible if, in the aristocratic society of Milan, he had given himself out for an ex-corporal and the son of a tailor; but the assumption of a superior grade and higher birth savours strongly of a censurable amount of petty vanity; and such tricks were the height of folly in a town like Milan, where both the governing and the governed were naturally prone to suspect treachery.

Whilst he was yet hesitating what course to pursue, the police settled the matter by summarily ordering him to leave the Austrian territory, upon the gratuitous supposition that he was affiliated to the sect of Carbonari. From 1821 to 1830, he resided at Paris, where he was an established member of the circles which comprised the leading notabilities of the period, male and female:

'It is from this epoch,' says M. Colomb, 'that his reputation as homme d'esprit, and conteur agréable (both these terms are untranslatable) dates. Society listened with pleasurewith a sustained interest-to that multitude of anecdotes which his vast memory and his lively imagination produced under a graceful, coloured, original form. People recognised in the narrator the man who had studied and seen much, and observed with acuteness. Across the profound changes undergone by the salon life since 1789, he recalled attention, in a limited degree, to the taste which reigned at that time amongst those who guided it; he succeeded in generalising the conversation,—a difficult and almost disused thing in our days, when, if three people are gathered together, there are two conversations proceeding simultaneously without any connection; when routs resemble public places open to all

comers, and where about as much esprit is consumed as at a costume ball, composed of persons who see each other fo the first time. Beyle's agreeability frequently enabled him to triumph over all the dissolvents which tend to destroy French society.'

And a very great triumph it was, if we consider the period and the angry passions which then divided the company he thus contrived to amalgamate by the introduction of well-chosen topics, by his felicitous mode of treating them, by his varied knowledge, his lively fancy, and his tact. The reason why M. Colomb is obliged to go back to a period antecedent to 1789 for his model of drawing-room life, is that the French thenceforth ceased to be the gay, laughing, pleasureseeking nation of which we have read or heard traditionally. Serious practical politics are a sad drawback to lively and clever conversation, not merely because any dull fellow can bawl out the commonplaces of his party, but because the easy interchange of mind is impeded, and our thoughts are constantly reverting, in our own despite, to the absorbing and beaten questions of the hour. But the buoyant spirits and elastic energies of a rising generation cannot be kept down. The struggle of a new school of authors or artists with a declining or superannuated one affords ample scope for the display of wit, taste, and acquirement; and the contest between classicism and romanticism, which raged furiously during the last years of the Restoration, was admirably adapted to the genius of a Beyle.

There can hardly be a fairer test of the position