Er. 26.

day I nearly killed myself with a collar of brawn, which I swallowed for supper, and indigested for I don't know how long but that is by the by. All this gourmandise was in honour of Lent; for I am forbidden meat all the rest of the year, but it is strictly enjoined me during your solemn fast. I have been, and am, in very tolerable love; but of that hereafter as it may be.

'My dear Moore, say what you will in your preface; and quiz any thing or any body, me if you like it. Oons! dost thou think me of the old, or rather elderly, school? If one can't jest with one's friends, with whom can we be facetious? You have nothing to fear from **, whom I have not seen, being out of town when he called. He will be very correct, smooth, and all that, but I doubt whether there will be any grace beyond the reach of art;'and, whether there is or not, how long will you be so d-d modest? As for Jeffrey, it is a very handsome thing of him to speak well of an old antagonist, and what a mean mind dared not do. Any one will revoke praise; but were it not partly my own case I should that say very few have strength of mind to unsay their censure, or follow it up with praise of other things.

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What think you of the review of Levis? 1 It beats the Bag and my hand-grenade hollow, as an invective, and hath thrown the Court into hysterics, as I hear from very good authority. Have you heard from ***? "No more rhyme for- or rather, from me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer. I have had my day, and there's an end. The utmost I expect, or even wish, is to have it said in the Biographia Britannica, that I might perhaps have been a poet, had I gone on and amended. My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me. They can't say I have truckled to the times, nor to popular topics, (as Johnson, or somebody, said of Cleveland,) and whatever I have gained has been at the expenditure of as much personal favour as possible; for I do believe never was a bard more unpopular, quoad homo, than myself. And now I have done; -'ludite nunc

I

1 ["Souvenirs et Portraits, par M. de Levis." See Edin. Review, vol. xxii. p. 281.]

2 [A critique on Inchiquen's "State of Society in America," in which the reviewer had quoted Mr. Moore's description of the city of Washington in 1806:

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alios.' Every body may be d-d, as they seem fond of it, and resolve to stickle lustily for endless brimstone.

Oh by the by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem, an Anti-Byron,' coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow, by rhyme, all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important, till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce such a production. Murray would not publish it, for which he was a fool, and so I told him; but some one else will, doubtless. Something too much of this.'

'Your French scheme is good, but let it be Italian; all the Angles will be at Paris. Let it be Rome, Milan, Naples, Florence, Turin, Venice, or Switzerland, and 'egad!' (as Bayes saith,) I will connubiate and join you; and we will write a new 'Inferno' in our Paradise. Pray think of this - and I will really buy a wife and a ring, and say the ceremony, and settle near you in a summer-house upon the Arno, or the Po, or the Adriatic.

'Ah! my poor little pagod, Napoleon, has walked off his pedestal. He has abdicated, they say. This would draw molten brass from the eyes of Zatanai. What! 'kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet and then be baited by the rabble's curse!' I cannot bear such a crouching catastrophe. I must stick to Sylla, for my modern favourites don't do, — their_resignations are of a different kind. All health and prosperity, my dear Moore. Excuse this lengthy letter. Ever, &c.

"P. S.-The Quarterly quotes you frequently in an article on America; and every body I know asks perpetually after you and yours. When will you answer them in person ?"

He did not long persevere in his resolution against writing, as will be seen from the following notes to his publisher.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"April 10. 1814. "I have written an Ode on the fall of Napoleon, which, if you like, I will copy out, and make you a present of. Mr. Merivale has seen part of it, and likes it. You may show it to Mr. Gifford, and print

"That famed metropolis, where fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which travelling fools and gazetteers adorn
With shrines unbuilt, and heroes yet unborn."]

"I enclose you a letteret from Mrs. Leigh.

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It will be best not to put my name to our Ode; but you may say as openly as you like that it is mine, and I can inscribe it to Mr. Hobhouse, from the author, which will mark it sufficiently. After the resolution of not publishing, though it is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be better altogether that it is anonymous; but we will incorporate it in the first tome of ours that you find time or the wish to publish. Yours alway,

"B.

1 I had begun my letter in the following manner:"Have you seen the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte?'. I suspect it to be either Fitzgerald's or Rosa Matilda's. Those rapid and masterly portraits of all the tyrants that preceded Napoleon have a vigour in them which would incline me to say that Rosa Matilda is the person - but then, on the other hand, that powerful grasp of history," &c. &c. After a little more of this mock parallel, the letter went on thus: "I should like to know what you think of the matter?- Some friends of mine here will insist that it is the work of the author of Childe Harold, -but then they are not so well read in Fitzgerald and

LETTER 175. TO MR. MOORE.

Albany, April 20. 1814. "I am very glad to hear that you are to be transient from Mayfield so very soon, and was taken in by the first part of your letter. Indeed, for aught I know, you may be treating me, as Slipslop says, with ironing' even now. I shall say nothing of the shock, which had nothing of humeur in it; as I am apt to take even a critic, and still more a friend, at his word, and never to doubt that I have been writing cursed nonsense, if they say so. There was a mental reservation in my pact with the public, in behalf of anonymes; and, even had there not, the provocation was such as to make it physically impossible to pass over this damnable epoch of triumphant tameness. a cursed business; and, after all, I shall think higher of rhyme and reason, and very humbly of your heroic people, till-Elba becomes a volcano, and sends him out again. 3 I can't think it all over yet.

'Tis

"My departure for the Continent depends, in some measure, on the incontinent. I have two country invitations at home, and don't know what to say or do. In the mean time, I have bought a macaw and a parrot, and have got up my books; and I box and fence daily, and go out very little.

"At this present writing, Louis the Gouty is wheeling in triumph into Piccadilly, in all the pomp and rabblement of royalty. I had an offer of seats to see them pass; but, as I have seen a Sultan going to mosque, and been at his reception of an ambassador, the Most Christian King hath no attractions for me:'-though in some coming year of the Hegira, I should not dislike to see the place where he had reigned, shortly after the second revolution, and a happy sovereignty of two months, the last six weeks being civil war.

"Pray write, and deem me ever, &c."

Rosa Matilda as I am; and, besides, they seem to forget that you promised, about a month or two ago, not to write any more for years. Seriously," &c. &c.

I quote this foolish banter merely to show how safely, even on his most sensitive points, one might venture to jest with him.

2 We find D'Argenson thus encouraging Voltaire to break a similar vow:-" Continue to write without fear for five-and-twenty years longer, but write poetry, notwithstanding your oath in the preface to Newton."

3 [Buonaparte reached Elba the 4th of May, 1814, and escaped from it on the 26th of February, 1815.]

Ær. 26.

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This is sad news, and very hard upon the sufferers at any, but more at such a time -I mean the Bayonne sortie.

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You should urge Moore to come out. "P. S. I want Moreri to purchase for good and all. I have a Bayle, but want Moreri too.

"P. S.-Perry hath a piece of compliment to-day; but I think the name might have been as well omitted. ' No matter; they can but throw the old story of inconsistency in my teeth- let them, I mean, as to not publishing. However, now I will keep my word. Nothing but the occasion, which was physically irresistible, made me swerve; and I thought an anonyme within my pact with the public. It is the only thing I have or shall set about."

1["Lord Byron has written a very beautiful Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. The noble poet speaks with becoming indignation of the manner in which the tyrant has borne himself in his fall."- M. Chron.]

2 Mr. Murray had requested of him to make some additions to the Ode, so as to save the stamp duty imposed upon publications not exceeding a single sheet; and he afterwards added, in successive editions, five or six stanzas, the original number being but eleven. There were also three more stanzas, which he never printed, but which, for the just tribute they contain to Washington, are worthy of being preserved :

"There was a day there was an hour,

While earth was Gaul's - Gaul thine-
When that immeasurable power

Unsated to resign

Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo's name

And gilded thy decline,

Through the long twilight of all time, Despite some passing clouds of crime.

"But thou, forsooth, must be a king, And don the purple vest,

two I have altered in my mind's manuscript already. Has any one seen and judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide-only give me a fair report, and ' nothing extenuate,' as I will in that case do something else. Ever, &c.

"I want Moreri, and an Athenæus."

LETTER 178. TO MR. MURRAY.

"April 26. 1814.

"I have been thinking that it might be as well to publish no more of the Ode separately, but incorporate it with any of the other things, and include the smaller poem too (in that case) — which I must previously correct, nevertheless. I can't, for the head

of me, add a line worth scribbling; my vein' is quite gone, and my present occupations are of the gymnastic order-boxing and fencing and my principal conversation is with my macaw and Bayle. I want my Moreri, and I want Athenæus.

"P. S. I hope you sent back that poetical packet to the address which I forwarded to you on Sunday: if not, pray do; or I shall have the author screaming after his Epic."

LETTER 179. TO MR. MURRAY.

In a subsequent note to Mr. Murray, Lord Byron says, "I do not think less highly of Buonaparte' for knowing the author. I was aware that he was a man of talent, but did not suspect him of possessing all the family talents in such perfection."

A resolution was, about this time, adopted by him, which, however strange and precipitate it appeared, a knowledge of the previous state of his mind may enable us to account for satisfactorily. He had now, for two years, been drawing upon the admiration of the public with a rapidity and success which seemed to defy exhaustion, - having crowded, indeed, into that brief interval the materials of a long life of fame. But admiration is a sort of impost from which most minds are but too willing to relieve themselves. The eye grows weary of looking up to the same object of wonder, and begins to exchange, at last, the delight of observing its elevation for the less generous pleasure of watching and speculating on its fall. The reputation of Lord Byron had already begun to experience some of these consequences of its own prolonged and constantly renewed splendour. Even among that host of admirers who would have been the last to find fault, there were some not

1 It was the fear of this sort of back-water current to which so rapid a flow of fame seemed liable, that led some even of his warmest admirers, ignorant as they were yet of the boundlessness of his resources, to tremble a little at the frequency of his appearances before the public. In one of my own letters to him, I find this apprehension thus expressed :-" If you did not write so well, — as the Royal wit observed, I should say you write too much; at least, too much in the same strain. The Pythagoreans, you know, were of opinion that the reason why we do not hear or heed the music of the heavenly bodies is that they are always sounding in our ears; and I fear that even the influence of your song may be diminished by falling upon the world's dull ear too constantly."

The opinion, however, which a great writer of our day (himself one of the few to whom his remark replies) had

unwilling to repose from praise; while they, who had been from the first reluctant eulogists, took advantage of these apparent symptoms of satiety to indulge in blame.

The loud outcry raised, at the beginning of the present year, by his verses to the Princess Charlotte, had afforded a vent for much of this reserved venom; and the tone of disparagement in which some of his assailants now affected to speak of his poetry was, however absurd and contemptible in itself, precisely that sort of attack which was the most calculated to wound his, at once, proud and diffident spirit. As long as they confined themselves to blackening his moral and social character, so far from offending, their libels rather fell in with his own shadowy style of self-portraiture, and gratified the strange inverted ambition that possessed him. But the slighting opinion which they ventured to express of his genius, - - seconded as it was by that inward dissatisfaction with his own powers, which they whose standard of excellence is highest are always the surest to feel, - mortified and disturbed him; and, being the first sound of ill augury that had come across his triumphal career, startled him, as we have seen, into serious doubts of its continuance.

Had he been occupying himself, at the time, with any new task, that confidence in his own energies, which he never truly felt but while in the actual exercise of them, would have enabled him to forget these humiliations of the moment in the glow and excitement of anticipated success. But he had just pledged himself to the world to take a long farewell of poesy, had sealed up that only fountain from which his heart ever drew refreshment or strength,—and thus was left, idly and helplessly, to brood over the daily taunts of his enemies, without the power of avenging himself when they insulted his person, and but too much disposed to agree with them when they made light of his genius. "I am afraid, (he says, in no

the generosity, as well as sagacity, to pronounce on this point, at a time when Lord Byron was indulging in the fullest lavishment of his powers, must be regarded, after all, as the most judicious and wise:-" But they cater ill for the public," says Sir Walter Scott, "and give indifferent advice to the poet, supposing him possessed of the highest qualities of his art, who do not advise him to labour while the laurel around his brows yet retains its freshness. Sketches from Lord Byron are more valuable than finished pictures from others; nor are we at all sure that any labour which he might bestow in revisal would not rather efface then refine those outlines of striking and powerful originality which they exhibit when flung rough from the hand of a master."-Biographical Memoirs, by SIR W. Scorт. [Miscell. Prose Works, vol. iv. p. 361.]

Ær. 26.

ticing these attacks in one of his letters,) what you call trash is plaguily to the purpose, and very good sense into the bargain; and, to tell the truth, for some little time past, I have been myself much of the same opinion." In this sensitive state of mind,— which he but ill disguised or relieved by an exterior of gay defiance or philosophic contempt, — we can hardly feel surprised that he should have, all at once, come to the resolution, not only of persevering in his determination to write no more in future, but of purchasing back the whole of his past copyrights, and suppressing every page and line he had ever written. On his first mention of this design, Mr. Murray naturally doubted as to its seriousness; but the arrival of the following letter, enclosing a draft for the amount of the copyrights, put his intentions beyond question.

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In such a conjuncture, an appeal to his good nature and considerateness was, as Mr. Murray well judged, his best resource; and the following prompt reply will show how easily, and at once, it succeeded.

LETTER 181.

"Dear Sir,

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TO MR. MURRAY.

"May 1. 1814.

If your present note is serious, and it really would be inconvenient, there is an end of the matter; tear my draft, and go on as usual: in that case, we will recur to our former basis. That I was perfectly serious, is true; but certainly not to interfere with in wishing to suppress all future publication the convenience of others, and more particularly your own. Some day, I will tell you the reason of this apparently strange resolution. At present, may be enough to say that I recall it at your suggestion; and as it appears to have annoyed you, I lose no time in saying so. "Yours truly,

RIAGE TO MISS MILBANKE.

DURING my stay in town this year, we were of flattery to the dead I say, that the more almost daily together; and it is in no spirit intimately I became acquainted with his disI felt disposed to take an interest in every position and character, the more warmly Not that, in the thing that concerned him. opportunities thus afforded me of observing much to lament, and not a little to condemn. more closely his defects, I did not discover But there was still, in the neighbourhood of even his worst faults, some atoning good quality, which was always sure, if brought kindly and with management into play, to neutralise their ill effects. The very frankness, indeed, with which he avowed his errors seemed to imply a confidence in his own power of redeeming them,-a consciousness