"I have been riding my saddle-horses every day, and been to Albano, its lakes, and to the top of the Alban Mount, to Frascati, ancient and modern, it beats Greece, Constantinople, everything. As a whole, - See Letter to John Murray, p. 47. دو old Cruscan friends, Parsons, Greathead, Mrs. Piozzi, and Merry, all of whom he had known in his youth. I gave him as bad an account of them as I could, answering, as the false "Solomon Lob" does to "Totterton in the farce, that they were "all gone dead," and damned by a satire more than twenty years ago; that the name of their extinguisher was Gifford; that they were but a sad set of scribes after all, and no great things in any other way. He seemed, as was natural, very much pleased with this account of his old acquaintances, and went away greatly gratified with that and Mr. Forsyth's sententious paragraph of applause in his own (Pindemonte's) favour. After having been a little libertine in his youth, he is grown devout, and takes prayers, and talks to himself, to keep off the Devil; but for all that, he is a very nice little old gentleman. I forgot to tell you that at Bologna (which is celebrated for producing popes, painters, and sausages) I saw an anatomical gallery, where there is a deal of waxwork, in which.. I am sorry to hear of your row with Hunt2: but suppose him to be exasperated by the Quarterly and your refusal to deal; and when one is angry and edits a paper I should think the temptation too strong for literary nature, which is not always human. I can't conceive in what, and for what, he abuses you: what have you done? 1 "Love laughs at Locksmiths," by George Colman the Younger. 2 John Hunt, editor of the Examiner. "Wat Tyler" was reviewed in the Examiner for May 4, 1817, and, in the numbers for May 11 and May 18, Southey's letter was violently attacked, and Murray himself not spared. you are not an author nor a politician nor a public character; I know no scrape you have tumbled into. I am the more sorry for this, because I introduced you to Hunt, and because I believe him to be a very good man; but till I know the particulars, I can give no opinion. Let me know about Lallah Rookh, which must be out by this time. In I restore the proofs, but the punctuation should be corrected. I feel too lazy to have at it myself; so beg and pray Mr. Gifford for me. Address for Venice. a few days I go to my Villeggiatura, in a casino near the Brenta, a few miles only on the mainland. I have determined on another year, and many years, of residence, if I can compass them. Marianna is with me, hardly recovered of the fever, which has been attacking all Italy last winter. I am afraid she is a little hectic; but I hope the best. Ever yours truly, B. P. S.-Torwaltzen has done a bust of me at Rome for Mr. Hobhouse, which is reckoned very good.2 He is their best after Canova, and by some preferred to him. 1 The “deep-dyed" Brenta flows, from its source in Tyrol, past Padua into the Lagoon at Fusina. Byron's villa La Mira was on the river near Mira, about seven miles inland. 2 The original of the bust is now in the possession of Lady Dorchester, daughter of Mr. Hobhouse. The head of the statue at Trinity College, Cambridge, begun by Thorwaldsen in 1829, and finished in 1834, is a repetition of the original bust. TO THOMAS MOORE LA MIRA, VENICE, July 10, 1817. MURRAY, the Mokanna1 of booksellers, has contrived to send me extracts from Lalla Rookh by the post. They are taken from some magazine, and contain a short outline and quotations from the two first Poems. I am very much delighted with what is before me, and very thirsty for the rest. You have caught the colours as if you had been in the rainbow, and the tone of the East is perfectly preserved. I am glad you have changed the title from "Persian Tale." I suspect you have written a devilish fine composition, and I rejoice in it from my heart; because "the Douglas and the Percy both together are confident against a world in arms." I hope you won't be affronted at my looking on us as "birds of a feather"; though, on whatever subject you had written, I should have been very happy in your success. Do you remember that damned supper at Rancliffe's that ought to have been a dinner? "Ah, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight." But My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea; But, before I go, Tom Moore, Here's a double health to thee! 1 An allusion to the all-powerful Veiled Mokanna in "Lalla Rookh." Here's a sigh to those who love me, Though the ocean roar around me, Were 't the last drop in the well, "T is to thee that I would drink. With that water, as this wine, The libation I would pour Should be peace with thine and mine, This should have been written fifteen moons ago - the first stanza was.1 I am just come out from an hour's swim in the Adriatic; and I write to you with a blackeyed Venetian girl before me, reading Boccaccio. Last week I had a row on the road (I came up to Venice from my casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe) with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him 1 The lines were partly written in April, 1816. |