The Quarterly-Ah, sir, if you The room's so full of wits and bards, Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards, And others, neither bards nor wits:-- My humble tenement admits All persons in the dress of gent., A party dines with me to-day, JOHN MURRAY. EPISTLE TO MR. MURRAY. My dear Mr. Murray, You're in a damu'd hurry To set up this ultimate Canto; (1) Will bring it safe in his portmanteau. For the Journal you hint of, As ready to print off, No doubt you do right to commend it; But as yet I have writ off The devil a bit of Our Beppo: when copied, I'll send it. Then you've ***'s Tour, No great things, to be sure, You could hardly begin with a less work; Nor French, must have scribbled by guesswork. You can make any loss up A work which must surely succeed; Then Queen Mary's Epistle-craft, With the new "Fytte" of Whistlecraft, Must make people purchase and read. Then you've General Gordon, Who girded his sword on, To serve with a Muscovite master, And help him to polish A nation so owlish, They thought shaving their beards a disaster. (1) The fourth Canto of Childe Harold.-L. E. (2) Allusion is here made to a phrase contained in a previous letter from Mr. Murray.-P. E. (3) On the birth of this child, the son of the British viceconsul at Venice, Lord Byron wrote these lines. They are in no other respect remarkable, than that they were thought For the man," poor and shrewd,” (2) With whom you'd conclude A compact without more delay, Perhaps some such pen is Still extant in Venice; But please, sir, to mention your pay. VENICE, January 8, 1818. TO MR. MURRAY. STRAHAN, Tonson, Lintot of the times, To thee, with hope and terror dumb, Upon thy table's baize so green Along thy sprucest book-shelves shine Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist, And Heaven forbid I should conclude VENICE, March 25, 1818. ODE ON VENICE. (1) On Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls A loud lament along the sweeping sea! What should thy sons do ?-any thing but weep: No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, The everlasting to be which hath been, (1) This Ode was transmitted from Venice, along with Mazeppa.-L. E. The Ode on Fenice, as Lord Byron states in a letter Are of as high an order-they must go Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter. A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd, With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate! But did not quench, her spirit-in her fate She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead, O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; to Mr. Murray, was completed in July, 1818. Mr. Galt has justly designated it as "a spirited and indiguant effusion, rich in a variety of impressive and original images." "P.F His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time; STANZAS TO THE PO.(1) RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls, (2) Where dwells the lady of my love, when she Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls A faint and fleeting memory of me; What if thy deep and ample stream should be A mirror of my heart, where she may read The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee, Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed! What do I say-a mirror of my heart? Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my passions long. Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever; Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river! Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away (1) About the middle of April, 1819, Lord Byron travelled from Venice to Ravenna, at which last city he expected to find the Countess Guiccioli. These stanzas, which have been as much admired as any of the kind he ever wrote, were composed, according to Madame Guiccioli's statement, during this journey, and while Lord Byron was actually sailing on the Po. In transmitting them to England, in May, 1820, he says, "They must not be published: pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions." They were first printed in 1824.-L. E. (2) Ravenna-a city to which Lord Byron afterwards declared himself more attached than to any other place, except Greece. He resided in it rather more than two years, "and quitted it," says Madame Guiccioli, "with the deepest regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils: he was continually per forming generous actions: many families owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed; his arrival was The current I behold will sweep beneath She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee, Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream.-- That happy wave repass me in its flow! The wave that bears my tears returns no more: As various as the climates of our birth. A stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd By the black wind that chills the polar flood. My blood is all meridian; were it not, I had not left my clime, nor should I be, Tis vain to struggle-let me perish young- EPIGRAM, FROM THE FRENCH OF RULHIÈRES. IF, for silver or for gold, You could melt ten thousand pimples Into half-a-dozen dimples, Then your face we might behold, Looking, doubtless, much more snugly; spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity." In the third Canto of Don Juan, Lord Byron has pictured the tranquil life which, at this time, he was leading: "Sweet hour of twilight-in the solitude "The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bells that rose the boughs among ; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng, Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye."-L.. E, Obscures his glory; SONNET TO GEORGE THE FOURTH, (1) ON THE REPEAL OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S FORFEITURE. To be the father of the fatherless, [raise To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and His offspring, who expired in other days To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,This is to be a monarch, and repress Envy into unutterable praise. Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand, except to bless? Were it not easy, sir, and is 't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete; A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us. BOLOGNA, August 12, 1819. STANZAS. (2) COULD Love for ever Run like a river, Be tried in vain— No other pleasure With this could measure; We'd hug the chain Love plumes his wing; Then for this reason Let's love a season; But let that season be only Spring. When lovers parted A few years older, They pluck Love's feather From out his wing- But sadly shiver Without his plumage, when past the spring. (3) Like chiefs of faction, His life is action, A formal paction That curbs his reign, (1) "So the prince has been repealing Lord Fitzgerald's forfeiture? Ecco un' sonetto? There, you dogs! there's a sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was a very noble piece of principality." Lord B. to Mr. Murray. -L. E. (2) A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ravenna when he wrote these Stanzas, says, "They were Despot no more, he Quits with disdain. He must move on- Love brooks not a degraded throne. Wait not, fond lover! As from a dream. All passion blight: If once diminish'd Love's reign is finish'd Then part in friendship,—and bid good-night. (4) So shall affection To recollection The dear connection Bring back with joy: As through the past; Reflect but rapture-not least though last. True, separations Ask more than patience; What desperations From such have risen! But yet remaining, What is 't but chaining Hearts which, once waning, Beat 'gainst their prison? Is but for boys— To wean, and not wear out your joys. composed, like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song, was labouring under an access of fever."— L. E. (3) That sped his spring."—L. E. (4) V. L.-"One last embrace, then, and bid good-night.” -L. E. "You come to him on earth again, He'll go with you to hell."-L. E. These lines, together with the "Epitaph for William Pitt" were enclosed in a letter to Mr. Moore, Jan. 2, 1820, in which the author thus alludes to them:-"Pray let not these versiculi go forth with my name, except among the initiated, because my friend H. has foamed into a reformer, and I greatly fear will subside into Newgate."-P. E. (3) With the view of inducing his friends (the Earl and Countess of Blessington) to prolong their stay at Genoa, Byron suggested their taking a pretty villa, called Il Paradiso, in the neighbourhood of his own, and accompanied them to look at it. Upon that occasion it was, that, on the lady expressing some intentions of residing there, he produced the above impromptu. The jest which it contains THE IRISH AVATAR.(4) ERE the daughter of Brunswick is cold in her grave, True, the great of her bright and brief era are gone, Which betray'd not, or crush'd not, or wept not her cause. True, the chains of the Catholic clank o'er his rags; For a moment to gaze ere he flies from his hearth; Tears fall on his chain, though it drops from his hands, For the dungeon he quits is the place of his birth. But he comes! the Messiah of royalty comes! Like a goodly Leviathan roll'd from the waves! Then receive him as best such an advent becomes, With a legion of cooks, and an army of slaves! He comes, in the promise and bloom of threescore, To perform in the pageant the sovereign's part— But long live the shamrock which shadows him o'er; Could the green in his hat be transferr'd to his heart! Could that long-wither'd spot but be verdant again, And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the skies. His soul o'er the freedom implored and denied. Ever-glorious Grattan! (5) the best of the good! So simple in heart, so sublime in the rest! had been applied by the Genoese wits to himself. Taking it into their heads that this villa (which was also, I believe, a casa saluzzo), had been the one fixed on for his own residence, they said I Diavolo è ancora entrato in Paradiso."" Moore.-P. E. (4) "In one copy, the following sentence (taken from a letter of Curran, in the able life of that true Irishman, written by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the poem:'And Ireland like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider.'-At the end of the verses are these words; (Signed) W. L. B, M. A., and written with a view to a bishoprick.'" Moore, Life.-P. E. "I will show you my Irish Avatara. Moore tells me that it has saved him from writing on the same subject: he would have done it much better." Medwin.-P. E (5) The stanzas referring to Grattan, appear to have been additions made to the poem as it was originally composed. In a letter of Lord B. to Mr. Moore, we find the following: -"After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with His soul o'er the freedom implored and denied,' will it please you to cause insert the following addenda,' which I dreamed of during to-day's siesta: Ever glorious Grattan,' etc, etc. etc."-P. E.' |