Chapter XXXVII: Letter 308: To Mr. Murray

"Venice, Feb. 20. 1818.

"I have to thank Mr. Croker for the arrival, and you for the
contents, of the parcel which came last week, much quicker than any
before, owing to Mr. Croker's kind attention and the official
exterior of the bags; and all safe, except much friction amongst
the magnesia, of which only two bottles came entire; but it is all
very well, and I am exceedingly obliged to you.

"The books I have read, or rather am reading. Pray, who may be the
Sexagenarian, whose gossip is very amusing? Many of his sketches I
recognise, particularly Gifford, Mackintosh, Drummond, Dutens, H.
Walpole, Mrs. Inchbald, Opie, &c., with the Scotts, Loughborough,
and most of the divines and lawyers, besides a few shorter hints of
authors, and a few lines about a certain '_noble author_,'
characterised as malignant and sceptical, according to the good old
story, 'as it was in the beginning, is now, but _not_ always shall
be:' do you know such a person, Master Murray? eh?--And pray, of
the booksellers, which be _you_? the dry, the dirty, the honest,
the opulent, the finical, the splendid, or the coxcomb bookseller?
Stap my vitals, but the author grows scurrilous in his grand
climacteric!

"I remember to have seen Porson at Cambridge, in the hall of our
college, and in private parties, but not frequently; and I never
can recollect him except as drunk or brutal, and generally both: I
mean in an evening, for in the hall he dined at the Dean's table,
and I at the Vice-master's, so that I was not near him; and he then
and there appeared sober in his demeanour, nor did I ever hear of
excess or outrage on his part in public,--commons, college, or
chapel; but I have seen him in a private party of undergraduates,
many of them fresh men and strangers, take up a poker to one of
them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his action. I
have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his
intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of
all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson
was the most bestial, as far as the few times that I saw him went,
which were only at William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's)
rooms. I saw him once go away in a rage, because nobody knew the
name of the 'Cobbler of Messina,' insulting their ignorance with
the most vulgar terms of reprobation. He was tolerated in this
state amongst the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a
madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to recite, or rather
vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot;
and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser
exhibition than this man's intoxication.

"I perceive, in the book you sent me, a long account of him, which
is very savage. I cannot judge, as I never saw him sober, except in
_hall_ or combination-room; and then I was never near enough to
hear, and hardly to see him. Of his drunken deportment, I can be
sure, because I saw it.

"With the Reviews I have been much entertained. It requires to be
as far from England as I am to relish a periodical paper properly:
it is like soda-water in an Italian summer. But what cruel work you
make with Lady * * * *! You should recollect that she is a woman;
though, to be sure, they are now and then very provoking; still, as
authoresses, they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so
much good invective should have been laid out upon her, when there
is such a fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon.

"I heard from Moore lately, and was sorry to be made aware of his
domestic loss. Thus it is--'medio de fonte leporum'--in the acme of
his fame and his happiness comes a drawback as usual.

"Mr. Hoppner, whom I saw this morning, has been made the father of
a very fine boy[15].--Mother and child doing very well indeed. By
this time Hobhouse should be with you, and also certain packets,
letters, &c. of mine, sent since his departure.--I am not at all
well in health within this last eight days. My remembrances to
Gifford and all friends.

"Yours, &c.

"B.

"P.S. In the course of a month or two, Hanson will have probably to
send off a clerk with conveyances to sign (Newstead being sold in
November last for ninety-four thousand five hundred pounds), in
which case I supplicate supplies of articles as usual, for which,
desire Mr. Kinnaird to settle from funds in their bank, and deduct
from my account with him.

"P.S. To-morrow night I am going to see 'Otello,' an opera from our
'Othello,' and one of Rossini's best, it is said. It will be
curious to see in Venice the Venetian story itself represented,
besides to discover what they will make of Shakspeare in music."

[Footnote 15: On the birth of this child, who was christened John William Rizzo, Lord Byron wrote the four following lines, which are in no other respect remarkable than that they were thought worthy of being metrically translated into no less than ten different languages; namely, Greek, Latin, Italian (also in the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan:--

"His father's sense, his mother's grace
In him, I hope, will always fit so;
With (still to keep him in good case)
The health and appetite of Rizzo."

The original lines, with the different versions just mentioned, were printed, in a small neat volume (which now lies before me), in the seminary of Padua.]

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