Chapter LXVII: Letter 338: To Mr. Murray

"Bologna, August 23. 1819.

"I send you a letter to R * *ts, signed Wortley Clutterbuck, which
you may publish in what form you please, in answer to his article.
I have had many proofs of men's absurdity, but he beats all in
folly. Why, the wolf in sheep's clothing has tumbled into the very
trap! We'll strip him. The letter is written in great haste, and
amidst a thousand vexations. Your letter only came yesterday, so
that there is no time to polish: the post goes out to-morrow. The
date is 'Little Piddlington.' Let * * * * correct the press: he
knows and can read the handwriting. Continue to keep the
_anonymous_ about 'Juan;' it helps us to fight against overwhelming
numbers. I have a thousand distractions at present; so excuse
haste, and wonder I can act or write at all. Answer by post, as
usual.

"Yours.

"P.S. If I had had time, and been quieter and nearer, I would have
cut him to hash; but as it is, you can judge for yourselves."

* * * * *

The letter to the Reviewer, here mentioned, had its origin in rather an amusing circumstance. In the first Canto of Don Juan appeared the following passage:--

"For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed My Grandmother's Review,--the British!

"I sent it in a letter to the editor,
Who thank'd me duly by return of post--
I'm for a handsome article his creditor;
Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast,
And break a promise after having made it her,
Denying the receipt of what it cost,
And smear his page with gall instead of honey,
All I can say is--that he had the money."

On the appearance of the poem, the learned editor of the Review in question allowed himself to be decoyed into the ineffable absurdity of taking the charge as serious, and, in his succeeding number, came forth with an indignant contradiction of it. To this tempting subject the letter, written so hastily off at Bologna, related; but, though printed for Mr. Murray, in a pamphlet consisting of twenty-three pages, it was never published by him.[43] Being valuable, however, as one of the best specimens we have of Lord Byron's simple and thoroughly English prose, I shall here preserve some extracts from it.

[Footnote 43: It appeared afterwards in the Liberal.]

* * * * *

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH REVIEW.

"My dear R----ts,

"As a believer in the Church of England--to say nothing of the
State--I have been an occasional reader, and great admirer, though
not a subscriber, to your Review. But I do not know that any
article of its contents ever gave me much surprise till the
eleventh of your late twenty-seventh number made its appearance.
You have there most manfully refuted a calumnious accusation of
bribery and corruption, the credence of which in the public mind
might not only have damaged your reputation as a clergyman and an
editor, but, what would have been still worse, have injured the
circulation of your journal; which, I regret to hear, is not so
extensive as the 'purity (as you well observe) of its, &c. &c.' and
the present taste for propriety, would induce us to expect. The
charge itself is of a solemn nature; and, although in verse, is
couched in terms of such circumstantial gravity as to induce a
belief little short of that generally accorded to the thirty-nine
articles, to which you so generously subscribed on taking your
degrees. It is a charge the most revolting to the heart of man from
its frequent occurrence; to the mind of a statesman from its
occasional truth; and to the soul of an editor from its moral
impossibility. You are charged then in the last line of one octave
stanza, and the whole eight lines of the next, viz. 209th and 210th
of the first Canto of that 'pestilent poem,' Don Juan, with
receiving, and still more foolishly acknowledging, the receipt of
certain moneys to eulogise the unknown author, who by this account
must be known to you, if to nobody else. An impeachment of this
nature, so seriously made, there is but one way of refuting; and it
is my firm persuasion, that whether you did or did not (and _I_
believe that you did not) receive the said moneys, of which I wish
that he had specified the sum, you are quite right in denying all
knowledge of the transaction. If charges of this nefarious
description are to go forth, sanctioned by all the solemnity of
circumstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as
Counsellor Phillips would say), what is to become of readers
hitherto implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of
our critical journals? what is to become of the reviews; and, if
the reviews fail, what is to become of the editors? It is common
cause, and you have done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my
humble sphere, will be one of your echoes. In the words of the
tragedian Liston, 'I love a row,' and you seem justly determined to
make one.

"It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might
have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the
proverb says, 'breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, or
it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad
one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse
one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all
whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the
immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not doubt your word,
my dear R----ts, yet I cannot help wishing that, in a case of such
vital importance, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an
affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives
any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as
evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at
the same time that he himself meditates the same good office
towards the river Thames.

"I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject
discussed at the tea-table of Mr. * * * the poet,--and Mrs. and the
Misses * * * * * being in a corner of the room perusing the proof
sheets of Mr. * * *'s poems, the male part of the _conversazione_
were at liberty to make some observations on the poem and passage
in question, and there was a difference of opinion. Some thought
the allusion was to the 'British Critic;' others, that by the
expression 'My Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated that 'my
grandmother' was not the reader of the review, but actually the
writer; thereby insinuating, my dear Mr. R----ts, that you were an
old woman; because, as people often say, 'Jeffrey's Review,"
'Gifford's Review,' in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly, so 'My
Grandmother's Review' and R----ts's might be also synonymous. Now,
whatever colour this insinuation might derive from the circumstance
of your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of life, your
general style, and various passages of your writings,--I will take
upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion of the kind, and
assert, without calling Mrs. R----ts in testimony, that if ever you
should be chosen Pope, you will pass through all the previous
ceremonies with as much credit as any pontiff since the parturition
of Joan. It is very unfair to judge of sex from writings,
particularly from those of the British Review. We are all liable to
be deceived, and it is an indisputable fact that many of the best
articles in your journal, which were attributed to a veteran
female, were actually written by you yourself, and yet to this day
there are people who could never find out the difference. But let
us return to the more immediate question.

"I agree with you that it is impossible Lord B. should be the
author, not only because, as a British peer and a British poet, it
would be impracticable for him to have recourse to such facetious
fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to
state. In the first place, his Lordship has no grandmother. Now the
author--and we may believe him in this--doth expressly state that
the 'British' is his 'Grandmother's Review;' and if, as I think I
have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to
your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows,
whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still
extant.

"Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to
insinuate, God forbid! but if, by any accident, there should have
been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author,
whoever he may be, send him back his money; I dare say he will be
very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value
of the article and the circulation of the journal; and you are too
modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth:--don't be angry,
I know you won't, at this appraisement of your powers of eulogy:
for on the other hand, my dear fellow, depend upon it your abuse is
worth, not its own weight, that's a feather, but _your_ weight in
gold. So don't spare it; if he has bargained for _that_, give it
handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office.

"What the motives of this writer may have been for (as you
magnificently translate his quizzing you) 'stating, with the
particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless
fiction,' (do, pray, my dear R., talk a little less 'in King
Cambyses' vein,') I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you,
but that is no reason for your benevolently making all the world
laugh also. I approve of your being angry, I tell you I am angry
too, but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn
'_if_ somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received
from Lord B. or from any other person,' reminds me of Charley
Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear
him sing without paying their share of the reckoning--'if a maun,
or _ony_ maun, or _ony other_ maun,' &c. &c.; you have both the
same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would
personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read
your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your
conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your
prolixity. The fact is, my dear R----ts, that somebody has tried to
make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have
done for him and for yourself."

* * * * *

Towards the latter end of August, Count Guiccioli, accompanied by his lady, went for a short time to visit some of his Romagnese estates, while Lord Byron remained at Bologna alone. And here, with a heart softened and excited by the new feeling that had taken possession of him, he appears to have given himself up, during this interval of solitude, to a train of melancholy and impassioned thought, such as, for a time, brought back all the romance of his youthful days. That spring of natural tenderness within his soul, which neither the world's efforts nor his own had been able to chill or choke up, was now, with something of its first freshness, set flowing once more. He again knew what it was to love and be loved,--too late, it is true, for happiness, and too wrongly for peace, but with devotion enough, on the part of the woman, to satisfy even his thirst for affection, and with a sad earnestness, on his own, a foreboding fidelity, which made him cling but the more passionately to this attachment from feeling that it would be his last.

A circumstance which he himself used to mention as having occurred at this period will show how over-powering, at times, was the rush of melancholy over his heart. It was his fancy, during Madame Guiccioli's absence from Bologna, to go daily to her house at his usual hour of visiting her, and there, causing her apartments to be opened, to sit turning over her books, and writing in them.[44] He would then descend into her garden, where he passed hours in musing; and it was on an occasion of this kind, as he stood looking, in a state of unconscious reverie, into one of those fountains so common in the gardens of Italy, that there came suddenly into his mind such desolate fancies, such bodings of the misery he might bring on her he loved, by that doom which (as he has himself written) "makes it fatal to be loved[45]," that, overwhelmed with his own thoughts, he burst into an agony of tears.

During the same few days it was that he wrote in the last page of Madame Guiccioli's copy of "Corinne" the following remarkable note:--

"My dearest Teresa,--I have read this book in your garden;--my
love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a
favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You
will not understand these English words, and _others_ will not
understand them--which is the reason I have not scrawled them in
Italian. But you will recognise the hand-writing of him who
passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which
was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in
all languages, but most so in yours--_Amor mio_--is comprised my
existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I fear that
I shall exist hereafter,--to _what_ purpose you will decide; my
destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, seventeen years of
age, and two out of a convent. I wish that you had stayed there,
with all my heart,--or, at least, that I had never met you in your
married state.

"But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me,--at least,
you _say so_, and _act_ as if you _did_ so, which last is a great
consolation in all events. But _I_ more than love you, and cannot
cease to love you.

"Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide
us,--but they never will, unless you _wish_ it. BYRON.

"Bologna, August 25. 1819."

[Footnote 44: One of these notes, written at the end of the 5th chapter, 18th book of Corinne ("Fragmens des Pensees de Corinne") is as follows:--

"I knew Madame de Stael well,--better than she knew Italy,--but I
little thought that, one day, I should _think with her thoughts_,
in the country where she has laid the scene of her most attractive
productions. She is sometimes right, and often wrong, about Italy
and England; but almost always true in delineating the heart, which
is of but one nation, and of no country,--or, rather, of all.

"BYRON.

"Bologna, August 23. 1819."
]

[Footnote 45:

"Oh Love! what is it, in this world of ours,
Which makes it fatal to be loved? ah! why
With cypress branches hast thou wreath'd thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breasts--but place to die.--
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish."
]

* * * * *