Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV

Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV

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Title: Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV With His Letters and Journals
Author: Thomas Moore
Release Date: August 19, 2005 [EBook #16549]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LIFE
OF
LORD BYRON:
WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. IV.
NEW EDITION.
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.

CONTENTS OF VOL. IV
LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES
OF HIS LIFE, from April, 1817, to October, 1820.

NOTICES
OF THE
LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

LETTER 272. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, April 9. 1817.
"Your letters of the 18th and 20th are arrived. In my own I have given
you the rise, progress, decline, and fall, of my recent malady. It is gone
to the devil: I won't pay him so bad a compliment as to say it came
from him;--he is too much of a gentleman. It was nothing but a slow
fever, which quickened its pace towards the end of its journey. I had
been bored with it some weeks--with nocturnal burnings and morning
perspirations; but I am quite well again, which I attribute to having had
neither medicine nor doctor thereof.
"In a few days I set off for Rome: such is my purpose. I shall change it
very often before Monday next, but do you continue to direct and
address to Venice, as heretofore. If I go, letters will be forwarded: I say
'if,' because I never know what I shall do till it is done; and as I mean

most firmly to set out for Rome, it is not unlikely I may find myself at
St. Petersburg.
"You tell me to 'take care of myself;'--faith, and I will. I won't be
posthumous yet, if I can help it. Notwithstanding, only think what a
'Life and Adventures,' while I am in full scandal, would be worth,
together with the 'membra' of my writing-desk, the sixteen beginnings
of poems never to be finished! Do you think I would not have shot
myself last year, had I not luckily recollected that Mrs. C * * and Lady
N * *, and all the old women in England would have been
delighted;--besides the agreeable 'Lunacy,' of the 'Crowner's Quest,' and
the regrets of two or three or half a dozen? Be assured that I would live
for two reasons, or more;--there are one or two people whom I have to
put out of the world, and as many into it, before I can 'depart in peace;'
if I do so before, I have not fulfilled my mission. Besides, when I turn
thirty, I will turn devout; I feel a great vocation that way in Catholic
churches, and when I hear the organ.
"So * * is writing again! Is there no Bedlam in Scotland? nor
thumb-screw? nor gag? nor hand-cuff? I went upon my knees to him
almost, some years ago, to prevent him from publishing a political
pamphlet, which would have given him a livelier idea of 'Habeas
Corpus' than the world will derive from his present production upon
that suspended subject, which will doubtless be followed by the
suspension of other of his Majesty's subjects.
"I condole with Drury Lane and rejoice with * *,--that is, in a modest
way,--on the tragical end of the new tragedy.
"You and Leigh Hunt have quarrelled then, it seems? I introduce him
and his poem to you, in the hope that (malgré politics) the union would
be beneficial to both, and the end is eternal enmity; and yet I did this
with the best intentions: I introduce * * *, and * * * runs away with
your money: my friend Hobhouse quarrels, too, with the Quarterly: and
(except the last) I am the innocent Istmhus (damn the word! I can't spell
it, though I have crossed that of Corinth a dozen times) of these
enmities.

"I will tell you something about Chillon.--A Mr. De Luc, ninety years
old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it,--so my sister
writes. He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon, and that the
description is perfectly correct. But this is not all: I recollected
something of the name, and find the following passage in 'The
Confessions,'