FOOTNOTES:[115]I cannot remember whether anybody has ever made a list of the books that Coleridge did not write. It would be the catalogue of a most interesting library in Utopia.
[115]I cannot remember whether anybody has ever made a list of the books that Coleridge did not write. It would be the catalogue of a most interesting library in Utopia.
[115]I cannot remember whether anybody has ever made a list of the books that Coleridge did not write. It would be the catalogue of a most interesting library in Utopia.
One of the strangest things met by the present writer in the course of preparing this book was a remark of the late Mr. Scoones—an old acquaintance and a man who has deserved most excellently on the subject—in reference to Southey's letters, that they show the author as "dry and unsympathetic." "They contain too much information to be good as letters." Well: there certainly is information in the specimen that follows: whether it is "dry" or not readers must decide. The fact is that Southey, despite occasional touches of self-righteousness and of over-bookishness, was full of humour, extraordinarily affectionate, and extremely natural. There is moreover a great deal of interest in this skit on poor Mrs. Coleridge: for "lingos" of the kind, though in her case they may have helped to disgust her husband with his "pensive Sara," were in her time and afterwards by no means uncommon, especially—physiologists must say why—with the female sex. The present writer, near the middle of the nineteenth century, knew a lady of family, position and property who was fond of the phrase, "hail-fellow-well-met," but always turned it into "Fellowship Wilmot"—a pretty close parallel to "horsemangander" for "horse-godmother". Extension—with levelling—of education, and such processes as those which have turned "Sissiter" into "Syrencesster" and "Kirton" into "Credd-itt-on", have made the phenomenon rarer: but have also made such alocus classicusof the habit as this all the more valuable and amusing. It may be added that Lamb, in one of his letters, has a sly if good-natured glance at this peculiarity of the elder Sara Coleridge in reference to the aptitude of the younger in her "mother-tongue."Southey has dealt with the matter in several epistles to his friend Grosvenor Bedford. The whole would have been rather long but the following mosaic will, I think, do very well. Dr. Warter, the editor of the supplementary collection of Southey's letters from which it comes, was the husband of Edith May Southey, the heroine of not a little literature, sometimes[116]in connection, not merely as here with Sara Coleridge the younger, but with Dora Wordsworth—the three daughters of the three Lake Poets. She was, as her father says, a very tall girl, while her aunt, Mrs. Coleridge, was little (her husband, writing from Hamburg, speaks with surprise of some German lady as "smaller than you are").
One of the strangest things met by the present writer in the course of preparing this book was a remark of the late Mr. Scoones—an old acquaintance and a man who has deserved most excellently on the subject—in reference to Southey's letters, that they show the author as "dry and unsympathetic." "They contain too much information to be good as letters." Well: there certainly is information in the specimen that follows: whether it is "dry" or not readers must decide. The fact is that Southey, despite occasional touches of self-righteousness and of over-bookishness, was full of humour, extraordinarily affectionate, and extremely natural. There is moreover a great deal of interest in this skit on poor Mrs. Coleridge: for "lingos" of the kind, though in her case they may have helped to disgust her husband with his "pensive Sara," were in her time and afterwards by no means uncommon, especially—physiologists must say why—with the female sex. The present writer, near the middle of the nineteenth century, knew a lady of family, position and property who was fond of the phrase, "hail-fellow-well-met," but always turned it into "Fellowship Wilmot"—a pretty close parallel to "horsemangander" for "horse-godmother". Extension—with levelling—of education, and such processes as those which have turned "Sissiter" into "Syrencesster" and "Kirton" into "Credd-itt-on", have made the phenomenon rarer: but have also made such alocus classicusof the habit as this all the more valuable and amusing. It may be added that Lamb, in one of his letters, has a sly if good-natured glance at this peculiarity of the elder Sara Coleridge in reference to the aptitude of the younger in her "mother-tongue."Southey has dealt with the matter in several epistles to his friend Grosvenor Bedford. The whole would have been rather long but the following mosaic will, I think, do very well. Dr. Warter, the editor of the supplementary collection of Southey's letters from which it comes, was the husband of Edith May Southey, the heroine of not a little literature, sometimes[116]in connection, not merely as here with Sara Coleridge the younger, but with Dora Wordsworth—the three daughters of the three Lake Poets. She was, as her father says, a very tall girl, while her aunt, Mrs. Coleridge, was little (her husband, writing from Hamburg, speaks with surprise of some German lady as "smaller than you are").
30.To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Sep. 14, 1821
Dear Stumparumper,
Don't rub your eyes at that word, Bedford, as if you were slopy. The purport of this letter, which is to be as precious as the Punic scenes in Plautus, is to give you some account (though but an imperfect one) of the language spoken in this house by ... and invented by her. I have carefully composed a vocabulary of it by the help of her daughter and mine, having my ivory tablets always ready when she is red-raggifying in full confabulumpatus.
31.To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Oct. 7, 1821.
My dear G,
I very much approve your laudable curiosity to know the precise meaning of that noble wordhorsemangandering. Before I tell you itsapplication, you must be informed of its history and origin. Be it therefore known unto you that ... the whole and sole inventor of the never-to-be-forgottenlingo grande(in which, by the bye, I purpose ere long to compose a second epistle), thought proper one day to call my daughter a greathorsemangander, thinking, I suppose, that that appellation contained as much unfeminine meaning as could be put into any decent compound. From this substantive the verb has been formed to denote an operation performed by the said daughter upon the said aunt, of which I was an astonished spectator. The horsemangander—that is to say, Edith May—being tall and strong, came behind the person to be horsemangandered (to wit, ...), and took her round the waist, under the arms, then jumped with her all the way from the kitchen into the middle of the parlour; the motion of the horsemangandered person at every jump being something like that of a paviour's rammer, and all resistance impossible.
32.To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Oct. 8, 1821.
* * * * *
P.S. The name of the newly-discovered language (of which I have more to say hereafter) is thelingo grande.
33.To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Dec. 24, 1822
Dear Stumparumper,
So long a time has elapsed since I sent you the commencement of my remarks upon the peculiar language spoken by ... which I have denominated thelingo-grande, that I fear you may supposethat I have altogether neglected the subject. Yet such a subject, as you must perceive, requires a great deal of patient observation, as well as of attentive consideration; and were I to flustercumhurry over it, as if it were a matter which could be undercumstood in a jiffump (that is to say in a momper), this would be to do what I have undertaken shabroonily, and you might shartainly have reason to think me fuffling and indiscruckt. Upon my vurtz I have not dumdawdled with it, like a dangleampeter; which being interpreted in the samelingois an undecider, or an improvidentur, too idle to explore the hurtch mine which he has had the fortune to discover. No, I must be a stupossum indeed to act thus, as well as a slouwdowdekcum, or slowdonothinger; and these are appellations which she has never bestowed upon me; though, perhaps, the uncommon richness, and even exuberance of her language has not been more strikingly displayed in anything than in the variety of names which it has enabled her to shower upon my devoted person.
* * * * *
And so-o-o,Dear Miscumter Bedfordiddlededford,I subcumscribe myself,Your sincumcere friendiddledend and serdiddledeservant,
Robcumbert Southey diddiedouthey.
Student in the Lingo-Grande, Graduate in Butlerology, Professor of the science of Noncumsensediddledense, of sneezing and of vocal music, P.L. and LL.D. etc etc.
FOOTNOTES:[116]See Wordsworth'sTriad.
[116]See Wordsworth'sTriad.
[116]See Wordsworth'sTriad.
There are not many people about whom it is more difficult—or more unnecessary—to write than it is about Lamb. A few very unfortunate people do not enjoy him, and probably never could be made to do so. Most of those who care for literature at all revel in him: and do not in the least need to be told to do so. And, as was said before, there is hardly any difference between his published works and his letters except that the former stand a little—a very little—more "upon ceremony." As to selecting the letters one remembers Mr. Matthew Arnold's very agreeable confession, when he was asked to select his poems, that he wanted to select them all. This being impossible, one has to confess that, putting subject, scale etc. aside, any one is almost as tempting as any other, and that whatever is chosen reminds one, half-regretfully, of the letters that were left. When a man can write (to William Wordsworth too), "The very head and sum of the girlery were two young girls," there is nothing left to do but to repeat, with the slight alteration of "write to" for "ask," Thackeray's ejaculation to the supposed host at an unusually satisfactory dinner, "Dear Sir! doaskus again." And on almost every page of his letters, whether in Talfourd's original issue of them or in the more recent and fuller editions of his works, the spirit is the same everywhere: the volume only differs. If (but you never know exactly when Lamb is speaking seriously) at the time he had "an aversion from letter writing," then most certainly Mrs. Malaprop was justified in saying that there "is nothing like beginning with a little aversion"! The letter which follows is, though it may have pleased others besides myself,not one of the stock examples. But it seems to me to present a rather unusual combination of Lamb's attractive qualities, not a little of his rare phrase ("divine plain face" especially) and a remarkable expression of that yearning forsolitudewhich some people seem to think rather shameful, but which to others is a thing no more to be accounted for than it is to be got rid of. It will be observed that the letter, ostensibly to Mrs. W., is really both to her and to her husband. "W. H." is of course Hazlitt, and the "lectures" are his famous ones on English Poets. As for Lamb's criticisms on lectures generally, they would perhaps be endorsed by some who have given, as well as by many who have received, this form of instruction. The "gentleman at Haydon's" was the hero or victim of a story good, but too long to give here. He said some excessively foolish things and Lamb, after dinner, behaved to him in a fashion possibly not quite undeserved but entirely unsanctioned by the conventions of society.
There are not many people about whom it is more difficult—or more unnecessary—to write than it is about Lamb. A few very unfortunate people do not enjoy him, and probably never could be made to do so. Most of those who care for literature at all revel in him: and do not in the least need to be told to do so. And, as was said before, there is hardly any difference between his published works and his letters except that the former stand a little—a very little—more "upon ceremony." As to selecting the letters one remembers Mr. Matthew Arnold's very agreeable confession, when he was asked to select his poems, that he wanted to select them all. This being impossible, one has to confess that, putting subject, scale etc. aside, any one is almost as tempting as any other, and that whatever is chosen reminds one, half-regretfully, of the letters that were left. When a man can write (to William Wordsworth too), "The very head and sum of the girlery were two young girls," there is nothing left to do but to repeat, with the slight alteration of "write to" for "ask," Thackeray's ejaculation to the supposed host at an unusually satisfactory dinner, "Dear Sir! doaskus again." And on almost every page of his letters, whether in Talfourd's original issue of them or in the more recent and fuller editions of his works, the spirit is the same everywhere: the volume only differs. If (but you never know exactly when Lamb is speaking seriously) at the time he had "an aversion from letter writing," then most certainly Mrs. Malaprop was justified in saying that there "is nothing like beginning with a little aversion"! The letter which follows is, though it may have pleased others besides myself,not one of the stock examples. But it seems to me to present a rather unusual combination of Lamb's attractive qualities, not a little of his rare phrase ("divine plain face" especially) and a remarkable expression of that yearning forsolitudewhich some people seem to think rather shameful, but which to others is a thing no more to be accounted for than it is to be got rid of. It will be observed that the letter, ostensibly to Mrs. W., is really both to her and to her husband. "W. H." is of course Hazlitt, and the "lectures" are his famous ones on English Poets. As for Lamb's criticisms on lectures generally, they would perhaps be endorsed by some who have given, as well as by many who have received, this form of instruction. The "gentleman at Haydon's" was the hero or victim of a story good, but too long to give here. He said some excessively foolish things and Lamb, after dinner, behaved to him in a fashion possibly not quite undeserved but entirely unsanctioned by the conventions of society.
34.To Mrs. Wordsworth
East India House.February 18, 1818.
My dear Mrs. Wordsworth,
I have repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it, but she having failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now trying to do it in the midst of commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of gourds, cassia, cardamoms, aloes, ginger, or tea, than into kindly responses and friendly recollections. The reason why I cannot write letters at home is, that I am never alone. Plato's (I write to W. W. now)—Plato's double animal parted never longed more to be reciprocallyre-united in the system of its first creation than I sometimes do to be but for a moment single and separate. Except my morning's walk to the office, which is like treading on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office but some officious friend offers his unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in great books, or compare sum with sum, and write "paid" against this, and "unpaid" against t'other, and yet reserve in some corner of my mind "some darling thoughts all my own,"—faint memory of some passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice—a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face. The two operations might be going on at the same time without thwarting, as the sun's two motions (earth's I mean), or as I sometimes turn round till I am giddy, in my back parlour, while my sister is walking longitudinally in the front; or as the shoulder of veal twists round with the spit, while the smoke wreathes up the chimney. But there are a set of amateurs of the Belles Lettres—the gay science—who come to me as a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, of British Institutions, Lalla Rookhs, etc,—what Coleridge said at the lecture last night—who have the form of reading men, but, for any possible use reading can be to them, but to talk of, might as well have been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as the pyramids will last, before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business, and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little salutary warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if I take a newspaper, cramming in between my own free thoughts and a column of figureswhich had come to an amicable compromise but for them. Their noise ended, one of them, as I said, accompanies me home, lest I should be solitary for a moment; he at length takes his welcome leave at the door; up I go, mutton on table, hungry as hunter, hope to forget my cares, and bury them in the agreeable abstraction of mastication; knock at the door, in comes Mr. Hazlitt, or Mr. Martin Burney, or Morgan Demigorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to prevent my eating alone—a process absolutely necessary to my poor wretched digestion. O the pleasure of eating alone!—eating my dinner alone! let me think of it. But in they come, and make it absolutely necessary that I should open a bottle of orange; for my meat turns into stone when any one dines with me, if I have not wine. Wine can mollify stones; thenthatwine turns into acidity, acerbity, misanthropy, a hatred of my interrupters—(God bless 'em! I love some of 'em dearly), and with the hatred, a still greater aversion to their going away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon me, choking and deadening, but worse is the deader dry sand they leave me on, if they go before bed-time. Come never, I would say to those spoilers of my dinner; but if you come, never go! The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often; but every time it comes by surprise, that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening company I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces (divineforsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company; but I assure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get two, or one to myself. I am never C. L. but always C. L. and Co. He who thought it not good for man to bealone, preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself! I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week, generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the hour I ought always to be a-bed; just close to my bedroom window is the club-room of a public-house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus-singers of the two theatres (it must be both of them), begin their orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) who, being limited by their talents to the burthen of the song at the play-houses, in revenge have got the common popular airs by Bishop, or some cheap composer, arranged for choruses; that is, to be sung all in chorus. At least I never can catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on't. "That fury being quenched"—the howl, I mean—a burden succeeds of shouts and clapping, and knocking of the table. At length overtasked nature drops under it, and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent creatures of dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I think of the words Christabel's father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink!) to say every morning by way of variety when he awoke:
"Every knell, the Baron saith,Wakes us up to a world of death"
"Every knell, the Baron saith,Wakes us up to a world of death"
or something like it. All I mean by this senseless interrupted tale, is, that by my central situation I am a little over-companied. Not that I have any animosity against the good creatures that are so anxious to drive away the harpy solitude from me. I like 'em, and cards, and a cheerful glass; but I mean merely to give you an idea, between office confinement and after-office society, howlittle time I can call my own. I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an inference. I would not that I know of have it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which a late visitation brought most welcome, and carried away, leaving regret, but more pleasure, even a kind of gratitude, at being so often favoured with that kind northern visitation. My London faces and noises don't hear me—I mean no disrespect, or I should explain myself, that instead of their return 220 times a year, and the return of W. W. etc., seven times in 104 weeks, some more equal distribution might be found. I have scarce room to put in Mary's kind love, and my poor name,
C.Lamb.
* * * * *
W. H. goes on lecturing against W. W. and making copious use of quotations from said W. W. to give a zest to said lectures. S. T. C. is lecturing with success. I have not heard either of him or H., but dined with S. T. C. at Gillman's a Sunday or two since, and he was well and in good spirits. I mean to hear some of the course but lectures are not much to my taste, whatever the lecturer may be. Ifread, they are dismal flat, and you can't think why you are brought together to hear a man read his works, which you could read so much better at leisure yourself. If delivered extempore I am always in pain lest the gift of utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the dinner given in honour of me at the London tavern.[117]"Gentlemen," said I,and there I stopped; the rest my feelings were under the necessity of supplying. Mrs. Wordsworthwillgo on, kindly haunting us with visions of seeing the lakes once more, which never can be realised. Between us there is a great gulf, not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, I hope, as there seemed to be between me and that gentleman concerned in the Stamp Office, that I so strangely recoiled from at Haydon's. I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate all such people—accountants' deputy-accountants. The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather poetical; but as she makes herself manifest by the persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us of all our red-letter days, they had done their worst; but I was deceived in the length to which heads of offices, those true liberty-haters, can go. They are the tyrants; not Ferdinand, nor Nero. By a decree passed this week they have abridged us of the immemorially-observed custom of going at one o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow of a holiday left us. Dear W. W., be thankful for liberty.
FOOTNOTES:[117]Lamb would have enjoyed a recent newspaper paragraph which, stating that an inquest had been held on some one who, after lecturing somewhere was taken ill and expired, concluded thus: "Verdict: death from natural causes."
[117]Lamb would have enjoyed a recent newspaper paragraph which, stating that an inquest had been held on some one who, after lecturing somewhere was taken ill and expired, concluded thus: "Verdict: death from natural causes."
[117]Lamb would have enjoyed a recent newspaper paragraph which, stating that an inquest had been held on some one who, after lecturing somewhere was taken ill and expired, concluded thus: "Verdict: death from natural causes."
It is one of the commonest of commonplaces that there are certain subjects and persons who and which always cause difference of opinion: and something like a full century has established the fact that Byron is one of them. As far as his poetry is concerned we have nothing to do with this difference or these differences. They affect his letters less, inasmuch as almost everybody admits them to be remarkably good of their kind. But when the further questions are raised, "Whatisthat kind?" and "Is it the best, or even a very good kind?" the old division manifests itself again. That they are extraordinarilycleveris again more or less matter of agreement. That they make some people dislike him more than they otherwise might is perhaps not a fatal objection: for the people may be wrong. Besides, as a matter of fact, they sometimes make other peoplelikehim more than they would have done without these letters: so the two things at least cancel each other. The chief objection to them, which is hardly removable, is their too frequent artificiality. Byron did not play the tricks that Pope played: for, he was not, like Pope, an invalid with an invalid's weaknesses and excuses. But almost more than in his poems, where the "dramatic" excuse is available, (i.e.that the writer is speaking not for himself but for the character) the letters provoke the question, "Is this what the man thought, felt, did, or what he wished to seem to feel, think, do?" In other words, "Is thispersonaorres?" The following shows Byron in perhaps as favourable a light as any that could be chosen, and with as little of the artificiality as is anywhere to befound. It is true that even here Moore, his biographer and letter-giver, at first included, though he afterwards cut out, some attacks on Sir Samuel Romilly, whom Byron thought guilty of causing or abetting dissension between Lady Byron and himself. But the letter loses nothing by the omission and does not even gain unfairly by it. There is nothingfalsein the contrast of comedy and sentiment concerning the cemetery. His impression by the epitaphs Byron gave in more letters than one. Nor is there any affectation in his remarks about his own burial, about his children, or any other subject. They did "pickle him and bring him home" (a quotation, not quite literal, from Sheridan'sRivals), and his funeral procession through London is the theme of a memorable passage in Borrow'sLavengro. "Juan" is of courseDon Juan. "Allegra," his daughter by Jane (or as she re-christened herself, Claire) Clairmont—step-daughter of Godwin, through his second wife, and so a connection though no relation of Mrs. Shelley—died at five years old. "Ada," his and Lady Byron's only child, lived to marry Lord Lovelace, and continued his blood to the present day. "Electra" works out no further than the fact of her being the daughter of his "moralClytemnestra," as he called Lady Byron, from her having been almost as fatal to his reputation as the actual Clytemnestra to her husband's life.
It is one of the commonest of commonplaces that there are certain subjects and persons who and which always cause difference of opinion: and something like a full century has established the fact that Byron is one of them. As far as his poetry is concerned we have nothing to do with this difference or these differences. They affect his letters less, inasmuch as almost everybody admits them to be remarkably good of their kind. But when the further questions are raised, "Whatisthat kind?" and "Is it the best, or even a very good kind?" the old division manifests itself again. That they are extraordinarilycleveris again more or less matter of agreement. That they make some people dislike him more than they otherwise might is perhaps not a fatal objection: for the people may be wrong. Besides, as a matter of fact, they sometimes make other peoplelikehim more than they would have done without these letters: so the two things at least cancel each other. The chief objection to them, which is hardly removable, is their too frequent artificiality. Byron did not play the tricks that Pope played: for, he was not, like Pope, an invalid with an invalid's weaknesses and excuses. But almost more than in his poems, where the "dramatic" excuse is available, (i.e.that the writer is speaking not for himself but for the character) the letters provoke the question, "Is this what the man thought, felt, did, or what he wished to seem to feel, think, do?" In other words, "Is thispersonaorres?" The following shows Byron in perhaps as favourable a light as any that could be chosen, and with as little of the artificiality as is anywhere to befound. It is true that even here Moore, his biographer and letter-giver, at first included, though he afterwards cut out, some attacks on Sir Samuel Romilly, whom Byron thought guilty of causing or abetting dissension between Lady Byron and himself. But the letter loses nothing by the omission and does not even gain unfairly by it. There is nothingfalsein the contrast of comedy and sentiment concerning the cemetery. His impression by the epitaphs Byron gave in more letters than one. Nor is there any affectation in his remarks about his own burial, about his children, or any other subject. They did "pickle him and bring him home" (a quotation, not quite literal, from Sheridan'sRivals), and his funeral procession through London is the theme of a memorable passage in Borrow'sLavengro. "Juan" is of courseDon Juan. "Allegra," his daughter by Jane (or as she re-christened herself, Claire) Clairmont—step-daughter of Godwin, through his second wife, and so a connection though no relation of Mrs. Shelley—died at five years old. "Ada," his and Lady Byron's only child, lived to marry Lord Lovelace, and continued his blood to the present day. "Electra" works out no further than the fact of her being the daughter of his "moralClytemnestra," as he called Lady Byron, from her having been almost as fatal to his reputation as the actual Clytemnestra to her husband's life.
35.To Mr. Murray
Bologna, June 7. 1817.
Tell Mr. Hobhouse that I wrote to him a few days ago from Ferrara. It will therefore be idle in him or you to wait for any further answers or returns of proofs from Venice, as I have directed that no English letters be sent after me. The publication can be proceeded in without, and I am already sick of your remarks, to which I think not the least attention ought to be paid.
Tell Mr. Hobhouse that since I wrote to him I had availed myself of my Ferrara letters, and found the society much younger and better than that at Venice. I am very much pleased with the little the shortness of my stay permitted me to see of the Gonfaloniere Count Mosti, and his family and friends in general.
I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls and found, besides the superb burial ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the gravedigger inHamlet.
He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them said "This is Brother Desiderio Birro, who died at forty—one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime and then boiled it. Here it is, teeth and all, in excellent preservation. He was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went he brought joy, and whenever anyone was melancholy, the sight of him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively, you might have taken him for a dancer—he joked—he laughed—oh! he was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!"
He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three thousand persons. In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess Bartorini, dead two centuries ago: he said that, on opening her grave, they had found her hair complete, and"as yellow as gold."[118]Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna; for instance:—
"MARTINI LUIGIIMPLORA PACE."
"LUCREZIA PICINIIMPLORA ETERNA QUIETE."
Can anything be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought, the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this theyimplore!
There is all the helplessness and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise from the grave—'implora pace.' I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of "pickling, and bringing me home to clod or Blunderbuss Hall." I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. I would not even feed your worms if I could help it.
So, as Shakespeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk, who died at Venice (seeRichard II.), that he, after fighting
"Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens,And toiled with works of war, retired himselfTo Italy, and there, atVenice, gaveHis body to thatpleasantcountry's earth.And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,Under whose colours he had fought so long!"
"Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens,And toiled with works of war, retired himselfTo Italy, and there, atVenice, gaveHis body to thatpleasantcountry's earth.And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,Under whose colours he had fought so long!"
Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr. Hobhouse's sheets of Juan. Don't wait for further answers from me, but address yours to Venice as usual. I know nothing of my own movements; I may return there in a few days, or not for some time. All this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well, as well as his son and Mrs. Hoppner. My daughter Allegra was well too, and is growing pretty; her hair is growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mrs. H. says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady.
I have never heard anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae. But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. What a long letter I have scribbled.
Yours &c.
P.S. Here, as in Greece, they strew flowers on the tombs. I saw a quantity of rose-leaves, and entire roses, scattered over the graves at Ferrara. It has the most pleasing effect you can imagine.
FOOTNOTES:[118]No one who has seen the Roman girl's hair at York, nearer two thousand than two hundred years old, will doubt this, thoughhertresses are not "yellow."
[118]No one who has seen the Roman girl's hair at York, nearer two thousand than two hundred years old, will doubt this, thoughhertresses are not "yellow."
[118]No one who has seen the Roman girl's hair at York, nearer two thousand than two hundred years old, will doubt this, thoughhertresses are not "yellow."
It may sometimes seem as if there were only two things that Shelley lacked—humour and common sense. As a matter of fact he possessed both, but allowed them to be perpetually stifled by other elements—not in themselves necessarily bad—of his character. If either—still better both—had been able to constitute themselves monarchs of his Brentford, Duumvirs of the rest, his political and religious extravagances would have been curbed; his less admirable actions would probably—for he would not have married and therefore would not have deserted poor Harriet—have been obviated; and it is by no means necessary that his poetry, though it could not have been much improved, should have been in any degree worsened. Shakespeare, one thinks, had plenty of both. Nor is this consideration irrelevant to the study of his letters. There are glimmerings of the humour which shines inPeter Bell the Third, and more of the common sense which is not needed, but by no means negatived, in the sublimer poems. But in the case suggested we should certainly have had more of them in a department than which they could have found no better home. Shelley wrote everything (after his intellectual infancy) that he did write, so excellently that he must have excelled here also. As it is, we must take him as we find him and be thankful. Since he wrote the following, English readers have perhaps been satiated with writings about Art. But rather more than 100 years ago there had been comparatively little of it and hardly anything, if anything at all, of this quality. And it may not be absurd to draw attention to the differences betweenthese descriptions and those in ornate prose that we have had since from Mr. Ruskin and others. Most of the latter are essentially prose though often very beautiful prose: Shelley's, though pure prose in form, are as it were scenarios for poetry. Indeed by this time poetry had taken almost entire possession of him, and he of her.
It may sometimes seem as if there were only two things that Shelley lacked—humour and common sense. As a matter of fact he possessed both, but allowed them to be perpetually stifled by other elements—not in themselves necessarily bad—of his character. If either—still better both—had been able to constitute themselves monarchs of his Brentford, Duumvirs of the rest, his political and religious extravagances would have been curbed; his less admirable actions would probably—for he would not have married and therefore would not have deserted poor Harriet—have been obviated; and it is by no means necessary that his poetry, though it could not have been much improved, should have been in any degree worsened. Shakespeare, one thinks, had plenty of both. Nor is this consideration irrelevant to the study of his letters. There are glimmerings of the humour which shines inPeter Bell the Third, and more of the common sense which is not needed, but by no means negatived, in the sublimer poems. But in the case suggested we should certainly have had more of them in a department than which they could have found no better home. Shelley wrote everything (after his intellectual infancy) that he did write, so excellently that he must have excelled here also. As it is, we must take him as we find him and be thankful. Since he wrote the following, English readers have perhaps been satiated with writings about Art. But rather more than 100 years ago there had been comparatively little of it and hardly anything, if anything at all, of this quality. And it may not be absurd to draw attention to the differences betweenthese descriptions and those in ornate prose that we have had since from Mr. Ruskin and others. Most of the latter are essentially prose though often very beautiful prose: Shelley's, though pure prose in form, are as it were scenarios for poetry. Indeed by this time poetry had taken almost entire possession of him, and he of her.
36.To Thomas Love Peacock
Bologna,Monday, Nov[ember] 9, 1818.
My dear Peacock,
I have seen a quantity of things here—churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a commonplace-book, I will try to recollect something of what I have seen; for, indeed, it requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we went to the cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. We went then to a palace—I am sure I forget the name of it—where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio, about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil who was bound in that style—but who can make anything offour saints? For what can they be supposed to be about? There was one painting, indeed, by this master, Christ beatified, inexpressibly fine. It is a half figure, seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with an ethereal, rose-like lustre; the arms are expanded; the whole frame seems dilated with expression; the countenance is heavy, as it were, with the weight of the rapture of the spirit; the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath of intense but regulated passion; the eyes are calm and benignant; the whole features harmonised in majesty and sweetness. The hair is parted on the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each side. It is motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath would move it. The colouring, I suppose, must be very good, if I could remark and understand it. The sky is of pale aërial orange, like the tints of latest sunset; it does not seem painted around and beyond the figure, but everything seems to have absorbed, and to have been penetrated by its hues. I do not think we saw any other of Correggio, but this specimen gives me a very exalted idea of his powers.
We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces—Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing a novel. I saw many more of Guido. One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass's jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is supposed to do this, God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows—but certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure of Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, as it were, in the hues of human life, and full of strength and elegance. Round him lie the Philistines in all the attitudes of death. One prone, with the slight convulsion of pain just passing fromhis forehead, whilst on his lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. Another leaning on his arm, with his hand, white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the distance, more dead bodies; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil sail.
There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely coloured, with much fine expression—but the subject is very horrible, and it seemed deficient in strength—at least, you require the highest ideal energy, the most poetical and exalted conception of the subject, to reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with the look of passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair, and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate compassion; his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves together, as it were, with involuntary anguish; his feet almost writhing up from the ground with the same sympathy; and the whole of this arrayed in colours of diviner nature, yet most like nature's self. Of the contemplation of this one would never weary.
There was a "Fortune," too, of Guido; a piece of mere beauty. There was the figure of Fortune on a globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love was trying to catch her back by the hair, and her face was half turned towards him; her long chestnut hair was floating in the stream of the wind, and threw its shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were fixed on her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light smile was hovering on herlips. The colours which arrayed her delicate limbs were ethereal and warm.
But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures of Guido which I saw was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on her soft and gentle countenance, and in her simple and affectionate gestures—there is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness in the expression of her face; her eyes are almost closed; her lip depressed; there is a serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were, of all the muscles which are called into action by ordinary emotions: but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost insupportable from its intensity, were brooding over and weighing down the soul, or whatever it is, without which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.
There is another painter here, called Franceschini, a Bolognese, who, though certainly very inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent powers. One entire church, that of Santa Catarina, is covered by his works. I do not know whether any of his pictures have ever been seen in England. His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but nothing can be more clear and delicate; it is as if he could have dipped his pencil in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight. His forms have the same delicacy and aërial loveliness; their eyes are all bright with innocence and love; their lips scarce divided by some gentle and sweet emotion. His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings ever created by the human mind. These are generally, whether in the capacity of Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the picture; and the underplot of their lovely and infantine play is something almost pathetic from the excess of its unpretending beauty.One of the best of his pieces is an Annunciation of the Virgin:—the Angel is beaming in beauty; the Virgin, soft, retiring, and simple.
We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael—St. Cecilia: this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead—she holds an organ in her hands—her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet it has all her truth and softness.
A good deal has already been said of Keats in the Introduction; but a little more may be pardoned on that most remarkable correspondence with his brother and sister-in-law which is there mentioned, and which it is hoped may be fairly sampled here. There is nothing quite like it: and one can only be thankful to the Atlantic (which here at least can have "disappointed" nobody worth mentioning) for causing the separation that brought it about. The inspirations which it shows were happily double. We do not know very much about George Keats, but John's family affection was of the keenest, and this was the only member of the family who was, in all the circumstances, likely to sympathise thoroughly with the poet in his poetry as in other things. Georgiana is said to have been personally attractive and mentally gifted beyond the common: and there is no doubt that this excited something more than mere family devotion in such an impressionable person as Keats. The combined reagency of these relatives has given us what we have from no other English poet—for the simple reason that no other English poet has had such a chance of giving it to us. The only thing to regret is that it could not continue longer: and that is only a necessary operation of Fate. The particular passage chosen here is one of the best known perhaps, but it is also one of the most illuminating: for it gives at once Keats's natural and simple interest in ordinary things, with no mere trivialities: hisrealattitude (so different from that long attributed to him!) as regards the attacks of critics, and his passion for beauty apart from mere hedonism. The "Charmian" was at onetime supposed to be Miss Brawne: but this was an error. She was a Miss Jane Cox, and nothing is heard of her afterwards.
A good deal has already been said of Keats in the Introduction; but a little more may be pardoned on that most remarkable correspondence with his brother and sister-in-law which is there mentioned, and which it is hoped may be fairly sampled here. There is nothing quite like it: and one can only be thankful to the Atlantic (which here at least can have "disappointed" nobody worth mentioning) for causing the separation that brought it about. The inspirations which it shows were happily double. We do not know very much about George Keats, but John's family affection was of the keenest, and this was the only member of the family who was, in all the circumstances, likely to sympathise thoroughly with the poet in his poetry as in other things. Georgiana is said to have been personally attractive and mentally gifted beyond the common: and there is no doubt that this excited something more than mere family devotion in such an impressionable person as Keats. The combined reagency of these relatives has given us what we have from no other English poet—for the simple reason that no other English poet has had such a chance of giving it to us. The only thing to regret is that it could not continue longer: and that is only a necessary operation of Fate. The particular passage chosen here is one of the best known perhaps, but it is also one of the most illuminating: for it gives at once Keats's natural and simple interest in ordinary things, with no mere trivialities: hisrealattitude (so different from that long attributed to him!) as regards the attacks of critics, and his passion for beauty apart from mere hedonism. The "Charmian" was at onetime supposed to be Miss Brawne: but this was an error. She was a Miss Jane Cox, and nothing is heard of her afterwards.
37.To George and Georgiana Keats
[October 14 or 15, 1818]
I came by ship from Inverness, and was nine days at Sea without being sick. A little qualm now and then put me in mind of you; however, as soon as you touch the shore, all the horrors of sickness are soon forgotten, as was the case with a lady on board, who could not hold her head up all the way. We had not been in the Thames an hour before her tongue began to some tune—paying off, as it was fit she should, all old scores. I was the only Englishman on board. There was a downright Scotchman, who, hearing that there had been a bad crop of potatoes in England, had brought some triumphant specimens from Scotland. These he exhibited with national pride to all the ignorant lightermen and watermen from the Nore to the Bridge. I fed upon beef all the way; not being able to eat the thick porridge which the Ladies managed to manage, with large, awkward, horn spoons into the bargain. Reynolds has returned from a six-weeks' enjoyment in Devonshire; he is well, and persuades me to publish my "Pot of Basil" as an answer to the attacks made on me in "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." There have been two Letters in my defence in the Chronicle and one in the Examiner, copied from the Exeter Paper, and written by Reynolds. I do not know who wrote those in the Chronicle. This is a mere matter of the moment—I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.Even as a Matter of present interest the attempt to crush me in the "Quarterly" has only brought me more into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, "I wonder the Quarterly should cut its own throat." It does me not the least harm in Society to make me appear little and ridiculous: I know when a man is superior to me and give him all due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the rest I feel that I make an impression upon them which insures me personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when my back is turned.
The Misses —— are very kind to me, but they have lately displeased me much, and in this way: Now I am coming the Richardson! On my return, the first day I called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a Cousin of theirs, who, having fallen out with her Grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. —— to take asylum in her house. She is an East-Indian, and ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I called, Mrs. —— was in conference with her upstairs, and the young ladies were warm in her praises downstairs, calling her genteel, interesting and a thousand other pretty things to which I gave no heed, not being partial to nine-days' wonders—Now all is completely changed—they hate her, and from what I hear she is not without faults of a real kind: but she has others, which are more apt to make women of inferior charms hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian. She has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes into the room she makes an impression the same as the Beauty of a Leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any Man who may address her; from habit she thinks that nothingparticular. Ialways find myself more at ease with such a woman: the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will, by this time, think that I am in love with her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very "yes" and "no" of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and her like, because one has nosensations; what we both are is taken for granted. You will suppose I have by this had much talk with her—no such thing; there are the Misses —— on the look out. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt to me—what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn towards her with a magnetic power; this they call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she has faults; the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things—the worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord Byron and this Charmian hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of the world I love the rich talk of aCharmian; as an eternal being I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me.