1831.] Byron's Memoirs. 151 



" I suppose now/' says he, in a letter to Murray, " I shall never be able to 

 shake off my sables in the public imagination, particularly since my moral 

 * * * * clove down my fame. However, not that nor more than that has 

 yet extinguished my spirit, which always rises with the rebound. 



" At Venice we are in Lent, and I have not lately moved out of doors, my 

 feverishness remaining quiet ; and, by way of being more quiet, here is the 

 Signora Marianna just come in, and seated at my elbow." 



In some reference to Jeffrey the reviewer, he bids Murray tell him 



" that he (Byron) was not and indeed is not even now the misanthropical 

 and gloomy gentleman he took him for; but a facetious companion, well to do 

 with those with whom he is intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if he 

 were a much cleverer fellow." 



As an illustration of his sorrowful temperament, we find a series of 

 critiques brief, we will allow, but pithy on the works of some of 

 his acquaintance : 



" I read the ' Christabel' 



Very well. 

 I read the ' Missionary' 



Pretty, very. 

 I tried ' Ildezim' 



Ahem ! 

 I read a page of ' Margaret of Anjou' 



Can you ? 

 I turned a page of 's f Waterloo'- 



Pooh! pooh! 

 I looked at Wordsworth's < Milk-white Rylstone Doe' 



Hillo !" 



His English feelings are thus described : 



" I have not the least idea where I am going, nor what I am going to do. 

 I wished to have gone to Rome, but at present it is pestilent with English. A 

 man is a fool who travels now in France or Italy, till this tribe of wretches is 

 swept home again. I staid at Venice, chiefly because it is not one of their 

 dens of thieves ; and here they but pause and pass. In Switzerland it was 

 really noxious. Luckily I was early, and had got the prettiest place on the 

 lakes before they were quickened into motion with the rest of the reptiles. 

 Venice is not a place where the English are gregarious : their pigeon-houses 

 are Florence, Naples, Rome, &c., &c., and to tell you the truth, this was one 

 reason why I staid here until the season of the purgation of Rome from those 

 people, which is infected with them at this time, should arrive. Besides I 

 abhor the nation, and the nation me. It is impossible for me to describe my 

 own sensation on this point, but it may suffice to say, that if I meet with any 

 of the race in the beautiful parts of Switzerland, the most distant glimpse, or 

 aspect, of them poisoned the whole scene." 



An anecdote follows, worth a whole quarto of sentimentality : 



" An Austrian officer, the other day, being in love with a Venetian, was 

 ordered with his regiment into Hungary. Distracted between love and duty, 

 he purchased a deadly drug, which, dividing with his mistress, both swal- 

 lowed. The ensuing pains were terrific ; but the pills were purgative, and 

 not poisonous, by the contrivance of the apothecary : so that so much suicide 

 was all thrown away. You may conceive the previous confusion, arid the final 

 laughter : but the intention was good on all sides." 



Some of the best letters are to Murray, whom he treats alternately as 

 a correspondent and a bookseller: 



