THE AUTHOR'S DEFENCE OF DON JUAN 177 in his indefatigable Catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, "like Honour, it came unlooked for," I have looked through it. I must say that, upon the whole, that is, the whole of the half which I have read (for the other half is to be the Segment of Gal.'s next week's Circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor will not, quarrel with the bad: and what the Writer says of Don Juan is harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very firmly seated, party: a review may and will direct or "turn awry the Currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don Juan will be known by-and-bye, for what it is intended,―a Satire on abuses of the present states of Society, and not an eulogy of vice: it may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that. Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2nd of Roderick] R[andom]) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No Girl will ever be seduced by reading D. J.:-no, no; she will go to Little's [i.e. Moore's] poems and Rousseau's romans for that, or even to the immaculate De Stael they will encourage her, and not the Don, who laughs at that, and-and-most other things. But never mind-Ca ira! (1822, December 25. Letter 1048, to John Murray, Vol. VI., p. 155.) Do not defend me it will never do-you will only make yourself enemies. Mine are neither to be diminished nor softened, but they may be overthrown ; and there are events which may occur, less improb M able than those which have happened in our time, that may reverse the present state of things-nous verrons. (1823, May 17. Letter 1084, to Lady - (3) Personal Avowals I. REFUSING TO IDENTIFY HIMSELF WITH HIS CHARACTERS I much wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's character with mine, and that, in sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the title-page. (1811, August 21. Letter 167, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. I., p. 335.) I by no means intend to identify myself with Harold, but to deny all connection with him. If in parts I may be thought to have drawn from myself, believe me it is but in parts, and I shall not own even to that. As to the Monastic dome, etc., I thought those circumstances would suit him as well as any other, and I could describe what I had seen better than I could invent. I would not be such a fellow as I have made my hero for all the world. (1811, October 31. Letter 206, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. II., p. 66.) He [i.e. Hobhouse] told me an odd report,-that I am the actual Conrad, the veritable Corsair, and that part of my travels are supposed to have passed in privacy. Um-people sometimes hit near the truth; but never the whole truth. H. don't know BYRON'S "PECULIARLY HARD CASE" 179 what I was about the year after he left the Levant; nor does any one-nor-nor-nor-however, it is a lie-but, "I doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth." (1814, March 10. "Journal, 1813-1814," Vol. II., p. 399.) I must here observe, and it is at once ludicrous and vexatious to be compelled so frequently to repeat the same thing,-that my case, as an author, is peculiarly hard, in being everlastingly taken, or mistaken for my own protagonist. It is unjust and particular. I never heard that my friend Moore was set down for a fire-worshipper on account of his Guebre; that Scott was identified with Roderick Dhu, or with Balfour of Burley; or that, notwithstanding all the magicians in Thalaba, any body has ever taken M Southey for a conjurer; whereas I have had some difficulty in extricating me even from Manfred, who, as Mr Southey slily observes in one of his articles in the Quarterly, "met the devil on the Jungfrau and bullied him: and I answer Mr Southey, who has apparently, in his poetical life, not been so successful against the great enemy, that, in this, Manfred exactly followed the sacred precept, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (1820, March 15. Byron's reply to What you say about Galignani's two biographies is very amusing: and, if I were not lazy, I would certainly do what you desire [i.e. "write a sort of mock-heroic account of himself, outdoing, in horrors and wonders, all that had yet been related or believed of him"]. But I doubt my present stock of facetiousness-that is, of good serious humour, so as not to let the cat out of the bag. I wish you would undertake it. I will forgive and indulge you (like a Pope) beforehand, for any thing ludicrous, that might keep those fools in their own dear belief that a man is a loup garou. I suppose I told you that the Giaour story had actually some foundation on facts; or, if I did not, you will one day find it in a letter of Lord Sligo's, written to me after the publication of the poem. I should not like marvels to rest on any account of my own, and shall say nothing about it. However, the real incident is still remote enough from the poetical one, being just such as, happening to a man of any imagination, might suggest such a composition. The worst of any real adventures is that they involve living people-else M's, — ,'s etc., are as "German to the matter" as Mr Maturin could desire for his novels. (1821, December 12. Letter 966, to Thomas Moore, Vol. V., p. 493.) My ideas of a character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a moment after the pen is from off the paper. (1822, March 4. Letter 981, to Thomas Moore, Vol. VI., p. 32.) GIFFORD, LORD HOLLAND, AND THE BRIDE 181 II. PROTESTING THAT HE WRITES TO RELIEVE HIS FEELINGS AND TO OCCUPY TIME You have been good enough to look at a thing of mine in MS.—a Turkish story [i.e. The Bride of Abydos], and I should feel gratified if you would do it the same favour in its probationary state of printing. It was written, I cannot say for amusement, nor "obliged by hunger and request of friends," but in a state of mind, from circumstances which occasionally occur to "us youth," that rendered it necessary for me to apply my mind to something, any thing but reality; and under this not very brilliant inspiration it was composed. Being done, and having at least diverted me from myself, I thought you would not perhaps be offended if Mr Murray forwarded it to you. He has done so, and to apologise for his doing so a second time is the object of my present letter. (1813, November 12. Letter 346, to William Gifford, Vol. II., p. 278.) I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last "Giaour," and "The Bride of Abydos." He won't like the latter, and I don't think that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from * *. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart,bitter diet;-Hodgson likes it better than "The Giaour," but nobody else will,—and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, that would never have been published, |