Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 392 pages of information about Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III.

Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 392 pages of information about Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III.

     “You may show these matters to Moore and the select, but not to the
     profane; and tell Moore, that I wonder he don’t write to one now
     and then.”

[Footnote 132:  Whenever a word or passage occurs (as in this instance) which Lord Byron would have pronounced emphatically in speaking, it appears, in his handwriting, as if written with something of the same vehemence.]

[Footnote 133:  Here follow the same rhymes ("I read the Christabel,” &c.) which have already been given in one of his letters to myself.]

* * * * *

LETTER 269.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Venice, March 31. 1817.

“You will begin to think my epistolary offerings (to whatever altar you please to devote them) rather prodigal.  But until you answer, I shall not abate, because you deserve no better.  I know you are well, because I hear of your voyaging to London and the environs, which I rejoice to learn, because your note alarmed me by the purgation and phlebotomy therein prognosticated.  I also hear of your being in the press; all which, methinks, might have furnished you with subject-matter for a middle-sized letter, considering that I am in foreign parts, and that the last month’s advertisements and obituary would be absolute news to me from your Tramontane country.
“I told you, in my last, I have had a smart fever.  There is an epidemic in the place; but I suspect, from the symptoms, that mine was a fever of my own, and had nothing in common with the low, vulgar typhus, which is at this moment decimating Venice, and which has half unpeopled Milan, if the accounts be true.  This malady has sorely discomfited my serving men, who want sadly to be gone away, and get me to remove.  But, besides my natural perversity, I was seasoned in Turkey, by the continual whispers of the plague, against apprehensions of contagion.  Besides which, apprehension would not prevent it; and then I am still in love, and ’forty thousand’ fevers should not make me stir before my minute, while under the influence of that paramount delirium.  Seriously speaking, there is a malady rife in the city—­a dangerous one, they say.  However, mine did not appear so, though it was not pleasant.

     “This is Passion-week—­and twilight—­and all the world are at
     vespers.  They have an eternal churching, as in all Catholic
     countries, but are not so bigoted as they seem to be in Spain.

“I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry that you are leaving Mayfield.  Had I ever been at Newstead during your stay there, (except during the winter of 1813-14, when the roads were impracticable,) we should have been within hail, and I should like to have made a giro of the Peak with you.  I know that country well, having been all over it when a boy.  Was you ever in Dovedale?  I can assure you
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Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.