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Fiction, Fair and Foul
by
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‘September 8.
‘I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.
‘I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended possessor.’
[175] Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader’s better convenience, I shall continue to spell ‘Ryme’ without our wrongly added h.
[176] L. ii. 278.
[177] ‘Che nella mente mia ragiona.’ Love–you observe, the highest Reasonableness, instead of French ivresse, or even Shakespearian ‘mere folly’; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of the Convito, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of Reason; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line:–
‘Costei penso chi che mosso l’universo.’
(See Lyell’s Canzoniere, p. 104.)
[178] [Greek: horan tes terpsios]–Plato, Laws, ii., Steph. 669. ‘Hour’ having here nearly the power of ‘Fate’ with added sense of being a daughter of Themis.
[179] ‘Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, and what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous‘! (Evenings at Home–fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth; and I only wish that in the substance of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Nevertheless, the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufacture and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in ‘Evenings at Home‘ and ‘Harry and Lucy‘–being all the while themselves works of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and fulfilled. See for instance the paper, ‘Things by their Right Names,’ following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), and closing the first volume of the old edition of the Evenings.
[180] Carlyle, French Revolution (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70; conf. p. 25, and the Ca ira at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276.
[181] Ibid. iii. 26.
[182] Carlyle, French Revolution, iii. 106, the last sentence altered in a word or two.
[183] I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the unfathomable.
[184] ‘It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion–and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.
‘I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in Count G.’s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet–but the masquing goes on the same.’ (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) ‘A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody’s wife, except your neighbour’s.’
[185] See quoted infra the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other modern poets, Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for line.
[186] Island, ii. 16, where see context.
[187] Juan, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship’s quotation, Wordsworth says ‘instrument’–not ‘daughter.’ Your Lordship had better have said ‘Infant’ and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant would not have rymed.
[188] Juan, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context 61–68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the Devil’s speech, beginning, ‘Yes, Sir, you forget’ in scene 2 of The Deformed Transformed: then Sardanapalus’s, act i. scene 2, beginning ‘he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,’ and finally, the Vision of Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5.