When you write, continue to address to me at Venice. Where do you suppose the books you sent to me are? At Turin ! This comes of "the foreign office," which is foreign enough, God knows, for any good it can be of to me, or any one else, and be damned to it, to its last Clerk and first Charlatan, Castlereagh.1 This makes my hundredth letter at least. Yours ever and truly, B. 1. Robert Stewart (1769-1822), Viscount Castlereagh (1796), succeeded his father as second Marquis of Londonderry in 1821. Leader successively of the Irish and of the British House of Commons, commanding an influence in the latter which Earl Russell, from his sixty years' experience, could only compare to that of Lord Althorp, for twenty years a minister of the first rank, the chosen representative of Great Britain at Congresses which settled the map of Europe,-Castlereagh's services and reputation have been comparatively forgotten. Yet he was the chief agent in crushing the Irish Rebellion and carrying the Union. As Minister for War (1805-6, and 1807-9), he consistently supported Wellington, and inspired the coalition of the Northern Powers; as Foreign Minister (1812-22), he settled the terms by which the Treaty of Vienna secured to Europe a durable peace. Some of the reasons which have obscured his reputation are obvious. He had read little, and had had neither a public school nor a University education. A great executive minister, he was not a man of ideas. Without the personal magnetism which inspires a following, he despised public favour, and preferred unpopularity as being, in his own phrase, "more convenient and gentlemanlike." Though he always left his opponents much to answer, he was without oratorical power, and Moore does not exaggerate his extraordinary phraseology when he makes Phil Fudge (Fudge Family in Paris, Letter ii.) address Castlereagh thus "Where (still to use your Lordship's tropes) The level of obedience slopes Upward and downward, as the stream Of hydra faction kicks the beam." His handsome person, inherited from his mother, Lady Sarah Frances Seymour-Conway, and conciliatory manners might have won him friends, had they not been marred by the haughty reserve which always made him, as Bulwer Lytton says in St. Stephen's "Stately in quiet high-bred self-esteem." Byron's abhorrence of Castlereagh was purely political, and probably, in its origin, due to Moore. When Castlereagh entered 1817.] LORD CASTLEREAGH. 109 646.-To John Murray. Venice, April 14, 1817. DEAR SIR,―The present proofs (of the whole) begin only at the 17th page; but as I had corrected and sent back the 1st act, it does not signify. political life in 1790, he won County Down from Lord Downshire as a friend of reform; and Irishmen, looking to his conduct before and at the time of the Union, execrated him as a political apostate. O'Connell called him the Assassin of his country, and Moore (Fudge Family in Paris, Letter iv.), rejoicing in the detestation expressed abroad for England, exults— "That 'twas an Irish head, an Irish heart, Made thee the fallen and tarnished thing thou art ; In which he died, to rack his conqueror's breast, Apart from Moore's influence, Byron attributed to Castlereagh, and the coalition of Northern Powers that he inspired, the downfall of Napoleon, which the poet professed to deplore. By Liberals and reformers like Hobhouse, Castlereagh was identified with the repressive policy of the Government in domestic affairs. Strong of will, and politically as well as personally fearless, he was known to dominate the Cabinet, and, though Foreign Minister, he had identified himself with such measures as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (February, 1817) and the Six Acts (November, 1819), which he introduced in the Lower House. It was his domestic measures which Shelley attacked in the Masque of Anarchy "I met Murder on his way, He had a mask like Castlereagh." Castlereagh also took a leading part in the divorce proceedings against the Queen, whose cause Byron advocated. Finally, by Byron's Italian friends, who, like the Gambas, were Liberals, Castlereagh was detested for his conduct to Genoa. In 1814 Lord W. Bentinck, contrary to Castlereagh's instructions, proclaimed the re-establishment of the Genoese Constitution. But Castlereagh, to secure Italy against French aggression, repudiated these pledges, and at the Congress of Vienna favoured the annexation of Genoa to Piedmont. These were the causes which moved Byron to write of Castlereagh as he does in his letters, to compose his epigrams alluding to his suicide, to speak of him in his "Irish Avatar” as "a wretch never "named but with curses and jeers," or to attack him in the Dedication to Don Juan as "the intellectual eunuch Castlereagh," the "cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant," "the vulgarest "tool that Tyranny could want," "a bungler even in its disgusting "trade," "a tinkering slave-maker," "a second Eutropius." > 1 The third act is certainly damned bad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savoured of the palsy), has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be published in its present state. I will try and reform it, or re-write it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it. I would not have it published as it is on any account. The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me. I am very glad indeed that you sent me Mr. Gifford's opinion without deduction.2 Do you suppose me such a Sotheby as not to be very much obliged to him? or that in fact I was not, and am not, convinced and convicted in my conscience of this same overt act of nonsense? I shall try at it again: in the mean time, lay it upon the shelf (the whole drama, I mean): but pray correct. your copies of the 1st and 2nd acts by the original MS. I am not coming to England; but going to Rome in a few days. I return to Venice in June: so, pray, address all letters, etc. to me here, as usual, that is, to Venice. Dr. Polidori this day left this city with Lord Guilford for England. He is charged with some books to your care (from me), and two miniatures also to the same address, both for my sister. Recollect not to publish, upon pain of I know not what, until I have tried again at the third act. I am not 1. Gil Blas de Santillane, livre vii. cap. 4. The archbishop's homily "savoured" of the apoplexy. 2. Murray (March 28, 1817) sent Byron Gifford's objections to act iii. of Manfred, which, as Murray says, "he does not by any "means like." 3. Byron left Venice towards the middle of April, and, passing through Ferrara, Florence, and Foligno, met Hobhouse at Rome. He returned to Venice towards the end of May. 1817.] THIRD ACT OF MAnfred. III sure that I shall try, and still less that I shall succeed, if I do; but I am very sure, that (as it is) it is unfit for publication or perusal; and unless I can make it out to my own satisfaction, I won't have any part published. I write in haste, and after having lately written very often. Yours ever truly, BN. CHAPTER XVI. VENICE, ROME, OR LA MIRA, APRIL, 1817- FERRARA AND THE LAMENT OF TASSO-ROME-RETURN TO VENICE-childe HAROLD, CANTO IV.-BEPPO. 647.-To John Murray.1 Foligno, April 26, 1817. DEAR SIR,-I wrote to you the other day from Florence, inclosing a MS. entitled The Lament of Tasso.2 It was written in consequence of my having been lately at Ferrara. In the last section of this MS. but one (that is, the penultimate), I think that I have omitted a line in the copy sent to you from Florence, viz. after the lineAnd woo compassion to a blighted name, insert, Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim. The context will show you the sense, which is not clear in this quotation. Remember, I write this in the supposition that you have received my Florentine packet. At Florence I remained but a day, having a hurry for Rome, to which I am thus far advanced. However, I 1. The original of this letter cannot be found. It is, therefore, printed as published in Moore's Life (p. 353). 2. The manuscript of The Lament of Tasso is dated April 20, 1817. The poem was published July 17, 1817. |