The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 474, Supplementary Number

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Various. The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 474, Supplementary Number

LORD BYRON

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, BY THOMAS MOORE, Vol. ii

HIS SENSIBILITY

TO AUGUSTA

AMOUR AT VENICE

AT VENICE

AN EXECUTION

PORSON

THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI

MEETING OF LORD BYRON AND MR. MOORE AT VENICE

LORD BYRON'S PARSIMONY

HIS MEMOIRS

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

POPE—AND OTHER MATTERS

FROM "DETACHED THOUGHTS."

EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON, 1821

LORD CLARE

HIS SERVICE IN THE GREEK CAUSE

HIS PORTRAIT

Отрывок из книги

With the following melancholy passage one of his journals concludes:—

"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have been very fortunate—fortunate in a companion (Mr. H.)—fortunate in all our prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty; I can bear fatigue and welcome privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But in all this—the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me–."

.....

By way of divertisement, I am studying daily, at an Armenian monastery, the Armenian language. I found that my mind wanted something craggy to break upon; and this—as the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement—I have chosen, to torture me into attention. It is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it. I try, and shall go on;—but I answer for nothing, least of all for my intentions or my success. There are some very curious MSS. in the monastery, as well as books; translations also from Greek originals, now lost, and from Persian and Syriac, &c.; besides works of their own people. Four years ago the French instituted an Armenian professorship. Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry. They persevered with a courage worthy of the nation and of universal conquest, till Thursday; when fifteen of the twenty succumbed to the six and twentieth letter of the alphabet. It is, to be sure, a Waterloo of an Alphabet—that must be said for them. But it is so like these fellows, to do by it as they did by their sovereigns—abandon both; to parody the old rhymes, "Take a thing and give a thing"—"Take a king and give a king. They are the worst of animals, except their conquerors.

I hear that that H–n is your neighbour, having a living in Derbyshire. You will find him an excellent hearted fellow, as well as one of the cleverest; a little, perhaps, too much japanned by preferment in the church and the tuition of youth, as well as inoculated with the disease of domestic felicity, besides being overrun with fine feelings about women and constancy (that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal;) but, otherwise, a very worthy man, who has lately got a pretty wife, and (I suppose) a child by this time. Pray remember me to him, and say that I know not which to envy most—his neighbourhood, him, or you.

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