Noctes Ambrosianæ.

No. IV.

SCENE.-Transferred (by poetic licence) to Pisa.

ODOHERTY, (Solus.)

Jupiter strike me! but that cabbage soup and roasted raisins is an infernal mixture-Blow all Italian cookery, say I. Everything is over-done here— how inferior to the Carlingford! The dishes done to rags.

Enter WAITER.

Milordo, here is questo grand Lord is come, for to have the onore of kissing the manos for sua eccellenza.

ODOHERTY.

Kissing my what? Shew in the shaver-hand him in upon a clean plate. [Exit Waiter.

Mr Odoherty, I have to beg pardon for this intrusion-but really, hearing you were to remain but this evening in Pisa, I could not deny myself the pleasure of at least seeing a gentleman, of whom I have heard and read so muchI need scarcely add, that I believe myself to be in the presence of THE Odoherty.

ODOHERTY.

You may say that; but, may I take the liberty of asking, who you are yourself?

My name's Byron.

BYRON.

ODOHERTY.

Byron! Lord Byron! God Bless you, my dear fellow. Sure I was a blockhead not to know you at first sight.-Waiter! waiter! waiter, I say. They don't understand even plain English in this house!

Milordo!

Enter WAITER.

ODOHERTY.

Instantaneously a clean glass-if you have any thing clean in this filthy country-And, my Lord, what will you drink? I drink every thing bating water.

BYRON.

Why, Mr Odoherty, to be plain with you-you will find but poor accommodation in those Italian inns-and I should, therefore, recommend you to come with me to my villa. You will meet fellows there-asses of the first water-native and stranger, whom you can cut-up, quiz, and humbug without end.

ODOHERTY.

With deference, my Lord, I shall stay where I am-I never knew any place where a man was so much at home as in a tavern, no matter how shy. Ho! waiter.

WAITER.

Milordo!

ODOHERTY.

What-a have-a you-a to drink-a, in this damned house-a of yours?—[Aside.] I suppose, to make the fellow understand, I must speak broken English. [Lord Byron whispers waiter, who exit; and after a moment returns with two flasks of Montifiascone.]

BYRON.

Fill, Mr Odoherty. Your health, sir; and welcome to Italy.

ODOHERTY.

Your health, my lord; and I wish we both were out of it. But this stuff is by no means so bad as I expected it. What do you call it ?

Lacryma Christi.

BYRON.

ODOHERTY.

Lacryma Christi! A pretty name to go to church with! Very passable stingo-though Inishowen is, after all, rather stiffer drinking.

Inishowen! What's that?

BYRON.

ODOHERTY.

Whisky, made in the hills about Inishowen, in the north. General Hart patronizes it much. Indeed the Lord Chancellor, old Manners, is a great hand at it.

BYRON.

I cannot exactly say I recognise whom you speak of; nor did I ever hear of the liquor.

ODOHERTY.

Why, then, I wrote rather a neat song about it once on a time, which I shall just twist off for the edification of your Lordship.

Thank ye, Mr Odoherty. Oh! by Jupiter, you have not been flattered; you are a prince of good-fellows; ay, and of good-looking fellows.

ODOHERTY.

The same compliment I may pay you, my Lord. Inever saw you before. By-the-bye, you look much older than the print which Murray gave me when I was up at the Coronation.

BYRON.

Ah! then you know Murray. Murray is an excellent fellow. Not such a bookseller between the Appenine and the Grampian.

ODOHERTY,

Always excepting Ebony, my Lord?

BYRON.

How is Ebony? I'm told he's been getting fat since I saw him.

ODOHERTY.

A porpoise. No wonder, my lord; let them fatten who win. As for laughing, that you know, we may all screw a mouth to.

BYRON.

On the same principle, my old friend Jeffrey must be thinning apace.

O yes, past through about a fortnight ago. But let me request your Lordship to sink the mister entirely, and call me by my name quite plain-Odoherty, as it is.

BYRON.

Certainly, Odoherty, as you wish it—but you in return must sink the Lord, and let me be plain Byron.

ODOHERTY.

To be sure, Byron. Hunt you know called you "Dear Byron" some years ago in a dedication; and if you would allow the familiarity of a poor devil of a Cockney editor of a sneaking Sunday paper, you would be squeamish indeed if you wanted to be Lorded by me. And yet, after all, Le Hunto is a cleverer fellow than most of the Cockneys.

His last work! I am glad to hear it has come at length.

Non mi ricordo. I was in a state of civilation when I wrote it—if indeed I did ever write such a thing.

ODOHERTY.

"Twas Wordsworth told me of it, and I doubt he's given to humbugging much.

BYRON.

Oh! the old Ponder! The great god Pan! is he extant still.

ODOHERTY.

Alive and sulky. He has been delivered of two octavos this spring.

BYRON.

So have I for that matter. Are his as heavy as mine?

ODOHERTY.

The Giants' Causeway to a two-year-old paving-stone-thundering fellows, about Roman Catholic Emancipation, which he has dished into little sonnets. Yours, however, were lumpish enough, in the name of Nicholas.

The sale, at least, was heavy.

BYRON.

ODOHERTY.

Your tributary, his Majesty the Emperor of the West, grumbled like a pig in the fits, I suppose.

BYRON.

Come, come, no personalities on this side of the Alps.

ODOHERTY.

Satan reproving sin. That's pretty from you-the bottle's out-after what Jeffrey has said of you-call for another-in the last number of the Edinburgh -fill your glass-of the Edinburgh Review. No bad bottle this.

BYRON.

Why, Odoherty, you and I may joke, but such fellows as these to be preaching about Cain, and canting about Don Juan, is too bad. I once thought Jeffrey had a little brains, but now I see he is quite an old woman.

ODOHERTY.

Nay, by the eternal frost, and that's as great an oath as if I swore by the holy bottle, I agree with Jeff. on this point. I don't care a crack'd Jewsharp about him in general; but here, faith, I must say I think him quite right. Consider, my lord-consider, I say, what a very immoral work Don Juan is-how you therein sport with the holiest ties-the most sacred feelings -the purest sentiments. In a word, with every thing-the bottle is with you-with every thing which raises man above a mere sensual being. I say, consider this, and you will not wonder so much that all England is in an outcry against it, as that Murray, surrounded with the rums and buzzes of parsons as he is, should have the audacity to publish it-or Sir Mungo Malagrowther

Who?

BYRON.

ODOHERTY.

His Editor-Now-a-days commonly called Sir Mungo Malagrowther. I say it is really astonishing that Murray should print, or Sir Mungo have the face not to cut up, a book so destructive of every feeling which we have been taught to cherish.

I did not expect it. I thought this silly out-cry about Don Juan and Cain was confined to the underlings of literature; so much so, that I was astonished to find even Jeffrey joining in it--but that you, one of the first and most enlightened men of the age should adopt it-that Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty should be found swelling the war-hoop of my antagonist Dr Southey, is indeed more than I expected.

ODOHERTY.

I am not an old quiz, like Malagrowther and the Laureate: Yet, my Lord Byron, I am a man and an Englishman, (I mean an Irishman,) and disapprove of Don Juan.

BYRON.

The devil ye do! Why, most illustrious rival of Dr Magnus Oglethorpe, why?

ODOHERTY.

I have already sufficiently explained myself.

BYRON.

I

You have uttered nothing, sir, pardon me, but the common old humbug. In Don Juan I meant to give a flowing free satire on things as they are. meant to call people's attention to the realities of things. I could make nothing of England or France. There every thing is convention-surface-cant. I had recourse to the regions where Nature acts more vividly, more in the open light of day. I meant no harm, upon my honour. I meant but to do what any other man might have done with a more serious face, and had all the Hannah Mores in Europe to answer his Plaudite.

I don't follow your Lordship.

ODOHERTY.

BYRON.

Not follow me, sir? Why, what can be more plain than my intention? I drew a lively lad, neglected in his education, strong in his passions, active in his body, and lively in his brains; would you have had me make him look as wise as a Quarterly Reviewer? Every boy must sow his wild oats; wait till Don Juan be turned of fifty, and if I dont represent him as one of the gravest and most devout Tories in the world, may I be hanged. As yet he has only been what Dr Southey once was, "a clever boy, thinking upon politics (and other subjects) as those who are boys in mind, whatever their age may be, do think." Have patience. The Don may be Lord Chancellor ere he dies.

ODOHERTY.

The serious charge is your warmth of colouring.

BYRON.

Look at Homer, remember the cloud-scene. Look at Virgil, remember the cave-seen. Look at Milton, remember the bower-scene, the scene of "nothing loth." Why, sir, poets are like their heroes, and poets represent such matters (which all poets do and must represent) more or less warmly, just as they are more or less men.

ODOHERTY.

Well, but what do you say for Cain? 'Tis blasphemous.

BYRON.

Not intentionally at least-but I cannot see that it is so at all. You know -for I suppose you know theology as well as you know every thing else.

ODOHERTY.

Like Dr Magee-an old friend of mine, who has lately been made an Archbishop.

BYRON.

You know then that there is no question so puzzling in all divinity—no matter under what light you view it—as the origin of evil. There is no theory whatever I say not one-and you may take your countryman, Archbishop King's, among them, which is not liable to great objection, if the objectors be determined to cavil. Now I assert, and that fearlessly, that it is quite possible to reconcile my scheme, bating a few poetical flights of no moment, with views and feelings perfectly religious. I engage to write a commentary on Cain, proving it beyond question a religious poem.

ODOHERTY.

Warburton did the same for the Essay on Man-but convinced nobody.

BYRON.

And yet Warburton was a bishop-yea, more than a bishop-one of your brightest, deepest, profoundest, most brilliant theologians. I only ask you to extend to me the same indulgence you extend to Milton-ay, even to Cumberland-if his Calvary be still extant.

ODOHERTY.

Nay, my Lord, there is this difference. The intention of Milton and Cumberland makes a vast distinction. They wrote poems to promote religionyour Lordship wrote

BYRON.

Mr Odoherty, I presume-Nay, I know-I am talking to a gentleman. I have disclaimed irreligious intention, and I demand, as a gentleman, to be believed. Cain is like all poems in which spiritual matters are introduced. The antagonist of Heaven-of whom the Prometheus of Eschylus is the prototype -cannot be made to speak in such terms, as may not be perverted by those who wish to pervert. I defy any man-I repeat it-I defy any man to shew me a speech-a line in Cain, which is not defensible on the same principle as the haughty speech of Satan, in the fifth book of Milton-or the proud defiance of Moloch in the second. In both poets-I beg pardon-in the poet, and in Cain, speeches torn from the context, and misinterpreted by the malevolent or the weak-minded, may be made to prove what was directly contrary to the intention of the writer.