Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

and when animated possessed a fire which seemed to look through and penetrate the thoughts of others, while they marked the in

His teeth were small,

spirations of his own.

regular, and white;

these, I afterwards

found, he took great pains to preserve.*

I expected to discover that he had a club, perhaps a cloven foot; but it would have been difficult to distinguish one from the other, either in size or in form.

On the whole, his figure was manly, and his countenance handsome and prepossessing, and very expressive; and the familiar ease

For this purpose he used tobacco when he first went into the open air; and he told me he was in the habit of grinding his teeth in his sleep, to prevent which he was forced to put a napkin between them.

of his conversation soon made me perfectly at home in his society. Our first interview was marked with a cordiality and confidence that flattered while it delighted me; and I felt anxious for the next day, in order that I might repeat my visit.

When I called on his Lordship at two o'clock, he had just left his bed-room, and was at breakfast, if it could be called one. It consisted of a cup of strong green tea, without milk or sugar, and an egg, of which he ate the yolk raw. I observed the abstemi

ousness of his meal.

66

My digestion is weak; I am too bilious,"

said he,

66

66

to eat more than once a-day, and

generally live on vegetables. To be sure

"I drink two bottles of wine at dinner, but

66

they form only a vegetable diet. Just

66 now I live on claret and soda-water.

66

me.

You

"are just come from Geneva, Shelley tells I passed the best part of the sum"mer of 1816 at the Campagna Diodati, " and was very nearly passing this last there. "I went so far as to write to Hentsh the "banker; but Shelley, when he came to visit

66

me at Ravenna, gave me such a flattering "account of Pisa that I changed my mind. "Then it is troublesome to travel so far with 66 so much live and dead stock as I do; and "I don't like to leave behind me any of my

[ocr errors]

pets that have been accumulating since I

66 came on the Continent.* One cannot trust

*He says afterwards in "Don Juan," Canto X, Stanza L.:

"He had a kind of inclination, or

Weakness, for what most people deem mere

vermin,

Live animals."

"to strangers to take care of them. You "will see at the farmer's some of my pea"fowls en pension. Fletcher tells me that they are almost as bad fellow-travellers as the monkey*, which I will shew you."

66

66

Here he led the way to a room, where, after playing with and caressing the creature for some time, he proposed a game of billiards.

I brought the conversation back on Switzerland and his travels, and asked him if he had been in Germany?

"No," said he, "not even at Trieste. "I hate despotism and the Goths too much.

* He afterwards bought another monkey in Pisa, in the street, because he saw it ill-used.

66

"I have travelled little on the Continent, 66 at least never gone out of my way. This "is partly owing to the indolence of my disposition, partly owing to my incum"brances. I had some idea, when at "Rome, of visiting Naples, but was at "that time anxious to get back to Venice. "But Pæstum cannot surpass the ruins of

66

Agrigentum, which I saw by moon-light; "nor Naples, Constantinople: You have

"no conception of the beauty of the twelve "islands where the Turks have their coun"try-houses, or of the blue Symplegades against which the Bosphorus beats with 66 such restless violence.

66

"Switzerland is a country I have been "satisfied with seeing once; Turkey I "could live in for ever. I never forget "my predilections. I was in a wretched

« ForrigeFortsæt »