Page:The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register - Volume 011.djvu/210

194 And storm and darkness, ye are wond’rous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers thro’ her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps who call to her aloud! And this is in the night:—Most glorious night! Thou wer’t not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy far and fierce delight,— A portion of the tempest and of me! How the lit lake shines a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again ’tis black,—and now the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o’er a young earth-quake’s birth. Now where the swift Rhine cleaves his way between Heights which appear, as lovers who have parted In haste, whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, tho’ broken hearted; Tho’ in their souls which thus each other thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage Which blighted their life’s bloom, and then departed— Itself expired, but leaving them an age Of years all winter—war within themselves to wage.

I went down to the little port, if I may use the expression, wherein his vessel used to lay, and conversed with the cottager, who had the care of it. You may smile, but I have my pleasure in thus helping my personification of the individual I admire, by attaining to the knowledge of those circumstances which were daily around him. I have made numerous enquiries in the town concerning him, but can learn nothing. He only went into society there once, when M. Pictet took him to the house of a lady to spend the evening. They say he is a very singular man, and seem to think him very uncivil. Amongst other things they relate, that having invited M. Pictet and Bonstetten to dinner, he went on the lake to Chillon, leaving a gentleman who travelled with him to receive them, and make his apologies. Another evening, being invited to the house of Lady D H, he promised to attend, but upon approaching the windows of her ladyship’s villa, and perceiving the room to be full of company, he put down his friend, desiring him to plead his excuse, and immediately returned home. This will serve as a contradiction to the report which you tell me is current in England, of his having been avoided by his countrymen on the continent. The case happens to be directly the reverse, as he has been generally sought after by them, though on most occasions, apparently without success. It is said, indeed, that upon paying his first visit at Coppet, following the servant who had announced his name, he was surprised to meet a lady carried out fainting; but before he had been seated many minutes, the same lady, who had been so affected at the sound of his name, returned and conversed with him a considerable time—such is female curiosity and affectation! He visited Coppet frequently, and of course associated there with several of his countrymen, who evinced no reluctance to meet him whom his enemies alone would represent as an outcast.

Though I have been so unsuccessful in this town, I have been more fortunate in my enquiries elsewhere. There is a society three or four miles from Geneva, the centre of which is the Countess of Breuss, a Russian lady, well acquainted with the agrémens de la Société, and who has collected them round herself at her mansion. It was chiefly here, I find, that the gentleman who travelled with Lord Byron, as physician, sought for society. He used almost every day to cross the lake by himself, in one of their flat-bottomed boats, and return after passing the evening with his friends about eleven or twelve at night, often whilst the storms were raging in the circling summits of the mountains around. As he became intimate, from long acquaintance, with several of the families in this neighbourhood, I have gathered from their accounts some excellent traits of his lordship’s character, which I will relate to you at some future opportunity. I must, however, free him from one imputation attached to him—of having in his house two sisters as the partakers of his revels. This is, like many other charges which have been brought against his lordship, entirely destitute of truth. His only companion was the physician I have already mentioned. The report originated from the following circumstance: Mr. Percy Bysshe ShellyShelley [sic], a gentleman well known