The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-01 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MOORE'S MEMOIRS OF LORD BYRON, Vol.. 11.
LONDON, 1831.

We have barely had time to glance over the
contents of this volume, so for the present must
content ourselves with saying, that Lord Byron
is made for the most part to be his own bio-
grapher through the medium of a very clever
correspondent, with his English friends (espe-
cially with Mr. Murray the publisher), that the
work appears to abound in personal anecdote, and
that at the commencement we have an animated
journal (penned by Lord Byron himself, for the
perusal of his sister Mrs. Leigh) of his excur-
sion to the Jungfrau in company with Mr. Ilob-
house. The volume is embellished with a
beautiful portrait of his Lordship taken when in
his 19th year. We subjoin an extract descrip-
tive of one of Lord Byron's Venetian mistresses.
The description is front his own pen :

" Since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni, you
shall be told it, though it may be lengthy.

" Iler face is the tine Venetian cast of the old time; her
figure, though perhaps too tall, is not less fine—and taken
altogether in the national dress.
"In the summer of 1817, '" * and myself were
sauntering on horseback along the Brenta one evening,
when, amongst a group of peasants, we remarked two
girls as the prettiest we had seen for some time. About
this period there had been great distress in the country,
and I had a little relieved sonic of the people. Generosity
makes a great figure at very little cost in Venetian livrer,
and mine had probably been exaggerated as an Englieb-
man's. Whether they remarked us looking at their. or no
I know not ; but one of them called out to me in Venetian,
' Why do not you, who relieve others, thin!: of ❑s also ?'
I turned round and answered her—' Cara in sci troppo
Lena c yiovane per aver bisogna del soccorso min.' She
answered, If you saw my hut and my food, you would not
say so.' All this passed half jestingly, and I saw no more
of her for several days.
" A few evenings after, we met with these two girls
again, and they addressed us more seriously, assuring us
of the truth of their statement. They were cousins ;
Margarita married, the other single. As I doubted still
of tl:e circumstances, I took the business in a different
light, and made an appointment with them for the next
evening.
In short, in a few evenings we arranged our affairs, and
for a long space of time she was the only one who pre-
served over me an ascendancy which was often disputed,
and never impaired.
" The reasons of this were, firstly, her person—very
dark, till, the Venetian face, very fine black eyes. She
was two-and-twenty years old. •
She was besides a thorough Venetian in her dialect, in her
thoughts, in her countenance, in every thing, with all
their naivete and pantaloon humour. Besides, she could
neither read nor write, and could not pl igue me with let-
ters,—except twice that she paid sixpence to a public
scribe, under the piazza, to make a letter for her, upon
some occasion when I was ill and could not see her. In
other respects she was somewhat fierce and prepotente,'
that is, overbearing, and used to walk in whenever it
suited her, wilh no very great regard to time, place, nor
persons ; and if she found any women in her way, she
knoc!:e I them down.

When I first knew her, I was in relazione (liaison)
with la Signora '4, who was silly enough one evening at
Dolo, accompanied by some of her female friends, to
threaten her; far the gossips of the Villeggiatura had al-
ready found out, by the neighing of my horse one evening,
that I used to ride late in the night' to meet the Forna-
rum. Margarita threw back her veil (fazziolo), and re-
plied in very explicit Venetian, ' You are not his wife ;
ain not Ilk wife; you are his Donna, and I am his
Donna; your husband is a becco, and mine is another.
For the rest, what right have you to reproach me ? if he
prefers me to you, is it my fault ? If you wish to secure
him, tie him to your petticoat-string? But do not think
to speak to me without a reply, because you happen lo be
richer than I am.' Having delivered this pretty piece of
eloquence (which I translate as it was related to me by a
bystander), she went on her way, leaving a numerous au-
dience with Madame " to ponder at her leisure on the
dialogue between them.
" When I came to Venice for the winter, she followed,

and as she found herself out to be a favonrite, she came to
me pretty often. But she had inordinate self-love, and
was not tolerant of other women. At the Cavalchina,'
the masqued ball on the last night of the Carnival, where
ali the world goes, she pnatelted off the mask of Madame
Contarini, a lady noble by birth, and decent in conduct,
for no other reason but because she happened to be leaning
on my arm. You may suppose what a cursed noise this
made ; but this is only one of her pranks.
" At last she quarrelled with her husband, and one
evening ran away to my house. I told her this would not
do; she said she would lie in the street, l.ut not go back
to him ; that be beat her, (the gentle tigress) spent her
money, and scandalously neglected her. As it was mid-
night I let her stay, and next day there was no moving her
at all. Her husband came, roaring and crying, and en-
treating her to come back :—not she ! He then applied
to the police, and they applied to me : I told them
and her husband to take her; I did not want her; she
had come, and I could not fling her out of the window ;
but they might conduct her through that or the door if
they chose it. She went before the Commissary, but was
obliged to return with that ' becco ettico,' as she called the
poor man, who had a phthisic. In a few days she ran
away again. After a precious piece of work, she fixed
herself in my house, really and truly without my consent;
but, owing to my indolence, and not being able to keep
toy countenance—for if I began in a rage, she always
finished by making me laugh with some Venetian panta-
loonery or another; and the gipsy knew this well enough,
as well as her other powers of persuasion, and exerted
them with the usual tact and success of all she-things ;
high and low, they are all alike for that.
" Madame Bensoni also took her under her protection,
and then her head turned. She was always in extremes,
either crying or laughing, and so fierce when angered,
that she was the terror of men, women, and children—
for she had the strength of an Amazon, with the temper
of Medea. She was a fine animal, but quite untameable.
I was the only person that cook' at all keep her in any
order, and when she saw me really angry (which they
tell me is a savage sight), she subsided. But she had a
thousand fooleries. In her
_fazziolo, the dress of the
lower orders, she looked beautiful ; but, alas ! she longed
for a hat and feathers ; and all I could say or do (and I
said much) could not prevent this travestie. I put the
first into the fire; but I got tired of burning them before
she did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure—
for they did not at all become her.
" Then she would have her gowns with a tail—like a
lady, forsooth, nothing would serve her, but 'Z'abita colla
coua,' or coo, that is the Venetian for la cola,' the tail
or train) and as her cured pronunciation of the word
made me laugh, there was an end of all controversy, and
she, dragged this diabolical tail after her everywhere.
" In the meantime she beat the women, and stopped
may letters. I found her one day pondering over one.
She used to try to find out by their shape whether
they were feminine or no ; and she used to lament her ig-
rance, and actually studied her alphabet on purpose (as
she declared) to open all letters addressed to me, and read
their contents.

" I must not omit to do justice to her housekeeping
qualities. After she came into my house as " Donna di
gorerno,' the expences were reduced to less than half, and
every body did their duty better—the apartments were
kept in order, and every thing and every body else, except
herself.

" That she had a sufficient regard for me in her wild
way, I hal many reasons to believe. I will mention one.
In the autumn, one day, going to the Lido with my gon-
doliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gon-
dola put in peril—hats blown away, boats filling, oar
lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night coming,
and wind unceasing. On our return, after a tight struggle,
I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo Palace, on
the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing
through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was
streaming, drenched with rain, ever her brows and
breast. She was perfectly exposed to the stoma ; and the
wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin tall figure,
and the lightning flashing round her, and the waves rolling
at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her
chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around
her, the only living thing within hail at that moment ex-
cept ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to
greet me, as might have been expected, but calling out to
me—' Ah ! can' della Madonna, re esto it tempo per
andar al Lido?' (Ah dog of the Virgin is this a time to go
to Lido?) ran into the house, and solaced herself with
scalding the boatmen for not foreseeing the temporale.'
I am told by the set vents that she had only been prevented
from coming in a boat to look after me, by the refusal of
all the gondoliers of the canal to put out into the harbour
in such a moment ; and that then she sat down en the
steps in all the thickest of the squall, and would neither
be removed nor comforted. Her joy at seeing me again
was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the
idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.
" But her reign drew near a close. She became quite
ungovernable some months after, and a concurrence of
complaints, some true, and many false—' a favourite has
no friends'—determined me to part with her. I told her
quietly that she must return borne (she had acquired a suf-
ficient provision far herself and her mother, &c. in my
service), and she refused to quit the house. I was firm,
and she went threatening knives and revenge. I told her
that I had seen knives drawn before her titre, and that if
si.e chose to begin, there was a knife, and fork also, at her
service on the table, and that intimidation would not do.
The next day, while I was at dinner, she walked in
(having broken open a glass door that led from the hall
below to the stake Ise, by way of prologue), and advancing
straight up to the table, snatched the knife from my hand,
cutting me slightly in the thumb in the operation.
Whether she meant to use this against herself or me, I
know nut—probably against neither—but Fletcher seized
her by the arms, and disarmed her. I then called my
boatmen, and desired them to get the gondola ready. and
conduct her to her own house again, seeing carefully that
she did herself no mischief by the way. She seemed
quite quiet, and walked down stairs. I resumed my
dinner.

We heard a great noise, and went out, and met them
on the staircase, carrying her up stairs. She had thrown
herself into the canal. That she intended to destroy her-
self, I do not believe; but when we consider the fear
women and men who can't swim have of deep or even of
shallow water (and the Venetians in particular, though
they live or. the waves), and that it was also night, and
dark, P.ud very cold, it shows that she had a devilish
spir;t of some srlrt within her. They had got her out
without much difficulty or damage, excepting the salt
water she had swallowed, and the wetting she had under-
gone.

" I foresaw her intention to rdix herself, and sent for
a surgeon, inquiring how many hours it would require to
restore her from her agitation ; and he named the time.
I then said, I give you that time, and more if you re-
quire it; but ut the expiration of this prescribed period,
if she does not leave the house, I will.'

" All my people were consternated. They had always
been frightened at her, and were now paralysed ; they
wanted me to apply to the police, to guard myself, Ike. &c.
like a pack of snivelling servile boobies as they were. I
did nothing of the kind, thinking that I might as well end
that way as another ; besides, I had been used to savage
women, and knew their ways.
" I had her sent home quietly after her recovery, and
never saw her since, except twice at the opera, at a dis-
tance amongst the audience. She made many attempts to
return, but no more violent ones. And this is the story
of Margarita Cogni, as far as it relate■ to me.
I forget to mention that she was very devout, and
would cross herself if she heard the prayer time stlike."
a • • •

PROMETHEUS, WITH ENGLISH NOTES.
LONDON, 1881.

The Promethean Desmotes of lEschylus—
one of the finest of the Greek Dramas—is here
illustrated with English notes, partly original,
partly selected, for the use of schools and col-
leges. The edition is a cheap and an able one.

LONDON UNIVERSITY CALENDAR.
LONDON, 1830.

This Calendar contains an account of the
origin and progress of that meritorious institu-
tion the London University, down to the pre-
sent period : its mode of education—the list,
&c., of its Professors—the development of the
course of instruction pursued in the several
classes—every thing, in short, which, directly or
indirectly, appertains to it. Some specimens of
the Midsummer Latin Examinations of the ju
nior classes in 1830, are also introduced, and
display much more efficiency than those usually
entered into at public schools.