Journal of Correspondence and Conversations Between Lord Byron and the Countess of Blessington (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1851 Excerpt: ... meant by this is, that the consciousness of it gives to the countenance an habitual expression of discontent, which I believe is the case; yet it is too bad (added Byron with bitterness) that, because one had a defective foot, one cannot have a perfect face." He indulges a morbid feeling on this subject that is extraordinary, and that leads me to think it has had a powerful effect in forming his character. As Byron had said that his own position had led to his writing " The Deformed Transformed," I ventured to remind him that, in the advertisement to that drama, he had stated it to have been founded on the novel of " The Three Brothers." He said that both statements were correct, and then changed the subject, without giving me an opportunity of questioning him on the unacknowledged, but visible, resemblances between other of his works and that extraordinary production. It is possible that he is unconscious of the plagiary of ideas he has committed; for his reading is so desultory, that he seizes thoughts which, in passing through the glowing alembie of his mind, become so embellished as to lose all identity with the original crude embryos he had adopted. This was proved to me in another instance, when a book that he was constantly in the habit of looking over fell into my hands, and I traced various passages marked by his pencil or by his notes, which gave me the idea of having led to certain trains of thought in his works. He told me that he rarely ever read a page that did not give rise to chains of thought, the first idea serving as the original link on which the others were formed, --Awake but one, and lo what myriads rise. I have observed, that, in conversation, some trifling remark has often led him into long disquisitions, evidently elicited by it; a...