Title: The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Vol. 2
Author: Baron George Gordon Byron Byron
Editor: Baron Ernle Rowland E. Prothero
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9921]
Most recently updated: December 27, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9921
Credits: Produced by Clytie Siddall, Keren Vergon, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
"He told me," writes Moore, "that, one day, travelling from Newstead to town with Lord Byron in his vis-a-vis, the latter kept his pistols beside him, and continued silent for hours, with the most ferocious expression possible on his countenance.
'For God's sake, my dear B.,' said W—— at last, 'what are you thinking of? Are you about to commit murder? or what other dreadful thing are you meditating?'
To which Byron answered that he always had a sort of presentiment that his own life would be attacked some time or other; and that this was the reason of his always going armed, as it was also the subject of his thoughts at that moment."
"W. W. owes Lord Byron, he says, £1000, and does not seem to have the slightest intention of paying him."
"To the Devizes ball in the evening; Lady Frances W. there; introduced to her, and had much conversation, chiefly about our friend Lord B. Several of those beautiful things, published (if I remember right) with the Bride, were addressed to her. She must have been very pretty when she had more of the freshness of youth, though she is still but five or six and twenty; but she looks faded already" (1819).
"Reddish's Hotel, 29th July, 1811.
"My Dear Webster,—As this eternal vis-a-vis seems to sit heavy on your soul, I beg leave to apprize you that I have arranged with Goodall: you are to give me the promised Wheels, and the lining, with 'the Box at Brighton,' and I am to pay the stipulated sum.
"I am obliged to you for your favourable opinion, and trust that the happiness you talk so much of will be stationary, and not take those freaks to which the felicity of common mortals is subject. I do very sincerely wish you well, and am so convinced of the justice of your matrimonial arguments, that I shall follow your example as soon as I can get a sufficient price for my coronet. In the mean time I should be happy to drill for my new situation under your auspices; but business, inexorable business, keeps me here. Your letters are forwarded. If I can serve you in any way, command me. I will endeavour to fulfil your requests as awkwardly as another. I shall pay you a visit, perhaps, in the autumn. Believe me, dear W.,
Yours unintelligibly,
B."
"Reddish's Hotel, July 31st, 1811.
My Dear W. W.,—I always understood that the lining was to accompany the carriage; if not, the carriage may accompany the lining, for I will have neither the one nor the other. In short, to prevent squabbling, this is my determination, so decide;—if you leave it to my feelings (as you say) they are very strongly in favour of the said lining. Two hundred guineas for a carriage with ancient lining!!! Rags and rubbish! You must write another pamphlet, my dear W., before; but pray do not waste your time and eloquence in expostulation, because it will do neither of us any good, but decide—content or not content. The best thing you can do for the Tutor you speak of will be to send him in your Vis (with the lining) to 'the U-Niversity of Göttingen.' How can you suppose (now that my own Bear is dead) that I have any situation for a German genius of this kind, till I get another, or some children? I am infinitely obliged by your invitations, but I can't pay so high for a second-hand chaise to make my friends a visit. The coronet will not grace the 'pretty Vis,' till your tattered lining ceases to disgrace it. Pray favour me with an answer, as we must finish the affair one way or another immediately,—before next week.
Believe me, yours truly,
Byron."
"In Seaham churchyard, without any memorial," says Mr. Surtees, "rest the remains of Joseph Blacket, an unfortunate child of genius, whose last days were soothed by the generous attention of the family of Milbanke."
"It is, I believe, certainly true that the King has taken for the last three days scarcely any food at all, and that, unless a change takes place very shortly in that respect, he cannot survive many days"
"The King, I should suppose," wrote Lord Buckinghamshire, on August 13, "is not likely to die soon, but I fear his mental recovery is hardly to be expected "
"And fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
"I have been reading the Remains of Kirke White, and find that you have to answer for misleading me. He does not, in my opinion, merit the high praise you have bestowed upon him."
"In your note, as it stands, it strikes me that the eulogy on Matthews is a little at the expense of Wingfield and others whom you have commemorated. I should think it quite enough to say that his Powers and Attainments were above all praise, without expressly admitting them to be above that of a Muse who soars high in the praise of others."
"6 Mile Bottom, Aug. 27th.
"My Dearest Brother,—Your letter was stupidly sent to Town to me on Sunday, from whence I arrived at home yesterday; consequently I have not received it so soon as I ought to have done. I feel so very happy to have the pleasure of hearing from you that I will not delay a moment answering it, altho' I am in all the delights of unpacking, and afraid of being too late for the Post.
"I have been a fortnight in Town, and went up on my eldest little girl's account. She had been very unwell for some time, and I could not feel happy till I had better advice than this neighbourhood affords. She is, thank Heaven! much better, and I hope in a fair way to be quite herself again. Mr. Davies flattered me by saying she was exactly the sort of child you would delight in. I am determined not to say another word in her praise for fear you should accuse me of partiality and expect too much. The youngest (little Augusta) is just 6 months old, and has no particular merit at present but a very sweet placid temper.
"Oh! that I could immediately set out to Newstead and shew them to you. I can't tell you half the happiness it would give me to see it and you; but, my dearest B., it is a long journey and serious undertaking all things considered. Mr. Davies writes me word you promise to make him a visit bye and bye; pray do, you can then so easily come here. I have set my heart upon it. Consider how very long it is since I've seen you.
"I have indeed much to tell you; but it is more easily said than written. Probably you have heard of many changes in our situation since you left England; in a pecuniary point of view it is materially altered for the worse; perhaps in other respects better. Col. Leigh has been in Dorsetshire and Sussex during my stay in Town. I expect him at home towards the end of this week, and hope to make him acquainted with you ere long.
"I have not time to write half I have to say, for my letter must go; but I prefer writing in a hurry to not writing at all. You can't think how much I feel for your griefs and losses, or how much and constantly I have thought of you lately. I began a letter to you in Town, but destroyed it, from the fear of appearing troublesome. There are times, I know, when one cannot write with any degree of comfort or satisfaction. I intend to do so again shortly, so I hope yon won't think me a bore.
Remember me most kindly to Old Joe. I rejoice to hear of his health and prosperity. Your letter (some parts of it at least) made me laugh. I am so very glad to hear you have sufficiently overcome your prejudices against the fair sex to have determined upon marrying; but I shall be most anxious that my future Belle Soeur should have more attractions than merely money, though to be sure that is somewhat necessary. I have not another moment, dearest B., so forgive me if I write again very soon, and believe me,
Your most affec'tn Sister, A. L.
Do write if you can."
"One night Scrope Davies at a Gaming house (before I was of age), being tipsy as he usually was at the Midnight hour, and having lost monies, was in vain intreated by his friends, one degree less intoxicated than himself, to come or go home. In despair, he was left to himself and to the demons of the dice-box.
Next day, being visited about two of the Clock, by some friends just risen with a severe headache and empty pockets (who had left him losing at four or five in the morning), he was found in a sound sleep, without a night-cap, and not particularly encumbered with bed-cloathes: a Chamber-pot stood by his bed-side, brim-full of—-Bank Notes!, all won, God knows how, and crammed, Scrope knew not where; but There they were, all good legitimate notes, and to the amount of some thousand pounds."
Contents/p>
"6 Mile Bottom, Saturday, 31 Aug.
My dearest brother,—I hope you don't dislike receiving letters so much as writing them, for you would in that case pronounce me a great torment. But as I prepared you in my last for its being followed very soon by another, I hope you will have reconciled your mind to the impending toil. I really wrote in such a hurry that I did not say half I wished; but I did not like to delay telling you how happy you made me by writing. I have been dwelling constantly upon the idea of going to Newstead ever since I had your wish to see me there. At last a bright thought struck me.
We intend, I believe, to go to Yorkshire in the autumn. Now, if I could contrive to pay you a visit en passant, it would be delightful, and give me the greatest pleasure. But I fear you would be obliged to make up your mind to receive my Brats too. As for my husband, he prefers the outside of the Mail to the inside of a Post-Chaise, particularly when partly occupied by Nurse and Children, so that we always travel independent of each other.
So much for this, my dear B. I can only say I should much like to see you at Newstead. The former I hope I shall at all events, as you must not be shabby, but come to Cambridge as you promised. Are you staying at Newstead now for any time? I saw George Byron in Town for one day, and he promised to call or write again, but has not done either, so I begin to think he has gone back to Lisbon. I think it is impossible not to like him; he is so good-natured and natural. We talked much of you; he told me you were grown very thin; as you don't complain, I hope you are not the worse for being so, and I remember you used to wish it. Don't you think it a great shame that George B. is not promoted? I wish there was any possibility of assisting him about it; but all I know who could do any good with you present Ministers, I don't for many reasons like to ask. Perhaps there may be a change bye and bye.
Fred Howard is married to Miss Lambton. I saw them in town in their way to Castle Howard. I hope he will be happy with all my heart; his kindness and friendship to us last year, when Col. Leigh was placed in one of the most perplexing situations that I think anybody could be in, is never to be forgotten. I think he used to be a greater favourite with you than some others of his family. Mrs. F.H. is very pretty, very young (not quite 17), and appears gentle and pleasing, which is all one can expect [to discover from] a very slight acquaintance.
Now, my dearest Byron, pray let me hear from you. I shall be daily expecting to hear of a Lady Byron, since you have confided to me your determination of marrying, in which I really hope you are serious, being convinced such an event would contribute greatly to your happiness, provided her Ladyship was the sort of person that would suit you; and you won't be angry with me for saying that it is not every one who would; therefore don't be too precipitate. You will wish me hanged, I fear, for boring you so unmercifully, so God bless you, my dearest Bro.; and, when you have time, do write. Are you going to amuse us with any more Satires? Oh, English Bards! I shall make you laugh (when we meet) about it.
Ever your most affectionate Sis. and Friend,
A.L.
Southwell, Ap: 16th, 1807.
"Your Epistle, my dear Standard Bearer, augurs not much in favour of your new life, particularly the latter part, where you say your happiest Days are over. I most sincerely hope not. The past has certainly in some parts been pleasant, but I trust will be equalled, if not exceeded by the future. You hope it is not so with me.
"To be plain with Regard to myself. Nature stampt me in the Die of Indifference. I consider myself as destined never to be happy, although in some instances fortunate. I am an isolated Being on the Earth, without a Tie to attach me to life, except a few School-fellows, and a score of females. Let me but 'hear my fame on the winds' and the song of the Bards in my Norman house, I ask no more and don't expect so much. Of Religion I know nothing, at least in its favour. We have fools in all sects and Impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one understands, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for Inspiration, and style themselves Evangelicals? However enough on this subject. Your piety will be aghast, and I wish for no proselytes. This much I will venture to affirm, that all the virtues and pious Deeds performed on Earth can never entitle a man to Everlasting happiness in a future State; nor on the other hand can such a Scene as a Seat of eternal punishment exist, it is incompatible with the benign attributes of a Deity to suppose so.
"I am surrounded here by parsons and methodists, but, as you will see, not infected with the mania. I have lived a Deist, what I shall die I know not; however, come what may, ridens moriar.
"Nothing detains me here but the publication, which will not be complete till June. About 20 of the present pieces will be cut out, and a number of new things added. Amongst them a complete Episode of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil, some Odes from Anacreon, and several original Odes, the whole will cover 170 pages. My last production has been a poem in imitation of Ossian, which I shall not publish, having enough without it. Many of the present poems are enlarged and altered, in short you will behold an 'Old friend with a new face.' Were I to publish all I have written in Rhyme, I should fill a decent Quarto; however, half is quite enough at present. You shall have all when we meet.
"I grow thin daily; since the commencement of my System I have lost 23 lbs. in my weight (i.e.) 1 st. and 9 lbs. When I began I weighed 14 st. 6 lbs., and on Tuesday I found myself reduced to 12 st. 11 lb. What sayest thou, Ned? do you not envy? I shall still proceed till I arrive at 12 st. and then stop, at least if I am not too fat, but shall always live temperately and take much exercise.
"If there is a possibility we shall meet in June. I shall be in Town, before I proceed to Granta, and if the 'mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain.' I don't mean, by comparing you to the mountain, to insinuate anything on the Subject of your Size. Xerxes, it is said, formed Mount Athos into the Shape of a Woman; had he lived now, and taken a peep at Chatham, he would have spared himself the trouble and made it unnecessary by finding a Hill ready cut to his wishes.
"Adieu, dear Mont Blanc, or rather Mont Rouge; don't, for Heaven's sake, turn Volcanic, at least roll the Lava of your indignation in any other Channel, and not consume Your's ever,
Byron.
"Write Immediately."
"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it were for—not to have lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.
"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body—in dreams, for instance;—incoherently and madly, I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should not act separately, as well as jointly, who can pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state 'a soul which drags a carcass,'—a heavy chain, to be sure; but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our future life will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to Revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong; and when the world is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here;—but the whole thing is inscrutable."
"It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains."
"Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms."
"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.
........
........
Quæris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?
Quo non nata jacent."
"Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur."
"Les Européens les ont appelés talapoins, probablement du nom de l'éventail qu'ils tiennent à la main, lequel s'appelle talapat, qui signifie feuille de palmier."
| "A. des C.: | Combien avez-vous de soldats? |
| Croutef.: | Quatre-vingt mille, fort médiocrement payés. |
| A. des C.: | Et de talapoins? |
| Cr.: | Cent vingt-mille, tous fainéans et trés riches," etc. |
"24, Cockspur Street, Aug. 22'd, 1811.
"My Lord,—Mr. Green the Amanuensis has finished the Latin of the Horace, and I shall be happy to do with it as your Lordship may direct, either to forward it to Newstead, or keep it in Town. Would it not be better to print a small edition seperate (sic), and afterwards print the two satires together? This I leave to your Lordship's consideration. Four Sheets of the Travels are already printed, and one of the plates (Albanian Solain) is executed. I sent it Capt. H[obhouse] yesterday to Cork, to see if it meets his approbation. The work is printed in quarto, for which I may be in some measure indebted to your Lordship, as I urged it so strongly. I shall be extremely sorry if Capt. H. is not pleased with it, but I think he will. Your Lordship's goodness will excuse me for saying how much the very sudden and melancholy events that have lately transpired—I regret—Capt. Hobhouse has written me since the decease of Mr. Mathews. I am told Capt. H. is very much affected at it. I have received some drawings of costumes from him, which I am to deliver to your Lordship. Is it likely we shall see your Lordship in Town soon?
"I have the honour to be your Lordship's
"Most respectful and greatly obliged Servt.,
"James Cawthorn.
"If a small edition is printed of 'Horace' for the first" [words erased] "that, and I think in all probability the 'E. Bards' will want reprinting about March next, when both could be done together. Do not think me too sanguine."
"Newstead Abbey, September 4th, 1811.
"More notes for the 'Hints'! You mistake me much by thinking me inattentive to this publication. If I had a friend willing and able to correct the press, it should be out with my good will immediately. Pray attend to annexing additional notes in their proper places, and let them be added immediately.
"Yours, etc.,
"Byron."
"London, Sept. 4, 1811, Wednesday.
"My Lord,—An absence of some days, passed in the country, has prevented me from writing earlier in answer to your obliging letter. I have now, however, the pleasure of sending under a separate cover, the first proof sheet of your Lordship's Poem, which is so good as to be entitled to all your care to render perfect. Besides its general merit, there are parts, which, I am tempted to believe, far excel anything that your Lordship has hitherto published, and it were therefore grievous indeed, if you do not condescend to bestow upon it all the improvement of which your Lordship's mind is so capable; every correction already made is valuable, and this circumstance renders me more confident in soliciting for it your further attention.
"There are some expressions, too, concerning Spain and Portugal, which, however just, and particularly so at the time they were conceived, yet as they do not harmonize with the general feeling, would so greatly interfere with the popularity which the poem is, in other respects, so certainly calculated to excite, that, in compassion to your publisher, who does not presume to reason upon the subject, otherwise than as a mere matter of business, I hope your Lordship's goodness will induce you to obviate them, and, with them, perhaps, some religious feelings which may deprive me of some customers amongst the Orthodox.
"Could I flatter myself that these suggestions were not obtrusive, I would hazard another, in an earnest solicitation that your Lordship would add the two promised Cantos, and complete the Poem. It were cruel indeed not to perfect a work which contains so much that is excellent; your Fame, my Lord, demands it; you are raising a Monument that will outlive your present feelings, and it should therefore be so constructed as to excite no other associations than those of respect and admiration for your Lordship's Character and Genius.
"I trust that you will pardon the warmth of this address when I assure your Lordship that it arises, in the greatest degree, in a sincere regard for your lasting reputation, with, however, some view to that portion of it, which must attend the Publisher of so beautiful a Poem, as your Lordship is capable of rendering
"The Romaunt of Childe Harold.
"I have the honour to be, My Lord,
"Your Lordship's
"Obedient and faithful servant,
"John Murray."
"Sweet maid, if thou would'st charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight,
Than all Bocara's vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand."
"In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve,
As that abominable tittle-tattle,
Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle."
"Heel-Tap. Now, neighbours, have a good caution that this Master Mug does not cajole you; he is a damn'd palavering fellow."
'Tis said at times the sullen tear would start.
Good plays are scarce,
So Moore writes Farce;
Is Fame like his so brittle?
We knew before
That "Little's" Moore,
But now 'tis Moore that's Little.
"Fully believing this to be the Man whom God has appointed, I engrave this likeness. William Sharp."
"et Pangloss disait quelquefois à Candide; Tous les événements sont enchainés dans le meilleur des mondes possibles," etc.
"Your last letter has unfeignedly grieved me. Believing, as I do from my heart, that you would be better and happier by thoroughly examining the evidences for Christianity, how can I hear you say you will not read any book on the subject, without being pained? But God bless you under all circumstances. I will say no more. Only do not talk of 'shocking my prejudices,' or of 'rushing to see me before I am a Deacon.' I wish to see you at all times; and as to our different opinions, we can easily keep them to ourselves."
"Let me make one other effort. You mentioned an opinion of Hume's about miracles. For God's sake,—hear me, Byron, for God's sake—examine Paley's answer to that opinion; examine the whole of Paley's Evidences. The two volumes may be read carefully in less than a week. Let me for the last time by our friendship, implore you to read them."
"Fresh from the fencing rooms of Angelo and Jackson, he used to amuse himself by renewing his practice of Carte et Tierce, with his walking-cane directed against the bookshelves, while Murray was reading passages from the poem with occasional ejaculations of admiration, on which Byron would say, 'You think that a good idea, do you, Murray?' Then he would fence and lunge with his walking-stick at some special book which he had picked out on the shelves before him. As Murray afterwards said, 'I was often very glad to get rid of him!'"
"L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont réconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais, ni les fatigues."
"A literary friend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of 'one in jeopardy:' he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on buttermilk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel spear and a landing-net, and at last (horresco referens) pulled out—his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its 'alacrity of sinking' was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry-premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of 'Felo de Bibliopolâ' against a quarto unknown,' and circumstantial evidence being since strong against the Curse of Kehama (of which the above words are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers next session, in Grub Street—Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Coeur de Lion, Exodus, Exodiad, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve jurors. The judges are Pye, Bowles, and the bell-man of St. Sepulchre's."
Oh Thou, in Hellas deem'd of heavenly birth,
etc., etc.
Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,
Mine, etc.
Yet there I've wandered by the vaunted rill;
"And now I'm in the world alone,
Upon the wide, wide sea;
But why should I for others groan,
When none will sigh for me?
Perchance my dog will whine in vain,
Till fed by stranger hands;
But long ere I come back again
He'd tear me where he stands."
Some bitter bubbles up, and e'en on roses stings.
Full from the heart of joy's delicious springs
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.
"But ne'er magician's wand
Wrought change, with all Armida's fairy art,
Like what this light touch left on Juan's heart."
| XXV | "In golden characters, right well designed, First on the list appeareth one 'Junot;' Then certain other glorious names we find; (Which rhyme compelleth me to place below—) Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe, Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due, Stand, worthy of each other, in a row Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of 'tother tew." |
| XXVII | "But when Convention sent his handy work, Pens, tongues, feet, hands, combined in wild uproar; Mayor, Alderman, laid down th' uplifted fork; The bench of Bishops half forgot to snore; Stern Cobbett, who for one whole week forbore To question aught, once more with transport leapt, And bit his dev'lish quill agen, and swore With foe such treaty never should be kept. Then burst the blatant beast, and roared and raged and—slept!!!" |
| XXVIII | "Thus unto heaven appealed the people; heaven, Which loves the lieges of our gracious King, Decreed that ere our generals were forgiven, Inquiry should be held about the thing. But mercy cloaked the babes beneath her wing; And as they spared our foes so spared we them. (Where was the pity of our sires for Byng?) Yet knaves, not idiots, should the law condemn. Then live ye, triumph gallants! and bless your judges' phlegm." |
"I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
...
I have supp'd full with horrors."
"Murray's shopman, taught, I presume, by himself, calls Psyche 'Pishy,' The Four Slaves of Cythera 'The Four do. of Cythera,' and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage.' This misnomering Vendor of Books must have been misbegotten in some portentous union of the Malaprops and the Slipslops."
"Now full in sight the Paphian gardens smile,
And thence by many a green and summer isle,
Whose ancient walls and temples seem to sleep,
Enshadowed on the mirror of the deep,
They coast along Cythera's happy ground,
Gem of the sea, for love's delight renown'd."
"I'm never to be delighted with your agreeable wild notes, unfeeling monster!"
| IX | There, thou! whose love and life together fled, Have left me here to love and live in vain:— Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead, When busy Memory flashes o'er my brain? Well—I will dream that we may meet again, And woo the vision to my vacant breast; If aught of young Remembrance then remain, Be as it may Whate'er beside Futurity's behest; |
| or | Howe'er may be For me 'twere bliss enough to see thy spirit blest! |
Oh, known the earliest and beloved the most,
"a delightful companion, gay without being boisterous, witty without effort, comic without coarseness, and sentimental without being lachrymose. He reminds one of the fairy who, whenever she spoke, let diamonds fall from her lips. My tête-à-tête suppers with Moore are among the most agreeable impressions I retain of the hours passed in London."
"Dublin, January 1, 1810.
"My Lord,—Having just seen the name of 'Lord Byron' prefixed to a work entitled English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, in which, as it appears to me, the lie is given to a public statement of mine, respecting an affair with Mr. Jeffrey some years since, I beg you will have the goodness to inform me whether I may consider your Lordship as the author of this publication.
"I shall not, I fear, be able to return to London for a week or two; but, in the mean time, I trust your Lordship will not deny me the satisfaction of knowing whether you avow the insult contained in the passages alluded to.
"It is needless to suggest to your Lordship the propriety of keeping our correspondence secret.
"I have the honour to be,
"Your Lordship's very humble servant,
"Thomas Moore.
"22, Molesworth Street."
"'It is now useless,' I continued (Life, p. 143), 'to speak of the steps with which it was my intention to follow up that letter. The time which has elapsed since then, though it has done away neither the injury nor the feeling of it, has, in many respects, materially altered my situation; and the only object which I have now in writing to your Lordship is to preserve some consistency with that former letter, and to prove to you that the injured feeling still exists, however circumstances may compel me to be deaf to its dictates, at present. When I say "injured feeling," let me assure your Lordship that there is not a single vindictive sentiment in my mind towards you. I mean but to express that uneasiness, under (what I consider to be) a charge of falsehood, which must haunt a man of any feeling to his grave, unless the insult be retracted or atoned for; and which, if I did not feel, I should, indeed, deserve far worse than your Lordship's satire could inflict upon me.' In conclusion I added, that so far from being influenced by any angry or resentful feeling towards him, it would give me sincere pleasure if, by any satisfactory explanation, he would enable me to seek the honour of being henceforward ranked among his acquaintance."
As your Lordship does not show any wish to proceed beyond the rigid formulary of explanation, it is not for me to make any further advances. We Irishmen, in businesses of this kind, seldom know any medium between decided hostility and decided friendship; but, as any approaches towards the latter alternative must now depend entirely on your Lordship, I have only to repeat that I am satisfied with your letter, and that I have the honour to be," etc., etc.
"Piqued," says Moore (Life, 144), "at the manner in which my efforts towards a more friendly understanding were received,"
"Neither Moore nor myself had ever seen Byron when it was settled that he should dine at my house to meet Moore; nor was he known by sight to Campbell, who, happening to call upon me that morning, consented to join the party. I thought it best that I alone should be in the drawing-room when Byron entered it; and Moore and Campbell accordingly withdrew. Soon after his arrival, they returned; and I introduced them to him severally, naming them as Adam named the beasts. When we sat down to dinner, I asked Byron if he would take soup? 'No; he never took soup.' 'Would he take some fish?' 'No; he never took fish.' Presently I asked if he would eat some mutton? 'No; he never ate mutton.' I then asked if he would take a glass of wine? 'No; he never tasted wine.' It was now necessary to inquire what he did eat and drink; and the answer was, 'Nothing but hard biscuits and soda-water.' Unfortunately, neither hard biscuits nor soda-water were at hand; and he dined upon potatoes bruised down on his plate and drenched with vinegar. My guests stayed very late, discussing the merits of Walter Scott and Joanna Baillie. Some days after, meeting Hobhouse, I said to him, 'How long will Lord Byron persevere in his present diet? 'He replied, 'Just as long as you continue to notice it.' I did not then know, what I now know to be a fact, that Byron, after leaving my house, had gone to a Club in St. James's Street and eaten a hearty meat-supper"
"the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manners, and—what was naturally not the least attraction—his marked kindness to myself. Being in mourning for his mother, the colour, as well of his dress, as of his glossy, curling, and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual character when in repose."
"the town mouse a sleek, well-fed, sly, white mouse, and the country mouse with its rough, weather-worn face and grey hairs; the town mouse displaying its delicate little rolls and pyramids of glistening strawberries, the country mouse exulting in its hollow tree, its crust of bread and liberty, and rallying its brother on his late hours and frequent dinners."
"Time was," wrote Mathias (Pursuits of Literature, note, p. 360, ed. 1808), "when bankers were as stupid as their guineas could make them; they were neither orators, nor painters, nor poets. But now. .. Mr. Rogers dreams on Parnassus; and, if I am rightly informed, there is a great demand among his brethren for the Pleasures of Memory."
"When Sheridan was on his death-bed, Rogers aided him with purse and person. This was particularly kind of Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least), but, indeed, he does that of everybody to anybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line:being:'The best good man with the worst natured Muse,'His Muse being all Sentiment and Sago and Sugar, while he himself is a venomous talker. I say 'worst good man' because he is (perhaps) a good man; at least he does good now and then, as well he may, to purchase himself a shilling's worth of salvation for his slanders. They are so little, too—small talk—and old Womanny, and he is malignant too—and envious—and—he be damned!"'The worst good man with the best natured Muse.'
"I never heard Rogers say a single word against Byron, which is rather odd too. Byron wrote a bitter and undeserved satire on Rogers. This conduct must have been motived by something or other."
"He certainly took pennyworths out of his friend's character. I sat three hours for my picture to Sir Thomas Lawrence, during which the whole conversation was filled up by Rogers with stories of Sheridan, for the least of which, if true, he deserved the gallows. One respected his committing a rape on his sister-in-law on the day of her husband's funeral. Others were worse."
"Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it;—
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."
"admiration for his genius, respect for his character, and gratitude for his friendship."
"the highly refined, but somewhat insipid, pastoral tale of Jacqueline."
"The man's a fool. Jacqueline is as superior to Lara as Rogers is to me"
"The Pleasures of Memory," he said (Lady Blessington's Conversations, p. 153), "is a very beautiful poem, harmonious, finished, and chaste; it contains not a single meretricious ornament. If Rogers has not fixed himself in the higher fields of Parnassus, he has, at least, cultivated a very pretty flower-garden at its base."
"a hortus siccus of pretty flowers," and an illustration of "the difference between inspiration and versification."
"He is now at rest;
And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
Now dull in death. Yes, Byron, thou art gone,
Gone like a star that through the firmament
Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
Was generous, noble—noble in its scorn
Of all things low or little; nothing there
Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
None more than I, thy gratitude would build
On slight foundations; and, if in thy life
Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
Thy wish accomplished; dying in the land
Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,
Dying in Greece, and in a cause so glorious!
They in thy train—ah, little did they think,
As round we went, that they so soon should sit
Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourned,
Changing her festal for her funeral song;
That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
As morning gleamed on what remained of thee,
Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
Thy years of joy and sorrow.
Thou art gone;
And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,
Tried as thou wert—even from thy earliest years,
When wandering, yet unspoilt, a Highland boy—
Tried as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;
Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
Her charmed cup—ah, who among us all
Could say he had not erred as much, and more?"
"I enclose you the long-delayed letter, which, from the similarity of hands alone, Davies and I will go shares in a bet of ten to one is the cartel in question."
"Yet Caledonia claims some native worth," etc.3
"Flog high, flog low"
"The de'il burn ye, there's no pleasing you, flog where one will."
"Dulces reminiscitur Argos"
"What news, what news? Queen Orraca,
What news of scribblers five?
S——, W——, C——, L——d, and L——e?
All damn'd, though yet alive."
"What news, O King Affonso,
What news of the Friars five?
Have they preached to the Miramamolin;
And are they still alive?"
"Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co.,
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux."
"neither Southey, Scott, nor Campbell would by their poetry survive much beyond the day when they lived and wrote. Their works seemed to him not to have the seeds of vitality, the real germs of long life. The two first were entertaining as tellers of stories in verse; but the last, in his Pleasures of Hope, obviously had no fixed design, but when a thought (of course, not a very original one) came into his head, he put it down in couplets, and afterwards strung the disjecta membra (not poetæ) together. Some of the best things in it were borrowed; for instance the line:was taken from a much-ridiculed piece by Dennis, a pindaric on William III.:'And freedom shriek'd when Kosciusko fell,'It is the same production in which the following much-laughed-at specimen of bathos is found:'Fair Liberty shriek'd out aloud, aloud Religion groaned.'Coleridge had little toleration for Campbell, and considered him, as far as he had gone, a mere verse-maker "'Nor Alps nor Pyreneans keep him out,
Nor fortified redoubt.'
"I have seen many old fools often, but such an old fool as Phormio, never
(Multos se deliros senes sæpe vidisse; sed qui magis, quam Phormio, deliraret, vidisse neminem)"
"I'm parish clerk and sexton here,
My name is Caleb Quotem,
I'm painter, glazier, auctioneer,
In short, I am factotum."
...
"At night by the fire, like a good, jolly cock,
When my day's work is done and all over,
I tipple, I smoke, and I wind up the clock,
With my sweet Mrs. Quotem in clover.
"As dreadful as the Manichean God,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy."
"Long may Long-Tilney-Wellesley-Long-Pole live."
"When you go to Naples," said Byron to Lady Blessington (Conversations, pp. 238, 239), "you must make acquaintance with Sir William Drummond, for he is certainly one of the most erudite men and admirable philosophers now living. He has all the wit of Voltaire, with a profundity that seldom appertains to wit, and writes so forcibly, and with such elegance and purity of style, that his works possess a peculiar charm. Have you read his Academical Questions? If not, get them directly, and I think you will agree with me, that the preface to that work alone would prove Sir William Drummond an admirable writer. He concludes it by the following sentence, which I think one of the best in our language:Is not the passage admirable? How few could have written it! and yet how few read Drummond's works! They are too good to be popular. His Odin is really a fine poem, and has some passages that are beautiful, but it is so little read that it may be said to have dropped still-born from the press—a mortifying proof of the bad taste of the age. His translation of Persius is not only very literal, but preserves much of the spirit of the original;... he has escaped all the defects of translators, and his Persius resembles the original as nearly, in feeling and sentiment, as two languages so dissimilar in idiom will admit."'Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while Reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other; he who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.'
"I am indescribably occupied," she writes to Dr. Burney, October 12, 1813, "in giving more and more last touches to my work, about which I begin to grow very anxious. I am to receive merely £500 upon delivery of the MS.; the two following £500 by instalments from nine months to nine months, that is, in a year and a half from the day of publication. If all goes well, the whole will be £3000, but only at the end of the sale of eight thousand copies."
"Come now, do send me a kind letter and tell me if Madame d'Arblaye gets £3000 for her book or no, and if Lord Byron is to be called over about some verses he has written, as the papers hint."
"an a man will be beaten with brains, he shall never keep a clean doublet."4
"Ward is one of the best-informed men I know, and, in a tête-à-tête, is one of the most agreeable companions. He has great originality, and, being très distrait, it adds to the piquancy of his observations, which are sometimes somewhat trop naïve, though always amusing. This naïveté of his is the more piquant from his being really a good-natured man, who unconsciously thinks aloud. Interest Ward on a subject, and I know no one who can talk better. His expressions are concise without being poor, and terse and epigrammatic without being affected," etc.
"The charm of Mr. Ward's conversation is exactly what Mr. Luttrell wants, a sort of abandon, and being entertaining because it is his nature and he cannot help it. I only mean Mr. Ward in his happier hour, for what I have said of him is the very reverse of what he is when vanity or humour seize upon him."
"In the evening at Coleridge's lecture. Conclusion of Milton. Not one of the happiest of Coleridge's efforts. Rogers was there, and with him was Lord Byron. He was wrapped up, but I recognized his club foot, and, indeed, his countenance and general appearance."
| Benedict | No; if a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him. |
"Nobody but Campbell the poet, Rocca, and her own daughter. After dinner, Campbell read to us a discourse of his upon English poetry, and upon some of the great poets. There are always signs of a poet and critic of genius in all he does, often encumbered by too ornate a style."
"There are some of Campbell's lyrics," said Rogers (Table-Talk, etc., pp. 254, 255), which will never die. His Pleasures of Hope is no great favourite with me. The feeling throughout his Gertrude is very beautiful."
"strangely over-rated; its fine words and sounding lines please the generality of readers, who never stop to ask themselves the meaning of a passage."
"'Lochiel' and 'Mariners' are spirit-stirring productions; his Gertrude of Wyoming is beautiful; and some of the episodes in his Pleasures of Hope pleased me so much that I know them by heart"
"He is a short, small man, and has one of the roundest and most lively faces I have seen amongst this grave people. His manners seemed as open as his countenance, and his conversation as spirited as his poetry. He could have kept me amused till morning."
"Campbell had the same good spirits and love of merriment as when I met him before,—the same desire to amuse everybody about him; but still I could see, as I partly saw then, that he labours under the burden of an extraordinary reputation, too easily acquired, and feels too constantly that it is necessary for him to make an exertion to satisfy expectation. The consequence is that, though he is always amusing, he is not always quite natural."
"But, do you know, that's devilish fine! Why, it's the finest thing you ever wrote, and it must be printed!"
"My friend Dug is a proof that a good heart cannot compensate for an irritable temper; whenever he is named, people dwell on the last and pass over the first; and yet he really has an excellent heart, and a sound head, of which I, in common with many others of his friends, have had various proofs. He is clever, too, and well informed, and I do think would have made a figure in the world, were it not for his temper, which gives a dictatorial tone to his manner, that is offensive to the amour propre of those with whom he mixes."
"I was a member of the Alfred. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis d'Ivernois; but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season."
"The Alfred, like all other clubs, was much haunted with boars, a tusky monster which delights to range where men most do congregate. A boar, or bore, is always remarkable for something respectable, such as wealth, character, high birth, acknowledged talent, or, in short, for something that forbids people to turn him out by the shoulders, or, in other words, to cut him dead. Much of this respectability is supplied by the mere circumstance of belonging to a certain society of clubists, within whose districts the bore obtains free-warren, and may wallow or grunt at pleasure. Old stagers in the club know and avoid the fated corner and arm-chair which he haunts; but he often rushes from his lair on the inexperienced."
"Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra."
"Plus ego polliceor: nil recitabo tibi."
"On this occasion, another of the noble poet's peculiarities was, somewhat startlingly, introduced to my notice. When we were on the point of setting out from his lodgings in St. James's Street, it being then about midday, he said to the servant, who was shutting the door of the vis-a-vis, 'Have you put in the pistols?' and was answered in the affirmative. It was difficult,—more especially taking into account the circumstances under which we had just become acquainted,— to keep from smiling at this singular noonday precaution."
"Many gentlemen have been weak enough to fancy themselves actors, but no one ever persevered in obtruding himself for so long a time on the notice of the public in spite of laughter, hissing, etc."
"pink silk vest and cloak, white satin breeches and stockings, Spanish hat, with a rich high plume of ostrich feathers,"
"Pray don't forget me, as I shall never cease thinking of you, my Dearest and only Friend, (signed) S. H. V."
"This was written on the 11th of January, 1812; on the 28th I received ample proof that the Girl had forgotten me and herself too. Heigho! B."
"how gravely and coolly the young lord could arbitrate on such an occasion, and with what considerate leaning towards the servant whose fidelity he had proved, in preference to any new liking or fancy by which it might be suspected he was actuated toward the other."
"Having compared Rogers's poems to a flower-garden, to what shall I compare Moore's?—to the Valley of Diamonds, where all is brilliant and attractive, but where one is so dazzled by the sparkling on every side that one knows not where to fix, each gem beautiful in itself, but overpowering to the eye from their quantity."
"Oh, woman! woman! deceitful, damnable, (changing into a half-smile) delightful woman! do all one can, there's nothing else worth thinking of."
"Sir,—I take the liberty of sending an alteration of the two last lines of Stanza 2'd which I wish to run as follows,I wish you could insert it tomorrow for a particular reason; but I feel much obliged by your inserting it at all. Of course, do not put my name to the thing.'Gibbets on Sherwood will heighten the Scenery
Shewing how Commerce, how Liberty thrives!'
Believe me, Your obliged and very obed't Serv't,
Byron. 8, St. James Street, Sunday,
March 1st, 1812."
"Breakfasted with Mr. Cowell," writes Moore, in his Diary, June 11, 1828, "having made his acquaintance for the purpose of gaining information about Lord Byron. Knew Byron for the first time when he himself was a little boy, from being in the habit of playing with B.'s dogs. Byron wrote to him to school to bid him mind his prosody. Gave me two or three of his letters to him. Saw a good deal of B. at Hastings; mentioned the anecdote about the ink-bottle striking one of the lead Muses. These Muses had been brought from Holland; and there were, I think, only eight of them arrived safe. Fletcher had brought B. a large jar of ink, and, not thinking it was full, B. had thrust his pen down to the very bottom; his anger at finding it come out all besmeared with ink made him chuck the jar out of the window, when it knocked down one of the Muses in the garden, and deluged her with ink. In 1813, when B. was at Salt Hill, he had Cowell over from Eton, and pouched him no less than ten pounds. Cowell has ever since kept one of the notes. Told me a curious anecdote of Byron's mentioning to him, as if it had made a great impression on him, their seeing Shelley (as they thought) walking into a little wood at Lerici, when it was discovered afterwards that Shelley was at that time in quite another direction. 'This,' said Byron, in a sort of awe-struck voice, 'was about ten days before his death.' Cowell's imitation of his look and manner very striking. Thinks that in Byron's speech to Fletcher, when he was dying, threatening to appear to him, there was a touch of that humour and fun which he was accustomed to mix up with everything".
"Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'"
"praised the Annals of the Parish very highly, as also The Entail,... some scenes of which, he said, had affected him very much.'The characters in Mr. Galt's novels have an identity,' added Byron, 'that reminds me of Wilkie's pictures'"
"When I knew Galt, years ago," said Byron to Lady Blessington, I was not in a frame of mind to form an impartial opinion of him: his mildness and equanimity struck me even then; but, to say the truth, his manner had not deference enough for my then aristocratical taste, and finding I could not awe him into a respect sufficiently profound for my sublime self, either as a peer or an author, I felt a little grudge towards him that has now completely worn off," etc., etc.
"I have already read a review of Safie in the British Critic, and will undertake it in the Monthly if Griffiths, with whom I am in very bad odour from my late shameful idleness, will allow me. Oh that you would write a good smart critique of something to get both yourself and me in high repute at Turnham Green!!!!"
"I have been a reviewer. In the Monthly Review I wrote some articles which were inserted. This was in the latter part of 1811. In 1807, in a Magazine called Monthly Literary Recreations, I reviewed Wordsworth's trash of that time.
Excepting these, I cannot accuse myself of anonymous Criticism (that I recollect), though I have been offered more than one review in our principal Journals."
"There never was a maxim of greater wisdom than that uttered by the noble lord [Byron] who had so ably addressed their lordships that night for the first time"
"Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying me I do not know, but Lady Caroline Lamb and others told me that he said the same both before and after he knew me) was founded upon English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. He told me that he did not care about poetry (or about mine—at least, any but that poem of mine), but he was sure, from that and other symptoms, I should make an orator, if I would but take to speaking, and grow a parliament man. He never ceased harping upon this to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr. Drury, had the same notion when I was a boy; but it never was my turn of inclination to try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers do, as a kind of introduction into public life; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging, particularly my first speech (I spoke three or four times in all); but just after it, my poem of Childe Harold was published, and nobody ever thought about my prose afterwards, nor indeed did I; it became to me a secondary and neglected object, though I sometimes wonder to myself if I should have succeeded."
"Dear Sir,—In the report of my speech (which by the bye is given very incorrectly) in the M[orning] Herald, Day, and B[ritish] Press, they state that I mentioned Bristol, a place I never saw in my life and knew nothing of whatever, nor mentioned at all last night. Will you be good enough to send to these papers immediately, and have the mistake corrected, or I shall get into a scrape with the Bristol people?
"I am, yours very truly,
"B."
"Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,"
"To Augusta, my dearest sister, and my best friend, who has ever loved me much better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son, and most affectionate brother, B."
"I awoke one morning and found myself famous."
"The subject," says Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire (Two Duchesses, pp. 375, 376), "of conversation, of curiosity, of enthusiasm almost, one might say, of the moment is not Spain or Portugal, Warriors or Patriots, but Lord Byron!" "He returned," she continues, "sorry for the severity of some of his lines (in the English Bards), and with a new poem, Childe Harold, which he published. This poem is on every table, and himself courted, visited, flattered, and praised whenever he appears. He has a pale, sickly, but handsome countenance, a bad figure, and, in short, he is really the only topic almost of every conversation—the men jealous of him, the women of each other."
"Lord Byron," writes Lady Harriet Leveson Gower to the Duke of Devonshire, May 10, 1812 (Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, vol. i. p. 34), "is still upon a pedestal, and Caroline William doing homage. I have made acquaintance with him. He is agreeable, but I feel no wish for any further intimacy. His countenance is fine when it is in repose; but the moment it is in play, suspicious, malignant, and consequently repulsive. His manner is either remarkably gracious and conciliatory, with a tinge of affectation, or irritable and impetuous, and then, I am afraid, perfectly natural."
"After Byron had become the rage, I was frequently amused at the manoeuvres of certain noble ladies to get acquainted with him by means of me; for instance, I would receive a note from Lady ——, requesting the pleasure of my company on a particular evening, with a postscript, 'Pray, could you not contrive to bring Lord Byron with you?' Once, at a great party given by Lady Jersey, Mrs. Sheridan ran up to me and said, 'Do, as a favour, try if you can place Lord Byron beside me at supper!'"
"Forgiveness to the injured does belong,
But they ne'er pardon, who have done the wrong."
"A wife's a drug now; mere tar-water, with every virtue under heaven, but nobody takes it."
"Or hail at once the patron and the pile
Of vice and folly, Greville and Argyle," etc.
"I have been called in as mediator, or second, at least twenty times, in violent quarrels, and have always contrived to settle the business without compromising the honour of the parties, or leading them to mortal consequences, and this, too, sometimes in very difficult and delicate circumstances, and having to deal with very hot and haughty spirits,—Irishmen, gamesters, guardsmen, captains, and cornets of horse, and the like. This was, of course, in my youth, when I lived in hot-headed company. I have had to carry challenges from gentlemen to noblemen, from captains to captains, from lawyers to counsellors, and once from a clergyman to an officer in the Life Guards; but I found the latter by far the most difficult:the business being about a woman: I must add, too, that I never saw a woman behave so ill, like a cold-blooded, heartless b——as she was,—but very handsome for all that. A certain Susan C——was she called. I never saw her but once; and that was to induce her but to say two words (which in no degree compromised herself), and which would have had the effect of saving a priest or a lieutenant of cavalry. She would not say them, and neither Nepean nor myself (the son of Sir Evan Nepean, and a friend to one of the parties) could prevail upon her to say them, though both of us used to deal in some sort with womankind. At last I managed to quiet the combatants without her talisman, and, I believe, to her great disappointment: she was the damnedest b—— that I ever saw, and I have seen a great many. Though my clergyman was sure to lose either his life or his living, he was as warlike as the Bishop of Beauvais, and would hardly be pacified; but then he was in love, and that is a martial passion."'to compose
The bloody duel without blows,'
"When in London," writes Gronow (Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 152), "Byron used to go to Manton's shooting-gallery, in Davies Street, to try his hand, as he said, at a wafer. Wedderburn Webster was present when the poet, intensely delighted with his own skill, boasted to Joe Manton that he considered himself the best shot in London. 'No, my lord,' replied Manton, 'not the best; but your shooting to-day was respectable.' Whereupon Byron waxed wroth, and left the shop in a violent passion."
"the veriest tyrant," said Byron, "that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to shake their caps and bells as she willed it."
"To that most Distinguished and Despotic Conclave, composed of their High Mightinesses the Ladies Patronesses of the Balls at Almack's, the Rulers of Fashion, the Arbiters of Taste, the Leaders of Ton, and the Makers of Manners, whose Sovereign sway over 'the world' of London has long been established on the firmest basis, whose Decrees are Laws, and from whose judgment there is no appeal."
"She knew more than any person I ever met with, and both everything and everybody; she could quiz and she could flatter."
"Treat people like fools," she is supposed to say, "and they will worship you; stoop to make up to them, and they will directly tread you underfoot."
"What o'clock is it?" Lady Jersey asked. "Seven minutes after eleven, your ladyship." She paused a moment, and then said, with emphasis and distinctness, Give my compliments,—give Lady Jersey's compliments to the Duke of Wellington, and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of exclusion is such that hereafter no one can complain of its application. He cannot be admitted."
"public business was much talked about—the corporation bill, the motion for admitting Dissenters to the universities, etc., etc.; and as to the last, when the question arose whether it would be debated on Tuesday night, it was admitted to be doubtful whether Lady Jersey would not succeed in getting it postponed, as she has a grand dinner that evening."
"stopped for a moment, and then, drawing himself up, marched past her with a look of the utmost disdain. Lady Jersey returned the look to the full; and, as soon as the Prince was gone, said to me, with a smile, 'Didn't I do it well?'"
"Of all that coterie, Madame [de Stael], after Lady [Jersey], was the best; at least I thought so, for these two ladies were the only ones who ventured to protect me when all London was crying out against me on the separation, and they behaved courageously and kindly ... Poor dear Lady [Jersey]! Does she still retain her beautiful cream-coloured complexion and raven hair? I used to long to tell her that she spoiled her looks by her excessive animation; for eyes, tongue, head, and arms were all in movement at once, and were only relieved from their active service by want of respiration," etc., etc.
"His little eyes like William's shine;
How great is then my joy,
For, while I call this darling mine,
I see 'tis William's boy!"
"Winged with Hope and hushed with Joy,
See yon wanton, blue-eyed Boy,—
Arch his smile, and keen his dart,—
Aim at Laura's youthful heart!
How could he his wiles disguise?
How deceive such watchful eyes?
How so pure a breast inspire,
Set so young a Mind on fire?
'Twas because to raise the flame
Love bethought of friendship's name.
Under this false guise he told her
That he lived but to behold her.
How could she his fault discover
When he often vowed to love her?
How could she her heart defend
When he took the name of friend?"
"I cannot fancy Lady Caroline married. I cannot be glad of it. How changed she must be—the delicate Ariel, the little Fairy Queen become a wife and soon perhaps a mother."
"You may retract all your sorrow about Caro Ponsonby's marriage, for she is the same wild, delicate, odd, delightful person, unlike everything."
Fletcher,—Will you come and see me here some evening at 9, and no one will know of it. You may say you bring a letter, and wait the answer. I will send for you in. But I will let you know first, for I wish to speak with you. I also want you to take the little Foreign Page I shall send in to see Lord Byron. Do not tell him before-hand, but, when he comes with flowers, shew him in. I shall not come myself, unless just before he goes away; so do not think it is me. Besides, you will see this is quite a child, only I wish him to see my Lord if you can contrive it, which, if you tell me what hour is most convenient, will be very easy. I go out of Town to-morrow for a day or two, and I am now quite well—at least much better."
"I had a quarter of an hour's conversation, which, I own, gave me a great desire to know him better, and he seemed willing that I should do so."
"At the end of the evening I had half an hour's conversation with Lord Byron, principally on the subject of the Scotch Review, with which he is very much pleased. He is a singular man, and pleasant to me but I very much fear that his head begins to be turned by all the adoration of the world, especially the women"
"was the most primitive hamlet ever met with—a dozen or so of cottages, no trade, no manufacture, no business doing that we could see; the owners were mostly servants of Sir Ralph Milbanke's."
"There was something piquant and what we term pretty in Miss Milbanke. Her features were small and feminine, though not regular. She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure was perfect for her height; and there was a simplicity, a retired modesty, about her, which was very characteristic, and formed a happy contrast to the cold, artificial formality and studied stiffness which is called fashion."
"Caro means to see la bella Annabelle before she writes to you ... I shall almost hate her if she is blind to the merits of one who would make her so happy"
"She persists in saying," writes the duchess, May 4, 1812 (ibid., p. 362), "that she never suspected your attachment to her; but she is so odd a girl that, though she has for some time rather liked another, she has decidedly refused them, because she thinks she ought to marry a person with a good fortune; and this is partly, I believe, from generosity to her parents, and partly owning that fortune is an object to herself for happiness. In short, she is good, amiable, and sensible, but cold, prudent, and reflecting. Lord Byron makes up to her a little; but she don't seem to admire him except as a poet, nor he her except for a wife."
"Your Annabella is a mystery; liking, not liking; generous-minded, yet afraid of poverty; there is no making her out. I hope you don't make yourself unhappy about her; she is really an icicle."
"I was the fashion when she first came out; I had the character of being a great rake, and was a great dandy—both of which young ladies like. She married me from vanity, and the hope of reforming and fixing me."
"seemed to think she must. He was such a loveable person. I remember him (said she) sitting there with that light upon him, looking so beautiful!'"
"was accompanied on the occasion by his old schoolfellows, Mr. Bailey and Mr. John Madocks. They went together from some assembly, and, on their arriving at the spot, about three o'clock in the morning, not finding the house that was to receive them open, Mr. Madocks undertook to rouse the inmates, while Lord Byron and Mr. Bailey sauntered, arm in arm, up the street. During this interval, rather a painful scene occurred. Seeing an unfortunate woman lying on the steps of a door, Lord Byron, with some expression of compassion, offered her a few shillings; but, instead of accepting them, she violently pushed away his hand, and, starting up with a yell of laughter, began to mimic the lameness of his gait. He did not utter a word; but 'I could feel,' said Mr. Bailey, 'his arm trembling within mine, as we left her.' "
"Baillie (commonly called 'Long' Baillie, a very clever man, but odd) complained in riding, to our friend Scrope Davies, that he had a stitch in his side. 'I don't wonder at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride like a tailor.' Whoever has seen B. on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee."
"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,—
Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail."
"But, oh, the basest of defections!
His Letter about 'predilections'—
His own dear Letter, void of grace,
Now flew up in its parent's face! "
"I am proud to declare I have no predilections,
My heart is a sieve, where some scatter'd affections
Are just danc'd about for a moment or two,
And the finer they are, the more sure to run through."
"Oh ye! who so lately were blythsome and gay,
At the Butterfly's banquet carousing away;
Your feasts and your revels of pleasure are fled,
For the soul of the banquet, the Butterfly's dead!
...
And here shall the daisy and violet blow,
And the lily discover her bosom of snow;
While under the leaf, in the evenings of spring,
Still mourning his friend, shall the grasshopper sing."
"that one evening, when Brummell and Lord Moira were engaged in earnest conversation at Carlton House, the prince requested the former to ring the bell, and that he replied without reflection, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it,' upon which the prince rang the bell and ordered his friend's carriage, but that Lord Moira's intervention caused the unintentional liberty to be overlooked."
"Neither have I resentments, or wish there should come ill
To mortal—except, now I think on it, Beau Brummell,
Who threatened last year, in a superfine passion,
To cut me, and bring the old king into fashion."
"My Dear Scrope,—Lend me two hundred pounds; the banks are shut, and all my money is in the three per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow morning.
Yours,
George Brummell.
"Scrope Davies is a wit, and a man of the world, and feels as much as such a character can do."
"My Dear George,—'Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the three per cents.
Yours,
S. Davies.
"obliged," says Byron (Detached Thoughts), "by that affair of poor Meyler, who thence acquired the name of 'Dick the Dandykiller'—(it was about money and debt and all that)—to retire to France,"
"what progress Brummell had made in French, he responded 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.' I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally as his own some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning."
"With Spartan Pye lull England to repose,
Or frighten children with Lenora's woes;"
"Why should I faint when all with patience hear,
And laureat Pye sings more than twice a year?"
"When the pie was opened," etc.
"a little, square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, and still greater benevolence."
"Trumpington, Wednesday morning.
Dear Lord Byron,—From the eagerness which I felt to make known my opinions of your poem before others had expressed any upon the subject, I waited upon you to deliver my hasty, although hearty, commendation. If it be worthy your acceptance, take it once more, in a more deliberate form! Upon my arrival in town I found that Mathias entirely coincided with me. 'Surely,' said I to him, 'Lord Byron, at this time of life, cannot have experienced such keen anguish as those exquisite allusions to what older men may have felt seem to denote!' This was his answer: 'I fear he has—he could not else have written such a poem.' This morning I read the second canto with all the attention it so highly merits, in the peace and stillness of my study; and I am ready to confess I was never so much affected by any poem, passionately fond of poetry as I have been from my earliest youth....
"The eighth stanza, 'Yet if as holiest men,' etc., has never been surpassed. In the twenty-third, the sentiment is at variance with Dryden:And it is perhaps an instance wherein, for the first time, I found not within my own breast an echo to your thought, for I would not 'be once more a boy;' but the generality of men will agree with you, and wish to tread life's path again.'Strange cozenage! none would live past years again.'
In the twelfth stanza of the same canto, you might really add a very curious note to these lines:by stating this fact: When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving it, a great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs, was thrown down by the work men whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe out of his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri—'Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains,'I was present at the time.
Once more I thank you for the gratification you have afforded me.
Believe me, ever yours most truly,
E. D. Clarke."
"But the Prince's great delight," says Murray, "was Walter Scott, whose name and writings he dwelt upon and recurred to incessantly. He preferred him far beyond any other poet of the time, repeated several passages with fervour, and criticized them faithfully.... Lord Byron called upon me, merely to let off the raptures of the Prince respecting you, thinking, as he said, that if I were likely to have occasion to write to you, it might not be ungrateful for you to hear of his praises."
"Edinburgh, July 3d, 1812.
"My Lord,—I am uncertain if I ought to profit by the apology which is afforded me, by a very obliging communication from our acquaintance, John Murray, of Fleet Street, to give your Lordship the present trouble. But my intrusion concerns a large debt of gratitude due to your Lordship, and a much less important one of explanation, which I think I owe to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of any person whose talents rank so highly in my own, as your Lordship's most deservedly do.
"The first count, as our technical language expresses it, relates to the high pleasure I have received from the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, and from its precursors; the former, with all its classical associations, some of which are lost on so poor a scholar as I am, possesses the additional charm of vivid and animated description, mingled with original sentiment; but besides this debt, which I owe your Lordship in common with the rest of the reading public, I have to acknowledge my particular thanks for your having distinguished by praise, in the work which your Lordship rather dedicated in general to satire, some of my own literary attempts. And this leads me to put your Lordship right in the circumstances respecting the sale of Marmion, which had reached you in a distorted and misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some reason to complain, were given to the public without more particular inquiry. The poem, my Lord, was not written upon contract for a sum of money—though it is too true that it was sold and published in a very unfinished state (which I have since regretted), to enable me to extricate myself from some engagements which fell suddenly upon me by the unexpected misfortunes of a very near relation. So that, to quote statute and precedent, I really come under the case cited by Juvenal, though not quite in the extremity of the classic author:And so much for a mistake, into which your Lordship might easily fall, especially as I generally find it the easiest way of stopping sentimental compliments on the beauty, etc., of certain poetry, and the delights which the author must have taken in the composition, by assigning the readiest reason that will cut the discourse short, upon a subject where one must appear either conceited or affectedly rude and cynical.'Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.'
"As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the pleasure of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their value; and I am not ashamed to say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some comforts and elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure your Lordship's good sense will easily put this unimportant egotism to the right account, for—though I do not know the motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair or an unfair literary critic—I may be well excused for a wish to clear my personal character from any tinge of mercenary or sordid feeling in the eyes of a contemporary of genius. Your Lordship will likewise permit me to add that you would have escaped the trouble of this explanation, had I not understood that the satire alluded to had been suppressed, not to be reprinted. For in removing a prejudice on your Lordship's own mind, I had no intention of making any appeal by or through you to the public, since my own habits of life have rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too easy.
"Leaving this foolish matter where it lies, I have to request your Lordship's acceptance of my best thanks for the flattering communication which you took the trouble to make Mr. Murray on my behalf, and which could not fail to give me the gratification which I am sure you intended. I dare say our worthy bibliopolist overcoloured his report of your Lordship's conversation with the Prince Regent, but I owe my thanks to him nevertheless, for the excuse he has given me for intruding these pages on your Lordship. Wishing you health, spirit, and perseverance, to continue your pilgrimage through the interesting countries which you have still to pass with Childe Harold, I have the honour to be, my Lord,
"Your Lordship's obedient servant,
"Walter Scott.
"P.S.—Will your Lordship permit me a verbal criticism on Childe Harold, were it only to show I have read his Pilgrimage with attention? Nuestra Dama de la Pena means, I suspect, not our Lady of Crime or Punishment, but our Lady of the Cliff; the difference is, I believe, merely in the accentuation of peña."
"At the time when Scott and Byron were the two lions of London, Hookham Frere observed, 'Great poets formerly (Homer and Milton) were blind; now they are lame'"
"There, too, he saw (whate'er he may be now)
A Prince, the prince of princes at the time,
With fascination in his very bow,
And full of promise, as the spring of prime.
Though royalty was written on his brow,
He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime,
Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,
A finish'd gentleman from top to toe."
"Your little friend, Caro William," writes the Duchess of Devonshire, May 4, 1812, "as usual, is doing all sorts of imprudent things for him and with him."
"The ladies, I hear, spoil him, and the gentlemen are jealous of him. He is going back to Naxos, and then the husbands may sleep in peace. I should not be surprised if Caro William were to go with him, she is so wild and imprudent"
"Mortanville Priory, November the 9th.
"Lady Avondale,—I am no longer your lover; and since you oblige me to confess it, by this truly unfeminine persecution, ... learn, that I am attached to another; whose name it would, of course, be dishonourable to mention. I shall ever remember with gratitude the many instances I have received of the predilection you have shown in my favour. I shall ever continue your friend, if your ladyship will permit me so to style myself; and, as a first proof of my regard, I offer you this advice, correct your vanity, which is ridiculous; exert your absurd caprices upon others; and leave me in peace.
"Your most obedient servant,
"Glenarvon."
"I do not know," writes C. Lemon to Lady H. Frampton (Journal of Mary Frampton, pp. 286, 287), "all the characters in Glenarvon, but I will tell you all I do know. I am not surprised at your being struck with a few detached passages; but before you have read one volume, I think you will doubt at which end of the book you began. There is no connection between any two ideas in the book, and it seems to me to have been written as the sages of Laputa composed their works. 'Glenarvon' is Lord Byron; 'Lady Augusta,' the late Duchess of Devonshire; 'Lady Mandeville'—I think it is Lady Mandeville, but the lady who dictated Glearvon's farewell letter to Calantha—is Lady Oxford. This letter she really dictated to Lord Byron to send to Lady Caroline Lamb, and is now very much offended that she has treated the matter so lightly as to introduce it into her book. The best character in it is the 'Princess of Madagascar' (Lady Holland), with all her Reviewers about her. The young Duke of Devonshire is in the book, but I forget under what name. I need not say that the heroine is Lady Caroline's own self."
"To have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared," he writes, "its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage—a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of Childe Harold."
"Should you feel any touch of poetical glow,
We've a Scheme to suggest—Mr. Sc—tt, you must know,
(Who, we're sorry to say it, now works for the Row)
Having quitted the Borders, to seek new renown,
Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town;
And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay)
Means to do all the Gentlemen's Seats on the way.
Now the Scheme is (though none of our hackneys can beat him)
To start a fresh Poet through Highgate to meet him;
Who, by means of quick proofs—no revises—long coaches—
May do a few Villas before Sc—tt approaches—
Indeed, if our Pegasus be not curst shabby,
He'll reach, without found'ring, at least Woburn Abbey."
| Diddler | O Sam, you haven't got such a thing as tenpence about you, have you? |
| Sam | Yes. And I mean to keep it about me, you see. |
| Diddler | Oh, aye, certainly. I only asked for information. |
"By the waters of Cheltenham I sat down and drank, when I remembered thee, oh Georgiana Cottage! As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the willows that grew thereby. Then they said, Sing us a song of Drury Lane," etc.;
"Rebuilding of Drury-Lane Theatre.
"The Committee are desirous of promoting a fair and free competition for an Address, to be spoken upon the opening of the Theatre, which will take place on the 10th of October next: They have therefore thought fit to announce to the Public, that they will be glad to receive any such Compositions, addressed to their Secretary at the Treasury Office in Drury Lane, on or before the 10th of September, sealed up, with a distinguishing word, number, or motto, on the cover, corresponding with the inscription, on a separate sealed paper, containing the name of the Author, which will not be opened, unless containing the name of the successful Candidate. Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, August 13, 1812.
Owing to an accidental delay in the publication of the above Advertisement, the Committee have thought proper to extend the time for receiving Addresses, from the last day of August to the 10th of September."
"The public were more importantly employed, than to observe the easy simplicity of my style, or the harmony of my periods. Sheet after sheet was thrown off to oblivion. My essays were buried among the essays upon liberty, Eastern tales, and cures for the bite of a mad dog."
"I climb'd the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn," etc., etc.
This greeting o'er, the ancient rule obey'd,
The drama's homage by her Herald paid,
Receive our welcome too, whose every tone
Springs from our hearts, and fain would win your own.
The curtain rises, etc., etc.
As flashing far the new Volcano shone
And swept the skies with {lightnings}/{meteors} not their own,
While thousands throng'd around the burning dome,
Etc., etc.
As flash'd the volumed blaze, and {sadly}/{ghastly} shone
The skies with lightnings awful as their own.
"A key of fire ran all along the shore,
And lightened all the river with a blaze;
The wakened tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze."
"Bidding in one grand pile this Town expire,
Her towers in dust, her Thames a Lake of fire."
"When Greek join'd Greek then was the tug of war."
"He is as envious as an old maid verging on the desperation of six and thirty; and then the insidious humility with which he seduces you to give a free opinion on any of his works can be exceeded only by the petulant arrogance with which he is sure to reject your observations."
Ye who beheld—oh sight admired and mourn'd,
Whose radiance mock'd the ruin it adorn'd;
When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.
"Such are the names that here your plaudits sought,
When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote."
"Dear are the days that made our annals bright,
Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write."
"I am almost ashamed," writes Lord Holland to Rogers, October 22, 1812 (Clayden's Rogers and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 115), "of having induced Lord Byron to write on so ungrateful a theme (ungrateful in all senses) as the opening of a theatre; he was so good-humoured, took so much pains, corrected so good-humouredly, and produced, as I thought and think, a prologue so superior to the common run of that sort of trumpery, that it is quite vexatious to see him attacked for it. Some part of it is a little too much laboured, and the whole too long; but surely it is good and poetical.... You cannot imagine how I grew to like Lord Byron in my critical intercourse with him, and how much I am convinced that your friendship and judgment have contributed to improve both his understanding and his happiness."
"Immortal names emblazon'd on our line."
As glared each rising flash1, and ghastly shone
The skies with lightnings awful as their own.
"As glared the volumed blaze."
"Mr. Whitbread was a more steady character; his appearance was heavy; he was fond of agriculture, and was very plain and simple in his tastes. Both were reckoned good debaters in the House, but Grey was the most eloquent."
"I'm like Archimedes for science and skill;
I'm like a young prince going straight up a hill;
I'm like—(with respect to the fair be it said)—
I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed.
If you ask why the 11th of June I remember
Much better than April, or May, or November,
On that day, my lords, with truth I assure ye,
My sainted progenitor set up his brewery;
On that day, in the morn, he began brewing beer;
On that day, too, commenced his connubial career;]
On that day he received and he issued his bills;
On that day he cleared out all the cash from his tills;
On that day he died, having finished his summing,
And the angels all cried, 'Here's old Whitbread a-coming!'
So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh,
For his beer with an E, and his bier with an I;
And still on that day, in the hottest of weather,
The whole Whitbread family dine all together.—
So long as the beams of this house shall support
The roof which o'ershades this respectable Court,
Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos;
So long as that sun shall shine in at those windows,
My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines,
Mine recorded in journals, his blazoned on signs!"
"My Lord,—
"As I now have the honour to be
By Man'ging a Playhouse a double M.P.,
In this my address I think fit to complain
Of certain encroachments on great Drury Lane," etc., etc.
"By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd."
"Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn,
Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn."
"Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn."
Till slowly ebb'd the {lava of the}/{spent volcanic} wave,
And blackening ashes mark'd the Muse's grave.
Till ebb'd the lava of {the burning}/{that molten} wave3
This is the place where, if a poet
Shined in description, he might show it.
Yes, it shall be—the magic of that name,
That scorns the scythe of Time, the torch of Flame,
On the same spot, etc., etc.
"Nay, lower still, the Drama yet deplores
That late she deigned to crawl upon all-fours.
When Richard roars in Bosworth for a horse,
If you command, the steed must come in course.
If you decree, the Stage must condescend
To soothe the sickly taste we dare not mend.
Blame not our judgment should we acquiesce,
And gratify you more by showing less.
Oh, since your Fiat stamps the Drama's laws,
Forbear to mock us with misplaced applause;
That public praise be ne'er again disgraced,
From {brutes to man recall}/{babes and brutes redeem} a nation's taste;
Then pride shall doubly nerve the actor's powers,
When Reason's voice is echoed back by ours."
"The past reproach let present scenes refute,
Nor shift from man to babe, from babe to brute."
"Your taste, recover'd half from foreign quacks,
Takes airings, now, on English horses' backs;
While every modern bard may raise his name,
If not on lasting praise, on stable fame."
"Then crush'd by rules, and weaken'd as refined,
For years the power of Tragedy declined;
From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
Till Declamation roared, whilst Passion slept.
Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread,
Philosophy remained though Nature fled.
But forced, at length, her ancient reign to quit,
She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of Wit;
Exulting Folly hailed the joyous Day,
And Pantomime and Song confirmed her sway.
But who the coming changes can presage,
And mark the future periods of the Stage?
Perhaps if skill could distant times explore,
New Behns, new Durfeys, yet remain in store;
Perhaps, where Lear has raved, and Hamlet died,
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride;
Perhaps (for who can guess th' effects of chance?)
Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance."
"Till blackening ashes and lonely wall
Usurp'd the Muse's realm, and mark'd her fall."
"Ladies and gentlemen,—I know nothing I have done to offend you, and has set (sic) those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to you to turn them out."
"Child! Why, sir, when I was a very young actor in the York Company, that little creature kept an inn at Tadcaster, and had a large family"
"though deservedly discountenanced at a great theatre, she will, no doubt, prove an acquisition to the infant establishment"
"In 1812 at Middelton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition, an attempt on horseback, I think, to escort the women—God knows where—in the month of November, ended in a fit of the Lumbago—as Lord Ogleby says, 'a grievous enemy to Gallantry and address'—and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for the cause of his malady, I don't think that he would have turned a 'Squire of dames' in a hurry again. He seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into assemblies, and trying to look young—and gentlemanly.
Erskine too!—Erskine was there—good but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did everything admirably, but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then 'the trial by Jury!!!'—I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed 'Cheek Chester,' and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a 'bonvivant' in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in 'by G-d, he drinks like a Man!'"
"On Tuesday," he says, "I supped, after the opera, at Mrs. Meynel's with a set of the most fashionable company, which, take notice, I very seldom do now, as I certainly am not of the age to mix often with young people. Lady Melbourne was standing before the fire, and adjusting her feathers in the glass. Says she, 'Lord, they say the stocks will blow up! That will be very comical.'"
"Ah! my mother was a most remarkable woman; not merely clever and engaging, but the most sagacious woman I ever knew"
"the best, the kindest, and ablest female I have ever known, old or young,"
"Lady M., who might have been my mother, excited an interest in my feelings that few young women have been able to awaken. She was a charming person—a sort of modern Aspasia, uniting the energy of a man's mind with the delicacy and tenderness of a woman's. She wrote and spoke admirably, because she felt admirably. Envy, malice, hatred, or uncharitableness, found no place in her feelings. She had all of philosophy, save its moroseness, and all of nature, save its defects and general faiblesse; or if some portion of faiblesse attached to her, it only served to render her more forbearing to the errors of others. I have often thought, that, with a little more youth, Lady M. might have turned my head, at all events she often turned my heart, by bringing me back to mild feelings, when the demon passion was strong within me. Her mind and heart were as fresh as if only sixteen summers had flown over her, instead of four times that number."
"Even now the autumnal charms of Lady —— are remembered by me with more than admiration. She resembled a landscape by Claude Lorraine, with a setting sun, her beauties enhanced by the knowledge that they were shedding their last dying beams, which threw a radiance around. A woman... is only grateful for her first and last conquest. The first of poor dear Lady ——'s was achieved before I entered on this world of care; but the last, I do flatter myself, was reserved for me, and a bonne bouche it was."
"There was a lady at that time," said Byron (Medwin's Conversations, pp. 93, 94), "double my own age, the mother of several children who were perfect angels, with whom I had formed a liaison that continued without interruption for eight months. The autumn of a beauty like her's is preferable to the spring in others. She told me she was never in love till she was thirty; and I thought myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger passion; which she returned with equal ardour.... She had been sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible in the scale of creation; and on whom she bestowed a numerous family, to which the law gave him the right to be called father. Strange as it may seem, she gained (as all women do) an influence over me so strong, that I had great difficulty in breaking with her, even when I knew she had been inconstant to me: and once was on the point of going abroad with her, and narrowly escaped this folly."
"This is a melancholy subject"—[the death, by consumption of Lord Aberdeen's children]—"and I must go to another. Poor Lady Oxford! I had heard with great concern of her dangerous illness, but hoped she might get through it, and was much, very much grieved to hear that it had ended fatally. I had, as you know, lived a great deal with her from the time she came into this country, immediately after her marriage; but for some years past, since she went abroad, had scarcely had any correspondence or intercourse with her, till I met her in town last spring. I then saw her twice, and both times she seemed so overjoyed to see an old friend, and expressed her joy so naturally and cordially, that I felt no less overjoyed at seeing her after so long an absence. She talked, with great satisfaction, of our meeting for a longer time this next spring, little thinking of an eternal separation. There could not, in all respects, be a more ill-matched pair than herself and Lord Oxford, or a stronger instance of the cruel sports of Venus, or, rather, of Hymen:It has been said that she was, in some measure, forced into the match. Had she been united to a man whom she had loved, esteemed, and respected, she herself might have been generally respected and esteemed, as well as loved; but in her situation, to keep clear of all misconduct required a strong mind or a cold heart; perhaps both, and she had neither. Her failings were in no small degree the effect of circumstances; her amiable qualities all her own. There was something about her, in spite of her errors, remarkably attaching, and that something was not merely her beauty. 'Kindness has resistless charms,' and she was full of affectionate kindness to those she loved, whether as friends or as lovers. As a friend, I always found her the same, never at all changeful or capricious. As I am not a very rigid moralist, and am extremely open to kindness, 'I could have better spared a better woman.'"'Cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea
Sævo mittere cum joco.'
"of one peer and two commoners, one poet and two prosers, one Lord and two Brewers; and the only points in which they coincided were in being all three parliament men, all three politicians, all three in opposition to the Government of the country. Their names, as we understand, were Vassal Holland, Samuel Whitbread, and Harvey Christian Combe."
Far be from him that hour which asks in vain
Tears such as flow for Garrick in his strain;
Far be that hour that vainly asks in turn
Such verse for him as {crown'd his/wept o'er} Garrick's urn.
"If you think the picture you saw at Murray's worth your acceptance, it is yours; and you may put a glove or mask on it, if you like"
"It is with unaffected satisfaction we find that he has improved wonderfully, and that he is a poet. Indeed, when we consider the comparatively short interval which has elapsed, and contrast the character of his recent with that of his early work, we confess ourselves astonished at the intellectual progress which Lord Byron has made, and are happy to hold him up as another example of the extraordinary effects of study and cultivation, even on minds apparently of the most unpromising description."
"abound with beautiful imagery, clothed in a diction free, forcible, and various. Childe Harold, although avowedly a fragment, contains many fragments which would do honour to any poet, of any period, in any country."
"Mr. Elliston then came forward and delivered the following Prize Address. We cannot boast of the eloquence of the delivery. It was neither gracefully nor correctly recited. The merits of the production itself we submit to the criticism of our readers. We cannot suppose that it was selected as the most poetical composition of all the scores that were submitted to the Committee. But, perhaps by its tenor, by its allusions to the fire, to Garrick, to Siddons, and to Sheridan, it was thought most applicable to the occasion, notwithstanding its being in parts unmusical, and in general tame."
"A wag has already published a small volume of Addresses rejected, in which, with admirable wit, all the poets of the day are assembled, contesting for the Prize Address at Drury Lane. And certainly he has assigned to the pen of Lord B. a superior poem to that which has gained the prize."
"Poor Byron! what I hear and read of his prologue makes me very angry. Of such value is public favour! So a man is to be tried by a copy of verses thrown off perhaps at hazard, and invitâ Minervâ!"
"When Mr. France was here," writes Mrs. Byron to Hanson, July 13, 1811 (Kölbing's Englische Studien, vol. xxv. p. I53), "he told me there had been an injunction procured to prevent Deardin from working the Coal Pits that was in dispute between Lord Byron and him, but since France was here, there has been a Man from Lancashire who says they are worked by Deardin the same as ever. I also heard that the Person you sent down to take an account of the Coals was bribed by Deardin, and did not give an account of half of what was got."
"Lord Byron, to the best of his knowledge and recollection, in Dec., 1805-January, 1806 applied to King, in consequence of an advertisement in the papers, who acquainted Lord Byron that his minority prevented all money transactions without the security of competent persons. Through Mr. K. he became acquainted with Mr. Dellevelly, another of the tribe of Israel, and subsequently with a Mr. Howard of Golden Square.
"After many delays, during which Lord B. had interviews with Howard, once, he thinks, in Golden Square, but more frequently in Piccadilly, Mrs. M[assingberd] agreed to become security jointly with her daughter. Lord B. knows Howard's person perfectly well, has not seen him subsequent to the transaction, but recollects Howard's mentioning to him that he, Lord B., was acting imprudently, stating that he made it a rule to advise young men against such proceedings. Lord B. recollects, on the day on which the money was paid, that he remained in the next room till the papers were signed, Mrs. M[assingberd] having stated that the parties wished him to be kept out of sight during the business, and wished to avoid even mentioning his name. Mrs. M[assingberd] deducted the interest for two years and a half, and £100 for Howard's papers."
Mortal ('twas thus she spake), etc.
"Lord Byron.
A Bill for £1500, drawn by Scrope B. Davies, lies due at Sir James Esdaile and Co's., No. 21, Lombard-Street.
All Drafts intended for the Payment of Bills, to be brought before Half past Three o'Clock.
Please to call between 3 and Five o'Clock."
"Do pray press Claughton, as Mr. D.'s business must be settled at all events. I send you his letter, and I am more uncomfortable than I can possibly express myself upon the subject. Pray write."
"Dear Sir,—I have to request that you will pay the bearer (my Groom) the wages due to him (12 pds. 10s.), and dismiss him immediately, as I have given up my horses, and place the sum to my account.
Ever yours,
Byron."
"Dear Sir,—I request your attention to the enclosed. See what can be done with Howard, and urge Claughton. If this kind of thing continues, I must quit a country which my debts render uninhabitable, notwithstanding every sacrifice on my part.
Yours ever,
B."
"Byron often talks of the authors of the Rejected Addresses, and always in terms of unqualified praise. He says that the imitations, unlike all other imitations, are full of genius. 'Parodies,' he said, 'always give a bad impression of the original, but in the Rejected Addresses the reverse was the fact;' and he quoted the second and third stanzas, in imitation of himself, as admirable, and just what he could have wished to write on a similar subject"
"The Bessboroughs," writes Lady H. Leveson Gower to Lady G. Morpeth, September 12, 1812 (Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, vol. i. pp. 40, 41), "have been unpacked about a couple of hours. My aunt looks stout and well, but poor Caroline most terribly the contrary. She is worn to the bone, as pale as death and her eyes starting out of her head. She seems indeed in a sad way, alternately in tearing spirits and in tears. I hate her character, her feelings, and herself when I am away from her, but she interests me when I am with her, and to see her poor careworn face is dismal, in spite of reason and speculation upon her extraordinary conduct. She appears to me in a state very (little) short of insanity, and my aunt describes it as at times having been decidedly so."
"a dialogue matrimonial, which passed between Jonathan Wild, Esquire, and Laetitia his wife" (née Laetitia Snap), "Laetitia asks, 'But pray, Mr. Wild, why b—ch? Why did you suffer such a word to escape you?'"
"All who behold my mutilated pile
Shall brand its ravager with classic rage,
And soon a titled bard from Britain's Isle,
Thy country's praise and suffrage shall engage,
And fire with Athens' wrongs an angry age!"
"Such as mild Justice might herself dispense,
To Inexperience and a First Offence."
Contents
cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 276
"Friday Morning.
"My Dearest Byron,—I have just received your note, but I will not execute your Commission; and, moreover, I will tell Lord Boringdon that I refused to do it. I know your situation; and I should never sleep again, if by any interference of mine, for by so harsh a word I must call it, you should be led by your generosity, your pride, or any other noble motive, to do more than you are called upon to do.
"I mentioned the thing to Lord Holland last night, and he entirely agreed with me, that you are not called upon to do it. The Principal and the legal interest are all that these extortioners are entitled to; and, you must forgive me, but I will not do as you require. I shall keep the draft till I see you.
"Yours ever and ever,
"Saml. Rogers."
"I have never heard any one who fulfilled my ideal of an orator. Grattan would have been near it, but for his harlequin delivery. Pitt I never heard. Fox but once, and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as different from an orator as an improvisatore, or a versifier, from a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory. Canning is sometimes very like one. Windham I did not admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad sophistry. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English. Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour's delivery. Burdett is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and I think the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches up stairs, and run down from Bellamy's when he was upon his legs. I heard Bob Milnes make his second speech; it made no impression. I like Ward—studied, but keen, and sometimes eloquent. Peel, my school and form fellow (we sat within two of each other), strange to say, I have never heard, though I often wished to do so; but, from what I remember of him at Harrow, he is, or should be, among the best of them. Now I do not admire Mr. Wilberforce's speaking; it is nothing but a flow of words—'words, words, alone.'
"I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence, properly so called; and am inclined to think that the Irish had a great deal, and that the French will have, and have had in Mirabeau. Lord Chatham and Burke are the nearest approaches to orators in England. I don't know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but in the House, I wish him at the bar once more. Lauderdale is shrill, and Scotch, and acute. Of Brougham I shall say nothing, as I have a personal feeling of dislike to the man.
cross-reference: return to Footnote 2 of Journal entry for March 10th, 1814
"But amongst all these, good, bad, and indifferent, I never heard the speech which was not too long for the auditors, and not very intelligible, except here and there. The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious and tiresome as maybe to those who must be often present. I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly, but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit: and he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length.
"The impression of Parliament upon me was, that its members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence, (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and I suspect still fewer in modern times,) but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them know what is right, though they can't express it nobly.
"Horne Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial reunions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in a barn, would have done. Whatever diffidence or nervousness I felt (and I felt both, in a great degree) arose from the number rather than the quality of the assemblage, and the thought rather of the public without than the persons within,—knowing (as all know) that Cicero himself, and probably the Messiah, could never have altered the vote of a single lord of the bedchamber, or bishop. I thought our House dull, but the other animating enough upon great days.
"I have heard that when Grattan made his first speech in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubtful whether to laugh at or cheer him. The débût of his predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under nearly similar circumstances. But when the ministerial part of our senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer) for the cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman, and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan's speech, indeed, deserved them; it was a chef-d'oeuvre. I did not hear that speech of his (being then at Harrow), but heard most of his others on the same question—also that on the war of 1815. I differed from his opinions on the latter question, but coincided in the general admiration of his eloquence.
"When I met old Courtenay, the orator, at Rogers's the poet's, in 1811-12, I was much taken with the portly remains of his fine figure, and the still acute quickness of his conversation. It was he who silenced Flood in the English House by a crushing reply to a hasty débût of the rival of Grattan in Ireland. I asked Courtenay (for I like to trace motives) if he had not some personal provocation; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me, as I read it, to involve it. Courtenay said 'he had; that, when in Ireland (being an Irishman), at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, Flood had made a personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being a member of that House, could not defend himself, and that some years afterwards, the opportunity of retort offering in the English Parliament, he could not resist it.' He certainly repaid Flood with interest, for Flood never made any figure, and only a speech or two afterwards, in the English House of Commons. I must except, however, his speech on Reform in 1790, which Fox called 'the best he ever heard upon that subject.'"
Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town,
Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown1,—
For hang me if I know of which you may most brag,
Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny Post Bag;
...
But now to my letter—to yours 'tis an answer—
To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,
All ready and dress'd for proceeding to spunge on
(According to compact) the wit in the dungeon2—
Pray Phœbus at length our political malice
May not get us lodgings within the same palace!
I suppose that to-night you're engaged with some codgers,
And for Sotheby's3 Blues have deserted Sam Rogers;
And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got,
Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote.
But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra,
And you'll be Catullus, the Regent, Mamurra4.
"What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this 'Glory of the People' was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!... that this "'Exciter of Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!), this 'Adonis in Loveliness,' was a corpulent man of fifty!—in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity."
"Leigh Hunt is an enthusiast, very well intentioned, and, I believe, prepared for the worst. He said, pleasantly enough, 'No one can accuse me of not writing a libel. Everything is a libel, as the law is now declared, and our security lies only in their shame.'"
"the brave and enlightened man... to whom the public owes a debt as the champion of their liberties and virtues"
"What though for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison."
"There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into an idea of being a great Poet."
"It is a great Pity that People should, by associating themselves with the finest things, spoil them. Hunt has damned Hampstead, and masks, and sonnets, and Italian tales."
"If I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him; but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart. I care not for white Busts—and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing."
"there was not an English trait in him from head to foot—morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his composition."
"He loves everything," says Crabb Robinson (Diary, vol. ii. p. 192), "he catches the sunny side of everything, and, excepting that he has a few polemical antipathies, finds everything beautiful."
"I certainly shall not be ill-natured to Rimini. It is very sweet and very lively in many places, and is altogether piquant, as being by far the best imitation of Chaucer and some of his Italian contemporaries that modern times have produced."
"a very good opinion of the talents and principle of Mr. Hunt, though, as he said, 'our tastes are so opposite that we are totally unsuited to each other ... in short, we are more formed to be friends at a distance, than near.'"
"Next week will be published (as 'Lives' are the rage)
The whole Reminiscences, wondrous and strange,
Of a small puppy-dog, that lived once in the cage
Of the late noble Lion at Exeter 'Change.
"Though the dog is a dog of the kind they call 'sad,'
'Tis a puppy that much to good breeding pretends;
And few dogs have such opportunities had
Of knowing how Lions behave—among friends.
"How that animal eats, how he snores, how he drinks,
Is all noted down by this Boswell so small;
And 'tis plain, from each sentence, the puppy-dog thinks
That the Lion was no such great things after all.
"Though he roared pretty well—this the puppy allows—
It was all, he says, borrowed—all second-hand roar;
And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows
To the loftiest war-note the Lion could pour.
"'Tis, indeed, as good fun as a Cynic could ask,
To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits
Takes gravely the Lord of the Forest to task,
And judges of Lions by puppy-dog habits.
"Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)
With sops every day from the Lion's own pan,
He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcass,
And—does all a dog, so diminutive, can.
"However, the book's a good book, being rich in
Examples and warnings to lions high-bred,
How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen,
Who'll feed on them living, and foul them when dead.
"Sotheby is a good man; rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me (something about Agamemnon or Orestes—or some of his plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time). Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me by the button, and the heart-strings, and spared neither. W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and, coming up to us both, took me by the hand and pathetically bade me farewell, 'for,' said he, 'I see it is all over with you.' Sotheby then went away. Sic me servavit Apollo."
"Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,
Nisi impudicus et vorax, et aleo,
Mamurram habere, quod Comata Gallia
Habebat uncti et ultima Britannia?"
"spouting in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering. 'I told them,' he said, 'that it was a most flagrant violation of the Constitution—that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom, and that—'
'But what was this dreadful grievance?' asked Moore.
'The grievance?' he repeated, pausing as if to consider, 'oh, that I forget.'"
1.
When Thurlow this damn'd nonsense sent,
(I hope I am not violent),
Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.
2.
And since not ev'n our Rogers' praise
To common sense his thoughts could raise—
Why would they let him print his lays?
3.
...
4.
...
5.
To me, divine Apollo, grant—O!
Hermilda's first and second canto,
I'm fitting up a new portmanteau;
6.
And thus to furnish decent lining,
My own and others' bays I'm twining—
So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in.
"When Rogers o'er this labour bent,
Their purest fire the Muses lent,
T' illustrate this sweet argument."
"in such a state of inextinguishable laughter, that, had the author himself been of the party, I question much whether he could have resisted the infection."
"Then, thus, to form Apollo's crown,
(Let ev'ry other bring his own,)
I lay my branch of laurel down."
| 1 | "'I lay my branch of laurel down.' "Thou 'lay thy branch of laurel down!' Why, what thou'st stole is not enow; And, were it lawfully thine own, Does Rogers want it most, or thou? Keep to thyself thy wither'd bough, Or send it back to Dr. Donne— Were justice done to both, I trow, He'd have but little, and thou—none. |
| 2 | "'Then thus to form Apollo's crown.' "A crown! why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi's town, Inquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, They'll tell you Phœbus gave his crown, Some years before your birth, to Rogers. |
| 3 | "'Let every other bring his own.' "When coals to Newcastle are carried, And owls sent to Athens as wonders, From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried, Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders; When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel, When Castlereagh's wife has an heir, Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel, And thou shalt have plenty to spare." |
"In English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers the same respectable corps of critics is successively exhibited, in the course of only ten lines, under the following significant but somewhat incongruous forms, viz. (1) Northern Wolves, (2) Harpies, (3) Bloodhounds."
"Shall he immortal bays aspire to wear
Who immortality from man would tear,
Repress the sigh which hopes a happier home,
And chase the visions of a life to come?"
"But before I conclude this Section, I wish to make the admirers of this Nautical Romance mindful of a Report, which prevailed many years ago; that Defoe, after all, was not the real author of Robinson Crusoe. This assertion is noticed in an article in the seventh volume of the Edinburgh Magazine [vol. vii. p. 269]. Dr. Towers, in his Life of Defoe in the Biographia, is inclined to pay no attention to it; but was that writer aware of the following letter, which also appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1788? (vol. lviii. part i. p. 208). At least no notice is taken of it in his Life of Defoe:It is impossible for me to enter on a discussion of this literary subject; though I thought the circumstance ought to be more generally known. And yet I must observe, that I always discerned a very striking falling off between the composition of the first and second volumes of this Romance—they seem to bear evident marks of having been the work of different writers."'Dublin, February 25.
Mr. Urban,—In the course of a late conversation with a nobleman of the first consequence and information in this kingdom, he assured me, that Mr. Benjamin Holloway, of Middleton Stony, assured him, some time ago: that he knew for fact, that the celebrated Romance of 'Robinson Crusoe' was really written by the Earl of Oxford, when confined in the Tower of London: that his Lordship gave the manuscript to Daniel Defoe, who frequently visited him during his confinement: and that Defoe, having afterwards added the second volume, published the whole as his own production. This anecdote I would not venture to send to your valuable magazine, if I did not think my information good, and imagine it might be acceptable to your numerous readers, not-withstanding the work has heretofore been generally attributed to the latter. W. W.'"
"Mem. Jul. 10, 1774. In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr. Benjamin Holloway, rector of Middleton Stony, in Oxfordshire, then about 70 years old, and in the early part of his life domestic Chaplain to Lord Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland say that Lord Oxford, while a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote the first volume of the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an amusement under confinement; and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who frequently visited Lord Oxford in the Tower, and was one of his Pamphlet writers. That De Foe, by Lord Oxford's permission, printed it as his own, and, encouraged by its extraordinary success, added himself the second volume, the inferiority of which is generally acknowledged. Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord Sunderland, that Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De Foe. Mr. Holloway was a grave conscientious clergyman, not vain of telling anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good orientalist, author of some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and a Master of Arts at St. John's College, Cambridge. He lived many years with great respect in Lord Sunderland's family, and was like to the late Duke of Marlborough. He died, as I remember, about the year "1761."
"'And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien,
Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen,
Neckar's fair daughter, Staël the Epicene!
Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and pumple nose
The bloom of young desire unceasing glows!
Fain would the Muse—but ah! she dares no more,
A mournful voice from lone Guyana's shore,
Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks,
Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.'
"These lines contain the Secret History of Quatremer's deportation. He presumed, in the Council of Five Hundred, to arraign Madame de Staël's conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. He was sent to Guyana. The transaction naturally brings to one's mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare's Henry IV."
"certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had ever known. 'She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you,' said he, 'never pausing except to take breath; and if during that interval a rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not attend to it, as she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it had not been interrupted'".
"ugly, and not of an intellectual ugliness. Her features were coarse, and the ordinary expression rather vulgar, she had an ugly mouth, and one or two irregularly prominent teeth, which perhaps gave her countenance an habitual gaiety. Her eye was full, dark, and expressive; and when she declaimed, which was almost whenever she spoke, she looked eloquent, and one forgot that she was plain."
"did not affect to conceal her preference for the society of men to that of her own sex,"
"Found her in an excessively dirty cabinet—sofa singularly so; her own dress, a loose spencer with a bare neck,"
"On the 28th of January," he writes, "I first waited on Madame de Staël. I was shown into her bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian customs, I was unprepared. She was sitting, most decorously, in her bed, and writing. She had her night-cap on, and her face was not made up for the day. It was by no means a captivating spectacle; but I had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled benignantly on me."
"Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. These latter talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their situation. She had a horror of the canaille, but anything of sangre asul had a charm for her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.' Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. 'What!' exclaimed she indignantly, 'What! have you sent away the Duke? Hurry! Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that, though I die for all the world, I live for him.'"
"Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly miscellany called the Universal Visitor. There was a formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw.... They were bound to write nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years"
"But first the Monarch, so polite,
Ask'd Mister Whitbread if he'd be a Knight.
Unwilling in the list to be enroll'd,
Whitbread contemplated the Knights of Peg,
Then to his generous Sov'reign made a leg,
And said, 'He was afraid he was too old,'" etc.
"He is now about thirty-three, but with all the freshness and bloom of five-and-twenty, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of vivacity, talks rapidly, though with great precision, and is so much interested in conversation, that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion."
"found her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she speaks, has much spirit and expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady."
"To Samuel Rogers, Esq., as a slight but most sincere token of my admiration of his genius."
"A word in conclusion. The noble lord appears to have an aristocratical solicitude to be read only by the opulent. Four shillings and sixpence for forty-one octavo pages of poetry! and those pages verily happily answering to Mr. Sheridan's image of a rivulet of text flowing through a meadow of margin. My good Lord Byron, while you are revelling in all the sensual and intellectual luxury which the successful sale of Newstead Abbey has procured for you, you little think of the privations to which you have subjected us unfortunate Reviewers, ... in order to enable us to purchase your lordship's expensive publication."
"Madame de Stael treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour; I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: she is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talents— pleasantry, anecdote, and literature. I have reviewed her Essay on Suicide in the last Edinburgh Review: it is not one of her best, and I have accordingly said more of the author and the subject than of the work."
"Lady A. F—— was also very handsome. It is melancholy to talk of women in the past tense. What a pity, that of all flowers, none fade so soon as beauty! Poor Lady A. F— has not got married. Do you know, I once had some thoughts of her as a wife; not that I was in love, as people call it, but I had argued myself into a belief that I ought to marry, and, meeting her very often in society, the notion came into my head, not heart, that she would suit me. Moore, too, told me so much of her good qualities—all which was, I believe, quite true—that I felt tempted to propose to her, but did not, whether tant mieux or tant pis, God knows, supposing my proposal accepted."
"Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou."
"Have you not heard of the Trojan Horse;
With Seventy Men in his Belly?
This Dragon was not quite so big,
But very near, I'll tell you;
Devoured he poor Children three,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he eat them up,
As one would eat an Apple.
"All sorts of Cattle this Dragon did eat,
Some say he eat up Trees,
And that the Forest sure he would
Devour by degrees.
For Houses and Churches were to him Geese and Turkies;
He eat all, and left none behind,
But some Stones, dear Jack, which he could not crack,
Which on the Hills you'll find."
"Farewell, thou poor rag of the Muse!
In the bag of the clothesman go lie;
A farthing thou'lt fetch from the Jews,
Which the hard-hearted Christians deny," etc.
"There reeling Morris and his bestial songs."
"a handful of grey pease, given him by a girl at a wake (after fasting for twenty-four hours) the most comfortable repast he had ever made."
"I liked the Dandies," says Byron, in his Detached Thoughts; "they were always very civil to me, though in general they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madme. de Staël, Lewis, Horace Twiss, and the like, damnably. They persuaded Madme. de Staël that Alvanley had a hundred thousand a year, etc., etc., till she praised him to his face for his beauty! and made a set at him for Albertine (Libertine, as Brummell baptized her, though the poor girl was, and is, as correct as maid or wife can be, and very amiable withal), and a hundred other fooleries besides. The truth is, that, though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of Dandyism in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones at four and twenty. I had gamed and drunk and taken my degrees in most dissipations, and, having no pedantry, and not being overbearing, we ran quietly together. I knew them all more or less, and they made me a member of Watier's (a superb club at that time), being, I take it, the only literary man (except two others, both men of the world, M[oore] and S[pencer] in it. Our Masquerade was a grand one; so was the Dandy Ball too—at the Argyle,—but that (the latter) was given by the four chiefs—B[rummel?], M[idmay?], A[lvanley?], and P[ierreoint?], if I err not."
"He had a prodigious memory, and could repeat by heart more of Cicero than you could easily believe.... I never met a man with a fuller mind than Mackintosh,—such readiness on all subjects, such a talker."
"Till subdued by age and illness," wrote Sydney Smith (Life of Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 500), "his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with."
"Mr. Canning it seems has (to use a French phrase) reformed his political corps. He assembled them at the close of the Session, and with many expressions of regret for the failure of certain negociations, which might have been favourable to them as a body, relieved them from their oaths of allegiance, and recommended them to pursue in future their objects separately. The Right Honourable gentleman, perhaps, finds it more convenient for himself to act unencumbered; and both he and one or two others may find their interest in disbanding the squad; but some of them are turned off without a character."
"We believe ... that Mr. Canning is not indisposed to join the present Cabinet, and may wish one or two of his particular friends to come in with him."
"I have led my ragamuffins where they are pepper'd: there's but three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town's end, to beg during life."
"a little fat man with a flaxen wig, Kersey-mere breeches, a blue straight-cut coat, and a broad-brimmed white hat. To the most daring courage he added great dexterity and cunning; and was said, in propria persona, to have taken more thieves than all the other Bow Street officers put together."
"In society I have met Sheridan frequently: he was superb! He had a sort of liking for me, and never attacked me, at least to my face, as he did every body else—high names, and wits, and orators, some of them poets also. I have seen him cut up Whitbread, quiz Madame de Staël, annihilate Colman, and do little less by some others (whose names, as friends, I set not down) of good fame and ability. Poor fellow! he got drunk very thoroughly and very soon. It occasionally fell to my lot to pilot him home—no sinecure, for he was so tipsy that I was obliged to put on his cocked hat for him. To be sure, it tumbled off again, and I was not myself so sober as to be able to pick it up again.
"The last time I met him was, I think, at Sir Gilbert Elliot's, where he was as quick as ever—no, it was not the last time; the last time was at Douglas Kinnaird's. I have met him in all places and parties—at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock's, at Robins's the auctioneer's, at Sir Humphry Davy's, at Sam Rogers's,—in short, in most kinds of company, and always found him very convivial and delightful.
"I have seen Sheridan weep two or three times. It may be that he was maudlin; but this only renders it more impressive, for who would see"Once I saw him cry at Robins's the auctioneer's, after a splendid dinner, full of great names and high spirits. I had the honour of sitting next to Sheridan. The occasion of his tears was some observation or other upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office and keeping to their principles: Sheridan turned round: 'Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived, or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have a shilling of their own.' And in saying this he wept.'From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expire a driveller and a show'?
"There was something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say that it, in fact, is my opinion also, and that he is a person whom I do absolutely and utterly despise, abhor, and detest.' He then launched out into a description of his despicable qualities, at some length, and with his usual wit, and evidently in earnest (for he hated Lyttelton). His former compliment had been drawn out by some preceding one, just as its reverse was by my hinting that it was unmerited.
"I have more than once heard him say, 'that he never had a shilling of his own.' To be sure, he contrived to extract a good many of other people's.
"In 1815 I had occasion to visit my lawyer in Chancery Lane; he was with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring that of Sheridan. 'Oh,' replied the attorney, 'the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.'—'Well,' said I, 'and what do you mean to do?'—'Nothing at all for the present,' said he: 'would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?' and here he began laughing, and going over Sheridan's good gifts of conversation.
"Now, from personal experience, I can vouch that my attorney is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly accessible to any kind of impression out of the statute or record; and yet Sheridan, in half an hour, had found the way to soften and seduce him in such a manner, that I almost think he would have thrown his client (an honest man, with all the laws, and some justice, on his side) out of the window, had he come in at the moment.
"Such was Sheridan! he could soften an attorney! There has been nothing like it since the days of Orpheus.
"One day I saw him take up his own 'Monody on Garrick.' He lighted upon the Dedication to the Dowager Lady Spencer. On seeing it, he flew into a rage, and exclaimed 'that it must be a forgery, that he had never dedicated any thing of his to such a damned canting bitch,' etc., etc.—and so went on for half an hour abusing his own dedication, or at least the object of it. If all writers were equally sincere, it would be ludicrous.
"He told me that, on the night of the grand success of his School for Scandal he was knocked down and put into the watch-house for making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watchmen. Latterly, when found drunk one night in the kennel, and asked his name by the watchmen, he answered, 'Wilberforce.'
"When dying he was requested to undergo 'an operation.' He replied that he had already submitted to two, which were enough for one man's lifetime. Being asked what they were, he answered, 'having his hair cut, and sitting for his picture."
"I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought him extremely pleasant and convivial. Sheridan's humour, or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage; he never laughed (at least that I saw, and I watched him), but Colman did. If I had to choose and could not have both at a time I should say, 'Let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman.' Sheridan for dinner, Colman for supper; Sheridan for claret or port but Colman for every thing, from the madeira and champagne at dinner the claret with a layer of port between the glasses up to the punch of the night, and down to the grog, or gin and water, of daybreak;—all these I have threaded with both the same. Sheridan was a grenadier company of life guards, but Colman a whole regiment—of light infantry, to be sure, but still a regiment."
"Potations pottle deep"
With horn-handled knife,
To kill a tender lamb as dead as mutton."
"A short time back (say the newspapers, and newspapers never say the thing which is not) Lady H. gave a ball and supper. Among the company were Lord B—n, Lady W—, and Lady C. L—b. Lord B., it would appear, is a favourite with the latter Lady; on this occasion, however, he seemed to lavish his attention on another fair object. This preference so enraged Lady C. L. that in a paroxysm of jealousy she took up a dessert-knife and stabbed herself. The gay circle was, of course, immediately plunged in confusion and dismay, which however, was soon succeeded by levity and scandal. The general cry for medical assistance was from Lady W—d: Lady W—d!!! And why? Because it was said that, early after her marriage, Lady W— also took a similar liberty with her person for a similar cause, and was therefore considered to have learned from experience the most efficacious remedy for the complaint. It was also whispered that the Lady's husband had most to grieve, that the attempt had not fully succeeded. Lady C. L. is still living.
"The poet has told us how 'Ladies wish to be who love their Lords;' but this is the first public demonstration in our times to show us how Ladies wish to be who love, not their own, but others' Lords. 'Better be with the dead than thus,' cried the jealous fair; and, casting a languishing look at Lord B—, who, Heaven knows, is more like Pan than Apollo, she whipt up as pretty a little dessert-knife as a Lady could desire to commit suicide with,"The desperate Lady was carried out of the room, and the affair endeavoured to be hushed up, etc., etc."'And stuck it in her wizzard.'
"led an irregular life, and met a deplorable death at Doberan, a small city of the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, a favourite resort in summer for bathing, gambling, etc. Some officers of the état-major of Bernadotte had gone to try their luck in this place of play and pleasure. They quarrelled over some louis, and a duel immediately ensued. I well remember that the Grand-Duke Paul of Mecklenburg-Schwerin told me he was there at the time, and, while walking with his tutors in the park, suddenly heard the clinking of swords in a neighbouring thicket. They ran to the place, and reached it just in time to see the head of Albert fall, cleft by one of those long and formidable sabres which were carried by the Prussian cavalry."
"You are to imagine, then, before you a short, stout, little gentleman, about five and a half feet high, with a very red face, black hair, and black eyes. You are to suppose him to possess a very gay and animated countenance, and you are to see in him all the restlessness of a will-o'-wisp ... He enters a room with a countenance so satisfied, and a step so light and almost fantastic, that all your previous impressions of the dignity and severity of the Edinburgh Review are immediately put to flight ... It is not possible, however, to be long in his presence without understanding something of his real character, for the same promptness and assurance which mark his entrance into a room carry him at once into conversation. The moment a topic is suggested—no matter what or by whom—he comes forth, and the first thing you observe is his singular fluency," etc., etc.
"His manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man whose real character is so much the reverse."
"And all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine
To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over; Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face—but you have acted, on the whole,
Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."
"Barnaby, Barnaby, thou'st been drinking,
I can tell by thy nose, and thy eyes winking;
Drunk at Richmond, drunk at Dover,
Drunk at Newcastle, drunk all over.
Hey, Barnaby! tak't for a warning,
Be no more drunk, nor dry in a morning!"
"A Persian's Heav'n is easily made—
'Tis but black eyes and lemonade."
"The Ode of Horace—some passages of which I told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures:'Natis in usum lætitiæ,' etc.;'Quanta laboras in Charybdi!
Digne puer meliore flammâ!'"
"In his first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable—'Bright as the gem of Giamschid'—but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to 'Bright as the ruby of Giamschid.' On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, 'that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a "ruby" might unluckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to "Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;"' which he accordingly did in the following edition"
"Then all the riches this place contains, as well as the carbuncle of Giamschid, shall be hers."
"I had already, singularly enough, anticipated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aërial parent in an episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circumstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, 'All I ask of your friendship is—not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author's) nature—but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aërial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery'"
"Nous nous persuadons souvent d'aimer les gens plus puissans que nous, et néanmoins c'est l'interêt seul qui produit notre amitié; nous ne nous donnons pas à eux pour le bien que nous leur voulons faire, mais pour celui que nous en voulons recevoir."
"Yes, his manner was cold; his shake of the hand came under the genus 'mortmain;' but his heart was overflowing with benevolence"
Albany, Monday, August 31, 1813.
"My Dear Byron,—You have requested me to tell you all that I heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there; you have asked me to remember every circumstance, in the remotest degree relating to it, which I heard. In compliance with your wishes, I write to you all I heard, and I cannot imagine it to be very far from the fact, as the circumstances happened only a day or two before I arrived at Athens, and, consequently, was a matter of common conversation at the time.
"The new governor, unaccustomed to have the same intercourse with the Christians as his predecessor, had, of course, the barbarous Turkish ideas with regard to women. In consequence, and in compliance with the strict letter of the Mohammedan law, he ordered this girl to be sewed up in a sack, and thrown into the sea—as is, indeed, quite customary at Constantinople. As you were returning from bathing in the Piræus, you met the procession going down to execute the sentence of the Waywode on this unhappy girl. Report continues to say, that on finding out what the object of their journey was, and who was the miserable sufferer, you immediately interfered; and on some delay in obeying your orders, you were obliged to inform the leader of the escort that force should make him comply; that, on further hesitation, you drew a pistol, and told him, that if he did not immediately obey your orders, and come back with you to the Aga's house, you would shoot him dead. On this the man turned about and went with you to the governor's house; here you succeeded, partly by personal threats, and partly by bribery and entreaty, in procuring her pardon, on condition of her leaving Athens. I was told that you then conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night to Thebes, where she found a safe asylum. Such is the story I heard, as nearly as I can recollect it at present. Should you wish to ask me any further questions about it, I shall be very ready and willing to answer them.
I remain, my dear Byron,
Yours very sincerely,
Sligo.
"almost chuckled with joy or irony," and said, "Well, I cautioned you,
and told you that my name would almost damn any thing or creature."
"tavern continued to be frequented by young men, and 'much in vogue for devilled kidneys, oysters, and Welch rabbits, cigars, "goes" of brandy, and great supplies of London stout' (also for comic songs), till it was absorbed in the extensions of the Adelphi Theatre."
"On ne vous a done pas violé? on ne vous a point fendu le ventre, comme le philosophe Pangloss me l'avait assuré? Si fait, dit la belle Cunégonde; mais on ne meurt pas toujours de ces deux accidents."
When from the heart where Sorrow sits,
Her dusky shadow mounts too high,
And o'er the changing aspect flits,
And clouds the brow, or fills the eye:
Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink;
My Thoughts their dungeon know too well—
Back to my breast the wanderers shrink,
And bleed within their silent cell.
"I wish you'd let me and my good alone, then—snubbing this way when I'm in spirits."
List of Letters
Contents
cross-reference: return to Footnote 2 of Letter 210
"making a particular sort of blacking, which he said would eventually supersede every other."
"heard him, on the occasion of a delightful old light-blue Sèvres box he was using being admired, say, in his lisping way, 'Yes, it is a nice summer box, but would not do for winter wear.'"
"I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private life. They were odd, but they were natural. Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and 'thanking God that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly ludicrous. Rogers used to call him a 'Sentimental Harlequin;' but Rogers backbites everybody, and Curran, who used to quiz his great friend Godwin to his very face, would hardly respect a fair mark of mimicry in another. To be sure, Curran was admirable! to hear his description of the examination of an Irish witness was next to hearing his own speeches; the latter I never heard, but I have the former."
"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most—such imagination! There never was anything like it, that ever I saw or heard of. His published life—his published speeches—give you no idea of the man; none at all. He was a Machine of imagination, as some one said that Piron was an 'Epigrammatic Machine.' I did not see a great deal of Curran,—only in 1813; but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh's, Holland House, etc., etc. And he was wonderful, even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time."
"When Mathews first began to imitate Curran in Dublin—in society, I mean,—Curran sent for him and said, the moment he entered the room, 'Mr. Mathews, you are a first-rate artist, and, since you are to do my picture, pray allow me to give you a sitting.' Everyone knows how admirably Mathews succeeded in furnishing at last the portraiture begun under these circumstances. No one was more aware of the truth than Curran himself. In his latter and feeble days, he was riding in Hyde Park one morning, bowed down over the saddle and bitterly dejected in his air. Mathews happened to observe and saluted him. Curran stopped his horse for a moment, squeezed Charles by the hand, and said in that deep whisper which the comedian so exquisitely mimics, 'Don't speak to me, my dear Mathews; you are the only Curran now!'"
"Did you know Curran?" asked Byron of Lady Blessington (Conversations, p. 176); "he was the most wonderful person I ever saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the observation applied to ——, that his heart was in his head."
"'For though his monkey face might fail to woo her,
Yet, ah! his monkey tricks would quite undo her.'"
"It is the custom of maidens, on the eve of their marriage, to wash in the waters of the Scamander, and then to utter this almost sacred formula,'Take, O Scamander, my virginity'
"The motto to The Giaour:which is taken from one of the Irish Melodies, had been quoted by him incorrectly in the first editions of the poem" (Moore).One fatal remembrance—one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes,' etc.
Unmeet for Solitude to share.
For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear;
To share the Master's "bread and salt;"
To break the Master's bread and salt.
Nor there will weary traveller halt,
To bless the sacred "bread and salt."
"Those are like wax—apply them to the fire,
Melting, they take th' impressions you desire:
Easy to mould, and fashion as you please,
And again moulded with an equal ease:
Like smelted iron these the forms retain;
But, once impress'd, will never melt again."
"A hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of wind to fly or fall abroad."
"A Turkish tale I shall unfold,
A sweeter tale was never told;
But then the facts, I must allow,
Are in the east not common now;
Tho' in the 'olden time,' the scene
My Goaour (sic) describes had often been.
What is the cause! Perhaps the fair
Are now more cautious than they were;
Perhaps the Christians not so bold,
So enterprising as of old.
No matter what the cause may be,
It is a subject fit for me.
"Take my disjointed fragments then,
The offspring of a willing pen.
And give them to the public, pray,
On or before the month of May.
Yes, my disjointed fragments take,
But do not ask how much they'll make.
Perhaps not fifty pages—well,
I in a little space can tell
Th' adventures of an infidel;
Of quantity I never boast,
For quality's, approved of most.
"It is a handsome sum to touch,
Induces authors to write much;
But in this much, alas! my friend,
How little is there to commend.
So, Mr. M——y, I disdain,
To sacrifice my muse for gain.
I wish it to be understood,
The little which I write is good.
"I do not like the quarto size,
Th' octavo, therefore, I advise.
Then do not, Mr. M——y, fail,
To publish this, my Turkish Tale;
For tho' the volume may be thin,
A thousand readers it will win;
And when my pages they explore,
They'll gladly read them o'er and o'er;
And all the ladies, I engage,
With tears will moisten every page."
"Mr. Canning returned the poem to-day with very warm expressions of delight. I told him your delicacy as to separate publication, of which he said you should remove every apprehension."
And curse—if I could curse—the day.
And mourn—I dare not curse—the day,
That saw my solitary birth, etc., etc.
And tints to-morrow with a fancied ray
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray;
And {gilds/tints} the hope of Morning with its ray;
And gilds to-morrow's hope with heavenly ray.
"Some doubt had been expressed by Murray as to the propriety of his putting the name of Cain into the mouth of a Mussulman."
"So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,
The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more."
"I restore the Giaour to your Lordship entirely, and for it, the Bride of Abydos, and the miscellaneous poems intended to fill up the volume of the small edition, I beg leave to offer you the sum of One Thousand Guineas, and I shall be happy if you perceive that my estimation of your talents in my character of a man of business is not much under my admiration of them as a man."
"I received the books, and, among them, The Bride of Abydos. It is very, very beautiful. Lord Byron (when I met him, one day, at dinner at Mr. Ward's) was so kind as to promise to give me a copy of it. I mention this, not to save my purchase, but because I should be really flattered by the present. I can now say that I have read enough of Mad. de Staël to be highly pleased and instructed by her. The second volume delights me particularly. I have not yet finished the third, but am taking it with me on my journey to Liverpool."
He makes a Solitude, and calls it Peace.
Mark where his carnage and his conquests cease—
He makes a Solitude, and calls it—peace.
"Solitudinem faciunt—pacem appellant."
"Lord Byron is the author of the day; six thousand of his Bride of Abydos have been sold within a month."
"Then, if my lip once murmurs, it must be
No sigh for Safety, but a prayer for thee."
"Lord Byron's muse is extremely fruitful. He has another poem coming out, entitled The Bride of Abydos, which is spoken of in terms of the highest encomium."
"Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it;—
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."
The deepest murmur of this life shall be
No sigh for Safety, but a prayer for thee!
"I am sorry I must wait till 'we are veterans' before you will open to me 'the story of your wandering life, wherein you find more hours due to repentance ... than time hath told you yet.' Is it so with you, or are you, like me, reprobate enough to look back with complacency on what you have done? I suppose repentance must bring up the rear with us all; but at present I should say with old Fontenelle, Si je recommençais ma carrière, je ferais tout ce que j'ai fait."
"Conscience, avaunt! Richard's himself again."
"Horrible imaginings."
"To John I owe some obligation,
But John unluckily thinks fit
To publish it to all the nation,
So John and I are more than quit."
"My noble-hearted friend, Lord Byron, after many offers of a similar kind, which I felt bound to refuse, has irresistibly in my present circumstances ... volunteered to pay all my debts, and within a few pounds it is done! Oh, if you knew (but you do know) the exultation of heart, aye, and of head too, I feel at being free from these depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and brother Byron."
List of Letters
Contents
cross-reference: return to Footnote 3 of Journal entry for December 1st, 1813
"My dear Lord,—I need not tell you how much your second letter has gratified me, for I am apt to speak as sincerely as I think (you must suffer me to talk in this way after what you have been kind enough to say of my independence), and it always rejoices me to find that those whom I wish to regard will take me at my word. But I shall grow egotistical upon the strength of your Lordship's good opinion. I shall be heartily glad to see you on Saturday morning, and perhaps shall prevail upon you to take a luncheon with us at our dinner-time (3). The nature of your letter would have brought upon you a long answer, filled perhaps with an enthusiasm that might have made you smile; but I am keeping your servant in the cold, and so, among other good offices, you see what he has done for you. However, I would not make a light thing of so good a matter as I mean my enthusiasm to be, and intend, before I have done, that you shall have as sound a regard for it, as I have for the feelings on your Lordship's part that have called it forth.
Yours, my dear Lord, most sincerely and cordially,
Leigh Hunt.
Surrey Jail, 2'd Dec'r., 1813."
"He never attempts to deceive the world by representing the profligate as happy.... And his testimony is of the more value, as his situation in life must have permitted him to see the experiment tried under the most favourable circumstances. He has probably seen more than one example of young men of high birth, talents, and expectancies, ... sink under the burden of unsubdued tempers, licentious alliances, and ennervating indulgence.... He has seen all this; nay, perhaps—But we check our pen," etc., etc.
Blest as the call which from Medina's dome
Invites Devotion to her Prophet's tomb, etc.
"I tried at 'Ilderim;'
Ahem!"
"Aucun homme, dans aucune langue, n'a été, peut-être, plus complètement le poëte du coeur et le poëte des femmes. Les critiques lui reprochent de n'avoir représenté le monde ní tel qu'il est, ni tel qu'il doit être; mais les femmes répondent qu'il l'a représenté tel qu'elles le désirent."
"Among the stories intended to be introduced into Lalla Rookh, which I had begun, but, from various causes, never finished, there was one which I had made some progress in, at the time of the appearance of The Bride, and which, on reading that poem, I found to contain such singular coincidences with it, not only in locality and costume, but in plot and characters, that I immediately gave up my story altogether, and began another on an entirely new subject—the Fire-worshippers. To this circumstance, which I immediately communicated to him, Lord Byron alludes in this letter. In my hero (to whom I had even given the name of 'Zelim,' and who was a descendant of Ali, outlawed, with all his followers, by the reigning Caliph) it was my intention to shadow out, as I did afterwards in another form, the national cause of Ireland. To quote the words of my letter to Lord Byron on the subject: 'I chose this story because one writes best about what one feels most, and I thought the parallel with Ireland would enable me to infuse some vigour into my hero's character. But to aim at vigour and strong feeling after you is hopeless;—that region "was made for Cæsar."'"
"Que de gens ont la réputation d'être méchans, avec lesquels on serait trop heureux de passer sa vie."
"Elle avait du talent pour écrire; mais elle ne l'exerça que fort tard .... Le premier livre qu'elle publia, n'étant plus très jeune, fut un recueil de pensées détachées, dédié aux mânes de Saurin, qu'elle intitula Doutes sur differentes Opinions reçues dans la Societé. Ce recueil eut un véritable succés."
"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen blühn?"
"Do you know de Staël's lines?" he asked Lady Blessington (Conversations, pp. 326, 327); "for if I am a thief, she must be the plundered, as I don't read German and do French: yet I could almost swear that I never saw her verses when I wrote mine, nor do I even now remember them. I think the first began with 'Cette terre,' etc., etc.; but the rest I forget. As you have a good memory, perhaps you would repeat them."
"I did so," says Lady Blessington, "and they are as follows:'Cette terre, où les myrtes fleurissent,
Où les rayons des cieux tombent avec amour,
Où des sons enchanteurs dans les airs retentissent,
Où la plus douce nuit succéde au plus beau jour,' etc."
"'A Book'—Any Person having in their possession a COPY of a CERTAIN BOOK, printed by Mr. Edwards, in 1807, but never published, with W. Lindsell's Name as the Seller of the same on the title page, and will bring it to W. Lindsell, Bookseller, Wimpole-Street, will receive a handsome gratuity."
"I open my letter to say that when Lord Byron went to give his vote just now in the Senate House, the young men burst out into the most rapturous applause."
"I should add that as I was going to vote I met him coming away, and presently saw that something had happened, by his extreme paleness and agitation. Dr. Clark, who was with him, told me the cause, and I returned with B. to my room. There I begged him to sit down and write a letter and communicate this event, which he did not feel up to, but wished I would. So down I sate, and commenced my acquaintance with Miss Milbanke by writing her an account of this most pleasing event, which, although nothing at Oxford, is here very unusual indeed."
"Dear Sir,—It will be easier for you to imagine than for me to express the pleasure which your very kind letter has given me. Not only on account of its gratifying intelligence, but also as introductory to an acquaintance which I have been taught to value, and have sincerely desired. Allow me to consider Lord Byron's friend as not 'a stranger,' and accept, with my sincerest thanks, my best wishes for your own happiness.
I am, dear sir, your faithful servant,
A. I. MlLBANKE."
"I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earth´s end."
"Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd."1
"quæque ipse......vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui."2
"Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed."
". ... quœque ipse miserrima vidi
Et quorum pars magna fui."
"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?"
"Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: 'I will bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum—I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my Castle Spectre.'
'I never make large bets,' said Sheridan, 'but I will lay you a very small one. I will bet you what it is worth!'"
"Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some words upon that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the following epigram upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice:Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and his air sentimental; being asked why? he replied 'that when people said anything kind to him, it affected him deeply, and just now the Duchess had said something so kind to him' —here tears began to flow again. 'Never mind, Lewis,' said Col. Armstrong to him, 'never mind—don't cry, she could not mean it.'"'For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.'"
"Lewis was a good man—a clever man, but a bore—a damned bore, one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially—Me. de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set, I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards evening, and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch, over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrasséd by the charge. Thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming and was obliged to bring to, to his distant signals of distance and distress. All the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow, he died a martyr to his new riches— of a second visit to Jamaica."Lewis said to me, 'Why do you talk Venetian (such as I could talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual Italian?' I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood, if possible. 'It may be so,' said Lewis, 'but it sounds to me like talking with a brogue to an Irishman.'"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
that is
'I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!'
"Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis? Why, that picture is like a man.' He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis's head was at his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that he wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense. He had the finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever heard—finer than Byron's.
Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or a man of fortune. He had always dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was particularly fond of any one who had a title. You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had been all his life in good society.
He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His father and mother lived separately. Mr. Lewis allowed his son a handsome income; but reduced it more than one half when he found that he gave his mother half of it. He restricted himself in all his expenses, and shared the diminished income with his mother as before. He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature.
I had a good picture drawn me, I think by Thos. Thomson, of Fox, in his latter days, suffering the fatigue of an attack from Lewis. The great statesman was become bulky and lethargic, and lay like a fat ox which for sometime endures the persecution of a buzzing fly, rather than rise to get rid of it; and then at last he got up, and heavily plodded his way to the other side of the room."
"I had a worse adventure with Mat Lewis. I had been his guide from the cottage I then had at Laswade to the Chapel of Roslin. We were to go up one side of the river and come down the other. In the return he was dead tired, and, like the Israelites, he murmured against his guide for leading him into the wilderness. I was then as strong as a poney, and took him on my back, dressed as he was in his shooting array of a close sky-blue jacket, and the brightest red pantaloons I ever saw on a human breech. He also had a kind of feather in his cap. At last I could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure we must both have made, at which my rider waxed wroth. It was an ill-chosen hour and place, for I could have served him as Wallace did Fawden—thrown him down and twisted his head off. We returned to the cottage weary wights, and it cost more than one glass of Noyau, which he liked in a decent way, to get Mat's temper on its legs again."
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"But words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
"——-my weal, my woe,
My hope on high—my all below;
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same."
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"Wherefore doth a living man complain?"
"I dare not fight; but I will wink, and hold out mine iron."
"Bold Robert Speer was Bony's bad precursor.
Bob was a bloody dog, but Bonaparte a worser."
"We owe great gratitude to this thunderstorm of a fellow for clearing the air of all the old legitimate fogs that have settled upon us, and I sincerely trust his task is not yet over."
"After an instant's pause, Lord Byron replied, 'I am damned sorry for it;' and then, after another slight pause, he added, 'I didn't know but I might live to see Lord Castlereagh's head on a pole. But I suppose I shan't now.'"
"The vanity of Victories is considerable. Of all who fell at Waterloo or Trafalgar, ask any man in company to name you ten off hand. They will stick at Nelson: the other will survive himself. Nelson was a hero, the other is a mere Corporal, dividing with Prussians and Spaniards the luck which he never deserved. He even—but I hate the fool, and will be silent."
"The Miscreant Wellington is the Cub of Fortune, but she will never lick him into shape. If he lives, he will be beaten; that's certain. Victory was never before wasted upon such an unprofitable soil as this dunghill of Tyranny, whence nothing springs but Viper's eggs."
"I remember seeing Blucher in the London Assemblies, and never saw anything of his age less venerable. With the voice and manners of a recruiting Sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero; just as if a stone could be worshipped because a man stumbled over it."
"L'intérêt est l'ame de l'amour-propre, de sorte que comme le corps, privé de son ame, est sans vue, sans ouïe, sans connoissance, sans sentiment, et sans mouvement; de même l'amour-propre, séparé, s'il le faut dire ainsi, de son intérêt, ne voit, n'entend, ne sent, et ne se remue plus," etc., etc.
"Monsieur de Puységur," says Lady H. Leveson Gower (Letters of Harriet, Countess of Granville, vol. i. p. 23), "is really concentré into one wrinkle. It is the oldest, gayest, thinnest, most withered, and most brilliant thing one can meet with. When there are so many young, fat fools going about the world, I wish for the transmigration of souls. Puységur might animate a whole family."
| Lord Byron | To M. Richold | > | ||
| 1813 | £ | s. | d. | |
| Balance of last bill | 0 | 13 | 10 | |
| Aug. 9 | To dinner bill | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| 10 | To do. do. | 4 | 13 | 6 |
| 11 | To do. do. | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 14 | To do. do. | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| 15 | To share of do. | 4 | 4 | 6 |
| 16 | To dinner bill | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| 17 | To do. do. | 1 | 6 | 6 |
| 19 | To do. do. | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| 20 | To share of do. | 4 | 19 | 0 |
| 21 | To dinner bill | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| 22 | To do. do. | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 23 | To do. do. | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 25 | To do. do. | 1 | 9 | 0 |
| 26 | To dinner bill | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| 27 | To do. do. | 1 | 8 | 6 |
| Sept. 2 | To do. do. | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 3 | To do. do. | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 4 | To do. do. | 1 | 11 | 0 |
| 5 | To do. do. | 1 | 6 | 6 |
| 7 | To do. do. | 5 | 7 | 0 |
| 9 | To do. do. | 1 | 6 | 6 |
| 26 | To do. do. | 1 | 9 | 0 |
| Nov. 14 | To do. do. | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| 21 | To do. do. | 0 | 19 | 0 |
| Total | 44 | 11 | 10 |
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"And marvels so much wit is all his own,"6
"resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore dressed up three paradoxes with some ingenuity.... 'Well,' asks the Vicar, 'and what did the learned world say to your paradoxes?' 'Sir,' replied my son, 'the learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all.... I found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. I could neither read nor write with satisfaction; for excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade.'"
"With what delight rhymes on the scribbling dunce.
He's ne'er perplex'd to choose, but right at once;
With rapture hails each work as soon as done,
And wonders so much wit was all his own."
"I once had the gratification of Seeing Lord Byron. He was at Evening party at the Poet Sotheby's. I was not aware of his being in the room, or even that he had been invited, when I was arrested from listening to the person conversing with me by the Sounds of the most melodious Speaking Voice I had ever heard. It was gentle and beautifully modulated. I turned round to look for the Speaker, and then saw a Gentleman in black of an Elegant form (for nothing of his lameness could be discovered), and with a face I never shall forget. The features of the finest proportions. The Eye deep set, but mildly lustrous; and the Complexion what I at the time described to my Sister as a Sort of moonlight paleness. It was so pale, yet with all so Softly brilliant.
I instantly asked my Companion who that Gentleman was. He replied, 'Lord Byron.' I was astonished, for there was no Scorn, no disdain, nothing in that noble Countenance then of the proud Spirit which has since soared to Heaven, illuminating the Horizon far and wide."
"in all the capitals of Europe. At one of her dinners in Park Street (all the company except herself being Whigs), the desperate prospects of the Whig party were discussed. Yes,' said Sydney Smith, who was present, 'we are in a most deplorable condition; we must do something to help ourselves. I think,' said he, looking at Lydia White, 'we had better sacrifice a Tory Virgin'"
"Lord and Lady Byron persuaded me to go with them to Miss White. Never have I seen a more imposing convocation of ladies arranged in a circle than when we entered, taking William Spencer with us. Lord Byron brought me home. He stayed to supper."
"Found him in high good humour. In talking of Miss White, he said, 'How wonderfully she does hold out! They may say what they will, but Miss White and Missolongi are the most remarkable things going"
"Sir George thinks exactly with Lady Bluebottle."
"The head of Lady Charlemont (when I first saw her, nine years ago) seemed to possess all that sculpture could require for its ideal."
"Called upon Lady Charlemont, and sat with her some time. Lady Mansfield told me that the effect she produces here with her beauty is wonderful; last night, at the Comtesse d'Albany's, the Italians were ready to fall down and worship her."
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"By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers,
Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond."
"What with qualms, age, rheumatism, and a few surfeits in his youth, he must have a great deal of brushing, oyling, screwing, and winding up, to set him a-going for the day."
"Frere is a slovenly fellow. His remarks on Homer, in the Classical Journal, prove how fine a Greek scholar he is; his Quarterly Reviews, how well he writes; his 'Rovers, or the Double Arrangement,' what humour he possesses; and the reputation he has left in Spain and Portugal, how much better he understood their literatures than they do themselves; while, at the same time, his books left in France, in Gallicia, at Lisbon, and two or three places in England; his manuscripts, neglected and lost to himself; his manners, lazy and careless; and his conversation, equally rich and negligent, show how little he cares about all that distinguishes him in the eyes of the world. He studies as a luxury, he writes as an amusement, and conversation is a kind of sensual enjoyment to him. If he had been born in Asia, he would have been the laziest man that ever lived."
"At the Opposition meeting of the peers, in 1812, at Lord Grenville's, when Lord Grey and he read to us the correspondence upon Moira's negociation, I sate next to the present Duke of Grafton. When it was over, I turned to him and said, 'What is to be done next?' 'Wake the Duke of Norfolk' (who was snoring away near us), replied he. 'I don't think the Negociators have left anything else for us to do this turn.'"
"In the debate, or rather discussion, afterwards, in the House of Lords, upon that very question, I sate immediately behind Lord Moira, who was extremely annoyed at G.'s speech upon the subject, and while G. was speaking, turned round to me repeatedly and asked me whether I agreed with him? It was an awkward question to me, who had not heard both sides. Moira kept repeating to me, 'It was not so, it was so and so,' etc. I did not know very well what to think, but I sympathized with the acuteness of his feelings upon the subject."
"Lord Eldon affects an Imitation of two very different Chancellors—Thurlow and Loughborough—and can indulge in an oath now and then. On one of the debates on the Catholic question, when we were either equal or within one (I forget which), I had been sent for in great haste from a Ball, which I quitted, I confess somewhat reluctantly, to emancipate five Millions of people. I came in late, and did not go immediately into the body of the house, but stood just behind the Woolsack. Eldon turned round, and, catching my eye, immediately said to a peer (who had come to him for a few minutes on the Woolsack, as is the custom of his friends), 'Damn them! they'll have it now, by God!—the vote that is just come in will give it them.'"
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"Whole as the marble, founded as the rock."
"I saw little of them, excepting Mr. Sharp, formerly a Member of Parliament, and who, from his talents in society, has been called 'Conversation Sharp.' He has been made an associate of most of the literary clubs in London, from the days of Burke down to the present time. He told me a great many amusing anecdotes of them, and particularly of Burke, Porson, and Grattan, with whom he had been intimate; and occupied the dinner-time as pleasantly as the same number of hours have passed with me in England....
June 7.—This morning I breakfasted with Mr. Sharp, and had a continuation of yesterday,—more pleasant accounts of the great men of the present day, and more amusing anecdotes of the generation that has passed away."
"He is clever, but I should suspect of little real depth of intellect."
"Yes! thou hast chosen well 'the better part,'
And, for the triumphs of the noblest art,
Hast wisely scorn'd the sordid cares of life."
"O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead;
That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds."
"He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."
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"Ah, deere ladye, said Robin Hood, thou
That art both Mother and May,
I think it was never man's destinye
To die before his day."
"Greece, the mother of freedom and of poetry in the West, which had long employed only the antiquary, the artist, and the philologist, was at length destined, after an interval of many silent and inglorious ages, to awaken the genius of a poet. Full of enthusiasm for those perfect forms of heroism and liberty which his imagination had placed in the recesses of antiquity, he gave vent to his impatience of the imperfections of living men and real institutions, in an original strain of sublime satire, which clothes moral anger in imagery of an almost horrible grandeur; and which, though it cannot coincide with the estimate of reason, yet could only flow from that worship of perfection which is the soul of all true poetry."
"In the last Edinburgh Review you will find two articles of mine, one on Rogers, and the other on Madame de Staël: they are both, especially the first, thought too panegyrical. I like the praises which I have bestowed on Lord Byron and Thomas Moore. I am convinced of the justness of the praises given to Madame de Staël."
"I have that within which passeth show."
" ... the seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless."
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"It does the very highest honour to his moral character, which, I think, stands higher than that of any other conspicuous Englishman now alive. Probity, independence, humanity, and liberality breathe through every word; considered merely as a composition, accuracy, perspicuity, discretion, and good taste are its chief merits; great originality and comprehension of thought, or remarkable vigour of expression, it does not possess."
"Romilly," said Lord Lansdowne to Moore (Memoirs, etc., vol. ii. p. 211), "was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself; when he lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up."
"For an eloquent passage in the latest work of the first female writer of this, perhaps of any, age, on the analogy (and the immediate comparison excited by that analogy) between 'painting and music,' see vol. iii. cap. 10, De l'Allemagne."
"Sans cesse nous comparons la peinture à la musique, et la musique à la peinture, parceque les émotions que nous eprouvons nous révèlent des analogies où l'observation froide ne verroit que des différences," etc., etc.
"Argyll St., No. 31.
"Je ne saurais vous exprímer, my lord, à quel point je me trouve honorée d'être dans une note de votre poëme, et de quel poëme! il me semble que pour la première fois je me crois certaine d'un nom d'avenir et que vous avez disposé pour moi de cet empire de reputation qui vous sera tous les jours plus soumis. Je voudrais vous parler de ce poëme que tout le monde admire, mais j'avouerai que je suis trop suspecte en le louant, et je ne cache pas qu' une louage de vous m'a fait épreuver un sentiment de fierté et de réconaissance qui me rendrait incapable de vous juger; mais heureusement vous êtes au dessus du jugement.
"Donnez moi quelquefois le plaisir de vous voir; il-y-a un proverbe français qui dit qu'un bonheur ne va jamais sans d'autre.
"de Staël."
"Byron," writes Sir Walter Scott, in a hitherto unpublished note, "occasionally said what are called good things, but never studied for them. They came naturally and easily, and mixed with the comic or serious, as it happened. A professed wit is of all earthly companions the most intolerable. He is like a schoolboy with his pockets stuffed with crackers.
"No first-rate author was ever what is understood by a great conversational wit. Swift's wit in common society was either the strong sense of a wonderful man unconsciously exerting his powers, or that of the same being wilfully unbending, wilfully, in fact, degrading himself. Who ever heard of any fame for conversational wit lingering over the memory of a Shakespeare, a Milton, even of a Dryden or a Pope?
Johnson is, perhaps, a solitary exception. More shame to him. He was the most indolent great man that ever lived, and threw away in his talk more than he ever took pains to embalm in his writings.
It is true that Boswell has in great measure counteracted all this. But here is no defence. Few great men can expect to have a Boswell, and none ought to wish to have one, far less to trust to having one. A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest only that his valet may occasionally show off in them; no, nor yet strut about in them in his chamber, only that his valet may puff him and his finery abroad.
What might not he have done, who wrote Rasselas in the evenings of eight days to get money enough for his mother's funeral expenses? As it is, what has Johnson done? Is it nothing to be the first intellect of an age? and who seriously talks even of Burke as having been more than a clever boy in the presence of old Samuel?"
"Nothing was more tiresome than Lewis when he began to harp upon any extravagant proposition. He would tinker at it for hours without mercy, and repeat the same thing in four hundred different ways. If you assented in despair, he resumed his reasoning in triumph, and you had only for your pains the disgrace of giving in. If you disputed, daylight and candle-light could not bring the discussion to an end, and Mat's arguments were always ditto repeated."
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"Oh Gioventu!
Oh Primavera! gioventu dell' anno.
Oh Gioventu! primavera della vita."
| Strato | For Brutus only overcame himself, And no man else hath honour by his death. |
| ... | |
| Octavius | According to his virtue let us use him, With all respect and rites of burial. |
"As rising on its purple wing
The insect-queen of Eastern spring
O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near," etc.
"The blue-winged butterfly of Kashmeer, the most rare and beautiful of the species."
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"Read English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, by Lord Byron. It is well written. His Lordship is rather severe, perhaps justly so, on Walter Scott, and most assuredly justly severe upon Monk Lewis."
"In general I do not draw well with literary men. Not that I dislike them, but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication. There are several exceptions, to be sure; but then they have always been men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, etc., or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, etc. But your literary every-day man and I never went well in company, especially your foreigner, whom I never could abide,—except Giordani, and—and—and (I really can't name any other); I do not remember a man amongst them whom I ever wished to see twice, except, perhaps, Mezzophanti, who is a Monster of Languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking Polyglott, and more—who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel as universal Interpreter. He is, indeed, a Marvel,—unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues of which I have a single oath (or adjuration to the Gods against Postboys, Savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, Gondoliers, Muleteers, Cameldrivers, Vetturini, Postmasters, post-horses, post-houses, post-everything) and Egad! he astounded me even to my English."
"I suspect Lord Byron of some self-deceit as to this matter. It appears that he liked extremely the only first-rate men of letters into whose society he happened to be thrown in England. They happened to be men of the world, it is true; but how few men of very great eminence in literature, how few intellectually Lord B.'s peers, have not been men of the world? Does any one doubt that the topics he had most pleasure in discussing with Scott or Moore were literary ones, or had at least some relation to literature?
"As for the foreign literati, pray what literati anything like his own rank did he encounter abroad? I have no doubt he would have been as much at home with an Alfieri, a Schiller, or a Goethe, or a Voltaire, as he was with Scott or Moore, and yet two of these were very little of men of the world in the sense in which he uses that phrase.
"As to 'every-day men of letters,' pray who does like their company? Would a clever man like a prosing 'captain, or colonel, or knight-in-arms' the better for happening to be himself the Duke of Wellington?"
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"Your friend Bosville and I have entered into a strict engagement to belong for ever to the established government, to the Established Church, and to the established language of our country, because they are established."
"Glenbervie, Glenbervie,
What's good for the scurvy?
For ne'er be your old trade forgot."
"He has been curious, attentive, agreeable; and in every place where he has resided some days, he has left acquaintance who esteem and regret him; I never knew so clear and general an impression."
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"First, it must be a plot, because there's a woman in't; secondly, it must be a plot, because there's a priest in't; thirdly, it must be a plot, because there's French gold in't; and fourthly, it must be a plot, because I don't know what to make on't."
"It was vain," said Mrs. Shelley, "for any other woman to attempt to gain attention."
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"If you wish, Sir, to Shave—nay, pray look not grave,
Since nothing on earth can be worse,
To P—d repair, you're shaved to a hair,
Which I mean to exhibit in verse.
"When in moving the beard—I wish to be heard—
The dull razor occasions a curse,
The strop that I view will its merits renew;
Behold I record it in verse.
"Some in fashion's tontine disperse all their spleen,
And others their destinies curse;
But P—d's fine taste, with his Strops and his Paste,
Which I'll show you in Prose and in Verse.
"I have taken this plan to comment on a man,
Whose merit I'm proud to rehearse;
For a razor and knife he will sharpen for life,
And deserves every praise in my verse.
"Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine—
The 'Art of Cookery,' and mine,
My Murray."
"could direct you to any book in any part of the world, with the precision with which the metropolitan policeman directs you to St. Paul's or Piccadilly. It is of him that the stories are told of answers to inquiries after books, in these terms: 'There is but one copy of that book in the world. It is in the Grand Seignior's library at Constantinople, and is the seventh book in the second shelf on the right hand as you go in.'"
"Burns, in depth of poetical feeling, in strong shrewd sense to balance and regulate this, in the tact to make his poetry tell by connecting it with the stream of public thought and the sentiment of the age, in commanded wildness of fancy and profligacy or recklessness as to moral and occasionally as to religious matters, was much more like Lord Byron than any other person to whom Lord B. says he had been compared.
"A gross blunder of the English public has been talking of Burns as if the character of his poetry ought to be estimated with an eternal recollection that he was a peasant. It would be just as proper to say that Lord Byron ought always to be thought of as a Peer. Rank in life was nothing to either in his true moments. Then, they were both great Poets. Some silly and sickly affectations connected with the accidents of birth and breeding may be observed in both, when they are not under the influence of 'the happier star.' Witness Burns's prate about independence, when he was an exciseman, and Byron's ridiculous pretence of Republicanism, when he never wrote sincerely about the Multitude without expressing or insinuating the very soul of scorn."
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| Gibbet | And I can assure you, friend, there's a great deal of address and good manners in robbing a lady: I am most a gentleman that way that ever travelled the road. |
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"We are informed from very good authority, that as soon as the House of Lords meet again, a Peer of very independent principles and character intends to give notice of a motion occasioned by a late spontaneous avowal of a copy of verses by Lord Byron, addressed to the Princess Charlotte of Wales, in which he has taken the most unwarrantable liberties with her august father's character and conduct: this motion being of a personal nature, it will be necessary to give the noble Satirist some days' notice, that he may prepare himself for his defence against a charge of so aggravated a nature," etc.
"Brutus, thou sleepest, awake."
"There is nothing left for Mankind but a Republic, and I think that there are hopes of such. The two Americas (South and North) have it; Spain and Portugal approach it; all thirst for it. Oh Washington!"
"Je renonce à vos visites, pourvu que vous acceptiez mes diners, car enfin à quoi servirait il de vivre dans le même tems que vous, si l'on ne vous voyait pas? Dinez chez moi dimanche avec vos amis,—je ne dirai pas vos admirateurs, car je n'ai rencontré que cela de touts parts.
"A dimanche, "de Staël.
"Mardi.
"Je prends le silence pour oui."
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"Mr. Kean's attraction is unprecedented in the annals of theatricals—even Cooke's performances are left at an immeasurable distance; his first three nights of Richard produced upwards of £1800, and on repeating that character on Thursday night for the fourthth (sic) time, the receipts were upwards of £700."
"Drury Lane Theatre again overflowed last night, at an early hour. Such is the continued and increasing attraction of that truly great actor Mr. Kean."
"To see Kean act," said Coleridge, "is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning."
"Garrick's nature," writes Leigh Hunt, in the Tatler, July 25, 1831, "displaced Quin's formalism; and in precisely the same way did Kean displace Kemble. ... Everything with Kemble was literally a personation—it was a mask and a sounding-pipe. It was all external and artificial.... Kean's face is full of light and shade, his tones vary, his voice trembles, his eye glistens, sometimes with a withering scorn, sometimes with a tear."
"His 'Richard III.' pleased me, but I was not enthusiastic. His expression of the passions is natural and strong, but I do not like his declamation; his voice, naturally not agreeable, becomes monotonous"
"To my mind he is without grace and without elevation of mind, because he never seems to rise with the poet in those sublime passages which abound in Hamlet"
"To such lengths," says Moore, "did he, at this time, carry his enthusiasm for Kean, that when Miss O'Neil appeared, and, by her matchless representation of feminine tenderness, attracted all eyes and hearts, he was not only a little jealous of her reputation, as interfering with that of his favourite, but, in order to guard himself against the risk of becoming a convert, refused to go to see her act. I endeavoured sometimes to persuade him into witnessing, at least, one of her performances; but his answer was (punning upon Shakspeare's word, 'unanealed'), 'No—I am resolved to continue un-Oneiled.'"
"Of actors Cooke was the most natural, Kemble the most supernatural, Kean the medium between the two. But Mrs. Siddons was worth them all put together."
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"I am myself alone."
"This ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil, furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron's proneness to attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once enlisted his good nature in its behalf, and become associated with his thoughts. He first found this old woman at his lodgings in Bennet Street, where, for a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of his visitors. When, next year, he took chambers in Albany, one of the great advantages which his friends looked to in the change was, that they should get rid of this phantom. But, no,—there she was again—he had actually brought her with him from Bennet Street. The following year saw him married, and, with a regular establishment of servants, in Piccadilly; and here,—as Mrs. Mule had not made her appearance to any of the visitors,—it was concluded, rashly, that the witch had vanished. One of those friends, however, who had most fondly indulged in this persuasion, happening to call one day when all the male part of the establishment were abroad, saw, to his dismay, the door opened by the same grim personage, improved considerably in point of babiliments since he last saw her, and keeping pace with the increased scale of her master's household, as a new peruke, and other symptoms of promotion, testified. When asked 'how he came to carry this old woman about with him from place to place,' Lord Byron's only answer was, 'The poor old devil was so kind to me' " (Moore).
"Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all?"
"I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
And wish the estate of the world were now undone."
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"Even the great luminaries of the law," says Wraxall (Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i. p. 86), "when arrayed in their ermine, bent under his ascendancy, and seemed to be half subdued by his intelligence, or awed by his vehemence, pertinacity, and undaunted character."
"The monarch's pale face was with blushes suffused,
To observe right and wrong by twelve villains confused,
And, kicking their ——s all round in a fury,
Cried, 'Curs'd be the day I invented a jury!'"
"on slips of paper in the midst of all the business which I was engaged in at the time—not at home, but in open court, whilst the causes were trying. When it was not my turn to examine a witness, or to speak to the Jury, I wrote a little bit; and so on by snatches."
"A vain, pert prater, bred in Erskine's school."
"Old Edgeworth, the fourth or fifth Mrs. Edgeworth, and the Miss Edgeworth were in London, 1813. Miss Edgeworth liked, Mrs. Edgeworth not disliked, old Edgeworth a bore, the worst of bores—a boisterous Bore. I met them in Society—once at a breakfast of Sir H. D.'s. Old Edgeworth came in late, boasting that he had given 'Dr. Parr a dressing the night before' (no such easy matter by the way). I thought her pleasant. They all abused Anna Seward's memory. When on the road they heard of her brother's—and his son's—death. What was to be done? Their London apparel was all ordered and made! so they sunk his death for the six weeks of their sojourn, and went into mourning on their way back to Ireland. Fact!
"While the Colony were in London, there was a book with a subscription for the 'recall of Mrs. Siddons to the Stage' going about for signatures. Moore moved for a similar subscription for the 'recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland!' "Sir Humphry Davy told me that the scene of the French Valet and Irish postboy in Ennui was taken from his verbal description to the Edgeworths in Edgeworthtown of a similar fact on the road occurring to himself. So much the better—being life."
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"Denman mentioned Lord Byron's affidavit about Lord Portsmouth as a proof of the influence of Hanson over him; Lord B. swearing that Lord P. had 'rather a superior mind than otherwise'"
"I have been acquainted with Mr. Hanson and his family for many years. He is my solicitor. About the beginning of March last he sent to me to ask my opinion on the subject of Lord Portsmouth, who, as I understood from Mr. H., was paying great attention to his eldest daughter. He stated to me that Mr. Newton Fellowes (with whom I have no personal acquaintance) was particularly desirous that Lord Portsmouth should marry some 'elderly woman' of his (Mr. Fellowes's) selection—that the title and family estates might thereby devolve on Mr. F. or his children; but that Lord P. had expressed a dislike to old women, and a desire to choose for himself. I told Mr. Hanson that, if Miss Hanson's affections were not pre-engaged, and Lord Portsmouth appeared attached to her, there could be, in my opinion, no objection to the match. I think, but cannot be positive, that I saw Lord Portsmouth at Mr. Hanson's two or three times previous to the marriage; but I had no conversation with him upon it.
"The night before the ceremony, I received an invitation from Mr. Hanson, requesting me, as a friend of the family, to be present at the marriage, which was to take place next morning. I went next morning to Bloomsbury Square, where I found the parties. Lady Portsmouth, with her brother and sister and another gentleman, went in the carriage to St. George's Church; Lord Portsmouth and myself walked, as the carriage was full, and the distance short. On my way Lord Portsmouth told me that he had been partial to Miss Hanson from her childhood, and that, since she grew up, and more particularly subsequent to the decease of the late Lady P., this partiality had become attachment, and that he thought her calculated to make him an excellent wife. I was present at the ceremony and gave away the bride. Lord Portsmouth's behaviour seemed to me perfectly calm and rational on the occasion. He seemed particularly attentive to the priest, and gave the responses audibly and very distinctly. I remarked this because, in ordinary conversation, his Lordship has a hesitation in his speech. After the ceremony, we returned to Mr. Hanson's, whence, I believe, they went into the country—where I did not accompany them. Since their return I have occasionally seen Lord and Lady Portsmouth in Bloomsbury Square. They appeared very happy. I have never been very intimate with his Lordship, and am therefore unqualified to give a decided opinion of his general conduct. But had I considered him insane, I should have advised Mr. Hanson, when he consulted me on the subject, not to permit the marriage. His preference of a young woman to an old one, and of his own wishes to those of a younger brother, seemed to me neither irrational nor extraordinary."
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"My health having suffered by long and close confinement, and my oppressors being resolved to deprive me of property or life, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice."
"Your friend, Lord B., is, in my opinion, a singularly agreeable person, which is very rarely the case with eminent men. His independent principles give him a great additional charm."
"Mrs. Jordan, the only Miss Hoyden on the stage, supported that character with unabated spirit. In every scene, from her soliloquy on being locked up, which was delivered with extraordinary naïveté, both with reference to her tones, her emphasis, and her action, until the consummation of the piece, the house was shaken by loud and quick-succeeding peals of laughter. The style in which she expressed Hoyden's rustic arithmetic, 'Now, Nursey, if he gives me six hundred pounds a-year to buy pins, what will he give me to buy petticoats?' was uncommonly fine. The frock waving in her hand, the backward bound of two or three steps, the gravity of countenance, induced by a mental glance at the magnitude of the sum, all spoke expectation, delight, and astonishment."
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"Henderson was a truly great actor: his Hamlet and his Falstaff were equally good. He was a very fine reader too: in his comic readings, superior, of course, to Mrs. Siddons: his John Gilpin was marvellous."
"There has not," says Sharp, "been such a first appearance since yours; yet Nature, though she has been bountiful to him in figure and feature, has denied him a voice.... You have been so long without a 'brother near the throne,' that it will perhaps be serviceable to you to be obliged to bestir yourself in Hamlet, Macbeth, Lord Townley, and Maskwell; but in Lear, Richard, Falstaff, and Benedict, you have nothing to fear, not-withstanding the known fickleness of the public and its love of novelty."
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"It is no slight consolation to us, while suffering under alternate reproaches for ill-timed severity, and injudicious praise, to reflect that no very mischievous effects have as yet resulted to the literature of the country, from this imputed misbehaviour on our part. Powerful genius, we are persuaded, will not be repressed even by unjust castigation; nor will the most excessive praise that can be lavished by sincere admiration ever abate the efforts that are fitted to attain to excellence. Our alleged severity upon a youthful production has not prevented the noble author from becoming the first poet of his time."
"Fuseli's picture of Ezzelin Bracciaferro musing over Meduna, slain by him for disloyalty during his absence in the Holy Land, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. Mr. Knowles, in his Life of the painter, relates the following anecdote: 'Fuseli frequently invented the subject of his pictures without the aid of the poet or historian, as in his composition of Ezzelin, Belisaire, and some others: these he denominated "philosophical ideas intuitive, or sentiment personified." On one occasion he was much amused by the following inquiry of Lord Byron: "I have been looking in vain, Mr. Fuseli, for some months, in the poets and historians of Italy, for the subject of your picture of Ezzelin: pray where is it to be found?" "Only in my brain, my Lord," was the answer: "for I invented it"' (vol. i. p. 403)" (Moore).
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"Londres le 9 Mars... On vient de publier une caricature insolente et grossiere centre le mariage projeté (de la Princesse de Galles) et centre le Prince d'Orange. En commentant cette gravure, le Town Talk a osé avancer que la Princesse Charlotte détestait son époux futur, et que ses véritables affections étaient sacrifices à des vues politiques. Le Lord Byron a fait de ce bruit populaire le sujet d'une romance."
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"Lord Byron, as you know, has removed into Albany, and lives in an apartment, I should think thirty by forty feet."
"Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace."
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"He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke—
Alone—how look'd he round?"
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"What whining monk art thou? What holy cheat?
That would'st encroach upon my credulous ears,
And cant'st thus vilely! Hence! I know thee not!"
"I see, men's judgements are a parcel of their fortunes."
"Expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo
Invenies?"
"Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,
And weigh the mighty dust which yet remains:
And is this all?"
"In the Statistical Account of Scotland, I find that Sir John Paterson had the curiosity to collect, and weigh, the ashes of a person discovered a few years since in the parish of Eccles. Wonderful to relate, he found the whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! And is this all!"
"Doctor, the thanes fly from me!"
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"See, where fresh blood-gouts mat the green,
Yon wheel its reeking points advance;
There, by the moon's wan light half seen,
Grim ghosts of tombless murderers dance.
'Come, spectres of the guilty dead,
With us your goblin morris ply,
Come all in festive dance to tread,
Ere on the bridal couch we lie.'
"Forward th' obedient phantoms push,
Their trackless footsteps rustle near,
In sound like autumn winds that rush
Through withering oak or beech-wood sere.
With lightning's force the courser flies,
Earth shakes his thund'ring hoofs beneath,
Dust, stones, and sparks, in whirlwind rise,
And horse and horseman heave for breath.
"Swift roll the moon-light scenes away,
Hills chasing hills successive fly;
E'en stars that pave th' eternal way,
Seem shooting to a backward sky.
'Fear'st thou, my love? the moon shines clear;
Hurrah! how swiftly speed the dead!
The dead does Leonora fear?
Oh God! oh leave, oh leave the dead!'"
"When midnight o'er the moonless skies
Her pall of transient death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise,
And nought is wakeful but the dead!
"No bloodless shape my way pursues,
No sheeted ghost my couch annoys.
Visions more sad my fancy views,
Visions of long departed joys!
"The shade of youthful hope is there,
That linger'd long, and latest died;
Ambition all dissolved to air,
With phantom honours at her side.
"What empty shadows glimmer nigh!
They once were friendship, truth, and love!
Oh, die to thought, to mem'ry die,
Since lifeless to my heart ye prove!"
"To The Lady Anne Hamilton.
"Too late I staid, forgive the crime,
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of Time,
That only treads on flow'rs!
"What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of his glass,
When all its sands are di'mond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?
"Ah! who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,
When birds of Paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings?"
"Addressed to Lady Susan Fincastle, now Countess Of Dunmore.
"What ails you, Fancy? you're become
Colder than Truth, than Reason duller!
Your wings are worn, your chirping's dumb,
And ev'ry plume has lost its colour.
"You droop like geese, whose cacklings cease
When dire St. Michael they remember,
Or like some bird who just has heard
That Fin's preparing for September?
"Can you refuse your sweetest spell
When I for Susan's praise invoke you?
What, sulkier still? you pout and swell
As if that lovely name would choke you."
"When an Eden zephyr hovers
O'er a slumb'ring cherub's lyre,
Or when sighs of seraph lovers
Breathe upon th' unfinger'd wire."
"Heav'n must hear—a bloom more tender
Seems to tint the wreath of May,
Lovelier beams the noon-day splendour,
Brighter dew-drops gem the spray!
"Is the breath of angels moving
O'er each flow'ret's heighten'd hue?
Are their smiles the day improving,
Have their tears enrich'd the dew?"
"The triflers think your varied powers
Made only for life's gala bow'rs,
To smooth Reflection's mentor-frown,
Or Pillow joy on softer down.—
Fools!—yon blest orb not only glows
To chase the cloud, or paint the rose;
These are the pastimes of his might,
Earth's torpid bosom drinks his light;
Find there his wondrous pow'r's true measure,
Death turn'd to life, and dross to treasure!"
"'Qu'est ce que c'est que le Genie?'
"Brillant est cet esprit privé de sentiment;
Mais ce n'est qu'un soleil trop vif et trop constant,
Tendre est ce sentiment qu' aucun esprit n'anime,
Mais ce n'est qu'un jour doux, que trop de pluie abime!
Quand un brillant esprit de ses rares couleurs,
Orne du sentiment les aimables douleurs,
Un Phenomêne en nait, le plus beau de la vie!
C'est alors que les ris en se mélant aux pleurs,
Font ces Iris de l'ame, appellê le Genie!"
"C'y gist un povre menestrel,
Occis par maint enmiict cruel—
Ne plains pas trop sa destinée—
N'est icy que son corps mortel:
Son ame est toujours à Gillwell,
Et n'est ce pas là l'Elyséé?"
"See this stone
For William Shenstone—
Who planted groves rural,
And wrote verse natural!"
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"Chaste widow'd Mourner, still with tears bedew
That sacred Urn, which can imbue
Thy worldly thoughts, thus kindling mem'ry's glow:
Each retrospective virtue, fadeless beam,
Embalms thy Truth in heavenly dream,
To soothe the bosom's agonizing woe.
"Yet soft—more poignantly to wake the soul,
And ev'ry pensive thought controul,
Truth shall with energy his worth proclaim;
Here I'll record his philanthropic mind,
Eager to bless all human kind,
Yet modest shrinking from the voice of Fame.
"As Patriot view him shun the courtly crew,
And dauntless ever keep in view
That bright palladium, England's dear renown.
The people's Freedom and the Monarch's good,
Purchas'd with Patriotic blood,
The surest safeguard of the state and crown.
"Or now behold his glowing soul extend,
To shine the polish'd social friend;
His country's matchless Prince his worth rever'd;
Gigantic Fox, true Freedom's darling child,
By kindred excellence beguil'd,
To lasting amity the temple rear'd.
"As Critic chaste, his judgment could explore
The beauties of poetic lore,
Or classic strains mellifluent infuse;
Yet glowing genius and expanded sense
Were crown'd with innate diffidence,
The sure attendant of a genuine muse."
"To thee, gigantic genius, next I'll sound;
The clarion string, and fill fame's vasty round;
'Tis Milton beams upon the wond'ring sight,
Rob'd in the splendour of Apollo's light;
As when from ocean bursting on the view,
His orb dispenses ev'ry brilliant hue,
Crowns with resplendent gold th' horizon wide,
And cloathes with countless gems the buoyant tide;
While through the boundless realms of æther blaze,
On spotless azure, streamy saffron rays:—
So o'er the world of genius Milton shone,
Profound in science—as the bard—alone."
"Friend of great Dryden, though of humble fame,
The Laureat Tate, shall here record his name;
Whose sorrowing numbers breath'd a nation's pain,
When death from mortal to immortal reign
Translated royal Anne, our island's boast,
Victorious sov'reign, dread of Gallia's host;
Whose arms by land and sea with fame were crown'd,
Whose statesmen grave for wisdom were renown'd,
Whose reign with science dignifies the page;
Bright noon of genius—great Augustan age.
Such was thy Queen, and such th' illustrious time
That nurs'd thy muse, and tun'd thy soul to rhyme;
Yet wast thou fated sorrow's shaft to bear,
Augmenting still this catalogue of care;
The gripe of penury thy bosom knew,
A gloomy jail obscur'd bright freedom's view;
So life's gay visions faded to thy sight,
Thy brilliant hopes enscarf'd in sorrow's night."
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"Non tempore tali
Cogere concilium cum muros obsidet hostis."
"To John I owe some obligation,
But John unluckily thinks fit
To publish it to all the nation,
So John and I are more than quit."
"I perceive no reason why men of different religious persuasions should not sit upon the same bench, deliberate in the same council, or fight in the same ranks, as well as men of various religious opinions upon any controverted topic of natural history, philosophy, or ethics."
"Would any of the tribe of Barabbas
Should have it rather than a Christian!"
"Caput insanabile tribus Anticyris."
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"'Perchance my dog will whine in vain
Till fed by stranger hands;
But long e'er I come back again,
He'd tear me where he stands.'
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"Is this Guy Faux you burn in effigy?
Why bring the Traitor here? What is Guy Faux to me?
Guy Faux betrayed his country, and his laws.
England revenged the wrong; his was a public cause.
But I have private cause to raise this flame.
Burn also those, and be their fate the same.
[Puts the Basket in the fire under the figure.]
See here are locks and braids of coloured hair
Worn oft by me, to make the people stare;
Rouge, feathers, flowers, and all those tawdry things,
Besides those Pictures, letters, chains, and rings—
All made to lure the mind and please the eye,
And fill the heart with pride and vanity—
Burn, fire, burn; these glittering toys destroy.
While thus we hail the blaze with throats of joy.
Burn, fire, burn, while wondering Boys exclaim,
And gold and trinkets glitter in the flame.
Ah! look not thus on me, so grave, so sad;
Shake not your heads, nor say the Lady's mad.
Judge not of others, for there is but one
To whom the heart and feelings can be known.
Upon my youthful faults few censures cast.
Look to the future—and forgive the past.
London, farewell; vain world, vain life, adieu!
Take the last tears I e'er shall shed for you.
Young tho' I seem, I leave the world for ever,
Never to enter it again—no, never—never!"
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"A Giant that once of a Dwarf made a friend,
(And their friendship the Dwarf took care shouldn't be hid),
Would now and then, out of his glooms, condescend
To laugh at his antics,—as every one did.
"This Dwarf-an extremely diminutive Dwarf,—
In birth unlike G—y, though his pride was as big,
Had been taken, when young, from the bogs of Clontarf,
And though born quite a Helot, had grown up a Whig.
"He wrote little verses—and sung them withal,
And the Giant's dark visions they sometimes could charm,
Like the voice of the lute which had pow'r over Saul,
And the song which could Hell and its legions disarm.
"The Giant was grateful, and offered him gold,
But the Dwarf was indignant, and spurn'd at the offer:
'No, never!' he cried, 'shall my friendship be sold
For the sordid contents of another man's coffer!
"'What would Dwarfland, and Ireland, and every land say?
To what would so shocking a thing be ascribed?
My Lady would think that I was in your pay,
And the Quarterly say that I must have been bribed.
"'You see how I'm puzzled; I don't say it wouldn't
Be pleasant just now to have just that amount:
But to take it in gold or in bank-notes!—I couldn't,
I wouldn't accept it—on any account.
"'But couldn't you just write your Autobiography,
All fearless and personal, bitter and stinging?
Sure that, with a few famous heads in lithography,
Would bring me far more than my Songs or my singing.
"'You know what I did for poor Sheridan's Life;
Your's is sure of my very best superintendence;
I'll expunge what might point at your sister or wife,—
And I'll thus keep my priceless, unbought independence!'
"The Giant smiled grimly: he couldn't quite see
What diff'rence there was on the face of the earth,
Between the Dwarf's taking the money in fee,
And his taking the same thing in that money's worth.
"But to please him he wrote; and the business was done:
The Dwarf went immediately off to 'the Row;'
And ere the next night had pass'd over the sun,
The Memoirs were purchas'd by Longman and Co.
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"Weep daughter of a royal line,
A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay;"
"View! daughter of a royal line,
A father's fame, a realm's renown:
Ah! happy that that realm is thine,
And that its father is thine own!
"View, and exulting view, thy fate,
Which dooms thee o'er these blissful Isles
To reign, (but distant be the date!)
And, like thy Sire, deserve thy People's smiles."
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"The Courier is indignant," says the Morning Chronicle, "at the discovery now made by Lord BYRON, that he was the author of 'the Verses to a Young Lady weeping,' which were inserted about a twelvemonth ago in the Morning Chronicle. The Editor thinks it audacious in a hereditary Counsellor of the King to admonish the Heir Apparent. It may not be courtly but it is certainly British, and we wish the kingdom had more such honest advisers."
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"The mob of Gentlemen who wrote with ease"
"No Muse will cheer with renovating smile,
The paralytic puling of Carlisle;
What heterogeneous honours deck the Peer,
Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer!
So dull in youth, so drivelling in age,
His scenes alone had damn'd our sinking stage.
But Managers, for once, cried 'hold, enough,'
Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff.
Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh,
And case his volumes in congenial calf:
Yes! doff that covering where Morocco shines,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines."
"What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."
"Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind."
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"Could nothing but your chief reproach,
Serve for a motto on your coach?"
"Known be thy name, unbounded be thy sway,
Thy Holland's banquets shall each toil repay,
While grateful Britain yields the praise she owes,
To Hollands hirelings, and to learnings foes!"
"—These wolves that still in darkness prowl;
This coward brood, which mangle, as their prey,
By hellish instinct, all that cross their way;"
"Illustrious Holland! hard would be his lot,
His hirelings mention'd, and himself forgot!
Blest be the banquets spread at Holland House,
Where Scotchmen feed, and Critics may carouse!
Long, long, beneath that hospitable roof
Shall Grub-street dine, while duns are kept aloof,
And grateful to the founder of the feast
Declare the Landlord can translate, at least!"
"That lest when heated with the unusual grape,
Some glowing thoughts should to the press escape,
And tinge with red the female reader's cheek,
My Lady skims the cream of each critique;
Breathes o'er each page her purity of soul,
Reforms each error, and refines the whole."
"Him, I would trust as I would adders fang'd."
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"Let Erin remember the days of old,
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her,
When Malachy wore the collar of gold,
Which he won from her proud Invader;
When her Kings, with standard of green unfurl'd,
Led the Red Branch Knights to danger,
Ere, the emerald gem of the western world,
Was set in the crown of a Stranger."
"Now look around and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age,
While Little's lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves."
"Who in soft guise, surrounded by a quire
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd,
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd?
'Tis Little, young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay;
Griev'd to condemn, the Muse must yet be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust!"
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| Don Pedro. | What offence have these men done? |
| Dogberry. | Many, Sir; they have committed false reports; moreover they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixthly and lastly, they have belied a Lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things, and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." |
"And think'st them, Scott, by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance;
Though Murray with his Miller may combine,
To yield thy Muse just Half-a-crown a Line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Low may they sink to merited contempt,
And scorn remunerate the mean attempt."
"—Even-handed Justice
Commends the ingredients of his poison'd chalice
To his own lips."
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"He professes no keeping oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool."
"—all the din of Melbourne House
And Lambes' resentment—"
"Mr. Brougham, in No. 25 of the Edinburgh Review, throughout the article concerning Don Pedro Cevallos, has displayed more politics than policy; many of the worthy burgesses of Edinburgh being so incensed at the Infamous principles it evinces, as to have withdrawn their subscriptions;" and in the text of this poem, to which the foregoing is a note, he advises the Editor of the Review to"Beware, lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale;
Turn beef to bannacks, cauliflower to kail."
"—Oh cease thy song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long;
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare;
A Fourth, alas, were more than we could bear."
"That should he back return, no letter'd rage
Shall drag his common-place book on the stage;
Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,
He'll leave topography to classic Cell,
And, quite content, no more shall interpose,
To stun mankind with poetry or prose."
"Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are penetrable stuff."
"—I have—
Learn'd to deride the Critic's stern decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me."
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"magno cum optaverit emptum
Intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista, diemque
Oderit;"
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"Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line."
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"Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line."
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"Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line."
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"Procul este profani—!"
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"Weep, daughter of a Royal line,
A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay:
Ah! happy! if each tear of thine
Could wash a father's fault away!
"Weep—for thy tears are Virtue's tears—
Auspicious to these suffering isles:
And be each drop, in future years,
Repaid thee by thy people's smiles!"
"The Courier is indignant at the discovery now made by Lord Byron, that he was the author of 'the Verses to a Young Lady weeping,' which were inserted about a twelvemonth ago in the Morning Chronicle. The Editor thinks it audacious in a hereditary Counsellor of the King to admonish the Heir Apparent. It may not be courtly, but it is certainly British, and we wish the kingdom had more such honest advisers."
"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,
Where the rage of the vulture—the love of the turtle—
Now melt into sorrow—now madden to crime?—
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine?
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume,
Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;
Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye."
"Know'st thou the land, where citrons scent the gale,
Where glows the orange in the golden vale,
Where softer breezes fan the azure skies,
Where myrtles spring and prouder laurels rise?
"Know'st them the pile, the colonnade sustains,
Its splendid chambers and its rich domains,
Where breathing statues stand in bright array,
And seem, 'What ails thee, hapless maid?' to say?
"Know'st thou the mount, where clouds obscure the day;
Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way;
Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood;
And broken rocks oppose the headlong flood?"
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"That Byron borrows verses is well known,
But his misanthropy is all his own."
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We are informed from very good authority, that as soon as the House of Lords meets again, a Peer of very independent principles and character intends to give notice of a motion, occasioned by the late spontaneous avowal of a copy of verses by Lord Byron, addressed to the Princess Charlotte of Wales, in which he has taken the most unwarrantable liberties with her august Father's character and conduct; this motion being of a personal nature, it will be necessary to give the Noble Satirist some days notice, that he may prepare himself for his defence against a charge of so aggravated a nature, which may perhaps not be a fit subject for a criminal prosecution, as the laws of the country, not forseeing the probability of such a case ever occurring, under all the present circumstances, have not made a provision against it; but we know that each House of Parliament has a controul over its own members, and that there are instances on the Journals of Parliament, where an individual Peer has been suspended from all the privileges of the high situation to which his birth entitled him, when by any flagrant offence against good order and government, he has rendered himself unworthy of exercising so important a trust.
Morning Post.
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"'Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line!'
"Mourn, dabbler in dull party rhyme,
Thy mind's disease, thy name's disgrace.
Ah, lucky! if the hand of Time
Should all thy Muse's crimes efface!
"Mourn—for thy lays are Rancour's lays—
Disgraceful to a Briton born;
And hence each theme of factious praise
Consigns thee to thy Country's scorn."
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