Byron, whatever may be said, was in his feelings more a man of letters than anything else, and in all that he says to the contrary, he betrays himself to have been a partaker in that weakness which made Voltaire laugh at Congreve. He was not the least happy of these comparison-makers, that likened Byron to Burns.-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 sentiments of the age, in commanding wildness of fancy and profligacy or recklessness as to moral, and occasionally as to religious matters, was much more like Lord Byron than any of the other persons to whom Lord Byron says he had been compared. A gross blunder (by the way) 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. C. D. That is a clever letter-yet open to animadversion. What is said about white hands is twaddle. His Lordship was not vain of his white hands, he was proud of them, for he conceived them to be symptoms of high birth. It seems that "blood" is shown in a man's hands, more than in his feet—at least it was so in his Lordship's case, and thence he rejoiced in the delicacy of his digits. In the days of chivalry, we suspect it was otherwise. Sir Philip Sydney, we dare say, had a pretty white hand, but not so Archibald Bell-the-Cat -nor before his time, the Black Prince nor Coeur-de-Lion. We cannot think that the English public commit any blunder in talking of the poetry of Burns as being characterized by the soul of a peasant. A Scottish peasant is a" finer animal" than Mr Cobbett-and strip Burns of his glorious "peasantry," and you leave him a lout. The soil of Scotland is on his thick-soled shoes, even when he walks heavily over turkey-carpets in rich men's houses; the sweet-smelling air of his native hills bathes that "curled darling,” his head, in perfume preferable to oil Macassar; and the sun-burnt, glowing brown of his fearless physiognomy was imprinted there, as "he walked in glory and in joy, following his plough upon the mountain-side." As it was beautifully said, in words we do not now remember, by Campbell, in reply to Jeffrey's lament, Burns made love, not like a sighing knight, but a burning ploughman; and indeed, how could he wear in his hat his lady's glove, unless he had previously purchased for her a pair of mittens? He was a flesh-and-blood lover, and celebrated the charms of no woman, till he had her in his arms-not with evil thoughts-but in the use and wont of ural courtship, when "kittling in the fause-house," or lying entranced among the rigs o' barley, with the gowden locks of Anna on his bosom; or when meeting his ain kind dearie on the lea-rig: Although the nicht was ne'er sae late, Burns's "prate about independence," even when an exciseman, may have sounded to some ears rather out of season; but it deserves a better name, when we remember that, when he died, after no short illness, his debts did not amount to ten pounds and that he had shared with his brother the paltry profits of his immortal poetry. But now for another column of the Byron Papers. No. II. I have never heard any one who fulfilled my idea 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. Wyndham 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 they ran down from Bellamy's when he was on his legs.. I heard Bishop Marsh make his second speech. It made no impression. I like Ward (now Viscount Dudley and Ward), studied-but clear 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, amongst the best of them. Now I do not admire Mr Wilberforce's speaking. It is nothing but a flow of wordswords, words alone. I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence, properly so called, and am induced 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 oratory 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. 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 as tiresome as may be 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-he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length. All this is admirable-vigorous alike in thought and expression, and a great embodiment of truth. "Pitt I never heard," must have been said in the same spirit in which a poet would say, "I never heard thunder among mountains.', Why had Byron a personal feeling of dislike to Brougham? The annotator should have told us this-else, what the use of "cum notis variorum ?" "The whole thing is a grand deception," must be acknowledged by all who ever knew intimately, in private life, almost any of those men who are reckoned great orators. Not so with great poets. They are all eloquent as is Apollo's lute, and sacred oratory is native to their lips, or descends upon them from heaven, like the bees that swarmed in murmurs on the mouth of that Greek of old. For theirs is passion and imagination, a perpetual dower, flowing up perennially from the fountain of the spirit. Whitbread! in what was his voice better than a squash of brown-stout forcing out the bung from one of his own beer-barrels? What is Canning, the most eloquent public speaker, by much and afar in all England, at the height of his glory, in St Stephen's Chapel, to Coleridge idealizing like Apollo's self, in his sanctum sanctorum, in Highgate? Another screed of the Byroniana. No. III. When I belonged to the Drury Lane Committee, and was one of the Stage Committee of Management, the number of plays upon the shelves was about five hundred. Conceiving that amongst these there must be some of merit, in person and by proxy, I caused an investigation. I do not think that of those which I saw, there was which could be conscientiously tolera one ted. There never were such things as most of them. Maturin was very kindly recommended to me by Walter Scott; to whom I had recourse, firstly, in the hope that he would do something for us himself, and, secondly, in my despair, that he would point out to us any young or old writer of promise. Maturin sent his Bertram, and a letter without his address; so that at first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer, and something more substantial. His play succeeded, but I was at that time absent from England. I tried Coleridge, too, but he had nothing feasible in hand at the time. Mr Sotheby obligingly offered all his tragedies; and I pledged myself, and, notwithstanding many squabbles with my committee brethren, did get Iran accepted, read, and the parts distributed. But lo! in the very heart of the matter, upon some tepidness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the author, Sotheby withdrew his play. Sir J. B. Burgess did also present four tragedies and a farce, and I handed them to the green-room and Stage Committee; but they would not do. Then the scenes I had to go through! The authors and the authoresses-the milliners and the wild Irishmen the people from Brigh ton, from Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, from Dublin, from Dundee, who came in upon me!to all whom it was proper to give a civil answer, and a hearing, and a reading. Mrs Glover's father, an Irish dancing-master, of sixty years, called upon me to request to play "Archer," dressed in silk stockings, on a frosty morning, to show his legs, (which were certainly good and Irish for his age; and had been still better.) Miss Emma Somebody, with a play entitled the Bandit of Bohemia, or some such title or production; Mr O'Higginsthen resident at Richmond-with an Irish tragedy, in which the Protagonist was chained by the leg to a pillar during the chief part of the performance. He was a wild man, of savage appearance, and the difficulty of not laughing at him was only to be got over by reflecting on the probable consequences of such a cachinnation. As I am really a civil and polite person, and do hate giving pain when it can be avoided, I sent them up to Douglas Kinnaird, who is a man of business, and sufficiently ready with a negative, and left them to settle with him; and as at the beginning of next year I went abroad, I have since been little aware of the progress of the theatre. Players are said to be an impracticable people. They are so; but I managed to steer clear of any disputes with them, and excepting one debate with the elder Byrne about Miss Smith's pas de-something, (I forget the technicals,) I do not remember any litigation of my own. I used to protect Miss Smith, because she was like Lady Jane Harley in the face; and likenesses go a great way with me indeed. In general, I left such things to my more bustling colleagues, who used to reprove me seriously for not being able to take such things in hand, without buffooning with the Histrionians, and throwing things into confusion by treating light matters with levity. Then the committee-then the subcommittee-we were but few, and never agreed. There was Peter_Moore, who contradicted Kinnaird; and Kinnaird, who contradicted everybody. There were two managers, Rae and Dibdin, and our secretary, Wardand yet we were all very zealous, and in earnest to do good, and so forth. Hobhouse furnished us with prologues to our revived old English plays, but was not pleased with us for complimenting him as the "Upton" of our theatre, (Mr Upton is, or was, the poet who writes the songs for Astley's,) and almost gave up prologizing in consequence. NOTES.-I remember hearing Sir Walter Scott, in a conversation with Lord Byron, in Albemarle-street, express his determination never to write for the stage, and allege in excuse, not only the probability that he might not succeed, but the unpleasant, yet necessary and inevitable subjection in which he must, as a dramatist, be kept by "the good folks of the Green-room;"--" Cæteraque," he added, "haud subeunda ingenio meo." Byron sprung up, and crossed the room with great vivacity, saying, " No, by G-, nor mine either." I cannot but think, that he had been thinking of some dramatic attempt, and that Scott's answer had touched his pride. A. D. When this happened, Byron and Scott were both authors of established fame, and extraordinary popularity. They had therefore overcome all the difficulties which men experience in the commencement of a literary career; they were no longer obliged to undergo the pain of negotiating with unwilling, indifferent, cold, perhaps haughty booksellers; nor were they-at all events they ought not to have been— any longer under the fear and dread of criticisms from unpropitious Reviewers, and such other ills as ink is heir to. Why, therefore, should Scott and Byron commence a new career, having of course its own new set of difficulties and annoyances to be met and overcome on the threshold ?--The question is a very different one in regard to an author who has not as yet succeeded in any department of letters. The good folks of the green-room" must, moreover, be tried with first-rate authors-which they have not been in our time-ere we are entitled to talk of their airs, and the subjection in which they wish to keep those who write for them. And first-rate authors will never give them the chance of vindicating their character as to this, until the law has been changed in regard to the author's profits in a successful dramatic effort. These are at present by far too slender to tempt men like Scott and Byron, who have once tasted the liberality which the great booksellers of our time never fail to exhibit, when they are satisfied that the public backs their approbation of an author; and which, begging authors' pardons, they would be very foolish, if not presumptuous, to exhibit till this is the case. Who will believe anything of Scott and Byron being afraid of a set of managers and players? Neither player nor manager has lived in our time, that durst have stood erect in the presence of either of these men, after they had attained the eminence on which they stood at the period of this conversation. B. F. It is always delightful to read about the stage,-most delightful even to us, who never now set our foot in a theatre. And the above of Byron's is most spirited and sprightly. The notes too are good; and we beg leave to return our best thanks to Messrs A. D. and B. F. But does not B. F. Esquire, rather contradict Byron and Scott on a subject of their own experience? The "good folks of the green-room" are as self-opinionated as other professional menbarristers, doctors, physical and theological, musicians and painters. They are not so submissive as B. F. would imagine. Perhaps it is too much to expect it. Most players are prodigious ninnies-but they have a better notion of what will do on the boards than any dramatic writer, even of first-rate genius, who has not been himself, like Shakspeare and "the rest," an actor. There is not a manager of them all, metropolitan or provincial, that would not have stood erect in the presence of both Byron and Scott. They can all "keep their backs straught before a great man," and otherwise they would not be fit for their profession. We see that they did so before Byron-and that Scott expected nothing less from them; and we have no doubt that they often behaved to Shakspeare in a style at once insolent and scurvy. Sheridan, himself a manager, and who had proved himself to be in comedy as great a genius as either of these illustrious men could ever have proved himself to be in tragedy, with power and practique in his hands, was bothered, badgered, and blackguarded, and often forced to swindle them into common civility, and introduce his plays before the lamps by legerdemain. What B. F. says about profits" is just for even Maturin's Bertram cleared, it is said, to the theatre, L.10,000, while he pocketed but some three or four hundred. Finally, neither Byron nor Scott had then given, nor have they since, any demonstrative proofs of being able to write a first-rate acting tragedy. They have written more difficult things-but that is nothing to the purpose. Neither Smollett nor Fielding could write comedies or farces; Sheridan would probably have made but a poor hand of a novel. The author of the Excursion would write fearful epigrams-we should doubt the orthodoxy of a sermon from the pen of Mr Thomas Moore-nor would we, if booksellers and publishers, give a thousand guineas to James Hogg for an edition, with notes, preface, and prolegomena, of my Lord Chesterfield. Let the Editor of The Representative and his contributors go on giving us scraps of the Byron Papers-and we shall allow a year's jubilee to Balaam. DUKE PHRANZA, THE REGICIDE. A Tale of the Greek Empire. 'Twas deep midnight on the Caspian wave! And he dream'd that he saw a dungeon cave, "Come not, my bold lord," she wildly cried, "There is death by the arrow, and death by the sword; "I have dress'd myself in a sable dress, And when thou shalt come my lip to press, He sprang from sleep; his slumbering hand "On, on!" in agony, he cried "There's treachery in my hall. But his panting heart foreboded woe, In the lamp that glimmer'd so pale and low, Duke Phranza knock'd at his palace gate, He wound his trumpet-call; He knock'd with his mace at the portcullis' grate, 'Twas lonely silence all. He felt a sudden throb of pain Shoot through each quivering limb; And hark, a sad and distant strain Oh Heaven, a funeral hymn! Back roll'd the gate, no warrior's tramp Came their gallant chief to cheer, But he saw a pale and fitful lamp He saw no golden table spread |