Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

And did not know it; no, they went about
Holding a poor decrepit standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau!

A little before, the manner of Pope is termed,

"A »cism,

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,

Made great Apollo blush for this his land." ↑

I thought "foppery," was a consequence of re finement: but n'importe.

The above will suffice to show the notions enter

Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one] except Milton ever wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day, or else such rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware. that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not "prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer." The opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference which time will restore to him from all, but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject if well tained by the new performers on the English lyre balanced, but in the stanza of Spencer or of Tasso, of him who made it most tuneable, and the great or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of improvements of their own "variazioni." Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indo- which he has learnt to write such lines and such lence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, sentiments as the above. He says "easy was the although it might have taken up six months instead task " of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling of weeks in the composition. I recommend also him, I presume. I recommend him to try before he to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present is so positive on the subject, and then compare what laureate's Odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint he will have then written and what he has now writCecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of ten with the humblest and earliest compositions of Mr. Southey. Pope, produced in years still more youthful than To the heaven-born genii and inspired young those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new “Esscriveners of the day much of this will appear par-say on Criticism," entitled “ Sleep and Poetry,” (an adox: it will appear so even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be a reacknowledged truth in ten more. † As a balance to these lines, and to the sense and sentiment of the new In the mean time, I will conclude with two quota-school, I will put down a passage or two from Pope's earliest poems, taken tions, both intended for some of my old classical at random :friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves honored by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the "little nightingale" of Twickenham. The first is from the notes to the poem of the "Friends." *

"It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticisms have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection."

The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him: †

"But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of-were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school
Of dolls to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task :
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask

Of poesy. Ill-fated, impious race,

That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,

• Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francia Hodgson. In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated Nov. 12, 1821, Lord Byron says," Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article on his Endymion,' in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before and since; and although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little] dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do Justice to his own genius, which, malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical anodels of the language."

It was at least a grammar "school."

• So spelt by the author.

"Envy her own snakes shall feel,

And Persecution mourn her broken wheel,
There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,
And gasping Faries thirst for blood in vain."
"Ah! what avails his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes;
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold."
"Round broken columns clasping ivy twined,

O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires."
"Hail, bards triumphant ! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honors with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found i
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
That on weak wings, from far pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own!"

"Amphion there the loud creating lyre
Strikes, and behold a sudden Thebes aspire I
Citharon's echoes answer to his call,
And half the mountain rolls into a wall."

"So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on th' impassive ice the lightnings play ;
Eternal snows the growing mass supply,
Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky,
As Atlas fix'd each hoary pile appears,

The gather'd winter of a thousand years.”

"Thus, when we view some well-proportion'd done,
The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Romne !
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes:

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The whole at once is bold and regular."

A thousand similar passages crowd upon me, all composed by Pope befor his two-and-twentieth year; and yet it is contended that he is no poet, and we are told so in such lines as I beg the reader to compare with these youthful verses of the "no poet." Must we repeat the question of Johnson, "If Pope is not a poet, where is poetry to be found?" Even in descripties poetry, the lowest department of the art, be will be found, en a fair examina tion, to surpass any living writer.

[ocr errors]

66

●minous_title,) from whence the above canons are of naming him, by the same species of courtesy taken. Pope's was written at nineteen, and pub-which has induced him to designate me as the lished at twenty-two. author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and Poets, he may perhaps recall to mind that I merely such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were express an opinion long ago entertained and speciJohnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, fied in a letter to Mr. James Hogg, which he the Gifford, Matthias, Haley, and the author of the said James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of Paradise of Coquettes; to whom may be added pens, showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814, Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, as he himself informed me in his answer, telling me Merivale, and others who have not had their full by way of apology, that "he'd be dd if he could fame, because "the race is not always to the swift, help it;" and I am not conscious of any thing like nor the battle to the strong," and because there is envy or exacerbation" at this moment which a fortune in fame as in all other things. Now, of induces me to think better or worse of Southey, all the new schools-I say all, for, "like Legion, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now, they are many"-has there appeared a single scholar although I do know one or two things more which who has not made his master ashamed of him? have added to my contempt for them as individuals. unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated every body, And, in return for Mr. Wilson's invective, I shall and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott found content myself with asking one question: Did he peculiar favor and imitation among the fair sex: never compose, recite, or sing any parody or parothere was Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss dies upon the Psalms (of what nature this deponent Francis; but, with the greatest respect be it spoken, saith not), in certain jovial meetings of the youth none of his imitators did much honor to the origi- of Edinburgh? It is not that I think any great nal, except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the harm if he did; because it seems to me that all deappearance of "The Bridal of Triermain," and pends upon the intention of such a parody. If it "Harold the Dauntless," which in the opinion of be meant to throw ridicule on the sacred original, it some equalled if not surpassed him; and lo! after is a sin; if it be intended to burlesque the profane three or four years, they turned out to be the Mas-subject, or to inculcate a moral truth, it is none. If ter's own compositions. Have Southey, or Cole- it were, the unbelievers' Creed, the many political ridge, or t'other fellow, made a follower of renown? parodies of various parts of the Scriptures and Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in liturgy, particularly a celebrated one of the Lord's the "City of the Plague." Has Moore, or any Prayer, and the beautiful moral parable in favor of other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable toleration by Franklin, which has often been taken imitator, or rather disciple? Now, it is remark- for a real extract from Genesis, would all be sins of able, that almost all the followers of Pope, whom I a damning nature. But I wish to know, if Mr. have named, have produced beautiful and standard Wilson ever has done this, and if he has, why he works, and it was not the number of his imitators should be so very angry with similar portions of who finally hurt his fame, but the despair of imi- Don Juan ?-Did no "parody profane" appear in tation, and the ease of not imitating him sufficiently. any of the earlier numbers of Blackwood's MagaThis, and the same reason which induced the Athen-zine?

ian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides, I will now conclude this long answer to a short "because he was tired of always hearing him called article, repenting of having said so much in my own the Just," have produced the temporary exile of defence, and so little on the "crying, left-hand fallPope from the State of Literature. But the term ings off and national defections" of the poetry of of his ostracism will expire, and the sooner the bet-the present day. Having said this, I can hardly be ter, not for him, but for those who banished him, and for the coming generation, who

"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."

expected to defend Don Juan, or any other "living" poetry, and shall not make the attempt. And although I do not think that Mr. John Wilson has in this instance treated me with candor or consideration, I trust that the tone I have used in speaking I will now return to the writer of the article which of him personally will prove that I bear him as lithas drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly tle malice as I really believe at the bottom of his take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and heart he bears towards me; but the duties of an acquirements, well known to the public as the editor, like those of a tax-gatherer, are paramount author of the "City of the Plague," "Isle of and peremptory. I have done. Palms," and other productions. I take the liberty

BYRON.

LETTER

TO THE EDITOR OF MY GRANDMOTHER'S REVIEW,

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE "LIBERAL."

IN the first canto of Don Juan appeared the fol- certain monies, to eulogize the unknown author, owing passage:

"For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed My Grandmother's Review,-the British I

"I sent it in a letter to the editor,

Who thank'd me duly by return of post-
I'm for a handsome article his creditor;

Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast,
And break a promise after having made it her,
Denying the receipt of what it cost,

who by this account must be known to you, if to nobody else. An impeachment of this nature, so seriously made, there is but one way of refuting; and it is my firm persuasion, that whether you did or did not (and I believe that you did not) receive the said monies, of which I wish that he had specified the sum, you are quite right in denying all knowledge of the transaction. If charges of this nefarious description are to go forth sanctioned by all the solemnity of circumstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as Counsellor Phillips would say) what is to become of readers hitherto of the Review in question allowed himself to be de-reviews? And if the reviews fail, what is to become On the appearance of the poem, the learned editor implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of our critical journals? what is to become of the coyed into the ineffable absurdity of taking the charge as serious, and, in his succeeding number, came forth with an indignant contradiction of it; to which Lord Byron replied in the following letter:

And smear his page with gall instead of honey,
All I can say is that he had the money."

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH REVIEW. "MY DEAR ROBERTS,

In the

of the editors? It is common cause, and you have
done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my
humble sphere, will be one of your echoes.
words of the tragedian Liston, I love a row,' and
you seem justly determined to make one.

"It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, "As a believer in the Church of England-to say or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The nothing of the State-I have been an occasional jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and reader, and great admirer of, though not a sub-might have been a still worse one for you, if your scriber to, your Review, which is rather expensive. copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it But I do not know that any part of its contents may concern your own indignant innocence, and the ever gave me much surprise till the eleventh article immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not of your twenty-seventh number made its appear- doubt your word, my dear Roberts, yet I cannot ance. You have there most vigorously refuted a help wishing that in a case of such vital importance, calumnious accusation of bribery and corruption, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an the credence of which in the public mind might not affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor. only have damaged your reputation as a barrister "I am sure, my dear Roberts, that you will take and an editor, but, what would have been still these observations of mine in good part; they are worse, have injured the circulation of your journal; written in a spirit of friendship not less pure than which, I regret to hear, is not so extensive as the your own editorial integrity. I have always admired 'purity (as you well observe) of its,' &c., &c., and you; and not knowing any shape which friendship the present taste for propriety would induce us to and admiration can assume more agreeable and useexpect. The charge itself is of a solemn nature, ful than that of good advice, I shall continue my and, although in verse, is couched in terms of such lucubrations, mixed with here and there a monitory circumstantial gravity, as to induce a belief little hint as to what I conceive to be the line you should short of that generally accorded to the thirty-nine pursue, in case you should ever again be assailed articles, to which you so frankly subscribed on with bribes, or accused of taking them. By-thetaking your degrees. It is a charge the most re- way, you don't say much about the poem, except volting to the heart of man, from its frequent oc- that it is flagitious.' This is a pity-you should currence; to the mind of a lawyer, from its occa- have cut it up; because, to say the truth, in not sional truth; and to the soul of an editor, from its doing so, you somewhat assist any notions which moral impossibility. You are charged, then, in the the malignant might entertain on the score of the last line of one octave stanza, and the whole eight aronymous asseveration which has made you so lines of the next, viz., two hundred and ninth and angry.

two hundred and tenth of the first canto of that You say, no bookseller was willing to take 'pestilent poem,' Don Juan, with receiving. and upon himself the publication, though most of them still more foolishly acknowledging the receipt of disgrace themselves by selling it. Now, my dear

friend, though we all know that those fellows will British Critic;' others, that by the expression, do any thing for money, methinks the disgrace is my Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated that more with the purchasers; and some such, doubt-my grandmother' was not the reader of the review, less, there are, for there can be no very extensive but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my selling (as you will perceive by that of the British dear Roberts, that you were an old woman; because, Review) without buying. You then add, 'what can as people often say, Jeffrey's Review,' 'Gifford's the critic say?' I am sure I don't know; at pres-Review,' in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly; so ent he says very little, and that not much to the my Grandmother's Review and Roberts's might purpose. Then comes, for praise, as far as regards be also synonymous. Now, whatever color his inthe poetry, many passages might be exhibited; for sinuation might derive from the circumstance of condemnation, as far as regards the morality, all.' your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of Now, my dear, good Roberts, I feel for you and for life, your general style, and various passages of your your reputation; my heart bleeds for both; and I writings,-I will take upon myself to exculpate you do ask you, whether or not such language does not from all suspicion of the kind, and assert, without come positively under the description of the puff calling Mrs. Roberts in testimony, that if ever you collusive,' for which see Sheridan's farce of "The should be chosen Pope, you will pass through all Critic,' (by-the-way, a little more facetious than the previous ceremonies with as much credit as any your own farce under the same title) towards the pontiff since the parturition of Joan. It is very close of scene second, act the first. unfair to judge of sex from writings, particularly

"The poem is, it seems, sold as the work of Lord from those of the British Review. We are all liable Byron; but you feel yourself at liberty to suppose to be deceived; and it is an indisputable fact, that it not Lord B.'s composition.' Why did you ever many of the best articles in your journal, which suppose that it was? I approve of your indigna- were attributed to a veteran female, were actually tion-I applaud it-I feel as angry as you can; but written by you yourself; and yet to this day there perhaps your virtuous wrath carries you a little too are people who could never find out the difference. far, when you say that no misdemeanor, not even But let us return to the more immediate question. that of sending into the world obscene and blas"I agree with you that it is impossible Lord Byron phemous poetry, the product of studious lewdness should be the author, not only because as a British and labored impiety, appears to you in so detestable peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable a light as the acceptance of a present by the editor for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, of a review, as the condition of praising an author,' but for some other reasons which you have omitted The devil it doesn't! Think a little. This is being to state. In the first place, his lordship has no critical overmuch. In point of Gentile benevolence grandmother. Now the author-and we may beor Christian charity, it were surely less criminal to lieve him in this-doth expressly state that the praise for a bribe, than to abuse a fellow-creature for British is his Grandmother's Review;' and if, nothing; and as to the assertion of the compara- as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a tive innocence of blasphemy and obscenity, con- mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellecfronted with an editors' acceptance of a present,' tual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether I shall merely observe, that as an editor you say you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady very well, but as a Christian barrister, I would not still extant. And I can the more readily credit this, recommend you to transplant this sentence into a having a sexagenary aunt of my own, who perused you constantly, till unfortunately falling asleep over "And yet you say, 'the miserable man, (for misera- the leading article of your last number, her spectable he is, as having a soul of which he cannot get cles fell off and were broken against the fender, rid.') But here I must pause, and inquire what is after a faithful service of fifteen years, and she has the meaning of this parenthesis. We have heard of never been able to fit her eyes since; so that I have people of little soul,' or of 'no soul at all,' but never been forced to read you aloud to her; and this is in till now of the misery of having a soul of which we fact the way in which I became acquainted with the cannot get rid;' a misery under which you are pos- subject of my present letter, and thus determined sibly no great sufferer, having got rid apparently of to become your public correspondent. some of the intellectual part of your own, when you "In the next place, Lord B.'s destiny seems in penned this pretty piece of eloquence.

brief.

some sort like that of Hercules of old, who became

"But to continue. You call upon Lord Byron, the author of all unappropriated prodigies. Lord always supposing him not the author, to disclaim B. has been supposed the author of the Vampire,' with all gentlemanly haste,' &c., &c. I am told of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,' To the Dead Sea,' that Lord B. is in a foreign country, some thousand of 'Death upon the Pale Horse,' of odes to 'Lavamiles off it may be; so that it will be difficult for lette,' to 'Saint Helena,' to the Land of the Gaul,* him to hurry to your wishes. In the mean time, and to a sucking child. Now he turned out to have perhaps you yourself have set an example of more written none of these things. Besides, you say, he haste than gentility; but the more haste the worse knows in what a spirit of, &c., you criticise. Are speed.'

"Let us now look at the charge itself, my dear Roberts, which appears to me to be in some degree not quite explicitly worded:

"I bribed my Grandmother's Review, the British."

you sure he knows all this? that he has read you like my poor dear aunt? They tell me he is a queer sort of a man; and I would not be too sure, if I were you, either of what he has read or what he has written. I thought his style had been the serious and terrible. As to his sending you money, this is "I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, the first time that ever I heard of his paying his this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. S. the reviewers in that coin; I thought that it was rather poet, who expressed himself, I remember, a good in their own, to judge from some of his earlier prodeal surprised that you had never reviewed his epic ductions. Besides, though he may not be profuse poem, nor any of his six tragedies, of which, in one in his expenditure, I should conjecture that his reinstance, the bad taste of the pit, and in all the viewer's bill is not so long as his tailor's. rest, the barbarous repugnance of the principal "Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinactors, prevented the performance. Mrs. and the ion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid! but if, Misses S. being in a corner of the room perusing by any accident, there should have been such a cor the proof sheets of some new poems on Italy, (I respondence between you and the unknown author, wish, by-the-by, Mrs. S. would make the tea a little whoever he may be, send him back his money: i stronger,) the male part of the conversazione were dare say he will be very glad to have it again: it at liberty to make a few observations on the poem can't be much, considering the value of the article and passage in question, and there was a difference and the circulation of the journal; and you are too of opinion. Some thought the allusion was to the modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth.

"Most truly yours, "WORTLEY CLUTTERBUCK.

Don't be angis-I know you won't,-at this ap-|maun,' &c., &c.; you have both the same redunpraisement of your powers of eulogy; for on the dant eloquence. But why should you think any other hand, my dear friend, depend upon it your body would personate you? Nobody would dream abuse is worth, not its own weight-that's a feather, of such a prank who ever read your compositions -but your weight in gold. So don't spare it: if he and perhaps not many who have heard your converhas bargained for that, give it handsomely, and de-sation. But I have been inocculcated with a little of pend upon your doing him a friendly office. your prolixity. The fact is, my dear Roberts, that "But I only speak in case of possibility; for, as somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what I said before, I cannot believe in the first instance, he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him that you would receive a bribe to praise any person and for yourself. whatever; and still less can I believe that your "With regard to the poem itself, or the author, praise could ever produce such an offer. You are a whom I cannot find out, (can you?) I have nothing good creature, my dear Roberts, and a clever fellow; to say; my business is with you. I am sure that else I could almost suspect that you had fallen into you will, upon second thoughts, be really obliged to the very trap set for you in verse by this anonymous me for the intention of this letter, however far short wag, who will certainly be but too happy to see you my expressions may have fallen of the sincere good saving him the trouble of making you ridiculous. will, admiration, and thorough esteem, with which The fact is, that the solemnity of your eleventh ar- I am ever, my dear Roberts, ticle does make you look a little more absurd than you ever yet looked, in all probability, and at the same time does no good; for if any body believed before in the octave stanzas, they will believe still, and you will find it not less difficult to prove your negative, than the learned Partridge found it to de-post is going. I forget whether or not I asked you "P. S. My letter is too long to revise, and th monstrate his not being dead, to the satisfaction of the meaning of your last words, the forgery of a "What the motives of this writer may have been and all fiction a kind of forgery, is not this tautogroundless fiction. Now, as all forgery is ction, for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you) logical? The sentence would have er.ded more stating, with the particularity which belongs to strongly with forgery;' only it hath an awful Bankfact, the forgery of a groundless fiction,' (do pray; of-England sound, and would have ended like an my dear R., talk a little less in King Cambyses indictment, besides sparing you several words, and vein,') I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at conferring some meaning upon the remainder. But you, but this is no reason for your benevolently this is mere verbal criticism. Good bye-once more making all the world laugh also. I approve of your "W. C. being angry; I tell you I am angry too; but you yours truly, should not have shown it so outrageously. Your "P. S. 2d. Is it true that the Saints make up the solemn if somebody personating the Editor of the,' losses of the review?-It is very handsome in them &c., &c.,has received from Lord B., or from any to be at so great an expense.-Pray pardon my other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's taking up so much of your time from the bar, and usual exordium when people came into the tavern from your clients, who I hear are about the same to hear him sing without paying their share of the number with the readers of your journal. Twice reckoning-If a maun, or ony maun, or ony other more yours,

the readers of almanacs.

[ocr errors]

⚫ Sept., 1819.
"Little Pidlington.

"W. C."

[blocks in formation]
« ForrigeFortsæt »