Chapter 19

{Sub-Footnote 0.1: Compare 'Hints from Horace', l. 808, 'note' 1.}

[Footnote 4: Cid Hamet Benengeli promises repose to his pen, in the last chapter of 'Don Quixote'. Oh! that our voluminous gentry would follow the example of Cid Hamet Benengeli!]

[Footnote 5: "This must have been written in the spirit of prophecy." (B., 1816.)]

[Footnote 6: "He's a very good fellow; and, except his mother and sister, the best of the set, to my mind."--B., 1816. [William (1779-1848) and George (1784-1834) Lamb, sons of Sir Peniston Lamb (Viscount Melbourne, 1828), by Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, were Lady Byron's first cousins. William married, in 1805, Lady Caroline Ponsonby, the writer of 'Glenarvon'. George, who was one of the early contributors to the 'Edinburgh Review', married in 1809 Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules. At the time of the separation, Lady Caroline Lamb and Mrs. George Lamb warmly espoused Lady Byron's cause, Lady Melbourne and her daughter Lady Cowper (afterwards Lady Palmerston) were rather against than for Lady Byron. William Lamb was discreetly silent, and George Lamb declaimed against Lady Byron, calling her a d----d fool. Hence Lord Byron's praises of George. Cf. line 517 of 'English Bards'.]

[Footnote 7: This ingenuous youth is mentioned more particularly, with his production, in another place. ('Vide post', l. 516.)

"Spurious Brat" [see variant ii. p. 300], that is the farce; the ingenuous youth who begat it is mentioned more particularly with his offspring in another place. ['Note. MS. M.'] [The farce 'Whistle for It' was performed two or three times at Covent Garden Theatre in 1807.]

[Footnote 8: In the 'Edinburgh Review'.]

[Footnote 9: The proverbial "Joe" Miller, an actor by profession (1684-1738), was a man of no education, and is said to have been unable to read. His reputation rests mainly on the book of jests compiled after his death, and attributed to him by John Mottley. (First Edition. T. Read. 1739.)]

[Footnote 10: Messrs. Jeffrey and Lamb are the alpha and omega, the first and last of the 'Edinburgh Review'; the others are mentioned hereafter.

[The MS. Note is as follows:--"Of the young gentlemen who write in the 'E.R.', I have now named the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the best and the worst. The intermediate members are designated with due honour hereafter."]

"This was not just. Neither the heart nor the head of these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented. At the time this was written, I was personally unacquainted with either."--B., 1816.

[Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) founded the 'Edinburgh Review' in conjunction with Sydney Smith, Brougham, and Francis Horner, in 1802. In 1803 he succeeded Smith as editor, and conducted the 'Review' till 1829. Independence of publishers and high pay to contributors ("Ten guineas a sheet," writes Southey to Scott, June, 1807, "instead of seven pounds for the 'Annual'," 'Life and Corr'., iii. 125) distinguished the new journal from the first. Jeffrey was called to the Scottish bar in 1794, and as an advocate was especially successful with juries. He was constantly employed, and won fame and fortune. In 1829 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, and the following year, when the Whigs came into office, he became Lord Advocate. He sat as M.P. twice for Malton (1830-1832), and, afterwards, for Edinburgh. In 1834 he was appointed a Judge of the Court of Sessions, when he took the title of Lord Jeffrey. Byron had attacked Jeffrey in British Bards before his 'Hours of Idleness' had been cut up by the 'Edinburgh', and when the article appeared (Jan. 1808), under the mistaken impression that he was the author, denounced him at large (ll. 460-528) in the first edition of 'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers'. None the less, the great critic did not fail to do ample justice to the poet's mature work, and won from him repeated acknowledgments of his kindness and generosity. (See 'Edinburgh Review', vol. xxii. p. 416, and Byron's comment in his 'Diary' for March 20,1814; 'Life', p. 232. See, too, 'Hints from Horace', ll. 589-626; and 'Don Juan', canto x. st. 11-16, and canto xii. st. 16. See also Bagehot's 'Literary Studies', vol. i. article I.)]

[Footnote 11: IMITATION.

"Stulta est dementia, cum tot ubique ------occurras perituræ parcere chartæ."

JUVENAL, 'Sat. I.' ll. 17, 18.]

[Footnote 12: IMITATION.

"Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo, Per quem magnus equos Auruncæ flexit alumnus, Si vacat, et placidi rationem admittitis, edam."

JUVENAL, 'Sat. I'. ll. 19-21.]

[Footnote 13: William Gifford (1756-1826), a self-taught scholar, first a ploughboy, then boy on board a Brixham coaster, afterwards shoemaker's apprentice, was sent by friends to Exeter College, Oxford (1779-81). In the 'Baviad' (1794) and the 'Maeviad' (1795) he attacked many of the smaller writers of the day, who were either silly, like the Della Cruscan School, or discreditable, like Williams, who wrote as "Anthony Pasquin." In his 'Epistle to Peter Pindar' (1800) he laboured to expose the true character of John Wolcot. As editor of the 'Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner' (November, 1797, to July, 1798), he supported the political views of Canning and his friends. As editor of the 'Quarterly Review', from its foundation (February, 1809) to his resignation in September, 1824, he soon rose to literary eminence by his sound sense and adherence to the best models, though his judgments were sometimes narrow-minded and warped by political prejudice. His editions of 'Massinger' (1805), which superseded that of Monck Mason and Davies (1765), of 'Ben Jonson' (1816), of 'Ford' (1827), are valuable. To his translation of 'Juvenal' (1802) is prefixed his autobiography. His translation of 'Persius' appeared in 1821. To Gifford, Byron usually paid the utmost deference. "Any suggestion of yours, even if it were conveyed," he writes to him, in 1813, "in the less tender text of the 'Baviad', or a Monck Mason note to Massinger, would be obeyed." See also his letter (September 20, 1821, 'Life', p.531): "I know no praise which would compensate me in my own mind for his censure." Byron was attracted to Gifford, partly by his devotion to the classical models of literature, partly by the outspoken frankness of his literary criticism, partly also, perhaps, by his physical deformity.]

[Footnote 14: Henry James Pye (1745-1813), M.P. for Berkshire, and afterwards Police Magistrate for Westminster, held the office of poet laureate from 1790 till his death in 1813, succeeding Thomas Warton, and succeeded by Southey. He published 'Farringdon Hill' in 1774, The 'Progress of Refinement' in 1783, and a translation of Burger's 'Lenore' in 1795. His name recurs in the 'Vision of Judgment', stanza xcii. Lines 97-102 were inserted in the Fifth Edition.]

[Footnote 15: The first edition of the Satire opened with this line; and Byron's original intention was to prefix the following argument, first published in 'Recollections', by R. C. Dallas (1824):--

"ARGUMENT.

"The poet considereth times past, and their poesy--makes a sudden transition to times present--is incensed against book-makers--revileth Walter Scott for cupidity and ballad-mongering, with notable remarks on Master Southey--complaineth that Master Southey had inflicted three poems, epic and otherwise, on the public--inveigheth against William Wordsworth, but laudeth Mister Coleridge and his elegy on a young ass--is disposed to vituperate Mr. Lewis--and greatly rebuketh Thomas Little (the late) and Lord Strangford--recommendeth Mr. Hayley to turn his attention to prose--and exhorteth the Moravians to glorify Mr. Grahame--sympathiseth with the Rev. [William Bowles]--and deploreth the melancholy fate of James Montgomery--breaketh out into invective against the Edinburgh Reviewers--calleth them hard names, harpies and the like--apostrophiseth Jeffrey, and prophesieth.--Episode of Jeffrey and Moore, their jeopardy and deliverance; portents on the morn of the combat; the Tweed, Tolbooth, Firth of Forth [and Arthur's Seat], severally shocked; descent of a goddess to save Jeffrey; incorporation of the bullets with his sinciput and occiput.--Edinburgh Reviews 'en masse'.--Lord Aberdeen, Herbert, Scott, Hallam, Pillans, Lambe, Sydney Smith, Brougham, etc.--Lord Holland applauded for dinners and translations.--The Drama; Skeffington, Hook, Reynolds, Kenney, Cherry, etc.--Sheridan, Colman, and Cumberland called upon [requested, MS.] to write.--Return to poesy--scribblers of all sorts--lords sometimes rhyme; much better not--Hafiz, Rosa Matilda, and X.Y.Z.--Rogers, Campbell, Gifford, etc. true poets--Translators of the Greek Anthology--Crabbe--Darwin's style--Cambridge--Seatonian Prize--Smythe--Hodgson--Oxford--Richards--Poetaloquitur--Conclusion."]

[Footnote 16: Lines 115, 116, were a MS. addition to the printed text of 'British Bards'. An alternative version has been pencilled on the margin:--

"Otway and Congreve mimic scenes had wove And Waller tuned his Lyre to mighty Love."]

[Footnote 17: Thomas Little was the name under which Moore's early poems were published, 'The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.' (1801). "Twelves" refers to the "duodecimo." Sheets, after printing, are pressed between cold or hot rollers, to impart smoothness of "surface." Hot rolling is the more expensive process.]

[Footnote 18: Eccles. chapter i. verse 9.]

[Footnote 19: At first sight Byron appears to refer to the lighting of streets by gas, especially as the first shop lighted with it was that of Lardner & Co., at the corner of the Albany (June, 1805), and as lamps were on view at the premises of the Gas Light and Coke Company in Pall Mall from 1808 onwards. But it is almost certain that he alludes to the "sublimating gas" of Dr. Beddoes, which his assistant, Davy, mentions in his 'Researches' (1800) as nitrous oxide, and which was used by Southey and Coleridge. The same four "wonders" of medical science are depicted in Gillray's caricatures, November, 1801, and May and June, 1802, and are satirized in Christopher Caustic's 'Terrible Tractoration! A Poetical Petition against Galvanising Trumpery and the Perkinistit Institution' (in 4 cantos, 1803).

Against vaccination, or cow-pox, a brisk war was still being carried on. Gillray has a likeness of Jenner vaccinating patients.

Metallic "Tractors" were a remedy much advertised at the beginning of the century by an American quack, Benjamin Charles Perkins, founder of the Perkinean Institution in London, as a "cure for all Disorders, Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs."

In Galvanism several experiments, conducted by Professor Aldini, nephew of Galvani, are described in the 'Morning Post' for Jan. 6th, Feb. 6th, and Jan. 22nd, 1803. The latter were made on the body of Forster the murderer.

For the allusion to Gas, compare 'Terrible Tractoration', canto 1--

"Beddoes (bless the good doctor) has Sent me a bag full of his gas, Which snuff'd the nose up, makes wit brighter, And eke a dunce an airy writer."]

[Footnote 20: Stott, better known in the 'Morning Post' by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:--('Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia')--

"Princely offspring of Braganza, Erin greets thee with a stanza," etc.

Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:--

"Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surge That lashes Lapland's sounding shore."

Lord have mercy on us! the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" was nothing to this. [The lines "Princely Offspring," headed "Extemporaneous Verse on the expulsion of the Prince Regent from Portugal by Gallic Tyranny," were published in the 'Morning Post', Dec. 30, 1807. (See 'post', l. 708, and 'note'.)] ]

[Footnote 21: See p. 317, note 1.]

[Footnote 22: See the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 'passim'. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' tragedy [('vide The Rehearsal'), 'British Bards'], unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, "'twas his neckverse at Harribee," 'i. e.' the gallows.

The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are 'chefs d'oeuvre' in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs. CONSTABLE, MURRAY, and MILLER, worshipful Booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money; and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr. SCOTT will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repetition of Black-Letter Ballad imitations.

[Constable paid Scott a thousand pounds for 'Marmion', and

"offered one fourth of the copyright to Mr. Miller of Albemarle Street, and one fourth to Mr. Murray of Fleet Street (see line 173). Both publishers eagerly accepted the proposal." ... "A severe and unjust review of 'Marmion' by Jeffrey appeared in [the 'Edinburgh Review' for April] 1808, accusing Scott of a mercenary spirit in writing for money. ... Scott was much nettled by these observations."

('Memoirs of John Murray', i. 76, 95). In his diary of 1813 Byron wrote of Scott,

"He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most 'English' of Bards."

'Life', p. 206.]]

[Footnote 23: It was the suggestion of the Countess of Dalkeith, that Scott should write a ballad on the old border legend of 'Gilpin Horner', which first gave shape to the poet's ideas, and led to the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'.]

[Footnote 24: In his strictures on Scott and Southey, Byron takes his lead from Lady Anne Hamilton's (1766-1846, daughter of Archibald, ninth Duke of Hamilton, and Lady-in-waiting to Caroline of Brunswick) 'Epics of the Ton' (1807), a work which has not shared the dubious celebrity of her 'Secret Memories of the Court', etc. (1832). Compare the following lines (p. 9):--

"Then still might Southey sing his crazy Joan, Or feign a Welshman o'er the Atlantic flown, Or tell of Thalaba the wondrous matter, Or with clown Wordsworth, chatter, chatter, chatter. * * * * * Good-natured Scott rehearse, in well-paid lays, The marv'lous chiefs and elves of other days."

(For Scott's reference to "my share of flagellation among my betters," and an explicit statement that he had remonstrated with Jeffrey against the "offensive criticism" of 'Hours of Idleness', because he thought it treated with undue severity, see Introduction to 'Marmion', 1830.)]]

[Footnote 25: Lines 179, 180, in the Fifth Edition, were substituted for variant i. p. 312.--'Leigh Hunt's annotated Copy of the Fourth Edition'.]

[Footnote 26: "Good night to Marmion"--the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.]

[Footnote 27: As the 'Odyssey' is so closely connected with the story of the 'Iliad', they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the 'Paradise Lost' and 'Gerusalemme Liberata' as their standard efforts; since neither the 'Jerusalem Conquered' of the Italian, nor the 'Paradise Regained' of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?]

[Footnote 28: 'Thalaba', Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. 'Joan of Arc' was marvellous enough, but 'Thalaba' was one of those poems "which," in the word of PORSON, "will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but--<i<not till then'." ["Of 'Thalaba" the wild and wondrous song"--Proem to 'Madoc', Southey's 'Poetical Works' (1838), vol. v. 'Joan of Arc' was published in 1796, 'Thalaba the Destroyer' in 1801, and 'Madoc' in 1805.]

[Footnote 29: The hero of Fielding's farce, 'The Tragedy of Tragedies', 'or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great', first played in 1730 at the Haymarket.]

[Footnote 30: Southey's 'Madoc' is divided into two parts--Part I., "Madoc in Wales;" Part II., "Madoc in Aztlan." The word "cacique" ("Cacique or cazique... a native chief or 'prince' of the aborigines in the West Indies:" 'New Engl. Dict'., Art. "Cacique") occurs in the translations of Spanish writers quoted by Southey in his notes, but not in the text of the poem.]

[Footnote 31: We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degraded title of Epic." See his Preface. ["It assumes not the degraded title of Epic."--Preface to 'Madoc' (1805), Southey's 'Poetical Works' (1838), vol. v. p. xxi.] Why is Epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late Romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvy, Hole,[A] and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the Epic Muse; but, as Mr. SOUTHEY'S poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask--has he substituted anything better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir RICHARD BLACKMORE in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

[Sub-Footnote A: For "Hole," the 'MS'. and 'British Bards' read "Sir J. B. Burgess; Cumberland."] ]

[Footnote 32: See 'The Old Woman of Berkeley', a ballad by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high trotting horse."]

[Footnote 33: The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the 'Anti-Jacobin' to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics:--

"God help thee, silly one!"

'Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin', p. 23.]

[Footnote 34: In the annotated copy of the Fourth Edition Byron has drawn a line down the margin of the passage on Wordsworth, lines 236-248, and adds the word "Unjust." The first four lines on Coleridge (lines 255-258) are also marked "Unjust." The recantation is, no doubt, intended to apply to both passages from beginning to end. "'Unjust'."--B., 1816. (See also Byron's letter to S. T. Coleridge, March 31, 1815.)]

[Footnote 35: 'Lyrical Ballads', p. 4.--"The Tables Turned," Stanza 1.

"Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks, Why all this toil and trouble? Up, up, my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double."]

[Footnote 36: Mr. W. in his preface labours hard to prove, that prose and verse are much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable:--

"And thus to Betty's questions he Made answer, like a traveller bold. 'The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold.'"

'Lyrical Ballads', p. 179. [Compare 'The Simpliciad', II. 295-305, and 'note'.]]

[Footnote 37: "He has not published for some years."--'British Bards'. (A marginal note in pencil.) [Coleridge's 'Poems' (3rd edit.) appeared in 1803; the first number of 'The Friend' on June 1, 1809.]]

[Footnote 38: COLERIDGE'S 'Poems', p. 11, "Songs of the Pixies," 'i. e.' Devonshire Fairies; p. 42, we have "Lines to a Young Lady;" and, p. 52, "Lines to a Young Ass." [Compare 'The Simpliciad', ll. 211, 213--

"Then in despite of scornful Folly's pother, Ask him to live with you and hail him brother."]]

[Footnote 39: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), known as "Monk" Lewis, was the son of a rich Jamaica planter. During a six months' visit to Weimar (1792-3), when he was introduced to Goethe, he applied himself to the study of German literature, especially novels and the drama. In 1794 he was appointed 'attaché' to the Embassy at the Hague, and in the course of ten weeks wrote 'Ambrosio, or The Monk', which was published in 1795. In 1798 he made the acquaintance of Scott, and procured his promise of co-operation in his contemplated 'Tales of Terror'. In the same year he published the 'Castle Spectre' (first played at Drury Lane, Dec. 14, 1797), in which, to quote the postscript "To the Reader," he meant (but Sheridan interposed) "to have exhibited a whole regiment of Ghosts." 'Tales of Terror' were printed at Weybridge in 1801, and two or three editions of 'Tales of Wonder', to which Byron refers, came out in the same year. Lewis borrowed so freely from all sources that the collection was called "Tales of Plunder." In the first edition (two vols., printed by W. Bulmer for the author, 1801) the first eighteen poems, with the exception of 'The Fire King' (xii.) by Walter Scott, are by Lewis, either original or translated. Scott also contributed 'Glenfinlas, The Eve of St. John, Frederick and Alice, The Wild Huntsmen (Der Wilde Jäger). Southey contributed six poems, including 'The Old Woman of Berkeley' (xxiv.). 'The Little Grey Man' (xix.) is by H. Bunbury. The second volume is made up from Burns, Gray, Parnell, Glover, Percy's 'Reliques', and other sources.

A second edition, published in 1801, which consists of thirty-two ballads (Southey's are not included), advertises "'Tales of Terror' printed uniform with this edition of 'Tales of Wonder'." 'Romantic Tales', in four volumes, appeared in 1808. Of his other works, 'The Captive, A Monodrama', was played in 1803; the 'Bravo of Venice, A Translation from the German', in 1804; and 'Timour the Tartar' in 1811. His 'Journal of a West Indian Proprietor' was not published till 1834. He sat as M.P. for Hindon (1796-1802).

He had been a favourite in society before Byron appeared on the scene, but there is no record of any intimacy or acquaintance before 1813. When Byron was living at Geneva, Lewis visited the Maison Diodati in August, 1816, on which occasion he "translated to him Goethe's 'Faust' by word of mouth," and drew up a codicil to his will, witnessed by Byron, Shelley, and Polidori, which contained certain humane provisions for the well-being of the negroes on his Jamaica estates. He also visited him at 'La Mira' in August, 1817. Byron wrote of him after his death: "He was a good man, and a clever one, but he was a bore, a damned bore--one may say. But I liked him."

To judge from his letters to his mother and other evidence (Scott's testimony, for instance), he was a kindly, well-intentioned man, but lacking in humour. When his father condemned the indecency of the 'Monk', he assured him "that he had not the slightest idea that what he was then writing could injure the principles of any human being." "He was," said Byron, "too great a bore to lie," and the plea is evidently offered in good faith. As a writer, he is memorable chiefly for his sponsorship of German literature. Scott said of him that he had the finest ear for rhythm he ever met with--finer than Byron's; and Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth, Jan., 1798 ('Letters of S. T. C.' (1895), i. 237), and again in 'Table Talk' for March 20, 1834, commends his verses. Certainly his ballad of "Crazy Jane," once so famous that ladies took to wearing "Crazy Jane" hats, is of the nature of poetry. (See 'Life', 349, 362, 491, etc.; 'Life and Correspondence' of M. G. Lewis (1839), i. 158, etc.; 'Life of Scott', by J. G. Lockhart (1842), pp. 80-83, 94.)] ]