← The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. Poetry
Chapter 12
Poems on Various Occasions (part 3)
Contents
Contents p.5Postscript to the Second Edition
I have been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well-beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry;
"Tantæne animis coelestibus Iræ!"
I suppose I must say of Jeffrey as Sir Andrew Aguecheek saith,
"an I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him."
What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed! But I yet hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.
My Northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality towards their great literary Anthropophagus, Jeffery; but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by "lying and slandering," and slake their thirst by "evil speaking"? I have adduced facts already well known, and of Jeffrey's mind I have stated my free opinion, nor has he thence sustained any injury:--what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England because I have censured there "persons of honour and wit about town;" but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal: those who do not, may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas! "the age of chivalry is over," or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.
There is a youth ycleped Hewson Clarke (subaudi esquire), a sizer of Emanuel College, and, I believe, a denizen of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet; he is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the Satirist for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name, till coupled with the Satirist. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather pleased than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the editor of the Satirist, who, it seems, is a gentleman--God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr. Jerningham is about to take up the cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord Carlisle. I hope not: he was one of the few, who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, "pour on, I will endure." I have nothing further to add, save a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publishers, and, in the words of Scott, I wish
"To all and each a fair good night,
And rosy dreams and slumbers light."Footnote 1: Ý The article never appeared, and Lord Byron, in the Hints from Horace, taunted Jeffrey with a silence which seemed to indicate that the critic was beaten from the field.
return to footnote markFootnote 2: Ý Edward Jerningham (1727-1812), third son of Sir George Jerningham, Bart., was an indefatigable versifier. Between the publication of his first poem, The Nunnery, in 1766, and his last, The Old Bard's Farewell, in 1812, he sent to the press no less than thirty separate compositions. As a contributor to the British Album, Gifford handled him roughly in the Baviad (lines 21, 22); and Mathias, in a note to Pursuits of Literature, brackets him with Payne Knight as "ecrivain du commun et poëte vulgaire." He was a dandy with a literary turn, who throughout a long life knew every one who was worth knowing. Some of his letters have recently been published (see Jerningham Letters, two vols., 1896).
Contents
Contents p.5
cross-reference: return to Footnote 19 of Hints from HoraceHints from Horacea
being An Allusion in English Verse to the Epistle "ad Pisones, de Arte Poeticâ," and Intended as a Sequel to English Bards, And Scotch Reviewers.
----"Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."Hor. De Arte Poet., II. 304 and 305.
"Rhymes are diftlcult things--they are stubborn things, Sir."
Fielding's Amelia, Vol. iii. Book; and Chap. v.
Footnote a: Ý
Hints from Horace (Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811); being an Imitation in English Verse from the Epistle, etc.
[MS. M.]
Hints from Horace: being a Partial Imitation, in English Verse, of the Epistle Ad Pisones, De Arte Poeticâ; and intended as a sequel to English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.
Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 12, 1811.
[Proof b.]
return to footnote markIntroduction to Hints from Horace
Three MSS. of Hints from Horace are extant, two in the possession of Lord Lovelace (MSS. L. a and b), and a third in the possession of Mr. Murray (MS. M.).
Proofs of lines 173-272 and 1-272 (Proofs a, b), are among the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum. They were purchased from the Rev. Alexander Dallas, January 12, 1867, and are, doubtless, fragments of the proofs set up in type for Cawthorn in 1811. They are in "book-form," and show that the volume was intended to be uniform with the Fifth Edition of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, of 1811. The text corresponds closely but not exactly with that adopted by Murray in 1831, and does not embody the variants of the several MSS. It is probable that complete proofs were in Moore's possession at the time when he included the selections from the Hints in his Letters and Journals, pp. 263-269, and that the text of the entire poem as published in 1831 was derived from this source. Selections, numbering in all 156 lines, had already appeared in Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R. C. Dallas, 1824, pp. 104-113. Byron, estimating the merit by the difficulty of the performance, rated the Hints from Horace extravagantly high. He only forbore to publish them after the success of Childe Harold, because he felt, as he states, that he should be "heaping coals of fire upon his head" if he were in his hour of triumph to put forth a sequel to a lampoon provoked by failure. Nine years afterwards, when he resolved to print the work with some omissions, he gravely maintained that it excelled the productions of his mature genius.
"As far," he said, "as versification goes, it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times"
[September 23, 1820]. The opinion of J. C. Hobhouse that the Hints would require "a good deal of slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, and other considerations, again led Byron to suspend the publication. Authors are frequently bad judges of their own works, but of all the literary hallucinations upon record there are none which exceed the mistaken preferences of Lord Byron. Shortly after the appearance of The Corsair he fancied that English Bards was still his masterpiece; when all his greatest works had been produced, he contended that his translation from Pulci was his "grand performance,--the best thing he ever did in his life;" and throughout the whole of his literary career he regarded these Hints from Horace with a special and unchanging fondness.
Contents
Contents p.5Hints from Horace
Athens: Capuchin Convent, March. 12, 1811a.
Who would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to graceb
His costly canvas with each flattered face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tailc?
Or low Dubost--as once the world has seen--
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seemsd
The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.
Poets and painters, as all artists know,
May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
But make not monsters spring from gentle dams--
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.
A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry endsf;
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As Pertness passes with a legal gowng:
Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strainh
The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain:
The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,
King's Coll-Cam's stream-stained windows, and old walls:
Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims
To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames.
You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shinej--
But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
You plan a vase--it dwindles to a pot;
Then glide down Grub-street--fasting and forgot:
Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till--true.
In fine, to whatsoever you aspire,
Let it at least be simple and entire.
The greater portion of the rhyming tribek
(Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)
Are led astray by some peculiar lurem.
I labour to be brief--become obscure;
One falls while following Elegance too fast;
Another soars, inflated with Bombast;
Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
He spins his subject to Satiety;
Absurdly varying, he at last engraves
Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the wavesn!
Unless your care's exact, your judgment nice,
The flight from Folly leads but into Vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.
For galligaskins Slowshears is your mano
But coats must claim another artisan.
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
As Vulcan's feet to bear Apollo's frame;
Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
Black eyes, black ringlets, but--a bottle nose!
Dear Authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voicep,
Await the Poet, skilful in his choice;
With native Eloquence he soars along,
Grace in his thoughts, and Music in his song.
Let Judgment teach him wisely to combine
With future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author choose, or that reject,
Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting wordq.
Then fear not, if 'tis needful, to produce
Some term unknown, or obsolete in use,
(As Pitt has furnished us a word or two,
Which Lexicographers declined to do;)
So you indeed, with care,--(but be content
To take this license rarely)--may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phraser;
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer Muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt, and Walter Scott?
Since they, by force of rhyme and force of lungss,
Enriched our Island's ill-united tongues;
'Tis then--and shall be--lawful to present
Reform in writing, as in Parliament.
As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to Fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though as a Monarch nods, and Commerce callst,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drained, sustainu
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar,
All, all, must perish; but, surviving last,
The love of Letters half preserves the past.
True, some decay, yet not a few revive; v
Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,
As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting swayw
Our life and language must alike obey.
The immortal wars which Gods and Angels wage,
Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?
His strain will teach what numbers best belong
To themes celestial told in Epic songx.
The slow, sad stanza will correctly paint
The Lover's anguish, or the Friend's complaint.
But which deserves the Laurel--Rhyme or Blanky?
Which holds on Helicon the higher rank?
Let squabbling critics by themselves dispute
This point, as puzzling as a Chancery suit.
Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt--see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean.
Blank verse is now, with one consent, allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side.
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;
Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point, because they wrote in verse.
But so Thalia pleases to appearz,
Poor Virgin! damned some twenty times a year!
Whate'er the scene, let this advice have weight:--
Adapt your language to your Hero's state.
At times Melpomene forgets to groan,
And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone;
Nor unregarded will the act pass by
Where angry Townly "lifts his voice on high."
Again, our Shakespeare limits verse to Kings,
When common prose will serve for common things;
And lively Hal resigns heroic ireA,--
To "hollaing Hotspur" and his sceptred sireB.
'Tis not enough, ye Bards, with all your art,
To polish poems; they must touch the heart:
Where'er the scene be laid, whate'er the song,
Still let it bear the hearer's soul along;
Command your audience or to smile or weep,
Whiche'er may please you--anything but sleep.
The Poet claims our tears; but, by his leave,
Before I shed them, let me see him grieve.
If banished Romeo feigned nor sigh nor tear,
Lulled by his languor, I could sleep or sneerC.
Sad words, no doubt, become a serious face,
And men look angry in the proper place.
At double meanings folks seem wondrous sly,
And Sentiment prescribes a pensive eye;
For Nature formed at first the inward man,
And actors copy Nature--when they can.
She bids the beating heart with rapture bound,
Raised to the Stars, or levelled with the ground;
And for Expression's aid, 'tis said, or sungD,
She gave our mind's interpreter--the tongue,
Who, worn with use, of late would fain dispense
(At least in theatres) with common sense;
O'erwhelm with sound the Boxes, Gallery, Pit,
And raise a laugh with anything--but Wit.
To skilful writers it will much import,
Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court;
Whether they seek applause by smile or tear,
To draw a Lying Valet, or a Lear,
A sage, or rakish youngster wild from school,
A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull;
All persons please when Nature's voice prevails,
Scottish or Irish, born in Wilts or Wales.
Or follow common fame, or forge a plot;E
Who cares if mimic heroes lived or not!
One precept serves to regulate the scene:
Make it appear as if it might have been.
If some Drawcansir you aspire to draw,
Present him raving, and above all law:
If female furies in your scheme are planned,
Macbeth's fierce dame is ready to your hand;
For tears and treachery, for good and evil,
Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil!
But if a new design you dare essay,
And freely wander from the beaten way,
True to your characters, till all be past,
Preserve consistency from first to last.
Tis hard to venture where our betters fail, [xxx]
Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;
And yet, perchance,'tis wiser to prefer
A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err;
Yet copy not too closely, but record,
More justly, thought for thought than word for word;
Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways,
But only follow where he merits praise.
For you, young Bard! whom luckless fate may lead
To tremble on the nod of all who read,
Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls,F
Beware--for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles!
"Awake a louder and a loftier strain,"--
And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?--
He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire
The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit"
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song."G
Still to the "midst of things" he hastens on,
As if we witnessed all already done;H
Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean
To raise the subject, or adorn the scene;
Gives, as each page improves upon the sight,
Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness--light;
And truth and fiction with such art compounds,
We know not where to fix their several bounds.
If you would please the Public, deign to hear
What soothes the many-headed monster's ear:J
If your heart triumph when the hands of all
Applaud in thunder at the curtain's fall,
Deserve those plaudits--study Nature's page,
And sketch the striking traits of every age;
While varying Man and varying years unfold
Life's little tale, so oft, so vainly told;
Observe his simple childhood's dawning days,
His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays:
Till time at length the mannish tyro weans,
And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens!K
Behold him Freshman! forced no more to groanM
O'er Virgil's devilish verses and his own;
Prayers are too tedious, Lectures too abstruse,
He flies from Tavell's frown to "Fordham's Mews;"
(Unlucky Tavell! doomed to daily caresN
By pugilistic pupils, and by bears,)
Fines, Tutors, tasks, Conventions threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket Plain.
Rough with his elders, with his equals rash,
Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash;
Constant to nought--save hazard and a whore,P
Yet cursing both--for both have made him sore:
Unread (unless since books beguile disease,
The P----x becomes his passage to Degrees);
Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away,Q
And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.;
Master of Arts! as hells and clubs proclaim,R
Where scarce a blackleg bears a brighter name!
Launched into life, extinct his early fire,
He apes the selfish prudence of his Sire;
Marries for money, chooses friends for rank,
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the Senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow--for himself was there.
Mute, though he votes, unless when called to cheer,
His son's so sharp--he'll see the dog a Peer!
Manhood declines--Age palsies every limb;
He quits the scene--or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves,S
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
Counts cent per cent, and smiles, or vainly frets,
O'er hoards diminished by young Hopeful's debts;
Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
Complete in all life's lessons--but to die;
Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
Commending every time, save times like these;
Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
Expires unwept--is buried--Let him rot!
But from the Drama let me not digress,
Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less.T
Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred,U
When what is done is rather seen than heard,
Yet many deeds preserved in History's page
Are better told than acted on the stage;
The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,
And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,
True Briton all beside, I here am French--
Bloodshed 'tis surely better to retrench:
The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;
We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
And find small sympathy in being sick.
Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
Appals an audience with a Monarch's death;V
To gaze when sable Hubert threats to sear
Young Arthur's eyes, can ours or Nature bear?
A haltered heroine Johnson sought to slay--
We saved Irene, but half damned the play,
And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating times
Stint Metamorphoses to Pantomimes;
And Lewis' self, with all his sprites, would quake
To change Earl Osmond's negro to a snake!
Because, in scenes exciting joy or grief,
We loathe the action which exceeds belief:
And yet, God knows! what may not authors do,
Whose Postscripts prate of dyeing "heroines blue"?
Above all things, Dan Poet, if you can,
Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man,
Nor call a ghost, unless some cursed scrapeW
Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.
Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid,
I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did;
Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,
Rage, love, and aught but moralise--in song.
Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends,X
Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!
Napoleon's edicts no embargo lay
On whores--spies--singers--wisely shipped away.
Our giant Capital, whose squares are spreadY
Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,
In all iniquity is grown so nice,
It scorns amusements which are not of price.
Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,Z
Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
His anguish doubling by his own "encore;"Aa
Squeezed in "Fop's Alley," jostled by the beaux,
Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes;
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease,
Till the dropped curtain gives a glad release:
Why this, and more, he suffers--can ye guess?--
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!
So prosper eunuchs from Etruscan schools;
Give us but fiddlers, and they're sure of fools!
Ere scenes were played by many a reverend clerk, Bb
(What harm, if David danced before the ark?)Cc
In Christmas revels, simple country folks
Were pleased with morrice-mumm'ry and coarse jokes.
Improving years, with things no longer known,
Produced blithe Punch and merry Madame Joan,
Who still frisk on with feats so lewdly low,Dd
'Tis strange Benvolio suffers such a show;
Suppressing peer! to whom each vice gives place,Ee
Oaths, boxing, begging--all, save rout and race.
Farce followed Comedy, and reached her prime,
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time:
Mad wag! who pardoned none, nor spared the best,
And turned some very serious things to jest.
Nor Church nor State escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the Gown--Priests--Lawyers--Volunteers:
"Alas, poor Yorick!" now for ever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of Kings and Queens,
When "Crononhotonthologos must die,"
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
Moschus! with whom once more I hope to sit,Ff
And smile at folly, if we can't at wit;
Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell,
And bear Swift's motto, "Vive la bagatelle!"
Which charmed our days in each Ægean clime,
As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme.
Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past,
Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last;
But find in thine--like pagan Plato's bed, Gg
Some merry Manuscript of Mimes, when dead.
Now to the Drama let us bend our eyes,
Where fettered by whig Walpole low she lies;
Corruption foiled her, for she feared her glance;
Decorum left her for an Opera dance!
Yet Chesterfield, whose polished pen inveighs
'Gainst laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays;
Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains,
And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains.
Repeal that act! again let Humour roam
Wild o'er the stage--we've time for tears at home;
Let Archer plant the horns on Sullen's brows,
And Estifania gull her "Copper" spouse;
The moral's scant--but that may be excused,
Men go not to be lectured, but amused.
He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill
Must wear a head in want of Willis' skill;
Aye, but Macheath's example--psha!--no more!
It formed no thieves--the thief was formed before;
And spite of puritans and Collier's curse,Hh
Plays make mankind no better, and no worse.
Then spare our stage, ye methodistic men!
Nor burn damned Drury if it rise again.
But why to brain-scorched bigots thus appeal?
Can heavenly Mercy dwell with earthly Zeal?
For times of fire and faggot let them hope!
Times dear alike to puritan or Pope.
As pious Calvin saw Servetus blaze,
So would new sects on newer victims gaze.
E'en now the songs of Solyma begin;
Faith cants, perplexed apologist of Sin!
While the Lord's servant chastens whom he loves,
And Simeon kicks, where Baxter only "shoves."
Whom Nature guides, so writes, that every dunce,Jj
Enraptured, thinks to do the same at once;
But after inky thumbs and bitten nails,Kk
And twenty scattered quires, the coxcomb fails.
Let Pastoral be dumb; for who can hope
To match the youthful eclogues of our Pope?
Yet his and Philips' faults, of different kind,
For Art too rude, for Nature too refined,Mm
Instruct how hard the medium 'tis to hit
'Twixt too much polish and too coarse a wit.
A vulgar scribbler, certes, stands disgraced
In this nice age, when all aspire to taste;
The dirty language, and the noisome jest,
Which pleased in Swift of yore, we now detest;
Proscribed not only in the world polite,Nn
But even too nasty for a City Knight!
Peace to Swift's faults! his wit hath made them pass,
Unmatched by all, save matchless Hudibras!
Whose author is perhaps the first we meet,
Who from our couplet lopped two final feet;
Nor less in merit than the longer line,
This measure moves a favourite of the Nine.
Though at first view eight feet may seem in vain
Formed, save in Ode, to bear a serious strain,Pp
Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
Heroic rhyme, but most in Love and War,
Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
Are curbed too much by long-recurring rhyme.
But many a skilful judge abhors to see,
What few admire--irregularity.
This some vouchsafe to pardon; but 'tis hard
When such a word contents a British Bard.
And must the Bard his glowing thoughts confine,Qq
Lest Censure hover o'er some faulty line?
Remove whate'er a critic may suspect,
To gain the paltry suffrage of "Correct"?
Or prune the spirit of each daring phrase,
To fly from Error, not to merit Praise?
Ye, who seek finished models, never cease,Rr
By day and night, to read the works of Greece.
But our good Fathers never bent their brains
To heathen Greek, content with native strains.
The few who read a page, or used a pen,
Were satisfied with Chaucer and old Ben;
The jokes and numbers suited to their taste
Were quaint and careless, anything but chaste;
Yet, whether right or wrong the ancient rules,
It will not do to call our Fathers fools!
Though you and I, who eruditely know
To separate the elegant and low,
Can also, when a hobbling line appears,
Detect with fingers--in default of ears.
In sooth I do not know, or greatly care
To learn, who our first English strollers were;
Or if, till roofs received the vagrant art,
Our Muse, like that of Thespis, kept a cart;
But this is certain, since our Shakespeare's days,
There's pomp enough--if little else--in plays;
Nor will Melpomene ascend her ThroneSs
Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.
Old Comedies still meet with much applause,
Though too licentious for dramatic laws;
At least, we moderns, wisely, 'tis confest,
Curtail, or silence, the lascivious jest.Tt
Whate'er their follies, and their faults beside,
Our enterprising Bards pass nought untried;
Nor do they merit slight applause who choose
An English subject for an English Muse,
And leave to minds which never dare invent
French flippancy and German sentiment.
Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic, fame,
If all our Bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop, like Pope, to polish by the way?
Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults
O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults,Uu
Who soon detect, and mark where'er we fail,
And prove our marble with too nice a nail!
Democritus himself was not so bad;
He only thought--but you would make us--mad!
But truth to say, most rhymers rarely guard
Against that ridicule they deem so hard;
In person negligent, they wear, from sloth,
Beards of a week, and nails of annual growth;
Reside in garrets, fly from those they meet,
And walk in alleys rather than the street.With little rhyme, less reason, if you please,
The name of Poet may be got with ease,
So that not tuns of helleboric juiceVv
Shall ever turn your head to any use;
Write but like Wordsworth--live beside a lake,
And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake;
Then print your book, once more return to town,
And boys shall hunt your Bardship up and down.
Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight,
To purge in spring--like Bayes--before I write?
If this precaution softened not my bile,
I know no scribbler with a madder style;
But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice)
I cannot purchase Fame at such a price,
I'll labour gratis as a grinders' wheel,Ww
And, blunt myself, give edge to other's steel,
Nor write at all, unless to teach the art
To those rehearsing for the Poet's part;
From Horace show the pleasing paths of song,Xx
And from my own example--what is wrong.
Though modern practice sometimes differs quite,
'Tis just as well to think before you write;
Let every book that suits your theme be read,
So shall you trace it to the fountain-head.
He who has learned the duty which he owes
To friends and country, and to pardon foes;
Who models his deportment as may best
Accord with Brother, Sire, or Stranger-guest;
Who takes our Laws and Worship as they are,
Nor roars reform for Senate, Church, and Bar;
In practice, rather than loud precept, wise,
Bids not his tongue, but heart, philosophize:
Such is the man the Poet should rehearse,
As joint exemplar of his life and verse.
Sometimes a sprightly wit, and tale well told,
Without much grace, or weight, or art, will hold
A longer empire o'er the public mind
Than sounding trifles, empty, though refined.
Unhappy Greece! thy sons of ancient days
The Muse may celebrate with perfect praise,
Whose generous children narrowed not their hearts
With Commerce, given alone to Arms and Arts.Yy
Our boys (save those whom public schools compel
To "Long and Short" before they're taught to spell)
From frugal fathers soon imbibe by rote,
"A penny saved, my lad, 's a penny got."
Babe of a city birth! from sixpence takeZz
The third, how much will the remainder make?--
"A groat."--"Ah, bravo! Dick hath done the sum!aA
He'll swell my fifty thousand to a Plum."
They whose young souls receive this rust betimes,
'Tis clear, are fit for anything but rhymes;
And Locke will tell you, that the father's right
Who hides all verses from his children's sight;
For Poets (says this Sage, and many more,)
Make sad mechanics with their lyric lore:bB
And Delphi now, however rich of old,
Discovers little silver, and less gold,
Because Parnassus, though a Mount divine,
Is poor as Irus, or an Irish mine. cC
Two objects always should the Poet move,
Or one or both,--to please or to improve.
Whate'er you teach, be brief, if you design
For our remembrance your didactic line;
Redundance places Memory on the rack,
For brains may be o'erloaded, like the back.dD
Fiction does best when taught to look like Truth,
And fairy fables bubble none but youth:
Expect no credit for too wondrous tales,
Since Jonas only springs alive from Whales!
Young men with aught but Elegance dispense;
Maturer years require a little Sense.
To end at once:--that Bard for all is fiteE
Who mingles well instruction with his wit;
For him Reviews shall smile; for him o'erflow
The patronage of Paternoster-row;
His book, with Longman's liberal aid, shall pass
(Who ne'er despises books that bring him brass);
Through three long weeks the taste of London lead,
And cross St. George's Channel and the Tweed.
But every thing has faults, nor is't unknown
That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
And wayward voices, at their owner's call,
With all his best endeavours, only squall;
Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
And double-barrels (damn them!) miss their mark. fF
Where frequent beauties strike the reader's view,
We must not quarrel for a blot or two;
But pardon equally to books or men,
The slips of Human Nature, and the Pen.
Yet if an author, spite of foe or friend,
Despises all advice too much to mend,
But ever twangs the same discordant string,
Give him no quarter, howsoe'er he sing.
Let Havard's fate o'ertake him, who, for once,
Produced a play too dashing for a dunce:
At first none deemed it his; but when his name
Announced the fact--what then?--it lost its fame.
Though all deplore when Milton deigns to doze,gG
In a long work 'tis fair to steal repose.
As Pictures, so shall Poems be; some stand
The critic eye, and please when near at hand;hH
But others at a distance strike the sight;
This seeks the shade, but that demands the light,
Nor dreads the connoisseur's fastidious view,
But, ten times scrutinised, is ten times new.
Parnassian pilgrims! ye whom chance, or choice,jJ
Hath led to listen to the Muse's voice,
Receive this counsel, and be timely wise;
Few reach the Summit which before you lies.
Our Church and State, our Courts and Camps, concede
Reward to very moderate heads indeed!
In these plain common sense will travel far;
All are not Erskines who mislead the Bar: kK
But Poesy between the best and worst
No medium knows; you must be last or first;
For middling Poets' miserable volumes
Are damned alike by Gods, and Men, and Columns.mM
Again, my Jeffrey--as that sound inspires,
How wakes my bosom to its wonted fires!
Fires, such as gentle Caledonians feel
When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel,
Or mild Eclectics, when some, worse than Turks,
Would rob poor Faith to decorate "Good Works."
Such are the genial feelings them canst claim--
My Falcon flies not at ignoble game.
Mightiest of all Dunedin's beasts of chase!
For thee my Pegasus would mend his pace.
Arise, my Jeffrey! or my inkless pen
Shall never blunt its edge on meaner men;
Till thee or thine mine evil eye discerns,
"Alas! I cannot strike at wretched kernes."
Inhuman Saxon! wilt thou then resign
A Muse and heart by choice so wholly thine?
Dear d--d contemner of my schoolboy songs,
Hast thou no vengeance for my Manhood's wrongs?
If unprovoked thou once could bid me bleed,
Hast thou no weapon for my daring deed?
What! not a word!--and am I then so low?
Wilt thou forbear, who never spared a foe?
Hast thou no wrath, or wish to give it vent?
No wit for Nobles, Dunces by descent?
No jest on "minors," quibbles on a name,
Nor one facetious paragraph of blame?
Is it for this on Ilion I have stood,
And thought of Homer less than Holyrood?
On shore of Euxine or Ægean sea,
My hate, untravelled, fondly turned to thee.
Ah! let me cease! in vain my bosom burns,
From Corydon unkind Alexis turns:
Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego,
Nor woo that anger which he will not show.
What then?--Edina starves some lanker son,
To write an article thou canst not shun;
Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found,
As bold in Billingsgate, though less renowned.
As if at table some discordant dish,
Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish;
As oil in lieu of butter men decry,
And poppies please not in a modern pie'nN
If all such mixtures then be half a crime,
We must have Excellence to relish rhyme.
Mere roast and boiled no Epicure invites;
Thus Poetry disgusts, or else delights.
Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun:
Will he who swims not to the river run?
And men unpractised in exchanging knocks
Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box.
Whate'er the weapon, cudgel, fist, or foil,
None reach expertness without years of toil;
But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease,
Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please.
Why not?--shall I, thus qualified to sit
For rotten boroughs, never show my wit?
Shall I, whose fathers with the "Quorum" sate,pP
And lived in freedom on a fair estate;
Who left me heir, with stables, kennels, packs,qQ
To all their income, and to--twice its tax;
Whose form and pedigree have scarce a fault,
Shall I, I say, suppress my Attic Salt?
Thus think "the Mob of Gentlemen;" but you,
Besides all this, must have some Genius too.
Be this your sober judgment, and a rule,
And print not piping hot from Southey's school,
Who (ere another Thalaba appears),
I trust, will spare us for at least nine years.
And hark'ye, Southey! pray--but don't be vexed--
Burn all your last three works--and half the next.
But why this vain advice? once published, books
Can never be recalled--from pastry-cooks!rR
Though "Madoc," with "Pucelle," instead of Punk,
May travel back to Quito--on a trunk!
Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempriere,
Led all wild beasts but Women by the ear;
And had he fiddled at the present hour,
We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower;
And old Amphion, such were minstrels then,
Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren.
Verse too was Justice, and the Bards of Greece
Did more than constables to keep the peace;
Abolished cuckoldom with much applause,
Called county meetings, and enforced the laws,
Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes,
And served the Church--without demanding tithes;
And hence, throughout all Hellas and the East,
Each Poet was a Prophet and a Priest,
Whose old-established Board of Joint Controls
Included kingdoms in the cure of souls.
Next rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince,
And Fighting's been in fashion ever since;
And old Tyrtæus, when the Spartans warred,
(A limping leader, but a lofty bard)sS
Though walled Ithome had resisted long,
Reduced the fortress by the force of song.
When Oracles prevailed, in times of old,
In song alone Apollo's will was told.tT
Then if your verse is what all verse should be,
And Gods were not ashamed on't, why should we?
The Muse, like mortal females, may be wooed;
In turns she'll seem a Paphian, or a prude;
Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright,
Mild as the same upon the second night;
Wild as the wife of Alderman or Peer,
Now for His Grace, and now a grenadier!
Her eyes beseem, her heart belies, her zone--
Ice in a crowd--and Lava when alone.
If Verse be studied with some show of Art.
Kind Nature always will perform her part;
Though without Genius, and a native vein
Of wit, we loathe an artificial strain,
Yet Art and Nature joined will win the prize,
Unless they act like us and our allies.
The youth who trains to ride, or run a race,
Must bear privations with unruffled face,
Be called to labour when he thinks to dine,
And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine.
Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight,
Have followed Music through her farthest flight;uU
But rhymers tell you neither more nor less,
"I've got a pretty poem for the Press;"
And that's enough; then write and print so fast;--
If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last?
They storm the Types, they publish, one and all, vV
They leap the counter, and they leave the stall.
Provincial Maidens, men of high command,
Yea! Baronets have inked the bloody hand!
Cash cannot quell them; Pollio played this prank,wW
(Then Phoebus first found credit in a Bank!)
Not all the living only, but the dead,
Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' Head;
Damned all their days, they posthumously thrive,
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Reviews record this epidemic crime,
Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme.
Alas! woe worth the scribbler! often seen
In Morning Post, or Monthly Magazine.
There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot pressed,xX
Behold a Quarto!--Tarts must tell the rest.
Then leave, ye wise, the Lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords,yY
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
The Cobbler-Laureats sing to Capel Lofft!
Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears,zZ
Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears!AA
There lives one Druid, who prepares in time
'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;
Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse,
To publish faults which Friendship should excuse.
If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach
More polished usage of his parts of speech.
But what is shame, or what is aught to him?BB
He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim.
Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate,
Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;
Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon
The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.
Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,
Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town:
If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man--
May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be--sold!
Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now,
In modern Physics, we can scarce allow),CC
Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
Some rhyming Peer--there's plenty of the sort-- DD
All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his Chaplain's yawn!)
Condemn the unlucky Curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the Rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.
Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
(The Lord forgive him!) "Bravo! Grand! Divine!"
Hoarse with those praises (which, by Flatt'ry fed,EE
Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye,FF
As when the dying vicar will not die!
Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;--
But all Dissemblers overact their part.
Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme,"
Believe not all who laud your false "sublime;"
But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
"Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,"
And, after fruitless efforts, you return
Without amendment, and he answers, "Burn!"
That instant throw your paper in the fire,
Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
But (if true Bard!) you scorn to condescend,GG
And will not alter what you can't defend,
If you will breed this Bastard of your Brains,
We'll have no words--I've only lost my pains.
Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought,
As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
No matter, throw your ornaments aside,--
Better let him than all the world deride.
Give light to passages too much in shade,
Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;
Your friend's a "Johnson," not to leave one word,
However trifling, which may seem absurd;
Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
And furnish food for critics, or their quills.
As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune,
Or the sad influence of the angry Moon,
All men avoid bad writers' ready tongues,
As yawning waiters fly Fitzscribble's lungs;HH
Yet on he mouths--ten minutes--tedious each JJ
As Prelate's homily, or placeman's speech;
Long as the last years of a lingering lease,
When Riot pauses until Rents increase.
While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays
O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented ways,
If by some chance he walks into a well,
And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,
"A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!"
Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
For there his carcass he might freely fling,KK
From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.
Though this has happened to more Bards than one;
I'll tell you Budgell's story,--and have done.
Budgell, a rogue and rhymester, for no good,
(Unless his case be much misunderstood)
When teased with creditors' continual claims,
"To die like Cato," leapt into the Thames!
And therefore be it lawful through the town
For any Bard to poison, hang, or drown.
Who saves the intended Suicide receives
Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves;MM
And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose
The Glory of that death they freely choose.
Nor is it certain that some sorts of verseNN
Prick not the Poet's conscience as a curse;
Dosed with vile drams on Sunday he was found,
Or got a child on consecrated ground!
And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage--
Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit:
But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,--him
He flays with Recitation limb by limb;
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach,
And gorges like a Lawyer--or a Leech.10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
200
210
220
230
240
250
260
270
280
290
300
310
320
330
340
350
360
370
380
390
400
410
420
430
440
450
460
470
480
490
500
510
520
530
540
550
560
570
580
590
600
610
620
630
640
650
660
670
680
690
700
710
720
730
c8 Ýc9
740
750
760
770
780
790
800
c12
810
820
830
840
The last page of MS. M. is dated--
Byron,
Capuchin Convent,
Athens. March 14th, 1811.
The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is also inscribed on the last page:
"722 lines, and 4 inserted after and now counted, in all 726.--B.
Since this several lines are added.--B. June 14th, 1811.Copied fair at Malta, May 3rd, 1811.--B."
Byron
March 11th and 12th,
Athens. 1811.,[MS. L. (a).]
Byron,
March 14th, 1811.
Athens, Capuchin Convent..[MS. L. (b).]
Footnote 1: Ý Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) succeeded West as P.R.A. in 1820. Benjamin West (1738-1820) had been elected P.R.A. in 1792, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
return to footnote mark Footnote a: ÝAthens, March 2nd, 1811.
[MS. L. (a).]
Athens, March 12th, 1811.
[MS. L. (i), MS. M.]
Footnote 2: Ý In an English newspaper, which finds its way abroad wherever there are Englishmen, I read an account of this dirty dauber's caricature of Mr. H--- as a "beast," and the consequent action, etc. The circumstance is, probably, too well known to require further comment.
[Thomas Hope (1770-1831) was celebrated for his collections of pictures, sculpture, and bric-à-brac. He was the author of Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek, etc., which was attributed to Byron, and, according to Lady Blessington, excited his envy. "Low Dubost" was a French painter, who, in revenge for some fancied injustice, caricatured Hope and his wife as Beauty and the Beast. An exhibition of the sketch is said to have brought in from twenty to thirty pounds a week. A brother of Mrs. Hope (Louisa Beresford, daughter of Lord Decies, Archbishop of Tuam) mutilated the picture, and, an action having been brought, was ordered to pay a nominal sum of five pounds. Dubost's academy portrait of Mrs. Hope did not please Peter Pindar."In Mistress Hope, Monsieur Dubost! Thy Genius yieldeth up the Ghost."
Works (1812), v. 372.]
Footnote b: ÝIfA West or Lawrence, (take whichever you will)
Sons of the Brush, supreme in graphic skill,
Should clap a human head-piece on a mare,
How would our Exhibition's loungers stare!
Or should some dashing limner set to sale
My Lady's likeness with a Mermaid's tail.[MS. L. (a).]
The features finished, should superbly deck
My Lady's likeness with a Filly's neck;
Or should some limner mad or maudlin group
A Mermaid's tail and Maid of Honour's Hoop.[MS. L.(b).]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; I have been obliged to dive into the "Bathos" for the simile, as I could not find a description of these Painters' merits above ground.
"Si liceat parvis
Componere magna"--"Like London's column pointing to the skies
Like a tall Bully, lifts its head and lies"I was in hopes might bear me out, if the monument be like a Bully. West's glory may be reduced by the scale of comparison. If not, let me have recourse to Tom Thumb the Great [Fielding's farce, first played 1730] to keep my simile in countenance.--[MS. L. (b) erased]
return to main footnote
return to poemFootnote 3: Ý
"While pure Description held the place of Sense."
Pope, Prol. to the Sat., L. 148.
"While Mr. Sol decked out all so glorious
Shines like a Beau in his Birthday Embroidery."[Fielding, Tom Thumb, act i. sc. I.] [MS. M.] "Fas est et ab Hoste doceri." In the 7th Art. of the 31st No. of the Edinburgh Review (vol. xvi. Ap. 1810) the "Observations" of an Oxford Tutor are compared to "Children's Cradles" (page 181), then to a "Barndoor fowl flying" (page 182), then the man himself to "a Coach-horse on the Trottoir" (page 185) etc., etc., with a variety of other conundrums all tending to prove that the ingenuity of comparison increases in proportion to the dissimilarity between the things compared.--[MS. L. (b) erased.]
Footnote c: Ý After line 6, the following lines (erased) were inserted:--Or patch a Mammoth up with wings and limbs,
And fins of aught that flies or walks or swims.[MS. M.]
Another variant ran--
Or paint (astray from Truth and Nature led)
A Judge with wings, a Statesman with a Head![MS. M.]
Footnote 4: Ý Mere common mortals were commonly content with one Taylor and with one bill, but the more particular gentlemen found it impossible to confide their lower garments to the makers of their body clothes. I speak of the beginning of 1809: what reform may have since taken place I neither know, nor desire to know.--[MSS. L. (b), M.]]
Footnote d: ÝBelieve me, Hobhouse...
[MS M.]
Footnote 5: Ý Mr. Pitt was liberal in his additions to our Parliamentary tongue; as may be seen in many publications, particularly the Edinburgh Review.
[The reference may be to financial terms, such as sinking fund (a phrase not introduced by Pitt), the English equivalent of caisse d'amortissement, or income tax (impôt sur le revenu), or to actual French words such as chouannerie, projet, etc. But Pitt's "additions" are unnoticed by Frere and other reporters and critics of his speeches. For a satirical description of Pitt's words, "which are finer and longer than can be conceived," see Rolliad, 1799; Political Miscellanies, p. 421; and Political Eclogues, p. 195."And Billy best of all things loves--a trope."
Compare, too, Peter Pindar, "To Sylvanus Urban," Works (1812), ii. 259.
"Lycurgus Pitt whose penetrating eyes
Behold the fount of Freedom in excise,
Whose patriot logic possibly maintains
The identity of liberty and chains."Footnote e: Ý
as we scribblers...
[MSS. L. (a and b), MS. M.]
Footnote 6: Ý Old ballads, old plays, and old women's stories, are at present in as much request as old wine or new speeches. In fact, this is the millennium of black letter: thanks to our Hebers, Webers, and Scotts!
[Richard Heber (1773-1833), book-collector and man of letters, was half-brother of the Bishop of Calcutta. He edited, inter alia, Specimens of the Early English Poets, by George Ellis, 3 vols., London: 1811.W. H. Weber (1783-1818), a German by birth, was employed by Sir Walter Scott as an amanuensis and "searcher." He edited, in 1810, Metrical Romances of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries, a work described by Southey (Letters, ii. 308) as "admirably edited, exceedingly curious, and after my own heart." He also published editions of Ford, and Beaumont and Fletcher, which were adversely criticized by Gifford. For an account of his relations to Scott and of his melancholy end, see Lockhart's Life of Scott (1871), p. 251.]
Footnote f: ÝLike Wardle'sA speeches.
[MS. L. (a).] Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; Gwyllim Lloyd Wardle (1762-1834), who served in Ireland in 1798, as Colonel of the Welsh Fusiliers, known as "Wynne's lambs," was M.P. for Okehampton 1807-12. In January, 1809, he brought forward a motion for a parliamentary investigation into the exercise of military patronage by the Duke of York, and the supposed influence of the Duke's mistress, Mary Anne Clarke.
return main footnote
return to poemFootnote 7: Ý Mac Flecknoe, the Dunciad, and all Swift's lampooning ballads. Whatever their other works may be, these originated in personal feelings, and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the ability of these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts from the personal character of the writers.
Footnote g: ÝAs pertness lurks beneath a legal gown.
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down.[MS. L. (a).]
or,
Which covers all things like a Prelate's gown.
[MS. L. (a).]]
or,
Which wraps presumption.
[MS. M. erased.]
Footnote 8: ÝAlmanzor: or the Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, a Tragedy by John Dryden. The bombastic character of the hero was severely criticized in Dryden's own time, and was defended by him thus:
"'Tis said that Almanzor is no perfect pattern of heroic virtue, that he is a contemner of kings, and that he is made to perform impossibilities. I must therefore avow, in the first place, from whence I took the character. The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer: the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of Mons. Calprenède.... He talks extravagantly in his passion, but if I would take the trouble to quote from Ben Jonson's Cethegus, I could easily show you that the rhodomontades of Almanzor are neither so irrational as his nor so impossible to be put in execution."
An Essay on Heroic Plays. Works of John Dryden (1821), iv. 23-25.
return Footnote h: ÝAs when the poet to description yields
Of waters gliding through the goodly fields;
The Groves of Granta and her Gothic Halls,
Oxford and Christchurch, London and St. Pauls,
Or with a ruder flight he feebly aims
To paint a rainbow or the River Thames.
Perhaps you draw a fir tree or a beech,
But then a landscape is beyond your reach;
Or, if that allegory please you not,
Take this--you'ld form a vase, but make a pot...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 9: Ý With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators, and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition.
["Cicero also," says Addison, "has sprinkled several of his works with them; and in his book on Oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which, upon examination, prove arrant puns."
Essay on Wit, Works (1888), ii. 354.]]
return Footnote j: ÝAlthough you sketch a tree which Taste endures,
Your ill-daubed Shipwreck shocks the Connoisseurs....[MS M.]
Footnote 1: Ý In Vanbrugh and Gibber's comedy of The Provoked Husband, first played at Drury Lane, January 10, 1728.
Footnote k: ÝThe greater portion of the men of rhyme
Parents and children or their Sires sublime...[MS M.]
Footnote 11: Ý
"And in his ear I'll holla--Mortimer!"
[I Henry IV., act i. sc. 3.]
Footnote m: ÝBut change the malady they strive to cure...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 12: ÝGarrick's Lying Valet was played for the first time at Goodman's Fields, November 30, 1741.
["Peregrine" is a character in George Colman's John Bull, or An Englishman's Fire-Side, Covent Garden. March 5, 1803.]
Footnote n: ÝFish in the woods and wild-boars in the waves...
[MS M.]
Footnote 13: Ý I have Johnson's authority for making Lear a monosyllable--
"Perhaps where Lear rav'd or Hamlet died
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride."["Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet dy'd."
Prologue to Irene. Johnson's Works (1806), i. 168.] and (if it need be mentioned) the authority of the epigram on Barry and Garrick. [Note erased, Proof b, British Museum.]
Footnote o: ÝFor Coat and waistcoat Slowshears is your man,
But Breeches claim another Artisan;
Now this to me I own seems much the same
As one leg perfect and the other lame.[MSS. M., L. (a).]
Sweitzer is your man.
[MS. M. erased.]
Footnote 14: Ý
"Johnson: Pray, Mr. Bayes, who is that Drawcansir?
Bayes. Why, Sir, a great [fierce] hero, that frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good sense, or justice [good manners, justice, or numbers]."
The Rehearsal, act iv. sc. I.
The Rehearsal, by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), appeared in 1671. Sprat and others are said to have shared the authorship. So popular was the play that "Drawcansir" passed into a synonime for a braggadocio. It is believed that "Bayes" (that is, of course, "laureate") was meant for a caricature of Dryden: "he himself complains bitterly that it was so." (See Lives of the Poets (1890), i. 386; and Boswell's Life of Johnson (1876), p. 235, and note.)
Footnote p: ÝHim who hath sense to make a skilful choice
Nor lucid Order, nor the Siren Voice
Of Eloquence shall shun, and Wit and Grace
(Or I'm deceived) shall aid him in the Race:
These too will teach him to defer or join
To future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author like or that reject,
Sparing in words and cautious to select:
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who well compounds a wanting word,
And if, by chance, 'tis needful to produce
Some term long laid and obsolete in use...[MSS. M., L. (a and b). The last line partly erased.]
Footnote 15: Ý
"Difficile est proprie communia dicere; tuque
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus."Hor: De Arte Poet: 128-130.
Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Boileau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who can't have taken the same liberty, I should have held "my farthing candle" as awkwardly as another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan "Siècle" induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I therefore offer
Boileau: "Il est difficile de trailer des sujets qui sont à la portée de tout le monde d'une maniere qui vous les rende propres, ce qui s'appelle s'approprier un sujet par le tour qu'on y donne."
Batteux: "Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres et individuels aux etres purement possibles."
Dacier: "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères que tout le monde peut inventer."
Mr. Sévigné's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes,
"La chose est bien remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la veritable."
But, by way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards, "Le lumineux Dumarsais" made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs again, "dissiper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;" and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation" of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G. from saying any more on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at least as good a scholar as Mr. de Sévigné, has said,
"A little learning is a dangerous thing."
And by the above extract, it appears that a good deal may be rendered as useless to the Proprietors.
[Byron chose the words in question, Difficile, etc., as a motto for the first five cantos of Don Juan]
Footnote q: ÝThe dextrous Coiner of a wanting word...
[Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 16: Ý About two years ago a young man named Townsend was announced by Mr. Cumberland, in a review (since deceased) [the London Review], as being engaged in an epic poem to be entitled "Armageddon." The plan and specimen promise much; but I hope neither to offend Mr. Townsend, nor his friends, by recommending to his attention the lines of Horace to which these rhymes allude. If Mr. Townsend succeeds in his undertaking, as there is reason to hope, how much will the world be indebted to Mr. Cumberland for bringing him before the public! But, till that eventful day arrives, it may be doubted whether the premature display of his plan (sublime as the ideas confessedly are) has not,--by raising expectation too high, or diminishing curiosity, by developing his argument,--rather incurred the hazard of injuring Mr. Townsend's future prospects. Mr. Cumberland (whose talents I shall not depreciate by the humble tribute of my praise) and Mr. Townsend must not suppose me actuated by unworthy motives in this suggestion. I wish the author all the success he can wish himself, and shall be truly happy to see epic poetry weighed up from the bathos where it lies sunken with Southey, Cottle, Cowley (Mrs. or Abraham), Ogilvy, Wilkie, Pye, and all the "dull of past and present days." Even if he is not a Milton, he may be better than Blackmore; if not a Homer, an Antimachus. I should deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from envy; he will soon know mankind well enough not to attribute this expression to malice.
[This note was written [at Athens] before the author was apprised of Mr. Cumberland's death [in May, 1811].--MS. (See Byron's letter to Dallas, August 27, 1811.) The Rev. George Townsend (1788-1857) published Poems in 1810, and eight books of his Armageddon in 1815. They met with the fate which Byron had predicted. In later life he compiled numerous works of scriptural exegesis. He was a Canon of Durham from 1825 till his death.]
Footnote r: ÝAdroitly grafted...
[Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 17: ÝThe first line of A Spirit of Discovery by Sea, by the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, first published in 1805.
Footnote s: ÝSince they enriched our language in their time
In modern speeches or Black letter rhyme....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 18: ÝHarvey, the circulator of the circulation of the blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say, "the book had a devil." Now such a character as I am copying would probably fling it away also, but rather wish that "the devil had the book;" not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of "Long and Short" is enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life, and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.
Footnote t: ÝThough at a Monarch's nod, and Traffic's call
Reluctant rivers deviate to Canal...[MSS M., L. (a and b).]
Footnote 19: Ý
"Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem."
I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me; and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.--To the above events, "quæque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui," all times and terms bear testimony.
[The Rev. G.F. Tavell was a fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, during Byron's residence, and owed this notice to the "zeal with which he protested against his juvenile vagaries." During a part of his residence at Trinity, Byron kept a tame bear in his rooms in Neville's Court. (See English Bards, l. 973, note, and postscript to the Second Edition, ante, p. 383. See also letter to Miss Pigot, October 26, 1807.)
The following copy of a bill (no date) tells its own story:--
The Honble. Lord Byron.
To John Clarke.
To Bread & Milk for the Bear deliv'd. to Haladay ... ... ... £ 1 9 7
Cambridge Reve. A Clarke.]
Footnote u: Ý
marshes dried, sustain...
[Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 20: Ý
"Hell," a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal.
"Club," a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.
Footnote v: Ý
Thus--future years dead volumes shall revive...
[Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 21: Ý
"Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go off the stage alive."
Boswell's Johnson [1876, p. 60].
[Irene (first played February 6, 1749) for the future was put to death behind the scenes. The strangling her, contrary to Horace's rule, coram populo, was suggested by Garrick. (See Davies' Life of Garrick (1808), i. 157.)]
Footnote w: ÝAs Custom fluctuates whose Iron Sway
Though ever changing Mortals must obey...[MS M.]
Footnote 22: Ý Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). (Vide English Bards, etc., l. 265, n. 8.) The character of Hassan, "my misanthropic negro," as Lewis called him, was said by the critics of the day to have been borrowed from Zanga in Young's Revenge. Lewis, in his "Address to the Reader," quoted by Byron (in note 3), defends the originality of the conception.
Footnote x: ÝTo mark the Majesty of Epic song...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 23: Ý In the postscript to The Castle Spectre, Mr. Lewis tells us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he could have produced the effect "by making his heroine blue,"--I quote him--"blue he would have made her!" [The Castle Spectre, by M.G. Lewis, Esq., M.P., London, 1798, page 102.]
cross-reference: return to Footnote 22 of this poem Footnote y: Ý
But which is preferable rhyme or blank
Which holds in poesy...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 24: Ý In 1706 John Dennis, the critic (1657-1734), wrote an Essay on the Operas after the Italian manner, which are about to be established on the English Stage; to show that they were more immoral than the most licentious play.
Footnote z: Ýventures to appear...
[MS. Corr. in Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 25: Ý One of the gangways in the Opera House, where the young men of fashion used to assemble. (See letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820; Life, p. 62.)
Footnote A: ÝAnd Harry Monmouth, till the scenes require,
Resigns heroics to his sceptred Sire....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 26: Ý In the year 1808, happening at the opera to tread on the toes of a very well-dressed man, I turned round to apologize, when, to my utter astonishment, I recognized the face of the porter of the very hotel where I then lodged in Albemarle Street. So here was a gentleman who ran every morning forty errands for half a crown, throwing away half a guinea at night, besides the expense of his habiliments, and the hire of his "Chapeau de Bras."--[MS. L. (a).]]
Footnote B: ÝTo "hollaing Hotspur" and the sceptred sire...
[MS. Corr. in Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 27: Ý The first theatrical representations, entitled "Mysteries and Moralities," were generally enacted at Christmas, by monks (as the only persons who could read), and latterly by the clergy and students of the universities. The dramatis personae were usually Adam, Pater Coelestis, Faith, Vice, and sometimes an angel or two; but these were eventually superseded by Gammer Gurton's Needle.--Vide Warton's History of English Poetry [passim].--[MSS. M., L. (b).
Footnote C: ÝDull as an Opera, I should sleep or sneer...
[MS M.]
Footnote 28: Ý Benvolio [Lord Grosvenor, MS. L. (b)] does not bet; but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little pharisaical. Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for chastity, because she herself did not commit fornication.
[Robert, second Earl Grosvenor (1767-1845), was created Marquis of Westminster in 1831. Like his father, Gifford's patron, the first Earl Grosvenor, he was a breeder of racehorses, and a patron of the turf. As Lord Belgrave, he brought forward a motion for the suppression of Sunday newspapers, June 11, 1799, denouncing them in a violent speech. The motion was lost; but many years after, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, January 2, 1807, he returned to the charge. (See Parl. Hist., 34. 1006, 1010; and Parl. Deb., 8. 286.) (For a skit on Lord Belgrave's sabbatarian views, see Peter Pindar, Works (1812), iv. 519.)]
Footnote D: ÝAnd for Emotion's aid 'tis said and sung...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 29: Ý Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo entertainments, in The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures, 1747-8 (see his comedy Taste), were the precursors of Mathews at Home, and a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often "spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living persons. Among his better known pieces are The Minor (1760), ridiculing Whitefield and the Methodists, and The Mayor of Garratt (1763), in which he played the part of Sturgeon (Byron used this piece, for an illustration in his speech on the Frame-workers Bill, February 27, 1812). The Lyar, first played at Covent Garden, January 12, 1762, was the latest to hold the stage. It was reproduced at the Opera Comique in 1877.
Footnote E: Ýor form a plot...
[Proof b, British Museum]
Footnote 30: ÝHenry Carey, poet and musician (d. 1743), a natural son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, was the author of Chrononhotonthologos, "the most tragical tragedy ever yet tragedised by any company of tragedians," which was first played at the Haymarket, February 22, 1734. The well-known lines, "Go, call a coach, and let a coach be called," etc., which Scott prefixed to the first chapter of The Antiquary, are from the last scene, in which Bombardinion fights with and kills the King Chrononhotonthologos. But his one achievement was Sally in our Alley, of which he wrote both the words and the music. The authorship of "God Save the King" has been attributed to him, probably under a misapprehension.
Footnote F: ÝWhat'eer the critic says or poet sings
'Tis no slight task to write on common things...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 31: ;nbsp Under Plato's pillow a volume of the Mimes of Sophron was found the day he died.--Vide Barthélémi, De Pauw, or Diogenes Laërtius, [Lib. iii. p. 168--Chouet 1595] if agreeable. De Pauw calls it a jest-book. Cumberland, in his Observer, terms it moral, like the sayings of Publius Syrus.
Footnote G: ÝEre o'er our heads your Muse's Thunder rolls....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 32: Ý In 1737 the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre having brought Sir Robert Walpole a farce called The Golden Rump, the minister detained the copy. He then made extracts of the most offensive passages, read them to the house, and brought in a bill to limit the number of playhouses and to subject all dramatic writings to the inspection of the Lord Chamberlain. Horace Walpole ascribed The Golden Rump to Fielding, and said that he had found an imperfect copy of the play among his father's papers. But this has been questioned. (See A Book of the Play, by Dutton Cook (1881), p. 27.)
Footnote H: ÝEarth, Heaven and Hell, are shaken with the Song....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 33: Ý His speech on the Licensing Act [in which he opposed the Bill], is reckoned one of his most eloquent efforts.
[The following sentences have been extracted from the speech which was delivered:--
"The bill is not only an encroachment upon liberty, it is likewise an encroachment on property. Wit, my lords, is a sort of property; it is the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on...
"Those gentlemen who have any such property are all, I hope, our friends; do not let us subject them to any unnecessary or arbitrary restraint...
"The stage and the press, my lord, are two of our out-sentries; if we remove them, if we hoodwink them, if we throw them into fetters, the enemy may surprise us. Therefore I must now look upon the bill before us as a step for introducing arbitrary power into this kingdom."
Lord Chesterfield's sentiments with regard to laughter are contained in an apophthegm, repeated more than once in his correspondence:
"The vulgar laugh aloud, but never smile; on the contrary, people of fashion often smile, but seldom or never laugh aloud."
Chesterfield's Letters to his Godson, Oxford, 1890, p. 27.]
Footnote J: ÝThrough deeds we know not, though already done,...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 34: Ý Archer and Squire Sullen are characters in Farquhar's play (1678-1707), The Beaux' Stratagem, March 8, 1707.
Footnote K: ÝWhat soothes the people's, Peer's, and Critic's ear....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 35: Ý Michael Perez, the "Copper Captain," in [Fletcher's] Rule a Wife and Have a Wife [licensed October 19, 1624].
Footnote M: ÝAnd Vice buds forth developed with his Teens....
[MS M.]
Footnote 36: Ý The Rev. Dr. Francis Willis died in 1807, in the 90th year of his age. He attended George III. in his first attack of madness in 1788. The power of his eye on other persons is illustrated by a story related by Frederick Reynolds (Life and Times, ii. 23), who describes how Edmund Burke quailed under his look. His son, John Willis, was entrusted with the entire charge of the king in 1811. Compare Shelley's Peter Bell the Third, part vi.--
"Let him shave his head:
Where's Dr. Willis?"(See, too, Bland-Burges Papers (1885), pp. 113-115, and Life of George IV., by Percy Fitzgerald (1881), ii. 18.)
Footnote N: ÝThe beardless Tyro freed at length from school.
[MSS. L. (b), M. erased.]
And blushing Birch disdains all College rule.
[MS. M. erased.]
And dreaded Birch.
[MS. L. (a and b).]
Footnote 37: Ý Dr. Johnson was of the like opinion.
"Highwaymen and housebreakers," he says, in his Life of Gay, "seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."
Lives of the Poets, by Samuel Johnson (1890), ii. 266. It was asserted, on the other hand, by Sir John Fielding, the Bow-street magistrate, that on every run of the piece, The Beggar's Opera, an increased number of highwaymen were brought to his office; and so strong was his conviction, that in 1772 he remonstrated against the performance with the managers of both the houses.
Footnote P: ÝUnlucky Tavell! damned to daily cares
By pugilistic Freshmen, and by Bears....[MS. M. erased]
Footnote 38: Ý Jerry Collier's controversy with Congreve, etc., on the subject of the drama, is too well known to require further comment.
[Jeremy Collier (1650-1756), non-juring bishop and divine. The occasion of his controversy with Congreve was the publication of his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1697-8). Congreve, who had been attacked by name, replied in a tract entitled Amendments upon Mr. Collier's false and imperfect citations from the Old Batcheleur, etc.]
Footnote Q: ÝReady to quit whatever he loved before,
Constant to nought, save hazard and a whore....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 39: ÝA few months after lines 370-381 were added to The Hints, in September, 1812, Byron, at the request of Lord Holland, wrote the address delivered on the opening of the theatre, which had been rebuilt after the fire of February 24, 1809. He subsequently joined the Committee of Management
Footnote R: ÝThe better years of youth he wastes away....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 40: Ý Mr. Simeon is the very bully of beliefs, and castigator of "good works." He is ably supported by John Stickles, a labourer in the same vineyard:--but I say no more, for, according to Johnny in full congregation,"No hopes for them as laughs."
[The Rev. Charles Simeon (1758-1836) was the leader of the evangelical movement in Cambridge. The reference may be to the rigour with which he repelled a charge brought against him by Dr. Edwards, the Master of Sidney Sussex, that a sermon which he had preached in November, 1809, savoured of antinomianism. It may be noted that a friend (the Rev. W. Parish), to whom he submitted the MS. of a rejoinder to Pearson's Cautions, etc., advised him to print it, "especially if you should rather keep down a lash or two which might irritate." Simeon was naturally irascible, and, in reply to a friend who had mildly reproved him for some display of temper, signed himself, in humorous penitence, "Charles proud and irritable." (See Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Mr. Simeon, by Rev. W. Carus (1847), pp. 195, 282, etc.)]
Footnote S: ÝMaster of Arts, as all the Clubs proclaim...
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 41: ÝBaxter's Shove to heavy-a--d Christians, the veritable title of a book once in good repute, and likely enough to be so again.
["Baxter" is a slip of the pen. The tract or sermon, An Effectual Shove to the heavy-arse Christian, was, according to the title-page, written by William Bunyan, minister of the gospel in South Wales, and "printed for the author" in London in 1768.]
Footnote T: ÝScrapes wealth, o'er Grandam's endless jointure grieves...
[MS. erased.]
O'er Grandam's mortgage, or young hopeful's debts...
[MS. L. (a).]
O'er Uncle's mortgage...
[MS. L. (b).]
Footnote 42: Ý Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749) published hisEpistle to the Earl of Dorset and his Pastorals in 1709. It is said that Pope attacked him in his satires in consequence of an article in the Guardian, in which the Pastorals were unduly extolled. His verses, addressed to the children of his patron, Lord Carteret, were parodied by Henry Carey, in Namby Pamby, or a Panegyric on the New Versification.
Footnote U: ÝYour plot is told or acted more or less...
[MS M.]
Footnote 43: Ý See letters to Murray, Sept. 15, 1817; Jan. 25, 1819; Mar. 29, 1820; Nov. 4, 1820; etc. See also the two Letters against Bowles, written at Ravenna, Feb. 7 and Mar. 21, 1821, in which Byron's enthusiastic reverence for Pope is the dominant note.
Footnote V: ÝTo greater sympathy our feelings rise When what is done is done before our eyes....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 44: ÝAs famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid [and may be like him a senator, one day or other: no disparagement to the High Court of Parliament.--MS.L. (b)], and may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads he crops, viz.-- Independence.
[According to the Scholiast, Cassar made his barber Licinus a senator, "quod odisset Pompeium." Blake (see Letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820) was, presumably, Benjamin Blake, a perfumer, who lived at 46, Park Street, Grosvenor Square.]
Footnote W: ÝAppalls an audience with the work of Death-- To gaze when Hubert simply threats to sere....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 45: Ý There was some foundation for this. When Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy called on Daniel Stuart, editor of the Courier, at his fine new house in Harley Street, the butler would not admit them further than the hall, and was not a little taken aback when he witnessed the deference shown to these strangely-attired figures by his master.-- Personal Reminiscence of the late Miss Stuart, of 106, Harley Street.
Footnote X: ÝNor call a Ghost, unless some cursed hitch
Requires a trapdoor Goblin or a Witch....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 46: Ý
"Bayes: If I am to write familiar things, as sonnets to Armida, and the like, I make use of stewed prunes only; but when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take physic and let blood; for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge."
Rehearsal, act ii. sc. 1.
This passage is instanced by Johnson as a proof that "Bayes" was a caricature of Dryden.
"Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and purged; this, as Lamotte relates, ... was the real practice of the poet."
Lives of the Poets 1890), i. 388.
Footnote Y: ÝThis comes from Commerce with our foreign friends
These are the precious fruits Ausonia sends....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 47: Ý Cant term for £100,000.
Footnote Z: ÝOur Giant Capital where streets still spread
Where once our simpler sins were bred....[MS L. (a)]
Our fields where once the rustic earned his bread....
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 48: Ý I have not the original by me, but the Italian translation runs as follows:--
"E una cosa a mio credere molto stravagante, che un Padre desideri, o permetta, che suo figliuolo coltivi e perfezioni questo talento."
A little further on: "
Si trovano di rado nel Parnaso le miniere d' oro e d' argento,"
Educazione dei Fanciulli del Signer Locke (Venice, 1782), ii. 87.
["If the child have a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in the world, that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved."
...
"It is very seldom seen, that any one discovers mines of gold or silver on Parnassus."Some Thoughts concerning Education, by John Locke (1880), p. 152.]
Footnote Aa: ÝAches with the Orchestra he pays to hear...
[MS M.]
Footnote 49: Ý "Iro pauperior:" a proverb: this is the same beggar who boxed with Ulysses for a pound of kid's fry, which he lost and half a dozen teeth besides. (See Odyssey, xviii. 98.)
Footnote Bb: ÝScarce kept awake by roaring out encore...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 50: Ý The Irish gold mine in Wicklow, which yields just ore enough to swear by, or gild a bad guinea.
Footnote Cc: ÝEre theatres were built and reverend clerks
Wrote plays as some old book remarks...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 51: Ý As Mr. Pope took the liberty of damning Homer, to whom he was under great obligations--"And Homer (damn him!) calls"--it may be presumed that anybody or anything may be damned in verse by poetical licence [I shall suppose one may damn anything else in verse with impunity.--MS. L. (b)]; and, in case of accident, I beg leave to plead so illustrious a precedent.
Footnote Dd: ÝWho did what Vestris--yet, at least,--cannot,
And cut his kingly capers "Sans culotte."...[MS M.]
Footnote 52: Ý For the story of Billy Havard's tragedy, see Davies's Life of Garrick. I believe it is Regulus, or Charles the First [Lincoln's Inn Fields, March 1, 1737]. The moment it was known to be his the theatre thinned, and the book-seller refused to give the customary sum for the copyright. [See Life of Garrick, by Thomas Davies (1808), ii. 205.]
Footnote Ee: ÝWho yet squeaks on nor fears to be forgot
If good Earl Grosvenor supersede them not...[MS L. (a)]
Who still frisk on with feats so vastly low
'Tis strange Earl Grosvenor suffers such a show...[MS M.]
Footnote 53: Ý: Thomas Erskine (third son of the fifth Earl of Buchan) afterwards Lord Erskine (1750-1823), Lord Chancellor (1806-7), an eloquent orator, a supremely great advocate, was, by comparison, a failure as a judge. His power over a jury, "his little twelvers," as he would sometimes address them, was practically unlimited. (See Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856), p. 126.)
Footnote Ff: ÝSuppressing Peer! to whom all vice gives place,
Save Gambling--for his Lordship loves a Race...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 54: Ý Lines 589-626 are not in the Murray MS., nor in either of the Lovelace MSS.
Footnote Gg: ÝHobhouse, since we have roved through Eastern climes,
While all the Ægean echoed to our rhymes,
And bound to Momus by some pagan spell
Laughed, sang and quaffed to "Vive la Bagatelle!...[MS L. (a)]
Hobhouse, with whom once more I hope to sit And smile at what our Stage retails for wit. Since few, I know, enjoy a laugh so well Sardonic slave to "Vive la Bagatelle" So that in your's like Pagan Plato's bed They'll find some book of Epigrams when dead
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 55: ÝTo the Eclectic or Christian Reviewers I have to return thanks for the fervour of that charity which, in 1809, induced them to express a hope that a thing then published by me might lead to certain consequences, which, although natural enough, surely came but rashly from reverend lips. I refer them to their own pages, where they congratulated themselves on the prospect of a tilt between Mr. Jeffrey and myself, from which some great good was to accrue, provided one or both were knocked on the head. Having survived two years and a half those "Elegies" which they were kindly preparing to review, I have no peculiar gusto to give them "so joyful a trouble," except, indeed, "upon compulsion, Hal;" but if, as David says in The Rivals, it should come to "bloody sword and gun fighting," we "won't run, will we, Sir Lucius?"
[Byron, writing at Athens, away from his books, misquotes The Rivals. The words, "Sir Lucius, we--we--we--we won't run," are spoken by Acres, not by David.]
I do not know what I had done to these Eclectic gentlemen: my works are their lawful perquisite, to be hewn in pieces like Agag, if it seem meet unto them: but why they should be in such a hurry to kill off their author, I am ignorant. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong:" and now, as these Christians have "smote me on one cheek," I hold them up the other; and, in return for their good wishes, give them an opportunity of repeating them. Had any other set of men expressed such sentiments, I should have smiled, and left them to the "recording angel;" but from the pharisees of Christianity decency might be expected. I can assure these brethren, that, publican and sinner as I am, I would not have treated "mine enemy's dog thus." To show them the superiority of my brotherly love, if ever the Reverend Messrs. Simeon or Ramsden should be engaged in such a conflict as that in which they requested me to fall, I hope they may escape with being "winged" only, and that Heaviside may be at hand to extract the ball.--
["If, however, the noble Lord and the learned advocate have the courage requisite to sustain their mutual insults, we shall probably soon hear the explosions of another kind of paper war, after the fashion of the ever-memorable duel which the latter is said to have fought, or seemed to fight, with 'Little' Moore. We confess there is sufficient provocation, if not in the critique, at least in the satire, to urge a 'man of honour' to defy his assailant to mortal combat, and perhaps to warrant a man of law to declare war in Westminster Hall. Of this we shall no doubt hear more in due time"
(Eclectic Review, May, 1809).
Byron pretends to believe that the "Christian" Reviewers, actuated by stern zeal for piety, were making mischief in sober earnest.
"Heaviside" (see last line of Byron's note) was the surgeon in attendance at the duel between Lord Falkland and Mr. A. Powell. (See English Bards, 1. 686, note 2.)
Footnote Hh: ÝMy wayward Spirit weakly yields to gloom,
But thine will waft thee lightly to the Tomb,
So that in thine, like Pagan Plato's, bed
They'll find some Manuscript of Mimes, when dead...[MS M.]
Footnote 56: Ý Macbeth, act v. sc. 7.
Footnote Jj: ÝAnd spite of Methodism and Collier's curse...
[MS M.]
He who's seduced by plays must be a fool
If boys want teaching let them stay at school...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 57: ÝSee the critique of the Edinburgh Review on Hours of Idleness, January, 1808.
Footnote Kk: ÝWhom Nature guides so writes that he who sees
Enraptured thinks to do the same with ease...[MS M.]
Footnote 58: Ý
"Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin."
Footnote Mm: Ý
But after toil-inked thumbs and bitten nails
Scratched head, ten quires--the easy scribbler fails...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 59: ÝHere MS. L. (a) recommences.
Footnote Nn: ÝThe one too rustic, t'other too refined...
[MS L. (a and b)]
Footnote 60: ÝJohn Jackson (1769-1845), better known as "Gentleman" Jackson, was champion of England from 1795 to 1803. His three fights were against Fewterel (1788), George Ingleston, nicknamed "the Brewer" (1789), and Mendoza (1795). In 1803 he retired from the ring. His rooms at 13, Bond Street, became the head-quarters of the Pugilistic Club. (See Pierce Egan's Life in London, pp. 252-254, where the rooms are described, and a drawing of them by Cruikshank is given.) Jackson's character stood high.
"From the highest to the lowest person in the Sporting World, his decision is law."
He was Byron's guest at Cambridge, Newstead, and Brighton; received from him many letters; and is described by him, in a note to Don Juan (xi. 19), as
"my old friend and corporeal pastor and master."
Footnote Pp: Ý
Offensive most to men with house and land
Possessed of Pedigree and bloody hand...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 61: Ý Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in The Curse of Kehama, maugre the neglect of Madoc, etc., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. 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 butter-milk 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.
The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. The public anxiously await the result, and all live publishers will be subpoenaed as witnesses.--But Mr. Southey has published The Curse of Kehama,--an inviting title to quibblers. By the bye, it is a good deal beneath Scott and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the booby Ballantyne to entitle them, in the Edinburgh Annual Register (of which, by the bye, Southey is editor) "the grand poetical triumvirate of the day." But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the one-eyed leaders of the blind, though they might as well keep to themselves "Scott's thirty thousand copies sold," which must sadly discomfort poor Southey's unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, is the "Lepidus" of this poetical triumvirate. I am only surprised to see him in such good company.
"Such things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil he came there."The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid:--
"Because, in the triangles D B C, A C B; D B is equal to A C; and B C common to both; the two sides D B, B C, are equal to the two A C, C B, each to each, and the angle D B C is equal to the angle A C B: therefore, the base D C is equal to the base A B, and the triangle D B C (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A C B, the less to the greater, which is absurd" etc.
The editor of the Edinburgh Register will find the rest of the theorem hard by his stabling; he has only to cross the river; 'tis the first turnpike t' other side Pons AsinorumA.
[The Curse of Kehama, by Robert Southey, was published 1810;
Arthur, or The Northern Enchantment, by the Rev. Richard Hole, in 1789;
Alfred, by Joseph Cottle, in 1801;
Davideis`, by Abraham Cowley, in 1656;
Richard the First, by Sir James Bland Surges, in 1801;
Exodiad, by Sir J. Bland Surges and R. Cumberland, in 1808;
Exodus, by Charles Hoyle, in 1802;
Epigoniad, by W. Wilkie, D.D., in 1757;
Calvary, by R. Cumberland, in 1792;
Fall of Cambria, by Joseph Cottle, in 1809;
Siege of Acre, by Hannah Cowley, in 1801;
The Vision of Don Roderick, by Sir Walter Scott, in 1811;
Tom Thumb the Great, by Henry Fielding, in 1730.
The Courier of July 16, 1811, reports in full the first stage of the case Sir F. Burdett v. William Scott (vide supra), which was brought before Lord Meadowbank as ordinary in the outer court. Jeffrey was counsel for the pursuer, who sought to recover a sum of £5000 lent under a bond. For the defence it was alleged that the money had been entrusted for a particular purpose, namely, the maintenance of an infant. Jeffrey denied the existence of any such claim, and maintained that whatever was scandalous or calumnious in the defence was absolutely untrue. The case, which was not included in the Scottish Law Reports, was probably settled out of court. Evidently the judge held that on technical grounds an action did not lie. Burdett's enemies were not slow in turning the scandal to account. (See a contemporary pamphlet, Adultery and Patriotism, London, 1811.)]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of Edinburgh. Ballantyne said it meant the "Bridge of Berwick," but Southey claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the "Brig o' Stirling:" he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses over it. At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more nor less than the "counter of Archy Constable's shop."
return to main footnote
return to poem
cross-reference: return to Footnote 63 of this poem Footnote Qq: ÝComposed for any but the lightest strain...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 62: ÝVoltaire's Pucelle is not quite so immaculate as Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc, and yet I am afraid the Frenchman has both more truth and poetry too on his side--(they rarely go together)--than our patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change of the first letter.
Footnote Rr: ÝAnd must I then my...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 63: Ý Like Sir Bland Burges's Richard; the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyre's, 19, Cockspur-street. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from.
[Sir James Bland Burges (1752-1824), who assumed, in 1821, the name of Lamb, married, as his first wife, the Hon. Elizabeth Noel, daughter of Lord Wentworth, and younger sister of Byron's mother-in-law, Lady Milbanke. He was called to the bar in 1777, and in the same year was appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. In 1787 he was returned M.P. for the borough of Helleston; and from 1789 to 1795 held office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1795, at the instance of his chief, Lord Grenville, he vacated his post, and by way of compensation was created a baronet with a sinecure post as Knight-Marshal of the Royal Household. Thenceforth he devoted himself to literature. In 1796 he wrote the Birth and Triumph of Love, by way of letter-press to some elegant designs of the Princess Elizabeth. (For Richard the First and the Exodiad, see note, p. 436.) His plays, Riches and Tricks for Travellers, appeared in 1810, and there were other works. In spite of Wordsworth's testimony (Wordsworth signed, but Coleridge dictated and no doubt composed, the letter: see Thomas Poole and His Friends, ii. 27) "to a pure and unmixed vein of native English" in Richard the First (Bland-Burges Papers, 1885, p. 308), Burges as a poet awaits rediscovery. His diaries, portions of which were published in 1885, are lively and instructive. He has been immortalized in Person's Macaronics--
"Poetis nos lætamur tribus,
Pye, Petro Pindar, parvo Pybus.
Si ulterius ire pergis,
Adde his Sir James Bland Burges!"Footnote Ss: Ý
Ye who require Improvement...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 64: Ý [Charles Lamb, in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago" (Prose Works, 1836, ii. 30), records his repeated visits, as a Blue Coat boy, "to the Lions in the Tower--to whose levée, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission."
Footnote Tt: ÝAnd Tragedy, whatever stuff he spoke
Now wants high heels, long sword and velvet cloak...[MS L. (a) erased]
Footnote 65: Ý Lines 677, 678 are not in MS. L. (a).
Footnote Uu: ÝCurtail or silence the offensive jest...
[MS M.]
Curtail the personal or smutty jest...
[MS L. (a) erased]
Footnote 66: Ý Lines 689-696 are not in MS. L. (a) or MS. L. (b).
Footnote Vv: ÝOverthrow whole books with all their hosts of faults...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 67: Ý MS. L. (a and b) continue at line 758.
Footnote Ww: ÝSo that not Hellebore with all its juice...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 68: Ý
"Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum,
Gurgite cum medio portans OEagrius Hebrus,
Volveret Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua;
Ah, miseram Eurydicen! animâ fugiente vocabat;
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ."[Georgic, iv. 523-527.]
Footnote Xx: ÝI'll act instead of whetstone--blunted, but
Of use to make another's razor cut...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 69: Ý I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of panta--psha!--of cantos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country customers--Merry's "Moorfields whine" was nothing to all this. The "Delia Cruscans" were people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians ("Arcades ambo"--bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and small-clothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures, and Pæans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shop-board, they describe the fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an "Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet;"
"And own that nine such poets made a Tate."
Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and if he did, why not take it as his motto?
[An Essay on War; Honington Green, a Ballad,. . . an Elegy and other Poems, was published in 1803.]
Footnote Yy: ÝFrom Horace show the better arts of song...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 70: Ý This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of "Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well; but the "tragedies" are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done: for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of "Remains" come under the statute against "resurrection men." What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in an octavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now, might not some of this Sutor ultra Crepidaitis friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then his inscription split into so many modicums!-- "To the Duchess of Somuch, the Right Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are," etc. etc.-- why, this is doling out the "soft milk of dedication" in gills,-- there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the devil.
[For Robert Bloomfield, see English Bards, ll. 774-786 (click c6 to return), and note 2. For Joseph Blacket, see English Bards, ll. 765-770 (click c7 to return), and note 1. Blacket's Remains, with Life by Pratt, appeared in 1811. The work was dedicated "To Her Grace the Duchess of Leeds, Lady Milbanke and Family, Benevolent Patrons of the Author," etc.]
Footnote Zz: ÝTo Trade, but gave their hours to arms and arts...
[MS L. (a)]
With traffic...
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 71: Ý Lines 737-758 are not in either of the three original MSS. of Hints from Horace, and were probably written in the autumn of 1811. They appear among a sheet of "alterations to English Bards, and S. Reviewers, continued with additions" (MSS. L.), drawn up for the fifth edition, and they are inserted on a separate sheet in MS. M. A second sheet (MSS. L.) of "scraps of rhyme,... principally additions and corrections for English Bards, etc." (for the fifth edition), some of which are dated 1810, does not give the whole passage, but includes the following variants (erased) of lines 753-756:--
(i.)
"Then let thy ponderous quarto steep and stink,
The dullest fattest weed on Lethe's brink.
Down with that volume to the depths of hell!
Oblivion seems rewarding it too well."(ii.)
"Yet then thy quarto still may," etc.
A "Druid" (see English Bards, line 741 (click c10 to return)) was Byron's name for a scribbler who wrote for his living. In MS. M., "scribbler" has been erased, and "Druid" substituted. It is doubtful to whom the passage, in its final shape, was intended to apply, but it is possible that the erased lines, in which "ponderous quarto" stands for "lost songs," were aimed at Southey (see ante, line 657, note 1).
return to poem Footnote aA: ÝBabe of old ThelussonA--...
[MS L. (a) and (b)]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; Peter Isaac Thellusson, banker (died July 21, 1797), by his will directed that his property should accumulate for the benefit of the unborn heir of an unborn grandson. The will was, finally, upheld, but, meanwhile, on July 28, 1800, an act (39 and 40 Geo. III.c.98) was passed limiting such executory devises.] return to poem
Footnote 72: ÝMS. L. (a) recommences at line 758.
Footnote bB: ÝA groat--ah bravo! Dick's the boy for sums
He'll swell my fifty thousand into plums...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 73: Ý Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the ultimus Romanorum, the last of the Cruscanti--"Edwin" the "profound" by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of "well said Baviad the Correct." I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate. A Familiar Epistle to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.
"What reams of paper, floods of ink,"
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'll say of me,
In which your readers may agree.
Still I write on, and tell you why;
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain
Without the risk of giving pain, etc., etc.On Some Modern Quacks and Reformists.
In tracing of the human mind
Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
It knows not its resources:And men through life assume a part
For which no talents they possess,
Yet wonder that, with all their art,
They meet no better with success, etc., etc.[A Familiar Epistle, etc., by T. Vaughan, Esq., was published in the Morning Chronicle, October 7, 1811. Gifford, in the Baviad (l. 350), speaks of "Edwin's mewlings," and in a note names "Edwin" as the "profound Mr. T. Vaughan." Love's Metamorphoses, by T. Vaughan, was played at Drury Lane, April 15, 1776. He also wrote The Hotel, or Double Valet, November 26, 1776, which Jephson rewrote under the title of The Servant with Two Masters. Compare Children of Apollo, p. 49:--
"Jephson, who has no humour of his own,
Thinks it no crime to borrow from the town;
The farce (almost forgot) of The Hotel
Or Double Valet seems to answer well.
This and his own make Two Strings to his Bow."]Footnote cC: Ý
Are idle dogs and (damn them!) always poor...
[MS L. (a) and (b)]
Footnote 74: Ý See Milton's Lycidas.
Footnote dD: ÝUnlike Potosi holds no silver mine...
[MS L. (a)]
Keeps back his ingots like/Is rather costive--like/Is no Potosi, but...an Irish Mine
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 75: Ý Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, etc. etc.
Footnote eE: ÝWrite but recite not, e'en Apollo's song
Mouthed in a mortal ear would seem too long,
Long as the last year of a lingering lease,
When Revel pauses until Rents increase...[MS M. erased]
Footnote 76: Ý
A crust for the critics....
[Bayes, in "the Rehearsal", [act ii. sc. 2]]
Footnote fF: ÝTo finish all...
[MS L. (b )]
That Bard the mask will fit...
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 77: Ý And the "waiters" are the only fortunate people who can "fly" from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the "Literary Fund," being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a hope of exclaiming, "Sic" (that is, by choking Fitz. with bad wine, or worse poetry) "me servavit Apollo!"
[See English Bards, line 1 and note 3.]
return to poem Footnote gG: ÝRevenge defeats its object in the dark
And pistols (courage bullies!) miss their mark...[MS L. (a)]
And pistols (courage duellists!) miss their mark...
[MS L. (b)]
Footnote 78: ÝLines 813-816 not in MS. L. (a) or MS. L. (b).
Footnote hH: ÝThough much displeased...
[MS L. (a) and (b)]
Footnote 79: ÝOn his table were found these words:--"What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong." But Addison did not "approve;" and if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his daughter on the same water-party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of "Atticus," and the enemy of Pope!
[Eustace Budgell (1686-1737), a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt into the Thames" to escape the dishonour which attached to him in connection with Dr. Tindal's will, and the immediate pressure of money difficulties. He was, more or less, insane.
"We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself. I put the case of Eustace Budgell.
'Suppose, sir,' said I, 'that a man is absolutely sure that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace, and expulsion from society?'
Johnson. 'Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.'"
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1886), p. 281.]
Footnote jJ: ÝThe The scrutiny....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote 80: Ý If "dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent couplet, I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present.
Footnote kK: ÝOh ye aspiring youths whom fate or choice...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote mM: Ý
All are not Erskines who adorn the bar...
[MS M.]
Footnote nN: Ý
With very middling verses to offend
The Devil and Jeffrey grant but to a friend....[MS L. (a)]
Though what "Gods, men, and columns" interdict,
The Devil and JeffreyA pardon--in a Pict....[MS M.]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; "The Devil and Jeffrey are here placed antithetically to gods and men, such being their usual position, and their due one--according to the facetious saying, 'If God won't take you, the Devil must;' and I am sure no one durst object to his taking the poetry, which, rejected by Horace, is accepted by Jeffrey. That these gentlemen are in some cases kinder,--the one to countrymen, and the other from his odd propensity to prefer evil to good,--than the 'gods, men, and columns' of Horace, may be seen by a reference to the review of Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming; and in No. 31 of the Edinburgh Review (given to me the other day by the captain of an English frigate off Salamis), there is a similar concession to the mediocrity of Jamie Graham's British Georgics. It is fortunate for Campbell, that his fame neither depends on his last poem, nor the puff of the Edinburgh Review. The catalogues of our English are also less fastidious than the pillars of the Roman librarians. A word more with the author of Gertrude of Wyoming. At the end of a poem, and even of a couplet, we have generally 'that unmeaning thing we call a thought;' so Mr. Campbell concludes with a thought in such a manner as to fulfil the whole of Pope's prescription, and be as 'unmeaning' as the best of his brethren:--
'Because I may not stain with grief
The death-song of an Indian chief.'"When I was in the fifth form, I carried to my master the translation of a chorus in Prometheus, wherein was a pestilent expression about 'staining a voice,' which met with no quarter. Little did I think that Mr. Campbell would have adopted my fifth form 'sublime'--at least in so conspicuous a situation. 'Sorrow' has been 'dry' (in proverbs), and 'wet' (in sonnets), this many a day; and now it 'stains,' and stains a sound, of all feasible things! To be sure, death-songs might have been stained with that same grief to very good purpose, if Outalissi had clapped down his stanzas on wholesome paper for the Edinburgh Evening Post, or any other given hyperborean gazette; or if the said Outalissi had been troubled with the slightest second sight of his own notes embodied on the last proof of an overcharged quarto; but as he is supposed to have been an improvisatore on this occasion, and probably to the last tune he ever chanted in this world, it would have done him no discredit to have made his exit with a mouthful of common sense. Talking of 'staining' (as Caleb Quotem says) 'puts me in mind' of a certain couplet, which Mr. Campbell will find in a writer for whom he, and his school, have no small contempt:--
'E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art--the art to blot!' "[MS. M.]
return to this footnote return to poemFootnote pP: Ý
And mustard rarely pleases in a pie...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote qQ: Ý
At the Sessions...
[MS L. (b) in pencil]
Footnote rR: Ý Lines 647-650--
Whose character contains no glaring fault...
Shall I, I say...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote sS: Ý After 660--
But why this hint-what author e'er could stop
His poems' progress in a Grocers shop....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote tT: Ý
As lame as I am, but a better bard...
[MS M.]
Footnote uU: Ý
Apollo's song the fate of men foretold...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote vV: Ý
Have studied with a Master day and night...
[MS L. (a, b)]
Footnote wW: Ý
They storm Bolt Court, they publish one and all...
[MS M. erased]
Footnote xX: Ý
Rogers played this prank...
[MS M.]
Footnote yY: Ý
There see their sonnets first--but Spring--hot prest
Beholds a Quarto--Tarts must tell the Rest....[MS M. erased]
Footnote zZ: Ý
To fuddled Esquires or to flippant Lords...
[MS M.]
Footnote AA: Ý
Till lo! that modern Midas of the swains--
Feels his ears lengthen--with the lengthening strains...[MS M. erased]
Footnote BB: Ý
Adds a week's growth to his enormous ears...
[MS M. erased]
Footnote CC: Ý
But what are these? Benefits might bind
Some decent ties about a manly mind...[MS M.]
Footnote DD: Ý
Our modern sceptics can no more allow....
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote DD: Ý
Some rhyming peer--Carlisle or CarysfortA...
[MS Newstead]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; [To variant ii. (p. 444) (this footnote) is subjoined this note:
"Of 'John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort,' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morea. Being a rhymer himself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his 'foolscap crown octavos.'"
[John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems (Dramatic and Miscellaneous Works, 1810), he published two pamphlets (1780,1783), to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.] return to poem
Footnote EE: Ý
Hoarse with bepraising, and half choaked with lies,
Sweat on his brow and tear drops in his eyes...[MS L. (a)]
Footnote FF: Ý
hen sits again, then shakes his piteous head
As if the Vicar were already dead....[MS L. (a)]
Footnote GG: Ý
But if you're too conceited to amend...
[MS L. (a)]
Footnote HH: Ý
On pain of suffering from their pen or tongues...
[MS M. erased]
fly Fitzgerald's lungs...
[MS M.]
Footnote JJ: Ý
Ah when Bards mouth! how sympathetic Time
Stagnates, and Hours stand still to hear their rhyme...[MS M. erased]
Footnote KK: Ý
Besides how know ye? that he did not fling
Himself there--for the humour of the thing....[MS M.]
Footnote MM: Ý
Small thanks, unwelcome life he quickly leaves;
And raving poets--really should not lose...[MS M.]
Footnote NN: Ý
Nor is it clearly understood that verse
Has not been given the poet for a curse;
Perhaps he sent the parson's pig to pound,
Or got a child on consecrated ground;
But, be this as it may, his rhyming rage
Exceeds a Bear who strives to break his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit;
The young, the old, the simpleton and wit...[MS L. (a)]
Contents
Contents p.5The Curse of Minerva
--"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas
Immolat, et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit."Æneid, lib. xii. 947, 948.
Notes to this edition
Note 1
In The Malediction of Minerva (New Monthly Magazine, vol. iii. p. 240) additional footnotes are appended
to line 106, recording the obliteration of Lord Elgin's name, "which had been inscribed on a pillar of one of the principal temples," while that of Lady Elgin had been left untouched; and
to line 196, giving quotations from pp. 158, 269, 419 of Eustace's Classical Tour in Italy.
After line 130, which reads, "And well I know within that murky land" (i.e. Caledonia), the following apology for a hiatus was inserted:
"Here follows in the original certain lines which the editor has exercised his discretion by suppressing; inasmuch as they comprise national reflections which the bard's justifiable indignation has made him pour forth against a people which, if not universally of an amiable, is generally of a respectable character, and deserves not in this case to be censured en masse for the faults of an individual."
Note 2
The text of The Curse of Minerva is based on that of the quarto printed by T. Davison in 1813. With the exception of the variants, as noted, the text corresponds with the MS. in the possession of Lord Stanhope. Doubtless it represents Byron's final revision. The text of an edition of The Curse, etc., Philadelphia, 1815, 8vo [printed by De Silver and Co.], was followed by Galignani (third edit., 1818, etc.). The same text is followed, but not invariably, in the selections printed by Hone in 1816 (111 lines); Wilson, 1818 (112 lines); and Knight and Lacy, 1824 (111 lines). It exhibits the following variants from the quarto of 1813:--
Line Variant
56 ---- lands and main.
81 Her helm was deep indented and her lance.
94 Seek'st thou the cause? O mortal, look around.
102 That Hadrian ----
116 The last base brute ----
143 Ten thousand schemes of petulance and pride.
152 ----victors o'er the grave.
162 ----Time shall tell the rest.
199 Loath'd throughout life--scarce pardon'd in the dust.
203 Erostratus and Elgin, etc.
206 ----viler than the first.
222 Shall shake your usurpation to its base.
233 While Lusitania ----
273 Then in the Senates ----
290 ---- decorate his fall.
The following variants may also be noted:--
Line Variant Publisher
1 Slow sinks now lovely, etc.-- Hone
110 The Gothic monarch and the British----. Hone
110 ----and his fit compeer Wilson
131 And well I know within that murky land.
...
Dispatched her reckoning children far and wide. Hone131 And well I know, albeit afar, the land,
Where starving Avarice keeps her chosen band;
Or sends their hungry numbers eager forth.
...
And aye accursed, etc. WilsonContents
Contents p.5Introduction to The Curse of Minerva
The Curse of Minerva, which was written at Athens, and is dated March 17, 1811, remained unpublished, as a whole, in this country, during Byron's life-time. The arrangement which had been made with Cawthorn, to bring out a fifth edition of English Bards, included the issue of a separate volume, containing Hints from Horace and The Curse of Minerva; and, as Moore intimates, it was the withdrawal of the latter, in deference to the wishes of Lord Elgin or his connections, which led to the suppression of the other satires.
The quarto edition of The Curse of Minerva, printed by T. Davison in 1812, was probably set up at the same time as Murray's quarto edition of Childe Harold, and reserved for private circulation. With or without Byron's consent, the poem as a whole was published in Philadelphia by De Silver and Co., 18l5, 8vo (for variants, see p. 453, note). In a letter to Murray, March 6, 1816, he says that he "disowns" The Curse, etc., "as stolen and published in a miserable and villainous copy in the magazine." The reference is to The Malediction of Minerva, or The Athenian Marble-Market, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1818, vol. iii. 240. It numbers 111 lines, and is signed "Steropes" (The Lightner, a Cyclops). The text of the magazine, with the same additional footnotes, but under the title of The Curse, etc., was republished in the eighth edition of Poems on His Domestic Circumstances, W. Hone, London, 1816, 8vo, and, thenceforth, in other piratical issues. Whatever may have been his feelings or intentions in 1812, four years later Byron was well aware that The Curse of Minerva would not increase his reputation as a poet, while the object of his satire--the exposure and denunciation of Lord Elgin--had been accomplished by the scathing stanzas (canto ii. 10-15), with their accompanying note, in Childe Harold. "Disown" it as he might, his words were past recall, and both indictments stand in his name.
Byron was prejudiced against Elgin before he started on his tour. He had, perhaps, glanced at the splendid folio, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, which was issued by the Dilettanti Society in 1809. Payne Knight wrote the preface, in which he maintains that the friezes and metopes of the Parthenon were not the actual work of Phidias, "but ... architectural studies ... probably by workmen scarcely ranked among artists." So judged the leader of the cognoscenti, and, in accordance with his views, Elgin and Aberdeen are held up to ridicule in English Bards (second edition, October, 1809, l. 1007 (click c13 to return), and note) as credulous and extravagant collectors of "maimed antiques." It was, however, not till the first visit to Athens (December, 1809-March, 1810), when he saw with his own eyes the "ravages of barbarous and antiquarian despoilers" (Lord Broughton's Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 259), that contempt gave way to indignation, and his wrath found vent in the pages of Childe Harold.
Byron cared as little for ancient buildings as he did for the authorities, or for patriotic enterprise, but he was stirred to the quick by the marks of fresh and, as he was led to believe, wanton injury to "Athena's poor remains." The southern side of the half-wrecked Parthenon had been deprived of its remaining metopes, which had suffered far less from the weather than the other sides which are still in the building; all that remained of the frieze had been stripped from the three sides of the cella, and the eastern pediment had been despoiled of its diminished and mutilated, but still splendid, group of figures; and, though five or six years had gone by, the blank spaces between the triglyphs must have revealed their recent exposure to the light, and the shattered edges of the cornice, which here and there had been raised and demolished to permit the dislodgment of the metopes, must have caught the eye as they sparkled in the sun. Nor had the removal and deportation of friezes and statues come to an end. The firman which Dr. Hunt, the chaplain to the embassy, had obtained in 1801, which empowered Elgin and his agents to take away qualche pezzi di pietra, still ran, and Don Tita Lusieri, the Italian artist, who remained in Elgin's service, was still, like the canes venatici (Americané, "smell-dogs") employed by Verres in Sicily (see Childe Harold, canto ii. st. 12, note), finding fresh relics, and still bewailing to sympathetic travellers the hard fate which compelled him to despoil the temples malgré lui. The feelings of the inhabitants themselves were not much in question, but their opinions were quoted for and against the removal of the marbles. Elgin's secretary and prime agent, W.R. Hamilton, testifies, from personal knowledge, that, "so far from exciting any unpleasant sensations, the people seemed to feel it as the means of bringing foreigners into the country, and of having money spent there" (Memoir on the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece, 1811). On the other hand, the traveller, Edward Daniel Clarke, with whom Byron corresponded (see Childe Harold, canto ii. st. 12, note), speaks of the attachment of the Turks to the Parthenon, and their religious veneration for the building as a mosque, and tells a pathetic story of the grief of the Disdar when "a metope was lowered, and the adjacent masonry scattered its white fragments with thundering noise among the ruins" (Travels in Various Countries, part ii. sect. ii. p. 483).
Other travellers of less authority than Clarke--Dodwell, for instance, who visited the Parthenon before it had been dismantled, and, afterwards, was present at the removal of metopes; and Hughes, who came after Byron (autumn, 18l3)--make use of such phrases as "shattered desolation," "wanton devastation and avidity of plunder." Even Michaelis, the great archaeologist, who denounces The Curse of Minerva as a "libellous poem," and affirms "that only blind passion could doubt that Lord Elgin's act was an act of preservation," admits that "the removal of several metopes and of the statue from the Erechtheion had severely injured the surrounding architecture" (Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, by A. Michaelis, translated by C.A.M. Fennell, 1882, p. 135). Highly coloured and emotional as some of these phrases may be, they explain, if they do not justify, the sæva indignatio of Byron's satire.
It is almost, if not quite, unnecessary to state the facts on the other side. History regards Lord Elgin as a disinterested official, who at personal loss (at least thirty-five thousand pounds on his own showing), and in spite of opposition and disparagement, secured for his own country and the furtherance of art the perishable fragments of Phidian workmanship, which, but for his intervention, might have perished altogether. If they had eluded the clutches of Turkish mason and Greek dealer in antiquities--if, by some happy chance, they had escaped the ravages of war, the gradual but gradually increasing assaults of rain and frost would have already left their effacing scars on the "Elgin marbles." As it is, the progress of decay has been arrested, and all the world is the gainer. Byron was neither a prophet nor an archaeologist, and time and knowledge have put him in the wrong. But in 1810 the gaps in the entablature of the Parthenon were new, the Phidian marbles were huddled in a "damp dirty penthouse" in Park Lane (see Life of Haydon, i. 84), and the logic of events had not justified a sad necessity.
Contents
Contents p.5The Curse of Minerva
Pallas te hoc Vulnere Pallas
Immolat et poenam scelerato ex Sanguine Sumit.Athens: Capuchin Convent, March 17, 1811.
Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting Sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throwsa,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows;
On old Ægina's rock and Hydra's isle
The God of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divineb.
Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expansec,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleepd.On such an eve his palest beam he cast
When, Athens! here thy Wisest looked his last.
How watched thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murdered Sage's latest day!
Not yet--not yet--Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes;
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seemed to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frowned before;
But ere he sunk below Cithaeron's head,
The cup of Woe was quaffed--the Spirit fled;
The soul of Him that scorned to fear or flye,
Who lived and died as none can live or die.But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain
The Queen of Night asserts her silent reign; f
No murky vapour, herald of the stormg,
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the Minaret;
The groves of olive scattered dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And sad and sombre 'mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane, yon solitary palm;
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.
Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war:
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle
That frown, where gentler Ocean deigns to smileh.As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane,
I marked the beauties of the land and main,
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poets' lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turned to scan,
Sacred to Gods, but not secure from Man,
The Past returned, the Present seemed to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!Hour rolled along, and Dian's orb on high
Had gained the centre of her softest sky;
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O'er the vain shrine of many a vanished Godj:
But chiefly, Pallas! thine, when Hecate's glare
Checked by thy columns, fell more sadly fair
O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mused, and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When, lo! a giant-form before me strode,
And Pallas hailed me in her own Abode!Yes,'twas Minerva's self; but, ah! how changed,
Since o'er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appeared from Phidias' plastic hand:
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle Ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance
Seemed weak and shaftless e'en to mortal glance;
The Olive Branch, which still she deigned to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch, and withered in her grasp;
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimmed her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourned his mistress with a shriek of woe!"Mortal!"--'twas thus she spake--"that blush of shame
Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the freek,
Now honoured less by all, and least by me:
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seek'st thou the cause of loathing!--look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive Tyrannies expire;
'Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Gothm,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain:
These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adorned,
That Adrian reared when drooping Science mourned.
What more I owe let Gratitude attest--
Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.
That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,
Below, his name--above, behold his deeds!
Be ever hailed with equal honour here
The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peern:
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won.
So when the Lion quits his fell repast,
Next prowls the Wolf, the filthy Jackal lasto:
Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own,
The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.
Yet still the Gods are just, and crimes are crossed:
See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Another name with his pollutes my shrine:
Behold where Dian's beams disdain to shine!
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half avenged Minerva's shame."She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,
To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:
"Daughter of Jove! in Britain's injured namep,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not:
Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.
Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyles' towers
Survey Boeotia;--Caledonia's ours.
And well I know within that bastard land
Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command;
A barren soil, where Nature's germs, confined
To stern sterility, can stint the mind;
Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist;
A land of meanness, sophistry, and mistq.
Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till, burst at length, each wat'ry head o'erflows,
Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows:
Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her scheming children far and wide;
Some East, some West, some--everywhere but North!
In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.
And thus--accursed be the day and year!
She sent a Pict to play the felon here.
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,
As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth;
So may her few, the lettered and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,
Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand;
As once, of yore, in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race.""Mortal!" the blue-eyed maid resumed, "once more
Bear back my mandate to thy native shore.
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest;
Hear and believe, for Time will tell the rest."First on the head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light,--on him and all his seed:
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire:
If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,
Believe him bastard of a brighter race:
Still with his hireling artists let him prate,
And Folly's praise repay for Wisdom's hate;
Long of their Patron's gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest, native gusto is--to sell:
To sell, and make--may shame record the day!--
The State--Receiver of his pilfered prey.
Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,
Europe's worst dauber, and poor Britain's best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o'er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.
Be all the Bruisers culled from all St. Giles',
That Art and Nature may compare their stylesr;
While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his Lordship's 'stone shop' there.
Round the thronged gate shall sauntering coxcombs creep
To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;
While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,
On giant statues casts the curious eye;
The room with transient glance appears to skim,
Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;
Mourns o'er the difference of now and then;
Exclaims, 'These Greeks indeed were proper men!'
Draws slight comparisons of these with those,s
And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.
When shall a modern maid have swains like these?t
Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules!
And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,
In silent indignation mixed with grief,
Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.
Oh, loathed in life, nor pardoned in the dust,
May Hate pursue his sacrilegious lust!
Linked with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,
And Eratostratus and Elgin shine
In many a branding page and burning line;
Alike reserved for aye to stand accursed,
Perchance the second blacker than the first."So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,
Fixed statue on the pedestal of Scorn;
Though not for him alone revenge shall wait,
But fits thy country for her coming fate:
Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To do what oft Britannia's self had done.
Look to the Baltic--blazing from afar,
Your old Ally yet mourns perfidious war.
Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid,
Or break the compact which herself had made;
Far from such counsels, from the faithless field
She fled--but left behind her Gorgon shield;
A fatal gift that turned your friends to stone,
And left lost Albion hated and alone."Look to the East, where Ganges' swarthy race
Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;
Lo! there Rebellion rears her ghastly head,
And glares the Nemesis of native dead;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish!--Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave."Look on your Spain!--she clasps the hand she hates,
But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,
Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat
Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?"Look last at home--ye love not to look there
On the grim smile of comfortless despair:
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft;
No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit;' who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck'd each Premier by the ear,
Who Gods and men alike disdained to hear;
But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls,--but calls, alas! too late:
Then raves for '——'; to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So, once of yore, each reasonable frog,
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign 'log.'
Thus hailed your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a God."Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanished power;
Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme;
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.
Gone is that Gold, the marvel of mankind.
And Pirates barter all that's left behind.
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.
The idle merchant on the useless quay
Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away;
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumbered shores:
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming doom.
Then in the Senates of your sinking state
Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.
Vain is each voice where tones could once command;
E'en factions cease to charm a factious land:
Yet jarring sects convulse a sister Isle,
And light with maddening hands the mutual pile."'Tis done, 'tis past--since Pallas warns in vain;
The Furies seize her abdicated reign:
Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling brands,
And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,u
And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains,
The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files,v
O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country's call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,
Swell the young heart with visionary charms.
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought;
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight.
But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun:
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most?
The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife."10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
200
210
220
230
240
250
c13
260
270
280
290
300
310
Footnote 1: Ý The lines (1-54) with which the Satire begins, down to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane," first appeared (1814) as the opening stanza of the Third Canto of The Corsair. At that time the publication of The Curse of Minerva had been abandoned. (See Byron's note to The Corsair, Canto III. st. i. line i.)
return to footnote mark Footnote a: ÝO'er the blue ocean way his...
[MS.A]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; The only MS. of The Curse of Minerva which the editor has seen, is in the possession of the Earl of Stanhope. A second MS., formerly in the possession of the Duke of Newcastle, is believed to have perished in a fire which broke out at Clumber in 1879.
return to poemFootnote 2: Ý Idra; The Corsair, III. st. i. line 7. Hydra, or Hydrea, is an island on the east coast of the Peloponnese, between the gulfs of Nauplia and Ægina. As an "isle of Greece" it had almost no history until the War of Independence, when its chief town became a "city of refuge" for the inhabitants of the Morea and Northern Greece. Byron was, perhaps, the first poet to give it a name in song.
Footnote b: ÝNor yet forbears each long-abandoned shrine...
[MS.]
Footnote 3: Ý Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset (the hour of execution), notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun went down.
Footnote c: ÝTheir varying azure mingled with the sky
Beneath his rays assumes a deeper dye...[MS.]
Footnote 4: ÝThe twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration.
Footnote d: ÝBehind his Delphian cliff...
[Corsair, III. st. i. l. 18.]
Footnote 5: Ý The kiosk is a Turkish summer-house; the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream at all.
Footnote e: ÝThe soul of him who...
[Corsair, III. st. i. 1. 31.
Footnote 6: Ý
"The Temple of Theseus is the most perfect ancient edifice in the world. In this fabric, the most enduring stability, and a simplicity of design peculiarly striking, are united with the highest elegance and accuracy of workmanship."
Travels in Albania, etc., by Lord Broughton (1858), i. 259.
Footnote f: Ýsilver reign...
[MS.]
Footnote 7: Ý This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in particular. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian; sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautiful marble and architecture.
Footnote g: ÝHow sweet and Silent, not a passing cloud
Hides her fair face with intervening shroud...[MS.]
Footnote 8: Ý The following lines, of which the first two were written on the original MS., are in Byron's handwriting:--
"Aspice quos Scoto Pallas concedit honores;
Subter stat nomen, facta superque vide.
Scote miser! quamvis nocuisti Palladis ædi,
Infandum facinus vindicat ipsa Venus.
Pygmalion statuam pro sponsâ arsisse refertur;
Tu statuam rapias, Scote, sed uxor abest."Compare Horace in London, by the authors of Rejected Addresses (James and Horace Smith), London, 1813, ode xv., "The Parthenon," "Pastor quum traheret per freta navibus."
"And Hymen shall thy nuptial hopes consume,
Unless, like fond Pygmalion, thou canst wed
Statues thy hand could never give to bloom.
In wifeless wedlock shall thy life be led,
No marriage joys to bless thy solitary bed."[Lord Elgin's first marriage with Mary, daughter of William Hamilton Nisbet, was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1808.]
Footnote h: Ýseems to smile...
[Corsair, III. st. i. 1. 54.]
Footnote 9: Ý His lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon; above, in a part not far distant, are the torn remnants of the bassorelievos, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them.
[On the Erechtheum there was deeply cut in a plaster wall the words--
"Quod Non Fecerunt Goti,
Hoc Fecerunt Scoti."]Footnote j: Ý
Sad shrine...
[MS.]
Footnote 10: Ý"Irish bastards," according to Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan. ["A wild Irish soldier in the Prussian Army," in Macklin's Love-à-la-Mode (first played December 12, 1759).]
Footnote k: ÝWelcome to slaves, and foremost...
[MS.]
Footnote 11: ÝLines 149-156 not in original MS.
Footnote m: ÝAh, Athens! scarce escaped from Turk and Goth,
Hell sends a paltry Scotchman worse than both....[MS.]
Footnote 12: Ý Compare Horace in London, ode xv.:--
"All who behold my mutilated pile,
Shall brand its ravages 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."Footnote n: Ý
British peer...
[MS.]
Footnote 13: Ý Mr. West, on seeing the "Elgin Collection," (I suppose we shall hear of the "Abershaw" and "Jack Shephard" collection) declared himself a "mere tyro" in art.
[Compare Letters of Benjamin West to the Earl of Elgin, February 6, 1809, March 20, 1811, published in W.R. Hamilton's Memorandum, 1811.]
Footnote o: ÝSneaking Jackal...
[MS.]
Footnote 14: ÝPoor Crib was sadly puzzled when the marbles were first exhibited at Elgin House; he asked if it was not "a stone shop?"--He was right; it is a shop.
Footnote p: Ýguilty name...
[MS.]
Footnote 15: Ý Lines 202-265 are not in the MS.
Footnote q: ÝA land of liars, mountebanks, and Mist...
[MS.]
Footnote 16: Ý Herostratus or Eratostratus fired the temple of Artemis on the same night that Alexander the Great was born. (See Plut., Alex., 3, etc.)
Footnote r: ÝThat Art may measure old and modern styles...
[MS.]
Footnote 17: ÝThe affair of Copenhagen. Copenhagen was bombarded by sea by Admiral Lord Gambier (1756-1833), and by land by General Lord Cathcart (1755-1843), September 2-8, 1807. The citadel was given up to the English, and the Danes surrendered their fleet, with all the naval stores, and their arsenals and dockyards. The expedition was "promptly and secretly equipped" by the British Government "with an activity and celerity," says Koch (Hist. of Europe, p. 214), "such as they had never displayed in sending aid to their allies," with a view to anticipate the seizure and appropriation of the Danish fleet by Napoleon and Alexander (Green's Hist. English People (1875), p. 799).
Footnote s: Ýshy comparisons...
[MS.]
Footnote 18: Ý"The East" is brought within range of Minerva's curse, symmetriae causâ, and it is hard to say to which "rebellion" she refers. A choice lies between the mutiny which broke out in 1809, during Sir George Barlow's presidency of Madras, among the officers of the Company's service, and which at one time threatened the continuance of British sway in India; and later troubles, in 1810, arising from the Pindárí hordes, who laid waste the villages of Central India and Hindostan, and from the Pathans, who invaded Berar under Ameer Khan. But here, as in lines 245-258 (click on c13 to return) (vide infra, p. 470, note i), Byron is taking toll of a note to Epics of the Ton, pp. 246, 247, which enlarges on the mutiny of native soldiers which took place at Vellore in 1806, where several "European officers and a considerable portion of the 69th Regiment were massacred," in consequence of "an injudicious order with respect to the dress of the Sepoys."--Gleig's History of the British Empire in India (1835), iii. 233, note.x
Footnote t: ÝIn sooth the Nymph 'twere no slight task to please
Since young Sir Harry, etc....[MS.]
Footnote 19: Ý The victory of "bright Barossa," March 5, 1811, was achieved by the sudden determination--"an inspiration rather than a resolution," says Napier--of the British commander, General Graham (Thomas, Lord Lynedoch, 1750-1843), to counter-march his troops, and force the eminence known as the Cerro de Puerco, or hill of Barosa, which had fallen into the hands of the French under Ruffin. Graham was at this time second in command to the Spanish Captain-general, La Peña, and at his orders, but under the impression that the hill would be guarded by the Spanish troops, was making his way to a neighbouring height. Meantime La Peña had withdrawn the corps of battle to a distance, and left the hill covered with baggage and imperfectly protected. Graham recaptured Barosa, and repulsed the French with heavy loss, in an hour and a half. Napier affirms that La Peña "looked idly on, neither sending his cavalry nor his horse artillery to the assistance of his ally;" and testifies "that no stroke in aid of the British was struck by a Spanish sabre that day."
"Famine" may have raised the devil in the English troops, but it prevented them from following up the victory. A further charge against the Spaniards was that, after Barosa had been won, the English were left for hours without food, and, as they had marched through the night before they came into action, they could only look on while the French made good their retreat.
Two companies of the 20th Portuguese formed part of the British contingent, and took part in the engagement. The year before, at Busaco (September 27, 1810), the Portuguese had displayed signal bravery; but at Gebora (February 19, 1811) "Madden's Portuguese, regardless of his example and reproaches, shamefully turned their backs" (Napier's History of the Peninsular War (1890), iii. 26, 98, 102-107).
Footnote u: ÝFallen is each dear bought friend on Foreign Coast
Or leagued to add you to the world you lost...[MS.]
Footnote 20: Ý
"Blest paper credit! last and best supply,
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly."(Pope.)
[In February, 1811, a select committee of the House of Commons "on commercial credit" recommended an advance of £6,000,000 to manufacturers who were suffering from over-speculation.
"Did they not know," asked Lord Grenville, in the House of Lords, March 21, "that they were adding to the mass of paper at this moment in existence a sum of £6,000,000, as if there was not paper enough already in the country, in order to protect their commerce and manufactures from destruction?"
Nevertheless, the measure passed. The year before (February 19, 1810), a committee which had sat under the presidency of Francis Horner, to inquire into the cause of the high price of gold bullion (gold was worth £4. 10s. an ounce), returned (June 10) a report urging the resumption of cash payment at the end of two years.
It has been suggested to the editor that the asterisks ('——') in line 251 (which are not filled up in Lord Stanhope's MS. of The Curse of Minerva) stand for "Horner," and that Byron, writing at Athens in March, 1811, was under the impression that Perceval would adopt sound views on the currency question, and was not aware that he was strongly anti-bullionist. On that supposition the two premiers are Portland and Perceval, Horner is the Mentor, and Perceval (line 257) the "patrician clod." To what extent Byron was au courant with home politics when he wrote the lines, it is impossible to say, and without such knowledge some doubt must rest on any interpretation of the passage. But of its genesis there is no doubt. Lady Ann Hamilton, in her estimate of Lord Henry Petty, in Epics of the Ton (p. 139), has something to say on budget "figures"--
"Those imps which make the senses reel, and zounds!
Mistake a cypher for a thousand pounds;"and her note-writer comments thus: "It somewhat hurts the feelings to see a minister stand up in his place, and after a very pretty exordium to the budget, take up a bundle of papers from the table, gaze at the incomprehensible calculations before him, stammer out a few confused numbers, and then, with a rueful face, look over his shoulder to V--ns--rt for assistance. How often have I grieved to see unhappy A--d--g--n in this lamentable predicament!" Again, on Thellusson being raised to the peerage as Lord Rendlesham, she asks--
"Say, shall we bend to titles thus bestowed,
And like the Egyptians, hail the calf a god?
With toads, asps, onions, ornament the shrine,
And reptiles own and pot-herbs things divine?"It is evident that Byron, uninspired by Pallas, turned to the Epics of the Ton for "copy," but whether he left a blank on purpose because "Vansittart" (to whom Perceval did turn) would not scan, or, misled by old newspapers, would have written "Horner," must remain a mystery.
Footnote v: Ý---the glittering file
The martial sounds that animate the while...[MS.]
Footnote 21: Ý See the portrait of Spencer Perceval in the National Portrait Gallery.
cross-reference: return to Footnote 18 of this poem
Footnote 22: ÝThe Deal and Dover traffickers in specie.
Contents
Contents p.5
The Waltz
Introduction
Byron spent the autumn of 1812 "by the waters of Cheltenham," and, besides writing to order his Song of Drury Lane (the address spoken at the opening of the theatre, Oct. 10, 1812), he put in hand a Satire on Waltzing. It was published anonymously in the following spring; but, possibly, because it was somewhat coolly received, he told Murray (April 21, 1813) "to contradict the report that he was the author of a certain malicious publication on waltzing." In his memoranda "chiefly with reference to my Byron," Moore notes "Byron's hatred of waltzing," and records a passage of arms between "the lame boy" and Mary Chaworth, which arose from her "dancing with some person who was unknown to her." Then, and always, he must have experienced the bitter sense of exclusion from active amusements; but it is a hasty assumption that Byron only denounced waltzing because he was unable to waltz himself. To modern sentiment, on the moral side, waltzing is unassailable; but the first impressions of spectators, to whom it was a novelty, were distinctly unfavourable.
In a letter from Germany (May 17, 1799) Coleridge describes a dance round the maypole at Rübeland.
"The dances were reels and the waltzes, but chiefly the latter; this dance is in the higher circles sufficiently voluptuous, but here the motions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passions."
A year later, H.C. Robinson, writing from Frankfort in 1800 (Diary and Letters, i. 76), says, "The dancing is unlike anything you ever saw. You must have heard of it under the name of waltzing, that is rolling and turning, though the rolling is not horizontal but perpendicular. Yet Werther, after describing his first waltz with Charlotte, says, and I say so too, 'I felt that if I were married my wife should waltz (or roll) with no one but myself.'" Ten years later, Gillray publishes a caricature of the waltz, as a French dance, which he styles, "Le bon Genre." It is not a pretty picture. By degrees, however, and with some reluctance, society yielded to the fascinations of the stranger.
"My cousin Hartington," writes Lady Caroline Lamb, in 1812 (Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne, by W.T. McCullagh Torrens, i. 105), "wanted to have waltzes and quadrilles; and at Devonshire House it could not be allowed, so we had them in the great drawing-room at Whitehall. All the bon ton assembled there continually. There was nothing so fashionable."
"No event," says Thomas Raikes (Personal Reminiscences, p. 284), ever produced so great a sensation in English society as the introduction of the German waltz.... Old and young returned to school, and the mornings were now absorbed at home in practising the figures of a French quadrille or whirling a chair round the room to learn the step and measure of the German waltz. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, cried it down; mothers forbad it, and every ballroom became a scene of feud and contention. The foreigners were not idle in forming their élèves; Baron Tripp, Neumann, St. Aldegonde, etc., persevered in spite of all prejudices which were marshalled against them. It was not, however, till Byron's "malicious publication" had been issued and forgotten that the new dance received full recognition. "When," Raikes concludes, "the Emperor Alexander was seen waltzing round the room at Almack's with his tight uniform and numerous decorations," or [Gronow, Recollections, 1860, pp. 32, 33] "Lord Palmerston might have been seen describing an infinite number of circles with Madame de Lieven," insular prejudices gave way, and waltzing became general.
Contents
Contents p.5Note to this edition
The title-page of the first edition (4to.) of The Waltz bears the imprint:
London:
Printed by S. Gosnell,
Little Queen Street, Holborn.
For Sherwood, Neely and Jones,
Paternoster Row. 1813.
(Price Three Shillings.)Successive Revises had run as follows:--
London: Printed for John Murray, Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. By S. Gosnell, Little Queen Street. 1813.
Cambridge: Printed by G. Maitland. For John Murray, etc.
Cambridge: Printed by G. Maitland. For Sherwood, Neely and Jones, Paternoster Row. 1813.
For the Bibliography of The Waltz, see vol. vi. of the present issue.
Contents
Contents p.5Preface
To the Publisher.
Sir,
I am a country Gentleman of a midland county. I might have been a Parliament-man for a certain borough; having had the offer of as many votes as General T. at the general election in 1812. But I was all for domestic happiness; as, fifteen years ago, on a visit to London, I married a middle-aged Maid of Honour. We lived happily at Hornem Hall till last Season, when my wife and I were invited by the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of my Spouse) to pass the winter in town. Thinking no harm, and our Girls being come to a marriageable (or, as they call it, marketable) age, and having besides a Chancery suit inveterately entailed upon the family estate, we came up in our old chariot,--of which, by the bye, my wife grew so ashamed in less than a week, that I was obliged to buy a second-hand barouche, of which I might mount the box, Mrs. H. says, if I could drive, but never see the inside--that place being reserved for the Honourable Augustus Tiptoe, her partner-general and Opera-knight. Hearing great praises of Mrs. H.'s dancing (she was famous for birthnight minuets in the latter end of the last century), I unbooted, and went to a ball at the Countess's, expecting to see a country dance, or, at most, Cotillons, reels, and all the old paces to the newest tunes, But, judge of my surprise, on arriving, to see poor dear Mrs. Hornem with her arms half round the loins of a huge hussar-looking gentleman I never set eyes on before; and his, to say truth, rather more than half round her waist, turning round, and round, to a d----d see-saw up-and-down sort of tune, that reminded me of the "Black Joke," only more "affettuoso" till it made me quite giddy with wondering they were not so. By and by they stopped a bit, and I thought they would sit or fall down:--but no; with Mrs. H.'s hand on his shoulder, "Quam familiariter" (as Terence said, when I was at school,) they walked about a minute, and then at it again, like two cock-chafers spitted on the same bodkin. I asked what all this meant, when, with a loud laugh, a child no older than our Wilhelmina (a name I never heard but in the Vicar of Wakefield, though her mother would call her after the Princess of Swappenbach,) said, "L--d! Mr. Hornem, can't you see they're valtzing?" or waltzing (I forget which); and then up she got, and her mother and sister, and away they went, and round-abouted it till supper-time. Now that I know what it is, I like it of all things, and so does Mrs. H. (though I have broken my shins, and four times overturned Mrs. Hornem's maid, in practising the preliminary steps in a morning). Indeed, so much do I like it, that having a turn for rhyme, tastily displayed in some election ballads, and songs in honour of all the victories (but till lately I have had little practice in that way), I sat down, and with the aid of William Fitzgerald, Esq., and a few hints from Dr. Busby, (whose recitations I attend, and am monstrous fond of Master Busby's manner of delivering his father's late successful "Drury Lane Address,") I composed the following hymn, wherewithal to make my sentiments known to the Public; whom, nevertheless, I heartily despise, as well as the critics.
I am, Sir, yours, etc., etc.
Horace Hornem.
Footnote 1: Ý State of the poll (last day) 5.
[General Tarleton (1754-1833) contested Liverpool in October, 1812. For three days the poll stood at five, and on the last day, eleven. Canning and Gascoigne were the successful candidates.]
return to footnote markFootnote 2: Ý More expressive.--[MS.]
Footnote 3: Ý My Latin is all forgotten, if a man can be said to have forgotten what he never remembered; but I bought my title-page motto of a Catholic priest for a three-shilling bank token, after much haggling for the even sixpence. I grudged the money to a papist, being all for the memory of Perceval and "No popery," and quite regretting the downfall of the pope, because we can't burn him any more.--[Revise No. 2.]
cross-reference: return to Footnote 17 of The Waltz
Footnote 4: Ý See Rejected Addresses.
Contents
Contents p.5The Waltz
an Apostrophic Hymn.
by Horace Hornem, Esq.
"Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,
Exercet Diana choros."Virgil, Æn. i. 502.
"Such on Eurotas's banks, or Cynthus's height,
Diana seems: and so she charms the sight,
When in the dance the graceful goddess leads
The quire of nymphs, and overtops their heads."Dryden's Virgil.
Muse of the many-twinkling feet! whose charms
Are now extended up from legs to arms;
Terpsichore!--too long misdeemed a maid--
Reproachful term--bestowed but to upbraid--
Henceforth in all the bronze of brightness shinea,
The least a Vestal of the Virgin Nine.
Far be from thee and thine the name of Prude:
Mocked yet triumphant; sneered at, unsubdued;
Thy legs must move to conquer as they fly,
If but thy coats are reasonably high!
Thy breast--if bare enough--requires no shield;
Dance forth--sans armour thou shalt take the field
And own--impregnable to most assaults,
Thy not too lawfully begotten "Waltz."
Hail, nimble Nymph! to whom the young hussar,
The whiskered votary of Waltz and War,
His night devotes, despite of spur and boots;
A sight unmatched since Orpheus and his brutes:
Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz!--beneath whose banners
A modern hero fought for modish manners;
On Hounslow's heath to rival Wellesley's fame,
Cocked, fired, and missed his man--but gained his aim;
Hail, moving muse! to whom the fair one's breast
Gives all it can, and bids us take the rest.
Oh! for the flow of Busby, or of Fitz,
The latter's loyalty, the former's wits,
To "energise the object I pursue,"
And give both Belial and his Dance their dueb!
Imperial Waltz! imported from the Rhine
(Famed for the growth of pedigrees and wine),
Long be thine import from all duty free,
And Hock itself be less esteemed than thee;
In some few qualities alike--for Hock
Improves our cellar--thou our living stock.
The head to Hock belongs--thy subtler art
Intoxicates alone the heedless heart:
Through the full veins thy gentler poison swims,
And wakes to Wantonness the willing limbs.
Oh, Germany! how much to thee we owe,
As heaven-born Pitt can testify below,
Ere cursed Confederation made thee France's,
And only left us thy d--d debts and dances!
Of subsidies and Hanover bereft,
We bless thee still--George the Third is left!
Of kings the best--and last, not least in worth,
For graciously begetting George the Fourth.
To Germany, and Highnesses serene,
Who owe us millions--don't we owe the Queen?
To Germany, what owe we not besides?
So oft bestowing Brunswickers and brides;
Who paid for vulgar, with her royal blood,
Drawn from the stem of each Teutonic stud:
Who sent us--so be pardoned all her faults--
A dozen dukes, some kings, a Queen--and Waltz.
But peace to her--her Emperor and Diet,
Though now transferred to Buonapartè's "fiat!"
Back to my theme--O muse of Motion! say,
How first to Albion found thy Waltz her way?
Borne on the breath of Hyperborean gales,
From Hamburg's port (while Hamburg yet had mails),
Ere yet unlucky Fame--compelled to creep
To snowy Gottenburg-was chilled to sleep;
Or, starting from her slumbers, deigned arise,
Heligoland! to stock thy mart with liesc;
While unburnt Moscow yet had news to send,
Nor owed her fiery Exit to a friend,
She came--Waltz came--and with her certain sets
Of true despatches, and as true Gazettes;
Then flamed of Austerlitz the blest despatch,
Which Moniteur nor Morning Post can match
And--almost crushed beneath the glorious news--
Ten plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue's;
One envoy's letters, six composer's airs,
And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs:
Meiners' four volumes upon Womankind,
Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind;
Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast, and, to back it,
Of Heynè, such as should not sink the packetd.
Fraught with this cargo--and her fairest freight,
Delightful Waltz, on tiptoe for a Mate,
The welcome vessel reached the genial strand,
And round her flocked the daughters of the land.
Not decent David, when, before the ark,
His grand Pas-seul excited some remark;
Not love-lorn Quixote, when his Sancho thought
The knight's Fandango friskier than it ought;
Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread,
Her nimble feet danced off another's head;
Not Cleopatra on her Galley's Deck,
Displayed so much of leg or more of neck,
Than Thou, ambrosial Waltz, when first the Moon
Beheld thee twirling to a Saxon tune!To You, ye husbands of ten years! whose brows
Ache with the annual tributes of a spouse;
To you of nine years less, who only bear
The budding sprouts of those that you shall wear,
With added ornaments around them rolled
Of native brass, or law-awarded gold;
To You, ye Matrons, ever on the watch
To mar a son's, or make a daughter's match;
To You, ye children of--whom chance accords--
Always the Ladies, and sometimes their Lords;
To You, ye single gentlemen, who seek
Torments for life, or pleasures for a week;
As Love or Hymen your endeavours guide,
To gain your own, or snatch another's bride;--
To one and all the lovely Stranger came,
And every Ball-room echoes with her name.
Endearing Waltz!--to thy more melting tune
Bow Irish Jig, and ancient Rigadoon.
Scotch reels, avaunt! and Country-dance forego
Your future claims to each fantastic toe!
Waltz--Waltz alone--both legs and arms demands,
Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands;
Hands which may freely range in public sight
Where ne'er before--but--pray "put out the light."
Methinks the glare of yonder chandelier
Shines much too far--or I am much too near;
And true, though strange--Waltz whispers this remark,
"My slippery steps are safest in the dark!"
But here the Muse with due decorum halts,
And lends her longest petticoat to "Waltz."
Observant Travellers of every time!
Ye Quartos published upon every clime!
0 say, shall dull Romaika's heavy round,
Fandango's wriggle, or Bolero's bound;
Can Egypt's Almas--tantalising group--
Columbia's caperers to the warlike Whoop--
Can aught from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn
With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be born?
Ah, no! from Morier's pages down to Galt's,
Each tourist pens a paragraph for "Waltz."
Shades of those Belles whose reign began of yore,
With George the Third's--and ended long before!--
Though in your daughters' daughters yet you thrivee,
Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive!
Back to the Ball-room speed your spectred host,
Fool's Paradise is dull to that you lostf.
No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake;
No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers acheg;
(Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape
Goats in their visage, women in their shape;)
No damsel faints when rather closely pressed,
But more caressing seems when most caressed;
Superfluous Hartshorn, and reviving Salts,
Both banished by the sovereign cordial "Waltz."
Seductive Waltz!--though on thy native shore
Even Werter's self proclaimed thee half a whore;
Werter--to decent vice though much inclined,
Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind--
Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Staël,
Would even proscribe thee from a Paris ball;
The fashion hails--from Countesses to Queens,
And maids and valets waltz behind the scenes;
Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads,
And turns--if nothing else--at least our heads;
With thee even clumsy cits attempt to bounce,
And cockney's practise what they can't pronounce.
Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts,
And Rhyme finds partner Rhyme in praise of "Waltz!"
Blest was the time Waltz chose for her début!
The Court, the Regent, like herself were new;
New face for friends, for foes some new rewards;
New ornaments for black-and royal Guardsh;
New laws to hang the rogues that roared for bread;
New coins (most new) to follow those that fled;
New victories--nor can we prize them less,
Though Jenky wonders at his own success;
New wars, because the old succeed so well,
That most survivors envy those who fell;
New mistresses--no, old--and yet 'tis true,
Though they be old, the thing is something new;
Each new, quite new--(except some ancient tricks),
New white-sticks--gold-sticks--broom-sticks--all new sticks!
With vests or ribands--decked alike in hue,
New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue:
So saith the Muse: my----, what say you?
Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain
Her new preferments in this novel reign;
Such was the time, nor ever yet was such;
Hoops are more, and petticoats not much;
Morals and Minuets, Virtue and her stays,
And tell-tale powder--all have had their days.
The Ball begins--the honours of the house
First duly done by daughter or by spouse,
Some Potentate--or royal or serene--
With Kent's gay grace, or sapient Gloster's mienj,
Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush
Might once have been mistaken for a blush.
From where the garb just leaves the bosom free,
That spot where hearts were once supposed to be;
Round all the confines of the yielded waist,
The strangest hand may wander undisplaced:
The lady's in return may grasp as much
As princely paunches offer to her touch.
Pleased round the chalky floor how well they trip
One hand reposing on the royal hip!
The other to the shoulder no less royal
Ascending with affection truly loyal!
Thus front to front the partners move or stand,
The foot may rest, but none withdraw the hand;
And all in turn may follow in their rank,
The Earl of--Asterisk--and Lady--Blank;
Sir--Such-a-one--with those of fashion's host, k
For whose blest surnames--vide "Morning Post."
(Or if for that impartial print too late,
Search Doctors' Commons six months from my date)--
Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow,
The genial contact gently undergo;
Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk,
If "nothing follows all this palming work?"
True, honest Mirza!--you may trust my rhyme--
Something does follow at a fitter time;
The breast thus publicly resigned to man,
In private may resist him--if it can.
O ye who loved our Grandmothers of yore,
Fitzpatrick, Sheridan, and many more!
And thou, my Prince! whose sovereign taste and willm
It is to love the lovely beldames still!
Thou Ghost of Queensberry! whose judging Sprite
Satan may spare to peep a single night,
Pronounce--if ever in your days of bliss
Asmodeus struck so bright a stroke as this;
To teach the young ideas how to rise,
Flush in the cheek, and languish in the eyes;
Rush to the heart, and lighten through the frame,
With half-told wish, and ill-dissembled flame,
For prurient Nature still will storm the breast--
Who, tempted thus, can answer for the rest?
But ye--who never felt a single thought
For what our Morals are to be, or ought;
Who wisely wish the charms you view to reap,
Say--would you make those beauties quite so cheap?
Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side,
Where were the rapture then to clasp the form
From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warmn?
At once Love's most endearing thought resign,
To press the hand so pressed by none but thine;
To gaze upon that eye which never met
Another's ardent look without regret;
Approach the lip which all, without restraint,
Come near enough--if not to touch--to taint;
If such thou lovest--love her then no more,
Or give--like her--caresses to a score;
Her Mind with these is gone, and with it go
The little left behind it to bestow.
Voluptuous Waltz! and dare I thus blaspheme?
Thy bard forgot thy praises were his theme.
Terpsichore forgive!--at every Ball
My wife now waltzes--and my daughters shall;
My son--(or stop--'tis needless to inquire--
These little accidents should ne'er transpire;
Some ages hence our genealogic treep
Will wear as green a bough for him as me)--
Waltzing shall rear, to make our name amends
Grandsons for me--in heirs to all his friends.10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
200
210
220
230
240
250
Footnote 1: Ý "Glance their many-twinkling feet."--Gray.
return to footnote mark Footnote a: ÝHenceforth with due unblushing brightness shine...
[MS.]
Footnote 2: Ý Lines 15-28 do not appear in the MS., but ten lines (omitting lines 21-24) were inserted in Proof No. 1.
Footnote b: ÝAnd weave a couplet worthy them and you...
[Proof]
Footnote 3: Ý To rival Lord Wellesley's, or his nephew's, as the reader pleases:--the one gained a pretty woman, whom he deserved, by fighting for; and the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, "by Shrewsbury clock," without gaining anything in that country but the title of "the Great Lord," and "the Lord;" which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom "Te Deums" for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.--It is to be presumed the general will one day return to his Sabine farm: there
"To tame the genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain!"The Lord Peterborough conquered continents in a summer; we do more--we contrive both to conquer and lose them in a shorter season. If the "great Lord's" Cincinnatian progress in agriculture be no speedier than the proportional average of time in Pope's couplet, it will, according to the farmer's proverb, be "ploughing with dogs."
By the bye--one of this illustrious person's new titles is forgotten--it is, however, worth remembering--"Salvador del mundo!" credite, posteri! If this be the appellation annexed by the inhabitants of the Peninsula to the name of a man who has not yet saved them--query--are they worth saving, even in this world? for, according to the mildest modifications of any Christian creed, those three words make the odds much against them in the next--"Saviour of the world," quotha!--it were to be wished that he, or any one else, could save a corner of it--his country. Yet this stupid misnomer, although it shows the near connection between superstition and impiety, so far has its use, that it proves there can be little to dread from those Catholics (inquisitorial Catholics too) who can confer such an appellation on a Protestant. I suppose next year he will be entitled the "Virgin Mary;" if so, Lord George Gordon himself would have nothing to object to such liberal bastards of our Lady of Babylon.
[William Pole-Wellesley (1785?-1857), afterwards fourth Lord Mornington, a nephew of the great Duke of Wellington, married, in March, 1812, Catharine, daughter and heiress of Sir Tylney Long, Bart. On his marriage he added his wife's double surname to his own, and, thereby, gave the wits their chance. In Rejected Addresses Fitzgerald is made to exclaim--
"Bless every man possess'd of aught to give,
Long may Long-Tilney-Wellesley-Long-Pole live."The principals in the duel to which Byron alludes were Wellesley-Pole and Lord Kilworth. The occasion of the quarrel was a misconception of some expression of Pole's at an assembly at Lady Hawarden's (August 6, 1811). A meeting took place on Wimbledon Common (August 9), at which the seconds intervened, and everything was "amicably adjusted." Some days later a letter appeared in the Morning Post (August 14, 1811), signed "Kilworth," to the effect that an apology had been offered and accepted. This led to a second meeting on Hounslow Heath (August 15), when shots were exchanged. Again the seconds intervened, and, after more explanations, matters were finally arranged. A jeu d'esprit which appeared in the Morning Chronicle (August 16, 1811) connects the "mortal fracas" with Pole's prowess in waltzing at a fête at Wanstead House, near Hackney, where, when the heiress had been wooed and won, his guests used to dine at midnight after the opera.
"Mid the tumult of waltzing and wild Irish reels,
A prime dancer, I'm sure to get at her--
And by Love's graceful movements to trip up her heels,
Is the Long and the short of the matter."Footnote c: Ý
To make Heligoland the mart for lies...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 4: Ý Thomas Busby, Mus. Doc. (1755-1838), musical composer, and author of A New and Complete Musical Dictionary, 1801, etc. He was also a versifier. As early as 1785 he published The Age of Genius, A Satire; and, after he had ceased to compose music for the stage, brought out a translation of Lucretius, which had long been in MS. His "rejected address" on the reopening of Drury Lane Theatre, would have been recited by his son (October 15), but the gallery refused to hear it out. On the next night (October 16) "Master" Busby was more successful. Byron's parody of Busby's address, which began with the line, "When energising objects men pursue," is headed, "Parenthetical Address. By Dr. Plagiary."
Footnote d: ÝAs much of Heyne as should not sink the packet...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 5: ÝThe Confederation of the Rhine (1803-1813), by which the courts of Würtemberg and Bavaria, together with some lesser principalities, detached themselves from the Germanic Body, and accepted the immediate protection of France.
Footnote e: ÝWho in your daughters' daughters yet survive
Like Banquo's spirit be yourselves alive....[MS. M.]
Footnote 6: ÝThe patriotic arson of our amiable allies cannot be sufficiently commended--nor subscribed for. Amongst other details omitted in the variousA despatches of our eloquent ambassador, he did not state (being too much occupied with the exploits of Colonel C----, in swimming rivers frozen, and galloping over roads impassable,) that one entire province perished by famine in the most melancholy manner, as follows:--In General Rostopchin's consummate conflagration, the consumption of tallow and train oil was so great, that the market was inadequate to the demand: and thus one hundred and thirty-three thousand persons were starved to death, by being reduced to wholesome diet! the lamp-lighters of London have since subscribed a pint (of oil) a piece, and the tallow-chandlers have unanimously voted a quantity of best moulds (four to the pound), to the relief of the surviving Scythians;--the scarcity will soon, by such exertions, and a proper attention to the quality rather than the quantity of provision, be totally alleviated. It is said, in return, that the untouched Ukraine has subscribed sixty thousand beeves for a day's meal to our suffering manufacturers.
[Hamburg fell to Napoleon's forces in 1810, and thence-forward the mails from the north of Europe were despatched from Anholt, or Gothenberg, or Heligoland. In 1811 an attempt to enforce the conscription resulted in the emigration of numbers of young men of suitable age for military service. The unfortunate city was deprived of mails and males at the same time. Heligoland, which was taken by the British in 1807, and turned into a depot for the importation of smuggled goods to French territory, afforded a meeting-place for British and continental traders. Mails from Heligoland detailed rumours of what was taking place at the centres of war; but the newspapers occasionally threw doubts on the information obtained from this source. Lord Cathcart's despatch, dated November 23, appeared in the Gazette December 16, 1812. The paragraph which appealed to Byron's sense of humour is as follows:
"The expedition of Colonel Chernichef (sic) [the Czar's aide-de-camp] was a continued and extraordinary exertion, he having marched seven hundred wersts (sic) in five days, and swam several rivers."
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp;Veracious despatches.--[MS. M.]
return to main footnote
return to poem Footnote f: ÝElysium's ill exchanged for that you lost...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 7: ÝAusterlitz was fought on Dec. 2, 1805. On Dec. 20 the Morning Chronicle published a communication from a correspondent, giving the substance of Napoleon's "Proclamation to the Army," issued on the evening after the battle, which had reached Bourrienne, the French minister at Hamburg. "An army," ran the proclamation, "of 100,000 men, which was commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, has been in less than four hours either cut off or dispersed." It was an official note of this "blest despatch," forwarded by courier to Bath, which brought "the heavy news" to Pitt, and, it is believed, hastened his death.
Footnote g: ÝNo stiff-starched stays make meddling lovers ache...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 8: ÝAugust Frederick Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1761-1819), whom Coleridge appraised as "the German Beaumont and Fletcher without their poetic powers," and Carlyle as "a bundle of dyed rags," wrote over a hundred plays, publishing twenty within a few years.
An adaptation of Misanthropy and Repentance as The Stranger, Sheridan's Pizarro, and Lewis' Castle Spectre are well-known instances of his powerful influence on English dramatists.
"The Present," writes Sara Coleridge, in a note to one of her father's letters, "will ever have her special votaries in the world of letters, who collect into their focus, by a kind of burning-glass, the feelings of the day. Amongst such Kotzebue holds a high rank. Those 'dyed rags' of his once formed gorgeous banners, and flaunted in the eyes of refined companies from London to Madrid, from Paris to Moscow."
--Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1847), ii. 227.
Footnote h: ÝNew caps and Jackets for the royal Guards...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 9: ÝA translation of Christopher Meiner's History of the Female Sex, in four volumes, was published in London in 1808. Lapland wizards, not witches, were said to raise storms by knotting pieces of string, which they exposed to the wind.
Footnote j: ÝWith K--t's gay grace, or silly-Billy's mien...
[MS. M.]
With K--t's gay grace, or G--r's booby mien...
[MS. erased.]
Footnote 10: Ý Richard Franz Philippe Brunck (1729-1803). His editions of the Anthologia Græca, and of the Greek dramatists are among his best known works. Compare Sheridan's doggerel--
"Huge leaves of that great commentator, old Brunck,
Perhaps is the paper that lined my poor Trunk."Footnote k: Ý
Sir--Such a one--with Mrs.--Miss So-so...
[Revise]
Footnote 11: Ý Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) published editions of Virgil (1767-1775), Pindar (1773), and Opuscula Academica, in six vols. (1785-1812).
Footnote m: ÝAnd thou my Prince whose undisputed will...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 12: ÝA lively dance for one couple, characterized by a peculiar jumping step. It probably originated in Provence.
Footnote n: ÝFrom this abominable contact warm...
[MS. M.]
Footnote 13: Ý Dancing girls--who do for hire what Waltz doth gratis.
[The Romaika is a modern Greek dance, characterized by serpentining figures and handkerchief-throwing among the dancers. The Fandango (Spaniards use the word "seguidilla") was of Moorish origin. The Bolero was brought from Provence, circ. 1780.
"The Bolero intoxicates, the Fandango inflames"
(Hist. of Dancing, by G. Vuillier-Heinemann, 1898).]
Footnote p: ÝSome generations hence our Pedigree Will never look the worse for him or me....
[MS. Erased.]
Footnote 14: Ý For Morier, see note to line 211. Galt has a paragraph descriptive of the waltzing Dervishes (Voyages and Travels (1812), p.190).
Footnote 15: Ý It cannot be complained now, as in the Lady Baussière's time, of the "Sieur de la Croix," that there be "no whiskers;" but how far these are indications of valour in the field, or elsewhere, may still be questionable. Much may be, and hath beenA; avouched on both sides. In the olden time philosophers had whiskers, and soldiers none--Scipio himself was shaven--Hannibal thought his one eye handsome enough without a beard; but Adrian, the emperor, wore a beard (having warts on his chin, which neither the Empress Sabina nor even the courtiers could abide)--Turenne had whiskers, Marlborough none--Buonaparte is unwhiskered, the Regent whiskered; "argal" greatness of mind and whiskers may or may not go together; but certainly the different occurrences, since the growth of the last mentioned, go further in behalf of whiskers than the anathema of Anselm did against long hair in the reign of Henry I.--Formerly, red was a favourite colour. See Lodowick Barrey's comedy of Ram Alley, 1661; Act I. Scene I.
Taffeta. Now for a wager--What coloured beard comes next by the window?
Adriana. A black man's, I think.
Taffeta. I think not so: I think a red, for that is most in fashion."
There is "nothing new under the sun:" but red, then a favourite, has now subsided into a favourite's colour.
[This is, doubtless, an allusion to Lord Yarmouth, whose fiery whiskers gained him the nickname of "Red Herrings."]
Sub-Footnote A: nbsp; The paragraph "Much may be" down to "reign of Henry I." was added in Revise 1, and the remainder of the note in Revise 2.
return to main footnote
return to poemFootnote 16: Ý Madame Genlis (Stephanie Félicité Ducrest, Marquise de Sillery), commenting on the waltz, writes,
"As a foreigner, I shall not take the liberty to censure this kind of dance; but this I can say, that it appears intolerable to German writers of superior merits who are not accused of severity of manners,"
and by way of example instances M. Jacobi, who affirms that "Werther (Sorrows of Werther, Letter ix.), the lover of Charlotte, swears that, were he to perish for it, never should a girl for whom he entertained any affection, and on whom he had honourable views, dance the waltz with any other man besides himself."--Selections from the Works of Madame de Genlis (1806), p. 65.
Compare, too, "Faulkland" on country-dances in The Rivals, act ii. sc. I,
"Country-dances! jigs and reels!... A minuet I could have forgiven.... Zounds! had she made one in a cotillon--I believe I could have forgiven even that--but to be monkey-led for a night! to run the gauntlet through a string of amorous palming puppies... Oh, Jack, there never can be but one man in the world whom a truly modest and delicate woman ought to pair with in a country-dance; and even then, the rest of the couples should be her great-uncles and aunts!"
Footnote 17: Ý An anachronism--Waltz and the battle of Austerlitz are before said to have opened the ball together; the bard means (if he means anything), Waltz was not so much in vogue till the Regent attained the acme of his popularity. Waltz, the comet, whiskers, and the new government, illuminated heaven and earth, in all their glory, much about the same time: of these the comet only has disappeared; the other three continue to astonish us still.--Printers Devil.
[As the Printer's Devil intimates, the various novelties of the age of "Waltz" are somewhat loosely enumerated. The Comet, which signalized 1811, the year of the restricted Regency, had disappeared before the Prince and his satellites burst into full blaze in 1812. It was (see Historical Record of the Life Guards, 1835, p.177) in 1812 that the Prince Regent commanded the following alterations to be made in the equipments of the regiment of Life Guards:
"Cocked hats with feathers to be discontinued, and brass helmets with black horsehair crests substituted. Long coats, trimmed with gold lace across the front. Shirts and cuffs to be replaced by short coatees," etc., etc.
In the same branch of the service, whiskers were already in vogue. The "new laws" were those embodied in the "Frame-work Bill," which Byron denounced in his speech in the House of Lords, Feb. 27, 1812. Formerly the breaking of frames had been treated "as a minor felony, punishable by transportation for fourteen years," and the object of the bill was to make such offences capital. The bill passed into law on March 5, and as a result we read (Annual Register, 1812, pp.38,39) that on May 24 a special commission for the rioters of Cheshire was opened by Judge Dallas at Chester.
"His lordship passed the awful sentence of death upon sixteen, and in a most impressioned address, held out not the smallest hope of mercy."
Of these five only were hanged.
Owing to the scarcity of silver coinage, the Bank of England was empowered to issue bank-tokens for various sums (Mr. Hornem bought his motto for The Waltz with a three-shilling bank-token; see note to Preface) which came into circulation on July 9, 1811. The "new ninepences" which were said to be forthcoming never passed into circulation at all. A single "pattern" coin (on the obverse, Bank Token, Ninepence, 1812) is preserved in the British Museum (see privately printed Catalogue, by W. Boyne (1866), p.11). The "new victories" were the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo (Jan. 17), the capture of Badajoz (April 7), and the Battle of Salamanca (July 12, 1812). By way of "new wars," the President of the United States declared war with Great Britain on June 18, and Great Britain with the United States, Oct. 13, 1812. As to "new mistresses," for a reference to "Our Sultan's" "she-promotions" of "those only plump and sage, Who've reached the regulation age," see Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-bag, by Thomas Brown the Younger, 1813, and for "gold sticks," etc., see "Promotions" in the Annual Register for March, 1812, in which a long list of Household appointments is duly recorded.]
Footnote 18: Ý Amongst others a new ninepence--a creditable coin now forthcoming, worth a pound, in paper, at the fairest calculation.
Footnote 19: ÝRobert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool, was Secretary at War and for the Colonies from 1809 to 1812, in Spencer Perceval's administration, and, on the assassination of the premier, undertook the government. Both as Secretary at War and as Prime Minister his chief efforts were devoted to the support of Wellington in the Peninsula.
Footnote 20: Ý "Oh that right should thus overcome might!" Who does not remember the "delicate investigation" in the Merry Wives of Windsor?--
Ford: Pray you, come near; if I suspect without cause, why then make sport at me; then let me be your jest; I deserve it. How now? whither bear you this?
Mrs. Ford. What have you to do whither they bear it?--You were best meddle with buck-washing."
[Act iii. sc. 3.]
Footnote 21: ÝThe gentle, or ferocious, reader may fill up the blank as he pleases--there are several dissyllabic names at his service (being already in the Regent's): it would not be fair to back any peculiar initial against the alphabet, as every month will add to the list now entered for the sweep-stakes;--a distinguished consonant is said to be the favourite, much against the wishes of the knowing ones.--[Revise]
[In the Revise the line, which is not in the MS., ran,"So saith the Muse; my M---- what say you?" The name intended to be supplied is "Moira."
On Perceval's death (May 11 1812), Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister, but was unable to carry on the government. Accordingly the Prince Regent desired the Marquis Wellesley and Canning to approach Lords Grey and Grenville with regard to the formation of a coalition ministry. They were unsuccessful, and as a next step Lord Moira (Francis Rawdon, first Marquis of Hastings, 1754-1826) was empowered to make overtures in the same quarter. The Whig Lords stipulated that the regulation of the Household should rest with ministers, and to this Moira would not consent, possibly because the Prince's favourite, Lord Yarmouth, was Vice-Chamberlain. Negotiations were again broken off, and on June 9 Liverpool began his long term of office as Prime Minister.
"I sate," writes Byron, "in the debate or rather discussion in the House of Lords on that question (the second negotiation) immediately behind Moira, who, while Grey 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 is not so; it is so and so,'" etc.
(Letter to W. Bankes (undated), Life, p. 162). Hence the question, "My Moira, what say you?"]
Footnote 22: Ý
"We have changed all that," says the Mock Doctor--'tis all gone--Asmodeus knows where. After all, it is of no great importance how women's hearts are disposed of; they have nature's privilege to distribute them as absurdly as possible. But there are also some men with hearts so thoroughly bad, as to remind us of those phenomena often mentioned in natural history; viz. a mass of solid stone--only to be opened by force--and when divided, you discover a toad in the centre, lively, and with the reputation of being venomous."
[In the MS. the last sentence stood: "In this country there is one man with a heart so thoroughly bad that it reminds us of those unaccountable petrifactions often mentioned in natural history," etc. The couplet--
"Such things we know are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the Devil they got there,"which was affixed to the note, was subsequently erased.]
Footnote 23: Ý Compare Sheridan's lines on waltzing, which Moore heard him "repeat in a drawing-room"--
"With tranquil step, and timid downcast glance,
Behold the well-pair'd couple now advance.
In such sweet posture our first parents moved,
While, hand in hand, through Eden's bower they roved.
Ere yet the devil, with promise fine and false,
Turned their poor heads, and taught them how to waltz.
One hand grasps hers, the other holds her hip.
...
For so the law's laid down by Baron Trip."Footnote 24: Ý Lines 204-207 are not in the MS., but were added in a revise.
Footnote 25: Ý In Turkey a pertinent--here an impertinent and superfluous question--literally put, as in the text, by a Persian to Morier, on seeing a Waltz in Pera.
[See A Journey through Persia, etc. By James Morier, London (1812), p. 365.]
Footnote 26: Ý Richard Fitzpatrick (1747-1813), second son of John, first Earl of Ossory, served in the first American War at the battles of Brandywine and Germanstown. He sat as M.P. for Tavistock for thirty-three years. The chosen friend and companion of Fox, he was a prominent member of the opposition during the close of the eighteenth century. In the ministry of "All the Talents" he was Secretary at War. He dabbled in literature, was one of the authors of the Rolliad, and in 1775 published Dorinda: A Town Eclogue. He was noted for his social gifts, and in recognition, it is said, of his "fine manners and polite address," inherited a handsome annuity from the Duke of Queensberry. Byron associates him with Sheridan as un homme galant and leader of ton of the past generation.
Footnote 27: Ý William Douglas, third Earl of March and fourth Duke of Queensberry (1724-1810), otherwise "old Q.," was conspicuous as a "blood" and evil liver from youth to extreme old age. He was a patron of the turf, a connoisseur of Italian Opera, and surtout an inveterate libertine. As a Whig, he held office in the Household during North's Coalition Ministry, but throughout George the Third's first illness in 1788, displayed such indecent partisanship with the Prince of Wales, that, when the king recovered, he lost his post. His dukedom died with him, and his immense fortune was divided between the heirs to his other titles and his friends. Lord Yarmouth, whose wife, Maria Fagniani, he believed to be his natural daughter, was one of the principal legatees.
Contents
Contents p.5end of text