Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  Do write and send this letter that hath been so long in your custody. It is important that Moore should be certain that I never received it, if it be his. Are you drowned in a bottle of Port? or a Kilderkin of Ale? that I have never heard from you, or are you fallen into a fit of perplexity? Cawthorn has declined, and the MS. is returned to him. This is all at present from yours in the faith,

  “I enclose you the long-delayed letter, which, from the similarity of hands alone, Davies and I will go shares in a bet of ten to one is the cartel in question.”

  209 — to Francis Hodgson

  8, St. James’s Street, December 4, 1811.

  My Dear Hodgson, — I have seen Miller, who will see Bland, but I have no great hopes of his obtaining the translation from the crowd of candidates. Yesterday I wrote to Harness, who will probably tell you what I said on the subject. Hobhouse has sent me my Romaic MS., and I shall require your aid in correcting the press, as your Greek eye is more correct than mine. But these will not come to type this month, I dare say. I have put some soft lines on ye Scotch in the Curse of Minerva; take them;

  “Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,” etc.

  If you are not content now, I must say with the Irish drummer to the deserter who called out,

  “Flog high, flog low”

  “The de’il burn ye, there’s no pleasing you, flog where one will.”

  Have you given up wine, even British wine?

  I have read Watson to Gibbon. He proves nothing, so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy Creed, and I want a better, but there is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything. The post brings me to a conclusion. Bland has just been here. Yours ever,

  BN.

  210 — to William Harness

  8, St. James’s Street, Dec. 6, 1811.

  My Dear Harness, — I write again, but don’t suppose I mean to lay such a tax on your pen and patience as to expect regular replies. When you are inclined, write: when silent, I shall have the consolation of knowing that you are much better employed. Yesterday, Bland and I called on Mr. Miller, who, being then out, will call on Bland to-day or to-morrow. I shall certainly endeavour to bring them together. — You are censorious, child; when you are a little older, you will learn to dislike every body, but abuse nobody.

  With regard to the person of whom you speak, your own good sense must direct you. I never pretend to advise, being an implicit believer in the old proverb. This present frost is detestable. It is the first I have felt for these three years, though I longed for one in the oriental summer, when no such thing is to be had, unless I had gone to the top of Hymettus for it.

  I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and am not the less pleased to meet with it again from one where I had known it earliest. I have not changed in all my ramblings, — Harrow, and, of course, yourself, never left me, and the

  “Dulces reminiscitur Argos”

  attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the mind of the fallen Argive. — Our intimacy began before we began to date at all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it and me with the things that were.

  Do read mathematics. — I should think X plus Y at least as amusing as the Curse of Kehama, and much more intelligible. Master Southey’s poems are, in fact, what parallel lines might be — viz. prolonged ad infinitum without meeting anything half so absurd as themselves.

  “What news, what news? Queen Orraca,

  What news of scribblers five?

  S — — , W — — , C — — , L — — d, and L — — e?

  All damn’d, though yet alive.”

  Coleridge is lecturing.

  “Many an old fool,” said Hannibal to some such lecturer, “but such as this, never.”

  Ever yours, etc.

  “What news, O King Affonso,

  What news of the Friars five?

  Have they preached to the Miramamolin;

  And are they still alive?”

  The blanks stand for Scott or Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb(e), with the lines from New Morality in his mind:

  “Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co.,

  Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux.”

  Collier, in his notes of Coleridge’s conversation (November I, 1811), gives the substance, in all probability, of the attack on Campbell alluded to in the next letter. Coleridge said that

  “neither Southey, Scott, nor Campbell would by their poetry survive much beyond the day when they lived and wrote. Their works seemed to him not to have the seeds of vitality, the real germs of long life. The two first were entertaining as tellers of stories in verse; but the last, in his Pleasures of Hope, obviously had no fixed design, but when a thought (of course, not a very original one) came into his head, he put it down in couplets, and afterwards strung the disjecta membra (not poetæ) together. Some of the best things in it were borrowed; for instance the line:

  ‘And freedom shriek’d when Kosciusko fell,’

  was taken from a much-ridiculed piece by Dennis, a pindaric on William III.:

  ‘Fair Liberty shriek’d out aloud, aloud Religion groaned.’

  It is the same production in which the following much-laughed-at specimen of bathos is found:

  ‘Nor Alps nor Pyreneans keep him out,

  Nor fortified redoubt.’

  Coleridge had little toleration for Campbell, and considered him, as far as he had gone, a mere verse-maker “

  (Ashe’s Introduction to Lectures on Shakspere, pp. 16, 17).

  “I have seen many old fools often, but such an old fool as Phormio, never

  (Multos se deliros senes sæpe vidisse; sed qui magis, quam Phormio, deliraret, vidisse neminem)”

  (Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 18).

  211 — to James Wedderburn Webster

  8, St. James’s St., Dec. 7th, 1811.

  My Dear W., — I was out of town during the arrival of your letters, but forwarded all on my return.

  I hope you are going on to your satisfaction, and that her Ladyship is about to produce an heir with all his mother’s Graces and all his Sire’s good qualities. You know I am to be a Godfather. Byron Webster! a most heroic name, say what you please.

  Don’t be alarmed; my “caprice” won’t lead me in to Dorset. No, Bachelors for me! I consider you as dead to us, and all my future devoirs are but tributes of respect to your Memory. Poor fellow! he was a facetious companion and well respected by all who knew him; but he is gone. Sooner or later we must all come to it.

  I see nothing of you in the papers, the only place where I don’t wish to see you; but you will be in town in the Winter. What dost thou do? shoot, hunt, and “wind up y’e Clock” as Caleb Quotem says?

  That thou art vastly happy, I doubt not.

  I see your brother in law at times, and like him much; but we miss you much; I shall leave town in a fortnight to pass my Xmas in Notts.

  Good afternoon, Dear W.

  Believe me, Yours ever most truly,

  B.

  “I’m parish clerk and sexton here,

  My name is Caleb Quotem,

  I’m painter, glazier, auctioneer,

  In short, I am factotum.”

  ...

  “At night by the fire, like a good, jolly cock,

  When my day’s work is done and all over,

  I tipple, I smoke, and I wind up the clock,

  With my sweet Mrs. Quotem in clover.

  212 — to William Harness

  St. James’s Street, Dec. 8, 1811.

  Behold a most formidable sheet, without gilt or black edging, and consequently very vulgar and indecorous, particularly to one of your precision; but this being Sunday, I can procure no better, and will atone for its length by not filling it. Bland I have not se
en since my last letter; but on Tuesday he dines with me, and will meet Moore, the epitome of all that is exquisite in poetical or personal accomplishments. How Bland has settled with Miller, I know not. I have very little interest with either, and they must arrange their concerns according to their own gusto. I have done my endeavours, at your request, to bring them together, and hope they may agree to their mutual advantage.

  Coleridge has been lecturing against Campbell.

  Rogers was present, and from him I derive the information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of poesy. Pole is to marry Miss Long, and will be a very miserable dog for all that. The present ministers are to continue, and his Majesty does continue in the same state; so there’s folly and madness for you, both in a breath.

  I never heard but of one man truly fortunate, and he was Beaumarchais, the author of Figaro, who buried two wives and gained three lawsuits before he was thirty.

  And now, child, what art thou doing? Reading, I trust. I want to see you take a degree. Remember, this is the most important period of your life; and don’t disappoint your papa and your aunt, and all your kin — besides myself. Don’t you know that all male children are begotten for the express purpose of being graduates? and that even I am an A.M., though how I became so the Public Orator only can resolve. Besides, you are to be a priest; and to confute Sir William Drummond’s late book about the Bible (printed, but not published), and all other infidels whatever. Now leave Master H.’s gig, and Master S.’s Sapphics, and become as immortal as Cambridge can make you.

  You see, Mio Carissimo, what a pestilent correspondent I am likely to become; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead as you please, and I won’t disturb your studies as I do now. When do you fix the day, that I may take you up according to contract? Hodgson talks of making a third in our journey; but we can’t stow him, inside at least. Positively you shall go with me as was agreed, and don’t let me have any of your politesse to H. on the occasion. I shall manage to arrange for both with a little contrivance. I wish H. was not quite so fat, and we should pack better. You will want to know what I am doing — chewing tobacco.

  You see nothing of my allies, Scrope Davies and Matthews — they don’t suit you; and how does it happen that I — who am a pipkin of the same pottery — continue in your good graces? Good night, — I will go on in the morning.

  Dec. 9th. — In a morning I am always sullen, and to-day is as sombre as myself. Rain and mist are worse than a sirocco, particularly in a beef-eating and beer-drinking country. My bookseller, Cawthorne, has just left me, and tells me, with a most important face, that he is in treaty for a novel of Madame D’Arblay’s, for which 1000 guineas are asked! He wants me to read the MS. (if he obtains it), which I shall do with pleasure; but I should be very cautious in venturing an opinion on her whose Cecilia Dr. Johnson superintended.

  If he lends it to me, I shall put it in the hands of Rogers and Moore, who are truly men of taste. I have filled the sheet, and beg your pardon; I will not do it again. I shall, perhaps, write again; but if not, believe, silent or scribbling, that I am,

  My dearest William, ever, etc.

  “As dreadful as the Manichean God,

  Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.”

  “Long may Long-Tilney-Wellesley-Long-Pole live.”

  For Byron’s allusion to him in The Waltz, see Poems, 1898, vol. i. p. 484, note 1. Having run through his wife’s large fortune by his extravagant expenditure at Wanstead Park and elsewhere, he was obliged, in 1822, to escape from his creditors to the Continent. There (1823-25) he lived with Mrs. Bligh, wife of Captain Bligh, of the Coldstream Guards. His wife died in 1825, after filing a bill for divorce, and making her children wards of Chancery. Wellesley subsequently (1828) married Mrs. Bligh; but the second wife was as ill treated as the first, and he left her so destitute that she was a frequent applicant for relief at the metropolitan police-courts. He died of heart-disease in July, 1857, a pensioner on the charity of his cousin, the second Duke of Wellington.

  “When you go to Naples,” said Byron to Lady Blessington (Conversations, pp. 238, 239), “you must make acquaintance with Sir William Drummond, for he is certainly one of the most erudite men and admirable philosophers now living. He has all the wit of Voltaire, with a profundity that seldom appertains to wit, and writes so forcibly, and with such elegance and purity of style, that his works possess a peculiar charm. Have you read his Academical Questions? If not, get them directly, and I think you will agree with me, that the preface to that work alone would prove Sir William Drummond an admirable writer. He concludes it by the following sentence, which I think one of the best in our language:

  ‘Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while Reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other; he who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.’

  Is not the passage admirable? How few could have written it! and yet how few read Drummond’s works! They are too good to be popular. His Odin is really a fine poem, and has some passages that are beautiful, but it is so little read that it may be said to have dropped still-born from the press — a mortifying proof of the bad taste of the age. His translation of Persius is not only very literal, but preserves much of the spirit of the original;... he has escaped all the defects of translators, and his Persius resembles the original as nearly, in feeling and sentiment, as two languages so dissimilar in idiom will admit.”

  “I am indescribably occupied,” she writes to Dr. Burney, October 12, 1813, “in giving more and more last touches to my work, about which I begin to grow very anxious. I am to receive merely £500 upon delivery of the MS.; the two following £500 by instalments from nine months to nine months, that is, in a year and a half from the day of publication. If all goes well, the whole will be £3000, but only at the end of the sale of eight thousand copies.”

  The book failed; but rumour magnified the sum received by the writer. Mrs. Piozzi, shortly after the publication of The Wanderer and of Byron’s lines, “Weep, daughter of a royal line,” writes to Samuel Lysons, February 17, 1814:

  “Come now, do send me a kind letter and tell me if Madame d’Arblaye gets £3000 for her book or no, and if Lord Byron is to be called over about some verses he has written, as the papers hint.”

  (Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 246).

  213 — to Francis Hodgson

  London, Dec. 8, 1811.

  I sent you a sad Tale of Three Friars the other day, and now take a dose in another style. I wrote it a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days.

  “Away, away, ye notes of woe,” etc., etc.

  I have gotten a book by Sir W. Drummond (printed, but not published), entitled Œdipus Judaicus in which he attempts to prove the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretation very roughly. I wish you could see it. Mr. Ward has lent it me, and I confess to me it is worth fifty Watsons.

  You and Harness must fix on the time for your visit to Newstead; I can command mine at your wish, unless any thing particular occurs in the interim. Master William Harness and I have recommenced a most fiery correspondence; I like him as Euripides liked Agatho, or Darby admired Joan, as much for the past as the present. Bland dines with me on Tuesday to meet Moore. Coleridge has attacked the Pleasures of Hope, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was present, and heard himself indirectly rowed by the lecturer. We are going in a party to hear the new Art of Poetry by this reformed schismatic; and were I one of these poetical luminaries, or of sufficient consequence to be noticed by the man of lectures, I should not hear him without an answer. For you know,

  “an a man will be beaten with brains, he shall never keep a clean doublet.”
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  Campbell will be desperately annoyed. I never saw a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive; — what a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what can he fear from criticism? I don’t know if Bland has seen Miller, who was to call on him yesterday.

  To-day is the Sabbath, — a day I never pass pleasantly, but at Cambridge; and, even there, the organ is a sad remembrancer. Things are stagnant enough in town; as long as they don’t retrograde, ‘tis all very well. Hobhouse writes and writes and writes, and is an author. I do nothing but eschew tobacco. I wish parliament were assembled, that I may hear, and perhaps some day be heard; — but on this point I am not very sanguine. I have many plans; — sometimes I think of the East again, and dearly beloved Greece. I am well, but weakly. Yesterday Kinnaird told me I looked very ill, and sent me home happy.

  You will never give up wine. See what it is to be thirty! if you were six years younger, you might leave off anything. You drink and repent; you repent and drink.

  Is Scrope still interesting and invalid? And how does Hinde with his cursed chemistry? To Harness I have written, and he has written, and we have all written, and have nothing now to do but write again, till Death splits up the pen and the scribbler.

  The Alfred has three hundred and fifty-four candidates for six vacancies. The cook has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive. Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new cook is none of the best. I speak from report, — for what is cookery to a leguminous-eating Ascetic? So now you know as much of the matter as I do. Books and quiet are still there, and they may dress their dishes in their own way for me. Let me know your determination as to Newstead, and believe me, Yours ever,

  “Ward is one of the best-informed men I know, and, in a tête-à-tête, is one of the most agreeable companions. He has great originality, and, being très distrait, it adds to the piquancy of his observations, which are sometimes somewhat trop naïve, though always amusing. This naïveté of his is the more piquant from his being really a good-natured man, who unconsciously thinks aloud. Interest Ward on a subject, and I know no one who can talk better. His expressions are concise without being poor, and terse and epigrammatic without being affected,” etc.