Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  Believe me, yours truly, B’N.

  287 — to John Hanson

  Presteigne, April 15th, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I wrote to you requesting an answer last week, and again apprising you of my determination of leaving England early in May, and proceeding no further with Claughton.

  Now, having arrived, I shall write to that person immediately to give up the whole business. I am sick of the delays attending it, and can wait no longer, and I have had too much of law already at Rochdale to place Newstead in the same predicament.

  I shall only be able to see you for a few days in town, as I shall sail before the 20th of May.

  Believe me, yours ever, B.

  P. S. — My best compliments to Mrs. H. and the family.

  288 — to John Hanson

  Presteigne, April 17th, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I shall follow your advice and say nothing to our shuffling purchaser, but leave him to you, and the fullest powers of Attorney, which I hope you will have ready on my arrival in town early next week. I wish, if possible, the arrangement with Hoare to be made immediately, as I must set off forthwith. I mean to remain incog. in London for the short time previous to my embarkation.

  I have not written to Claughton, nor shall, of course, after your counsel on the subject. I wish you would turn in your mind the expediency of selling Rochdale. I shall never make any thing of it, as it is.

  I beg you will provide (as before my last voyage) the fullest powers to act in my absence, and bring my cursed concerns into some kind of order. You must at least allow that I have acted according to your advice about Newstead, and I shall take no step without your being previously consulted.

  I hope I shall find you and Mrs. H., etc., well in London, and that you have heard something from this dilatory gentleman.

  Believe me, ever yours truly,

  B.

  289 — to John Murray

  April 21, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I shall be in town by Sunday next, and will call and have some conversation on the subject of Westall’s proposed designs. I am to sit to him for a picture at the request of a friend of mine; and as Sanders’s is not a good one, you will probably prefer the other. I wish you to have Sanders’s taken down and sent to my lodgings immediately — before my arrival. I hear that a certain malicious publication on Waltzing is attributed to me. This report, I suppose, you will take care to contradict, as the Author, I am sure, will not like that I should wear his cap and bells. Mr. Hobhouse’s quarto will be out immediately; pray send to the author for an early copy which I wish to take abroad with me.

  Dear Sir, I am, yours very truly, B.

  P. S. — I see the Examiner threatens some observations upon you next week. What can you have done to share the wrath which has heretofore been principally expended upon the Prince? I presume all your Scribleri will be drawn up in battle array in defence of the modern Tonson — Mr. Bucke, for instance. Send in my account to Bennet Street, as I wish to settle it before sailing.

  CHAPTER VII — MAY, 1812-DECEMBER, 1813

  THE GIAOUR AND BRIDE OF ABYDOS

  290 — to John Murray

  May 13, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I send a corrected, and, I hope, amended copy of the lines for the “fragment” already sent this evening. Let the enclosed be the copy that is sent to the Devil (the printers) and burn the other.

  Yours, etc., B’N.

  291 — to Thomas Moore

  May 19, 1813.

  Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town,

  Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown, —

  For hang me if I know of which you may most brag,

  Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny Post Bag;

  ...

  But now to my letter — to yours ‘tis an answer —

  To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,

  All ready and dress’d for proceeding to spunge on

  (According to compact) the wit in the dungeon —

  Pray Phœbus at length our political malice

  May not get us lodgings within the same palace!

  I suppose that to-night you’re engaged with some codgers,

  And for Sotheby’s Blues have deserted Sam Rogers;

  And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got,

  Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote.

  But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra,

  And you’ll be Catullus, the Regent, Mamurra.

  Dear M., — having got thus far, I am interrupted by — — . 10 o’clock.

  Half-past 11. — — is gone. I must dress for Lady Heathcote’s. — Addio.

  In March, 1812, the Morning Post printed a poem, speaking of the Prince Regent as the “Mæcenas of the Age,” the “Exciter of Desire,” the “Glory of the People,” an “Adonis of Loveliness,” etc. The Examiner for March 12, 1812, thus translated this adulation into “the language of truth:”

  “What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this ‘Glory of the People’ was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!... that this “‘Exciter of Desire’ (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!), this ‘Adonis in Loveliness,’ was a corpulent man of fifty! — in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity.”

  Crabb Robinson, who met Leigh Hunt, four days later, at Charles Lamb’s, says (Diary, vol. i. p. 376),

  “Leigh Hunt is an enthusiast, very well intentioned, and, I believe, prepared for the worst. He said, pleasantly enough, ‘No one can accuse me of not writing a libel. Everything is a libel, as the law is now declared, and our security lies only in their shame.’“

  For this libel John and Leigh Hunt were convicted in the Court of King’s Bench on December 9, 1812. In the following February they were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of £500 a-piece. John was imprisoned in Coldbath-fields, Leigh in the Surrey County Gaol. They were released on February 2 or 3, 1815.

  Shelley, on reading the sentence, proposed a subscription for

  “the brave and enlightened man… to whom the public owes a debt as the champion of their liberties and virtues”

  (Dowden, Life of Shelley, vol. i. p. 325). Keats wrote a sonnet to Hunt on the day he left his prison, beginning:

  “What though for showing truth to flatter’d state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison.”

  A political alliance was thus cemented, which, for the time, was disastrous to the literary prospects of Shelley and Keats. To Hunt Shelley dedicated the Cenci, and Keats his first volume of Poems (1817). He is the “gentlest of the wise” in Shelley’s Adonais; and, in a suppressed stanza of the same poem, the poet speaks of Hunt’s “sweet and earnest looks,” “soft smiles,” and “dark and night-like eyes.” The words inscribed on Shelley’s tomb — ”Cor Cordium” — were Hunt’s choice. In his various papers Hunt zealously championed his friends. In the Examiner for September to October, 1819, he defended Shelley’s personal character; in the same paper for June to July, 1817, he praised Keats’s first volume of Poems; he reviewed “Lamia” in the Indicator for August 2-9, 1820, and “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in that for May 10, 1820. In his Foliage (1818) are three sonnets addressed to Keats.

  Shelley believed in Hunt to the end. It was mainly through him that Hunt came to Pisa in June, 1822, to join with Byron in The Liberal. But he doubted whether the alliance between the “wren and the eagle” could continue (Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 519). Keats, on the other hand, lost his faith in Hunt. In a letter to Haydon (May, 1817), speaking of Hunt, he says,

  “There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly
than to flatter oneself into an idea of being a great Poet.”

  Again (March, 1818) he writes,

  “It is a great Pity that People should, by associating themselves with the finest things, spoil them. Hunt has damned Hampstead, and masks, and sonnets, and Italian tales.”

  He writes still more severely (December, 1818-January, 1819),

  “If I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him; but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart. I care not for white Busts — and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing.”

  Haydon considered that Hunt was the “great unhinger” of Keats’s best dispositions (Works of Keats, ed. H. B. Forman, vol. iv. p. 359); and Severn attributes Keats’s temporary “mawkishness” to Hunt’s society (ibid., p. 376).

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (Our Old Home, p. 229, ed. 1884) says of Hunt, and means it as high praise, that

  “there was not an English trait in him from head to foot — morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his composition.”

  He was, in fact, a man of weak fibre, who allowed himself to sponge upon his friends, such as Talfourd, Haydon, and Shelley. Though Dickens denied (All the Year Round, Dec. 24, 1859) that “Harold Skimpole” was intended for Hunt, the picture was recognized as a portrait. On the other hand, Hunt was a man of kindly and genial disposition.

  “He loves everything,” says Crabb Robinson (Diary, vol. ii. p. 192), “he catches the sunny side of everything, and, excepting that he has a few polemical antipathies, finds everything beautiful.”

  In his essays, the best of which appeared in the Indicator (1819-21), he communicates some of his own sense of enjoyment to those of his readers who are content to take him as he is. His circle is limited; but in it his observation is minute and suggestive. The Vale of Health is to him, in a degree proportioned to their respective powers, what the Temple was to Lamb. His style is neat, pretty, and would be affected if it were not the man himself. As a literary journalist, a dramatic critic, and an essayist, he has a place in literature. His poetry is less successful; his affectations, innate vulgarity, and habit of pawing his subjects repel even those who are attracted by its sweetness. Yet his Story of Rimini (1816), which he dedicated to Byron, was admired in its day. Byron, though he condemned its affected style, thought the poem a “devilish good one.” Moore held the same opinion; and Jeffrey, writing to him May 28, 1816 (Memoirs, etc., of Thomas Moon, vol. ii. p. 100), says,

  “I certainly shall not be ill-natured to Rimini. It is very sweet and very lively in many places, and is altogether piquant, as being by far the best imitation of Chaucer and some of his Italian contemporaries that modern times have produced.”

  No two men could be more unlike than Byron and Hunt, or have less in common. Yet, with a singular capacity for self-delusion, Hunt told his wife that the texture of Byron’s mind resembled his to a thread (Correspondence of L. Hunt, vol. i. p. 88). The friendship began in political sympathy; but two years later (see Byron’s letter to Moore, June 1, 1818) it had, on one side at least, cooled. In June, 1822, Hunt came to Pisa to launch The Liberal, with the aid of Shelley and Byron. The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South, started in 1822, lived through four numbers, and died in July, 1823. During that time Byron expressed to Lady Blessington (Conversations, p. 77)

  “a very good opinion of the talents and principle of Mr. Hunt, though, as he said, ‘our tastes are so opposite that we are totally unsuited to each other … in short, we are more formed to be friends at a distance, than near.’“

  For the best part of two years Hunt was Byron’s guest: he repaid his hospitality by publishing his Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (1828). Though Lady Blessington said the book “gave, in the main, a fair account” of Byron (Crabb Robinson’s Diary, vol. iii. p. 13), its publication was a breach of honour. As such it was justly attacked by Moore in “The Living Dog and the Dead Lion “:

  “Next week will be published (as ‘Lives’ are the rage)

  The whole Reminiscences, wondrous and strange,

  Of a small puppy-dog, that lived once in the cage

  Of the late noble Lion at Exeter ‘Change.

  “Though the dog is a dog of the kind they call ‘sad,’

  ‘Tis a puppy that much to good breeding pretends;

  And few dogs have such opportunities had

  Of knowing how Lions behave — among friends.

  “How that animal eats, how he snores, how he drinks,

  Is all noted down by this Boswell so small;

  And ‘tis plain, from each sentence, the puppy-dog thinks

  That the Lion was no such great things after all.

  “Though he roared pretty well — this the puppy allows —

  It was all, he says, borrowed — all second-hand roar;

  And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows

  To the loftiest war-note the Lion could pour.

  “‘Tis, indeed, as good fun as a Cynic could ask,

  To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits

  Takes gravely the Lord of the Forest to task,

  And judges of Lions by puppy-dog habits.

  “Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)

  With sops every day from the Lion’s own pan,

  He lifts up his leg at the noble beast’s carcass,

  And — does all a dog, so diminutive, can.

  “However, the book’s a good book, being rich in

  Examples and warnings to lions high-bred,

  How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen,

  Who’ll feed on them living, and foul them when dead.

  “Exeter ‘Change.

  T. Pidcock.”

  For the reply of Hunt or one of his friends, “The Giant and the Dwarf,” see .

  “Sotheby is a good man; rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope’s, he had fastened upon me (something about Agamemnon or Orestes — or some of his plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time). Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me by the button, and the heart-strings, and spared neither. W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don’t dislike mischief, saw my case, and, coming up to us both, took me by the hand and pathetically bade me farewell, ‘for,’ said he, ‘I see it is all over with you.’ Sotheby then went away. Sic me servavit Apollo.”

  “Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,

  Nisi impudicus et vorax, et aleo,

  Mamurram habere, quod Comata Gallia

  Habebat uncti et ultima Britannia?”

  See also xli. 4, xliii. 5 (compare Horace, Sat. i. 5. 37), and lvii. 2.

  292 — to John Murray

  May 22nd, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I return the “Curiosities of Literature.” Pray is it fair to ask if the “Twopenny Postbag” is to be reviewed in this No.? because, if not, I should be glad to undertake it, and leave it to Chance and the Editor for a reception into your pages.

  Yours truly, B.

  P. S. — You have not sent me Eustace’s Travels.

  293 — to John Murray

  May 23rd, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I question whether ever author before received such a compliment from his master. I am glad you think the thing is tolerably vamped and will be vendible.

  Pray look over the proof again. I am but a careless reviser, and let me have 12 struck off, and one or two for yourself to serve as MS. for the thing when published in
the body of the volume. If Lady Caroline Lamb sends for it, do not let her have it, till the copies are all ready, and then you can send her one.

  Yours truly,

  P. S. — H.’s book is out at last; I have my copy, which I have lent already.

  294 — to John Murray

  June 2, 1813.

  Dear Sir, — I presented a petition to the house yesterday, which gave rise to some debate, and I wish you to favour me for a few minutes with the Times and Herald to look on their hostile report.

  You will find, if you like to look at my prose, my words nearly verbatim in the M. Chronicle.

  B’N.

  “spouting in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering. ‘I told them,’ he said, ‘that it was a most flagrant violation of the Constitution — that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom, and that — ’

  ‘But what was this dreadful grievance?’ asked Moore.

  ‘The grievance?’ he repeated, pausing as if to consider, ‘oh, that I forget.’“

  295 — to Thomas Moore

  My Dear Moore, — ”When Rogers” must not see the inclosed, which I send for your perusal. I am ready to fix any day you like for our visit. Was not Sheridan good upon the whole? The “Poulterer” was the first and best.

  Ever yours, etc.

  1.

  When Thurlow this damn’d nonsense sent,

  (I hope I am not violent),

  Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.

  2.

  And since not ev’n our Rogers’ praise

  To common sense his thoughts could raise —

  Why would they let him print his lays?

  3.

  ...

  4.

  ...

  5.

  To me, divine Apollo, grant — O!

  Hermilda’s first and second canto,

  I’m fitting up a new portmanteau;

  6.

  And thus to furnish decent lining,

  My own and others’ bays I’m twining —

  So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in.

  “When Rogers o’er this labour bent,