by Lord Byron
But, hold — we had forgot one circumstance: Mr. Moore has been said to be one of the authors of certain verses on the highest characters of the State, which appeared from time to time in the Morning Chronicle, and which were afterwards collected into a little volume; this may, probably, be in Lord Byron’s opinion, a clear title to the name of patriot, in which case, his Lordship has also his claim to the same honour; and, indeed that sagacious and loyal person, the Editor of the Morning Chronicle, seems to be of this notion; for when some one ventured to express some, we think not unnatural, indignation at Lord Byron’s having been the author of some impudent doggrels, of the same vein, which appeared anonymously in that paper reflecting on his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and her Royal Highness his daughter, the Editor before-mentioned exclaimed — ”What! and is not a Peer, an hereditary councillor of the Crown, to be permitted to give his constitutional advice?!!!”
If writing such vile and anonymous stuff as one sometimes reads in the Morning Chronicle be the duty of a good subject, or the privilege of a Peer of Parliament, then indeed we have nothing to object to Mr. Moore’s title of Patriot, or Lord Byron’s open, honourable, manly, and constitutional method of advising the Crown.
To return, however, to our main object, Lord Byron’s consistency, truth, and trustworthiness.
His Lordship is pleased to call Mr. Moore not only Patriot and Poet, but he acquaints us also, that “he is the delight alike of his readers and his friends; the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own.”
Let us now turn to Lord Byron’s thrice-recorded opinion of “this Poet of all Circles.” We shall quote from a Poem which was republished, improved, amended, and reconsidered, not more than three years ago; since which time Mr. Moore has published no Poem whatsoever; therefore, Lord Byron’s former and his present opinions are founded upon the same data, and if they do not agree, it really is no fault of Mr. Moore’s, who has published nothing to alter them.
“Now look around and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age,
While Little’s lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves.”
Here, by no great length of induction, we find Little’s, i.e. Mr. Thomas Moore’s lyrics, are trifling, “precious works,” his Lordship ironically adds, that “please times from which,” as his Lordship says, “taste and reason are passed away!”
Bye and by his Lordship delivers a still more plain opinion on Mr. Moore’s fitness to be the “Poet of All circles.”
“Who in soft guise, surrounded by a quire
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush’d,
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush’d?
‘Tis Little, young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay;
Griev’d to condemn, the Muse must yet be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust!”
“O calum et terra!” as Lingo says. What! this purest of Patriots is immoral? What! “the Poet of all circles” is “the advocate of lust”? Monstrous! But who can doubt Byron? And his Lordship, in a subsequent passage, does not hesitate to speak still more plainly, and to declare, in plain round terms (we shudder while we copy) that Moore, the Poet, the Patriot “Moore, is lewd”!!!
After this, we humbly apprehend that if we were to “trust Byron,” Mr. Moore, however he may be the idol of his own circle, would find some little difficulty in obtaining admittance into any other.
Lord Byron having thus disposed, as far as depended upon him, of the moral character of the first of Patriots and Poets, takes an early opportunity of doing justice to the personal honour of this dear “friend;” one, as his Lordship expresses it, of “the magnificent and fiery spirited” sons of Erin.
“In 1806,” says Lord Byron, “Messrs. Jeffery and Moore met at Chalk Farm — the duel was prevented by the interference of the Magistracy, and on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated!”
“Magnificent and fiery spirit,” with a vengeance!
We are far from thinking of Mr. Moore as Lord Byron either did or does; not so degradingly as his Lordship did in 1810; not so extravagantly as he does in 1813. But we think that Mr. Moore has grave reason of complaint, and almost just cause, to exert “his fiery spirit” against Lord Byron, who has the effrontery to drag him twice before the public, and overwhelm him, one day with odium, and another with ridicule.
We regret that Lord Byron, by obliging us to examine the value of his censures, has forced us to contrast his past with his present judgments, and to bring again before the public the objects of his lampoons and his flatteries. We have, however, much less remorse in quoting his satire than his dedications; for, by this time, we believe, the whole world is inclined to admit that his Lordship can pay no compliment so valuable as his censure, nor offer any insult so intolerable as his praise.
(7) Byroniana No. 4 (The Courier, February 17, 1814)
.
Don Pedro.
What offence have these men done?
Dogberry.
Many, Sir; they have committed false reports; moreover they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixthly and lastly, they have belied a Lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things, and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.”
Much Ado about Nothing.
We have already seen how scurvily Lord Byron has treated three of the four persons to whom he has successively dedicated his Poems; but for the fourth he reserved a species of contumely, which we are confident our readers will think more degrading than all the rest. He has uniformly praised him! and him alone!!! — The exalted rank, the gentle manners, the polished taste of his guardian and relation, Lord Carlisle; the considerations due to Lord Holland, from his family, his personal character, and his love of letters; the amiability of Mr. Moore’s society, the sweetness of his versification, and the vivacity of his imagination; — all these could not save their possessors from the brutality of Lord Byron’s personal satire.
It was, then, for a person only, who should have none of these titles to his envy that his Lordship could be expected to reserve the fullness and steadiness of his friendship; and if we had any respect or regard for that small poet and very disagreeable person, Mr. Sam Rogers, we should heartily pity him for being “damned” to such “fame” as Lord Byron’s uninterrupted praise can give.
But Mr. Sam Rogers has another cause of complaint against Lord Byron, and which he is of a taste to resent more. His Lordship has not deigned to call him “the firmest of patriots,” though we have heard that his claims to that title are not much inferior to Mr. Moore’s. Mr. Sam Rogers is reported to have clubb’d with the Irish Anacreon in that scurrilous collection of verses, which we have before mentioned, and which were published under the title of the Twopenny Post-bag, and the assumed name of “Thomas Brown.” The rumour may be unfounded; if it be, Messrs. Rogers and Moore will easily forgive us for saying that, much as we are astonished at the effrontery with which Lord Byron has acknowledged his lampoon, we infinitely prefer it to the cowardly prudence of the author or authors of the Twopenny Post-bag lurking behind a fictitious name, and “devising impossible slanders,” which he or they have not the spirit to avow.
But, to return to the more immediate subject of our lucubrations: It seems almost like a fatality, that Lord Byron has hardly ever praised any thing that he has not at some other period censured, or censured any thing that he has not, by and bye, praised or practised.
It does not often happen that booksellers are assailed for their too great liberality to authors; yet, in Lord Byron’s satire, while Mr. Scott is abused, his publisher, Mr. Murray, is sneered at, in the following lines:
“And think’st them, Scott, by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance;
Tho
ugh Murray with his Miller may combine,
To yield thy Muse just Half-a-crown a Line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
Let such forego the poet’s sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Low may they sink to merited contempt,
And scorn remunerate the mean attempt.”
Now, is it not almost incredible that this very Murray (the only remaining one of the booksellers whom his Lordship had attacked; Miller has left the trade) — is it not, we say, almost incredible that this very Murray should have been soon after selected, by this very Lord Byron, to be his own publisher? But what will our readers say, when we assure them, that not only was Murray so selected, but that this magnanimous young Lord has actually sold his works to this same Murray? and, what is a yet more singular circumstance, has received and pocketted, for one of his own “stale romances,” a sum amounting, not to “half-a-crown,” but to a whole crown, a line!!!
This fact, monstrous as it seems in the author of the foregoing lines, is, we have the fullest reason to believe, accurately true. And the “faded laurel,” “the brains rac’d for lucre,” “the merited contempt,” “the scorn,” and the “meanness,” which this impudent young man dared to attribute to Mr. Scott, appear to have been a mere anticipation of his own future proceedings; and thus,
“ — Even-handed Justice
Commends the ingredients of his poison’d chalice
To his own lips.”
How he now likes the taste of it we do not know; about as much, we suspect, as the “incestuous, murderous, damned Dane” did, when Hamlet obliged him to “drink off the potion” which he had treacherously drugged for the destruction of others.
(8) Byroniana No. 5 (The Courier, February 19, 1814).
“He professes no keeping oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.”
All’s Well that ends Well.
We have, we should hope, sufficiently exposed the audacious levity and waywardness of Lord Byron’s mind, and yet there are a few touches which we think will give a finish to the portrait, and add, if it be at all wanting, to the strength of the resemblance.
...
It must be amusing to those who know anything of Lord Byron in the circles of London, to find him magnanimously defying in very stout heroics,
“ — all the din of Melbourne House
And Lambes’ resentment — ”
and adding that he is “unscared” even by “Holland’s spouse.”
...
To those who may be in the habit of hearing his Lordship’s political descants, the following extract will appear equally curious:
“Mr. Brougham, in No. 25 of the Edinburgh Review, throughout the article concerning Don Pedro Cevallos, has displayed more politics than policy; many of the worthy burgesses of Edinburgh being so incensed at the Infamous principles it evinces, as to have withdrawn their subscriptions;” and in the text of this poem, to which the foregoing is a note, he advises the Editor of the Review to
“Beware, lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale;
Turn beef to bannacks, cauliflower to kail.”
Those who have attended to his Lordship’s progress as an author, and observed that he has published four poems, in little more than two years, will start at the following lines:
“ — Oh cease thy song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long;
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare;
A Fourth, alas, were more than we could bear.”
And as the scene of each of these four Poems is laid in the Levant, it is curious to recollect, that when his Lordship informed the world that he was about to visit “Afric’s coast,” and “Calpe’s height,” and “Stamboul’s minarets,” and “Beauty’s native clime,” he enters into a voluntary and solemn engagement with the public,
“That should he back return, no letter’d rage
Shall drag his common-place book on the stage;
Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,
He’ll leave topography to classic Cell,
And, quite content, no more shall interpose,
To stun mankind with poetry or prose.”
And yet we have already had, growing out of this “Tour,” four volumes of poetry, enriched with copious notes in prose, selected from his “common-place book.” The whole interspersed every here and there with the most convincing proofs that instead of being “quite content,” his Lordship has returned, as he went out, the most discontented and peevish thing that breathes.
But the passage of all others which gives us the most delight is that in which his Lordship attacks his critics, and declares that
“Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are penetrable stuff.”
and adds,
“ — I have —
Learn’d to deride the Critic’s stern decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me.”
We should now, with all humility, ask his Lordship whether he yet feels that “he too is penetrable stuff;” and we should further wish to know how he likes being “broken on the wheel he meant for others?”
When his Lordship shall have sufficiently pondered on those questions, we may perhaps venture to propound one or two more.
(9) From The Courier (March 15, 1814).
The republication of some Satires, which the humour of the moment now disposes the writer to recall, was strenuously censured, the other day, in a Morning Paper. It was there said, amongst other things, that such a republication “contributes to exasperate and perpetuate the divisions of those whom nature and friendship have joined!” This is within six weeks after the deliberate republication of “Weep, daughter,” etc., etc.; and thus we are informed of the exact moment at which all retort is to cease; at which misrepresentation towards the public and outrage towards the Personages much more than insulted in those lines, is to be no longer remembered. What privileges does this writer claim for his friends! They are to live in all “the swill’d insolence” of attack upon those on whose character, union, and welfare, the public prosperity mainly depends; they are to instruct the Daughter to hold the Father disgraced, because he does not surrender the prime Offices of the State to their ambition. And if, after this, public disgust make the author feel, in the midst of the little circle of flatterers that remains to him, what an insight he has given into the guilt of satire before maturity, before experience, before knowledge; if the original unprovoked intruder upon the peace of others be thus taught a love of privacy and a facility of retraction; if Turnus have found the time,
“magno cum optaverit emptum
Intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista, diemque
Oderit;”
if triumphing arrogance be changed into a sentimental humility, O! then Liberality is to call out for him in the best of her hacknied tones; the contest is to cease at the instant when his humour changes from mischief to melancholy; affetuoso is to be the only word; and he is to be allowed his season of sacred torpidity, till the venom, new formed in the shade, make him glisten again in the sunshine he envies!
II: The Morning Post
(1) Verses (Morning Post, February 5, 1814).
Suggested by reading some lines of Lord Byron’s at the end of his newly published work, entitled “The Corsair” which begin:
“Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line.”
“‘Far better be the thing that crawls,
Disgustful on a dungeon’s walls;
Far better be the worm that creeps,
In icy rings o’er him who sleeps;’“
“Far better be the reptile scorn’d,
Unseen, unheeded, unadorn’d,
Than him, to whom indulgent heav’n,
If stung by envy, warp’d by pride,
Such gifts, alas! are misapplied;
Not all by nature’s bounty blest
In beauty’s dazzling hues are drest;
But who shall play the critic’s part,
If for the form atones the heart?
But if the gloomiest thoughts prevail,
And Atheist doctrines stain the tale;
If calumny to pow’r addrest,
Attempts to wound its Sovereign’s breast;
If impious it shall try to part,
The Father from the Daughter’s heart;
If it shall aim to wield a brand,
To fire our fair and native land;
If hatred for the world and men,
Shall dip in gall the ready pen:
“‘Oh then far better ‘tis to crawl,
Harmless upon a dungeon’s wall;
And better far the worm that creeps,
In icy rings o’er him who sleeps.’“
(2) To Lord Byron (Morning Post, February 7, 1814).
“Bard of ungentle wayward mood!
‘Tis said of thee, when in the lap,
Thy nurse to tempt thee to thy food,
Would squeeze a lemon in thy pap.
At vinegar how danc’d thine eyes,
Before thy tongue a want could utter,
And oft the dame to stop thy cries,
Strew’d wormwood on thy bread and butter.
And when in childhood’s frolic hour,
Thou’dst plait a garland for thy hair;
The nettle bloom’d a chosen flow’r,
And native thistles flourish’d there.
For sugar-plum thou ne’er did’st pine,