by Thomas Moore
In the interval Mr. Dallas looked over this Paraphrase, which he had been permitted by Lord Byron to take home with him for the purpose, and his disappointment was, as he himself describes it, “grievous,” on finding, that a pilgrimage of two years to the inspiring lands of the East had been attended with no richer poetical result. On their meeting again next morning, though unwilling to speak disparagingly of the work, he could not refrain, as he informs us, from expressing some surprise that his noble friend should have produced nothing else during his absence.— “Upon this,” he continues, “Lord Byron told me that he had occasionally written short poems, besides a great many stanzas in Spenser’s measure, relative to the countries he had visited. ‘They are not worth troubling you with, but you shall have them all with you if you like.’ So came I by Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He took it from a small trunk, with a number of verses. He said they had been read but by one person, who had found very little to commend and much to condemn: that he himself was of that opinion, and he was sure I should be so too. Such as it was, however, it was at my service; but he was urgent that ‘The Hints from Horace’ should be immediately put in train, which I promised to have done.”
The value of the treasure thus presented to him, Mr. Dallas was not slow in discovering. That very evening he despatched a letter to his noble friend, saying— “You have written one of the most delightful poems I ever read. If I wrote this in flattery, I should deserve your contempt rather than your friendship. I have been so fascinated with Childe Harold that I have not been able to lay it down. I would almost pledge my life on its advancing the reputation of your poetical powers, and on its gaining you great honour and regard, if you will do me the credit and favour of attending to my suggestions respecting,” &c.&c.&c.
Notwithstanding this just praise, and the secret echo it must have found in a heart so awake to the slightest whisper of fame, it was some time before Lord Byron’s obstinate repugnance to the idea of publishing Childe Harold could be removed.
“Attentive,” says Mr. Dallas, “as he had hitherto been to my opinions and suggestions, and natural as it was that he should be swayed by such decided praise, I was surprised to find that I could not at first obtain credit with him for my judgment on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. ‘It was any thing but poetry — it had been condemned by a good critic — had I not myself seen the sentences on the margins of the manuscripts?’ He dwelt upon the Paraphrase of the Art of Poetry with pleasure, and the manuscript of that was given to Cawthorn, the publisher of the Satire, to be brought forth without delay. I did not, however, leave him so: before I quitted him I returned to the charge, and told him that I was so convinced of the merit of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that, as he had given it to me, I should certainly publish it, if he would have the kindness to attend to some corrections and alterations.”
Among the many instances, recorded in literary history, of the false judgments of authors respecting their own productions, the preference given by Lord Byron to a work so little worthy of his genius, over a poem of such rare and original beauty as the first Cantos of Childe Harold, may be accounted, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable.
“It is in men as in soils,” says Swift, “where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.” But Lord Byron had made the discovery of the vein, without, as it would seem, being aware of its value. I have already had occasion to observe that, even while occupied with the composition of Childe Harold, it is questionable whether he himself was yet fully conscious of the new powers, both of thought and feeling, that had been awakened in him; and the strange estimate we now find him forming of his own production appears to warrant the remark. It would seem, indeed, as if, while the imaginative powers of his mind had received such an impulse forward, the faculty of judgment, slower in its developement, was still immature, and that of self-judgment, the most difficult of all, still unattained.
On the other hand, from the deference which, particularly at this period of his life, he was inclined to pay to the opinions of those with whom he associated, it would be fairer, perhaps, to conclude that this erroneous valuation arose rather from a diffidence in his own judgment than from any deficiency of it. To his college companions, almost all of whom were his superiors in scholarship, and some of them even, at this time, his competitors in poetry, he looked up with a degree of fond and admiring deference, for which his ignorance of his own intellectual strength alone could account; and the example, as well as tastes, of these young writers being mostly on the side of established models, their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps, towards school recollections, may have had a share in prompting his preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable; — at least, that it was enough to lead him, untried as he had yet been in the new path, to content himself, for the present, with following up his success in the old. We have seen, indeed, that the manuscript of the two Cantos of Childe Harold had, previously to its being placed in the hands of Mr. Dallas, been submitted by the noble author to the perusal of some friend — the first and only one, it appears, who at that time had seen them. Who this fastidious critic was, Mr. Dallas has not mentioned; but the sweeping tone of censure in which he conveyed his remarks was such as, at any period of his career, would have disconcerted the judgment of one, who, years after, in all the plenitude of his fame, confessed, that “the depreciation of the lowest of mankind was more painful to him than the applause of the highest was pleasing.”
Though on every thing that, after his arrival at the age of manhood, he produced, some mark or other of the master-hand may be traced; yet, to print the whole of his Paraphrase of Horace, which extends to nearly 800 lines, would be, at the best, but a questionable compliment to his memory. That the reader, however, may be enabled to form some opinion of a performance, which — by an error or caprice of judgment, unexampled, perhaps, in the annals of literature — its author, for a time, preferred to the sublime musings of Childe Harold, I shall here select a few such passages from the Paraphrase as may seem calculated to give an idea as well of its merits as its defects.
The opening of the poem is, with reference to the original, ingenious: —
“Who would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace His costly canvass with each flatter’d 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 tail? 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 seems The book, which, sillier than a sick man’s dreams, Displays a crowd of figures incomplete, Poetic nightmares, without head or feet.”
The following is pointed, and felicitously expressed: —
“Then glide down Grub Street, fasting and forgot, Laugh’d into Lethe by some quaint Review, Whose wit is never troublesome till — true.”
Of the graver parts, the annexed is a favourable specimen: —
“New words find credit in these latter days, If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase: 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 lungs, Enrich’d our island’s ill-united tongues? ’Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present Reforms 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 calls, Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain’d sustain 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 survive, Though those shall sink which now appear to thrive, As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway Our life and language must alike obey.”
I quote what follows chiefly for the sake of the note attached to it: —
“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; — While 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 appear, — Poor virgin! — damn’d some twenty times a year!”
There is more of poetry in the following verses upon Milton than in any other passage throughout the Paraphrase: —
“‘Awake a louder and a loftier strain,’ And, pray, what follows from his boiling brain? He sinks to S * *’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.”
The annexed sketch contains some lively touches: —
“Behold him, Freshman! — forced no more to groan O’er Virgil’s devilish verses, and — his own; Prayers are too tedious, lectures too abstruse, He flies from T —— ll’s frown to ‘Fordham’s Mews;’ (Unlucky T —— ll, doom’d to daily cares 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. Fool’d, pillaged, dunn’d, he wastes his terms away; And, unexpell’d perhaps, retires M.A.: — Master of Arts! — as Hells and Clubs proclaim, Where scarce a black-leg bears a brighter name.
“Launch’d 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 call’d 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, And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves; Counts cent. per cent., and smiles, or vainly frets O’er hoards diminish’d 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!”
In speaking of the opera, he says: —
“Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear, Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore, His anguish doubled by his own ‘encore!’ 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 dropp’d curtain gives a glad release: Why this and more he suffers, can ye guess? — Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!”
The concluding couplet of the following lines is amusingly characteristic of that mixture of fun and bitterness with which their author sometimes spoke in conversation; — so much so, that those who knew him might almost fancy they hear him utter the words: —
“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!”
One more passage, with the humorous note appended to it, will complete the whole amount of my favourable specimens: —
“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, They leap the counter, and they leave the stall: — Provincial maidens, men of high command, Yea, baronets, have ink’d the bloody hand! Cash cannot quell them — Pollio play’d this prank: (Then Phoebus first found credit in a bank;) Not all the living only, but the dead Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus’ head! Damn’d 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-press’d, Behold a quarto! — tarts must tell the rest! Then leave, ye wise, the lyre’s precarious chords To muse-mad baronets or madder lords, Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale, Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale! Hark to those notes, narcotically soft, The cobbler-laureates sing to Capel Lofft!”
From these select specimens, which comprise, altogether, little more than an eighth of the whole poem, the reader may be enabled to form some notion of the remainder, which is, for the most part, of a very inferior quality, and, in some parts, descending to the depths of doggerel. Who, for instance, could trace the hand of Byron in such “prose, fringed with rhyme,” as the following? —
“Peace to Swift’s faults! his wit hath made them pass Unmatch’d by all, save matchless Hudibras, Whose author is perhaps the first we meet Who from our couplet lopp’d 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 Form’d, save in odes, to bear a serious strain, 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 or war, Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime, Are curb’d too much by long recurring rhyme.
“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 Shakspeare’s days, There’s pomp enough, if little else, in plays; Nor will Melpomene ascend her throne Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.
“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?”
In tracing the fortunes of men, it is not a little curious to observe, how often the course of a whole life has depended on one single step. Had Lord Byron now persisted in his original purpose of giving this poem to the press, instead of Childe Harold, it is more than probable that he would have been lost, as a great poet, to the world. Inferior as the Paraphrase is, in every respect, to his former Satire, and, in some places, even descending below the level of under-graduate versifiers, its failure, there can be little doubt, would have been certain and signal; — his former assailants would have resumed their advantage over him, and either, in the bitterness of his mortification, he would have flung Childe Harold into the fire; or, had he summoned up sufficient confidence to publish that poem, its reception, even if sufficient to retrieve him in the eyes of the public and his own, could never have, at all, resembled that explosion of success, — that instantaneous and universal acclaim of admiration into which, coming, as it were, fresh from the land of song, he now surprised the world, and in the midst of which he was borne, buoyant and self-assured, along, through a succession of new triumphs, each more splendid than the last.
Happily, the better judgment of his friends averted such a risk; and he at length consented to the immediate publication of Childe Harold, — still, however, to the last, expressing his doubts of its merits, and his
alarm at the sort of reception it might meet with in the world.
“I did all I could,” says his adviser, “to raise his opinion of this composition, and I succeeded; but he varied much in his feelings about it, nor was he, as will appear, at his ease until the world decided on its merit. He said again and again that I was going to get him into a scrape with his old enemies, and that none of them would rejoice more than the Edinburgh Reviewers at an opportunity to humble him. He said I must not put his name to it. I entreated him to leave it to me, and that I would answer for this poem silencing all his enemies.”
The publication being now determined upon, there arose some doubts and difficulty as to a publisher. Though Lord Byron had intrusted Cawthorn with what he considered to be his surer card, the “Hints from Horace,” he did not, it seems, think him of sufficient station in the trade to give a sanction or fashion to his more hazardous experiment. The former refusal of the Messrs. Longman to publish his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” was not forgotten; and he expressly stipulated with Mr. Dallas that the manuscript should not be offered to that house. An application was, at first, made to Mr. Miller, of Albemarle Street; but, in consequence of the severity with which Lord Elgin was treated in the poem, Mr. Miller (already the publisher and bookseller of this latter nobleman) declined the work. Even this circumstance, — so apprehensive was the poet for his fame, — began to re-awaken all the qualms and terrors he had, at first, felt; and, had any further difficulties or objections arisen, it is more than probable he might have relapsed into his original intention. It was not long, however, before a person was found willing and proud to undertake the publication. Mr. Murray, who, at this period, resided in Fleet Street, having, some time before, expressed a desire to be allowed to publish some work of Lord Byron, it was in his hands that Mr. Dallas now placed the manuscript of Childe Harold; — and thus was laid the first foundation of that connection between this gentleman and the noble poet, which continued, with but a temporary interruption, throughout the lifetime of the one, and has proved an abundant source of honour, as well as emolument, to the other.