Hast thou no wrath, or wish to give it vent? No wit for nobles, dunces by descent? 1 No jest on "minors," quibbles on a name, My hate, untravell'd, fondly turn'd to thee. Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego, [See the memorable critique of the Edinburgh Review on Hours of Idleness," antè, p. 419.] 2 Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit Alexin. 3 [Lord Byron's taste for boxing brought him acquainted, at an early period, with this distinguished, and, it is not too much to say, respected, professor of the art; for whom, throughout life, he continued to entertain a sincere regard. In a note to the eleventh canto of Don Juan, he calls him " his old friend, and corporeal pastor and master."} Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in the "Curse of Kehama," maugre the neglect of Madoc, &c., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. A literary riend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, 1 the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed y 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 bibliopolà " 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 Cœur de Lion, Exodus, Exodia, 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 bellman of St. Sepulchre's. The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir Francis 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 Edin And men unpractised in exchanging knocks Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please. burgh 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 discomfit 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 DBC, ACB, DB is equal to A C, and BC common to both; the two sides D B, BC, are equal to the two A C, CB, each to each, and the angle DB C is equal to the angle ACB: therefore, the base DC is equal to the base A B, and the triangle DBC (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A CB, the less to the greater, which is absurd," &c. The editor of the Edinburgh Register will find the rest of the theorem hard by his stabling; he has only to cross the river; 't is the first turnpike t'other side "Pons Asinorum.' " 5 Voltaire'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. 6 Like Sir Bland Burges's "Richard;" the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyre's, 19. Cockspurstreet. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from. Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempriere, Next rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince, When oracles prevail'd, in times of old, In song alone Apollo's will was told : The Muse, like mortal females, may be woo'd; If verse be studied with some show of art, Dictus et Amphion, Thebanæ conditor arcis, [Lord Byron had originally written "As lame as I amn, but a better bard." The reader of Mr. Moore's Notices will appreciate the feeling which, no doubt, influenced Lord Byron's alteration of the manuscript line.] 2 [The red hand of Ulster, introduced generally in a canton, marks the shield of a baronet of the United Kingdom.] 3 ["Pollio." In the original MS." Rogers."] "Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum, Gurgite cum medio portans Eagrius Hebrus, Volveret Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua; Ah, miseram Eurydicen ! anima fugiente vocabat ; Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ." Georgic. iv. 523. 5 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 "Della Cruscans were people of Though without genius, and a native vein The youth who trains to ride, or run a race, Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme. Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale, Sit tibi Musa lyræ solers, et cantor Apollo. 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 smallclothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up be gies on Enclosures and Pæans to Gunpowder.” Sitting on a shopboard, they describe fields of battle, when the only bod 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? — [See antè, p. 432. note.] 6 This well meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical und ng of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing, por has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt tac (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronag and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry, E he died during the operation, leaving one child and two vo lumes of "Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if the don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoe-maing Sappho, may do well; but the "tragedies" are as nor as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatin 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 polish'd usage of his parts of speech. But what is shame, or what is aught to him? He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim. Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate, Some folly cross'd, some jest, or some debate; Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon The gather'd 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 manMay 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), Should some pretending scribbler of the court, Some rhyming peer- there's plenty of the sort 2— 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! Si carmina condes, Nunquam te fallant animi sub vulpe latentes. Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes, Hoc (aiebat) et hoc: melius te posse negares, Bis terque expertum frustra, delere jubebat, Et male tornatos incudi reddere versus. 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 éclat, 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 Crepidam's" 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, &c. &c."- 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. - [See ante, p. 432.] [In the original MS.— Some rhyming peer- Carlisle or Carysfort." To which 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 Yet, since 't is promised at the rector's death, He strides and stamps along with creaking boot, Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme," 3 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, And will not alter what you can't defend, If you will breed this bastard of your brains 4,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. Si defendere delictum quam vertere malles, Nullum ultra verbum, aut operam insumebat inanem, Quin sine rivali teque et tua solus amares. Vir bonus et prudens versus reprehendet inertes: Culpabit duros; incomptis allinet atrum Transverso calamo signum, ambitiosa recidet 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 Petersburg in 1807. Besides his poems, he published two pamphlets, to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.] 2 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 "WHAT reams of paper, floods of ink," ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS, IN tracing of the human mind And men thro gh life assume a part They meet no better with success, &c. &c. 3 [See Milton's Lycidas.] 4 "Bastard of your brains."- Minerva being the first by Jupiter's headpiece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, &c. &c. &c. Give light to passages too much in shade, As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune, Ornamenta; parum claris lucem dare coget; 1 "A crust for the critics."- Bayes, in the "Rehearsal." 2 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 !" 3 ["Fitzscribble," originally "Fitzgerald." See antè, p. 421.] 4 On 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 waterparty; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of "Atticus," and the enemy of Pope!-[Eustace Budgell, a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt into the Thames " to escape a prosecution, on account of forging the will of Dr. Tindal; in which Eustace had provided himself with a legacy of two thousand pounds. To this Pope alludes "Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on my quill, 5 ["We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself. -JOHNSON. I should never think it time to make away with myself.' I put the case of Eustace Budgell, who was accused of forging a will, and sunk himself in the Thames, before the trial of its authenticity came on. 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.' Servari nolit? Dicam: Siculique poetæ Nec semel hoc fecit; nec, si retractus erit, jam 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." See Boswel vol. iv. p. 50. ed. 1835.] 6 If" dosed with," &c. 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," &c. irto a decent couplet, I will insert said couplet in lied of the present. 7 [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 persisted in his crignai purpose of giving this poem to the press, instead of Chode Harold, it is more than probable that he would have been a as a great poet, to the world. Inferior as this Paraphrase is m every respect, to his former Satire, and, in some places, even descending below the level of under-graduate versifiers, ta failure, there can be little doubt, would have been certa and signal;-his former assailants would have resumed ther advantage over him, and either, in the bitterness of his mars tification, he would have flung Childe Harold into the fre 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 were, fresh from the land of song, he surprised the world, and in the midst of which he was borne, buoyant and s assured, along, through a succession of new triumphs each more splendid than the last. Happily, the better judet of his friends averted such a risk. - MOORE.] Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 17. 1811. O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws, On such an eve his palest beam he cast And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes; But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain ![This fierce philippic on Lord Elgin, whose collection of Athenian marbles was ultimately purchased for the nation, in 1816, at the cost of thirty-five thousand pounds, was written at Athens, in March, 1811, and prepared for publication along with the "Hints from Horace;" but, like that satire, suppressed by Lord Byron, from motives which the reader will easily understand. It was first given to the world in 1828. Few can wonder that Lord Byron's feelings should have been powerfully excited by the spectacle of the despoiled Parthenon; but it is only due to Lord Elgin to keep in mind, that, had those precious marbles remained, they must, in all likelihood, have perished for ever amidst the miserable scenes of violence which Athens has since witnessed; and that their presence in England has already, by universal admission, been of the most essential advantage to the fine arts of our own country. The political allusions in this poem are not such as require much explanation. It contains many lines, which, it is hoped, the author, on mature reflection, disapproved of- but is too vigorous a specimen of his iambics to be omitted in any collective edition of his works.] [The splendid lines with which this satire opens, down to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane," first appeared at the commencement of the third canto of the Corsair, the author having, at that time, abandoned all notion of publishing the piece of which they originally made part.] 3 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." No murky vapour, herald of the storm, 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, Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle, That frown, where gentler ocean deigns to smile. As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane, I mark'd 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 turn'd to scan, Sacred to gods, but not secure from man, The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease, And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece! Hours roll'd along, and Dian's orb on high Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky; And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god : But chiefly, Pallas! thine; when Hecate's glare, Check'd by thy columns, fell more sadly fair 4 The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration. 5 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. 6 [During our residence of ten weeks at Athens, there was not, I believe, a day of which we did not devote a part to the contemplation of the noble monuments of Grecian genius, that have outlived the ravages of time, and the outrage of barbarous and antiquarian despoilers. The Temple of Theseus, which was within five minutes' walk of our lodgings, is the most enduring stability, and a simplicity of design peculiarly most perfect ancient edifice in the world. In this fatric, the striking, are united with the highest elegance and accuracy of workmanship; the characteristic of the Doric style, whose chaste beauty is not, in the opinion of the first artists, to be equalled by the graces of any of the other orders. A gentleman of Athens, of great taste and skill, assured us that, mains of the Parthenon, he could never again look with his after a continued contemplation of this temple, and the reaccustomed satisfaction upon the Ionic and Corinthian ruins of Athens, much less upon the specimens of the more modern species of architecture to be seen in Italy. - HOBHOUSE.] |