THE LION'S HEAD.

We have the satisfaction to inform our readers, that arrangements have been completed for the future Editorship of the LONDON MAGAZINE, which enable us to promise an interesting accession to the valuable contributions of our old friends and regular correspondents.

Among the contents of our next Number, we may enumerate:

An Etching of Mr. Hilton's Picture, in the present Exhibition, of " Nature blowing Bubbles for her Children."

Traditional Literature, No. VII.

"The Death of Walter Selby."

A Critical Notice of the Paintings in the British Institution. By the bye, we have to apologize for the entire omission in the present Number of the Royal Academy; though we regret, we could not avoid it,—but we trust that our readers will think our article in the next Number will fully apologize for the deficiency in the present.

A whimsical Article entitled " Fugitive Literature.”

The Buccaneer, a Tale.

Table Talk, No. XI. which the pressure of more temporary matter prevented us from inserting in the present Number.

Another paper on the interesting subject of the Songs and Ballads of the Northern Nations of Europe.

Sketches on the Road, No. II.

&c. &c. &c.

C. G. says he will thank us to destroy the MS. if his "Little Poems" do not suit us. We are sorry to say we are entitled to his thanks.

"The Eye of liquid

Philaulos shall not have occasion to repeat his hint. Blue" is very pretty, but the burden of the poem is too heavy to be borne by such tender little stanzas.

E. R. will perceive by the omission of his poem on "Evening," that we do not think it equal to his former contributions.

In our next Number we shall notice two new volumes of Poems, which will by that time have made their appearance, from the pen of John Clare, the Northamptonshire Peasant. It will give us the greater pleasure to do this, because it was the First Number of the LONDON MAGAZINE that took the lead in pointing out the simple beauties of the former volume,-and in asserting the genius of its author. We think we shall be able to show that the predictions, on which we then ventured, have been fully realized. We have yet seen only a portion of the work; and as this came into our hands too late for a notice of it to find an appropriate place in the present Number, we cannot refrain from occupying part of the space usually devoted to Correspondence, by a sweet and unaffected little ballad, entitled

THE REQUEST.

Now the sun his blinking beam
Behind yon mountain loses,
And each eye, that might evil deem,
In blinded slumber closes :
Now the field's a desert grown,

Now the hedger's fled the grove;
Put thou on thy russet gown,

Shielded from the dews, my love,
And wander out with me.

We have met at early day,
Slander rises early,

Slander's tongues had much to say,

And still I love thee dearly:

Slander now to rest has gone,

Only wakes the courting dove;

Slily steal thy bonnet on,

Leave thy father's cot, my love,
And wander out with me.

Clowns have pass'd our noon-day screen,
'Neath the hawthorn's blossom;
Seldom there the chance has been

To press thee to my bosom :
Ploughmen now no more appear,
Night-winds but the thorn-bough move;
Squander not a minute here,

Lift the door-latch gently, love,

And wander out with me.

Oh the hour so sweet as this,

With friendly night surrounded,

Left free to talk, embrace, and kiss,

By virtue only bounded—

Lose it not, make no delay,

Put on thy doublet, hat, and glove,

Sly ope the door and steal away;
And sweet 'twill be, my only love,
To wander out with thee.

THE

London Magazine.

N° XVIII.

JUNE, 1821.

VOL. III.

POPE, LORD BYRON, AND MR. BOWLES. THIS is a very proper letter for a lord to write to his bookseller, and for Mr. Murray to show about among his friends, as it contains some dry rubs at Mr. Bowles, and some good hits at Mr. Southey and his "invariable principles." There is some good hating, and some good writing in it, some coarse jests, and some dogmatical assertions; but that it is by any means a settler of the question, is what we are in all due form inclined to doubt. His Lordship, as a poet, is a little headstrong and self-willed, a spoiled child of nature and fortune: his philosophy and criticism have a tincture of the same spirit: he doles out his opinions with a great deal of frankness and spleen, saying, "this I like, that I loathe but he does not trouble himself, or the reader, with his reasons, any more than he accounts to his servants for the directions he gives them. This might seem too great a compliment in his Lordship to the public.

All this pribble-prabble about Pope, and Milton, and Shakspeare, and what foreigners say of us, and the Venus, and Antinöus, and the Acropolis, and the Grand Canal at Venice, and the Turkish fleet, and Falconer's Shipwreck, and ethics, and ethical poetry (with the single exception of some bold picturesque sketches in the poet's best prose-style) is what might be talked by any Bond-street

Letter to

lounger of them all, after a last night's debauch, in the intervals between the splashings of the soda-water and the acid taste of the port wine rising in the mouth. It is no better than that. If his Lordship had sent it in from Long's, or the Albany, to be handed about in Albemarle-street, in slips as he wrote it, it would have been very well. But all the way from Ravenna, cannot he contrive to send us something better than his own ill-humour and our own common-places-than the discovery that Pope was a poet, and that Cowper was none; and the old story that Canova, in forming a statue, takes a hand from one, a foot from another, and a nose from a third, and so makes out the idea of perfect beauty! (We would advise his Lordship to say less about this subject of virtù, for he knows little about it; and besides, his perceptions are at variance with his theories.) In truth, his Lordship has the worst of this controversy, though he throws out a number of pert, smart, flashy things, with the air of a man who sees company on subjects of taste, while his reverend antagonist, who is the better critic and logician of the two, goes prosing on in a tone of obsequious pertinacity and sore pleasantry, as if he were sitting (an unwelcome guest) at his Lordship's table, and were awed, yet galled, by the cavalier assumption of patrician

on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. By the Right Hon. Lord Byron. Third Edition Murray.

manners. We cannot understand school-boy instances for pithy proofs,
these startling voluntaries, played off it is not because he is not able, but
before the public on the ground of because he cannot be at the pains
personal rank, nor the controversial of going deeper into the question :—if
under-song, like the drone of a bag- he is rude to an antagonist, it is con-
pipe, that forms a tedious accom- strued into agreeable familiarity; any
paniment to them. As Jem Belcher, notice from so great a man appears
when asked if he did not feel a little like a favour:-if he tells or recom-
awkward at facing Gamble the tall mends " a tale of bawdry," he is
Irishman, made answer, "An please not to be tied down by the petty
ye, sir, when I am stript to my shirt, rules which restrict common men:-
I am afraid of no man; "-so we if he publishes a work, which is
would advise Mr. Bowles, in a ques- thought of too equivocal a description
tion of naked argument, to fear no for the delicate air of Albemarle-
man, and to let no man bite his street, his Lordship's own name in
thumb at him. If his Lordship were the title-page is sufficient to back it
to invite his brother-poet to his without the formality of a book-
house, and to eke out a sour jest by seller's; if a wire-drawn tragedy of his
the flavour of Monte-Pulciano or is acted, in spite of his protestations
Frontiniac,-if in the dearth of ar- against such an appeal to the taste
gument he were to ply his friend's of a vulgar audience, the storm of
weak side with rich sauces and well- pitiless damnation is not let loose
seasoned hospitality, "Ah! ça est bon, upon it, because it is felt that it
ah! goutez ça!"-if he were to point, would fall harmless on so high and
in illustration of Pope's style, to the proud a head; the gilded coronet
marble pillars, the virandas, the pier serves as a conductor to carry off the
glasses, the classic busts, the flower- lightning of popular criticism, which
ing dessert, and were to exclaim, might blast the merely laurelled
"You see, my dear Bowles, the su- bard; the blame, the disappoint-
periority of art over nature, the tri- ment, the flat effect, is thrown upon
umph of polished life over Gothic the manager, upon the actors-upon
barbarism; we have here neither the any body but the Noble Poet! This
ghosts nor fairies of Shakspeare, nor sounding title swells the mouth of
Milton's Heaven, nor his Hell, yet we Fame, and lends her voice a thou-
contrive to do without them;"-it sand circling echoes: the rank of the
might require Parson Supple's com- Author, and the public charity ex-
mand of countenance to smile off tended to him, as he does not want
this uncourteous address; but the it, cover a multitude of sins. What
divine would not have to digest does his Lordship mean, then, by this
such awkward raillery on an empty whining over the neglect of Horace
stomach-he would have his quid pro Walpole,--this uncalled-for sympathy
quo:
his Lordship would have paid with the faded lustre of patrician
for the liberty of using his privilege and gentlemanly pretensions? Has
of peerage. But why any man
he had only half his fame? Or, does
should carry the role of his Lordship's he already feel, with morbid antici-
chaplain out of his Lordship's house, pation, the retiring ebb of that over-
is what we see no reason for.-Lord whelming tide of popularity, which
Byron, in the Preface to his Tragedy, having been raised too high by ad-
complains that Horace Walpole has ventitious circumstances, is lost in
had hard measure dealt him by the flats and shallows, as soon as their
critics, "firstly, because he was a influence is withdrawn? Lord Byron
lord, and secondly, because he was a has been twice as much talked of as
gentleman." We do not know how he would have been, had he not been
the case may stand between the Lord Byron. His rank and genius
public and a dead nobleman: but a have been happily placed each
living lord has every reasonable al- other's beams to share," and both
lowance made him, and can do what together, by their mutually reflected
no one else can. If Lord Byron splendour, may be said to have melt-
chooses to make a bad joke, by ed the public coldness into the very
means of an ill-spelt pun, it is a wantonness of praise: the faults of
condescension in his Lordship :-if he the man (real or supposed) have
puts off a set of smart assertions and only given a dramatic interest to his