The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 19

"The de'il burn ye, there's no pleasing you, flog where one will."

Have you given up wine, even British wine?

I have read Watson to Gibbon. [4] He proves nothing, so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy Creed, and I want a better, but there is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything. The post brings me to a conclusion. Bland has just been here. Yours ever,

BN.

[Footnote 1: See Letters', vol. i. p. 319, 'note' 2 [Footnote 1 of Letter 158]]

[Footnote 2: Byron was endeavouring to secure for Bland (see 'Letters, vol. i. p. 271, 'note' 1 [Footnote 2 of Letter 137]), the work of translating Lucien Buonaparte's poem of 'Charlemagne'. He did not succeed. The poem, translated by Dr. Butler, Head-master of Shrewsbury, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, and Francis Hodgson, was published in 1815.]

[Footnote 3: Lines 149-156.]

[Footnote 4: 'An Apology for Christianity, in a Series of Letters to Edward Gibbon, Esq.', by Richard Watson, D.D. (1776). Gibbon had a great respect for Watson, at this time Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, whom he describes as "a prelate of a large mind and liberal spirit." In a letter to Holroyd (November 4, 1776), he speaks of the 'Apology' as "feeble," but "uncommingly genteel." To his stepmother he writes, November 29, 1776, that Watson's answer is "civil" and "too dull to deserve your notice."]

210.--To William Harness. [1]

8, St. James's Street, Dec. 6, 1811.

My Dear Harness,--I write again, but don't suppose I mean to lay such a tax on your pen and patience as to expect regular replies. When you are inclined, write: when silent, I shall have the consolation of knowing that you are much better employed. Yesterday, Bland and I called on Mr.

Miller, who, being then out, will call on Bland to-day or to-morrow. I shall certainly endeavour to bring them together.--You are censorious, child; when you are a little older, you will learn to dislike every body, but abuse n.o.body.

With regard to the person of whom you speak, your own good sense must direct you. I never pretend to advise, being an implicit believer in the old proverb. This present frost is detestable. It is the first I have felt for these three years, though I longed for one in the oriental summer, when no such thing is to be had, unless I had gone to the top of Hymettus for it.

I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and am not the less pleased to meet with it again from one where I had known it earliest. I have not changed in all my ramblings,--Harrow, and, of course, yourself, never left me, and the

"_Dulces reminiscitur Argos_"

attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the mind of the fallen Argive.--Our intimacy began before we began to date at all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it and me with the things that _were_.

Do read mathematics.--I should think _X plus Y_ at least as amusing as the 'Curse of Kehama' [2], and much more intelligible. Master Southey's poems _are_, in fact, what parallel lines might be--viz. prolonged _ad infinitum_ without meeting anything half so absurd as themselves.

"What news, what news? Queen Orraca, What news of scribblers five?

S----, W----, C----, L----d, and L----e?

All d.a.m.n'd, though yet alive."

Coleridge is lecturing. [3]

"Many an old fool," said Hannibal to some such lecturer, "but such as this, never." [4]

Ever yours, etc.

[Footnote 1: See 'Letters', vol. i. p. 177, 'note' 1. [Footnote 1 of Letter 92]]

[Footnote 2: Robert Southey (1774-1843) published his 'Curse of Kehama'

in 1810. It formed a part of a series of heroic poems in which he intended to embody the chief mythologies of the world. In spite of Byron's adverse opinion, it contains magnificent pa.s.sages, and disputes with 'Roderick, the Last of the Goths' (1814), the claim to be the finest of his longer poems. Southey's literary activity was immense. He had already produced 'Joan of Arc' (1796), 'Thalaba' (1801), 'Madoc'

(1805), and many other works in prose and verse. At this time he was personally unknown to Byron, who had ridiculed his "annual strains."

They met for the first time at Holland House, in September, 1813. (See Byron's letter to Moore, September 27, 1813, and Journal, p. 331.) The animosity between the two men belongs to a later date, and in its origin was partly political, partly personal. Southey, in early life, had been a republican and a Unitarian, if not a deist. He collaborated with Coleridge in the 'Fall of Robespierre' (1794), wrote a portion of the 'Conciones ad Populum' (1795), which the Government considered seditious; and, according to Poole ('Thomas Pools and his Friends', vol.

i. chap, vi.), wavered "between Deism and Atheism." He became a champion of monarchical principles and of religious orthodoxy, and attacked the views, which he had once held and expressed in 'Wat Tyler' (written in 1794, and piratically published in 1817), with the bitterness of a reactionary. He had also, as Byron believed, circulated, if not invented, a report that Byron and Sh.e.l.ley had formed "a league of incest" at Geneva, in 1816-17, with "two girls," Mary G.o.dwin (Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley) and Jane Clairmont. Byron not only denied the charge, but retorted upon him, in his "Observations upon an Article in 'Blackwood's Magazine'" (March 15, 1820), as the author of 'Wat Tyler' and poet laureate, the man who "wrote treason and serves the King," the ex-pantisocrat who advocated "all things, including women, in common."

Southey's 'Vision of Judgment', an apotheosis of George III., published in 1821, gave Byron a second provocation and a second opportunity, by speaking in the preface of his "Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety." Byron again replied in prose; and Southey (January 5, 1820), in a letter to the 'London Courier', invited him to attack him in rhyme.

In Byron's 'Vision of Judgment' he found his invitation accepted, and himself pilloried in that tremendous satire. Southey overvalued his own narrative poetry. It is as a man, a prominent figure in literary history, a leader in the romantic revival, a master of prose, and the author of the best short biography in the English language--the 'Life of Nelson' (1813)--that he lives at the present day. His name also deserves to be remembered with grat.i.tude by all who have read the nursery cla.s.sic of "'The Three Bears'." Byron parodies a stanza in Southey's "Queen Orraca and the Five Martyrs of Morocco" ('Works', vol. vi. pp. 166-173):

"What news, O King Affonso, What news of the Friars five?

Have they preached to the Miramamolin; And are they still alive?"

The blanks stand for Scott or Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb(e), with the lines from 'New Morality' in his mind:

"Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co., Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux."]

[Footnote 3: Coleridge, beginning November 18, 1811, and ending January 27, 1812, delivered a course of seventeen lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, "in ill.u.s.tration of the principles of poetry." The lectures were given under the auspices of the London Philosophical Society, in the Scot's Corporation Hall, Crane Court, Fleet Street. Single tickets for the whole course were two guineas, or three guineas "with the privilege of introducing a lady." J. Payne Collier took shorthand notes of the lectures and published a portion of his material, the rest being lost ('Lectures on Shakespear', from notes by J.P. Collier), The notes, with other contemporary reports from the 'Times', 'Morning Chronicle', 'Dublin Chronicle', Crabb Robinson's 'Diary', and other sources, were republished in 1883 by Mr. Ashe ('Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and other English Poets').

Collier, in his notes of Coleridge's conversation (November I, 1811), gives the substance, in all probability, of the attack on Campbell alluded to in the next letter. Coleridge said that "neither Southey, Scott, nor Campbell would by their poetry survive much beyond the day when they lived and wrote. Their works seemed to him not to have the seeds of vitality, the real germs of long life. The two first were entertaining as tellers of stories in verse; but the last, in his 'Pleasures of Hope', obviously had no fixed design, but when a thought (of course, not a very original one) came into his head, he put it down in couplets, and afterwards strung the 'disjecta membra' (not 'poetae') together. Some of the best things in it were borrowed; for instance the line:

'And freedom shriek'd when Kosciusko fell,'

was taken from a much-ridiculed piece by Dennis, a pindaric on William III.:

'Fair Liberty shriek'd out aloud, aloud Religion groaned.'

It is the same production in which the following much-laughed-at specimen of bathos is found:

'Nor Alps nor Pyreneans keep him out, Nor fortified redoubt.'

Coleridge had little toleration for Campbell, and considered him, as far as he had gone, a mere verse-maker."(Ashe's Introduction to 'Lectures on Shakspere', pp. 16, 17).]