The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 110

2dly, Batteux: "Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres et individuels aux etres purement possibles."

3dly, Dacier: "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caracteres que tout le monde peut inventer."

Mr. Sevigne's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes, "La chose est bien remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait etre la veritable." But, by way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards, "Le lumineux Dumarsais" made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs again, "dissiper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;"

and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation" of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G.

from saying any more on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at least as good a scholar as Mr. de Sevigne, has said,

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."

And by the above extract, it appears that a good deal may be rendered as useless to the Proprietors.

[Byron chose the words in question, Difficile,' etc., as a motto for the first five cantos of 'Don Juan']

[Footnote 16: About two years ago a young man named Townsend was announced by Mr. c.u.mberland, in a review (since deceased) [the 'London Review'], as being engaged in an epic poem to be ent.i.tled "Armageddon."

The plan and specimen promise much; but I hope neither to offend Mr.

Townsend, nor his friends, by recommending to his attention the lines of Horace to which these rhymes allude. If Mr. Townsend succeeds in his undertaking, as there is reason to hope, how much will the world be indebted to Mr. c.u.mberland for bringing him before the public! But, till that eventful day arrives, it may be doubted whether the premature display of his plan (sublime as the ideas confessedly are) has not,--by raising expectation too high, or diminis.h.i.+ng curiosity, by developing his argument,--rather incurred the hazard of injuring Mr. Townsend's future prospects. Mr. c.u.mberland (whose talents I shall not depreciate by the humble tribute of my praise) and Mr. Townsend must not suppose me actuated by unworthy motives in this suggestion. I wish the author all the success he can wish himself, and shall be truly happy to see epic poetry weighed up from the bathos where it lies sunken with Southey, Cottle, Cowley (Mrs. or Abraham), Ogilvy, Wilkie, Pye, and all the "dull of past and present days." Even if he is not a 'Milton', he may be better than 'Blackmore'; if not a 'Homer', an 'Antimachus'. I should deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from 'envy'; he will soon know mankind well enough not to attribute this expression to malice.

[This note was written [at Athens] before the author was apprised of Mr.

c.u.mberland's death [in May, 1811].--'MS'. (See Byron's letter to Dallas, August 27, 1811.) The Rev. George Townsend (1788-1857) published 'Poems'

in 1810, and eight books of his 'Armageddon' in 1815. They met with the fate which Byron had predicted. In later life he compiled numerous works of scriptural exegesis. He was a Canon of Durham from 1825 till his death.]]

[Footnote 17: The first line of 'A Spirit of Discovery by Sea', by the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, first published in 1805.]

[Footnote 18: Harvey, the 'circulator' of the 'circulation' of the blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say, "the book had a devil." Now such a character as I am copying would probably fling it away also, but rather wish that "the devil had the book;" not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of "Long and Short" is enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life, and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.]

[Footnote 19:

"'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem'."

I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me; and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.--To the above events, "'quaeque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui'," all 'times' and 'terms' bear testimony. [The Rev. G.F. Tavell was a fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, during Byron's residence, and owed this notice to the "zeal with which he protested against his juvenile vagaries." During a part of his residence at Trinity, Byron kept a tame bear in his rooms in Neville's Court. (See 'English Bards', l. 973, 'note', and postscript to the Second Edition, 'ante', p. 383. See also letter to Miss Pigot, October 26, 1807.)

The following copy of a bill (no date) tells its own story:--

The Honble. Lord Byron.

To John Clarke.

To Bread & Milk for the Bear deliv'd.} 1 9 7 to Haladay ... ... ... }

Cambridge Reve. A Clarke.]]

[Footnote 20: "h.e.l.l," a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal. "Club," a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.]

[Footnote 21:

"Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go off the stage alive."

'Boswell's Johnson' [1876, p. 60].

[Irene (first played February 6, 1749) for the future was put to death behind the scenes. The strangling her, contrary to Horace's rule, 'coram populo', was suggested by Garrick. (See Davies' 'Life of Garrick'

(1808), i. 157.)]]

[Footnote 22: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). ('Vide English Bards, etc'., l. 265, n. 8.) The character of Ha.s.san, "my misanthropic negro,"

as Lewis called him, was said by the critics of the day to have been borrowed from Zanga in Young's 'Revenge'. Lewis, in his "Address to the Reader," quoted by Byron (in 'note' 3), defends the originality of the conception.]

[Footnote 23: In the postscript to _The Castle Spectre_, Mr. Lewis tells us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he could have produced the effect "by making his heroine blue,"--I quote him--"blue he would have made her!" [_The Castle Spectre_, by M.G.

Lewis, Esq., M.P., London, 1798, page 102.]]

[Footnote 24: In 1706 John Dennis, the critic (1657-1734), wrote an 'Essay on the Operas after the Italian manner, which are about to be established on the English Stage'; to show that they were more immoral than the most licentious play.]

[Footnote 25: One of the gangways in the Opera House, where the young men of fas.h.i.+on used to a.s.semble. (See letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820; _Life_, p. 62.)]

[Footnote 26: In the year 1808, happening at the opera to tread on the toes of a very well-dressed man, I turned round to apologize, when, to my utter astonishment, I recognized the face of the porter of the very hotel where I then lodged in Albemarle Street. So here was a gentleman who ran every morning forty errands for half a crown, throwing away half a guinea at night, besides the expense of his habiliments, and the hire of his "Chapeau de Bras."--[_MS. L. (a)_.]]

[Footnote 27: The first theatrical representations, ent.i.tled "Mysteries and Moralities," were generally enacted at Christmas, by monks (as the only persons who could read), and latterly by the clergy and students of the universities. The dramatis personae were usually Adam, Pater Coelestis, Faith, Vice, and sometimes an angel or two; but these were eventually superseded by 'Gammer Gurton's Needle'.--'Vide' Warton's 'History of English Poetry [pa.s.sim]'.--['MSS. M., L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote 28: 'Benvolio' [Lord Grosvenor, 'MS. L'. ('b')] does not bet; but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little pharisaical.

Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for chast.i.ty, because 'she herself' did not commit fornication.

[Robert, second Earl Grosvenor (1767-1845), was created Marquis of Westminster in 1831. Like his father, Gifford's patron, the first Earl Grosvenor, he was a breeder of racehorses, and a patron of the turf. As Lord Belgrave, he brought forward a motion for the suppression of Sunday newspapers, June 11, 1799, denouncing them in a violent speech. The motion was lost; but many years after, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, January 2, 1807, he returned to the charge. (See 'Parl.

Hist'., 34. 1006, 1010; and 'Parl. Deb'., 8. 286.) (For a skit on Lord Belgrave's sabbatarian views, see Peter Pindar, 'Works' (1812), iv.

519.)]]

[Footnote 29: Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo entertainments, in 'The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures', 1747-8 (see his comedy 'Taste'), were the precursors of 'Mathews at Home', and a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often "spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living persons. Among his better known pieces are 'The Minor' (1760), ridiculing Whitefield and the Methodists, and 'The Mayor of Garratt'

(1763), in which he played the part of Sturgeon (Byron used this piece, for an ill.u.s.tration in his speech on the Frame-workers Bill, February 27, 1812). 'The Lyar', first played at Covent Garden, January 12, 1762, was the latest to hold the stage. It was reproduced at the Opera Comique in 1877.]

[Footnote 30: Henry Carey, poet and musician (d. 1743), a natural son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, was the author of _Chrononhotonthologos_, "the most tragical tragedy ever yet tragedised by any company of tragedians," which was first played at the Haymarket, February 22, 1734. The well-known lines, "Go, call a coach, and let a coach be called," etc., which Scott prefixed to the first chapter of _The Antiquary_, are from the last scene, in which Bombardinion fights with and kills the King Chrononhotonthologos. But his one achievement was _Sally in our Alley_, of which he wrote both the words and the music. The authors.h.i.+p of "G.o.d Save the King" has been attributed to him, probably under a misapprehension.]

[Footnote 31: Under Plato's pillow a volume of the 'Mimes' of Sophron was found the day he died.--'Vide' Barthelemi, De Pauw, or Diogenes Laertius, [Lib. iii. p. 168--Chouet 1595] if agreeable. De Pauw calls it a jest-book. c.u.mberland, in his 'Observer', terms it moral, like the sayings of Publius Syrus.]

[Footnote 32: In 1737 the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre having brought Sir Robert Walpole a farce called 'The Golden Rump', the minister detained the copy. He then made extracts of the most offensive pa.s.sages, read them to the house, and brought in a bill to limit the number of playhouses and to subject all dramatic writings to the inspection of the Lord Chamberlain. Horace Walpole ascribed 'The Golden Rump' to Fielding, and said that he had found an imperfect copy of the play among his father's papers. But this has been questioned. (See 'A Book of the Play', by Dutton Cook (1881), p. 27.)]]