The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 104

[599] {560}["The Marquis of Londonderry was cheered in the Castle-yard."

"He was," says the correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_, "the instrument of Ireland's degradation--he broke down her spirit, and prostrated, I fear, for ever her independence. To see the author of this measure cheered near the very spot," etc.]

[ja] ----_might make Humanity doubt_.--[MS. M.]

[jb] ----_in the heart of a king_.--[Medwin. MS. M. erased.]

[600] {561}[Byron spoke and voted in favour of the Earl of Donoughmore's motion for a Committee on the Roman Catholic claims, April 21, 1812.

(See "Parliamentary Speeches," Appendix II., _Letters_, 1898, ii.

431-443.)]

[jc] _My arm, though but feeble_----.--[Medwin.]

[jd] ----_though thou wert not my land_.--[Medwin.]

[601] [For Grattan and Curran, see letter to Moore, October 2, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 271, note 1; for Sheridan, see "Introduction to _Monody_," etc., _ante_, pp. 69, 70.]

[je]

_Nor the steps of enslavers, and slave-kissing slaves_ _Be damp'd in the turf_----.--[Medwin.]

[jf] _Though their virtues are blunted_----.--[Medwin.]

[jg] {562} ----_that I envy their dead_.--[Medwin.]

[jh] _They're the heart--the free spirit--the genius of Moore_.--[MS.

M.]

[602] ["Signed W. L. B----, M.A., and written with a view to a Bishop.r.i.c.k."--_Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 527, note.

Endorsed, "MS. Lord Byron. The King's visit to Ireland; a very seditious and horrible libel, which never was intended to be published, and which Lord B. called, himself, silly, being written in a moment of ill nature.--C. B."]

[603] ["I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa."--Pisa, 6th November, 1821, _Detached Thoughts_, No. 118, _Letters_, 1901, v. 466.]

[604] ["I told Byron that his poetical sentiments of the attractions of matured beauty had, at the moment, suggested four lines to me; which he begged me to repeat, and he laughed not a little when I recited the following lines to him:--

"Oh! talk not to me of the charms of Youth's dimples, There's surely more sentiment center'd in wrinkles.

They're the triumphs of Time that mark Beauty's decay, Telling tales of years past, and the few left to stay."

_Conversations of Lord Byron_, 1834, pp. 255, 256.]

[605] [These verses were written by Lord Byron a little before he left Italy for Greece. They were meant to suit the Hindostanee air, "Alia Malla Punca," which the Countess Guiccioli was fond of singing.--Editor's note, _Works, etc._, xiv. 357, Pisa, September, 1821.]

[606] {564}[Probably "To Lady Blessington," who includes them in her _Conversations of Lord Byron_.]

[607] {565}[For reproduction of Lawrence's portrait of Lady Blessington, see "List of Ill.u.s.trations," _Letters_, 1901, v. [xv.].]

[608] {566}[Aristomenes, the Achilles of the Alexandrian poet Rhia.n.u.s (Grote's _History of Greece_, 1869, ii. 428), is the legendary hero of the second Messenian War (B.C. 685-668). Thrice he slew a hundred of the Spartan foe, and thrice he offered the Hekatomphonia on Mount Ithome.

His name was held in honour long after "the rowers on their benches"

heard the wail, "Pan, Pan is dead!" At the close of the second century of the Christian era, Pausanias (iv. 16. 4) made a note of Messenian maidens hymning his victory over the Lacedaemonians--

"From the heart of the plain he drove them, And he drove them back to the hill: To the top of the hill he drove them, As he followed them, followed them still!"

Byron was familiar with Thomas Taylor's translation of the _Periegesis Graeciae_ (_vide ante_, p. 109, and "Observations," etc., _Letters_, v.

Appendix III. p. 574), and with Mitford's _Greece_ (_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza xix. line 7). Hence his knowledge of Aristomenes. The thought expressed in lines 5-11 was, possibly, suggested by Coleridge's translation of the famous pa.s.sage in Schiller's _Piccolomini_ (act ii.

sc. 4, lines 118, _sq._, "For fable is Love's world, his home," etc.), which is quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in the third chapter of _Guy Mannering_.]

THE BLUES:

A LITERARY ECLOGUE.

"Nimium ne crede colori."--Virgil, [_Ecl_. ii. 17]

O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue, Though your _hair_ were as _red_, as your _stockings_ are _blue_.

INTRODUCTION TO _THE BLUES_.

Byron's correspondence does not explain the mood in which he wrote _The Blues_, or afford the slightest hint or clue to its _motif_ or occasion.

In a letter to Murray, dated Ravenna, August 7, 1821, he writes, "I send you a thing which I scribbled off yesterday, a mere buffoonery, to quiz 'The Blues.' If published it must be _anonymously_.... You may send me a proof if you think it worth the trouble." Six weeks later, September 20, he had changed his mind. "You need not," he says, "send _The Blues_, which is a mere buffoonery not meant for publication." With these intimations our knowledge ends, and there is nothing to show why in August, 1821, he took it into his head "to quiz The Blues," or why, being so minded, he thought it worth while to quiz them in so pointless and belated a fas.h.i.+on. We can but guess that an allusion in a letter from England, an incident at a conversazione at Ravenna, or perhaps the dialogues in Peac.o.c.k's novels, _Melincourt_ and _Nightmare Abbey_, brought to his recollection the half-modish, half-literary coteries of the earlier years of the Regency, and that he sketches the scenes and persons of his eclogue not from life, but from memory.

In the Diary of 1813, 1814, there is more than one mention of the "Blues." For instance, November 27, 1813, he writes, "Sotheby is a _Litterateur_, the oracle of the Coteries of the * *'s, Lydia White (Sydney Smith's 'Tory Virgin'), Mrs. Wilmot (she, at least, is a swan, and might frequent a purer stream), Lady Beaumont and all the Blues, with Lady Charlemont at their head." Again on December 1, "To-morrow there is a party _purple_ at the 'blue' Miss Berry's. Shall I go? um!--I don't much affect your blue-bottles;--but one ought to be civil....

Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian b.u.t.terfly of book-learning Lady Charlemont will be there" (see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 333, 358, note 2).

Byron was, perhaps, a more willing guest at literary entertainments than he professed to be. "I met him," says Sir Walter Scott (_Memoirs of the Life, etc._, 1838, ii. 167), "frequently in society.... Some very agreeable parties I can recollect, particularly one at Sir George Beaumont's, where the amiable landlord had a.s.sembled some persons distinguished for talent. Of these I need only mention the late Sir Humphry Davy.... Mr. Richard Sharpe and Mr. Rogers were also present."

Again, Miss Berry, in her _Journal_ (1866, in. 49) records, May 8, 1815, that "Lord and Lady Byron persuaded me to go with them to Miss [Lydia]

White (_vide post_, p. 587). Never have I seen a more imposing convocation of ladies arranged in a circle than when we entered ... Lord Byron brought me home. He stayed to supper." If he did not affect "your blue-bottles," he was on intimate terms with Madame de Stael, "the _Begum_ of Literature," as Moore called her; with the Contessa d'Albrizzi (the De Stael of Italy); with Mrs. Wilmot, the inspirer of "She walks in beauty like the night;" with Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley; with Lady Blessington. Moreover, to say nothing of his "mathematical wife," who was as "blue as ether," the Countess Guiccioli could not only read and "inwardly digest" _Corinna_ (see letter to Moore, January 2, 1820), but knew the _Divina Commedia_ by heart, and was a critic as well as an inspirer of her lover's poetry.

If it is difficult to a.s.sign a reason or occasion for the composition of _The Blues_, it is a harder, perhaps an impossible, task to identify all the _dramatis personae_. Botherby, Lady Bluemount, and Miss Diddle are, obviously, Sotheby, Lady Beaumont, and Lydia White. Scamp the Lecturer may be Hazlitt, who had incurred Byron's displeasure by commenting on his various and varying estimates of Napoleon (see _Lectures on the English Poets_, 1818, p. 304, and _Don Juan_, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). Inkel seems to be meant for Byron himself, and Tracy, a friend, _not_ a Lake poet, for Moore. Sir Richard and Lady Bluebottle may possibly symbolize Lord and Lady Holland; and Miss Lilac is, certainly, Miss Milbanke, the "Annabella" of Byron's courts.h.i.+p, not the "moral Clytemnestra" of his marriage and separation.

_The Blues_ was published anonymously in the third number of the _Liberal_, which appeared April 26, 1823. The "Eclogue" was not attributed to Byron, and met with greater contempt than it deserved. In the _Noctes Ambrosiance_ (Blackwood's _Edinburgh Magazine_, May, 1823, vol. xiii. p. 607), the third number of the _Liberal_ is dismissed with the remark, "The last Number contains not one _line_ of Byron's! Thank G.o.d! he has seen his error, and kicked them out." Brief but contemptuous notices appeared in the _Literary Chronicle_, April 26, and the _Literary Gazette_, May 3, 1823; while a short-lived periodical, named the _Literary Register_ (May 3, quoted at length in _John Bull_, May 4, 1823), implies that the author (i.e. Leigh Hunt) would be better qualified to "catch the manners" of Lisson Grove than of May Fair. It is possible that this was the "last straw," and that the reception of _The Blues_ hastened Byron's determination to part company with the profitless and ill-omened _Liberal_.

THE BLUES:[609]

A LITERARY ECLOGUE.