1"He's a very good fellow; and, except his nother and sister, the best of the set, to my mind." B., 1816. [William (1779-1848, VisCount Melbourne, 1828), and George (17841814) Lamb, sons of Sir Peniston Lamb, by Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbunke, were Lady Byron's first cousins. William married, in 1805, Lady Caroline Ponsonby, the writer of Glenarvon. George was one of the early contributors to the Edinburgh Review.]

This ingenious youth is mentioned more particularly, with his production, in another place. (Vide post, I. 515.)

[The farce Whistle for It was performed two or three times at Covent Garden Theatre in 1807.]

In the Edinburgh Review.

1[The proverbial "Joe" Miller (1684–1738), an actor by profession, is said to have been unable to read. His reputation rests mainly on the book of jests, compiled after his death, by John Mottley.]

2 Messrs Jeffrey and Lamb are the alpha and omega, the first and last of the Edinburgh Review; the others are mentioned hereafter.

"This was not just. Neither the heart nor the head of these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented. At the time this was written, I was personally unacquainted with either." - B., 1816.

[Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) founded the Edinburgh Review in conjunction with Sydney Smith, Brougham, and Francis Horner, in 1802. In 1803 he succeeded Smith as editor, and conducted the Review till 1829. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1794, and as an advocate was

"Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo, Per quem magnus equos Auruncæ flexit alumnus,

Si vacat, et placidi rationem admittitis, edam."

- JUVENAL. Satire I. II. 19-21. [William Gifford (1756–1826), a selftaught scholar, was sent by friends to Exeter College, Oxford (1770-82). In the Baviad (1794) and the Maviad (1795) he attacked the so called Della Cruscan School, and in his Epistle to Peter Pindar (1800) he laboured to expose the true character of John Wolcot. As editor of the Quarterly Review, from its foundation (February, 1800) to his resignation in September, 1824, he soon rose to literary eminence by his sound sense, though his judgments were sometimes narrow-minded and warped by political prejudice. Byron was attracted to Gifford, partly by his devotion to the classical models of literature, partly by the outspoken frankness of his literary criticism, partly also, perhaps, by his physical deformity. "I know no praise," he wrote September 20, 1821, "which would compensate me in my own mind for his censure."]

[Little was the name under which Moore's

early poems were published. The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq. (1801). "Twelves" refers to the "duodecimo." Sheets, after printing, are pressed between cold or hot Talers, to impart smoothness of "surface." Hrolling is the more expensive process.]

Eccles. chapter i. verse 9.

[Metallic "Tractors" were a remedy much advertised at the beginning of the century by an American quack, Benjamin Charles Perkins, ander of the Perkinean Institution in London, as a "cure for all Disorders, Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs."]

1 Stott, better known in the Morning Post by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:(Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia)

"Princely offspring of Braganza,

Erin greets thee with a stanza," etc. Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:

"Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surge

That lashes Lapland's sounding shore." Lord have mercy on us! the Lay of the Last Minstrel was nothing to this. [The lines "Princely Offspring," etc., were published in the Morning Post, Dec. 30, 1807.]

2 [See line 265, note.]

3 See the Lay of the Last Minstrel, passim. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' tragedy, unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheepstealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, 'twas his neckverse at Harribee," i.e. the gallows.

The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice

The golden-crested haughty Marmion, Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,

Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight, The gibbet or the field prepared to grace

A mighty mixture of the great and base.

as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are chefs d'œuvre in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs CONSTABLE, MURRAY, and MILLER, worshipful Booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money; and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr Scort will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repetition of Black-Letter Ballad imitations.

[Constable paid Scott a thousand pounds for Marmion, and "offered one fourth of the copyright to Mr Miller of Albemarle Street, and one fourth to Mr Murray of Fleet Street (see line 173). Both publishers eagerly accepted the proposal. (Memoirs of John Murray, i. 76 95.)]

[It was the suggestion of the Countess of Dalkeith, that Scott should write a ballad on the old border legend of Gilpin Horner, which first gave shape to the poet's ideas, and led to the Lay of the Last Minstrel.]

These are the Bards to whom the Muse must bow;

While MILTON, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,

Resign their hallowed Bays to Walter SCOTT.

of the Italian, nor the Paradise Regained of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity their former poems. Query: Which of Mr Southey's will survive?

is

Thalaba, Mr SOUTHEY'S second poem, written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and exceeded to a miracle. Joan of Arc was mareous enough, but Thalaba was one of those prems which," in the words of PORSON, "will Se read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten,

a — not till then." ["Of Thalaba the wild and sondrous song." Proem to Madoc, Southey's Pretical Works (1838), vol. v. Joan of Arc was published in 1796, Thalaba the Destroyer in 1801, id Madoc in 1805.]

[The hero of Fielding's farce, The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, first played in 1730 at the Haymarket.]

2 [Southey's Madoc is divided into two parts - Part I., "Madoc in Wales:" Part II., "Madoc in Aztlan."]

We beg Mr Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degraded title of Epic." See his Preface. [Poetical Works, v. p. xxi.] Why is Epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late Romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvy, Hole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the Epic Muse; but, as Mr SOUTHEY'S poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask - has he substituted anything better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir RICHARD BLACKMORE in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

4 See The Old Woman of Berkeley, a ballad by Mr Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high trotting horse."