See Nathaniel Bloomfield's ode, elegy, or whatever he or any one else chooses to call it, on the enclosures of "Honington Green." [Nathaniel Bloomfield, as a matter of fact, called it a ballad.-Poems (1803).] Vide Recollections of a Weaver in the Moorlund of Staffordshire. [The exact title is The Moorland Bard; or Poetical Recollections of Werver, etc., 2 vols., 1807. The author was T. Bakewell, who also wrote A Domestic Guide to Insanity, 1805.] It would be superfluous to recall to the mind of the reader the authors of The Pleasures of Memory and The Pleasures of Hope, the most beautiful didactic poems in our language, if we except Pope's Essay on Man: but so many poetasters have started up, that even the names of Campbell and Rogers are become strange. — [Beneath this note Byron scribbled, in 1816, "Pretty Miss Jaqueline Led a great army on, Like a fierce Mameluke." 5 Unhappy WHITE! while life was in its spring, 830 And thy young Muse just waved her joyous wing, GIFFORD [vide line 94, note 3], author of the Baviad and Mæviud, the first satires of the day, and translator of Juvenal. * SOTHEBY, translator of WIELAND'S Oberon and Virgil's Georgics, and author of Saul, an epic poem (1807). (William Sotheby (17571833) began life as a cavalry officer, but being a man of fortune, sold out of the army and devoted himself to literature, and to the patronage of men of letters. He is "the solemn antique man of rhyme" (Beppo, st. lxiii.), and the "Botherby" of The Blues.] J MACNEIL, whose poems are deservedly popular, particularly Scotland's Scaith, and the Waes o' War, of which ten thousand copies were sold in one month. [Hector Macneill (17461818) wrote in defence of slavery in Jamaica, and was the author of several poems: Scotland's Skaith; or, the History o' Will and Jean (1705), etc., etc.] 4 Mr. GIFFORD promised publicly that the Baviad and Maviad should not be his last original works; let him remember, "Mox in reluctantes dracones." 5 Henry Kirke White died at Cambridge, in October, 1806, in consequence of too much exertion in the pursuit of studies that would have The Spoiler swept that soaring Lyre away, Which else had sounded an immortal lay. Oh! what a noble heart was here undone, When Science' self destroyed her favourite son! Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit, She sowed the seeds, but Death has reaped the fruit. 'Twas thine own Genius gave the final blow, And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low: So the struck Eagle, stretched upon the plain, 840 No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart; Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel; While the same plumage that had warmed his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. There be who say, in these enlightened days, That splendid lies are all the poet's praise; That strained Invention, ever on the wing, 850 Alone impels the modern Bard to sing: matured a mind which disease and poverty could not impair, and which Death itself de stroyed rather than subdued. His poems abound in such beauties as must impress the reader with the liveliest regret that so short a period was allotted to talents, which would have dignified even the sacred functions he was destined to assume. [H. K. White (1785-1806) published Clifton Grove and other poems, in 1803. His tendency to epilepsy was increased by over-work at Cambridge. He once remarked to a friend that "were he to paint a picture of Fame, crowning a distinguished undergraduate after the Senate house examination, he would represent her as concealing a Death's head under a mask of Beauty" (Life of H. K. W., by Southey, i. 45)} shore. But doubly blest is he whose heart expands With hallowed feelings for those classic lands; "I consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times, in point of power and genius." -B. 1816. Mr Shee, author of Rhymes on Art and Elements of Art. [Sir Martin Archer Shee 1760-1850) was President of the Royal Acadey (1830-45). His Rhymes on Art (1805) and Elements of Art (1809), a poem in six cantos, will hardly be regarded as worthy of Byron's raise, which was probably quite genuine. He also wrote a novel, Harry Calverley, and <her works.] Mr. Wright, late Consul-General for the Seven Islands, is author of a very beautiful poem, just published: it is entitled Hora Ionica, and is descriptive of the isles and the adjacent coast of Greece. [Waller Rodwell Wright was afterwards President of the Court of Appeal in Malta, where he died in 1826. Hora Ionica, a Poem descriptive of the Ionian Islands, and Part of the Adjacent Coast of Greece, was published in 1800.] The translators of the Anthology have since published separate poems, which evince genius that only requires opportunity to attain eminence. [The Rev. Robert Bland (1779-1825) published, in 1806, Translations chiefly from the Greek Anthology, etc. In these he was assisted by Denman (afterwards Chief Justice), by Hodgson himself, and, above all, by John Herman Merivale (1779-1844), who, in 1813, was joint editor with him of Collections from the Greek Anthology, etc.] But not in flimsy DARWIN'S' pompous chime, That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme, Whose gilded cymbals, more adorned than clear, The eye delighted, but fatigued the ear, In show the simple lyre could once sur pass, But now, worn down, appear in native brass; While all his train of hovering sylphs around Evaporate in similes and sound: Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die: 900 False glare attracts, but more offends the eye.2 Yet let them not to vulgar WORDS- The meanest object of the lowly group, Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, Seems blessed harmony to LAMB and LLOYD: 3 Let them - but hold, my Muse, nor dare to teach A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach: The native genius with their being given Will point the path, and peal their notes to heaven. [Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin. His chief works are The Botanic Garden (1789-92) and The Temple of Nature (1803).] The neglect of The Botanic Garden is some proof of returning taste. The scenery is its sole recommendation. Messrs Lamb and Lloyd, the most ignoble followers of Southey and Co. [Charles Lloyd (1775-1830). Lamb and Lloyd contributed several pieces to the second edition of Coleridge's Poems, published in 1797; and, in 1798, they brought out a joint volume of their own composition, named Poems in Blank Verse. But Byron probably had in his mind nothing more than the lines in the Anti-Jacobin, where Lamb and Lloyd are classed with Coleridge and Southey as advocates of French socialism: "Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co.. Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux."] "Unjust." B., 1816. [In Frost at Midnight, first published in 1708, Coleridge twice mentions his "Cradled infant."] 3 It may be asked, why I have censured the Earl of CARLISLE, my guardian and relative, to whom I dedicated a volume of puerile poems a few years ago? - The guardianship was nominal, at least as far as I have been able to discover: the relationship I cannot help, and am very sorry for it; but as his Lordship seemed to forget it on a very essential occasion to me, I shall not burden my memory with the recollection. I do not think that personal différences sanction the unjust condemnation of a brother scribbler; but I see no reason why they should act as a preventive, when the author, noble or ignoble, has, for a series of years, beguiled a "discerning public" (as the advertisements have it) with divers reams of most orthodox, imperial nonsense. Besides, I do not step aside to vituperate the earl: no- his works come fairly in review with those of other Patrician Literati. If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything favour of his Lordship's paper books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment, and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation. I have heard that sume persons conceive me to be under obligatas to Lord CARLISLE: if so, I shall be most particularly happy to learn what they are, and when conferred, that they may be duly appreGated and publicly acknowledged. What I have humbly advanced as an opinion on his printed things, I am prepared to support, if necessary, by quotations from Elegies, Eulogies, Odes. Episodes, and certain facetious and dainty tragedies bearing his name and mark:— "What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards." S says Pope. Amen!- "Much too savage, whatever the foundation might be." -B., 1816. Yet what avails the sanguine Poet's hope, To conquer ages, and with time to cope? New eras spread their wings, new nations rise, 950 And other Victors fill th' applauding skies; 1 A few brief generations fleet along, Whose sons forget the Poet and his song: E'en now, what once-loved Minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name! When Fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest blast, Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last; And Glory, like the Phoenix 2 midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires. 1 Line 951. Note"Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora." VIRGIL. "The devil take that 'Phoenix'! How came it there?" B., 1816. 3 [The Rev. Charles James Hoare (17811865), Archdeacon of Surrey and Canon of Winchester, a close friend of the leaders of the Evangelical party gained the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge in 1807 with his poem on the Shipwreck of St Paul.] [Edmund Hoyle, the father of the modern game of whist, lived from 1672 to 1769. The Rev. Charles Hoyle, his "poetical namesake," was, like Hoare, a Seatonian prizeman, and wrote an epic in thirteen books on the Exodus.] 5 The Games of Hoyle, well-known to the votaries of Whist, Chess, etc., are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the Plagues of Egypt." |