6 by the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke when he said, The wild beasts of the deserts shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance there,' &c. &c. The bitter recollections which Gibbon retained of Oxford, his own pen has recorded; and the cool contempt by which Locke avenged himself on the bigotry of the same seat of learning is even still more memorable.1 In poets such distasteful recollections of their collegiate life may well be thought to have their origin in that antipathy to the trammels of discipline, which is not unusually observable among the characteristics of genius, and which might be regarded, indeed, as a sort of instinct, implanted in it for its own preservation, if there be any truth in the opinion that a course of learned education is hurtful to the freshness and elasticity of the imaginative faculty. A right reverend writer, but little to be suspected of any desire to depreciate academical studies, not only puts the question, "Whether the usual forms of learning be not rather injurious to the true poet, than really assisting to him?" but appears strongly disposed to answer it in the affirmative,-giving, as an instance, in favour of this conclusion, the classic Addison, who, "as appears," he says, "from some original efforts in the sublime, allegorical way, had no want of natural talents for | the greater poetry,—which yet were so restrained and disabled by his constant and superstitious study of the old classics, that he was, in fact, but a very ordinary poet." It was, no doubt, under some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, versifying a thought of his own, in the letter to Mr. Dallas just given, declares, "Her Helicon is duller than her Cam." The poet Dryden, too, who, like Milton, had incurred some mark of disgrace at Cambridge, seems to have entertained but little more veneration for his Alma Mater; and the verses in which he has praised Oxford at the expense of his own university3 were, it is probable, dictated much less by 1 See his Letter to Anthony Collins, 1703-4, where he speaks of "those sharp heads, which were for damning his book, because of its discouraging the staple commodity of the place, which in his time was called hogs' shearing." 2 Hurd, "Discourses on Poetical Imitation." admiration of the one than by a desire to spite and depreciate the other. Nor is it genius only that thus rebels against the discipline of the schools. Even the tamer quality of Taste, which it is the professed object of classical studies to cultivate, is sometimes found to turn restive under the pedantic manège to which it is subjected. It was not till released from the duty of reading Virgil as a task, that Gray could feel himself capable of enjoying the beauties of that poet; and Lord Byron was, to the last, unable to vanquish a similar prepossession, with which the same sort of school association had inoculated him, against Horace. — “Though Time hath taught Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor. "Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To the list of eminent poets, who have thus left on record their dislike and disapproval of the English system of education, are to be added the distinguished names of Cowley, Addison, and Cowper; while, among the cases which, like those of Milton and Dryden, practically demonstrate the sort of inverse ratio that may exist between college honours and genius, must not be forgotten those of Swift, Goldsmith, and Churchill, to every one of whom some mark of incompetency was affixed by the respective universities, whose annals they adorn. When, in addition, too, to this rather ample catalogue of poets, whom the universities have sent forth either disloyal or dishonoured, we come to number over such names as those of Shakspeare and of Pope, followed by Gay, Thomson, Burns, Chatterton, &c., all of whom have attained their respective stations of eminence, without instruction or sanction from any college whatever, it forms altogether, it must be owned, a large portion of the poetical world, that must be subducted from the sphere of that nursing influence which 3 ["Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage; Dryden's Prologue to the University of Oxford.] F My dear Sir, 66 "Dorant's Hotel, Jan. 13. 1808. Through the stupidity of my servants, or the porter of the house, in not showing you up stairs (where I should have joined you directly), prevented me the pleasure of seeing you yesterday, I hoped to meet you at some public place in the evening. However, my stars decreed otherwise, as they generally do, when I have any favour to request of them. I think you would have been surprised at my figure, for, since our last meeting, I am reduced four stone in weight. I then weighed fourteen stone seven pound, and now only ten stone and a half. I have disposed of my superfluities by means of hard exercise and abstinence. "Should your Harrow engagements allow you to visit town between this and February, I shall be most happy to see you in Albemarle Street. If I am not so fortunate, I shall endeavour to join you for an afternoon at Harrow, though, I fear, your cellar will by no means contribute to my cure. As for my worthy preceptor, Dr. B., Our encounter would by no means prevent the mutual endearments he and I were wont to lavish on each other. We have only spoken once since my departure from Harrow in 1805, and then he politely told Tatersall I was not a proper associate for his pupils. This was long before my strictures in verse; but, in plain prose, had I been some years older, I should have held my tongue on his perfections. But, being laid on my back, when that schoolboy thing was written- -or rather dictated ― expecting to rise no more, my ["No system of national education ever was, or will be, planned with reference to minds such as Mr. Moore seems not merely chiefly, but exclusively, to be thinking of in this diatribe. The grand object is to prepare men for the discharge of those duties which society has a right to demand from its members; and, original genius being so rare as hitherto it always has been, the functions which cannot be discharged in the absence of that extraordinary gift are not entitled to be mainly, or even directly, considered. We are very far from maintaining that the established system ought not to be considerably modified: the classical literature of antiquity is no longer entitled to hold the exclusive place which belonged to it in the age of our scholastic and academical foundations; but it is not by such unguarded attacks as this, that the course of rational improvement is at all likely to be forwarded. They can serve no better purpose than to irritate or discourage the existing race of teachers (than physician having taken his sixteenth fee, and I his prescription, I could not quit this earth without leaving a memento of my constant attachment to Butler in gratitude for his manifold good offices. 2 "I meant to have been down in July; but thinking my appearance, immediately after the publication, would be construed into an insult, I directed my steps elsewhere. Besides, I heard that some of the boys had got hold of my Libellus, contrary to my wishes certainly, for I never transmitted a single copy till October, when I gave one to a boy, since gone, after repeated importunities. You will, I trust, pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject I thought some explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi' and 'so on' (as Lord Baltimore long at Trinity as to forget the conclusion of said on his trial for a rape) — I have been so the line; but though I cannot finish my believe me, gratefully and affectionately, &c. quotation, I will my letter, and entreat you to "P. S. I will not lay a tax on your time by requiring an answer, lest you say, as Butler said to Tatersall (when I had written his reverence an impudent epistle on the expression before mentioned), viz. that I wanted to draw him into a correspondence."" LETTER 23. TO MR. HARNESS. "Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street, Feb. 11. 1808. "My dear Harness, "As I had no opportunity of returning my verbal thanks, I trust you will accept my written acknowledgments for the compliment you were pleased to pay some production of my unlucky muse last November, - I am induced to do this not less from the pleasure I feel in the praise of an old schoolfellow, than from justice to you, for I had heard the story with some slight variations. Indeed, when we met this morning, Wing whom a more meritorious or worse-paid class of men cannot be named), and to pamper self-complacency, petulance, and the silly ambition of knowing a little of every thing, in a rising generation, already more than enough tinged with such phantasies." - Quarterly Review, 1831. "The only bald part of this Biography is that which relates to Byron's college life; nor can we approve of its spirit. Mr. Moore is too well acquainted with literary history, to fall into any blunders of commission; but he has fallen, - not perhaps unpurposely- into not a few of omission, and strives, most ineffectually, to make us believe, that because Byron did no good at Cambridge, no other young poet of a high order could do any, and that the Genius Loci is adverse to all inspiration." — Blackwood, 1830.] 2 [See Works, p. 383.] - field had not undeceived me; but he will tell you that I displayed no resentment in mentioning what I had heard, though I was not sorry to discover the truth. Perhaps you hardly recollect, some years ago, a short, though, for the time, a warm friendship between us. Why it was not of longer duration I know not. I have still a gift of yours in my possession, that must always prevent me from forgetting it. I also remember being favoured with the perusal of many of your compositions, and several other circumstances very pleasant in their day, which I will not force upon your memory, but entreat you to believe me, with much regret at their short continuance, and a hope they are not irrevocable. "Yours very sincerely, &c. I have already mentioned the early friendship that subsisted between this gentleman and Lord Byron, as well as the coolness that succeeded it. The following extract from a letter with which Mr. Harness favoured me, in placing at my disposal those of his noble correspondent, will explain the circumstances that led, at this time, to their reconcilement; and the candid tribute, in the concluding sentences, to Lord Byron, will be found not less honourable to the reverend writer himself than to his friend. "A coolness afterwards arose, which Byron alludes to in the first of the accompanying letters, and we never spoke during the last year of his remaining at school, nor till after the publication of his Hours of Idleness.' Lord Byron was then at Cambridge; I, in one of the upper forms, at Harrow. In an English theme I happened to quote from the volume, and mention it with praise. It was reported to Byron that I had, on the contrary, spoken slightingly of his work and of himself, for the purpose of conciliating the favour of Dr. Butler, the master, who had been severely satirised in one of the poems. Wingfield, who was afterwards Lord Powerscourt, a mutual friend of Byron and myself, disabused him of the error into which he had been led, and this was the occasion of the first letter of the collection. Our intimacy was renewed, and continued from that time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron might have had towards others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate. I have many slights and neglects towards him to reproach myself with; but I cannot call to mind a a single instance of caprice or unkindness, in the whole course of our friendship, to allege against him." My dear Becher, 66 "Dorant's Hotel, Feb. 26. 1808. 'Now for Apollo. I am happy that you still retain your predilection, and that I am of so much importance that a most violent the public allow me some share of praise. of the Edinburgh Review. This I had from attack is preparing for me in the next number the authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript of the critique. You know the system of the Edinburgh gentlemen is universal attack. They praise none; and neither the public nor the author expects to be noticed, as they profess to pass judg It is, however, something praise from them. attention. You will see this when it comes ment only on works requiring the public out; it is, I understand, of the most unmerciful description; but I am aware of it, and hope you will not be hurt by its se verity. with them, and to prepare her mind for the "Tell Mrs. Byron not to be out of humour greatest hostility on their part. It will do no injury whatever, and I trust her mind will not be ruffled. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never praise except the partisans of Lord Holland and Co. Southey, Moore, Lauderdale, Strangford, It is nothing to be abused when and Payne Knight, share the same fate. must be suppressed during this edition. I "I am sorry-but 'Childish Recollections' have altered, at your suggestion, the ob noxious allusions in the sixth stanza of my last ode. "And now, my dear Becher, I must return my best acknowledgments for the interest you have taken in me and my poetical bantlings, and I shall ever be proud to show how much I esteem the advice and the adviser. Believe me most truly," &c. Soon after this letter appeared the dreaded article, an article which, if not witty in itself," deserved eminently the credit of causing "wit in others." Seldom, indeed, has it fallen to the lot of the justest criticism to attain celebrity such as injustice has procured for this; nor as long as the short, but glorious race of Byron's genius is remembered, can the critic, whoever he may be, that so unintentionally ministered to its first start, be forgotten. It is but justice, however, to remark,— without at the same time intending any excuse for the contemptuous tone of criticism assumed by the reviewer, that the early verses of Lord Byron, however distinguished by tenderness and grace, give but little promise of those dazzling miracles of poesy with which he afterwards astonished and enchanted the world; and that, if his youthful verses now have a peculiar charm in our eyes, it is because we read them, as it were, by the light of his subsequent glory. There is, indeed, one point of view, in which these productions are deeply and intrinsically interesting. As faithful reflections of his character at that period of life, they enable us to judge of what he was in his yet unadulterated state,- before disappointment had begun to embitter his ardent spirit, or the stirring up of the energies of his nature had brought into activity also its defects. Tracing him thus through these natural effusions of his young genius, we find him pictured exactly such, in all the features of his character, as every anecdote of his boyish days proves him really to have been, proud, daring, and passionate, resentful of slight or injustice, but still more so in the cause of others than in his own; and yet, with all this vehemence, docile and placable, at the least touch of a hand authorised by love to guide him. The affectionateness, indeed, of his disposition 1 ["This is admirable, — all but the last sentence in which we see the hand of a man of finest feelings and genius trying in vain to wash the greasy face of a stupid slanderer, more hopelessly black than an Ethiop's skin." -WILSON. "Mr. Moore 'walks delicately,' like Agag, when the course of his narrative brings him to the truculent critique on these boyish essays, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review. Himself a distinguished victim and prop of that journal, he writes elegantly and eloquently traceable as it is through every page of this volume, is yet but faintly done justice to, even by himself;-his whole youth being, from earliest childhood, a series of the most passionate attachments, of those overflowings of the soul, both in friendship and love, which are still more rarely responded to than felt, and which, when checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure to turn into bitterness. We have seen also, in some of his early unpublished poems, how apparent, even through the doubts that already clouded them, are those feelings of piety which a soul like his could not but possess, and which, when afterwards diverted out of their legitimate channel, found a vent in the poetical worship of nature, and in that shadowy substitute for religion which superstition offers. When, in addition, too, to these traits of early character, we find scattered through his youthful poems such anticipations of the glory that awaited him,- such, alternately, proud and saddened glimpses into the future, as if he already felt the elements of something great within him, but doubted whether his destiny would allow him to bring it forth,—it is not wonderful that, with the whole of his career present to our imaginations, we should see a lustre round these first puerile attempts not really their own, but shed back upon them from the bright eminence which he afterwards attained; and that, in our indignation against the fastidious blindness of the critic, we should forget that he had not then the aid of this reflected charm, with which the subsequent achievements of the poet now irradiate all that bears his name. The effect this criticism produced upon him can only be conceived by those who, besides having an adequate notion of what most poets would feel under such an attack, can understand all that there was in the temper and disposition of Lord Byron to make him feel it with tenfold more acuteness than others. We have seen with what feverish anxiety he awaited the verdicts of all the minor Reviews, and, from his sensibility to the praise of the meanest of these censors, may guess how painfully he must have writhed under the sneers of the highest. A friend, who found him in the first moments on the subject, and contrives to drop no hint of what every human being felt at the time to be the simple truth of the whole matter to wit, that out of the thousand and one volumes of indifferent verse, which happened to be printed in the year of grace, 1807, only one bore a noble name on the title-page; and the opportunity of insulting a lord, under pretext of admonishing a poetaster, was too tempting to be resisted, in a particular quarter, at that particular time."- Quarterly Review, 1831.] of excitement after reading the article, inquired anxiously whether he had just received a challenge, not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of his looks. It would, indeed, be difficult for sculptor or painter to imagine a subject of more fearful beauty than the fine countenance of the young poet must have exhibited in the collected energy of that crisis. His pride had been wounded to the quick, and his ambition humbled ;-but this feeling of humiliation lasted but for a moment. The very reaction of his spirit against aggression roused him to a full consciousness of his own powers; and the pain and the shame of the injury were forgotten in the proud certainty of revenge. -- Among the less sentimental effects of this Review upon his mind, he used to mention that, on the day he read it, he drank three bottles of claret to his own share after dinner; that nothing, however, relieved him till he had given vent to his indignation in rhyme, and that "after the first twenty lines, he felt himself considerably better." His chief care, indeed, afterwards, was amiably devoted, as we have seen it was, in like manner, before the criticism, to allaying, as far as he could, the sensitiveness of his mother; who, not having the same motive or power to summon up a spirit of resistance, was, of course, more helplessly alive to this attack upon his fame, and felt it far more than, after the first burst of indignation, he did himself. But the state of his mind upon the subject will be best understood from the following letter. LETTER 25 TO MR. BECHER. "Dorant's, March 28. 1808. "I have lately received a copy of the new edition from Ridge, and it is high time for me to return my best thanks to you for the trouble you have taken in the superintendence. This I do most sincerely, and only regret that Ridge has not seconded you as I could wish,—at least, in the bindings, paper, &c., of the copy he sent to me. Perhaps those for the public may be more respectable in such articles. You have seen the Edinburgh Review, of course. I regret that Mrs. Byron is so much annoyed. For my own part, these 'paper 1 ""Tis a quality very observable in human nature, that any opposition which does not entirely discourage and intimidate us, has rather a contrary effect, and inspires us with a more than ordinary grandeur and magnanimity. In collecting our force to overcome the opposition, we invigorate the soul, and give it an elevation with which otherwise it would never have been acquainted.". HUME, Treatise of Human Nature. 2 ["Dr. Johnson's reply to the friend who asked him bullets of the brain' have only taught me to stand fire; and, as I have been lucky enough upon the whole, my repose and appetite are not discomposed. Pratt, the gleaner, author, poet, &c. &c., addressed a long rhyming epistle to me on the subject, by way of consolation; but it was not well done, so I do not send it, though the name of the man might make it go down. The E. R'. have not performed their task well; at least the literati tell me this; and I think I could write a more sarcastic critique on myself than any yet published. For instance, instead of the remark,-ill-natured enough, but not keen,—about Macpherson, I (quoad reviewers) could have said, Alas, this imitation only proves the assertion of Dr. Johnson, that many men, women, and children, could write such poetry as Ossian's.' 2 "I am thin and in exercise. During the spring or summer I trust we shall meet. I hear Lord Ruthyn leaves Newstead in April. As soon as he quits it for ever, I wish much you would take a ride over, survey the mansion, and give me your candid opinion on the most advisable mode of proceeding with regard to the house. Entre nous, I am cursedly dipped; my debts, every thing inclusive, will be nine or ten thousand before I am twenty-one. But I have reason to think my property will turn out better than general expectation may conceive. Of Newstead I have little hope or care; but Hanson, my agent, intimated my Lancashire property was worth three Newsteads. I believe we have it hollow; though the defendants are protracting the surrender, if possible, till after my majority, for the purpose of forming some arrangement with me, thinking I shall probably prefer a sum in hand to a reversion. Newstead I may sell ;-perhaps I will not, though of that more anon. I will come down in May or June. "Yours most truly," &c. The sort of life which he led at this period between the dissipations of London and of Cambridge, without a home to welcome, or even the roof of a single relative to receive him, was but little calculated to render him satisfied either with himself or the world. Unrestricted as he was by deference to any will but his own 3, even the pleasures to if any man living could have written such a book is well known: Yes, Sir; many men, many women, and many children.' I inquired of him myself if this story was authentic, and he said it was."- MRS. Piozzi, Johnsoniana, p. 84.] 3 "The colour of our whole life is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters make it."- COWPER. |