66 I hope not he was one of the few, who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, pour on, I will endure." I have nothing further to add, save a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publishers, and, in the words of Scott, I wish "To all and each a fair good night, And rosy dreams and slumbers light." HINTS FROM HORACE: i. BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICÂ," AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH "Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi." HOR. De Arte Poet., 11. 304 and 305. 'Rhymes are difficult things-they are stubborn things, Sir." FIELDING'S Amelia, Vol. iii. Book and Chap. v. i. Hints from Horace (Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811); being an Imitation in English Verse from the Epistle, etc. -[MS. M.] Hints from Horace: being a Partial Imitation, in English Verse, of the Epistle Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica; and intended as a sequel to English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 12, 1811.-[Proof b.] VOL. I. + 2 C INTRODUCTION TO HINTS FROM HORACE. THREE MSS. of Hints from Horace are extant, two in the possession of Lord Lovelace (MSS. L. a and b), and a third in the possession of Mr. Murray (MS. M.). 66 Proofs of lines 173-272 and 1-272 (Proofs a, b), are among the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum. They were purchased from the Rev. Alexander Dallas, January 12, 1867, and are, doubtless, fragments of the proofs set up in type for Cawthorn in 1811. They are in 'book-form," and show that the volume was intended to be uniform with the Fifth Edition of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, of 1811. The text corresponds closely but not exactly with that adopted by Murray in 1831, and does not embody the variants of the several MSS. It is probable that complete proofs were in Moore's possession at the time when he inIcluded the selections from the Hints in his Letters and Journals, pp. 263–269, and that the text of the entire poem as published in 1831 was derived from this source. Selections, numbering in all 156 lines, had already appeared in Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R. C. Dallas, 1824, pp. 104-113. Byron, estimating the merit by the difficulty of the performance, rated the Hints from Horace extravagantly high. He only forbore to publish them after the success of Childe Harold, because he felt, as he states, that he should be "heaping coals of fire upon his head” if he were in his hour of triumph to put forth a sequel to a lampoon provoked by failure. Nine years afterwards, when he resolved to print the work with some omissions, he gravely maintained that it excelled the productions of his mature genius. "As far," he said, "as versification goes, it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times" [September 23, 1820]. The opinion of J. C. Hobhouse that the Hints would require "a good deal of slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, and other considerations, again led Byron to suspend the publication. Authors are frequently bad judges of their own works, but of all the literary hallucinations upon record there are none which exceed the mistaken preferences of Lord Byron. Shortly after the appearance of The Corsair he fancied that English Bards was still his masterpiece; when all his greatest works had been produced, he contended that his translation from Pulci was his "grand performance,-the best thing he ever did in his life;" and throughout the whole of his literary career he regarded these Hints from Horace with a special and unchanging fondness. |