But to continue. You call upon Lord Byron, always supposing him not the author, to disclaim" with all gentlemanly haste," &c. &c. I am told that Lord B. is in a foreign country, some thousand miles off it may be; so that it will be difficult for him to hurry to your wishes. In the meantime, perhaps you yourself have set an example of more haste than gentility; but "the more haste the worse speed."

Let us now look at the charge itself, my dear Roberts, which appears to me to be in some degree not quite explicitly worded:

"I bribed my Grandmother's Review, the British."

I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. Sotheby the poet, who expressed himself, I remember, a good deal surprised that you had never reviewed his epic poem of “Saul," nor any of his six tragedies; of which, in one instance, the bad taste of the pit, and, in all the rest, the barbarous repugnance of the principal actors, prevented the performance. Mrs. and the Misses S. being in a corner of the room, perusing the proof sheets of Mr. S.'s poems in Italy, or on Italy, as he says, (1 wish, by the by, Mrs. S. would make the tea a little stronger,) the male part of the conversazione were at liberty to make a few observations on the poem and passage in question; and there was a difference of opinion. Some thought the allusion was to the "British Critic 1;" others, that by the expression, My Grandmother's Review," it was intimated that "my grandmother" was not the reader of the review, but actually the writer, thereby insinuating, my dear Roberts, that you were an old woman; because, as people often say, "Jeffrey's Review," "Gifford's Review," in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly: so" my Grandmother's Review" and Roberts's might be almost synonymous. Now, whatever colour this insinuation might derive from the circumstance of your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of life, your general style, and various passages of your writings, I will take upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion of the kind, and assert, without calling Mrs. Roberts in testimony, that if ever you should be chosen Pope, you will pass through all the previous ceremonies with as much credit as any pontiff since the parturition of Joan. It is very unfair to judge of sex from writings, particularly from those of the British Review. We are all liable to be deceived; and it is an indisputable fact, that many of the best articles in your journal, which were attributed to a veteran female, were actually written by you yourself; and yet to this day there are people who could never find out the difference. But let us return to the more immediate question.

I agree with you, that it is impossible Lord Byron should be the author, not only because, as a British peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his Lordship has no grandmother. Now, the author-and we may believe him in this-doth expressly state that the "British" is his "Grandmother's Review;" and if, as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still extant. And I can the more readily credit this, having a sexagenary aunt of my own, who perused you constantly, till unfortunately falling asleep over the leading article of your last number, her spectacles fell off and were broken against the fender, after a faithful service of fifteen years, and she has never been able to fit her eyes since; so that I have been forced to read you aloud to her; and this is in fact the way in which I became acquainted with the subject of my present letter, and thus determined to become your public correspondent.

In the next place, Lord B.'s destiny seems in some sort like that of Hercules of old, who became the author of all

1" [Whether it be the British Critic, or the British Review, against which the nolde lord prefers so grave a charge, or rather so facetious an accusation, we are at a loss to determine. The latter has thought it worth

unappropriated prodigies. Lord B. has been supposed the author of the " Vampire," of a "Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," "To the Dead Sea," of " Death upon the Pale Horse," of odes to" La Valette," to " Saint Helena," to the "Land of the Gaul," and to a sucking child. Now, he turned out to have written none of these things. Besides, you say, he knows in what a spirit of, &c. you criticise:- Are you sure he' knows all this? that he has read you like my poor dear aunt? They tell me he is a queer sort of a man; and I would not be too sure, if I were you, either of what he has read or of what he has written. I thought his style had been the serious and terrible. As to his sending you money, this is the first time that ever I heard of his paying his reviewers in that coin; I thought it was rather in their own, to judge from some of his earlier productions. Besides, though he may not be profuse in his expenditure, I should conjecture that his reviewer's bill is not so long as his tailor's.

Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid ! but if, by any accident, there should have been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author, whoever he may be, send him back his money: I dare say he will be very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value of the article and the circulation of the journal; and you are too modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth.-Don't be angry,- I know you won't,-at this appraisement of your powers of eulogy; for on the other hand, my dear friend, depend upon it your abuse is worth, not its own weight,- that's a feather, -- but your weight in gold. So don't spare it: if he has bargained for that, give it handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office.

But I only speak in case of possibility; for, as I said before, I cannot believe, in the first instance, that you would receive a bribe to praise any person whatever; and still less can I believe that your praise could ever produce such an offer. You are a good creature, my dear Roberts, and a clever fellow; else I could almost suspect that you had fallen into the very trap set for you in verse by this anonymous wag, who will certainly be but too happy to see you saving him the trouble of making you ridiculous. The fact is, that the solemnity of your eleventh article does make you look a little more absurd than you ever yet looked, in all probability, and at the same time does no good; for if any body believed before in the octave stanzas, they will believe still, and you will find it not less difficult to prove your negative, than the learned Partridge found it to demonstrate his not being dead, to the satisfaction of the readers of almanacs.

What the motives of this writer may have been for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you)" stating, with the particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless fiction," (do pray, my dear R., talk a little less "in King Cambyses' vein,") I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you, but that is no reason for your benevolently making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry; I tell you I am angry too; but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn "if somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B.,or from any other person," reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning" if a maun, or ony maun, or any other maun," &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear Roberts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and for yourself.

With regard to the poem itself, or the author, whom I cannot find out, (can you?) I have nothing to say; my business

its while, in a public paper, to make a serious reply. As we are not so seriously inclined, we shall leave our share of this accusation to its fate."Brit. Critic.]

P. S. My letter is too long to revise, and the post is going. I forget whether or not I asked you the meaning of your last words, "the forgery of a groundless fiction." Now, as all forgery is fiction, and all fiction a kind of forgery, is not this tautological? The sentence would have ended more strongly with forgery;" only, it hath an awful Bank of England sound, and would have ended like an indictment, besides sparing you several words, and conferring some meaning upon the remainder. But this is mere verbal criticism. Good-bye -once more, yours truly, W.C.

P.S. 2d. Is it true that the Saints make up the loss of the Review? It is very handsome in them to be at so great an expense. Twice more, yours, W.C.

"THE life of a writer" has been said, by Pope, I believe, to be" a warfare upon earth." As far as my own experience has gone, I have nothing to say against the proposition; and, like the rest, having once plunged into this state of hostility, must, however reluctantly, carry it on. An article has appeared in a periodical work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan," which has been so full of this spirit, on the part of the writer, as to require some observations on mine.

In the first place, I am not aware by what right the writer assumes this work, which is anonymous, to be my production. He will answer, that there is internal evidence; that is to say, that there are passages which appear to be written in my name, or in my manner. But might not this have been done on purpose by another? He will say, why not then deny it? To this I could answer, that of all the things attributed to me within the last five years, - Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Deaths upon Pale Horses, Odes to the Land of the Gaul, Adieus to England, Songs to Madame La Valette, Odes to St. Helena, Vampires, and what not,-of which, God knows I never composed nor read a syllable beyond their titles in advertisements,-I never thought it worth while to disavow any, except one which came linked with an account of my "residence in the Isle of Mitylene," where I never resided,

1 [In Sheridan's comedy of "The Rivals."]

2 [See Blackwood, vol. iii. p. 329. Lord B., as it appears from one of his letters, ascribed (though unjustly) this paper to the Rev.Dr.Chalmers!] 3 ["As the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review (vol. xxi. p. 366.), speaking inci

and appeared to be carrying the amusement of those persons who think my name can be of any use to them, a little too far. I should hardly, therefore, if I did not take the trouble to disavow these things published in my name, and yet not mine. go out of my way to deny an anonymous work; which micht appear an act of supererogation. With regard to Don Jizam, I neither deny nor admit it to be mine-every body may form their own opinion; but, if there be any who now, or in the progress of that poem, if it is to be continued, feel, ur should feel themselves so aggrieved as to require a mort explicit answer, privately and personally, they shall have it.

I have never shrunk from the responsibility of what I have written, and have more than once incurred obloque by seglecting to disavow what was attributed to my pen without

foundation.

The greater part, however, of the "Remarks on Dan Juan" contain but little on the work itself, which receives an extraordinary portion of praise as a composition. With th exception of some quotations, and a few incidental remarks, the rest of the article is neither more nor less than a persoza attack upon the imputed author. It is not the first in the same publication: for I recollect to have read, some time won, similar remarks upon "Beppo" (said to have been writ by a celebrated northern preacher); in which the conclas drawn was, that "Childe Harold, Byron, and the Count a Beppo, were one and the same person; " thereby making turn out to be, as Mrs. Malaprop1 says, " like Cerberus, tart gentlemen at once." That article was signed Presbyter Anglicanus;" which, I presume, being interpreted, zna Scotch Presbyterian. 2 I must here observe,- and it once ludicrous and vexatious to be compelled so frequent to repeat the same thing,-that my case, as an author, b peculiarly hard, in being everlastingly taken, or mistaken, ▾ my own protagonist. It is unjust and particular. I never heard that my friend Moore was set down for a fire-wershipper on account of his Guebre; that Scott was id cffe: with Roderick Dhu, or with Balfour of Burley; or that, nitwithstanding all the magicians in Thalaba, any body has ever taken Mr. Southey for a conjuror; whereas I have had some difficulty in extricating me even from Manfred, who, as M Southey slily observes in one of his articles in the Quaterly "met the devil on the Jungfrau, and bullied him3:"as i answer Mr. Southey, who has apparently, in his poetica. Lan not been so successful against the great enemy, that, in tha Manfred exactly followed the sacred precept,—“ Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."-I shall have more to s on the subject of this person – not the devil, but his not humble servant Mr. Southey-before I conclude; bet ir the present, I must return to the article in the ESCO Magazine.

In the course of this article, amidst some extracts observations, there occur the following words :- It appears.. in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted cere species of sensual gratification, — having drained the cup a sin even to its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show me he is no longer a human being even in his frailties, — but cool, unconcerned fiend, laughing with a detestable pire un m the whole of the better and worse elements of which huma life is composed." In another place there appeurs. lurking-place of his selfish and polluted exile.”—” By m troth, these be bitter words!"- With regard to the £¥ sentence, I shall content myself with observing, ta appears to have been composed for Sardanapalus, Thera the Regent Duke of Orleans, or Louis XV.; and that I hư copied it with as much indifference as I would a pionas from Suetonius, or from any of the private memoirs sú 2regency, conceiving it to be amply refuted by the terms « which it is expressed, and to be utterly inapy Leade private individual. On the words," lursing-plie selfish and polluted exile," I have something more ta

dentally of the Jungfrau, I said, 'It was the scene where Loned m Manfred met the devil, and bulliert him – thưgh the dar won his cause before any tribunal in this warld, or the ex not pleaded more fechly for himself than 1.4 advacia, I canonisation, ever pleaded for him."" - Soutaxi.]

little, except that I had written what is called poetry, was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why, because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances. The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority: the reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of verses, rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects of both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the waters.

If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards, that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters, nor from voting according to my principles; and with regard to the third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others, as has been done on similar occasions.

I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had: but I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact was indisputable : the public in general would hardly have been so much excited against a more popular character, without at least an accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or substantiated, for I can hardly conceive that the common and every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual complaints of " being prejudged," "condemned unheard," "unfairness," " partiality," and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person very much disliked; and I knew no remedy, having already used to their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told that there was one-but it was not of my formation, nor did I then know of its existence-none in literature; and in politics I had voted with the Whigs, with

precisely that importance which a Whig vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of any thing Ele friendship from any one, except a few young men of my own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in fe, which last it had been my fortune to serve in circumsta ces of difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect, some time after, Madame de Staël said to me in Switzerland," You should not have warred with the world — it w not do it is too strong always for any individual: I mysel once tried it in early life, but it will not do." I perfectiy acquiesce in the truth of this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war; and assuredly, if peace is only to be obtained by courting and paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance. I thought. in the words of Campbell,

"Then wed thee to an exiled lot,

And if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne."

I recollect, however, that, having been much bart by Romilly's conduct, (he, having a general retainer for me, kad acted as adviser to the adversary, alleging, on being reminded of his retainer, that he had forgotten it, as his clerk had so many,) I observed that some of those who were sov eagerly laying the axe to my roof-tree, might see their en shaken, and feel a portion of what they had inflicted — Hư fell, and crushed him.

I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I bebeve that the best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out f the way of temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am not quite sure that I could resist . having derived from my mother something of the " serievidum ingenium Scotorum." I have not sought, and sha not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in my path not in this allude to the party, who might be right or wring: but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in ber own feelings; for whatever her reasons may have been and she never adduced them to me at least), she probably sehem contemplated nor conceived to what she became the cwsze of conducting the father of her child, and the husband of her choice.

So much for the general voice of his countrymen."1 will now speak of some in particular.

In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appear is the Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Sem doing great honour to him, and no disgrace to me, thểền both poetically and personally more than sufficiently favo able to the work and the author of whom it treated It was written at a time when a selfish man would net, and a orm one dared not, have said a word in favour of either; it wa written by one to whom temporary public opiran elevated me to the rank of a rival — a proud distincti e, mi unmerited; but which has not prevented me from fem, ga a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to sentiment. The article in question was written Third Canto of Childe Harold; and after many observan A which it would as ill become me to repeat as to foret, cluded with "a hope that I might yet return to Ergant How this expression was received in England itself. I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at Rome to the rwy able ten or twenty thousand English travellers tram there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some » so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact 16: I wa informed, long afterwards, that the greatest ind graË A been manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of t: a me which happened to comprise within it - amidst a cradles leaven of Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, f loose upon their travels-several really well-burn D2 =

1 [See Quarterly Review, vol. zvi, p. 172 ]

bred families, who did not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. "Why should he return to England?" was the general exclamation-I answer why? It is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence and I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again, and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England; but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I have been more or less informed of their conduct since my departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends, from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could, and some things which they should have unfolded; however, that which is deferred is not lost-but it has been no fault of mine that it has been deferred at all.

I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the reproach cast upon what has been called my "selfish exile," and my "voluntary exile." Voluntary" it has been; for who would dwell among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far it has been "selfish" has been already explained.

I have now arrived at a passage describing me as having vented my "spleen against the lofty-minded and virtuous men," men" whose virtues few indeed can equal;" meaning, I humbly presume, the notorious triumvirate known by the name of Lake Poets" in their aggregate capacity, and by Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, when taken singly.. I wish to say a word or two upon the virtues of one of those persons, public and private, for reasons which will soon appear.

When I left England in April, 1816, ill in mind, in body, and in circumstances, I took up my residence at Coligny, by the lake of Geneva. The sole companion of my journey was a young physician, who had to make his way in the world, and having seen very little of it, was naturally and laudably desirous of seeing more society than suited my present habits or my past experience. I therefore presented him to those gentlemen of Geneva for whom I had letters of introduction; and having thus seen him in a situation to make his own way, retired for my own part entirely from society, with the exception of one English family, living at about a quarter of a mile's distance from Diodati, and with the further exception of some occasional intercourse with Coppet at the wish of Madame de Staël. The English family to which I allude consisted of two ladies, a gentleman and his son, a boy of a year old. 2

One of "these lofty-minded and virtuous men," in the words of the Edinburgh Magazine, made, I understand, about this time, or soon after, a tour in Switzerland. On his return to England, he circulated-and, for any thing I know, invented-a report, that the gentleman to whom I have alluded and myself were living in promiscuous intercourse with two sisters, "having formed a league of incest" (I quote the words as they were stated to me), and indulged himself on the natural comments upon such a conjunction, which are said to have been repeated publicly, with great complacency, by another of that poetical fraternity, of whom I shall say only, that even had the story been true, he should not have repeated it, as far as it regarded myself, except in sorrow. The tale itself requires but a word in answer-the ladies were not sisters, nor in any degree connected, except by the

1 [Dr. Polidori-author of the "Vampire."]

second marriage of their respective parents, a widower with a widow, both being the offspring of former marriages; neither of them were, in 1816, nineteen years old. "Promiscuous intercourse" could hardly have disgusted the great patron of pantisocracy, (does Mr. Southey remember such a scheme?) but there was none.

How far this man, who, as author of Wat Tyler, has been proclaimed by the Lord Chancellor guilty of a treasonable and blasphemous libel, and denounced in the House of Commons, by the upright and able member for Norwich, as a" rancorous renegado," be fit for sitting as a judge upon others, let others judge. He has said that for this expression "he brands William Smith on the forehead as a calumniator," and that "the mark will outlast his epitaph." How long William Smith's epitaph will last, and in what words it will be written, I know not, but William Smith's words form the epitaph itself of Robert Southey. He has written Wat Tyler, and taken the office of poet laureate he has, in the Life of Henry Kirke White, denominated reviewing "the ungentle craft," and has become a reviewer-he was one of the projectors of a scheme, called "pantisocracy," for having all things, including women, in common, (query, common women?) and he sets up as a moralist-he denounced the battle of Blenheim, and he praised the battle of Waterloohe loved Mary Wollstoncraft, and he tried to blast the character of her daughter (one of the young females mentioned) --he wrote treason, and serves the king- he was the butt of the Antijacobin, and he is the prop of the Quarterly Review; licking the hands that smote him, eating the bread of his enemies, and internally writhing beneath his own contempt, - he would fain conceal, under anonymous bluster, and a vain endeavour to obtain the esteem of others, after having for ever lost his own, his leprous sense of his own degradation. What is there in such a man to "envy?" Who ever envied the envious? Is it his birth, his name, his fame, or his virtues, that I am to "envy ?" I was born of the aristocracy, which he abhorred; and am sprung, by my mother, from the kings who preceded those whom he has hired himself to sing. It cannot, then, be his birth. As a poet, I have, for the past eight years, had nothing to apprehend from a competition; and for the future," that life to come in every poet's creed," it is open to all. I will only remind Mr. Southey, in the words of a critic, who, if still living, would have annihilated Southey's literary existence now and hereafter, as the sworn foe of charlatans and impostors, from Macpherson downwards, that "those dreams were Settle's once and Ogilby's;" and, for my own part, I assure him, that whenever he and his sect are remembered, I shall be proud to be "forgot." That he is not content with his success as a poet may reasonably be believed he has been the nine-pin of reviews; the Edinburgh knocked him down, and the Quarterly set him up; the government found him useful in the periodical line, and made a point of recommending his works to purchasers, so that he is occasionally bought, (I mean his books, as well as the author,) and may be found on the same shelf, if not upon the table, of most of the gentlemen employed in the different offices. With regard to his private virtues, I know nothing of his principles, I have heard enough. As far as having been, to the best of my power, benevolent to others, I do not fear the comparison; and for the errors of the passions, was Mr. Southey always so tranquil and stainless? Did he never covet his neighbour's wife? Did he never calumniate his neighbour's wife's daughter, the offspring of her he coveted? So much for the apostle of pantisocracy.

Of the "lofty-minded, virtuous" Wordsworth, one anecdote will suffice to speak his sincerity. In a conversation with Mr. upon poetry, he concluded with, "After all, I would not give five shillings for all that Southey has ever written." Perhaps this calculation might rather show his esteem for five shillings than his low estimate of Dr. Southey; but considering that when he was in his need, and Southey had a shilling, Wordsworth is said to have had generally

2 [Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, Miss Clermont, and Master Shelley.]