Ær. 23.

Davies and Matthews1 they don't suit you; and how does it happen that I who am a pipkin of the same pottery - continue in your good graces? Good night, I will go on in the morning.

"Dec. 9th. In a morning, I'm always sullen, and to-day is as sombre as myself. Rain and mist are worse than a sirocco, particularly in a beef-eating and beer-drinking country. My bookseller, Cawthorne, has just left me, and tells me, with a most important face, that he is in treaty for a novel of Madame D'Arblay's, for which 1000 guineas are asked! He wants me to read the MS. (if he obtains it), which I shall do with pleasure; but I should be very cautious in venturing an opinion on her whose Cecilia Dr. Johnson superintended. If he lends it to me, I shall put it into the hands of Rogers and M**e, who are truly men of taste. I have filled the sheet, and beg your pardon; I will not do it again. I shall, perhaps, write again; but if not, believe, silent or scribbling, that I am, my dearest William, ever, &c."

LETTER 79. TO MR. HODGSON.

66 London, Dec. 8. 1811.

“I sent you a sad Tale of Three Friars the other day, and now take a dose in another style. I wrote it a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days.

"Away, away, ye notes of woe3,' &c. &c.

"I have gotten a book by Sir W. Drummond, (printed, but not published,) entitled Edipus Judaicus, in which he attempts to prove the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretion very roughly. I wish you could see it. Mr.W** has lent it me, and I confess to me it is worth fifty Watsons.

"You and Harness must fix on the time for your visit to Newstead; I can command mine at your wish, unless any thing particular occurs in the interim. Bland dines with me on Tuesday to meet Moore. Coleridge has attacked the 'Pleasures of Hope,' and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was present, and heard himself indirectly rowed by the lecturer. We are going in a party to hear the new Art of Poetry by this reformed schismatic; and were I one of these poetical luminaries, or of sufficient

1 The brother of his late friend, Charles Skinner Matthews.

2 Lord Byron is here mistaken. Dr. Johnson never saw Cecilia till it was in print. A day or two before publication, the young authoress, as I understand, sent

147

consequence to be noticed by the man of lectures, I should not hear him without an answer. For you know, an a man will be beaten with brains, he shall never keep a clean doublet.' Campbell will be desperately annoyed. I never saw a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive;

- what a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what can he fear from criticism? I don't know if Bland has seen Miller, who was to call on him yesterday.

"To-day is the Sabbath, - a day I never pass pleasantly, but at Cambridge; and, even there, the organ is a sad remembrancer. Things are stagnant enough in town; as long as they don't retrograde, 'tis all very well. Hobhouse writes and writes and writes, and is an author. I do nothing but eschew tobacco. I wish parliament were assembled, that I may hear, and perhaps some day be heard ; but on this point I am not very sanguine. I have many plans ;- - sometimes I think of the East again, and dearly beloved Greece. I am well, but weakly. Yesterday Kinnaird told me I looked very ill, and sent me home happy.

"Is Scrope still interesting and invalid? And how does Hinde with his cursed che

mistry? To Harness I have written, and have nothing now to do but write again, till he has written, and we have all written, and death splits up the pen and the scribbler.

"The Alfred has three hundred and fiftyfour candidates for six vacancies. The cook has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive. Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new cook is none of the best. Í speak from report, for what is cookery to a leguminous-eating ascetic? So now you know as much of the matter as I do. Books and quiet are still there, and they may dress their dishes in their own way for me. Let me know your determination as to Newstead, and believe me, "Yours ever,

66 Μπαιρῶν.”

LETTER 80. TO MR. HODGSON.

"8. St. James's Street, Dec. 12. 1811.

"Why, Hodgson! I fear you have left off wine and me at the same time, I have written and written and written, and no answer! My dear Sir Edgar, water disagrees with you,-drink sack and write. Bland did not come to his appointment,

three copies to the three persons who had the best claim to them, her father, Mrs. Thrale, and Dr. Johnson.— Second edition.

3 This poem is now printed in Lord Byron's Works. [See Works, p. 550.].

being unwell, but M**e supplied all other vacancies most delectably. I have hopes of his joining us at Newstead. I am sure you would like him more and more as he developes, at least I do.

"How Miller and Bland go on, I don't know. Cawthorne talks of being in treaty for a novel of Madame D'Arblay's, and if he obtains it (at 1500 guineas!!) wishes me to see the MS. This I should read with pleasure, not that I should ever dare to venture a criticism on her whose writings Dr. Johnson once revised, but for the pleasure of the thing. If my worthy publisher wanted a sound opinion, I should send the MS. to Rogers and M✶✶e, as men most alive to true taste. I have had frequent letters from Wm. Harness, and you are silent; certes, you are not a schoolboy. However, I have the consolation of knowing that you are better employed, viz. reviewing. You don't deserve that I should add another syllable, and I won't. Yours, &c.

*

"P. S.-I only wait for your answer to fix our meeting."

LETTER 81.

TO MR. HARNESS.

"8. St. James's Street, Dec. 15. 1811.

I wrote you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of **'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things combined, put me out of humour with him and all mankind. The latter part of my life has been a perpetual struggle against affections which embittered the earliest portion; and though I flatter myself I have in a great measure conquered them, yet there are moments (and this was one) when I am as foolish as formerly. I never said so much before, nor had I said this now, if I did not suspect myself of having been rather savage in my letter, and wish to inform you thus much of the cause. You know I am not one of

["The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties," was not published till the year 1814. "This novel,' say the Quarterly Reviewers," which might be expected to finish and crown Madame D'Arblay's literary labours, is not only inferior to its sister-works, but cannot, in our judgment, claim any very decided superiority over the thousand-and-one volumes with which the Minerva Press inundates the shelves of circulating libraries, and increases, instead of diverting the ennui of the loungers at watering-places ?"- Vol. xi. p. 124.]

your dolorous gentlemen: so now let us laugh again.

66

રે

Yesterday I went with Moore to Sydenham to visit Campbell. He was not visible, so we jogged homeward merrily enough. To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a kind of rage at present. Last night I saw Kemble in Coriolanus ;-he was glorious, and exerted himself wonderfully. By good luck I got an excellent place in the best part of the house, which was more than overflowing. Clare and Delawarr, who were there on the I same speculation, were less fortunate. saw them by accident, we were not together. I wished for you, to gratify your love of Shakspeare and of fine acting to its fullest extent. Last week I saw an exhibition of a different kind in a Mr. Coates, at the Haymarket, who performed Lothario in a damned and damnable manner.

"I told you the fate of B. and H. in my last. So much for these sentimentalists, who console themselves in their stews for the loss - the never to be recovered lossthe despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs! You censure my life, Harness, - when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence-a walking statue-without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love-romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!

'Dec. 16th. I have just received your letter ;- I feel your kindness very deeply. The foregoing part of my letter, written yesterday, will, I hope, account for the tone of the former, though it cannot excuse it. I do like to hear from you more than like. Next to seeing you, I have no greater satisfaction. But you have other duties, and greater pleasures, and I should regret to take a moment from either. H** was to call to-day, but I have not seen him. The circumstances you mention at the close of your letter is another proof in favour of my

2 On this occasion, another of the noble poet's peculiarities was, somewhat startlingly, introduced to my notice. When we were on the point of setting out from his lodgings in St. James's Street, it being then about mid-day, he said to the servant, who was shutting the door of the vis-à-vis, "Have you put in the pistols ?" and was answered in the affirmative. It was difficult, more especially, taking into account the circumstances under which we had just become acquainted,— to keep from smiling at this singular noonday precaution.

ET. 23.

I was

From the time of our first meeting, there seldom elapsed a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each other; and our acquaintance ripened into intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have seldom known an example. I was, indeed, lucky in all the circumstances that attended my first introduction to him. In a generous nature like his, the pleasure of repairing an injustice would naturally give a zest to any partiality I might have inspired in his mind; while the manner in which I had sought this reparation, free as it was from resentment or defiance, left nothing painful to remember in the transaction between us, -no compromise or concession that could wound self-love, or take away from the grace of that frank friendship to which he at once, so cordially and so unhesitatingly, admitted me. also not a little fortunate in forming my acquaintance with him, before his success had yet reached its meridian burst,—before the triumphs that were in store for him had brought the world all in homage at his feet, and, among the splendid crowds that courted his society, even claims less humble than mine had but a feeble chance of fixing his regard. As it was, the new scene of life that opened upon him with his success, instead of detaching us from each other, only multiplied our opportunities of meeting, and increased our intimacy. In that society where his birth entitled him to move, circumstances had already placed me, notwithstanding mine; and when, after the appearance of "Childe Harold," he began to mingle with the world, the same persons, who had long been my intimates and friends, became his; our visits were mostly to the same places, and, in the gay and giddy round

1 "Written beneath the picture of Miss Chaworth." [See Works, p. 540.]

2 ["The meaning of these two lines is so obvious, that it is marvellous how any one could miss it:- By the death-blow of my hope- the blow that deprived me of

149

of a London spring, we were generally (as in one of his own letters he expresses it) "embarked in the same Ship of Fools together."

But, at the time when we first met, his position in the world was most solitary. Even those coffee-house companions who, before his departure from England, had served him as a sort of substitute for more worthy society, were either relinquished or had dispersed; and, with the exception of three or four associates of his college days (to whom he appeared strongly attached), Mr. Dallas and his solicitor seemed to be the only persons whom, even in their very questionable degree, he could boast of as friends. Though too proud to complain of this loneliness, it was evident that he felt it; and that the state of cheerless isolation, "unguided and unfriended," to which, on entering into manhood, he had found himself abandoned, was one of the chief sources of that resentful disdain of mankind, which even their subsequent worship of him came too late to remove. The effect, indeed, which his subsequent commerce with society had, for the short period it lasted, in softening and exhilarating his temper, showed how fit a soil his heart would have been for the growth of all the kindlier feelings, had but a portion of this sunshine of the world's smiles shone on him earlier.

At the same time, in all such speculations and conjectures as to what might have been, under more favourable circumstances, his character, it is invariably to be borne in mind, that his very defects were among the elements of his greatness, and that it was out of the struggle between the good and evil principles of his nature that his mighty genius drew its strength. A more genial and fostering introduction into life, while it would doubtless have softened and disciplined his mind, might have impaired its vigour; and the same influences that would have diffused smoothness and happiness over his life might have been fatal to its glory. Ina short poem of his ', which appears to have been produced at Athens, (as I find it written on a leaf of the original MS. of Childe Harold, and dated " Athens, 1811,") there are two lines which, though hardly intelligible as connected with the rest of the poem, may, taken separately, be interpreted as implying a sort of prophetic consciousness that it was out of the wreck and ruin of all his hopes the immortality of his name was to arise.

the original of this picture-my memory grew immortal: - my remembrance of her became so strong that it shows not the slightest symptom of decay; now, when after a lapse of time I look at her picture, the painful feelings of memory are as vivid as on the day I lost her. This

ET. 23.

on the occasion of conferring this overwhelming favour, I always intended to do it.""

CHAPTER XIV.

1811-1812.

CHILDE HAROLD IN THE PRESS ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS.-HINTS FROM HORACE, CURSE OF MINERVA, AND A FIFTH EDITION OF ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS LIKEWISE IN THE PRESS.-EPISODE.-LETTERS TO ROBERT RUSHTON, MR. HODGSON, AND YOUNG COWELL. - MAIDEN SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.-ACQUAINTANCE WITH LORD HOLLAND.-PUBLICATION OF CHILDE HAROLD.

151

In place of that mournful song "To Ines," in the first canto, which contains some of the dreariest touches of sadness that even his pen ever let fall, he had, in the original construction of the poem, been so little fastidious as to content himself with such ordinary sing-song as the following:

"Oh never tell again to me

SENTATION OF THE COPY-RIGHT TO MR.
DALLAS.

DURING all this time, and through the months of January and February, his poem of "Childe Harold" was in its progress through the press; and to the changes and additions which he made in the course of printing, some of the most beautiful passages of the work owe their existence. On comparing, indeed, his rough draft of the two cantos with the finished form in which they exist at present, we are made sensible of the power which the man of genius possesses, not only of surpassing others, but of improving on himself. Originally, the 'little Page and "Yeoman" of the Childe were introduced to the reader's notice in the following tame stanzas, by expanding the substance of which into their present light, lyric shape, it is almost needless to remark how much the poet has gained in variety and dramatic effect :

"And of his train there was a henchman page,

A peasant boy, who served his master well;
And often would his pranksome prate engage
Childe Burun's1 ear, when his proud heart did swell
With sullen thoughts that he disdain'd to tell.
Then would he smile on him, and Alwin 2 smiled,
When aught that from his young lips archly fell,
The gloomy film from Harold's eye beguiled.

"Him and one yeoman only did he take
To travel eastward to a far countrie;
And, though the boy was grieved to leave the lake,
On whose fair banks he grew from infancy,

1 If there could be any doubt as to his intention of delineating himself in his hero, this adoption of the old Norman name of his family, which he seems to have at first contemplated, would be sufficient to remove it.

In the MS. the names "Robin" and "Rupert "

ludicrous than that of the description of a London Sunday, which still disfigures the poem. In thus mixing up the light with the solemn, it was the intention of the poet to imitate Ariosto. But it is far easier to rise, with grace, from the level of a strain generally familiar, into an occasional short burst of pathos or splendour, than to interrupt thus a prolonged tone of solemnity by any descent into the ludicrous or burlesque. + In the former case, the transition may have the effect of softening or elevating, while, in the latter, it almost invariably shocks ;—for the same reason, perhaps, that a trait of pathos or high feeling, in comedy, has a peculiar charm; while the intrusion of comic scenes into tragedy, however sanctioned among us by habit and authority, rarely fails to offend. The noble poet was, himself, convinced of the failure of the experiment, and in none of the succeeding cantos of Childe Harold repeated it.

Of the satiric parts, some verses on the well-known traveller, Sir John Carr, may supply us with, at least, a harmless speci

men:

"Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
Sights, saints, antiques, arts, anecdotes, and war,
Go, hie ye hence to Paternoster Row,-
Are they not written in the boke of Carr ?
Green Erin's Knight, and Europe's wandering star.
Then listen, readers, to the Man of Ink,

Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar:
All these are coop'd within one Quarto's brink;
This borrow, steal (don't buy), and tell us what you
think."

had been successively inserted here and scratched out again.

3 Here the manuscript is illegible.

4 Among the acknowledged blemishes of Milton's great poem is his abrupt transition, in this manner, into an imitation of Ariosto's style, in the " Paradise of Fools."