(Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron - Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)

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"I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
and Campbell.'[4] Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
country, such as it once was and may still be.

"In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.

"There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the
harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
_imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
composition not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down
the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
variety--where will you find them?

"I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of
literary treason.

"Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such
rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware
that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not
'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The
opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present
fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference
which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I
am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more
nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets,
although even _they_ could sustain the subject if well balanced,
but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of
Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our
language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme,
although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr.
Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six
months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the
lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the
side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read
_first_ those of Mr. Southey.

"To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the
higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago,
and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean
time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some
of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge
about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden
as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their
earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little
nightingale' of Twickenham.

"The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages
181, 182.

"'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those
notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught
our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and
moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a
writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his
proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not
the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it _affects our
poetical numbers alone_, and there is matter of more importance
that requires present reflection.'

"The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:

"'But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of--were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school[7]
Of _dolts_ to _smooth_, _inlay_, and _chip_, and _fit_,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
_Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:_
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of poesy. Ill-fated, impious race,
That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,
And did not know it; no, they went about
Holding a poor _decrepit_ standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of _one_ Boileau.'

"A little before the manner of Pope is termed

"'A _scism_[8],
Nurtured by _foppery_ and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'

"I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but
_n'importe_.

"The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable,
and the great improvements of their own _variazioni_.

"The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of
the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such
lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the
task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume.
I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and
then compare what he will have _then_ written and what he has _now_
written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope,
produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. K. when he
invented his new 'Essay on Criticism,' entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'
(an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's
was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.

"Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars.
The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell,
Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise
of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham,
Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full
fame, because 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong,' and because there is a fortune in fame as in all
other things. Now of all the new schools--I say _all_, for, 'like
Legion, they are many'--has there appeared a single scholar who has
not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has
imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott
found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was
Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the
greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much
honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the
appearance of 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'Harold the
Dauntless,' which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed
him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the
Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or
Wordsworth, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till
he set up for himself in the 'City of the Plague.' Has Moore, or
any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or
rather disciple? Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers
of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard
works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt
his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the _ease_ of _not_
imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced
the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,
'because he was tired of always hearing him called _the Just_,'
have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of
Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and
for the coming generation, who

"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."

[Footnote 3: As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this
assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what
AElian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their
lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove
that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward
of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns. When the
"Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of
the towns of Attica, these personages, as AElian tells us, were
unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called
Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the
substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher
declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his
happiness, as to think that Greece,--"illa nobilis Graecia,"--so far
from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.--Epist. 79.]

[Footnote 4: I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my
noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk
of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the
inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all those who
stood up for particular "schools" of poetry, and yet, at the same time,
maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art himself. How little,
however, he attended to either the grounds or degrees of my dissent from
him, will appear by the following wholesale report of my opinion, in his
"Detached Thoughts:"

"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, is, that
the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are _more_ poets
(soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionally _less_ poetry.

"This _thesis_ I have maintained for some years, but, strange to say, it
meeteth not with favour from my brethren of the shell. Even Moore shakes
his head, and firmly believes that it is the grand age of British
poesy."]

[Footnote 5: Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis
Hodgson.]

[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by
Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated
November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year
after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a
blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly
Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is
bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by
it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in
the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr.
Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to
his own genius, which, malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style,
was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems
actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a
loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right
line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the
language."]

[Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"]

[Footnote 8: "So spelt by the author."]

* * * * *

LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.

"I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the
poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all
matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know
not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani's request might be
legal, and I doubt that it would not be honest. In case you choose
to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and in so doing
I wash my hands of the business altogether. I sign them merely to
enable you to exert the power you justly possess more properly. I
will have nothing to do with it farther, except, in my answer to
Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you,
and the causes thereof.

"If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
whatever, but to secure to you your property.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr. Bowles
shall be answered:--he is not quite correct in his statement about
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in
the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ should require
it--but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets,
disgrace themselves and deny God in running down Pope, the most
_faultless_ of poets, and almost of men."

[Footnote 9: Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of
procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of
which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable
him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.]

* * * * *

LETTER 397. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, November 5. 1820.

"Thanks for your letter, which hath come somewhat costively; but
better late than never. Of it anon. Mr. Galignani, of the Press,
hath, it seems, been sup-planted and sub-pirated by another
Parisian publisher, who has audaciously printed an edition of
L.B.'s Works, at the ultra-liberal price of ten francs, and (as
Galignani piteously observes) eight francs only for booksellers!
'horresco referens.' Think of a man's _whole_ works producing so
little!

"Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission _for him, from me,_
to publish, &c. &c. which _permit_ I have signed and sent to Mr.
Murray of Albemarle Street. Will you explain to G. _that I_ have no
right to dispose of Murray's works without his leave? and therefore
I must refer him to M. to get the permit out of his claws--no easy
matter, I suspect. I have written to G. to say as much; but a word
of mouth from a 'great brother author' would convince him that I
could not honestly have complied with his wish, though I might
legally. What I could do, I have done, viz. signed the warrant and
sent it to Murray. Let the dogs divide the carcass, if it is
killed to their liking.

"I am glad of your epigram. It is odd that we should both let our
wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both
Queen's men at bottom. But there is no resisting a clinch--it is so
clever! Apropos of that--we have a 'diphthong' also in this part of
the world--not a _Greek_, but a _Spanish_ one--do you understand
me?--which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. It was first
pronounced at Naples, and is spreading; but we are nearer the
Barbarians; who are in great force on the Po, and will pass it,
with the first legitimate pretext.

"There will be the devil to pay, and there is no saying who will or
who will not be set down in his bill. If 'honour should come
unlooked for' to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it,
that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of
being plaintively pitied--or still more nobly commemorated, like
'Oh breathe not his name.' In case you should not think him worth
it, here is a Chant for you instead--

"When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.

"To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.

"So you have gotten the letter of 'Epigrams'--I am glad of it. You
will not be so, for I shall send you more. Here is one I wrote for
the endorsement of 'the Deed of Separation' in 1816; but the
lawyers objected to it, as superfluous. It was written as we were
getting up the signing and sealing. * * has the original.

"_Endorsement to the Deed of Separation, in the April of 1816._

"A year ago you swore, fond she!
'To love, to honour, and so forth:
Such was the vow you pledged to me,
And here's exactly what 'tis worth.

"For the anniversary of January 2. 1821, I have a small grateful
anticipation, which, in case of accident, I add--

"_To Penelope, January 2. 1821._

"This day, of all our days, has done
The worst for me and you:--
'Tis just _six_ years since we were _one_,
And _five_ since we were _two_.

"Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense just now,
for fear of wandering to more serious topics, which, in the present
state of things, is not safe by a foreign post.

"I told you in my last, that I had been going on with the
'Memoirs,' and have got as far as twelve more sheets. But I suspect
they will be interrupted. In that case I will send them on by post,
though I feel remorse at making a friend pay so much for postage,
for we can't frank here beyond the frontier.

"I shall be glad to hear of the event of the Queen's concern. As
to the ultimate effect, the most inevitable one to you and me (if
they and we live so long) will be that the Miss Moores and Miss
Byrons will present us with a great variety of grandchildren by
different fathers.

"Pray, where did you get hold of Goethe's Florentine
husband-killing story? Upon such matters, in general, I may say,
with Beau Clincher, in reply to Errand's wife--

"'Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy!'

"'_Clincher_. Damn your Timothy!--I tell you, woman, your husband
has _murdered me_--he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'

"So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis in the Quarterly),
about the woods of 'Madeira,' and so forth. I shall be at Bowles
again, if he is not quiet. He mis-states, or mistakes, in a point
or two. The paper is finished, and so is the letter.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 9 deg., 1820.

"The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and might prove a
'national service,' but unfortunately I must be angry with a man
before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in '_generals_,'
so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a
_Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' had not by many little dirty sneaking
traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though I _had
observed_ him. Here follows an alteration: put--

Devil with _such_ delight in damning,
That if at the resurrection
Unto him the free election
Of his future could be given,
'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven;

that is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out
and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression.
You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that
Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
things, and may be indulged now and then.

"Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a
horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major
Sturgeon; I have fed at times for two months together on sheer
biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or
eighty miles a day _riding_ post, and _swim five_ at a stretch, as
at Venice, in 1818, or at least I _could do_, and have done it
ONCE.

"I know Henry Matthews: he is the image, to the very voice, of his
brother Charles, only darker--his laugh his in particular. The
first time I ever met him was in Scrope Davies's rooms after his
brother's death, and I nearly dropped, thinking that it was his
ghost. I have also dined with him in his rooms at King's College.
Hobhouse once purposed a similar Memoir; but I am afraid that the
letters of Charles's correspondence with me (which are at Whitton
with my other papers) would hardly do for the public: for our
lives were not over strict, and our letters somewhat lax upon most
subjects.[10]

"Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some
documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity
of _checking_, or at least _limiting_, those _French
republications_. You may let all your authors publish what they
please _against me_ and _mine_. A publisher is not, and cannot be,
responsible for all the works that issue from his printer's.

"The 'White Lady of Avenel' is not quite so good as a _real well
authenticated_ ('Donna Bianca') White Lady of Colalto, or spectre
in the Marca Trivigiana, who has been repeatedly seen. There is a
man (a huntsman) now alive who saw her also. Hoppner could tell you
all about her, and so can Rose, perhaps. I myself have _no doubt_
of the fact, historical and spectral.[11] She always appeared on
particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. &c. I
heard Madame Benzoni say, that she knew a gentleman who had seen
her cross his room at Colalto Castle. Hoppner saw and spoke with
the huntsman who met her at the chase, and never _hunted_
afterwards. She was a girl attendant, who, one day dressing the
hair of a Countess Colalto, was seen by her mistress to smile upon
her husband in the glass. The Countess had her shut up in the wall
of the castle, like Constance de Beverley. Ever after, she haunted
them and all the Colaltos. She is described as very beautiful and
fair. It is well authenticated."

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