Who soon detect, and mark where'er we fail, And prove our marble with too nice a nail! Democritus himself was not so bad; He only thought, but you would make, us mad! But truth to say, most rhymers rarely guard Against that ridicule they deem so hard; In person negligent, they wear, from sloth, Beards of a week, and nails of annual growth; Reside in garrets, fly from those they meet, And walk in alleys, rather than the street, With little rhyme, less reason, if you please, The name of poet may be got with ease, So that not tuns of helleboric juice Shall ever turn your head to any use; Write but like Wordsworth, live beside a lake,(1) And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; (2) Then print your book, once more return to town, And boys shall hunt your bardship up and down. Quam lingua Latium, si non offenderet unum. 8 poets, disgrace themselves, and deny God, in running down Pope, the most faultless of poets." Again, in situ, same year:-"I have at last lost all patience with the atrocious eant and nonsense about Pope with which our present are overflowing, and am determined to make such head against it as an individual can by prose or verse, and I will at least do it with good will. There is no bearing it any longer, and, if it goes on, it will destroy what little good writing or taste remains amongst us. I hope there are still a few men of taste to second me; but if not I'll battle it alone, convinced that it is in the best cause of English literature." Again, in 1821:-"Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the book of life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story.' Here is a statesman's opinion of poetry; it is honourable to him and to the art. Such a poet of a thousand years' was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our literature. But it can want them: he is himself a literature."-L. E. (1) "That this is the age of the decline of English poetry, will be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That there are men of genius among the present poets, makes little against the fact; because it has been well said, that, next to him who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marini, who corrupted, not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe, for nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has been a kind of epidemic concurrence. The Lakers and their school, and every body else with their Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight, I know no scribbler with a madder style; Though modern practice sometimes differs quite, 'Tis just as well to think before you write; Let every book that suits your theme be read, So shall you trace it to the fountain-head. He who has learn'd the duty which he owes To friends and country, and to pardon foes; Qui purgor bilem sub verni temporis horam! Qui didicit patriæ quid debeat, et quid amicis ; school, and even Moore without a school, and dilettanti lec turers at institutions, and elderly gentlemen who translate and imitate, and young ladies who listen and repeat. and baronets who draw indifferent frontispieces for bad poets, and noblemen who let them dine with them in the country, the small body of the wits and the great body of the blues, have latterly united in a depreciation, of which their forefathers would have been as much ashamed as their children will be. In the mean time, what have we got instead? The Lake School, which began with an epic poem written in six weeks' (so Joan of Arc proclaimed herself), and finished with a ballad composed in twenty years, as Peter Bell's creator takes care to inform the few who will inquire. What have we got instead? A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who have both made the best of our bad materials and erroneous system. What have we got instead? Madoc, which is neither an epic nor any thing else; Thaloba, Kehama, Gebir, and such gibberish, written in all metres, and in no language." B. Letters, 1819.-See also the two pamphlets against Mr. Bowles, written at Ravenna in 1821, in which Lord Byron's enthusiastic reverence for Pope is the principal feature.-L. E. (2) As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid, and may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads he crops, | viz.-independence. Bayes. Now I write standing-that's one thing; and then another thing is, with what do you prepare yourself? "Smith. Prepare myself! what the devil does the fool mean? "Bayes. Why, I'll tell you what I do. If I am to write familiar things, as sonnets to Armida, and the like, I make use of stewed prunes only; but when I have a grand design in hand. I ever take physic and let blood: for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge."-L. E. Who models his deportment as may best Sometimes a sprightly wit, and tale well told, Unhappy Greece! thy sons of ancient days The Muse may celebrate with perfect praise, Whose generous children narrow'd not their hearts With commerce, given alone to arms and arts. Our boys (save those whom public schools compel To "long and short" before they 're taught to spell) From frugal fathers soon imbibe by rote, "A penny saved, my lad, 's a penny got." Babe of a city birth! from sixpence take The third, how much will the remainder make?— “A groat.”—“Ah, bravo! Dick hath done the sum! He'll swell my fifty thousand to a plum." They whose young souls receive this rust betimes, Because Parnassus, though a mount divine, Quod sit conscripti, quod judicis officium, quæ Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo (1) I have not the original by me, but the Italian translation runs as follows:-"E una cosa a mio credere molto stravagante, che un padre desideri, o permetta, che suo figliuolo coltivi e perfezioni questo talento." A little further on: "Si trovano di rado nel Parnaso le miniere d'oro e d' argento." Educazione dei Fanciulli del Signor Locke.—[“If the child have a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in the world, that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved."-"It is very seldom seen, that any one discovers mines of gold or silver on Parnassus.”—L. E.] (2) Iro pauperior:" this is the same beggar who boxed with Ulysses for a pound of kid's fry, which he lost, and half a dozen teeth besides.-See Odyssey, b. 18. Two objects always should the poet move, Or one or both,-to please or to improve. Whate'er you teach, be brief, if you design For our remembrance your didactic line; Redundance places memory on the rack, For brains may be o'erloaded, like the back. Fiction does best when taught to look like truth, And fairy fables bubble none but youth: Expect no credit for too-wondrous tales, Since Jonas only springs alive from whales! Young men with aught but elegance dispense; To end at once:-that bard for all is fit His book, with Longman's liberal aid, shall pass But every thing has faults, nor is 't unknown Where frequent beauties strike the reader's view, We must not quarrel for a blot or two; But pardon equally to books or men, The slips of human nature, and the pen. Yet if an author, spite of foe or friend, Despises all advice too much to mend, Quidquid præcipies, esto brevis: ut cito dicta Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus. Aut humana parum cavit natura. Quid ergo est (3) The Irish gold-mine of Wicklow, which yields just ore enough to swear by, or gild a bad guinea. (4) "This couplet is amusingly characteristic of that mixture of fun and bitterness with which their author some. times spoke in conversation; so much so, that those who knew him might almost fancy they hear him utter the words." Moore.-L. E. (5) As Mr. Pope took the liberty of damning Homer, to whom he was under great obligations-" And Homer (damn him!) calls"-it may be presumed that any body or any thing may be damned in verse by poetical license; and, in case of accident, I beg leave to plead so illustrious a pre- i cedent. But ever twangs the same discordant string, As pictures, so shall poems be; some stand Parnassian pilgrims! ye whom chance, or choice, Hath led to listen to the Muse's voice, Ridetur, chordà qui semper oberrat eâdem: Ut pictura poesis erit: quæ, si propius stes, Te capiet magis; et quædam, si longius abstes: Hæc amat obscurum; volet hæc sub luce videri, Judicis argutum quæ non formidat acumen : (1) For the story of Billy Havard's tragedy, see Davies's Life of Garrick. I believe it is Regulus, or Charles the First. The moment it was known to be his the theatre thinned, and the bookseller refused to give the customary sum for the copyright." Havard," says Davies, "was reduced to great straits, and, in order to retrieve his affairs, the story of Charles the First was proposed to him as a proper subject to engage the public attention. Havard's desire of ease was known to be superior to his thirst for fame or money; and Giffard, the manager, insisted upon the power of locking him up till the work was finished. To this he consented; and Giffard actually turned the key upon him, and let him out at his pleasure, till the play was completed. It was acted with great emolument to the manager, and some degree of reputation, as well as gain, to the author. It drew large crowds to the theatre; curiosity was excited with respect to the author: that was a secret to be kept from the people; but Havard's love of fame would not suffer it to be concealed longer than the tenth or twelfth night of acting the play. The moment Havard put on the sword and tiewig, the genteel dress of the times, and professed himself to be the writer of Charles the First, the audiences were thinned, and the bookseller refused to give the usual sum of a hundred pounds for the copyright."-L. E.] (2) Here, in the original MS., we find the following couplet and note:- "Though what 'gods, men, and columns' interdict, The Devil and Jeffrey pardon-in a Pict.-L. E. (3) To the Eclectic or Christian Reviewers I have to return thanks for the fervour of that charity which, in 1809, induced them to express a hope that a thing then published "The Devil and Jeffrey are here placed antithetically to gods and men, such being their usual position, and their dne one-according to the facetious saying, 'If God won't take you, the Devil must; and I am sure no one durst object to his taking the poetry which, rejected by Horace, is accepted by Jeffrey. That these gentlemen are in some cases kinder,-the one to countrymen, and the other from his odd propensity to prefer evil to good,-than the 'gods, men, and columns' of Horace, may be seen by a reference to the review of Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming; and in No. 31 of the Edinburgh Review (given to me the other day by the captain of an English frigate off Salamis), there is a similar concession to the mediocrity of Jamie Grahame's British Georgies. It is fortunate for Campbell, that his fame neither depends on his last poem, nor the puff of the Edinburgh Review. The catalogues of our English are also less fastidious than the pillars of the Roman librarians.-A word more with the author of Gertrude of Wyoming. At the end of a poem, and even of a couplet, we have generally that unmeaning thing we call a thought; so Mr. Campbell concludes with a thought in such a manner as to fulfil the whole of Pope's prescription, and be as unmeaning' as the best of his brethren : Because I may not stain with grief Receive this counsel, and be timely wise; In these plain common sense will travel far; Are damn'd alike by gods, and men, and columns.(2) Again, my Jeffrey!-as that sound inspires, When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel; Hæc placuit semel; hæc decies repetita placebit. by me might lead to certain consequences, which, although natural enough, surely came but rashly from reverend lips. I refer them to their own pages, where they congratulated themselves on the prospect of a tilt between Mr. Jeffrey and myself, from which some great good was to accrue, provided one or both were knocked on the head. Having survived two years and a half those Elegies which they were kindly preparing to review, I have no peculiar gusto to give them "so joyful a trouble," except, indeed, "upon compulsion, Hal;" but if, as David says in the Rivals, it should come to "bloody sword and gun fighting," we "won't run, will we, Sir Lucius?" I do not know what I had done to these Eclectic gentlemen: my works are their lawful perquisite, to be hewn in pieces like Agag, if it seem meet unto them: but why they should be in such a hurry to kill off their author, I am ignorant. "The race is not always. to the swift, nor the battle to the strong:" and now, as these Christians have "smote me on one cheek," I hold them up the other; and, in return for their good wishes, give them an opportunity of repeating them. Had any other set of men expressed such sentiments, I should have smiled, and left them to the "recording angel;" but from the pharisees of Christianity decency might be expected. I can assure these brethren, that, publican and sinner as I am, I would not have treated “mine enemy's dog thus." To show them the superiority of my brotherly love, if ever the Reverend Messrs. Simeon or Ramsden should be engaged in such a conflict as that in which they requested me to fall, I hope they may escape with being "winged" only, and that Heaviside may be at hand to extract the ball.-[The following is the charitable passage in the Eclectic Review of which Lord Byron speaks:-"If the noble lord and the learned ad When I was in the fifth form, I carried to my master the translation of a chorus in Prometheus,† wherein was a pestilent expression about 'staining a voice,' which met with no quarter. Little did I think that Mr. Campbell would have adopted my fifth form sublime'-at least in so conspicuous a situation. 'Sorrow' has been 'dry' (in proverbs), and wet' (in sonnets), this many a day; and now it stains, and stains a sound, of all feasible things! To be sure, death-songs might have been stained with that same grief to very good purpose, if Outalissi had clapped down his stanzas on wholesome paper for the Edinburgh Evening Post, or any other given hyperborean gazette; or if the said Outalissi had been troubled with the slightest second sight of his own notes embodied on the last proof of an overcharged quaro: but as he is supposed to have been an improvisatore on this occasion, and probably to the last tune he ever chanted in this world, it would have done him no discredit to have made his exit with a mouthful of common sense. Talking of staining' (as Caleb Quotem says) puts me in mind' of a certain couplet, which Mr. Campbell will find in a writer for whom he, and his school, have no small contempt : 'E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art-the art to blet!"—L. E. Such are the genial feelings thou canst claim- A muse and heart by choice so wholly thine? My hate, untravell'd, fondly turn'd to thee. Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego, As if at table some discordant dish Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish; Ut gratas inter mensas symphonia discors, vocate have the courage requisite to sustain their mutual insults, we shall probably soon hear the explosions of another kind of paper-war, after the fashion of the ever-memorable duel which the latter is said to have fought, or seemed to fight, with Little Moore.' We confess there is sufficient provocation, if not in the critique, at least in the satire, to urge a man of honour' to defy his assailant to mortal combat. Of this we shall no doubt hear more in due time."-L. E.] (1) "Alas! I cannot strike at wretched kernes." Macbeth. | -L. E. (2) See the memorable critique of the Edinburgh Review, on Hours of Idleness.-L. E. (3) Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin." (4) Lord Byron's taste for boxing brought him acquainted, at an early period, with this distinguished, and, it is not too much to say, respected professor of the art; for whom, throughout life, he continued to entertain a sincere regard. In a note to the eleventh canto of Don Juan, he calls him his old friend, and corporeal pastor and master."-L. E. (5) Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in the Curse of Kehama, maugre the neglect of Madoc, etc., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. literary friend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of "one in jeopardy:" he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on butter milk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel-spear, and a landing-net, and at last (horresco referens!) pulled out- his own publisher. The unfortunate A As oil in lieu of butter men decry, Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun: Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please. Thus think "the mob of gentlemen;" but you, Besides all this, must have some genius too. Be this your sober judgment, and a rule, And print not piping hot from Southey's school, Who (ere another Thalaba appears), I trust, will spare us for at least nine years. Qui nescit, versus tamen audet fingere!" Quid ni? Id tibi judicium est, ea mens. Si quid tamen olim Et patris, et nostras: nonumque prematur in annum. man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its "alacrity of sinking" was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of "Felo de bibliopola" against a "quarto unknown;" and circumstantial evidence being since strong against the Curse of Kehama (of which the above words are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers next sessions, in Grubstreet-Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Exodus, Exodia, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve jurors. The judges are Pye, Bowles, and the bellman of St. Sepulchre's. The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. public anxiously await the result, and all live publishers will be subpoenaed as witnesses. But Mr. Southey has published the Curse of Kehama,—an inviting title to quibblers. By the by, it is a good deal beneath Scott and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the booby Ballantyne to entitle them, in the Edinburgh Annual Register (of which, by the by, Southey is editor) "the grand poetical triumvi. rate of the day." But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the one-eyed leaders of the blind, though they might as well keep to themselves "Scott's thirty thousand copies sold," which must sadly discomfit poor Southey's unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, The Though Madoc, with Pucelle,(1) instead of punk, May travel back to Quito-on a trunk! (2) Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempriere, Led all wild beasts but women by the ear; And had he fiddled at the present hour, We'd seen the lions waltzing in the Tower; And old Amphion, such were minstrels then, Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren. Verse too was justice, and the bards of Greece Did more than constables to keep the peace; Abolish'd cuckoldom with much applause, Call'd county meetings, and enforced the laws; Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes, And served the church-without demanding tithes : And hence, throughout all Hellas and the East, Each poet was a prophet and a priest, Whose old-establish'd board of joint controls Included kingdoms in the cure of souls. Next rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince, And fighting's been in fashion ever since; And old Tyrtæus, when the Spartans warr'd, (A limping leader, but a lofty bard,) (3) Though wall'd Ithome had resisted long, Reduced the fortress by the force of song. When oracles prevail'd, in times of old, In song alone Apollo's will was told. Then if your verse is what all verse should be? And gods were not ashamed on't, why should we? The Muse, like mortal females, may be woo'd; In turns she'll seem a Paphian, or a prude; Quod non edideris. Nescit vox missa reverti. "Such things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid: "Because, in the triangles DBC, ACB, D B is equal to AC, and BC common to both; the two sides D B, B C, are equal to the two A C, C B, each to each, and the angle DBC is equal to the angle ACB: therefore, the base DC is equal to the base A B. and the triangle DBC (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A CB, the less to the greater, which is absurd," etc.-The editor of the Edinburgh Register will find the rest of the theorem hard by his stabling: he has only to cross the river; 'tis the first turnpike t'other side "Pons Asinorum."* (1) Voltaire's Pucelle is not quite so immaculate as Mr. Southey's "Joan of Arc," and yet I am afraid the French This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of Edinburgh, Ballantyne said it meant the "Bridge of Berwick," but Southey claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the "Brig o' Stirling;" he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses over it. At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more nor loss than the "counter of Archy Constable's shop." Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright, If verse be studied with some show of art, Kind Nature always will perform her part; Though without genius, and a native vein Of wit, we loathe an artificial strainYet art and nature join'd will win the prize, Unless they act like us and our allies. The youth who trains to, ride, or run a race, Must bear privations with unruffled face, Be call'd to labour when he thinks to dine, And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine. Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight, Have follow'd music through her farthest flight; But rhymers tell you neither more nor less, "I've got a pretty poem for the press;" And that's enough; then write and print so fast;If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last? They storm the types, they publish, one and all, They leap the counter, and they leave the stall. Provincial maidens, men of high command, Yea, baronets have ink'd the bloody hand! (4) Cash cannot quell them; Pollio (5) play'd this prank (Then Phoebus first found credit in a bank!) Not all the living only, but the dead, Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head; (6) Damn'd all their days, they posthumously thriveDug up from dust, though buried when alive! Pieriis tentata modis; ludusque repertus, Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam, man has both more truth and poetry too on his side-(they rarely go together)—than our patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change of the first letter. (2) Like Sir Bland Burgess's Richard; the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyres. 19, Cockspurstreet. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from. (3) Lord Byron had originally written "As lame as I am, but a better bard." The reader of Mr. Moore's Life will appreciate the feeling which, no doubt, influenced Lord Byron's alteration of the manuscript line.-L. E. (4) The Red Hand of Ulster, introduced generally_ia a | canton, marks the shield of a baronet of the United Kingdom.-L. E. (5) "Pollio."—In the original MS. "Rogers."-L. E. (6) "Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum, Gurgite cum medio portans OEagrius Hebrus Volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua, Ah, miseram Eurydicen anima fugiente vocabat; Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripe." Georgic. iv. 523. |