Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain! These are the themes that claim our plaudits now; These are the bards to whom the muse must bow! While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot, Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott. The time has been, when yet the muse was young, When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung, An epic scarce ten centuries could claim, While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name: The work of each immortal bard appears The single wonder of a thousand years: (2) Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth, Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth, Without the glory such a strain can give As even in ruin bids the language live. Not so with us, though minor bards, content, On one great work a life of labour spent: With eagle pinion soaring to the skies, Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise! To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield, Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field. First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance, (I) "Good night to Marmion"-the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion. [Notwithstanding these harsh lines, Byron has, in many passages of his poems and journals, evinced his profound regard and veneration for the character and talents of Sir Walter Scott, whom he elsewhere designates as "the Monarch of Parnassus and most English of Bards," and in Childs Harold, canto iv., stanza 40, his Lordship pays a well-merited compliment to his gifted friend, styling him "the minstrel who called forth A new creation with his magic line, And, like the Ariosto of the north, Sang ladye love and war, romance and knightly worth."-P. E.] (2) As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider The scourge of England and the boast of France! the Paradise Lost, and Gerusalemme Liberata, as their standard efforts; since neither the Jerusalem Conquered of the Italian, nor the Paradise Regained of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive? (3) Thalaba, Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. Joan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of those poems "which," in the words of l'orson, "will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but not till then.” (4) "Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."-Madoc. -L. E. (5) We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degrading title of epic." See his preface. Why is epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogylvy, Hoole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the epic muse; but as Mr. Southey's poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask -has he substituted any thing better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as quality of his verse? (6) See The Old Woman of Berkley, a ballad, by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a “high-trotting horse." (7) The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the Anti-jacobin to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics. [Lord Byron here alludes to Mr. Gifford's parody on Mr. Southey's Dactylics, which ends thus: "Ne'er talk of cars again! look at thy spelling-book; Dilworth and Dyche are both mad at thy quantitiesDactylics, call'st thou 'em? God help thee! silly one."-L. E (8) Lord Byron, on being introduced to Mr. Southey in 1813, at Holland House, describes him "as the best-looking bard he had seen for a long time."-"To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would," he says, "almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, a man of talent, and all that, and there is his eulogy." In his Journal, of the same year, he says-"Southey I have not seen much of. His appearance is epic, and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed to their authorship. His manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation-posterity will probably select. He Next comes the dull disciple of thy school, And Christmas stories, tortured into rhyme, A moon-struck silly lad, who lost his way, Oh! wonder-working Lewis! (7) monk, or bard, Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a church-yard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou takest thy stand, By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P.! (8) from whose infernal brain Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train! At whose command "grim women" throng in crowds, And, like his bard, confounded night with day; (3) St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease; So close on each pathetic part he dwells, And each adventure so sublimely tells, That all who view the "idiot in his glory" Conceive the bard the hero of the story. Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here, He brays, (5) the laureat of the long-ear'd kind. (6) has passages equal to any thing. At present, he has a party, but no public-except for his prose writings. His Life of Nelson is beautiful." Elsewhere, and later, Lord B. pronounces Southey's Don Roderick, "the first poem of our time."-L. E. (1) "Unjust."-B. 1816. L. E. (2) Lyrical Ballads, p. 4.-"The Tables Turned." Stanza I. (3) Mr W., in his preface, labours hard to prove that prose and verse are much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable :-- "And thus to Betty's questions he And the sun did shine so cold," etc. etc. p. 129. (4) Coleridge's Poems, p. II, Songs of the Pixies, i. e. Devonshire fairies; p. 42, we have, Lines to a young Lady; and p. 52, Lines to a young Ass. (5) Thus altered by Lord Byron, in his last revision of the satire. In all former editions the line stood, "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind."-L. E. (6) "Unjust." B. 1816.—In a letter to Mr. Coleridge, written in 1815, Lord Byron says,-"You mention my 'Satire,' lampoon, or whatever you or others please to call it. I can only say, that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side ever since: more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends; which is heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attempted attacks."—L. E. (7) Matthew Gregory Lewis, Esq. M. P. for Hindon, never distinguished himself in Parliament, but, mainly in consequence of the clever use he made of his knowledge of the German language, then a rare accomplishment, attracted much notice in the literary world, at a very early period of Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire, Grieved to condemn, (9) the muse must still be just, She bids thee "mend thy line, and sin no more."(10) his life. His Tales of Terror; the drama of the Castle Spectre; and the romance called the Bravo of Venice (which is, however, little more than a version from the Swiss Zschocke); but above all, the libidinous and impious novel of The Monk, invested the name of Lewis with an extraordinary degree of celebrity, during the poor period which intervened between the obscuration of Cowper, and the full display of Sir Walter Scott's talents in the Lay of the Last Minstrel,-a period which is sufficiently characterized by the fact, that Hayley then passed for a Poet. Next to that solemn coxcomb, Lewis was for several years the fashionable versifier of his time; but his plagiarisms, perhaps more audacious than had ever before been resorted to by a man of real talents, were by degrees unveiled, and writers of greater original genius, as well as of purer taste and morals, successively emerging, Monk Lewis, dying young, had already outlived his reputation. In society he was to the last a favourite; and Lord Byron, who had become well acquainted with him during his experience of London life, thus notices his death, which occurred at sea in 1818:-"Lewis was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,-Madame de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was the jewel of a man, had he been better set; I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory, to every thing and every body. Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches-of a second visit to Jamaica:"I'd give the lands of Deloraine, Dark Musgrave were alive again!" That is, "I would give many a sugar cane, (8) "For every one knows little Matt's an M. P."-See a poem to Mr. Lewis, in The Statesman, supposed to be written by Mr. Jekyll. (9) In very early life, Little's Poems were Lord Byron's favourite study. "Heigho!" he exclaims in 1820, in a letter to Moore, "I believe all the mischief I have ever done, or sung, has been owing to that confounded book of yours."L. E. (10) In the original manuscript, the words were "mend thy life," but the poet subsequently adopted line.—See Dallas. -L. E. For thee, translator of the tinsel song, To whom such glittering ornaments belong, Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue, (1) And boasted locks of red or auburn hue, Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires, And o'er harmonious fustian half expires, Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author's sense, Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence. Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place, By dressing Camoëns (2) in a suit of lace? Mend, Strangford! mend thy morals and thy taste; Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste: Cease to deceive; thy pilfer'd harp restore, Behold!-ye tarts! one moment spare the textHayley's last work, and worst-until his next; Whether he spin poor couplets into plays, Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise, His style in youth or age is still the same, For ever feeble and for ever tame. Triumphant, first, see Temper's Triumphs shine! At least I'm sure they triumph'd over mine. Of Music's Triumphs, all who read may swear That luckless music never triumph'd there. (3) Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward On dull devotion-Lo! the Sabbath bard, Sepulchral Grahame, (4) pours his notes sublime In mangled prose, nor e'en aspires to rhyme; Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke, And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch; And, undisturb'd by conscientious qualms, Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms. Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings (5) A thousand visions of a thousand things, (I) The reader, who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to Strangford's Camoëns, p. 127, note to p. 56; or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Camoens. (2) It is also to be remarked, that the things given to the public as poems of Camoens are no more to be found in the original Portuguese than in the Song of Solomon. (3) Hayley's two most notorious verse productions are Triumphs of Temper, and The Triumphs of Music. He has also written much comedy in rhyme, epistles, etc. etc. As he is rather an elegant writer of notes and biography, let us recom. mend Pope's advice to Wycherley to Mr. H.'s consideration, viz. "to convert his poetry into prose," which may be easily done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.[The only performance for which Hayley is now remembered is his Life of Cowper. His personal history has been sketched by Mr. Southey in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi. p. 263.—L. E.] (4) Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name of Sabbath Walks, and Biblical Pictures. [This very amiable man, and pleasing poet, published subsequently, The Birds of Scotland, and other pieces; but his reputation rests on his Sabbath. He began life as an advocate at the Edinburgh bar; but he had little success there, and, being of a melancholy and very devout temperament, entered into holy orders, and retired to a curacy near Durham, where he died in 1811.-L. E.] (5) Immediately before this line, we find, in the original manuscript, the following, which Lord Byron good-naturedly consented to omit, at the request of Mr. Dallas, who was, no doubt, a friend of the scribbler they refer to: "In verse most stale, unprofitable, flat, Come, let us change the scene, and glean' with Pratt; The votaries of the Muse are ill repaid, And shows, still whimpering through threescore of years, The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers. And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles! To which this note was appended:-" Mr. Pratt, once a Bath bookseller, now a London author, has written as much, to as little purpose, as any of his scribbling contemporaries. Mr. P.'s Sympathy is in rhyme; but his prose productions are the most voluminous." The more popular of these last were entitled Gleanings.-L. E. (6) See Bowles's Sonnet to Oxford, and Stanzas on hearing the Bells of Ostend. (7) "Awake a louder," etc., is the first line in Bowles' Spirit of Discovery; a very spirited and pretty dwarf-epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following: "A kiss Stole on the list'ning silence, never yet Here heard; they trembled even as if the power," etc. etc. That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss; very much astonished, as well they might be, at such a phenomenon.-[" Misquoted and misunderstood by me; but not intentionally. It was not the woods,' but the people in them who trembled-why, Heaven only knows-unless they were overheard making the prodigious smack." B. 1816.-L. E.] (8) The episode above alluded to is the story of "Robert a Machin" and "Anna d'Arfet," a pair of constant lovers, who performed the kiss above mentioned, that startled the woods of Madeira. (9) "Although," says Lord Byron, in 1821, "I regret having published English Bards, the part which I regret the least is that which regards Mr. Bowles, with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's, Pope are in the first edition of English Bards, and are quite as severe, and much more poetical, than my own, in the second. On reprinting the work, as I If chance some bard, though once by dunces fear'd, Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page; To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme; (3) Another epic! Who inflicts again put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, by which the work gained less than Mr. Bowles."-[The following are the lines written by Mr. Hobhouse : "Stick to thy sonnets, man!—at least they sell. Thus Bowles may triumph o'er the shade of Pope."—L. E.] (1) Curll is one of the heroes of the Dunciad, and was a bookseller. Lord Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, author of Lines to the Imitator of Horace. (2) Lord Bolingbroke hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the poet had retained some copies of a work by Lord Bolingbroke-The Patriot King-which that splendid but malignant, genius had ordered to be destroyed. -{"Bolingbroke's thirst of vengeance," says Dr. Johnson, incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations."-L. E.] (3) Dennis the critic, and Ralph the rhymester:**Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, Making night hideous: answer him, ye owls!"-Dunciad. (4) See Bowles's late edition of Pope's Works, for which he received three hundred pounds. Thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another than to elevate his own. (5) Lord Byron's MS. note of 1816 on this passage is,"Too savage all this on Bowles:" and well might he say That venerable person is still living; and in spite of all Oh, Amos Cottle!-Phoebus! what a name As Sisyphus against the infernal steep The petrifactions of a plodding brain, That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back again. Yet say! why should the bard at once resign the criticism to which his injudicious edition of Pope exposed him afterwards, there can be no doubt that Lord B., in his calmer moments, did justice to that exquisite poetical genius which, by their own confession, originally inspired both Wordsworth and Coleridge. -L. E. (6) "Fresh fish from Helicon! "-"Helicon" is a mountain, and not a fish-pond. It should have been "Hippocrene." B. 1816.-L. E. (7) Mr. Cottle, Amos, Joseph, I don't know which, but one or both, once sellers of books they did not write, and now writers of books they do not sell, have published a pair of epics-Alfred,-(poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!) -Alfred, and the Fall of Cambria. (8) Here Lord B. notes in 1816:-" All right. I saw some letters of this fellow (Joseph Cottle) to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions, which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of, he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that 1 could hardly resist assailing him, even were it unjust, which it is not-for verily he is an ass." B. 1816.-The same person has had the honour to be recorded in the Anti jacobin, probably by Canning: "And Cottle, not he who that Alfred made famous, But Joseph, of Bristol, the brother of Amos."-L. E.] (9) Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto, upon the beauties of Richmond Hill, and the like; it also takes in a charming view of Turnham Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent. [The Rev. Thomas Maurice also wrote Westminster Abbey, and other poems, the History of Ancient and Modern Hindostan, etc. and his own Memoirs, comprehending Anecdotes of Literary Characters, during a period of thirty years; -a very amusing piece of autobiography. He died in 1824, at his apartments in the British Museum; where he had been for some years assistant keeper of MSS.-L. E.] (10) Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius. His anderer of Switzerland is worth a thousand Lyrical Ballads, and at least fifty "degraded epics." Aged or young, the living or the dead, No mercy find these harpies (1) must be fed. Health to immortal Jeffrey! (3) once, in name, Health to great Jeffrey! Heaven preserve his life, To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, And guard it sacred in its future wars, Since authors sometimes seek the field of Mars! Can none remember that eventful day, (5) That ever-glorious, almost fatal, fray, When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by? (6) Oh, day disastrous! On her firm-set rock, Dunedin's castle felt a secret shock; (I) In a MS. critique on this satire, by the late Reverend William Crowe, public orator at Oxford, the incongruity of these metaphors is thus noticed:-"Within the space of three or four couplets he transforms a man into as many different animals: allow him but the compass of three lines, and he will metamorphose him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will make him a bloodhound!" On seeing Mr. Crowe's remarks, Lord Byron desired Mr. Murray to substitute, in the copy in his possession, for "hellish instinct,” “brutal instinct," for "harpies" "felons," and for "blood-hounds" "hell-hounds. "—L. E. (2) Arthur's Seat, the hill which overhangs Edinburgh. (3) Mr. Jeffrey, who, after the first Number or two, succeeded the Rev. Sidney Smith in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, retired from his critical post some little time before he was appointed Lord Advocate for Scotland: he is now (1834) a Lord of Session. "I have often, since my return to England," says Lord Byron (Diary, 1814), "heard Jeffrey most highly commended by those who knew him, for things independent of his talents. I admire him for thisnot because he has praised me, but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under the relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other, would have had the liberality to act thus: none but a great soul dared hazard it a little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter."-L. E. (4) "Too ferocious-this is mere insanity." B. 1816.— L. E. (5) "All this is bad, because personal." B. 1816.-L. E. (6) In 1806, Messrs. Jeffrey and Moore met at Chalk-Farm. The duel was prevented by the interference of the magistracy; and, on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evapor Dark roll'd the sympathetic waves of Forth, "My son," she cried, "ne'er thirst for gore again, Boast of thy country, and Britannia's guide! ated. This incident gave occasion to much waggery in the daily prints. [The above note was struck out of the fifth edition, and the following, after being submitted to Mr. Moore, substi tuted in its place:-"I am informed that Mr. Moore published at the time a disavowal of the statements in the newspapers, as far as regarded himself; and, in justice to him, I mention this circumstance. As I never heard of it before, I cannot state the particulars, and was only made acquainted with the fact very lately. Nov. 4, 1811.”—L. E.] (7) In the original manuscript, the line was- "Half Tweed combined his waves to form a tear." Dallas.-P. E. (8) The Tweed here behaved with proper decorum; it would have been highly reprehensible in the English half of the river to have shown the smallest symptom of apprehension. (9) This display of sympathy on the part of the Tolbooth (the principal prison in Edinburgh), which truly seems to have been most affected on this occasion, is much to be commended. It was to be apprehended, that the many unhappy criminals executed in the front might have rendered the edifice more callous. She is said to be of the softer sex, because her delicacy of feeling on this day was truly feminine, though, like most feminine impulses, perhaps a little selfish. (10) His lordship has been much abroad, is a member of the Athenian Society, and reviewer of Gell's Topography of Troy.-[George Hamilton Gordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen, K.T., F.R.S., and P.S.A. In 1822, his Lordship pablished an Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture.-L. E.] |