Hints From Horace
ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, March. 12, 1811. [i]
Who would not laugh, if Lawrence [1], hired to grace [ii]
His costly canvas with each flattered face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tail? [iii]
Or low Dubost [2]—as once the world has seen—
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems [iv]
The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.
Poets and painters, as all artists know, [v]
May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
But make not monsters spring from gentle dams—
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.
A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends; [vi]
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As Pertness passes with a legal gown: [vii]
Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain [viii]
The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain:
The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,
King's Coll-Cam's stream-stained windows, and old walls:
Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims
To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames. [3]
You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine [ix]—
But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
You plan a vase—it dwindles to a pot;
Then glide down Grub-street—fasting and forgot:
Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till—true.
In fine, to whatsoever you aspire,
Let it at least be simple and entire.
The greater portion of the rhyming tribe [x]
(Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)
Are led astray by some peculiar lure. [xi]
I labour to be brief—become obscure;
One falls while following Elegance too fast;
Another soars, inflated with Bombast;
Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
He spins his subject to Satiety;
Absurdly varying, he at last engraves
Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the waves! [xii]
Unless your care's exact, your judgment nice,
The flight from Folly leads but into Vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.
For galligaskins Slowshears is your man [xiii]
But coats must claim another artisan. [4]
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
As Vulcan's feet to bear Apollo's frame;
Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
Black eyes, black ringlets, but—a bottle nose!
Dear Authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voice, [xiv]
Await the Poet, skilful in his choice;
With native Eloquence he soars along,
Grace in his thoughts, and Music in his song.
Let Judgment teach him wisely to combine
With future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author choose, or that reject,
Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting word. [xv]
Then fear not, if 'tis needful, to produce
Some term unknown, or obsolete in use,
(As Pitt has furnished us a word or two, [5]
Which Lexicographers declined to do;)
So you indeed, with care,—(but be content
To take this license rarely)—may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase; [xvi]
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer Muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt, and Walter Scott?
Since they, by force of rhyme and force of lungs, [xvii]
Enriched our Island's ill-united tongues;
'Tis then—and shall be—lawful to present
Reform in writing, as in Parliament.
As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to Fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though as a Monarch nods, and Commerce calls, [xviii]
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drained, sustain [xix]
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar,
All, all, must perish; but, surviving last,
The love of Letters half preserves the past.
True, some decay, yet not a few revive; [xx] [6]
Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,
As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway [xxi]
Our life and language must alike obey.
The immortal wars which Gods and Angels wage,
Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?
His strain will teach what numbers best belong
To themes celestial told in Epic song. [xxii]
The slow, sad stanza will correctly paint
The Lover's anguish, or the Friend's complaint.
But which deserves the Laurel—Rhyme or Blank? [xxiii]
Which holds on Helicon the higher rank?
Let squabbling critics by themselves dispute
This point, as puzzling as a Chancery suit.
Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt—see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean. [7]
Blank verse is now, with one consent, allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side.
Though mad Almanzor [8] rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;
Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and 'pun' [9] in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point, because they wrote in verse.
But so Thalia pleases to appear, [xxiv]
Poor Virgin! damned some twenty times a year!
Whate'er the scene, let this advice have weight:—
Adapt your language to your Hero's state.
At times Melpomene forgets to groan,
And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone;
Nor unregarded will the act pass by
Where angry Townly [10] "lifts his voice on high."
Again, our Shakespeare limits verse to Kings,
When common prose will serve for common things;
And lively Hal resigns heroic ire, [xxv]—
To "hollaing Hotspur" [11] and his sceptred sire. [xxvi]
'Tis not enough, ye Bards, with all your art,
To polish poems; they must touch the heart:
Where'er the scene be laid, whate'er the song,
Still let it bear the hearer's soul along;
Command your audience or to smile or weep,
Whiche'er may please you—anything but sleep.
The Poet claims our tears; but, by his leave,
Before I shed them, let me see 'him' grieve.
If banished Romeo feigned nor sigh nor tear,
Lulled by his languor, I could sleep or sneer. [xxvii]
Sad words, no doubt, become a serious face,
And men look angry in the proper place.
At double meanings folks seem wondrous sly,
And Sentiment prescribes a pensive eye;
For Nature formed at first the inward man,
And actors copy Nature—when they can.
She bids the beating heart with rapture bound,
Raised to the Stars, or levelled with the ground;
And for Expression's aid, 'tis said, or sung, [xxviii]
She gave our mind's interpreter—the tongue,
Who, worn with use, of late would fain dispense
(At least in theatres) with common sense;
O'erwhelm with sound the Boxes, Gallery, Pit,
And raise a laugh with anything—but Wit.
To skilful writers it will much import,
Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court;
Whether they seek applause by smile or tear,
To draw a Lying Valet, [12] or a Lear, [13]
A sage, or rakish youngster wild from school,
A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull;
All persons please when Nature's voice prevails,
Scottish or Irish, born in Wilts or Wales.
Or follow common fame, or forge a plot; [xxix]
Who cares if mimic heroes lived or not!
One precept serves to regulate the scene:
Make it appear as if it might have been.
If some Drawcansir [14] you aspire to draw,
Present him raving, and above all law:
If female furies in your scheme are planned,
Macbeth's fierce dame is ready to your hand;
For tears and treachery, for good and evil,
Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil!
But if a new design you dare essay,
And freely wander from the beaten way,
True to your characters, till all be past,
Preserve consistency from first to last.
Tis hard [15] to venture where our betters fail, [xxx]
Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;
And yet, perchance,'tis wiser to prefer
A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err;
Yet copy not too closely, but record,
More justly, thought for thought than word for word;
Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways,
But only follow where he merits praise.
For you, young Bard! whom luckless fate may lead [16]
To tremble on the nod of all who read,
Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls, [xxxi]
Beware—for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles!
"Awake a louder and a loftier strain," [17]—
And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?—
He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire
The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit"
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song."[xxxii]
Still to the "midst of things" he hastens on,
As if we witnessed all already done; [xxxiii]
Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean
To raise the subject, or adorn the scene;
Gives, as each page improves upon the sight,
Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness—light;
And truth and fiction with such art compounds,
We know not where to fix their several bounds.
If you would please the Public, deign to hear
What soothes the many-headed monster's ear: [xxxiv]
If your heart triumph when the hands of all
Applaud in thunder at the curtain's fall,
Deserve those plaudits—study Nature's page,
And sketch the striking traits of every age;
While varying Man and varying years unfold
Life's little tale, so oft, so vainly told;
Observe his simple childhood's dawning days,
His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays:
Till time at length the mannish tyro weans,
And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens! [xxxv]
Behold him Freshman! forced no more to groan [xxxvi]
O'er Virgil's [18] devilish verses and his own;
Prayers are too tedious, Lectures too abstruse,
He flies from Tavell's frown to "Fordham's Mews;"
(Unlucky Tavell! [19] doomed to daily cares [xxxvii]
By pugilistic pupils, and by bears,)
Fines, Tutors, tasks, Conventions threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket Plain.
Rough with his elders, with his equals rash,
Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash;
Constant to nought—save hazard and a whore, [xxxviii]
Yet cursing both—for both have made him sore:
Unread (unless since books beguile disease,
The P——x becomes his passage to Degrees);
Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away, [xxxix]
And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.;
Master of Arts! as hells and clubs [20] proclaim, [xl]
Where scarce a blackleg bears a brighter name!
Launched into life, extinct his early fire,
He apes the selfish prudence of his Sire;
Marries for money, chooses friends for rank,
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the Senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow—for himself was there.
Mute, though he votes, unless when called to cheer,
His son's so sharp—he'll see the dog a Peer!
Manhood declines—Age palsies every limb;
He quits the scene—or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves, [xli]
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
Counts cent per cent, and smiles, or vainly frets,
O'er hoards diminished by young Hopeful's debts;
Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
Complete in all life's lessons—but to die;
Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
Commending every time, save times like these;
Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
Expires unwept—is buried—Let him rot!
But from the Drama let me not digress,
Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less. [xlii]
Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred, [xliii]
When what is done is rather seen than heard,
Yet many deeds preserved in History's page
Are better told than acted on the stage;
The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,
And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,
True Briton all beside, I here am French—
Bloodshed 'tis surely better to retrench:
The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;
We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
And find small sympathy in being sick.
Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
Appals an audience with a Monarch's death; [xliv]
To gaze when sable Hubert threats to sear
Young Arthur's eyes, can ours or Nature bear?
A haltered heroine [21] Johnson sought to slay—
We saved Irene, but half damned the play,
And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating times
Stint Metamorphoses to Pantomimes;
And Lewis' [22] self, with all his sprites, would quake
To change Earl Osmond's negro to a snake!
Because, in scenes exciting joy or grief,
We loathe the action which exceeds belief:
And yet, God knows! what may not authors do,
Whose Postscripts prate of dyeing "heroines blue"? [23]
Above all things, Dan Poet, if you can,
Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man,
Nor call a ghost, unless some cursed scrape [xlv]
Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.
Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid,
I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did; [24]
Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,
Rage, love, and aught but moralise—in song.
Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends, [xlvi]
Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!
Napoleon's edicts no embargo lay
On whores—spies—singers—wisely shipped away.
Our giant Capital, whose squares are spread [xlvii]
Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,
In all iniquity is grown so nice,
It scorns amusements which are not of price.
Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear, [xlviii]
Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
His anguish doubling by his own "encore;" [xlix]
Squeezed in "Fop's Alley," [25] jostled by the beaux,
Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes;
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease,
Till the dropped curtain gives a glad release:
Why this, and more, he suffers—can ye guess?—
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress! [26]
So prosper eunuchs from Etruscan schools;
Give us but fiddlers, and they're sure of fools!
Ere scenes were played by many a reverend clerk, [l] [27]
(What harm, if David danced before the ark?) [li]
In Christmas revels, simple country folks
Were pleased with morrice-mumm'ry and coarse jokes.
Improving years, with things no longer known,
Produced blithe Punch and merry Madame Joan,
Who still frisk on with feats so lewdly low, [lii]
'Tis strange Benvolio [28] suffers such a show;
Suppressing peer! to whom each vice gives place, [liii]
Oaths, boxing, begging—all, save rout and race.
Farce followed Comedy, and reached her prime,
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time: [29]
Mad wag! who pardoned none, nor spared the best,
And turned some very serious things to jest.
Nor Church nor State escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the Gown—Priests—Lawyers—Volunteers:
"Alas, poor Yorick!" now for ever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of Kings and Queens,
When "Crononhotonthologos must die," [30]
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
Moschus! with whom once more I hope to sit, [liv]
And smile at folly, if we can't at wit;
Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell,
And bear Swift's motto, "Vive la bagatelle!"
Which charmed our days in each Ægean clime,
As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme.
Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past,
Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last;
But find in thine—like pagan Plato's bed, [lv] [31]
Some merry Manuscript of Mimes, when dead.
Now to the Drama let us bend our eyes,
Where fettered by whig Walpole low she lies; [32]
Corruption foiled her, for she feared her glance;
Decorum left her for an Opera dance!
Yet Chesterfield, [33] whose polished pen inveighs
'Gainst laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays;
Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains,
And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains.
Repeal that act! again let Humour roam
Wild o'er the stage—we've time for tears at home;
Let Archer [34] plant the horns on Sullen's brows,
And Estifania gull her "Copper" [35] spouse;
The moral's scant—but that may be excused,
Men go not to be lectured, but amused.
He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill
Must wear a head in want of Willis' skill; [36]
Aye, but Macheath's example—psha!—no more!
It formed no thieves—the thief was formed before; [37]
And spite of puritans and Collier's curse, [lvi]
Plays make mankind no better, and no worse. [38]
Then spare our stage, ye methodistic men!
Nor burn damned Drury if it rise again. [39]
But why to brain-scorched bigots thus appeal?
Can heavenly Mercy dwell with earthly Zeal?
For times of fire and faggot let them hope!
Times dear alike to puritan or Pope.
As pious Calvin saw Servetus blaze,
So would new sects on newer victims gaze.
E'en now the songs of Solyma begin;
Faith cants, perplexed apologist of Sin!
While the Lord's servant chastens whom he loves,
And Simeon kicks, [40] where Baxter only "shoves."[41]
Whom Nature guides, so writes, that every dunce [lvii],
Enraptured, thinks to do the same at once;
But after inky thumbs and bitten nails [lviii],
And twenty scattered quires, the coxcomb fails.
Let Pastoral be dumb; for who can hope
To match the youthful eclogues of our Pope?
Yet his and Philips' [42] faults, of different kind,
For Art too rude, for Nature too refined, [lix]
Instruct how hard the medium 'tis to hit
'Twixt too much polish and too coarse a wit.
A vulgar scribbler, certes, stands disgraced
In this nice age, when all aspire to taste;
The dirty language, and the noisome jest,
Which pleased in Swift of yore, we now detest;
Proscribed not only in the world polite [lx],
But even too nasty for a City Knight!
Peace to Swift's faults! his wit hath made them pass,
Unmatched by all, save matchless Hudibras!
Whose author is perhaps the first we meet,
Who from our couplet lopped two final feet;
Nor less in merit than the longer line,
This measure moves a favourite of the Nine.
Though at first view eight feet may seem in vain
Formed, save in Ode, to bear a serious strain [lxi],
Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
Heroic rhyme, but most in Love and War,
Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
Are curbed too much by long-recurring rhyme.
But many a skilful judge abhors to see,
What few admire—irregularity.
This some vouchsafe to pardon; but 'tis hard
When such a word contents a British Bard.
And must the Bard his glowing thoughts confine, [lxii]
Lest Censure hover o'er some faulty line?
Remove whate'er a critic may suspect,
To gain the paltry suffrage of "Correct"?
Or prune the spirit of each daring phrase,
To fly from Error, not to merit Praise?
Ye, who seek finished models, never cease [lxiii],
By day and night, to read the works of Greece.
But our good Fathers never bent their brains
To heathen Greek, content with native strains.
The few who read a page, or used a pen,
Were satisfied with Chaucer and old Ben;
The jokes and numbers suited to their taste
Were quaint and careless, anything but chaste;
Yet, whether right or wrong the ancient rules,
It will not do to call our Fathers fools!
Though you and I, who eruditely know
To separate the elegant and low,
Can also, when a hobbling line appears,
Detect with fingers—in default of ears.
In sooth I do not know, or greatly care
To learn, who our first English strollers were;
Or if, till roofs received the vagrant art,
Our Muse, like that of Thespis, kept a cart;
But this is certain, since our Shakespeare's days,
There's pomp enough—if little else—in plays;
Nor will Melpomene ascend her Throne [lxiv]
Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.
Old Comedies still meet with much applause,
Though too licentious for dramatic laws;
At least, we moderns, wisely, 'tis confest,
Curtail, or silence, the lascivious jest [lxv].
Whate'er their follies, and their faults beside,
Our enterprising Bards pass nought untried;
Nor do they merit slight applause who choose
An English subject for an English Muse,
And leave to minds which never dare invent
French flippancy and German sentiment.
Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic, fame,
If all our Bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop, like Pope, to polish by the way? [43]
Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults
O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults [lxvi],
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. 470
With little rhyme, less reason, if you please,
The name of Poet may be got with ease,
So that not tuns of helleboric juice [lxvii]
Shall ever turn your head to any use;
Write but like Wordsworth—live beside a lake,
And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; [44]
Then print your book, once more return to town,
And boys shall hunt your Bardship up and down. [45]
Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight,
To purge in spring—like Bayes [46]—before I write?
If this precaution softened not my bile,
I know no scribbler with a madder style;
But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice)
I cannot purchase Fame at such a price,
I'll labour gratis as a grinders' wheel, [lxviii]
And, blunt myself, give edge to other's steel,
Nor write at all, unless to teach the art
To those rehearsing for the Poet's part;
From Horace show the pleasing paths of song, [lxix],
And from my own example—what is wrong.
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 learned the duty which he owes
To friends and country, and to pardon foes;
Who models his deportment as may best
Accord with Brother, Sire, or Stranger-guest;
Who takes our Laws and Worship as they are,
Nor roars reform for Senate, Church, and Bar;
In practice, rather than loud precept, wise,
Bids not his tongue, but heart, philosophize:
Such is the man the Poet should rehearse,
As joint exemplar of his life and verse.
Sometimes a sprightly wit, and tale well told,
Without much grace, or weight, or art, will hold
A longer empire o'er the public mind
Than sounding trifles, empty, though refined.
Unhappy Greece! thy sons of ancient days
The Muse may celebrate with perfect praise,
Whose generous children narrowed not their hearts
With Commerce, given alone to Arms and Arts. [lxx]
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 [lxxi]
The third, how much will the remainder make?—
"A groat."—"Ah, bravo! Dick hath done the sum! [lxxii]
He'll swell my fifty thousand to a Plum." [47]
They whose young souls receive this rust betimes,
'Tis clear, are fit for anything but rhymes;
And Locke will tell you, that the father's right
Who hides all verses from his children's sight;
For Poets (says this Sage [48], and many more,)
Make sad mechanics with their lyric lore: [lxxiii]
And Delphi now, however rich of old,
Discovers little silver, and less gold,
Because Parnassus, though a Mount divine,
Is poor as Irus, [49] or an Irish mine. [lxxiv] [50]
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. [lxxv]
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;
Maturer years require a little Sense.
To end at once:—that Bard for all is fit [lxxvi]
Who mingles well instruction with his wit;
For him Reviews shall smile; for him o'erflow
The patronage of Paternoster-row;
His book, with Longman's liberal aid, shall pass
(Who ne'er despises books that bring him brass);
Through three long weeks the taste of London lead,
And cross St. George's Channel and the Tweed.
But every thing has faults, nor is't unknown
That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
And wayward voices, at their owner's call,
With all his best endeavours, only squall;
Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
And double-barrels (damn them!) miss their mark. [lxxvii] [51]
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,
But ever twangs the same discordant string,
Give him no quarter, howsoe'er he sing.
Let Havard's [52] fate o'ertake him, who, for once,
Produced a play too dashing for a dunce:
At first none deemed it his; but when his name
Announced the fact—what then?—it lost its fame.
Though all deplore when Milton deigns to doze, [lxxviii]
In a long work 'tis fair to steal repose.
As Pictures, so shall Poems be; some stand
The critic eye, and please when near at hand; [lxxix]
But others at a distance strike the sight;
This seeks the shade, but that demands the light,
Nor dreads the connoisseur's fastidious view,
But, ten times scrutinised, is ten times new.
Parnassian pilgrims! ye whom chance, or choice, [lxxx]
Hath led to listen to the Muse's voice,
Receive this counsel, and be timely wise;
Few reach the Summit which before you lies.
Our Church and State, our Courts and Camps, concede
Reward to very moderate heads indeed!
In these plain common sense will travel far;
All are not Erskines who mislead the Bar: [lxxxi] [53]
But Poesy between the best and worst
No medium knows; you must be last or first;
For middling Poets' miserable volumes
Are damned alike by Gods, and Men, and Columns. [lxxxii]
Again, my Jeffrey—as that sound inspires, [54]
How wakes my bosom to its wonted fires!
Fires, such as gentle Caledonians feel
When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel,
Or mild Eclectics, [55] when some, worse than Turks,
Would rob poor Faith to decorate "Good Works."
Such are the genial feelings them canst claim—
My Falcon flies not at ignoble game.
Mightiest of all Dunedin's beasts of chase!
For thee my Pegasus would mend his pace.
Arise, my Jeffrey! or my inkless pen
Shall never blunt its edge on meaner men;
Till thee or thine mine evil eye discerns,
"Alas! I cannot strike at wretched kernes." [56]
Inhuman Saxon! wilt thou then resign
A Muse and heart by choice so wholly thine?
Dear d—d contemner of my schoolboy songs,
Hast thou no vengeance for my Manhood's wrongs?
If unprovoked thou once could bid me bleed,
Hast thou no weapon for my daring deed?
What! not a word!—and am I then so low?
Wilt thou forbear, who never spared a foe?
Hast thou no wrath, or wish to give it vent?
No wit for Nobles, Dunces by descent?
No jest on "minors," quibbles on a name, [57]
Nor one facetious paragraph of blame?
Is it for this on Ilion I have stood,
And thought of Homer less than Holyrood?
On shore of Euxine or Ægean sea,
My hate, untravelled, fondly turned to thee.
Ah! let me cease! in vain my bosom burns,
From Corydon unkind Alexis turns: [58]
Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego,
Nor woo that anger which he will not show.
What then?—Edina starves some lanker son,
To write an article thou canst not shun;
Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found,
As bold in Billingsgate, though less renowned.
As if at table some discordant dish, [59]
Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish;
As oil in lieu of butter men decry,
And poppies please not in a modern pie; [lxxxiii]
If all such mixtures then be half a crime,
We must have Excellence to relish rhyme.
Mere roast and boiled no Epicure invites;
Thus Poetry disgusts, or else delights.
Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun:
Will he who swims not to the river run?
And men unpractised in exchanging knocks
Must go to Jackson [60] ere they dare to box.
Whate'er the weapon, cudgel, fist, or foil,
None reach expertness without years of toil;
But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease,
Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please.
Why not?—shall I, thus qualified to sit
For rotten boroughs, never show my wit?
Shall I, whose fathers with the "Quorum" sate, [lxxxiv]
And lived in freedom on a fair estate;
Who left me heir, with stables, kennels, packs, [lxxxv]
To 'all' their income, and to—'twice' its tax;
Whose form and pedigree have scarce a fault,
Shall I, I say, suppress my Attic Salt?
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.
And hark'ye, Southey! [61] pray—but don't be vexed—
Burn all your last three works—and half the next.
But why this vain advice? once published, books
Can never be recalled—from pastry-cooks! [lxxxvi]
Though "Madoc," with "Pucelle," [62] instead of Punk,
May travel back to Quito—on a trunk! [63]
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; [64]
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;
Abolished cuckoldom with much applause,
Called 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-established Board of Joint Controls [65]
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 warred,
(A limping leader, but a lofty bard) [lxxxvii]
Though walled Ithome had resisted long,
Reduced the fortress by the force of song.
When Oracles prevailed, in times of old,
In song alone Apollo's will was told. [lxxxviii]
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 wooed; [66]
In turns she'll seem a Paphian, or a prude;
Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright,
Mild as the same upon the second night;
Wild as the wife of Alderman or Peer,
Now for His Grace, and now a grenadier!
Her eyes beseem, her heart belies, her zone—
Ice in a crowd—and Lava when alone.
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 strain,
Yet Art and Nature joined 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 called 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 followed Music through her farthest flight; [lxxxix]
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, [xc] [67]
They leap the counter, and they leave the stall.
Provincial Maidens, men of high command,
Yea! Baronets have inked the bloody hand!
Cash cannot quell them; Pollio played this prank, [xci]
(Then Phoebus first found credit in a Bank!)
Not all the living only, but the dead,
Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' Head; [68]
Damned all their days, they posthumously thrive,
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Reviews record this epidemic crime,
Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme.
Alas! woe worth the scribbler! often seen
In Morning Post, or Monthly Magazine.
There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot pressed, [xcii]
Behold a Quarto!—Tarts must tell the rest.
Then leave, ye wise, the Lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords, [cxiii]
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
The Cobbler-Laureats [69] sing to Capel Lofft! [70]
Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears, [xciv]
Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears! [xcv]
There lives one Druid, who prepares in time [71]
'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;
Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse,
To publish faults which Friendship should excuse.
If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach
More polished usage of his parts of speech.
But what is shame, or what is aught to him? [xcvi]
He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim.
Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate,
Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;
Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon
The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.
Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,
Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town:
If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man—
May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be—sold!
Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now, [72]
In modern Physics, we can scarce allow), [xcvii]
Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
Some rhyming Peer—there's plenty of the sort—[xcviii] [73]
All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his Chaplain's yawn!)
Condemn the unlucky Curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the Rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.
Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
(The Lord forgive him!) "Bravo! Grand! Divine!"
Hoarse with those praises (which, by Flatt'ry fed, [xcix]
Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye, [c]
As when the dying vicar will not die!
Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;—
But all Dissemblers overact their part.
Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme," [74]
Believe not all who laud your false "sublime;"
But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
"Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,"
And, after fruitless efforts, you return
Without amendment, and he answers, "Burn!"
That instant throw your paper in the fire,
Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
But (if true Bard!) you scorn to condescend, [ci]
And will not alter what you can't defend,
If you will breed this Bastard of your Brains, [75]
We'll have no words—I've only lost my pains.
Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought,
As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
No matter, throw your ornaments aside,—
Better let him than all the world deride.
Give light to passages too much in shade,
Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;
Your friend's a "Johnson," not to leave one word,
However trifling, which may seem absurd;
Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
And furnish food for critics, or their quills. [76]
As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune,
Or the sad influence of the angry Moon,
All men avoid bad writers' ready tongues,
As yawning waiters fly [77] Fitzscribble's lungs; [cii]
Yet on he mouths—ten minutes—tedious each [ciii] [78]
As Prelate's homily, or placeman's speech;
Long as the last years of a lingering lease,
When Riot pauses until Rents increase.
While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays
O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented ways,
If by some chance he walks into a well,
And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,
"A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!"
Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
For there his carcass he might freely fling, [civ]
From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.
Though this has happened to more Bards than one;
I'll tell you Budgell's story,—and have done.
Budgell, a rogue and rhymester, for no good,
(Unless his case be much misunderstood)
When teased with creditors' continual claims,
"To die like Cato," [79] leapt into the Thames!
And therefore be it lawful through the town
For any Bard to poison, hang, or drown.
Who saves the intended Suicide receives
Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves; [cv]
And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose
The Glory of that death they freely choose.
Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse [cvi]
Prick not the Poet's conscience as a curse;
Dosed [80] with vile drams on Sunday he was found,
Or got a child on consecrated ground!
And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage—
Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit:
But 'him', unhappy! whom he seizes,—'him'
He flays with Recitation limb by limb;
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach,
And gorges like a Lawyer—or a Leech.
[The last page of 'MS. M.' is dated—
BYRON,
Capuchin Convent,
Athens. 'March 14th, 1811'.
The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is also inscribed on the last page:
"722 lines, and 4 inserted after and now counted, in all 726.—B.
"Since this several lines are added.—B. June 14th, 1811.
"Copied fair at Malta, May 3rd, 1811.—B."
BYRON,
'March 11th and 12th',
Athens. 1811.
['MS. L. (a)'.]
BYRON, 'March 14th, 1811.'
Athens, Capuchin Convent.
['MS. L. (b)'.]]
[Footnote 1: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) succeeded West as P.R.A. in 1820. Benjamin West (1738-1820) had been elected P.R.A. in 1792, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds.]
[Footnote 2: In an English newspaper, which finds its way abroad wherever there are Englishmen, I read an account of this dirty dauber's caricature of Mr. H—-as a "beast," and the consequent action, etc. The circumstance is, probably, too well known to require further comment. [Thomas Hope (1770-1831) was celebrated for his collections of pictures, sculpture, and bric-à-brac. He was the author of Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek, etc., which was attributed to Byron, and, according to Lady Blessington, excited his envy. "Low Dubost" was a French painter, who, in revenge for some fancied injustice, caricatured Hope and his wife as Beauty and the Beast. An exhibition of the sketch is said to have brought in from twenty to thirty pounds a week. A brother of Mrs. Hope (Louisa Beresford, daughter of Lord Decies, Archbishop of Tuam) mutilated the picture, and, an action having been brought, was ordered to pay a nominal sum of five pounds. Dubost's academy portrait of Mrs. Hope did not please Peter Pindar.
"In Mistress Hope, Monsieur Dubost!
Thy Genius yieldeth up the Ghost."
Works (1812), v. 372.]]
[Footnote 3:
"While pure Description held the place of Sense."—
Pope, Prol. to the Sat., L. 148.
"While Mr. Sol decked out all so glorious
Shines like a Beau in his Birthday Embroidery."
[Fielding, Tom Thumb, act i. sc. I.]—[MS. M.]
"Fas est et ab Hoste doceri." In the 7th Art. of the 31st No. of the Edinburgh Review (vol. xvi. Ap. 1810) the "Observations" of an Oxford Tutor are compared to "Children's Cradles" (page 181), then to a "Barndoor fowl flying" (page 182), then the man himself to "a Coach-horse on the Trottoir" (page 185) etc., etc., with a variety of other conundrums all tending to prove that the ingenuity of comparison increases in proportion to the dissimilarity between the things compared.—[MS. L. (b) erased.]]
[Footnote 4: Mere common mortals were commonly content with one Taylor and with one bill, but the more particular gentlemen found it impossible to confide their lower garments to the makers of their body clothes. I speak of the beginning of 1809: what reform may have since taken place I neither know, nor desire to know.—[MSS. L. (b), M.]]
[Footnote 5: Mr. Pitt was liberal in his additions to our Parliamentary tongue; as may be seen in many publications, particularly the 'Edinburgh Review'.
[The reference may be to financial terms, such as sinking fund (a phrase not introduced by Pitt), the English equivalent of 'caisse d'amortissement', or income tax ('impôt sur le revenu'), or to actual French words such as 'chouannerie, projet', etc. But Pitt's "additions" are unnoticed by Frere and other reporters and critics of his speeches. For a satirical description of Pitt's words, "which are finer and longer than can be conceived," see 'Rolliad', 1799; 'Political Miscellanies', p. 421; and 'Political Eclogues', p. 195.
"And Billy best of all things loves—a trope."
Compare, too, Peter Pindar, "To Sylvanus Urban," 'Works' (1812), ii. 259.
"Lycurgus Pitt whose penetrating eyes
Behold the fount of Freedom in excise,
Whose 'patriot' logic possibly maintains
The 'identity' of 'liberty' and 'chains'."]]
[Footnote 6: Old ballads, old plays, and old women's stories, are at present in as much request as old wine or new speeches. In fact, this is the millennium of black letter: thanks to our Hebers, Webers, and Scotts!
[Richard Heber (1773-1833), book-collector and man of letters, was half-brother of the Bishop of Calcutta. He edited, 'inter alia', 'Specimens of the Early English Poets', by George Ellis, 3 vols., London: 1811.
W. H. Weber (1783-1818), a German by birth, was employed by Sir Walter
Scott as an amanuensis and "searcher." He edited, in 1810, 'Metrical
Romances of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries', a work described by
Southey ('Letters', ii. 308) as "admirably edited, exceedingly curious,
and after my own heart." He also published editions of Ford, and
Beaumont and Fletcher, which were adversely criticized by Gifford. For
an account of his relations to Scott and of his melancholy end, see
Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' (1871), p. 251.]]
[Footnote 7: 'Mac Flecknoe', the 'Dunciad', and all Swift's lampooning ballads. Whatever their other works may be, these originated in personal feelings, and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the ability of these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts from the personal character of the writers.]
[Footnote 8: 'Almanzor: or the Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards', a Tragedy by John Dryden. The bombastic character of the hero was severely criticized in Dryden's own time, and was defended by him thus:
"'Tis said that Almanzor is no perfect pattern of heroic virtue, that he is a contemner of kings, and that he is made to perform impossibilities. I must therefore avow, in the first place, from whence I took the character. The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer: the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of Mons. Calprenède…. He talks extravagantly in his passion, but if I would take the trouble to quote from Ben Jonson's Cethegus, I could easily show you that the rhodomontades of Almanzor are neither so irrational as his nor so impossible to be put in execution."
'An Essay on Heroic Plays. Works of John Dryden' (1821), iv. 23-25.]
[Footnote 9: With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators, and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition.
["Cicero also," says Addison, "has sprinkled several of his works with them; and in his book on Oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which, upon examination, prove arrant puns."—'Essay on Wit, Works' (1888), ii. 354.]]
[Footnote 10: In Vanbrugh and Gibber's comedy of The Provoked Husband, first played at Drury Lane, January 10, 1728.]]
[Footnote 11:
"And in his ear I'll holla—Mortimer!"
['I Henry IV'., act i. sc. 3.]]
[Footnote 12: Garrick's 'Lying Valet' was played for the first time at
Goodman's Fields, November 30, 1741.]
["Peregrine" is a character in George Colman's 'John Bull', or 'An
Englishman's Fire-Side', Covent Garden. March 5, 1803.] ]
[Footnote 13: I have Johnson's authority for making Lear a monosyllable—
"Perhaps where Lear rav'd or Hamlet died
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride."
["Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet dy'd."
Prologue to 'Irene. Johnson's Works' (1806), i. 168.] and (if it need be mentioned) the 'authority' of the epigram on Barry and Garrick.—[Note 'erased, Proof b, British Museum'.]]
[Footnote 14:
"'Johnson'. Pray, Mr. Bayes, who is that Drawcansir?
'Bayes'. Why, Sir, a great [fierce] hero, that frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good sense, or justice [good manners, justice, or numbers]."
'The Rehearsal', act iv. sc. I.
'The Rehearsal', by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), appeared in 1671. Sprat and others are said to have shared the authorship. So popular was the play that "Drawcansir" passed into a synonime for a braggadocio. It is believed that "Bayes" (that is, of course, "laureate") was meant for a caricature of Dryden: "he himself complains bitterly that it was so." (See 'Lives of the Poets' (1890), i. 386; and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (1876), p. 235, and 'note'.)]]
[Footnote 15:
"Difficile est proprie communia dicere; tuque
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus."
HOR: 'DE ARTE POET': 128-130.
Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Boileau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who can't have taken the same liberty, I should have held "my farthing candle" as awkwardly as another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan "Siècle" induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I therefore offer:
firstly Boileau: "Il est difficile de trailer des sujets qui sont à la portée de tout le monde d'une maniere qui vous les rende propres, ce qui s'appelle s'approprier un sujet par le tour qu'on y donne."
2dly, Batteux: "Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres et individuels aux etres purement possibles."
3dly, Dacier: "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères que tout le monde peut inventer."
Mr. Sévigné's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes, "La chose est bien remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la veritable." But, by way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards, "Le lumineux Dumarsais" made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs again, "dissiper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;" and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation" of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G. from saying any more on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at least as good a scholar as Mr. de Sévigné, has said,
"A little learning is a dangerous thing."
And by the above extract, it appears that a good deal may be rendered as useless to the Proprietors.
[Byron chose the words in question, Difficile,' etc., as a motto for the first five cantos of 'Don Juan']
[Footnote 16: About two years ago a young man named Townsend was announced by Mr. Cumberland, in a review (since deceased) [the 'London Review'], as being engaged in an epic poem to be entitled "Armageddon." The plan and specimen promise much; but I hope neither to offend Mr. Townsend, nor his friends, by recommending to his attention the lines of Horace to which these rhymes allude. If Mr. Townsend succeeds in his undertaking, as there is reason to hope, how much will the world be indebted to Mr. Cumberland for bringing him before the public! But, till that eventful day arrives, it may be doubted whether the premature display of his plan (sublime as the ideas confessedly are) has not,—by raising expectation too high, or diminishing curiosity, by developing his argument,—rather incurred the hazard of injuring Mr. Townsend's future prospects. Mr. Cumberland (whose talents I shall not depreciate by the humble tribute of my praise) and Mr. Townsend must not suppose me actuated by unworthy motives in this suggestion. I wish the author all the success he can wish himself, and shall be truly happy to see epic poetry weighed up from the bathos where it lies sunken with Southey, Cottle, Cowley (Mrs. or Abraham), Ogilvy, Wilkie, Pye, and all the "dull of past and present days." Even if he is not a 'Milton', he may be better than 'Blackmore'; if not a 'Homer', an 'Antimachus'. I should deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from 'envy'; he will soon know mankind well enough not to attribute this expression to malice. [This note was written [at Athens] before the author was apprised of Mr. Cumberland's death [in May, 1811].—'MS'. (See Byron's letter to Dallas, August 27, 1811.) The Rev. George Townsend (1788-1857) published 'Poems' in 1810, and eight books of his 'Armageddon' in 1815. They met with the fate which Byron had predicted. In later life he compiled numerous works of scriptural exegesis. He was a Canon of Durham from 1825 till his death.]]
[Footnote 17: The first line of 'A Spirit of Discovery by Sea', by the
Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, first published in 1805.]
[Footnote 18: Harvey, the 'circulator' of the 'circulation' of the blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say, "the book had a devil." Now such a character as I am copying would probably fling it away also, but rather wish that "the devil had the book;" not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of "Long and Short" is enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life, and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.]
[Footnote 19:
"'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem'."
I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me; and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.—To the above events, "'quæque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui'," all 'times' and 'terms' bear testimony. [The Rev. G.F. Tavell was a fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, during Byron's residence, and owed this notice to the "zeal with which he protested against his juvenile vagaries." During a part of his residence at Trinity, Byron kept a tame bear in his rooms in Neville's Court. (See 'English Bards', l. 973, 'note', and postscript to the Second Edition, 'ante', p. 383. See also letter to Miss Pigot, October 26, 1807.)
The following copy of a bill (no date) tells its own story:—
The Honble. Lord Byron.
To John Clarke.
To Bread & Milk for the Bear deliv'd.} £ 1 9 7 to Haladay … … … }
Cambridge Reve. A Clarke.]]
[Footnote 20: "Hell," a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal. "Club," a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.]
[Footnote 21:
"Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go off the stage alive."
'Boswell's Johnson' [1876, p. 60].
[Irene (first played February 6, 1749) for the future was put to death behind the scenes. The strangling her, contrary to Horace's rule, 'coram populo', was suggested by Garrick. (See Davies' 'Life of Garrick' (1808), i. 157.)]]
[Footnote 22: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). ('Vide English Bards, etc'., l. 265, n. 8.) The character of Hassan, "my misanthropic negro," as Lewis called him, was said by the critics of the day to have been borrowed from Zanga in Young's 'Revenge'. Lewis, in his "Address to the Reader," quoted by Byron (in 'note' 3), defends the originality of the conception.]
[Footnote 23: In the postscript to The Castle Spectre, Mr. Lewis tells us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he could have produced the effect "by making his heroine blue,"—I quote him—"blue he would have made her!" [The Castle Spectre, by M.G. Lewis, Esq., M.P., London, 1798, page 102.]]
[Footnote 24: In 1706 John Dennis, the critic (1657-1734), wrote an 'Essay on the Operas after the Italian manner, which are about to be established on the English Stage'; to show that they were more immoral than the most licentious play.]
[Footnote 25: One of the gangways in the Opera House, where the young men of fashion used to assemble. (See letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820; Life, p. 62.)]
[Footnote 26: In the year 1808, happening at the opera to tread on the toes of a very well-dressed man, I turned round to apologize, when, to my utter astonishment, I recognized the face of the porter of the very hotel where I then lodged in Albemarle Street. So here was a gentleman who ran every morning forty errands for half a crown, throwing away half a guinea at night, besides the expense of his habiliments, and the hire of his "Chapeau de Bras."—[MS. L. (a).]]
[Footnote 27: The first theatrical representations, entitled "Mysteries and Moralities," were generally enacted at Christmas, by monks (as the only persons who could read), and latterly by the clergy and students of the universities. The dramatis personae were usually Adam, Pater Coelestis, Faith, Vice, and sometimes an angel or two; but these were eventually superseded by 'Gammer Gurton's Needle'.—'Vide' Warton's 'History of English Poetry [passim]'.—['MSS. M., L. (b)'.]]
[Footnote 28: 'Benvolio' [Lord Grosvenor, 'MS. L'. ('b')] does not bet; but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little pharisaical. Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for chastity, because 'she herself' did not commit fornication.
[Robert, second Earl Grosvenor (1767-1845), was created Marquis of Westminster in 1831. Like his father, Gifford's patron, the first Earl Grosvenor, he was a breeder of racehorses, and a patron of the turf. As Lord Belgrave, he brought forward a motion for the suppression of Sunday newspapers, June 11, 1799, denouncing them in a violent speech. The motion was lost; but many years after, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, January 2, 1807, he returned to the charge. (See 'Parl. Hist'., 34. 1006, 1010; and 'Parl. Deb'., 8. 286.) (For a skit on Lord Belgrave's sabbatarian views, see Peter Pindar, 'Works' (1812), iv. 519.)]]
[Footnote 29: Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo entertainments, in 'The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures', 1747-8 (see his comedy 'Taste'), were the precursors of 'Mathews at Home', and a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often "spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living persons. Among his better known pieces are 'The Minor' (1760), ridiculing Whitefield and the Methodists, and 'The Mayor of Garratt' (1763), in which he played the part of Sturgeon (Byron used this piece, for an illustration in his speech on the Frame-workers Bill, February 27, 1812). 'The Lyar', first played at Covent Garden, January 12, 1762, was the latest to hold the stage. It was reproduced at the Opera Comique in 1877.]
[Footnote 30: Henry Carey, poet and musician (d. 1743), a natural son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, was the author of Chrononhotonthologos, "the most tragical tragedy ever yet tragedised by any company of tragedians," which was first played at the Haymarket, February 22, 1734. The well-known lines, "Go, call a coach, and let a coach be called," etc., which Scott prefixed to the first chapter of The Antiquary, are from the last scene, in which Bombardinion fights with and kills the King Chrononhotonthologos. But his one achievement was Sally in our Alley, of which he wrote both the words and the music. The authorship of "God Save the King" has been attributed to him, probably under a misapprehension.]
[Footnote 31: Under Plato's pillow a volume of the 'Mimes' of Sophron was found the day he died.—'Vide' Barthélémi, De Pauw, or Diogenes Laërtius, [Lib. iii. p. 168—Chouet 1595] if agreeable. De Pauw calls it a jest-book. Cumberland, in his 'Observer', terms it moral, like the sayings of Publius Syrus.]
[Footnote 32: In 1737 the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre having brought Sir Robert Walpole a farce called 'The Golden Rump', the minister detained the copy. He then made extracts of the most offensive passages, read them to the house, and brought in a bill to limit the number of playhouses and to subject all dramatic writings to the inspection of the Lord Chamberlain. Horace Walpole ascribed 'The Golden Rump' to Fielding, and said that he had found an imperfect copy of the play among his father's papers. But this has been questioned. (See 'A Book of the Play', by Dutton Cook (1881), p. 27.)]]
[Footnote 33: His speech on the Licensing Act [in which he opposed the
Bill], is reckoned one of his most eloquent efforts.
[The following sentences have been extracted from the speech which was delivered:—
"The bill is not only an encroachment upon liberty, it is likewise an encroachment on property. Wit, my lords, is a sort of property; it is the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on…
"Those gentlemen who have any such property are all, I hope, our friends; do not let us subject them to any unnecessary or arbitrary restraint…
"The stage and the press, my lord, are two of our out-sentries; if we remove them, if we hoodwink them, if we throw them into fetters, the enemy may surprise us. Therefore I must now look upon the bill before us as a step for introducing arbitrary power into this kingdom."
Lord Chesterfield's sentiments with regard to laughter are contained in an apophthegm, repeated more than once in his correspondence: "The vulgar laugh aloud, but never smile; on the contrary, people of fashion often smile, but seldom or never laugh aloud."—'Chesterfield's Letters to his Godson', Oxford, 1890, p. 27.]]
[Footnote 34: Archer and Squire Sullen are characters in Farquhar's play (1678-1707), 'The Beaux' Stratagem', March 8, 1707.]]
[Footnote 35: Michael Perez, the "Copper Captain," in [Fletcher's]
'Rule a Wife and Have a Wife' [licensed October 19, 1624].]
[Footnote 36: The Rev. Dr. Francis Willis died in 1807, in the 90th year of his age. He attended George III. in his first attack of madness in 1788. The power of his eye on other persons is illustrated by a story related by Frederick Reynolds ('Life and Times', ii. 23), who describes how Edmund Burke quailed under his look. His son, John Willis, was entrusted with the entire charge of the king in 1811. Compare Shelley's 'Peter Bell the Third', part vi.—
"Let him shave his head:
Where's Dr. Willis?"
(See, too, 'Bland-Burges Papers' (1885), pp. 113-115, and 'Life of
George IV'., by Percy Fitzgerald (1881), ii. 18.)]]
[Footnote 37: Dr. Johnson was of the like opinion.
"Highwaymen and housebreakers," he says, in his Life of Gay, "seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."
'Lives of the Poets', by Samuel Johnson (1890), ii. 266. It was asserted, on the other hand, by Sir John Fielding, the Bow-street magistrate, that on every run of the piece, 'The Beggar's Opera', an increased number of highwaymen were brought to his office; and so strong was his conviction, that in 1772 he remonstrated against the performance with the managers of both the houses.]
[Footnote 38: Jerry Collier's controversy with Congreve, etc., on the subject of the drama, is too well known to require further comment.
[Jeremy Collier (1650-1756), non-juring bishop and divine. The occasion of his controversy with Congreve was the publication of his 'Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage' (1697-8). Congreve, who had been attacked by name, replied in a tract entitled 'Amendments upon Mr. Collier's false and imperfect citations from the' OLD BATCHELEUR, etc.]]
[Footnote 39: A few months after lines 370-381 were added to 'The Hints', in September, 1812, Byron, at the request of Lord Holland, wrote the address delivered on the opening of the theatre, which had been rebuilt after the fire of February 24, 1809. He subsequently joined the Committee of Management]
[Footnote 40: Mr. Simeon is the very bully of beliefs, and castigator of "good works." He is ably supported by John Stickles, a labourer in the same vineyard:—but I say no more, for, according to Johnny in full congregation,'"No hopes for them as laughs."'
[The Rev. Charles Simeon (1758-1836) was the leader of the evangelical movement in Cambridge. The reference may be to the rigour with which he repelled a charge brought against him by Dr. Edwards, the Master of Sidney Sussex, that a sermon which he had preached in November, 1809, savoured of antinomianism. It may be noted that a friend (the Rev. W. Parish), to whom he submitted the MS. of a rejoinder to Pearson's 'Cautions, etc.', advised him to print it, "especially if you should rather keep down a lash or two which might irritate." Simeon was naturally irascible, and, in reply to a friend who had mildly reproved him for some display of temper, signed himself, in humorous penitence, "Charles proud and irritable." (See 'Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Mr. Simeon', by Rev. W. Carus (1847), pp. 195, 282, etc.)]]
[Footnote 41: 'Baxter's Shove to heavy-a—d Christians', the veritable title of a book once in good repute, and likely enough to be so again.
["Baxter" is a slip of the pen. The tract or sermon, 'An Effectual Shove to the heavy-arse Christian', was, according to the title-page, written by William Bunyan, minister of the gospel in South Wales, and "printed for the author" in London in 1768.]]
[Footnote 42: Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749) published his 'Epistle to the Earl of Dorset' and his 'Pastorals' in 1709. It is said that Pope attacked him in his satires in consequence of an article in the 'Guardian', in which the 'Pastorals' were unduly extolled. His verses, addressed to the children of his patron, Lord Carteret, were parodied by Henry Carey, in 'Namby Pamby, or a Panegyric on the New Versification'.]
[Footnote 43: See letters to Murray, Sept. 15, 1817; Jan. 25, 1819; Mar. 29, 1820; Nov. 4, 1820; etc. See also the two 'Letters' against Bowles, written at Ravenna, Feb. 7 and Mar. 21, 1821, in which Byron's enthusiastic reverence for Pope is the dominant note.]
[Footnote 44: As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid [and may be like him a senator, one day or other: no disparagement to the High Court of Parliament.—'MS.L.(b)'], and may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads he crops, viz.—Independence.
[According to the Scholiast, Cassar made his barber Licinus a senator, "quod odisset Pompeium." Blake (see Letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820) was, presumably, Benjamin Blake, a perfumer, who lived at 46, Park Street, Grosvenor Square.]]
[Footnote 45: There was some foundation for this. When Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy called on Daniel Stuart, editor of the 'Courier', at his fine new house in Harley Street, the butler would not admit them further than the hall, and was not a little taken aback when he witnessed
