The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 67

My Dear Webster,--I am, you know, a detestable correspondent, and write to no one person whatever; you therefore cannot attribute my silence to any thing but want of good breeding or good taste, and not to any more atrocious cause; and as I confess the fault to be entirely mine--why--you will pardon it.

I have ordered a copy of the 'Giaour' (which is nearly doubled in quant.i.ty in this edition) to be sent, and I will first scribble my name in the t.i.tle page. Many and sincere thanks for your good opinion of book, and (I hope to add) author.

Rushton shall attend you whenever you please, though I should like him to stay a few weeks, and help my other people in forwarding my chattels.

Your taking him is no less a favor to me than him; and I trust he will behave well. If not, your remedy is very simple; only don't let him be idle; honest I am sure he is, and I believe good-hearted and quiet. No pains has been spared, and a good deal of expense incurred in his education; accounts and mensuration, etc., he ought to know, and I believe he does.

I write this near London, but your answer will reach me better in Bennet Street, etc. (as before). I am going very soon, and if you would do the same thing--as far as Sicily--I am sure you would not be sorry. My sister, Mrs. L. goes with me--her spouse is obliged to retrench for a few years (but _he_ stays at home); so that his _link boy_ prophecy (if ever he made it) recoils upon himself.

I am truly glad to hear of Lady Frances's good health. Have you added to your family? Pray make my best respects acceptable to her Ladys.h.i.+p.

Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear from you as soon and as fully as you please. Ever most truly yours,

BYRON.

322.--To Thomas Moore.

Bennet Street, August 22, 1813.

As our late--I might say, deceased--correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, _paulo majora_, prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first--criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood [1].

Mad'e. de Stael Holstein has lost one of her young barons [2], who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,--kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be,--but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could--write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance--and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.

In a "mail-coach copy" of the _Edinburgh_ [3] I perceive _The Giaour_ is second article. The numbers are still in the Leith smack--_pray which way is the wind?_ The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey _in love_ [4];--you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several _quarters, eperdument amoureux_. Seriously--as Winifred Jenkins [5]

says of Lismahago--Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) "has done the handsome thing by me," and I say _nothing_. But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By the by, I was call'd _in_ the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and--after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one's fellow-creatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for nothing,--I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after [6].

One was a peer, the other a friend unt.i.tled, and both fond of high play;--and one, I can swear for, though very mild, "not fearful," and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane. They both conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of _pain_ as soon as I could.

There is an American _Life_ of G. F. Cooke [7], _Scurra_ deceased, lately published. Such a book!--I believe, since _Drunken Barnaby's Journal_ [8] nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and tap-room--drams and the drama--brandy, whisky-punch, and, _latterly_, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous,--first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless;--but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are too regularly registered.

All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very perplexing--not so much for the thing itself as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places, even from England. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly spent on sh.o.r.e as in the s.h.i.+p; but one likes to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;--not stay, if I can help it, but where to go? Sligo is for the North;--a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a m.u.f.f, or else tumbling into one's neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief! If the winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller?--Give me a _sun_, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and _my_ Heaven is as easily made as your Persian's [9].

_The Giaour_ is now a thousand and odd lines. "Lord f.a.n.n.y spins a thousand such a day," [10] eh, Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,

BYRON.

P. S.--I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant s.e.x; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, sc.r.a.pe [11] than any of the last twelve months,--and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women.

I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left Newstead, you reside near it. Did you ever see it? _do_--but don't tell me that you like it. If I had known of such intellectual neighbourhood, I don't think I should have quitted it. You could have come over so often, as a bachelor,--for it was a thorough bachelor's mansion--plenty of wine and such sordid sensualities--with books enough, room enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except the la.s.ses) that would have suited you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had built myself a bath and a _vault_--and now I sha'n't even be buried in it. It is odd that we can't even be certain of a _grave_, at least a particular one. I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there, which I can repeat almost now,--and asking all kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see him--and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with that volume. Adieu--I commit you to the care of the G.o.ds--Hindoo, Scandinavian, and h.e.l.lenic!

P.S. 2d.--There is an excellent review of Grimm's _Correspondence_ and Madame de Stael in this No. of the _E[dinburgh] R[eview]_ [12]. Jeffrey, himself, was my critic last year; but this is, I believe, by another hand. I hope you are going on with your _grand coup_--pray do--or that d.a.m.ned Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of his poem in MS., and he really surpa.s.ses every thing beneath Ta.s.so. Hodgson is translating him _against_ another bard. You and (I believe Rogers,) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be referred to as judges between the twain,--that is, if you accept the office. Conceive our different opinions! I think we, most of us (I am talking very impudently, you will think--_us_, indeed!) have a way of our own,--at least, you and Scott certainly have.

[Footnote 1: The fight, in which Harry Harmer, "the Coppersmith"

(1784-1834), beat Jack Ford, took place at St. Nicholas, near Margate, August 23, 1813.

Francis Charles Seymour Conway, Earl of Yarmouth (1777-1842), succeeded his father as second Marquis of Hertford in 1822. The colossal libertinism and patrician splendour of his life inspired Disraeli to paint him as "Monmouth" in 'Coningsby', and Thackeray as "Steyne" in 'Vanity Fair'. He married, in 1798, Maria f.a.gniani, claimed as a daughter by George Selwyn and by "Old Q.," and enriched by both.

Yarmouth, as an intimate friend of the Regent, and the son of the Prince's female favourite, was the b.u.t.t of Moore and the Whig satirists.

Byron gibes at Yarmouth's red whiskers, which helped to gain him the name of "Red Herrings" in the 'Waltz', line 142, 'note' 1. Yarmouth, like Byron, patronized the fancy, and, like him also, was a frequenter of Manton's shooting-gallery in Davies Street; but there is no record of their being acquainted, though the house, which Byron occupied (13, Piccadilly Terrace) during his brief married life, was in the occupation of Lord Yarmouth before Byron took it from the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re.]

[Footnote 2: Albert de Stael

"led an irregular life, and met a deplorable death at Doberan, a small city of the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, a favourite resort in summer for bathing, gambling, etc. Some officers of the etat-major of Bernadotte had gone to try their luck in this place of play and pleasure. They quarrelled over some louis, and a duel immediately ensued. I well remember that the Grand-Duke Paul of Mecklenburg-Schwerin told me he was there at the time, and, while walking with his tutors in the park, suddenly heard the clinking of swords in a neighbouring thicket. They ran to the place, and reached it just in time to see the head of Albert fall, cleft by one of those long and formidable sabres which were carried by the Prussian cavalry."

The above pa.s.sage is quoted from the unpublished 'Souvenirs' of M.

Pictet de Sergy, given by A. Stevens in his 'Life of Madame de Stael', vol. ii. pp. 204, 205.]

[Footnote 3: Only special copies of books published in Edinburgh came to London by coach: the bulk was forwarded in Leith smacks.

In the 'Edinburgh Review' for July, 1813, the 'Giaour' was reviewed as a poem "full of spirit, character, and originality," and producing an effect at once "powerful and pathetic." But the reviewer considers that "energy of character and intensity of emotion... presented in combination with worthlessness and guilt," are "most powerful corrupters and perverters of our moral nature," and he deplores Byron's exclusive devotion to gloomy and revolting subjects.]

[Footnote 4: Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) succeeded Sidney Smith as editor of the 'Edinburgh Review' (founded 1802), and held the editors.h.i.+p till 1829. The first number of the 'Review', says Francis Horner, brought to light "the genius of that little man." During the first six years of its existence, he wrote upwards of seventy articles. At the same time, he was a successful lawyer. Called to the Scottish Bar in 1794, he became successively Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (1829), Lord Advocate (1830), and a Judge of the Court of Sessions (1834) with the t.i.tle of Lord Jeffrey. He married, as his second wife, at New York, in October, 1813, Charlotte Wilkes, a grandniece of John Wilkes.

Jeffrey is described at considerable length by Ticknor, in a letter, dated February 8, 1814 ('Life of G. Ticknor', vol. i. pp. 43-47):

"You are to imagine, then, before you a short, stout, little gentleman, about five and a half feet high, with a very red face, black hair, and black eyes. You are to suppose him to possess a very gay and animated countenance, and you are to see in him all the restlessness of a will-o'-wisp ... He enters a room with a countenance so satisfied, and a step so light and almost fantastic, that all your previous impressions of the dignity and severity of the 'Edinburgh Review' are immediately put to flight ... It is not possible, however, to be long in his presence without understanding something of his real character, for the same promptness and a.s.surance which mark his entrance into a room carry him at once into conversation. The moment a topic is suggested--no matter what or by whom--he comes forth, and the first thing you observe is his singular fluency," etc., etc.

By the side of this description may be set that given of Jeffrey by Francis Horner ('Life of Jeffrey', 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 212):

"His manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man whose real character is so much the reverse."

The secret of his success, both as editor and critic, is that he made the 'Review' the expression of the Whig character, both in its excellences and its limitations. A man of clear, discriminating mind, of cool and placid judgment, he refused to accept the existing state of things, was persuaded that it might be safely improved, saw the practical steps required, and had the courage of his convictions. He was suspicious of large principles, somewhat callous to enthusiasm or sentiment, intolerant of whatever was incapable of precise expression.

His intellectual strength lay not in the possession of one great gift, but in the simultaneous exercise of several well-adjusted talents. His literary taste was correct; but it consisted rather in recognizing compliance with accepted rules of proved utility than in the readiness to appreciate novelties of thought and treatment. Hence his criticism, though useful for his time, has not endured beyond his day. It may be doubted whether more could be expected from a man who was eminently successful in addressing a jury. "He might not know his subject, but he knew his readers" (Bagehot's 'Literary Studies', vol. i. p. 30).

Byron, believing him to have been the author of the famous article on 'Hours of Idleness', attacked him bitterly in 'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers'; (lines 460-528). He afterwards recognized his error. 'Don Juan' (Canto X. stanza xvi.) expresses his mature opinion of a critic who, whatever may have been his faults, was as absolutely honest as political prejudice would permit:

"And all our little feuds, at least all 'mine', Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe (As far as rhyme and criticism combine To make such puppets of us things below), Are over; Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'

I do not know you, and may never know Your face--but you have acted, on the whole, Most n.o.bly; and I own it from my soul."

Jeffrey reviewed 'Childe Harold' in the 'Edinburgh Review', No. 38, art.

10; the 'Giaour', No. 42, art. 2; the 'Corsair' and 'Bride of Abydos', No. 45, art. 9; Byron's 'Poetry', No. 54, art. I; 'Manfred', No. 56, art. 7; 'Beppo', No. 58, art. 2; 'Marino Faliero', No. 70, art. I; Byron's 'Tragedies', No. 72, art. 5.]