The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 93

SOUTHEY.--WORDSWORTH.--COLERIDGE.

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There is a triangular _Gradus ad Parna.s.sum_!--the names are too numerous for the base of the triangle. Poor Thurlow has gone wild about the poetry of Queen Bess's reign--_c'est dommage_. I have ranked the names upon my triangle more upon what I believe popular opinion, than any decided opinion of my own. For, to me, some of Moore's last _Erin_ sparks--"As a beam o'er the face of the waters"--"When he who adores thee"--"Oh blame not"--and "Oh breathe not his name"--are worth all the Epics that ever were composed.

Rogers thinks the 'Quarterly' will attack me next. Let them. I have been "peppered so highly" in my time, _both_ ways, that it must be cayenne or aloes to make me taste. I can sincerely say, that I am not very much alive _now_ to criticism. But--in tracing this--I rather believe that it proceeds from my not attaching that importance to authors.h.i.+p which many do, and which, when young, I did also. "One gets tired of every thing, my angel," says Valmont [6].

The "angels" are the only things of which I am not a little sick--but I do think the preference of _writers_ to _agents_--the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others--a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness. Who would write, who had any thing better to do? "Action--action--action"--said Demosthenes: "Actions--actions," I say, and not writing,--least of all, rhyme. Look at the querulous and monotonous lives of the "genus;"--except Cervantes, Ta.s.so, Dante, Ariosto, Kleist (who were brave and active citizens), aeschylus, Sophocles, and some other of the antiques also--what a worthless, idle brood it is!

[Footnote 1: 'Macbeth', act iii. sc. 4--

"Whole as the marble, founded as the rock."]

[Footnote 2: Richard Sharp (1759-1835), a wealthy hat-manufacturer, was a prominent figure in political and literary life. A consistent Whig, he was one of the "Friends of the People," and in the House of Commons (1806-12) was a recognized authority on questions of finance.

Essentially a "club-able man," he was a member of many clubs, both literary and political. In Park Lane and at Mickleham he gathered round him many friends--Rogers, Moore, Mackintosh, Macaulay, Coleridge, Horner, Grattan, Horne Tooke, and Sydney Smith, who was so frequently his guest in the country that he was called the "Bishop of Mickleham."

Horner (May 20, 1816) speaks of a visit paid to Sharp in Surrey, in company with Grattan ('Memoirs', vol. ii. p. 355). Ticknor, who, in 1815, breakfasted with Sharp in Park Lane ('Life', vol. i. pp. 55, 56), says of a party of "men of letters:"

"I saw little of them, excepting Mr. Sharp, formerly a Member of Parliament, and who, from his talents in society, has been called 'Conversation Sharp.' He has been made an a.s.sociate of most of the literary clubs in London, from the days of Burke down to the present time. He told me a great many amusing anecdotes of them, and particularly of Burke, Porson, and Grattan, with whom he had been intimate; and occupied the dinner-time as pleasantly as the same number of hours have pa.s.sed with me in England.... 'June 7'.--This morning I breakfasted with Mr. Sharp, and had a continuation of yesterday,--more pleasant accounts of the great men of the present day, and more amusing anecdotes of the generation that has pa.s.sed away."

Miss Berry, who met Sharp often, writes, in her Journal for March 26, 1808 ('Journal', vol. ii. p. 344),

"He is clever, but I should suspect of little real depth of intellect."

Sharp published anonymously a volume of 'Epistles in Verse' (1828).

These were reproduced, with additions, in his 'Letters and Essays', published with his name in 1834. His "Epistle to an Eminent Poet" is evidently addressed to his lifelong friend, Samuel Rogers:

"Yes! thou hast chosen well 'the better part,'

And, for the triumphs of the n.o.blest art, Hast wisely scorn'd the sordid cares of life."]

[Footnote 3: William Windham, of Felbrigg Hall (1750-1810), educated at Eton, Glasgow, and University College, Oxford, became M.P. for Norwich in 1784. In the following year he was made chief secretary to Lord Northington, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Expressing some doubts to Dr.

Johnson whether he possessed the arts necessary for Parliamentary success, the Doctor said, "You will become an able negotiator; a very pretty rascal." He resigned the secretarys.h.i.+p within the year, according to Gibbon, on the plea of ill health. He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1788, Secretary at War from 1794 to 1801, and War and Colonial Secretary, 1806-7.

Windham, a shrewd critic of other speakers, called Pitt's style a "State-paper style," because of its combined dignity and poverty, and "verily believed Mr. Pitt could speak a king's speech off-hand." As a speaker he was himself remarkably effective, a master of ill.u.s.tration and allusion, delighting in "homely Saxon," and affecting provincial words and p.r.o.nunciation. Lord Sheffield, writing to Gibbon, February 5, 1793, says, "As to Windham, I should think he is become the best, at least the most sensible, speaker of the whole." His love of paradox, combined with his political independence and irresolution, gained him the name of "Weatherc.o.c.k Windham;" but he was respected by both sides as an honest politician. Outside the house it was his ambition to be known as a thorough Englishman--a patron of horse-racing, c.o.c.k-fighting, bull-baiting, pugilism, and football. He was also a scholar, a man of wide reading, an admirable talker, and a friend of Miss Berry and of Madame d'Arblay, in whose Diaries he is a prominent figure. His own 'Diary' (1784-1810) was published in 1866.

On the 8th of July, 1809, he saw a fire in Conduit Street, which threatened to spread to the house of his friend North, who possessed a valuable library. In his efforts to save the books, he fell and bruised his hip. A tumour formed, which was removed; but he sank under the operation, and died June 4, 1810.]

[Footnote 4:

"O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead; That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds."

'Romeo and Juliet', act iii. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 5:

"He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."

'Hamlet', act i. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 6: The allusion probably is to 'The Foundling of the Forest'

(1809), by William Dimond the Younger. But no pa.s.sage exactly corresponds to the quotation.]

12, Mezza Notte.

Just returned from dinner with Jackson (the Emperor of Pugilism) and another of the select, at Crib's, the champion's. I drank more than I like, and have brought away some three bottles of very fair claret--for I have no headach. We had Tom Crib up after dinner;--very facetious, though somewhat prolix. He don't like his situation--wants to fight again--pray Pollux (or Castor, if he was the _miller_) he may! Tom has been a sailor--a coal-heaver--and some other genteel profession, before he took to the cestus. Tom has been in action at sea, and is now only three-and-thirty. A great man! has a wife and a mistress, and conversations well--bating some sad omissions and misapplications of the aspirate. Tom is an old friend of mine; I have seen some of his best battles in my nonage. He is now a publican, and, I fear, a sinner;--for Mrs. Crib is on alimony, and Tom's daughter lives with the champion.

_This_ Tom told me,--Tom, having an opinion of my morals, pa.s.sed her off as a legal spouse. Talking of her, he said, "she was the truest of women"--from which I immediately inferred she could _not_ be his wife, and so it turned out.

These panegyrics don't belong to matrimony;--for, if "true," a man don't think it necessary to say so; and if not, the less he says the better.

Crib is the only man except----, I ever heard harangue upon his wife's virtue; and I listened to both with great credence and patience, and stuffed my handkerchief into my mouth, when I found yawning irresistible--By the by, I am yawning now--so, good night to thee.--[Greek: Noairon] [1]

[Footnote 1: It is doubtful whether this is not a mistake for [Greek: Npairon], a variant of [Greek: Mpairon], which is the correct transliteration into modern Greek of 'Byron', but the MS. is destroyed.]

Thursday, November 26.

Awoke a little feverish, but no headach--no dreams neither, thanks to stupor! Two letters; one from----, the other from Lady Melbourne--both excellent in their respective styles.----'s contained also a very pretty lyric on "concealed griefs;" if not her own, yet very like her.

Why did she not say that the stanzas were, or were not, of her own composition? I do not know whether to wish them _hers_ or not. I have no great esteem for poetical persons, particularly women; they have so much of the "ideal" in _practics_, as well as _ethics_.

I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel pa.s.sion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, "Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Co'e." And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject--to _me_--and contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother's _faux pas_ at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their house not far from the Plain-stanes at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in our way.