The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 92

[Book III. II. 165, 166, Pope wrote, "And makes night," etc.]]

[Footnote 53: See Bowles's late edition of Pope's works, for which he received three hundred pounds. [Twelve hundred guineas.--'British Bards'.] Thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another, than to elevate his own. ["Too savage all this on Bowles," wrote Byron, in 1816, but he afterwards returned to his original sentiments. "Although," he says (Feb. 7, 1821), "I regret having published 'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers', 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 put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, by which the work gained less than Mr. Bowles....

I am grieved to say that, in reading over those lines, I repent of their having so far fallen short of what I meant to express upon the subject of his edition of Pope's works" ('Life', pp. 688, 689). The lines supplied by Hobhouse are here subjoined:--

"Stick to thy sonnets, man!--at least they sell.

Or take the only path that open lies For modern worthies who would hope to rise: Fix on some well-known name, and, bit by bit, Pare off the merits of his worth and wit: On each alike employ the critic's knife, And when a comment fails, prefix a life; Hint certain failings, faults before unknown, Review forgotten lies, and add your own; Let no disease, let no misfortune 'scape, And print, if luckily deformed, his shape: Thus shall the world, quite undeceived at last, Cleave to their present wits, and quit their past; Bards once revered no more with favour view, But give their modern sonneteers their due; Thus with the dead may living merit cope, Thus Bowles may triumph o'er the shade of Pope."]]

[Footnote 54:

"'Helicon' is a mountain, and not a fish-pond. It should have been 'Hippocrene.'"--B., 1816.

[The correction was made in the Fifth Edition.]]

[Footnote 55: 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'.

"All right. I saw some letters of this fellow (Jh. Cottle) to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions, which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of, he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly regret a.s.sailing him, even were it unjust, which it is not--for verily he is an a.s.s."--B., 1816.

[Compare 'Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin'--

"And Cottle, not he whom that Alfred made famous, But Joseph of Bristol, the brother of Amos."

The ident.i.ty of the brothers Cottle appears to have been a matter beneath the notice both of the authors of the 'Anti-Jacobin' and of Byron. Amos Cottle, who died in 1800 (see Lamb's Letter to Coleridge of Oct. 9, 1800; 'Letters of C. Lamb', 1888, i. 140), was the author of a 'Translation of the Edda of Soemund', published in 1797. Joseph Cottle, 'inter alia', published 'Alfred' in 1801, and 'The Fall of Cambria', 1807. An 'Expostulatory Epistle', in which Joseph avenges Amos and solemnly castigates the author of 'Don Juan', was issued in 1819 (see Lamb's Letter to Cottle, Nov. 5, 1819), and was reprinted in the Memoir of Amos Cottle, inserted in his brother's 'Early Recollections of Coleridge' (London, 1837, i. 119). The "unfortunate poetess" was, probably, Ann Yearsley, the Bristol milk-woman. Wordsworth, too (see 'Recollections of the Table-Talk of S. Rogers', 1856, p. 235), dissuaded her from publis.h.i.+ng her poems. Roughness and bitterness were not among Cottle's faults or foibles, and it is possible that Byron misconceived the purport of the correspondence.]]

[Footnote 56: 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 (1754-1824) had this at least in common with Byron--that his 'History of Ancient and Modern Hindostan' was severely attacked in the 'Edinburgh Review'. He published a vindication of his work in 1805. He must have confined his dulness to his poems ('Richmond Hill' (1807), etc.), for his 'Memoirs' (1819) are amusing, and, though otherwise blameless, he left behind him the reputation of an "indiscriminate enjoyment" of literary and other society. Lady Anne Hamilton alludes to him in 'Epics of the Ton' (1807), p. 165--

"Or warmed like Maurice by Museum fire, From Ganges dragged a hurdy-gurdy lyre."

He was a.s.sistant keeper of MSS. at the British Museum from 1799 till his death.]]

[Footnote 57: 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 'Wanderer of Switzerland'

is worth a thousand 'Lyrical Ballads', and at least fifty 'Degraded Epics'.

[James Montgomery (1771-1854) was born in Ayrs.h.i.+re, but settled at Sheffield, where he edited a newspaper, the 'Iris', a radical print, which brought him into conflict with the authorities. His early poems were held up to ridicule in the 'Edinburgh Review' by Jeffrey, in Jan.

1807. It was probably the following pa.s.sage which provoked Byron's note: "When every day is bringing forth some new work from the pen of Scott, Campbell,... Wordsworth, and Southey, it is natural to feel some disgust at the undistinguis.h.i.+ng voracity which can swallow down these... verses to a pillow." The 'Wanderer of Switzerland', which Byron said he preferred to the 'Lyrical Ballads', was published in 1806. The allusion in line 419 is to the first stanza of 'The Lyre'--

"Where the roving rill meand'red Down the green, retiring vale, Poor, forlorn Alaecus wandered, Pale with thoughts--serenely pale."

He is remembered chiefly as the writer of some admirable hymns. ('Vide ante', p. 107, "Answer to a Beautiful Poem," and 'note'.)]

[Footnote 58: Arthur's Seat; the hill which overhangs Edinburgh.]

[Footnote 59: Lines 439-527 are not in the 'MS.' The first draft of the pa.s.sage on Jeffrey, which appears to have found a place in 'British Bards' and to have been afterwards cut out, runs as follows:--

"Who has not heard in this enlightened age, When all can criticise the historic page, Who has not heard in James's Bigot Reign Of Jefferies! monarch of the scourge, and chain, Jefferies the wretch whose pestilential breath, Like the dread Simoom, winged the shaft of Death; The old, the young to Fate remorseless gave Nor spared one victim from the common grave?

"Such was the Judge of James's iron time, When Law was Murder, Mercy was a crime, Till from his throne by weary millions hurled The Despot roamed in Exile through the world.

"Years have rolled on;--in all the lists of Shame, Who now can parallel a Jefferies' name?

With hand less mighty, but with heart as black With voice as willing to decree the Rack, With tongue envenomed, with intentions foul The same in name and character and soul."

The first four lines of the above, which have been erased, are to be found on p. 16 of 'British Bards.' Pages 17, 18, are wanting, and quarto proofs of lines 438-527 have been inserted. Lines 528-539 appear for the first time in the Fifth Edition.]]

[Footnote 60: "Too ferocious--this is mere insanity."--B., 1816. [The comment applies to lines 432-453.]]

[Footnote 61: "All this is bad, because personal."--B., 1816.]

[Footnote 62: In 1806, Messrs. Jeffrey and Moore met at Chalk Farm. The duel was prevented by the interference of the Magistracy; and on examination, the b.a.l.l.s of the pistols were found to have evaporated.

This incident gave occasion to much waggery in the daily prints. [The first four editions read, "the b.a.l.l.s of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants."]

[The following disclaimer to the foregoing note appears in the MS. in Leigh Hunt's copy of the Fourth Edition, 1811. It was first printed in the Fifth Edition:--]

"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 circ.u.mstance. As I never heard of it before, I cannot state the particulars, and was only made acquainted with the fact very lately. November 4, 1811."

[As a matter of fact, it was Jeffrey's pistol that was found to be leadless.]]

[Footnote 63: 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.]

[Footnote 64: This display of sympathy on the part of the Tolbooth (the princ.i.p.al 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 s.e.x, because her delicacy of feeling on this day was truly feminine, though, like most feminine impulses, perhaps a little selfish.]

[Footnote 65: Line 508. For "oat-fed phalanx," the Quarto Proof and Editions 1-4 read "ranks ill.u.s.trious." The correction is made in 'MS'. in the Annotated Edition. It was suggested that the motto of the 'Edinburgh Review' should have been, "Musam tenui meditamur avena."]

[Footnote 66: His Lords.h.i.+p has been much abroad, is a member of the Athenian Society, and reviewer of Gell's 'Topography of Troy'. [George Gordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), published in 1822 'An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture'. His grandfather purchased Gight, the property which Mrs. Byron had sold to pay her husband's debts. This may have been an additional reason for the introduction of his name.]]

[Footnote 67: Mr. Herbert is a translator of Icelandic and other poetry.