The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 121

[Sub-Footnote A: "The Devil and Jeffrey are here placed ant.i.thetically to G.o.ds and men, such being their usual position, and their due one--according to the facetious saying, 'If G.o.d won't take you, the Devil must;' and I am sure no one durst object to his taking the poetry, which, rejected by Horace, is accepted by Jeffrey. That these gentlemen are in some cases kinder,--the one to countrymen, and the other from his odd propensity to prefer evil to good,--than the 'G.o.ds, men, and columns' of Horace, may be seen by a reference to the review of Campbell's 'Gertrude of Wyoming'; and in No. 31 of the 'Edinburgh Review' (given to me the other day by the captain of an English frigate off Salamis), there is a similar concession to the mediocrity of Jamie Graham's 'British Georgics'. It is fortunate for Campbell, that his fame neither depends on his last poem, nor the puff of the 'Edinburgh Review'. The catalogues of our English are also less fastidious than the pillars of the Roman librarians. A word more with the author of 'Gertrude of Wyoming'. At the end of a poem, and even of a couplet, we have generally 'that unmeaning thing we call a thought;'

so Mr. Campbell concludes with a thought in such a manner as to fulfil the whole of Pope's prescription, and be as 'unmeaning' as the best of his brethren:--

'Because I may not 'stain' with grief The death-song of an Indian chief.'

"When I was in the fifth form, I carried to my master the translation of a chorus in Prometheus, wherein was a pestilent expression about 'staining a voice,' which met with no quarter. Little did I think that Mr. Campbell would have adopted my fifth form 'sublime'--at least in so conspicuous a situation. 'Sorrow' has been 'dry' (in proverbs), and 'wet' (in sonnets), this many a day; and now it ''stains',' and stains a sound, of all feasible things! To be sure, death-songs might have been stained with that same grief to very good purpose, if Outalissi had clapped down his stanzas on wholesome paper for the 'Edinburgh Evening Post', or any other given hyperborean gazette; or if the said Outalissi had been troubled with the slightest second sight of his own notes embodied on the last proof of an overcharged quarto; but as he is supposed to have been an improvisatore on this occasion, and probably to the last tune he ever chanted in this world, it would have done him no discredit to have made his exit with a mouthful of common sense. Talking of ''staining'' (as Caleb Quotem says) 'puts me in mind' of a certain couplet, which Mr. Campbell will find in a writer for whom he, and his school, have no small contempt:--

'E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art--the art to 'blot'!'"

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote lx.x.xiii:

'And mustard rarely pleases in a pie.'

['MS. L. '(a).]]

[Footnote lx.x.xiv:

'At the Sessions'.

['MS. L.' (b), 'in pencil'.] ]

[Footnote lx.x.xv: Lines 647-650--

Whose character contains no glaring fault...

Shall I, I say.

[MS. L. (a).]]

[Footnote lx.x.xvi: After 660--

'But why this hint-what author e'er could stop His poems' progress in a Grocers shop.'

['MS. L. (a).'] ]

[Footnote lx.x.xvii:

'As lame as I am, but a better bard.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote lx.x.xviii:

'Apollo's song the fate of men foretold.'

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote lx.x.xix:

'Have studied with a Master day and night'.

['MS. L. (a, b).']]

[Footnote xc:

'They storm Bolt Court, they publish one and all'.--

['MS. M. erased.']]

[Footnote xci:

'Rogers played this prank'.

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xcii:

'There see their sonnets first--but Spring--hot prest Beholds a Quarto--Tarts must tell the Rest.'

['MS. M. erased.']]

[Footnote xciii:

'To fuddled Esquires or to flippant Lords.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xciv:

'Till lo! that modern Midas of the swains-- Feels his ears lengthen--with the lengthening strains'.--

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote xcv: