The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 89

[Footnote 9: The proverbial "Joe" Miller, an actor by profession (1684-1738), was a man of no education, and is said to have been unable to read. His reputation rests mainly on the book of jests compiled after his death, and attributed to him by John Mottley. (First Edition. T.

Read. 1739.)]

[Footnote 10: Messrs. Jeffrey and Lamb are the alpha and omega, the first and last of the 'Edinburgh Review'; the others are mentioned hereafter.

[The MS. Note is as follows:--"Of the young gentlemen who write in the 'E.R.', I have now named the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the best and the worst. The intermediate members are designated with due honour hereafter."]

"This was not just. Neither the heart nor the head of these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented. At the time this was written, I was personally unacquainted with either."--B., 1816.

[Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) founded the 'Edinburgh Review' in conjunction with Sydney Smith, Brougham, and Francis Horner, in 1802. In 1803 he succeeded Smith as editor, and conducted the 'Review' till 1829.

Independence of publishers and high pay to contributors ("Ten guineas a sheet," writes Southey to Scott, June, 1807, "instead of seven pounds for the 'Annual'," 'Life and Corr'., iii. 125) distinguished the new journal from the first. Jeffrey was called to the Scottish bar in 1794, and as an advocate was especially successful with juries. He was constantly employed, and won fame and fortune. In 1829 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, and the following year, when the Whigs came into office, he became Lord Advocate. He sat as M.P. twice for Malton (1830-1832), and, afterwards, for Edinburgh. In 1834 he was appointed a Judge of the Court of Sessions, when he took the t.i.tle of Lord Jeffrey. Byron had attacked Jeffrey in British Bards before his 'Hours of Idleness' had been cut up by the 'Edinburgh', and when the article appeared (Jan. 1808), under the mistaken impression that he was the author, denounced him at large (ll. 460-528) in the first edition of 'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers'. None the less, the great critic did not fail to do ample justice to the poet's mature work, and won from him repeated acknowledgments of his kindness and generosity. (See 'Edinburgh Review', vol. xxii. p. 416, and Byron's comment in his 'Diary' for March 20,1814; 'Life', p. 232. See, too, 'Hints from Horace', ll. 589-626; and 'Don Juan', canto x. st. 11-16, and canto xii.

st. 16. See also Bagehot's 'Literary Studies', vol. i. article I.)]

[Footnote 11: IMITATION.

"Stulta est dementia, c.u.m tot ubique ------occurras periturae parcere chartae."

JUVENAL, 'Sat. I.' ll. 17, 18.]

[Footnote 12: IMITATION.

"Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo, Per quem magnus equos Auruncae flexit alumnus, Si vacat, et placidi rationem admitt.i.tis, edam."

JUVENAL, 'Sat. I'. ll. 19-21.]

[Footnote 13: William Gifford (1756-1826), a self-taught scholar, first a ploughboy, then boy on board a Brixham coaster, afterwards shoemaker's apprentice, was sent by friends to Exeter College, Oxford (1779-81). In the 'Baviad' (1794) and the 'Maeviad' (1795) he attacked many of the smaller writers of the day, who were either silly, like the Della Cruscan School, or discreditable, like Williams, who wrote as "Anthony Pasquin." In his 'Epistle to Peter Pindar' (1800) he laboured to expose the true character of John Wolcot. As editor of the 'Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner' (November, 1797, to July, 1798), he supported the political views of Canning and his friends. As editor of the 'Quarterly Review', from its foundation (February, 1809) to his resignation in September, 1824, he soon rose to literary eminence by his sound sense and adherence to the best models, though his judgments were sometimes narrow-minded and warped by political prejudice. His editions of 'Ma.s.singer' (1805), which superseded that of Monck Mason and Davies (1765), of 'Ben Jonson' (1816), of 'Ford' (1827), are valuable. To his translation of 'Juvenal' (1802) is prefixed his autobiography. His translation of 'Persius' appeared in 1821. To Gifford, Byron usually paid the utmost deference. "Any suggestion of yours, even if it were conveyed," he writes to him, in 1813, "in the less tender text of the 'Baviad', or a Monck Mason note to Ma.s.singer, would be obeyed." See also his letter (September 20, 1821, 'Life', p.531): "I know no praise which would compensate me in my own mind for his censure." Byron was attracted to Gifford, partly by his devotion to the cla.s.sical models of literature, partly by the outspoken frankness of his literary criticism, partly also, perhaps, by his physical deformity.]

[Footnote 14: Henry James Pye (1745-1813), M.P. for Berkshire, and afterwards Police Magistrate for Westminster, held the office of poet laureate from 1790 till his death in 1813, succeeding Thomas Warton, and succeeded by Southey. He published 'Farringdon Hill' in 1774, The 'Progress of Refinement' in 1783, and a translation of Burger's 'Lenore'

in 1795. His name recurs in the 'Vision of Judgment', stanza xcii. Lines 97-102 were inserted in the Fifth Edition.]

[Footnote 15: The first edition of the Satire opened with this line; and Byron's original intention was to prefix the following argument, first published in 'Recollections', by R. C. Dallas (1824):--

"ARGUMENT.

"The poet considereth times past, and their poesy--makes a sudden transition to times present--is incensed against book-makers--revileth Walter Scott for cupidity and ballad-mongering, with notable remarks on Master Southey--complaineth that Master Southey had inflicted three poems, epic and otherwise, on the public--inveigheth against William Wordsworth, but laudeth Mister Coleridge and his elegy on a young a.s.s--is disposed to vituperate Mr. Lewis--and greatly rebuketh Thomas Little (the late) and Lord Strangford--recommendeth Mr. Hayley to turn his attention to prose--and exhorteth the Moravians to glorify Mr.

Grahame--sympathiseth with the Rev. [William Bowles]--and deploreth the melancholy fate of James Montgomery--breaketh out into invective against the Edinburgh Reviewers--calleth them hard names, harpies and the like--apostrophiseth Jeffrey, and prophesieth.--Episode of Jeffrey and Moore, their jeopardy and deliverance; portents on the morn of the combat; the Tweed, Tolbooth, Firth of Forth [and Arthur's Seat], severally shocked; descent of a G.o.ddess to save Jeffrey; incorporation of the bullets with his sinciput and occiput.--Edinburgh Reviews 'en ma.s.se'.--Lord Aberdeen, Herbert, Scott, Hallam, Pillans, Lambe, Sydney Smith, Brougham, etc.--Lord Holland applauded for dinners and translations.--The Drama; Skeffington, Hook, Reynolds, Kenney, Cherry, etc.--Sheridan, Colman, and c.u.mberland called upon [requested, MS.] to write.--Return to poesy--scribblers of all sorts--lords sometimes rhyme; much better not--Hafiz, Rosa Matilda, and X.Y.Z.--Rogers, Campbell, Gifford, etc. true poets--Translators of the Greek Anthology--Crabbe--Darwin's style--Cambridge--Seatonian Prize--Smythe--Hodgson--Oxford--Richards--Poetaloquitur--Conclusion."]

[Footnote 16: Lines 115, 116, were a MS. addition to the printed text of 'British Bards'. An alternative version has been pencilled on the margin:--

"Otway and Congreve mimic scenes had wove And Waller tuned his Lyre to mighty Love."]

[Footnote 17: Thomas Little was the name under which Moore's early poems were published, 'The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.'

(1801). "Twelves" refers to the "duodecimo." Sheets, after printing, are pressed between cold or hot rollers, to impart smoothness of "surface."

Hot rolling is the more expensive process.]

[Footnote 18: Eccles. chapter i. verse 9.]

[Footnote 19: At first sight Byron appears to refer to the lighting of streets by gas, especially as the first shop lighted with it was that of Lardner & Co., at the corner of the Albany (June, 1805), and as lamps were on view at the premises of the Gas Light and c.o.ke Company in Pall Mall from 1808 onwards. But it is almost certain that he alludes to the "sublimating gas" of Dr. Beddoes, which his a.s.sistant, Davy, mentions in his 'Researches' (1800) as nitrous oxide, and which was used by Southey and Coleridge. The same four "wonders" of medical science are depicted in Gillray's caricatures, November, 1801, and May and June, 1802, and are satirized in Christopher Caustic's 'Terrible Tractoration! A Poetical Pet.i.tion against Galvanising Trumpery and the Perkinist.i.t Inst.i.tution' (in 4 cantos, 1803).

Against vaccination, or cow-pox, a brisk war was still being carried on.

Gillray has a likeness of Jenner vaccinating patients.

Metallic "Tractors" were a remedy much advertised at the beginning of the century by an American quack, Benjamin Charles Perkins, founder of the Perkinean Inst.i.tution in London, as a "cure for all Disorders, Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs."

In Galvanism several experiments, conducted by Professor Aldini, nephew of Galvani, are described in the 'Morning Post' for Jan. 6th, Feb. 6th, and Jan. 22nd, 1803. The latter were made on the body of Forster the murderer.

For the allusion to Gas, compare 'Terrible Tractoration', canto 1--

"Beddoes (bless the good doctor) has Sent me a bag full of his gas, Which snuff'd the nose up, makes wit brighter, And eke a dunce an airy writer."]

[Footnote 20: Stott, better known in the 'Morning Post' by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:--('Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia')--

"Princely offspring of Braganza, Erin greets thee with a stanza," etc.

Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:--

"Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surge That lashes Lapland's sounding sh.o.r.e."

Lord have mercy on us! the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" was nothing to this. [The lines "Princely Offspring," headed "Extemporaneous Verse on the expulsion of the Prince Regent from Portugal by Gallic Tyranny,"

were published in the 'Morning Post', Dec. 30, 1807. (See 'post', l.

708, and 'note'.)] ]

[Footnote 21: See p. 317, note 1.]

[Footnote 22: See the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 'pa.s.sim'. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production.

The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' tragedy [('vide The Rehearsal'), 'British Bards'], unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, "'twas his neckverse at Harribee," 'i. e.' the gallows.

The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are 'chefs d'oeuvre' in the improvement of taste.

For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs. CONSTABLE, MURRAY, and MILLER, worshipful Booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money; and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production.

If Mr. SCOTT will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repet.i.tion of Black-Letter Ballad imitations.

[Constable paid Scott a thousand pounds for 'Marmion', and

"offered one fourth of the copyright to Mr. Miller of Albemarle Street, and one fourth to Mr. Murray of Fleet Street (see line 173).