250—to Lord Holland

Twelfth Night

, act iii. sc. 4.

Dryden's

Annus Mirabilis

, stanza 231:

"A key of fire ran all along the shore,
And lightened all the river with a blaze;
The wakened tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze."

Footnote 3:

Churchill's

Times

, lines 701, 702:

"Bidding in one grand pile this Town expire,
Her towers in dust, her Thames a Lake of fire."

Footnote 4:

Nathaniel Lee (circ. 1653-1692), the dramatist, wrote

The Rival Queens

(1677), in which occurs the line:

"When Greek join'd Greek then was the tug of war."

He collaborated with Dryden in

Œdipus

(1679) and

The Duke of Guise

(1682). His numerous dramas were distinguished, in his own day, for extravagance and bombast. His mind failing, he was confined from 1684 to 1688 in Bethlehem Hospital, where he is said to have composed a tragedy in 25 acts.

Footnote 5:

The Critic

, act i. sc. I. "Sneer," speaking of "Sir Fretful Plagiary," says,

"He is as envious as an old maid verging on the desperation of six and thirty; and then the insidious humility with which he seduces you to give a free opinion on any of his works can be exceeded only by the petulant arrogance with which he is sure to reject your observations."

You will think there is no end to my villanous emendations. The fifth and sixth lines I think to alter thus:

250—to Lord Holland

September 26, 1812.

Ye who beheld—oh sight admired and mourn'd,
Whose radiance mock'd the ruin it adorn'd;

because "night" is repeated the next line but one; and, as it now stands, the conclusion of the paragraph, "worthy him (Shakspeare) and

you

," appears to apply the "

you

" to those only who were out of bed and in Covent Garden market on the night of conflagration, instead of the audience or the discerning public at large, all of whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive and, I hope, comprehensible pronoun.

By the by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom:

When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.

Ceasing

live

is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be first; therefore I will let the old couplet stand, with its half rhymes "sought" and "wrote."

Second thoughts in every thing are best, but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss. I am very anxious on this business, and I do hope that the very trouble I occasion you will plead its own excuse, and that it will tend to show my endeavour to make the most of the time allotted. I wish I had known it months ago, for in that case I had not left one line standing on another. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as much as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began

Childe Harold

, I had never tried Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other.

After

all, my dear Lord, if you can get a decent

Address

elsewhere, don't hesitate to put this aside

Why did you not trust your own Muse? I am very sure she would have been triumphant, and saved the Committee their trouble—"'tis a joyful one" to me, but I fear I shall not satisfy even myself. After the account you sent me, 'tis no compliment to say you would have beaten your candidates; but I mean that, in

that

case, there would have been no occasion for their being beaten at all.

There

are but two decent prologues in our tongue—Pope's to

Cato

—Johnson's to Drury-Lane

⁴

These

, with the epilogue to

The Distrest Mother

⁵

and, I think, one of Goldsmith's

⁶

, and a prologue of old Colman's to Beaumont and Fletcher's

Philaster

⁷

, are the best things of the kind we have.

P.S.—I am diluted to the throat with medicine for the stone; and Boisragon wants me to try a warm climate for the winter—but I won't.

"Such are the names that here your plaudits sought,
When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote."

At present the couplet stands thus:

"Dear are the days that made our annals bright,
Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write."

"I am almost ashamed," writes Lord Holland to Rogers, October 22, 1812 (Clayden's Rogers and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 115), "of having induced Lord Byron to write on so ungrateful a theme (ungrateful in all senses) as the opening of a theatre; he was so good-humoured, took so much pains, corrected so good-humouredly, and produced, as I thought and think, a prologue so superior to the common run of that sort of trumpery, that it is quite vexatious to see him attacked for it. Some part of it is a little too much laboured, and the whole too long; but surely it is good and poetical.... You cannot imagine how I grew to like Lord Byron in my critical intercourse with him, and how much I am convinced that your friendship and judgment have contributed to improve both his understanding and his happiness."

Footnote 3:

Pope wrote the Prologue to Addison's

Cato

when it was acted at Drury Lane, April 13, 1713.

Footnote 4:

Johnson wrote the Prologue when Garrick opened Drury Lane, September 15, 1747, with

The Merchant of Venice

. "It is," says Genest (

English Stage

, vol. iv. p. 231), "the best Prologue that was ever written." Johnson wrote the Prologue to Milton's

Comus

, played at Drury Lane, April 5, 1750; to Goldsmith's

Good-Natured Man

, played at Covent Garden, January 29, 1769; and to Hugh Kelly's

A Word to the Wise

, played at Drury Lane, March 3, 1770.

Footnote 5:

The Distrest Mother

, adapted from Racine by Ambrose Philips, was first played at Drury Lane, March 17, 1712. Addison is supposed (Genest,

English Stage

, vol. ii. p. 496) to have written the epilogue.

Footnote 6:

It is impossible to say to which of Goldsmith's epilogues Byron refers. A previous editor of Moore's

Life, etc

., identified it with his epilogue to Charlotte Lennox's unsuccessful comedy,

The Sister

, which was once played at Covent Garden, February 18, 1769, and then withdrawn.

Footnote 7:

George Colman the Elder, who edited an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (10 vols., 1778), wrote the prologue to

Philaster

, when it was produced at Drury Lane, October 8, 1763.

251—to Lord Holland

Sept. 27, 1812.

believe

this is the third scrawl since yesterday—all about epithets. I think the epithet "intellectual" won't convey the meaning I intend; and though I hate compounds, for the present I will try (

col' permesso

) the word "genius gifted patriots of our line"

instead. Johnson has "many coloured life," a compound —— but they are always best avoided.

However

, it is the only one in ninety lines

, but will be happy to give way to a better. I am ashamed to intrude any more remembrances on Lady H. or letters upon you; but you are, fortunately for me, gifted with patience already too often tried by

Your etc., etc.,

Byron

This, as finally altered, stood thus:

"Immortal names emblazon'd on our line."

Reduced to seventy-three lines.

I have just received your very kind letter, and hope you have met with a second copy corrected and addressed to Holland House,

252—to Lord Holland

September 27, 1812.

with

some omissions and this new couplet,

As glared each rising flash¹, and ghastly shone
The skies with lightnings awful as their own.

As to remarks, I can only say I will alter and acquiesce in any thing.

With

regard to the part which Whitbread

wishes to omit, I believe the

Address

will go off

quicker

without it, though, like the agility of the Hottentot, at the expense of its vigour. I leave to your choice entirely the different specimens of stucco-work; and a

brick

of your own will also much improve my Babylonish turret. I should like Elliston to have it, with your leave. "

Adorn

" and "mourn" are lawful rhymes in Pope's

Death of the Unfortunate Lady

.—Gray has "forlorn" and "mourn"—and "torn" and "mourn" are in Smollett's famous

Tears of Scotland

As there will probably be an outcry amongst the rejected, I hope the Committee will testify (if it be needful) that I sent in nothing to the congress whatever, with or without a name, as your Lordship well knows. All I have to do with it is with and through you; and though I, of course, wish to satisfy the audience, I do assure you my first object is to comply with your request, and in so doing to show the sense I have of the many obligations you have conferred upon me.

Yours ever,

At present:

"As glared the volumed blaze."

Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815) married, in 1789, Elizabeth, daughter of General Sir Charles Grey, created (1806) Earl Grey, and sister of the second Earl Grey, of Reform Bill fame. The son of a wealthy brewer, whose fortune he inherited, he entered Parliament as M.P. for Bedford in 1790. Raikes, in his

Journal

(vol. iv. PP. 50, 51), speaks of him, at the outset of his career, as a staunch Foxite, and "much remarked in society." Comparing him with his brother-in-law Grey, he says,

"Mr. Whitbread was a more steady character; his appearance was heavy; he was fond of agriculture, and was very plain and simple in his tastes. Both were reckoned good debaters in the House, but Grey was the most eloquent."

An independent Whig, and an advocate for peace with France, Whitbread supported Fox against Pitt throughout the Napoleonic War, strongly opposed its renewal after the return of the emperor from Elba, and interested himself in such measures as moderate Parliamentary reform, the amendment of the poor law, national education, and retrenchment of public expenditure. On April 8, 1805, he moved the resolutions which ended in the impeachment of Lord Melville, and took the lead in the inquiries, which were made, March, 1809, into the conduct of the Duke of York. He was a plain, business-like speaker, and a man of such unimpeachable integrity that Mr., afterwards Lord, Plunket, in a speech on the Roman Catholic claims, February 28, 1821, called him "the incorruptible sentinel of the constitution."

When he moved the articles of impeachment against Lord Melville, Canning scribbled the following impromptu parody of his speech (

Anecdotal History of the British Parliament

, p. 222):

"I'm like Archimedes for science and skill;
I'm like a young prince going straight up a hill;
I'm like—(with respect to the fair be it said)—
I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed.
If you ask why the 11th of June I remember
Much better than April, or May, or November,
On that day, my lords, with truth I assure ye,
My sainted progenitor set up his brewery;
On that day, in the morn, he began brewing beer;
On that day, too, commenced his connubial career;]
On that day he received and he issued his bills;
On that day he cleared out all the cash from his tills;
On that day he died, having finished his summing,
And the angels all cried, 'Here's old Whitbread a-coming!'
So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh,
For his beer with an E, and his bier with an I;
And still on that day, in the hottest of weather,
The whole Whitbread family dine all together.—
So long as the beams of this house shall support
The roof which o'ershades this respectable Court,
Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos;
So long as that sun shall shine in at those windows,
My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines,
Mine recorded in journals, his blazoned on signs!"

An active member of Parliament, a large landed proprietor, the manager of his immense brewery in Chiswell Street, Whitbread also found time to reduce to order the chaotic concerns of Drury Lane Theatre. He was, with Lord Holland and Harvey Combe, responsible for the request to Byron to write an address, having first rejected his own address with its "poulterer's description of the Phœnix." He was fond of private theatricals, and Dibdin (

Reminiscences

, vol. ii. pp. 383, 384) gives the play-bill of an entertainment given by him at Southill. In the first play,

The Happy Return

, he took the part of "Margery;" and in the second,

Fatal Duplicity

, that of "Eglantine," a very young lady, loved by "Sir Buntybart" and "Sir Brandywine." In his capacity as manager of Drury Lane, Whitbread is represented by the author of

Accepted Addresses

(1813) as addressing "the M—s of H—d"—

"My Lord,—

"As I now have the honour to be
By Man'ging a Playhouse a double M.P.,
In this my address I think fit to complain
Of certain encroachments on great Drury Lane," etc., etc.

Whitbread strongly supported the cause of the Princess of Wales. Miss Berry (

Journal

, vol. iii. p. 25) says that he dictated the letters which the Princess wrote to the Queen, who had desired that she should not attend the two drawing-rooms to be held in June, 1814. "They were good," she adds, "but too long, and sometimes marked by Whitbread's want of taste."

The strain of his multifarious activities affected both his health and his mind, and he committed suicide July 6, 1815.

Footnote 3:

"By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd."

(Pope.)

"Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn,
Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn."

(Gray.)

"Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn."

(Smollett.)