Dear H.,
tutto tuo
,
BN.
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Je. 9, 1813.
Dear Sir,—I regret much that I have no profane garment to array you
with for the masquerade. As my motions will be uncertain, you need not
write nor send the proofs till my return.
Yours truly,
BN.
P. S.—My wardrobe is out of town—or I could have dressed you as an
Albanian—or a Turk—or an officer—or a Waggoner.
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June 12, 1813.
Dear Sir,—Having occasion to send a servant to London, I will thank you
to inform me whether I left with the other things 3 miniatures in your
care (—if not—I know where to find them), and also to "report
progress" in unpacking the books? The bearer returns this evening.
How does Hobhouse's work go on, or rather off—for that is the essential
part? In
paper, immediately under an advertisement on
"Strictures in the Urethra," I see—most appropriately consequent—a
poem with "
strictures
on Ld B., Mr. Southey and others,"
though I am afraid neither "Mr. S.'s" poetical distemper, nor "mine,"
nor "others," is of the suppressive or stranguary kind. You may read me
the prescription of this kill or cure physician. The medicine is
compounded at White and Cochrane's, Fleet Street. As I have nothing else
to do, I may enjoy it like Sir Fretful, or the Archbishop of Grenada, or
any other personage in like predicament.
that my lacquey returns in the Evening, and that I set out for
Portsmouth
to-morrow. All here are very well, and much pleased with
your politeness and attention during their stay in town.
Believe me, yours truly,
B.
P. S.—Are there anything but books? If so, let those
extras
remain untouched for the present. I trust you have not stumbled on any
more "Aphrodites," and have burnt those. I send you both the
advertisements, but don't send me the first treatise—as I have no
occasion for
Caustic
in that quarter.
In the
Morning Chronicle
(June 10, 1813) appeared
advertisements of the two following books:
- Practical Observations on
the best mode of curing Strictures, etc., with Remarks on Inefficacy,
etc., of Caustic Applications. By William Wadd. Printed for J.
Callow, Soho.
- Modern Poets; a Dialogue in Verse, containing some
Strictures on the Poetry of Lord Byron, Mr. Southey, and Others.
Printed for White, Cochrane, and Co., Fleet Street.
In a note on
Modern Poets
(p. 7) occurs the following passage:
"In English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers the same respectable
corps of critics is successively exhibited, in the course of only ten
lines, under the following significant but somewhat incongruous forms,
viz. (1) Northern Wolves, (2) Harpies, (3) Bloodhounds."
In proof the writer quotes lines 426-437 of the Satire. Then follows a
long review of
Childe Harold
, in which the critic condemns
Harold, the hero, as "an uncouth incumbrance of this flighty Lord;" the
want of "plot ... action and fable, interest, order, end;" and asks:
"Shall he immortal bays aspire to wear
Who immortality from man would tear,
Repress the sigh which hopes a happier home,
And chase the visions of a life to come?"
For Byron's intention to go abroad with Lord and Lady
Oxford, see p. 164,
3.
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[Maidenhead], June 13, 1813.
Dear Sir,—Amongst the books from Bennet St. is a small vol. of
abominable poems by the Earl of Haddington which must not be in ye
Catalogue on Sale—also—a vol. of French Epigrams in the same
predicament.
On the title page of Meletius is an inscription in writing which must be
erased
and made illegible.
I have read the strictures, which are just enough, and not grossly
abusive, in very fair couplets. There is a note against Massinger near
the end, but one cannot quarrel with one's company, at any rate. The
author detects some incongruous figures in a passage of
E. Bds
., page
23., but which edition I do not know. In the
sole
copy in your
possession—I mean the
fifth
edition—you may make these alterations,
that I may profit (though a little too late) by his remarks:—For
"
hellish
instinct," substitute "
brutal
instinct;" "
harpies
" alter
to "
felons
;" and for "blood-hounds" write "hell-hounds." These be
"very bitter words, by my troth," and the alterations not much sweeter;
but as I shall not publish the thing, they can do no harm, but are a
satisfaction to me in the way of amendment. The passage is only 12
lines.
You do not answer me about H.'s book; I want to write to him, and not to
say anything unpleasing. If you direct to Post Office, Portsmouth, till
called
for, I will send and receive your letter.
never told me of
the forthcoming critique on
Columbus
which is not
too
fair; and
I do not think justice quite done to the
Pleasures
, which surely
entitles the author to a higher rank than that assigned to him in the
Quarterly
. But I must not cavil at the decisions of the
invisible
infallibles
; and the article is very well written. The
horror
of "
fragments
"
makes me tremulous for "
The Giaour
;" but you
would publish it—I presume, by this time, to your repentance. But as I
consented, whatever be its fate, I won't now quarrel with you, even
though I detect it in my pastry; but I shall not open a pye without
apprehension for some weeks.
The Books which may be marked G.O. I will carry out.
you know
Clarke's
Naufragia
? I am told that he asserts the
first
volume of
Robinson Crusoe
was
written by the first Lord Oxford, when in the Tower, and
given by him to Defoe; if true, it is a curious anecdote.
Have you got back Lord Brooke's MS.? and what does
Heber say of it? Write to me at Portsmouth.
Ever yours, etc.,
Bn.
Rogers's
Columbus
was reviewed by Ward in the
Quarterly
for March, 1813. The reviewer detects "evident marks of haste" in the
poem.
The Giaour
, like
Columbus
, was written in fragments.
James Stanier Clarke, a Navy Chaplain (1765-1834),
published, in 1805,
Naufragia, or Historical Memoirs of Shipwrecks
. In
that work he does not himself attribute the
first
volume of
Robinson
Crusoe
to Lord Oxford. The following is the passage to which Byron
refers (
Naufragia
, vol. i. pp. 12, 13):
"But before I conclude this
Section, I wish to make the admirers of this Nautical Romance mindful of
a Report, which prevailed many years ago; that Defoe, after all, was not
the real author of
Robinson Crusoe. This assertion is noticed in an
article in the seventh volume of the
Edinburgh Magazine [vol. vii. p.
269]. Dr. Towers, in his
Life of Defoe in the
Biographia, is
inclined to pay no attention to it; but was that writer aware of the
following letter, which also appeared in the
Gentleman's Magazine for
1788? (vol. lviii. part i. p. 208). At least no notice is taken of it in
his
Life of Defoe:
'Dublin, February 25.
Mr. Urban,—In the course of a late conversation with a nobleman of
the first consequence and information in this kingdom, he assured me,
that Mr. Benjamin Holloway, of Middleton Stony, assured him, some time
ago: that he knew for fact, that the celebrated Romance of 'Robinson
Crusoe' was really written by the Earl of Oxford, when confined in the
Tower of London: that his Lordship gave the manuscript to Daniel
Defoe, who frequently visited him during his confinement: and that
Defoe, having afterwards added the second volume, published the whole
as his own production. This anecdote I would not venture to send to
your valuable magazine, if I did not think my information good, and
imagine it might be acceptable to your numerous readers,
not-withstanding the work has heretofore been generally attributed to
the latter. W. W.'"
It is impossible for me to enter on a discussion of this literary
subject; though I thought the circumstance ought to be more generally
known. And yet I must observe, that I always discerned a very striking
falling off between the composition of the first and second volumes of
this Romance—they seem to bear evident marks of having been the work of
different writers."
A volume of memoranda in the handwriting of Warton, the Laureate,
preserved in the British Museum, contains the following:
"Mem. Jul. 10, 1774. In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr.
Benjamin Holloway, rector of Middleton Stony, in Oxfordshire, then
about 70 years old, and in the early part of his life domestic
Chaplain to Lord Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland
say that Lord Oxford, while a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote
the first volume of the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an
amusement under confinement; and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who
frequently visited Lord Oxford in the Tower, and was one of his
Pamphlet writers. That De Foe, by Lord Oxford's permission, printed it
as his own, and, encouraged by its extraordinary success, added
himself the second volume, the inferiority of which is generally
acknowledged. Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord Sunderland, that
Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De Foe. Mr.
Holloway was a grave conscientious clergyman, not vain of telling
anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good orientalist, author of
some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and a Master of Arts at
St. John's College, Cambridge. He lived many years with great respect
in Lord Sunderland's family, and was like to the late Duke of
Marlborough. He died, as I remember, about the year "1761."
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Constantinople, May 18, 1810.
Dear Madam,—I arrived here in an English frigate from Smyrna a few days
ago, without any events worth mentioning, except landing to view the
plains of Troy, and afterwards, when we were at anchor in the
Dardanelles,
swimming
from Sestos to Abydos, in imitation of
Monsieur Leander, whose story you, no doubt, know too well for me to add
anything on the subject except that I crossed the Hellespont without so
good a motive for the undertaking. As I am just going to visit the
Captain-Pacha, you will excuse the brevity of my letter. When Mr. Adair
takes leave I am to see the Sultan and the mosques, etc.
Believe me, yours ever,
Byron
.
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June 18, 1813.
Dear Sir,—Will you forward the enclosed answer to the kindest letter I
ever received in my life, my sense of which I can neither express to Mr.
Gifford himself nor to any one else?
Ever yours,
B'N.
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June 18, 1813.
My Dear Sir,—I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all—still
more to thank you as I ought. If you knew the veneration with which I
have ever regarded you, long before I had the most distant prospect of
becoming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my embarrassment would
not surprise you.
Any
of yours, even were it conveyed in the less tender shape
of the text of the
Baviad
, or a Monk Mason note in Massinger
,
would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself by
your censure: judge then if I shall be less willing to profit by your
kindness. It is not for me to bandy compliments with my elders and my
betters: I receive your approbation with gratitude, and will not return
my brass for your Gold by expressing more fully those sentiments of
admiration, which, however sincere, would, I know, be unwelcome.
To your advice on Religious topics, I shall equally attend. Perhaps the
best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The already published
objectionable passages have been much commented upon, but certainly have
been rather
strongly
interpreted. I am no Bigot to Infidelity,
and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of Man, I
should be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the
comparative insignificance of ourselves and
our world
, when
placed in competition with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom,
that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be
over-rated.
This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where
I was cudgelled to Church for the first ten years of my life, afflicted
me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease of the
mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria.
I regret to hear you talk of ill-health. May you long exist! not only to
enjoy your own fame, but outlive that of fifty such ephemeral
adventurers as myself.
As I do not sail quite so soon as Murray may have led you to expect (not
till July) I trust I have some chance of taking you by the hand before
my departure, and repeating in person how sincerely and affectionately I
am
Your obliged servant,
Byron
.
See
Letters
, vol. i. p. 198 [Footnote 4 of Letter 192.].
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June 22, 1813.
Dear Sir,—I send you a
corrected
copy of the lines with several
important
alterations,—so many that this had better be sent for
proof rather than subject the other to so many blots.
You will excuse the eternal trouble I inflict upon you. As you will see,
I have attended to your Criticism, and softened a passage you proscribed
this morning.
Yours veritably,
B.
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June 22, 1813.
I dined in company with Stael, the "Epicene,"
whose
politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord
of Liverpool—a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory—talks of
nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God
and the government will help her to a pension.
, the
Greek: anax
of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a
design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and
stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be
bound, like "Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the
"
Universal Visitor?
"
Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and—though I hate prating of
the beggarly elements —his proposal may be to your honour and profit,
and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.
I don't know what to say about "friendship." I never was in friendship
but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as
love. I
afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted
to knight him, that I am "too old;
but nevertheless, no one wishes
you more friends, fame, and felicity, than
Yours, etc.
"'And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien,
Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen,
Neckar's fair daughter, Staël the Epicene!
Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and pumple nose
The bloom of young desire unceasing glows!
Fain would the Muse—but ah! she dares no more,
A mournful voice from lone Guyana's shore,
Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks,
Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.'
"These lines contain the Secret History of Quatremer's deportation. He
presumed, in the Council of Five Hundred, to arraign Madame de Staël's
conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. He was sent to
Guyana. The transaction naturally brings to one's mind the
dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare's
Henry IV."
Canning's New Morality
, lines 293-301 (Edmonds' edition of the
Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin
, pp. 282, 283).
Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1766-1817), only child of the Minister
Necker and his wife Suzanne Curchod, Gibbon's early love, married, in
1786, the Swedish Ambassador Baron de Staël Holstein, who died in 1802.
She married, as her second husband, in 1811, M. de Rocca, a young French
officer, who had been severely wounded in Spain, but survived her by a
year (Madame de Récamier,
Souvenirs
, vol. i. p. 272). Her book,
De l'Allemagne
, seized and destroyed by Napoleon, was brought out
in June, 1813, by John Murray. Byron thought her
"certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had
ever known. 'She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you,'
said he, 'never pausing except to take breath; and if during that
interval a rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not
attend to it, as she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it
had not been interrupted'".
(Lady Blessington's
Conversations
, p. 26). Croker (
Croker
Papers
, vol. i. p. 327) describes her as
"ugly, and not of an intellectual ugliness. Her features were coarse,
and the ordinary expression rather vulgar, she had an ugly mouth, and
one or two irregularly prominent teeth, which perhaps gave her
countenance an habitual gaiety. Her eye was full, dark, and
expressive; and when she declaimed, which was almost whenever she
spoke, she looked eloquent, and one forgot that she was plain."