And you know, my dear fellow, how heartily I, Whatever you publish, am ready to buy. [for sale, Ink. That's my bookseller's business; I care not Indeed the best poems at first rather fail. There were Renegade's epics, and Botherby's plays, 1 And my own grand romance Tra. Had its full share of praise. I myself saw it puff'd in the "Old Girl's Review."2 Ink. What Review ? [Trevoux; "s Tra. 'Tis the English" Journal de A clerical work of our jesuits at home. Have you never yet seen it? Tra. soon I have heard people say And I own, for my own part, that 't is not unpleasant. But let us proceed; for I think, by the hum Ink. Very true; let us go, then, before they can come, Or else we'll be kept here an hour at their levy, 1 [Messrs. Southey and Sotheby.] 2 ["My Grandmother's Review, the British." This heavy journal has since been gathered to its grandmothers.] 3 [The "Journal de Trevoux" (in fifty-six volumes) is one of the most curious collections of literary gossip in the world, -and the Poet paid the British Review an extravagant compliment, when he made this comparison.] 4 ["Sotheby is a good man- rhymes well (if not wisely); but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me- -(something about Agamemnon, or Orestes, or some of his plays) not An Apartment in the House of LADY BLUEBOTTLE -A Table prepared. SIR RICHARD BLUEBOTTLE solus. Was there ever a man who was married so sorry? In science and art, I'll be cursed if I know Is the numerous, humourous, backbiting crew Enter LADY BLUEBOTTLE, MISS LILAC, LADY BLUE- Lady Blueb. Ah! Sir Richard, good morning; Lady Blueb. But the luncheon attends. I pray ye be seated, sans cérémonie.” Mr. Scamp, you're fatigued; take your chair there, next me. [They all sit. (for I was withstanding my symptoms of manifest distress — in love, and just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time. Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me ty the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither. William Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; for,' said he, I see it is all over with you.' Sotheby then went his way: sic me servavit Apollo.' - Byron Diary, 1821.] Sir Rich. (aside.) If he does, his fatigue is to come. Lady Blueb. Mr. Tracy Lady Bluemount-Miss Lilac-be pleased, pray, to place ye; And you, Mr. Botherby Both. I obey. Lady Blueb. Oh fie! Miss Lil. And for shame! Lady Bluem. Both. You're too bad. Very good! Lady Bluem. How good? Oh, my dear lady, Lady Bluem. He grows rude Lady Blueb. He means nought-'t is his phrase. Lady Blueb. He means nothing; nay, ask him. Lady Bluem. What you say? Ink. Pray, sir! did you mean Never mind if he did; 't will be seen That whatever he means won't alloy what he says. Both. Sir! Ink. Pray be content with your portion of praise; 'Twas in your defence. Both. If you please, with submission, I can make out my own. A few green-room whispers, which hinted know, That the taste of the actors at best is so so. 3 Both. Sir, the green-room's in rapture, and so's the committee. Ink. Ay-yours are the plays for exciting our "pity [mind," And fear," as the Greek says: for "purging the I doubt if you'll leave us an equal behind. Both. I have written the prologue, and meant to have pray'd For a spice of your wit in an epilogue's aid. Both. Will right these great men, and this age's severity Become its reproach. Ink. I've no sart of objection, So I'm not of the party to take the infection. Both. For God's sake, my Lady Bluebottle, check not This gentle emotion, so seldom our lot Upon earth. Give it way; 'tis an impulse which lifts Lady Blueb. Perhaps you have doubts that they Our spirits from earth; the sublimest of gifts; Ink. Not at all; on the contrary, those of the lake To take-what they can, from a groat to a guinea, What say you to this? Scamp. It is only time past which comes under Lady Blueb. Come, a truce with all tartness: Is to see Nature's triumph o'er all that is art. Both. Grand Shakspeare ! Sir George And down Aristotle And my Lord Seventy-four 2, who protects our dear Bard, And who gave him his place, has the greatest regard Scamp. I needs must confess I'm embarrass'd. With old schools, and new schools, and no schools, Tra. Well, one thing is certain, that some must I should like to know who. Ink. Lady Blueb. A truce with remark, and let no thing control This "feast of our reason, and flow of the soul." I wish her much joy on't. [The late Sir George Beaumont -a constant friend of Mr. Wordsworth.] 2 [It was not the present Earl of Lonsdale, but James, 3 ["We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps ;' To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear waggoners,' around his lakes. Another outcry for a little boat,' For which poor Prometheus was chain'd to his mountain; 'Tis the source of all sentiment feeling's true fountain : 'Tis the Vision of Heaven upon Earth: 'tis the gas Of the soul: 'tis the seizing of shades as they pass, And making them substance: 't is something divine:Ink. Shall I help you, my friend, to a little more wine ? Both. I thank you; not any more, sir, till I dine. Ink. A propos-Do you dine with Sir Humphry 5 to-day? Tra. I should think with Duke Humphry was more in your way. Ink. It might be of yore; but we authors now look To the knight, as a landlord, much more than the Duke. The truth is, each writer now quite at his case is, But 't is now nearly five, and I must to the Park. For my lecture next week. He must mind whom he quotes Out of Elegant Extracts." Well, now we break up; But remember Miss Diddle 6 invites us to sup. So much for his poem-a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed "Satanic School," the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer. If there good or evil of my deeds may preponderate is not for me to ascertain; but as my means and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present defence to an assertion, (easily proved, if necessary,) that I, in my degree,' have done more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence. There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a hireling. There are others to which I recur with sorrow and repentance; but the only act of my life of which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in contact with a near connection of his own [Mr. Coleridge], did no dishonour to that connection nor to me. "I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others; they have done him no good in this world; and if his creed be the right one, they will do him leas in the next. What his death-bed' may be, it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all work sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of Gebir,' whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten. I for one neither envy him the friendship,' nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelusson's fortune, in the third and fourth generation. This friendship will probably be as memorable as his own epics, which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in English Bards') Porson said would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten,-and not till then.' For the present I leave him." Mr. Southey was not disposed to let this pass unanswered. He, on the 5th of January, 1822, addressed to the Editor of the London Courier a letter, of which we shall quote all that is of importance: "I come at once to his Lordship's charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be, that Mr. Southey, on his return from Switzerland (in 1817), scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron and others. To this I reply with a direct and positive denial. "If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or Monk of La Trappe, that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly; passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him, as of Baron Geramb*, the Green Mant, the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of his Lordship: and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him, would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every body would stare, no one would wonder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alpnacht, and the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne-not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula. "Once, and only once, in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; and, as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review,' speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, it was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the Devil and bullied him-though the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonisation, ever pleaded for him.' "With regard to the others, whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names I found written in the Album at Mont-Anvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment in the same language, underneath it. Those names, with that avowal and the comment, transcribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not have thought himself slandered, by having that recorded of him which he has so often recorded of himself." "The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave, as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself. 'How easily is a noble spirit discern'd From harsh and sulphurous matter that flies out In contumelles, makes a noise, and stinks!" B. JONSON. But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that, when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, and could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, indeed, that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually assailing me. But abhorring, as I do, the personalities which disgrace our current literature, and averse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of [Baron Geramb, a German Jew, who, for some time excited much public attention in London by the extravagance of his dress. Being very troublesome and menacing in demanding remuneration from Government, for a proposal he had made of engaging a body of Croat troops in the service of England, he was, in 1812, sent out of the country under the alien act.] [The Green Man" was a popular afterpiece, so called from the hero, who wore every thing green, hat, gloves, &c. &c.] [Mr. P. B. Shelley signed his name, with the addition of deeoc, in this album.] exists any where, excepting in his imagination, such a School, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have "talked of him; for they laughed consumedly." non-resistance. When the offence and the offender are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them. "Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained in my preface to the 'Vision of Judgment.' Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings, with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having, in this, stripped it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity. "Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books; against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality, like themselves; against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals. "His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is an appellation which will not stick, like that of the Satanic school. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind-and then reissued them, when the evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned and taken possession, with seven others, more wicked than himself. I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare to affix my name; or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean; there is no damned spot' upon them-no taint, which all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.' woman. "Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, and its Corypheus, the author of Don Juan.' I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of the country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can! "One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude. When be attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in the same rankness and' virulence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity." Lord Byron, without waiting for the closing hint of the foregoing letter, had already attacked" Mr. Southey "in rhyme.' On October 1. 1821, he says to Mr. Moore, "I have written about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft -it is as old as the hills, in Italy), called The Vision of Judgment,' by Quevedo Redivivus. In this it is my intention to put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate, for his preface and his other demerits." Lord Byron had proceeded some length in the performance thus announced, before Mr. Southey's letter to the "Courier" fell into his hands. On seeing it, his Lordship's feelings were so excited, that he could not wait for revenge in inkshed, but on the instant despatched a cartel' of mortal defiance to the Poet Laureate, through the medium of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, -to whom he thus writes, February 6. 1822: "I have got Southey's pretended reply: what remains to be done is to call him out. The question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive Journey to no purpose. You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you. I apply to you as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie. Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner; having no other object which could bring me into that country except to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence." Mr. Kinnaird, justly appreciating the momentary exacerbation under which Lord Byron had written the challenge which this letter enclosed, and fully aware how absurd the whole business would seem to his distant friend after the lapse of such a period as must intervene before the return of post from Keswick to Ravenna, put Lord Byron's warlike missive aside; and it never was heard of by Mr. Southey until after the death of its author. Meantime Lord Byron had continued his attack in rhyme "-and his "Vision of Judgment," after ineffectual negotiations with various publishers in London, at length saw the light in 1822, in the pages of the unfortunate "Liberal."] |