1017

Vindication of Lord Byron's Poetry.

mine his show of argument; premising, however, that I confine myself to the present dispute, and do not meddle with G. M.'s first born. I could refer G. M. to one or two contemporary publications, to which I have contributed my mite; but as I consider those trifles to have no connection with this controversy, I shall not, like him, "somewhat pompously" particularize them.

1018

Wordsworth, and as a specimen of his namby-pamby composition, take the following verses, in which "expletives their feeble aid Do join ;" and which contains too much profanity to place him very high in the list of moral writers.

"Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Ne any drop to drink.
The very deeps did rot, O Christ!
That ever this should be,

Yea slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea."

G. M. illiberally insinuates that one who differs from him in opinion, cannot have read any British poet: he shall find, however, that I have read Byron and Wordsworth; though I It crack'd, and growl'd, and roar'd, and howl'd confess that I never could get through the latter's

"Clumsy,frowzy Poem, call'd "The Excursion." Besides G. M.'s assertion of Wordsworth's excellence, we are now treated with "the puff direct," by Coleridge and others; as if one Poet never complimented another! G. M. has produced only one prose writer who has praised Wordsworth; and he is sadly unfortunate in the author he named. "Surely" G. M. "cannot have read" Mr. Hazlitt's works. The following extracts from that gentleman's publications, will show his opinion of Wordsworth and of Byron.

"ToWordsworth, the great and the small are the same; the near aud the remote; what is, and what only appears to be! An intellectual egotism swallows up every thing; even the dialogues introduced are soliloquies of the same character, taking different views of the same subject. The recluse, the pastor, and the pedlar, are three persons in one Poet. With him, a mole-hill, covered with wild thyme, assumes the importance of the guarded mount. A puddle is filled with præternatural faces, and agitated with the fiercer storms of passion."

Hazlitt's Round Table, Vol. II. "Wordsworth's Excursion' is more than any thing else in the world like Robinson Crusoe's hoat; which would have been an excellent good

boat, and would have carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get it out of the sand where it stuck fast."

Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets.

"The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around;

Like noises of a swound."

Ancyent Mariner.

"And thus to Betty's questions he
Made answer like a traveller bold;
The cock did crow towhoo, towhoo,
And the sun did shine so cold.
But when the poney mov'd his legs,

Oh then for the poor idiot boy!
For joy he cannot hold the bridle,
For joy his head and heels are idle,
He's idle all for very joy,

And Betty's most especial charge

Was, Johnny, Johnny, mind that you
Come home again, nor stop at all,
Come home again whate'er befal,

My Johnny do, I pray you do."

"And Johnny's lips, they burr, burr, burr.' Idiot Boy.

"The squire said, Sure as Paradise Was lost to Man by Adam's fall," &c. Peter Bell.

"" 66

99

Can

Upon reading the above farrago, who can help indignantly exclaiming with the reviewer of "Peter Bell,' Englishmen write, and Englishmen read, such drivel, such dandling, impotent drivel, as this? Weak indeed must be the mind,"(mark that, G. M.) "that by any process of sophistry, or long practice of patience,can be reconciled to it. We feel the force of custom to be almost omnipotent; but however dulled and deadened our sense of propriety, our sense of poetry, sense of every kind, may have been by

or

Having quoted Lord Byron, Mr. the eternal repetition of similar imbe

Hazlitt observes, that he is

“A noble Poet, who is fulfilling the promise of his youth." Round Table, Vol. 1. These extracts evince that Mr. Haz

litt's estimate of Wordsworth's and Lord Byron's Poetry, are totally different from G. M.'s account; and may, perhaps, teach your Derby correspon

dent in future to remember that

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."
To substantiate my character of
No. 33.-VOL III.

cilities, we should have thought, that, head could hold such unmeaning prituntil the very brains were extracted, no tle-prattle as the above; no tongue, we are persuaded, tied by the thinnest silk of shame, would ever have poured it forth. We really waste words, howWe can only say, that if a nurse were ever, on what is scarcely word's worth. to talk to any of their children in this

manner, a sensible father and mother would be strongly disposed to dismiss her without a character."

3 T

Vindication of Lord Byron's Poetry.

Many of Wordsworth's serious
Poems appear, to me, even below
Dr. Johnson's admirable burlesque :

"As with my hat upon my head
I walk'd along the Strand,
1 there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand."

They are more like

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Vindication of Lord Byron's Poetry.

1022

Jew who, on account of his extensive buffoon of nature herself, "his Lordship charity, was termed by his neigh-on this ground deserves the gratitude bours a good Christian. In this point of Wordsworth's real, though not of of view, his Lordship's character his soi-disant friends.-Further: to a stands deservedly high. The nume- classical scholar, like G. J. should not rous well-authenticated anecdotes* of Lord Byron's "bright and breathing" his beneficence related in various reli- descriptions of Parnassus, of Greece, gious publications, evince that, like and of Rome, atone for all his faults? the Jew, even the deistical Lord Byron These descriptions are indeed chefs is a good Christian.-I would ask, too, d'ouvre in composition, and will live has not Lord Byron elevated the lite- till “nature sink in years."-I would rary taste of the age from "the pueril- also bespeak some consideration for ities of Wordsworth," and made even the English scholar. that writer himself decline his unmeaning prittle-prattle." The warmest admirers of Wordsworth, (except such a violent bigot as G. M. Bridge | Street, Derby,) condemn his infantile lisping; and if Lord Byron has made the lake-poet ashamed of being "the

**In 1812, during a temporary residence in

some of the Greek islands, Lord Byron portioned eight young girls, besides supplying them with cotton and silk for the manufacture in which they were employed. He gave cows to some and horses to others; and a new boat to a

While the man of erudition enjoys the literary treasures of ancient Athens and of ancient Rome, let not the mere English reader be debarred from the loftiest productions of the British muse. I readily admit that an author who blends the "utile cum dulce” is the most deserving of praise; and that a Milton's and a Cowper's piety gives additional zest to their poetry. But while the Literati read works entirely for their style, surely a Byron, who combines the fire of Homer with the fisherman who had lost his own in a gale. It is elegance of Virgil, and blends the wit a fact positively ascertained, that he frequently gave Greek Testaments to the poor children re- of Aristophanes with the satire of Jusident at Mytilene. To the Greek Church there he gave forty pounds; to the hospitals six- Venal,-surely such a writer ought not ty pounds; and distributed in private charity to be immured in " the tomb of all the three hundred zechines. In Scio, to a farmer Capulets." It would be easy, were who had lost a horse and cart in crossing the stream of Cauerio, he gave five guineas; and, it proper, to name classic authors, at a visit received from the master and pupils compared with whom Lord Byron is of the school erected there, fifty pounds for the purity in the abstract, yet they are use of the school, small donations to the scho. lars, and to the master himself a robe of velvet Constantly read. Let not then his and satin. An aged Greek woman, residing at Lordship's poems be withheld from a place called Epheseas, where she had occupied a small vineyard and two fields, was disthe mere English scholar: he cannot trained for rent. Albana, the Turkish collec- have recourse to the treasures of antitor, seized her goods, and put them up for sale.quity; let then his genius be fostered,

Lord Byron bought and restored them to the widow. To the keeper of the cave called Homer's School, he gave a Greek Testament and some money. His departure was marked by much regret on the part of the Greeks, and even of the Turks, who, by an unwonted exertion of gallantry, fired a salute of four guns from the castle, which he returned by eight. Cos, which he afterwards visited, was distinguished by acts of beneficence equally numer

ous.

Since his Lordship's residence at Venice, a printer, at Malinari, had the whole of his premises consumed by fire; which was no sooner

made known to Lord Byron, than he generously sent him one hundred and fifty guineas! It has again been ascertained that the profits of some of his productions have been applied to the uses of literary men, under circumstances of pecu

niary difficulty. A person who has industriously endeavoured to depreciate Lord Byron's character by reports as false as they are feeble, in submitting to the editor of a well-known periodical, the sketch of a production intended for insertion in his miscellany, inadvertently inclosed with it the copy of a letter addressed to the noble Lord, replete with the most humble acknowledgments of pecuniary assistance to a CONSIDERABLE EXTENT! The original application seems to have been made under very necessitous circumstances." The length of this note precludes my adding many more which could easily be adduced; but ex his, disce omnes. "Charity covereth a multitude of sins."

and his literary taste improved, by the muse of Byron.-The "obscenities" of his Lordship deserve all the reprobation which G. J. can bestow upon them; but they are of very rare occurrence, except in one poem, which, by it published by his bookseller. Conthe way, he has never owned, nor is trast the acknowledged poems of Byron with the authenticated productions of Shakspeare,† and his Lordship will be found to be the purer writer. The editor of the Monthly Magazine goes still further; he says, "Compare the

+ Mr. Bowdler, by his "Family Shakspeare, in which the "obscenities" are expunged, deserves the gratitude of the community. But the fact of such a work being executed, and yet of the common edition being generally used in families, shows that there is some foundation for Lord Byron's observation on the charges made against him for immorality,

"There was a time when all this cant Would have produced remarks, which now it shan't."

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Vindication of Lord Byron's Poetry.

cantos of Don Juan with the works of Swift. There is nothing in them which presents our nature in so degraded and disgusting a point of view as the latter laboured to place it in; yet he was a dignitary of the church, and of unimpeached character. And why not allow his jest to Lord Byron? Those who are acquainted with his predecessors in this vineyard, will be inclined to think that he has not exerted his powers in a very outrageous

manner.

"

As a proof that I have not too highly estimated Lord Byron's poetry, I submit the following extracts to the notice of your readers. And, first, look at his exquisite delineation of Henry Kirke White.

"Unhappy White! while life was in its spring,
And thy young muse just waved her joyous
wing,

The spoiler swept that soaring lyre away
Which else had sounded an immortal lay.
Oh what a noble heart was here undone,
When science' self destroyed her fav'rite son!
'Twas thine own genius gave the fatal blow
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee
low.

Thus the struck eagle stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather in the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his
heart;

Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nurs'd the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm'd his

nest

Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast."

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

His Lordship's verses on the Death of the Princess Charlotte are too long to quote: the following portion of them will evince their excellence.

"Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,

A long, low, distant murmur of dread sound, Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound. Through storm and darkness, yawns the rending ground,

The gulf is thick with phantoms; but the chief Seems royal still, though with her head dis

crown'd,

Scion of chiefs and monarchs! where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead!
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?

Those who weep not for kings shall weep for
thee!"

Childe Harold, Canto IV.

The following lines on Female Beauty, I confidently submit to the approbation of every admirer of THAT SEX which heightens all man's joys, alleviates all his sorrows, and throws a celestial halo over "this visible diurnal sphere."

1024

"Who hath not prov'd how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight

Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might-the majesty of loveliness?
Such was Zuleika-such around her shone
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone;
The light of love, the purity of grace,

The mind-the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the
And oh! that eye was in itself a soul!"
Bride of Abydos.

whole

ed me to desist. I will therefore only Your limits,Sir, have long since warnrefer to Lord Byron's exquisite Hebrew Melodies; Napoleon's Farewell; The Ode, commencing "Oh shame to thee, land of the Gaul;" the brilliant burning Ode on the Star of the Legion of Honour; and the beautiful song beginning “Maid of Athens, ere we part." I conclude these extracts by giving one of his Lordship's minor poems.

To

"Bright be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control

In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
On earth thou wert all but divine,

As thy soul shall immortally be;
And our sorrow may cease to repine,
When we know that thy God is with thee.
Light be the turf of thy tomb!

May its verdure like emeralds be:
There should not be the shadow of gloom
In aught that reminds us of thee.
Young йlowers and an evergreen tree
May spring from the spot of thy rest:
But not cypress nor yew let us see,
For, why should we mourn for the blest?"
Now, Mr. Editor, I would triumph-
antly ask, Can such a writer "decline"
in the estimation of those "whose ap
probation is worth having?" Oh no!
surely every reader will exclaim with

Joannah Southcote's Shiloh and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind; so few are the elect; ̧ And the new births of both their stale virgin. ities

Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.” While, on the contrary, Lord Byron "possesses not only the poetry of nobility, but the NOBILITY OF

POETRY."

October 2, 1821.

ARISTARCHUS.