APPENDIX X. THOMAS MULOCK'S ANSWER GIVEN BY THE GOSPEL TO THE ATHEISM OF ALL AGES. LONDON, 1819. (See p. 416, note 1.) BYRON refers to two passages in the above-mentioned work. 1. Note (pp. 43, 44)— "Critics are perpetually perplexed in attempting to account for the moody and misanthropic strain of mystic melancholy, intermixed with the expression of sharper sorrows, which runs through the productions of the greatest of living poets, and perhaps of all poets, Lord Byron.-But the Christian is enabled to behold in those matchless (uninspired) effusions the outpourings of a heart not right with God, and awfully preyed upon by vulture regrets and disappointments. The wild, agonising wailings of Lord Byron's lyre, are the piercing plaints of an exhausted voluptuary, conscious of an aching void in the soul, which, uninstructed by terrible experience, he seeks to supply by sensible pleasures. The volcanic bursts of burning exclamation, in which Lord Byron fearfully pours forth his internal sufferings, clearly betoken great spiritual conflict, in which some chronic vice-some sin that doth most easily beset him, wars against his convictions, which, as heavenly chastenings, have been, with a purpose of mercy, inflicted upon him. Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living. It may be also remarked, that Lord Byron's poetry contains glimpses of the great doctrine of human depravity, a deeper insight into which would, under the divine guidance, lead him to Jesus, the repairer of the breach-the restorer of paths to dwell in. "In the religion of Christ, this man of many thoughts,' would find a spiritual sublimity, to which all the grandeur of his most unearthly aspirations would adoringly bow. His talents would be tamed by a single glance at the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus; and his passions, which no mortal monitions can quell, would gradually sink under the sway of that celestial wisdom, which x.] THOMAS MULOCK ON BYRON. 497 is first pure, and then peaceable. No slight portion of Lord Byron's misery is associated with a sense of isolation. He seems to himself to be a fated voyager upon an ocean untracked by any other keel. But if the God of all grace shall show him the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is, his monopoly of wretchedness will be quickly abandoned. He will find that, though man may not, and perhaps cannot, sound the depths of his mental distress, there is a mercyseat to which he may approach through an everlasting Mediator, where his woes will be intelligible-being interpreted by that great and gracious High Priest, who was himself made perfect through sufferings, and who, though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. At present, Lord Byron is interrogating the air, and asking with the similarly exercised sufferer in Holy Writ, Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable? Let Lord Byron, and all other 'wandering outlaws of their own dark minds,' search the scriptures. In the Bible, when unsealed to them by the Spirit of the living God, they will discover what their harrowing introspection of themselvestheir jaundiced survey of others, and their carnal communings with external nature,-will never reveal to them-the cause and the cure of their calamities. They will see that sin, the sin of their wholly ruined nature, is within them, and that salvation is without them; and that the burthen under which they groan, (felt by millions with different degrees of intensity, according to the constitution of their minds, the vicissitudes in their condition, and the variform abuse of bodily gifts), cannot be removed but by an almighty arm. healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." 2. Note (pp. 99, 100)— He Who "Lord Byron whose awful state of mind enables him to view, with supernatural strength of vision, the fallacy of carnal life, without discerning the fulness of him who filleth all in all-has wrought into a single stanza more solid truth than can be detected in the philosophy and theology of all ages. But he greatly errs in concluding, that exhibitions of human suffering would have the slightest effect in quelling human passions. This is the prerogative-royal of sovereign grace. Where, it may be asked, are the converts made to purity and peace by Lord Byron's terrific disclosure of the woes which inly torture his own bared and burning bosom? Sin is deaf as well as blind, and will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." VOL. IV. 2 K APPENDIX XI. BYRON'S BALLAD ON HOBHOUSE. HOBHOUSE was seriously annoyed with Byron for writing, and with Murray for showing, the ballad printed on p. 423. A version of the lines was printed in the Morning Post for April 15, 1820, but without the allusion to the Whig Club at Cambridge, which gave Hobhouse the greatest offence. In this Appendix are printed (1) the ballad as it appeared in the Morning Post; and (2) Hobhouse's letter to John Murray. (1) To the Editor of the Morning Post. "SIR,-A copy of verses, to the tune of 'My boy Tammy,' are repeated in literary circles, and said to be written by a Noble Lord of the highest poetical fame, upon his quondam friend and annotator. My memory does not enable me to repeat more than the first two verses quite accurately, but the humourous spirit of the Song may be gathered from these "Why were you put in Lob's pond, "Who are your grand Reformers now, There's me and BURDETT,-gentlemen, "Have you no other friends but these, Yes, Southwark's KNIGHT, the County BYNG, XI.] (2) "How do you recreate yourselves, We spout with tavern Radicals, And drink with them hobby-nobby O! "What purpose can such folly work, It gives our partisans a chance "Have they no higher game in view, And then to head the mob-by O! "But sure they'll at their ruin pause, No! they'd see King and Parliament "But, if they fail, they'll be hang'd up, Why, then, they'll swing, like better men, 499 "PHILO-RADICLE." J. C. Hobhouse to John Murray. "I have received your letter, and return to you Lord Byron's. I shall tell you very frankly, because I think it much better to speak a little of a man to his face than to say a great deal about him behind his back, that I think you have not treated me as I deserved, nor as might have been expected from that friendly intercourse which has subsisted between us for so many years. Had Lord Byron transmitted to me a lampoon on you, I should, if I know myself at all, either have put it into the fire without delivery, or should have sent it at once to you. I should not have given it a circulation for the gratification of all the small wits at the great and little houses, where no treat is so agreeable as to find a man laughing at his friend. In this case, the whole coterie of the very shabbiest party that ever disgraced and divided a nation-I mean the Whigs are, I know, chuckling over that silly charge made by Mr. Lamb on the hustings, and now confirmed by Lord Byron, of my having belonged to a Whig club at Cambridge. Such a Whig as I then was, I am now. selfishness and subserviency, and desertion of the most important I had no notion that the name implied principles for the sake of the least important interest. I had no notion that it implied anything more than an attachment to the principles the ascendency of which expelled the Stuarts from the "2, Hanover Square, November, 1820. Throne. Lord Byron belonged to this Cambridge club, and desired me to scratch out his name, on account of the criticism in the Edinburgh Review on his early poems; but, exercising my discretion on the subject, I did not erase his name, but reconciled him to the said Whigs. "The members of the club were but few, and with those who have any marked politics amongst them, I continue to agree at this day. They were but ten, and you must know most of them-Mr. W. Ponsonby, Mr. George O'Callaghan, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Dominick Browne, Mr. Henry Pearce, Mr. Kinnaird, Lord Tavistock, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Byron, and myself. I was not, as Lord Byron says in the song, the founder of this club; on the contrary, thinking myself of mighty importance in those days, I recollect very well that some difficulty attended my consenting to belong to the club, and I have by me a letter from Lord Tavistock, in which the distinction between being a Whig party man and a Revolution Whig is strongly insisted upon. "I have troubled you with this detail in consequence of Lord Byron's charge, which he, who despises and defies, and has lampooned the Whigs all round, only invented out of wantonness, and for the sake of annoying me-and he has certainly succeeded, thanks to your circulating this filthy ballad. As for his Lordship's vulgar notions about the mob, they are very fit for the Poet of the Morning Post, and for nobody else. Nothing in the ballad annoyed me but the charge about the Cambridge club, because nothing else had the semblance of truth; and I own it has hurt me very much to find Lord Byron playing into the hands of the Holland House sycophants, for whom he has himself the most sovereign contempt, and whom in other days I myself have tried to induce him to tolerate. "I shall say no more on this unpleasant subject except that, by a letter which I have just received from Lord Byron, I think he is ashamed of his song. I shall certainly speak as plainly to him as I have taken the liberty to do to you on this matter. He was very wanton and you very indiscreet; but I trust neither one nor the other meant mischief, and there's an end of it. Do not aggravate matters by telling how much I have been annoyed. Lord Byron has sent me a list of his new poems and some prose, all of which he requests me to prepare for the press for him. The monied arrangement is to be made by Mr. Kinnaird. When you are ready for me, the materials may be sent to me at this place, where I have taken up my abode for the season. "I remain, very truly yours, END OF VOL. IV. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. |