1.]

ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 377

APPENDIX I.

QUARREL BETWEEN BYRON AND SOUTHEY. (See p. 10, note 1.)

IN English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers (see Poems, vol. i.
pp. 313-315, lines 199-234) Byron attacked Southey-

"Not so with us, though minor Bards, content,
On one great work a life of labour spent ;
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the Ballad-monger Southey rise!
To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,

The scourge of England and the boast of France!

Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wond'rous son;

Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and Prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
Oh, Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long;
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkeley-Ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue :
'God help thee,' Southey, and thy readers too."

The satire did not prevent the two men from meeting at Holland House (Sunday, September 26, 1813) on friendly terms. Southey struck Byron as "the best-looking bard I have seen for some time," as "a person of very epic

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appearance," with "a fine head-as far as the outside goes, "and wants nothing but taste to make the inside equally "attractive" (Letters, vol. ii. pp. 266, 269, 270, 331). In a letter to Mrs. Southey, dated September 28, 1813 (Life and Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 44), Southey gives his impression of Byron

"I dined on Sunday at Holland House, with some eighteen or twenty persons. Sharp was there, who introduced me with all due form to Rogers and to Sir James Mackintosh, who seems to be in a bad state of health. In the evening Lord Byron came in. He had asked Rogers if I was 'magnanimous,' and requested him to make for him all sorts of amends honourable for having tried his wit upon me at the expense of his discretion; and in full confidence of the success of the apology, had been provided with a letter of introduction to me in case he had gone to the Lakes, as he intended to have done. As for me, you know how I regard things of this kind; so we met with all becoming courtesy on both sides, and I saw a man whom in voice, manner, and countenance, I liked very much more than either his character or his writings had given me reason to expect. Rogers wanted me to dine with him on Tuesday (this day): only Lord Byron and Sharp were to have been of the party, but I had a pending engagement here, and was sorry for it."

From this meeting till the publication of Don Juan, that is, from September, 1813, to July, 1819, Southey rarely refers to Byron, and his son states (Life, etc., vol. v. p. 69) that he has printed every allusion to Byron contained in his father's correspondence. Only three references occur. The first is April 29, 1814. In a letter to Neville White, speaking of the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Southey says, "Thank "you for Lord Byron's Ode; there is in it, as in all his "poems, great life, spirit, and originality; though the mean"ing is not always brought out with sufficient perspicuity. 66 The last time I saw him he asked me if I did not think Bonaparte a great man in his villany. I told him, no,"that he was a mean-minded villain. And Lord Byron has 66 now been brought to the same opinion" (Life, etc., vol. iv. p. 73). The second allusion is suggested by Byron's admiration for Roderick (Letters, vol. iii. p. 169). Southey's comment is cold. "I have heard," he says to Dr. Southey, February 16, 1815 (Life, etc., vol. iv. p. 105), "from many "quarters of Lord Byron's praise, and regard it just as much as I did his censure." The third reference occurs in a

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letter to Ebenezer Elliott, January 30, 1819 (ibid., p. 335), where Southey refers to the popularity of Byron and Scott as a possible argument against the correctness of his own views of poetry.

Meanwhile Byron, from 1818 onwards, repeatedly refers to Southey with bitterness and contempt. His reasons were religious, political, and, above all, personal. He believed that he had a grudge against him on private grounds, and he came to regard him as the personification of successful cant in religion and politics. He also attributed to Southey a criticism on Leigh Hunt's Foliage in the Quarterly Review (vol. xviii. pp. 324-335), with an "oblique and shabby" attack on Shelley. In this temper he wrote the Dedication to Don Juan, Canto I. "I have given it to Master Southey," he writes to Murray, November 24, 1818 (Letters, vol. iv. p. 271), "and he shall have more before I have done with him. "I understand the scoundrel said, on his return from Switzer"land two years ago, that 'Shelley and I were in a league "of Incest,' etc., etc. He is a burning liar!" (see also ibid., pp. 276, 282, 298, 299). The Dedication was not published till after Byron's death. But it is plain that Southey knew of its existence, if not of the precise terms in which it spoke of him. Even without the Dedication, Don Juan, Canto I. (published July 15, 1819), contained irritating references to Southey. To one of these (stanza ccv.) he refers in his correspondence

"Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope:

Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,

The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy."

Southey's comment on the lines is contained in the following extract from a letter written to C. H. Townshend, and dated July 20, 1819 (Life, etc., vol. iv. p. 352):—

"I have not seen more of Don Juan than some extracts in a country paper, wherein my own name is coupled with a rhyme which I thought would never be used by any person but myself when kissing one of my own children in infancy, and talking nonsense to it, which, whatever you may think of it at present as an exercise for the intellect, I hope you will one day have occasion to practise, and you will then find out its many and various excellencies.