towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer. God knows, I wish you happy, and when I quit you, or rather you, from a sense of duty to your husband and mother, quit me, you shall acknowledge the truth of what I again promise and vow, that no other in word or deed, shall ever hold the place in my affections, which is, and shall be, most sacred to you, till I am nothing. I never knew till that moment the madness of my dearest and most beloved friend; I cannot express myself; this is no time for words, but I shall have a pride, a melancholy pleasure, in suffering what you yourself can scarcely conceive, for you do not know me. I am about to go out with a heavy heart, because my appearing this evening will stop any absurd story which the event of the day might give rise to. Do you think now I am cold and stern and artful? Will even others think so? Will your mother ever-that mother to whom we must indeed sacrifice much, more, much more on my part than she shall ever know or can imagine? "Promise not to love you!" ah, Caroline, it is past promising. But I shall attribute all concessions to the proper motive, and never cease to feel all that you have already witnessed, and more than can ever be known but to my own heart,—perhaps to yours. May God protect, forgive, and bless you. Ever, and even more than ever, Your most attached, BYRON. P.S.-These taunts which have driven you to this, my dearest Caroline, were it not for your mother and the kindness of your connections, is there anything on earth or heaven that would have made me so happy as to have made you mine long ago? and not less now than then, but more than ever at this time. You know I would with 1812.] LADY CAROLINE LAMB. 139 pleasure give up all here and all beyond the grave for you, and in refraining from this, must my motives be misunderstood? I care not who knows this, what use is made of it,-it is to you and to you only that they are yourself (sic). I was and am yours freely and most entirely, to obey, to honour, love, and fly with you when, where, and how you yourself might and may determine. 243.-To John Murray. High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5, 1812. DEAR SIR,-Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the E. R. with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request.-How do you go on? and when is the graven image, "with bays "and wicked rhyme upon't," to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions? Send me 66 Rokeby," " who the deuce is he?-no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your inquiries: I am so so, but "To 1. Rokeby, completed December 31, 1812, was published in the following year, with a dedication to John Morritt, to whom Rokeby belonged. It was, as Scott admits in the Preface to the edition of 1830, comparatively a failure. In the popularity of Byron he finds the chief cause of the small success which his poem obtained. "have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared,” he writes, "its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and "to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage-a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in "which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than "himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, "who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of Childe Harold." On this rivalry Byron wrote the passage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of Rokeby was my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point. What will you give me or mine for a poem1 of six cantos, (when complete-no rhyme, no recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas which one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure. Believe me, yours very sincerely, BYRON. P.S.-My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like Jeremy Diddler, I only "ask for infor"mation."-Send me Adair on Diet and Regimen, just republished by Ridgway." its inferiority both to the Lay and to Marmion. In Letter vii. of the Twopenny Post-bag, Moore writes thus of Rokeby— "Should you feel any touch of poetical glow, We've a Scheme to suggest-Mr. Sc-tt, you must know, Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town; And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay) Now the Scheme is (though none of our hackneys can beat him) Who, by means of quick proofs-no revises-long coaches- Indeed, if our Pegasus be not curst shabby, He'll reach, without found'ring, at least Woburn Abbey." 1. The Giaour, published in 1813, for which Murray paid, not Byron, but Dallas, 500 guineas. 2. Kenney's Raising the Wind, act i. sc. I— "Diddler. O Sam, you haven't got such a thing as tenpence about you, have you? "Sam. Yes. And I mean to keep it about me, you see. "Diddler. Oh, aye, certainly. I only asked for information." 3. James MacKittrick (1728-1802), who assumed the name of Adair, published, in 1804, An Essay on Diet and Regimen, as indispensable to the Recovery and Preservation of Firm Health, especially to Indolent, Studious, Delicate and Invalid; with appropriate cases. 1812.] REOPENING OF DRURY LANE. 141 244.-To Lord Holland. Cheltenham, September 10, 1812. MY DEAR LORD,-The lines which I sketched off on your hint are still, or rather were, in an unfinished state, for I have just committed them to a flame more decisive than that of Drury. Under all the circumstances, I should hardly wish a contest with Philodrama-PhiloDrury-Asbestos, H **, and all the anonymes and synonymes of Committee candidates. Seriously, I think you have a chance of something much better; for prologuising is not my forte, and, at all events, either my pride or my modesty won't let me incur the hazard of having my rhymes buried in next month's Magazine, under "Essays on the Murder of Mr. Perceval," and "Cures r. Drury Lane Theatre was reopened, after the fire of February 24, 1809, on Saturday, October 10, 1812. In the previous August the following advertisement was issued : 66 86 Rebuilding of Drury-Lane Theatre. "The Committee are desirous of promoting a fair and free competition for an Address, to be spoken upon the opening of the Theatre, which will take place on the 10th of October next: They have therefore thought fit to announce to the Public, that they will be glad to receive any such Compositions, addressed to "their Secretary at the Treasury Office in Drury Lane, on or before "the 10th of September, sealed up, with a distinguishing word, "number, or motto, on the cover, corresponding with the inscription, on a separate sealed paper, containing the name of the Author, "which will not be opened, unless containing the name of the "successful Candidate. "Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, August 13, 1812. 66 "Owing to an accidental delay in the publication of the above "Advertisement, the Committee have thought proper to extend the "time for receiving Addresses, from the last day of August to the "10th of September." Byron, on the suggestion of Lord Holland, intended to send in an Address in competition with other similar productions. He afterwards changed his mind, and refused to compete. After all the Addresses had been received and rejected, the Committee applied to him to write an Address. This he consented to do. "for the Bite of a Mad Dog," as poor Goldsmith complained of the fate of far superior performances.1 I am still sufficiently interested to wish to know the successful candidate; and, amongst so many, I have no doubt some will be excellent, particularly in an age when writing verse is the easiest of all attainments. 2 I I cannot answer your intelligence with the "like com"fort," unless, as you are deeply theatrical, you may wish to hear of Mr. Betty, whose acting is, I fear, utterly inadequate to the London engagement into which the managers of Covent Garden have lately entered. His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory 3 says, "I defy him to "extort that damned muffin face of his into madness." was very sorry to see him in the character of the "Ele"phant on the slack rope;" for, when I last saw him, I was in raptures with his performance. But then I was sixteen-an age to which all London condescended to subside. After all, much better judges have admired, and may again; but I venture to "prognosticate a pro"phecy" (see the Courier) that he will not succeed. So, poor dear Rogers has stuck fast on the brow of "the mighty Helvellyn " --I hope not for ever. My best I. "The public were more importantly employed, than to observe "the easy simplicity of my style, or the harmony of my periods. "Sheet after sheet was thrown off to oblivion. My essays were "buried among the essays upon liberty, Eastern tales, and cures for "the bite of a mad dog.”—Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xx. 2. See Letters, vol. i. p. 63, note 2. 3. "Diggory," one of Liston's parts, a character in Jackman's All the World's a Stage, asks (act i. sc. 2), "But how can you extort "that damned pudding-face of yours to madness?" 4. Rogers had gone for a tour in the North. Byron alludes to Scott's poem Helvellyn "I climb'd the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn," etc., etc. The poem was occasioned, as Scott's note states, by the death of a young gentleman of talents, and of a most amiable disposition," who was killed on the mountain in 1805. |