enclosed! to the utter discomfiture of the printer, and, I fear, not to your advantage. B. 320.-To John Murray. Half-past two in the morning, Aug. 10, 1813. DEAR SIR,-Pray suspend the proofs, for I am bitten again, and have quantities for other parts of the bravura. Yours ever, B. P.S.-You shall have them in the course of the day. 321.-To James Wedderburn Webster. August 12, 1813. MY DEAR WEBSTER,—I am, you know, a detestable correspondent, and write to no one person whatever; you therefore cannot attribute my silence to any thing but want of good breeding or good taste, and not to any more atrocious cause; and as I confess the fault to be entirely mine-why-you will pardon it. I have ordered a copy of the Giaour (which is nearly doubled in quantity in this edition) to be sent, and I will first scribble my name in the title page. Many and sincere thanks for your good opinion of book, and (I hope to add) author. Rushton shall attend you whenever you please, though I should like him to stay a few weeks, and help my other people in forwarding my chattels. Your taking him is no less a favor to me than him; and I trust he will behave well. If not, your remedy is very simple; only don't let him be idle; honest I am sure he is, and I believe good-hearted and quiet. No pains has been 1813.] LORD YARMOUTH. 245 spared, and a good deal of expense incurred in his education; accounts and mensuration, etc., he ought to know, and I believe he does. I write this near London, but your answer will reach me better in Bennet Street, etc. (as before). I am going very soon, and if you would do the same thing-as far as Sicily-I am sure you would not be sorry. My sister, Mrs. L. goes with me- -her spouse is obliged to retrench for a few years (but he stays at home); so that his link boy prophecy (if ever he made it) recoils upon himself. I am truly glad to hear of Lady Frances's good health. Have you added to your family? Pray make my best respects acceptable to her Ladyship. Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear from you as soon and as fully as you please. Ever most truly yours, 322.-To Thomas Moore. BYRON. Bennet Street, August 22, 1813. As our late-I might say, deceased-correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, paulo majora, prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first-criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood. Mad. de Stael Holstein has 1. The fight, in which Harry Harmer, "the Coppersmith" (17841834), beat Jack Ford, took place at St. Nicholas, near Margate, August 23, 1813. Francis Charles Seymour Conway, Earl of Yarmouth (1777-1842), succeeded his father as second Marquis of Hertford in 1822. The colossal libertinism and patrician splendour of his life inspired Disraeli to paint him as "Monmouth" in Coningsby, and Thackeray as 'Steyne" in Vanity Fair. He married, in 1798, Maria Fagniani, claimed as a daughter by George Selwyn and by "Old Q.," and lost one of her young barons,1 who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,-kilt and killed in a coffeehouse at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be,—but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could-write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance-and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation. In a "mail-coach copy" of the Edinburgh,2 I perceive The Giaour is second article. The numbers are enriched by both. Yarmouth, as an intimate friend of the Regent, and the son of the Prince's female favourite, was the butt of Moore and the Whig satirists. Byron gibes at Yarmouth's red whiskers, which helped to gain him the name of "Red Herrings" in the Waltz, line 142, note 1. Yarmouth, like Byron, patronized the fancy, and, like him also, was a frequenter of Manton's shooting-gallery in Davies Street; but there is no record of their being acquainted, though the house, which Byron occupied (13, Piccadilly Terrace) during his brief married life, was in the occupation of Lord Yarmouth before Byron took it from the Duchess of Devonshire. 1. Albert de Staël “led an irregular life, and met a deplorable "death at Doberan, a small city of the duchy of Mecklenburg"Schwerin, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, a favourite resort in summer for bathing, gambling, etc. Some officers of the état"major of Bernadotte had gone to try their luck in this place of "play and pleasure. They quarrelled over some louis, and a duel "immediately ensued. I well remember that the Grand-Duke Paul "of Mecklenburg-Schwerin told me he was there at the time, and, "while walking with his tutors in the park, suddenly heard the "clinking of swords in a neighbouring thicket. They ran to the "place, and reached it just in time to see the head of Albert fall, "cleft by one of those long and formidable sabres which were "carried by the Prussian cavalry." The above passage is quoted from the unpublished Souvenirs of M. Pictet de Sergy, given by A. Stevens in his Life of Madame de Staël, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205. 2. Only special copies of books published in Edinburgh came to London by coach; the bulk was forwarded in Leith smacks. In the Edinburgh Review for July, 1813, the Giaour was reviewed as a poem "full of spirit, character, and originality," and producing an effect at once "powerful and pathetic.' But the reviewer considers that "energy of character and intensity of emotion. pre. "sented in combination with worthlessness and guilt," are 'most "powerful corrupters and perverters of our moral nature," and he deplores Byron's exclusive devotion to gloomy and revolting subjects. 1813.] FRANCIS JEFFREY. 247 still in the Leith smack-pray which way is the wind? The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love; -you know he is 1. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) succeeded Sidney Smith as editor of the Edinburgh Review (founded 1802), and held the editorship till 1829. The first number of the Review, says Francis Horner, brought to light "the genius of that little man. "During the first six years of its existence, he wrote upwards of seventy articles. At the same time, he was a successful lawyer. Called to the Scottish Bar in 1794, he became successively Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (1829), Lord Advocate (1830), and a Judge of the Court of Sessions (1834) with the title of Lord Jeffrey. He married, as his second wife, at New York, in October, 1813, Charlotte Wilkes, a grandniece of John Wilkes. ... Jeffrey is described at considerable length by Ticknor, in a letter, dated February 8, 1814 (Life of G. Ticknor, vol. i. pp. 43-47): "You are to imagine, then, before you a short, stout, little gentle"man, about five and a half feet high, with a very red face, black "hair, and black eyes. You are to suppose him to possess a very 'gay and animated countenance, and you are to see in him all the "restlessness of a will-o'-wisp. He enters a room with a countenance so satisfied, and a step so light and almost fantastic, "that all your previous impressions of the dignity and severity of "the Edinburgh Review are immediately put to flight. . . . It is "not possible, however, to be long in his presence without under"standing something of his real character, for the same promptness "and assurance which mark his entrance into a room carry him at 'once into conversation. The moment a topic is suggested-no "matter what or by whom he comes forth, and the first thing you "observe is his singular fluency," etc., etc. By the side of this description may be set that given of Jeffrey by Francis Horner (Life of Jeffrey, 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 212): "His 'manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast "which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity "and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man whose real "character is so much the reverse." The secret of his success, both as editor and critic, is that he made the Review the expression of the Whig character, both in its excellences and its limitations. A man of clear, discriminating mind, of cool and placid judgment, he refused to accept the existing state of things, was persuaded that it might be safely improved, saw the practical steps required, and had the courage of his convictions. He was suspicious of large principles, somewhat callous to enthusiasm or sentiment, intolerant of whatever was incapable of precise expression. His intellectual strength lay not in the possession of one great gift, but in the simultaneous exercise of several well-adjusted talents. His literary taste was correct; but it consisted rather in recognizing compliance with accepted rules of proved utility than gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several quarters, éperdument amoureux. Seriously -as Winifred Jenkins1 says of Lismahago—Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) "has done the handsome thing by me," and I say nothing. But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By the by, I was call'd in the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and-after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one's fellowcreatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for nothing, I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after. One in the readiness to appreciate novelties of thought and treatment. Hence his criticism, though useful for his time, has not endured beyond his day. It may be doubted whether more could be expected from a man who was eminently successful in addressing a jury. "He might not know his subject, but he knew his readers" (Bagehot's Literary Studies, vol. i. p. 30). Byron, believing him to have been the author of the famous article on Hours of Idleness, attacked him bitterly in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers (lines 460-528). He afterwards recognized his error. Don Juan (Canto X. stanza xvi.) expresses his mature opinion of a critic who, whatever may have been his faults, was as absolutely honest as political prejudice would permit― "And all our little feuds, at least all mine, Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe (As far as rhyme and criticism combine To make such puppets of us things below), Are over; Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne !' I do not know you, and may never know Jeffrey reviewed Childe Harold in the Edinburgh Review, No. 38, art. 10; the Giaour, No. 42, art. 2; the Corsair and Bride of Abydos, No. 45, art. 9; Byron's Poetry, No. 54, art. 1; Manfred, No. 56, art. 7; Beppo, No. 58, art. 2; Marino Faliero, No. 70, art. 1; Byron's Tragedies, No. 72, art. 5. 1. Winifred Jenkins is the maid to Miss Tabitha Bramble, who marries Captain Lismahago, in Smollett's Humphrey Clinker, 2. Lord Foley and Scrope Davies. |