read the MS. (if he obtains it), which I shall do with pleasure; but I should be very cautious in venturing an opinion on her whose Cecilia Dr. Johnson superintended.' If he lends it to me, I shall put it in the hands of Rogers and Moore, who are truly men of taste. I have filled the sheet, and beg your pardon; I will not do it again. I shall, perhaps, write again; but if not, believe, silent or scribbling, that I am,

My dearest William, ever, etc.

213.-To Francis Hodgson.

London, Dec. 8, 1811.

I sent you a sad Tale of Three Friars the other day, and now take a dose in another style. I wrote it a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days.

"Away, away, ye notes of woe," etc., etc.

I have gotten a book by Sir W. Drummond (printed, but not published), entitled Edipus Judaicus, in which he attempts to prove the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretation very roughly. I wish you could see it. Mr. Ward 3 has lent it me, and I confess to me it is worth fifty Watsons.

1. Dr. Johnson never saw Cecilia (1782) till it was in print. A day or two before publication, Miss Burney sent three copies to the three persons who had the best claim to them-her father, Mrs. Thrale, and Dr. Johnson.

2. Here follows one of the Thyrza poems.

3. The Hon. John William Ward, afterwards fourth Earl of Dudley. Byron said of him (Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 197), "Ward is one of the best-informed men "I know, and, in a tête-à-tête, is one of the most agreeable com"panions. He has great originality, and, being très distrait, it "adds to the piquancy of his observations, which are sometimes

1811.]

COLERIDGE'S LECTURES.

83

You and Harness must fix on the time for your visit to Newstead; I can command mine at your wish, unless any thing particular occurs in the interim. Master William Harness and I have recommenced a most fiery correspondence; I like him as Euripides liked Agatho, or Darby admired Joan, as much for the past as the present. Bland dines with me on Tuesday to meet Moore. Coleridge has attacked the Pleasures of Hope, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was present, and heard himself indirectly rowed by the lecturer. We are going in a party to hear the new Art of Poetry by this reformed schismatic; and were I one of these poetical luminaries, or of sufficient consequence to be noticed by the man of lectures, I should not hear him without an answer. For you know, "an a man will be beaten "with brains, he shall never keep a clean doublet." 2 Campbell3 will be desperately annoyed. I never saw

"somewhat trop naïve, though always amusing. This naïveté of his "is the more piquant from his being really a good-natured man, "who unconsciously thinks aloud. Interest Ward on a subject, "and I know no one who can talk better. His expressions are "concise without being poor, and terse and epigrammatic without "being affected," etc. Of somewhat the same opinion was Lady H. Leveson Gower (Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, vol. í. Pp. 41, 42): "The charm of Mr. Ward's conversation is exactly "what Mr. Luttrell wants, a sort of abandon, and being entertaining "because it is his nature and he cannot help it. I only mean "Mr. Ward in his happier hour, for what I have said of him is the "very reverse of what he is when vanity or humour seize upon him."

1. Crabb Robinson, in his Diary for January 20, 1812, has the following entry: "In the evening at Coleridge's lecture. "Conclusion of Milton. Not one of the happiest of Coleridge's "efforts. Rogers was there, and with him was Lord Byron. He was wrapped up, but I recognized his club foot, and, indeed, his 66 countenance and general appearance."

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2. "Benedict: No; if a man will be beaten with brains, he "shall wear nothing handsome about him.”—Much Ado about Nothing, act v. sc. 4.

3. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) lectured at the Royal Institution in 1811 on poetry. The lectures were afterwards published in the New Monthly Magazine, of which he was editor (1820-30).

a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive; -what a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what

Campbell also apparently read his lectures aloud at private houses. Miss Berry (Journal, vol. ii. p. 502) mentions a dinner-party on June 26, 1812, at the Princess of Wales's, where she heard him read his 66 first discourse," delivered at the Institution. Again (ibid., vol. iii. p. 6), she dined with Madame de Staël, March 9, 1814: "Nobody but Campbell the poet, Rocca, and her own daughter. "After dinner, Campbell read to us a discourse of his upon English "poetry, and upon some of the great poets. There are always "signs of a poet and critic of genius in all he does, often encum"bered by too ornate a style."

Campbell's best work was done between 1798 and 1810. Within that period were published The Pleasures of Hope (1799), Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), and such other shorter poems as "Hohen"linden," ," "Ye Mariners of England," "The Battle of the Baltic," and "O'Connor's Child." His "Ritter Bann," a reminiscence of his sojourn abroad (1800-1), was not published till later; both it and "The Last Man" were published in the New Monthly Maga zine, during the period of his editorship. An excellent judge of verse, he collected Specimens of the British Poets (1819), to which he added a valuable essay on poetry and short biographies. His Theodoric (1824), Pilgrim of Glencoe (1842), and Lives of Mrs. Siddons, Petrarch, and Shakespeare added nothing to his reputation.

The judgment of contemporary poets in the main agreed with Coleridge's estimate of Campbell's work. "There are some of "Campbell's lyrics," said Rogers (Table-Talk, etc., pp. 254, 255), "which will never die. His Pleasures of Hope is no great favourite "with me. The feeling throughout his Gertrude is very beautiful." Wordsworth also thought the Pleasures of Hope "strangely over"rated; its fine words and sounding lines please the generality of "readers, who never stop to ask themselves the meaning of a pas"sage." Byron, who calls Campbell "a warm-hearted and honest man," thought that his "Lochiel' and 'Mariners' are spirit-stir"ring productions; his Gertrude of Wyoming is beautiful; and some of the episodes in his Pleasures of Hope pleased me so much "that I know them by heart" (Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 353).

George Ticknor, who met Campbell in 1815 (Life, vol. i. p. 63), says, "He is a short, small man, and has one of the roundest and "most lively faces I have seen amongst this grave people. His "manners seemed as open as his countenance, and his conversation "as spirited as his poetry. He could have kept me amused till "morning." Shortly afterwards, Ticknor went to see him at Sydenham (ibid., p. 65): "Campbell had the same good spirits and "love of merriment as when I met him before,-the same desire to "amuse everybody about him; but still I could see, as I partly saw "then, that he labours under the burden of an extraordinary repu"tation, too easily acquired, and feels too constantly that it is

1811.]

WISH TO SPEAK IN PARLIAMENT.

85

can he fear from criticism? I don't know if Bland has seen Miller, who was to call on him yesterday.

To-day is the Sabbath,-a day I never pass pleasantly, but at Cambridge; and, even there, the organ is a sad remembrancer. Things are stagnant enough in town; as long as they don't retrograde, 'tis all very well. Hobhouse writes and writes and writes, and is an author. I do nothing but eschew tobacco. I wish parliament were assembled, that I may hear, and perhaps some day be heard;-but on this point I am not very sanguine. I have many plans;-sometimes I think of the East again, and dearly beloved Greece. I am well, but weakly. Yesterday Kinnaird told me I looked very ill, and sent me home happy.

necessary for him to make an exertion to satisfy expectation. The consequence is that, though he is always amusing, he is not always "quite natural." Sir Walter Scott made a similar remark about the numbing effect of Campbell's reputation upon his literary work; his deference to critics ruined his individuality. It was Scott's admiration for "Hohenlinden" which induced Campbell to publish the poem. The two men, travelling in a stage-coach alone, beguiled the way by repeating poetry. At last Scott asked Campbell for something of his own. He replied that there was one thing he had never printed, full of "drums and trumpets and blunderbusses and "thunder," and that he did not know if there was any good in it. He then repeated "Hohenlinden." When he had finished, Scott broke out with, "But, do you know, that's devilish fine! Why, "it's the finest thing you ever wrote, and it must be printed!" 1. See p. 31, note 1.

2. Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788–1830), fifth son of the seventh Baron Kinnaird, was educated at Eton, Göttingen, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an intimate friend of Hobhouse, with whom he travelled on the Continent (1813-14), and was in political sympathy. He represented Bishop's Castle from July, 1819, to March, 1820, but losing his seat at the general election, did not again attempt to enter Parliament. He was famous for his "mob dinners," to which Moore probably refers when he writes to Byron, in an undated letter, of the "Deipno"sophist Kinnaird." He was a partner in the bank of Ransom and Morland, a member of the committee for managing Drury Lane Theatre, author of the acting version of The Merchant of Bruges, or Beggar's Bush (acted at Drury Lane, December 14, 1815), and a member of the Radical Rota Club.

You will never give up wine. See what it is to be thirty! if you were six years younger, you might leave off anything. You drink and repent; you repent and drink.

Is Scrope still interesting and invalid? And how does Hinde with his cursed chemistry? To Harness I have written, and he has written, and we have all written, and have nothing now to do but write again, till Death splits up the pen and the scribbler.

The Alfred1 has three hundred and fifty-four candidates

Kinnaird was Byron's "trusty and trustworthy trustee and "banker, and crown and sheet anchor." It was at his suggestion that Byron wrote the Hebrew Melodies and the Monody on the Death of Sheridan. Talking of Kinnaird to Lady Blessington (Conversations, p. 215), Byron said, "My friend Dug is a proof that a good heart cannot compensate for an irritable temper; whenever "he is named, people dwell on the last and pass over the first; and 66 yet he really has an excellent heart, and a sound head, of which "I, in common with many others of his friends, have had various 66 proofs. He is clever, too, and well informed, and I do think "would have made a figure in the world, were it not for his temper, "which gives a dictatorial tone to his manner, that is offensive to "the amour propre of those with whom he mixes."

1. The Alfred Club (1808-55), established at 23, Albemarle Street, was the Savile of the day. Beloe, in his Sexagenarian (vol. ii. chaps. xx.-xxv.), describes among the members of the Symposium, as he calls it, Sir James Mackintosh, George Ellis, William Gifford, John Reeves, Sir W. Drummond, and himself. Byron, in his Detached Thoughts, says, "I was a member of "the Alfred. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and "bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis d'Ivernois; but one met "Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known "people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season." It was, says Mr. Wheatley (London Past and Present), known as the Half-read.

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In a manuscript note, now for the first time printed as written, on the above passage from Byron's Detached Thoughts, Sir Walter Scott writes, "The Alfred, like all other clubs, was much haunted "with boars, a tusky monster which delights to range where men "most do congregate. A boar, or bore, is always remarkable for "something respectable, such as wealth, character, high birth, "acknowledged talent, or, in short, for something that forbids "people to turn him out by the shoulders, or, in other words, to cut "him dead. Much of this respectability is supplied by the mere