III.] WEDDERBURN WEBSTER'S LETTER. All in a common ruin lay, In ghastly token of the fray. There both the dying and the dead, Might seek to find their earthly forms in vain.' 449 "Now your Review upon this-'The Poem goes on to say the Battle was so tremendous that when the ghosts of the dead men came back in the night (still the night mare) to look for their bodies they were not able to find them, as "Then the spirits of the slain Might seek to find their earthly forms in vain.' "Upon this part I can't do better than parodize your own passage: : "And this is the trash that Mr. Gifford has the perfidy to palm on the British Public as the Critique of a Reviewer on an English Poem!!' One more instance, but by far the most atrocious of your perversion and illiberal distortion of my work, and I have done-It is this-and my comment upon it will be very brief— what you have made a Translation is given by me as an IMITATION of Gresset, and as such I believe is invulnerable to your missiles you knew this, but in your spirit of malignity you chose to render my passages ridiculous by making them your own-and by a chaotic play upon words, by which the best Poem (allowing mine to be the worst) may be made appear any thing but what it is in the eyes of those, who judge by such criticisms. As the present Attorney General once said, 'Libels are no very dreadful things, if a man will but take care of his own honour it signifies nothing though he be libelled from the beginning of January to the end of December;'-and in this I perfectly concur-but there is a certain form of attack, a certain kind of negative, midnight insult, which no man can tacitly submit to, without becoming contemptible to others by his own compromise-there are cases, and I consider the present as one in point, where moderation ceases to be a virtue, and when the feelings direct their own issue-when we survive them-life is held on far too dear terms. If however in presenting these remarks to the public, for which I owe many apologies, any expressions have escaped me at all bordering on the same character and of the same complexion as your attack upon me in the Quarterly Review, I am ready to admit them unworthy of myself -but I cannot allow they are improperly applied. I shall conclude with a text from the Baviad. The commentary we have yet to find :— "It is to be wished that Critics by profession, sensible of the influence which their opinions necessarily have on the public taste, would divest themselves of their prejudices when they sit down—to the execution of what I hope they consider a SOLEMN DUTY.' "Of such professions we may say with Martial "Nos hæc novimus esse nihil.' "J. WEDDERBURN WEBSTER. "Gladwood near Melrose, December 10, 1816." VOL. IV. 2 G APPENDIX IV. STENDHAL'S ACCOUNT OF BYRON AT VENICE. (See p. 140, note 1.) 66 IN Rome, Naples, et Florence, par de Stendhal (Henri Beyle), Edition complète (1854), p. 394, appears, under the date of June 27, 1817, the following entry : "L'on m'a présenté au spectacle à Lord Byron." A passage at this point seems to have been omitted which was thus translated in Rome, Naples, and Florence, by Count de Stendhal (London, 1818, 8vo), pp. 254, 255 :— "" June 27th.-I was introduced, at the theatre, to Lord Byron. -What a grand countenance !-it is impossible to have finer eyes the divine man of genius!-He is yet scarcely twentyeight years of age, and he is the first poet in England, probably in the world; when he is listening to music it is a countenance worthy of the beau-idéal of the Greeks. "For the rest, let a man be ever so great a poet, let him besides be the head of one of the most ancient families in England, this is too much for our age, and I have learnt with pleasure, that Lord Byron is a wretch. When he came into the drawing-room of Madame de Staël, at Copet, all the English ladies left it. Our unfortunate man of genius had the imprudence to marry-his wife is very clever, and has renewed at his expense the old story of Tom Jones and Blifil. Men of genius are generally mad, or at the least very imprudent! his lordship was so atrocious, as to take an actress into keeping for two months. If he had been a blockhead, nobody would have concerned themselves with his following the example of almost all young men of fashion; but it is well known that Mr. Murray, the bookseller, gives him two guineas a line for all the verses he sends him. He is absolutely the counterpart of M. de Mirabeau; the feodalists, before the Revolution, not knowing how to answer the Eagle of Marseilles, discovered that he was a monster. The Provençal would laugh at what befel his countryman; the Englishman, it appears, thought proper to take up the matter in the high tragic tone. The injustice which this young Lord has met Iv.] A MOST DELIGHTFUL MONSTER. 451 with in his own country, has rendered him, it is said, gloomy and misanthropic. Much good may it do him! If at the age of 28, when he can already reproach himself with having written six volumes of the finest poetry, it had been possible thoroughly to know the world, he would have been aware that in the 19th century there is but one alternative, to be a blockhead or a monster. Be this as it may, he is the most delightful monster I ever knew; in talking of poetry in any literary discussion he is as simple as a child; the reverse is the case with an academician. He can speak the ancient Greek, the modern Greek, and the Arabic. He is learning the Armenian language here of an Armenian Papa, who is occupied in composing a very curious work to ascertain the precise situation of the Garden of Eden. This work, Lord Byron, whose sombre genius adores the oriental fictions, will translate into English. Were I in his place, I would pass myself off as dead, and commence a new life, as Mr. Smith, a worthy merchant of Lima." APPENDIX V. BYRON'S UNFINISHED SKIT ON SOTHEBY'S TOUR (1816-17) WITH HIS FAMILY, PROFESSOR ELMSLEY, AND DR. PLAYFAIR. (See p. 191, note 1.) "Ravenna, August 19th 1820. "ITALY, OR NOT CORINNA: A TRAVELLING ROMANCE BY AN ÉCRIVAIN EN Poste. "In the year 181-, not very long after the peace of Lord Castlereagh's, which only resembled that of the Deity, in its passing 'all understanding,' among the 100,000 travellers who broke loose from Great Britain in all directions, there were two whose movements we mean to follow, and some others who will be found to follow those movements. "They were young men between twenty and thirty years of age: their names were Amandeville and Clutterbuck, which are still recorded in the various Inn-books of their route, with considerable variations of orthography, according to the accomplishments of the waiter who took them down for the police; they are also carved on some of the window frames, and written in the Album of Arqua immediately under those of Mr. Solemnboy, the poet, Mrs. Solemnboy, and the six Miss Solemnboys, who much about the same period began to travel-the young ladies for improvement, the old lady for company, and Mr. Solemnboy himself, at the age of Sixty, for the acquisition of languages, being addicted to translation. "The two single Gentlemen above mentioned posted in their light barouche, with no great luggage, and a patience, acquired on the great English North road, of nine miles an hour, which, however, became more worthy of comparison with that of Job, by the probationary exercise of several days journey on German roads with German postillions, in their way to a more genial climate. "Mr. Solemnboy and family had more soberly contracted with a Vetturino, for the sum of 12 louis, to convey them to Paris, finding them in food and the French language on the way, in consequence of which agreement they had ample leisure afforded for the digestion of the one and the acquisition of the other. t v.] AN UNFINISHED SKIT. 453 "On their arrival at the grand metropolis of the civilized World, which at this period was civilizing the Bashkins, who had travelled all the way from the Chinese wall to see it, they wondered and were delighted; and Mr. Solemnboy published an Ode to the uppermost Emperor of the day, which Mr. Galignani, who appropriates most English works by republication, has not yet pirated, though it has now been several years printed. "After a short stay in Paris, they accompanied their Vetturino to Switzerland and Italy, in the same ratio as before and in the same vehicle, which, though large, was neither speedy nor convenient. It admitted the rain, but excluded the light, and was only airy during a high wind, or a snow storm. However, by dint of being obliged to get out on going up a hill, and of being thrown out on going down one, they contrived to see so much of the Country as to acquire a tolerable notion of landscape; and their letters dated Gfull of past and present description, with very little assistance from Coxe's Guide-book." were |