DETACHED THOUGHTS. [EXTRACTED FROM VARIOUS JOURNALS, MEMORANDUMS, &c. &c.] ON the first leaf of his "Scriptores Græci" is, looking down upon the little round lake that was in his schoolboy hand, the following memorial:-once Regillus, and which dots the immense expanse "George Gordon Byron, Wednesday, June 26th; below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my A. D. 1805, three quarters of an hour past three old instructor. Afterward I had a very serious, o'clock in the afternoon third school,-Calvert, saturnine, but kind young man, named Paterson, monitor, Tom Wildman on my left hand, and Long for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but on my right. Harrow on the Hill." On the same a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch. He leaf, written five years after, appears this comment: was a rigid Presbyterian also. With him I began "Ehue fugaces, Posthume! Posthume ! Latin in Ruddiman's grammar, and continued till I went to the Grammar school' (Scoticè, 'Schule;' Aberdonice, Squeel,') where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to "B. January 9th, 1809.-Of the four persons England (where I had been hatched) by the demise whose names are here mentioned, one is dead, of my uncle. I acquired this handwriting, which I another in a distant climate, all separated, and not can hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. five years have elapsed since they sat together in Duncan of the same city: I don't think he would school, and none are yet twenty-one years of age." plume himself much upon my progress. However, In some of his other school-books are recorded I wrote much better then than I have ever done the date of his entrance at Harrow, the names of since. Haste and agitation of one kind or another the boys who were at that time monitors, and the have quite spoiled as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched list of his fellow-pupils, under Doctor Drury, as over a frank. The grammar school might consist of follows: a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided into five classes taught by four masters, the chief teaching the fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and monitors, are heard by the head masters." "Byron, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, Alumnus Schola Lyonensis primus in anno Domini 1801, Ellison Duce." "Monitors, 1801.-Ellison, Royston, Hunxman, Rashleigh, Rokeby, Leigh." "Drury's Pupils, 1804.-Byron, Drury, Sinclair, Hoare, Bolder, Annesley, Calvert, Strong, Acland, Gordon, Drummond." * * "I doubt sometimes whether, after all, a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me; yet I sometimes long for it. My earliest dreams (as most boys' dreams are) were martial; but a little later "For several years of my earliest childhood, I they were all for love and retirement, till the hopewas in Aberdeen, but have never revisited it since I less attachment to M*** C*** began and conwas ten years old. I was sent, at five years old or tinued (though sedulously concealed) very early in earlier, to a school kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was my teens; and so upwards for a time. This threw called Bodsy Bowers,' by reason of his dapperness. me out again alone on a wide, wide sea.' In the It was a school for both sexes. I learned little there year 1804, I recollect meeting my sister at General except to repeat by rote the first lesson of Monosyl- Harcourt's in Portland Place. I was then one thing, lables (God made man '-'Let us love him ') by and as she had always till then found me. When hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. we met again in 1805, (she told me since,) my temWhenever proof was made of my progress at home, per and disposition were so completely altered that I repeated these words with the most rapid fluency; I was hardly to be recognized. I was not then but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to sensible of the change; but I can believe it, and repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries of my account for it. first year's accomplishments were detected, my ears boxed, (which they did not deserve, seeing it was by "In all other respects," (he says, after mentioncar only that I had acquired my letters,) and my ing his infant passion for Mary Duff,) "I differed intellects consigned to a new preceptor. He was a not at all from other children, being neither tall nor very devout, clever little clergyman, named Ross, short, dull nor witty, of my age, but rather livelyafterward minister of one of the kirks, (East, I except in my sullen moods, and then I was always a think.) Under him I made astonishing progress devil. They once (in one of my silent rages) and I recollect to this day his mild manners and wrenched a knife from me, which I had snatched good-natured pains-taking. The moment I could from table at Mrs. B.'s dinner, (I always dined read, my grand passion was history, and, why I earlier,) and applied to my breast;-but this was know not, but I was particularly taken with the three or four years after, just before the late Lord battle near the Lake Regillus in the Roman His- B.'s decease. * * * tory, put into my hands first. Four years ago, "My ostensible temper has certainly improved in when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and later years; but I shudder, and must to my latest hour, regret the consequence of it and my passions have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by combined. One event-but no matter-there are our fathers, it would have joined lands broad and others not much better to think of also-and to rich, it would have joined at least one heart, and them I give the preference..... two persons not ill matched in years, (she is two years my elder,) and-and-and-what has been the result?' * * * * * * "But I hate dwelling upon incidents. My temper is now under management-rarely loud, and, when loud, never deadly. It is when silent, and I feel my forehead and my cheek paling, that I cannot control "When I was a youth, I was reckoned a good it; and then..... but unless there is a woman (and actor. Besides Harrow Speeches,' (in which I not any or every woman) in the way, I have sunk shone,) I enacted Penruddock, in the Wheel of into tolerable apathy." Fortune,' and Tristram Fickle in Allingham's farce of the Weathercock,' for three nights, (the dura"My passions were developed very early-so tion of our compact,) in some private theatricals at early that few would believe me if I were to state Southwell, in 1806, with great applause. The occathe period and the facts which accompanied it. sional prologue for our volunteer play was also of Perhaps this was one of the reasons which caused my composition. The other performers were young. the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts,-ladies and gentlemen of the neighborhood, and the having anticipated life. My earlier poems are the whole went off with great effect upon our goodthoughts of one at least ten years older than the natured audience.' age at which they were written,-I don't mean for their solidity, but their experience. The first two cantos of Childe Harold were completed at twentytwo; and they are written as if by a man older than I shall probably ever be." * * * * * * "When I first went up to college, it was a new and a heavy-hearted scene for me: firstly, I so much disliked leaving Harrow, that though it was time, (I being seventeen,) it broke my very rest for the last quarter with counting the days that remained. My first dash into poetry was as early as 1890. I always hated Harrow till the last year and a half, It was the ebulliton of a passion for my first cousin, but then I liked it. Secondly, I wished to go to Margaret Parker, (daughter and granddaughter of Oxford and not to Cambridge. Thirdly, I was so the two Admirals Parker,) one of the most beauti- completely alone in this new world, that it half ful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten broke my spirits. My companions were not unsothe verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget cial, but the contrary-lively, hospitable, of rank her-her dark eyes-her long eyelashes-her com- and fortune, and gay far beyond my gayety. I pletely Greek cast of face and figure! I was then mingled with, and dined and supped, &c., with about twelve-she rather older, perhaps a year. She them; but, I know not how, it was one of the died about a year or two afterward, in consequence deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel of a fall, which injured her spine, and induced con- that I was no longer a boy." sumption. Her sister Augusta (by some thought "From that moment" (he adds) "I began to still more beautiful) died of the same malady; and grow old in my own esteem, and in my esteem age it was, indeed, in attending her, that Margaret met is not estimable. I took my gradations in the vices with the accident which occasioned her own death. with great promptitude, but they were not to my My sister told me, that when she went to see her, taste; for my early passions, though violent in the shortly before her death, upon accidentally mention- extreme, were concentrated, and hated division or ing my name, Margaret colored through the pale- spreading abroad. I could have left or lost the ness of mortality to the eyes, to the great astonish- whole world with, or for, that which I loved; but, ment of my sister, who (residing with her grand- though my temperament was naturally burning, Í mother, Lady Holderness, and seeing but little of could not share in the common-place libertinism of me, for family reasons) knew nothing of our attach- the place and time without disgust. And yet this ment, nor could conceive why my name should very disgust, and my heart thrown back upon itself, affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her threw me into excesses perhaps more fatal than illness, being at Harrow and in the country, till she those from which I shrunk, as fixing upon one (at Some years after, I made an attempt at a time) the passions which spread among many an elegy-a very dull one.* would have hurt only myself." was gone. * * * * "I do not recollect scarcely any thing equal to the transparent beauty of my cousin, or to the "Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may sweetness of her temper, during the short period of seem) I had never read a Review. But while at our intimacy. She looked as if she had been made | Harrow, my general information was so great on out of a rainbow-all beauty and peace. modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could My passion had its usual effects upon me-I only collect so much information from Reviews, could not sleep-I could not eat-I could not rest; because I was never seen reading, but always idle, and although I had reason to know that she loved and in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I me, it was the texture of my life to think of the read eating, read in bed, read when no one else time which must elapse before we could meet again read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was -being usually about twelve hours of separation! five years old, and yet never met with a Review, But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser now." which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them. But it is true; for I remem"When I was fifteen years of age, it happened ber when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this that, in a cavern in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my ludiboat, (in which two people only could lie down,) a crous astonishment in asking them, 'What is a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so Review?' To be sure, they were then less comclose upon the water as to admit the boat only to be mon. In three years more, I was better acquainted pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who with that same; but the first I ever read was in wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The 1806-7. * companion of my transit was Mary Anne Chaworth, "At school I was (as I have said) remarked for with whom I had been long in love and never told the extent and readiness of my general information; it, though she had discovered it without. I recol- but in all other respects idle, capable of great sualect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and den exertions, (such as thirty or forty Greek hexIt is as well. We were a party, a Mr. W., two Miss W.'s, Mr. and Mrs. Cl-ke, Miss R. and my M. A. C. Alas! why do I say MY? Our union would * See proceding Memoranda, on page 979. ameters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God,) but of few continuous drudgeries. My qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron, (our head master,) had a great notion that I should turn ou an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my published of myself in different journals, Euglisa voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my ac-and foreign. This was suggested to me by accition. I remember that my first declamation aston-dently turning over a foreign one lately, for I have ished him into some unwonted (for he was economi-made it a rule latterly never to search for any thing cal of such) and sudden compliments, before the of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal if predeclaimers at our first rehearsal. My first Harrow sented by chance. verses, (that is, English, as exercises,) a translation "To begin, then: I have seen myself compared of a chorus from the Prometheus of Eschylus, were personally or poetically, in English, French, Gerreceived by him but coolly. No one had the least man, (as interpreted to me,) Italian, and Portunotion that I should subside into poesy. guese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, "Peel, the orator and statesman, (that was, or Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, is, or is to be,') was my form-fellow, and we were 'an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakboth at the top of our remove, (a public-school speare, Bonaparte, Tiberius, Eschylus, Sophocles, phrase.) We were on good terms, but his brother Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and was my intimate friend. There were always great Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the nopes of Peel, among us all, masters and scholars-Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Daland he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he las, (the schoolboy,) to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, to a petit-maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never; Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to oft and in school, he always knew his lesson and I have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron,' in Shakrarely-but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as speare, to Churchill, the poet, to Kean, the actor, to well. In general information, history, &c., &c., I Alfieri, &c., &c., &c. think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of "The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very serimy standing. ously by an Italian who had known him in his "The prodigy of our school-days was George Sin-younger days. It of course related merely to our clair, (son of Sir John ;) he made exercises for half apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert the school, (literally,) verses at will, and themes it to me, (for we were not then good friends,) but in without it. *** He was a friend of mine, and in society. the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise, a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others, when it was necessary, as a point of honor and stature, that he should so chastise; or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me from school, still.* "The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or any body else." * * * * "My mother, before I was twenty, would have it that I was like Rousseau, and Madame de Staël used to say so, too, in 1813, and the Edinburgh Review has something of the sort in its critique on the fourth canto of Childe Harold. I can't see any point of resemblance:-he wrote prose; I verse: he was of the people; I of the aristocracy:* he was a "Clayton was another school-monster of learn- philosopher; I am none: he published his first work ing, and talent, and hope; but what has become of at forty; I mine at eighteen his first essay brought him I do not know. He was certainly a genius. him universal applause; mine the contrary: he "My school friendships were with me passions, married his housekeeper; I could not keep house (for I was always violent,) but I do not know that with my wife: he thought all the world in a plot there is one which has endured (to be sure some against him; my little world seems to think me in have been cut short by death) till now. That with a plot against it, if I may judge by their abuse in Lord Clare began one of the earliest and lasted print and coterie: he liked botany; I like flowers, longest-being only interrupted by distance that I herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pediknow of. I never hear the word Clare' without a grees: he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it beating of the heart even now, and I write it with to what I catch by ear-I never could learn any the feelings of 1893-4-5 ad infinitum. thing by study, not even a language-it was all by "At Harrow I fought my way fairly. I think I rote, and ear, and memory: he had a bad memory; lost but one battle out of seven; and that was to I had, at least, an excellent one, (ask Hodgson, the H; and the rascal did not win it, but by the poet-a good judge, for he has an astonishing one:) unfair treatment of his own boarding-house, where he wrote with hesitation and care; I with rapidity, we boxed-I had not even a second. I never for- and rarely with pains: he could never ride, nor gave him, and I should be sorry to meet him now, as I swim, nor was cunning of fence;' I am an excel· am sure we should quarrel. My most memorable lent swimmer, a decent, though not at all a dashing, combats were with Morgan, Rice, Rainsford, and Lord rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen in the Jocelyn, but we were always friendly afterward. I course of scampering,) and was sufficient of fence, was a most unpopular boy, but led latterly, and have particularly of the Highland broadsword,-not a retained many of my school friendships, and all my bad boxer, when I could keep my temper, which dislikes-except to Doctor Butler, whom I treated was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I rebelliously, and have been sorry ever since. Doc- knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his kneepan tor Drury, whom I plagued sufficiently too, was the out, (with the gloves on,) in Angelo's and Jackson's was the best, the kindest (and yet strict, too) friend rooms, in 1806, during the sparring, and I was beI ever had-and I look upon him still as a father. sides a very fair cricketer-one of the Harrow eleven, "P. Hunter, Curzon, Long, and Tatersall, were when we played against Eaton in 1805. Besides, my principal friends. Clare, Dorset, Cs. Gordon, Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners, De Bath, Claridge, and J. Wingfield, were my his whole character, were so very different, that I juniors and favorites, whom I spoiled by indulgence. am at a loss to conceive how such a comparison Of all human beings, I was, perhaps, at one time, could have arisen, as it has done three several times, the most attached to poor Wingfield, who died at and all in rather a remarkable manner. I forgot to Coimbra, 1811, before I returned to England." say that he was also shortsighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary, to such a degree, that in the largest theatre of Bologna I distin guished and read some busts and inscriptions painted * * * "I have been thinking over, the other day, on the various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen • See Childe Harold, Canto I., note 19. See Letter xxxiii. near the stage from a box so distant and so darkly and Prince Cantemir, besiges a more modern hislighted, that none of the company (composed of tory, anonymous. Of the Ottoman History I know young and very bright-eyed people, some of them every event, from Tangralopi, and afterward Othin the same box) could make out a letter, and man I., to the peace of Passarowitz, in 1718,-the thought it was a trick, though I had never been in battle of Cutzka, in 1739, and the treaty between that theatre before. Russia and Turkey, in 17990. "Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man, and the thing, if true, were flattering enough ;-but I have no idea of being pleased with a chimera." * * * * * "Russia.-Tooke's Life of Catherine II., Voltaire's Czar Peter. "Sweden.-Voltaire's Charles XII., also Norberg's Charles XII.,-in my opinion the best of the two. A translation of Schiller's Thirty Years' War, which contains the exploits of Gustavus Adol"I have been thinking of an odd circumstance. phus, besides Harte's Life of the same prince. I My daughter, (1) my wife, (2) my half-sister, (3) my have somewhere, too, read an account of Gustavus mother, (4) my sister's mother, (5) my natural Vasa, the deliverer of Sweden, but do not remember daughter, (6) and myself, (7) are, or were, all only the author's name. children. My sister's mother (Lady Conyers) had "Prussia.-I have seen, at least, twenty Lives of only my half-sister by that second marriage, (her-Frederick II., the only prince worthy recording in self, too, an only child,) and my father had only Prussian annals. Gillies, His own Works, and me, an only child, by his second marriage with my Thiebalt,-none very amusing. The last is paltry, mother, an only child too. Such a complication of but circumstantial. only children, all tending to one family, is singular enough, and looks like fatality almost. But the fiercest animals have the fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants, which are mild in comparison."* * "Denmark I know little of. Of Norway I understand the natural history, but not the chronological. "Germany.-I have read long histories of the house of Suabia, Wenceslaus, and, at length, Rodolph of Hapsburgh and his thick-lipped Austrian descendants. of Morgarten, where Burgundy was slain. "Italy.-Davila, Guicciardini, the Guelphs and "America.—Robertson, Andrews' American War. Africa.-Merely from travels, as Mungo Park, Bruce. BIOGR “I have a notion (he says) that gamblers are as happy as many people, being always excited. Women, wine, fame, the table, -even ambition, sate now and then; but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gamester alive; besides, one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else. I was very fond of it when young, that is to say, of hazard, for I hate all card games,—even faro. When macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle and dash of the box and dice, and "Robertson's Charles V.,-Cæsar, Sallust, (Catithe glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or line and Jugurtha,) Lives of Marlborough and bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had some- Eugene, Tekeli, Bonnard, Bonaparte, all the Brittimes to throw often to decide at all. I have thrown ish Poets, both by Johnson and Anderson, Rosas many as fourteen mains running, and carried off seau's Confessions, Life of Cromwell, British Pluall the cash upon the table occasionally; but I had tarch, British Nepos, Campbell's Lives of the Adno coolness, or judgment, or calculation. It was the mirals, Charles XII., Czar Peter, Catherine II., delight of the thing that pleased me. Upon the Henry Lord Kaimes, Marmontel, Teignmouth's Sir whole, I left off in time, without being much a William Jones, Life of Newton, Belisaire, with winner or loser. Since one-and-twenty years of thousands not to be detailed. age, I have played but little, and then never above a hundred, or two, or three." LIST OF HISTORICAL WRITERS WHOSE WORKS I "LAW. "Blackstone, Montesquieu. "History of England. - Hume, Rapin, Henry, "Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drum Smollet, Tindal, Belsham, Bisset, Adolphus, Hol- mond, Beattie, and Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest. ingshed, Froissart's Chronicle's, (belonging properly to France.) Spain.-I chiefly derived my knowledge of old Spanish History from a book called the Atlas, now "GEOGRAPHY. "Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie. POETRY. "All the British Classics, as before detailed, with most of the living poets, Scott, Southey, &c.-Some French, in the original, of which the Cid is my favorite.-Little Italian.-Greek and Latin without have translated a good deal from both languages, number:-these last I shall give up in future.-I verse as well as prosc. ELOQUENCE. "Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, obsolete. The modern history, from the intrigues Austin's Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates, of Alberoni down to the Prince of Peace, I learned from the Revolution to the year 1742. from its connexion with European politics. "Portugal.-From Vertot; as also his account of the Siege of Rhodes,-though the last is his own invention, the real facts being totally different. So much for his Knights of Malta. Turkey.-I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut, • See Letter dxxxvi. DIVINITY. "Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker,-all very tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and Thirty-nine Arti cles. MISCELLANIES. account. But as for the others, from Chaucer down "Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c.-Novels to Churchill, they are 'voces et præterea nihil; sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with by the thousand. "All the books here enumerated I have taken advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praise: down from memory. I recollect reading them, and bestowed on him, I think obscene and contempti can quote passages from any mentioned. I have, of ble:-he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, course, omitted several in my catalogue; but the which he does not deserve so well as Pierce, PlowEnglish living greater part of the above I perused before the age man, or Thomas of Ercildoune. of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have become idle poets I have avoided mentioning ;-we have none and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making who will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us; and another century will sweep our "B.-Nov. 30, 1807. empire, our literature, and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind. love to women. "November 30, 1807. * * "BYRON." * "I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, &c., &c. The book, Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M. W. Monin my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to tague, Hawkins's Translation from Mignot's Hisacquire the reputation of being well read, with the tory of the Turks, the Arabian Nights, all travels, least trouble, is, Burton's Anatomy of Melan- or histories, or books upon the East I could meet choly,' the most amusing and instructive medley of with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. ten years old. I think the Arabian Nights first. But a superficial reader must take care, or his intri- After these, I preferred the history of naval actions, cacies will bewilder him. If, however, he has pa- Don Quixote, and Smollet's novels, particularly tience to go through his volumes, he will be more Roderick Random, and I was passsionate for the improved for literary conversation than by the peru- Roman History. When a boy, I could never bear to sal of any twenty other works with which I am ac- read any poetry whatever without disgust and requainted at least, in the English language." luctance. * * * * In the same book that contains the above record "When I belonged to the Drury-Lane Commitof his studies, he has written out, also from memo- tee, and was one of the sub-committee of managery, a "List of the different poets, dramatic or oth-ment, the number of plays upon the shelves were erwise, who have distinguished their respective lan-about five hundred. Conceiving that among these guages by their productions." After enumerating there must be some of merit, in person and by proxy the various poets, both ancient and modern, of Eu-I caused an investigation. I do not think that of rope, he thus proceeds with his catalogue through those which I saw, there was one which could be other quarters of the world :conscientiously tolerated. There never were such "Arabia.—Mahomet, whose Koran contains most things as most of them! Maturin was very kindly sublime poetical passages, far surpassing European recommended to me by Walter Scott, to whom I had poetry. recourse, firstly, in the hope that he would do some"Persia. Ferdousi, author of the Shah Namch, thing for us himself, and secondly, in my despair, the Persian Iliad,-Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal that he would point out to us any young (or old) Hafiz, the oriental Anacreon. The last is reverenced writer of promise. Maturin sent his Bertram and beyond any bard of ancient or modern times by the a letter without his address, so that at first I could Persians, who resort to his tomb, near Shiraz to cel-give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his ebrate his memory. A splendid copy of his works residence, I sent him a favorable answer, and someis chained to his monument. thing more substantial. His play succeeded; but I "America.-An epic poet has already appeared in was at that time absent from England. that hemisphere, Barlow, author of the Columbiad, "I tried Coleridge too; but he had nothing fea-not to be compared with the works of more pol-sible in hand at the time. Mr. Sotheby obligingly ished nations. offered all his tragedies, and I pledged myself, and "Iceland, Denmark, Norway, were famous for notwithstanding many squabbles with my committheir Skalds. Among these Lodburg was one of the most distinguished. His Death-Song breathes ferocious sentiments, but a glorious and impassioned strain of poetry. "Hindostan is undistinguished by any great bard, —at least, the Sanscrit is so imperfectly known to Europeans, we know not what poetical relicts may exist. "The Birman Empire.-Here the natives are passionately fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown. teed brethren, did get Ivan' accepted, read, and the parts distributed. But, lo! in the very heart of the matter, upon some tepidness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the author, Sotheby withdrew his play. Sir J. B. Burgess did also present four tragedies and a farce, and I moved green-room and subcommittee, but they would not. "Then the scenes I had to go through !-the authors, and the authoresses, and the milliners, and the wild Irishmen,—the people from Brighton, from Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, from "China.-I never heard of any Chinese poet but Dublin, from Dundee,-who came in upon me! to the Emperor Kien Long, and his ode to Tea. What all of whom it was proper to give a civil answer, a pity their philosopher Confucius did not write po- and a hearing, and a reading. Mrs. Glover's father, etry, with his precepts of morality ! an Irish dancing-master of sixty years, called upon Africa-In Africa some of the native melodies me to request to play Archer, dressed in silk stockare plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; ings, on a frosty morning, to show his legs, (which but whether their rude strains of nature can be were certainly good and Irish for his age, and had been classed with poetry, as the songs of the bards, the still better,)-Miss Emma Somebody with a play enSkalds of Europe, &c., &c., I know not. titled 'The Bandit of Bohemia,' or some such title or "This brief list of poets I have written down production,-Mr. O'Higgins, then resident at Richfrom memory, without any book of reference; con- mond, with an Irish tragedy, in which the unities sequently some errors may occur, but I think, if could not fail to be observed, for the protagonist any, very trivial. The works of the European, and was chained by the leg to a pillar during the chief some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in the part of the performance. He was a wild man of a original or translations. In my list of English, I salvage appearance, and the difficulty of not laughhave merely mentioned the greatest ;-to enumerate ing at him was only to be got over by reflecting upon the minor poets would be useless, as well as tedious. the probable consequences of such cachinnation. Perhaps Gray, Goldsmith, and Collins, might have "As I am really a civil and polite person, and do been added, as worthy of mention, in a cosmopolite hate giving pain when it can be avoided, I sent them |