LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF MY GRANDMOTHER'S REVIEW, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE "LIBERAL." IN the first canto of Don Juan appeared the fol- certain monies, to eulogize the unknown author owing passage: "For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, "I sent it in a letter to the editor, Who thank'd me duly by return of post- Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast, And smear his page with gall instead of honey, All I can say is that he had the money." On the appearance of the poem, the learned editor of the Review in question allowed himself to be decoyed into the ineffable absurdity of taking the charge as serious, and, in his succeeding number, came forth with an indignant contradiction of it; to which Lord Byron replied in the following letter "TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH REVIEW. "MY DEAR ROBERTS, who by this account must be known to you, if t In the "It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, 'breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, "As a believer in the Church of England-to say or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The nothing of the State-I have been an occasional jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and reader, and great admirer of, though not a sub-might have been a still worse one for you, if your scriber to, your Review, which is rather expensive. copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it But I do not know that any part of its contents may concern your own indignant innocence, and the ever gave me much surprise till the eleventh article immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not of your twenty-seventh number made its appear- doubt your word, my dear Roberts, yet I cannot ance. You have there most vigorously refuted a help wishing that in a case of such vital importatre, calumnious accusation of bribery and corruption, it had assumed the more substantial shape of at the credence of which in the public mind might not affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor. only have damaged your reputation as a barrister "I am sure, my dear Roberts, that you will take and an editor, but, what would have been still these observations of mine in good part; they are worse, have injured the circulation of your journal; written in a spirit of friendship not less pure than which, I regret to hear, is not so extensive as the your own editorial integrity, I have always admed purity (as you well observe) of its,' &c., &c., and you; and not knowing any shape which friendship the present taste for propriety would induce us to and admiration can assume more agreeable and t expect. The charge itself is of a solemn nature, ful than that of good advice, I shall continue my and, although in verse, is couched in terms of such lucubrations, mixed with here and there a monitory circumstantial gravity, as to induce a belief little hint as to what I conceive to be the line you should short of that generally accorded to the thirty-nine pursue, in case you should ever again be assailed articles, to which you so frankly subscribed on with bribes, or accused of taking them. By-thetaking your degrees. It is a charge the most re-way, you don't say much about the poem, except volting to the heart of man, from its frequent oc- that it is flagitious. This is a pity-you should currence; to the mind of a lawyer, from its occa- have cut it up; because, to say the truth, in net sional truth; and to the soul of an editor, from its doing so, you somewhat assist any notions which moral impossibility. You are charged, then, in the the inalignant might entertain on the score of the last line of one octave stanza, and the whole eight aronymous asseveration which has made you se lines of the next, viz., two hundred and ninth and angry. two hundred and tenth of the first canto of that You say, no bookseller was willing to take pestilent poem,' Don Juan, with receiving, and upon himself the publication, though most of them still more foolishly acknowledging the rerupt of disgrace themselves by selling it' Now, my deza friend, though we all know that those fellows will' British Critic; others, that by the expression, do any thing for money, methinks the disgrace is my Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated tha: more with the purchasers; and some such, doubt-my grandmother' was not the reader of the review, less, there are, for there can be no very extensive but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my selling (as you will perceive by that of the British dear Roberts, that you were an old woman; because, Review) without buying. You then add, what can as people often say, Jeffrey's Review,' Gifford's the critic say?' I am sure I don't know; at pres- Review,' in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly; so ent he says very little, and that not much to the my Grandmother's Review and Roberts's might purpose. Then comes, for praise, as far as regards be also synonymous. Now, whatever color his inthe poetry, many passages might be exhibited; for sinuation might derive from the circumstance of condemnation, as far as regards the morality, all.' your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of Now, my dear, good Roberts, I feel for you and for life, your general style, and various passages of your your reputation; my heart bleeds for both; and I writings,-I will take upon myself to exculpate you do ask you, whether or not such language does not from all suspicion of the kind, and assert, without come positively under the description of the puff calling Mrs. Roberts in testimony, that if ever you collusive,' for which see Sheridan's farce of The should be chosen Pope, you will pass through al Critic,' (by-the-way, a little more facetious than the previous ceremonies with as much credit as any your own farce under the same title) towards the pontiff since the parturition of Joan. It is very close of scene second, act the first. unfair to judge of sex from writings, particularly "The poem is, it seems, sold as the work of Lord from those of the British Review. We are all liable Byron; but you feel yourself at liberty to suppose to be deceived; and it is an indisputable fact, that it not Lord B.'s composition.' Why did you ever many of the best articles in your journal, which suppose that it was? I approve of your indigna- were attributed to a veteran female, were actually tion-I applaud it-I feel as angry as you can; but written by you yourself; and yet to this day there perhaps your virtuous wrath carries you a little too are people who could never find out the difference. far, when you say that no misdemeanor, not even But let us return to the more immediate question. that of sending into the world obscene and blas- "I agree with you that it is impossible Lord Byron phemous poetry, the product of studious lewdness should be the author, not only because as a British and labored impiety, appears to you in so detestable peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable a light as the acceptance of a present by the editor for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, of a review, as the condition of praising an author.' but for some other reasons which you have omitted The devil it doesn't! Think a little. This is being to state. In the first place, his lordship has no critical overmuch. In point of Gentile benevolence grandmother. Now the author-and we may beor Christian charity, it were surely less criminal to lieve him in this-doth expressly state that the praise for a bribe, than to abuse a fellow-creature for British' is his 'Grandmother's Review;' and if, nothing; and as to the assertion of the compara- as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a tive innocence of blasphemy and obscenity, con- mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellec fronted with an editors' acceptance of a present,' tual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether I shall merely observe, that as an editor you say you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady very well, but as a Christian barrister, I would not still extant. And I can the more readily credit this recommend you to transplant this sentence into a having a sexagenary aunt of my own, who perused brief. "And yet you say, 'the miserable man, (for miserable he is, as having a soul of which he cannot get rid.) But here I must pause, and inquire what is the meaning of this parenthesis. We have heard of people of little soul,' or of 'no soul at all,' but never till now of the misery of having a soul of which we cannot get rid; a misery under which you are possibly no great sufferer, having got rid apparently of some of the intellectual part of your own, when you penned this pretty piece of eloquence. you constantly, till unfortunately falling asleep over the leading article of your last number, her spectacles fell off and were broken against the fender, after a faithful service of fifteen years, and she has never been able to fit her eyes since; so that I have been forced to read you aloud to her; and this is in fact the way in which I became acquainted with the subject of my present letter, and thus determined to become your public correspondent. "In the next place, Lord B.'s destiny seems in some sort like that of Hercules of old, who became "But to continue. You call upon Lord Byron, the author of all unappropriated prodigies. Lord always supposing him not the author, to disclaim B. has been supposed the author of the Vampire,' with all gentlemanly haste,' &c., &c. I am told of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,' To the Dead Sea,' that Lord B. is in a foreign country, some thousand of 'Death upon the Pale Horse,' of odes to Lavamiles off it may be; so that it will be difficult for lette,' to 'Saint Helena,' to the 'Land of the Gaul,' him to hurry to your wishes. In the mean time, and to a sucking child. Now he turned out to have perhaps you yourself have set an example of more written none of these things. Besides, you say, he haste than gentility; but 'the more haste the worse speed.' "Let us now look at the charge itself, my dear Roberts, which appears to me to be in some degree not quite explicitly worded: "I bribed my Grandmother's Review, the British." were you, knows in what a spirit of, &c., you criticise. Are you sure he knows all this? that he has read you like my poor dear aunt? They tell me he is a queer sort of a man; and I would not be too sure, if I either of what he has read or what he has written. I thought his style had been the serious and terrible. As to his sending you money, this is "I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, the first time that ever I heard of his paying his this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. S. the reviewers in that coin; I thought that it was rather poet, who expressed himself, I remember, a good in their own, to judge from some of his earlier prodeal surprised that you had never reviewed his epic ductions. Besides, though he may not be profuse poem, nor any of his six tragedies, of which, in one in his expenditure, I should conjecture that his reinstance, the bad taste of the pit, and in all the viewer's bill is not so long as his tailor's. rest, the barbarous repugnance of the principal "Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinactors, prevented the performance. Mrs. and the ion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid! but if, Misses S. being in a corner of the room perusing by any accident, there should have been such a corthe proof sheets of some new poems on Italy, (I respondence between you and the unknown author, wish, by-the-by, Mrs. S. would make the tea a little whoever he may be, send him back his money: I stronger,) the male part of the conversazione were dare say he will be very glad to have it again: it at liberty to make a few observations on the poem can't be much, considering the value of the article and passage in question, and there was a difference and the circulation of the journal; and you are toa of opinion. Some thought the allasion was to the modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth Don't be angry I know you won't,-at this ap- maun,' &c., &c.; you have both the same redunpraisement of your powers of eulogy; for on the dant eloquence. But why should you think any other hand, my dear friend, depend upon it your body would personate you? Nobody would dream abuse is worth, not its own weight-that's a feather, of such a prank who ever read your compositions -but your weight in gold. So don't spare it: if he and perhaps not many who have heard your convers has bargained for that, give it handsomely, and de-sation. But I have been inocculcated with a little o pend upon your doing him a friendly office. your prolixity. The fact is, my dear Roberts, that "But I only speak in case of possibility; for, as somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what I said before, I cannot believe in the first instance, he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him that you would receive a bribe to praise any person and for yourself. whatever; and still less can I believe that your "With regard to the poem itself, or the author, praise could ever produce such an offer. You are a whom I cannot find out, (can you?) I have nothing good creature, my dear Roberts, and a clever fellow; to say; my business is with you. I am sure that else I could almost suspect that you had fallen into you will, upon second thoughts, be really obliged to the very trap set for you in verse by this anonymous me for the intention of this letter, however far short wag, who will certainly be but too happy to see you my expressions may have fallen of the sincere good saving him the trouble of making you ridiculous. will, admiration, and thorough esteem, with which The fact is, that the solemnity of your eleventh ar- I am ever, my dear Roberts, ticle does make you look a little more absurd than "Most truly yours, you ever yet looked, in all probability, and at the "WORTLEY CLUTTERBUCK. same time does no good; for if any body believed before in the octave stanzas, they will believe still, and you will find it not less difficult to prove your negative, than the learned Partridge found it to demonstrate his not being dead, to the satisfaction of the readers of almanacs. Sept., 1819. "Little Pidlington. post is going. I forget whether or not I asked vou "P. S. My letter is too long to revise, and th the meaning of your last words, the forgery of a "What the motives of this writer may have been and all fiction a kind of forgery, is not this tantogroundless fiction.' Now, as all forgery is Getion, for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you) logical? The sentence would have er.ded more stating, with the particularity which belongs to strongly with forgery;' only it hath an awful Bankfact, the forgery of a groundless fiction,' (do pray; of-England sound, and would have ended like an my dear R., talk a little less in King Cambyses' indictment, besides sparing you several words, and vein,') I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at conferring some meaning upon the remainder. But you, but this is no reason for your benevolently this is mere verbal criticism. Good bye-once more making all the world laugh also. I approve of your yours truly, being angry; I tell you I am angry too; but you **W. C. should not have shown it so outrageously. Your "P. S. 2d. Is it true that the Saints make up the solemn if somebody personating the Editor of the,' losses of the review ?—It is very handsome in ther &c., &c., has received from Lord B., or from any to be at so great an expense.-Pray pardon my other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's taking up so much of your time from the bar, and usual exordium when people came into the tavern from your clients, who I hear are about the same to hear him sing without paying their share of the number with the readers of your journal. There reckoning-'If a maun, or ony maun, or ony other more yours, "W. C." him, for that he had This happened to the made by the emperor mankind." This was said by Anacharsis the Scythian, and not by a Greek. This was not said Demosthenes, but to mosthenes by Phocion. 267. with the breastplate o the bishop of Beauvais, This did not happen to Demetrius, but to Philip King of Macedon VOLTAIRE. Having stated that Bacon was frequently incorrect in his citations from history, I have thought it necessary in what regards so great a name (however trifling), to support the assertion by such facts as more immediately occur to me. They are but trifles, and yet for such trifles a schoolboy would be whipped (if still in the fourth form); and Voltaire for half a dozen similar errors has been treated as a superficial writer, notwithstanding the testimony of the learned Warton:-" Voltaire, a writer of much deeper research than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and comprehension." For another distinguished testimony to Voltaire's merits in literary research, see also Lord Holland's excellent Account of the Life and Writings of Lope de Vega, vol. i., p. 215, edition of 1817. Voltaire has even been termed "a shallow fellow," by some of the same school who called Dryby den's Ode "a drunken song; "a school (as it is De-called, I presume, from their education being still incomplete) the whole of whose filthy trash of Epics, Excursions, &c., &c., &c., is not worth the two words in Zaire, "Vous pleurez," or a single speech of Tancred:-a school, the apostate lives of whose renegadoes, with their tea-drinking neutrality of morals, and their convenient treachery in politicsin the record of their accumulated pretences to This was not said of deeds drawn up in array) to equal or approach the virtue can produce no actions (were all their good Caius (Caligula, I pre-sole defence of the family of Calas, by that great sume, is intended by Ca- and unequalled genius-the universal Voltaire. ius), but of Tiberius him- This reply was not made by a king of Hungary, but sent by Richard the first, Coeur de Lion, of England to the Pope, I have ventured to remark on these little inaccuracies of "the greatest genius that England or per haps any other country ever produced," merely to show our national injustice in condemning generally, the greatest genius of France for such inadverten cies as these, of which the highest of England has been no less guilty. Query, was Bacon a greater intellect than Newton? • Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes, p. 158. Malone's adition. TRANSLATION OF TWO EPISTLES FROM THE ARMENIAN VERSION. THE EPISTLE OF THE CORINTHIANS TO ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE.* and conveyed this Epistle to the city of the Philip pians. When Paul received the Epistle, although he wai 1 STEPHEN, and the elders with him, Dabnus, then in chains on account of Stratonice, the wife Eubulus, Theophilus, and Xinon, to Paul, our fa- of Apofolanus, yet, as it were forgetting his ther and evangelist, and faithful master in Jesus bonds, he mourned over these words, and said, Christ, health. weeping, "It were better for me to be dead, and 2 Two men have come to Corinth, Simon, by with the Lord. For while I am in this body, and name, and Cleobus, who vehemently disturb the hear the wretched words of such false doctrine, be faith of some with deceitful and corrupt words; hold, grief arises upon grief, and my trouble adds a 3 Of which words thou shouldst inform thyself: weight to my chains; when I behold this calamity 4 For neither have we heard such words from and progress of the machinations of Satan, whe hee, nor from the other apostles: searcheth to do wrong." 5 But we know only that what we have heard from thee and from them, that we have kept firmly. 6 But in this chiefly has our Lord had compassion, that, whilst thou art yet with us in the flesh, we are again about to hear from thee. And thus with deep affliction Paul composed his reply to the Epistle.§ 7 Therefore do thou write to us, or come thyself EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS] among us quickly. 8 We believe in the Lord, that, as it was revealed to Theonas, he hath delivered thee from the hands of the unrighteous. 9 But these are the sinful words of these impure men, for thus do they say and teach: 10 That it behooves not to admit the Prophets.¶ 11 Neither do they affirm the omnipotence of God: 12 Neither do they affirm the resurrection of the flesh: 13 Neither do they affirm that man was altogether created by God: 14 Neither do they affirm that Jesus Christ was born in the flesh from the Virgin Mary : 15 Neither do they affirm that the world was the work of God, but of some one of the angels. 16 Therefore do thou make haste** to come among 17 That this city of the Corinthians may remain without scandal. 18 And that the folly of these men may be made manifest by an open refutation. Fare thee well.++ The deacons Thereptus and Tichust‡ received • Some MSS. have the title thus: Epistle of Stephen the Elder to Paul he Apostle, from the Corinthians. + In the MSS., the marginal verses published by the Whiston's are want Ing. 1 Paul, in bonds for Jesus Christ, disturbed by so many errors, to his Corinthian brethren, health. 2 nothing marvel that the preachers of evil have made this progress. 3 For because the Lord Jesus is about to fulfil bis coming, verily on this account do certain men per vert and despise his words. 4 But I, verily, from the beginning, have taught you that only which I myself received from the former apostles, who always remained with the Lord Jesus Christ. 5 And I now say unto you, that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, who was of the seed of David, 6 According to the annunciation of the Holy Ghost, sent to her by our Father from heaven; and deliver our flesh by his flesh, and that he might 7 That Jesus might be introduced into the world,** raise us up from the dead; 8 As in this also he himself became the example. 9 That it might be made manifest that man was created by the Father, 10 He has not remained in perdition unsought: 11 But he is sought for, that he might be revived by adoption. 12 For God, who is the Lord of all, the Father of The Whiston's have, To the city of Phænicia; but in all the MSS ♥♥ ↑ In some MSS. we find, The elders Numenus, Eubulus, Theophilus, find, To the city of the Phillipinna. and Nomeson, to Paul their brother, health I 5 Other read, There came certain men,... and Clobeus, who vehemently shake. Some MSS, have, We believe in the Lord, that his presence was made manifest; and by this hath the Lord delivered us from the hands of the unrighteous. Others rea: To read the Prophets. .. Some MSS ave Therefore, brother, do thou make haste. 11 Others read Fare thee well in the Lord. 11 Some MSS. have, The Deacons Therepus and Techus. ↑ Others read, On account of Onotice. The Whistons have, Of Apollophanus: but in all the MSS, we t Apofolanus. In the text of this Epistle there are some other variations in the wank but the sense in the same, Some MSS. have, Paul's Epistle from Prison, for the inst” estuam a the Corinthians. Others read, Disturbed by various compunctions. * Some MSS, have, That Jesus might comfort the seria ↑↑ Others read, He has not remained truliferent |