ENGLISH BARDS

AND

SCOTCH REVIEWERS;"

A SATIRE.

"I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!

Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers."
SHAKSPEARE.

"Buch shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandon'd critics too."

POPE.

A FIFTH edition of the "English Bards and am not to be terrified by abuse, or bullied by review 3cotch Reviewers," in which Lord Byron intro-ers, with or without arms. I can safely say that I duced several alterations and corrections, was pre- have attacked none personally who did not compared in 1812, but was, at his desire, destroyed on mence on the offensive. An author's works are the eve of publication. One copy of this edition public property: he who purchases may judge, and alone escaped, from which the satire has been printed publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors in the present volume. The Author re-perused the I have endeavored to commemorate may do by me poem in the latter part of the summer in 1816, after as I have done by them: I dare say they will his final departure from England. He at that time succeed better in condemning my scribblings than also corrected the text in several places, and added in mending their own. But my object is not to a few notes and observations in the margin, which prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make the reader will find inserted. On the blank leaf others write better. preceding the title-page of the copy from which he As the poem has met with far more success than read, Lord Byron has written-"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for the contents; and nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames."

PREFACE.t

I expected, I have endeavored in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusal.

In the first edition of this satire, published anonymously, fourteen lines on the subject of Bowles's Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend of mine, who has now in the press a volume of poetry. In the present edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead; my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner, a determination nct to publish with my name any production which was not entirely and exclusively my own compostion.

With regard to the real talents of many of the

ALL my friends, learned and unlearned, have urged me not to publish this satire with my name. If I were to be "turned from the career of my humor by quibbles quick, and paper bullets of the brain," poetical persons whose performances are mentioned I should have complied with their counsel. But I

In the original manuscript, the title was "THE BRITISH BARDS A SATIRE."

↑ This preface was written for the second edition, and printed with it. The noble author had left this country previous to the publication of that editon, and in not yet returned.-Note to the fourth edition, 1811. He is, and gore gen. 1816.- MS. note by Lord Byron.

or alluded to in the following pages, it is presumed by the author that there can be little difference of opinion in the public at large; though, like other sectaries, each has his separate tabernacle of proselytes, by whom his abilities are overrated, his faults

• The preface to the first edition began hero.

overlooked, and his metrical canons received without | Inspires-our path though full of thorns, is plain scruple and without consideration. But the unques- Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain. tionable possession of considerable genius by several

of the writers here censured renders their mental When Vice triumphant holds her sov'reign sway, prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be Obey'd by all who nought beside obey; pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; per- When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime, verted powers demand the most decided reprehension. Bedecks her cap with bells of every clime; No one can wish more than the author that some When knaves and fools combined o'er all prevail, known and able writer had undertaken their expos- And weigh their justice in a golden scale; ure; but Mr. Gifford has devoted himself to Massin- E'en then the boldest start from public sneers, ger, and, in the absence of the regular physician, a Afraid of shame, unknown to other fears, country practitioner may, in cases of absolute neces-More darkly sin, by satire kept in awe,

sity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent And shrink from ridicule, though not from law. the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided

there be no quackery in his treatment of the mal- Such is the force of wit! but not belong ady. A caustic is here offered, as it is to be feared To me the arrows of satiric song; nothing short of actual cautery can recover the The royal vices of our age demand numerous patients afflicted with the present preva- A keener weapon, and a mightier hand. lent and distressing rabies for rhyming.-As to the Still there are follies, e'en for me to chase, Edinburgh Reviewers-it would indeed require an And yield at least amusement in the race: Hercules to crush the Hydra; but if the author Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame succeeds in merely "bruising one of the heads of The cry is up, and scribblers are my game. the serpent," though his own hand should suffer in Speed, Pegasus!-ye strains of great and small, the encounter, he will be amply satisfied. |Ode, epic, elegy, have at you all!

I too can scrawl, and once upon a time

I pour'd along the town a flood of rhyme,

A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame;

I printed-older children do the same.

STILL must I hear?-shail hoarse Fitzgerald+ bawlt 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my muse?
Prepare for rhyme-I'll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

Oh! nature's noblest gift-my gray goose-quill!
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen foredoom'd to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labor, big with verse or prose,
Though nymphs forsake, and critics may deride,
The lover's solace, and the author's pride.
What wits! what poets dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemn'd at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which 'twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen!
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamet's§ shall be free;
Though spurn'd by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No eastern vision, no distemper'd dream||

A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
Not that a title's sounding charm can save
Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave:
This Lambe must own, since his patrician name
Fail'd to preserve the spurious farce from shame.
No matter, George continues still to write,t
Though now the name is veil'd from public sight
Moved by the great example, I pursue
The self-same road, but make my own review:
Not seek great Jeffrey's, yet, like him, will be
Self-constituted judge of poesy.

A man must serve his time to ev'ry trade
Save censure-critics all are ready made.
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault;
A turn for punning, call it Attic salt;
To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a sharper hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit;
Care not for feeling-pass your proper jest,
And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.

• 'The first ninety-six lines were prefixed to the second edition: the original And shall we own such judgment? no-as soon opened with

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days,

Ignoble themes, &c.-Line 97.

Seek roses in December-ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff;

↑ Hoarse Fitzgerald.-Right enough; but why nice such a munte Believe a woman or an epitaph,

Dank?-MS. note by Lord Byron.

IMITATION,

"Semper ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam,
Vexatus toties ra aci Theseide Codri?"

Juvenal, Sotire I.

Mr. Fitzgerald, facetiously termed by Cobbett the "Small Beer Poet," inflicts his annual tribute of verse on the "Literary Fund: " not contem with writing, he spouts in person, after the company have imbibed a reasonable quantity of bad port, to enable them to sustain the operation.

§ Cid Hamet Benengeli promises repose to his pen in the last chapter of Don Quixote. Oh! that our voluminous gentry would follow the example of Cid Hamet Benengeli.

| No eastern vision, no distemper'd dream.--This must have been writ ton in th spirit of prophecy -MS. note by Lord Byron.

Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics, who themselves are sore,
Or yield one single thought to be misled
By Jeffrey's heart or Lambe's Baotian head.§

To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced, | In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Combined usurpers on the throne of taste;

To these, when authors bend in humble awe,
And hail their voice as truth, their word as law-
While these are censors, 'twould be sin to spare;
While such are critics, why should I forbear?
But yet, so near all modern worthies run,
"Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun;
Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike,
Our bards and censors are so much alike.

Then should you ask me, why I venture o'er
The path which Pope and Gifford trod before;
If not yet sicken'd, you can still proceed:
Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read.
But hold! exclaims a friend,-here's some neglect;
This-that-and 't other line seem incorrect.
What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got,
And careless Dryden-ay-but Pye has not,-
Indeed!-'tis granted, faith!-but what care I?
Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days,
Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise,
When sense and wit with poesy allied,
No fabled graces, flourish'd side by side;
From the same fount their inspiration drew,
And, rear'd by taste, bloom'd fairer as they grew.
Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polish'd nation's praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people's, as the poet's fame.
Like him great Dryden pour'd the tide of song,
In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
Then Congreve's scenes could cheer, or Otway's

melt

Till the swoln bubble bursts-and all is air!
Nor less new schools of poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O'er taste awhile these pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurting lawful genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;
Some leaden calf-but whom it matters not,
From soaring Southey down to grovelling Stott❤

Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race,
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode:
And tales of terror jostle on the road:
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering folly loves a varied song,
To strange mysterious dullness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus Lays of Minstrelst-may they be the last!-
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard's grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace,
A mighty mixture of the great and base.

Stott, better known in the "Morning Post" by the name of Hafis This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:

For nature then an English audience felt.
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let satire's self allow,
No dearth of bards can be complain'd of now:
The loaded press beneath her labor groans,
And printers' devils shake their weary bones;
While Southey's epics cram the creaking shelves,
And Little's lyrics shine in hot-press'd twelves.
Thus saith the preacher: || "Nought beneath the Lord have mercy on us the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" was nothing to

sun;

Is new," yet still from change to change we run:
What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas,

(Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia.) "Princely offspring of Braganza,

Erin greets thee with a stanza," &c. &c. Also a sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering odo, commencing as follows: "Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surge That lashes Lapland's sounding shore."

this.

↑ See the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," passim. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuizing to Bayes's tragedy unfortunate takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiablu William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compou..

here resented. At the time this was written (1808) 1 was personally unac- of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical quainted wh either. 1816.-MS. note by Lord Byron.

lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledg

Mears, Jeffrey and Lambe are the alpha and omega, the first and the last ment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his of the Elinburg Review; the others are mentioned hereafter.

"Stuita est Clementis, cum tot ubique

occurras periture parcen charte."

↑ IMITATION

Juvenal, Satire I.

"Cur tamen hoe libeat potius decurrere campo
Per quem magnus equos Auruuce flexit alumnus
Si vacat, et placida rationem admittitis edam."

Juvenal, Satire I.

But hold! esclaims a friend, &.-The following six lines were inserted the fifth edition.

own elegant phrase, 'twas his neck-verse at hairbee," i. e. the gallows.
The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who
travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leaguer
boots, are the chef de œuvres in the improvement of taste. For incident we
have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear, bestowed on the
page, and the entrance of a knight and charger into the castle, under the
very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter
romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been had he
been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs
Constable, Murray, and Miller, worshipful booksellers, in consideration o
the receipt of a sum of money and truly, considering the inspiration, it is s

Thus saith the preacher, &c -The following fourteen lines were inserted very creditable production. If Mr. Scott will write for hire, let him do his

a the second edition.

! Ecclesiae, chap. I.

best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubted great, by a repetition of black-letter ballad imitations.

bard may chant too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in merey spare !
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,t
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue :
"God help thee," Southey, and thy readers too.

And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance, Oh! Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though Murray with his Miller may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain,
And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,
And bid a long "good night to Marmion."*

These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.

The time has been, when yet the muse was young,
When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung,
An epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name!
The work of each immortal bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.†
Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave them
birth,

Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor bards content,
On one great work a life of labor spent:
With eagle pinions soaring to the skies,
Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!
To him let Camoens, Milton, Tasso yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,‡
Arabia's monstrous, wild and wond'rous son;
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conquerer of common sense!
Now, last and greatest Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico and prince in Wales:
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's and not so true.

• "Good night to Marmion "the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.

↑ As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the "Paradise Lost," and "Gierusalemme Liberata," as their standard efforts, since neither the "Jerusalem Conquered" of the Italian, nor the "Paradise Regained" of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?

Next comes the dull disciple of thy schoo.,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favorite May,
Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble
And quit his books for fear of growing double; " ||
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of "an idiot boy;"
A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day; ¶
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the "idiot in his glory,
Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ass.
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the laureat of the long-ear'd kind.

. We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degrading ste epic. See his preface. Why is epic degraded and by whom? Certainly the late romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvy, Hole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the epic muse; but as Mr. Southey poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask-has he substituted any thing better instead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as the quality of his verse

↑ See "The Old Woman of Berkley," a ballad, by Mr. Southey, wherein s aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high-trotting house." The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the And Jacobin to Mr. Southey, on his dactylics:

"God help thee, silly one !"

Poetry of the Anti-jacobin, p. 25. Against this passage on Wordsworth and Coloridge, Lord Byron ba written "unjust."

Lyrical Ballads, p. 4.-"The Tables Turned," Stanza I

"Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

Up. up, my friend, and quit your books,

Or surely you'll grow double."

Mr. W. in his preface labors hard to prove that prose and verse ane much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly coo formable.

"And thus to Betty's questions, he
Made answer like a traveller bold,
The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whon,
And the sun did shine so cold," &c. &c.
Lyrical Ballada, p. 29.

• Coleridge's Poems, p. 11, Songs of the Pixies, i. e. Devocabire fabrion;

I Thedaba, Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in open defiance of pre-p. 42, we have "Lines to a Young Lady;" and p. 52,"Lines to a young cedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded Ass."'

to a miracle. Joan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of tt He brays, the laureat of the long-ear'd kw-Altered by Lon! Byro those poems" which," in the words of Purson, "will be read when Homer in his last revision of the satire. In all former editions the line stood, "A fellow-feeling makes us wond'rous kind." and Virgil re forgotten, but-not till then."

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
in On dull devotion-lo! the Sabbath bard,
Sepulchral Grahame, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e'en aspires to rhyme;

With "small gray men," "wild yagers," and what- Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,†

"Breaks into mawkish lines each holy book." Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name o "Sabbath Walks," and "Biblical Pictures."

§ Still whimpering through threescore of years.—Thus altered in the fifth edition. The original reading was,

"Dissolved in thine own melting tears." Whether thou wing'st, &c.—This couplet, in all the editions before the fifth, was printed, of