САТО ΤΟ LORD BYRON. MY LORD, It will probably occasion you no surprise that a poet who disregards decency should subject himself to animadversion. In assuming the liberty of this address, I claim but a common and conceded privilege. "An author's works (as you have yourself remarked *) are public property. He who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases." Generally speaking, indeed, we content ourselves with a silent judgment; but when the moral sense of mankind. is attempted to be perverted, and their religious opinions and feelings are held up to contempt, a mere silent judgment can no longer be rested in. Our duty then runs in a higher form, and, where offence is crying, reprehension becomes virtuous. That you have afforded but too just a field for severe discussion, even your warmest admirers * Preface to Childe Harold. must admit. For my own part, I have not, I confess, been a regular peruser of your works. I have neither thought well enough of them, nor of your motives, so far as they could be discovered, in giving them to the public, to be very solicitous about the expected seasons of their appearance. You have probably written more than it has fallen to my lot to meet with. But I have read enough to convince me that had I seen and known less of them, I should have sustained no loss. It is not my intention minutely to examine the grounds upon which the poetry of Lord Byron claims, and has been considered as deserving of its high reputation. Few will deny you the possession of genius, and none will wish to rob that genius of its reward. My views in the task I here impose upon myself are of another kind. It is the immorality of your writings that will constitute with me the chief theme of investigation. It is the deformity that attaches to you as a Christian and as a man. Yet I say not that I will debar myself in these strictures from such excursions, even of mere fancy, as may in any measure fall in with my main design; for I am not come solely to spy out the moral nakedness of the land, but to indulge in occasionally, and to exhibit the variety of its soil and the richness and exuberance of its productions. I pledge myself to no formal division of the course of such reflections as I may eventually be led into in taking up the volumes of your Lordship's poetry. I say this with more concern than I am willing to confess; but we are not the makers of our own minds and judgments, though it be our duty to improve them. It is a bad school that gives us matter without method; and in such a school I have, alas! learnt but too much of the little I can boast to know. Half a man's thoughts become refuse when they are not regulated, and that, I have reason to fear, will be found eminently to be the case with mine. Your Lordship, however, discursive in every sentiment and feeling of your soul, will not be the person to condemn me. Both you and myself must herein become amenable to a higher tribunal. Permit me, then, my Lord, in the first instance, and as a preparation for what may hereafter follow, cursorily to advert to the subjects of your earlier poems. It is necessary to do this, both because these are the works upon which, I conceive, much of your best fame is founded, and because I wish to shew that your present lost state of mind has not come suddenly upon you, but that from the very cradle of your genius you have forced your muse into the service of immorality. For, if I mistake not, in these earlier productions will be found the seeds of that full harvest of impiety and licentiousness |