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Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face).

Look on her features! and behold her mind,
As in the mirror of itself defined:

Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged-
This is no trait which might not be enlarged;
Yet true to << Nature's journeymen,»> who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade,-
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-
The time shall come, nor long remote when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.

May the strong curse of crush'd affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,

The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
Look on thine earthly victims-and despair!
Down to the dust!-and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers,
And festering in the infamy of years.

March 30, 1816.

CARMINA BYRONIS IN C. ELGIN. ASPICE, quos Scoto Pallas concedit honores, Subter stat nomen, facta superque vide. Scote miser! quamvis nocuisti Palladis ædi, Infandum facinus vindicat ipsa Venus. Pygmalion statuam pro sponsa arsisse refertur; In statuam rapias, Scote, sed uxor abest.

LINES TO MR MOORE.

(The following lines were addressed extempore by Lord Byron to his friend Mr. Moore, on the latter's last visit to Italy.]

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea; But, before I go, TOM MOORE,

Here's a double health to thee. Here's a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And, whatever sky 's above me, Here's a heart for every fate. Though the ocean roar around me,

Yet it still shall bear me on; Though a desert should surround me, It hath springs that may be won.

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with accuracy. Of the tone of seriousness» I certainly recollect nothing on the contrary, I thought Mr Bowles rather disposed to treat the subject lightly; for he said (I have no objection to be contradicted if incorrect) that some of his good-natured friends had come to him and exclaimed, «Eh! Bowles! how came you to make the Woods of Madeira,» etc., etc., and that he had been at some pains and pulling down of the poem to convince them that he had never made the Woods» do any thing of the kind. He was right, and I was wrong, and have been wrong still up to this acknowledgment; for I ought to have looked twice before I wrote that which involved an inaccuracy capable of giving pain. The fact was, that although I had certainly before read the Spirit of Discovery,» I took the quotation from the review. But the mistake was mine, and not the

In the different pamphlets which you have had the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles' controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr Bowles refers more than once to what be is pleased to consider «a remarkable circumstance,» not only in his letter to Mr Campbell, but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also, and Mr Gilchrist, have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr. Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, «Lord Byron, if he remembers the circumstance, will witness»- -(witness IN ITALIC, an ominous character for a testimony at pre-review's, which quoted the passage correctly enough, I sent).

I shall not avail myself of a « non mi ricordo,»> even after so long a residence in Italy;-I do « remember the circumstance»-and have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do) as correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of «English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,» I had the honour of meeting Mr Bowles in the house of our venerable host of « Human Life, etc.» the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr Bowles calls this « soon after» the publication; but to me three years appear a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing of the rest of the company going into another room »>-nor, though I well remember the topography of our host's elegant and classically-furnished mansion, could I swear to the very room where the conversation occurred, though the taking down the poem» seems to fix it in the library. Had it been taken up,» it would probably have been in the drawing-room. I presume also that the «remarkable circumstance» took place after dinner, as I conceive that neither Mr Bowles's politeness nor appetite would have allowed him to detain the rest of the company» standing round their chairs in the « other room» while we were discussing the woods of Madeira,» instead of circulating its vintage. Of Mr Bowles's « goodhumour>> I have a full and not ungrateful recollection; as also of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable conversation. I speak of the whole, and not of particulars; for whether he did or did not use the precise words printed in the pamphlet, I cannot say, nor could he

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believe. I blundered-God knows how-into attributing the tremors of the lovers to the «Woods of Madeira,» by which they were surrounded. And I hereby do fully and freely declare and asseverate, that the Woods did not tremble to a kiss, and that the lovers did. I quote from memory

A kiss

Stole on the list ning silence, etc., etc.

They (the lovers) trembled, even as if the power, etc. And if I had been aware that this declaration would have been in the smallest degree satisfactory to Mr Bowles, I should not have waited nine years to make it, notwithstanding that «English Bards and Scotch Reviewers» had been suppressed some time previously to my meeting him at Mr Rogers's. Our worthy host might indeed have told him as much, as it was at his representation that I suppressed it. A new edition of that lampoon was preparing for the press, when Mr Rogers represented to me, that «I was now acquainted with many of the persons mentioned in it, and with some on terms of intimacy;» and that he knew «one family in particular to whom its suppression would give pleasure.» I did not hesitate one moment; it was cancelled instantly; and it is no fault of mine that it has ever been republished. When I left England, in April, 1816, with no very violent intentions of troubling that country again, and amidst scenes of various kinds to distract my attention-almost my last act, I believe, was to sign a power of attorney, to yourself, to prevent or suppress any attempts (of which several had becu made in Ireland) at a re-publication. It is proper that I should state, that the persons with whom I was subsequently acquainted, whose names had occurred in that

publication, were made my acquaintances at their own desire, or through the unsought intervention of others: I never, to the best of my knowledge, sought a personal introduction to any. Some of them to this day I know only by correspondence; and with one of those it was begun by myself, in consequence, however, of a polite verbal communication from a third person.

I have dwelt for an instant on these circumstances, because it has sometimes been made a subject of bitter reproach to me, to have endeavoured to suppress that satire. I never shrunk, as those who know me know, from any personal consequences which could be attached to its publication. Of its subsequent suppression, as I possessed the copyright, I was the best judge and the

day in the week but of«< his character» I know nothing personally; I can only speak to his manners, and these have my warmest approbation. But I never judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pacha. Of Mr Bowles's « character, I will not do him the injustice to judge from the edition of Pope, if he prepared it heedlessly; nor the justice, should it be otherwise, because I would neither become a literary executioner, nor a personal one. Mr Bowles the individual, and Mr Bowles the editor, appear the two most opposite things imaginable;

And he himself one antithesis.

I won't say « vile,» because it is harsh; nor « mistaken,» because it has two syllables too many; but every one must fill up the blank as he pleases.

I

sole master. The circumstances which occasioned the suppression I have now stated; of the motives, each must judge according to his candour or malignity. What I saw of Mr Bowles increased my surprise and Mr Bowles does me the honour to talk of « noble mind,» regret that he should ever have lent his talents to such and << generous magnanimity;» and all this because a task. If he had been a fool, there would have been << the circumstance would have been explained had not the book been suppressed.» I see no «< some excuse for him; if he had been a needy or a bad nobility of man, his conduct would have been intelligible; but he mind>> in an act of simple justice; and I hate the word is the opposite of all these; and thinking and feeling as « magnanimity,» because I have sometimes seen it ap-I do of Pope, to me the whole thing is unaccountable. plied to the grossest of impostors by the greatest of However, I must call things by their right names. fools; but I would have « explained the circumstance,» cannot call his edition of Pope a «< candid» work; and notwithstanding the suppression of the book,» if Mr I still think that there is an affectation of that quality, Bowles had expressed any desire that I should. As the not only in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately << gallant Galbraith» says to « Bailie Jarvie,» « Well, the published. devil take the mistake and all that occasioned it.» I have had as great and greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight-and-forty hours had gone over them.

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I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom you have my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter on or to (for I forget which) the editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine;» and here I doubt that Mr Bowles will not approve of my sentiments. Although I regret having published « English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,» the part which I regret the least is that which regards Mr Bowles with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr Hobhouse was desirous that I should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr Bowles's edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt Jazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's Pope are in the first edition of << English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ;» and are quite as severe and much more poetical than my own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I omitted Mr Hobhouse's lines, and replaced them with my own, by which the work gained less than Mr Bowles. I have stated this in the preface to the second edition. It is many years since I have read that poem; but the Quarterly Review, Mr Octavius Gilchrist, and Mr Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to refresh my memory, and that of the public. I am grieved to say, that in reading over those lines, I repent of their having so far fallen short of what I meant to express upon the subject of Bowles's edition of Pope's Works. Mr Bowles says that « Lord Byron knows he does not deserve this character.» I know no such thing. I have met Mr Bowles occasionally, in the best society in London; he appeared to me an amiable, well-informed, and extremely able man. I desire nothing better than to dine in company with such a mannered man every

Why yet he doth deny his prisoners!

Mr Bowles says, that he has seen passages in his letters to Martha Blount, which were never published by me, and I hope never will be by others; which are so gross as to imply the grossest licentiousness.» Is this fair play? It may, or it may not be that such passages exist; and that Pope, who was not a monk, although a catholic, may have occasionally sinned in word and in deed with woman in his youth; but is this a sufficient ground for such a sweeping denunciation? Where is the uumarried Englishman of a certain rank of life, who (provided he has not taken orders) has not to reproach himself between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far more licentiousness than has ever yet been traced to Pope? Pope lived in the public eye from his youth upwards; he had all the dunces of his own time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not the apology of dulness for detraction, since his death: and yet to what do all their accumulated hints and charges amount?-to an equivocal liaison with Martha Blount, which might arise as much from his infirmities as from his passions; to a hopeless flirtation with Lady Mary W. Montagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two or three coarse passages in his works. Who could come forth clearer from an invidious inquest, on a life of fiftysix years? Why are we to be officiously reminded of such passages in his letters, provided that they exist. Is Mr Bowles aware to what such rummaging among <«<letters» and « stories» might lead? I have myself seen a collection of letters of another eminent, nay, preeminent, deceased poet, so abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, that I do not believe that they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange, is, that some of these are couched as postscripts to his serious and sentimental letters, to which are tacked either a piece of prose, or some verses, of the most hyperbolical indecency. He himself says, that if « obscenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin against

the Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot be saved.» These letters are in existence, and have been seen by many besides myself; but would his editor have been candid» in even alluding to them? Nothing would have even provoked me, an indifferent spectator, to allude to them, but this further attempt at the depreciation of Pope.

to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charge of a « libertine sort of love; while the more serious will look upon those who bring forward such charges upou an insulated fact, as fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes compounded in a happy mixture.

Mr Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of a «< second tumbler of hot white-wine negus.» What does he mean? Is there any harm in negus? or is it the worse for being hot? or does Mr Bowles drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. I hoped that whatever wine he drank was neat ; or at least that, like the ordinary in Jonathan Wild, «he preferred punch, the rather as there was nothing against it in scripture.» I should be sorry to believe that Mr Bowles was fond of negus ; it is such a «< candid» liquor, so like a wishywashy compromise between the passion for wine and the propriety of water. But different writers have « Com

divers tastes. Judge Blackstone composed his mentaries» (he was a poet too in his youth), with a bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was not good for much till he had taken a similar dose. Perhaps the prescription of these two great men was not inferior to the very different one of a soi-disant poet of this day, who, after wandering amongst the hills, returns, goes to bed, and dictates his verses, being fed

tion.

What should we say to an editor of Addison, who cited the following passage from Walpole's letters to George Montagu? «Dr Young has published a new book, etc. Mr Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could die; unluckily he died of brandy; nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, where you are.» Suppose the editor introduced it with this preface: « One circumstance is mentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed flagitious. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, when dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could die; but unluckily he died drunk, etc., etc.»> Now, although there might occur on the subsequent, or on the same page, a faint show of disbelief, seasoned with the expression of « the same candour» (the same exactly as throughout the book), I should say that this editor was either foolish or false to his trust; such a story ought not to have been admitted, except for one brief mark of crushing in-by a by-stander with bread and butter during the operadignation, unless it were completely proved. Why the words « if true?» that « if» is not a peace-maker. Why talk of « Cibber's testimony» to his licentiousness; to what does this amount? that Pope, when very young, was once decoyed by some nobleman and the player to a house of carnal recreation. Mr Bowles was not always a clergyman; and when he was a very young man, was he never seduced into as much? If I were in the humour for story-telling, and relating little anecdotes, I could tell a much better story of Mr Bowles than Cibber's, up-need of my alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; on much better authority, viz. that of Mr Bowles himself. It was not related by him in my presence, but in that of a third person, whom Mr Bowles names oftener than once in the course of his replies. This gentleman related it to me as a humorous and witty anecdote; and so it was, whatever its other characteristics might be. But should I. from a youthful frolic, brand Mr Bowles with a « libertine sort of love, or with « licentiousness?» is he the less now a pious or a good man for not having always been a priest? No such thing; I am willing to believe him a good man, almost as good a man as Pope, but no better.

The truth is, that in these days the grand «primum mobile» of England is cant; cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say cant, because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon humau actions; the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was

I now come to Mr Bowles's « invariable principles of poetry.» These Mr Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce « unanswerable; » and they are « unanswered,» at least by Campbell, who seems to have been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being. offered to ally himself to a king of France, because «he hated the word league; which proves that the Padishan understood French. Mr Campbell has no

but I do hate that word « invariable.» What is there of human, be it poetry, philosophy, wit, wisdom, science, power, glory, mind, matter, life or death, which is « invariable ?» Of course I put things divine out of the question. Of all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a pamphlet appears the most complacently conceited. It is Mr Campbell's part to answer the contents of this performance, and especially to vindicate his own Ship,» which Mr Bowles most triumphantly proclaims to have struck to his very first fire.

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Quoth he, there was a Ship;

Now let me go, thou grey-hair'd loon,
Or my staff shall make thee skip.

I shall !

It is no affair of mine, but having once begun (certainly
not by my own wish, but called upon by the frequent
recurrence to my name in the pamphlets), I am like an
Irishman in a « row,» « any body's customer.»
therefore say a word or two on the « Ship,»
Mr Bowles asserts that Campbell's « Ship of the Line,»
derives all its poetry, not from «art,» but from «nature.»
Take away the waves, the winds, the sun, etc., etc. one
will become a stripe of blue bunting; and the other a
piece of coarse canvas on three tall poles.» Very true;
take away the waves,» «the winds,» and there will
be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any
other purpose; and take away <<< the sun,» and we must
read Mr Bowles's pamphlet by candle-light. But the
«poetry» of the «Ship» does not depend on the waves, a
etc.; on the contrary, the «Ship of the Lines confers

its own poetry upon the waters, and heightens theirs. I do not deny, that the waves and winds,» and above all<«< the sun,» are highly poetical; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions of them in verse: but if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, would its beams be equally poetical? I think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away « the .ship of the line» « swinging round» the « calm water,» and the calm water becomes a somewhat monotonous thing to look at, particularly if not transparently clear; witness the thousands who pass by without looking on it at all. What was it attracted the thousands to the Jaunch? they might have seen the poetical «calm water,» at Wapping, or in the London Dock,» or in the Paddington Canal, or in a horse-poud, or in a slop-basin, or in any other vase. They might have heard the poetical winds howling through the chinks of a pig-stye, or the garret-window; they might have seen the sun shining on a footman's livery, or on a brass warming-pan; but could the «< calm water,» or the « wind,» or the « sun,» make all, or any of these « poetical?» I think not. Mr Bowles admits « the ship» to be poetical, but only from those accessaries: now if they confer poetry so as to make one thing poetical, they would make other things poetical; the more so, as Mr Bowles calls a «ship of the line» without them, that is to say, its « masts and sails and streamers,» « blue bunting,» and « coarse canvas,» and «< tall poles.» So they are; and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is grass, and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy. Did Mr Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I that he has, at least upon a sea-piece. Did any painter ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunet? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing monotony! Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both much undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high order of that art.

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and Turkish craft, which were obliged to « cut and run»> before the wind, from their unsafe anchorage, some for Tenedos, some for other isles, some for the main, and some it might be for eternity. The sight of these little scudding vessels, darting over the foam in the twilight, now appearing and now disappearing between the waves in the cloud of night, with their peculiarly white sails (the Levant sails not being of « coarse canvas», but of white cotton), skimming along as quickly, but less safely than the sea-mews which hovered over them; their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the distance, their crowded succession, their littleness, stout forty-four's teak timbers (she was built in India) as contending with the giant element, which made our creak again; their aspect and their motion, all struck broad, brawling, shipless sea, and the sullen winds, me as something far more «< poetical» than the mere could possibly have been without them.

I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval matters, at least to poets-with the exception of Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey, perhaps (who have been voyagers), I have swam more miles than all the rest of them together now living ever sailed, and have lived for months and months on ship-board; and during the whole period of my life abroad, have scarcely ever passed a month out of sight of the ocean: besides being brought up from two years till ten on the brink of it. I recollect, when anchored off Cape Sigæum, in 1810, in an English frigate, a violent squall coming on at sunset, so violent as to make us imagine that the ship would part cable, or drive from her anchorage. Mr Hobhouse and myself, and some officers, had been up the Dardanelles to Abydos, and were just returned in time. The aspect of a storm in the Archipelago is as poetical as need be, the sea being particularly short, dashing, and dangerous, and the navigation intricate and broken by the isles and currents. Cape Sigæum, the tumuli of the Troad, Lemnos, Tenedos, all added to the associations of the time. But what seemed the most « poetical» of all at the moment, were the numbers (about two hundred) of Greek

The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the port of Constantinople the most beautiful of harbours, and yet I cannot but think that the twenty sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty guns, rendered it more more, for the Turks illuminate their vessels of war in a «poetical» by day in the sun, and by night perhaps still ficial. As for the Euxine, I stood upon the Symplemanner the most picturesque, and yet all this is artigades-I stood by the broken altar still exposed to the winds upon one of them-I felt all the «poetry» of the situation, as I repeated the first lines of Medea; but would not that « poetry» have been heightened by the Argo? It was so even by the appearance chant vessel arriving from Odessa. But Mr Bowles says, of any merthat I know, except that ships are built to be launched. why bring your ship off the stocks?» for no reason The water,etc., undoubtedly HEIGHTENS the poetical associations, but it does not make them; and the ship amply repays the obligation: they aid each other; the water is more poetical with the ship-the ship less so without the water. But even a ship, laid up in dock, is a graud and poetical sight. Even an old boat, keel up wards, wrecked upon the barren sand, is a « object (and Wordsworth, who made a poem about a poetical»> washing-tub and a blind boy, may tell you so as well as I; whilst a long extent of sand and unbroken water, without the boat, would be as like dull prose as any pamphlet lately published.

What makes the poetry in the image of the « marble waste of Tadmor,» or Grainger's so much admired by Johnson? Is it the «marble,» or « Ode to Solitude, »> the waste,» the artificial or the natural object. The « wasten is like all other wastes; but the « marble» of Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the place.

But

The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc., etc., are in themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. am I to be told that the « nature» of Attica would be more poetical without the «art» of the Acropolis? of the Temple of Theseus? and of the still all Greek and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial genius? Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The rocks, at the foot of it, or the recollection that Falconer's COLUMNS of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself? The

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