their 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 relics may exist. "The Birman Empire.-Here the natives are passionately fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown. "China.-I never heard of any Chinese poet, but the Emperor Kien Long, and his ode to Tea. What a pity their philosopher Confucius did not write poetry, with his precepts of morality! 66 Africa.-In Africa some of the native melodies are plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; but whether their rude strains of nature can be classed with poetry, as the songs of the bards, the Skalds of Europe, &c. &c. I know not. "This brief list of poets I have written down from memory, without any book of reference; consequently some errors may occur, but I think, if any, very trivial. The works of the European, and some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in the original or translations. In my list of English, I have merely mentioned the greatest;-to enumerate the minor poets would be useless, as well as tedious. Perhaps Gray, Goldsmith, and Collins, might have been added, as worthy of mention, in a cosmopolite account. But as for the others, from Chaucer down to Churchill, they are voces et præterea nihil;'sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible; -he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune. English living poets I have avoided mentioning;-we have none who will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us; and another century will sweep our empire, our literature, and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind. "November 30, 1807." "BYRON. Among the papers of his in my possession are several detached Poems (in all nearly six hundred lines), which he wrote about this period, but never printed-having produced most of them after the publication of his "Hours of Idleness." The greater number of these have little, besides his name, to recommend them: but there are a few that, from the feelings and circumstances that gave rise to them, will, I have no doubt, be interesting to the reader. When he first went to Newstead, on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient specimen : Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground, That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around, Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy's years, A stranger has dwelt in the Hall of my Sire," &c. &c. The subject of the verses that follow is sufficiently explained by the notice which he has prefixed to them; and, as illustrative of the romantic and almost love-like feeling which he threw into his school friendships, they appeared to me, though rather quaint and elaborate, to be worth preserving. "Some years ago, when at H, a friend of the author engraved on a particular spot the names of both, with a few additional words as a memorial. Afterwards, on receiving some real or imagined injury, the author destroyed the frail record, before he left H. On revisiting the place in 1807, he wrote under it the following stanzas : 1. Here once engaged the stranger's view Young Friendship's record, simply traced; Few were her words,-but yet though few, Resentment's hand the line defaced. 2. Deeply she cut-but, not erased, The characters were still so plain, That Friendship once return'd, and gazed,Till Memory hail'd the words again. 3. Repentance placed them as before; Forgiveness join'd her gentle name; So fair the inscription seem'd once more, That Friendship thought it still the same. 4. Thus might the Record now have been; The same romantic feeling of friendship breathes throughout another of these poems, in which he has taken for his subject the ingenious thought "l'Amitié est l'Amour sans ailes," and concludes every stanza with the words "Friendship is Love without his wings." Of the nine stanzas of which this poem consists, the three following appear the most worthy of selection : Why should my anxious breast repine, Days of delight may still be mine, Affection is not dead. In tracing back the years of youth, Celestial consolation brings; Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat, Where first my heart responsive beat,- Affection for a time may sleep, But, oh, 'twill wake again. From this my hope of rapture springs, 'Friendship is Love without his wings!' Whether the verses I am now about to give are, in any degree, founded on fact, I have no accurate means of determining. Fond as he was of recording every particular of his youth, such an event, or rather era, as is here commemorated, would have been, of all others, the least likely to pass unmentioned by him and ;yet neither in conversation nor in any of his writings do I remember even an allusion to it.* On the other hand, so entirely was all that he wrote,-making allowance for the embellishments of fancy,-the transcript of his actual life and feelings, that it is not easy to suppose a poem, so full of natural tenderness, to have been indebted for its origin to imagination alone. TO MY SON! 1. Those flaxen locks, those eyes of blue, Bright as thy mother's in their hue; Those rosy lips, whose dimples play And smile to steal the heart away, Recall a scene of former joy, And touch thy father's heart, my Boy! 2. And thou canst lisp a father's nameAh, William' were thine own the same, No self-reproach-but, let me ceaseMy care for thee shall purchase peace; Thy mother's shade shall smile in joy, And pardon all the past, my Boy! 3. Her lowly grave the turf has prest, 4. Why, let the world unfeeling frown, 5. Oh, 'twill be sweet in thee to trace, Ere age has wrinkled o'er my face, The only circumstance I know, that bears even remotely on the subject of this poem, is the following. About a year or two before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as I have been told by a person, to whom Mrs Byron herself communicated the circumstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself after his death in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord Byron was the father of her child. This, he positively assured his mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the child belonged to Curzon, it was his wish that it should be brought up with all possible care, and he therefore entreated that his mother would have the kindness to take charge of it. Though such a request might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper more mild than Mrs Byron's, she notwithstanding answered her son in the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired. Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus spared the being a tax on the good-nature of any body. Ere half my glass of life is run, Although so young thy heedless sire, 37 But the most remarkable of these poems is one of a date prior to any I have given, being written in December, 1806, when he was not yet nineteen years old. It contains, as will be seen, his religious creed at that period, and shows how early the struggle between natural piety and doubt began in his mind. THE PRAYER OF NATURE. Father of Light! great God of Heaven! Thou see'st my soul is dark within; Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth. Let superstition hail the pile, Let priests, to spread their sable reign, To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne. Must perish in the mingling storm? And live beyond the bounds of Time? Thy laws in Nature's works appear;- Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear! * In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), "by affixing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own compositions to the notice of posterity." The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never, as far as I know, appeared in print : Epitaph on John Adams, of Southwell, a carrier, who died of drunkenness. John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, B, Sept., 1807 Who calm'st the elemental war, Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:Thou, who in wisdom placed me here, Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence, Extend to me thy wide defence. With clay the grave's eternal bed, This erring life may fly at last. 29th Dec., 1806. BYRON. In another of these poems, which extends to about a hundred lines, and which he wrote under the melancholy impression that he should soon die, we find him concluding with a prayer in somewhat the same spirit. After bidding adieu to all the favourite scenes of his youth,* he thus continues : Forget this world, my restless sprite, To bigots and to sects unknown, Bow down beneath th' Almighty's Throne, He, who is merciful and just, Although his meanest care. Father of Light! to thee I call, My soul is dark within; Thou, who canst mark the sparrow fall, Thou, who canst guide the wandering star, Whose mantle is yon boundless sky, 1807. "Southwell, April, 1807. 66 MY DEAR PIGOT, "Allow me to congratulate you on the success of your first examination- Courage, mon ami.' The title of Dr will do wonders with the damsels. I shall most probably be in Essex or London when you arrive at this d-d place, where I am detained by the publication of my rhymes. Adieu.-Believe me yours very truly, "BYRON. "P. S.-Since we met, I have reduced myself by violent exercise, much physic, and hot bathing, from 14 stone 6lb., to 12 stone 71b. In all I have lost 27 pounds, Bravo!-what say you??? * His movements and occupations for the remainder of this year will be best collected from a series of his own letters, which I am enabled, by the kindness of the lady to whom they were addressed, to give. Though these letters are boyishly written, and a good deal of their pleasantry is of that conventional kind which depends more upon phrase than thought, they will yet, I think, be found curious and interesting, not only as enabling us to track him through this period of his life, but as throwing light upon various little traits of character, and laying open to us the first working of his hopes and fears while waiting, in suspense, the opinions that were to decide, as he thought, his future fame. The first of the series, which is without date, appears to have been written before he had left Southwell. The other letters, it will be seen, are dated from Cambridge and from London. "Savage ought to be immortal:-though not a thorough-bred bull-dog, he is the finest puppy I ever saw, and will answer much better; in his great and manifold kindness he has already bitten my fingers, and disturbed the gravity of old Boatswain, who is grievously discomposed. I wish to be informed what may nify Mr. G. My thanks are all I can give for he costs, his expenses, &c. &c., that I indem the trouble he has taken, make a long speech, and conclude it with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.† I am out of practice, so deputize you as Legate,-ambassador would letters to her brother, that Lord Byron sent, through this gentleman, a copy of his Poems to Mr Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling :-" I am glad you mentioned Mr Mackenzie's having got a copy of Lord B.'s Poems, and what he thought of them-Lord B. was so much pleased!" In another letter, the fair writer says:-"Lord Byron desired me to tell you that the reason you did not hear from him was because his publication was not so forward as he had flattered himself it would have been. I told him,' he was no more to be depended on than a woman,' which instantly brought the softness of that sex into his countenance, for he blushed exceedingly." He was, indeed, a thorough boy, at this period, in every respect:- Next Monday" (says Miss ) " is our great fair. Lord Byron talks of it with as much pleasure as little Henry, and declares he will ride in the Round-about,-but I think he will change his mind.” † He here alludes to an odd fancy or trick of his own ;whenever he was at a loss for something to say, he used always to gabble over 1 2 3 4 5 6 7." "Cambridge, June 30th, 1807. "Better late than never, Pal,' is a saying of which you know the origin, and as it is applicable on the present occasion, you will excuse its conspicuous place in the front of my epistle. I am almost superannuated here. My old friends (with the exception of a very few) all departed, and I am preparing to follow them, but remain till Monday to be present at 3 Oratorios, 2 Concerts, a Fair, and a Ball. I find I am not only thinner but taller by an inch since my last visit. I was obliged to tell every body my name, nobody having the least recollection of my visage, or person. Even the hero of my Cornelian (who is now sitting vis-à-vis, reading a volume of my Poetics) passed me in Trinity walks without recognising me in the least, and was thunderstruck at the alteration which had taken place in my countenance, &c. &c. Some say I look better, others worse, but all agree I am thinner-more I do not require. I have lost 2lb. in my weight since I left your cursed, detestable, and abhorred abode of scandal, where, excepting yourself and John Becher, I care not if the whole race were consigned to the Pit of Acheron, which I would visit in person rather than contaminate my sandals with the polluted dust of Southwell. Seriously, unless obliged by the emptiness of my purse to revisit Mrs B., you will see me no more. * don't much admire lampoons-truth always disagreeable. "Write, and tell me how the inhabitants of your Menagerie go on, and if my publication goes off well do the quadrupeds growl? Apropos, my bulldog is deceased-"Flesh both of cur and man is grass.' Address your answer to Cambridge. If I am gone, it will be forwarded. Sad news just arrived-Russians beat-a bad set, eat nothing but oil, consequently must melt before a hard fire. I get awkward in my academic habiliments for want of practice. Got up in a window to hear the oratorio at St Mary's, popped down in the middle of the Messiah, tore a woeful rent in the back of my best black silk gown, and damaged an egregious pair of breeches. Mem.-never tumble from a church window during service. Adieu, dear****! do not remember me to any body :-to forget and be forgotten by the people of Southwell is all I aspire to.” LETTER XIV. TO MISS "Trin. Coll. Camb., July 5th, 1807. "Since my last letter I have determined to reside another year at Granta, as my rooms, &c. &c., are finished in great style, several old friends come up again, and many new acquaintances made; consequently my inclination leads me forward, and I shall return to college in October, if still alive. My life here has been one continued routine of dissipationout at different places every day, engaged to more dinners, &c. &c., than my stay would permit me to fulfil. At this moment I write with a bottle of claret in my head and tears in my eyes; for I have just parted with my Cornelian,' who spent the evening with me. As it was our last interview, I postponed my engagement to devote the hours of the Sabbath to friendship:-Edleston and I have separated for the present, and my mind is a chaos of hope and sorrow. To-morrow I set out for London: you will address your answer to ' Gordon's Hotel, Albemarlestreet,' where I sojourn during my visit to the metropolis. 6 6 "On Monday I depart for London. I quit Cambridge with little regret, because our set are vanished, and my musical protégé before mentioned has left the choir, and is stationed in a mercantile house of considerable eminence in the metropolis. You may have heard me observe he is exactly, to an hour, two years younger than myself. I found him grown considerably, and, as you will suppose, very glad to see his former Putron. He is nearly my height, very thin, very fair complexion, dark eyes, and light locks. My opinion of his mind you already know;-I hope I shall never have occasion to change it. Every body here conceives me to be an invalid. The University at present is very gay, from the fêtes of divers kinds. I supped out last night, but eat (or ate) nothing, sipped a bottle of claret, went to bed at 2 and rose at 8. I have commenced early rising, and find it agrees with me. The Masters and the Fellows all very polite, but look a little askance-terest, or residing with me altogether. Of course he *Notwithstanding the abuse which, evidently more in sport than in seriousness, he lavishes, in the course of these letters, upon Southwell, he was, in after days, taught to feel that the hours which he had passed in this place were far more happy than any he had known afterwards. In a letter written not long since to his servant, Fletcher, by a lady who had been intimate with him, in his young days, at Southwell, there are the following words :- Your poor, good master always called me' Old Piety,' when I preached to him. When he paid me his last visit, he said, 'Well, good friend, I shall never be so happy again as I was in old Southwell." His real opinion of the advantages of this town, as a place of residence, will be seen in a subsequent letter, where he most strenuously recommends it, in that point of view, to Mr Dallas. "I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé : he has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my minority, when I shall leave to his decision either entering as a partner through my in would in his present frame of mind prefer the latter, but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; -however, he shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human being, and neither time or distance have had the least effect on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short, we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Jonathan and David the go by.' He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in return. During the whole of my residence at Cam bridge we met every day, summer and winter, without passing one tiresome moment, and separated each time with increasing reluctance. I hope you will one day see us together; he is the only being I esteem, though I like many.* "The Marquis of Tavistock was down the other day; I supped with him at his tutor's-entirely a whig party. The opposition muster strong here now, and Lord Huntingdon, the Duke of Leinster, &c. &c, are to join us in October, so every thing will be splendid. The music is all over at present. Met with another accidency'-upset a butter-boat in the lap of a lady-look'd very blue-spectators grinned- curse 'em!' Apropos, sorry to say, been drunk every day, and not quite sober yet-however, touch no meat, nothing but fish, soup, and vegetables, consequently it does me no harm-sad dogs all the Cantabs. Mem.-we mean to reform next January. This place is a monotony of endless variety-like it -hate Southwell. Has Ridge sold well? or do the ancients demur? What ladies have bought? * * "Saw a girl at St Mary's the image of Anne **, thought it was her-all in the wrong—the lady stared, so did I-I blushed, so did not the lady-sad thingwish women had more modesty. Talking of women puts me in mind of my terrier Fanny-how is she? Got a headache, must go to bed, up early in the morning to travel. My protégé breakfasts with me; parting spoils my appetite-excepting from Southwell. Mem. I hate Southwell. Yours, &c." LETTER XV. TO MISS——. "Gordon's Hotel, July 13th, 1807. "You write most excellent epistles-a fig for other * It may be as well to mention here the sequel of this enthusiastic attachment. In the year 1811 young Edleston died of a consumption, and the following letter, addressed by Lord Byron to the mother of his fair Southwell correspondent, will show with what melancholy faithfulness, among the many his heart had then to mourn for, he still dwelt on the memory of his young college friend. 66 DEAR MADAM, "Cambridge, Oct. 28th, 1811. "I am about to write to you on a silly subject, and yet I cannot well do otherwise. You may remember a cornelian, which some years ago I consigned to Miss ****, indeed gave to her, and now I am going to make the most selfish and rude of requests. The person who gave it to me, when I was very young, is dead, and though a long time has elapsed since we met, as it was the only memorial I possessed of that person (in whom I was very much interested), it has acquired a value by this event I could have wished it never to have borne in my eyes. If, therefore, Miss **** should have preserved it, I must, under these circumstances, beg her to excuse my requesting it to be transmitted to me at No. 8, St James's street, London, and I will replace it by something she may remember me by equally well. As she was always so kind as to feel interested in the fate of him that formed the subject of our conversation, you may tell her that the giver of that cornelian died in May last of a consumption, at the age of twentyone, making the sixth, within four months, of friends and relatives that I have lost between May and the end of August. "Believe me, dear madam, yours very sincerely, "P. S.-I go to London to-morrow." The cornelian heart was, of course, returned, and Lord Byron, at the same time, reminded that he had left it with Miss **** as a deposit, not a gift. correspondents, with their nonsensical apologies for 'knowing nought about it,'-you send me a delightful budget. I am here in a perpetual vortex of dissipation (very pleasant for all that), and, strange to tell, I get thinner, being now below 11 stone considerably. Stay in town a month, perhaps 6 weeks, trip into Essex, and then, as a favour, irradiate Southwell for 3 days with the light of my countenance; but nothing shall ever make me reside there again. I positively return to Cambridge in October; we are to be uncommonly gay, or in truth I should cut the University. An extraordinary circumstance occurred to me * made her at Cambridge, a girl so very like appearance, that nothing but the most minute inI wish I had spection could have undeceived me. asked if she had ever been at H ***. "What the devil would Ridge have? is not 50 in a fortnight, before the advertisements, a sufficient sale? I hear many of the London booksellers have them, and Crosby has sent copies to the principal watering-places. Are they liked or not in Southwell? * * I wish Boatswain had swallowed Damon! How is Bran? by the immortal gods, Bran ought to be a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. * * * "The intelligence of London cannot be interesting to you, who have rusticated all your life-the annals of routs, riots, balls, and boxing-matches, cards and crim. cons, parliamentary discussion, political details, masquerades, mechanics, Argyle-street Institution, and aquatic races, love and lotteries, Brooks's and Buonaparte, opera-singers and oratorios, wine, women, wax-work, and weather cocks, can't accord with your insulated ideas of decorum and other silly expressions not inserted in our vocabulary. "Oh! Southwell, Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee, and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, amongst the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals!-However, one thing I do not regret, which is having pared off a sufficient quantity of flesh to enable me to slip into ‘an eel skin,' and vie with the slim beaux of modern times; though, I am sorry to say, it seems to be the mode amongst gentlemen to grow fat, and I am told I am at least 14lb. below the fashion. However, I decrease instead of enlarging, which is extraordinary, as violent exercise in London is impracticable; but I attribute the phenomenon to our evening squeezes at public and private parties. I heard from Ridge this morning (the 14th, my letter was begun yesterday): he says the Poems go on as well as can be wished, the seventy-five sent to town are circulated, and a demand for fifty more complied with, the day he dated his epistle, though the advertisements are not yet half published.—Adieu. "P, S.-Lord Carlisle, on receiving my Poems, sent, before he opened the book, a tolerably handsome letter:-I have not heard from him since. His opinions I neither know nor care about; if he is the least insolent, I shall enroll him with Butler* and the other worthies. He is in Yorkshire, poor man! and In the Collection of his Poems printed for private circulation, he had inserted some severe verses on Doctor Butler, which he omitted in the subsequent publication, at the same time explaining why he did so in a note little less severe than the verses. |