Mr. H.C. should recollect the proverb "'tis a villainous bird that
defiles his own nest." He now writes in the 'Satirist'. We recommend the
young man to abandon the magazines for mathematics, and to believe that
a high degree at Cambridge will be more advantageous, as well as
profitable in the end, than his present precarious gleanings.]

[Hewson Clarke (1787-circ. 1832) was entered at Emmanuel Coll. Camb.
circ. 1806 (see 'Postscript'). He had to leave the University without
taking a degree, and migrated to London, where he devoted his not
inconsiderable talents to contributions to the 'Satirist', the
'Scourge', etc. He also wrote: 'An Impartial History of the Naval, etc.,
Events of Europe ... from the French Revolution ... to the Conclusion of
a General Peace' (1815); and a continuation of Hume's 'History of
England', 2 vols. (1832).

The 'Satirist', a monthly magazine illustrated with coloured cartoons,
was issued 1808-1814. 'Hours of Idleness' was reviewed Jan. 1808 (i.
77-81). "The Diary of a Cantab" (June, 1808, ii. 368) contains some
verses of "Lord B----n to his Bear. To the tune of Lachin y gair." The
last verse runs thus:--

  "But when with the ardour of Love I am burning,
  I feel for thy torments, I feel for thy care;
  And weep for thy bondage, so truly discerning
  What's felt by a 'Lord', may be felt by a 'Bear'."

In August, 1808 (iii. 78-86), there is a critique on 'Poems Original and
Translated', in which the bear plays many parts. The writer "is without
his bear and is himself muzzled," etc. Towards the close of the article
a solemn sentence is passed on the author for his disregard of the
advice of parents, tutors, friends; "but," adds the reviewer, "in the
paltry volume before us we think we observe some proof that the still
small voice of conscience will be heard in the cool of the day. Even now
the gay, the gallant, the accomplished bear-leader is not happy," etc.
Hence the castigation of "the sizar of Emmanuel College."]

[Footnote 151:

  "Right enough: this was well deserved, and well laid on."

(B., 1816.)]

[Footnote 152:

  "Into Cambridgeshire the Emperor Probus transported a considerable
  body of Vandals."

(Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall', ii. 83.) There is no reason to doubt the
truth of this assertion; the breed is still in high perfection.

We see no reason to doubt the truth of this statement, as a large stock
of the same breed are to be found there at this day.--'British Bards'.

[Lines 981-984 do not occur in the 'MS'. Lines 981, 982, are inserted in
MS. in 'British Bards'.]]

[Footnote 153: This gentleman's name requires no praise: the man who
[has surpassed Dryden and Gifford as a Translator.--'MS. British Bards']
in translation displays unquestionable genius may be well expected to
excel in original composition, of which, it is to be hoped, we shall
soon see a splendid specimen. [Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) was Byron's
lifelong friend. His 'Juvenal' appeared in 1807; 'Lady Jane Grey and
other Poems', in 1809; 'Sir Edgar, a Tale', in 1810. For other works and
details, see 'Life of the Rev. Francis Hodgson', by the Rev. James T.
Hodgson (1878).]]

[Footnote 154: Hewson Clarke, 'Esq'., as it is written.]

[Footnote 155: 'The Aboriginal Britons', an excellent ["most excellent"
in 'MS.'] poem, by Richards. [The Rev. George Richards, D.D.
(1769-1835), a Fellow of Oriel, and afterwards Rector of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields. 'The Aboriginal Britons', a prize poem, was
published in 1792, and was followed by 'The Songs of the Aboriginal
Bards of Britain' (1792), and various other prose and poetical works.]]

[Footnote: 156. With this verse the satire originally ended.]

[Footnote 157: A friend of mine being asked, why his Grace of Portland
was likened to an old woman? replied, "he supposed it was because he was
past bearing." (Even Homer was a punster--a solitary pun.)--['MS'.] His
Grace is now gathered to his grandmothers, where he sleeps as sound as
ever; but even his sleep was better than his colleagues' waking. 1811.
[William Henry Cavendish, third Duke of Portland (1738-1809), Prime
Minister in 1807, on the downfall of the Ministry of "All the Talents,"
till his death in 1809, was, as the wits said, "a convenient block to
hang Whigs on," but was not, even in his vigour, a man of much
intellectual capacity. When Byron meditated a tour to India in 1808,
Portland declined to write on his behalf to the Directors of the East
India Company, and couched his refusal in terms which Byron fancied to
be offensive.]]

[Footnote 158: "Saw it August, 1809."--B., 1816. [The following notes
were omitted from the Fifth Edition:--

  "Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar. Saw it August, 1809.--B.,
  1816.

  "Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople. Was there the summer
  1810."

  To "Mount Caucasus," he adds, "Saw the distant ridge of,--1810, 1811"]]

[Footnote 159: Georgia.]

[Footnote 160: Mount Caucasus.]

[Footnote 161: Lord Elgin would fain persuade us that all the figures,
with and without noses, in his stoneshop, are the work of Phidias!
"Credat Judæus!" [R. Payne Knight, in his introduction to 'Specimens of
Ancient Sculpture', published 1809, by the Dilettanti Society, throws a
doubt on the Phidian workmanship of the "Elgin" marbles. See the
Introduction to 'The Curse of Minerva'.]]

[Footnote 162: [Sir William Gell (1777-1836) published the 'Topography
of Troy' (1804), the 'Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca' (1807), and
the 'Itinerary of Greece' (1808). Byron reviewed the two last works in
the 'Monthly Review' (August, 1811), ('Life', pp. 670, 676). Fresh from
the scenes, he speaks with authority. "With Homer in his pocket and Gell
on his sumpter-mule, the Odysseus tourist may now make a very classical
and delightful excursion." The epithet in the original MS. was
"coxcomb," but becoming acquainted with Gell while the satire was in the
press, Byron changed it to "classic." In the fifth edition he altered it
to "rapid," and appended this note:--"'Rapid,' indeed! He topographised
and typographised King Priam's dominions in three days! I called him
'classic' before I saw the Troad, but since have learned better than to
tack to his name what don't belong to it."]]

[Footnote 163: Mr. Gell's 'Topography of Troy and Ithaca' cannot fail to
ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as
well for the information Mr. Gell conveys to the mind of the reader, as
for the ability and research the respective works display.

  "'Troy and Ithaca.' Visited both in 1810, 1811."--B., 1816.
  "'Ithaca' passed first in 1809."--B., 1816.

  "Since seeing the plain of Troy, my opinions are somewhat changed as
  to the above note. Cell's survey was hasty and superficial."--B.,
  1816.]

[Footnote 164:

  "Singular enough, and 'din' enough, God knows."

  (B., 1816).]

[Footnote 165:

  "The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been
  written-not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical,
  and some of the personal part of it--but the tone and temper are such
  as I cannot approve."

BYRON. July 14, 1816. 'Diodati, Geneva'.]

[Footnote i:

  'Truth be my theme, and Censure guide my song.'

['MS. M.']

[Footnote ii:

  'But thou, at least, mine own especial quill
  Dipt in the dew drops from Parnassus' hill,
  Shalt ever honoured and regarded be,
  By more beside no doubt, yet still by me.'

['MS. M.'] ]

[Footnote iii:

  'And men through life her willing slaves obey.'

['MS. Second, Third, and Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote iv:

  'Unfolds her motley store to suit the time.'--

['MS. Second, Third, and Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote v:

  'When Justice halts and Right begins to fail.'

['MS. Second, Third, and Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote vi:

  'A mortal weapon'.

['MS. M.']

[Footnote vii:

  'Yet Titles sounding lineage cannot save
  Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave,
  Lamb had his farce but that Patrician name
  Failed to preserve the spurious brat from shame.'

['MS.']]

[Footnote viii:

  'a lucky hit.'

['Second, Third, and Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote ix:

  'No dearth of rhyme.'

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote x:

  'The Press oppressed.'

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xi:

  'While Southey's Epics load.'

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xii:

  'O'er taste awhile these Infidels prevail.'

['MS.']]

[Footnote xiii:

  'Erect and hail an idol of their own.'

['MS.']]

[Footnote xiv:

  'Not quite a footpad-----.'

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xv:

  'Low may they sink to merited contempt.'

['British Bards'.]]

  'And Scorn reimmerate the mean attempt!'--

['MS. First to Fourth Editions']]

[Footnote xvi:

  '--though lesser bards content--'

['British Bards']

[Footnote xvii:

  'How well the subject.'

['MS. First to Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote xviii:

  'A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.'--

['British Bards, First to Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote xix:

  'Who fain would'st.'

['British Bards, First to Fifth Editions'.]]

[Footnote xx:

  'Mend thy life, and sin no more.'

['MS.']]

[Footnote xxi:

  'And o'er harmonious nonsense.'

['MS. First Edition.']]

[Footnote xxii:

  'In many marble-covered volumes view
  Hayley, in vain attempting something new,
  Whether he spin his comedies in rhyme,
  Or scrawls as Wood and Barclay [A] walk, 'gainst Time.'

['MS. British Bards', and 'First to Fourth Editions.']

[Sub-Footnote A: Captain Robert Barclay (1779-1854) of Ury,
agriculturalist and pedestrian, came of a family noted for physical
strength and endurance. Byron saw him win his walk against Wood at
Newmarket. (See Angelo's 'Reminiscences' (1837), vol. ii. pp. 37-44.) In
July, 1809, Barclay completed his task of walking a thousand miles in a
thousand hours, at the rate of one mile in each and every hour. (See,
too, for an account of Barclay, 'The Eccentric Review' (1812), i.
133-150.)]]

[Footnote xxiii:

  'Breaks into mawkish lines each holy Book'.

['MS. First Edition'.] ]

[Footnote xxiv:

  'Thy "Sympathy" that'.

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xxv:

  'And shows dissolved in sympathetic tears'.
  '----in thine own melting tears.--'

['MS. First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote xxvi:

  'Whether in sighing winds them seek'st relief
  Or Consolation in a yellow leaf.--'

['MS. first to Fourth Editions.'] ]

[Footnote xxvii:

  'What pretty sounds.'

['British Bards.'] ]

[Footnote xxviii:

  'Thou fain woulds't----'

['British Bards.'] ]

[Footnote xxix:

  'But to soft themes'.

['British Bards, First Edition'.] ]

[Footnote xxx:

  'The Bard has wove'.

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xxxi:

  'If Pope, since mortal, not untaught to err
  Again demand a dull biographer'.

['MS'.]]

[Footnote xxxii:

  'Too much in Turtle Bristol's sons delight
  Too much in Bowls of Rack prolong the night.--'

['MS. Second to Fourth Editions'.]

  'Too much o'er Bowls.'

['Second and Third Editions'.]]

[Footnote xxxiii:

  'And yet why'.

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xxxiv:

  'Or old or young'.

['British Bards'.] ]

[Footnote xxxv:

 --'yes, I'm sure all may.'

['Quarto Proof Sheet']

[Footnote xxxvi:

  'While Cloacina's holy pontiff Lambe [3]
  As he himself was damned shall try to damn'.

['British Bards'.]

[Sub-Footnote A. We have heard of persons who "when the Bagpipe sings in
the nose cannot contain their urine for affection," but Mr. L. carries
it a step further than Shakespeare's diuretic amateurs, being notorious
at school and college for his inability to contain--anything. We do not
know to what "Pipe" to attribute this additional effect, but the fact is
uncontrovertible.--['Note' to Quarto Proof bound up with 'British
Bards'.]]

[Footnote xxxvii:

  'Lo! long beneath'--.

['British Bards'.]]

[Footnote xxxviii:

  'And grateful to the founder of the feast
  Declare his landlord can translate at least'.--

['MS. British Bards. First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote xxxix:

  '--are fed because they write.'

['British Bards'.]]

[Footnote xl:

  'Princes in Barrels, Counts in arbours pent.--

[MS. British Bards'.]]

[Footnote xli:

'His "damme, poohs."'

['MS. First Edition.']]

[Footnote xlii:

  'While Kenny's World just suffered to proceed
  Proclaims the audience very kind indeed'.--

['MS. British Bards. First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote xliii:

  'Resume her throne again'.--

['MS. British Bards. First to Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote xliv:--

  'and Kemble lives to tread'.--

['British Bards. First to Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote xlv:

  'St. George [A] and Goody Goose divide the prize.'--

[MS. alternative in British Bards.]

[Sub-Footnote A: We need not inform the reader that we do not allude to
the Champion of England who slew the Dragon. Our St. George is content
to draw status with a very different kind of animal.--[Pencil note to
'British Bards'.]]]

[Footnote xlvi:

  'Its humble flight to splendid Pantomimes'.

['British Bards. MS']]

[Footnote xlvii:

  'Behold the new Petronius of the times
  The skilful Arbiter of modern crimes.'

['MS.']

[Footnote xlviii:

  '----a Paget for your wife.'

['MS. First to Fourth Editions.']]

[Footnote xlix:

  'From Grosvenor Place or Square'.

['MS. British Bards'.]]

[Footnote l:

  'On one alone Apollo deigns to smile
  And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle.'

['MS. Addition to British Bards.']

  'Nor e'en a hackneyed Muse will deign to smile
  On minor Byron, or mature Carlisle.'

[First Edition.]

[Footnote li:

  'Yet at their fiat----'
  'Yet at their nausea----.'

['MS. Addition to British Bards'.]]

[Footnote lii:

  'Such sneering fame.'

['British Bards']

[Footnote liii:

  'Though Bell has lost his nightingales and owls,
  Matilda snivels still and Hafiz howls,
  And Crusca's spirit rising from the dead
  Revives in Laura, Quiz, and X. Y. Z.'--

['British Bards. First to Third Editions', 1810.]]

[Footnote liv:

  'None since the past have claimed the tribute due'.

['British Bards. MS'.]]

[Footnote lv:

  'From Albion's cliffs to Caledonia's coast.
  Some few who know to write as well as feel'.

['MS'.]]

[Footnote lvi:

  'The spoiler came; and all thy promise fair
  Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.--'

['First to Fourth Editions']]

[Footnote lvii:

  'On him may meritorious honours tend
  While doubly mingling,'.

['MS. erased'.]]

Footnote lviii:

  'And you united Bards'.

['MS. Addition to British Bards'.]

  'And you ye nameless'.

['MS. erased'.]]

[Footnote lvix:

  'Translation's servile work at length disown
  And quit Achaia's Muse to court your own'.

['MS. Addition to British Bards'.]]

[Footnote lx:

  'Let these arise and anxious of applause'.

['British Bards. MS'.]]

[Footnote lxi:

  'But not in heavy'.

['British Bards. MS'.]]

[Footnote lxii:

  'Let prurient Southey cease'.

['MS. British Bards'.]]

[Footnote lxiii:

  'still the babe at nurse'.

['MS'.]

'Let Lewis jilt our nurseries with alarm
  With tales that oft disgust and never charm'.

[Footnote lxiv:

  'But thou with powers--'

['MS. British Bards'.]]

[Footnote lxv:

  'Let MOORE be lewd; let STRANGFORD steal from MOORE'.

['MS. First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote lxvi:

  'For outlawed Sherwood's tales.'

['MS. Brit. Bards. Eds.' 1-4.]

[Footnote lxvii:

  'And even spurns the great Seatonian prize.--'

['MS. First to Fourth Editions' (a correction in the Annotated Copy).]]

[Footnote lxviii:

  'With odes by Smyth [A] and epic songs by Hoyle,
  Hoyle whose learn'd page, if still upheld by whist
  Required no sacred theme to bid us list.--'

['MS. British Bards.']

[Sub-Footnote A: William Smyth (1766-1849). Professor of Modern History
at Cambridge, published his 'English Lyrics' (in 1806), and several
other works.]

[Footnote lxix:

  'Yet hold--as when by Heaven's supreme behest,
  If found, ten righteous had preserved the Rest
  In Sodom's fated town--for Granta's name
  Let Hodgson's Genius plead and save her fame
  But where fair Isis, etc.'

['MS.' and 'British Bards.']]

[Footnote lxx:

  'See Clarke still striving piteously to please
  Forgets that Doggrel leads not to degrees.--'

['MS. Fragment' bound up with 'British Bards'.]

[Footnote lxxi:

  'So sunk in dullness and so lost in shame
  That Smythe and Hodgson scarce redeem thy fame.--'

['MS. Addition to British Bards. First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote lxxii:

  '----is wove.--'

[MS. British Bards' and 'First to Fourth Editions'.]]

[Footnote lxxiii:

  'And modern Britons justly praise their sires.'--

['MS. British Bards' and 'First to Fourth Editions]]

[Footnote lxxiv:

  '--what her sons must know too well.'

['British Bards]]

[Footnote lxxv:

  'Zeal for her honour no malignant Rage,
  Has bade me spurn the follies of the age.--'

['MS. British Bards'. First Edition]]

[Footnote lxxvi:

  '--Ocean's lonely Queen.'

['British Bards']]

  '--Ocean's mighty Queen.'

['First to Fourth Editions']]

[Footnote: lxxvii.

  'Like these thy cliffs may sink in ruin hurled
  The last white ramparts of a falling world'.--

['British Bards MS.']]

[Footnote: lxxviii.

  'But should I back return, no lettered rage
  Shall drag my common-place book on the stage:
  Let vain Valentia [A] rival luckless Carr,
  And equal him whose work he sought to mar.--'

['Second to Fourth Editions'.]

[Sub-Footnote: A. Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are
forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical,
typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Mr.
Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of 'The Stranger' in
Ireland.--Oh, fie, my lord! has your lordship no more feeling for a
fellow-tourist?--but "two of a trade," they say, etc. [George Annesley,
Viscount Valentia (1769-1844), published, in 1809, 'Voyages and Travels
to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt in the Years
1802-6'. Byron calls him "vain" Valentia, because his "accounts of
ceremonies attending his lordship's interviews with several of the petty
princes" suggest the thought "that his principal errand to India was to
measure certain rank in the British peerage against the gradations of
Asiatic royalty."--'Eclectic Review', August, 1809. In August, 1808, Sir
John Carr, author of numerous 'Travels', brought an unsuccessful action
for damages against Messrs. Hood and Sharpe, the publishers of the
parody of his works by Edward Dubois,--'My Pocket Book: or Hints for a
Ryghte Merrie and Conceitede Tour, in 4to, to be called "The Stranger in
Ireland in 1805,"' By a Knight Errant, and dedicated to the papermakers.
(See Letter to Hodgson, August 6, 1809, and suppressed stanza (stanza
Ixxxvii.) of the first canto of 'Childe Harold'.)]]

[Footnote lxxix:

  'To stun mankind, with Poesy or Prose'.

['Second to Fourth Editions'.]

[Footnote lxxx:

  'Thus much I've dared to do, how far my lay'.--

['First to Fourth Editions'.]]

POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I have been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that
my trusty and well-beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are
preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, 'unresisting'
Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry;

  "Tantæne animis coelestibus Iræ!"

I suppose I must say of JEFFREY as Sir ANDREW AGUECHEEK saith, "an I had
known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought
him." What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the
next number has passed the Tweed! But I yet hope to light my pipe with
it in Persia. [1]

My Northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality
towards their great literary Anthropophagus, Jeffery; but what else was
to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by "lying and
slandering," and slake their thirst by "evil speaking"? I have adduced
facts already well known, and of JEFFREY's mind I have stated my free
opinion, nor has he thence sustained any injury:--what scavenger was
ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England
because I have censured there "persons of honour and wit about town;"
but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my
return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving
England are very different from fears, literary or personal: those who
do not, may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing,
my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to
answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry
cartels; but, alas! "the age of chivalry is over," or, in the vulgar
tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.

There is a youth ycleped Hewson Clarke (subaudi 'esquire'), a sizer of
Emanuel College, and, I believe, a denizen of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whom I
have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been
accustomed to meet; he is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no
reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept
by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his
Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and,
what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the
'Satirist' for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of
having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard
his name, till coupled with the 'Satirist'. He has therefore no reason
to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is
rather 'pleased' than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done
me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book,
except the editor of the 'Satirist', who, it seems, is a gentleman--God
wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate
scribblers. I hear that Mr. JERNINGHAM[1] is about to take up the
cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord Carlisle. I hope not: he was one of the
few, who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with
kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, "pour on, I will
endure." I have nothing further to add, save a general note of
thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publishers, and, in the words
of SCOTT, I wish

  "To all and each a fair good night,
  And rosy dreams and slumbers light."

[Footnote 1: The article never appeared, and Lord Byron, in the 'Hints
from Horace', taunted Jeffrey with a silence which seemed to indicate
that the critic was beaten from the field.]

[Footnote 2: Edward Jerningham (1727-1812), third son of Sir George
Jerningham, Bart., was an indefatigable versifier. Between the
publication of his first poem, 'The Nunnery', in 1766, and his last,
'The Old Bard's Farewell', in 1812, he sent to the press no less than
thirty separate compositions. As a contributor to the 'British Album',
Gifford handled him roughly in the 'Baviad' (lines 21, 22); and Mathias,
in a note to 'Pursuits of Literature', brackets him with Payne Knight as
"ecrivain du commun et poëte vulgaire." He was a dandy with a literary
turn, who throughout a long life knew every one who was worth knowing.
Some of his letters have recently been published (see 'Jerningham
Letters', two vols., 1896).]

HINTS FROM  HORACE: [i]

BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE
"AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICÂ,"
AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO "ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS."

 ----"Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum
  Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."

  HOR. 'De Arte Poet'., II. 304 and 305.

  "Rhymes are difficult things--they are stubborn things, Sir."

  FIELDING'S 'Amelia', Vol. iii. Book; and Chap. v.

[Footnote i:

  Hints from Horace (Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811); being an
  Imitation in English Verse from the Epistle, etc.

[MS, M.]

  Hints from Horace: being a Partial Imitation, in English Verse, of the
  Epistle 'Ad Pisones, De Arte Poeticâ'; and intended as a sequel to
  'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers'.

  Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 12, 1811.

['Proof b'.]]

INTRODUCTION TO HINTS FROM HORACE

Three MSS. of 'Hints from Horace' are extant, two in the possession of
Lord Lovelace (MSS. L. a and b), and a third in the possession of Mr.
Murray ('MS. M'.).

Proofs of lines 173-272 and 1-272 ('Proofs a, b'), are among the Egerton
MSS. in the British Museum. They were purchased from the Rev. Alexander
Dallas, January 12, 1867, and are, doubtless, fragments of the proofs
set up in type for Cawthorn in 1811. They are in "book-form," and show
that the volume was intended to be uniform with the Fifth Edition of
'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers', of 1811. The text corresponds
closely but not exactly with that adopted by Murray in 1831, and does
not embody the variants of the several MSS. It is probable that complete
proofs were in Moore's possession at the time when he included the
selections from the 'Hints' in his 'Letters and Journals', pp. 263-269,
and that the text of the entire poem as published in 1831 was derived
from this source. Selections, numbering in all 156 lines, had already
appeared in 'Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron', by R. C. Dallas,
1824, pp. 104-113. Byron, estimating the merit by the difficulty of the
performance, rated the 'Hints from Horace' extravagantly high. He only
forbore to publish them after the success of 'Childe Harold', because he
felt, as he states, that he should be "heaping coals of fire upon his
head" if he were in his hour of triumph to put forth a sequel to a
lampoon provoked by failure. Nine years afterwards, when he resolved to
print the work with some omissions, he gravely maintained that it
excelled the productions of his mature genius. "As far," he said, "as
versification goes, it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote
about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on.
I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into
the atrocious bad taste of the times" [September 23, 1820]. The opinion
of J. C. Hobhouse that the 'Hints' would require "a good deal of
slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, and other considerations,
again led Byron to suspend the publication. Authors are frequently bad
judges of their own works, but of all the literary hallucinations upon
record there are none which exceed the mistaken preferences of Lord
Byron. Shortly after the appearance of 'The Corsair' he fancied that
'English Bards' was still his masterpiece; when all his greatest works
had been produced, he contended that his translation from Pulci was his
"grand performance,--the best thing he ever did in his life;" and
throughout the whole of his literary career he regarded these 'Hints
from Horace' with a special and unchanging fondness.

HINTS FROM HORACE

ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, March. 12, 1811. [i]

  Who would not laugh, if Lawrence [1], hired to grace [ii]
  His costly canvas with each flattered face,
  Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
  Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
  Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
  A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tail? [iii]
  Or low Dubost [2]--as once the world has seen--
  Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
  Not all that forced politeness, which defends
  Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.          10
  Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems [iv]
  The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
  Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
  Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.

    Poets and painters, as all artists know, [v]
  May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
  We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
  And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
  But make not monsters spring from gentle dams--
  Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.                 20

    A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends
  (Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends; [vi]
  And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
  As Pertness passes with a legal gown: [vii]
  Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain [viii]
  The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain:
  The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,
  King's Coll-Cam's stream-stained windows, and old walls:
  Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims
  To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames. [3]                    30

    You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine [ix]--
  But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
  You plan a _vase_--it dwindles to a _pot_;
  Then glide down Grub-street--fasting and forgot:
  Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
  Whose wit is never troublesome till--true.

  In fine, to whatsoever you aspire,
  Let it at least be simple and entire.

    The greater portion of the rhyming tribe [x]
  (Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)              40
  Are led astray by some peculiar lure. [xi]
  I labour to be brief--become obscure;
  One falls while following Elegance too fast;
  Another soars, inflated with Bombast;
  Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
  He spins his subject to Satiety;
  Absurdly varying, he at last engraves
  Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the waves! [xii]

    Unless your care's exact, your judgment nice,
  The flight from Folly leads but into Vice;                      50
  None are complete, all wanting in some part,
  Like certain tailors, limited in art.
  For galligaskins Slowshears is your man [xiii]
  But coats must claim another artisan. [4]
  Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
  As Vulcan's feet to bear Apollo's frame;
  Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
  Black eyes, black ringlets, but--a bottle nose!

    Dear Authors! suit your topics to your strength,
  And ponder well your subject, and its length;                   60
  Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
  What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
  But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voice, [xiv]
  Await the Poet, skilful in his choice;
  With native Eloquence he soars along,
  Grace in his thoughts, and Music in his song.

    Let Judgment teach him wisely to combine
  With future parts the now omitted line:
  This shall the Author choose, or that reject,
  Precise in style, and cautious to select;                       70
  Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
  To him who furnishes a wanting word. [xv]
  Then fear not, if 'tis needful, to produce
  Some term unknown, or obsolete in use,
  (As Pitt has furnished us a word or two, [5]
  Which Lexicographers declined to do;)
  So you indeed, with care,--(but be content
  To take this license rarely)--may invent.
  New words find credit in these latter days,
  If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase; [xvi]                     80
  What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce refuse
  To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer Muse.
  If you can add a little, say why not,
  As well as William Pitt, and Walter Scott?
  Since they, by force of rhyme and force of lungs, [xvii]
  Enriched our Island's ill-united tongues;
  'Tis then--and shall be--lawful to present
  Reform in writing, as in Parliament.

    As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
  So fade expressions which in season please;                     90
  And we and ours, alas! are due to Fate,
  And works and words but dwindle to a date.
  Though as a Monarch nods, and Commerce calls, [xviii]
  Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
  Though swamps subdued, and marshes drained, sustain [xix]
  The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,
  And rising ports along the busy shore
  Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar,
  All, all, must perish; but, surviving last,
  The love of Letters half preserves the past.                    100
  True, some decay, yet not a few revive; [xx] [6]
  Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,
  As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway [xxi]
  Our life and language must alike obey.

    The immortal wars which Gods and Angels wage,
  Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?
  His strain will teach what numbers best belong
  To themes celestial told in Epic song. [xxii]

    The slow, sad stanza will correctly paint
  The Lover's anguish, or the Friend's complaint.                 110
  But which deserves the Laurel--Rhyme or Blank? [xxiii]
  Which holds on Helicon the higher rank?
  Let squabbling critics by themselves dispute
  This point, as puzzling as a Chancery suit.

    Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
  You doubt--see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean. [7]
  Blank verse is now, with one consent, allied
  To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side.
  Though mad Almanzor [8] rhymed in Dryden's days,
  No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;                        120
  Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
  For jest and 'pun' [9] in very middling prose.
  Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
  Or lose one point, because they wrote in verse.
  But so Thalia pleases to appear, [xxiv]
  Poor Virgin! damned some twenty times a year!

  Whate'er the scene, let this advice have weight:--
  Adapt your language to your Hero's state.
  At times Melpomene forgets to groan,
  And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone;                          130
  Nor unregarded will the act pass by
  Where angry Townly [10] "lifts his voice on high."
  Again, our Shakespeare limits verse to Kings,
  When common prose will serve for common things;
  And lively Hal resigns heroic ire, [xxv]--
  To "hollaing Hotspur" [11] and his sceptred sire. [xxvi]

    'Tis not enough, ye Bards, with all your art,
  To polish poems; they must touch the heart:
  Where'er the scene be laid, whate'er the song,
  Still let it bear the hearer's soul along;                      140
  Command your audience or to smile or weep,
  Whiche'er may please you--anything but sleep.
  The Poet claims our tears; but, by his leave,
  Before I shed them, let me see 'him' grieve.

    If banished Romeo feigned nor sigh nor tear,
  Lulled by his languor, I could sleep or sneer. [xxvii]
  Sad words, no doubt, become a serious face,
  And men look angry in the proper place.
  At double meanings folks seem wondrous sly,
  And Sentiment prescribes a pensive eye;                         150
  For Nature formed at first the inward man,
  And actors copy Nature--when they can.
  She bids the beating heart with rapture bound,
  Raised to the Stars, or levelled with the ground;
  And for Expression's aid, 'tis said, or sung, [xxviii]
  She gave our mind's interpreter--the tongue,
  Who, worn with use, of late would fain dispense
  (At least in theatres) with common sense;
  O'erwhelm with sound the Boxes, Gallery, Pit,
  And raise a laugh with anything--but Wit.                       160

    To skilful writers it will much import,
  Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court;
  Whether they seek applause by smile or tear,
  To draw a Lying Valet, [12] or a Lear, [13]
  A sage, or rakish youngster wild from school,
  A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull;
  All persons please when Nature's voice prevails,
  Scottish or Irish, born in Wilts or Wales.

    Or follow common fame, or forge a plot; [xxix]
  Who cares if mimic heroes lived or not!                         170
  One precept serves to regulate the scene:
  Make it appear as if it _might_ have _been_.

    If some Drawcansir [14] you aspire to draw,
  Present him raving, and above all law:
  If female furies in your scheme are planned,
  Macbeth's fierce dame is ready to your hand;
  For tears and treachery, for good and evil,
  Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil!
  But if a new design you dare essay,
  And freely wander from the beaten way,                          180
  True to your characters, till all be past,
  Preserve consistency from first to last.

    Tis hard [15] to venture where our betters fail, [xxx]
  Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;
  And yet, perchance,'tis wiser to prefer
  A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err;
  Yet copy not too closely, but record,
  More justly, thought for thought than word for word;
  Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways,
  But only follow where he merits praise.                         190

    For you, young Bard! whom luckless fate may lead [16]
  To tremble on the nod of all who read,
  Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls, [xxxi]
  Beware--for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles!
  "Awake a louder and a loftier strain," [17]--
  And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?--
  He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
  Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!
  Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire
  The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;                      200
  Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
  "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit"
  He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
  Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song."[xxxii]
  Still to the "midst of things" he hastens on,
  As if we witnessed all already done; [xxxiii]
  Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean
  To raise the subject, or adorn the scene;
  Gives, as each page improves upon the sight,
  Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness--light;            210
  And truth and fiction with such art compounds,
  We know not where to fix their several bounds.

    If you would please the Public, deign to hear
  What soothes the many-headed monster's ear: [xxxiv]
  If your heart triumph when the hands of all
  Applaud in thunder at the curtain's fall,
  Deserve those plaudits--study Nature's page,
  And sketch the striking traits of every age;
  While varying Man and varying years unfold
  Life's little tale, so oft, so vainly told;                     220
  Observe his simple childhood's dawning days,
  His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays:
  Till time at length the mannish tyro weans,
  And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens! [xxxv]

    Behold him Freshman! forced no more to groan [xxxvi]
  O'er Virgil's [18] devilish verses and his own;
  Prayers are too tedious, Lectures too abstruse,
  He flies from Tavell's frown to "Fordham's Mews;"
  (Unlucky Tavell! [19] doomed to daily cares [xxxvii]
  By pugilistic pupils, and by bears,)                            230
  Fines, Tutors, tasks, Conventions threat in vain,
  Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket Plain.
  Rough with his elders, with his equals rash,
  Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash;
  Constant to nought--save hazard and a whore, [xxxviii]
  Yet cursing both--for both have made him sore:
  Unread (unless since books beguile disease,
  The P----x becomes his passage to Degrees);
  Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away, [xxxix]
  And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.;                          240
  Master of Arts! as _hells_ and _clubs_ [20] proclaim, [xl]
  Where scarce a blackleg bears a brighter name!

    Launched into life, extinct his early fire,
  He apes the selfish prudence of his Sire;
  Marries for money, chooses friends for rank,
  Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
  Sits in the Senate; gets a son and heir;
  Sends him to Harrow--for himself was there.
  Mute, though he votes, unless when called to cheer,
  His son's so sharp--he'll see the dog a Peer!                   250

    Manhood declines--Age palsies every limb;
  He quits the scene--or else the scene quits him;
  Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves, [xli]
  And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
  Counts cent per cent, and smiles, or vainly frets,
  O'er hoards diminished by young Hopeful's debts;
  Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
  Complete in all life's lessons--but to die;
  Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
  Commending every time, save times like these;                   260
  Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
  Expires unwept--is buried--Let him rot!

    But from the Drama let me not digress,
  Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less. [xlii]
  Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred, [xliii]
  When what is done is rather seen than heard,
  Yet many deeds preserved in History's page
  Are better told than acted on the stage;
  The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,
  And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,                           270
  True Briton all beside, I here am French--
  Bloodshed 'tis surely better to retrench:
  The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
  In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;
  We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
  And find small sympathy in being sick.
  Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
  Appals an audience with a Monarch's death; [xliv]
  To gaze when sable Hubert threats to sear
  Young Arthur's eyes, can _ours_ or _Nature_ bear?               280
  A haltered heroine [21] Johnson sought to slay--
  We saved Irene, but half damned the play,
  And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating times
  Stint Metamorphoses to Pantomimes;
  And Lewis' [22] self, with all his sprites, would quake
  To change Earl Osmond's negro to a snake!
  Because, in scenes exciting joy or grief,
  We loathe the action which exceeds belief:
  And yet, God knows! what may not authors do,
  Whose Postscripts prate of dyeing "heroines blue"? [23]         290

    Above all things, _Dan_ Poet, if you can,
  Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man,
  Nor call a ghost, unless some cursed scrape [xlv]
  Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.
  Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid,
  I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did; [24]
  Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,
  Rage, love, and aught but moralise--in song.
  Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends, [xlvi]
  Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!                    300
  Napoleon's edicts no embargo lay
  On whores--spies--singers--wisely shipped away.
  Our giant Capital, whose squares are spread [xlvii]
  Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,
  In all iniquity is grown so nice,
  It scorns amusements which are not of price.
  Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
  Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear, [xlviii]
  Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
  His anguish doubling by his own "encore;" [xlix]                310
  Squeezed in "Fop's Alley," [25] jostled by the beaux,
  Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes;
  Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease,
  Till the dropped curtain gives a glad release:
  Why this, and more, he suffers--can ye guess?--
  Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress! [26]

    So prosper eunuchs from Etruscan schools;
  Give us but fiddlers, and they're sure of fools!
  Ere scenes were played by many a reverend clerk, [l] [27]
  (What harm, if David danced before the ark?) [li]               320
  In Christmas revels, simple country folks
  Were pleased with morrice-mumm'ry and coarse jokes.
  Improving years, with things no longer known,
  Produced blithe Punch and merry Madame Joan,
  Who still frisk on with feats so lewdly low, [lii]
  'Tis strange Benvolio [28] suffers such a show;
  Suppressing peer! to whom each vice gives place, [liii]
  Oaths, boxing, begging--all, save rout and race.

    Farce followed Comedy, and reached her prime,
  In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time: [29]                   330
  Mad wag! who pardoned none, nor spared the best,
  And turned some very serious things to jest.
  Nor Church nor State escaped his public sneers,
  Arms nor the Gown--Priests--Lawyers--Volunteers:
  "Alas, poor Yorick!" now for ever mute!
  Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.

    We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
  Ape the swoln dialogue of Kings and Queens,
  When "Crononhotonthologos must die," [30]
  And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.                             340

    Moschus! with whom once more I hope to sit, [liv]
  And smile at folly, if we can't at wit;
  Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell,
  And bear Swift's motto, "Vive la bagatelle!"
  Which charmed our days in each Ægean clime,
  As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme.
  Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past,
  Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last;
  But find in thine--like pagan Plato's bed, [lv] [31]
  Some merry Manuscript of Mimes, when dead.                      350

    Now to the Drama let us bend our eyes,
  Where fettered by whig Walpole low she lies; [32]
  Corruption foiled her, for she feared her glance;
  Decorum left her for an Opera dance!
  Yet Chesterfield, [33] whose polished pen inveighs
  'Gainst laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays;
  Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains,
  And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains.
  Repeal that act! again let Humour roam
  Wild o'er the stage--we've time for tears at home;              360
  Let Archer [34] plant the horns on Sullen's brows,
  And Estifania gull her "Copper" [35] spouse;
  The moral's scant--but that may be excused,
  Men go not to be lectured, but amused.
  He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill
  Must wear a head in want of Willis' skill; [36]
  Aye, but Macheath's example--psha!--no more!
  It formed no thieves--the thief was formed before; [37]
  And spite of puritans and Collier's curse, [lvi]
  Plays make mankind no better, and no worse. [38]                370
  Then spare our stage, ye methodistic men!
  Nor burn damned Drury if it rise again. [39]
  But why to brain-scorched bigots thus appeal?
  Can heavenly Mercy dwell with earthly Zeal?
  For times of fire and faggot let them hope!
  Times dear alike to puritan or Pope.
  As pious Calvin saw Servetus blaze,
  So would new sects on newer victims gaze.
  E'en now the songs of Solyma begin;
  Faith cants, perplexed apologist of Sin!                        380
  While the Lord's servant chastens whom he loves,
  And Simeon kicks, [40] where Baxter only "shoves."[41]

    Whom Nature guides, so writes, that every dunce [lvii],
  Enraptured, thinks to do the same at once;
  But after inky thumbs and bitten nails [lviii],
  And twenty scattered quires, the coxcomb fails.

    Let Pastoral be dumb; for who can hope
  To match the youthful eclogues of our Pope?
  Yet his and Philips' [42] faults, of different kind,
  For Art too rude, for Nature too refined, [lix]                 390
  Instruct how hard the medium 'tis to hit
  'Twixt too much polish and too coarse a wit.

    A vulgar scribbler, certes, stands disgraced
  In this nice age, when all aspire to taste;
  The dirty language, and the noisome jest,
  Which pleased in Swift of yore, we now detest;
  Proscribed not only in the world polite [lx],
  But even too nasty for a City Knight!

    Peace to Swift's faults! his wit hath made them pass,
  Unmatched by all, save matchless Hudibras!                      400
  Whose author is perhaps the first we meet,
  Who from our couplet lopped two final feet;
  Nor less in merit than the longer line,
  This measure moves a favourite of the Nine.
  Though at first view eight feet may seem in vain
  Formed, save in Ode, to bear a serious strain [lxi],
  Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
  This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
  And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
  Heroic rhyme, but most in Love and War,                         410
  Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
  Are curbed too much by long-recurring rhyme.

    But many a skilful judge abhors to see,
  What few admire--irregularity.
  This some vouchsafe to pardon; but 'tis hard
  When such a word contents a British Bard.

    And must the Bard his glowing thoughts confine, [lxii]
  Lest Censure hover o'er some faulty line?
  Remove whate'er a critic may suspect,
  To gain the paltry suffrage of "Correct"?                       420
  Or prune the spirit of each daring phrase,
  To fly from Error, not to merit Praise?

    Ye, who seek finished models, never cease [lxiii],
  By day and night, to read the works of Greece.
  But our good Fathers never bent their brains
  To heathen Greek, content with native strains.
  The few who read a page, or used a pen,
  Were satisfied with Chaucer and old Ben;
  The jokes and numbers suited to their taste
  Were quaint and careless, anything but chaste;                  430
  Yet, whether right or wrong the ancient rules,
  It will not do to call our Fathers fools!
  Though you and I, who eruditely know
  To separate the elegant and low,
  Can also, when a hobbling line appears,
  Detect with fingers--in default of ears.

    In sooth I do not know, or greatly care
  To learn, who our first English strollers were;
  Or if, till roofs received the vagrant art,
  Our Muse, like that of Thespis, kept a cart;                    440
  But this is certain, since our Shakespeare's days,
  There's pomp enough--if little else--in plays;
  Nor will Melpomene ascend her Throne [lxiv]
  Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.

    Old Comedies still meet with much applause,
  Though too licentious for dramatic laws;
  At least, we moderns, wisely, 'tis confest,
  Curtail, or silence, the lascivious jest [lxv].

    Whate'er their follies, and their faults beside,
  Our enterprising Bards pass nought untried;                     450
  Nor do they merit slight applause who choose
  An English subject for an English Muse,
  And leave to minds which never dare invent
  French flippancy and German sentiment.
  Where is that living language which could claim
  Poetic more, as philosophic, fame,
  If all our Bards, more patient of delay,
  Would stop, like Pope, to polish by the way? [43]

    Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults
  O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults [lxvi],     460
  Who soon detect, and mark where'er we fail,
  And prove our marble with too nice a nail!
  Democritus himself was not so bad;
  He only 'thought'--but 'you' would make us--mad!

    But truth to say, most rhymers rarely guard
  Against that ridicule they deem so hard;
  In person negligent, they wear, from sloth,
  Beards of a week, and nails of annual growth;
  Reside in garrets, fly from those they meet,
  And walk in alleys rather than the street.                      470

    With little rhyme, less reason, if you please,
  The name of Poet may be got with ease,
  So that not tuns of helleboric juice [lxvii]
  Shall ever turn your head to any use;
  Write but like Wordsworth--live beside a lake,
  And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; [44]
  Then print your book, once more return to town,
  And boys shall hunt your Bardship up and down. [45]
  Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight,
  To purge in spring--like Bayes [46]--before I write?            480
  If this precaution softened not my bile,
  I know no scribbler with a madder style;
  But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice)
  I cannot purchase Fame at such a price,
  I'll labour gratis as a grinders' wheel, [lxviii]
  And, blunt myself, give edge to other's steel,
  Nor write at all, unless to teach the art
  To those rehearsing for the Poet's part;
  From Horace show the pleasing paths of song, [lxix],
  And from my own example--what is wrong.                         490

    Though modern practice sometimes differs quite,
  'Tis just as well to think before you write;
  Let every book that suits your theme be read,
  So shall you trace it to the fountain-head.

    He who has learned the duty which he owes
  To friends and country, and to pardon foes;
  Who models his deportment as may best
  Accord with Brother, Sire, or Stranger-guest;
  Who takes our Laws and Worship as they are,
  Nor roars reform for Senate, Church, and Bar;                   500
  In practice, rather than loud precept, wise,
  Bids not his tongue, but heart, philosophize:
  Such is the man the Poet should rehearse,
  As joint exemplar of his life and verse.

    Sometimes a sprightly wit, and tale well told,
  Without much grace, or weight, or art, will hold
  A longer empire o'er the public mind
  Than sounding trifles, empty, though refined.

    Unhappy Greece! thy sons of ancient days
  The Muse may celebrate with perfect praise,                     510
  Whose generous children narrowed not their hearts
  With Commerce, given alone to Arms and Arts. [lxx]
  Our boys (save those whom public schools compel
  To "Long and Short" before they're taught to spell)
  From frugal fathers soon imbibe by rote,
  "A penny saved, my lad, 's a penny got."
  Babe of a city birth! from sixpence take [lxxi]
  The third, how much will the remainder make?--
  "A groat."--"Ah, bravo! Dick hath done the sum! [lxxii]
  He'll swell my fifty thousand to a Plum." [47]                  520

    They whose young souls receive this rust betimes,
  'Tis clear, are fit for anything but rhymes;
  And Locke will tell you, that the father's right
  Who hides all verses from his children's sight;
  For Poets (says this Sage [48], and many more,)
  Make sad mechanics with their lyric lore: [lxxiii]
  And Delphi now, however rich of old,
  Discovers little silver, and less gold,
  Because Parnassus, though a Mount divine,
  Is poor as Irus, [49] or an Irish mine. [lxxiv] [50]            530

    Two objects always should the Poet move,
  Or one or both,--to please or to improve.
  Whate'er you teach, be brief, if you design
  For our remembrance your didactic line;
  Redundance places Memory on the rack,
  For brains may be o'erloaded, like the back. [lxxv]

    Fiction does best when taught to look like Truth,
  And fairy fables bubble none but youth:
  Expect no credit for too wondrous tales,
  Since Jonas only springs alive from Whales!                     540

    Young men with aught but Elegance dispense;
  Maturer years require a little Sense.
  To end at once:--that Bard for all is fit [lxxvi]
  Who mingles well instruction with his wit;
  For him Reviews shall smile; for him o'erflow
  The patronage of Paternoster-row;
  His book, with Longman's liberal aid, shall pass
  (Who ne'er despises books that bring him brass);
  Through three long weeks the taste of London lead,
  And cross St. George's Channel and the Tweed.                   550

  But every thing has faults, nor is't unknown
  That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
  And wayward voices, at their owner's call,
  With all his best endeavours, only squall;
  Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
  And double-barrels (damn them!) miss their mark. [lxxvii] [51]

  Where frequent beauties strike the reader's view,
  We must not quarrel for a blot or two;
  But pardon equally to books or men,
  The slips of Human Nature, and the Pen.                         560
  Yet if an author, spite of foe or friend,
  Despises all advice too much to mend,
  But ever twangs the same discordant string,
  Give him no quarter, howsoe'er he sing.
  Let Havard's [52] fate o'ertake him, who, for once,
  Produced a play too dashing for a dunce:
  At first none deemed it his; but when his name
  Announced the fact--what then?--it lost its fame.
  Though all deplore when Milton deigns to doze, [lxxviii]
  In a long work 'tis fair to steal repose.                       570

  As Pictures, so shall Poems be; some stand
  The critic eye, and please when near at hand; [lxxix]
  But others at a distance strike the sight;
  This seeks the shade, but that demands the light,
  Nor dreads the connoisseur's fastidious view,
  But, ten times scrutinised, is ten times new.

  Parnassian pilgrims! ye whom chance, or choice, [lxxx]
  Hath led to listen to the Muse's voice,
  Receive this counsel, and be timely wise;
  Few reach the Summit which before you lies.                     580
  Our Church and State, our Courts and Camps, concede
  Reward to very moderate heads indeed!
  In these plain common sense will travel far;
  All are not Erskines who mislead the Bar: [lxxxi] [53]
  But Poesy between the best and worst
  No medium knows; you must be last or first;
  For middling Poets' miserable volumes
  Are damned alike by Gods, and Men, and Columns. [lxxxii]
  Again, my Jeffrey--as that sound inspires, [54]
  How wakes my bosom to its wonted fires!                         590
  Fires, such as gentle Caledonians feel
  When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel,
  Or mild Eclectics, [55] when some, worse than Turks,
  Would rob poor Faith to decorate "Good Works."
  Such are the genial feelings them canst claim--
  My Falcon flies not at ignoble game.
  Mightiest of all Dunedin's beasts of chase!
  For thee my Pegasus would mend his pace.
  Arise, my Jeffrey! or my inkless pen
  Shall never blunt its edge on meaner men;                       600
  Till thee or thine mine evil eye discerns,
  "Alas! I cannot strike at wretched kernes." [56]
  Inhuman Saxon! wilt thou then resign
  A Muse and heart by choice so wholly thine?
  Dear d--d contemner of my schoolboy songs,
  Hast thou no vengeance for my Manhood's wrongs?
  If unprovoked thou once could bid me bleed,
  Hast thou no weapon for my daring deed?
  What! not a word!--and am I then so low?
  Wilt thou forbear, who never spared a foe?                      610
  Hast thou no wrath, or wish to give it vent?
  No wit for Nobles, Dunces by descent?
  No jest on "minors," quibbles on a name, [57]
  Nor one facetious paragraph of blame?
  Is it for this on Ilion I have stood,
  And thought of Homer less than Holyrood?
  On shore of Euxine or Ægean sea,
  My hate, untravelled, fondly turned to thee.
  Ah! let me cease! in vain my bosom burns,
  From Corydon unkind Alexis turns: [58]                          620
  Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego,
  Nor woo that anger which he will not show.
  What then?--Edina starves some lanker son,
  To write an article thou canst not shun;
  Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found,
  As bold in Billingsgate, though less renowned.

    As if at table some discordant dish, [59]
  Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish;
  As oil in lieu of butter men decry,
  And poppies please not in a modern pie; [lxxxiii]               630
  If all such mixtures then be half a crime,
  We must have Excellence to relish rhyme.
  Mere roast and boiled no Epicure invites;
  Thus Poetry disgusts, or else delights.

    Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun:
  Will he who swims not to the river run?
  And men unpractised in exchanging knocks
  Must go to Jackson [60] ere they dare to box.
  Whate'er the weapon, cudgel, fist, or foil,
  None reach expertness without years of toil;                    640
  But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease,
  Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please.
  Why not?--shall I, thus qualified to sit
  For rotten boroughs, never show my wit?
  Shall I, whose fathers with the "Quorum" sate, [lxxxiv]
  And lived in freedom on a fair estate;
  Who left me heir, with stables, kennels, packs, [lxxxv]
  To 'all' their income, and to--'twice' its tax;
  Whose form and pedigree have scarce a fault,
  Shall I, I say, suppress my Attic Salt?                         650

    Thus think "the Mob of Gentlemen;" but you,
  Besides all this, must have some Genius too.
  Be this your sober judgment, and a rule,
  And print not piping hot from Southey's school,
  Who (ere another Thalaba appears),
  I trust, will spare us for at least nine years.
  And hark'ye, Southey! [61] pray--but don't be vexed--
  Burn all your last three works--and half the next.
  But why this vain advice? once published, books
  Can never be recalled--from pastry-cooks! [lxxxvi]              660
  Though "Madoc," with "Pucelle," [62] instead of Punk,
  May travel back to Quito--on a trunk! [63]

    Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempriere,
  Led all wild beasts but Women by the ear;
  And had he fiddled at the present hour,
  We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower; [64]
  And old Amphion, such were minstrels then,
  Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren.
  Verse too was Justice, and the Bards of Greece
  Did more than constables to keep the peace;                     670
  Abolished cuckoldom with much applause,
  Called county meetings, and enforced the laws,
  Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes,
  And served the Church--without demanding tithes;
  And hence, throughout all Hellas and the East,
  Each Poet was a Prophet and a Priest,
  Whose old-established Board of Joint Controls [65]
  Included kingdoms in the cure of souls.

    Next rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince,
  And Fighting's been in fashion ever since;                      680
  And old Tyrtæus, when the Spartans warred,
  (A limping leader, but a lofty bard) [lxxxvii]
  Though walled Ithome had resisted long,
  Reduced the fortress by the force of song.

    When Oracles prevailed, in times of old,
  In song alone Apollo's will was told. [lxxxviii]
  Then if your verse is what all verse should be,
  And Gods were not ashamed on't, why should we?

    The Muse, like mortal females, may be wooed; [66]
  In turns she'll seem a Paphian, or a prude;                     690
  Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright,
  Mild as the same upon the second night;
  Wild as the wife of Alderman or Peer,
  Now for His Grace, and now a grenadier!
  Her eyes beseem, her heart belies, her zone--
  Ice in a crowd--and Lava when alone.

    If Verse be studied with some show of Art.
  Kind Nature always will perform her part;
  Though without Genius, and a native vein
  Of wit, we loathe an artificial strain,                         700
  Yet Art and Nature joined will win the prize,
  Unless they act like us and our allies.

    The youth who trains to ride, or run a race,
  Must bear privations with unruffled face,
  Be called to labour when he thinks to dine,
  And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine.
  Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight,
  Have followed Music through her farthest flight; [lxxxix]
  But rhymers tell you neither more nor less,
  "I've got a pretty poem for the Press;"                         710
  And that's enough; then write and print so fast;--
  If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last?
  They storm the Types, they publish, one and all, [xc] [67]
  They leap the counter, and they leave the stall.
  Provincial Maidens, men of high command,
  Yea! Baronets have inked the bloody hand!
  Cash cannot quell them; Pollio played this prank, [xci]
  (Then Phoebus first found credit in a Bank!)
  Not all the living only, but the dead,
  Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' Head; [68]                    720
  Damned all their days, they posthumously thrive,
  Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
  Reviews record this epidemic crime,
  Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme.
  Alas! woe worth the scribbler! often seen
  In Morning Post, or Monthly Magazine.
  There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot pressed, [xcii]
  Behold a Quarto!--Tarts must tell the rest.
  Then leave, ye wise, the Lyre's precarious chords
  To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords, [cxiii]                  730
  Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
  Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
  Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
  The Cobbler-Laureats [69] sing to Capel Lofft! [70]
  Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears, [xciv]
  Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears! [xcv]
  There lives one Druid, who prepares in time [71]
  'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;
  Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse,
  To publish faults which Friendship should excuse.               740
  If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach
  More polished usage of his parts of speech.
  But what is shame, or what is aught to him? [xcvi]
  He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim.
  Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate,
  Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;
  Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon
  The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.
  Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,
  Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town:                    750
  If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man--
  May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
  Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
  Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
  While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
  The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
  But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
  Be (what they never were before) be--sold!
  Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now, [72]
  In modern Physics, we can scarce allow), [xcvii]                760
  Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
  Some rhyming Peer--there's plenty of the sort--[xcviii] [73]
  All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
  (Ah! too regardless of his Chaplain's yawn!)
  Condemn the unlucky Curate to recite
  Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
  How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
  Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
  Yet, since 'tis promised at the Rector's death,
  He'll risk no living for a little breath.                       770
  Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
  (The Lord forgive him!) "Bravo! Grand! Divine!"
  Hoarse with those praises (which, by Flatt'ry fed, [xcix]
  Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
  He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
  Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
  Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye, [c]
  As when the dying vicar will not die!
  Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;--
  But all Dissemblers overact their part.                         780

    Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme," [74]
  Believe not all who laud your false "sublime;"
  But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
  "Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,"
  And, after fruitless efforts, you return
  Without amendment, and he answers, "Burn!"
  That instant throw your paper in the fire,
  Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
  But (if true Bard!) you scorn to condescend, [ci]
  And will not alter what you can't defend,                       790
  If you will breed this Bastard of your Brains, [75]
  We'll have no words--I've only lost my pains.

    Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought,
  As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
  If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
  And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
  No matter, throw your ornaments aside,--
  Better let him than all the world deride.
  Give light to passages too much in shade,
  Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;                  800
  Your friend's a "Johnson," not to leave one word,
  However trifling, which may seem absurd;
  Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
  And furnish food for critics, or their quills. [76]

    As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune,
  Or the sad influence of the angry Moon,
  All men avoid bad writers' ready tongues,
  As yawning waiters fly [77] Fitzscribble's lungs; [cii]
  Yet on he mouths--ten minutes--tedious each [ciii] [78]
  As Prelate's homily, or placeman's speech;                      810
  Long as the last years of a lingering lease,
  When Riot pauses until Rents increase.
  While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays
  O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented ways,
  If by some chance he walks into a well,
  And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,
  "A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!"
  Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
  For there his carcass he might freely fling, [civ]
  From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.                        820
  Though this has happened to more Bards than one;
  I'll tell you Budgell's story,--and have done.

  Budgell, a rogue and rhymester, for no good,
  (Unless his case be much misunderstood)
  When teased with creditors' continual claims,
  "To die like Cato," [79] leapt into the Thames!
  And therefore be it lawful through the town
  For any Bard to poison, hang, or drown.
  Who saves the intended Suicide receives
  Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves; [cv]      830
  And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose
  The Glory of that death they freely choose.

  Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse [cvi]
  Prick not the Poet's conscience as a curse;
  Dosed [80] with vile drams on Sunday he was found,
  Or got a child on consecrated ground!
  And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage--
  Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage.
  If free, all fly his versifying fit,
  Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit:                              840
  But 'him', unhappy! whom he seizes,--'him'
  He flays with Recitation limb by limb;
  Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach,
  And gorges like a Lawyer--or a Leech.

[The last page of 'MS. M.' is dated--

  BYRON,

  Capuchin Convent,

  Athens. 'March 14th, 1811'.

The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is also inscribed on
the last page:

  "722 lines, and 4 inserted after and now counted, in all 726.--B.

  "Since this several lines are added.--B. June 14th, 1811.

  "Copied fair at Malta, May 3rd, 1811.--B."

  BYRON,

  'March 11th and 12th',
  Athens. 1811.

['MS. L. (a)'.]

  BYRON, 'March 14th, 1811.'
  Athens, Capuchin Convent.

['MS. L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote 1: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) succeeded West as P.R.A. in
1820. Benjamin West (1738-1820) had been elected P.R.A. in 1792, on the
death of Sir Joshua Reynolds.]

[Footnote 2: In an English newspaper, which finds its way abroad
wherever there are Englishmen, I read an account of this dirty dauber's
caricature of Mr. H---as a "beast," and the consequent action, etc. The
circumstance is, probably, too well known to require further comment.
[Thomas Hope (1770-1831) was celebrated for his collections of pictures,
sculpture, and _bric-à-brac_. He was the author of _Anastasius, or
Memoirs of a Greek, etc_., which was attributed to Byron, and, according
to Lady Blessington, excited his envy. "Low Dubost" was a French
painter, who, in revenge for some fancied injustice, caricatured Hope
and his wife as Beauty and the Beast. An exhibition of the sketch is
said to have brought in from twenty to thirty pounds a week. A brother
of Mrs. Hope (Louisa Beresford, daughter of Lord Decies, Archbishop of
Tuam) mutilated the picture, and, an action having been brought, was
ordered to pay a nominal sum of five pounds. Dubost's academy portrait
of Mrs. Hope did not please Peter Pindar.

  "In Mistress Hope, Monsieur Dubost!
  Thy Genius yieldeth up the Ghost."

_Works_ (1812), v. 372.]]

[Footnote 3:

  "While pure Description held the place of Sense."--

Pope, _Prol. to the Sat.,_ L. 148.

  "While Mr. Sol decked out all so glorious
  Shines like a Beau in his Birthday Embroidery."

[Fielding, _Tom Thumb_, act i. sc. I.]--[_MS. M._]

"_Fas est et ab Hoste doceri._" In the 7th Art. of the 31st No. of the
_Edinburgh Review_ (vol. xvi. Ap. 1810) the "Observations" of an Oxford
Tutor are compared to "Children's Cradles" (page 181), then to a
"Barndoor fowl flying" (page 182), then the man himself to "a
Coach-horse on the Trottoir" (page 185) etc., etc., with a variety of
other conundrums all tending to prove that the ingenuity of comparison
increases in proportion to the dissimilarity between the things
compared.--[_MS. L. (b) erased._]]

[Footnote 4: Mere common mortals were commonly content with one Taylor
and with one bill, but the more particular gentlemen found it impossible
to confide their lower garments to the makers of their body clothes. I
speak of the beginning of 1809: what reform may have since taken place I
neither know, nor desire to know.--[_MSS. L. (b), M_.]]

[Footnote 5: Mr. Pitt was liberal in his additions to our Parliamentary
tongue; as may be seen in many publications, particularly the 'Edinburgh
Review'.

[The reference may be to financial terms, such as sinking fund (a phrase
not introduced by Pitt), the English equivalent of 'caisse
d'amortissement', or income tax ('impôt sur le revenu'), or to actual
French words such as 'chouannerie, projet', etc. But Pitt's "additions"
are unnoticed by Frere and other reporters and critics of his speeches.
For a satirical description of Pitt's words, "which are finer and longer
than can be conceived," see 'Rolliad', 1799; 'Political Miscellanies',
p. 421; and 'Political Eclogues', p. 195.

  "And Billy best of all things loves--a trope."

Compare, too, Peter Pindar, "To Sylvanus Urban," 'Works' (1812), ii. 259.

  "Lycurgus Pitt whose penetrating eyes
  Behold the fount of Freedom in excise,
  Whose 'patriot' logic possibly maintains
  The 'identity' of 'liberty' and 'chains'."]]

[Footnote 6: Old ballads, old plays, and old women's stories, are at
present in as much request as old wine or new speeches. In fact, this is
the millennium of black letter: thanks to our Hebers, Webers, and
Scotts!

[Richard Heber (1773-1833), book-collector and man of letters, was
half-brother of the Bishop of Calcutta. He edited, 'inter alia',
'Specimens of the Early English Poets', by George Ellis, 3 vols., London:
1811.

W. H. Weber (1783-1818), a German by birth, was employed by Sir Walter
Scott as an amanuensis and "searcher." He edited, in 1810, 'Metrical
Romances of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries', a work described by
Southey ('Letters', ii. 308) as "admirably edited, exceedingly curious,
and after my own heart." He also published editions of Ford, and
Beaumont and Fletcher, which were adversely criticized by Gifford. For
an account of his relations to Scott and of his melancholy end, see
Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' (1871), p. 251.]]

[Footnote 7: 'Mac Flecknoe', the 'Dunciad', and all Swift's lampooning
ballads. Whatever their other works may be, these originated in personal
feelings, and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the ability of
these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts from the
personal character of the writers.]

[Footnote 8: 'Almanzor: or the Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards', a
Tragedy by John Dryden. The bombastic character of the hero was severely
criticized in Dryden's own time, and was defended by him thus:

  "'Tis said that Almanzor is no perfect pattern of heroic virtue, that
  he is a contemner of kings, and that he is made to perform
  impossibilities. I must therefore avow, in the first place, from
  whence I took the character. The first image I had of him was from the
  Achilles of Homer: the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from
  the Artaban of Mons. Calprenède.... He talks extravagantly in his
  passion, but if I would take the trouble to quote from Ben Jonson's
  Cethegus, I could easily show you that the rhodomontades of Almanzor
  are neither so irrational as his nor so impossible to be put in
  execution."

'An Essay on Heroic Plays. Works of John Dryden' (1821), iv. 23-25.]

[Footnote 9: With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of
puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators,
and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition.

["Cicero also," says Addison, "has sprinkled several of his works with
them; and in his book on Oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces
of wit, which, upon examination, prove arrant puns."--'Essay on Wit,
Works' (1888), ii. 354.]]

[Footnote 10: In Vanbrugh and Gibber's comedy of The Provoked Husband,
first played at Drury Lane, January 10, 1728.]]

[Footnote 11:

  "And in his ear I'll holla--Mortimer!"

['I Henry IV'., act i. sc. 3.]]

[Footnote 12: Garrick's 'Lying Valet' was played for the first time at
Goodman's Fields, November 30, 1741.]

["Peregrine" is a character in George Colman's 'John Bull', or 'An
Englishman's Fire-Side', Covent Garden. March 5, 1803.] ]

[Footnote 13: I have Johnson's authority for making Lear a
monosyllable--

  "Perhaps where Lear rav'd or Hamlet died
  On flying cars new sorcerers may ride."

  ["Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet dy'd."

Prologue to 'Irene. Johnson's Works' (1806), i. 168.]
and (if it need be mentioned) the 'authority' of the epigram on Barry
and Garrick.--[Note 'erased, Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote 14:

  "'Johnson'. Pray, Mr. Bayes, who is that Drawcansir?

   'Bayes'. Why, Sir, a great [fierce] hero, that frights his mistress,
   snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard
   to numbers, good sense, or justice [good manners, justice, or
   numbers]."

'The Rehearsal', act iv. sc. I.

'The Rehearsal', by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham
(1627-1688), appeared in 1671. Sprat and others are said to have shared
the authorship. So popular was the play that "Drawcansir" passed into a
synonime for a braggadocio. It is believed that "Bayes" (that is, of
course, "laureate") was meant for a caricature of Dryden: "he himself
complains bitterly that it was so." (See 'Lives of the Poets' (1890), i.
386; and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (1876), p. 235, and 'note'.)]]

[Footnote 15:

  "Difficile est proprie communia dicere; tuque
  Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
  Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus."

HOR: 'DE ARTE POET': 128-130.

Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Boileau, and others, have left their
dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer
than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh
volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806.
Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such
subjects, particularly as so many who _can't_ have taken the same
liberty, I should have held "my farthing candle" as awkwardly as
another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan
"Siècle" induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I
therefore offer:

firstly Boileau: "Il est difficile de trailer des sujets qui sont à la
portée de tout le monde d'une maniere qui vous les rende propres, ce qui
s'appelle s'approprier un sujet par le tour qu'on y donne."

2dly, Batteux: "Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres
et individuels aux etres purement possibles."

3dly, Dacier: "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères
que tout le monde peut inventer."

Mr. Sévigné's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages,
I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes, "La chose est bien
remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la
veritable." But, by way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards,
"Le lumineux Dumarsais" made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs
again, "dissiper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;"
and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous,
will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this
weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and
comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am
happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation" of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G.
from saying any more on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at
least as good a scholar as Mr. de Sévigné, has said,

  "A little learning is a dangerous thing."

And by the above extract, it appears that a good deal may be rendered as
useless to the Proprietors.

[Byron chose the words in question, Difficile,' etc., as a motto for the
first five cantos of 'Don Juan']

[Footnote 16: About two years ago a young man named Townsend was
announced by Mr. Cumberland, in a review (since deceased) [the 'London
Review'], as being engaged in an epic poem to be entitled "Armageddon."
The plan and specimen promise much; but I hope neither to offend Mr.
Townsend, nor his friends, by recommending to his attention the lines of
Horace to which these rhymes allude. If Mr. Townsend succeeds in his
undertaking, as there is reason to hope, how much will the world be
indebted to Mr. Cumberland for bringing him before the public! But, till
that eventful day arrives, it may be doubted whether the premature
display of his plan (sublime as the ideas confessedly are) has not,--by
raising expectation too high, or diminishing curiosity, by developing
his argument,--rather incurred the hazard of injuring Mr. Townsend's
future prospects. Mr. Cumberland (whose talents I shall not depreciate
by the humble tribute of my praise) and Mr. Townsend must not suppose me
actuated by unworthy motives in this suggestion. I wish the author all
the success he can wish himself, and shall be truly happy to see epic
poetry weighed up from the bathos where it lies sunken with Southey,
Cottle, Cowley (Mrs. or Abraham), Ogilvy, Wilkie, Pye, and all the "dull
of past and present days." Even if he is not a 'Milton', he may be
better than 'Blackmore'; if not a 'Homer', an 'Antimachus'. I should
deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it
not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest
difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find
employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the
scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will
teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who
do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of
it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from 'envy'; he will soon
know mankind well enough not to attribute this expression to malice.
[This note was written [at Athens] before the author was apprised of Mr.
Cumberland's death [in May, 1811].--'MS'. (See Byron's letter to Dallas,
August 27, 1811.) The Rev. George Townsend (1788-1857) published 'Poems'
in 1810, and eight books of his 'Armageddon' in 1815. They met with the
fate which Byron had predicted. In later life he compiled numerous works
of scriptural exegesis. He was a Canon of Durham from 1825 till his
death.]]

[Footnote 17: The first line of 'A Spirit of Discovery by Sea', by the
Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, first published in 1805.]

[Footnote 18: Harvey, the 'circulator' of the 'circulation' of the
blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say,
"the book had a devil." Now such a character as I am copying would
probably fling it away also, but rather wish that "the devil had the
book;" not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of
hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of "Long and Short" is
enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life,
and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.]

[Footnote 19:

  "'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem'."

I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me;
and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.--To the above
events, "'quæque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui'," all
'times' and 'terms' bear testimony. [The Rev. G.F. Tavell was a fellow
and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, during Byron's residence, and
owed this notice to the "zeal with which he protested against his
juvenile vagaries." During a part of his residence at Trinity, Byron
kept a tame bear in his rooms in Neville's Court. (See 'English Bards',
l. 973, 'note', and postscript to the Second Edition, 'ante', p. 383. See
also letter to Miss Pigot, October 26, 1807.)

The following copy of a bill (no date) tells its own story:--

  The Honble. Lord Byron.

  To John Clarke.

  To Bread & Milk for the Bear deliv'd.} £ 1 9 7
  to Haladay ... ... ...               }

  Cambridge Reve.              A Clarke.]]

[Footnote 20: "Hell," a gaming-house so called, where you risk little,
and are cheated a good deal. "Club," a pleasant purgatory, where you
lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.]

[Footnote 21:

  "Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but
  the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go
  off the stage alive."

'Boswell's Johnson' [1876, p. 60].

[Irene (first played February 6, 1749) for the future was put to death
behind the scenes. The strangling her, contrary to Horace's rule, 'coram
populo', was suggested by Garrick. (See Davies' 'Life of Garrick'
(1808), i. 157.)]]

 [Footnote 22: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). ('Vide English Bards,
 etc'., l. 265, n. 8.) The character of Hassan, "my misanthropic negro,"
 as Lewis called him, was said by the critics of the day to have been
 borrowed from Zanga in Young's 'Revenge'. Lewis, in his "Address to the
 Reader," quoted by Byron (in 'note' 3), defends the originality of the
 conception.]

[Footnote 23: In the postscript to _The Castle Spectre_, Mr. Lewis tells
us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his
action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he
could have produced the effect "by making his heroine blue,"--I quote
him--"blue he would have made her!" [_The Castle Spectre_, by M.G.
Lewis, Esq., M.P., London, 1798, page 102.]]

[Footnote 24: In 1706 John Dennis, the critic (1657-1734), wrote an
'Essay on the Operas after the Italian manner, which are about to be
established on the English Stage'; to show that they were more immoral
than the most licentious play.]

[Footnote 25: One of the gangways in the Opera House, where the young
men of fashion used to assemble. (See letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820;
_Life_, p. 62.)]

[Footnote 26: In the year 1808, happening at the opera to tread on the
toes of a very well-dressed man, I turned round to apologize, when, to
my utter astonishment, I recognized the face of the porter of the very
hotel where I then lodged in Albemarle Street. So here was a gentleman
who ran every morning forty errands for half a crown, throwing away half
a guinea at night, besides the expense of his habiliments, and the hire
of his "Chapeau de Bras."--[_MS. L. (a)_.]]

[Footnote 27: The first theatrical representations, entitled "Mysteries
and Moralities," were generally enacted at Christmas, by monks (as the
only persons who could read), and latterly by the clergy and students of
the universities. The dramatis personae were usually Adam, Pater
Coelestis, Faith, Vice, and sometimes an angel or two; but these were
eventually superseded by 'Gammer Gurton's Needle'.--'Vide' Warton's
'History of English Poetry [passim]'.--['MSS. M., L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote 28: 'Benvolio' [Lord Grosvenor, 'MS. L'. ('b')] does not bet;
but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the
concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little pharisaical.
Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for
chastity, because 'she herself' did not commit fornication.

[Robert, second Earl Grosvenor (1767-1845), was created Marquis of
Westminster in 1831. Like his father, Gifford's patron, the first Earl
Grosvenor, he was a breeder of racehorses, and a patron of the turf. As
Lord Belgrave, he brought forward a motion for the suppression of Sunday
newspapers, June 11, 1799, denouncing them in a violent speech. The
motion was lost; but many years after, in a speech delivered in the
House of Lords, January 2, 1807, he returned to the charge. (See 'Parl.
Hist'., 34. 1006, 1010; and 'Parl. Deb'., 8. 286.) (For a skit on Lord
Belgrave's sabbatarian views, see Peter Pindar, 'Works' (1812), iv.
519.)]]

[Footnote 29: Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo
entertainments, in 'The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures', 1747-8
(see his comedy 'Taste'), were the precursors of 'Mathews at Home', and
a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often
"spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living
persons. Among his better known pieces are 'The Minor' (1760),
ridiculing Whitefield and the Methodists, and 'The Mayor of Garratt'
(1763), in which he played the part of Sturgeon (Byron used this piece,
for an illustration in his speech on the Frame-workers Bill, February
27, 1812). 'The Lyar', first played at Covent Garden, January 12, 1762,
was the latest to hold the stage. It was reproduced at the Opera Comique
in 1877.]

[Footnote 30: Henry Carey, poet and musician (d. 1743), a natural son of
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, was the author of
_Chrononhotonthologos_, "the most tragical tragedy ever yet tragedised
by any company of tragedians," which was first played at the Haymarket,
February 22, 1734. The well-known lines, "Go, call a coach, and let a
coach be called," etc., which Scott prefixed to the first chapter of
_The Antiquary_, are from the last scene, in which Bombardinion fights
with and kills the King Chrononhotonthologos. But his one achievement
was _Sally in our Alley_, of which he wrote both the words and the
music. The authorship of "God Save the King" has been attributed to him,
probably under a misapprehension.]

[Footnote 31: Under Plato's pillow a volume of the 'Mimes' of Sophron
was found the day he died.--'Vide' Barthélémi, De Pauw, or Diogenes
Laërtius, [Lib. iii. p. 168--Chouet 1595] if agreeable. De Pauw calls it
a jest-book. Cumberland, in his 'Observer', terms it moral, like the
sayings of Publius Syrus.]

[Footnote 32: In 1737 the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre having
brought Sir Robert Walpole a farce called 'The Golden Rump', the
minister detained the copy. He then made extracts of the most offensive
passages, read them to the house, and brought in a bill to limit the
number of playhouses and to subject all dramatic writings to the
inspection of the Lord Chamberlain. Horace Walpole ascribed 'The Golden
Rump' to Fielding, and said that he had found an imperfect copy of the
play among his father's papers. But this has been questioned. (See 'A
Book of the Play', by Dutton Cook (1881), p. 27.)]]

[Footnote 33: His speech on the Licensing Act [in which he opposed the
Bill], is reckoned one of his most eloquent efforts.

[The following sentences have been extracted from the speech which was
delivered:--

  "The bill is not only an encroachment upon liberty, it is likewise an
  encroachment on property. Wit, my lords, is a sort of property; it is
  the property of those who have it, and too often the only property
  they have to depend on...

  "Those gentlemen who have any such property are all, I hope, our
  friends; do not let us subject them to any unnecessary or arbitrary
  restraint...

  "The stage and the press, my lord, are two of our out-sentries; if we
  remove them, if we hoodwink them, if we throw them into fetters, the
  enemy may surprise us. Therefore I must now look upon the bill before
  us as a step for introducing arbitrary power into this kingdom."

Lord Chesterfield's sentiments with regard to laughter are contained in
an apophthegm, repeated more than once in his correspondence: "The
vulgar laugh aloud, but never smile; on the contrary, people of fashion
often smile, but seldom or never laugh aloud."--'Chesterfield's Letters
to his Godson', Oxford, 1890, p. 27.]]

[Footnote 34: Archer and Squire Sullen are characters in Farquhar's
play (1678-1707), 'The Beaux' Stratagem', March 8, 1707.]]

[Footnote 35: Michael Perez, the "Copper Captain," in [Fletcher's]
'Rule a Wife and Have a Wife' [licensed October 19, 1624].]

[Footnote 36: The Rev. Dr. Francis Willis died in 1807, in the 90th year
of his age. He attended George III. in his first attack of madness in
1788. The power of his eye on other persons is illustrated by a story
related by Frederick Reynolds ('Life and Times', ii. 23), who describes
how Edmund Burke quailed under his look. His son, John Willis, was
entrusted with the entire charge of the king in 1811. Compare Shelley's
'Peter Bell the Third', part vi.--

  "Let him shave his head:
  Where's Dr. Willis?"

(See, too, 'Bland-Burges Papers' (1885), pp. 113-115, and 'Life of
George IV'., by Percy Fitzgerald (1881), ii. 18.)]]

[Footnote 37: Dr. Johnson was of the like opinion.

  "Highwaymen and housebreakers," he says, in his Life of Gay, "seldom
  frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it
  possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because
  he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."

'Lives of the Poets', by Samuel Johnson (1890), ii. 266. It was
asserted, on the other hand, by Sir John Fielding, the Bow-street
magistrate, that on every run of the piece, 'The Beggar's Opera', an
increased number of highwaymen were brought to his office; and so strong
was his conviction, that in 1772 he remonstrated against the performance
with the managers of both the houses.]

[Footnote 38: Jerry Collier's controversy with Congreve, etc., on the
subject of the drama, is too well known to require further comment.

[Jeremy Collier (1650-1756), non-juring bishop and divine. The occasion
of his controversy with Congreve was the publication of his 'Short View
of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage' (1697-8).
Congreve, who had been attacked by name, replied in a tract entitled
'Amendments upon Mr. Collier's false and imperfect citations from the'
OLD BATCHELEUR, etc.]]

[Footnote 39: A few months after lines 370-381 were added to 'The
Hints', in September, 1812, Byron, at the request of Lord Holland, wrote
the address delivered on the opening of the theatre, which had been
rebuilt after the fire of February 24, 1809. He subsequently joined the
Committee of Management]

[Footnote 40: Mr. Simeon is the very bully of beliefs, and castigator of
"good works." He is ably supported by John Stickles, a labourer in the
same vineyard:--but I say no more, for, according to Johnny in full
congregation,'"No hopes for them as laughs."'

[The Rev. Charles Simeon (1758-1836) was the leader of the evangelical
movement in Cambridge. The reference may be to the rigour with which he
repelled a charge brought against him by Dr. Edwards, the Master of
Sidney Sussex, that a sermon which he had preached in November, 1809,
savoured of antinomianism. It may be noted that a friend (the Rev. W.
Parish), to whom he submitted the MS. of a rejoinder to Pearson's
'Cautions, etc.', advised him to print it, "especially if you should
rather keep down a lash or two which might irritate." Simeon was
naturally irascible, and, in reply to a friend who had mildly reproved
him for some display of temper, signed himself, in humorous penitence,
"Charles proud and irritable." (See 'Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Mr.
Simeon', by Rev. W. Carus (1847), pp. 195, 282, etc.)]]

[Footnote 41: 'Baxter's Shove to heavy-a--d Christians', the veritable
title of a book once in good repute, and likely enough to be so again.

["Baxter" is a slip of the pen. The tract or sermon, 'An Effectual Shove
to the heavy-arse Christian', was, according to the title-page, written
by William Bunyan, minister of the gospel in South Wales, and "printed
for the author" in London in 1768.]]

[Footnote 42: Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749) published his 'Epistle to the
Earl of Dorset' and his 'Pastorals' in 1709. It is said that Pope
attacked him in his satires in consequence of an article in the
'Guardian', in which the 'Pastorals' were unduly extolled. His verses,
addressed to the children of his patron, Lord Carteret, were parodied by
Henry Carey, in 'Namby Pamby, or a Panegyric on the New
Versification'.]

[Footnote 43: See letters to Murray, Sept. 15, 1817; Jan. 25, 1819; Mar.
29, 1820; Nov. 4, 1820; etc. See also the two 'Letters' against Bowles,
written at Ravenna, Feb. 7 and Mar. 21, 1821, in which Byron's
enthusiastic reverence for Pope is the dominant note.]

[Footnote 44: As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid
[and may be like him a senator, one day or other: no disparagement to
the High Court of Parliament.--'MS.L.(b)'], and may, like him, be one
day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads
he crops, viz.--Independence.

[According to the Scholiast, Cassar made his barber Licinus a senator,
"quod odisset Pompeium." Blake (see Letter to Murray, Nov. 9, 1820) was,
presumably, Benjamin Blake, a perfumer, who lived at 46, Park Street,
Grosvenor Square.]]

[Footnote 45: There was some foundation for this. When Wordsworth and
his sister Dorothy called on Daniel Stuart, editor of the 'Courier', at
his fine new house in Harley Street, the butler would not admit them
further than the hall, and was not a little taken aback when he
witnessed the deference shown to these strangely-attired figures by his
master.--Personal Reminiscence of the late Miss Stuart, of 106, Harley
Street.]

[Footnote 46:

  "'Bayes'. If I am to write familiar things, as sonnets to Armida, and
  the like, I make use of stewed prunes only; but when I have a grand
  design in hand, I ever take physic and let blood; for when you would
  have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must
  have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge."

'Rehearsal', act ii. sc. 1.

This passage is instanced by Johnson as a proof that "Bayes" was a
caricature of Dryden.

  "Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and purged; this, as Lamotte
  relates, ... was the real practice of the poet."

'Lives of the Poets' 1890), i. 388.]]

[Footnote 47: Cant term for £100,000.]

[Footnote 48: I have not the original by me, but the Italian translation
runs as follows:--

  "E una cosa a mio credere molto stravagante, che un Padre desideri, o
  permetta, che suo figliuolo coltivi e perfezioni questo talento."

A little further on:

  "Si trovano di rado nel Parnaso le miniere d' oro e d' argento,"

'Educazione dei Fanciulli del Signer Locke' (Venice, 1782), ii. 87.

  ["If the child have a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in
  the world, that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished
  or improved."--"It is very seldom seen, that any one discovers mines
  of gold or silver on Parnassus."

'Some Thoughts concerning Education', by John Locke (1880), p. 152.]]

[Footnote 49: "Iro pauperior:" a proverb: this is the same beggar who
boxed with Ulysses for a pound of kid's fry, which he lost and half a
dozen teeth besides. (See 'Odyssey', xviii. 98.)]

[Footnote 50: The Irish gold mine in Wicklow, which yields just ore
enough to swear by, or gild a bad guinea.]

[Footnote 51: As Mr. Pope took the liberty of damning Homer, to whom he
was under great obligations--"'And Homer (damn him!) calls'"--it may be
presumed that anybody or anything may be damned in verse by poetical
licence [I shall suppose one may damn anything else in verse with
impunity.--'MS. L. (b)']; and, in case of accident, I beg leave to plead
so illustrious a precedent.]

[Footnote 52: For the story of Billy Havard's tragedy, see Davies's
'Life of Garrick'. I believe it is 'Regulus', or 'Charles the First'
[Lincoln's Inn Fields, March 1, 1737]. The moment it was known to be his
the theatre thinned, and the book-seller refused to give the customary
sum for the copyright. [See 'Life of Garrick', by Thomas Davies (1808),
ii. 205.]

[Footnote 53: Thomas Erskine (third son of the fifth Earl of Buchan)
afterwards Lord Erskine (1750-1823), Lord Chancellor (1806-7), an
eloquent orator, a supremely great advocate, was, by comparison, a
failure as a judge. His power over a jury, "his little twelvers," as he
would sometimes address them, was practically unlimited. (See
'Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers' (1856), p. 126.)]]

[Footnote 54: Lines 589-626 are not in the 'Murray MS'., nor in either
of the 'Lovelace MSS'.]]

[Footnote 55: To the Eclectic or Christian Reviewers I have to return
thanks for the fervour of that charity which, in 1809, induced them to
express a hope that a thing then published by me might lead to certain
consequences, which, although natural enough, surely came but rashly
from reverend lips. I refer them to their own pages, where they
congratulated themselves on the prospect of a tilt between Mr. Jeffrey
and myself, from which some great good was to accrue, provided one or
both were knocked on the head. Having survived two years and a half
those "Elegies" which they were kindly preparing to review, I have no
peculiar gusto to give them "so joyful a trouble," except, indeed, "upon
compulsion, Hal;" but if, as David says in 'The Rivals', it should come
to "bloody sword and gun fighting," we "won't run, will we, Sir Lucius?"
[Byron, writing at Athens, away from his books, misquotes 'The Rivals'.
The words, "Sir Lucius, we--we--we--we won't run," are spoken by Acres,
not by David.] I do not know what I had done to these Eclectic
gentlemen: my works are their lawful perquisite, to be hewn in pieces
like Agag, if it seem meet unto them: but why they should be in such a
hurry to kill off their author, I am ignorant. "The race is not always
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong:" and now, as these
Christians have "smote me on one cheek," I hold them up the other; and,
in return for their good wishes, give them an opportunity of repeating
them. Had any other set of men expressed such sentiments, I should have
smiled, and left them to the "recording angel;" but from the pharisees
of Christianity decency might be expected. I can assure these brethren,
that, publican and sinner as I am, I would not have treated "mine
enemy's dog thus." To show them the superiority of my brotherly love, if
ever the Reverend Messrs. Simeon or Ramsden should be engaged in such a
conflict as that in which they requested me to fall, I hope they may
escape with being "winged" only, and that Heaviside may be at hand to
extract the ball.

  ["If, however, the noble Lord and the learned advocate have the
  courage requisite to sustain their mutual insults, we shall probably
  soon hear the explosions of another kind of 'paper' war, after the
  fashion of the ever-memorable duel which the latter is said to have
  fought, or seemed to fight, with 'Little' Moore. We confess there is
  sufficient provocation, if not in the critique, at least in the
  satire, to urge a 'man of honour' to defy his assailant to mortal
  combat, and perhaps to warrant a man of law to 'declare' war in
  Westminster Hall. Of this we shall no doubt hear more in due time"

('Eclectic Review', May, 1809). Byron pretends to believe that the
"Christian" Reviewers, actuated by stern zeal for piety, were making
mischief in sober earnest. "Heaviside" (see last line of Byron's note)
was the surgeon in attendance at the duel between Lord Falkland and Mr.
A. Powell. (See 'English Bards', 1. 686, note 2.)]]

[Footnote 56: _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 7.]

[Footnote 57: See the critique of the 'Edinburgh Review' on 'Hours of
Idleness', January, 1808.]

[Footnote 58: "Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin."]

[Footnote 59: Here 'MS. L.' (a) recommences.]

[Footnote 60: John Jackson (1769-1845), better known as "Gentleman"
Jackson, was champion of England from 1795 to 1803. His three fights
were against Fewterel (1788), George Ingleston, nicknamed "the Brewer"
(1789), and Mendoza (1795). In 1803 he retired from the ring. His rooms
at 13, Bond Street, became the head-quarters of the Pugilistic Club.
(See Pierce Egan's 'Life in London', pp. 252-254, where the rooms are
described, and a drawing of them by Cruikshank is given.) Jackson's
character stood high.

  "From the highest to the lowest person in the Sporting World, his
  'decision' is law."

He was Byron's guest at Cambridge, Newstead, and Brighton; received from
him many letters; and is described by him, in a note to 'Don Juan' (xi.
19), as:

  "my old friend and corporeal pastor and master."]

[Footnote 61: Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail
in 'The Curse of Kehama', maugre the neglect of 'Madoc', etc., and has
in one instance had a wonderful effect. A literary friend of mine,
walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of
the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of "one in jeopardy:" he
rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on
butter-milk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel-spear
and a landing net, and at last ('horresco referens') pulled out--his own
publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large
quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to
have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its "alacrity of sinking" was so
great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that
it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry premises,
Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict
of "'Felo de bibliopolâ'" against a "quarto unknown;" and circumstantial
evidence being since strong against 'The Curse of Kehama' (of which the
above words are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers
next session, in Grub-street--Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Coeur de
Lion, Exodus, Exodiad, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of
Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve
jurors. The judges are Pye, Bowles, and the bell-man of St. Sepulchre's.

The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in
Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. The public
anxiously await the result, and all 'live' publishers will be subpoenaed
as witnesses.--But Mr. Southey has published 'The Curse of Kehama',--an
inviting title to quibblers. By the bye, it is a good deal beneath Scott
and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the booby Ballantyne
to entitle them, in the 'Edinburgh Annual Register' (of which, by the
bye, Southey is editor) "the grand poetical triumvirate of the day."
But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the
one-eyed leaders of the blind, though they might as well keep to
themselves "Scott's thirty thousand copies sold," which must sadly
discomfort poor Southey's unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, is
the "Lepidus" of this poetical triumvirate. I am only surprised to see
him in such good company.

  "Such things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
  But wonder how the devil 'he' came there."

The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid:--

  "Because, in the triangles D B C, A C B; D B is equal to A C; and B C
  common to both; the two sides D B, B C, are equal to the two A C, C B,
  each to each, and the angle D B C is equal to the angle A C B:
  therefore, the base D C is equal to the base A B, and the triangle D B
  C (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A C B, the less to the
  greater, which is absurd" etc.

The editor of the 'Edinburgh Register' will find the rest of the theorem
hard by his stabling; he has only to cross the river; 'tis the first
turnpike t' other side 'Pons Asinorum.'[A]

['The Curse of Kehama', by Robert Southey, was published 1810;
'Arthur, or The Northern Enchantment', by the Rev. Richard Hole, in 1789;
'Alfred', by Joseph Cottle, in 1801;
'Davideis`', by Abraham Cowley, in 1656;
'Richard the First', by Sir James Bland Surges, in 1801;
'Exodiad', by Sir J. Bland Surges and R. Cumberland, in 1808;
'Exodus', by Charles Hoyle, in 1802;
'Epigoniad', by W. Wilkie, D.D., in 1757;
'Calvary', by R. Cumberland, in 1792;
'Fall of Cambria', by Joseph Cottle, in 1809;
'Siege of Acre', by Hannah Cowley, in 1801;
'The Vision of Don Roderick', by Sir Walter Scott, in 1811;
'Tom Thumb the Great', by Henry Fielding, in 1730.

The 'Courier' of July 16, 1811, reports in full the first stage of the
case Sir F. Burdett 'v.' William Scott ('vide supra'), which was brought
before Lord Meadowbank as ordinary in the outer court. Jeffrey was
counsel for the pursuer, who sought to recover a sum of £5000 lent under
a bond. For the defence it was alleged that the money had been entrusted
for a particular purpose, namely, the maintenance of an infant. Jeffrey
denied the existence of any such claim, and maintained that whatever was
scandalous or calumnious in the defence was absolutely untrue. The case,
which was not included in the Scottish Law Reports, was probably settled
out of court. Evidently the judge held that on technical grounds an
action did not lie. Burdett's enemies were not slow in turning the
scandal to account. (See a contemporary pamphlet, 'Adultery and
Patriotism', London, 1811.)] ]

  [Sub-Footnote A: This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of
  Edinburgh. Ballantyne said it meant the "Bridge of Berwick," but
  Southey claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the "Brig o'
  Stirling:" he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses
  over it. At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more
  nor less than the "counter of Archy Constable's shop."]

[Footnote 62: Voltaire's 'Pucelle' is not quite so immaculate as Mr.
Southey's 'Joan of Arc', and yet I am afraid the Frenchman has both more
truth and poetry too on his side--(they rarely go together)--than our
patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical
French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change
of the first letter.]

[Footnote 63: Like Sir Bland Burges's 'Richard'; the tenth book of
which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyre's, 19, Cockspur-street.
If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from.

[Sir James Bland Burges (1752-1824), who assumed, in 1821, the name of
Lamb, married, as his first wife, the Hon. Elizabeth Noel, daughter of
Lord Wentworth, and younger sister of Byron's mother-in-law, Lady
Milbanke. He was called to the bar in 1777, and in the same year was
appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. In 1787 he was returned M.P. for
the borough of Helleston; and from 1789 to 1795 held office as
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1795, at the instance of his
chief, Lord Grenville, he vacated his post, and by way of compensation
was created a baronet with a sinecure post as Knight-Marshal of the
Royal Household. Thenceforth he devoted himself to literature. In 1796
he wrote the 'Birth and Triumph of Love', by way of letter-press to some
elegant designs of the Princess Elizabeth. (For 'Richard the First' and
the 'Exodiad', see note, p. 436.) His plays, 'Riches and Tricks for
Travellers', appeared in 1810, and there were other works. In spite of
Wordsworth's testimony (Wordsworth signed, but Coleridge dictated and no
doubt composed, the letter: see 'Thomas Poole and His Friends', ii. 27)
"to a pure and unmixed vein of native English" in 'Richard the First
(Bland-Burges Papers', 1885, p. 308), Burges as a poet awaits
rediscovery. His diaries, portions of which were published in 1885, are
lively and instructive. He has been immortalized in Person's
Macaronics--

  "Poetis nos lætamur tribus,
  Pye, Petro Pindar, parvo Pybus.
  Si ulterius ire pergis,
  Adde his Sir James Bland Burges!"]

[Footnote 64: [Charles Lamb, in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years
Ago" (_Prose Works_, 1836, ii. 30), records his repeated visits, as a
Blue Coat boy, "to the Lions in the Tower--to whose levée, by courtesy
immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission."]

[Footnote 65: Lines 677, 678 are not in 'MS. L. (a)'.]

[Footnote 66: Lines 689-696 are not in 'MS. L. (a)' or 'MS. L. (b)'.]

[Footnote 67: 'MS. L.' ('a' and 'b') continue at line 758.]

[Footnote 68:

  "Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum,
  Gurgite cum medio portans OEagrius Hebrus,
  Volveret Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua;
  Ah, miseram Eurydicen! animâ fugiente vocabat;
  Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ."

'Georgic', iv. 523-527.]

[Footnote 69: I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; 'it' is a
'tailor', but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface
to two pair of panta--psha!--of cantos, which he wished the public to
try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the
expense of an advertisement to his country customers--Merry's
"Moorfields whine" was nothing to all this. The "Delia Cruscans" were
people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians
("Arcades ambo"--bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without
the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and small-clothes in the
parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures, and Pæans to
Gunpowder. Sitting on a shop-board, they describe the fields of battle,
when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an
"Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet;"

  "And own that 'nine' such poets made a Tate."

Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and if he did, why not take it
as his motto?

['An Essay on War; Honington Green, a Ballad ... an Elegy and other
Poems,' was published in 1803.]]

[Footnote 70: This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent
shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical undoing of many of the
industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set
all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one
county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of
patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he
died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of
"Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical
twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well; but the
"tragedies" are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl
or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly
answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But
this is the least they have done: for, by a refinement of barbarity,
they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what
he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these
rakers of "Remains" come under the statute against "resurrection men."
What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in
Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as
his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his
soul in an octavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may
be;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed
through life with a sort of éclat is to find himself a mountebank on the
other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock
of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now,
might not some of this 'Sutor ultra Crepidaitis' friends and seducers
have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And
then his inscription split into so many modicums!--"To the Duchess of
Somuch, the Right Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these
volumes are," etc. etc.--why, this is doling out the "soft milk of
dedication" in gills,--there is but a quart, and he divides it among a
dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six
families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a
book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the
grocer, and the dedication to the devil.

[For Robert Bloomfield, see 'English Bards', ll. 774-786, and note 2.
For Joseph Blacket, see 'English Bards', ll. 765-770, and note 1.
Blacket's 'Remains', with Life by Pratt, appeared in 1811. The work was
dedicated "To Her Grace the Duchess of Leeds, Lady Milbanke and Family,
Benevolent Patrons of the Author," etc.]]

[Footnote 71: Lines 737-758 are not in either of the three original MSS.
of 'Hints from Horace', and were probably written in the autumn of 1811.
They appear among a sheet of "alterations to 'English Bards, and S.
Reviewers', continued with additions" ('MSS. L.'}, drawn up for the
fifth edition, and they are inserted on a separate sheet in 'MS. M.' A
second sheet ('MSS. L.') of "scraps of rhyme ... principally additions
and corrections for 'English Bards', etc." (for the fifth edition), some
of which are dated 1810, does not give the whole passage, but includes
the following variants (erased) of lines 753-756:--

(i.)

  "Then let thy ponderous quarto steep and stink,
  The dullest fattest weed on Lethe's brink.
  Down with that volume to the depths of hell!
  Oblivion seems rewarding it too well."

(ii.)

  "Yet then thy quarto still may," etc.

A "Druid" (see 'English Bards', line 741) was Byron's name for a
scribbler who wrote for his living. In 'MS. M.', "scribbler" has been
erased, and "Druid" substituted. It is doubtful to whom the passage, in
its final shape, was intended to apply, but it is possible that the
erased lines, in which "ponderous quarto" stands for "lost songs," were
aimed at Southey (see 'ante', line 657, 'note' 1).]

[Footnote 72: 'MS. L. (a)' recommences at line 758.]

[Footnote 73: Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to
his notice the sole survivor, the "ultimus Romanorum," the last of the
Cruscanti--"Edwin" the "profound" by our Lady of Punishment! here he is,
as lively as in the days of "well said Baviad the Correct." I thought
Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the
penultimate.

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MORNING CHRONICLE."

  "What reams of paper, floods of ink,"
  Do some men spoil, who never think!
  And so perhaps you'll say of me,
  In which your readers may agree.
  Still I write on, and tell you why;
  Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
  But may instruct or entertain
  Without the risk of giving pain, etc., etc.

ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS.

  In tracing of the human mind
  Through all its various courses,
  Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
  It knows not its resources:

  And men through life assume a part
  For which no talents they possess,
  Yet wonder that, with all their art,
  They meet no better with success, etc., etc.]

['A Familiar Epistle, etc.', by T. Vaughan, Esq., was published in the
'Morning Chronicle', October 7, 1811. Gifford, in the 'Baviad' (l. 350),
speaks of "Edwin's mewlings," and in a note names "Edwin" as the
"profound Mr. T. Vaughan." 'Love's Metamorphoses', by T. Vaughan, was
played at Drury Lane, April 15, 1776. He also wrote 'The Hotel, or
Double Valet', November 26, 1776, which Jephson rewrote under the title
of 'The Servant with Two Masters.' Compare 'Children of Apollo', p. 49:--

  "Jephson, who has no humour of his own,
  Thinks it no crime to borrow from the town;
  The farce (almost forgot) of 'The Hotel'
  Or 'Double Valet' seems to answer well.
  This and his own make 'Two Strings to his Bow'."]]

[Footnote 74: See Milton's 'Lycidas'.]

[Footnote 75: Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a
variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc,
etc. etc.]

[Footnote 76:

  "A crust for the critics."

'Bayes, in "the Rehearsal"' [act ii. sc. 2].

[Footnote 77: And the "waiters" are the only fortunate people who can
"fly" from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the "Literary
Fund," being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a
hope of exclaiming, "Sic" (that is, by choking Fitz. with bad wine, or
worse poetry) "me servavit Apollo!"

[See 'English Bards', line 1 and 'note' 3.]]

[Footnote 78: Lines 813-816 not in 'MS. L. (a)' or 'MS. L. (b)'.]

[Footnote 79: On his table were found these words:--"What Cato did, and
Addison approved, cannot be wrong." But Addison did not "approve;" and
if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his
daughter on the same water-party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident,
escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of
"Atticus," and the enemy of Pope!

[Eustace Budgell (1686-1737), a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt
into the Thames" to escape the dishonour which attached to him in
connection with Dr. Tindal's will, and the immediate pressure of money
difficulties. He was, more or less, insane.

  "We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself. I put the case
  of Eustace Budgell.

  'Suppose, sir,' said I, 'that a man is absolutely sure that, if he
  lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the
  consequence of which will be utter disgrace, and expulsion from
  society?'

  JOHNSON. 'Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him
  go to some place where he is 'not' known. Don't let him go to the
  devil, where he 'is' known.'"

Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (1886), p. 281.]]

[Footnote 80: If "dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to
refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will
translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent couplet, I
will insert said couplet in lieu of the present.]

[Footnote i:

  ATHENS, 'March 2nd, 1811'.

['MS. L.' (a).]

  ATHENS, 'March 12th, 1811'.

['MS. L. (i), MS. M.']]

[Footnote ii:

  'If [A] West or Lawrence, (take whichever you will)
  Sons of the Brush, supreme in graphic skill,
  Should clap a human head-piece on a mare,
  How would our Exhibition's loungers stare!
  Or should some dashing limner set to sale
  My Lady's likeness with a Mermaid's tail.'

['MS. L.' (a).]

  'The features finished, should superbly deck
  My Lady's likeness with a Filly's neck;
  Or should some limner mad or maudlin group
  A Mermaid's tail and Maid of Honour's Hoop.'

['MS. L. '(b).] ]

  [Sub-Footnote A: I have been obliged to dive into the "Bathos" for the
  simile, as I could not find a description of these Painters' merits
  above ground.

    "Si liceat parvis
    Componere magna"--

  "Like London's column pointing to the skies
  Like a 'tall Bully', lifts its head and lies"

  I was in hopes might bear me out, if the monument be like a Bully.
  West's glory may be reduced by the scale of comparison. If not, let me
  have recourse to 'Tom Thumb the Great' [Fielding's farce, first
  played 1730] to keep my simile in countenance.--['MS. L. (b) erased]]

[Footnote iii: After line 6, the following lines (erased) were inserted:--

  'Or patch a Mammoth up with wings and limbs,
  And fins of aught that flies or walks or swims'.

['MS. M'.]

Another variant ran--

  'Or paint (astray from Truth and Nature led)
  A Judge with wings, a Statesman with a Head'!

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote iv:

  'Believe me, Hobhouse'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote v:

  'as we scribblers'.

['MSS. L'. ('a' and 'b'), 'MS. M'.]]

[Footnote vi:

  'Like Wardle's'[A] 'speeches'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

  [Sub-Footnote A: [Gwyllim Lloyd Wardle (1762-1834), who served in
  Ireland in 1798, as Colonel of the Welsh Fusiliers, known as "Wynne's
  lambs," was M.P. for Okehampton 1807-12. In January, 1809, he brought
  forward a motion for a parliamentary investigation into the exercise
  of military patronage by the Duke of York, and the supposed influence
  of the Duke's mistress, Mary Anne Clarke.]]

[Footnote vii:

  'As pertness lurks beneath a legal gown.
  And nonsense in a lofty note goes down'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

or,

  'Which covers all things like a Prelate's gown'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

  or,

  'Which wraps presumption'.

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote viii:

  'As when the poet to description yields
  Of waters gliding through the goodly fields;
  The Groves of Granta and her Gothic Halls,
  Oxford and Christchurch, London and St. Pauls,
  Or with a ruder flight he feebly aims
  To paint a rainbow or the River Thames.
  Perhaps you draw a fir tree or a beech,
  But then a landscape is beyond your reach;
  Or, if that allegory please you not,
  Take this--you'ld form a vase, but make a pot'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote ix:

  'Although you sketch a tree which Taste endures,
  Your ill-daubed Shipwreck shocks the Connoisseurs.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote x:

  'The greater portion of the men of rhyme
  Parents and children or their Sires sublime'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote xi:

  'But change the malady they strive to cure'.

['MS. L. (a').]]

[Footnote xii:

  'Fish in the woods and wild-boars in the waves'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote xiii:

  'For Coat and waistcoat Slowshears is your man,
  But Breeches claim another Artisan;
  Now this to me I own seems much the same
  As one leg perfect and the other lame'.

['MSS. M., L. (a').]

  'Sweitzer is your man'.

[MS. M. 'erased'.]]

[Footnote xiv:

'Him who hath sense to make a skilful choice
Nor lucid Order, nor the Siren Voice
Of Eloquence shall shun, and Wit and Grace
(Or I'm deceived) shall aid him in the Race:
These too will teach him to defer or join
To future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author like or that reject,
Sparing in words and cautious to select:
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who well compounds a wanting word,
And if, by chance, 'tis needful to produce
Some term long laid and obsolete in use'.--

['MSS. M., L'. ('a' and 'b'). 'The last line partly erased.']

[Footnote xv:

  'The dextrous Coiner of a' wanting 'word'.--

['Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xvi:

  'Adroitly grafted.'

['Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xvii:

  'Since they enriched our language in their time
  In modern speeches or Black letter rhyme.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xviii:

  'Though at a Monarch's nod, and Traffic's call
  Reluctant rivers deviate to Canal'.

['MSS. M., L'. ('a' and 'b').]]

[Footnote xix:

  'marshes dried, sustain'.

['Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xx:

  'Thus--future years dead volumes shall revive'.

['Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xxi:

  'As Custom fluctuates whose Iron Sway
  Though ever changing Mortals must obey'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote xxii:

  'To mark the Majesty of Epic song'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote xxiii:

  'But which is preferable rhyme or blank
  Which holds in poesy'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]

[Footnote xxiv:

 --'ventures to appear.--'

['MS. Corr. in Proof b, British Museum'.]

[Footnote xxv:

  'And Harry Monmouth, till the scenes require,
  Resigns heroics to his sceptred Sire.'

['MS. L'. (a).]]

[Footnote xxvi:

  'To "hollaing Hotspur" and the sceptred sire.'--

['MS. Corr. in Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xxvii:

  'Dull as an Opera, I should sleep or sneer.'

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote xxviii:

  'And for Emotion's aid 'tis said and sung'.

['MS. L, (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxix:

  'or form a plot'.

['Proof b, British Museum'.]]

[Footnote xxx:

  'Whate'er the critic says or poet sings
  'Tis no slight task to write on common things'.

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote xxxi:

  'Ere o'er our heads your Muse's Thunder rolls.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxxii:

  'Earth, Heaven and Hell, are shaken with the Song.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxxiii:

  'Through deeds we know not, though already done,'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxxiv:

  'What soothes the people's, Peer's, and Critic's ear.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxxv:

  'And Vice buds forth developed with his Teens.'

[MS. M.]]

[Footnote xxxvi:

  'The beardless Tyro freed at length from school.

[MSS. L. (b), M. erased'.]

  'And blushing Birch disdains all College rule.

[MS. M. erased'.]

  'And dreaded Birch.

[MS. L.' (a' and 'b').]]

[Footnote xxxvii:

  'Unlucky Tavell! damned to daily cares
  By pugilistic Freshmen, and by Bears.'

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote xxxviii:

  'Ready to quit whatever he loved before,
  Constant to nought, save hazard and a whore.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xxxix:

  'The better years of youth he wastes away.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xl:

  'Master of Arts, as all the Clubs proclaim.'

['MS. L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote xli:

  'Scrapes wealth, o'er Grandam's endless jointure grieves.'

['MS. erased'.]

  'O'er Grandam's mortgage, or young hopeful's debts.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

  'O'er Uncle's mortgage.'

['MS. L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote xlii:

  'Your plot is told or acted more or less.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xliii:

  'To greater sympathy our feelings rise
  When what is done is done before our eyes.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xliv:

  'Appalls an audience with the work of Death--
  To gaze when Hubert simply threats to sere.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xlv:

  'Nor call a Ghost, unless some cursed hitch
  Requires a trapdoor Goblin or a Witch.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xlvi:

  'This comes from Commerce with our foreign friends
  These are the precious fruits Ausonia sends.'