HINTS FROM HORACE:

BEING

AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE
PISONES, DE ARTE POETICA," AND INTENDED AS
A SEQUEL TO "ENGLISH BARDS AND

SCOTCH REVIEWERS."

AD

Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.”

HOR. De Arte Poet.

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

FIELDING'S Amelia

(73)

[Byron wrote "Hints from Horace" at Athens, in 1811, and brought it home in the same desk with the first two cantos of Childe Harold. He professed to think it superior to Childe Harold and was with apparent difficulty persuaded by his friends to forego its publication. The favorable reception of Childe Harold by the public seems to have softened his feelings towards the critics, and as he soon became personally acquainted with some of the persons whom he had satirized in the "Hints," he did not insist upon its publication until 1820, when he wrote thus to Mr. Murray.-"Get from Mr. Hobhouse and send me a proof of my 'Hints from Horace:' it has now the nonum prematur in annum complete for its production. I have a notion that with some omissions of names and passages it will do; and I could put my late observations for Pope amongst the nctes. As far as versification goes, it is good; and in 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." On hearing, however, that in Mr. Hobhouse's opinion the verses would require 66 a good deal of slashing" to suit the times, the notion of printing them was once more abandoned. They were first published in 1831, seven years after the author's death. The editor of Murray's edition remarks:-"No part of the poem is much above mediocrity, and not a little is below it. The versification, which Lord Byron singles out for praise, has no distinguishing excellence, and was surpassed by his later iambics in every metrical quality,—in majesty, in melody, in freedom. and in spirit. Authors are frequently as bad judges of their own works as men in general are, proverbially, in their own cause. and 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 the fondness which parents are said to feel for their least favored offspring."]

(74)

HINTS FROM HORACE.

Athens. Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811.

WHO would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace
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 honor to a mermaid's tail?

Or low Dubost * 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.

* 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, the author of "Anastasius," having offended Dubost, that painter revenged himself by a picture called "Beauty and the Beast," in which Mr. Hope and his lady were represented according to the wellknown fairy story. The exhibition of it is said to have fetched thirty pounds in a day. A brother of Mrs. Hope thrust his sword through the canvas; and M. Dubost had the consolation to get five pounds damages. The affair made much noise at the time.]

Believe me, Moschus,* like that picture seems
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,
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.

A labored, long exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends;
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As pertness passes with a legal gown:

Thus many a bard describes in pompous strain
The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain :
The groves of Granta, and her gothic halls, [walls;
King's Coll., Cam's stream, stained windows, and old
Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims

To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames.‡

You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shineBut daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;

You plan a vase ·

it dwindles to a pot;

Then glide down Grub-street-fasting and forgot;

* ["Moschus."-In the original MS., "Hobhouse."] "All artists."- Originally, "We scribblers."]

"Where pure description held the place of sense." — POPE

Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till

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

true.*

The greater portion of the rhyming tribe (Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe) Are led astray by some peculiar lure.

I labor 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!

Unless your care's exact, your judgment nice,
The flight from folly leads but into vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.

For galligaskins Slowshears is your man;
But coats must claim another artisan.†
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
As Vulcan's feet to bear Apollo's frame:

* [This is pointed, and felicitously expressed. - MOORE.] † Mere common mortals were commonly content with one tailor 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. [MS. "As one leg perfect, and the other lame."]