find out the difference. But let us return to the modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth. more immediate question. -Don't be angry,—l know you won't,-at this apI agree with you, that it is impossible Lord By- praisement of your powers of eulogy; for on the ron should be the author, not only because, as a other hand, my dear friend, depend upon it your British peer and a British poet, it would be imprac-abuse is worth, not its own weight,-that's a ticable for him to have recourse to such facetious feather,—but your weight in gold. So don't spare fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his Lordship has no grandmother. Now, the author-and we may believe him in this-doth expressly state the British in his "Grandmother's Review;" and if, as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still extant. And I can the more readily credit this, having a sexagenary aunt of my own, who perused you constantly, till unfortunately falling asleep over the leading article of your last number, her spectacles fell off and were broken against the fender, after a faithful service of fifteen years, and she has never been able to fit her eyes since; so that I have been forced to read you aloud to her; and this is in fact the way in which I became acquainted with the subject of my present letter, and thus determined to become your public correspondent. In the next place, Lord B.'s destiny seems in some sort like that of Hercules of old, who became the author of all unappropriated prodigies. Lord B. has been supposed the author of the Vampire, of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, To the Dead Sea, of Death upon the Pale horse, of odes to La Valette, to Saint Helena, to the Land of the Gaul, and to a sucking-child. Now, he turned out to have | written none of these things. Besides, you say, he knows in what a spirit of, etc. you criticise -Are you sure he knows all this? that he has read you, like my poor dear aunt? They tell me he is a queer sort of a man; and I would not be too sure, if I were you, either of what he has read or of what he has written. I thought his style had been the serious and terrible. As to his sending you money, this is the first time that ever I heard of his paying his reviewers in that coin; I thought | it was rather in their own, to judge from some of his earlier productions. Besides, though he may not be profuse in his expenditure, I should conjecture that his reviewer's bill is not so long as his tailor's. Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid! but if, by any accident, there should have been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author, whoever he may be, send him back his money: I dare say he will be very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value of the article and circulation of the journal; and you are too it: if he has bargained for that, give it handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office. But I only speak in case of possibility; for, as I said before, I cannot believe, in the first instance, that you would receive a bribe to praise any person whatever; and still less can I believe, that your praise could ever produce such an offer. You are a good creature, my dear Roberts, and a clever fellow, else I could almost suspect that you had fallen into the very trap set for you in verse by this anonymous wag, who will certainly be but too happy to see you saving him the trouble of making you ridiculous. The fact is, that the solemnity of your eleventh article does make you look a little more absurd than you ever yet looked, in all probability, and at the same time, does no good; for if any body believed before in the octave stanzas, they will believe still, and you will find it not less difficult to prove your negative, than the learned Partridge found it to demonstrate his not being dead, to the satisfaction of the readers of almanacks. What the motives of this writer may have been for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you)" stating, with the particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless fiction," (do, pray, my dear R., talk a little less "in King Cambyses' vein,") I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you, but that this is no reason for your benevolently making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry; I tell you I am angry too; but you should not have shown it so outraeously. Your solemn "if somebody personating the Editor of the, etc. etc. has received from Lord B. or from any other person," reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning :-"If a maun, or any maun, or any other maun," etc. etc.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear Roberts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and for yourself. With regard to the poem itself, or the author, whom I cannot find out, (can you ?) I have nothing to say; my business is with you. I am sure that you will, upon second thoughts, be really obliged Sept. 4th, 1819, WORTLEY CLUTTERBUCK. tom of contrition, remorse, or hesitation, with a calm careless ferociousness of contented and satisfied depravity-this was an insult which no man of genius had ever before dared to put upon his Creator or his species. Impiously railing against his Godmadly and meanly disloyal to his sovereign and his country,and brutally outraging all the best feelings of female honour, affection, and confidence,-how small a part of chivalry is that which remains to the descendant of the Byrons-a gloomy vizor, and a deadly weapon! "Those who are acquainted (as who is not?) with the main incidents in the private life of Lord Byron-and who have not seen his production, will scarcely believe that malignity should have carried him so far, as to make him commence a filthy and impious poem, with an elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife-from whom, even by his own confession, be has been separated only in consequence of his own cruel and heartless misconduct. It is in vain for Lord Byron to attempt, P. S.-My letter is too long to revise, and the post is going. I forget whether or not I asked you the meaning of your last words "the forgery of a groundless fiction." Now, as all forgery is fiction, and all fiction a kind of forgery, is not this tauto-in any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and, now logical? The sentence would have ended more strongly with "forgery;" only, it hath an awful Bank of England sound, and would have ended like an indictment, besides sparing you several words, and conferring some meaning upon the remainder. But this is mere verbal criticism. Good-bye-once more, yours truly, W.C. P. S. 2d. Is it true that the Saints make up the loss of the Review ?-It is very handsome in them to be at so great an expense. Twice more, W.C. yours, The annexed article, which also elicited his Lordship's remarks, is from the celebrated organ of northern toryism BLACKWOOD. that he has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the general voice of his countrymen. It would not be an easy matter to persuade any man, who has any knowledge of the nature of Woman, that a female such as Lord Byron has himself described his wife to be, would rashly, or hastily, or lightly, separate herself from the love with which she had once been inspired for such a man as he is, or was. Had he not heaped insult upon insult, and scorn upon scorn-had he not forced the iron of his contempt into her very soul-there is no woman of delicacy and virtue, as he admitted Lady Byron to be, who would not have hoped all things and suffered all things from one, her love of whom must have been interwoven with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and more delicious humility. To offend the love of such a woman was wrong-but it might be forgiven; to desert her was unmanly-but he might have returned, and whiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion;-but to injure, and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her widowed privacy with unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery-was brutally, fiendishly, inexpiably mean. For impurities there might be some possibility of pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions;-for impiety there might at "In the composition of this work there is unquestionably a least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious soul more thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice-power equalled its darkness;-but for offences such as this, which canand profligacy-than in any poem which had ever before been not proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse, or the written in the English or, indeed, in any other modern language. bewildered agonies of doubt-but which speak the wilful and Had the wickedness been less inextricably mingled with the determined spite of an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarbeauty, and the grace, and the strength of a most inimitable and castic, joyous sinner-there can be neither pity nor pardon. incomprehensible muse, our task would have been easy. Don Our knowledge that it is committed by one of the most powerful Juan is by far the most admirable specimen of the mixture of intellects our island ever has produced, lends intensity a thouease, strength, gaiety, and seriousness, extant in the whole body sand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation. Every high thought English poetry: the author has devoted his powers to the that was ever kindled in our breasts by the muse of Byronworst of purposes and passions; and it increases his guilt, and every pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within us our sorrow, that he has devoted them entire. to the sweep of his majestic inspirations-every remembered moment of admiration and enthusiasm, is up in arms against him. We look back with a mixture of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered ourselves to be filled by one who, all the while he was furnishing us with delight, must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with a cruel mockery-less cruel only, because less peculiar than that with which he has now turned him, from the lurking-place of his selfish and polluted exile. to pour the pitiful chalice of his contumely on the surrendered devotion of a virgin-bosom, and the holy hopes of the mother of his child. It is indeed a sad and a humiliating thing to know, that in the same year there proceeded from the same pen two productions, in all things so different, as the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold and this loathsome Don Juan. "The moral strain of the whole poem is pitched in the lowest key. Love-honour-patriotism-religion, are mentioned only to be scoffed at, as if their sole resting-place were, or ought to be, in the bosoms of fools. It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted every species of sensual gratification -having drained the cup of sin even to its bitterest dregs-were resolved to show us that he is no longer a human being, even in his frailties; but a cool unconcerned fiend, laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and worse elements of which human life is composed-treating well-nigh with equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices -dead alike to the beauty of the one, and the deformity of the other-a mere heartless despiser of that frail but noble humanity, whose type was never exhibited in a shape of more deplorable degradation than in his own contemptuously distinct delineation of himself. To confess to his Maker, and weep over in secret agonies, the wildest and most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life and action. But, to lay bare to the eye of man-and of woman-all the hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit-and to do all this without one symp "We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of Don Juan; and we are quite sure, the loftyminded and virtuous men whom Lord Byron has de based himself by insulting, will close the volume which contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for Him that has inflicted them, and for ller who partakes so largely in the same injuries.”—[Aug. 1819.] SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON AN ARTICLE IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, "Why, how now, Hecate, you look angrily."-Macbeth. TO I. D'ISRAELI, ESQ. THE AMIABLE AND INGENIOUS AUTHOR OF "THE CALAMITIES" AND "QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;" ONE OF THE NUMBER. RAVENNA, March 15, 1820. "THE life of a writer" has been said, by Pope, I believe, to be "a warfare upon earth.” As far as my own experience has gone, I have nothing to say against the proposition; and, like the rest, having once plunged into this state of hostility, must, however reluctantly, carry it on. An article has appeared in a periodical work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,” which has been so full of this spirit, on the part of the writer, as to require some observations on mine. to be continued, feel, or should feel themselves so aggrieved as to require a more explicit answer, privately and personally, they shall have it. I have never shrunk from the responsibility of what I have written, and have more than once incurred obloquy by neglecting to disavow what was attributed to my pen without foundation. The greater part, however, of the "Remarks on Don Juan" contain but little on the work itself, which receives an extraordinary portion of praise as a composition. With the exception of some quotations, and a few incidental remarks, the rest of the article is neither more nor less than a personal attack upon the imputed author. It is not the first in the same publication: for I recollect to have read, some time ago, similar remarks upon Beppo (said to have been written by a celebrated northern preacher); in which the conclusion drawn was, that "Childe Harold, Byron, and the Count in Beppo, were one and the same person;" thereby making me turn out to be, as Mrs. Malaprop(1) says, "like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once. That article was signed "Presbyter Anglicanus;" In the first place, I am not aware by what right which, I presume, being interpreted, means Scotch the writer assumes this work, which is anony-Presbyterian. (2) I must here observe,—and it is mous, to be my production. He will answer, that there is internal evidence; that is to say, that there are passages which appear to be written in my name, or in my manner. But might not this have been done on purpose by another? He will say, why not then deny it? To this I could answer, that of all the things attributed to me within the last five years,-Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Deaths upon Pale Horses, Odes to the Land of the Gaul, Adieus to England, Songs to Madame La Valette, Odes to St. Helena, Vampires, and what not,-of which, God knows, I never composed nor read a syllable beyond their titles in advertisements,-I never thought it worth while to disavow any except one which came linked with an account of my Residence in the Isle of Mitylene, where I never resided, and appeared to be carrying the amusement of those persons, who think my name can be of any use to them, a little too far. I should hardly, therefore, if I did not take the trouble to disavow these things published in my name, and yet not mine, go out of my way to deny an anonymous work; which might appear an act of supererogation. With regard to Don Juan, I neither deny nor admit it to be mine-every body may form their own opinion; but, if there be any who now, or in the progress of that poem, if it is (1) In Sheridan's comedy of The Rivals.-E. (2) See Blackwood, vol. iii. p. 329. Lord B., as it appears from one of his letters, ascribed this paper to the Rev. Dr. Chalmers!-E. (3) "As the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review (vol. xxi. at once ludicrous and vexatious to be compelled In the course of this article, amidst some extra-ordinary observations, there occur the following words :-"It appears, in short, as if this miserable p. 366.), speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, 'It was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the devil, and bullied him-though the devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonisation, ever pleaded for him."" Southey-E. and shame him, by applying to the Consul-General of our nation, resident in the place, who will be in the case either to confirm or deny what I have asserted.(1) I neither make, nor have ever made, pretensions to sanctity of demeanour, nor regularity of conduct; but my means have been expended principally on my own gratification neither now nor heretofore, neither in England nor out of it; and it wants but a word from me, if I thought that word decent or necessary, to call forth the most willing witnesses, and at once witnesses and proofs, in England itself, to show that there are those who have derived not the mere temporary relief of a wretched boon, but the means which led them to immediate happiness and ultimate independence, by my want of that very "selfishness," as grossly as falsely now im Had I been a selfish man-had I been a grasping man-had I been, in the worldly sense of the word, even a prudent man,-1 should not be where I now am; I should not have taken the step which was the first that led to the events which have sunk and swoln a gulf between me and mine: but in this respect the truth will one day be made known: in the mean time, as Durandearte says, in the Cave of Montesinos, "Patience, and shuffle the cards." man having exhausted every species of sensual (1) "Lord Byron was ever ready to assist the distressed, and he was most unostentatious in his charities; for, besides considerable sums which he gave away to applicants at his own house, he contributed largely, by weekly and monthly allowances, to persons whom he had never seen and who, as the money reached them by other hands, did not even know who was their benefactor." Hoppner. I bitterly feel the ostentation of this statement, the first of the kind I have ever made: I feel the degradation of being compelled to make it; but I also feel its truth, and I trust to feel it on my deathbed, should it be my lot to die there. I am not less sensible of the egotism of all this; but, alas! who have made me thus egotistical in my own defence, if not they, who, by perversely persisting in referring fiction to truth, and tracing poetry to life, and regarding characters of imagination as creatures of existence, have made me personally responsible for almost every poetical delineation which fancy, and a particular bias of thought, may have tended to produce? "Those who are ac The writer continues:quainted, as who is not? with the main incidents of the private life of Lord B.," etc. Assuredly, whoever may be acquainted with these "main incidents," the writer of the "Remarks on Don Juan" is not, or he would use a very different language. That which I believe he alludes to as a "main incident," happened to be a very subordinate one, and the natural and almost inevitable consequence of events and circumstances long prior "The house of a shoemaker near his Lordship's residence in St. Samuel was burnt to the ground, with all it contained, by which the proprietor was reduced to indigence. Byron not only caused a new and superior house to be erected, but also presented the sufferer with a sum of money equal in value to the whole of his stock-in-trade and furniture."-Galt. what has been already said and done? Has not to the period at which it occurred. It is the last drop which makes the cup run over, and mine was already full. But,―to return to this man's charge: he accuses Lord B. of “an elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife." From what parts of Don Juan the writer has inferred this he himself best knows. As far as I recollect of the female characters in that production, there is but one who is depicted in ridiculous colours, or that could be interpreted as a satire upon any body. But here my poetical sins are again visited upon me, The man who is exiled by a faction has the consupposing that the poem be mine. If I depict a solation of thinking that he is a martyr; he is upheld corsair, a misanthrope, a libertine, a chief of insur-by hope and the dignity of his cause, real or imagents, or an infidel, he is set down to the author; ginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of and if, in a poem by no means ascertained to be debt may indulge in the thought that time and my production, there appears a disagreeable, ca- prudence will retrieve his circumstances: he who suistical, and by no means respectable female is condemned by the law has a term to his banishpedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any ment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may be, resemblance? If there be, if is in those who make the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the it: I can see none. In my writings I have rarely law, or of its administration in his own particular: described any character under a fictitious name: but he who is outlawed by general opinion, without those of whom I have spoken have had their own—the intervention of hostile politics, illegal judg-in many cases a stronger satire in itself than any which could be appended to it. But of real circumstances I have availed myself plentifully, both in the serious and the ludicrous-they are to poetry what landscapes are to the painter; but my figures are not portraits. It may even have happened, that I have seized on some events that have occurred under my own observation, or in my own family, as I would paint a view from my grounds, did it harmonise with my picture; but I never would introduce the likenesses of its living mem-knew why,because the persons complaining refused bers, unless their features could be made as favourable to themselves as to the effect; which, in the above instance, would be extremely difficult. ment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile, without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry, was a nobleman, h married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my wife and her relatives, no one had to state their grievances. The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority: the reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of verses, rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects of both, was tortured into a My learned brother proceeds to observe, that "it is in vain for Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and now that he has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen." How far the "open-species of crime, or constructive petty treason. I ness" of an anonymous poem, and the "audacity" of an imaginary character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B., may be deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their “most sweet voices," I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I cannot "in any way justify my own behaviour in that affair," I acquiesce, because no man can “justify” himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never had-and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it any specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such. But is not the writer content with was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour : my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the waters. |