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"Salute Gifford and all my friends.

"Yours, &c."

As already, before his acquaintance with Mr Matthews commenced, Lord Byron had begun to bewilder himself in the mazes of scepticism, it would be unjust to impute to this gentleman any further share in the formation of his noble friend's opinions than what arose from the natural influence of example and sympathy;-an influence which, as it was felt perhaps equally on both sides, rendered the contagion of their doctrines, in a great measure, reciprocal. In addition, too, to this community of sentiment on such subjects, they were both, in no ordinary degree, possessed by that dangerous spirit of ridicule, whose impulses even the pious cannot always restrain, and which draws the mind on, by a sort of irresistible fascination, to disport itself most wantonly on the brink of all that is most solemn and awful. It is not

wonderful, therefore, that, in such society, the opinions of the noble poet should have been, at least, accelerated in that direction to which their bias already leaned; and though he cannot be said to have become thus confirmed in these doctrines-as neither now, nor at any time of his life, was he a confirmed unbeliever, he had undoubtedly learned to feel less uneasy under his scepticism, and even to mingle somewhat of boast and of levity with his expression of it. At the very first onset of his correspondence with Mr Dallas, we find him proclaiming his sentiments on all such subjects with a flippancy and confidence, far different from the tone in which he had first ventured on his doubts,-from that fervid sadness, as of a heart loth to part with its allusions, which breathes through every line of those prayers, that, but a year before, his pen had traced.

Here, again, however, we should recollect, there must be a considerable share of allowance for his

usual tendency to make the most and the worst of

his own obliquities. There occurs, indeed, in his first letter to Mr Dallas, an instance of this strange ambition, the very reverse, it must be allowed, of hypocrisy, which led him to court, rather than avoid, the reputation of profligacy, and to put at all times the worst face on his own character and conduct. His new correspondent having, in introducing himself to his acquaintance, passed some compliments on the tone of moral and charitable feeling which breathed through one of his poems, had added, that "it brought

to his mind another noble author, who was not only a fine poet, orator, and historian, but one of the closest reasoners we have on the truth of that religion of which forgiveness is a prominent principle,-the great and the good Lord Lyttleton, whose fame will never die. His son," adds Mr Dallas, " to whom he had transmitted genius, but not virtue, sparkled for a moment and went out like a star,-and with him the title became extinct." To this Lord Byron answers in the following letter.

LETTER XX.

TO MR DALLAS.

"Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle-street, Jan. 20th, 1808 66 SIR, "Your letter was not received till this morning,

I presume from being addressed to me in Notts., where I have not resided since last June, and as the date is the 6th, you will excuse the delay of my

answer.

"If the little volume you mention has given pleasure to the author of Percival and Aubrey, I am sufficiently repaid by his praise. Though our periodical censors have been uncommonly lenient, I confess a tribute from a man of acknowledged genius is still more flattering. But I am afraid I should forfeit all claim to candour, if I did not decline such praise as I do not deserve; and this is, I am sorry to say, the case in the present instance.

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My compositions speak for themselves, and must stand or fall by their own worth or demerit: thus far I feel highly gratified by your favourable opinion. But my pretensions to virtue are unluckily so few, that though I should be happy to merit, I cannot accept, your applause in that respect. One passage in your letter struck me forcibly: you mention the two Lords Lyttleton in a manner they respectively deserve, and will be surprised to hear the person who is now addressing you has been frequently compared to the latter. I know I am injuring myself in your esteem by this avowal, but the circumstance was so remarkable from your observation, that I cannot help relating the fact. The events of my short life have been of so singular a nature, that, though the pride commonly called honour has, and I trust ever will, prevent me from disgracing my name by a mean or cowardly action, I have been already held infidelity. How far justice may have dictated this up as the votary of licentiousness, and the disciple of accusation I cannot pretend to say, but, like the gentleman to whom my religious friends, in the warmth of their charity, have already devoted me, I am made worse than I really am. However, to quit myself (the worst theme I could pitch upon) and return to my Poems, I camot sufficiently express my thanks, and I hope I shall some day have an opportunity of rendering them in person. A second edition is now in the press, with some additions and considerable omissions; you will allow me to present you with a copy. The Critical, Monthly, and Anti-Jacobin Reviews have been very indulgent; but the Eclectic has pronounced a furious Philippic, not against the book but the author, where you will find all I have mentioned asserted by a reverend divine who wrote the critique.

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the parallel. Mr Dallas, who seems to have been but little prepared for such a reception of his compliments, escapes out of the difficulty by transferring to the young lord's "candour" the praise he had so thanklessly bestowed on his morals in general; adding, that from the design Lord Byron had expressed in his preface of resigning the service of the Muses for a different vocation, he had “conceived him bent on pursuits which lead to the character of a legislator and statesman ;-had imagined him at one of the universities, training himself to habits of reasoning and eloquence, and storing up a large fund of history and law." It is in reply to this letter that the exposition of the noble poet's opinions to which I have above alluded is contained.

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SIR,

LETTER XXI.

TO MR DALLAS.

"Dorant's, January 21st., 1808.

"Whenever leisure and inclination permit me the pleasure of a visit, I shall feel truly gratified in a personal acquamtanc with one whose mind has been long known to me in his writings.

"You are so far correct in your conjecture, that I am a member of the University of Cambridge, where I shall take my degree of A. M. this term; but were reasoning, eloquence, or virtue, the objects of my search, Granta is not their metropolis, nor is the place of her situation an El Dorado,' far less an Utopia. The intellects of her children are as stagnant as her Cam, and their pursuits limited to the church-not of Christ, but of the nearest benefice. "As to my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical; so that few nations exist, or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree ac

quainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon. Of the classics, I know about as much as most schoolboys after a discipline of thirteen years; of the law of the land as much as enables me to keep within the statute'-to use the poacher's vocabulary. I did study the Spirit of Laws' and the Law of Nations; but when I saw the latter violated every month, I gave up my attempts at so useless an accomplishment;-of geography, I have seen more land on maps than I should wish to traverse on foot ;-of mathematics, enough to give me the headache without clearing the part affected;-of philosophy, astronomy, and metaphysics, more than I can comprehend ;† and of common sense so little, that I mean to leave a Byronian prize at each of our Alma Matres' for the first discovery,-though I rather fear that of the Longitude will precede it.

"I once thought myself a philosopher, and talked nonsense with great decorum: I defied pain, and preached up equanimity. For some time this did very well, for no one was in pain for me but my *This appeal to the imagination of his correspondent

was not altogether without effect.-"I considered," says Mr Dallas," these letters, though evidently grounded on some occurrences in the still earlier part of his life, rather as jeux d'esprit than as a true portrait."

He appears to have had in his memory Voltaire's lively account of Zadig's learning:-" Il savait de la métaphysique ce qu'on en a su dans tous les âges, c'est à dire, fort peu de chose," &c.

friends, and none lost their patience but my hearers. At last, a fall from my horse convinced me bodily suffering was an evil; and the worst of an argument overset my maxims and my temper at the same moment, so I quitted Zeno for Aristippus, and conceive that pleasure constitutes the ro xaλov. In morality, I prefer Confucius to the Ten Commandments, and Socrates to St Paul, though the two latter agree in their opinion of marriage. In religion, I favour the Catholic emancipation, but do not acknowledge the Pope; and I have refused to take the Sacrament, because I do not think eating bread or drinking wine from the hand of an earthly vicar will make me an inheritor of heaven. I hold virtue in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition, each a feeling, not a principle.* I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity; and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body. You have here a brief compendium of the sentiments of the wicked George Lord Byron; and, till I get a new suit, you will perceive I am badly clothed. I remain," &c.

Though such was, doubtless, the general cast of his opinions at this time, it must be recollected, before his creed, that, in addition to the temptation, never we attach any particular importance to the details of easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, person who, though, no doubt, well-meaning, was whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify. The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with

which, through life, he amused himself, at the exand sociability drew around him. pense of all the numerous quacks, whom his celebrity

The terms in which he speaks of the university in

this letter agree in spirit with many passages both in the "Hours of Idleness," and his early Satire, and prove that, while Harrow was remembered by him with more affection perhaps than respect, Cambridge had not been able to inspire him with either. This feeling of distaste to his "nursing mother" he entertained in common with some of the most illustrious names of English literature. So great was Milton's hatred to Cambridge, that he had even conceived, says Warton, a dislike to the face of the country,— to the fields in its neighbourhood. The poet Gray thus speaks of the same university :-"Surely, it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke when he said, the wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" &c. &c. The bitter recollections which Gibbon retained of Oxford, his own pen has recorded; and the cool contempt by which Locke avenged himself on the bigotry of the same seat of learning is even still more memorable.†

6

The doctrine of Hume, who resolves all virtue into sentiment. See his "Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals."

+ See his Letter to Anthony Collins, 1703-4, where he speaks of those sharp heads, which were for damning his book, because of its discouraging the staple commodity of the place, which in his time was called hogs' shearing."

In poets, such distasteful recollections of their collegiate life may well be thought to have their origin in that antipathy to the trammels of discipline, which is not unusually observable among the characteristics of genius, and which might be regarded, indeed, as a sort of instinct, implanted in it for its own preservation, if there be any truth in the opinion that a course of learned education is hurtful to the freshness and elasticity of the imaginative faculty. A right reverend writer, but little to be suspected of any desire to depreciate academical studies, not only puts the question, "whether the usual forms of learning be not rather injurious to the true poet, than really assisting to him?" but appears strongly disposed to answer it in the affirmative,—giving, as an instance, in favour of this conclusion, the classic Addison, who, "as appears," he says, "from some original efforts in the sublime, allegorical way, had no want of natural talents for the greater poetry, which yet were so restrained and disabled by his constant and superstitious study of the old classics, that he was, in fact, but a very ordinary poet."

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It was, no doubt, under some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, versifying a thought of his own, in a letter to Mr Dallas just given, declares,

Her Helicon is duller than her Cam.

The poet Dryden, too, who, like Milton, had incurred some mark of disgrace at Cambridge, seems to have entertained but little more veneration for his Alma Mater; and the verses in which he has praised Oxford at the expense of his own university † were, it is probable, dictated much less by admiration of the one than by a desire to spite and depreciate the

other.

on record their dislike and disapproval of the English system of education, are to be added, the distinguished names of Cowley, Addison, and Cowper; while, among the cases which, like those of Milton and Dryden, practically demonstrate the sort of inverse ratio that may exist between college honours and genius, must not be forgotten those of Swift, Goldsmith, and Churchill, to every one of whom some mark of incompetency was affixed by the respective universities, whose annals they adorn. When in addition, too, to this rather ample catalogue of poets, whom the universities have sent forth either disloyal or dishonoured, we come to number over such names as those of Shakspeare and of Pope, followed by Gay, Thomson, Burns, Chatterton, &c., all of whom have attained their respective stations of eminence, without instruction or sanction from any college whatever, it forms altogether, it must be owned, a large portion of the poetical world, that must be subducted from the sphere of that nursing influence which the universities are supposed to exercise over the genius of the country.

The following letters, written at this time, contain some particulars which will not be found uninteresting.

LETTER XXII.

TO MR HENRY DRURY.

"Dorant's Hotel, January 13th, 1808.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Though the stupidity of my servants, or the porter of the house, in not showing you up stairs (where I should have joined you directly) prevented me the pleasure of seeing you yesterday, I hoped. to meet you at some public place in the evening. However, my stars decreed otherwise, as they generally do, when I have any favour to request of them. I think you would have been surprised at my figure, for, since our last meeting, I am reduced four stone in weight. I then weighed fourteen stone seven pound, and now only ten stone and a half. I have disposed of my superfluities, by means of hard exer

Nor is it Genius only that thus rebels against the discipline of the schools. Even the tamer quality of Taste, which it is the professed object of classical studies to cultivate, is sometimes found to turn restive under the pedantic manège to which it is sub-cise and abstinence. *** jected. It was not till released from the duty of reading Virgil as a task, that Gray could feel himself capable of enjoying the beauties of that poet; and Lord Byron was, to the last, unable to vanquish a similar prepossession, with which the same sort of school association had inoculated him, against Horace.

Though Time hath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learn'd,
Yet such the fix'd inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse.

Childe Harold, Canto IV.

"Should your Harrow engagements allow you to visit town between this and February, I shall be most happy to see you in Albemarle-street. If I am not so fortunate, I shall endeavour to join you for an afternoon at Harrow, though, I fear, your cellar will by no means contribute to my cure. As for my worthy preceptor,, Dr B., our encounter would by no means prevent the mutual endearments he and I were wont to lavish on each other. We have only spoken once since my departure from Harrow in 1805, and then he politely told Tatersall I was not a proper associate for his pupils. This was long before my strictures in verse: but, in plain prose, had I been some years older, I should have held my tongue on his perfections. But, being laid on my back, when that schoolboy thing was written-or rather dictated-expecting to rise no more, my physician having taken his sixteenth fee, and I his prescrip

To the list of eminent poets, who have thus left tion, I could not quit this earth without leaving a

* Hurd, "Discourses on Poetical Imitation."

+ Prologue to the University of Oxford.

memento of my constant attachment to Butler in gratitude for his manifold good offices.

"I meant to have been down in July; but thinking

my appearance, immediately after the publication, would be construed into an insult, I directed my steps elsewhere. Besides, I heard that some of the boys had got hold of my Libellus, contrary to my wishes certainly, for I never transmitted a single copy till October, when I gave one to a boy, since gone, after repeated importunities. You will, I trust, pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject, I thought some explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi'-and 'so on' (as Lord Baltimore said on his trial for a rape)-I have been so long at Trinity as to forget the conclusion of the line; but, though I cannot finish my quotation, I will my letter, and entreat you to believe me, gratefully and affectionately, &c.

"P. S-I will not lay a tax on your time by requiring an answer, lest you say, as Butler said to Tatersall (when I had written his reverence an impudent epistle on the expression before mentioned), viz.— that I wanted to draw him into a correspondence.""

me,

LETTER XXIII.

TO MR HARNESS.

"Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle-street, Feb. 11th, 1808.

"MY DEAR HARNESS,

"As I had no opportunity of returning my verbal thanks, I trust you will accept my written acknowledgments for the compliment you were pleased to pay some production of my unlucky muse last November-I am induced to do this not less from the pleasure I feel in the praise of an old schoolfellow, than from justice to you, for I had heard the story with some slight variations. Indeed, when we met this morning, Wingfield had not undeceived but he will tell you that I displayed no resentment in mentioning what I had heard, though I was not sorry to discover the truth. Perhaps you hardly recollect some years ago a short, though, for the time, a warm friendship between us? Why it was not of longer duration, I know not. I have still a gift of yours in my possession, that must always prevent me from forgetting it. I also remember being favoured with the perusal of many of your compositions, and several other circumstances very pleasant in their day, which I will not force upon with your memory, but entreat you to believe me, much regret at their short continuance, and a hope they are not irrevocable. Yours very sincerely, &c. "BYRON."

I have already mentioned the early friendship that subsisted between this gentleman and Lord Byron, as well as the coolness that succeeded it. The following extract from a letter with which Mr Harness favoured me, in placing at my disposal those of his noble correspondent, will explain the circumstances that led, at this time, to their reconcilement; and the candid tribute, in the concluding sentences, to Lord Byron, will be found not less honourable to the reverend writer himself than to his friend.

"A coolness afterwards arose which Byron alludes to in the first of the accompanying letters, and we never spoke during the last year of his remaining at school, nor till after the publication of his Hours of

Idleness.' Lord Byron was then at Cambridge; I, in one of the upper forms at Harrow. In an English theme I happened to quote from the volume, and mention it with praise. It was reported to Byron that I had, on the contrary, spoken slightingly of his work and of himself, for the purpose of conciliating the favour of Dr Butler, the master, who had been severely satirized in one of the poems. Wingfield, who was afterwards Lord Powerscourt, a mutual friend of Byron and myself, disabused him of the error into which he had been led, and this was the occasion of the first letter of the collection. Our conversation was renewed and continued from that time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron might have had towards others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate. I have many slights and neglects towards him to reproach myself with; but I cannot call to mind a single instance of caprice or unkindness, in the whole course of our intimacy, to allege against him.”

In the spring of this year (1808) appeared the memorable critique upon the "Hours of Idleness" in the Edinburgh Review. That he had some notice of what was to be expected from that quarter appears by the following letter to his friend, Mr Becher.

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MY DEAR BECHER,

66* * * * * * Now for Apollo. I am happy that you still retain your predilection, and that the public allow me some share of praise. I am of so much importance, that a most violent attack is preparing for me in the next number of the Edinburgh Review. This I had from the authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript of the critique. You know the system of the Edinburgh gentlemen is universal attack. They praise none; and neither the public nor the author expects praise from them. It is, however, something to be noticed, as they profess to pass judgment only on works requiring the public attention. You will see this, when it comes out;-it is, I understand, of the most unmerciful description; but I am aware of it, and hope you will not be hurt by its severity.

"Tell Mrs Byron not to be out of humour with them, and to prepare her mind for the greatest hostility on their part. It will do no injury whatever, and I trust her mind will not be ruffled. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never praise except the partisans of Lord Holland and Co. It is nothing to be abused when Southey, Moore, Lauderdale, Strangford, and Payne Knight, share the same fate.

"I am sorry-but 'Childish Recollections' must be suppressed during this edition. I have altered, at your suggestion, the obnoxious allusions in the sixth stanza of my last ode.

you

"And now, my dear Becher, I must return my best acknowledgments for the interest have taken in me and my poetical bantlings, and I shall ever be proud to show how much I esteem the advice and the adviser. Believe me most truly," &c.

Soon after this letter appeared the dreaded article,—an article,—which, if not "witty in itself," deserves eminently the credit of causing "wit in others." Seldom, indeed, has it fallen to the lot of the justest criticism to attain celebrity such as injustice has procured for this; nor as long as the short, but glorious race of Byron's genius is remembered, can the critic, whoever he may be, that so unintentionally ministered to its first start, be forgotten.

It is but justice, however, to remark,-without at the same time intending any excuse for the contemptuous tone of criticism assumed by the reviewer, -that the early verses of Lord Byron, however distinguished by tenderness and grace, give but little promise of those dazzling miracles of poesy, with which he afterwards astonished and enchanted the world; and that, if his youthful verses now have a peculiar charm in our eyes, it is because we read them, as it were, by the light of his subsequent glory.

fastidious blindness of the critic, we should forget that he had not then the aid of this reflected charm, with which the subsequent achievements of the poet now irradiate all that bears his name.

The effect this criticism produced upon him can only be conceived by those, who, besides having an adequate notion of what most poets would feel under such an attack, can understand all that there was in the temper and disposition of Lord Byron to make him feel it with tenfold more acuteness than others.

We have seen with what feverish anxiety he awaited the verdicts of all the minor Reviews, and, from his sensibility to the praise of the meanest of these censors, may guess how painfully he must have writhed under the sneers of the highest. A friend, who found him in the first moments of excitement after reading the article, inquired anxiously, whether he had just received a challenge?—not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of his looks. It would, indeed, be difficult for sculptor or painter to imagine a subject of more fearful beauty, than the fine countenance of the young poet must have exhibited in the collected energy of that crisis. His pride had been wounded to the quick, and his ambi

but for a moment. The very reaction of his spirit against aggression roused him to a full consciousness of his own powers;* and the pain and the shame of the injury were forgotten in the proud certainty of revenge.

There is, indeed, one point of view, in which these productions are deeply and intrinsically interesting. As faithful reflections of his character at that period of life, they enable us to judge of what he was in histion humbled:-but this feeling of humiliation lasted yet unadulterated state,-before disappointment had begun to embitter his ardent spirit, or the stirring up of the energies of his nature had brought into activity also its defects. Tracing him thus through these natural effusions of his young genius, we find him pictured exactly such, in all the features of his character, as every anecdote of his boyish days proves him really to have been,-proud, daring, and passionate, resentful of slight or injustice, but still more so in the cause of others than in his own; and yet, with all this vehemence, docile and placable, at the least touch of a hand authorized by love to guide him. The affectionateness, indeed, of his disposition, traceable as it is through every page of this volume, is yet but faintly done justice to, even by himself;his whole youth being, from earliest childhood, a series of the most passionate attachments,-of those overflowings of the soul, both in friendship and love, which are still more rarely responded to than felt, and which, when checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure to turn into bitterness.

We have seen also, in some of his early unpublished poems, how apparent, even through the doubts that already clouded them, are those feelings of piety which a soul like his could not but possess, and which, when afterwards diverted out of their legitimate channel, found a vent in the poetical worship of nature, and in that shadowy substitute for religion which superstition offers. When, in addition, too, to these traits of early character, we find scattered through his youthful poems such anticipations of the glory that awaited him-such, alternately, proud and saddened glimpses into the future, as if he already felt the elements of something great within him, but doubted whether his destiny would allow him to bring it forth,-it is not wonderful that, with the whole of his career present to our imaginations, we should see a lustre round these first puerile attempts, not really their own, but shed back upon them from the bright eminence which he afterwards attained; and that, in our indignation against the

Among the less sentimental effects of this Review upon his mind, he used to mention that, on the day he read it, he drank three bottles of claret, to his own share, after dinner ;-that nothing, however, relieved him, till he had given vent to his indignation in rhyme, and that "after the first twenty lines, he felt himself considerably better." His chief care, indeed, afterwards, was amiably devoted,—as we have seen it was, in like manner, before the criticism, to allaying, as far as he could, the sensitiveness of his mother; who, not having the same motive or power to summon up a spirit of resistance, was, of course, more helplessly alive to this attack upon his fame, and felt it far more than, after the first burst of indignation, he did himself. But the state of his mind upon the subject will be best understood from the following letter.

LETTER XXV.

TO MR BECHER.

"Dorant's, March 28th, 1808. "I have lately received a copy of the new edition from Ridge, and it is high time for me to return my best thanks to you for the trouble you have taken in the superintendence. This I do most sincerely, and only regret that Ridge has not seconded you as I could wish,—at least, in the bindings, paper, &c., of the copy he sent to me. Perhaps those for the public may be more respectable in such articles.

Tis a quality very observable in human nature, that any opposition which does not entirely discourage and intimidate us has rather a contrary effect, and inspires us with a more than ordinary grandeur and magnanimity. In collecting our force to overcome the opposition, we invigorate the soul, and give it an elevation with which otherwise it would never have been acquainted."—Hume, Treatise of Human Nature.

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