The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. PoetryByron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
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The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. Poetry
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
Poetry
[Footnote 24: In his strictures on Scott and Southey, Byron takes his
lead from Lady Anne Hamilton's (1766-1846, daughter of Archibald, ninth
Duke of Hamilton, and Lady-in-waiting to Caroline of Brunswick) 'Epics
of the Ton' (1807), a work which has not shared the dubious celebrity of
her 'Secret Memories of the Court', etc. (1832). Compare the following
lines (p. 9):--
"Then still might Southey sing his crazy Joan,
Or feign a Welshman o'er the Atlantic flown,
Or tell of Thalaba the wondrous matter,
Or with clown Wordsworth, chatter, chatter, chatter.
* * * * *
Good-natured Scott rehearse, in well-paid lays,
The marv'lous chiefs and elves of other days."
(For Scott's reference to "my share of flagellation among my betters,"
and an explicit statement that he had remonstrated with Jeffrey against
the "offensive criticism" of 'Hours of Idleness', because he thought it
treated with undue severity, see Introduction to 'Marmion', 1830.)]]
[Footnote 25: Lines 179, 180, in the Fifth Edition, were substituted for
variant i. p. 312.--'Leigh Hunt's annotated Copy of the Fourth Edition'.]
[Footnote 26: "Good night to Marmion"--the pathetic and also prophetic
exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.]
[Footnote 27: As the 'Odyssey' is so closely connected with the story of
the 'Iliad', they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In
alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the 'Paradise Lost' and
'Gerusalemme Liberata' as their standard efforts; since neither the
'Jerusalem Conquered' of the Italian, nor the 'Paradise Regained' of the
English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems.
Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?]
[Footnote 28: 'Thalaba', Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in
defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something
novel, and succeeded to a miracle. 'Joan of Arc' was marvellous enough,
but 'Thalaba' was one of those poems "which," in the word of PORSON,
"will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but--<i<not till
then'." ["Of 'Thalaba" the wild and wondrous song"--Proem to 'Madoc',
Southey's 'Poetical Works' (1838), vol. v. 'Joan of Arc' was published
in 1796, 'Thalaba the Destroyer' in 1801, and 'Madoc' in 1805.]
[Footnote 29: The hero of Fielding's farce, 'The Tragedy of Tragedies',
'or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great', first played in 1730 at
the Haymarket.]
[Footnote 30: Southey's 'Madoc' is divided into two parts--Part I.,
"Madoc in Wales;" Part II., "Madoc in Aztlan." The word "cacique"
("Cacique or cazique... a native chief or 'prince' of the aborigines in
the West Indies:" 'New Engl. Dict'., Art. "Cacique") occurs in the
translations of Spanish writers quoted by Southey in his notes, but not
in the text of the poem.]
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