The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. PoetryByron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. Poetry
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
Poetry
[Sub-Footnote A: "The Devil and Jeffrey are here placed antithetically
to gods and men, such being their usual position, and their due
one--according to the facetious saying, 'If God won't take you, the
Devil must;' and I am sure no one durst object to his taking the
poetry, which, rejected by Horace, is accepted by Jeffrey. That these
gentlemen are in some cases kinder,--the one to countrymen, and the
other from his odd propensity to prefer evil to good,--than the 'gods,
men, and columns' of Horace, may be seen by a reference to the review
of Campbell's 'Gertrude of Wyoming'; and in No. 31 of the 'Edinburgh
Review' (given to me the other day by the captain of an English
frigate off Salamis), there is a similar concession to the mediocrity
of Jamie Graham's 'British Georgics'. It is fortunate for Campbell,
that his fame neither depends on his last poem, nor the puff of the
'Edinburgh Review'. The catalogues of our English are also less
fastidious than the pillars of the Roman librarians. A word more with
the author of 'Gertrude of Wyoming'. At the end of a poem, and even of
a couplet, we have generally 'that unmeaning thing we call a thought;'
so Mr. Campbell concludes with a thought in such a manner as to fulfil
the whole of Pope's prescription, and be as 'unmeaning' as the best of
his brethren:--
'Because I may not 'stain' with grief
The death-song of an Indian chief.'
"When I was in the fifth form, I carried to my master the translation
of a chorus in Prometheus, wherein was a pestilent expression about
'staining a voice,' which met with no quarter. Little did I think that
Mr. Campbell would have adopted my fifth form 'sublime'--at least in
so conspicuous a situation. 'Sorrow' has been 'dry' (in proverbs), and
'wet' (in sonnets), this many a day; and now it ''stains',' and stains
a sound, of all feasible things! To be sure, death-songs might have
been stained with that same grief to very good purpose, if Outalissi
had clapped down his stanzas on wholesome paper for the 'Edinburgh
Evening Post', or any other given hyperborean gazette; or if the said
Outalissi had been troubled with the slightest second sight of his own
notes embodied on the last proof of an overcharged quarto; but as he
is supposed to have been an improvisatore on this occasion, and
probably to the last tune he ever chanted in this world, it would have
done him no discredit to have made his exit with a mouthful of common
sense. Talking of ''staining'' (as Caleb Quotem says) 'puts me in
mind' of a certain couplet, which Mr. Campbell will find in a writer
for whom he, and his school, have no small contempt:--
'E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art--the art to 'blot'!'"
['MS. M'.]]
[Footnote lxxxiii:
'And mustard rarely pleases in a pie.'
['MS. L. '(a).]]
[Footnote lxxxiv:
'At the Sessions'.
['MS. L.' (b), 'in pencil'.] ]
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