Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 25 September 1811
Newstead Abbey: September 25, 1811.
My dear Hodgson,—I fear that before the latest of October or the
first of November, I shall hardly be able to make Cambridge. My everlasting
agent puts off his coming like the
accomplishment of a prophecy. However, finding me growing serious he hath
promised to be here on Thursday, and ![]()
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about Monday we shall
remove to Rochdale. I have only to give discharges to the tenantry here (it
seems the poor creatures must be raised, though I wish it was not necessary)
and arrange the receipt of sums, and the liquidation of some debts, and I shall
be ready to enter upon new subjects of vexation. I intend to visit you in
Granta, and hope to prevail on you to accompany me here or there or anywhere.
My tortoises (all Athenians), my hedgehog, my mastiff, are all
purely. The tortoises lay eggs, and I have hired a hen to hatch them. I am
writing notes for my quarto1
(Murray would have it a quarto), and
Hobhouse is writing text for his quarto; if you call on Murray
or Cawthorn you will hear news of
either. I have attacked De Pauw,
Thornton, Lord Elgin, Spain, Portugal, the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ travellers, painters,
antiquarians and others, so you see what a dish of sour crout controversy I
shall prepare for myself. It would not answer for me to give way, now; as I was
forced into bitterness at the beginning, I will go through to the last.
‘Væ Victis.’ If I fall, I shall fall
gloriously, fighting against a host.
Felicissima Notte a Voss. Signoria.
B.
Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin (1766-1841)
British ambassador to Constantinople (1799); with the permission of the Turks he removed
the Parthenon marbles which were purchased for the British Museum in 1816.
James Cawthorne (1832 fl.)
London bookseller who published Byron's
English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers (1809); he had a shop at 132 Strand from 1810-32.
Cornelius De Pauw (1739-1799)
Dutch geographer employed at the court of Frederick the Great; he published
Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs (1788).
John Hanson (1755-1841)
Byron's solicitor and business agent.
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Thomas Thornton (1767 c.-1814)
An employee of the British factory at Constantinople from about 1793; he published
The Present State of Turkey (1807) which gives a favorable opinion
of the Turks.
