[Byron and his Admirers]The CourierEditor of the Courier Markup and editing by David Hill Radcliffe Completed April 2009 Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities Virginia Tech Courier.1824.Southey2
Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org
[Byron and his Admirers]The CourierLondon17 December 182410,326
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THE COURIER.
No. 10,326.FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 17, 1824. Price 7D.
Southey’s letter, which we
published on Monday, has provoked, as it was well calculated to do, the liberal admirers of
Lord Byron. They cannot
refute its arguments; and even they have not the impudence to say a word in defence of the
virtues or the morality of the departed poet. But they turn sentimental, and give us cant, or
sophistry, instead of reasons. Byron is in his
grave, we are told; and it is unmanly, it is cruel, it is malignant, to assail his memory.
There might be something plausible in this, if, with Byron’s death, his power to do mischief had died also. A generous
compassion, in such a case, might be permitted to leave his transgressions undisturbed, and not
to arraign one who could no longer offend. But an author has a double existence. His person
moulders into dust, while the writings he leaves behind him flourish in full vigour, and are
perpetuated, a blessing or a curse, according to their tendency. Why do we still speak with
abhorrence of the blasphemies of Paine and Voltaire—of the gross obscenities of the latter—of the
vicious eloquence of Rousseau?
They, too, are dead, as are many other Atheistical and licentious writers, whose polluted
legacies to posterity every man feels it a moral duty to withhold from his children. But who
hesitates to brand their memory with infamy? What, then, is the exemption in favor of
Lord Byron, which his foolish admirers
would plead? His works are recorded against him. There they are, the free subject of public or
private opinion: and we are yet to learn, that a morbid feeling of tenderness for the dead is
to extinguish our duty to the living.