Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 22 December 1820
My dear Hodgson,—My sister
tells me that you desire to hear from me. I have not written to you since I
left England, nearly five years ago. I have no excuse for this silence except
laziness, which is none. Where I am my date will tell you; what I have been
doing would but little interest you, as it regards another country and another
people, and would be almost speaking another language, for my own is not quite
so familiar to me as it used to be.
We have here the sepulchre of Dante and the forest of Dryden and Boccaccio,
all in very poetical ![]()
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preservation. I ride and write, and
have here some Italian friends and connections of both sexes, horses and dogs,
and the usual means and appliances of life, which passes chequered as usual
(and with all) with good and evil. Few English pass by this place, and none
remain, which renders it a much more eligible residence for a man who would
rather see them in England than out of it; they are best at home; for out of it
they but raise the prices of the necessaries and vices of other countries, and
carry little back to their own, except such things as you have lately seen and
heard of in the Queen’s trial.
Your friend Denman is
making a figure. I am glad of it; he had all the auguries of a superior man
about him before I left the country. Hobhouse is a Radical, and is doing great things in that
somewhat violent line of politics. His intellect will bear him out; but, though
I do not disapprove of his cause, I by no means envy him his company. Our
friend Scrope is dished, diddled, and
done up; what he is our mutual friends have written to
me somewhat more coldly than I think our former connections with him warrant:
but where he is I know not, for neither they nor he have informed me. Remember
me to Harry ![]()
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Drury. He wrote to me a year ago to
subscribe to the Harrow New School erection; but my name has not now value
enough to be placed among my old schoolfellows, and as to the trifle which can
come from a solitary subscriber, that is not worth mentioning. Some zealous
politicians wrote to me to come over to the Queen’s trial; it was a business with which I should have
been sorry to have had anything to do; in which they who voted her guilty cut
but a dirty figure. . . . Such a coroner’s inquest upon criminal
conversation has nothing very alluring in it, and I was obliged to her for
personal civilities (when in England), and would therefore rather avoid sitting
in judgment upon her, either for guilt or innocence, as it is an ungracious
office.
Murray sent me your ‘Friends,’ which I
thought very good and classical. The scoundrels of scribblers are trying to run
down Pope, but I hope in vain. It is
my intention to take up the cudgels in that controversy, and to do my best to
keep the Swan of Thames in his true place. This comes of Southey and Wordsworth and such renegado rascals with their systems. I hope
you will not be silent; it is the common concern of all men of common sense,
imagination, and a musical ear. ![]()
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I have already written
somewhat thereto and shall do more, and will not strike soft blows in a battle.
You will have seen that the ‘Quarterly’ has had the sense and spirit to support Pope in an
article upon Bowles; it is a good beginning. I do not know
the author of that article, but I suspect Israeli, 1 an
indefatigable and an able writer. What are you about—poetry? I direct to
Bakewell, but I do not know for certain. To save you a double letter, I close
this with the present sheet.
Yours ever,
B.
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)
English poet and critic; author of
Fourteen Sonnets, elegiac and
descriptive, written during a Tour (1789), editor of the
Works
of Alexander Pope, 10 vols (1806), and writer of pamphlets contributing to the
subsequent Pope controversy.
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Florentine poet, the author of the
Divine Comedy and other
works.
Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782-1852)
Byron met his bosom friend while at Cambridge. Davies, a professional gambler, lent Byron
funds to pay for his travels in Greece and Byron acted as second in Davies' duels.
Thomas Denman, first baron Denman (1779-1854)
English barrister and writer for the
Monthly Review; he was MP,
solicitor-general to Queen Caroline (1820), attorney-general (1820), lord chief justice
(1832-1850). Sydney Smith commented, “Denman everybody likes.”
Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778-1841)
The eldest son of Joseph Drury, Byron's headmaster; he was fellow of King's College,
Cambridge and assistant-master at Harrow from 1801. In 1808 he married Ann Caroline Tayler,
whose sisters married Drury's friends Robert Bland and Francis Hodgson.
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
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).
Hon. Augusta Mary Leigh [née Byron] (1783-1851)
Byron's half-sister; the daughter of Amelia Darcy, Baroness Conyers, she married
Lieutenant-Colonel George Leigh on 17 August 1807.
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.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
