The “Pope” of Holland House
John Whishaw to Thomas Smith, March 1818
March, 1818.
I ought to have mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hobhouse
as having been of the party at Ricardo’s. You have perhaps heard that J. Hobhouse is about to publish separate remarks on Italy (besides
the notes on Lord Byron), which are to appear on
the same day with the fourth canto of “Childe Harold.” I am afraid he will damage
his cause by violence and exaggeration.
Gifford, the Quarterly reviewer, who has
seen the MSS. of the fourth canto,
says that it is decidedly the best of Lord
Byron’s works.
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
Harriett Hobhouse [née Turton] (1785 c.-1858)
The daughter of John Turton of Sugnall Hall, Staffordshire; in 1806 she married Henry
Hobhouse and was the mother of Bishop Edmund Hobhouse.
Henry Hobhouse (1776-1854)
The son of Henry Hobhouse (1742-1792), he was educated at Eton and Brasenose College,
Oxford, and after working as a solicitor in Customs was permanent under-secretary of state
for the Home department (1817-27).
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).
David Ricardo (1772-1823)
English political economist, the author of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
(1817); he was a Whig MP for Portarlington (1819-23).
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.
