“Having seen in the newspapers a note relating to myself, extracted from a recent publication of Lord Byron’s, I request permission to reply through the medium of your journal.
“I come at once to his lordship’s
charge against me,
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“If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or monk of La Trappe,—that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the report, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly, passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him as of Baron Gerambe, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of his lordship; and, indeed, I should have thought anything which might be reported of him would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guilford,—that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every one would stare, no one would wonder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintances on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alpnach, and the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne,—not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula.
“Once, and only once, in connection with
Switzerland, I have alluded to his lordship; and as the passage was curtailed
in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking
incidentally of the ‘Jungfrau,’ I said ‘it was the scene
where Lord Byron’s Manfred met the Devil
and bullied him, though the Devil
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 351 |
“With regard to the others, whom his lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names I found written in the album at Mont Anvert, with an avowal of atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment, in the same language, underneath it. Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not have thought himself slandered by having that recorded of him which he has so often recorded of himself.
“The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself.
“‘How easily is a noble spirit discern’d From harsh and sulphurous matter that flies out In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks.’ |
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“Lord Byron’s present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind, not by hearsay reports of my conversation four years ago, transmitted him from England.
“The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic School of Poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or inventing a worse; and, as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having in this stript it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity.
“Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact that they are directed against authors of blasphemous and lascivious books; against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality like themselves; against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals.
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 353 |
“His lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is an appellation which will not stick like that of the Satanic School. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled, what kind of work I have not done:—
“I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintances, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind, and then reissued them when the evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned and taken possession, with seven others more wicked than himself. I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name, or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean! There is no damned spot upon them!—no taint, which all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten!
“Of the work which I have done it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, and its Coryphæus, the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of the country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can!
“One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude.
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“And while he may still indulge in the same rankness and violence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity.
