Memoir of John Murray
John Hookham Frere to John Murray, 27 April 1818
Tunbridge Wells, 27th April, 1818.
The stanzas which I now send, you have I believe seen before. There are
in all upwards of a hundred, including a Whistlecraftian view of the æra
of Pericles, Phidias, the
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Elgin Marbles, and the Peloponnesian War, after which a
few stanzas will conclude the siege of the Convent, and bring round the unity
of the story; but there are eighty which may be printed by themselves, though I
should like to divide them differently. What you say of the style, as foreign
to our general taste, is perfectly true. The public have no notion of wit or
humour without malignity, and put themselves at a loss for a meaning which they
conclude must be an ill-natured one; perhaps they will like this better, for it
has seemed good to me to gibbet a couple of names en passant, and to make a political allusion which
is pretty palpable. I was, I confess, mortified at seeing no notice of
‘Whistlecraft’ in the last Quarterly. It
might, I think, have occupied the place of ‘Adams on
Cataract.’ What has the Quarterly to do with cataracts, or catheters, or
cataplasms, or with any subjects which are neither of political, national, or
literary interest?
With respect to advertising. The advertisements that I see are
nothing to the purpose. ‘Whistlecraft, a National Poem,’ is
nothing; but ‘Metrical Prospectus and Specimen’ gives an intimation
of the possibility of good nonsense in the work. If you have a mind to
advertise, I will furnish one—e.g. (after the old collar-making
advertisement): “This article is confidently recommended to the public
from its superior durability, being warranted not to wear out by the most
repeated perusals.
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Peruse and re-peruse again,
A dozen times at least, or ten;
The flights of his Stowmarket pen
Require a keen attentive ken,
Soaring above all other men,
As much as hawks surpass the wren.
Let Envy grumble from her Den,
While Pindus yields from Dupham Fen.
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Confucius, Poet-in-Ordinary
to Her
Majesty’s Lottery Office Keepers,
Warren’s Blacking, &c., &c.”
If you have the spirit to put in a longer, I will send you an
excellent one, containing the testimonies of posterity in the same manner as
they sometimes put in the testimonies of the reviews. “The following
testimonies to the merit ![]()
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of this work may be expected to appear early in the ensuing century.” But
it is too long to write unless you wish to have it, which you may let me know.
Your usual prudery about advertising is quite out of place with such a work as
this. A man comes into a room with a strange, uncouth foreign uniform. If he
looks shy and diffident, he is immediately the last man in the company, and
nobody troubles themselves about him. If he puts himself confidently forward,
he becomes an object of general notice and curiosity. This is precisely the
case with Whistlecraft’s title-page.
What you say of the opinion of the best judges is very satisfactory in one
respect, and might induce me to go on if the work were a serious one; but to
write a burlesque poem for men of good taste to laugh at in private, is not an
object of very exalted ambition. A sober man (Burke says it of himself) may condescend to amuse the populace
with innocent buffoonery, but it would not I apprehend become him to go on with
his grimaces if the mob look grave. If I should be induced to go on with the
work, you will have nothing to apprehend from the shortness of your term in it.
My object was to prevent the possibility (as literary history furnishes some
examples of quarrels between booksellers and authors) of having the first
cantos of a work which I was continuing wholly out of my own hands. I shall
rate my present stanzas at two guineas apiece. If you think this too much, I
will beg you to return them. I will stand my trial with posterity upon the
first cantos, and if you should ultimately be a loser, I will find some way or
other of reimbursing you. But for the future I shall require a higher stimulus
to withdraw me from playing backgammon of an evening, which has been my main
occupation this winter. I was much pleased to find that Lord Byron was pleased with ‘Whistlecraft,’ but you do not mean
to deny that ‘Beppo’
is W. Rose’s. I mean to assert it
positively and distinctly. If I had seen it in his handwriting, I could hardly
be more convinced of it than I am. It is much better than anything that he has
done before, but there are his very phrases, and in some stanzas about the
weather a sort of valetudinary tone, which belongs to him. I shall lose my walk
if I write any more.
Believe me, sincerely yours,
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Irish politician and opposition leader in Parliament, author of
On the
Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and
Reflections on the Revolution
in France (1790).
John Hookham Frere (1769-1846)
English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon
(1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the
The
Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of
Prospectus and Specimen of an
intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 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.
Pericles (495 BC c.-429 BC)
Notable Athenian statesman deposed at the outset of the Peloponnesian war.
Phidias (480 BC c.-430 BC)
Athenian sculptor, architect, and painter during the reign of Pericles.
William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
Second son of George Rose, treasurer of the navy (1744-1818); he introduced Byron to
Frere's
Whistlecraft poems and translated Casti's
Animale parlante (1819).
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.
