Memoir of John Murray
Lord Byron to John Murray, 24 November 1818
Venice, November 24th, 1818.
Mr. Hanson has been here a week, and
went five days ago. He brought nothing but his papers, some corn-
* Byron had
written to Mr. Murray telling
him that he “had several things begun, verse and prose,”
that “the ‘Tales’ also are in an unfinished
state. I can fix no time for their completion: they are not in the
best manner.” |
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† Dr.
Aglietti, who was collecting these letters for
publication. |
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| BYRON’S OPINION OF SOUTHEY. | 399 |
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rubbers, and a
kaleidoscope. “For what we have received the Lord make us
thankful”! for without His aid I shall not be so. He—Hanson—left everything else in Chancery Lane whatever, except your copy-papers for the
last Canto,* &c., which
having a degree of parchment he brought with him. You may imagine his
reception; he swore the books were a “waggon-load”; if they were,
he should have come in a waggon; he would in that case, have come quicker than
he did.
Lord Lauderdale set off from hence twelve
days ago accompanied by a cargo of Poesy directed to Mr. Hobhouse, all spick and span, and in MS.;
you will see what it is like. I have given it to Master Southey, and he shall have more before I have done with
him.
You may make what I say here as public as you please, more
particularly to Southey, whom I look
upon—and will say so publicly—to be a dirty, lying rascal, and will
prove it in ink—or in his blood, if I did not believe him to be too much
of a poet to risk it! If he has forty reviews at his back, as he has the Quarterly, I
would have at him in his scribbling capacity now that he has begun with me; but
I will do nothing underhand; tell him what I say from me and every one else you
please.
You will see what I have said, if the parcel arrives safe. I
understand Coleridge went about
repeating Southey’s lie with
pleasure. I can believe it, for I had done him what is called a favour. . . . I
can understand Coleridge’s abusing me—but how
or why Southey, whom I had never
obliged in any sort of way, or done him the remotest service, should go about
fibbing and calumniating is more than I readily comprehend. Does he think to
put me down with his Canting, not being able to do it
with his poetry? We will try the question. I have read his review of Hunt, where he has attacked Shelley in an oblique and shabby manner. Does he know what that
review has done? I will tell you; it has sold an edition
of the ‘Revolt of
Islam’ which otherwise nobody would have thought of reading,
and few who read can understand, I for one.
Southey would have attacked me too
there, if he durst, further than by hints about Hunt’s friends in general, and some outcry about an
“Epicurean System” carried on by
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| 400 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY | |
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men of the most opposite habits and tastes and opinions in
life and poetry (I believe) that ever had their names in the same
volume—Moore, Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt,
Haydon, Leigh
Hunt, Lamb. What
resemblance do ye find among all or any of these men? And how could any sort of
system or plan be carried on or attempted amongst them? However, let Mr. Southey look to himself; since the wine is
tapped, he shall drink it.
I got some books a few weeks ago—many thanks. Amongst
them is Israeli’s new edition; it was not
fair in you to show him my copy of his former one, with all the marginal notes
and nonsense made in Greece when I was not two-and-twenty, and which certainly
were not meant for his perusal, nor for that of his readers. I have a great
respect for Israeli and his talents, and have read his
works over and over and over repeatedly, and been amused by them greatly, and
instructed often. Besides, I hate giving pain, unless provoked; and he is an
author, and must feel like his brethren; and although his Liberality repaid my
marginal flippancies with a compliment—the highest compliment—that
don’t reconcile me to myself—nor to you. It
was a breach of confidence to do this without my leave; I don’t know a
living man’s book I take up so often or lay down more reluctantly than
Israeli’s, and I never will forgive
you—that is, for many weeks. If he had got out of humour I should have
been less sorry; but even then I should have been sorry; but really he has
heaped his “coals of fire” so handsomely upon my head that they
burn unquenchably.
You ask me of the two reviews*—I will tell you.
Scott’s is the review of one poet on another—his
friend; Wilson’s, the review of a poet too, on
another—his Idol; for he likes me better than he
chooses to avow to the public with all his eulogy. I speak judging only from
the article, for I don’t know him personally.
Here is a long letter—can you read it?
Yours ever,
Francesco Aglietti (1757-1836)
Venetian physician and man of letters; he edited the
Opere of
Algarotti (Venice, 1791-94).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
John Hanson (1755-1841)
Byron's solicitor and business agent.
Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846)
English historical painter and diarist who recorded anecdotes of romantic writers and the
physiognomy of several in his paintings.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
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).
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
James Maitland, eighth earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839)
Scottish peer allied with Charles James Fox; he was author of
An
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and causes of
its Increase (1804) and other works on political economy.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
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).
John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854)
Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in
Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University (1820).
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.
