Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to R. C. Dallas, 25 August 1811
“Newstead Abbey, August 25, 1811.
“Being fortunately enabled to frank, I do not spare
scribbling, having sent you packets within the last ten days. I am passing solitary, and
do not expect my agent to accompany me to Rochdale before the second week in September,
a delay which perplexes me, as I wish the business over, and should at present welcome
employment. I sent you exordiums, annotations, &c. for the forthcoming quarto, if
quarto it is to be; and I also have written to Mr.
Murray my objection to sending the MS. to Juvenal, but allowing him to show it to any others of the calling.
Hobhouse is amongst the types already; so,
between his prose and my verse, the world will be decently drawn upon for its
paper-money and patience. Besides all this, my ‘Imitation of Horace’ is gasping for the press at
Cawthorn’s, but I am hesitating as to
the how and the when, the single or the
double, the present or the future. You must excuse all this, for I have nothing to say
in this lone mansion but of myself, and yet I would willingly talk or think of aught
else.
“What are you about to do? Do you think of perching in
Cumberland, as you opined when I was in the metropolis? If you mean to retire, why not
occupy Miss * *’s ‘cottage of
Friendship,’ late the seat of Cobbler Joe,
for whose death you and others are answerable? His ‘Orphan Daughter’
(pathetic Pratt!) will, certes, turn out a
shoemaking Sappho. Have you no remorse? I think that
elegant address to Miss Dallas should be inscribed on the cenotaph
which Miss * * * means to stitch to his memory.
The newspapers seem much disappointed at his majesty’s not dying, or doing something better. I presume it is
almost over. If parliament meets in October, I shall be in town to attend. I am also
invited to Cambridge for the beginning of that month, but am first to jaunt to Rochdale.
Now Matthews is gone, and Hobhouse in Ireland, I have hardly one left thereto bid
me welcome, except my inviter. At ![]()
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three-and-twenty I am
left alone, and what more can we be at seventy? It is true, I am young enough to begin
again, but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of life? It is odd how few of my
friends have died a quiet death,—I mean, in their beds. But a quiet life is of more
consequence. Yet one loves squabbling and jostling better than yawning. This last word admonishes me to relieve you from yours very truly,
&c
Joseph Blacket (1786-1810)
English shoemaker-poet;
Specimens of the Poetry of Joseph Blacket
(1809) was published under the patronage of Samuel Jackson Pratt; in failing health he was
later supported by Sir Ralph Milbanke, whose gamekeeper was a relation.
James Cawthorne (1832 fl.)
London bookseller who published Byron's
English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers (1809); he had a shop at 132 Strand from 1810-32.
Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824)
English poet, novelist, and translator who corresponded with Byron. His sister Charlotte
Henrietta Dallas (d. 1793) married Captain George Anson Byron (1758-1793); their son George
Anson Byron (1789-1868) inherited Byron's title in 1824.
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).
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).
Charles Skinner Matthews (1785-1811)
The libertine friend of Byron and Hobhouse at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was drowned
in the Cam.
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.
Samuel Jackson Pratt [Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
English miscellaneous writer who abandoned a clerical career to become an actor and
voluminous writer of sentimental literature; regarded as a charlatan by many who knew him,
Pratt acquired a degree of respectability in his latter years. He patronized the poetical
shoemaker-poet Joseph Blacket.
Sappho (612 BC c.-570 BC c.)
Greek lyric poet, born on the Isle of Lesbos.
