Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to William Harness, 6 December 1811
“8, St. James’s-street, December 6th, 1811.
“I write again, but don’t suppose I mean to lay such a
tax on your pen and patience as to expect regular replies. When you are inclined, write;
when silent, I shall have the consolation of knowing that you are much better employed.
Yesterday, Bland and I called on Mr. Miller, who, being then out, will call on
Bland* to-day or to-morrow. I shall certainly endeavour to bring
them together.—You are censorious, child; when you are a little older, you will learn to
dislike every body, but abuse nobody.
“With regard to the person of whom you speak, your own good
sense must direct you. I never pretend to advise, being an implicit believer in the old
proverb. This present frost is detestable. It is the first I have felt these three
years, though I longed for one in the oriental summer, when no such thing is to be had,
unless I had gone to the top of Hymettus for it.
“I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your
letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and I am
not the less pleased to meet with it again from one, where I had known it earliest. I
have not changed in all my ramblings,—Harrow and, of course, yourself never left me, and
the
‘Dulcea reminiscitur
Argos’ |
![]()
![]()
![]()
| 316 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1811. |
![]()
attended me to the very spot to which that sentence
alludes in the mind of the fallen Argive.—Our intimacy began before we began to date at
all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it and me with
the things that were.
“Do read mathematics.—I should think X
plus Y at least as amusing as the Curse of Kehama, and much more intelligible. Master S.’s poems are, in fact, what
parallel lines might be—viz., prolonged ad infinitum without
meeting any thing half so absurd as themselves.
|
“What news, what news? Queen Orraca,
What news of scribblers five?
All damn’d, though yet alive.
|
![]()
C——e is lecturing. ‘Many an old
fool,’ said Hannibal to some such
lecturer, ‘but such as this, never.’
“Ever yours, &c.”
Robert Bland (1779 c.-1825)
Under-master at Harrow 1796-1805, where he taught Byron; he was a friend of Byron and of
Francis Hodgson. With John Herman Merivale he published
Translations,
chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1806).
Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840)
Brother of Napoleon; he was captured by the British while attempting to flee to the
United States. He lived under house arrest in England (1810-14) while working on his epic
poem on Napoleon.
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.
Hannibal (247 BC-182 BC)
Leader of the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War with Rome.
William Harness (1790-1869)
A Harrow friend and early correspondent of Byron. He later answered the poet in
The Wrath of Cain (1822) and published an edition of Shakespeare
(1825) and other literary projects. Harness was a longtime friend of Mary Russell
Mitford.
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.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839)
Quaker poet; a disciple of Coleridge and friend of Charles Lamb, he published
Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821) and other
volumes.
William Richard Beckford Miller (1769-1844)
Albemarle-Street bookseller; he began publishing in 1790; shortly after he rejected
Byron's
Childe Harold in 1811 his stock and premises were purchased
by John Murray.
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).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
