Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to William Harness, 8 December 1811
“8, St. James’s-street, Dec. 8th, 1811.
“Behold a most formidable sheet, without gilt or black
edging, and consequently very vulgar and indecorous, particularly to one of your
precision; but this being Sunday, I can procure no better, and will atone for its length
by not filling it. Bland I have not seen since my
last letter; but on Tuesday he dines with me and will meet M * * e, the epitome of all that is exquisite in poetical
or personal accomplishments. How Bland has settled with Miller, I know not. I have very little interest with
either, and they must arrange their concerns according to their own gusto. I have done
my endeavours, at your request, to bring them together, and hope
they may agree to their mutual advantage.
“Coleridge has been
lecturing against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of poesy.—Pole is to marry Miss
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and will be a very miserable dog for
all that. The present ministers are to continue, and his
majesty does continue in the same state. So
there’s folly and madness for you, both in a breath.
“I never heard but of one man truly fortunate, and he was
Beaumarchais, the author of Figaro, who buried two wives and gained three
lawsuits before he was thirty.
“And now, child, what art thou doing? Reading, I trust. I want to see you take a degree. Remember this is the most
important period of your life; and don’t disappoint your papa and your aunt, and
all your kin—besides myself. Don’t you know that all male children are begotten
for the express purpose of being graduates? and that even I am an A.M., though how I
became so, the Public Orator only can resolve. Besides, you are to be a priest; and to
confute Sir William Drummond’s late book
about the Bible (printed, but not published), and all other infidels whatever. Now leave
master H.’s gig, and master S.’s Sapphics, and become
as immortal as Cambridge can make you.
“You see, Mio Carissimo, what a pestilent
correspondent I am likely to become; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead as you
please, and I won’t disturb your studies, as I do now. When do you fix the day,
that I may take you up according to contract? Hodgson talks of making a third in our journey: but we can’t stow
him, inside at least. Positively you shall go with me as was agreed, and don’t let
me have any of your politesse to H. on the occasion. I shall
manage to arrange for both with a little contrivance. I wish H. was not quite so fat,
and we should pack better. Has he left off vinous liquors? He is an excellent soul; but
I don’t think water would improve him, at least internally. You will want to know
what I am doing—chewing tobacco.
“You see nothing of my allies, Scrope Davies and Matthews*—they
don’t suit you; and how does it happen that I—who am a pipkin of the same
pottery—continue in your good graces? Good night,—I will go on in the morning.
“Dec. 9th. In a morning I’m always sullen, and to-day
is as sombre as myself. Rain and mist are worse than a sirocco, particularly in a
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beef-eating and beer-drinking country. My bookseller,
Cawthorne, has just left me, and tells me,
with a most important face, that he is in treaty for a novel of Madame D’Arblay’s, for which 1000
guineas are asked! He wants me to read the MS. (if he obtains it), which I shall do with
pleasure; but I should be very cautious in venturing an opinion on her, whose Cecilia Dr. Johnson superintended. If he lends it to me, I
shall put it into the hands of Rogers and
M * * e, who are truly men of
taste. I have filled the sheet, and beg your pardon; I will not do it again. I shall,
perhaps, write again, but if not, believe, silent or scribbling, that I am, my dearest
William, ever, &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).
Frances D'Arblay [née Burney] (1752-1840)
English novelist, the daughter of the musicologist Dr. Charles Burney; author of
Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
(1778),
Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), and
Camilla (1796).
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)
Scottish poet and man of letters; author of
The Pleasures of Hope
(1799),
Gertrude of Wyoming (1808) and lyric odes. He edited the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30).
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.
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.
Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782-1852)
Byron met his bosom friend while at Cambridge. Davies, a professional gambler, lent Byron
funds to pay for his travels in Greece and Byron acted as second in Davies' duels.
Sir William Drummond (1770 c.-1828)
Scottish classical scholar and Tory MP; succeeded Lord Elgin as ambassador to the Ottoman
Porte (1803); his
Oedipus judaicus, in which he interpreted the Old
Testament as an astrological allegory, was privately printed in 1811.
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.
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
Charles Skinner Matthews (1785-1811)
The libertine friend of Byron and Hobhouse at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was drowned
in the Cam.
Henry Matthews (1789-1828)
Brother of Charles Skinner Matthews; he was Byron's Cambridge friend, member of King's
College, and author of
The Diary of an Invalid (1820), afterwards a
judge in Ceylon.
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.
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.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
William Pole Wellesley, fourth earl of Mornington (1788-1857)
Whig MP and rake, the nephew of the Duke of Wellington; in 1812 he married Catherine
Tylney-Long whose fortune he squandered; in 1823 he eloped with the wife of Captain Thomas
Bligh of the Coldstream Guards.
