Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 8 December 1811
“I sent you a sad Tale
of Three Friars the other day, and now take a dose in another style. I wrote
it a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days.
“Away, away, ye notes of woe*, &c. &c. |
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“I have gotten a book by Sir W.
Drummond (printed, but not published), entitled Œdipus Judaicus, in which he attempts to prove
the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He
professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretation very
roughly. I wish you could see it. Mr. W * *
has lent it me, and I confess, to me, it is worth fifty Watsons.
“You and Harness must
fix on the time for your visit to Newstead; I can command mine at your wish, unless any
thing particular occurs in the interim. * * * Bland dines with me on
Tuesday to meet Moore. Coleridge has attacked the ‘Pleasures of Hope,’ and all other pleasures
whatsoever. SaRoger1855 was present, and heard himself indirectly
rowed by the lecturer. We are going in a party to hear the new
Art of Poetry by this reformed schismatic; and were I one of these
* This poem is now printed in Lord
Byron’s Works. |
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| A. D. 1811. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 319 |
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poetical luminaries, or of sufficient consequence to be
noticed by the man of lectures, I should not hear him without an answer. For, you know,
‘an’ a man will be beaten with brains, he shall never keep a clean
doublet.’ C * * will be
desperately annoyed. I never saw a man (and of him I have seen very little) so
sensitive;—what a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what can he fear from criticism? I don’t know if Bland has
seen Miller, who was to call on him yesterday.
“To-day is the Sabbath,—a day I never pass pleasantly, but
at Cambridge; and, even there, the organ is a sad remembrancer. Things are stagnant
enough in town,—as long as they don’t retrograde, ’tis all very well.
H * * writes and writes and writes,
and is an author. I do nothing but eschew tobacco. I wish parliament were assembled,
that I may hear, and perhaps some day be heard;—but on this point I am not very
sanguine. I have many plans;—sometimes I think of the East again, and dearly beloved
Greece. I am well, but weakly. Yesterday Kinnaird
told me I looked very ill, and sent me home happy.
“You will never give up wine;—see what it is to be thirty;
if you were six years younger, you might leave off any thing. You drink and repent, you
repent and drink. Is Scrope still interesting and
invalid? And how does Hinde with his cursed
chemistry? To Harness I have written, and he has
written, and we have all written, and have nothing now to do but write again, till death
splits up the pen and the scribbler.
“The Alfred has 354 candidates for six vacancies. The cook
has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive.
Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new
cook is none of the best. I speak from report,—for what is cookery to a
leguminous-eating ascetic? So now you know as much of the matter as I do. Books and
quiet are still there, and they may dress their dishes in their own way for me. Let me
know your determination as to Newstead, and believe me,
“Yours ever,
“Νωαιρϖν.”
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).
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).
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.
Hinde (1808 fl.)
An acquaintance of Byron and Hodgson; not identified. A Peter Robert Venables Hinde
(1761-1836) was assistant master at Eton, 1788-1801.
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).
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.
John William Ward, earl of Dudley (1781-1833)
The son of William Ward, third Viscount Dudley (d. 1823); educated at Edinburgh and
Oxford, he was an English MP, sometimes a Foxite Whig and sometimes Canningite Tory, who
suffered from insanity in his latter years.
Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff (1737-1816)
Regius Professor of Divinity, Trinity College, Cambridge and bishop of Llandaff (1782);
he published
Apology for Christianity (1776) in response to Gibbon,
and
Apology for the Bible (1796) in response to Paine.
