Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 7 June 1820
“Ravenna, June 7th, 1820.
“Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the
opinion of the greatest man of Germany—perhaps of Europe—upon one of the great men of
your advertisements (all ‘famous hands,’ as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins)—in short, a critique of
Goëthe’s upon
Manfred. There
is the original, an English translation, and an Italian ![]()
| 330 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1820. |
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one; keep them all in your archives, for the opinions of such a man as
Goëthe, whether favourable or not, are always interesting—and
this is more so, as favourable. His Faust I never read, for I don’t know German; but
Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny,
translated most of it to me vivâ voce,
and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach
and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred.
The first scene, however, and that of Faustus, are very
similar. Acknowledge this letter.
“Yours ever.
“P.S. I have received Ivanhoe;—good. Pray send me some tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by Waite, &c. Ricciardetto should have been
translated literally, or not at all. As to puffing Whistlecraft, it
won’t do. I’ll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall’s a poet, but spoilt by the detestable
schools of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet
also, but too stiltified and apostrophic,—and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the
Christian era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and, lately,
Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel—men who ought to have been weighed down with their crimes, even had
they believed. A deathbed is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of
religion. Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the same,
according to their strength rather than their creed. What does H * * H * * mean by his stanza?
which is octave got drunk or gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with
Thor’s hammer for rhyming so fantastically.”
Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786)
King of Prussia (1740-86) and military commander in the War of the Austrian Succession
and Seven Years War.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of
The Sorrows of Young
Werther (1774) and
Faust (1808, 1832).
Felicia Dorothea Hemans [née Browne] (1793-1835)
English poet; author of
Tales, and Historic Scenes (1819),
Records of Woman (1828), and other volumes. She was much in demand
as a contributor to the literary annuals.
Hon. William Herbert (1778-1847)
English poet, naturalist, MP, and clergyman; he was the son of Henry Herbert, first earl
of Carnarvon and the author of
Select Icelandic Poetry, translated from
the Originals (1804, 1806).
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.
Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874)
English poet; a contemporary of Byron at Harrow, and friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles
Lamb. He was the author of several volumes of poem and
Mirandola, a
tragedy (1821).
George Sanders (1774-1846)
Scottish portrait painter, educated in Edinburgh; he made several portraits of Lord
Byron.
Arthur Thistlewood (1774-1820)
English radical and disciple of Thomas Spence; he was hanged after the exposure of an
assassination plot against the British cabinet.
Jacob Tonson (1655-1736)
London bookseller and member of the Kit-Kat Club; the elder Tonson published Dryden; his
son, also Jacob Tonson (1682-1735), published Pope.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
French historian and man of letters; author of, among many other works,
The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and
Candide (1759).
John Waite (d. 1820)
Byron's dentist, who supplied him with the tooth-powders he so often requested from
Murray.
