Baron George Gordon Byron Byron

“ Lines 965, 966.
So sunk in dullness and so lost in shame
That Smythe and Hodgson scarce redeem thy fame.
So sunk in dullness that nor Hodgson's verse
Can make thee better—nor poor Hewson's worse.
[This emendation is not in the Murray copy. The Fifth Edition adopts the further correction, "So lost to Phoebus" for "So sunk in dullness."] ”

“ It was not only the questionable belief that he was on the side of the people, or his ethical and theological audacities, or his prolonged Continental exile, which won for Byron a greater name abroad than he has retained at home; but the character of his poetry. "The English may think of Byron as they please" (Conversations of Goethe, 1874, p. 171) , "but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be compared to him. He is different from all the others, and, for the most part, greater." ”

“ Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since Life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on—as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things, [7]
Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we're quaffing,
Let's have laughing—
Who the devil cares for more?—
Some good wine! and who would lack it,
Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet?
Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 230-232.]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] [For Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) , see Letters, 1898, i. 195, note 1.] ”

“ A bibliography is a dull epilogue to a poet's works, but it speaks with authority, and it speaks last. Finis coronat opus!
I must be permitted to renew my thanks to Mr. G. F. Barwick, Superintendent of the Reading Room, Mr. Cyril Davenport, and other officials of the British Museum, of [x] all grades and classes, for their generous and courteous assistance in the preparation and completion of the Bibliography. ”

“ The English may think of him as they please! and for them, or some of them, there is "a better oenomel," a vinum Dæmonum, which Byron has not in his gift. The evidence of a world-wide fame will not endear a poet to a people and a generation who care less for the matter than the manner of verse, or who believe in poetry as the symbol or "credo" of the imagination or the spirit ”

“ Do me the kindness to send by return of post a delicate declension of it, which I engage faithfully to copy."
"I never," said Byron, "was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill-humour, and vanity of this young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment. ”

“ It affords scientific proof of an almost unexampled fame, of a far-reaching and still potent influence. Teuton and Latin and Slav have taken Byron to themselves, and have made him their own. No other English poet except Shakespeare has been so widely read and so frequently translated. Of Manfred I reckon one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, three French, nine German, three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Roumanian, four Russian, and three Spanish translations, and, in all probability, there are others which have escaped my net. ”

“ George Frederick Nott (1767-1841) , critic and divine, was Rector of Harrietsham and Woodchurch, a Prebendary of Winchester and of Salisbury. He was Bampton Lecturer in 1802, and, soon afterwards, was appointed sub-preceptor to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. He was a connoisseur of architecture and painting, and passed much of his time in Italy and at Rome. When he was at Pisa he preached in a private room in the basement story of the house in Pisa where Shelley was living, and fell under Byron's displeasure for attacking the Satanic school, and denouncing Cain as a blasphemous production. ”

“ The consultation of many hundreds of volumes of one author, and the permission to retain a vast number in daily use, have entailed exceptional labour on a section of the staff. I have every reason to be grateful.
I am indebted to Mr. A. W. Pollard, of the British Museum, for advice and direction with regard to bibliographical formulas; to Mr. G. L. Calderon, late of the staff, for the collection and transcription of the title-pages of Polish, Russian, and Servian translations; and to Mr. R. Nisbet Bain for the supervision and correction of the proofs of Slavonic titles. ”

“ Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left (Prophecy of Dante, Canto I.) , iv. 247
One struggle more, and I am free (Poems 1809-1813) , iii. 31, 32, 36
Our life is two fold: Sleep hath its own world (The Dream) , iv. ”

“ But the path of the bibliographer is beset with difficulties. "Al Sirat's arch"—"the bridge of breadth narrower [vii] than the thread of a famished spider, and sharper than the edge of a sword" (see The Giaour, line 483, note 1) — affords an easier and a safer foothold.
To the general reader a bibliography says little or nothing; but, in one respect, a bibliography of Byron is of popular import. ”

“ In 1830, in his Notices of the Life of Lord Byron (vol. i. pp. 263-269) , Moore printed 165 lines of the "Paraphrase;" but his selections are drawn from lines 1-458, and it is evident that he had access to an original MS. (MS. M.) , which is now in Mr. Murray's possession. The full text, which follows the same MS., was first published in vol. v. pp. 273-327 of the six-volume edition of 1831 (vide ante, No. xliii. of "Collected Editions") .
The Irish Avatar
Byron wrote the Irish Avatar at Ravenna, September 16, 1821. ”

“ This essay is evidently the "Appendix to an English Work," to which Byron refers in the letter accompanying the suppressed Dedication to Marino Faliero. "In the Appendix to an English Work, lately translated into German, and published at Leipzig, a judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as follows: 'That in English poetry great genius, universal power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient tenderness and force are to be found, but that altogether these do not constitute poets,'" etc., etc. ”

“ Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt (circ. 1762-1833) was the son of the Rev. Edmund Tyrwhitt, Rector of Wickham Bishops, etc., and nephew of Thomas Tyrwhitt, the editor of the Canterbury Tales. He was Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, auditor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1796) , and Lord Warden of the Stannaries (1805) . He was knighted May 8, 1812. He was sent in the following year in charge of the Garter mission to the Czar, and on that occasion was made a Knight of the Imperial Order of St. Anne, First Class. He held the office of Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, 1812-1832. ”

“ Dedication of Don Juan.
The following note was attached to the "Dedication" which was prefixed to the First Canto in 1833 (Works, 1833, xv. 101) :—
"Note (1) . [This 'Dedication' was suppressed in 1819, with Lord Byron's reluctant consent; but, shortly after his death, its existence became notorious, in consequence of an article in the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John Hobhouse, and for several years the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside. It could therefore serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion.] " See, too, Poetical Works, 1903, vi. 3. ”

“ Hewoman's nor any female or male Tadpole of poet Wordsworth's."—Ibid., v. 64.]
STANZAS. [116]
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours; [71]
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on the head for his labours.
To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for Freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.
November 5, 1820.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 377.] ”

“ Thurlow's poems are by no means contemptible. A sonnet, "To a Bird, that haunted the Water of Lacken, in the Winter," which Charles Lamb transcribed in one of Coleridge's note-books, should be set over against the absurd lines, "On the Poems of Mr. Rogers."
"O melancholy bird, a winter's day
Thou standest by the margin of the pool;
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To Patience, which all evil can allay:
God has appointed thee the fish thy prey ”

“ Note (1) .—A facsimile of the Title-page (2) faces p. xii. of vol. i. of the Poetical Works, 1898. It has been alleged that large-paper copies of this edition were issued from the Newark press. It is certain that large copies (a copy in the British Museum, cut for binding, measures 220 X 122) , printed on paper bearing a water-mark dated 1806, were thrown upon the market at an early period, but it has not been ascertained at what date or in what place they were printed. They are undoubtedly deliberate forgeries. ”

“ Bob Southey! You're a poet—Poet-Laureate (Don Juan, Dedication) , vi. 3
[450] Born in a garret, in the kitchen bred (Poems of the Separation) , iii. 540
Breeze of the night in gentler sighs (Hours of Idleness) , i. 262
Bright be the place of thy soul! (Poems 1814-1816) , iii. 426
But once I dared to lift my eyes (Poems 1816-1823) , iv. 564
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept (Hebrew Melodies) , iii. 402
Candour compels me, Becher! to commend (Hours of Idleness) , i. 114
Chill and mirk is the nightly blast (Poems 1809-1813) , iii. ”

“ Childe Harold's Pilgrimage./ A Romaunt./ By/ Lord Byron./ L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays./ J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point/ été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu,/ m'ont réconcilié avec elle. ”

“ Cobbett, by way of atonement for youthful vituperation (he called him "a ragamuffin deist") of Tom Paine, exhumed his bones from their first resting-place at New Rochelle, and brought them to Liverpool on his return to England in 1819. They were preserved by Cobbett at Normanby, Farnham, till his death in 1835, but were sold in consequence of his son's bankruptcy in 1836, and passed into the keeping of a Mr. Tilly, who was known to be their fortunate possessor as late as 1844. (See Notes and Queries, 1868, Series IV. vol. i. pp. 201-203.) ”

“ Illusion, or the Trances of Nourjahad, a melodrama founded on The History of Nourjahad, By the Editor of Sidney Bidulph (Mrs. Frances Sheridan, née Chamberlaine, 1724-1766) , was played for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre, November 25, 1813. Byron was exceedingly indignant at being credited with the authorship or adaptation. (See Letter to Murray, November 27, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 288, note 1.) Miss Sophia Lee, who wrote some of the Canterbury Tales, "made a very elegant musical drama of it" (Memoirs of Mrs. F. Sheridan, by Alicia Lefanu, 1824, p. 296) ”

“ Vol. II.: pp. 1-465—Title (R. Imprint as above) ; Cont. of Vol. II.; Text, pp. 1-465. The Imprint, as above, is at the foot of p. 465.
The Front., "Newstead Abbey," is engr. by E. Finden from a drawing by W. Westall, A.R.A. The illustrated Title-page is embellished with a vignette, "Villeneuve," engr. by E. Finden from a drawing by C. Stansfield, A.R.A.
Note.—These volumes contain all that "the existing laws of copyright [1850] allows to be free;" e.g. all the dramas except Manfred and Cain, The Island, The Age of Bronze, etc., are omitted. In Vol. i. the Life and Text are illust. ”