_"Volage Frigate, at sea, June 28. 1811_.
"After two years' absence, (to a day, on the 2d of July, before
which we shall not arrive at Portsmouth,) I am retracing my way to
England.
"I am coming back with little prospect of pleasure at home, and
with a body a little shaken by one or two smart fevers, but a
spirit I hope yet unbroken. My affairs, it seems, are considerably
involved, and much business must be done with lawyers, colliers,
farmers, and creditors. Now this, to a man who hates bustle as he
hates a bishop, is a serious concern. But enough of my home
department.
"My Satire, it seems, is in a fourth edition, a success rather
above the middling run, but not much for a production which, from
its topics, must be temporary, and of course be successful at
first, or not at all. At this period, when I can think and act more
coolly, I regret that I have written it, though I shall probably
find it forgotten by all except those whom it has offended.
"Yours and Pratt's _protégé_, Blackett, the cobbler, is dead, in
spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where
death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that
poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons, he might
now have been in very good plight, shoe-(not verse-) making: but
you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this,
supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters, to have been the
death of him. If you are in town in or about the beginning of July,
you will find me at Dorant's, in Albemarle Street, glad to see you.
I have an imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry ready for Cawthorn,
but don't let that deter you, for I sha'n't inflict it upon you.
You know I never read my rhymes to visitors. I shall quit town in a
few days for Notts., and thence to Rochdale.
"Yours, &c."
* * * * *
Immediately, on Lord Byron's arrival in London, Mr. Dallas called upon
him. "On the 15th of July," says this gentleman, "I had the pleasure of
shaking hands with him at Reddish's Hotel in St. James's Street. I
thought his looks belied the report he had given me of his bodily
health, and his countenance did not betoken melancholy, or displeasure
at his return. He was very animated in the account of his travels, but
assured me he had never had the least idea of writing them. He said he
believed satire to be his _forte_, and to that he had adhered, having
written, during his stay at different places abroad, a Paraphrase of
Horace's Art of Poetry, which would be a good finish to English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers. He seemed to promise himself additional fame from
it, and I undertook to superintend its publication, as I had done that
of the Satire. I had chosen the time ill for my visit, and we had hardly
any time to converse uninterruptedly, he therefore engaged me to
breakfast with him next morning."
In the interval Mr. Dallas looked over this Paraphrase, which he had
been permitted by Lord Byron to take home with him for the purpose, and
his disappointment was, as he himself describes it, "grievous," on
finding, that a pilgrimage of two years to the inspiring lands of the
East had been attended with no richer poetical result. On their meeting
again next morning, though unwilling to speak disparagingly of the work,
he could not refrain, as he informs us, from expressing some surprise
that his noble friend should have produced nothing else during his
absence.--"Upon this," he continues, "Lord Byron told me that he had
occasionally written short poems, besides a great many stanzas in
Spenser's measure, relative to the countries he had visited. 'They are
not worth troubling you with, but you shall have them all with you if
you like.' So came I by Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He took it from a
small trunk, with a number of verses. He said they had been read but by
one person, who had found very little to commend and much to condemn:
that he himself was of that opinion, and he was sure I should be so too.
Such as it was, however, it was at my service; but he was urgent that
'The Hints from Horace' should be immediately put in train, which I
promised to have done."
The value of the treasure thus presented to him, Mr. Dallas was not slow
in discovering. That very evening he despatched a letter to his noble
friend, saying--"You have written one of the most delightful poems I
ever read. If I wrote this in flattery, I should deserve your contempt
rather than your friendship. I have been so fascinated with Childe
Harold that I have not been able to lay it down. I would almost pledge
my life on its advancing the reputation of your poetical powers, and on
its gaining you great honour and regard, if you will do me the credit
and favour of attending to my suggestions respecting," &c.&c.&c.
Notwithstanding this just praise, and the secret echo it must have found
in a heart so awake to the slightest whisper of fame, it was some time
before Lord Byron's obstinate repugnance to the idea of publishing
Childe Harold could be removed.
"Attentive," says Mr. Dallas, "as he had hitherto been to my opinions
and suggestions, and natural as it was that he should be swayed by such
decided praise, I was surprised to find that I could not at first obtain
credit with him for my judgment on Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 'It was
any thing but poetry--it had been condemned by a good critic--had I not
myself seen the sentences on the margins of the manuscripts?' He dwelt
upon the Paraphrase of the Art of Poetry with pleasure, and the
manuscript of that was given to Cawthorn, the publisher of the Satire,
to be brought forth without delay. I did not, however, leave him so:
before I quitted him I returned to the charge, and told him that I was
so convinced of the merit of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, that, as he had
given it to me, I should certainly publish it, if he would have the
kindness to attend to some corrections and alterations."
Among the many instances, recorded in literary history, of the false
judgments of authors respecting their own productions, the preference
given by Lord Byron to a work so little worthy of his genius, over a
poem of such rare and original beauty as the first Cantos of Childe
Harold, may be accounted, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary and
inexplicable.[5]
"It is in men as in soils," says Swift, "where sometimes there is a vein
of gold which the owner knows not of." But Lord Byron had made the
discovery of the vein, without, as it would seem, being aware of its
value. I have already had occasion to observe that, even while occupied
with the composition of Childe Harold, it is questionable whether he
himself was yet fully conscious of the new powers, both of thought and
feeling, that had been awakened in him; and the strange estimate we now
find him forming of his own production appears to warrant the remark. It
would seem, indeed, as if, while the imaginative powers of his mind had
received such an impulse forward, the faculty of judgment, slower in its
developement, was still immature, and that of _self_-judgment, the most
difficult of all, still unattained.
On the other hand, from the deference which, particularly at this period
of his life, he was inclined to pay to the opinions of those with whom
he associated, it would be fairer, perhaps, to conclude that this
erroneous valuation arose rather from a diffidence in his own judgment
than from any deficiency of it. To his college companions, almost all of
whom were his superiors in scholarship, and some of them even, at this
time, his competitors in poetry, he looked up with a degree of fond and
admiring deference, for which his ignorance of his own intellectual
strength alone could account; and the example, as well as tastes, of
these young writers being mostly on the side of established models,
their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain
degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original
path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps,
towards school recollections[6], may have had a share in prompting his
preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable;--at
least, that it was enough to lead him, untried as he had yet been in the
new path, to content himself, for the present, with following up his
success in the old. We have seen, indeed, that the manuscript of the two
Cantos of Childe Harold had, previously to its being placed in the hands
of Mr. Dallas, been submitted by the noble author to the perusal of some
friend--the first and only one, it appears, who at that time had seen
them. Who this fastidious critic was, Mr. Dallas has not mentioned; but
the sweeping tone of censure in which he conveyed his remarks was such
as, at any period of his career, would have disconcerted the judgment
of one, who, years after, in all the plenitude of his fame, confessed,
that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind was more painful to him
than the applause of the highest was pleasing."[7]
Though on every thing that, after his arrival at the age of manhood, he
produced, some mark or other of the master-hand may be traced; yet, to
print the whole of his Paraphrase of Horace, which extends to nearly 800
lines, would be, at the best, but a questionable compliment to his
memory. That the reader, however, may be enabled to form some opinion of
a performance, which--by an error or caprice of judgment, unexampled,
perhaps, in the annals of literature--its author, for a time, preferred
to the sublime musings of Childe Harold, I shall here select a few such
passages from the Paraphrase as may seem calculated to give an idea as
well of its merits as its defects.