"St. James's Street, July 6. 1812.
"Sir,
"I have just been honoured with your letter.--I feel sorry that you
should have thought it worth while to notice the 'evil works of my
nonage,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and your
explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written
when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying
my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my
wholesale assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your
praise; and now, waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince
Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after
some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own
attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities: he
preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which of
your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I
answered, I thought the "Lay." He said his own opinion was nearly
similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you
more particularly the poet of _Princes_, as _they_ never appeared
more fascinating than in 'Marmion' and the 'Lady of the Lake.' He
was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your
Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of
Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both; so that
(with the exception of the Turks and your humble servant) you were
in very good company. I defy Murray to have exaggerated his Royal
Highness's opinion of your powers, nor can I pretend to enumerate
all he said on the subject; but it may give you pleasure to hear
that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my
attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave
me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I
had hitherto considered as confined to _manners_, certainly
superior to those of any living _gentleman_.
"This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee; for
having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my
curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as
perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, 'no business there.' To be
thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if
that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made
through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very fortunately
and sincerely,
"Your obliged and obedient servant,
"BYRON.
"P.S.--Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, and just
after a journey."
* * * * *
During the summer of this year, he paid visits to some of his noble
friends, and, among others, to the Earl of Jersey and the Marquis of
Lansdowne. "In 1812," he says, "at Middleton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a
goodly company of lords, ladies, and wits, &c., there was (* * *.) [49]
"Erskine, too! Erskine was there; good, but intolerable. He jested, he
talked, he did every thing admirably, but then he would be applauded for
the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own
paragraph, and tell his own story again and again; and then the 'Trial
by Jury!!!' I almost wished it abolished, for I sat next him at dinner.
As I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat
them to me.
"C * * (the fox-hunter), nicknamed '_Cheek_ C * *,' and I, sweated the
claret, being the only two who did so. C * *, who loves his bottle, and
had no notion of meeting with a 'bon-vivant' in a scribbler[50], in
making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in--'By G----d he
drinks like a man.'
"Nobody drank, however, but C * * and I. To be sure, there was little
occasion, for we swept off what was on the table (a most splendid board,
as may be supposed, at Jersey's) very sufficiently. However, we carried
our liquor discreetly, like the Baron of Bradwardine."
[Footnote 49: A review, somewhat too critical, of some of the guests is
here omitted.]
[Footnote 50: For the first day or two, at Middleton, he did not join
his noble host's party till after dinner, but took his scanty repast of
biscuits and soda water in his own room. Being told by somebody that the
gentleman above mentioned had pronounced such habits to be "effeminate,"
he resolved to show the "fox-hunter" that he could be, on occasion, as
good a _bon-vivant_ as himself, and, by his prowess at the claret next
day, after dinner, drew forth from Mr. C * * the eulogium here
recorded.]
* * * * *
In the month of August this year, on the completion of the new Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, the Committee of Management, desirous of procuring an
Address for the opening of the theatre, took the rather novel mode of
inviting, by an advertisement in the newspapers, the competition of all
the poets of the day towards this object. Though the contributions that
ensued were sufficiently numerous, it did not appear to the Committee
that there was any one among the number worthy of selection. In this
difficulty it occurred to Lord Holland that they could not do better
than have recourse to Lord Byron, whose popularity would give additional
vogue to the solemnity of their opening, and to whose transcendant
claims, as a poet, it was taken for granted, (though without sufficient
allowance, as it proved, for the irritability of the brotherhood,) even
the rejected candidates themselves would bow without a murmur. The first
result of this application to the noble poet will be learned from what
follows.