The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2

(2) ‘The Courier’, February 2, 1814.

Lord BYRON, as we stated yesterday, has discovered and promulgated to the world, in eight lines of choice doggrel, that the realm of England is in decay, that her Sovereign is disgraced, and that the situation of the country is one which claims the tears of all good patriots.  To this very indubitable statement, the ‘Morning Chronicle’ of this day exhibits an admirable companion picture, a genuine letter from Paris, of the 25th ult.

(3) ‘The Courier’, February 3, 1814.

“‘The Courier’ is indignant,” says the ‘Morning Chronicle’, “at the discovery now made by Lord BYRON, that he was the author of ’the Verses to a Young Lady weeping,’ which were inserted about a twelvemonth ago in the ‘Morning Chronicle’.  The Editor thinks it audacious in a hereditary Counsellor of the KING to admonish the ’Heir Apparent’.  It may not be ‘courtly’ but it is certainly ‘British’, and we wish the kingdom had more such honest advisers.”

The discovery of the author of the verses in question was not made by Lord BYRON.  How could it be?  When he sent them to the ’Chronicle, without’ his name, he was just as well informed about the author as he is now that he has published them in a pamphlet, ‘with’ his name.  The discovery was made to the public.  They did not know in March, 1812, what they know in February, 1814.  They did not suspect then what they now find avowed, that a Peer of the Realm was the Author of the attack upon the PRINCE; of the attempt to induce the Princess CHARLOTTE of WALES to think that her father was an object not of reverence and regard, but of disgrace.

But we “think it audacious in an hereditary Counsellor of the KING to admonish the Heir Apparent.”  No! we do not think it audacious:  it is constitutional and proper.  But are anonymous attacks the constitutional duty of a Peer of the Realm?  Is that the mode in which he should admonish the Heir Apparent?  If Lord BYRON had desired to admonish the PRINCE, his course was open, plain, and known—­he could have demanded an audience of the PRINCE; or, he could have given his admonition in Parliament.  But to level such an attack—­What!—­“Kill men i’ the dark!” This, however, is called by the ‘Chronicle’ “certainly ’British’,” though it might not be ‘courtly’, and a strong wish is expressed that “the country had many more such honest advisers” or admonishers.  —­Admonishers indeed!  A pretty definition of admonition this, which consists not in giving advice, but in imputing blame, not in openly proffering counsel, but in secretly pointing censure.

(4) BYRONIANA NO.  I (’The Courier’, February 5, 1814).

The Lord BYRON has assumed such a poetico-political and such a politico-poetical air and authority, that in our double capacity of men of letters and politicians, he forces himself upon our recollection.  We say ‘recollection’ for reasons which will bye and by, be obvious to our readers, and will lead them to wonder why this young Lord, whose greatest talent it is to forget, and whose best praise it would be to be forgotten, should be such an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. SAM ROGERS’S ‘Pleasures of Memory’.

The most virulent satirists have ever been the most nauseous panegyrists, and they are for the most part as offensive by the praise as by the abuse which they scatter.

His Lordship does not degenerate from the character of those worthy persons, his poetical ancestors: 

  “The mob of Gentlemen who wrote with ease”

who of all authors dealt the most largely in the alternation of flattery and filth.  He is the severest satirical and the civilest dedicator of our day; and what completes his reputation for candour, good feeling, and honesty, is that the persons whom he most reviles, and to whom he most fulsomely dedicates, are identically the same.

We shall indulge our readers with a few instances:—­the most obvious case, because the most recent, is that of Mr. THOMAS MOORE, to whom he has dedicated, as we have already stated, his last pamphlet; but as we wish to proceed orderly, we shall postpone this and revert to some instances prior in order of time; we shall afterwards show that his Lordship strictly adheres to HORACE’S rule, in maintaining to the end the ill character in which he appeared at the outset.  His Lordship’s first dedication was to his guardian and relative, the Earl of CARLISLE.  So late as the year 1808, we find that Lord BYRON was that noble Lord’s “most affectionate kinsman, etc., etc.”

Hear how dutifully and affectionately this ingenuous young man celebrates, in a few months after (1809), the praises of his friend: 

“No Muse will cheer with renovating smile, The paralytic puling of CARLISLE; What heterogeneous honours deck the Peer, Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer!  So dull in youth, so drivelling in age, His scenes alone had damn’d our sinking stage.  But Managers, for once, cried ‘hold, enough,’ Nor drugg’d their audience with the tragic stuff.  Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh, And case his volumes in congenial calf:  Yes! doff that covering where Morocco shines, And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines.”

And in explanation of this affectionate effusion, our lordly dedicator subjoins a note to inform us that Lord CARLISLE’S works are splendidly bound, but that “the rest is all but leather and prunella,” and a little after, in a very laborious note, in which he endeavours to defend his consistency, he out-Herods Herod, or to speak more forcibly, out-Byrons Byron, in the virulence of his invective against “his guardian and relative, to whom he dedicated his volume of puerile poems.”  Lord CARLISLE has, it seems, if we are to believe his word, for a series of years, beguiled “the public with reams of most orthodox, imperial nonsense,” and Lord BYRON concludes by asking,

  “What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards? 
   Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.”

“So says POPE,” adds Lord BYRON.  But POPE does not say so; the words “knaves and fools,” are not in POPE, but interpolated by Lord BYRON, in favour of his “guardian and relative.”  Now, all this might have slept in oblivion with Lord CARLISLE’S Dramas, and Lord BYRON’S Poems; but if this young Gentleman chooses to erect himself into a spokesman of the public opinion, it becomes worth while to consider to what notice he is entitled; when he affects a tone of criticism and an air of candour, he obliges us to enquire whether he has any just pretensions to either, and when he arrogates the high functions of public praise and public censure, we may fairly inquire what the praise or censure of such a being is worth: 

  “Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind.”

(5) BYRONIANA NO. 2 (’The Courier’, February 8, 1814).

“Crede Byron” is Lord Byron’s armorial motto; ‘Trust Byron’ is the translation in the Red-book.  We cannot but admire the ingenuity with which his Lordship has converted the good faith of his ancestors into a sarcasm on his own duplicity.

  “Could nothing but your chief reproach,
  Serve for a motto on your coach?”

Poor Lord Carlisle; he, no doubt, trusted in his affectionate ward and kinsman, and we have seen how the affectionate ward and kinsman acknowledged, like Macbeth, “the double trust” only to abuse it.  We shall now show how much another Noble Peer, Lord Holland, has to trust to from his ingenuous dedicator.

Some time last year Lord Byron published a Poem, called The Bride of Abydos, which was inscribed to Lord Holland, “with every sentiment of regard and respect by his gratefully obliged and sincere friend, BYRON.” “Grateful and sincere!” Alas! alas; ’tis not even so good as what Shakespeare, in contempt, calls “the sincerity of a cold heart.” “Regard and respect!” Hear with what regard, and how much respect, he treats this identical Lord Holland.  In a tirade against literary assassins (a class of men which Lord Byron may well feel entitled to describe), we have these lines addressed to the Chief of the Critical Banditti: 

“Known be thy name, unbounded be thy sway, Thy Holland’s banquets shall each toil repay, While grateful Britain yields the praise she owes, To Hollands hirelings, and to learnings foes!”

By which it appears, that

  “—­These wolves that still in darkness prowl;
   This coward brood, which mangle, as their prey,
   By hellish instinct, all that cross their way;”

are hired by Lord Holland, and it follows, very naturally, that the “hirelings” of Lord Holland must be the “foes of learning.”

This seems sufficiently caustic; but hear, how our dedicator proceeds: 

  “Illustrious Holland! hard would be his lot,
   His hirelings mention’d, and himself forgot! 
   Blest be the banquets spread at Holland House,
   Where Scotchmen feed, and Critics may carouse! 
   Long, long, beneath that hospitable roof
   Shall Grub-street dine, while duns are kept aloof,
   And grateful to the founder of the feast
   Declare the Landlord can translate, at least!”

Lord Byron has, it seems, very accurate notions of gratitude, and the word “grateful” in these lines, and in his dedication of ’The Bride of Abydos’, has a delightful similarity of meaning.  His Lordship is pleased to add, in an explanatory note to this passage, that Lord Holland’s life of Lopez de Vega, and his translated specimens of that author, are much “BEPRAISED by these disinterested guests.”  Lord Byron well knows that bepraise and bespatter are almost synonimous.  There was but one point on which he could have any hope of touching Lord Holland more nearly; and of course he avails himself, in the most gentlemanly and generous manner, of the golden opportunity.

When his club of literary assassins is assembled at Lord Holland’s table, Lord Byron informs us

  “That lest when heated with the unusual grape,
   Some glowing thoughts should to the press escape,
   And tinge with red the female reader’s cheek,
   My LADY skims the cream of each critique;
   Breathes o’er each page her purity of soul,
   Reforms each error, and refines the whole.”

Our readers will, no doubt, duly appreciate the manliness and generosity of these lines; but, to encrease their admiration, we beg to remind them that the next time Lord Byron addresses Lord Holland, it is to dedicate to him, in all friendship, sincerity, and gratitude, the story of a young, a pure, an amiable, and an affectionate bride!

The verses were bad enough, but what shall be said, after such verses, of the insult of such a dedication!

We forbear to extract any further specimens of this peculiar vein of Lord Byron’s satire; our “gorge rises at it,” and we regret to have been obliged to say so much.  And yet Lord Byron is, “with all regard and respect, Lord Holland’s sincere and grateful friend!” It reminds us of the respect which Lear’s daughters shewed their father, and which the poor old king felt to be “worse than murder.”

Some of our readers may perhaps observe that, personally, Lord Holland was not so ill-treated as Lord Carlisle; but let it be recollected, that Lord Holland is only an acquaintance, while Lord Carlisle was “guardian and relation,” and had therefore peculiar claims to the ingratitude of a mind like Lord Byron’s.

Trust Byron, indeed! “him,” as Hamlet says

   “Him, I would trust as I would adders fang’d.”

(6) BYRONIANA No. 3 (’The Courier’, February 12, 1814).  “Crede Byron”—­“Trust Byron.”

We have seen Lord Byron’s past and present opinions of two Noble Persons whom he has honoured with his satire, and vilified by his dedications; let us now compare the evidence which he has given at different and yet not distant times, on the merits of his third Dedicatee, Mr. Thomas Moore.  To him Lord Byron has inscribed his last poem as a person “of unshaken public principle, and the most undoubted and various talents; as the firmest of Irish patriots, and the first of Irish bards.”

Before we proceed to give Lord Byron’s own judgment of this “firmest of patriots,” and this “best of poets,” we must be allowed to say, that though we consider Mr. Moore as a very good writer of songs, we should very much complain of the poetical supremacy assigned to him, if Lord Byron had not qualified it by calling him the first only of Irish poets, and, as we suppose his Lordship must mean, of Irish poets of the present day.  The title may be, for aught we know to the contrary, perfectly appropriate; but we cannot conceive how Mr. Moore comes by the high-sounding name of “patriot;” what pretence there is for such an appellation; by what effort of intellect or of courage he has placed his name above those idols of Irish worship, Messrs. Scully, Connell, and Dromgoole.  Mr. Moore has written words to Irish tunes; so did Burns for his national airs; but who ever called Burns the “firmest of patriots” on the score of his contributions to the Scots Magazine?

Mr. Moore, we are aware, has been accused of tuning his harpsichord to the key-note of a faction, and of substituting, wherever he could, a party spirit for the spirit of poetry:  this, in the opinion of most persons, would derogate even from his poetical character, but we hope that Lord Byron stands alone in considering that such a prostitution of the muse entitles him to the name of patriot.  Mr. Moore, it seems, is an Irishman, and, we believe, a Roman Catholic; he appears to be, at least in his poetry, no great friend to the connexion of Ireland with England.  One or two of his ditties are quoted in Ireland as laments upon certain worthy persons whose lives were terminated by the hand of the law, in some of the unfortunate disturbances which have afflicted that country; and one of his most admired songs begins with a stanza, which we hope the Attorney-General will pardon us for quoting: 

  “Let Erin remember the days of old,
    Ere her faithless sons betrayed her,
  When Malachy wore the collar of gold,
    Which he won from her proud Invader;
  When her Kings, with standard of green unfurl’d,
    Led the Red Branch Knights to danger,
  Ere, the emerald gem of the western world,
    Was set in the crown of a Stranger.”

This will pretty well satisfy an English reader, that, if it be any ingredient of patriotism to promote the affectionate connexion of the English isles under the constitutional settlement made at the revolution and at the union; and if the foregoing verses speak Mr. Moore’s sentiments, he has the same claims to the name of “patriot” that Lord Byron has to the title of “trustworthy;” but if these and similar verses do not speak Mr. Moore’s political sentiments, then undoubtedly he has never written, or at least published any thing relating to public affairs; and Lord Byron has no kind of pretence for talking of the political character and public principles of an humble individual who is only known as the translator of Anacreon, and the writer, composer, and singer of certain songs, which songs do not (ex-hypothesi) speak the sentiments even of the writer himself.

But, hold—­we had forgot one circumstance:  Mr. Moore has been said to be one of the authors of certain verses on the highest characters of the State, which appeared from time to time in the ‘Morning Chronicle’, and which were afterwards collected into a little volume; this may, probably, be in Lord Byron’s opinion, a clear title to the name of patriot, in which case, his Lordship has also his claim to the same honour; and, indeed that sagacious and loyal person, the Editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle’, seems to be of this notion; for when some one ventured to express some, we think not unnatural, indignation at Lord Byron’s having been the author of some impudent doggrels, of the same vein, which appeared anonymously in that paper reflecting on his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and her Royal Highness his daughter, the Editor before-mentioned exclaimed—­“What! and is not a Peer, an hereditary councillor of the Crown, to be permitted to give his constitutional advice?!!!”

If writing such vile and anonymous stuff as one sometimes reads in the ‘Morning Chronicle’ be the duty of a good subject, or the privilege of a Peer of Parliament, then indeed we have nothing to object to Mr. Moore’s title of Patriot, or Lord Byron’s open, honourable, manly, and constitutional method of advising the Crown.

To return, however, to our main object, Lord Byron’s consistency, truth, and trustworthiness.

His Lordship is pleased to call Mr. Moore not only Patriot and Poet, but he acquaints us also, that “he is the delight alike of his readers and his friends; the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own.”

Let us now turn to Lord Byron’s thrice-recorded opinion of “this Poet of all Circles.”  We shall quote from a Poem which was republished, improved, amended, and reconsidered, not more than three years ago; since which time Mr. Moore has published no Poem whatsoever; therefore, Lord Byron’s former and his present opinions are founded upon the same data, and if they do not agree, it really is no fault of Mr. Moore’s, who has published nothing to alter them.

  “Now look around and turn each trifling page,
  Survey the precious works that please the age,
  While Little’s lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves.”

Here, by no great length of induction, we find Little’s, i.e. Mr. Thomas Moore’s lyrics, are trifling, “precious works,” his Lordship ironically adds, that “please times from which,” as his Lordship says, “taste and reason are passed away!”

Bye and by his Lordship delivers a still more plain opinion on Mr. Moore’s fitness to be the “Poet of ALL circles.”

  “Who in soft guise, surrounded by a quire
  Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,
  With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush’d,
  Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush’d? 
  ’Tis Little, young Catullus of his day,
  As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay;
  Griev’d to condemn, the Muse must yet be just,
  Nor spare melodious advocates of lust!”

“O calum et terra!” as Lingo says.  What! this purest of Patriots is immoral? What! “the Poet of all circles” is “the advocate of lust”?  Monstrous!  But who can doubt Byron?  And his Lordship, in a subsequent passage, does not hesitate to speak still more plainly, and to declare, in plain round terms (we shudder while we copy) that Moore, the Poet, the Patriot “Moore, is lewd”!!!

After this, we humbly apprehend that if we were to “trust Byron,” Mr. Moore, however he may be the idol of his own circle, would find some little difficulty in obtaining admittance into any other.

Lord Byron having thus disposed, as far as depended upon him, of the moral character of the first of Patriots and Poets, takes an early opportunity of doing justice to the personal honour of this dear “friend;” one, as his Lordship expresses it, of “the magnificent and fiery spirited” sons of Erin.

“In 1806,” says Lord Byron, “Messrs. Jeffery and Moore met at Chalk Farm—­the duel was prevented by the interference of the Magistracy, and on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated!”

“Magnificent and fiery spirit,” with a vengeance!

We are far from thinking of Mr. Moore as Lord Byron either did or does; not so degradingly as his Lordship did in 1810; not so extravagantly as he does in 1813.  But we think that Mr. Moore has grave reason of complaint, and almost just cause, to exert “his fiery spirit” against Lord Byron, who has the effrontery to drag him twice before the public, and overwhelm him, one day with odium, and another with ridicule.

We regret that Lord Byron, by obliging us to examine the value of his censures, has forced us to contrast his past with his present judgments, and to bring again before the public the objects of his lampoons and his flatteries.  We have, however, much less remorse in quoting his satire than his dedications; for, by this time, we believe, the whole world is inclined to admit that his Lordship can pay no compliment so valuable as his censure, nor offer any insult so intolerable as his praise.

(7) BYRONIANA No. 4 (’The Courier’, February 17, 1814).

“‘Don Pedro.’  What offence have these men done?

“‘Dogberry.’  Many, Sir; they have committed false reports; moreover
they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are
slanders; sixthly and lastly, they have belied a Lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things, and, to
conclude, they are lying knaves.”

‘Much Ado about Nothing.’

We have already seen how scurvily Lord Byron has treated three of the four persons to whom he has successively dedicated his Poems; but for the fourth he reserved a species of contumely, which we are confident our readers will think more degrading than all the rest. He has uniformly praised him! and him alone!!!—­The exalted rank, the gentle manners, the polished taste of his guardian and relation, Lord Carlisle; the considerations due to Lord Holland, from his family, his personal character, and his love of letters; the amiability of Mr. Moore’s society, the sweetness of his versification, and the vivacity of his imagination;—­all these could not save their possessors from the brutality of Lord Byron’s personal satire.

It was, then, for a person only, who should have none of these titles to his envy that his Lordship could be expected to reserve the fullness and steadiness of his friendship; and if we had any respect or regard for that small poet and very disagreeable person, Mr. Sam Rogers, we should heartily pity him for being “damned” to such “fame” as Lord Byron’s uninterrupted praise can give.

But Mr. Sam Rogers has another cause of complaint against Lord Byron, and which he is of a taste to resent more.  His Lordship has not deigned to call him “the firmest of patriots,” though we have heard that his claims to that title are not much inferior to Mr. Moore’s.  Mr. Sam Rogers is reported to have clubb’d with the Irish Anacreon in that scurrilous collection of verses, which we have before mentioned, and which were published under the title of the Twopenny Post-bag, and the assumed name of “Thomas Brown.”  The rumour may be unfounded; if it be, Messrs. Rogers and Moore will easily forgive us for saying that, much as we are astonished at the effrontery with which Lord Byron has acknowledged his lampoon, we infinitely prefer it to the cowardly prudence of the author or authors of the Twopenny Post-bag lurking behind a fictitious name, and “devising impossible slanders,” which he or they have not the spirit to avow.

But, to return to the more immediate subject of our lucubrations:  It seems almost like a fatality, that Lord Byron has hardly ever praised any thing that he has not at some other period censured, or censured any thing that he has not, by and bye, praised or practised.

It does not often happen that booksellers are assailed for their too great liberality to authors; yet, in Lord Byron’s satire, while Mr. Scott is abused, his publisher, Mr. Murray, is sneered at, in the following lines: 

“And think’st them, Scott, by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance; Though Murray with his Miller may combine, To yield thy Muse just HALF-A-CROWN A LINE?  No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.  Let such forego the poet’s sacred name, Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:  Low may they sink to merited contempt, And scorn remunerate the mean attempt.”

Now, is it not almost incredible that this very Murray (the only remaining one of the booksellers whom his Lordship had attacked; Miller has left the trade)—­is it not, we say, almost incredible that this very Murray should have been soon after selected, by this very Lord Byron, to be his own publisher?  But what will our readers say, when we assure them, that not only was Murray so selected, but that this magnanimous young Lord has actually sold his works to this same Murray? and, what is a yet more singular circumstance, has received and pocketted, for one of his own “stale romances,” a sum amounting, not to “half-a-crown,” but to a whole crown, a line!!!

This fact, monstrous as it seems in the author of the foregoing lines, is, we have the fullest reason to believe, accurately true.  And the “faded laurel,” “the brains rac’d for lucre,” “the merited contempt,” “the scorn,” and the “meanness,” which this impudent young man dared to attribute to Mr. Scott, appear to have been a mere anticipation of his own future proceedings; and thus,

          “—­Even-handed Justice
  Commends the ingredients of his poison’d chalice
  To his own lips.”

How he now likes the taste of it we do not know; about as much, we suspect, as the “incestuous, murderous, damned Dane” did, when Hamlet obliged him to “drink off the potion” which he had treacherously drugged for the destruction of others.

(8) BYRONIANA No. 5 (’The Courier’, February 19, 1814).

  “He professes no keeping oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than
  Hercules.  He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think
  truth were a fool.”

‘All’s Well that ends Well’.

We have, we should hope, sufficiently exposed the audacious levity and waywardness of Lord Byron’s mind, and yet there are a few touches which we think will give a finish to the portrait, and add, if it be at all wanting, to the strength of the resemblance.

It must be amusing to those who know anything of Lord Byron in the circles of London, to find him magnanimously defying in very stout heroics,

“—­all the din of Melbourne House And Lambes’ resentment—­”

and adding that he is “unscared” even by “Holland’s spouse.”

To those who may be in the habit of hearing his Lordship’s political descants, the following extract will appear equally curious: 

“Mr. Brougham, in No. 25 of the ‘Edinburgh Review’, throughout the article concerning Don Pedro Cevallos, has displayed more politics than policy; many of the worthy burgesses of Edinburgh being so incensed at the INFAMOUS principles it evinces, as to have withdrawn their subscriptions;” and in the text of this poem, to which the foregoing is a note, he advises the Editor of the Review to

“Beware, lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale;
Turn beef to bannacks, cauliflower to kail.”

Those who have attended to his Lordship’s progress as an author, and observed that he has published four poems, in little more than two years, will start at the following lines: 

                  “—­Oh cease thy song! 
    A bard may chaunt too often and too long;
    As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare;
    A FOURTH, alas, were more than we could bear.”

And as the scene of each of these four Poems is laid in the Levant, it is curious to recollect, that when his Lordship informed the world that he was about to visit “Afric’s coast,” and “Calpe’s height,” and “Stamboul’s minarets,” and “Beauty’s native clime,” he enters into a voluntary and solemn engagement with the public,

    “That should he back return, no letter’d rage
    Shall drag his common-place book on the stage;
    Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,
    He’ll leave topography to classic Cell,
    And, quite content, no more shall interpose,
    To stun mankind with poetry or prose.”

And yet we have already had, growing out of this “Tour,” four volumes of poetry, enriched with copious notes in prose, selected from his “common-place book.”  The whole interspersed every here and there with the most convincing proofs that instead of being “quite content,” his Lordship has returned, as he went out, the most discontented and peevish thing that breathes.

But the passage of all others which gives us the most delight is that in which his Lordship attacks his critics, and declares that

    “Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
    And feel they too are penetrable stuff.”

and adds,

                “—­I have—­
    Learn’d to deride the Critic’s stern decree,
    And break him on the wheel he meant for me.”

We should now, with all humility, ask his Lordship whether he yet feels that “he too is penetrable stuff;” and we should further wish to know how he likes being “broken on the wheel he meant for others?”

When his Lordship shall have sufficiently pondered on those questions, we may perhaps venture to propound one or two more.

(9) From ‘The Courier’ (March 15, 1814).

The republication of some Satires, which the humour of the moment now disposes the writer to recall, was strenuously censured, the other day, in a Morning Paper.  It was there said, amongst other things, that such a republication “contributes to exasperate and perpetuate the divisions of those whom nature and friendship have joined!” This is within six weeks after the deliberate republication of “Weep, daughter,” etc., etc.; and thus we are informed of the exact moment at which all retort is to cease; at which misrepresentation towards the public and outrage towards the Personages much more than insulted in those lines, is to be no longer remembered.  What privileges does this writer claim for his friends!  They are to live in all “the swill’d insolence” of attack upon those on whose character, union, and welfare, the public prosperity mainly depends; they are to instruct the DAUGHTER to hold the FATHER disgraced, because he does not surrender the prime Offices of the State to their ambition.  And if, after this, public disgust make the author feel, in the midst of the little circle of flatterers that remains to him, what an insight he has given into the guilt of satire before maturity, before experience, before knowledge; if the original unprovoked intruder upon the peace of others be thus taught a love of privacy and a facility of retraction; if Turnus have found the time,

      “magno cum optaverit emptum
  Intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista, diemque
  Oderit;”

if triumphing arrogance be changed into a sentimental humility, O! then ‘Liberality’ is to call out for him in the best of her hacknied tones; the contest is to cease at the instant when his humour changes from mischief to melancholy; ‘affetuoso’ is to be the only word; and he is to be allowed his season of sacred torpidity, till the venom, new formed in the shade, make him glisten again in the sunshine he envies!