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

(1) LORD BYRON AND THE ‘MORNING CHRONICLE’

(’The Sun’, February 4, 1814).

That poetical Peer, Lord BYRON, knowing full well that anything insulting to his Prince or injurious to his country would be most thankfully received and published by the ‘Morning Chronicle’, did in March, 1812, send the following loyal and patriotic lines to that loyal and patriotic Paper, in which of course they appeared: 

  “To A LADY WEEPING.

  “Weep, daughter of a Royal line,
    A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay:
  Ah! happy! if each tear of thine
    Could wash a father’s fault away!

  “Weep—­for thy tears are Virtue’s tears—­
    Auspicious to these suffering isles: 
  And be each drop, in future years,
    Repaid thee by thy people’s smiles!”

These lines the ‘Morning Chronicle’, in the following paragraph of yesterday, informs us were aimed at the PRINCE REGENT, and addressed to the Princess CHARLOTTE: 

“‘The Courier’ is indignant 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.”

No wonder the ‘Courier’, and every loyal man, should be indignant at the discovery (made by the republication of these worthless lines, in the Noble Lord’s new Volume) that this gross insult came from the pen of “a hereditary Counsellor of the KING!  “No wonder every good subject should execrate this novel and disagreeable mode of “‘admonishing’ the Heir Apparent,” which is further from being British than it is from being Courtly; for, from Courtier baseness may be expected, but from a Briton no such infamous dereliction of his duty as is involved in a malignant, ‘anonymous’ attack by a Peer of the Realm upon the person exercising the Sovereign Authority of his Country.  But the assertions of Lord BYRON are as false as they are audacious.  What was the “Sire’s Disgrace” to be thus bewept?  He preferred the independence of the Crown to the arrogant dictation of a haughty Aristocracy, who desired to hold him in Leading-strings.  It was then, amid a “Realm’s (fancied) decay,” because this Faction were not admitted to supreme power, that his Royal Highness’s early friends drunk his health in contemptuous silence, while their more vulgar partizans “at the lower end of the Hall” hissed and hooted the royal name.  But mark the reverse since March, 1812, a reverse which it might have been thought would have induced the Noble Lord, from prudent motives, to have withheld this ill-timed publication!  How is his Royal Highness’s health toasted ‘now’?  With universal shouts and acclamations.  Treason itself dare not interpose a single discordant sound save in its own private orgies!  Where is ‘now’ the realm’s decay? oh short-sighted prognosticators of the prophecies! look around, and dread the fate of the speakers of falsehood among the Jews of old, who were stoned to death by the people!  The wide world furnishes the answer to your selfish croakings, and tells Lord BYRON that he is destitute of at least one of the qualities of an inspired Bard.

Perhaps we might add another, viz. honesty in acknowledging his plagiarisms, one of which (as we have already said more than his silly verse above quoted deserves, except from the rank of its author) we shall take the liberty of stating to the Public.

The ‘Bride of Abydos’ begins, something in the stile of an old ballad, thus: 

  “Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
  Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,
  Where the rage of the vulture—­the love of the turtle—­
  Now melt into sorrow—­now madden to crime?—­
  Know ye the land of the cedar and vine? 
  Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,
  Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress’d with perfume,
  Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom;
  Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
  And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;
  Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,
  In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
  And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye.”

The whole of which passage we take to be a paraphrase, and a bad paraphrase too, of a song of the German of Göthe, of which the following translation was published at Berlin in 1798: 

  “Know’st thou the land, where citrons scent the gale,
  Where glows the orange in the golden vale,
  Where softer breezes fan the azure skies,
  Where myrtles spring and prouder laurels rise? 
  “Know’st them the pile, the colonnade sustains,
  Its splendid chambers and its rich domains,
  Where breathing statues stand in bright array,
  And seem, ‘What ails thee, hapless maid?’ to say?

  “Know’st thou the mount, where clouds obscure the day;
  Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way;
  Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood;
  And broken rocks oppose the headlong flood?”

* * * *

(2) EPIGRAM (’The Sun’, February 8, 1814).

On the Detection of Lord BYRON’S Plagiarism, in ‘The Sun’ of Friday last.

  “That BYRON borrows verses is well known,
  But his misanthropy is all his own.”

* * *

(3) LORD BYRON (’The Sun’, February 11, 1814).

We are informed from very good authority, that as soon as the House of Lords meets again, a Peer of very independent principles and character intends to give notice of a motion, occasioned by the late spontaneous avowal of a copy of verses by Lord BYRON, addressed to the Princess CHARLOTTE of WALES, in which he has taken the most unwarrantable liberties with her august Father’s character and conduct; this motion being of a personal nature, it will be necessary to give the Noble Satirist some days notice, that he may prepare himself for his defence against a charge of so aggravated a nature, which may perhaps not be a fit subject for a criminal prosecution, as the laws of the country, not forseeing the probability of such a case ever occurring, under all the present circumstances, have not made a provision against it; but we know that each House of Parliament has a controul over its own members, and that there are instances on the Journals of Parliament, where an individual Peer has been suspended from all the privileges of the high situation to which his birth entitled him, when by any flagrant offence against good order and government, he has rendered himself unworthy of exercising so important a trust.

‘Morning Post’.

* * * *

(4) PARODY (’The Sun’, February 16, 1814).

“‘WEEP, DAUGHTER OF A ROYAL LINE!’

“MOURN, dabbler in dull party rhyme,
  Thy mind’s disease, thy name’s disgrace. 
Ah, lucky! if the hand of Time
  Should all thy Muse’s crimes efface!

“MOURN—­for thy lays are Rancour’s lays—­
  Disgraceful to a Briton born;
And hence each theme of factious praise
  Consigns thee to thy Country’s scorn.”