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sinos. There were a number of casinos for the purpose of public assemblies, where gaming was the principal pursuit of the company. It was a strange sight to see persons of either sex masked, or grave personages in their magisterial robes, round a table, invoking chance, and giving way at one instant to the agonies of despair, at the next to the illusions of hope, and that without uttering a single word.

The rich had private casinos, but they lived incognito in them; and the wives whom they abandoned found compensation in the liberty they enjoyed. The corruption of morals had deprived them of their empire. We have just reviewed the whole history of Venice, and we have not once seen them exercise the slightest influence."-DARU: Hist. de la Répub. de Venise, vol. v. p. 95.

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*The nobles of Venice, though all equal in the eye of the law, were fancifully divided into three classes; the first distinguished as that of the sangue blò or sangue colombin, i. e. blue blood or pigeon's blood; the second, as the division of the morèl de mezo, or the middle piece; and the poorest of all as Bernaboti, er Barnabites, from their inhabiting small and cheap houses in the parish of St. Barnabas.

"It will be easily conceived that the poor nobility must have been numerous in a state which considered all the legitimate sons of a patrician as noble; where commerce no longer offered a resource, and the only profession left was that of the law. This class, therefore, subsisting upon the employments of the republic, civil or military, at home and abroad, was necessarily ruined by the revolution. But the cause of the almost general havoc which involved the Venetian aristocracy is not so immediately visible; the less so, as the laws of the fede-commesso, which corresponds with our entail, were sufficiently rigorous in old Venice.

"I shall try, according to the information I have received, to explain how this was accomplished. The first and foremost cause was the excessive indolence and profusion of the last generations of the nobility, who appear to have resembled the ancestor of Sir Roger de Coverley; who, he tells us, 'would sign a deed for a mortgage covering one half his estate with his glove on:' with this difference, however, that the Venetian patrician could only mortgage his estate during his own natural life; a circumstance which, it appears at first sight, should have been the protection of the ancient houses of Venice. The protection was, however, in most instances, of no avail.

In almost all countries the laws of honour often contravene the laws of the land, often mischievously; but they sometimes come in aid of sound morality. Such was their effect here. The law of the fede

(1) This is by no means a single case: A Venetian judge, displaced, but pensioned by the Austrians, peglected to receive his allowance according to the example of the others. At length he applied for his arrears, which were denied him.

commesso allowed a son to charge himself with the debts of a father, without prejudice to his successors; but it being considered as a point of honour to take up this burden, the son's son succeeded to it, and the debts of one generation were perpetuated through diverse succeeding ones.

"Things were in this state when the old government was overthrown, and the law of fede-commesso abolished here, as well as all over the countries revolutionised by France. The consequence was, the immediate seizure of property so encumbered. This was inevitable; and the creditor of the family of Corner, or any other Venetian house, seized upon his

own.

"Thus one of the indirect consequences of the revolution was the destruction of an immense number of Venetian families of the sangue blò and morèl de mezo. It was, however, more immediately destructive to those denominated the Barnabites, who were at once cut off from all the lucrative offices of the state. Nor was this all: the daughters of the indigent nobility had all of them pensions which they brought in dowry to their husbands; but place and pension, though bestowed for life, were annihilated, and, in the place of these, a miserable stipend of two Venetian livres a-day (not quite ten-pence English) was bestowed on those who condescended to accept of it, by the mushroom municipality which flourished for its day out of the ruins of the aristocracy. Poor as this pittance was, even in this country where necessaries bear a price out of all proportion to luxuries, numbers did accept it, under the idea that it would be increased under happier circumstances; but the French, it will be easily believed, did not augment it, and (what could scarcely be believed but by those versed in the proceedings of the cabinet of Vienna) the Austrian government clipped this miserable mite, and clogged it with conditions which neither the revolutionary municipality nor the French were illiberal enough to impose.

"The municipality gave their compensation, and, the whole of the terra ferma being in possession of the enemy, perhaps they could give no more-the municipality gave it as unrestricted as the pensions it was to replace: the French made no alteration in the system; but the Austrians have not only limited it to persons not having two hundred ducats a-year (twentyfive pounds sterling), but have insisted upon its being spent in their own dominions. Of the rigour with which this condition is exacted, take the following example:-A lady, ignorant of the regulations which had been introduced, was absent two years in the south of France; she returned, and claimed the arrears of her pension, without having specified where she had been. The arrears were paid, after the usual difficulties; but her absence having been ascertained, she was ordered to disgorge her prey, under the threat of being excluded from all further provision.

"I have said, after the usual difficulties: I will now illustrate these. (1) Another lady claimed seven months' arrears of pension, due during a residence in Lombardy and the Venetian state. Now, this was a claim verifiable by a single instrument, her passport, which ascertained the day of her arrival in every town, "What!" said he, "will you not give me what others have received?" "No!" was the answer, "and those others will be forced to refund."-Note that these pensions had been paid in virtue of a solemn and printed decree.

by the signature of accredited officers of the Austrian police. Notwithstanding this, she was seven months more before she could obtain her demand. These were spent in the presentation of petitions, always by order, always on stamped paper, and in the almost daily beat of half the official stairs of Venice, either in person or in proxy.

"But I willingly turn away my eyes from a picture, every detail of which is painful, and, having described the fortunes of the Venetian nobility, shall give some account of their honours. The patricians, as I said before, all equal in the eye of the law, had no titles | as such, excepting that of your Excellency; though some bore them, as Counts, etc. of terra ferma, before being enrolled in the nobility of Venice; and some had titles assigned them as compensations for, or rather as memorials of, fallen greatness. Thus the Querini, formerly lords of Crema, had the distinction continued to them, after Crema was absorbed in the Venetian state.

"These families, however, usually let their titles sleep, considering the quality of an untitled Venetian patrician as superior to any other distinction. Nor does this seem to have been an odd refinement, for

(1) The qualification to be a Count was about what is supposed to qualify for knighthood in England, and the fee paid for the title, if I am rightly informed, £20 or £40.

the old republic sold titles for a pittance to whoever could pay for them, though such a person might not even have had the education of a gentleman. (1) It was natural, therefore, that a lord of Crema should fear being confounded with this countly canaglia, and sink his having any thing in common with such a

crew.

"The great political revolution that has taken place, destroying the splendour of the libro d'oro, has induced some to produce their terra ferma titles; but the majority content themselves with the style of Cavaliere, (2) which does not necessarily denote actual knighthood; and is often used almost as liberally in Italy, as the denomination of Squire now is in England. A striking proof, indeed, of good sense and dignity was given by the great body of the Venetian nobility, on being invited by Austria to claim nobility and title from her, on the verification of their rights; ̧ the great body of them merely desiring a recognition of their rank, without availing themselves of the offer held out to them. A few, indeed, have pursued a different line of conduct, and received patents of princes," etc.-ROSE: Leliers from the North of Italy, vol. i.. p. 105.

(2) No order of knighthood was peculiar to Venice, and her citizens were precluded by law from becoming members of foreign orders.

The Vision of Judgment.

BY QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS. (1)

SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF "WAT TYLER."

"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."

PREFACE.

Ir hath been wisely said, that "One fool makes many;" and it hath been poetically observed, "That fools rush in where angels fear to tread."-Pope. If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have

(I) Had not the chronological order been again departed from, on the same grounds already explained with reference to Childe Harold, the reader would have had before him, ere he reaches this page of our collection, the two first Cantos of Don Juan. Those Cantos were printed without Lord Byron's name; but all the world knew that they were his; and Mr. Southey was far from being singular, in lamenting and condemning the spirit in which parts of them had been written.

The Laureate, in 1821, published a piece, in English hexameters, entitled A Vision of Judgment; and which Lord Byron, in criticising it, laughs at as "the Apotheosis of George the Third." In the preface to this poem, after some observations on the peculiar style of its versification, Mr. Southey introduced the following remarks:

"I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this lite rary intolerance were under the influence of a saner judgment, and

been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance and impious cant, of the poem by the author of at Tyler, are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself-containing the quintessence of his own attributes.

So much for his poem-a word on his preface. In

regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form! Would that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdns and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first beca polluted! For more than half a century English literature ba been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and, in its rare the cause, of an improvement in national manners. A father must without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his childre any book which issued from the press, if it did not bear, either in its title page or frontispiece, manifest signs that it was intended u furniture for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable bookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so: and woe to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender. the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his shar Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate 13 evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly ad ministered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offer der serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals bound to consider that such pernicions works would neither De published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, 15d ought to be, by public feeling: every person, therefore, who par

his preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate draw the picture of a supposed "Satanic school," me which he doth recommend to the notice of the gislature; thereby adding to his other laurels the

s such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the schief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and ettor of the crime.

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"The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst ofmes which can be committed against the well-being of society. a sin, to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, md those consequences no after-repentance in the writer can counWhatever remorse of conscience he may feel when his our comes (and come it must!) will be of no avail. The poignof a death-bed repentance cannot cancel one copy of the thouwhich are sent abroad; and as long as it continues to be so long is he the pander of posterity, and so long is he heapguilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation. These remarks are not more severe than the offence deserves, when applied to those immoral writers who have not been ss of any evil intention in their writings, who would acridge a little levity, a little warmth of colouring, and so forth, that sort of language with which men gloss over their favourite ces, and deceive themselves. What then should be said of those in whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can nger be pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood and deliberate purpose?-Men of diseased hearts and depraved magnabons, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own dappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordiCanes of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disteve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by bring them with a moral virus that eats into the soul! The

which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic d; for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in er lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome age of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, They are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride handacions impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of -pes wherewith it is allied.

This end is political as well as moral, for indeed moral and ptical evils are inseparably connected. Truly has it been affirmed by of our ablest and clearest reasoners, that the destruction of as may be proved and deduced from the general corrup the sabjects' manners, as a direct and natural cause thereof, 27 demonstration as certain as any in the mathematics. There is Etim more frequently enforced by Machiavelli, than that where banners of a people are generally corrupted, there the govern cannot long subsist,-a truth which all history exemplifies; There is no means whereby that corruption can be so surely drap dly diffused, as by poisoning the waters of literature. Le rulers of the state look to this, in time! But, to use the Bards of South, if our physicians think the best way of curing a is to pamper it.-the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to what He by miracle only can prevent!'

To apology is offered for these remarks. The subject led to and the occasion of introducing them was willingly taken, se it is the duty of every one, whose opinion may have any race, to expose the drift and aim of those writers who are lang to subvert the foundations of human virtue and of human appiness."

Lord Byron rejoined as follows:

Mr Sonthey, in his pions preface to a poem whose blasphemy armless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally d with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to to it,' as the toleration of such writings led to the French Reslation: not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the Satahool. This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voland Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent The Bastille, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution

occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have ed had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to atle every thing to the French Revolution, and the French Reon to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious Sammi poetæ in omni poetarum seculo viri fuerunt probi : stris id vidimus et videmus; neque alius est error a veritate quam magna ingenia magnis necessario corrumpi vitiis. Seplerique posthabent primum, hi malignitate, illi ignorantia; maliquem inveniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nec intamen nec in libris edendis parcum, cum stipant, prædi Occupant, amplectuntur. Si mores aliquantulum vellet corri stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio temperare, si tantillum interponere, tum ingens nescio quid et vere epiquadraginta annos natus, procuderat. Ignorant verò febriben indicari vires, impatientiam ab imbecillitate non differre; na levi homine et inconstante multa fortasse scribi posse am médiceria, nihil compositum, arduum, æternum." Landor, De Caltu atque Usu Latini Sermonis.

Sava

.This essay,

full of fine eritical remarks and striking thoughts felici expressed, reached me from Pisa, while the proof of the present was before me. Of its author (the author of Gebir and Count nation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a man, will I will only say in this place, that, to have obtained his emembered among the honours of my life, when the petty stations shall have passed away."-Mr. Southey's Note.} ties of this generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral

ambition of those of an informer. If there exists any where, excepting in his imagination, such a school, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain

--the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without the occurrence of a single alteration. And the English revolution-(the first, I mean)-what was it occasioned by? The Puritans were surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biographer? Acts-acts on the part of government, and not writings against them, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future.

"I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist; I wish to see the English constitution restored, and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present property in the funds, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have more to lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. The government may exult over the repression of petty tumults; these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and gaining ground with every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the country; and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? One mode of worship is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever will be, a country without a religion. We shall be told of France again: but it was only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theo-philanthropy. The church of England, if overthrown, will be swept away by the sectarians and not by the sceptics. People are too wise, too well informed, too certain of their own immense importance in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There may be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of human reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never gain proselytes-unless, indeed, they are persecuted-that, to be sure, will increase any thing.

"Mr. Southey, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant Vision of Judgment, in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, I have not waited for a 'death-bed' to repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which this pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him. Whether upon the whole the good or evil of my deeds may preponderate is not for me to ascertain; but as my means and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present defence to an assertion (easily proved, if necessary), that I, in my degree,' have done more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence. There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a hireling. There are others to which I recur with sorrow and repentance; but the only act of my life of which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in contact with a near connection of his own,† did no dishonour to that connection nor to me.

"I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others: they have done him no good in this world; and if his creed be the right one, they will do him less in the next. What his death-bed' may be, it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all work sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the Regi cide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of Gebir, whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten.' I for one neither envy him the friendship,' nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelusson's fortune, in the third and fourth generation. This friendship will probably be as memorable as his own epics. which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in English Bards) Porson said would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then.' For the present, I leave him,”

Mr. Southey was not disposed to let this pass unanswered. He, on the 5th of January, 1822, addressed to the Editor of the London Courier a letter, of which we shall quote all that is of importance:

"Here Lord Byron very modestly informs us, that he has done more good in any one year of his life, than Mr. Southey has done in the whole of the years he has lived upon the earth. We are much at a loss to understand the drift of this very candid communication. Does Lord Byron mean to say, that he has given away more money in charity than the Laureate could afford to do? We believe that this may very well be so; but why trumpet his own almsgiving in such a pompous fashion upon the house-top? There are plenty of good rich old widow ladies, who have subscribed lots of money to all sorts of charities, and advertised all their largesses in the newspapers-but are they entitled on that account to talk of themselves as doing more 'good' than Southey?" Blackwood, 1822. —L. E. Mr. Coleridge -See Moore's Life of Byron.

writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have "talked of him; for they laughed consumedly."

I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done more good,

"I come at once to his Lordship's charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be, that Mr. Southey, on his return from Switzerland (in 1817), scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron and others.' To this I reply with a direct and positive denial.

"If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or Monk of La Trappe,-that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly; passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him, as of Baron Geramb, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of his Lordship: and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every body would stare, no one would wonder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alpnacht, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne-not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula.

"Once, and only once, in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; and, as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, 'it was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the Devil and bullied him-though the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonization, ever pleaded for him.'

"With regard to the others,' whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names I found written in the album at Mount-Anvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment, in the same language, underneath it. § Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentle. man in question would not have thought himself slandered, by having that recorded of him, which he has so often recorded of himself.

"The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself.

How easily is a noble spirit discern'd

From harsh and sulphurous matter that flies out

In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks!'-B. Jonson.

But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that, when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, and could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, indeed, that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually as sailing me. But abhorring, as I do, the personalities which disgrace our current literature, and averse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence and the offender are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them.

"Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings, with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of compre hending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and, as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevo.

⚫ Baron Geramb.-a German Jew, who, for some time, excited much public attention in London, by the extravagance of his dress. Being very troublesome and menacing in demanding remuneration from Government, for a proposal he had made of engaging a body of Croat troops in the service of England, he was, in 1812, sent out of the country under the Alien Act.-L. E.

The Green Man was a popular afterpiece, so called from the hero, who wore every thing green, hat, gloves, etc. etc.-L. E.

Mr. P. B. Shelley signed his name, with the addition of altag, in this album.-L. E.

in the charities of life, to their fellow-creatures in any one year, than Mr. Southey has done harm to himself by his absurdities in his whole life; and this is saying a great deal. But I have a few questions to ask.

lence, I thank him for having, in this, stripped it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity.

"Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books; against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality, like them selves; against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewd ness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals.

"His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is an appellation which will not stick, like that of the Satanic school. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled-what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintance, expresse my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of bet ter mind-and then re-issued them when the evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned and taken possession, w seven others, more wicked than himself. I have never abused thr power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wand the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. I have never into the world a book to which I did not dare to affix my name or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirates 13 a knavish bookseller. I bave never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul wrt by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean: there is no damned spot' upon themwhich all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.'

"Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here speak, save only as relates to the Satanic school, and its Corpor the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public testation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the demen morals of the country. I have given them a designation to w their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from IST which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened i name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it săendure.-Take it down who can!

"One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude-When attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little mand of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper be obliged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in same rankness and virulence of insult, the metre will, in son d gree, seem to lessen its vulgarity."

Lord Byron, without waiting for the closing hint of t foregoing letter, had already "attacked" Mr. Southey " rhyme." On October 1, 1821, be says to Mr. Moore.

"I have written about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave st (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think wasn' by Whistlecraft-it is as old as the hills, in Italy,) called The of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus. In this it is my inten put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, at f getting the Poet Laureate, for his preface and his other demers

Lord Byron had proceeded some length in the perfor ance thus announced, before Mr. Southey's letter to Courier fell into his hands. On seeing it, his Lordshi feelings were so excited, that he could not wait for revea in ink shed, but on the instant, despatched a cartel of tal defiance to the Poet Laureate, through the mediam Mr. Douglas Kinnaird,-to whom he thus writes, Febru 6, 1822:

"I have got Southey's pretended reply: what remains to be 4 is to call him out. The question is, would he come? for, would not, the whole thing would appear ridiculous, if I wer take a long and expensive journey to no purpose. You must be second, and, as such, I wish to consult you. I apply to you as well versed in the duello, or monomachie. Of course I ha to England as privately as possible, and leave it (suppos was the survivor) in the same manner; having no other which could bring me to that country except to settle p accumulated during my absence."

Mr. Kinnaird, justly appreciating the momentary acerbation under which Lord Byron had written the c lenge which this letter enclosed, and fully aware bow surd the whole business would seem to his distant fr after the lapse of such a period as must intervene be the return of post from Keswick to Ravenna, pat Byron's warlike missive aside; and it never was beat by Mr. Southey until after the death of its author. time Lord Byron had continued his "attack in rhy and Is Vision of Judgment, after ineffectual negotia with various publishers in London, at length saw the in 1822, in the pages of the unfortunate Liberal.—L E

1stly, Is Mr. Southey the Author of Wat Tyler? 2dly, Was he not refused a remedy at law by the highest judge of his beloved England, because it was a blasphemous and seditious publication? (1) 3dly, Was he not entitled by William Smith, in full parliament, "a rancorous renegado?” (2)

4thly, Is he not Poet Laureate, with his own lines on Martin the regicide staring him in the face? (3)

And, 5thly, Putting the four preceding items together, with what conscience dare he call the attenion of the laws to the publications of others, be they what they may?

I say nothing of the cowardice of such a proceed ng; its meanness speaks for itself; but I wish to touch upon the motive, which is neither more nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the Antijacobin by his present patrons. (4) Hence all this *skimble scamble stuff" about "Satanic," and so forth. However, it is worthy of him-“qualis ab incepto."

If there is any thing obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. He might have written hexameters, as he has written every thing else, for aught that the writer cared-had they been upon another subject. But to attempt to canonise a monarch, who, whatever were his household virtues, was neither a successful nor a patriot king,-inasmuch as several years of his reign passed in war with America and Ireland, to say nothing of the aggression upon France, -like all other exaggeration, necessarily begets opposition. In whatever manner he may be spoken of in this new Vision, his public career will not be more favourably transmitted by history. Of his private virtaes (although a little expensive to the nation) there can be no doubt.

With regard to the supernatural personages treated

(1) In 1821, when Mr. Southey applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain the publication of Wat Tyler, Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced the following judgment:-"I have looked into all the affidavits, and have read the book itself. The bill goes the length of stating, that the work was composed by Mr. Southey in the year 1794; that it is his own production, and that it has been published by the defendants without his sanction or authority; and therefore seeking an account of the profits which have arisen from, and an injunction to restrain, the publi cation. I have examined the cases that I have been able to meet with containing precedents for injunctions of this natare, and I find that they all proceed upon the ground of a title to the property in the plaintiff. On this head a distinetion has been taken, to which a considerable weight of authority attaches, supported, as it is, by the opinion of Lord Chief Justice Eyre; who has expressly laid it down, hat a person cannot recover in damages for a work which s, in its nature, calculated to do injury to the public. Upon the same principle this court refused an injunction in the case of Walcot" (Peter Pindar) "v. Walker, inasmuch as he could not have recovered damages in an action. After the fullest consideration, I remain of the same opinion as that which I entertained in deciding the case referred to. Taking all the circumstances into my consideration, it ap pears to me, that I cannot grant this injunction, until after Mr. Southey shall have established his right to the property by action."-Injunction refused.--L. E.

(2) Mr. William Smith, M. P. for Norwich, made a virulent attack on Mr. Southey in the House of Commons on the 14th of March, 1817, and the Laureate replied by a letter in the Courier. As this Speech and Answer embrace almost all the points on which Lord Byron ever assailed his distinguished brother poet, we think it right to place both in an Appendix to Quevedo Redivivus.-See p. 409, 410. post.-L.E. (3) Among the effusions of Mr. Southey's juvenile muse,

of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I don't think that there is much more to say at present.

QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.

P. S.-It is possible that some readers may object, in these objectionable times, to the freedom with which saints, angels, and spiritual persons discourse in this Vision. But, for precedents upon such points, I must refer him to Fielding's Journey from this World to the next, and to the Visions of myself, the said Quevedo, in Spanish or translated. The reader is also requested to observe, that no doctrinal tenets are insisted upon or discussed; that the person of the Deity is carefully withheld from sight, which is more than can be said for the Laureate, who hath thought proper to make him talk, not "like a school divine," but like the unscholarlike Mr. Southey. The whole action passes on the outside of heaven; and Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, Swift's Tale of a Tub, and the other works above referred to, are cases in point of the freedom with which saints, etc. may be permitted to converse in works not intended to be serious.

Q. R.

** Mr. Southey being, as he says, a good Christian and vindictive, threatens, I understand, a reply to this our answer. It is to be hoped that his visionary faculties will in the mean time have acquired a little more judgment, properly so called: otherwise he will get himself into new dilemmas. These apostate jacobins furnish rich rejoinders. Let him take a specimen. we find this "Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Martin, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years:

"For thirty years secluded from mankind
Here Martin linger'd. Often have these walls
Echo'd his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison. Not to him
Did Nature's fair varieties exist;

He never saw the sun's delightful beams;
Save when through yon high bars he pour'd a sad
And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?
He had rebell'd against the King, and sat
In judgment on him; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! but such
As Plato loved; such as, with holy zeal,
Our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes! awhile
From man withheld; even to the latter days,

When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd."

(4) The following imitation of the Inscription on the Regicide's Apartment, written by Mr. Canning, appeared in the Anti-Jacobin :

"Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brown-
rigg, the 'Prentice-cide, was confined, previous to her Execution.
"For one long term, or ere her trial came,

Here Brownrigg linger'd. Often have these cells
Echo'd her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She scream'd for fresh geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;
Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart, she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes!
Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog
The little Spartans; such as erst chastised
Our Milton, when at college. For this act

Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come
When France shall reign, and laws be all repeal'd.”—L.E.

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