TWO LETTERS CONCERNING LORD BYRON. HAVING, in the Preface to my 'Vision of Judg ment,' explained the principle upon which th metre of that poem is constructed, I took the of portunity of introducing the following remarks: "I am well aware that the public are peculiarl intolerant of such innovations; not less so tha the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether foppery or convenience. Would that this literar intolerance were under the influence of a sane judgement, and regarded the morals more than th manner of a composition; the spirit rather than th form! Would that it were directed against thos monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery lewdness and impiety, with which English poetr has, in our days, first been polluted! For mor than half a century English literature had bee distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and, i its turn, the cause of an improvement in nationa manners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his children an book which issued from the press, if it did not bear either in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest sign that it was intended as 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 shame. Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly administered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works would neither be published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, and ought to be, bypublic feeling; every person, therefore, who purchases such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and abettor of the crime. "The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences which can be committed against the well-being of society. It is a sin, to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, and those consequences no after repentance in the writer can counteract. Whatever remorse of conscience he may feel when his hour comes (and come it must!) will be of no avail. The poignancy of a death-bed repentance cannot cancel one copy of the thousands which are sent abroad; and as long as it continues to be read, so long is he the pander of posterity, and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation. "These remarks are not more severe than th offence deserves, even when applied to those im moral writers who have not been conscious of an evil intention in their writings, who would acknow ledge a little levity, a little warmth of colouring and so forth, in that sort of language with which men gloss over their favourite vices, and deceive themselves. What then should be said of those for whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be pleaded, but whe have written in sober manhood and with deliberate purpose?.. Men of diseased * hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable Summi poetæ in omni poetarum sæculo viri fuerunt probi : im nostris id vidimus et videmus; neque alius est error a veritate longiù quàm magna ingenia magnis necessario corrumpi vitiis. Secund plerique posihabent primum, hi malignitate, illi ignorantiá; et quan aliquem inveniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nec inficetum tamen nec in libris edendis parcum, eum stipant, prædicant, occupant, am plectuntur. Si mores aliquantulum vellet corrigere, si stylum curar... paululum, si fervido ingenio temperare, si moræ tantillum interponere. tum ingens nescio quid et verè epicum, quadraginta annos natus, procuderat. Ignorant verò febriculis non indicari vires, impatientiam al imbecillitate non differre; ignorant a levi homine et inconstante mult fortasse scribi posse plusquam mediocria, nihil compositum, arduum æternum. Savagius Landor, De Cultu atque Usu Latini Sermonis This essay, which is full of fine critical remarks and striking thoughts felicitously expressed, reached me from Pisa, while the proof of the present sheet was before me. Of its author, (the author of Gebir and Count Julian) I will only say in this place, that, to have obtained his approbation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a man, will be remembered among the honours of my life, when the petty enmities of this generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral reputations shall have past away. |