Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 4 September 1817
“Your letter of the 15th has conveyed with its contents the
impression of a seal, to which the ‘Saracen’s Head’ is a seraph, and
the ‘Bull and Mouth’ a delicate device. I knew that calumny had sufficiently
blackened me of later days, but not that it had given the features as well as complexion
of a negro. Poor Augusta is not less, but rather more, shocked than myself, and says
‘people seem to have lost their recollection strangely’ when they engraved
such a ‘blackamoor.’ Pray don’t seal (at least to me) with such a
caricature of the human numskull altogether; and if you don’t break the
seal-cutter’s head, at least crack his libel (or likeness, if it should be a
likeness) of mine.
“Mr. Kinnaird is not
yet arrived, but expected. He has lost by the way all the tooth-powder, as a letter from
Spa informs me.
“By Mr. Rose I
received safely, though tardily, magnesia and tooth-powder, and * * * * Why
do you send me such trash—worse than trash, the Sublime of Mediocrity? Thanks for Lalla, however, which is good; and thanks
for the Edinburgh and Quarterly, both very amusing and well-written. Paris in 1815, &c.—good. Modern Greece—good for nothing; written
by some one who has never been there, and not being able to manage the Spenser stanza,
has invented a thing of its own, consisting of two elegiac stanzas, a heroic line, and
an Alexandrine, twisted on a string. Besides, why ‘modern?’ You may say modern Greeks, but surely Greece itself is rather more ancient than ever it was.—Now for
business.
“You offer 1500 guineas for the new Canto: I won’t
take it. I ask two thousand five hundred guineas for it, which you will either give or
not, as you think proper. It concludes the poem, and consists of 144 ![]()
| 144 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1817. |
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stanzas. The notes are numerous, and chiefly written by Mr. Hobhouse, whose researches have been indefatigable,
and who, I will venture to say, has more real knowledge of Rome and its environs than
any Englishman who has been there since Gibbon.
By the way, to prevent any mistakes, I think it necessary to state the fact that he,
Mr. Hobhouse, has no interest whatever in the price or profit to
be derived from the copyright of either poem or notes directly or indirectly; so that
you are not to suppose that it is by, for, or through him, that I require more for this
Canto than the preceding.—No: but if Mr. Eustace
was to have had two thousand for a poem on Education; if Mr.
Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla &c.; if Mr.
Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose on poetry—I don’t mean to disparage
these gentlemen in their labours—but I ask the aforesaid price for mine. You will tell
me that their productions are considerably longer: very true, and
when they shorten them, I will lengthen mine, and ask less. You shall submit the MS. to
Mr. Gifford, and any other two gentlemen to be
named by you (Mr. Frere, or Mr. Croker, or whomever you please, except such fellows
as your * *s and * *s), and if they pronounce this Canto to be inferior as a whole to the preceding, I will not appeal from their award, but
burn the manuscript, and leave things as they are.
“Yours very truly.
“P.S. In answer to a former letter, I sent you a short
statement of what I thought the state of our present copyright account, viz., six
hundred pounds still (or lately) due on Childe Harold, and six hundred guineas,
Manfred and Tasso, making a total of twelve hundred and thirty
pounds. If we agree about the new poem, I shall take the liberty to reserve the
choice of the manner in which it should be published, viz. a quarto, certes.” *
* * * * * * * *
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)
Scottish poet and man of letters; author of
The Pleasures of Hope
(1799),
Gertrude of Wyoming (1808) and lyric odes. He edited the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30).
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
John Chetwode Eustace (1761-1815)
Roman Catholic priest and tutor; the author of a standard traveler's guide,
Tour through Italy, 2 vols, (1813).
John Hookham Frere (1769-1846)
English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon
(1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the
The
Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of
Prospectus and Specimen of an
intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 1818).
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Author of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788).
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
Henry Gally Knight (1786-1846)
Poet, traveler, and architectural historian; after study at Eton was at Trinity College
with Byron; published oriental tales; notable among his later publications is
The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy from Constantine to the 15th
Century, 2 vols (1842-44). He was a friend of Samuel Rogers.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
Second son of George Rose, treasurer of the navy (1744-1818); he introduced Byron to
Frere's
Whistlecraft poems and translated Casti's
Animale parlante (1819).
William Sotheby (1757-1833)
English man of letters; after Harrow he joined the dragoons, married well, and published
Poems (1790) and became a prolific poet and translator,
prominent in literary society.
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
