Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 4 December 1811
8 St. James’s Street: December 4, 1811.
My dear Hodgson,—I have seen Miller, who will see Bland, but I have no great hopes of his obtaining ![]()
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the translation1 from
the crowd of candidates. Yesterday I wrote to Harness, who will probably tell you what I said on the subject.
Hobhouse has sent me my Romaic MSS.,
and I shall require your aid in correcting the press, as your Greek eye is more
correct than mine. But these will not come to type this month, I dare say. I
have put some soft lines on ye Scotch in the ‘Curse of Minerva,’ take them:
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth, &c. |
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If you are not content now, I must say with the Irish drummer to the
deserter who called out, ‘Flog high, flog low’—‘The
de’il burn ye, there’s no pleasing you, flog where one will.’
I have read Watson to Gibbon. He proves nothing, so I am where I was, verging
towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy
creed, and I want a better, but there is something pagan in me that I cannot
shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything. The post brings me
to a conclusion. Bland has just been
here.
Yours ever,
Bn.
Robert Bland (1779 c.-1825)
Under-master at Harrow 1796-1805, where he taught Byron; he was a friend of Byron and of
Francis Hodgson. With John Herman Merivale he published
Translations,
chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1806).
William Harness (1790-1869)
A Harrow friend and early correspondent of Byron. He later answered the poet in
The Wrath of Cain (1822) and published an edition of Shakespeare
(1825) and other literary projects. Harness was a longtime friend of Mary Russell
Mitford.
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).
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
William Richard Beckford Miller (1769-1844)
Albemarle-Street bookseller; he began publishing in 1790; shortly after he rejected
Byron's
Childe Harold in 1811 his stock and premises were purchased
by John Murray.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
Jewish writer who after being excommunicated pursued Enlightenment philosophy in
Holland.
