Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 20 May 1820
“Murray, my dear,
make my respects to Thomas Campbell, and tell him
from me, with faith and friendship, three things that he must right in his poets:
Firstly, he says Anstey’s Bath Guide characters are taken from
Smollett. ’Tis impossible:—the Guide was
published in 1766, and Humphrey
Clinker in 1771— dunque, ’tis
Smollett who has taken from Anstey.
Secondly, he does not know to whom Cowper
alludes, when he says that there was one who ‘built a church to God, and then blasphemed his name:’ it was
‘Deo erexit Voltaire’ to whom that maniacal
Calvinist and coddled poet alludes. Thirdly, he misquotes and spoils a passage from
Shakspeare, ‘to gild refined gold, to
paint the lily,’ &c.; for lily he puts rose, and bedevils in more words than one the whole quotation.
“Now, Tom is a fine fellow; but he
should be correct: for the first is an injustice (to Anstey), the second an ignorance,
and the third a blunder. Tell him all this, and let him take it
in good part; for I might have rammed it into a review and rowed him—instead of which, I
act like a Christian.
“Yours, &c.”
Christopher Anstey (1724-1805)
English poet; author of the popular burlesque poem,
The New Bath
Guide (1766).
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).
William Cowper (1731-1800)
English poet, author of
Olney Hymns (1779),
John
Gilpin (1782), and
The Task (1785); Cowper's delicate
mental health attracted as much sympathy from romantic readers as his letters, edited by
William Hayley, did admiration.
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.
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Scottish physician and man of letters; author of the novels
Roderick
Random (1747) and
Humphry Clinker (1771).
Voltaire (1694-1778)
French historian and man of letters; author of, among many other works,
The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and
Candide (1759).
