 | Randolph |  |
EDWARD MOLTON TO GEORGE STAFFORD.
No, Stafford, I never liked Byron. He wants natural
steadiness and grandeur. He is too full of affectation.—
Nothing is unpremeditated, with him; nothing permament.
His ambition is affected; his melancholy affected;
and so are his love and his misanthrophy. If he really
suffered, he would not be so forward to tell of it.
Men seek concealment in their calamity, whenever that
calamity is accompanied with wounded self-love. Not
so with Byron. Whatever happens to him, is for the
publick. His family distresses—the holiness of his home
—the sanctity of a loved one, whose heart is bruised and
sore, with his unkindness, in her retirement, are all exhibited
as so many spectacles. His passions, and thoughts,
are nothing more to him, than a kind of ware, with which he
supplies the market—a theatrical company, which he lets
out to the mob, for tragedy or comedy, prose or verse.
To-day the public appetite is for the moody and mysterious.
Byron profits by it. He marshals a score of
heroes, all of the same family; and exhibits them, with
such an air of reality, and with so many of his own diseased
attributes, that the world are willing to believe that they
are drawn from life. Ridiculous. Two or three things
alone that I find in his poetry, are enough to convince me,
that Byron is, naturally, a pleasant, harmless, inoffensive
sort of fellow, with no more gall nor bitterness of
heart, than many a man, who is never suspected of having
any at all. A sort of notion seems to prevail, that he
is blood-thirsty. I do not believe it. Nor do I even believe
that he is really a brave man. My reason is this;
and it is quite enough for me. He has published a note,
to his British Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, which no
brave man ever would have published. He speaks of
having waited for the vengeance of whosoever might see
fit to assail him, after he had published the first edition.
Can anything be pleasanter? What had he said so perilous,
to his personal safety? Nothing. But of whom
was it said?—of a set of poets—the most patient of
God's creatures, where powder and ball are concerned,
paper bullets of the brain “only,” are to be encountered.
No—Stafford. Byron is not a great man;—by this, I
mean, that he has not that quality which makes bad men
great, at times,—immobility. Every thing shakes him;
every thing disturbs him. That he is a great poet, I do
not deny. But while I admit that, in a part of his labour
he has never been excelled, yet I will maintain that no
man has written a greater proportion of abominable
trash.
The fashion will soon have gone by, as it was with
Walter Scott's poems, and will be with the novels that
are attributed to him, now. But this must not be known.
People forget the past, and regard the present, as an exception
to the vicissitude of fashion. If I should say,
therefore, that the time is close at hand, when Byron's
poems, and the Scotch novels, will be found on the same
shelf with Scott's poems, covered with dust; a drug in
Booksellers shops; and a part, too sacred to be touched,
of the library—I should be laughed at. Yet, it will be
so. The fashion is passing away. The measure and
manner of Byron, is worn out; and the novel writer is
exhausted. I can remember, when it was little else than
blasphemy to utter aught, against the poems of Walter
Scott;—I can remember when they were found upon every
table, every toilet; when they were cited on all occasions;
and his songs were to be heard, at every turn.
Then it would have been thought madness to predict,
what has since happened. Then, there was no such poetry,
as Walter Scott's poetry; no such poet as Walter
Scott. The Edinburgh Reviewers ranked him with
Homer!—and Lord Byron swore that his rhymes should
live, when England was no more!—How is it now? No
bookseller is willing to have them upon his shelves.—
They are seen upon no table—no toilet;—and nobody
pretends now, that Walter Scott was ever any thing more
than a pleasant, fiery sort of a rhymer; who, after drawing
two or three strong characters, kept the same, continually
before the publick, in different dresses, and under
different names, until they, simple souls, without
and come to their senses. The true reason was, that,
in his new works, there was nothing new;—nothing in
character, measure, image, and little in incident. Had
the name been unchanged, the whole might have passed
for one story. Bating a catastrophe, now and then, they
had more connexion than the cantos of Childe Harold; and,
finally it has come to this, that, of all his poems, that
which first made him popular, the Lady of the Lake, is
the only one that is ever spoken of now, with complacency.
Will this be the fate of the novels? Undoubtedly.—
Though I do not believe, that Walter Scott is the author,
for they are full of strength and destitute of ornament;
yet I believe that they will share the fate of the poems,
and that Byron's labour will go with them. Nay—is it
not so now? Has not his lordship discovered the fact;
and adopted another manner, entirely contradictory to
his old, in that Don Juan, which you have sent me?—
By the way, I should have written to you, on the subject of
that poem, when I first received it, but I was constantly
travelling. Yet, I shall endeavour to say a word or two
here, before we part.
But are there not other reasons, separate from the
fickleness of publick opinion, which may lead to this result?
I think that there are. They have been much
too popular, and too suddenly and vehemently popular.
Such things, no matter what their merit is, cannot last.
Besides, after admitting the merit of the writer, the dramatick
distinctness of his characters; for, after all, that is
his chief, if not his only merit, for there is nothing remarkable
in his style;—there are so many drawbacks,
so much trash—so many chapters of tiresome pedantry---
horology—law---heraldry---history---and stuff, relative
to individuals, that can be interesting only to those who
know the parties, that I should not fear to utter the prediction,
solely on that ground. But a great and conspicuous
fault is this; that all his leading characters are
the same. He seems to have no conception of mind, distinct
from the body. With him, the same body has always
point out to me where the real difference is. It is only
in a greater or less degree of vulgarity—and that, oftener
in the dress and situation, than in the language;
for his low-born often talk better than the high-born.—
In every tale, there is a deformed man;—with long arms
and prodigious personal strength:—there is Dirk
Hatterick, Ashley Osbaldeston—Rob Roy—the little
Black Dwarf—and the great Black Dwarf, for example,
all with the devil in their hearts.—And here I cannot
help making a remark that has long had weight with
me.—However it may be with Walter Scott, who I am
told is lame, I was sure, the moment that I saw Byron,
(and I did not know that he was clubfooted, till then)
that that was the chief cause of his bitterness and hostility
to men. The mind accustoms itself to regard the
body of a man, like his countenance, as in character
with his spirit. There is the crook backed “tyrant” of
Shakspeare, whom by the way, I suppose you know to have
been a “marvellous proper man,” and no more crook-backed
than I am. Such men, like the diminutive and
weak, cannot be magnanimous. What would be forbearance
in the strong and valiant, would be, in them,
but pusillanimity. They are viewed with an evil eye.—
Women avoid them—and fools, with better faces and
feet, get ahead of them. The consequence is, that they
become dark, unforgiving, and terrible;—their hearts
secrete a continual poison;—what is aliment to others,
the smile of beauty, the movement and grace of fashionable
life—is bitterness and death to them.—Love and women
are to them a perpetual taunt. They cannot be
loved—they know that;—if they have any ambition, they
aim to be feared, as the next best thing, accessible to
them.
But I am wandering again. Let us return. There
is also a series of mad women, you know, running
through the whole set of these novels—Meg Merillies;
Madge Wildfire; Ulrica; Edith; Helen McGregor; Norna
of the Fitful-Head; and one or two others, whom I cannot
recollect. And, after deducting these two sets of
—nothing but what is common to many novels, if we except
Claverhouse, which is only a sketch; Rebecca; Minna;
and Di Vernon; and the Waverly Heroine (who
are all one) and the Knight Templar.—The others are
paltry. And I do say that we shall see the time, and
soon too, when few persons will have the patience to
read through some of them, which are now thought the
most of—as Waverly, for instance. Can any thing be
more tiresome than the first one or two hundred pages
of Waverly—excepting some part of the latter? I can
remember when it first appeared. I read it with great
difficulty. It was the most irksome thing to me, that I
had ever met with—such was the general sentiment, too.
But the Scotch Reviewers pronounced it a miracle; and
we, in our humility, echoed the edict. They, too, have
declared that “Old Mortality” and “Waverly” are the
best of the collection. We have been fools enough to believe
them. And yet, Stafford, to an Englishman, or an
American, they are the most tiresome; and, for the very
reason that they are the most grateful to a Scot—their
extreme particularity and locality. No wonder that a
Scot finds entertainment in the barbarous gibberish of the
natives; but must we, in spite of our teeth, be pleased
too, with what is unintelligible to us? I hope not. No
—the fact is that the best of these novels are those that
are not national—Guy Mannering is the best—I vanhoe
the next. They are stories that men relish, who never
heard of Scotland, and never wish to hear of it. The characters
are not individuals—but species:—the language is
not provincial, but universal. But the epidemick
for Scotch poetry—cloaks—ribbands—novels—criticism—science—and
musick, is rapidly passing off.—
We begin to be only rationally disquieted by it.
But—if I am to say anything of Don Juan, I must do
it soon; my paper is nearly out. My first notion is, that
it is merely a piece of pleasantry in Lord Byron; and that
the world have sadly mistaken him, in supposing that he
had any design, good or bad, in sending it abroad. That it
is profligate, I admit;—but, is it more so, than Shakspeare?—his
—or is it half so coarse and brutal as his Othello? Why
even now, after the pruning of a whole century—a decent
woman can hardly sit it out, without blushing to the
very heart. Nay—there is the whole school of Beaumont
and Fletcher—Madam Centlivre;—and even
that most genteel piece of obscenity, that was ever tolerated
upon any stage, the SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL—the
greatest outrage upon decency that I know;—and all the
novels of Smollet and Fielding—are they not unspeakably
more coarse and shameful? They are. But do
not suppose that I mean to justify or plead for Byron.—
No. But I mean to say that, while the blasphemy, and
detestable licentiousness of his poems are complained of—
it would be more decent to complain of it, a little more
temperately; and after reading a little in Milton and
Shakspeare. Treat it as it is—sneer at it, as the pastime
of a wicked, dissolute man, worth reading, on account
of its vivacity; but not to be dreaded, as it is, like death
and rottenness, to the human heart. There, your reviewers
were foolish;—but they have set the fashion, and
we have followed it. They have called it the ne plus ultra
of genius and wickedness; and we have repeated it.
The opinion is false. It is no such wonderful thing,—
except for its eccentricity, as coming from the misanthrope.
You see with what facility it has been imitated.
There are parts in both of the works that I sent you, so
like the best part of Juan, that it would be difficult to detect
the counterfeit. Nay, nothing is easier;—and the
ridiculous doctrine of association, I take it, was first
gravely followed in Byron's Childe Harold. There, he
was forever wandering. And it is my serious opinion,
that, having become sensible, that it was easy to make
that habit, and consequently, the writer, ridiculous, he
tried his hand at Beppo, by way of anticipating such ridicule.
M. G. Lewis did the same thing, you know,
with his Giles Jollop. Don Juan, therefore, is only a
parody upon Childe Harold, by the author himself.—
And what is this association? That which keeps a man
continually turning. The author thinks of a horse—that
the moon—that, of lunaticks—that, of mad Lee—that, of
poor Swift—that, of racing—that, of the Olympian
games—that, of cards—boxing—bull fights—Elgin marbles—gladiators---Greece—Liberty—the
Turks—Emperor
Alexander, &c. &c. in short, of every thing, and
anything, but the subject in hand. And that is association!
I have now done. If you would have the venom of
Don Juan diluted,—make less noise about it. That is a
sure way. At present, people are ambitious of trying
the strength of their constitutions.
| Randolph | |