University of Virginia Library

THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF BYRON'S "TO THE PO"
by
Andrew M. Stauffer

Written in June of 1819 as Byron was falling uneasily in love with Theresa Guiccioli, "To the Po" provides one of our best examples of his late lyric mode, in which his passions are made tributary to clear-eyed surveys of the contradictions and limits of his life. The poem has long been thought to have first met the public eye in Thomas Medwin's Journal of the Conversations of the Lord Byron, published on October 23, 1824.[1] Certainly, Medwin was the instrument by which "To the Po" was published and known; prior to McGann's edition of Byron, "all printed texts [could] be traced back to Medwin as their most important intermediate source" (CPW 4.497). A friend and frequent visitor of both Byron and Shelley in 1821 and 1822, Medwin was well-placed to secure a copy of this particular poem; textual evidence indicates that he transcribed it from a manuscript copy that Mary Shelley executed in 1819. However, the poem in fact appeared in print just prior to its publication in the Conversations, in the premier issue of a literary journal entitled the Attic Miscellany, accompanying a preview of Medwin's work.[2] This version of the poem offers another window on the lost Medwin transcript.

The poem Byron himself called "To the Po" was first published as "ORIGINAL VERSES BY LORD BYRON: / Addressed to the Countess Guiccioli. / (From Capt. Medwin's Work.)" in the October (and indeed, the only) number of the Attic Miscellany, an abortive journal issued under the sponsorship of Thomas Colley Grattan, Henry Bulwer and Charles Sheridan, and edited by a Mr. Forbes.[3] Grattan had served as Medwin's literary agent in the placement

of the Journal of the Conversations with publisher Henry Colburn,[4] who allowed Grattan to publish extracts in advance. As Grattan describes the transaction,

Furthermore, Grattan writes in the introductory article in the Miscellany,

These extracts were printed as part of "Article IV" in the Miscellany, entitled "LORD BYRON AND HIS MEMOIRS. / Including Facts and Opinions as detailed by himself in authentic and / original Conversations with a Friend, upon the most interesting / Circumstances of his Life, his Contemporaries, and the Literature of / the present Day. / (Extracted from a Work now in the Press)," which occupies pages 26-37 of the issue. The "Original Verses" (i.e., "To the Po") appear separately on pages 136-137, between Articles XIV and XV.

In order to place this Attic Miscellany printing in context, we need to review briefly the textual history of "To the Po." We have a number of relevant manuscripts: Byron's original draft manuscript (MS. Mo), two transcripts of that draft by Mary Shelley (MSS. A and P), Byron's revised fair copy (MS. B), and a later (1827-29) transcript of MS. P made by Theresa Guiccioli (MS. G). The only relevant printed texts are those in the Miscellany and the Conversations; they derive directly from Medwin's transcript. McGann has determined that Medwin made his copy from Mary Shelley's MS. A (the earlier of her two transcripts), given that the Conversations text shares its unique readings (but not those of any other ms.). The Miscellany text shares these as well, helping confirm McGann's conclusion. Indeed, both of Mary's copies—MS. A and MS. P—are quite similar, differing only at three substantive points: MS. A has "and" for "yet" in line 17, "that moment" for "this moment" in line 26, and "on" for "by" in line 35. Medwin's copy as published in both the Miscellany and the Conversations does follow MS. A precisely at these three points, and thus most likely derived from it.[5]

Despite Grattan's assumption that Colburn would deliver proof-sheets of Medwin's work to the Attic Miscellany editors, Forbes and his typesetters were evidently working from Medwin's holograph manuscript itself, given the variants introduced there in the poem (and in the extracts as well).[6] This is significant in that the Miscellany text offers another partial view of Medwin's now-lost manuscript transcription of "To the Po." We know that the notoriously inaccurate Medwin produced a corrupt version of MS. A, not only through carelessness but by `improving' the poem in small ways as he copied. In both the Miscellany and Conversations printings of his manuscript, we find some thirteen substantive variants from MS. A. These can be observed in the following table, where differences in punctuation have not been recorded:

                                 

Stanza	Line	MS.A	Miscellany	Conversations
1	3	thy brink	the brink	the brink
4	13	have somewhat	somewhat have	have somewhat
5	17	behind us	behind us	behind them
5	19	wildly	wildly onward	wildly onward
6	23	will look	shall look	will look
6	24	unchained from	unharmed from	unharm'd by
7	27	name, hear named or see	name, nor name and see	dream of, name or see
7	28	inseparable	inseparable	inseparable
8	29	on thy	in thy	in thy
8	32	it's flow	a flow	its flow
9	35	thy bank	thy banks	thy banks
9	36	the source	the source	thy source
9	36	blue deep	dark-blue deep	dark-blue deep
10	39	distractions	distraction	distraction
11	40	Ah! various	As various	As various
14	52	cannot be moved	can ne'er be moved	can ne'er be moved

This collation shows that each printing of Medwin's copy of MS.A produced a different array of error. Forbes's version of the Medwin transcription (in the Miscellany) adheres to MS. A slightly more closely than does Colburn's version of it (in the Conversations): in lines 17, 24, 27, and 36, the Miscellany text follows MS. A where Conversations departs from it. However, in lines 13, 23, and 32 the opposite holds true; Conversations is closer to MS. A at these points. These conflicting errors suggest that Medwin's transcription— already corrupt at a number of points (e.g. 19, 36, 52)—was also difficult to decipher. Lines 24 and 27 in particular show the Miscellany editors reading more carefully than Colburn did, and yet still making mistakes: "unchained"

looked like "unharmed" and the sequence "name, here named, or see" was difficult to make out for both editors.

Ultimately, as McGann has shown, Byron would have favored neither published version, as he produced a revised text in April of 1820 (MS. B).[7] However, as the first text of the poem to be published, the Attic Miscellany version has priority in our conception of "To the Po" as part of Byron's printed legacy to post-Romantic England. The terms of its existence also help to fill out our picture of the publication and reception histories of Medwin's Conversations, a book of literary gossip that contributed heavily to the Victorian perception of Byron's personality, and to the biographical pursuit of the poet in general. Thanks to Medwin, "To the Po" itself comes to us as a record of one of Byron's personal romantic involvements—as do so many of his poems, early and late. In publishing "To the Po" in the midst of Byron's conversations, Medwin enacts an editorial theory that respects the deep connections of poetry and biography for readers of Byron. The Attic Miscellany extracts offer more evidence of how this Medwinian method of presenting Byron found its way to a public hungry for more.

Notes