167 — To R. C. Dallas
Newstead, August 21, 1811.
Your letter gives me credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer, and yet I do not feel relieved by it; but an indifferent person would think me in excellent spirits. "We must forget these things," and have recourse to our old selfish comforts, or rather comfortable selfishness.
I
do not think I shall return to London immediately, and shall therefore accept freely what is offered courteously — your mediation between me and Murray
. I don't think my name will answer the purpose, and you must be aware that my plaguy Satire will bring the north and south Grub Streets down upon the
Pilgrimage
; — but, nevertheless, if Murray makes a point of it, and you coincide with him, I will do it daringly; so let it be entitled "
By the author of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
." My remarks on the Romaic, etc., once intended to accompany the
Hints from Horace
, shall go along with the other, as being indeed more appropriate; also the smaller poems now in my possession, with a few selected from those published in Hobhouse's
Miscellany
. I have found amongst my poor mother's papers all my letters from the East, and one in particular of some length from Albania. From this, if necessary, I can work up a note or two on that subject. As I kept no journal, the letters written on the spot are the best. But of this anon, when we have definitively arranged.
Has Murray shown the work to any one? He may — but I will have no traps for applause. Of course there are little things I would wish to alter, and perhaps the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on London's Sunday are as well left out. I much wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's character with mine, and that, in sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the title-page. When you have made arrangements as to time, size, type, etc., favour me with a reply. I am giving you an universe of trouble, which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for my scepticism at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so much more like an attack than a defence, that, haply, it might better be omitted — perpend, pronounce. After all, I fear Murray will be in a scrape with the orthodox; but I cannot help it, though I wish him well through it. As for me, "I have supped full of criticism," and I don't think that the "most dismal treatise" will stir and rouse my "fell of hair" till "Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane."
I shall continue to write at intervals, and hope you will pay me in kind.
How
does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blackett's posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite of your Ionian friend
and myself, who would have saved him from Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine subject for subscription and biography; and Pratt, who makes the most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than five families of distinction.
I
am sorry you don't like Harry White
: with a great deal of cant, which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields
and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft
and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate.
You did not know Matthews: he was a man of the most astonishing powers, as he sufficiently proved at Cambridge, by carrying off more prizes and fellowships, against the ablest candidates, than any other graduate on record; but a most decided atheist, indeed noxiously so, for he proclaimed his principles in all societies. I knew him well, and feel a loss not easily to be supplied to myself — to Hobhouse never. Let me hear from you, and
Believe me, etc.
Footnote 1:
In 1793 John Murray the first (born 1745) died, leaving a widow, two daughters, and one son, John Murray the second (1778-1843), then a boy of fifteen. The bookselling and publishing business at 32, Fleet Street, which the first John Murray had purchased in 1768 from William Sandby, was for two years carried on by the chief assistant, Samuel Highley. From 1795, when John Murray the second joined it, it was conducted as a partnership, under the title of Murray and Highley. But in 1803 John Murray cancelled the partnership, and started for himself at 32, Fleet Street. Relieved from a timorous partner, he at once displayed his shrewdness, energy, and literary enthusiasm. He rapidly became, as Byron called him, "the
Greek (transliterated): Anax
of Publishers," or, as he was nicknamed, "The Emperor of the West." In February, 1809, he had launched the
Quarterly Review
; in March, 1812, he published
Childe Harold
; in the following September, he moved to 50, Albemarle Street, the lease of which, with the stock, good will, and copyrights, he purchased from William Miller (see page 319,
2). The remarkable position which the second John Murray created for himself, has two aspects, one commercial, the other social. He was not only the publisher, but the friend, of the most distinguished men of the day; and he was both by reason, partly of his honourable character, partly of his personal attractiveness. Sir Walter Scott, writing, October 30, 1828, to Lockhart, speaks of Murray in words which sum up his character:
"By all means do what the Emperor says. He is what Emperor Nap was not, 'much a gentleman.'"
Murray was the first to divorce the business of publishing from that of selling books; the first to see, as he wrote to Sir Walter Scott, October 13, 1825 (
A Publisher and his Friends
, vol. ii. p. 199), that
"the business of a publishing bookseller is not in his shop, or even his connection, but in his brains."
Quick-tempered and warm-hearted, he was endowed with a strong sense of humour, and a gift of felicitous expression, which made him at once an admirable talker and an excellent letter-writer, and enabled him to hold his own among the noted wits and brilliant men of letters whom he gathered under his roof. A man of ideas more than a man of business, of enterprise rather than of calculation, he was always on the watch for new writers and new openings. But his imagination and impulsive temperament were checked by his fine taste for sound literature, and controlled by high principles in matters of trade. Thus he was saved from those disastrous speculations which involved Scott in ruin, and might otherwise have appealed with fatal force to his own sanguine nature. His close relations with Byron, which began in 1811, and lasted till the poet's death, are set forth in the numerous letters which follow, and were never embittered even when he refused to continue the publication of
Don Juan
. Their names are inseparably associated in the history of literature. A generous paymaster, he was also an hospitable host. Round him gathers much of the literary history of a half-century which includes such names as those of Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Hallam, Milman, Mahon, Carlyle, Grote, Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, Canning, and Mr. Gladstone. His literary dinners were famous, and his drawing-room was the rallying-place of all that was witty and agreeable in society. At the same time, he was the acknowledged head of the publishing trade, unswerving in the rectitude of his commercial dealings, and in the maintenance of the honourable traditions of his most distinguished predecessors, as well as sincere in his enthusiasm for English letters.
cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 84
Footnote 2:
Walter Rodwell Wright, author of
Horæ Ionicæ, a Poem descriptive of the Ionian Islands, and part of the adjacent coast of Greece,
(1809), had been Consul-General of the Seven Islands. On his return he became Recorder of Bury St. Edmund's. He was subsequently President of the Court of Appeals in Malta, where he died in 1826. (See Byron's address to him in
English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers
, lines 877-880.)
Footnote 3:
Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) published
Clifton Grove
and other poems in 1803. He died at Cambridge in 1806. His
Remains
were published by Southey in 1807. (See
English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers
, lines 831-848, and
note
2.)
Footnote 4:
The three brothers, George Bloomfield, a shoemaker, Nathaniel, a tailor, and Robert, also a shoemaker, were the sons of a tailor at Honington, in Suffolk, whose wife kept the village school. (For further details as to George and Nathaniel, see
English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers
, lines 765-798, and
notes
.)
Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823) achieved a success with his
Farmer's Boy
(1800), of which thousands of copies were sold in England, and which was translated into French and Italian. But however creditable the lines may have been to the author, Byron's opinion of the merits of the poet was the true one. Bloomfield's subsequent volumes, of which there were seven, were inferior to
The Farmer's Boy
.
Good Tidings, or News from the Farm
(1804), is perhaps the best known. A collected edition of Bloomfield's
Works
was published in 1824.
cross-reference: return to Footnote 2 of Letter 154
Footnote 5:
Capel Lofft (1751-1824), educated at Eton and Cambridge, was called to the Bar in 1775. Succeeding in 1781 to the family estates near Bury St. Edmund's, he lived for some years at Troston Hall. Crabb Robinson (Diary, vol. i. p. 29) describes him, in 1795, as
"a gentleman of good family and estate — an author on an infinity of subjects; his books were on Law, History, Poetry, Antiquities, Divinity, and Politics. He was then an acting magistrate, having abandoned the profession of the Bar. He was one of the numerous answerers of Burke; and, in spite of a feeble voice and other disadvantages, was an eloquent speaker."
His boyish figure, slovenly dress, and involved sentences were well known on the platforms where he advocated parliamentary reform. On May 17, 1784, Johnson dined at Mr. Dilly's. Among the guests was
"Mr. Capel Lofft, who, though a most zealous Whig, has a mind so full of learning and knowledge, and so much in exercise in various exertions, and withal so much liberality, that the stupendous powers of the literary Goliath, though they did not frighten this little David of popular spirit, could not but excite his admiration."
Lofft held strong opinions in favour of the French Revolution, which he admired. He, "Godwin, and Thelwall are the only three persons I know (except Hazlitt) who grieve at the late events;" so writes Crabb Robinson, after the battle of Waterloo (Diary, vol. i. p. 491). He published numerous works on law and politics, besides four volumes of poetry: The Praises of Poetry, a Poem (1775); Eudosia, or a Poem on the Universe (1781); The first and second Georgics of Virgil (in blank verse, 1803); Laura, or an Anthology of Sonnets (1814). He also edited Milton's Paradise Lost. In November, 1798, Lofft read the manuscript of The Farmer's Boy, written by Robert Bloomfield in a London garret, where he worked as a shoemaker. Interested in the poem and the Suffolk poet, Lofft had it published in 1800, with cuts by Bewick, and a preface by himself.
