(8) Byroniana No. 5 (The Courier, February 19, 1814).
"He professes no keeping oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool."
All's Well that ends Well.
We have, we should hope, sufficiently exposed the audacious levity and waywardness of Lord Byron's mind, and yet there are a few touches which we think will give a finish to the portrait, and add, if it be at all wanting, to the strength of the resemblance.
...
It must be amusing to those who know anything of Lord Byron in the circles of London, to find him magnanimously defying in very stout heroics,
"—all the din of Melbourne House
And Lambes' resentment—" and adding that he is "unscared
" even by " Holland's spouse."
...
To those who may be in the habit of hearing his Lordship's political descants, the following extract will appear equally curious:
"Mr. Brougham, in No. 25 of the Edinburgh Review, throughout the article concerning Don Pedro Cevallos, has displayed more politics than policy; many of the worthy burgesses of Edinburgh being so incensed at the Infamous principles it evinces, as to have withdrawn their subscriptions;" and in the text of this poem, to which the foregoing is a note, he advises the Editor of the Review to
"Beware, lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale;
Turn beef to bannacks, cauliflower to kail."
Those who have attended to his Lordship's progress as an author, and observed that he has published four poems, in little more than two years, will start at the following lines:
"—Oh cease thy song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long;
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare;
A Fourth, alas, were more than we could bear."
And as the scene of each of these four Poems is laid in the Levant, it is curious to recollect, that when his Lordship informed the world that he was about to visit "Afric's coast," and "Calpe's height," and "Stamboul's minarets," and "Beauty's native clime," he enters into a voluntary and solemn engagement with the public,
"That should he back return, no letter'd rage
Shall drag his common-place book on the stage;
Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,
He'll leave topography to classic Cell,
And, quite content, no more shall interpose,
To stun mankind with poetry or prose."
And yet we have already had, growing out of this "Tour," four volumes of poetry, enriched with copious notes in prose, selected from his "common-place book." The whole interspersed every here and there with the most convincing proofs that instead of being "quite content," his Lordship has returned, as he went out, the most discontented and peevish thing that breathes.
But the passage of all others which gives us the most delight is that in which his Lordship attacks his critics, and declares that
"Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are penetrable stuff."
and adds,
"—I have—
Learn'd to deride the Critic's stern decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me."
We should now, with all humility, ask his Lordship whether he yet feels that "he too is penetrable stuff;" and we should further wish to know how he likes being "broken on the wheel he meant for others?"
When his Lordship shall have sufficiently pondered on those questions, we may perhaps venture to propound one or two more.
