209—to Francis Hodgson
8, St. James's Street, December 4, 1811.
My Dear Hodgson
,—I
have
seen Miller
, who will see Bland
, but I have no great hopes of his obtaining the translation from the crowd of candidates. Yesterday I wrote to Harness, who will probably tell you what I said on the subject. Hobhouse has sent me my Romaic MS., and I shall require your aid in correcting the press, as your Greek eye is more correct than mine. But these will not come to type this month, I dare say. I
have
put some soft lines on ye Scotch in the
Curse of Minerva
; take them;
"Yet Caledonia claims some native worth," etc. 3
If you are not content now, I must say with the Irish drummer to the deserter who called out,
"Flog high, flog low"
"The de'il burn ye, there's no pleasing you, flog where one will."
Have you given up wine, even British wine?
I
have
read Watson to Gibbon
. He proves nothing, so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy Creed, and I want a better, but there is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything. The post brings me to a conclusion. Bland has just been here. Yours ever,
BN.
Footnote 1:
See
Letters
, vol. i. p. 319,
note
2 [Footnote 1 of Letter 158].
Footnote 2:
Byron was endeavouring to secure for Bland (see
Letters
, vol. i. p. 271,
note
1 [Footnote 2 of Letter 137]), the work of translating Lucien Buonaparte's poem of
Charlemagne
. He did not succeed. The poem, translated by Dr. Butler, Head-master of Shrewsbury, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, and Francis Hodgson, was published in 1815.
Footnote 3:
Lines 149-156.
Footnote 4:
An Apology for Christianity, in a Series of Letters to Edward Gibbon, Esq.
, by Richard Watson, D.D. (1776). Gibbon had a great respect for Watson, at this time Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, whom he describes as "a prelate of a large mind and liberal spirit." In a letter to Holroyd (November 4, 1776), he speaks of the
Apology
as "feeble," but "uncommingly genteel." To his stepmother he writes, November 29, 1776, that Watson's answer is "civil" and "too dull to deserve your notice."
