243—to John Murray
High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5, 1812.
Dear Sir,—Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the
E.R.
with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request.—How do you go on? and when is the graven image, "with bays and wicked rhyme upon't," to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?
Send me "Rokeby" 1 who the deuce is he?—no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your inquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point.
What will you give me or mine for a poem 2 of six cantos, (when complete—no rhyme, no recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas which one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
Byron.
P. S.—My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like Jeremy Diddler 3 , I only "ask for information."—Send me Adair on Diet and Regimen , just republished by Ridgway 4 .
Footnote 1:
Rokeby, completed December 31, 1812, was published in the following year, with a dedication to John Morritt, to whom Rokeby belonged. It was, as Scott admits in the Preface to the edition of 1830, comparatively a failure. In the popularity of Byron he finds the chief cause of the small success which his poem obtained.
"To have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared," he writes, "its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage—a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of Childe Harold."
On this rivalry Byron wrote the passage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of Rokeby was its inferiority both to the Lay and to Marmion. In Letter vii. of the Twopenny Post-bag, Moore writes thus of Rokeby
"Should you feel any touch of poetical glow,
We've a Scheme to suggest—Mr. Sc—tt, you must know,
(Who, we're sorry to say it, now works for the Row)
Having quitted the Borders, to seek new renown,
Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town;
And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay)
Means to do all the Gentlemen's Seats on the way.
Now the Scheme is (though none of our hackneys can beat him)
To start a fresh Poet through Highgate to meet him;
Who, by means of quick proofs—no revises—long coaches—
May do a few Villas before Sc—tt approaches—
Indeed, if our Pegasus be not curst shabby,
He'll reach, without found'ring, at least Woburn Abbey."
Footnote 2:
The Giaour, published in 1813, for which Murray paid, not Byron, but Dallas, 500 guineas.
Footnote 3:
Kenney's Raising the Wind, act i. sc. 1:
| Diddler | O Sam, you haven't got such a thing as tenpence about you, have you? |
| Sam | Yes. And I mean to keep it about me, you see. |
| Diddler | Oh, aye, certainly. I only asked for information. |
Footnote 4:
James MacKittrick (1728-1802), who assumed the name of Adair, published, in 1804, An Essay on Diet and Regimen, as indispensable to the Recovery and Preservation of Firm Health, especially to Indolent, Studious, Delicate and Invalid; with appropriate cases.
