"In the evening at Coleridge"s lecture. Conclusion of Milton. Not one of the happiest of Coleridge"s efforts. Rogers was there, and with him was Lord Byron. He was wrapped up, but I recognized his club foot, and, indeed, his countenance and general appearance."]
[Footnote 4:
""Benedict":
No; if a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him."
"Much Ado about Nothing", act v. sc. 4.]
[Footnote 5: Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) lectured at the Royal Inst.i.tution in 1811 on poetry. The lectures were afterwards published in the "New Monthly Magazine", of which he was editor (1820-30).
Campbell also apparently read his lectures aloud at private houses. Miss Berry ("Journal", vol. ii. p. 502) mentions a dinner-party on June 26, 1812, at the Princess of Wales"s, where she heard him read his "first discourse," delivered at the Inst.i.tution. Again (ibid., vol. iii. p. 6), she dined with Madame de Stael, March 9, 1814:
"n.o.body but Campbell the poet, Rocca, and her own daughter. After dinner, Campbell read to us a discourse of his upon English poetry, and upon some of the great poets. There are always signs of a poet and critic of genius in all he does, often enc.u.mbered by too ornate a style."
Campbell"s best work was done between 1798 and 1810. Within that period were published "The Pleasures of Hope" (1799), "Gertrude of Wyoming"
(1809), and such other shorter poems as "Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England," "The Battle of the Baltic," and "O"Connor"s Child." His "Ritter Bann," a reminiscence of his sojourn abroad (1800-1), was not published till later; both it and "The Last Man" were published in the "New Monthly Magazine", during the period of his editorship. An excellent judge of verse, he collected "Specimens of the British Poets"
(1819), to which he added a valuable essay on poetry and short biographies. His "Theodoric" (1824), "Pilgrim of Glencoe" (1842), and Lives of Mrs. Siddons, Petrarch, and Shakespeare added nothing to his reputation.
The judgment of contemporary poets in the main agreed with Coleridge"s estimate of Campbell"s work.
"There are some of Campbell"s lyrics," said Rogers ("Table-Talk", etc., pp. 254, 255), "which will never die. His "Pleasures of Hope" is no great favourite with me. The "feeling" throughout his "Gertrude" is very beautiful." Wordsworth also thought the "Pleasures of Hope"
"strangely over-rated; its fine words and sounding lines please the generality of readers, who never stop to ask themselves the meaning of a pa.s.sage." Byron, who calls Campbell "a warm-hearted and honest man,"
thought that his ""Lochiel" and "Mariners" are spirit-stirring productions; his "Gertrude of Wyoming" is beautiful; and some of the episodes in his "Pleasures of Hope" pleased me so much that I know them by heart".
(Lady Blessington"s "Conversations with Lord Byron", p. 353).
George Ticknor, who met Campbell in 1815 ("Life", vol. i. p. 63), says,
"He is a short, small man, and has one of the roundest and most lively faces I have seen amongst this grave people. His manners seemed as open as his countenance, and his conversation as spirited as his poetry. He could have kept me amused till morning."
Shortly afterwards, Ticknor went to see him at Sydenham (ibid., p. 65):
"Campbell had the same good spirits and love of merriment as when I met him before,--the same desire to amuse everybody about him; but still I could see, as I partly saw then, that he labours under the burden of an extraordinary reputation, too easily acquired, and feels too constantly that it is necessary for him to make an exertion to satisfy expectation. The consequence is that, though he is always amusing, he is not always quite natural."
Sir Walter Scott made a similar remark about the numbing effect of Campbell"s reputation upon his literary work; his deference to critics ruined his individuality. It was Scott"s admiration for "Hohenlinden"
which induced Campbell to publish the poem. The two men, travelling in a stage-coach alone, beguiled the way by repeating poetry. At last Scott asked Campbell for something of his own. He replied that there was one thing he had never printed, full of "drums and trumpets and blunderbusses and thunder," and that he did not know if there was any good in it. He then repeated "Hohenlinden." When he had finished, Scott broke out with,
"But, do you know, that"s devilish fine! Why, it"s the finest thing you ever wrote, and it "must" be printed!"]
[Footnote 6: See p. 31, note 1 [Footnote 1 of Letter 181].]
[Footnote 7: Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788-1830), fifth son of the seventh Baron Kinnaird, was educated at Eton, Gottingen, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an intimate friend of Hobhouse, with whom he travelled on the Continent (1813-14), and was in political sympathy. He represented Bishop"s Castle from July, 1819, to March, 1820, but losing his seat at the general election, did not again attempt to enter Parliament. He was famous for his "mob dinners," to which Moore probably refers when he writes to Byron, in an undated letter, of the "Deipnosophist Kinnaird." He was a partner in the bank of Ransom and Morland, a member of the committee for managing Drury Lane Theatre, author of the acting version of "The Merchant of Bruges, or Beggar"s Bush" (acted at Drury Lane, December 14, 1815), and a member of the Radical Rota Club.
Kinnaird was Byron"s "trusty and trustworthy trustee and banker, and crown and sheet anchor." It was at his suggestion that Byron wrote the "Hebrew Melodies" and the "Monody on the Death of Sheridan". Talking of Kinnaird to Lady Blessington ("Conversations", p. 215), Byron said,
"My friend Dug is a proof that a good heart cannot compensate for an irritable temper; whenever he is named, people dwell on the last and pa.s.s over the first; and yet he really has an excellent heart, and a sound head, of which I, in common with many others of his friends, have had various proofs. He is clever, too, and well informed, and I do think would have made a figure in the world, were it not for his temper, which gives a dictatorial tone to his manner, that is offensive to the "amour propre" of those with whom he mixes."]
[Footnote 8: The Alfred Club (1808-55), established at 23, Albemarle Street, was the Savile of the day. Beloe, in his "s.e.xagenarian" (vol.
ii. chaps, xx.-xxv.), describes among the members of the Symposium, as he calls it, Sir James Mackintosh, George Ellis, William Gifford, John Reeves, Sir W. Drummond, and himself. Byron, in his "Detached Thoughts", says,
"I was a member of the Alfred. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis d"Ivernois; but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season."
It was, says Mr. Wheatley ("London Past and Present"), known as the "Half-read".
In a ma.n.u.script note, now for the first time printed as written, on the above pa.s.sage from Byron"s "Detached Thoughts", Sir Walter Scott writes,
"The Alfred, like all other clubs, was much haunted with boars, a tusky monster which delights to range where men most do congregate. A boar, or bore, is always remarkable for something respectable, such as wealth, character, high birth, acknowledged talent, or, in short, for something that forbids people to turn him out by the shoulders, or, in other words, to cut him dead. Much of this respectability is supplied by the mere circ.u.mstance of belonging to a certain society of clubists, within whose districts the bore obtains free-warren, and may wallow or grunt at pleasure. Old stagers in the club know and avoid the fated corner and arm-chair which he haunts; but he often rushes from his lair on the inexperienced."]
214.--To Thomas Moore.
December 11, 1811.
My Dear Moore,--If you please, we will drop our former monosyllables, and adhere to the appellations sanctioned by our G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers. If you make it a point, I will withdraw your name; at the same time there is no occasion, as I have this day postponed your election "sine die", till it shall suit your wishes to be amongst us. I do not say this from any awkwardness the erasure of your proposal would occasion to _me_, but simply such is the state of the case; and, indeed, the longer your name is up, the stronger will become your probability of success, and your voters more numerous. Of course you will decide--your wish shall be my law. If my zeal has already outrun discretion, pardon me, and attribute my officiousness to an excusable motive.
I wish you would go down with me to Newstead. Hodgson will be there, and a young friend, named Harness, the earliest and dearest I ever had from the third form at Harrow to this hour. I can promise you good wine, and, if you like shooting, a manor of 4000 acres, fires, books, your own free will, and my own very indifferent company. "Balnea, vina, Venus" [1].
Hodgson will plague you, I fear, with verse;--for my own part I will conclude, with Martial, "nil recitabo tibi" [2]; and surely the last inducement, is not the least. Ponder on my proposition, and believe me, my dear Moore,
Yours ever,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1:
"Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra."
The words are thus given in Gruter ("Corpus Inscriptionum" (1603), p.
DCCCCXII. 10).]
[Footnote 2: Martial (xi. lii. 16), "Ad Julium Cerealem":