at the very time when you fastidious gentlemen
begin to recover yours. I agree with you that
the world, as well as yourself, are of a different
opinion. I shall never be at the trouble to un-
deceive either ; my follies have seldom been of
my own seeking. ' Rebellion came in my way
and I found it.' This may appear as coxcombical
a speech as Veramore could m.akcyet ^ou partly
know its truth. You talk to me too of ' ray cha-



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 261

racter,' and yet it is one which you and fifty others
have been struggling these seven years to obtain
for yourselves. I wish you had it, you would make
so much better, that is worse, use of it ; relieve me,
and gratify an ambition which is unworthy of a
man of sense. It has always appeared to me
extraordinary that you should value women so
highly and yet love them so little. The height of
your gratification ceases with its accomplishment;
you bow — and you sigh — and you worship — and
abandon. For my part I regard them as a very
beautiful but inferior animal. I think them as
much out of their place at our tables as they
would be in our senates. The whole present
system, with regard to that sex, is a remnant of
the chivalrous barbarism of our ancestors ; I look
upon them as grown up children, but, like a
foolish mamma, am always the slave of some
only one. With a contempt for the race, I am
ever attached to the individual, in spite oi myself.
You know, that though not rude, I am inattentive ;
any thing but a ' beau garcon,' I would not
hand a woman out of her carriage, but I would
leap into a river after her. However, I grant you



262 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

that, as they must walk often er out of chariots
than into the Thames, you gentlemen Servitors,
Cortejos, and Cicisbei, have a better chance of
being agreeable and useful; you might, very
probably, do both ; but, as you can't swim, and I
can, I recommend you to invite me to your first
water-party.

" Bramblebear's Lady Penelope puzzles me.
She is very beautiful, but not one of my beauties.
You know I admire a different complexion, but
the figure is perfect. She is accomplished, if her
mother and music-master may be believed; ami-
able, if a soft voice and a sweet smile could
make her so ; young, even by the register of her
baptism ; pious and chaste, and doting on her
husband, according to Bramblebear's observa-
tion ; equally loving, not of her husband, though
rather less pious, and V other thing, according to
Veramore's ; and^ if mine hath any discernment,
she detests the one, despises the other, and
loves— herself. That she dislikes Bramblebear is
evident ; poor soul, I can't blame her ; she has
found him out to be mighty weak, and little-iem-
pered ; she has also discovered that she married



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 263

too early to know Vv^hat she liked, and that there
are many likeable people who would have been
less discordant and more creditable partners. Still
she conducts herself well, and in point of good-
humour, to admiration. — A good deal of religion,
(not enthusiasm, for that leads the contrary way),
a prying husband who never leaves her, and, as
I think, a very temperate pulse, will keep her
out of scrapes. I am glad of it, first, because,
though Bramblebear is bad, I don't think Vera-
more much better ; and next, because Bramble-
bear is ridiculous enough already, and it would
only be thrown away upon him to make him
more so ; thirdly, it would be a pity, because no
body would pit^ him ; and, fourthly, (as Scrub
says) he would then become a melancholy and
sentimental harlequin, instead of a merry, fretful,
pantaloon, and I like the pantomime better as it
is now cast.

" More in my next.

*' Yours, truly,

« . Darrell."



264 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE



CHAPTER XL

THE CORSAIR— CHARGE AGAINST LORD BYRON
IN THE PUBLIC PAPERS.



I AGAIN enjoyed his friendship and his com-
pany, with a pleasure sweet to my memory,
and not easily expressed. He was in the
habit of reading his poems to me as he
wrote them. In the spring of the year
1813, he read me the Giaour — he assured
me that the verse containing the simile of
the Scorpion was imagined in his sleep,
except the last four lines. At this time, I
thought him a good deal depressed in spi-
rits, and I lamented that he had abandoned
every idea of being a statesman. He talked
of going abroad again, and requested me to



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 265

keep in mind, that he had a presentiment
that he should never return. He now
renewed a promise which he had made me,
of concluding Childe Harold and giving it to
me, and requested me to print all his works
after his death. I considered all this as
the effects of depression — his genius had
but begun the long and lofty flight it was
about to take, and he was soon awakened
to the charm of occasional augmentations
of fame. It was some time before he
determined on publishing the Giaour. I
beUeve not till Mr. Gifford sent him a mes-
sage, calling on him not to give up his time
to slight compositions, as he had genius to
send him to the latest posterity with Milton
and Spenser. Meanwhile, he had written
the Bride of Abydos. Towards the end of
the year, his publisher wrote him a let-
ter, offering a thousand guineas for these
two poems, which he did not accept, but
suffered him to publish them. He was so



266 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

pleased with the flattery he received from
that quarter, that he forgot his dignity ; and
once he even said to me, that money le-
velled distinction.

The American government had this year
sent a special embassy to the Court of
Petersburgh. Mr. Gallatin was the Am-
bassador, and my nephew, George Mifflin
Dallas, was his Secretary. When the
business in Russia was finished, they came
to England. My nephew had brought over
with him an American Poem. American
literature rated very low. The Edinburgh
Review says, " the Americans have none —
no native literature we mean. It is all
imported. They had a Franklin indeed;
and may afford to live half a century on his
fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight,
who wrote some poems ; and his baptismal
name was Timothy. There is also a small
account of Virginia, by Jefferson, and an
Epic, by Joel Barlow — and some pieces of



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 267

pleasantry, by Mr. Irving. But why should
the Americans write books, when a six
weeks passage brings them, in their own
tongue, our sense, science, and genius, in
bales and hogsheads?*'' Much cannot be
said for the liberality of this criticism.
Some names, it is true, have been doomed
by the spirit of ridicule to mockery ; Lord
Byron himself exclaims against both bap-
tismal and surname —

Oh ! Amos Cottle ! — Phoebus ! what a name
To fill the speaking-trump of future fame !

So when it suited his Satire, he split the
southern smooth monosyllable of Brougham
into the rough northern dissyllable of
Brough-am :

Beware, lest blundering Brough-am spoil the sale,
Turn beef to bannocks, cauliflowers to kail —

Yet we know, that very unsonorous names
have, by greatness of mind, by talents and

* Edinburgh Review— No. 60, p. 144, Dec. 1818.



268 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

by virtues, been exalted to the highest pitch
of admiration. Pitt, and Fox, and Petty, owe
their grandeur to the men who have borne
them. Tom Spratt, and Tom Tickell, were
Enghsh poets and celebrated characters.
President Dwight was no ^vriter of poetry,
but had he written the Seasons, he would
have been a far-famed poet in spite of his
name being Timothy; and the theological
works which he has written, and of which
the Edinburgh Reviewer seems to be totally
ignorant, will immortalize his name though
it were ever so cacaphonic. The reasoning
is equally unintelligible, when the Reviewer
decides it to be sufficient for the Americans
to import sense, science, and genius, in
bales and hogsheads. Might not the Ame-
ricans as reasonably ask why the lawyers
of Edinburgh should write Reviews, when
three days bring them, in the tongue they
write in, all the criticism of England, in
brown-paper packages ? Poetical genius is



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 269

a heavenly spark, with which it pleases the
Almighty to gift some men. It has shone
forth in the other quarters of the globe —
if it be bestowed on an American, the
ability of importing English and Scotch
poems is no good reason why it should be
smothered. The poem which my nephew
brought to England was one of those
pieces of pleasantry by an American gen-
tleman*. It was a burlesque of a fine
poem of one of our most celebrated poets,
and as a specimen of a promising nature,
it was reprinted in London. With this
motive, only the ingenuity of the writer
was considered. It could not be thought
more injurious to the real Bard, than Cot-
ton s burlesque to Virgil ; nor could the
American hostility to a gallant British

* The gentleman to whom it was attributed has since
distinguished himself in the literary world, and is now
said not to be the author of it. It was not denied at the
time : the Americans in London ascribed it to him.



270 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

commander be suspected of giving a mo-
ment's pain— at least I did not think so.

I believe that the nature of this American
poem was known to the proprietor of the
Quarterly Review. So far as it was a bur-
lesque on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I
know it was ; yet was he, as a publisher, so
anxious to get it, that he engaged Lord
Byron to use his utmost influence with me
to obtain it for him, and his Lordship wrote
me a most pressing letter upon the occa-
sion. He asked me to let Mr. Murray
(who was in despair about it) have the
publication of this poem, as the greatest
possible favour.

The following was my answer, dated
Worton-House, December 19th, 1813:—-

" I would not hesitate a moment to lay
aside the kind of resentment I feel against
Mr. Murray, for the pleasure of complying
with the desire you so strongly express, if



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 271

it were in my power; — but judge of the
impracticability, when I assure you that a
considerable portion of the poem is in the
printer's hands, and that the publication
will soon make its appearance. It has in-
deed been morally impossible for me to do
it for some time. I think I need not pro-
test very eagerly to be believed, when I
say that I should be happy to do what you
could esteem a favour. I wish for no tri-
umph over Murray. — The post of this
morning brought me a letter from him. —
I shall probably answer it at my leisure
some way or other. — I wish you a good
night, and ever am,

" My dear Lord," &c.

In less than a fortnight, the current of
satisfaction which had run thus high and
thus strong in favour of his publisher,
ebbed with equal rapidity ; and became
so low, that in addition to the loss of



272 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

this coveted American poem, the pubHca-
tion of his Lordship's future works had
nearly gone into a different channel. On
the 28th of December, I called in the
morning on Lord Byron, whom I found
composing " The Corsair." He had been
working upon it but a few days, and he
read me the portion he had written. After
some observations, he said, " I have a great
mind — I will." He then added, that he
should finish it soon, and asked me to ac-
cept of the copyright. I was much sur-
prised. He had, before he was aware of
the value of his works, declared he never
would take money for them ; and that I
should have the whole advantage of all he
wrote. This declaration became morally
void, when the question was about thou-
sands instead of a few hundreds ; and I
perfectly agree with the admired and ad-
mirable author of Waverly, that " the wise
and good accept not gifts which are made



OF THE

:VERS1TY )

OF J



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 273

in heat of blood, and which may be after
repented of*." I felt this on the sale of
Childe Harold, and observed it to him.
The copyright of the Giaour and the Bride
of Abydos remained undisposed of, though
the poems were selling rapidly ; nor had I
the slightest notion that he would ever
again give me a copyright. But as he
continued in the resolution of not appro-
priating the sale of his works to his own
use, I did not scruple to accept that of the
Corsair ; and I thanked him. He asked me
to call and hear the portions read as he
wrote them. I went every morning, and
was astonished at the rapidity of his com-
position. He gave me the poem complete
on New Year's Day, 1814, saying, that my
acceptance of it gave him great pleasure ;
and that I was fully at liberty to publish it
with any bookseller I pleased. Independent
of the profit, I was highly delighted with

* Monastery, vol. iii. c. 7.



274 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

this confidential renewal of kindness, and
he seemed pleased that I felt it so. I must,
however, own, that I found kindness to
me was not the sole motive of the gift.
I asked him if he wished me to publish
it through his pubhsher.— " Not at all,"
said he, " do exactly as you please ; he
has had the assurance to give me his ad-
vice as to writing, and to tell me that I
should outwrite myself. I would rather
you would publish it by some other book-
seller."

The circumstance, however, lowered the
pride of wealth ; a submissive letter was
written, containing some flattery, and, in
spite of an awkward apology, Lord Byron
was appeased. He requested me to let the
publisher of the former poems have the
copyright, to which I of course agreed.

While the Corsair was in the press Lord
Byron dedicated it to Mr. Moore, and at
the end of the poem he added, " Stanzas



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 275

on a Lady weeping." These were printed
without my knowledge. They no sooner
appeared, acknowledged by his name in
the title page, than he was violently assailed
in the leading newspapers, in verse and in
prose : his life, his sentiments, his works.
The suppressed Satire, with the names of
his new friends at length, was re-printed, in
great portions, in the Courier, Post, and
other papers. Among other things, an at-
tempt was made to mortify him, by asser-
tions of his receiving large sums of money
for his writings. He was extremely galled —
and indeed the daily-continued attempts to
overwhelm him were enough to gall him.
There was no cessation of the fire opened
upon him. I was exceedingly hurt, but he
had brought it upon himself, after having by
his genius conquered all his enemies. He
did not relish the ecraser system, when it
was turned upon himself; and he derived
no aid from those who had got him into the

T 2



276 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE

scrape. In the goading it occasioned he
wrote to me.

His feeUngs upon this subject were clearly
manifested, but he expressed himself in the
kindest manner towards me; and though
Mr. Murray was going to contradict the
statement made in the Courier and other
papers, he desired that my name should
not be mentioned. Immediately on receiv-
ing Lord Byron's letter, I sat down to write
one to be pubhshed in the morning-papers,
and while I was writing it, I received ano-
ther note from him. It had been deter-
mined that Mr. Murray should say nothing
upon the subject, and Lord Byron deter-
mined to take no notice of it himself. He
therefore wished me not to involve myself
in the squabble by any public statement.

In the first of these letters it was very
evident that Lord Byron wished me to
interfere, though he was too dehcate to
ask it; and in the second letter, nothing can



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 277

be clearer than that he was hurt at the
determination which had been taken, that
his pubhsher should say nothing. I there-
fore resolved to publish the letter I had
written, but, at the same time, to have his
concurrence; in consequence I took it to
town and read it to him. He was greatly-
pleased, but urged me to do nothing dis-
agreeable to my feelings. I assured him
that it was, on the contrary, extremely
agreeable to them, and I immediately
carried it to the proprietor of the Morning
Post, with whom I was acquainted. I
sent copies to the Morning Chronicle and
other papers, and I had the satisfaction of
finding the persecution discontinued. The
following is the letter : —

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING POST.
Sir,

I have seen the paragraph in an evening
paper, in which Lord Byron is accused of " re-



278 UECOLLECTIONS OF THE

ceiving and pocketing" large sums for his works.
I believe no one who knows him has the slightest
suspicion of this kind, but the assertion being
public, I think it a justice I owe to Lord Byron
to contradict it publicly. I address this letter to
you for that purpose, and I am happy that it gives
me an opportunity, at this moment, to make some
observations which I have for several days been
anxious to do publicly, but from which I have
been restrained by an apprehension that I should
be suspected of being prompted by his Lordship.
I take upon me to affirm that Lord Byron never
received a shilling for any of his works. To my
certain knowledge the profits of the Satire were
left entirely to the publisher of it. The gift of
the copyright of Chiide Harold's Pilgrimage I have
already publicly acknowledged, in the Dedication
of the new edition of my novels ; and I now add
my acknowledgment for that of the Corsair, not
only for the profitable part of it, but for the deli-
cate and delightful manner of bestowing it, while
yet unpublished. With respect to his two other
poems, the Giaour and the Bride of Ahi/dos, Mr.
Murray, the publisher of them, can truly attest



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 279

that no part of the sale of those has ever touched
his hands, or been disposed of for his use. Having
said thus much as to facts, I cannot but express
my surprise, that it should ever be deemed a
matter of reproach that he should appropriate the
pecuniary returns of his works. Neither rank
nor fortune seems to me to place any man above
this ; for what difference does it make in honour
and noble feelings, whether a copyright be
bestowed, or its value employed in beneficent
purposes. T differ with my Lord Byron on this
subject as well as some others ; and he has con-
stantly, both by word and action, shown his aver-
sion to receiving money for his productions.

The pen in my hand, and affection and grateful
feelings in my heart, I cannot refrain from touch-
ing upon a subject of a painful nature, delicate as
it is, and fearful as I am that I shall be unable
to manage it with a propriety of which it is sus-
ceptible, but of which the execution is not easy.
One reflection encourages me, for if magnanimity
be the attendant of rank, (and all that I have pub-
lished proves such a prepossession in my mind,)
then have I the less to fear from the most illustrious,



280 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

in undertaking to throw, into its proper point of
view, a circumstance which has been completely
misrepresented or misunderstood.

I do not purpose to defend the publication of the
two stanzas at the end of the Corsair, which has
given rise to such a torrent of abuse, and of the in-
sertion of which I was not aware till the Poem was
published; but most surely they have been placed
in a light which never entered the mind of the au-
thor, and in which men of dispassionate minds
cannot see them. It is absurd to talk seriously
of their ever being meant to disunite the parent
and the child, or to libel the sovereign. It is very
easy to descant upon such assumed enormities ;
but the assumption of them, if not a loyal error, is
an atrocious crime. Lord Byron never contem-
plated the horrors that have been attributed to him.
The lines alluded to were an impromptu, upon a
single well-known fact ; I mean the failure in the
endeavour to form an administration in the year
1812, according to the wishes of the author's
friends ; on which it was reported that tears were
shed by an illustrious female. The very words
in the context show the verses to be confined



LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 281

to that one circumstance, for they are in the
singular number, disgrace, fault. What dis-
grace? — What fault ? Those (says the verse) of
not saving a sinking realm (and let the date be
remembered, March, 1812), by taking the writer's
friends to support it. Never was there a more
simple political sentiment expressed in rhyme.
If this be libel, if this be the undermining of filial
affection, where shall we find a term for the lan-
guage often heard in both houses of Parliament ?
While I hope that I have said enough to show
the hasty misrepresentation of the lines in ques-
tion, I must take care not to be misunderstood
myself. The little part I take in conversing on
politics is well known, among my friends, to difier
completely from the political sentiments which
dictated these verses ; but knowing their author
better than most who pretend to judge of him,
and with motives of afiection, veneration, and
admiration, I am shocked to think that the hasty
collecting of a few scattered poems, to be placed
at the end of a volume, should have raised such a
clamour. — I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,

R. C. Dallas.



282 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

I was delighted, and Lord Byron was
pleased with the effect of my public letter.
I passed a very pleasant morning with him
a day or two after it appeared, and he read
me several letters he had received upon it.

The Corsair had an immediate and rapid
sale. As soon as it was printed, the pub-
lisher sent it to a gentleman of fortune
and of talent, who supported his Review ;
informing him, at the same time, that he
had sold several thousand copies of the
Poem on the first day.

In the original manuscript of the Corsair,
the chief female character was called Fran-
cesca, in whose person he meant to deli-
neate one of his acquaintance ; but,
before the Poem went to the press, he
changed the name to Medora.

Through the winter, and during the
spring of 1814, he maintained an open and
friendly intercourse with me. I saw him
very frequently.



k



L[FE OF LORD BYRON, 283

In May he began his Poem of Lara ; on
the 19th I called upon him, when he read
the beginning of it to me. I immediately-
said that it was a continuation of the Cor-
sair.

He was now so frank and kind that I
again ventured to talk to him of Newtead
Abbey, which brought to his mind his
promise of the pledge; and, on June 10,
1814, after reading the continuation of
Lara, he renewed the resolution of never
parting with the Abbey. In confirmation
of this he gave me all the letters he had
written to his mother, from the time of his
forming the resolution to go abroad till his
return to England in July, 1811. The one
he originally meant as a pledge for the
preservation of Newstead, is that of the
6th March, 1809. In giving them to me,
he said, they might one day be looked
upon as curiosities, and that they were
mine to do as I pleased with.



284 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

I remained of opinion that Lara was the
Corsair disguised, or, rather, that Conrad
was Lara returned, after having embraced
the Ufe of a Corsair in consequence of his
crime. He had not determined the catas-
trophe when I left him — I wrote and urged
it. This was my letter on the subject ; —

" The beauties of your new Poem equal,
some of them perhaps excel, what we have
enjoyed in your preceding tales. With re-
spect to the narrative, the interest, as far
as you have read, is completely sustained.
Yet, to render Lara ultimately as interest-
ing as Conrad, he ought, I think, to be
developed of his mystery in the conclusion
of the Poem. Sequels to tales have seldom
been favourites, and I see you are disposed
to avoid one in Lara, but such a sequel as
you would make, with what you have
begun, could not fail of success. Slay him
in your proposed battle, and let Calad's



LIFE OP LORD BYRON. 285

lamentation over his body discover in him
the Corsair, and in his page the wretched
Gulnare. For all this gloom pray give us
after this a happy tale."

He chose to leave it to the reader's de-
termination ; but, I think, it is easy to be
traced in the scene under the line where
Lara, mortally wounded, is attended by
Kaled.—

" His dying tones are in that other tongue,

To which some strange remembrance wildly clung.
They spoke of other scenes, but what — is known
To Kaled, whom their meaning reached alone ;
And, he rephed, though faintly, to their sound,
While gazed the rest in dumb amazement round :
They seemed e''en then — that twain — unto the last
To half forget the present in the past ;
To share between themselves some separate fate.