Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

praise.' The review nettled the poet not a little, as we learn from a letter of Byron's, written in September:

66

Rogers has returned to town, but not yet recovered of the Quarterly. What fellows these reviewers are! These boys do fear us all!' They made you fight, and me (the milkiest of men) a satirist, and will end by making Rogers madder than Ajax. I have been reading Memory again, the other day, and Hope together, and retain all my preference of the former. His elegance is really wonderful; there is no such thing as a vulgar line in the book. * Rogers wants me to go with him on a crusade to the Lakes, and to besiege you on our way. This last is a great temptation, but I fear it will not be in my power, unless you would go on with one of us somewhere no matter where.

*

по

"P. S. No letter-n'importe. Rogers thinks the Quarterly will be at me this time; if so, it shall be a war of extermination quarter. From the youngest devil down to the oldest woman of that review, all shall perish by one fatal lampoon. The ties of nature shall be torn asunder, for I will not even spare my bookseller; nay, if one were to include readers also, all the better."

We do not know if this review prompted a celebrated epigram upon its author by the offended poet, or if the epigram prompted the review. From an allusion to it in Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron, we should imagine that the poet revenged himself by the satire; but as it is related in the Quarterly Review we infer that Rogers was the first offender. "Rogers is the only man," said his lordship to Captain Medwin, "who can write epigrams, and sharp bone-cutters, too, in two lines. For instance, that on an M. P. who had reviewed his book, and said he wrote very well for a banker:

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it;

He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.""

The Quarterly says that Ward would sometimes quote this distich, admit the point, and return usually a Roland for an Oliver. But even Mr. Ward did not fail to recognize the position which the poet had already secured by The Pleasures of Memory. "The first poem in this collection," he says, "does not fall within the province of our criticism. It has been published many years, and has ac

quired that sort of popularity which is, perhaps, more decisive than any other single test of merit. It has been generally admired, and, what is not always a certain consequence of being admired, it has been generally read. The circulation of it has not been confined to the highly-educated and critical part of the public, but it has received the applause which to works of the imagination is quite as flattering, · of that far more numerous class, who, without attempting to judge by accurate and philosophical rules, read poetry only for the pleasure it affords them, and praise because they are delighted. It is to be found in all libraries, and in most parlor windows." In another part of the review, the critic says, "Endowed with an ear naturally correct, and attuned by practice to the measures of his favorite masters, nice to the very verge of fastidiousness, accurate almost to minuteness, habitually attentive to the finer turns of expression and the more delicate shades of thought, Mr. Rogers was always harmonious, always graceful, and often pathetic. But his beauties are all beauties of execution and detail, arising from the charm of skilful versification, the 'curiosa felicitas' of expression, culled with infinite care and selection, and applied with no vulgar judgment, and with the refined tenderness of a polished and feeling mind."

We must now cite a few sentences in a different vein, to show how far the Quarterly was right in its estimate of this critique, and to what extent it might well have annoyed the poet. “We have always been desirous," says the reviewer, after alluding to the poet's early productions, " to see something more from the hand of an author whose first appearance was so auspicious. But year after year rolled on, and we began to fear that indolence, the occupations of a busy life, or the dread of detracting from a reputation already so high, would forever prevent our wishes from being gratified. We were, therefore, both pleased and surprised when, upon accidentally taking up the last edition of Mr. Rogers' poem, we found that it was enriched, not only with several very elegant wooden cuts, but with an entirely new performance in eleven cantos, called 'Fragments of a Poem on the Voyage of Columbus.'"

After a minute analysis of the poem, the critic thus sums up its merits and faults: "Still, however, and with all its defects both of subject and of execution, the poem is by no means undeserving

[ocr errors]

manner,

attention. Mr. Rogers has not been able to depart from his former that which use had made natural to him, so much as he, perhaps, intended. He is often himself, in spite of himself. Habit. good taste and an exquisite ear, are constantly bringing him back to the right path, even when he had set out with a resolution to wander from it. Hence, though the poem will not bear to be looked at as a whole, and though there runs through it an affectation of beauties which it is not in the author's power to produce, yet it contains passages of such merit as would amply repay the trouble of reading a much larger and more faulty work. It will be the more pleasing part of our task to select a few of them, with an assurance to our readers that they are not the only ones, and with a strong recommendation to read the whole, — a recommendation with which they will very easily comply, as the poem does not exceed seven or eight hundred lines."

In this connection the following contemporaneous memoranda of Lord Byron's, touching the poet and his critic, will be read with interest:

"Nov. 22, 1813.- Rogers is silent; and, it is said, severe. When he does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as his poetry. If you enter his house, his drawing-room, his library, you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his existence. O, the jarrings his disposition must have encountered through life!

"Nov. 23.-Ward. I like Ward. By Mahomet! I begin to think I like everybody, —a disposition not to be encouraged; a sort of social gluttony that swallows everything set before it. But I like Ward. He is piquant; and, in my opinion, will stand very high in the house, and everywhere else, if he applies regularly. By the by, I dine with him to-morrow, which may have some influence on my opinion. It is as well not to trust one's gratitude after dinner. I have heard many a host libelled by his guests, with his Burgundy yet reeking on their rascally lips."

In 1814 the poem of Jacqueline appeared, in the same volume with the Lara of Lord Byron.

"Rogers and I," wrote his lordship to Moore, in July, 1814, "have almost coalesced into a joint invasion of the public. Whether it will take place or not, I do not yet know; and I am afraid Jacqueline (which is very beautiful) will be in bad company. But in this case the lady will not be the sufferer." To the author he had written a few days previously: "You could not have made me a more acceptable present than Jacqueline; she is all grace, and softness, and poetry; there is so much of the last that we do not feel the want of story, which is simple, yet enough. I wonder that you do not oftener unbend to more of the same kind. I have some sympathy with the softer affections, though very little in my way; and no one can depict them so truly and successfully as yourself. I have half a mind to pay you in kind, or rather un-kind, for I have just 'supped full of horror' in two cantos of darkness and dismay." In August he wrote to Moore, "Rogers I have not seen, but Larry and Jacky came out a few days ago. Of their effect I know nothing." He adds in the same letter, "Murray talks of divorcing Larry and Jacky, —a bad sign for the authors, who, I suppose, will be divorced too, and throw the blame upon one another. Seriously, I don't

[ocr errors]

care a cigar about it, and I don't see why Sam should." "I believe I told you of Larry and Jacky," he again wrote to Moore. "A friend of mine was reading—at least a friend of his was reading said Larry and Jacky, in a Brighton coach. A passenger took up the book, and queried as to the author. The proprietor said there were two,' to which the answer of the unknown was 'Ay, ay, a joint concern, I suppose; summat like Sternhold and Hopkins.' Is not this excellent? I would not have missed the 'vile comparison to have 'scaped being one of the arcades ambo, et can

[merged small][ocr errors]

Byron seems to have lived on terms of the most cordial intimacy with Rogers, who is one of the few persons of whom he always spoke with kindness and respect. The full-length portrait of his lordship, by Sanders, was presented to him. "You are one of the few persons," Byron wrote to him in March, 1816, " with whom I have lived in what is called intimacy." "It is a considerable time," Byron wrote in the year following, "since I wrote to you last, and I hardly know why I should trouble you now, except that I think you will not be sorry to hear from me now and then. You and I were never

correspondents, but always something better, which is very good friends."

[ocr errors]

His diaries and letters frequently refer to their social meetings. "On Tuesday last," he writes under date of March 6, 1814. “I dined with Rogers, Madame de Staël, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Erskine and Payne Knight, Lady Donegal and Miss R., there. Sheridan told a very good story of himself and Madame de Recamier's handkerchief; Erskine a few stories of himself only. * The party went off very well, and the fish was very much to my gusto. But we got up too soon after the women; and Mrs. Corinne always lingers so long after dinner, that we wish her in room." The next week he makes another entry. dined with Rogers, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Sharpe, good, all except my own little prattlement. Much of old times, Horne Tooke, the Trials, evidence of Sheridan, and anecdotes of those times, when I, alas! was an infant."

the drawing"On Tuesday

much talk and

Of the nature of the relations between his lordship, Rogers, and their common friend Moore, the last mentioned gives us a vivid impression in his account of an evening in St. James'-street. We quote from Moore's Life of Byron :

66

Among the many gay hours we passed together this spring (1813), I remember particularly the wild flow of his spirits one evening, when we had accompanied Mr. Rogers home from some early assembly, and when Lord Byron, who, according to his frequent custom, had not dined for the last two days, found his hunger no longer governable, and called aloud for 'something to eat.' Our repast, of his own choosing, was simple bread and cheese; and seldom have I partaken of so joyous a supper. It happened that our host had just received a presentation copy of a volume of poems, written professedly in imitation of the old English writers, and containing, like many of these models, a good deal that was striking and beautiful, mixed up with much that was trifling, fantastic and absurd. In our mood at the moment, it was only with these latter qualities that either Lord Byron or I felt disposed to indulge ourselves; and, in turning over the pages, we found, it must be owned, abundant matter for mirth. In vain did Mr. Rogers, in justice to the author, endeavor to direct our attention to some of the beauties of the work. It suited better our purpose (as is too often the case

« PreviousContinue »