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CHAPTER III

BYRON'S OPINIONS OF THE LITERARY LIFE

(1) The Author's Trade and the Making of a Poet AND how does Sir Edgar? and your friend Bland? I suppose you are involved in some literary squabble. The only way is to despise all brothers of the quill. I suppose you won't allow me to be an author, but I contemn you all, you dogs !-I do.

You don't know Dallas, do you? He had a farce ready for the stage before I left England, and asked me for a prologue, which I promised, but sailed in such a hurry I never penned a couplet. I am afraid to ask after his drama, for fear it should be damned -Lord forgive me for using such a word! but the pit, Sir, you know the pit-they will do these things in spite of merit! I remember this farce from a curious circumstance. When Drury Lane was burnt to the ground, by which accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings they were worth, what doth my friend Dallas do? Why, before the fire was out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, the manager of this combustible concern, to inquire

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whether this farce was not converted into fuel with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this characteristic ?-the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only worth 300,000l., together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, and all that--in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands two acts and odd scenes of a farce!!

(1810, October 3. Letter 148, to Francis Hodgson, Vol. I., p. 299.)

Yours and Pratt's protégé, Blacket, the cobbler, is dead, in spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons, he might now have been in very good plight, shoe(not verse-) making; but you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this, supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters, to have been the death of him.

(1811, June 28. Letter 154, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. I., p. 314.)

What has Sir Edgar done? And the Imitations and Translations-where are they? I suppose you don't mean to let the public off so easily, but charge them home with a quarto. For me, I am "sick of fops, and poesy, and prate," and shall leave the "whole

Castalian state" to Bufo, or any body else. But you are a sentimental and sensibilitous person, and will rhyme to the end of the chapter. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, of one kind or another, on my travels.

(1811, June 29. Letter 155, to Francis Hodgson, Vol. I., p. 317.)

How does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blacket's posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite of your Ionian friend and myself, who would have saved him from Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine subject for subscription and biography ; and Pratt, who makes the most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than five families of distinction.

I am sorry you don't like Harry [Kirke] White: with a great deal of cant, which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe Blacket), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields and Blackets, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. (1811, August 21. Letter 167, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. I., p. 336.)

Your anxiety about the critique on **'s book is amusing; as it was anonymous, certes it was of little consequence: I wish it had produced a little more

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confusion, being a lover of literary malice. Are you doing nothing? writing nothing? printing nothing? why not your Satire on Methodism? the subject (supposing the public to be blind to merit) would do wonders. Besides, it would be as well for a destined deacon to prove his orthodoxy.-It really would give me pleasure to see you properly appreciated. I say really, as, being an author, my humanity might be suspected.

(1811, August 22. Letter 168, to Francis Hodgson, Vol. I., p. 339.)

My "Satire!"-I am glad it made you laugh for Somebody told me in Greece that you was angry, and I was sorry, as you were perhaps the only person whom I did not want to make angry.

But how you will make me laugh I don't know, for it is a vastly serious subject to me I assure you; therefore take care, or I shall hitch you into the next Edition to make up our family party. Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way;-all this comes of Authorship, but now I am in for it, and shall be at war with Grubstreet, till I find some better amusement.

(1811, September 2. Letter 176, to the Hon. Augusta Leigh, Vol. II., p. 18.)

I think more highly of your poetical talents than it would, perhaps, gratify you to hear expressed, for

I believe, from what I observe of your mind, that you are above flattery. To come to the point, you deserve success, but we know, before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it. But, suppose it attained,

"You know what ills the author's life assail,

Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail."

Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a possession, retain it; it will be, like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource. Compare M' Rogers with other authors of the day; assuredly he is amongst the first of living poets, but is it to that he owes his station in society, and his intimacy in the best circles? No, it is to his prudence and respectability; the world (a bad one, I own) courts him because he has no occasion to court it. He is a poet, nor is he less so because he was something more. I am not sorry to hear that you are not tempted by the vicinity of Capel Lofft, Esq., though, if he had done for you what he has done for the Bloomfields, I should never have laughed at his rage for patronising. But a truly constituted mind will ever be independent.

(1812, June 1. Letter 238, to Bernard Barton, Vol. II., p. 124.)

The plate is broken? between ourselves, it was unlike the picture; and besides, upon the whole, the frontispiece of an author's visage is but a paltry exhibition.

(1812, October 23. Letter 268, to John Murray, Vol. II., p. 179.)

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