1818.] Sir F. Bourgeois-Observations on a Letter to Lord Byron. 31

SIR,

BYRON.

EXALTED genius, like exalted virtue, however duly it may be honoured by those who are capable either of appreciating its worth, or emulating its example, is, nevertheless proportionably exposed to the bitterest shafts of envy and detraction. It occupies an elevated situation in the world, but

confessed it. Yet in this enlightened OBSERVATIONS ON A LETTER TO LORD country where toleration protects every religious denomination, an immense engine has been in exercise for more than two generations, under the direction of no ordinary hands, and avowed ly employed in reforming the people without having wrought an effect correspondent to its professions and means. On the contrary while every village has its meeting-house, a universal eutcry is heard upon the vitiation of manners and the increase of crimes. This question, therefore, forces itself upon the mind, whence is it that under such circumstances and with so vast an influence methodism has not succeeded in an equal proportion in depopulating gols, as in founding and filling conventicles?

GALLERY OF SIR FRANCIS BOURGEOIS.
MR. EDITOR,

IN reply to your correspondent who enquires for some particulars respecting the picture gallery founded at Dulwich College, I send you the following brief information. Sir Francis Bourgeois, a Swiss by birth, who had long resided in this country, and acquired both fortune and reputation by his profession as an historical painter, became desirous of securing his valuable collection of pictures for the benefit of the art. With this view he made an offer of the same to the British Museum, the trustees of which threw such obstacles in his way as induced him to transfer his proposal to other quarters. Strange to say he met with a cold reception also from the heads of other institutions in the metropolis on which he tendered his collection to the master, warden and fellows of the College of God's gift at Dulwich by whom it was accepted, and whose building is now enriched by this bequest in addition to the pictures of Mr. William Cartwright formerly given to the same society. Sir Francis, besides his donation of paintings, gave 10,000l. to keep them in preservation, 20001. for the fitting up of the gallery, and legacies of 10001. each to the principal and chaplain of the college.*

G.S.

"To be the mark where wrong Aims with her poisoned arrows;" and whilst it is an object of admiration to such as have sense to discern, and liberality enough to allow its merits, elicits also the hatred and malevolence of those who, destitute of virtue, and barren in understanding, would sully the purity of the spring they are not permitted to taste. I am led to offer these observations, from the perusal of a letter in Blackwood's magazine of last month to Lord Byron, in which the writer puts forth as much bitterness and malignity against that noble bard, as ever disgraced the annals of the press. Indeed I should scarcely have thought it necessary to notice so vile a superfetation of "envy, hatred, and uncharitableness," had it not occurred to me, that were such calumnies suffered to pass with impunity, their author might possibly delude himself into a belief, that his extravagant and unmanly insinuations had been received, and in some measure tolerated by the public.

It should then appear from the poetical "notices to correspondents," which Mr. Blackwood has prefixed to what he is pleased to term his "peerless magazine," that he has in his employ certain furbishers of falsehood for his pages, who amuse themselves by doing into letters-if we may be allowed the termthe characters of individuals justly entitled to the highest consideration and respect, and infusing into these compositions as much personality and abuse as they may deem necessary, either to round their periods with becoming effect, or produce what may be mistaken for originality of thought and energy of style. The traducer towards whom these observations are particularly directed, has undertaken to supply this publication with what, in the cant phrase of the day, is denominated "sauce piquante, and under the occasional signatures of "Idoloclastes," "Presbyter Anglicanus," &c., to calumniate all the authors of the day, whose writings shall have obtained for

32

Observations on a Letter to Lord Byron.

-

It seems, therefore, from these extracts, that a batch of letters has been received "breathing the very soul of bile," against five gentlemen, who, however objectionable their political principles, must be allowed to occupy a very high situation in this Augustan age of literature; but the bard of Lalla Rookh-a production which will be read with delight as long as the language in which it is written shall exist -the translator of Anacreon, the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own," is to be carped at, his intentions misrepresented, and his character traduced, and all this because, in the first place, his splendid talents have procured for him a degree of public faYour which renders every thing said of him of more than common interest to the world; and in the next to gratify the depraved appetites of some few creatures of idleness and dissipation, who, too feeble to contest with genius, are gratified only by the dark and malignant whisperings of its enemies.

I have

been led imperceptibly into this slight
tribute of admiration for Mr. Moore,
being well assured that no opinion
of mine can raise him higher in public
estimation than he at present stands;
but there is an individual from whom,
by the vilest and most unjustifiable ca-
lumnies, the tide of popular applause has
been in some measure turned one who
has been elevated by fame to the loftiest
pinnacle of her temple but to render him
the more liable to the shafts of envy and

See Notices to Blackwood's Magazine for June.

[Aug. 1,

malignity. It is almost needless to ob-
serve that this "man of many sorrows
is Lord Byron. Foiled in their impotent
attacks upon his poetic reputation, his
enemies would fain blacken and deforms
him in his character and conduct as
Well and truly has he said:

man.

"From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have not seen what human things
could do?

From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few,
And subtler venom of the reptile crew.

The Janus glance of whose significant
eye,

Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,

And without utterance save the shrug or sigh,

Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy."

Lord Byron has had to defend himself,
not so much "from the arrow that flieth
at noon day," as "from the pestilence
that walketh in darkness." He "has
been the mark

For blight and desolation compassed round
With hatred and contention;"
but bursting through the crude defor-
mity of his enemies with redoubled splen-
dour on each assault, he has driven them
to a state of roaring idiotcy, which oc-
casionally finds vent in that description
of general invective and execration on
which I now beg leave to offer some
remarks.

The "Letter to the author of Beppo" is ushered in by an affected "Note to the Editor," wherein the writer kindly expresses his concern, that all the critics who have ever commented upon Lord Byron's poetry should "have been led away by a (pardonable) enthusiasm in favor of his genius, to award to him a greater degree of fame as a poet than agreed with the notions which he (Presbyter Anglicanus) had long ago formed of the talents and character of that illustrious bard." He goes on to state that Lord Byron has no where so fully developed the "baseness of his principles as in his "Venetian Story," and that "he has degraded his genius by a series of cool sarcasms, in ridicule of the fidelity of English wives," and after besmearing the editor of the "Edinburgh Review" with his awkward flattery, this qualified critic finishes his "Note" and introduces his "Letter."

Your limits will not allow me to make such quotations from the poem of Reppo as would exhibit the falsehood of this assertion in its fullest light; yet surely the

1818.]

Observations on a Letter to Lord Byron.

,"

testimony of all the periodical critics of
the day is to be depended upon. It would
be singular enough, if what has been
pronounced by all who have seen it as
an ingenious and lively satire on the
vices of an Italian metropolis, should
turn out to be a series of cool sarcasms
against the fidelity of English wives!
But mark the inconsistency of this
sneaking malignant: he takes occasion
frequently in the course of his letter to
abuse Lord Byron for the deep and me-
lancholy tone of his writings, calls him
"the most lugubrious of mortals," affects
to "disbelieve that he had ever any real
cause for sorrow," and states that "he
howled by day upon the house top, and
called upon the world to admire his song
of lamentation, and join in its doleful
chorus," and after having expressed
that these have been his notions of
Lord Byron's poetry for some years,'
as soon as ever his Lordship publishes a
harmless jeu d'esprit-in the words of
one of the first critics of the day, "with
as little serious meaning as can well be
imagined, except that of being a lively
and playful satire"-he immediately
breaks forth into the most furious and
insane invectives against him, and de-
plores that he should have thrown
from him the harp of the mighty, which,
when he dashed his fingers over the
strings, faded as was the harmony, and
harsh the execution, were still made for
their listening, who had loved the solemn
music of the departed!" What rational
readers will be enabled to comprehend of
such bathos as this I know not, but
their risible faculties will doubtless be
affected, when they are told that this
stupendous critic takes the Devil in one
hand and lord Byron in the other, and after
having paced up and down 16 columns of
Mr. Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine,
and made various comparisons between
them, in which the "Prince of Dark-
ness has always the advantage of his
Lordship, he settles the point by de-
claring it to be his conviction that Šatan
is by far the noblest character of the
two; for that our poet "has all the ma-
levolence of a demon without the gene-
rosity of the superior fiend!"

Of the opinions of all critics who have ever spoken favourably of Lord Byron's genius, this "Presbyter Anglicanus" has an utter contempt; he considers their praise as "sneaking adulation," and the "shouts of the vulgar" &c. so that out

Probably ever since the appearance of the English bards and Scotch reviewers.

NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 55.

33

The noblest

of the thousands of all nations, who have
descanted upon his Lordship's poetry,
this person would fain delude himself
into a belief, that he alone has exhibited
the slightest perception, either in appre-
ciating its merits, or exhibiting its de-
fects. He would endeavour to persuade
the public that the opinions of such
men as Moore, Gifford, Rogers, Scott,
Southey, Campbell, &c. sink into com-
parative nothingness as soon as he
puts forth his sentiments upon the point
in question. Yet these, the most illus-
trious names of which this age can boast,
have all and each expressed the most ex-
alted eulogiums on the bard who, ac-
cording to the statement made by this
pettyfogging traducer, "has, with wan-
ton hypocrisy, tortured their' feelings,
and, with cool contemptuousness, insult-
ed their' principles."
poets and critics of the age have admitted
to their most intimate friendship and
association the man "who is the enemy
of his species, and whose poetry need not
to have been different from what it is,
although he had lived and died in the
midst of a generation of heartless and
unbelieving demons." They have shewn
themselves proud in publicly testifying
their esteem for the Being "whose he-
roism is lunacy, whose philosophy is
folly, whose virtue is a cheat, and whose
religion is a bubble!"-Yet such are the
conclusions which must be drawn, if
any credit is to be attached to the asser-
tions of this base vituperator of genius.
He further states that it is not his pur-
pose to describe, or attempt to describe,
wherein Lord Byron differs from other
great poets who have preceded him,
"but when he expresses an opinion
which he acknowledges to be different
from that of the world at large, it is in-
cumbent on him to offer something like
a valid testimony; some proof in sup-
port of that opinion, unless, as in the
present instance," he is conscious of hav-
ing offered to the public, a tissue of
glaring and indefensible falsehoods.

I should not have condescended to honour, with this particular notice, a production, so entirely divested of all manly sentiment and liberality, as the "letter to the author of Beppo," had I not felt it my duty to express my decided reprehension that a petty scribbler should continue to pour forth the vile and paltry ebullitions of his malice, merely because he imagines that his insignificance will secure him from the chastisement to which he is so justly entitled. A.

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