ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS, A SATIRE. "I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew! SHAKSPEARE. "Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true, POPE. [The first edition of this satire, which then began with what is now the ninety-seventh line (" Time was, ere yet," &c.), appeared in March, 1809. A second, to which the author prefixed his name, followed in October of that year; and a third and fourth were called for during his first pil grimage, in 1810 and 1811. On his return to England, a fifth edition was prepared for the press by himself, with considerable care, but suppressed, and, except one copy, destroyed, when on the eve of publication. The text is now printed from the copy that escaped; on casually meeting with which, in 1816, he re-perused the whole, and wrote on the margin some annotations, which also we shall preserve, distinguishing them, by the insertion of their date, from those affixed to the prior editions. The first of these MS. notes of 1816 appears on the fly-leaf, and runs thus: -"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for the contents; and nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another, prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames."-E] PREFACE. (') ALL my friends, learned and unlearned, have urged me not to publish this Satire with my name. If I were to be "turned from the career of my humour by quibbles quick, and paper bullets of the brain," I should have complied with their counsel. But I am not to be terrified by abuse, or bullied by reviewers, with or without arms. I can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive. An author's works are public property: he who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors I have endeavoured to commemorate may do by me as I have done by them. I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings, than in mending their own. But my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better. As the poem has met with far more success than I expected, I have endeavoured in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusal. (1) This preface was written for the second edition, and printed with it. The noble author had left this country previous to the publication of that edition, and is not yet returned. Note to the fourth edition, 1811.["He is, and gone again."-B. 1816.] In the first edition of this satire, published anonymously, fourteen lines on the subject of Bowles's Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend of mine (1), who has now in the press a volume of poetry. In the present edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead; my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner, -a determination not to publish with my name any production, which was not entirely and exclusively my own composition. With (2) regard to the real talents of many of the poetical persons whose performances are mentioned or alluded to in the following pages, it is presumed by the author that there can be little difference of opinion in the public at large; though, like other sectaries, each has his separate tabernacle of proselytes, by whom his abilities are over-rated, his faults overlooked, and his metrical canons received without scruple and without consideration. But the unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. No one can wish more than the author that some known and able writer had undertaken their exposure; but Mr. Gifford has devoted himself to Massinger, and, in the absence of the regular physician, a country practitioner may, in cases of (1) Mr. Hobhouse. See post, p. 246. (2) Here the preface to the first edition commenced. -E absolute necessity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided there be no quackery in his treatment of the malady. A caustic is here offered; as it is to be feared nothing short of actual cautery can recover the numerous patients afflicted with the present prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming. -As to the Edinburgh Reviewers (1), it would indeed require an Hercules to crush the Hydra; but if the author succeeds in merely "bruising one of the heads of the serpent," though his own hand should suffer in the encounter, he will be amply satisfied. (2) (1) "I well recollect," said Lord Byron, in 1821, "the effect which the critique of the Edinburgh Reviewers, on my first poem, had upon meit was rage and resistance, and redress; but not despondency nor despair. A savage review is hemlock to a sucking author, and the one on me (which produced the English Bards, &c.) knocked me down - but I got up again. That critique was a master-piece of low wit, a tissue of scurrilous abuse. I remember there was a great deal of vulgar trash, about people being thankful for what they could get,'. '-'not looking a gift horse in the mouth,' and such stable expressions. But so far from their bullying me, or deterring me from writing, I was bent on falsifying their raven predictions, and determined to show them, croak as they would, that it was not the last time they should hear from me." - E. (2)," The severity of the criticism," as Sir Egerton Brydges has well observed, "touched Lord Byron in the point where his original strength lay: it wounded his pride, and roused his bitter indignation. He published "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and bowed down those who had hitherto held a despotic victory over the public mind. There was, after all, more in the boldness of the enterprise, in the fearlessness of the attack, than in its intrinsic force. But the moral effect of the gallantry of the assault, and of the justice of the cause, made it victorious and triumphant. This was one of those lucky developements which cannot often occur; and which fixed Lord Byron's fame. From that day he engaged the public notice as a writer of undoubted talent and energy both of intellect and temper." - E. |