without which all prosecutions are unavailing. In Southey's own words, (I quote from memory ;) "But if within her walls, indifference dwell, Woe to her then! She needs no outer wound." If, however, in place of indifference, zeal should abound, I care not a farthing for the efforts of infidelity, and would willingly vote that libel prosecutions be left to such friends of freedom, as Henry Grey Bennet, Denman, Brougham, the late Queen, Daniel O'Connell of Ireland, Lord Archy Shilling, Peter Finnerty, late of the pillory, and John Leslie. The worthy Laureate, by the way, falls into the old Lake trick twice in the course of this concern. He quotes his own Joan of Arc, (0 ye Gods!) and he puffs Elia!-Eheu! Eheu! I consider the eleventh and thirteenth articles together, as being on something similar subjects, the former on Greece, the latter on Spain; but how dissimilar in style, argument, and common sense! The paper on Spanish affairs is by a sensible, well-informed, clear-headed, statesmanlike writer, who knows the interests of his country, and is not led away by the nonsensical claptraps that amuse fools. The other is a mere piece of schoolboy frothy declamation, such a thing as would be counted very clever in a boy at Westminster; and had I heard it from such a youth, I should have been tempted to say, "That is really a fine promising lad-has read his authors with some taste-How old may he be? Seventeen ?-Ay, a fine lad indeed, fine honourable boyish notions, and no doubt, when he gets a few years over his head, and can see things, not through mere bookish media, he will be able to produce something worth reading, if he can acquire a less ambitious style, and lose the habit of quoting Greek-and that, of course, he will do." But I have far different feelings for the composition of a fullgrown man, who has felt the razor over his throat. The quarrel between the Turks and the Greeks is a quarrel between two hostile factions of people of the same country. [We must beg Tickler's pardon for diminishing his excellent article, by omitting his strictures on the Greek affairs-because we have not room. They shall appear in our next. If Tim wishes, he may alter, or add, or omit, ad libitum, in the meantime.] The other affair of which you spoke shall be attended to. Mrs T. presents her compliments-the youngster, I am sorry to say, still continues weakly. I am, dear sir, yours ever, TIMOTHY TICKLER. Southside, Saturday. P.S.-Southey is still vivid in wrath against his Lordship of Byron, ex. gr. Contagion was extended beyond the sphere of the court, by a race of poets "Whose loose lascivious lays perpetuated Which sweet strain, we learn by a note, is in "Joan of Arc." As also that "These lines sufficiently shew, that their author held the same moral opinions at the age of nineteen, as when he branded the author of Don Juan"-a most important and highly-interesting fact. But I am no pretender to great powers of divination, when I say, that that note never would have appeared in the Quarterly, had not his Lordship quarrelled with Murray. Again, "One Liberal, (we are thankful for the word-it is well that we should have one which will at once express whatever is detestable in principle, and flagitious in conduct.)" Prosecute Southey, John Hunt, prosecute him, man, without a moment's delay. Leigh the first, also, had better take advice on the following passage: "Some of the most depraved minds in the present generation, have manifested this tendency, proclaiming, at the same time, their hatred for Christianity, and their predilection for what they are pleased to call the religion of the loves and luxuries-that is, the religion of Jupiter, Mars, Bacchus, Venus, the Garden God," &c. &c. Apollo and Mercurius, and the rest, as Bryan O'Proctor has it. "Some of the most DEPRAVED minds!" Fie! Fie! and fight in defence of the sky-gods. Again, "others of a higher class mingle, like Voltaire, filth with blasphemy, impiety with lewdness, and pursue their object with such devoted perseverance, as if the devil had chosen them for his apostles." A hit palpable against the Satanic school, a nickname which, however, will hardly last as long as our own Cockney or Leg-of-Mutton Schools of Poetry. T. T. P.S.-I have a corner still left of this voluminous epistle-and I shall use it to enter an appeal in behalf of Jerry Bentham. Hang it, he is our preserve. He is lugged in in p. 502, text and note-in p. 551-and other places. This is poaching on you. Warn Murray's scribes off, and vindicate your right in cutting up that first-rate piece of game, him whom a friend of ours calls, in that droll song which he sung a fortnight ago for us, (and which you should print,) "Sage Jeremy the bencher Good night-it is almost two o'clock. [I write to-morrow.] T. T. I was just going to seal up, when your new packet came to hand.Well, I have read the three new Can tos. ALAS! POOR BYRON! Not ten times a-day, dear Christopher, but ten times a-page, as I wandered over the intense and incredible stupidities of this duodecimo, was the departed spirit of the genius of Childe Harold saluted with this exclamation. Alas! that one so gifted-one whose soul gave such appearance of being deeply imbued with the genuine spirit of poetry-one, to whom we all looked as an ornament of our literature, and who indeed has contributed in no small degree towards spreading a strain of higher mood over our poetry-should descend to the composition of heartless, heavy, dull, anti-British garbage, to be printed by the Cockneys, and puffed in the Examiner.Alas! alas! that he should stoop to the miserable degradation of being extolled by Hunt!-that he, who we hoped would be the Samson of our poetical day, should suffer himself to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind buffooneries before the Philistines of Cockaigne. But so it is. Here we have three cantos of some hundred verses, from which it would be impossible to ex tract twenty, distinguished by any readable quality. Cant I never speak, and, with the blessing of God, never will speak-especially to you, and accordingly, though I was thoroughly disgusted with the scope and tendency of the former cantos of the Donthough there were passages in them which, in common with all other men of upright minds and true feelings, I looked on with indignation—yet I, for one, never permitted my moral or political antipathies so to master my critical judgment, as to make me whiningly decry the talent which they often wickedly, sometimes properly, exhibited. But here we are in a lower V deep-we are wallowing in a sty of mere filth. Page after page presents us with a monotonous unmusical drawl, decrying chastity, sneering at matrimony, cursing wives, abusing monarchy, deprecating lawful government, lisping dull double-entendres, hymning Jacobinism, in a style and manner so little unrelieved by any indication of poetic power, that I feel a moral conviction that his lordship must have taken the Examiner, the Liberal, the Rimini, the Round Table, as his model, and endeavoured to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I believe, from charitable motives, to associate. This is the most charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King of the Cockneys. At least I hope so-I hope that there is but one set capable of writing any thing so leering and impotent, as the loinless drivelling (if I may venture a translation of the strong expression of the Stoic satirist) which floats on the slaver of too many of these pages. I allude, for instance, to the attempt at wit, where the poet (the poet!) is facetious at the state of females during the sack of a town ;* the greatest part It is a pity to reprint such things, but a single specimen here may do good, by the disgust for the whole which it must create. "In one thing ne'ertheless 'tis fit to praise And therefore worthy of commemoration : Perhaps the season's chill, and their lone station "Much did they slay, more plunder, and no less As when the French, that dissipated nation, "Some odd mistakes, too, happen'd in the dark, Of light to save the venerably chaste ;- "But on the whole their continence was great; Of single blessedness,' and thought it good To bear these crosses) for each waning prude "Some voices of the buxom middle-aged of the seraglio scene; and other places to which I must decline making any farther reference. Alas! poor Lord Byron! His originality has been often questioned, and he has of late been compelled to admit, that the scissors, or a mental operation almost as mechanical as scissorswork, have stood him in good stead. In this new book of his, he honestly confesses his obligation to a French description of the siege of Ismail. So far so good. But he has not the courage, or, if you will, the impudence, to avow his obligation to another French work, which has supplied his warm colouring. I may as well name the book at once-the Chevalier de Faublas. To such of your readers as know the book, there is no need of making any observation whatever on its contents to those who do not, I may just mention that the meritorious Mr Ben bow has suffered an accident before the courts of Westminster for being so liberal as to republish it. Now, from this filthy work, which I am really almost ashamed for having mentioned, are all the striking situations of Don Juan taken-for instance, the very incident in the seraglio, &c. &c. &c. It is, however, fair to say, that Byron adopts here and there the filthy incidents, and, almost throughout, the filthy tone, of Faublas, without, in any one passage, (I mean of these three new cantos,) rivalling the sparkle of Louvet's wit-far less the elegance of Louvet's language. Talking of language, it is indeed luce clarius that Lord B.'s residence in Italy has been much too long protracted. He has positively lost his ear, not only for the harmony of English verse, but for the very jingle of English rhymes. He makes will rhyme to will in stanza 33 of Canto VI. "Patience" is the rhyme to "fresh ones" in another place. "John Murray" rhymes to "necessary" in a third; and "had in her" to "Wladimir" in a fourth. As for the flow of his verse, read the following patches of dull prose: "He died at fifty for a queen of forty; I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty, for then wealth, kingdoms, worlds, are but a sport; I remember when, though I had no great plenty of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I gave what I had -a heart;-as the world went I gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever." "I wonder (although Mars no doubt's a god I praise) if a man's name in a bulletin may make up for a bullet in his body? I hope this little question is no sin, because, though I am but a simple noddy, I think one Shakespeare puts the same thought in the mouth of some one in his plays so doating, which many people pass for wits by quoting." Stop here for a moment, Christopher, just to admire the style in which "one Shakespeare," and his "doating plays," are mentioned by this worshipper of Pope; and then go on to the following: "Perceiving then no more the commandant of his own corps, nor even the corps, which had quite disappeared-the Gods know how! (I can't account for everything which may look bad in history; but we at least may grant it was not marvellous that a mere lad, in search of glory, should look on before, nor care a pinch of snuff about his corps.") Read these morceaus, (they are three veritable stanzas of Don Juan,) and doubt, if you can, that Byron has staid away rather too long, and that, if he means to write more English, it is high time he were back in England, to hear the language spoken.-It is very good of him to give alms to any poor Cockney he finds at sea abroad, without a tester in his fob-but hence "Methinks these are the most tremendous words, Since Menè, Menè, Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,' Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords. Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson: What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's, Severe, sublime; the Prophet wrote no farce on The fate of Nations ;-but this Russ so witty Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a burning city." "Then there were foreigners of much renown, A pleasant thing to young men at their years. Back Thomson and Bill Thomson ;-all the rest The rest were Jacks and Gills, and Wills and Bills; And that his father was an honest blacksmith, I've said all I know of a name that fills Three lines of the despatch in taking Schmacksmith,' He fell, immortal in a bulletin." * "A habit rather blameable, which is That of despising those we combat with, The cause of killing Tchitchitzkoff and Smith; That one would think the FIRST who bore it' ADAM."" And then to crown the whole, take the stanza that immediately follows this about "Tchitchitzkoff and Smith." "The Russian batteries were incomplete, Because they were constructed in a hurry; Thus the same cause which makes a verse want feet, When the sale of new books is not so fleet As they who print them think is necessary, These are the mumblings of a man, whose impressions of Joseph Miller have been weakened by long absence! Never was such poor, poor stuff-and VOL. XIV. I am almost ashamed to think of myself tacking the mention of such contemptible trash to a notice, however hasty and imperfect, of such a work M |