'Nature's chief Master-piece is writing well.' Such was Roscommon,1 not more learn'd than good, With manners gen'rous as his noble blood; To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known, And ev'ry author's merit but his own. Such late was Walsh 2-the Muse's judge and friend, Who justly knew to blame or to commend ; 730 view, 739 The learn'd reflect on what before they knew: Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.3 1 Lord Roscommon, author of an Essay on Translated Verse.' [1633-1684]. 2 Walsh [1663-1709], a very poor writer, but of service to Pope; praised by both Pope and Dryden. 3 Cf. the last lines in Boileau's 'Art of Poetry.' IV LETTER TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ON THE REV. W. L. BOWLES'S STRICTURES ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF POPE. By LORD BYRON.1 DEAR SIR, 3 RAVENNA, February 7, 1821. In the different pamphlets 2 which you have had the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles's controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr Bowles refers more than once to what he is pleased to consider a remarkable circumstance,' not only in his letter to Mr Campbell, 1 'I'll play at Bowls with the sun and moon.'-Old Song. 'My mither's auld, Sir, and she has rather forgotten hersel in speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit (as I ken naebody likes it, if they could help themsels).'-Tales of My Landlord; Old Mortality, vol. ii. p. 163. 2 Some seven appear in the pages of The Pamphleteer alone. 3 His much debated edition of Pope appeared some fifteen years earlier. 162 but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also, and Mr Gilchrist have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, 'Lord Byron, if he remembers the circumstance, will witness'-(witness IN ITALIC, an ominous character for a testimony at present). I shall not avail myself of a 'non mi ricordo,' even after so long a residence in Italy; I do 'remember the circumstance,' -and have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do), as correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, I had the honour of meeting Mr Bowles, in the house of our venerable host1 of Human Life, etc. the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr Bowles calls this 'soon after' the publication; 2 but to me three years appear a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing 1 Samuel Rogers, whose poem, Human Life, appeared in 1819. 2 V. Bowles's Invariable Principles of Poetry (1819), 6 of 'the rest of the company going into another room,'-nor, though I well remember the topography of our host's elegant and classicallyfurnished mansion, could I swear to the very room where the conversation occurred, though the 'taking down the poem' seems to fix it in the library. Had it been 'taken up,' it would probably have been in the drawingroom. I presume also that the 'remarkable circumstance' took place after dinner; as I conceive that neither Mr Bowles's politeness nor appetite would have allowed him to detain the rest of the company' standing round their chairs in the 'other room,' while we were discussing the woods of Madeira,' instead of circulating its vintage. Of Mr Bowles's 'good humour' I have a full and not ungrateful recollection; as also of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable conversation. I speak of the whole, and not of particulars; for whether he did or did not use the precise words printed in the pamphlet, I cannot say, nor could he with accuracy. Of 'the tone of seriousness' I certainly recollect nothing: on the contrary, I thought Mr Bowles rather disposed to treat the subject lightly; for he said (I have no objection to be contradicted, if incorrect) that some of his good-natured friends had come to him and exclaimed, Eh! Bowles! how came you to make the woods of Madeira?' etc. etc. and that he had been at some pains and pulling down of the poem to convince them that he had never made 'the woods' do anything of the kind. He was right, and I was wrong, and have been wrong still up to this acknowledgment; for I ought to have looked twice before I wrote that which involved an inaccuracy capable of giving pain. The fact was, although I had certainly before read the Spirit of Discovery,1 I took the quotation from the review. But the mistake was mine, and not the review's, which quoted the passage correctly enough, I believe. I blunderedGod knows how-into attributing the tremors of the lovers to the woods of Madeira,'2 by which they were surrounded. And I hereby do fully and freely declare and asseverate. that the woods did not tremble to a kiss, and that the lovers did. I quote from memory -'A kiss Stole on the listening silence, etc. etc. They [the lovers] trembled, even as if the power,' etc. 1 The Spirit of Discovery, a poem in blank verse by Bowles, appeared in 1804. 26 'Thy woods, Madeira, trembled to a kiss,' Eng. Bards and S. Reviewers. |