Volume I Part 28 (1/2)
P.S.--I will not lay a tax on your time by requiring an answer, lest you say, as Butler said to Tatersall (when I had written his reverence an impudent epistle on the expression before mentioned), viz. ”that I wanted to draw him into a correspondence.”
[Footnote 1: See page 12 [Letter 4], [Foot]note 1 [2]; and page 41 [Letter 14], [Foot] note 2 [1].]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Butler, Head-master of Harrow (see page 58 [Letter 22], [Foot]note 1).]
[Footnote 3: See page 59 [Letter 22], [Foot]note 1 [2].]
[Footnote 4: Francis Calvert, seventh Lord Baltimore (1731-1771), was charged with decoying a young milliner, named Sarah Woodc.o.c.k, to his house, and with rape. On February 12, 1768, he was committed for trial at the Spring a.s.sizes, was tried at Kingston, March 26, 1768, and acquitted. The story is the subject of a romance, 'Injured Innocence; or the Rape of Sarah Woodc.o.c.k;' A Tale, by S. J., Esq., of Magdalen College, Oxford. New York (no date).
”I thank G.o.d,” Lord Baltimore is reported to have said, ”that I have had firmness and resolution to meet my accusers face to face, and provoke an enquiry into my conduct, 'Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi'”
('Ann. Register' for 1768, p. 234). His body lay in state at Exeter Change, previous to its interment at Epsom (Leigh Hunt's 'The Town', edit. 1893, p. 191).]
86.--To John Cam Hobhouse. [1]
Newstead Abbey, Notts, January 16, 1808.
My Dear Hobhouse,--I do not know how the _dens_-descended Davies [2]
came to mention his having received a copy of my epistle to you, but I addressed him and you on the same evening, and being much incensed at the account I had received from Wallace, I communicated the contents to the Birdmore, though without any of that malice wherewith you charge me. I shall leave my card at Batts, and hope to see you in your progress to the North.
I have lately discovered Scrope's genealogy to be enn.o.bled by a collateral tie with the Beardmore, Chirurgeon and Dentist to Royalty, and that the town of Southwell contains cousins of Scrope's, who disowned them (I grieve to speak it) on visiting that city in my society.
How I found this out I will disclose, the first time ”we three meet again.” But why did he conceal his lineage? ”Ah, my dear H., it was _cruel_, it was _insulting_, it was _unnecessary_.”
I have (notwithstanding your kind invitation to Wallace) been alone since the 8th of December; nothing of moment has occurred since our anniversary row. I shall be in London on the 19th; there are to be oxen roasted and sheep boiled on the 22nd, with ale and uproar for the mobility; a feast is also providing for the tenantry. For my own part, I shall know as little of the matter as a corpse of the funeral solemnized in its honour.
A letter addressed to Reddish's will find me. I still intend publis.h.i.+ng the _Bards_, but I have altered a good deal of the ”Body of the Book,” added and interpolated, with some excisions; your lines still stand, [3] and in all there will appear 624 lines.
I should like much to see your Essay upon Entrails: is there any honorary token of silver gilt? any cups, or pounds sterling attached to the prize, besides glory? I expect to see you with a medal suspended from your b.u.t.ton-hole, like a Croix de St. Louis.
Fletcher's father is deceased, and has left his son tway cottages, value ten pounds per annum. I know not how it is, but Fletch., though only the third brother, conceives himself ent.i.tled to all the estates of the defunct, and I have recommended him to a lawyer, who, I fear, will triumph in the spoils of this ancient family. A Birthday Ode has been addressed to me by a country schoolmaster, in which I am likened to the Sun, or Sol, as he cla.s.sically saith; the people of Newstead are compared to Laplanders. I am said to be a Baron, and a Byron, the truth of which is indisputable. Feronia is again to reign (she must have some woods to govern first), but it is altogether a very pleasant performance, and the author is as superior to Pye, as George Gordon to George Guelph. To be sure some of the lines are too short, but then, to make amends, the Alexandrines have from fifteen to seventeen syllables, so we may call them Alexandrines the great.
I shall be glad to hear from you, and beg you to believe me,
Yours very truly,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), created in 1851 Baron Broughton de Gyfford, was the eldest son of Mr. Benjamin Hobhouse, created a baronet in 1812, and M.P. (from 1797 to 1818) successively for Bletchingley, Grampound, and Hindon. From a school at Bristol, John Cam Hobhouse was sent to Westminster, and thence to Trinity, Cambridge, where he won (1808) the Hulsean Prize for an essay on ”Sacrifices,” and made acquaintance with Byron, as related in Letter 84. In 1809 he published a poetical miscellany, consisting of sixty-five pieces, under the t.i.tle of 'Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Cla.s.sics, together with original Poems never before published' (London, 1809, 8vo). (For Byron's nine contributions, see 'Poems', vol. i., Bibliographical Note.) In 1809-10 he was Byron's travelling companion abroad (see 'A Journey through Albania, etc.' London, 1813, 4to).
In 1813 he travelled with Douglas Kinnaird in Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Italy; in 1814 he was at Paris with the allied armies; and in April, 1815, was there again till the second Napoleonic war broke out, returning to witness the second restoration of the Bourbons (see his 'Letters--written by an Englishman resident in Paris, etc.' Anon., London, 1816, 2 vols., 8vo). During 1814 he was much with Byron in London. He notes going with him to Drury Lane, and being introduced with him to Kean (May 19); dining with him at Lord Tavistock's (June 4); dining with him at Douglas Kinnaird's, to meet Kean (December 14). He was Byron's best man at his marriage at Seaham (January 2, 1815), and it was to him that the bride said, ”If I am not happy, it will be my own fault.” He was the last person who shook hands with Byron on Dover pier, when the latter left England in 1816. Later in the same year he was with him at the Villa Diodati, on the Lake of Geneva, and travelled with him to Venice. To him Byron dedicated 'The Siege of Corinth', In the next year he was again with Byron in the Villa La Mira on the banks of the Brenta, and at Venice, where he prepared the commentary on the fourth canto of 'Childe Harold', which Byron dedicated to him. Part of the notes were published separately ('Historical Ill.u.s.trations, etc.'