Volume I Part 32 (1/2)

”Say, Byron! why compel me to deplore Talents designed for choice poetic lore, Deigning to varnish scenes, that shun the day, With guilty l.u.s.tre, and with amorous lay?

Forbear to taint the Virgin's spotless mind, In Power though mighty, be in Mercy kind, Bid the chaste Muse diffuse her hallowed light, So shall thy Page enkindle pure delight, Enhance thy native worth, and proudly twine, With Britain's Honors, those that are divine.”

[Footnote 2: See, for the Review itself, Appendix II.

”As an author,” writes Byron to Hobhouse, February 27, 1808, ”I am cut to atoms by the E-----'Review;' it is just out, and has completely demolished my little fabric of fame. This is rather scurvy treatment for a Whig Review; but politics and poetry are different things, and I am no adept in either. I therefore submit in silence.”

Among the less sentimental effects of this Review upon Byron's mind, he used to mention that, on the day he read it, he drank three bottles of claret to his own share after dinner; that nothing, however, relieved him till he had given vent to his indignation in rhyme, and that ”after the first twenty lines, he felt himself considerably better” (Moore, 'Life', p. 69).

”I was sitting with Charles Lamb,” H. Crabb Robinson told De Morgan, ”when Wordsworth came in, with fume in his countenance and the 'Edinburgh Review' in his hand.

'I have no patience with these Reviewers,' he said; 'here is a young man, a lord, and a minor, it appears, who publishes a little volume of poetry; and these fellows attack him, as if no one may write poetry unless he lives in a garret. The young man will do something, if he goes on.'

When I became acquainted with Lady Byron, I told her this story, and she said,

'Ah! if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked Wordsworth. He once went out to dinner where Wordsworth was to be; when he came home, I said,

”Well, how did the young poet get on with the old one?”

”To tell you the truth,” said he, ”I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the end--'reverence!'”'”

('Diary,' iii. 488.)]

[Footnote 3: That is to say, the 'Edinburgh Review' praised only Whigs.

Henry Richard Va.s.sall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773-1840), the ”nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,” married, in 1797, Elizabeth Va.s.sall, the divorced wife of Sir G.o.dfrey Webster. He held the office of Lord Privy Seal in the Ministry of All the Talents (October, 1806, to March, 1807).

During the long exclusion of the Whigs from office (1807-32), when there seemed as little chance of a Whig Administration as of ”a thaw in Nova Zembla,” Holland, in the House of Lords, supported Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, advocated the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, opposed the detention of Napoleon as a prisoner of war, and moved the abolition of capital punishment for minor offences. From November, 1830, to his death, with brief intervals, he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the administrations of Lord Grey and of Lord Melbourne.

Outside the House he kept the party together by his great social gifts.

An admirable talker, 'raconteur', and mimic, with a wit's relish for wit, the charm of his good temper was irresistible.

”In my whole experience of our race,” said Lord Brougham, ”I never saw such a temper, nor anything that at all resembled it”

('Statesmen of the Time of George III.', ed. 1843, 3rd series, p. 341).

Greville speaks of

”his imperturbable temper, unflagging vivacity and spirit, his inexhaustible fund of anecdote, extensive information, sprightly wit”

('Memoirs', iii. 446). Leslie, in his 'Autobiographical Recollections'

(vol. i. p. 100), adds the tribute that

”he was, without any exception, the very best-tempered man I have ever known.”