Literary Byways Part 4

If virtue honours the low race From which I was descended, If vices your high birth disgrace Who should be most commended?"

Duck wrote the epitaph for the tombstone over the remains of Joe Miller of mirthful memory. The following is a copy of the lines:--

"If humour, wit, and honesty could save The hum'rous, witty, honest from the grave; The grave had not so soon this tenant found Whom honesty, and wit, and humour crowned.

Or could esteem and love preserve our breath, And guard us longer from the stroke of death, The stroke of death on him had later fell, Whom all mankind esteem'd and lov'd so well."

The poet-preacher was advanced to the chaplaincy of a regiment of Dragoon Guards. Sad to relate, in the year 1756, in a fit of insanity, he took his own life.

During the Gordon riots on the 7th of January, 1780, Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury Square was burnt, and in the flames perished his valuable library, which he commenced collecting when a lad at school. It included many valuable volumes and materials for memoirs of his times.

Cowper thus wrote on the subject:--

"So then--the Vandals of our isle, Sworn foes of sense and law, Have burnt to dust a n.o.bler pile Than ever Roman saw!

And Murray sighs o'er Pope and Swift, And many a treasure more, The well-judged purchase, and the gift That graced his letter'd store.

Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn, The loss was his alone; But ages yet to come shall mourn The burning of his own."

A pleasing and playful epigram on Robert Bloomfield, the author of "The Farmer's Boy," was written by Henry Kirke White:--

"Bloomfield, thy happy omen'd name Ensures continuance of thy fame; Both sense and truth this verdict give, While _fields_ shall _bloom_ thy name shall live."

The residences of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge near the English Lakes suggested the t.i.tle of lake poets, and of their works the Rev. Henry Townshend wrote:--

"They come from the lakes--an appropriate quarter For poems diluted with plenty of water."

Surely Lord Holland was a little wide of the mark when he penned the following epigram, complaining that Southey did not write sufficient laureate poems; the fact is, he wrote too many to sustain his reputation as a poet:--

"Our Laureate Bob defrauds the King-- He takes his cash and will not sing; Yet on he goes, I know not why, Singing for us who do not buy."

In the _Diary_ of Thomas Moore, under date of September 4, 1825, it is stated: "Lord H. full of an epigram he had just written on Southey, which we all twisted and turned into various shapes; he is as happy as a boy during the operation. He suggests the following as the last couplet:--

"And for us, who will not buy, Goes singing on eternally."

It has been truthfully observed that William Wordsworth "found poetry in the most common-place events of life, and described them in familiar language; he naturally contended that there was little real difference between poetry and prose." Byron thus rallies him on the theory:--

"The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay As soft as evening in his favourite May, Who warns his friend, 'to shake off toil and trouble, And quit his books, for fear of growing double;'

Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; Convincing all, by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose inane."

Theodore Hook produced some pungent verses; here is a slight example on Sh.e.l.ley's "Prometheus Unbound":--

"Sh.e.l.ley styles his new poem _Prometheus Unbound_, And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round; For surely an age would be spent in the finding A reader so weak as to pay for the binding!"

Scott wrote a poem which was published in 1815, under the t.i.tle of _The Field of Waterloo_, and prefaced it thus: "It may be some apology for the imperfections of this poem, that it was composed hastily, and during a short tour upon the Continent, where the author's labours were liable to frequent interruption; but its best apology is, that it was written for the purpose of a.s.sisting the Waterloo subscription."

This plea did not disarm hostile criticism. Thomas, Lord Erskine, expressed himself as follows:--

"On Waterloo's ensanguined plain Lie tens of thousands of the slain; But none by sabre or by shot Fell half so flat as Walter Scott."

Wrote Thomas Moore in his _Diary_: "I have read _Walter_-loo. The battle murdered many, and _he_ has murdered the battle; 'tis sad stuff."

The Earl of Carlisle wrote a sixpenny pamphlet advocating small theatres; and on the day it was issued the newspapers contained the announcement that he had given a large subscription to a public fund, a circ.u.mstance which formed the theme of the following epigram by his cousin, Lord Byron:

"Carlisle subscribes a thousand pounds Out of his rich domains; And for sixpence circles round The product of his brains: 'Tis thus the difference you may hit Between his fortune and his wit."

Byron made his unhappy marriage the subject of at least three epigrams.

Here are two of them as follows:--

ON HIS WEDDING-DAY.

"Here's a happy new year! But with reason I beg you'll permit me to say-- Wish me many returns of the season, But as few as you please of the day."

At a later period he wrote--

"This day, of all our days, has done The worst for _me_ and _you_: 'Tis just six years since we were _one_, And five since we were _two_."

Lord Byron's friend, Thomas Moore, wrote many excellent epigrams, and not a few were penned about him. He published his first volume of poems under the name of Thomas Little. It is stated that a lady found a copy of the book under the pillow of her maid's bed, and wrote on it in pencil:--

"You read _Little_, I guess; I wish you'd read _less_."

The servant was equal to her mistress, and wrote:--

"I read Little before, Now I mean to read _Moore_."

Lord Byron wrote the following in 1811 on Moore's farcical opera:--

"Good plays are scarce; So Moore writes farce; The poet's fame grows brittle-- We knew before That Little's Moore, But now 'tis Moore that's Little."

Respecting Moore's duel with Lord Jeffrey, Theodore Hook composed the following lines:--

"When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said, A reverse he displayed in his vapour, For while all his poems were loaded with lead, His pistols were loaded with paper.

For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank, Such salvo he should not abuse; For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank That is fired away at _Reviews_."

"Moore is here called Anacreon," says W. Davenport Adams, "in allusion to his translations from that poet." The duel was owing to an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, which Moore thought proper to resent by challenging the editor. The combatants were, however, arrested on the ground, and conveyed to Bow Street, where the pistols were found to contain merely a charge of powder, the b.a.l.l.s having in some way disappeared. Byron alludes to the circ.u.mstance in _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_:--

"When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by."

After this strange encounter, the poet and critic were firm friends.

Slips of the pen have given rise to some smart epigrammatic corrections.

Albert Smith wrote in an alb.u.m as follows:--

"Mont Blanc is the Monarch of Mountains, They crown'd him long ago; But who they got to put it on n.o.body seems to know."

ALBERT SMITH.

Thackeray was successfully solicited to contribute to the same book, and wrote under the fore-going:--

A HUMBLE SUGGESTION.