filial affection
and
modesty
dwell."
Verax
.
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If it was the object of Lord
Byron
to stamp his character, and to bring his name forward by a single act of his life into general notoriety, it must be confessed that he has completely succeeded. We do not recollect any former instance in which a Peer has stood forth as the libeller of his Sovereign. If he disapproves the measures of his Ministers, the House of Parliament, in which he has an hereditary right to sit, is the place where his opinions may with propriety be uttered. If he thinks he can avert any danger to his country by a personal conference with his Sovereign, he has a right to demand it. The Peers are the natural advisers of the Crown, but the Constitution which has granted them such extraordinary privileges, makes it doubly criminal in them to attack the authority from which it is derived, and to insult the power which it is their peculiar province to uphold and protect. What then must we think of the foolish vanity, or the bad taste of a titled Poet, who is the first to proclaim himself the Author of a Libel, because he is fearful it will not be sufficiently read without his avowal. We perfectly remember having read the verses in question a year ago; but we could not then suppose them the offspring of patrician bile, nor should we now believe it without the Author's special authority. It seems by some late quotations from his Lordship's works, which have been rescued from that oblivion to which they were hastening with a rapid step, by one of our co-equals, that this peerless Peer has already gone through a complete course of private ingratitude. The inimitable Hogarth has traced the gradual workings of an unfeeling heart in his progress of cruelty. He has shewn, that malevolence is progressive in its operation, and that a man who begins life by impaling flies, will find a delight in torturing his fellow creatures before he closes it. We have heard that even at school these poetical propensities were strongly manifested in Lord
Byron
, and that he began his satirical career against those persons to whom the formation of his mind was entrusted. From his schoolmaster he turned the œstrum of his opening genius to his guardian and uncle, the Earl of
Carlisle
. We cannot believe that the Noble Person's conduct has in this instance been a perfect contrast to the general tenor of his life. We have heard, that during his guardianship he tripled the amount of his nephew's fortune. If the Earl of
Carlisle
was satisfied with his own
conscia mens recti
, if he wanted no thanks, he must at least have been much surprised to find such attentions and services rewarded with a libel, in which not only his literary accomplishments, but his bodily infirmities, were made the subject of public ridicule. The Noble Earl was certainly at liberty to treat such personal attacks with the contempt which they deserve, but since his Sovereign is become the object of a vile and unprovoked libel, he will no doubt draw the attention of his Peers to a new case of outrage to good order and government, which has been unfortunately furnished by his own nephew.
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That poetical Peer, Lord
Byron
, knowing full well that anything insulting to his Prince or injurious to his country would be most thankfully received and published by the
Morning Chronicle
, did in March, 1812, send the following loyal and patriotic lines to that loyal and patriotic Paper, in which of course they appeared: "To
a Lady Weeping.
"Weep, daughter of a Royal line,A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay:Ah! happy! if each tear of thineCould wash a father'sfaultaway!"Weep—for thy tears are Virtue's tears—Auspicious to these suffering isles:And be each drop, in future years,Repaid thee by thy people's smiles!"
These lines the
Morning Chronicle
, in the following paragraph of yesterday, informs us were aimed at the
Prince Regent
, and addressed to the Princess
Charlotte
:
"The Courieris indignant at the discovery now made by LordByron, that he was the author of 'the Verses to a Young Lady weeping,' which were inserted about a twelvemonth ago inthe Morning Chronicle. The Editor thinks it audacious in a hereditary Counsellor of the King to admonish theHeir Apparent. It may not becourtly, but it is certainlyBritish, and we wish the kingdom had more such honest advisers."
No wonder the
Courier
, and every loyal man, should be indignant at the discovery (made by the republication of these worthless lines, in the Noble Lord's new Volume) that this gross insult came from the pen of "a hereditary Counsellor of the
King
! "No wonder every good subject should execrate this novel and disagreeable mode of "
admonishing
the Heir Apparent," which is further from being British than it is from being Courtly; for, from Courtier baseness may be expected, but from a Briton no such infamous dereliction of his duty as is involved in a malignant,
anonymous
attack by a Peer of the Realm upon the person exercising the Sovereign Authority of his Country. But the assertions of Lord
Byron
are as false as they are audacious. What was the "Sire's Disgrace" to be thus bewept? He preferred the independence of the Crown to the arrogant dictation of a haughty Aristocracy, who desired to hold him in Leading-strings. It was then, amid a "Realm's (fancied) decay," because this Faction were not admitted to supreme power, that his Royal Highness's early friends drunk his health in contemptuous silence, while their more vulgar partizans "at the lower end of the Hall" hissed and hooted the royal name. But mark the reverse since March, 1812, a reverse which it might have been thought would have induced the Noble Lord, from prudent motives, to have withheld this ill-timed publication! How is his Royal Highness's health toasted
now
? With universal shouts and acclamations. Treason itself dare not interpose a single discordant sound save in its own private orgies! Where is
now
the realm's decay? oh short-sighted prognosticators of the prophecies! look around, and dread the fate of the speakers of falsehood among the Jews of old, who were stoned to death by the people! The wide world furnishes the answer to your selfish croakings, and tells Lord
Byron
that he is destitute of at least one of the qualities of an inspired Bard.
Perhaps we might add another, viz. honesty in acknowledging his plagiarisms, one of which (as we have already said more than his silly verse above quoted deserves, except from the rank of its author) we shall take the liberty of stating to the Public.
The
Bride of Abydos
begins, something in the stile of an old ballad, thus:
"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtleAre emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,Where the rage of the vulture—the love of the turtle—Now melt into sorrow—now madden to crime?—Know ye the land of the cedar and vine?Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume,Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom;Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye."
The whole of which passage we take to be a paraphrase, and a bad paraphrase too, of a song of the German of Göthe, of which the following translation was published at Berlin in 1798:
"Know'st thou the land, where citrons scent the gale,Where glows the orange in the golden vale,Where softer breezes fan the azure skies,Where myrtles spring and prouder laurels rise?"Know'st them the pile, the colonnade sustains,Its splendid chambers and its rich domains,Where breathing statues stand in bright array,And seem, 'What ails thee, hapless maid?' to say?"Know'st thou the mount, where clouds obscure the day;Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way;Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood;And broken rocks oppose the headlong flood?"
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.
On the Detection of Lord
Byron's
Plagiarism, in
The Sun
of Friday last.
"ThatByronborrows versesis well known,But hismisanthropyis all his own."
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We are informed from very good authority, that as soon as the House of Lords meets again, a Peer of very independent principles and character intends to give notice of a motion, occasioned by the late spontaneous avowal of a copy of verses by LordByron, addressed to the PrincessCharlotteofWales, in which he has taken the most unwarrantable liberties with her august Father's character and conduct; this motion being of a personal nature, it will be necessary to give the Noble Satirist some days notice, that he may prepare himself for his defence against a charge of so aggravated a nature, which may perhaps not be a fit subject for a criminal prosecution, as the laws of the country, not forseeing the probability of such a case ever occurring, under all the present circumstances, have not made a provision against it; but we know that each House of Parliament has a controul over its own members, and that there are instances on the Journals of Parliament, where an individual Peer has been suspended from all the privileges of the high situation to which his birth entitled him, when by any flagrant offence against good order and government, he has rendered himself unworthy of exercising so important a trust.Morning Post.
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.
"'Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line!'"Mourn, dabbler in dull party rhyme,Thy mind's disease, thy name's disgrace.Ah, lucky! if the hand of TimeShould all thy Muse's crimes efface!"Mourn—for thy lays are Rancour's lays—Disgraceful to a Briton born;And hence each theme of factious praiseConsigns thee to thy Country's scorn."
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