this Lord does, with low, vile, personal buffooneries—bottomed in utter falsehood, and expressed in crawling malice? Nothing, nothing. What can be more exquisitely worthy of contempt than the savage imbecility of these eternal tirades against the Duke of Wellington? What more pitiable than the state of mind that can find any gratification in calling such a man as Southey by nicknames that one would be ashamed of applying to a coal-heaver? What can be so abject as this eternal trampling upon the dust of Castlereagh? Shame! shame! shame! Byron ought to know, that all men of all parties (for Cockneys are not men, and saloop-parties are not parties,) unite in regarding all these things, but especially the first and the last, as insults to themselves, and as most miserable degradations of him. But he ought to be told this in a sensible manner. He ought not to be treated as if he were a driveller, or capable of being mistaken for one even for a moment; but he ought to be told plainly, distinctly, solemnly, and with a total negation of all humbug, that he is a writer of extraordinary talents—that Don Juan contains the outline of an extraordinary poem—and that he is voluntarily ruining both himself and his production.
I observe some of the Monthly idiots talk of “Don Juan” as if it were a by-job of Lord Byron’s—a thing that he just takes up now and then, when he is (I must quote their own sweet words) “relaxing from the fatigues of more serious literary exertions.” This I look upon as trash of the first water. It is very likely—indeed I have no doubt of it—that a canto of Don Juan costs Lord Byron much less trouble than a “Werner” or a “Cain.” In like manner, I daresay, one of Voltaire’s lumbering tragedies cost Voltaire ten times more fatigue than ten Zadigs, Taureau Blancs, or Princesses of Babylon, would have done. In like manner, I have no doubt Wordsworth’s “Convention of Cintra” pamphlet cost him much more trouble than his “Ruth,” or his “Song for Brougham Castle,” or his “Hart-leap Well.” In like manner, I have no doubt the Monthly List of Deaths, Marriages, Births, Bankruptcies, Patents, and Promotions, costs you more trouble than the “Leading Article.” But this is not the way to judge of these things. Almost any one canto of Juan—certainly any one of these three—contains more poetry and more genius than any three of Byron’s recent tragic attempts have done. The worthy I have been dishing probably opines that Lord Byron dashes off a canto of the Don after a tragedy, just as he himself does an article for “My Grandmother,” after he has finished his sermon for next Sunday.
I shall now beg leave to “relax from the fatigue of this serious literary exertion” over a tumbler of gin-twist; and, wishing mine Editor many similar relaxations, remain his most humble servant,
M. ODoherty.
Kilkenny, Sept. 12.
POPULAR TALES OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS.[1]
This publication has much disappointed us. It will do a great deal more harm than good to the popularity of German literature here. In general, very indifferent pieces are selected, while scores and scores innumerable of exquisite things of the same species are omitted. Who could trouble himself with doing into English such perfect trash as “the Sorcerers,” “the Victim of Priestcaft,” &c. &c. &c. while so many dozens of really excellent little stories of diablerie remain untouched—the whole works, to say no more, of Herr Hoffman?
We would earnestly recommend it to our worthy friend Bohte (a most spirited and most useful bookseller he is,) to have the few good stories in this collection cut out, and published by themselves in a single volume. At present, the proportion of Balaam is at least three to one, which is more than is sufferable even in periodicals, to say nothing of a book which ought to be, and which might so easily be, made a standard one. It will cost him the less trouble to do this, that, we know not by what accident, the best of his stories are also
- ↑ Popular Tales of the Northern Nations. In 3 vols. London. Simpkin and Marshall, and J. Bohte. 1823.
