The Press.
London, England, 1855-10-20 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. A New
Edition. In Six Volumes. Vol. I. " Murray's
British Classics." London : Murray.
" ANOTHER edition of Lord Byron !" may cry in
wonder some reader distant from London, and
not acquainted with the fact familiar to book
buyers, that copies of the previous library
editions of Byron have become extremely
scarce. They bring a figure at book-auctions,
and at the second-hand shops, at which we
have often been surprised. As a matter of
fact we know, of our own observation, that
" a new edition " of this great poet is abso •
lutely required.
And the present publication is in the highest
literary sense a " new " edition, and, judging
by this volume, it is, to our taste, the most
elegant and valuable that has yet appeared.
In the former editions the text was often en-
cumbered with long passages from the con-
temporary reviews of the noble poet. The
copiously-expressed admiration of Lord Jeffrey,
and other critics whose fame is already on the
wane, were felt as obtrusive by the reader of
taste and genuine feeling. In the present
edition the notes are all original, extracts and
superfluity are carefully avoided, while Lord
Byron's own notes, and those of Hobhouse,
are of course retained. Prefixed to each poem
is a succinct account of the circumstances
under which it was produced ; and while the
editor does not launch into dissertation, his
remarks are always most valuable from their
critical pertinence and their terseness of
style.
We have been so much pleased with the
literary character of some of the notes and
the introductions to the poems, that we shall
give some specimens of them to the reader.
Prefixed to the fourth canto of " Childe
Harold" we find the following critical estimate
of that great poem :
The defects of the poem, taken as a whole, are not very
serious. In places it is obscure ; the language is some-
times a little labored and exaggerated ; a few of the senti-
ments are repeated; and, for all its conciseness of phrase,
the incidents are occasionally dwelt on too long. There
was one subject to which his perpetual recurrence only
kept alive interest. As the lyre of Anacreon, whatever
topic he tried, reverted to love. so every theme conducted
Lord Byron to his sorrows and wrongs. He often alludes
to the pride of a heart which would rather break than re-
veal its woes, but in truth his passions found vent in verse,
and he confided them to the public, even while daring its
decrees. The most general objection made to the poem
was its sombre misanthropy. He held, with Horace Wal-
pole, that life is a comedy to those who think, and a
tragedy to those who feel. Man was but miserable dust
and ashes; honour and friendship but a name; all pursuits
but vanity and vexation, and he argued that Solomon and
a host of divines had declared the same. But Lord Byron
did not show the emptiness of earth that he might lead to
the skies, nor expose the frailty of our nature that we might
tolerate it in others and subdue it in ourselves. His was
that dreary, blighting philosophy
Which will not look beyond the tomb,
And cannot hope for rest before.
A multitude of imitators borrowed his creed and per-
sonated his character. They imagined they became :.-.;-‘re
interesting by seeming to be miserable, and that pretend-
ing to despise the world was to place themselves above it.
These affectations have long since passed away, and how-
ever much his readers may still be carried along by the
dark heavings of his tempestuous soul, they stand safe at
the conclusion upon the firm-set shore.
Most of the critical annotations appended to
this volume are penned in the critical tone of
the preceding passage. Byron is neither
blindly worshipped by the editor, nor is he
subjected to the cant of criticism. An absence
of all exaggeration of sentiment, and a calm
smooth style, is visible in them all.
A question has often been raised as to whe-
ther the " Hours of Idleness " really deserved
the castigation administered in the Edinburgh
Review. Were any germs of genius really
discernible in them? Did they show power
of versification, or indicate any originality ?
We have often read them at various times,
and our opinion is, that, while the most discri-
minative critic could not infer from them such
genius as Myron displayed afterwards, they
exhibit, if not originality, at least a pecu
liarity of mind. There is not a little in them
of the gloomy brooding which ran through all
his subsequent poems. Sir Walter cott was
not the only scholar or critic who discerned
something more than mediocrity in the " Hours
of Idleness." Sir Egerton Brydges wrote,
under the notice of Byron in his "Biographical
Peerage': (London 18013) :7-" His lordship is
", about twenty years old, but has already di s-

SATURDAY,

" tinguished himself in the literary world by a
" volume of juvenile poems, of which the fol-
" lowing, as it not only possesses much merit,
" but has a relation to the present subject, has
" a claim to insertion in this place ;" and he
then cites at length the verses "On leaving
Newstead Abbey ;" and in his large " History
of the Peerage " (1812), Sir Egerton again
remarked, " that his lordship, by his juvenile
" poems, had not only shown a mind highly
" cultivated, but adorned with fancy and fk
eli-
ing." In after times, Sir Egerton Brydges
wrote with remarkable ability on the more
matured exhalations of Byron's power; and,
of ourselves, we cite these opinions on the
" Hours of Idleness," as we have never seen
them quoted, and as they corroborate the
opinion of Walter Scott, as alluded to in the
following judicious passage from the editor of
the present publication :
The injustice of the article was not, as is often alleged,
in the insensibility it showed to poetic genius, for those
who could see the germs of " Childe Harold " in the
" Hours of Idleness," might detect the oak in an acorn.
Nine pieces out of ten are rather vapid imitations of pre-
ceding writers, and though the acute and benignant eye of
Walter Scott had already distinguished " passages of noble
promise," which led him to expostulate with the editor of
the Edinburgh Review upon the bitterness of the critique,
yet he frankly confessed that they raised no expectation of
even the dawning power which was displayed in the two first
cantos of the " Pilgrimage." Many buds of better promise
have never blown. But the unpretending volume of a
schoolboy—clever for the age at which it was produced—
might have been passed in silence, or treated with respect.
There was nothing to warrant scornful jeering, and, in-
deed, zeal for politics, more than for poetry, is said to have
inspired the article, which was dictated by the desire to
humble a peer. The peer soon taught his critics that they
had not set their foot upon a worm, but upon a snake that
could sting, and Jeffrey then endeavoured to extenuate the
wantonness of the attack by calling insulting ridicule " in-
nocent pleasantry and moderate castigation."

The question, it appears, is still an open one,
as to who was the reviewer in the Edinburgh.
We are told here :

It is authoritatively stated by his biographer, that
Jeffrey—the editor--was not the author of the article.
Lord Byron, who at first supposed him the sole
aggressor, settled down later into the belief that his
antagonist was the versatile Henry Brougham, to whose
pen the attack is now very generally attributed.

The article from the Edinburgh is reprinted
in this edition. The following passage, with
its bitter irony, and its involved parentheses,
is like the style of Lord Brougham'—

With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure
him that the mere rhyming of the final syllable, even when
accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet—
nay, although (which does not always happen) those feet
should scan regularly, and have been all counted accu-
rately upon the fingers—is not the whole art of poetry. We
would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of live-
liness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a
poem, and that a poem in the present day, to be read,
must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree
different from the ideas of former writers, or differently ez.-
pressed. We put it to his candour. whether there is any
thing so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the
following, written in 1806; and whether, if a youth of
eighteen could say anything so uninteresting to his ances-
tors, a youth of nineteen should publish it.
And then the reviewer scornfully cited the
" Farewell to Newstead." For the honour of the
craft of critics, it is well to recollect that the
opinion of the Monthly Review on the juvenile
peer's production was as follows :
- - •

These compositions (it said) are generally of a plaintive
or an amatory cast, with an occasional mixture of satire;
and they display both ease and strength—both pathos and
fire. It will be expected that marks of juvenility and of
baste should be discovered in these productions ; and we
seriously advise our young bard to fulfil with submissive
perseverance the duties of revision And correction. We
discern in Lord Byron a degree of mental power, and a
turn of mental disposition, which render us solicitous that
both should be well cultivated and wisely directed in his
career of life.
On the merits of the " English Bards and
Scoteh Reviewers " there is more diversity of
opinion. We are inclined, with the editor, to
rate the production low, and we concur
with him in thinking that it would not have
passed into celebrity but for the writer's sub-
sequent renown. It is extraordinary what a
iii
the of mere rubbish is often preserved n
the collected works of writers in consequence
of the glory of their more famous productionst
There is not a couplet, not even a line, of thg
" English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " that
has become classical, or proverbial by quota/
tion. In saying that, we refer to its satirical
and quasi-critical portions, as the fine apos-
trophe to Kirke White is not in the vein of
the poem at all. His present editor's opiniou
on tie satire is as follows