Mr. Southey And Lord Byro...
The Times, 1824-12-14T00:00:00

03he fculowliny letter Is ta'ken from an evening paper.] & Sr,...On two formner occasions you have allowed me, throieghthe ante1of yer jounal,to onraict a calumnious accua'tion jig publclyasi ha bee prfered and though, in these days of sian. der, eachthins hadlyevereffitation, there are reasons which ledue meoncemereto request a similar favour. extr~cR fro CaptIn Aledwria' rceent ublcation. Of Lm-d B'en'~ oiwersUos,sbave teen tami tmeby a iruml, ho happnin to kow what the ftsaewihaethere falii!id, I ofopinon hat t wuldnot sinb m e osaethem atti ie. 1whithoer,to be ditntyudrto,that in 1* do!ingz lam not izAune yany desr fvndctgmyelf : s.!s. 'wozla be wholl unnecessary, consideingfo w at ater thai charges come. Inotice them for, teseoflyn before :hoptablic one samPle miore of the practicsoth aiiehol enahozuing what creditis due to odBya'asetn.Fr,tt klti Lo .ahiilspolke to this eff-ect,anintstep, hvendot C&ptain Mledtrin having, I dare sy otebs fhsrclein faitthfullV pe-formed the worth ipfu fieo ealn l h foin c1 spFlee, alander, and malignity, which were ventedi i pre. as2lc. Ljard flyron is the person who suffer mos byTtis irtdeea, 'that man is there whiose character would remi unnjred il 5(!tea Peevish or angry expression, every sportive or extravagant Silly', throun off in the utnsuspicious and Imag,ined. safety of private lhiere to be secretly noted down, and published, with no notice .cdrcurrstance to show how they had arisen, and] when nio expla. r?2,to as possilble ? One of the offices whiich has been attributed tID tli devil, isq that of thus regirhering every iclle word. There is cVI endl Of aUl confidence or comnfort in social intercourse, if such a rf. ist t be tolerated by public opinion. When I take these C CsM7matons tobte authentic, itisbcaus as far as iam concerned, they accord, both inesmatter and spirit, WIt what his L-ordship him- pi IElid writtenaan publishied; and'it ison thisacceunt esly that I deem them worthy of notice-.the last notice that I shall ever be.. a`:31 iwUPOn the subject. Let there he as many " More last word,: of It Tr- Baxter" as the " reading pulblic" may choose to pay for, thley aIlI draw forth no further repy from mie. YNow,then, to the noint-The following speech is reported by Cap- nti d w Mdin, as L6rd Byron's:- `~I am glAd Alr. Southey owns that article5 on ' Foliage,' which ectited rm c.holer so much. Bnt who else could have been the eu- t)ic r h i~o but Southey would have had the baseness, under pre- t.i't of reviewinir the workc of one man, insidiously to make it a ricste..og for hatching .malicious caluminies agalRst others? I say -?othinv of the critique itself on ' Foliage;' but what was the oh. 2actof L.hi't article ? I repeat, to vilify and scatter his dark and dev-lish insinuations airinst me and others. Shame on the man Who could woundl an already bleeding heart.-be barbarous enough to Sev"ive the memory of ani event that Shelley was perfectly innocentof -eand foirad scandlal onfalselicod! Shelleyiataxu imnwith writing that article some years; -go; and he had the audacity to admit tbst-tce hzd treasured up some opinions of ShelIej, ten years be- fo'-r,vhza he mas,o a-visit. -at. )Kcswick,..And. Wmade a note of aLI t the tioe." 77ze revix-eal in quecstion I did noet write. Lord Byron migzht haave kiiovni this, if he had inquired of Air. Murray, who woulul readily hzve assured him thet I was not the author: and he mighit bave .k.oown it from the reniewal itself, ivhere the vwriter declares, in plain words, that hr was a contemporay of Shelley's at Eton. I had nio concern in it, directly or indirectly; but let it niot be inferred thiat, in. thu s dIiscaming that paper, any disproval of it is intended. Paeanthe Quarterly RevLew have been ascribed to me, (those on .&K lec' iPoems., for example) wFhich I have heartily condenined, both fort heir spirit and manner. But, for the one in question, its ,comPosition -would be credlitable to the most distinguished writer; ncrr Is there any thing either in the opinions exressed, or in the raimner of expressing them, which a man of just and honourable Principles would have hesitated to advance. I would not have written that part of it which alludes to MAVr. Shelley, because, hiaving met' him os'n familiar termis, and patted with him' in kindness, a feeling Of a'Isich Lord Byron had no conception would have withheld me from animrudverting in that mianner upon his conduct. In other. re- s-purts, the paper contains nothing that I would not have avowed if I had written, or subscribed,[as entirely assenting to, and approving, it. It is r.ot true tlht Shelley ever inquired of me whether I was the authior of that pep r whc a tng, as it did, to be written by an Erotian of hi rw taning, li ery well knew I was not. But in thtix part of Lord Byron's statement there may be somne mnisteke, mingledI with a great deal of malignant falsehood. Air. SlheUey ad. dressed aL letter to me from Pisa, asking if I were the author of a ern. titisni in the Quarterly Revicse upon his Revolt of Islam ; not exactly, in Lead By-ron's phrase, taxin me wilth it, for he declared his Own belief that I was r.ot, but asddX, that he was induced toasak the question b-y the positive declaration of some friends in England that thecarticle was mine. Denying, in my reply, that either hie or any ethet persn was entitled to propose such a question u on such groutnds, I nevertheles assured himi that I had not written t e paper, and that R had never, in anyo mwings, alluded to him ix any wy Now for the assertion hht ad the audacity to admnit hway.n trteasured up s-omneof Shellev's op inions,whca ha resided at Keswick, and haviig made notes of ihem at thle time. Wlhat truth is miixed up with (he slander of this statement, I shall immediately explain;, premnisint only, that as the opinion there imiplied concerning the practice 'of noting down familiar conversation is not aplical to ime, I transfer it to Captaini Mkedwin, for his own especial Use. Alir. Shtelley having, in the letter alluided to, thiouglht proper to mrake rome remarks upon my opinions, I wok oceasion, in reply, to comment uon his, and to ask him (as the tree is known by its fruits) whthger he had found then, conducive to his own happiness, and the happines of those with whom he had been most nearly connectced. T-,is produced a secondi letter from him, written in a tone, partly of justification, partly of attack. I Teplied to this also .-not tVany such absurd amission as Lard Byron has stated- but by recapitulating to himn, as a practical iillustration of his princi- ples, the leading circumstances of his own file,,from the com. nezcerene-t of his career at University College. 1.he earlier facts I stared upon hiis owhr authority, as i had heard them from his own lips; the latter were of piublic notoriety. There the corres- pondenrm ended. On his part It had been condfucted with the courtesy which was natural ro him-..on mine, in the stpirit of one who was earnestly admonishing a fellow-creatuire. This is thle correspondenc6 upon which Lerd Byron's miss-epre. aentation has b-en constructed. It is all that ever patssedI between usp, except a note from Shelley, soineyears before, aceompanving a COPY ef his -4osfo,-, and one of mine in acknowledgment of it. I have preserved his letter, together with copies of my own ; and, if I had as little consideration for the feelings of' the living as Captain AMed- win hims displyed, it is not aLny tenderness towards the dead+i that would withhol d me now from publishing themn. It s anot lik-ely that Shielley should have communicated my part of this correspondence lo Lord Byron even if he did his own. Bear. ing testimony, as bii- heart did, to h troth of my statement,s in every point, andl impossible as it was to escape fromi the oonclusion w7hich was there broughit home, I do not thiink he would have dasred Irde It Hoaw much, or how little, of the truthi was known to his1 Lordship, or with which of the party at Pisa the insolent and calumnniois. maisrepresentation convoyed' in his Lordship's words onlainated, is of little consenuence. The cha rge of scattering dark and devilish insinuilations is one which, if Lord Byron were living, I would throw back in his teeth. Ale he had assailed without the slightest provocation, and with that unmanliness, too, which was pecuiliar to hiim and in this comrse he mnight have gone on without giving me the slightest uncasiness, or calling 63rth one animadversion in reply. When I cause forward to attack his Lordship, it was upon public, not upon prinsate grounds. He is please& ~however, to suppose that he- hd "1 umrtally, ofFended" Mlr. Wordsworth and mystelf many C'ars na=, by a letter which he lied written to the Ettrick Shepherd. "' Crtinir itis," he says, " that I did not spare the Lakists in it, and be told mne that he could not reist the temptation, and had ahown it to the fraternity. It was too tempting ; and, as I could never keep at secret of imv own (as you knowv), much less that of Other veople, I could not blame htim. I remiember saying, among cithershings, that the Lake Poets were such fools as not to fish, in their own waters. But this was the least offensive part of the cpiu. ti." No sucht epistle was ever shown either to Air. Wordsworth or to me: but I remember (and this passage brings it to miy recollec- tionv) to have heard that Lord Byron had spoken of uts, in a letter to JIogg, withi tomne contempt, as fellows whto coulId neithier vie with hi-m for shll in angling, nor for prowess in swimmingc. Nothing msnre than this came to mv hearing:. and I must have been more aensitit-e than his Lordship himnseli' could I have been offended biv it. Lord ByroX..jiust have known that I hand the fto&i of his ceu . Iugium to balance the 'sauci of hi, seorn ; and that the one would have zhi.iLfe the other, even if I had not-well uliderstood the worthlessess ofk both. It was because Lord Byrnhad brought astigma upon Englishlili teraturt-, that I accused him; because he had perverted great ta- lents to the worst purposes; because he had set up for pander-gene.. mel to t be, youth of Great BrTitain as long as his writingq should en. dure; because be hadl committed a high crime and misdemeanour againstL society, by sending forth a work, in which moekery was mningled withA horrors, filth with impiety, profligacy with siedition nrd slarder. For these offences I came forward to arrain him. The rxcusathon was not made darkly, it was nut insinuated, nor was it advanced under the cover of a review. I attacked himi openly in Tmy owes name, end only, not by his, because he hiad not them pub. lircly av4Dwetl the flagitious production, by which he will be remem- bered mo lasting infamy. He replied in a manner altogether worthy olf himself and his cause. Contention with a generous and hgnourable opponent leads naturally to esteem, anid pro. balslv tp friendship; hut, next to sucli an antagonist, an enemy ..lice' Lord By-ron is to he desired; one, who, by hils coil duct in the contes t, divests himself of every claim to respect; one, whose baseness is such a.s to sancetify the vindictive feeling that it prurkes,and pon homthe ct o takng engeance is that of admniserig jstie. anwerd hm a hedeserved to be an- ~werd, nd he ffet wichtha anwer rroduced upon his Lord- shi hi ben escibe bylii fithulchronicler, Captain Aliedwin. Timiis he ealbisoryo wht te prveorsof scadal forthe publie areplete soetiesto nnonc inther dvertisements as -Bly. ron'sCnrvrywT S'otithey." What there wvas dark and devilish in it beog ohsLrship, and had'I been compelled to resume it drin hi lie, h wh plyedthemonster in literatuire, and aime hisblow atwome, shuld avebeen treated accordingly. " Th Ifpesticu Tio,"say Lod Bron CCwhen they began to publsh n cmmo, wee t hae hd acommunity of all things likethe nciet Brtonsto hve lved n a state of nature like 8 a- vags.-nli peple sme slad o th best with children in common lie _ A vere pretty Arcadian notion !" I may be excused for washing that Lomd Byron had published this himself: bitt though he is responsible for the atrocious fasehood, he is not tor its posthu. mous publication. I shall univ observe, therefere, thait the slander is a s worthy of hI Lordship as the scheme itself would have been. Nor xrould I hare condesicended to notice it even thus, were it not to show how little this calumniator knew concerning the objects of his uneasy and resless hatred. Ir. Wordswolth and I were strangers to each other, even by name, when he represents us as engaged in a Satanic confederacy. and we never published any thing in common. Here I dismiss the subject It mighit have been tbought that Lord Byron had attained the last degtee of disgrace when hli head ws Dt up for a sign at one of those preparatory schools for the * A volume of poems by Mr. Leigh Hunt. Thi reader who may be d-7'rous of referring to the *%rticio. will find It In the 5sth vel. of the Quarterly Revleirv," p. ;124. t In the Prefaee to his Ntlonody on Keates," Selleley, as I have been inrormed, asserpt, that I was rhe autbor of the eriticiam in the onrarterly Rerc-," upon that young man's poems, and that his death wasoccasioned by It. There as aadegreeof meanness in this, (eseriallysonsidering the temper and t5iour of our correspondenee), ljitel I was not then prepared to expect frorm Shelley. for that he belileved me to lbe the author of that ipser, I cartainly do not believe. Hees -asonce, fore .short time. myneighbour. C met him upon terms, nnt of friendship. inde;d, bitt certainly of mutual good rill I ad. mi,lred his ta;ents; thought that hewvotldoutgrnw his errors (perilsus as they werel, aud trusted that, meantime, a Idind and genlerous heart would reasit thue effaee of fatal opinions wvhich he 1usd iai'e, up In ignorance and boyhood. Hlerein I wvas mistaiten. But athen I eeased ohope, he becane to mean object fo toe rd1,1215~00 ot f ay ijurous or unkn!iOoad -leetI xpressedlmyrself tIthfjusnt sevuetrity coucerning im, It an direct coemUunleatioln.to hmitif, brxruiel and the allows where obecenity, sediton, and blasphemny, are retailed in trams for the vulgar. There rexiained one further shamne: there remained this expoqu.-e of his Private Conversations, whichhas compelled his Lordship's frfends, in their own defence, to comparc his oral declarations with his wrltten words, and thereby demoastrate that he was as regaraless of truth as be was incapable of sustaining those feelings suited to his birth, sta:ion, and high en. downments, which siometimes came across his better mind. Keswiek, Dec. 8,1824. ROBERT SOUTHiEY. - Rf SOUTIRBY.4AVD LORD Bl-RO,V.