Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

45: Mu. refers to Jeffery’s review of CHP III and PoC (Ed. Rev. XXVI liv, Dec. 1816, pp.278-310). 
46: Mahomet’s sarcophagus was said to be suspended between two magnets. 
47: Ovid, Tristia I, first line (“Without me, book, you will go into the city”); cp DJ I, final stanza. 
48: Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote; or, the Adventures of Arabella (1752). 
49: From John Hookham Frere’s Anti-Jacobin parody of Southey’s Needy Knife-Grinder. 
50: Thomas Dermody, dissipated author of Harp of Erin, Stranger in Ireland, and so on. 
51: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V i 8. 

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with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vul-[p.174]-
gar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination. His fancy 
overestimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, 
and despised when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his 
admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer’s hand, and all 
that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and astonishment at the hallucination under the 
influence of which it was undertaken. The disproportion between hope and possession which is felt by 
all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect 
by the rays of imagination. These reflexions, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us 
by the poetry of Lord Byron, by the sentiments of weariness of life and enmity with the world which 
they so frequently express—and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with incidents of 
his life so recently before the public. The works before us contain so many direct allusions to the 
author’s personal feelings and private history, that it becomes impossible for us to divide Lord Byron 
from his poetry, or to offer our criticism upon the continuation of Childe Harold, without reverting to 
the circumstances in which the commencement of that singular and original work first appeared. 
Distinguished by title and descent from an illustrious line of ancestry, Lord Byron shewed, even in 
his earliest years, that nature had added to those advantages the richest gifts of genius and fancy. His 
own tale is partly told in two lines of Lara: 
‘Left by his Sire, too young such loss to know, 
Lord of himself, that heritage of woe.’
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His first literary adventure and its fate are well remembered. The poems which he published in his 
minority had, indeed, those faults of conception and diction which are inseparable from juvenile 
attempts, and in particular might rather be considered as imitations of what had caught the ear and 
fancy of the youthful author, than as exhibiting originality of conception and expression. It was like the 
first essay of the singing bird catching at and imitating the notes of its parent, ere habit and mind have 
given the fullness of tone, confidence, and self-possession which renders assistance unnecessary. Yet 
though there were many, and those not the worst judges, who discerned in these juvenile productions, a 
depth of thought and felicity of expression which promised much at a more mature age, the errors did 
not escape the critical lash; and certain brethren of ours
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yielded to the opportunity of pouncing upon a 
titled author, and to that which most readily besets our fraternity, and to which we dare not pronounce 
ourselves wholly inaccessible, the temptation, namely, of shewing our own wit, and entertaining our 
readers [p.175] with a lively article without much respect to the feelings of the author, or even to the 
indications of merit which the work may exhibit. The review was read and raised mirth; the poems 
were neglected, the author was irritated, and took his revenge in keen iambics,
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not only on the 
offending critic, but on many others, on whose conduct or writings the juvenile bard had found, or 
imagined he had found, some cause of offence. The satire which has been since suppressed, as 
containing opinions hastily expressed, contained a spirit at least sufficiently poignant for all the 
purposes of reprisal; and though the verses might, in many respects, be deemed the offspring of hasty 
and indiscriminating resentment, they bore a strong testimony to the ripening talents of the author. 
Having thus vented his indignation against the critics and their readers, and put many, if not all the 
laughers on his side, Lord Byron went abroad, and the controversy was forgotten for some years. 
It was in 1812, when Lord Byron returned to England,
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that Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage made its 
first appearance, producing an effect upon the public, at least equal to any work which has appeared 
within this or the last century. Reading is indeed so general among all ranks and classes, that the 
impulse received by the public mind upon such occasions is instantaneous through all but the very 
lowest classes of society, instead of being slowly communicated from one set of readers to another, as 
was the case in the days of our fathers. ‘The Pilgrimage,’ acting on such an extensive medium, was 
calculated to rouse and arrest the attention in a peculiar degree. The fictitious personage, whose 
sentiments, however, no one could help identifying with those of the author himself, presented himself 
with an avowed disdain of all the attributes which most men would be gladly supposed to possess. 
Childe Harold is presented as one satiated by indulgence in pleasure, and seeking in change of place 
and clime a relief from the tedium of a life which glided on without an object. The assuming of such a 
character as the medium of communicating his poetry and his sentiments indicated a feeling towards 
the public, which, if it fell short of contemning their favour, disdained, at least, all attempt to propitiate