Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

 
from Scott to Robert Southey, August 7th 1809: 
(Source: text from Grierson II 214) 
 
... In the meantime, it is funny to a whelp of a young Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances 
he knows nothing, for endeavouring to scratch out a living by my pen. God help the bear, if having 
little else to eat, he must not even suck his own paws. I can assure the noble imp of fame it is not my 
fault that I was not born to a park and £5000 a-year, as it is not his lordship’s merit, although it may be 
his great good fortune, that he was not born to live by his literary talents and success. 
 
March 10th 1812: Childe Harold I and II published. 
 
Scott to Byron, from Edinburgh, July 3rd 1812: 
(Source: Grierson 1811-14, pp.136-9) 
[The right Honble / Lord Byron / &c &c &c / Care of Mr. Murray] 
Scott initiates the correspondence. 
EDINBURGH
, July 3d, 1812 
MY LORD
, – I am uncertain if I ought to profit by the apology which is afforded me, by a very obliging 
communication from our acquaintance, John Murray of Fleet Street,
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to give your Lordship the present 
trouble. But my intrusion concerns a large debt of gratitude due to your Lordship, and a much less 
important one of explanation, which I think I owe to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of 
any person whose talents rank so highly in my own as your Lordship’s most deservedly do. 
The first count, as our technical language expresses it, relates to the high pleasure I have received 
from the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, and from its precursors; the former, with all its classical 
associations, some of which are lost on so poor a scholar as I am, possesses the additional charm of 
vivid and animated description, mingled with original sentiment; – but besides this debt, which I owe 
your Lordship in common with the rest of the reading public, I have to acknowledge my particular 
thanks for your having distinguished by praise, in the work which your Lordship rather dedicated in 
general to satire, some of my own literary attempts.
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And this leads me to put your Lordship right in 
the circumstances respecting the sale of Marmion, which had reached you in a distorted and 
misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some reason to complain, were given to the public 
without more particular inquiry.
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The poem, my Lord, was not written upon contract for a sum of 
money – though it is too true that it was sold and published in a very unfinished state (which I have 
since regretted) to enable me to extricate myself from some engagements which fell suddenly upon me 
by the unexpected misfortunes of a very near relation. So that, to quote statute and precedent, I really 
come under the case cited by Juvenal, though not quite in the extremity of the classic author –