by indiscriminate abuse, and they never praise except the partisans of Lord Holland and Co. It is nothing to be abused when Southey, Moore, Lauderdale, Strangford,* and Payne Knight, share the same fate.-To Mr. Becher, Feb. 26, 1808.

You have seen the Edinburgh Review, of course. I regret that Mrs. Byron is so much annoyed. For my own part, these "paper bullets of the brain" have only taught me to stand fire; and, as I have been lucky enough upon the whole, my repose and appetite are not discomposed. Pratt, the gleaner, author, poet, &c., &c. addressed a long rhyming epistle to me on the subject, by way of consolation; but it was not well done, so I do not send it, though the name of the man might make it go down.† The E. Rs. have not performed their task well; at least the literati tell me this; and I think I could write a more sarcastic critique on myself than any yet published. For instance, instead of the remark,―ill-natured enough, but not keen,—about Macpherson, I (quoad reviewers) could have said, "Alas, this imitation only proves the assertion of Dr. Johnson, that many men, women, and children, could write such poetry as Ossian's.”—To Mr. Becher, March 8, 1808.

* Yet such are the temptations or the necessities of a satirist, that when Lord Byron retaliated upon the Edinburgh Reviewers, he himself attacked three of these very men-Southey, Moore and Strangford.

So little gratitude did Lord Byron feel towards his feeble champion that he spoke contemptuously of him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, though the lines were omitted at the request of Mr. Dallas who was a friend of Pratt.

Later in life, the poet called the article "a master-piece of low wit." It came from the pen of Brougham, and was evidently dashed off in some scornful hour under the impression that he was dealing with a common-place poetaster. The wonderful genius which Lord Byron subsequently displayed will not prevent any candid person from acknowledging that the 'Hours of Idleness' were little better than faint echoes of the poems of Gray and Moore.

LORD BYRON'S DOGS.

17

I remember the effect of the first Edinburgh Review on me. I heard of it six weeks before,-read it the day of its denunciation,—dined and drank three bottles of claret, (with S. B. Davies, I think,) neither ate nor slept the less, but, nevertheless, was not easy till I had vented my wrath and my rhyme, in the same pages, against every thing and every body. Like George, in the Vicar of Wakefield, "the fate of my paradoxes" would allow me to perceive no merit in another. I remembered only the maxim of my boxing-master, which, in my youth, was found useful in all general riots,-"Whoever is not for you is against you—mill away right and left," and so I did;-like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all men's anent me. did wonder, to be sure, at my own success

'And marvels so much wit is all his own,'

as Hobhouse sarcastically says of somebody (not unlikely myself, as we are old friends) ;—but were it to come over again, I would not. I have since redde the cause of my couplets, and it is not adequate to the effect. C** told me that it was believed I alluded to poor Lord Carlisle's nervous disorder in one of the lines.* I thank Heaven I did not know it-and would not, could not, if I had. I must naturally be the last person to be pointed on defects or maladies.-Diary, Nov. 22, 1813.

LORD BYRON'S DOGS.

Boatswain is dead!†—he expired in a state of madness on the 18th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the

*

No Muse will cheer, with renovating smile,
The paralytic puling of Carlisle.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

The monument raised by him to this dog,-the most memorable tribute of the kind, since the Dog's Grave, of old, at Salamis,—is still

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gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to any one near him. I have now lost every thing except old Murray.-To Mr. Hodgson, Nov. 1808.

As for canine recollections, as far as I could judge by a cur of mine own (always bating Boatswain, the dearest, and, alas! the maddest of dogs), I had one (half a wolf by the she side) that doted on me at ten years old, and very nearly ate me at twenty. When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him.-To Mr. Moore. Jan. 19, 1815.

THE WOUNDED EAGLET.

The last bird I ever fired at was an eaglet, on the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto, near Vostitza. It was

a conspicuous ornament of the gardens of Newstead. The misanthropic verses engraved upon it may be found among his poems, and the following is the inscription by which they are introduced :

"Near this spot

Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,

Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a Dog,

Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,

And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808.

In his original will Lord Byron directed that he should be buried with his dog, and Joe Murray was thought by his master to be worthy of the same honour. When Lord Byron was abroad, a gentleman to whom Joe was showing the tomb, observed, "Well, old boy, you will take your place here some twenty years hence." "I don't know that, sir," replied Joe; "if I was sure his Lordship would come here, I should like it well enough, but I should not like to be alone with the dog."

A STORM BY SEA AND LAND.

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only wounded, and I tried to save it, the eye was so bright; but it pined, and died in a few days; and I never did since, and never will, attempt the death of another bird.-Diary. March 20, 1814.

A STORM BY SEA AND LAND.-LORD BYRON'S VALET, FLETCHER.

66

Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war,* owing to the ignorance of the captain and crew, though the storm was not violent. Fletcher yelled after his wife, the Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmans on Alla; the captain burst into tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God; the sails were split, the main-yard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting in, and all our chance was to make Corfu, which is in possession of the French, or (as Fletcher pathetically termed it) a watery grave." I did what I could to console Fletcher, but finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst. I have learnt to philosophise in my travels; and if I had not, complaint was useless. Luckily the wind abated, and only drove us on the coast of Suli, on the main land, where we landed, and proceeded, by the help of the natives, to Prevesa again; but I shall not trust Turkish sailors in future.

Fletcher's next epistle will be full of marvels. We were one night lost for nine hours in the mountains in a thunder-storm, and since nearly wrecked. In both cases Fletcher was sorely bewildered, from apprehen

* Lord Byron sailed from England on the 2nd of July, 1809, and remained for two years, travelling through parts of Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey.

sions of famine and banditti in the first instance, and drowning in the second instance. His eyes were a little hurt by the lightning, or crying (I don't know which), but are now recovered. Like all Englishmen he is very much dissatisfied. He has suffered nothing but from cold, heat, and vermin, which those who lie in cottages and cross mountains in a cold country must undergo, and of which I have equally partaken with himself; but he is not valiant, and is afraid of robbers and tempests.-To Mrs. Byron. Prevesa, Nov. 12, 1809.

I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the year. Fletcher, after having been toasted and roasted, and baked, and grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to philosophise, is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the Fletchers, who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite. He (Fletcher) begs leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill-written and worse spelt letters have never come to hand.-To Mrs. Byron. Athens, July 25, 1810.

I cannot find that Fletcher is any loss. Besides, the perpetual lamentations after beef and beer, the stupid bigoted contempt for every thing foreign, and insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any language, rendered him, like all other English servants, an incumbrance. I do assure you, the plague of speaking for him, the comforts he required (more than myself by far), the pilaws (a Turkish dish of rice and meat) which he could not eat, the wines which he could not drink, the beds where he could not sleep, and