A rainy Sunday.
DEAR MURRAY,
I have to thank you for letting me see your two new cantos [the 3rd and 4th], which I return. What sublimity! what levity! what boldness! what tenderness! what majesty! what trifling! what variety! what tediousness!—for tedious to a strange degree, it must be confessed that whole passages are, particularly the earlier stanzas of the fourth canto. I know no man of such general powers of intellect as Brougham, yet I think him insufferably tedious; and I fancy the reason to be that he has such facility of expression that he is never recalled to a selection of his thoughts. A more costive orator would be obliged to choose, and a man of his talents could not fail to choose the best; but the power of uttering all and everything which passes across his mind, tempts him to say all. He goes on without thought—I should rather say, without pause. His speeches are poor from their richness, and dull from their infinite variety. An impediment in his speech would make him a perfect Demosthenes. Something of the same kind, and with something of the same effect, is Lord Byron's wonderful fertility of thought and facility of expression; and the Protean style of "Don Juan," instead of checking (as the fetters of rhythm generally do) his natural activity, not only gives him wider limits to range in, but even generates a more roving disposition. I dare swear, if the truth were known, that his digressions and repetitions generate one another, and that the happy jingle of some of his comical rhymes has led him on to episodes of which he never originally thought; and thus it is that, with the most extraordinary merit, merit of all kinds, these two cantos have been to me, in several points, tedious and even obscure.
As to the PRINCIPLES, all the world, and you, Mr. Murray, first of all, have done this poem great injustice. There are levities here and there, more than good taste approves, but nothing to make such a terrible rout about—nothing so bad as "Tom Jones," nor within a hundred degrees of "Count Fathom."
The writer goes on to remark that the personalities in the poem are more to be deprecated than "its imputed looseness of principle":
I mean some expressions of political and personal feelings which, I believe, he, in fact, never felt, and threw in wantonly and de gaieté de coeur, and which he would have omitted, advisedly and de bonté de coeur, if he had not been goaded by indiscreet, contradictory, and urgent criticisms, which, in some cases, were dark enough to be called calumnies. But these are blowing over, if not blown over; and I cannot but think that if Mr. Gifford, or some friend in whose taste and disinterestedness Lord Byron could rely, were to point out to him the cruelty to individuals, the injury to the national character, the offence to public taste, and the injury to his own reputation, of such passages as those about Southey and Waterloo and the British Government and the head of that Government, I cannot but hope and believe that these blemishes in the first cantos would be wiped away in the next edition; and that some that occur in the two cantos (which you sent me) would never see the light. What interest can Lord Byron have in being the poet of a party in politics?… In politics, he cannot be what he appears, or rather what Messrs. Hobhouse and Leigh Hunt wish to make him appear. A man of his birth, a man of his taste, a man of his talents, a man of his habits, can have nothing in common with such miserable creatures as we now call Radicals, of whom I know not that I can better express the illiterate and blind ignorance and vulgarity than by saying that the best informed of them have probably never heard of Lord Byron. No, no, Lord Byron may be indulgent to these jackal followers of his; he may connive at their use of his name—nay, it is not to be denied that he has given them too, too much countenance—but he never can, I should think, now that he sees not only the road but the rate they are going, continue to take a part so contrary to all his own interests and feelings, and to the feelings and interests of all the respectable part of his country…. But what is to be the end of all this rigmarole of mine? To conclude, this—to advise you, for your own sake as a tradesman, for Lord Byron's sake as a poet, for the sake of good literature and good principles, which ought to be united, to take such measures as you may be able to venture upon to get Lord Byron to revise these two cantos, and not to make another step in the odious path which Hobhouse beckons him to pursue….
Yours ever,
J.W. CROKER.
But Byron would alter nothing more in his "Don Juan." He accepted the corrections of Gifford in his "Tragedies," but "Don Juan" was never submitted to him. Hobhouse was occasionally applied to, because he knew Lord Byron's handwriting; but even his suggestions of alterations or corrections of "Don Juan" were in most cases declined, and moreover about this time a slight coolness had sprung up between him and Byron. When Hobhouse was standing for Westminster with Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Byron sent a song about him in a letter to Mr. Murray. It ran to the tune of "My Boy Tammy? O!"
"Who are now the People's men?
My boy Hobby O!
Yourself and Burdett, Gentlemen,
And Blackguard Hunt and Cobby O!