187.
[368] They were published in 1773 in a pamphlet of 16 pages, and, with the good fortune that attends a muse in the peerage, reached a third edition in the year. To this same earl the second edition of Byron's Hours of Idleness was 'dedicated by his obliged ward and affectionate kinsman, the author.' In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, he is abused in the passage which begins:--
'No muse will cheer with renovating smile, The paralytic puling of Carlisle.'
In a note Byron adds:--'The Earl of Carlisle has lately published an eighteen-penny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his plan for building a new theatre. It is to be hoped his lordship will be permitted to bring forward anything for the stage--except his own tragedies.' In the third canto of Childe Harold Byron makes amends. In writing of the death of Lord Carlisle's youngest son at Waterloo, he says:--
'Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine; Yet one I would select from that proud throng, Partly because they blend me with his line, And partly that I did his Sire some wrong.'
For his lordship's tragedy see post, under Nov. 19, 1783.
[369] Men of rank and fortune, however, should be pretty well assured of having a real claim to the approbation of the publick, as writers, before they venture to stand forth. Dryden, in his preface to All for Love, thus expresses himself:--
'Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out by [with] a smattering of Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen, by their poetry:
"Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in ilia Fortuna,"----[Juvenal, viii. 73.]
And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to publick view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle: If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of their number.' BOSWELL. Boswell, it should seem, had followed Swift's advice:--
'Read all the prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in; Though merely writ at first for filling, To raise the volume's price a shilling.'
Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 293.
[370] See ante, i. 402.
[371] Wordsworth, it should seem, held with Johnson in this. When he read the article in the Edinburgh Review on Lord Byron's early poems, he remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, yet such an attack was abominable,--that a young nobleman, who took to poetry, deserved to be encouraged, not ridiculed.' Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 234, note.
[372] Dr. Barnard, formerly Dean of Derry. See ante, iii. 84.
[373] This gave me very great pleasure, for there had been once a pretty smart altercation between Dr. Barnard and him, upon a question, whether a man could improve himself after the age of forty-five; when Johnson in a hasty humour, expressed himself in a manner not quite civil. Dr. Barnard made it the subject of a copy of pleasant verses, in which he supposed himself to learn different perfections from different men. They concluded with delicate irony:--
'Johnson shall teach me how to place In fairest light each borrow'd grace; From him I'll learn to write; Copy his clear familiar style, And by the roughness of his file Grow, like himself, polite.'
I know not whether Johnson ever saw the poem, but I had occasion to find that as Dr. Barnard and he knew each other better, their mutual regard increased. BOSWELL. See Appendix A.
[374] See ante, ii. 357, iii. 309, and post, March 23, 1783.
[375] 'Sir Joshua once asked Lord B---- to dine with Dr. Johnson and the rest, but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemed as much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one of the cages at Exeter-Change.' Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 41.
[376] Yet when he came across them he met with much respect. At Alnwick he was, he writes, 'treated with great civility by the Duke of Northumberland.' Piozzi Letters, i.