Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Research Articles

‘[T]he natural antipathy of author & bookseller’: Byron and John Murray

In later years John Murray looked back to 1812 as his ‘annus mirabilis’. In the history of the firm, this year was momentous, the acquisition of the famous Albemarle Street premises second only in importance to the publication of the first two cantos of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. This essay is concerned with Byron's relationship with John Murray from that period up until their protracted separation in the early 1820s. It begins by reflecting on the history of what Byron called the ‘natural antipathy’ of authors and booksellers before discussing Murray as a publisher in general terms. The essay asks questions about Byron's relationship with the man who published his works for over ten years - why was the association successful? Why did it break down? How did Byron's friends react to Murray's influence over Byron? It also briefly considers the extent to which Byron's preoccupation with the nature of his popularity and fame was exacerbated by his association with the massively successful Albemarle S...

‘The Romantic Byron’ Nottingham Trent University, 4 May 2013

After a swift re-shuffle of parts due to late arrivals, the Nottingham Byron Confer- ence started with the annual evening poetry reading. This year's poem was Byron's Siege of Corinth, and after Bernard Beatty stepped into the breach with a sprightly and surprisingly feminine performance, the evening went smoothly, bar a brief struggle between Peter Cochran and Peter Francev over whose lines were whose. Afterwards the conference attendees enjoyed a supper and became increasingly raucous as the evening progressed.The following morning, somewhat worse for wear, there was a small delay due to road closures, and the opening plenary took place in our hotel rather than at Nottingham Trent University. This was given by Stephen Minta (York), who provided a detailed and wide-ranging insight into the role of nostalgia in Byron's writings, linking the poet's fears of incipient middle age and mental decline with reminiscences of his bygone social glories when lionised in London. Minta considered various definitions of this nostalgia, variously interpreted as a disease, the hope of return to a former state, home- sickness, bygone friendships, the innocence of childhood, and the fantasy of returning to Eden or an Edenic state. Focusing on Byron's earlier works, Minta examined the association of death and rejection with nostalgia, and Byron's presentation of nostalgia as a form of therapy triggered by both pain and pleasure, before turning his attention to the central role Greece played both in Byron's pervasive nostalgia and the nineteenth century public en mass.After overcoming various traffic obstructions and delays, the attendees were at last able to get to the aptly named Ada Byron King building for the main body of the conference. The first session opened with Christine Kenyon Jones's (King's College London) consideration of the deliberately 'Romantic' aspects of the numerous portraits of Byron which both created and sustained his public persona. These included those creations favoured by Byron such as that of the windswept adventurer, the carefully posed dandy, against the backdrop of naval settings and gothic landscapes. This was followed by a discussion of Byron's inability to control his public image and his futile attempts to stop the proliferation of pictorial personas which did not meet with his approval. In particular, Murray's repeated commissioning of images of Byron as the louche yet tortured poet en dishabilles, and engravings in pirated editions of his poems which presented a more satanic, debauched figure, complete with sullen frown, length- ened nose and pointed chin. Monika Coghen (Krakow) followed with an inspection of the role played by publishers and editors, writers and poets, in Byron's evolution into the central Romantic poet on the Continent, paying particular attention to Byron's influence on authors such as de Stael and Stendhal, and how their perceptions of Byron, reflected in their works, entered the wider European consciousness. Agustin Coletes Blanco (Oviedo) continued this theme in his amusing and unusual discussion of the interrelation of the concepts of lost or fictional papers and fictional Byron. He revealed the presence of these concepts in works ranging from literary stalwarts such as Henry James's The Aspern Papers, to Robert Nye's provocative first-person presentation of Byron's sexual exploits in The Memoirs of Lord Byron, and Tom Holland's The Vampire: The Secret History of Lord Byron, in which Byron is discovered to still be among us as a member of the un-dead fraternity.The parallel session 2A, chaired by Agustin Coletes Blanco, opened with Peter Francev's (Leicester) argument that, far from emulating Wordsworth's veneration of nature, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto III is rather a challenge to the reverential Wordsworthian stance. Instead, Canto III is a reflection of the exuberant joy inspired by the power of nature's overwhelming vastness which takes hold of Byron. Francev argued that much of the text exhibits Byronic transcendence rather than Wordsworth's transcendentalism as seen in 'Tintern Abbey'. …

The Development of Byron's Philosophy of Knowledge: Certain in Uncertainty. Emily Bernhard Jackson.

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Development of Byron's Philosophy of Knowledge: Certain in Uncertainty. Emily Bernhard Jackson.William C. HorrellWilliam C. Horrell Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 43, Number 4Autumn 2012 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC24065348 Views: 4Total views on this site © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Byron Journal at Forty

In 1967, Robert Gleckner devoted two chapters in his still impressive Byron and the Ruins of Paradise to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I-II. This was a bold thing to do. Byron's poetry at that time, apart from what were pigeonholed as 'the satires' (Beppo, Don Juan and The Vision of Judgement), was almost universally patronised. Andrew Rutherford, an intelligent man and one of the time's foremost Byronists, could take for granted in a 1988 article in The Byron Journal that 'so much of Byron's poetry is downright bad or mediocre'.1 Gleckner noted that it 'is not only fashionable but critically correct to dismiss the first two cantos [of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage] almost as if they never existed'.2In 2012 in London, a symposium was held mainly on 'Byron in 1812' to commemorate the bicentenary of the poem's publication. Some very distinguished Byron critics (and these are now sufficiently numerous to be no longer a protected species) took Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I-II very seriously indeed. Times have changed. Another anniversary in 2012 might help to explain this change. Forty years ago, The Byron Journal was founded by Elma Dangerfield and Dennis Walwin Jones. It was initiated in 1972 but the first issue was on Byron's birthday, 22 January 1973. Almost unbelievably, 22 January was to be the date of Elma Dangerfield's death in 2006.It would be wrong to over-estimate the rise in Byron's reputation over this period, he is still barely taught in schools and under-taught in universities. The public at large remain convinced that Lord Byron is a Rupert Everett look-alike with a limp. It would smack of hubris, too, to explain his increased critical stature simply by the foundation of the journal but there has certainly been a change and The Byron Journal has certainly both mirrored and assisted this.The history of academic journals is an interesting and complicated one. I am no expert on the matter but it seems that they may be said to have originated with the Journal des Scavans (later Savants) in 1665, followed three months later by The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The former lasted until the French Revolution. The latter was not a regular publication but became one in 1800. Their purpose was to promote the public exchange of scientific ideas. Earlier in the seventeenth century, even Robert Boyle - 'the father of modern chemistry' - was still a believer in alchemy and it may be hazarded that anyone who thought that they had discovered a method of creating gold would not rush into print with the secret. The Royal Society gradually changed all that. Science was a public domain and knowledge a public good.Interestingly, when the Journal des Savants was refounded in 1816, it changed from being primarily a scientific journal into a literary one. The early nineteenth century was the birthplace of the academic literary journal though the contributors to and main readers of the Edinburgh (1802) and Quarterly Review were not academics. Earlier famous journals in the eighteenth century, such as The Spectator and The Tatler, sometimes featured extracts from new works but they were not journals of literary criticism. The new journals in Byron's time contained articles on many subjects, had a clear political bias, but devoted much space to the criticism of new literary books and introduced a new and powerful phenomenon - 'the reviewer'. Byron's title English Bards and Scotch Reviewers relies on the new usage, where a 'reviewer' is primarily someone who writes in a literary journal.3If we jump to the literary scene a century later, we find a diverse pattern. Academic literary journals have arrived such as the American Modern Language Review (1905) and the British Review of English Studies (1925). The Times newspaper has initiated The Times Literary Supplement (1902) with anonymous scholarly reviews. On the other hand, there are many journals that carry literary reviews which are not written or intended for an academic readership. …

‘D—-d corkscrew staircases’: Byron's Hangovers

This essay examines the odd richness of a Byronic hangover. It firstly provides a detailed account of Byron's hangovers as documented in his correspondence to Hobhouse, Moore and others before situating what Byron knew about his constitution in relation to contemporary medical accounts of the liver and stomach. It proceeds to argue that for Byron the morning after a night of heavy indulgence was a reminder of the interpenetration of body and soul. The essay then applies this discussion to the period of uncertainty surrounding the composition of the early cantos of Don Juan, exploring the way in which the grammar of a hangover becomes a way to encounter and engage with the moral squeamishness of readers, who Murray feared might find it difficult to ‘stomach’ Byron's satirical turn following the commercial success of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

Becoming Corsairs: Byron, British Property Rights and Orientalist Economics

LORD BYRON WAS FAMOUSLY ASSOCIATED WITH MARITIME PIRACY throughout his literary career, thanks to his dashing depictions of corsairs and their swashbuckling at sea. Stricken with itch of wanderlust and Proscribed at home, / And taunted to a wish to roam, (1) many of his heroes sailed to and fro, living for stretches of time as pirates or suffering their depredations. Briefly mentioned in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), The Giaour (1813), Mantled (1817) and Beppo (1818), subject of piracy appears at length for first time in The Bride of Abydos (1813), in which protagonist, Sehm, avenges an upbringing of humiliations at hands of his pasha uncle by embarking on a campaign of high-seas terror. Cantos 2, 3 and 4 of Don Juan (1819--21) mark Byron's list full treatment of issue, though merciless pirate, Lambro, is less matinee idol than cruel villain, tearing his daughter Haidee away from lovelorn Juan. But it was publication of poet's most popular work, The Corsair (1814), that turned piracy into emblem of Byronic heroism: readers were seduced by Conrad, an exile camped on a Mediterranean island who commands a renegade crew that attacks passing vessels. This passion for piracy in Byron's oeuvre begs question of why subject generated such interest in author and in audience that turned The Corsair into one of best-se/ling poetical works of Romantic period. (2) The Byronic pirate clearly owes much to popular traditions of medieval outlaw, hero of peasant folklore and ballads who resists an unjust feudal order that oppresses unprotected masses. (3) Like Conrad, archetypical Robin Hood takes up criminal fife because he has been a victim of injustice at an early age and reveals his innate goodness in his courtesy towards women. But by 18th century, romances glorifying audacious bandits were being relegated to nursery, considered a debased form of cultural capital apt to entertain children but unfit for edifying adults. (4) Why, then, did Romantics resurrect thieving outlaw for a post-feudal audience endowed with much-vaunted political rights? While no doubt attesting to Romantic taste for medievalism, figure of noble outlaw, certainly single most popular hero of Romantic Movement, (5) also engaged contemporary concerns. In particular, this essay argues that appeal of pirates lay in how their robberies refracted 19th century's most combustible social question: sanctity of property rights and potential that more representative government might engineer more equitable economic outcomes. The controversy over wealth subtends all political battles of period: a Reform movement agitating for universal suffrage not only disputed property as a qualification for vote but also threatened legislative measures to redistribute economic surpluses. In this context, piratical activities could activate disparate ideologies, at once invoking confiscations of an antiquated and arbitrary executive power or incipient egalitarianism of an emerging social democracy. Reconciling Byron's ode to piracy with these political vectors appears daunting given its ambiguities. In self-fashioning protagonist who has eschewed his noble prerogatives, risen above crowd of vulgar men, lustily quenched the thirsting eye of Enterprize and idealized domestic idyll of companionate marriage, we may identify thirsting 'T' of bourgeois meritocracy, individualism and privatized happiness. (6) If we emphasize his murders, robberies and slave trading, combined with his lordly arrogance, our hero more closely resembles entitled pasha who despotically rules neighboring fiefdom, blissfully oblivious to rights of man. Finally, we could read fact that Conrad cares not a whir about the grosser joys of sense and leads this crowd of vulgar men into battle against a hypocritical social order as radical attack of a disenfranchised mob on unquestioned privilege of nobility and capitalists to monopolize material satisfactions. …

Poet Interrupted: Differences in the Emotionality and Imagery of Byron's Poetry Associated with His Turbulent Mid-Career Years in England

The Dictionary of Affect in Language was employed to compare two parts of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, written before and after an interruption of several turbulent years in England. The post-interruption part of the poem employed fewer extreme emotional words and more abstract words than the pre-interruption part. In a second analysis, poems written during the interruption and poems written before and after Childe Harold were examined, along with it, in terms of emotion, imagery, and linguistic richness. Two variables--year and an interruption dummy coded as 1 for publications between 1812.5 and 1816.17--predicted observed differences accurately. Byron's poetry became linguistically richer, more abstract, and less passionate across time, and it was emotionally more negative and linguistically simpler during the turbulent years. Differences between the two parts of Childe Harold were best explained on the basis of time-dependent growth curves rather than the interruption.

'Byron's Religions' Nottingham Trent University 1 May 2010

The one-day Byron conference at Nottingham Trent University, organised by the Newstead Abbey Byron Society, Nottingham Trent University and the Midlands Romantic Seminar, traditionally falls on the first weekend of May, and this year it was for the seventh time that scholars and students from near and far gathered at this perhaps most Byronic of British locations to engage in a full day's academic work. Comme d'habitude, on the eve of the conference, a dinner was organised by the Newstead Abbey Byron Society, providing a pleasant social prelude to the academic proceedings. Unlike in previous years, the dinner was held at Pappas, a Greek taverna in the vicinity of the Nottinghamshire County Hall, a warm venue obliterating the caprice of a wet April evening. Having dined and wined and enjoyed the dessert listening to live Greek music, the participants were driven back to the Beeches Hotel for the afterdinner event, another fine and memorable conference tradition. This year's theme being religion, delegates were treated to a brilliant tandem reading of parallel quotations from Byron and the Bible by Bernard Beatty (Liverpool and St Andrews) and Peter Cochran (Newstead Abbey Byron Society), followed by an impromptu meditation on Byron and the emotion of faith by Canon Linda Church, rector of St Mary Magdalene church in Hucknall between 2003 and 2009, and a poignant coda by Beatty inspired by the famous inscription on the manuscript of Canto I of Don Juan: 'I would to heaven that I were so much clay / As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling'. The evening's entertainment set the mood for contemplation and discussion that was to be continued the following day. In the morning, participants made their way to the Ada Byron Building on Nottingham Trent's Clifton campus and were welcomed by Ken Purslow from the Newstead Abbey Byron Society and Carl Thompson from Nottingham Trent. Due to a concurrent conference at the same venue resulting in a shortage of space, the programme had had to be adjusted a few weeks earlier so that, departing from traditional arrangements, both plenary lectures were rescheduled to take place in the morning, followed by all four parallel sessions in the afternoon. However unorthodox, the morning juxtaposition of the two plenaries proved to be extremely stimulating. The first lecture was given by Mr Beatty and chaired by Dr Cochran. Beatty addressed the theme of Byron's orthodoxy in relation to his sense of sin, which set him apart from his contemporaries, as well as his ability to see unity in multiplicity and his careful construction of poetry that, through wonder and suffering, exceeds mere aesthetic remedy, poised as it is between bright and dark elements. Inter alia, Beatty discussed Schleiermacher's treatise 'On Religion', James Kennedy, Cain, Heaven and Earth, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the character of Aurora Raby. After a short break, the second plenary was given by Richard Cardwell (Nottingham) and chaired by Ken Purslow (Newstead Abbey Byron Society). Focusing on Manfred and Cain in relation to the theory of Catastrophism and the works of Buffon and Cuvier, Professor Cardwell traced Byron's metaphysical journey through these works, a journey concerned with the causality of crime and punishment, and revealing the poet's melancholic holding-up of love as the last sustaining illusion as well as his revolt against a system that lacks sense. After the lunch break, the first pair of parallel sessions commenced, featuring three speakers each. One session was chaired by Imke Heuer (York). The first speaker was Merve Tokmakcioglu (Bosphorus) who addressed the duality represented by Byron's strictly Calvinist upbringing in contrast to his scornful attitude to traditional Christian values. Taking up Manfred as a case study, she discussed the themes of salvation, damnation, self-loathing and vanity in relation to the Byronic Hero. The second speaker, Andreas Makrides from Athens, addressed the subject of Gnosticism, tracing the movement's historical origins and characteristics, describing its key topos of the existence of evil in the world and connecting the themes of death, pain and ugliness to Byron's Cain and its biographical aspects. …

Maureen Crisp: A Tribute

This tribute was originally delivered at Maureen Crisp's funeral service at Hucknall Church on 4 August 2008. In the past two and a half years we have witnessed the deaths of three of the most important ladies connected with the Byron scene since the Byron Society was re-founded on 22 January 1971. Elma Dangerfield died in 2006, Lucy Edwards in 2007 - both having lived to a great age. They laid the foundation of the organisation we have today. But it fell to their successor, Maureen Crisp, to develop the Newstead Abbey Byron Society (NABS) and, with equal importance, the International Byron Society (IBS), following on from Michael Rees when he decided to take Holy Orders. Now, in 2008, it is Maureen who has been taken from us, when she was in the prime of her life, as indeed of course was Lord Byron himself when he died in 1824. Maureen died on 26 July 2008. Maureen possessed Elma's drive and flair and Lucy's efficiency and administrative qualities, and this combination made her the ideal person to occupy the exalted position of Secretary of NABS and Executive Director of the IBS. She held the respect of everyone she came into contact with, from whichever country, and I am absolutely certain that there was much shock and grief felt at her passing throughout the Byron world. When Ken Purslow asked me to pay this tribute to her he also asked me to include some poetry of my choice. This was easily done because it just had to be with Byron that we commence our eulogy - I cannot conceive in Maureen's case of quoting from anyone else. Harold's 'Good Night' from the beginning of Canto I of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, is, I feel, ideal for this purpose, because, after all, we can say that our life itself is a pilgrimage: Adieu, adieu! My native shore Fades o'er the waters blue; The Night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild seamew. Yon Sun that sets upon the sea We follow in its flight; Farewell awhile to him and thee, My native Land - Good-Night. A few short hours and He will rise To give the Morrow birth; And I shall hail the main and skies, But not my mother Earth. I first met Maureen when, with Ken, she took over the restaurant at Newstead Abbey in, I believe, 1981. There was of course no local society in those days. The annual attraction was the visit of the London-based Byron Society, who arrived in a coach at a chosen venue. This was all to change when Maureen and Ken revitalised the catering arrangements at Newstead and immediately invited Byron Society members to use the refurbished dining room to be called 'The White Lady'. We were all looking forward to celebrating Byron's bicentenary in 1988. It would have been quite a modest affair. But Maureen came on the scene and our plans for this event were transformed. All this, of course, led to the formation of the Newstead Abbey Society in 1988, of which Maureen asked me to become the first Chairman. I believe the Byron involvement gave to Maureen the mental stimulation she sought. Now let me say that Maureen was not always the easiest person to work with at first. Great leaders never are - simply because they lead from the front by inspiration, and those of us trying hard to catch up are caught in the slipstream. I am sure many will recognise this trait as regards Byron himself - his colleagues, too, were dragged along by his charisma. You have to adjust to their way of operating. This chemistry worked in NABS and in the IBS and that is why they have seen so much success. Maureen stamped her personality on the whole Byron movement. The events of 22 January 1988 were spectacular. Marching bands and even a covering of snow added to the occasion. It was quite reminiscent of the time Byron and Augusta were snowbound at Newstead. Fortunately, the 1988 celebrations are all recorded on disc for posterity. We arranged for the Earl of Lytton to plant an oak tree to replace the one planted by his great-great-great-grandfather, Lord Byron, in 1798, which had since decayed. …

<i>Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom</i> (review)

ITALIA ROMANTICA: ENGLISH ROMANTICS AND ITALIAN FREEDOM. By Roderick Cavaliero. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008. Pp. x + 246. ISBN 978 1 84511 456 5. £9.99. Originally issued in hardback in 2005, over the last few years the book under review has received a fair share of attention - and a not insignificant amount of notice and praise - in a variety of newspapers, magazines and journals. As the press release accompanying the book indicates, reviewers have presented Italia Romantica as a 'lively informative survey' of the works and attitudes of Romantic English travellers and writers concerned with Italy, a book, according to the Times Literary Supplement, that 'brings us the frisson of the foreign, encountered in many forms'. In the Keats-Shelley Review, Italia Romantica has been described as a 'fascinating book' and 'a delightful cornucopia of absorbing details and intriguing, sometimes surprising connections', while The Economist has praised its 'highly entertaining account of English views of Italy' at a time when 'the British were launching themselves on the path of imperial greatness'. There is much in these judgements that may be agreed with. Cavaliero's book is undoubtedly wide-ranging and generous in its cultural reconstructions, an entertaining read full of intriguing details and connections, and a lively performance all round. Unfortunately, it is also beset with problems that, for the present reviewer, need to be addressed before considering its more valuable aspects. True enough, in spite of its rich bibliography and abundant endnotes, Cavaliero's book is not an academic publication. But its faults - some quite venial, others much more serious - should not appear in any type of publication, whether aimed at specialists or general readers. I will begin with the more venial problems. Although the book is an animated and eminently readable tour de force, sometimes its style lapses into some uncomfortably bathetic moments. A reader may smile at an image of Robert Southey 'nose down in Lisbon, writing an immense History of Brazil'; yet, when the author tells us that Gothic atmospheres could make Jane Austen's 'Henry Tilney's hair stand on end' but were 'not enough to cause Julia or Emily or Ellena to wet their knickers', this is perhaps taking the notion of a captivating conversational style a bit too far. However, since style is by definition a deeply subjective feature, perhaps not all readers will be put off by such discontinuities in register. It is when the book's content is considered that the problems become more serious, as Cavaliero's account regularly treats his readers to a number of statements that are either puzzling or just plain wrong. I'll quote just a few. Polidori's The Vampyre is misleadingly described as 'the entertainment that started the competition in the Villa Diodati'. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is presented as an early apologia pro vita italiana sua: 'She walked in beauty like the [Italian] night'. Manfred is described as one of Byron's 'heroic narratives' and grouped together with The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara and The Siege of Corinth. There are also problems with names, for instance that of the Humanist who features in the book as 'Poggio Bracciolino', or the Tuscan warlord known as 'Castruccio Castracane, Lord of Valperga' on page 40 and then as 'Castruccio Castracano' on page 63. But it is not just the Italians who get the occasional unfair treatment. For instance, discussing Felicia Hemans's play The Vespers of Palermo, the author tells us that 'Mrs Siddons' (and we are to suppose Sarah) 'agreed to play the romantic female lead, Constance, the sister of the last Hohenstaufen emperor whom the Angevins had executed' in April 1822, when 'Walter Scott produced [the] play for the Edinburgh theatre'. In actual fact, Scott did not 'produce' the play, it was not Sarah Siddons, who had already retired from the stage, who acted in it, but rather Mrs Henry Siddons (Harriet Murray), and the character of Constance is absolutely not the 'sister of the last Hohenstaufen emperor'. …

<i>Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron</i> (review)

LIBERTY AND POETIC LICENCE: NEW ESSAYS ON BYRON. Edited by Bernard Beatty, Tony Howe and Charles E. Robinson. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 244. ISBN 0 85323 589 7. £65.00. Collections of essays that begin life as conference papers are a risky business: publish too quickly or indiscriminately and the articles can be shallow or unnecessary; publish too slowly or selectively and they can seem dated or abstruse. Fortunately Bernard Beatty, Tony Howe and Charles Robinson have managed to hit the ideal medium in their collection based on the 2001 International Byron Conference; it is filled with pieces that are fresh, thought-provoking and able to stand on their own merits. 'Byron', as Beatty writes in his sensitive introduction, 'is the poet of liberty'. Yet, as the editor goes on to remind readers, both 'liberty' and 'licence' admit many meanings, and it is with these multivalent definitions that the collection concerns itself. In seventeen essays, Liberty and Poetic Licence examines works from all stages of Byron's career and the editors have designed the collection so that it proceeds chronologically. As a result, readers see the many ways Byron interpreted the concepts of liberty and licence throughout his career and the ways in which his valuations and modes of thought about these concepts altered as he matured. The contributors have chosen, for the most part, to deal with liberty rather than licence and what they offer is, also for the most part, very fine indeed. In the suggestive piece that begins the book, Peter Cochran considers Byron's self-censorship in his first four published collections, suggesting that 'pressures, both social and emotional' made Byron censor his own works, a censorship that perhaps lasted until he left England in 1816. Tom Mole next writes incisively about the politics of visibility in The Bride of Abydos, using Judith Butler to consider the complex matrix of real and subversive freedom in the poem's visualisations: Mole's past writings have proven him an illuminating and sensitive scholar, and this article reconfirms those conclusions. In the third essay, Michael O'Neill, writing on Byron's repeated ability to achieve freedom by immersing himself in destructive elements or experiences in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III and IV, argues for a Byron who relishes complexity and mutability, who finds in hubris a reason to celebrate human determination. Offering richly dense close readings, O'Neill's essay addresses the paradox of sorrow and delight that informs all of Byron's works, throwing new light on its source. In the pair of essays that follow, Peter Graham and Katharine Kernberger discuss Manfred. Graham's fascinating piece uses Isaiah Berlin's political philosophy to consider the ways in which the text contemplates 'freedom from' and 'freedom to', reaching the compelling conclusion that Manfred's freedom, freedom to, situates him as the ultimate free soul, master of his own fate. Kernberger, for her part, examines the play's paradox of death, asserting that the annihilation Manfred seeks is belied by Manfred's persistent representations of an afterlife. Kernberger's essay is less fruitful than Graham's, no doubt because of length constraints: at only twelve pages, it does not have much room for extended analysis. As the collection moves on to the less studied works of Byron's middle period, Gabriele Poole uncovers the rich interweaving of textual and thematic representations of liberty in Mazeppa, while Alan Rawes considers the paradox of both Faliero's and Byron's relationship with aristocratic values in Marino Faliero, a paradox he suggests Byron may have begun to resolve through religion. Rawes's vision of a Byron who is edging into faith is intriguing but, again because of space constraints, leaves the reader wanting more. Andrew Stauffer offers a truly original reading of the influence of the hugely popular eighteenthth-century story of Inkle and Yarico on Byron's later works: the links he elucidates between that story and The Blues, Don Juan and The Island break real new ground. …

Translating the Elgin Marbles: Byron, Hemans, Keats

Every day, visitors come to the British Museum and contemplate a remarkable collection of sculptures created in Greece some twenty-four centuries ago. The events that translated these ancient artworks into an English context took place at the beginning of the 19 th century, when Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, had the sculptures detached from the Parthenon in Athens, shipped in several boatloads to England, and sold to the British government, which installed them in the British Museum as the Elgin Marbles. If the Marbles are implicated in a globalized debate over the treatment of cultural patrimony, in Romantic Europe they were surrounded by an even more animated controversy that manifested itself in politics, periodicals, and poetry. Taking into account the responses of John Keats and Felicia Hemans, I would like to re-examine the treatment of the Elgin affair by Lord Byron, focussing on its significance for the rhetorical form of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the social-cultural processes that were at work among Byron's 19th century audience. Byron asks his readers to compare the seizure of treasures from occupied Mediterranean countries to the ancient Roman practice of seizing trophies and celebrating their arrival in the imperial capital with public triumphs. Invoking this paradigm repeatedly in Childe. Harold's Pilgrimage and in his annotations to the poem, Byron characterizes Elgin's activities as a debased version of it. Modern trophies, epitomized by the Elgin Marbles, are obtained by negotiation and bribery, commodified as souvenirs or museum pieces, and publicized through modern media practices. While opposing the removal of antique ruins and seeking to offer an alternative aesthetic experience by way of his own poetry, Byron also intuits his own complicity in the structures of desire and commodification that characterize modern economic empires. Capitalizing on his position as British ambassador to Constantinople, Lord Elgin began removing large fragments of statuary, friezes, and bas-reliefs from the Acropolis and shipping them to London in 1801. The debate over Elgin's motives and justification--whether he had rescued the sculptures from certain destruction in Ottoman-occupied Greece, or whether he had himself destroyed the temple of Athena Parthenos by his crude removal of the marbles--was further complicated by the contemporaneous activities of Napoleon in plundering occupied Italy. Beginning in 1796, French agents transported paintings and classical sculptures from Rome, and elsewhere in the growing French empire, to Paris for display in the Louvre. In the case of France, the plunder of art-works was a much more deliberate imitation of ancient history, consistent with the self-representation of revolutionary France as a new Roman republic and Napoleon's self-construction as the new Augustus. The arrival of the largest shipment of artworks in Paris in July, 1798. was accordingly celebrated by a public triumphal procession in the style of ancient Rome. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, these artworks were restored to Italy. The widespread public debate over their restoration thus coincided exactly with the debate over the British Parliament's purchase of the Elgin Marbles, which was concluded in 1816. Britain, opposing France on the battlefields of Europe for almost twenty years while consolidating its own empire, more frequently located its cultural origins in Greece, and public discourse drew heavily on the trope of London as the New Athens. The significance of ancient Rome for the British Empire was mediated, moreover, by a more direct parallel between Britain and Venice, two island-republic-empires that derived their wealth from eastern trade and naval strength. Nevertheless, even if these elective affinities insulated Britain somewhat from manifesting the explicit imperial aspirations of Napoleonic France, the ambitions of Britain and France did clash directly over the acquisition of ancient ruins from the Eastern Mediterranean. …

Byron's Dying Gladiator in Context

Stephen Larrabee's English Bards and Grecian Marbles (1943) marvellously unravelled and traced genealogy of Byron's tale of love-sick French maiden in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Stanza 162 (hereafter CHP, and quoted by canto number followed by stanza number), who fell in love with marble Apollo Belvedere and died of love she for statue. He traced it back to Henry Hart Milman's 1812 Newdigate Prize poem Belvidere Apollo, and also down to Barry Cornwall's 1823 story of Eva, girl of Provence, in Girl of Provence (Larrabee 262, 267-68). He curiously refrains from making any statements as to Byron's source for stanzas statue of Dying (hereafter DG), although he enumerates Newdigate poems from 1810 to 1817 and 1826 including Chinnery's Statue of Dying Gladiator for 1810 (261). Larrabee further complicates matters by carelessly quoting (259) Samuel Chew's 1913 article in Modern Language Notes, thus allowing for free speculation that Byron had seen and been influenced by Croly's poem in his passage statue of DG. (1) Grant Scott's essay, Felicia Hemans and Romantic Ekphrasis. centred Hemans and not Byron, does not help trace genealogy of DG poem, beyond his general statement that the annual Cambridge and Oxford prize poem ... helped create a vogue for poems classical sculpture (38). The purpose of present paper is, first, to establish climate in which statue of DG figured as one of favourite themes of poems in first two decades of 19th century, then to trace, by comparison, a possible source of Byron's GD passage in CHP, IV, back to a passage in William Hayley's 1800 poem, which, I hope to argue, stands, thematically and stylistically, at fountainhead of Chinnery's, Hemans's (2) and Byron's DG poems, and finally to show what those factual findings mean in interpretation of DG stanzas within context of Coliseum stanzas in CHP, IV. Here is poem Larrabee mentions (261), but does not clearly relate to Byron, and poem which Scott claimed Hemans's DG poem is closely modeled on (38). It is 1810 Newdigate Prize poem, George Robert Chinnery's The Statue of Dying Gladiator.-- Will then no pitying sword its succour lend The Gladiator's mortal throes to end, To free unconquer'd mind, whose generous pow'r Triumphs o'er nature in her saddest hour? Bow'd low, and full of death, his head declines, Yet o'er his brow indignant Valour shines, Still glares his closing eye with angry light, Now glares, now darkens with approaching night. Think not with terror heaves that sinewy breast,-- 'Tis vengeance visible, and pain supprest; Calm in despair, in agony sedate, His proud soul wrestles with o'ermastering fate; That pang conflict ends--he falls not yet, Seems every nerve for one last effort set, At once by death, death's lingering pow'r to brave-- He will not sink, but plunge into grave, Exhaust his mighty heart in one last sigh, And rally life's whole energy--to die! Unfear'd is now that cord, which oft ensnar'd The baffled rival whom his falchion spar'd Those clarions mute, which murd'rous stage Rous'd him to deeds of more than martial rage; Once poised by peerless might, once dear to fame, The shield which could not guard, supports his frame; His fixed eye dwells upon faithless blade, As if in silent agony he prayed, Oh might I yet, by one avenging blow, Not shun my fate, but share it with my foe! Vain hope!--the streams of life-blood fast descend; That giant-arm's upbearing strength must bend; Yet shall he scorn, procumbent, to betray One dastard sign of anguish or dismay, With one weak plaint to shame his parting breath, In pangs sublime, magnificent in death! But his were deeds unchronicled; his tomb No patriot wreaths adorn; to cheer his doom, No soothing thoughts arise of duties done, Of trophied conquests for his country won; And he, whose sculptur'd form gave deathless fame To Ctesilas--he dies without a name! …

Nympholepsy, Mythopoesis, and John Addington Symonds

meaning of the word nympholepsy has drifted in recent years towards n rrowly er tic sense. In 1989, the Oxford English Dictionary defined nymp holepsy as a state of rapture supposed to be inspired in men by nymphs; hence, an ecstasy or frenzy of emotion, esp. that inspired by something unattainable. In 2004, this meaning was supplemented by further sense of passion or desire aroused in men by young girls. In the nineteenth century, the latter, sexual meaning was unknown, and nympholepsy signified much wider and more general desire. In fact, it named spiritual condition that was one of the most important legacies of the European classical heritage to Romantic and Victorian writers: the yearning for mythopoeic connection with the natural world, coupled with the alienated sense that such connection was no longer possible. Just as Nabokov was largely responsible for the late twentieth-century under standing of nympholepsy as specific kind of sexual desire or disorder, it was Byron who established the characteristically nineteenth-century usage of the term to denote an aesthetic, emotional, or spiritual longing for unattainable beauty, love, or harmony. first nineteenth-century example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is Byron's description, in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, of the goddess Egeria as a young Aurora of the air, / nympholepsy of some fond despair ( 181 ; IV. 115-). In his stanzas on Egeria, Byron turned the classical idea of the madness induced in men by the sighting of nymph into meta phor for the condition of alienated modernity. This Byronic understanding of nympholepsy was further developed by the Victorian essayist, historian, and travel writer John Addington Symonds. In two essays of southern travel, The Cornice (1874) and Amalfi, Paestum, Capri (1879), mythological encoun ters between men and nymphs provide focal points for Symonds s meditations on the ancient mythopoeic connection with nature and the unattainability of that connection in the modern world. Byron's stanzas on the springs of Egeria outside Rome in Canto IV, stanzas 115?19, constitute one of several exercises in the interpretation of genius loci that take place in the course of Childe Harold's pilgrimage. Byron calls the

French Portraits of Byron, 1824–1880

The chameleon-like character of Byron makes it difficult to portray him. (Lady Blessington) Lady Blessington's comment about portraying Byron in words is just as applicable to the visual arts.1 In France, the many painted, engraved and sculpted portraits of Byron, produced from the beginning of what the poet himself called the 'contagion of Byronism' all over Europe,2 freely fantasised about Byron's personality and physical appearance, but nevertheless marked the French mind for a long time, laying the foundations of what can be considered a typically French image of Byron. Very recently, a nineteenth-century portrait of a male appeared on the Parisian art market with the following attribution: 'Lord Byron. Painted in Venice in 1817 by Laurencel'. Though presented as an unknown picture of Lord Byron by a little-known French artist,3 the portrait in question is obviously not of Byron. Featuring a man of about 25-30 years of age, with curly hair, open collar, wearing a fur coat and adopting a pose which clearly calls to mind the most famous portraits of Byron, this oil-oncanvas painting answers to a very widespread French image of Byron, which first appeared around 1820 and still persists today. It would be interesting to know whether this portrait was originally meant as a portrait of Byron - being in that case a kind of imaginary or ideal depiction of the poet - or has only retrospectively been associated with him. But what I intend to discuss here deals more with the artistic evaluation of Byron in nineteenth-century France that allows for either possibility. In early nineteenth- century France, a certain idea of Byron came into being that is expressed very clearly in this portrait. What follows is concerned with the history of this distinctive idea of Byron in French art. It is well known that the distinction between Byron and his work was blurred in his readers' minds from the outset of his publishing career. In particular, as his French translator Amedee Pichot put it, he was a 'man identified with the portraits of his heroes'.4 As Victor Hugo wrote: 'As we know Byron only through his poems, it is sweet to us to suppose him a life according to his soul and genius'.5 This identification of fact with fiction strongly affected visual representations of the noble poet. In early nineteenth-century French pictures, Byron is represented not just as a young and handsome poet, but also a seducer - and this is generally achieved through the re-use of poses and features from his British portraits (often made, it is interesting to recall, after Byron's own instructions).6 In France and beyond, large nineteenth-century history paintings based on Byron's poems frequently make characters - usually Don Juan or Manfred - look like the Byron of portraiture. This practice originated in British art (such as Richard Westall's illustrations for Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), but soon spread to France. In 1829, Francois-Louis Dejuinne re-used Westall's 1813 portrait of Byron in his Childe Harold and Ines in Cadiz, a now lost painting known through a lithograph by Aubry Lecomte.7 In 1831, Alexandre-Marie Colin did the same in his Don Juan and Haidee.8 This helps to explain how the subject of a portrait of a young dandy in early 1820s' costume, with a Romantically untidy appearance, can be so easily misidentified as Byron - and why such misidentifications were not, and apparently are still not, at all rare in France. Numerous other portraits of unknown young men have been wrongly identified as portraits of Byron, such as an oil painting often attributed to Theodore Gericault and kept in the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, traditionally called Portrait of Lord Byron,9 or Paillot de Montabert's Portrait of Lord Byron, painted in the 1820s and kept in the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Troyes.10 The art historian George Williamson once suggested that the famous eighteenth-century French portraitist Elisabeth Vigee- Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette's favourite painter, could have executed, sometime around 1805, a portrait of Byron (who was only seventeen at the time). …

The Changing Faces of the Byronic Hero in Middlemarch and North and South

Almost two hundred years after the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero remains, as Andrew Elfenbein argues, an ‘unprecedented cultural phenomenon’.1 This essay is not concerned with the more direct descendants of the Byronic hero (Rochester and Heathcliff, for example); rather, I shall be focusing on the less immediately obvious, and in some respects more complex, reincarnations of the Byronic hero in two nineteenth-century novels, George Eliot's Middlemarch and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. Establishing previously neglected connections between these authors and the figure of the Byronic hero not only opens new avenues of debate in relation to these novels, but also permits a reassessment of the extent and significance of Byron's influence in the Victorian period. The following questions will be addressed: first, why does a Byronic presence feature so prominently in the work of nineteenth-century women writers; second, what is distinctive about Eliot and Gaskell's respective treatments of this figure; and, third, how is the Byronic hero subsequently reinvented, and to what effect, in modern screen adaptations of their work?

Byronic Measures: Enacting Lordship in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Marino Faliero

Jerome Christensen construes " Lord Byron's Strength " as a singular capacity for "consequential action" in a socio-historical situation in which, as Lukács' says, the "commodity form" has become "total." I question Christensen's characterization of the pan-textualizing consequences of Byronic action, and offer readings of Childe Harold and Marino Faliero that show how it remains beholden to an epistemological project not unlike the commodifying function it ostensibly repudiates. But I follow Christensen in attempting to offer an account of characteristically Byronic action in terms not of what it is but what it does. To this end I focus upon the specific function of canonical allusion in the dramatic action of Faliero, in Byronic writing and reading, as well as the pirating of Byron's works.

Jerome McGann's Contributions to Byron Studies 1966–2006

For over forty years now, Jerome McGann has been shaping the ways we see Lord Byron, his writings, his Romantic contexts and his legacy. Moreover, McGann's engagements with Byron have taken an extraordinarily wide range of forms, including editorial, critical, theoretical, biographical, historical and creative acts, many of which have not only transformed the study of Byron but continue to provide the terms for larger conversations: about Romanticism, about textual theory and practice, about literary history and about poetics and performance. To the extensive record of printed material that these engagements have produced, we need to add McGann's generous influence as a teacher and as a leader in the scholarly community, both roles in which he continues to profess Byron's clear-eyed, lucid, critical spirit while encouraging younger scholars and cultivating a wide-ranging discussion about the poet and his work. It should also be remembered that, all along, McGann has made major scholarly contributions on a number of non-Byronic subjects, including Romanticism and other Romantic-period authors, modern and contemporary poetry, the Pre-Raphaelites, literary and editorial theory and digital scholarship. Such a career might well abash anyone charged with summarising even a portion, especially in brief compass. The following, then, is not definitive, but only an attempt at a chronological overview of McGann's ongoing contributions to Byron Studies. 1966-1980 What might be considered the first phase of McGann's work on Byron begins with his Yale dissertation, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the Poetics of Self-Expression (1966), and ends with the appearance of the first volume of Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works (1980). During these years, McGann published Fiery Dust: Byron's Poetic Development (1969) and Don Juan in Context (1976), books that established him as a leading new voice in Byron Studies, even as they demonstrated his own evolving theoretical position. Fiery Dust offers a wide-ranging set of readings of Byron's poetry, with a particular emphasis on matters textual, historical and biographical. The Don Juan book is a kind of sequel, though with a more focused attention on form and style. A number of McGann's articles in The Byron Journal and Keats Shelley Memorial Bulletin during this period attest to his interest in textual and editorial matters as he began work on the Complete Poetical Works, and both Byron books reveal his developing historicist sympathies as a critic. One also finds in a very early essay on 'the Dandy' some of the fundamental insights regarding Byronism and Romanticism that would structure McGann's critical attitude in the decades to come. It was during these early years, when he taught at the University of Chicago, that McGann helped form the experimental drama group Cain's Company, which staged difficult plays, including Byron's Cain, in the late 1960s. He also became one of the founding directors of the Byron Society of America in the early 1970s. Most importantly, he began editing the complete works of Byron, a process that caused him to re-think the nature of texts, literary production and reception, and Byron's place in the Romantic tradition. Over the next decades, the effects of this editorial project, and this reconceptualisation, would influence the study of Byron in profound ways. Books 1. Fiery Dust: Byron's Poetic Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) 2. Don Juan in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: John Murray, 1976) 3. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, Vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) Articles 1. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I-II: A Collation and Analysis', Keats Shelley Memorial Bulletin (1966), pp. 37-54 2. 'The Composition, Revision, and Meaning of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III', Bulletin of the New York Public Library (September 1967), pp. 415-30 3. …

Byronic Ambivalence in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV

In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV, Byron's treatment of imagination and reality, art and nature, subjectivity and objectivity, reason and feeling, freedom and tyranny, time and eternity, demonstrates a Romantic logic that defies one-sidedness. In this essay I want to argue against a number of familiar critical readings of the canto that want to read it according to the binary logic of 'either/or' - whereby Byron becomes either (mostly) optimistic or (mainly) pessimistic. I want to suggest that the poem is not characterised by a predominant mood or perspective but by an ambivalence towards all moods and perspectives. From the outset, the canto's discursive amalgamation of seemingly incompatible elements is foregrounded. Byron's original intentions were to publish the poem with Hobhouse's notes on the historical facts behind the canto's allusions. Byron's Preface, written with the prospect of such an edition in view, prepares the reader for an encounter with both the personal time of the lyric persona and the historical time of Europe's past. The enterprise envisages a complex interweaving of past and present, subjectivity and objectivity, imaginative writing and historical fact. This was not realised as originally planned, since Murray refused to have the poem and the notes printed together - and only reluctantly agreed to publish Hobhouse's contribution in a separate volume.1 Nevertheless, the initial design seems to have influenced the final product, as the text of the poem itself blurs the boundaries between, and undermines oppositions between, the self and outer world, literature and history, time and eternity. Where the first and second cantos of Childe Harold might well be called a 'descriptive medley mixing travel and history', and the third 'a poem in the confessional mode of Rousseau and Wordsworth', the fourth canto is a 'synthesis of the previous two poems' and of the many contradictory elements the earlier cantos bring together.2 At the very beginning of Childe Harold IV, Byron famously introduces duality by juxtaposing 'a palace and a prison' (1). This binary can be, and has been, seen as symbolising two contradictory modes running through the canto: the celebratory and the dejected.3 Shelley was among the first to ignore the unifying dichotomy of the poem, referring to the spirit in which it was written as 'the most wicked and mischievous insanity that ever was given forth' and reducing the text to its 'expressions of contempt and desperation'.4 A trend of literary criticism has adopted this interpretation, dismissing in various ways the canto's celebratory aspects and seeking to foreground its pessimism,5 reading it as a sustained articulation of 'the claims of despair',6 or, at best, as 'elegiac'.7 The first stanza of the canto certainly sets up an opposition between past and present that assigns value to the former and dismisses the latter as worthless, using the image of 'a dying Glory' smiling over recollections of a past that is categorically over. 'Those days are gone.' What is lost is important both politically and artistically: 'States fall, arts fade'. Nevertheless, counter arguments prohibit downright pessimism - 'Beauty still is here', 'Nature doth not die' (3). The transience of human achievements is counterbalanced by the immortality of nature, and by the canto itself, which keeps record not just of beauty but also of human history. On the one hand, the 'poem makes the past available to the informed imagination so that it can contribute to self-knowledge in the present'.8 On the other hand, however, admiration for the past is itself checked by the use of a vocabulary of belligerence and conflict: Venice's glorious past was built upon the 'spoils of nations' (2). Ambivalent from the outset, then, the poem almost immediately complicates further any absolute opposition between past and present and between celebration and dejection. The Rialto Bridge, a material monument of the past within the present, may decay but this is not the case with all art: the 'Venetian' characters in British literature will always exist. …

Flyting in the Declaration of Independence and The Vision of Judgment

Though they both lived through the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and the birth of a new form of English verse, Thomas Jefferson and Lord Byron took little notice of one another. Not much has been written about their relationship, for academic disciplines, departments of literature and political science, conspire to keep them apart. In part, this is justified. In his correspondence and poetry, Byron mentions Jefferson only once, though Jefferson presided over a country that clearly interested him. 'He must have meant to quiz the three presidents or at least two - Jefferson & Madison', Byron wrote of Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York. 'One of them had a wooden leg like Peter Stuyvesant.'1 This fragment of a letter to John Murray, possibly written in 1821, is hardly a promising observation by Byron: it was Governor Morris, not Jefferson or Madison, who used a wooden leg. Unlike Thomas Moore, who wrote about Jefferson and the United States disparagingly, however, Byron admired the country that had produced George Washington, Daniel Boone and Washington Irving. 'Whenever an American requests to see me - (which is not unfrequently) I comply', Byron wrote. '1stly. Because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by firmness without excess - and 2dly. Because these transatlantic visits few and far make me feel as if talking with Posterity from the other side of the Styx.'2 Jefferson had one of the most wide-ranging book collections in the United States, numbering roughly 6,487, but not a single volume by Byron. Jefferson's lack of interest in Byron between 1800 and 1808 is somewhat understandable, for Fugitive Pieces (1806), Hours of Idleness (1807) and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) were not widely quoted in American newspapers during the years when Jefferson, as America's third president, clipped verse from the papers for his poetry scrapbooks. But Jefferson also ignored Byron after the poet awoke to find himself famous with the publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Apparently, Byron's fame had not reached Monticello. Jefferson, like Byron, preferred poets such as Moore, Campbell and Rogers (not to mention Scott and Burns) to Wordsworth and Coleridge.3 For his poetry scrapbooks, compiled between 1801 and 1809, for example, Jefferson clipped Thomas Moore's 'Song', 'Rondeau', 'Stanzas', 'A Ballad', 'Love and Reason', 'The Lake of the Dismal Swamp', 'translations' from Anacreon and selections from his Irish Melodies. With the exception of John Wolcot (Peter Pindar), who has seventeen entries, Moore is the poet most often represented in Jefferson's poetry scrapbooks, with over ten poems. Jefferson also clipped Rogers' 'A Sketch of the Alps at Day-Break' and 'Farewell' and Campbell's 'To The Evening Star', 'To Caroline', 'Hohen Linden' and 'Exile of Erin'. Though they agreed about Moore, Campbell, Rogers and Scott, they disagreed about Robert Southey. Jefferson admired Southey's shorter poems, clipping no fewer than six of them: 'Oak of Our Fathers', 'Hymn to Content', 'The Death of W. Wallace', 'The Old Man's Comforts' and 'The Widow'.4 The possibility of a literary reckoning between Byron and Jefferson is brought tantalisingly close by the 24-year-old Thomas Moore's visit to Washington DC in 1803. According to one account, Moore was 'the first British traveler to mention Jefferson in print'.5 Moore stayed with the British Ambassador, Anthony Merry, who felt slighted by the republican President when Jefferson failed to greet him in full diplomatic dress.6 'The Merry's have been treated with the most pointed incivility by the present democratic president', Thomas Moore dutifully reported to his mother.7 Moore was received 'in the same homely costume, comprising slippers and Connemara stockings in which Mr. Merry had been received by him, much to that formal Minister's horror'.8 After staying with Merry and his wife, Moore then visited the Federalist editor of the Port Folio, Joseph Dennie (later jailed for sedition), who further poisoned his mind against Jefferson. …