With these lines of Lord Byron, and you will conceive the difference. You will give me credit for writing for the sake of truth, and not for so disgusting a motive as selfcommendation at the expense of a man of genius."

DON JUAN

"You

To an unknown correspondent Wordsworth writes: will probably see Gifford of the Quarterly Review. Tell him from me, if you think proper that ever true-born Englishman disallows the pretensions of the Review to the character of a faithful defender of the institutions of the country, while it leaves that infamous publication, Don Juan, unbranded. I do not mean by

a formal critique, for it is not worth it but by some decisive words of reprobation, both as to the damnable tendency of such works, and as to the despicable quality of the powers requisite for their production. What avails it to hunt down Shelley and leave Byron untouched? I am persuaded that Don Juan will do more harm to the English character than anything of our time; not so much as a book, but thousands, who will be ashamed to have it in that shape, will fatten upon choice bits of it in the shape of extracts.

PLAGIARISMS

Wordsowrth considered Byron not only an immoral IN BYRON writer so far as the ethics of his works were concerned but also lacking in the higher moral sense concerning the ethics of his profession as a poet. This is brought out in the following extract from a letter to Henry Taylor dated December 26, 1823: "I have not, nor ever had, a single poem of Lord Byron's by me, except the Lara, given me by Mr. Rogers: and therefore could not quote anything illustrative of his poetical obligations. So far as I am acquainted with his works, they are most apparant in the third canto of Childe Harold; not so much in particular expressions, though there is no want of these, as in the tone (assumed rather than natural) of enthusiastic admiration of Nature, and a sensibility of her influences. Of my writings, you need not read more than the blank verse poem on the river Wye to be convinced of this. Mrs. Wordsworth tells me that in reading one of Lord Byron's poems, of which the story was offensive, she was much disgusted with the plagiarisms from Mr. Coleridge - at least she thinks it was in that poem - but as she read the Siege of Corinth in the same volume, it might possibly be in that. If I am not mistaken there was some acknowledgement to Mr. Coleridge which takes very much from the reprehensiveness of literary trespass of this kind. Nothing lowered my opinion of Byron's poetical integrity so much as to see 'pride of place' carefully noted as quotation from Macbeth, in a work where contemporaries - from when he had drawn wholesale were not adverted to ....I remember one imprudent instance of his thefts. In Raymond's translation of Coxe's Travels in Switzerland, with Notes by the Translator, is a note with these words (speaking of the fall of Schaffausen: descendant avec moi sur cet echafaud, tomba a genoux en criant: Voila un enfer d'eau!' This expression is taken by Byron and beaten out unmercifully into two stanzas which a critic in the University Review is foolish enough to praise. They are found in the fourth

'Lewy (sic)

canto of Childe Harold. Whether the obligation is acknowledged or not I do not know, having seen nothing of it but in quotation. 11 This may account for the fact that Wordsworth did not know that in the fourth canto of Childe Harold Byron describes the falls of Terni in Italy, not Schaffhausen in Switzerland and in a note to stanza 71 he states that he had "not yet seen" the latter.

CRABBE

Of the poetical merits of Crabbe he writes to Samuel Rogers September 29, 1808: "I am happy to find that we coincide in opinion about Crabbe's verses, for poetry in no sense can they be called. Sharp is also of the same opinion. I remember that I mentioned in my last that there was nothing in the last publication so good as the description of the parish workhouse, apothecary, etc. This is true, and it is no less true that the passage which I commended is of no great merit, because the description, at the best of no high order, is - in the instance of the apothecary inconsistent, that is, false....After all, if the picture were true to nature, what claim would it have to be called poetry? At the best, it is the meanest kind of satire, except the merely personal. The sum of all is, that nineteen out of twenty of Crabbe's pictures are mere matters of fact, with which the Muses have just about as much to do as they have with a collection of medical reports, or of law cases. ་་

COLERIDGE

There is a brief mention of Coleridge which indicates Wordsworth's opinion of his collaborator. To Lady Beaumont he writes November 20, 1811: "Do you see The Courier newspaper at Dunmow? I ask you on account of a little poem upon the comet which I have read in it to day. Though with several defects, and some feeble and constrained expressions, it has great merit; and is far superior to the run not merely of newspaper but of modern poetry in general. I half suspect it to be Coleridge's, for though it is, in parts, inferior to him, I know no other writer of the day who can do so well."

ROGERS

11

....

"I have to thank you for a present of your volume of ་་ poems, Wordsworth writes to Samuel Rogers in May 1814, I have read it with great pleasure. The Columbus is what you intended. It has many bright and striking passages, and poems on this plan please better on a second perusal than the first.The gaps at first disappoint and vex you. ་་ By gaps he means the numerous starred lines. He continues, "There is a pretty piece in which you have done me the honour of imitating me towards the conclusion particularly, where you must have remembered the Highland Girl. I like the poem much; but the first paragraph is hurt by two apostrophes, to objects of different character, one to Luss, and one to your sister, and the apostrophe is not a figure that like Janus carries two faces with a good grace.

ROGERS

Again to Rogers, (September, 1822): "I detected you in a small collection of poems entitled Italy which we all read with much pleasure, Venice and The Brides of Venice.....please me as much as any; I had no fault to find, except too strong a