Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/247

Rh Lord Eldon. Strangely enough, Sir Samuel Romilly, whom Byron did not love, was counsel for the plaintiff.

In spite of the injunction, a volume entitled "Lord Byron's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a Poem in Two Cantos. To which is attached a fragment, The Tempest," was issued in 1817. It is a dull and, apparently, serious production, suggested by, but hardly an imitation of, Childe Harold. The notes are descriptive of the scenery, customs, and antiquities of Palestine. The Tempest, on the other hand, is a parody, and by no means a bad parody, of Byron at his worst; e.g.—

It is possible that this Pilgrimage was the genuine composition of some poetaster who failed to get his poems published under his own name, or it may have been the deliberate forgery of John Agg, or Hewson Clarke, or C. F. Lawler, the pseudo Peter Pindar—"Druids" who were in Johnston's pay, and were prepared to compose pilgrimages to any land, holy or unholy, which would bring grist to their employer's mill. (See the Advertisements at the end of Lord Byron's Pilgrimage, etc.)

The Third Canto was published, not as announced, on the 23rd, but on the 18th of November. Murray's "auspicious hope" of success was amply fulfilled. He "wrote to Lord Byron on the 13th of December, 1816, informing him that at a dinner at the Albion Tavern, he had sold to the assembled booksellers 7000 of his Third Canto of Childe Harold...." The reviews were for the most part laudatory. Sir Walter Scott's finely-tempered eulogium (Quart. Rev., No. xxxi., October, 1816 [published February 11, 1817]), and Jeffrey's balanced and cautious appreciation (Edin. Rev., No. liv., December, 1816 [published February 14, 1817]) have been reprinted in their collected works. Both writers conclude with an aspiration—Jeffrey, that