"Now, two hundred copies in quires would be above fifty pounds, and supposing the sum of fifty shillings for boarding, and selling at six shillings, he must have received fifty-seven pounds ten shillings for the copyright. He also was presented by his booksellers, of their own free will, with twenty-five pounds for every edition of a thousand copies, or, if two thousand were printed, fifty pounds, which sums were sometimes remitted to him in London, through Longman and Co., and sometimes paid to his mother. He was most generous and considerate to his relatives, and a truly excellent son and brother. On this score his receipts were one hundred and fifty pounds more. A misunderstanding taking place between the poet and Mundell and Son, these free payments were discontinued. Besides these payments, Campbell received permission to print by subscription a quarto edition, the seventh, for his own benefit. This edition yielded him at least six hundred pounds more, or, in all, eight hundred and seven pounds. Campbell did not receive less than nine hundred pounds for the copyright of the Pleasures of Hope alone. “More than half a century ago, such a profit upon a poem of eleven hundred lines was equal to that of Byron in a more vaunted literary era, a poet whose writings had a prodigious run, even, as it is well known, to the utmost of profit that the most popular author could expect to receive who does not retain his copyright. The Pleasures of Hope brought its author fifteen shillings and a fraction a line; and Byron, in receiving two thousand five hundred pounds for Manfred, the Prisoner of Chillon, and the third canto of Childe Harold, got no more per line. It is true that the booksellers, their heirs, executors, assigns, may, to their own advantage, quintuple such sums, but the author can have no ground to complain. The bargain made by the author of the Pleasures of Hope might have been bad, but the pecuniary worth of the poem could not be known until it was tested. It turned out that the author had no reason to censure the time in which he published, which appreciated his poem more correctly nearly half a century ago, and with half the present reading population of the British Isles, than it would have done had he written later. Byron then, with his astonishing popularity, and driving the bargain of a well-known author, got no more than Campbell received, merely through a concession of his publishers." LORD BYRON'S FIRST RHYME. His faithful Scottish nurse, Mary Gray, relates that it was in Nottingham he first exhibited symptoms of rhyming. The occasion said to have given rise to the first effort was amusing enough. An elderly lady was in the habit of visiting his mother, and made use of an expression which much affronted his lordship, who resented the slight with all the violence of his fiery temperament. The old lady cherished some curious idea with regard to the soul, which she imagined took its flight to the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before proceeding further. One day this ill-natured old lady having repeated the taunt, my lord appeared before his nurse almost distracted with rage. "Well, my little hero," she asked, "what's the matter with you now?" Upon which the child answered, that "this old woman had put him into a terrible passion, that he could not bear the sight of her;" and then he broke into the following doggrel, which he repeated over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his rage: "In Nottingham town, very near to swine-green, Byron dated his "first dash into poetry" a year later, (1799 ;) but the above is supposed to have been his earliest effusion.W. H. Wylie's Old and New Nottingham. LORD BYRON. Lord Byron, when one of the Drury-lane Committee of Management, challenged the writer to sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the praises of Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, who, by-the-bye, was hissed off the stage for an imputed intimacy of which she was quite innocent. The contest ran as follows: 66 Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre, But first profound, in duty bound, To London drove this queen of love, And so on. "Though tides of love around her rove, In that bright surge bards ne'er immerge, 'Out, out, alas!' ill-fated gas, That shin'st round Covent Garden, The reader has, no doubt, already discovered "which is the justice, and which is the teeth." Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it; a black coat and waistcoat, and very broad white trousers to hide his lame foot -these were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the evening. His watch-chain had a number of small gold seals appended to it, and was looped up to a button of his waistcoat. His face was void of colour; he wore no whiskers. His eyes were grey, fringed with long black lashes; and his air was imposing, but rather supercilious. He undervalued David Hume; denying his claim to genius on account of his bulk, and calling him, from the Heroic Epistle, 66 "The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty." 66 One of this extraordinary man's allegations was, that "fat is an oily dropsy." To stave off its visitation, he frequently chewed tobacco in lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the gastric juice of the stomach, and prevented hunger. "Pass your hand down my side," said his Lordship to the writer; can you count my ribs?" Every one of them." "I am delighted to hear you say so. I called last week on Lady -; 'Ah, Lord Byron,' said she, 'how fat you grow!' But you know Lady is fond of saying spiteful things!" Let this gossip be summed up with the words of Lord Chesterfield, in his character of Bolingbroke: "Upon the whole, on a survey of this extraordinary character, what can we say, but Alas, poor human nature !'" The writer never heard Lord Byron allude to his deformed foot, except upon one occasion, when, entering the greenroom of Drury-lane, he found Lord Byron alone, the younger Byrne and Miss Smith, the dancer, having just left him, after an angry conference about a pas seul. "Had you been here a minute sooner," said Lord B., 'you would have heard a question about dancing referred to me-me (looking mourn 66 fully downward) whom fate from my birth has prohibited from taking a single step."* In 1814 Byron re-visited Cambridge, on his way north, and entered the Senate House in company with Dr. E. D. Clarke. He had only proceeded a few paces when he was recognised, and a chorus of voices repeated aloud,— "Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?" "I know not what possessed us," said the informant, who was then a student of Trinity, "but it was a sort of freemasonry feeling-we could not restrain ourselves. The 'Bride of Abydos' was then in every one's hand." Literary Fame, Lord Byron affected to despise, in the following entry in his Ravenna Journal, January 4th, 1821 : "I was out of spirits-read the papers-thought what fame was, on reading in a case of murder that Mr. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a book, the Life of Pamela, which he was tearing for waste paper, &c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c., and a leaf of Pamela, wrapped round the bacon. What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of living authors (ie. while alive)-he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human nature), and of Pope (the most beautiful of poets)-what would he have said could he have traced pages from their place on the French prince's toilets (see Boswell's Johnson) to the grocer's counter and the gipsy murderess' bacon? What would he have said-what can any body say-save what Solomon said long before us? After all, it is but passing from one counter to another-from the bookseller's to the other tradesinan's, grocer or pastry-cook. For my part, I have met with most poetry upon trunks; so that I am apt to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship." his THOMAS CAMPBELL-UNIVERSITY SPREE. A respectable apothecary, named Fife, had a shop in the Trongate of Glasgow (when Campbell, at the age of seventeen, was attending the University of that city in 1795), with *Notes to "Rejected Addresses." G this notice in his window, printed in large letters, "Ears pierced by A Fife;" meaning the operation to which young ladies submit for the sake of wearing earrings. Mr. Fife's next-door neighbour was a citizen of the name of Drum, a spirit-dealer, whose windows exhibited various samples of the liquors which he sold. The worthy shopkeepers having become alienated by jealousy in trade, Thomas Campbell and two trusty college chums fell upon the following expedient for reconciling them. During the darkness of night, long before the streets of Glasgow were lighted with gas, Campbell and his two associates having procured a long fir-deal, had it extended from window to window of the two contiguous shops, with this inscription from Othello, which it fell to the youthful poet, as his share of the practical joke, to paint in flaming capitals: "THE SPIRIT-STIRRING DRUM, THE EAR-PIERCING FIFE." Hitherto (observes Campbell's biographer) the two neighbours had pursued very distinct callings; but, to their utter surprise, a sudden co-partnership had been struck during the night, and Fife and Drum were now united in the same martial line. A great sensation was produced in the morning, when, of course, the new co-partnery was suddenly dissolved. Campbell was, after some inquiry, found to have been the sign-painter, and threatened with pains and penalties, which were, however, commuted into a severe reprimand, suggesting to the poet the words of Parolles— “I'll no more drumming: a plague of all Drums.” LAST HOURS OF CAMPBELL. On the 6th of June, 1844, Campbell was able to converse freely; but his strength had become reduced, and on being assisted to change his posture, he fell back in the bed insensible. Conversation was carried on in the room in whispers ; and Campbell uttered a few sentences so unconnected, that his friends were doubtful whether he was conscious or not of what was going on in his presence, and had recourse to an artifice to learn. One of them spoke of the poem of "Hohenlinden," and, pretending to forget the author's name, said he had heard it was by a Mr. Robinson. Campbell saw the trick, was amused, and said playfully, in a calm but dis |