INTRODUCTION
TO _THE BLUES_.
Byron
p.
574), and with Mitford's _Greece_ (_Don Juan_, Canto
XII. stanza xix. line 7). Hence his knowledge of Aristomenes. The
thought expressed in lines 5-11 was, possibly, suggested by Coleridge's
translation of the famous passage in Schiller's _Piccolomini_ (act ii.
sc. 4, lines 118, _sq. _, "For fable is Love's world, his home," etc. ),
which is quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in the third chapter of _Guy
Mannering_. ]
THE BLUES:
A LITERARY ECLOGUE.
"Nimium ne crede colori. "--Virgil, [_Ecl_. ii. 17]
O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue,
Though your _hair_ were as _red_, as your _stockings_ are _blue_.
INTRODUCTION TO _THE BLUES_.
Byron's correspondence does not explain the mood in which he wrote _The
Blues_, or afford the slightest hint or clue to its _motif_ or occasion.
In a letter to Murray, dated Ravenna, August 7, 1821, he writes, "I send
you a thing which I scribbled off yesterday, a mere buffoonery, to quiz
'The Blues. ' If published it must be _anonymously_. . . . You may send me a
proof if you think it worth the trouble. " Six weeks later, September 20,
he had changed his mind. "You need not," he says, "send _The Blues_,
which is a mere buffoonery not meant for publication. " With these
intimations our knowledge ends, and there is nothing to show why in
August, 1821, he took it into his head "to quiz The Blues," or why,
being so minded, he thought it worth while to quiz them in so pointless
and belated a fashion. We can but guess that an allusion in a letter
from England, an incident at a conversazione at Ravenna, or perhaps the
dialogues in Peacock's novels, _Melincourt_ and _Nightmare Abbey_,
brought to his recollection the half-modish, half-literary coteries of
the earlier years of the Regency, and that he sketches the scenes and
persons of his eclogue not from life, but from memory.
In the Diary of 1813, 1814, there is more than one mention of the
"Blues. " For instance, November 27, 1813, he writes, "Sotheby is a
_Litterateur_, the oracle of the Coteries of the * *'s, Lydia White
(Sydney Smith's 'Tory Virgin'), Mrs. Wilmot (she, at least, is a swan,
and might frequent a purer stream), Lady Beaumont and all the Blues,
with Lady Charlemont at their head. " Again on December 1, "To-morrow
there is a party _purple_ at the 'blue' Miss Berry's.
XII. stanza xix. line 7). Hence his knowledge of Aristomenes. The
thought expressed in lines 5-11 was, possibly, suggested by Coleridge's
translation of the famous passage in Schiller's _Piccolomini_ (act ii.
sc. 4, lines 118, _sq. _, "For fable is Love's world, his home," etc. ),
which is quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in the third chapter of _Guy
Mannering_. ]
THE BLUES:
A LITERARY ECLOGUE.
"Nimium ne crede colori. "--Virgil, [_Ecl_. ii. 17]
O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue,
Though your _hair_ were as _red_, as your _stockings_ are _blue_.
INTRODUCTION TO _THE BLUES_.
Byron's correspondence does not explain the mood in which he wrote _The
Blues_, or afford the slightest hint or clue to its _motif_ or occasion.
In a letter to Murray, dated Ravenna, August 7, 1821, he writes, "I send
you a thing which I scribbled off yesterday, a mere buffoonery, to quiz
'The Blues. ' If published it must be _anonymously_. . . . You may send me a
proof if you think it worth the trouble. " Six weeks later, September 20,
he had changed his mind. "You need not," he says, "send _The Blues_,
which is a mere buffoonery not meant for publication. " With these
intimations our knowledge ends, and there is nothing to show why in
August, 1821, he took it into his head "to quiz The Blues," or why,
being so minded, he thought it worth while to quiz them in so pointless
and belated a fashion. We can but guess that an allusion in a letter
from England, an incident at a conversazione at Ravenna, or perhaps the
dialogues in Peacock's novels, _Melincourt_ and _Nightmare Abbey_,
brought to his recollection the half-modish, half-literary coteries of
the earlier years of the Regency, and that he sketches the scenes and
persons of his eclogue not from life, but from memory.
In the Diary of 1813, 1814, there is more than one mention of the
"Blues. " For instance, November 27, 1813, he writes, "Sotheby is a
_Litterateur_, the oracle of the Coteries of the * *'s, Lydia White
(Sydney Smith's 'Tory Virgin'), Mrs. Wilmot (she, at least, is a swan,
and might frequent a purer stream), Lady Beaumont and all the Blues,
with Lady Charlemont at their head. " Again on December 1, "To-morrow
there is a party _purple_ at the 'blue' Miss Berry's.
