Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc.
Review
Author(s): Peter W. Graham
Review by: Peter W. Graham
Source: Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 40 (1991), pp. 197-198
Published by: Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc.
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Reviews 197
Jones sets himself the task of reassessingHazlitt'spersonality,the most diffi-
cult reconstructivetask of any biographer.He works to replaceHazlitt's mis-
anthropic reputationwith a more sympathetic figure-"a gentleman without a
gentleman's means," "devoid of guile," subject to "treachery,""vulnerable,"
"timid"in "the commerce of daily life" (pp. 47, 49, 99, 257). Yet the man who
alienatedWordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, CrabbRobinson, DeQuincey, Wil-
son, Lockhart, and Godwin, whom Coleridge called "singularly repulsive"
(Griggs, Lettersof Coleridge,II: 990) and other contemporaries described as
"bitter,""obstinate,""uncouth and morbid and melancholy," "soured,"is not
easily replacedby Jones's picture of a sensitive, ingenuous countryman whose
adulthood was embittered by the persecutionsof town. Even setting aside the
caustic tone that made his essays famous (and readily identifiablein an age of
anonymous contributions), there may be more truth to the negative character
sketched by contemporariesthanJones is willing to concede.
ColumbiaUniversity ANNETTE WHEELER CAFARELLI
of the YoungerRomantics.Lord Byron. Vol. VIII. ChildeHarold's
The Manuscripts
Pilgrimage,Canto III. A Facsimile of the Autograph Fair Copy Found in
the "Scrope Davies" Notebook. Edited by T.A.J. BURNETT.New York
and London: GarlandPublishing, Inc., 1988. Pp. xiv, 219. $75.00.
Late in 1976, something almost unimaginablehappened:primary materialsof
Romantic textual scholarshipbecame the stuff of headlinesin the popularpress.
What lay behind this turn of events was the discovery, in the Pall Mall branch
of Barclay's Bank, of a leather trunk identified as the property of Scrope
Berdmore Davies, gamester, wit, Fellow of King's College Cambridge, and
close friend of Byron. Deposited in 1820, when dire financial circumstances
drove Davies into a Continental exile that would, like Byron's, last the rest of
his life, the chest contained the accumulatedrelics of a typical dandy's racketty
existence: betting books and cellarinventories, bills from gambling "hells"and
tennis clubs, love letters, legal writs, and court orders. Davies, of course, was
not just a typical dandy. His papersincluded, as might be expected, lettersfrom
Byron, Augusta Leigh, John Cam Hobhouse, Thomas Moore and others-
along with more surprisingdocuments:holographsof ChildeHarold'sPilgrimage
Canto IIIand "Mont Blanc," faircopies in Mary Godwin's hand of ThePrisoner
of Chillon,"Hymn to IntellectualBeauty,"andtwo previously unknown Shelley
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I198 Keats-Shelley
Journal
sonnets. Drawing on materialsfrom the chest and on the accounts of Davies's
contemporaries,T.A.J. Burnett of the British Library'sDepartmentof Western
Manuscripts restored the remarkableS.B.D. to public notice in his lively yet
scholarlybook The RiseandFall ofa RegencyDandy: TheLifeandTimesof Scrope
BerdmoreDavies (1981I).Mr. Burnett now has resurrectedthe long-missing
autograph manuscript of Childe Harold III as part of Garland's handsome
Younger Romantics facsimile series under the general editorship of Donald H.
Reiman.
The autographfair copy of ChildeHarold'sthird canto, Byron's "firstcopy"
from his draft, served as copy-text for two transcriptions:Mary Godwin's
(which lacks some late additions) and Claire Clairmont's (which Shelley, who
left Switzerlandfor England on 29 August 1816, carriedback to John Murray).
Byron presented the "first copy" to Davies in September, the plan being that
Davies would transmitthe manuscriptto Murray,who would consult its author-
ity if passages in the Clairmont transcriptshould prove difficult to decipher.
When Davies deliveredthe manuscriptto Albemarle Street,however, the poem
had alreadybeen set up in print. Accordingly,Murrayreturnedthe notebook to
Davies, in whose possession it stayeduntil he deposited it, and the chest'sother
contents, with Douglas Kinnaird at Ransome, Morland & Co., which later
became Barclay'sBank.
The rediscoveryof what Burnett terms the "'Scrope Davies' manuscript"is
important for severalreasons. It sheds new biographicallight that shows us an
expatriateByron more concernedabout getting an accuratetext safe to Murray
than he is sometimes characterizedas being (though the detailsof Byron's letters
belie this misconception)- and a Davies more trustworthy than he had earlier
seemed. The manuscript is yet more significant for textual and interpretative
reasons. With the information containedin this new-found primarydocument,
we are enabled to test the inferencesof the poem's editors and critics, to under-
stand the canto's composition history with greater specificity than was previ-
ously possible. Burnett's facsimile edition, with its clear and concise introduc-
tory matter and its conveniently accessibleannotations, will prove serviceable
to scholarly and general readersinterestedin the textual development of Childe
Harold'sPilgrimage.
InstituteandState University
VirginiaPolytechnic PETER W. GRAHAM
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