o his ear the sea-shell on his
chimney-piece, he will be aware of what is alluded to. If the text
should appear obscure, he will find in _Gebir_ the same idea better
expressed in two lines. The poem I never read, but have heard the lines
quoted, by a more recondite reader--who seems to be of a different
opinion from the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, who qualified it in
his answer to the Critical Reviewer of his _Juvenal_, as trash of the
worst and most insane description. It is to Mr. Landor, the author of
_Gebir_, so qualified, and of some Latin poems, which vie with Martial
or Catullus in obscenity, that the immaculate Mr. Southey addresses his
declamation against impurity!

[These are the lines in _Gebir_ to which Byron alludes--

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue.

* * * * *

Shake one and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

Compare, too, _The Excursion_, bk. iv.--

"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intently," etc.

Landor, in his _Satire upon Satirists_, 1836, p. 29, commenting on
Wordsworth's alleged remark that he "would not give five shillings for
all the poetry that Southey had written" (see _Letters_, 1900, iv.
Appendix IX. pp. 483, 484), calls attention to this unacknowledged
borrowing, "It would have been honester," he says, "and more decorous if
the writer of the following verses had mentioned from what bar he drew
his wire." According to H. C. Robinson (_Diary_, 1869, iii. 114),
Wordsworth acknowledged no obligation to Landor's _Gebir_ for the image
of the sea-shell. "From his childhood the shell was familiar to him,
etc. The 'Satire' seemed to give Wordsworth little annoyance."]

[395] {615}[In his Preface to Cantos I., II. of _Childe Harold_
(_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of
"Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical
"variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to
omit certain "ludicrous stanzas." It is to be regretted that no one
suggested the excision of sections xix.-xxi. from the second canto of
The Island.]

[396] Hobbes, the father of Lock