ABSTRACT
[Byron] Beppo (1818); review by Francis Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review, XXIX (Feb. 1818), 302–310. Jeffrey, having characterized Byron as a too-gloomy misanthrope, has a difficult time suspecting Byron’s hand in Beppo, though he finally does so very tentatively. In 1813 Thomas Moore, writing under the name of Thomas Brown the Younger, had authored The Two Penny Post Bag, and it is by no means clear that Jeffrey is aware of this pseudonym five years later. His remark about Edinburgh’s distance from the metropolis (p. 310) is only part of the story. Jeffrey’s reviews show that he lacked the taste for gossip and scandal that characterized both John Murray’s circle of Quarterly reviewers and the Blackwood’s Magazine group in the Athens of the North.
