ABSTRACT
Byron, The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814); review by George Ellis, Quarterly Review, XI (July 1814), 428-457. [Issue appeared after October 20, 1814.] Ellis’ diplomatic allusion to what he obviously regarded as Byron’s mistaken use of turf instead of surf (pp. 428-429) went unheeded, for Byron did not correct the text in later editions. One reason that Byron may have failed to take Ellis’ critiques too seriously was that he knew (according to his Journal entry of November 17, 1813) that Ellis was a defender of Walter Scott’s poetry against Murray’s attempt to dethrone Scott with Byron. Ellis, who had published on Medieval Romances, ends this review, as he did that of Childe Harold, with an attempt to rationalize Byron’s productions into an abortive romance or epic structure – perhaps like that of The Faerie Queene (pp. 453–454). The “co-ordinate” “critical tribunal” mentioned on pages 455 ff. is the Edinburgh Review. Note the difference in the two journals’ views of human nature – the Whig Edinburgh believing in “progress,” the Tory Quarterly contending that “the passions of mankind are always the same.”
