A Happy HalfCentury Author:Agnes Repplier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHEN LALLA ROOKH WAS YOUNG And give yon, mixed with western sentimentalism, Some glimpses of the finest orientalism. "STICK to the East," wrote Byron to M... more »oore, in 1813. " The oracle, Stae'l, told me it was the only poetic policy. The North, South, and West have all been exhausted; but from the East we have nothing but Southey's unsaleables, and these he has contrived to spoil by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't interest us, and yours will. You will have no competitors; and, if you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a ' voice in the wilderness' for you; and if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalizing, and pave the way for you." There is something admirably business-like in this advice. Byron, who four months before had sold the " Giaour " and the " Bride of Aby- dos" to Murray for a thousand guineas, was beginning to realize the commercial value ofpoetry; and, like a true man of affairs, knew what it meant to corner a poetic market. He was generous enough to give Moore the tip, and to hold out a helping hand as well; for he sent him six volumes of Castellan's "Moeurs des Ottomans," and three volumes of Toderini's " De la Litterature des Turcs." The orientalism afforded by text-books was the kind that England loved. From the publication of "Lalla Bookh" in 1817 to the publication of Thackeray's " Our Street" in 1847, Byron's far-sighted policy continued to bear golden fruit. For thirty years Caliphs and Deevs, Brahmins and Circassians, rioted through English verse; mosques and seraglios were the stage properties of English fiction; the bowers of Rochnabed, the Lake of Cashmere, became as familiar as Richmond and the Thames to English readers. Some feeble wa...« less