Description
Lines to Harold, commencing “Cold is the breast, extinct the vital spark …”, addressed “To the noble author of Childe Harolde. Contemporary manuscript, possibly autograph, unsigned. Neat manuscript, 4 pp. 9 x 7 inches, folded, some foxing, split at folds. Stoke Park, 1812. Privately printed, 1812. Reprinted as “Address to Lord Byron” in New Monthly Magazine 10 (September 1818) 132-33; Poetical Album; and Register of Modern Fugitive Poetry (1829); The Lyre: Fugitive Poetry of the XIXth Century (1830). In Penn, Original Lines and Translations (1815). Reprinted 1841. Granville Penn (1761-1844), a grandson of the Quaker William Penn, attended Magalen College Oxford without taking a degree. He worked as a clerk in the War Department, for which he was awarded a substantial pension. Penn lived in London before succeeding to the family estate of Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire upon the death of his brother John Penn in 1834. He published translations from the ancient languages and a variety of theological and scientific works on esoteric subjects.Apparently Penn sent a copy of “Lines to Harold” to Byron via John Murray; see Byron’s letter of 14 September 1812; Byron described them as “evidently the composition of some one in the habit of writing, and of writing well.”