Clarke

HEWSON CLARKE (1787 - 1832?)

Clarke's birthplace is unknown, though Lord Byron referred to him as 'a denizen of Berwick-on-Tweed'. Clarke was early apprenticed to Mr Huntley, a Gateshead druggist on Bottle Bank. There he contributed to the Tyne Mercury a series of papers afterwards enlarged and published in The Saunterer (Newcastle, (1805). This brought him fame and a place at Emmanuel college, Cambridge. He left without a degree, proceeding to London, where he edited The Scourge and contributed to The Satirist, as well as engaging in other literary endeavours.

Clarke attacked persons as diverse as Joanna Southcott and Lord Byron - the first 'being a prophetess was fair game for anyone to shoot at'. Clarke also libelled Byron for over a year in The Satirist. Byron responded in the postscript to the second edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:

'There is a youth named Hewson Clarke, a sizar of Emmanuel College, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet. He is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in The Satirist, for one year and nine months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation.'

Byron writes further:

There Clarke still striving piteously to please,
Forgetting doggerel leads not to degrees,
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehood for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.

The reference in the first line is to Clarke's poem 'The Art of Pleasing', which, according to Byron, contained little pleasantry and less poetry. Nevertheless, Clarke was a writer of considerable ability. His other works included A History of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1816), and a continuation of Hume's History of England (2 volumes, 1832). Eneas Mackenzie (q.v.) says that Clarke was already dead in 1827 (and seems relieved), but the publication date of the 1832 volumes casts doubt on this.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
HEWSON CLARKE (1787 - 1832?) Clarke's birthplace is unknown, though Lord Byron referred to him as 'a denizen of Berwick-on-Tweed'. Clarke was early apprenticed to Mr Huntley, a Gateshead druggist on Bottle Bank. There he contributed to the Tyne Mercury a series of papers afterwards enlarged and published in The Saunterer (Newcastle, (1805). This brought him fame and a place at Emmanuel college, Cambridge. He left without a degree, proceeding to London, where he edited The Scourge and contributed to The Satirist, as well as engaging in other literary endeavours. Clarke attacked persons as diverse as Joanna Southcott and Lord Byron - the first 'being a prophetess was fair game for anyone to shoot at'. Clarke also libelled Byron for over a year in The Satirist. Byron responded in the postscript to the second edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: 'There is a youth named Hewson Clarke, a sizar of Emmanuel College, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet. He is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in The Satirist, for one year and nine months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation.' Byron writes further: There Clarke still striving piteously to please, Forgetting doggerel leads not to degrees, A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehood for a magazine, Devotes to scandal his congenial mind; Himself a living libel on mankind. The reference in the first line is to Clarke's poem 'The Art of Pleasing', which, according to Byron, contained little pleasantry and less poetry. Nevertheless, Clarke was a writer of considerable ability. His other works included A History of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1816), and a continuation of Hume's History of England (2 volumes, 1832). Eneas Mackenzie (q.v.) says that Clarke was already dead in 1827 (and seems relieved), but the publication date of the 1832 volumes casts doubt on this.
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