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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10100-0.txt b/10100-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc29ac3 --- /dev/null +++ b/10100-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6615 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10100 *** + +BYRON + +BY + +JOHN NICHOL + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY + +CHAPTER II. +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL-LIFE. 1788-1808. + +CHAPTER III. +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HOURS OF IDLENESS--BARDS AND +REVIEWERS. 1808-1809. + +CHAPTER IV. +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 1809-1811. + +CHAPTER V. +LIFE IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT AND MOORE--SECOND PERIOD OF +AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (I., II.). AND THE ROMANCES. 1811-1815. + +CHAPTER VI. +MARRIAGE AND SEPARATION--FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 1815-1816. + +CHAPTER VII. +SWITZERLAND--VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (III., IV.) +--MANFRED. 1816-1820. + +CHAPTER VIII. +RAVENNA--COUNTESS GUICCIOLI--THE DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. +1820-1821. + +CHAPTER IX. +PISA--GENOA--THE LIBERAL--DON JUAN. 1821-1823. + +CHAPTER. X. +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. 1821-1824. + +CHAPTER XI. +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE + +INDEX + + + + +BOOKS CONSULTED. + +1. The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, Commodore, in a late + Expedition Round the World, &c. (Baker and Leigh) 1768 + +2. Voyage of H.M.S. _Blonde_ to the Sandwich Islands in the years + 1824-1825, the Right Hon. Lord Byron, Commander (John Murray) 1826 + +3. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron (H. + Colburn) 1822 + +4. The Life, Writings, Opinions, and Times of G.G. Noel Byron, with + courtiers of tho present polished and enlightened age, &c., &c., + 3 vols. (M. Hey) 1825 + +5. Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to Greece, from Journal of + Count Peter Gamba 1825 + +6. Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron at Pisa, 2 vols. (H. Colburn) + 1825 + +7. Leigh Hunt's Byron and His Contemporaries (H. Colburn) + 1828 + +8. The Works of Lord Byron, with Life by Thomas Moore, 17 + vols. (Murray) 1832 + +9. Galt's Life of Lord Byron (Colburn and Buntley) 1830 + +10. Kennedy's Conversations on Religion (Murray) 1830 + +11. Countess of Blessington's Conversations (Colburn) 1834 + +12. Lady Morgan's Memoirs, 2 vols. (W.H. Allen) 1842 + +13. Recollections of the Countess Guiccioli (Bentley) 1869 + +14. Castelar's Genius and Character of Byron (Tinsley) 1870 + +15. Elze's Life of Lord Byron (Murray) 1872 + +16. Trelawny's Reminiscences of Byron and Shelley 1858 + +17. Torrens' Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne (Macmillan) 1878 + +18. Rev. F. Hodgson's Memoirs, 2 vols. (Macimillan) 1879 + +19. Essays and Articles, or Recorded Criticisms, by Macaulay, Scott, + Shelley, Goethe, G. Brandes, Mazzini, Sainte Beuve, Chasles, H. + Taine, &c. + +20. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage 1879 + + + + +GENEALOGY OF THE BYRON FAMILY. + + +THE BYRON FAMILY, FROM THE CONQUEST + +Ralph de Burun (estates in Nottingham and Derby). +| +Hugh de Burun (Lord of Horestan). +| +Hugh de Buron (became a monk). +| +Sir Roger de Buron (gave lands to monks of Swinstead). +| +| Sir Richard Clayton. +| | +Robert de Byron. = Cecelia +| +Robert de Byron +| +Sir John Byron (Governor of York under Edward I.). +| +-------------------------------- +| | +Sir Richard Byron. Sir John (knighted at siege of Calais) +| +Sir John (knighted in 3rd year of Henry V.). +| +| Sir John Butler. +| | +Sir Nicholas. = Alice. +| +----------------------------------- +| | +Sir Nicholas (made K.B. at Sir John (knighted by Richmond + marriage of Prince Arthur, at Milford; fought at Bosworth; + died 1503). died 1488). +| +Sir John Byron = 2nd wife, widow of George Halgh. + (received grant of Newstead from Henry VIII., May 26,1540). +| +Bar // Sinister +| Sir Nicholas Strelleye +| | +John Byron, of Clayton = Alice + (inherited by gift, knighted by Elizabeth, 1579). +| +------------------------------------- +| | +| Sir Nicholas +| Sir Richard Molyneux +| | +Sir John = Anne + (K.B. at coronation of James I; Governor of Tower). +| +-------------------------------------- +| | +RICHARD, 2nd Lord (1605-1679) Sir JOHN 1st Lord (created + (Buried at Hucknal Torkard) Baron Byron of Rochdale, +| Oct. 24, 1643; at Newbury, +| Edgehill, Chester, &c. +| Viscount Chaworth Governor of Duke of York; died +| | at Paris, 1652). +WILLIAM, 3rd Lord = Elizabeth. + (died 1695) +| Lord Berkeley. +| | +WILLIAM, 4th Lord = Frances (3rd wife) + (1669-1736) +| +--------------------------- +| | +Admiral John (1723-1786) |- WILLIAM, 5th Lord (1722-1798) (killed Mr. +| "Foul-weather Jack"). | Chaworth; survived his sons +| | and a grandson, who died 1794; +| | called "The wicked Lord"). +| | +| | - Isabella = Lord Carlisle +| | +| Lord Carlisle (the poet's +| guardian). +--------------------------- +| | +| |- A daughter +| | | +| | Colonel Leigh +| | +| |- George Anson (1758-1793). +| | +| Admiral GEORGE ANSON, 7th Lord +| (1789-1868) +| | +| ---- +| |- Frederick +| | | +| | GEORGE F. WILLIAM, 9th and present +| | Lord Byron. +| | +| |- GEORGE, 8th Lord (1818-1870) +| +------------------- + | +1. Marchioness = John Byron (1751-1791) = 2. Miss Gordon of Gight + of Carmarthen | | + | | +Colonel Leigh = Augusta GEORGE GORDON, 6th Lord + | | (1788-1824). Married + Several daughters | Anna Isabella (1792-1860), + | daughter of Sir Ralph + | Milbanke and Judith, + | daughter of Sir Edward + | Noel (Viscount Wentworth), + | and by her had + ------------------------- + | + Earl Lovelace = Augusta-Ada (1815-1852). + | + -------------------------------------- + | | | +Mr. Blunt = Lady Anne. Byron Noel Ralph Gordon, + (died 1862) now Lord Wentworth + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. + +Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an +intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished to +be--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century. +Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record various +impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or +patronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey, +in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; an +American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion: +to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to +have been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first English +poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France, +Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud of +his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil +of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a +matter of no idle antiquarianism. + +There are legends of old Norse Buruns migrating from their home in +Scandinavia, and settling, one branch in Normandy, another in Livonia. To +the latter belonged a distant Marshal de Burun, famous for the almost +absolute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two members +of the family came over with the Conqueror, and settled in England. Of +Erneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more. +Ralph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book--our first +authentic record--as having estates in Nottinghamshire and Derby. His son +Hugh was lord of Horestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son of +the same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossington to +the monks of Lenton. Tim latter Hugh joined their order; but the race was +continued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery of +Swinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry II. (1155-1189), when +Robert de Byron adopted the spelling of his name afterwards retained, and +by his marriage with Cecilia, heir of Sir Richard Clayton, added to the +family possessions an estate; in Lancashire, where, till the time of Henry +VIII., they fixed their seat. The poet, relying on old wood-carvings at +Newstead, claims for some of his ancestors a part in the crusades, and +mentions a name not apparently belonging to that age-- + + Near Ascalon's towers, John of Horestan slumbers-- + +a romance, like many of his, possibly founded on fact, but incapable of +verification. + +Two grandsons of Sir Robert have a more substantial fame, having served +with distinction in the wars of Edward I. The elder of these was governor +of the city of York. Some members of his family fought at Cressy, and one +of his sons, Sir John, was knighted by Edward III. at the siege of Calais. +Descending through the other, Sir Richard, we come to another Sir John, +knighted by Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., on his landing at Milford. He +fought, with his kin, on the field of Bosworth, and dying without issue, +left the estates to his brother, Sir Nicholas, knighted in 1502, at the +marriage of Prince Arthur. The son of Sir Nicholas, known as "little Sir +John of the great beard," appears to have been a favourite of Henry VIII., +who made him Steward of Manchester and Lieutenant of Sherwood, and on the +dissolution of the monasteries presented him with the Priory of Newstead, +the rents of which were equivalent to about 4000l. of our money. Sir John, +who stepped into the Abbey in 1540, married twice, and the premature +appearance of a son by the second wife--widow of Sir George Halgh--brought +the bar sinister of which so much has been made. No indication of this +fact, however, appears in the family arms, and it is doubtful if the poet +was aware of a reproach which in any case does not touch his descent. The +"filius naturalis," John Byron of Clayton, inherited by deed of gift, and +was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1579. His descendants were prominent as +staunch Royalists during the whole period of the Civil Wars. At Edgehill +there were seven Byrons on the field. + + On Marston, with Rupert 'gainst traitors contending, + Four brothers enrich'd with their blood the bleak field. + +Sir Nicholas, one of the seven, is extolled as "a person of great +affability and dexterity, as well as martial knowledge, which gave great +life to the designs of the well affected." He was taken prisoner by the +Parliament while acting as governor of Chester. Under his nephew, Sir +John, Newstead is said to have been besieged and taken; but the knight +escaped, in the words of the poet--never a Radical at heart--a "protecting +genius, + + For nobler combats here reserved his life, + To lead the band where godlike Falkland foil." + +Clarendon, indeed, informs us, that on the morning before the battle, +Falkland, "very cheerful, as always upon action, put himself into the +first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment." This slightly antedates his +title. The first battle of Newbury was fought on September, 1643. For his +services there, and at a previous royal victory, over Waller in July, Sir +John was, on October 24th of the same year, created Baron of Rochdale, and +so became the first Peer of the family. + +This first lord was succeeded by his brother Richard (1605-1079), famous +in the war for his government and gallant defence of Newark. He rests in +the vault that now contains the dust of the greatest of his race, Hucknall +Torkard Church, where his epitaph records the fact that the family lost +all their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, "yet it pleased God +so to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that he +repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his +posterity, with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity." His +eldest son, William, the third Lord (died 1695), is worth remembering on +two accounts. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, and +so wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance: he +was a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods nor +columns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself a +poetaster, capable of the couplet,-- + + My whole ambition only does extend + To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend,-- + +an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to have +attained its desire. + +His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to +Prince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by his +third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a +strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The +eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of +the poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the +"Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and +subsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of the +passing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the +whole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners of +the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an +aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and +Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course +of the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose between +them about the management of game, so frivolous that one conjectures the +quarrel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of offence. Bets +were offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matter +had blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs, +and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to show +them an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow candle being placed +on the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, and +the hotel master rushing in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded. +There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, having received the +first lunge harmlessly in his waistcoat, had shortened his sword and run +his adversary through the body, with the boast, not uncharacteristic of +his grand nephew, "By G-d, I have as much courage as any man in England." +A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on a +charge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took place +in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for +six guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned a +verdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying his +fees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted +man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a +baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the +wildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the +carriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried to +drown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weird +legends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's +only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive +stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus +in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in +pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries +of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated his +heir presumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale,--a proceeding afterwards +challenged--and cut down the trees of Newstead, to spite him; but he +survived his three sons, his brother, and his only grandson, who was +killed in Corsica in 1794. + +On his own death in 1798, the estates and title passed to George Gordon, +then a child of ten, whom he used to talk of, without a shadow of +interest, as "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen." His sister Isabella +married Lord Carlisle, and became the mother of the fifth Earl, the poet's +nominal guardian. She was a lady distinguished for eccentricity of +manners, and (like her son satirized in the _Bards and Reviewers_) for the +perpetration of indifferent verses. The career of the fourth lord's second +son, John, the poet's grandfather, recalls that of the sea-kings from whom +the family claim to have sprung. Born in 1723, he at an early age entered +the naval service, and till his death in 1786 was tossed from storm to +storm. "He had no rest on sea, nor I on shore," writes his illustrious +descendant. In 1740 a fleet of five ships was sent out under Commodore +Anson to annoy the Spaniards, with whom we were then at war, in the South +Seas. Byron took service as a midshipman in one of those ships--all more +or less unfortunate--called "The Wager." Being a bad sailor, and heavily +laden, she was blown from her company, and wrecked in the Straits of +Magellan. The majority of the crew were cast on a bleak rock, which they +christened Mount Misery. After encountering all the horrors of mutiny and +famine, and being in various ways deserted, five of the survivors, among +them Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to the +Island of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They were +kept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. Iago, the capital of Chili, +and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brest +in October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at Dover in a Dutch vessel. + +This voyage is the subject of a well-known apostrophe in _The Pleasures of +Hope_, beginning-- + + And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his + native shore. In torrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep + Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, 'Twas his to mourn + misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled by the + rock. + +Byron's own account of his adventures, published in 1768, is remarkable +for freshness of scenery like that of our first literary traveller, Sir +John Mandeville, and a force of description which recalls Defoe. It +interests us more especially from the use that has been made of it in that +marvellous mosaic of voyages, the shipwreck, in _Don Juan_, the hardships +of his hero being, according to the poet-- + + Comparative + To those related in my grand-dad's narrative. + +In June, 1764, Byron sailed with two ships, the "Dolphin" and the "Tamar," +on a voyage of discovery arranged by Lord Egmont, to seek a southern +continent, in the course of which he took possession of the largest of the +Falkland Islands, again passed through the Magellanic Straits, and sailing +home by the Pacific, circumnavigated the globe. The planets so conspired +that, though his affable manners and considerate treatment made him always +popular with his men, sailors became afraid to serve under "foul-weather +Jack." In 1748 he married the daughter of a Cornish squire, John +Trevanion. They had two sons and three daughters. One of the latter +married her cousin (the fifth lord's eldest son), who died in 1776, +leaving as his sole heir the youth who fell in the Mediterranean in 1794. + +The eldest son of the veteran, John Byron, father of the poet, was born in +1751, educated at Westminster, and, having received a commission, became a +captain in the guards; but his character, fundamentally unprincipled, soon +developed itself in such a manner as to alienate him from his family. In +1778, under circumstances of peculiar effrontery, he seduced Amelia +D'Arcy, the daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, in her own right Countess +Conyers, then wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds. +"Mad Jack," as he was called, seems to have boasted of his conquest; but +the marquis, to whom his wife had hitherto been devoted, refused to +believe the rumours that were afloat, till an intercepted letter, +containing a remittance of money, for which Byron, in reverse of the usual +relations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pair +decamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained a +divorce, they were regularly married. Byron seems to have been not only +profligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he was +even more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, having +given birth to two daughters. One died in infancy; the other was Augusta, +the half sister and good genius of the poet, whose memory remains like a +star on the fringe of a thunder-cloud, only brighter by the passing of the +smoke of calumny. In 1807 she married Colonel Leigh, and had a numerous +family, most of whom died young. Her eldest daughter, Georgiana, married +Mr. Henry Trevanion. The fourth, Medora, had an unfortunate history, the +nucleus of an impertinent and happily ephemeral romance. + +The year after the death of his first wife, John Byron, who seems to have +had the fascinations of a Barry Lyndon, succeeded in entrapping a second. +This was Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight, a lady with considerable estates +in Aberdeenshire--which attracted the adventurer--and an overweening +Highland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts, +through his daughter Annabella, and the second Earl of Huntly. This union +suggested the ballad of an old rhymer, beginning-- + + O whare are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, + O whare are ye gaen, sae bonny and braw? + Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron, + To squander the lands o' Gight awa'. + +The prophecy was soon fulfilled. The property of the Scotch heiress was +squandered with impetuous rapidity by the English rake. In 1780 she left +Scotland for France, and returned to England toward the close of the +following year. On the 22nd of January, 1788, in Holles Street, London, +Mrs. Byron gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, sixth Lord. +Shortly after, being pressed by his creditors, the father abandoned both, +and leaving them with a pittance of 150 _l_ a year, fled to Valenciennes, +where he died, in August, 1791. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. + +Soon after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron took him to Scotland. After +spending some time with a relation, she, early in 1790, settled in a small +house at Aberdeen. Ere long her husband, who had in the interval +dissipated away his remaining means, rejoined her; and they lived together +in humble lodgings, until their tempers, alike fiery and irritable, +compelled a definite separation. They occupied apartments, for some time, +at the opposite ends of the same street, and interchanged visits. Being +accustomed to meet the boy and his nurse, the father expressed a wish that +the former should be sent to live with him, at least for some days. "To +this request," Moore informs us, "Mrs. Byron was at first not very willing +to accede; but, on the representation of the nurse that if he kept him +over one night he would not do so another, she consented. On inquiring +next morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he had +had quite enough of his young visitor." After a short stay in the north, +the Captain, extorting enough money from his wife to enable him to fly +from his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been a +relief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, that +her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an +anecdote of a similar outburst--attested by Sir W. Scott, who was present +on the occasion--before her marriage. Being present at a representation, +in Edinburgh, of the _Fatal Marriage_, when Mrs. Siddons was personating +Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of the +theatre, screaming out "O my Biron, my Biron." All we know of her +character shows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward, +but hysterical. She constantly boasted of her descent, and clung to the +courtesy title of "honourable," to which she had no claim. Her affection +and anger were alike demonstrative, her temper never for an hour secure. +She half worshipped, half hated, the blackguard to whom she was married, +and took no steps to protect her property; her son she alternately petted +and abused. "Your mother's a fool!" said a school companion to him years +after. "I know it," was his unique and tragic reply. Never was poet born +to so much illustrious, and to so much bad blood. The records of his +infancy betray the temper which he preserved through life--passionate, +sullen, defiant of authority, but singularly amenable to kindness. On +being scolded by his first nurse for having soiled a dress, without +uttering a word he tore it from top to seam, as he had seen his mother +tear her caps and gowns; but her sister and successor in office, May Gray, +acquired and retained a hold over his affections, to which he has borne +grateful testimony. To her training is attributed the early and remarkable +knowledge of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms, which he possessed: +he was, according to her later testimony, peculiarly inquisitive and +puzzling about religion. Of the sense of solitude, induced by his earliest +impressions, he characteristically makes a boast. "My daughter, my wife, +my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural daughter, and +myself, are or were all only children. But the fiercest animals have the +fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, &c." + +To this practical orphanhood, and inheritance of feverish passion, there +was added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physical +defect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned to +a high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter Scott +was lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over that +serene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest prose and +verse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope, we must +remember that he was a cripple: and Byron never allows us to forget, +because he himself never forgot it. Accounts differ as to the extent and +origin of his deformity; and the doubts on the matter are not removed by +the inconsistent accounts of the indelicate post-mortem examination made +by Mr. Trelawny at Mesolonghi. It is certain that one of the poet's feet +was, either at birth or at a very early period, so seriously clubbed or +twisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable extent his habits. It +also appears that the surgical means--boots, bandages, &c.--adopted to +straighten the limb, only aggravated the evil. His sensitiveness on the +subject was early awakened by careless or unfeeling references. "What a +pretty boy Byron is," said a friend of his nurse. "What a pity he has such +a leg." On which the child, with flashing eyes, cutting at her with a +baby's whip, cried out, "Dinna speak of it." His mother herself, in her +violent fits, when the boy ran round the room laughing at her attempts to +catch him, used to say he was a little dog, as bad as his father, and to +call him "a lame brat"--an incident, which, notoriously suggested the +opening scene of the _Deformed Transformed_. In the height of his +popularity he fancied that the beggars and street-sweepers in London were +mocking him. He satirized and discouraged dancing; he preferred riding and +swimming to other exercises, because they concealed his weakness; and on +his death-bed asked to be blistered in such a way that he might not be +called on to expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and +others, assure us that in society few would have observed the defect if he +had not referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and therefore +never far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men. + +In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys, taught +by a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeat +monosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a devout and +clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to his own account he +made astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Roman +history, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Long +afterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum and looking down on +the little round lake, he remembered his young enthusiasm and his old +instructor. He next came under the charge of a tutor called Paterson, whom +he describes as "a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man. He was the +son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar. With him I began Latin, and +continued till I went to the grammar school, where I threaded all the +classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of my +uncle." + +Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn from +scattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low in +his class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand high; but +that he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuriating in the +_Arabian Nights_. He was an indifferent penman, and always disliked +mathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eager +for adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than to +take one, affectionate, though resentful. + +When his cousin was killed at Corsica, in 1794, he became the next heir to +the title. In 1797, a friend, meaning to compliment the boy, said, "We +shall have the pleasure some day of reading your speeches in the House of +Commons," he, with precocious consciousness, replied, "I hope not. If you +read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords." Similarly, +when, in the course of the following year, the fierce old man at Newstead +died, and the young lord's name was called at school with "Dominus" +prefixed to it, his emotion was so great that he was unable to answer, and +burst into tears. + +Belonging to this period is the somewhat shadowy record of a childish +passion for a distant cousin slightly his senior, Mary Duff, with whom he +claims to have fallen in love in his ninth year. We have a quaint picture +of the pair sitting on the grass together, the girl's younger sister +beside them playing with a doll. A German critic gravely remarks, "This +strange phenomenon places him beside Dante." Byron himself, dilating on +the strength of his attachment, tells us that he used to coax a maid to +write letters for him, and that when he was sixteen, on being informed, by +his mother, of Mary's marriage, he nearly fell into convulsions. But in +the history of the calf-loves of poets it is difficult to distinguish +between the imaginative afterthought and the reality. This equally applies +to other recollections of later years. Moore remarks--"that the charm of +scenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and association, should +be felt at an age when fancy is yet hardly awake and associations are but +few, can with difficulty he conceived." But between the ages of eight and +ten, an appreciation of external beauty is sufficiently common. No one +doubts the accuracy of Wordsworth's account, in the _Prelude_ of his early +half-sensuous delight in mountain glory. It is impossible to define the +influence of Nature, either on nations or individuals, or to say +beforehand what selection from his varied surroundings a poet will for +artistic purposes elect to make. Shakespeare rests in meadows and glades, +and leaves to Milton "Teneriffe and Atlas." Burns, who lived for a +considerable part of his life in daily view of the hills of Arran, never +alludes to them. But, in this respect like Shelley, Byron was inspired by +a passion for the high-places of the earth. Their shadow is on half his +verse. "The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow" perpetually +remind him of one of his constantly recurring refrains,-- + + He who surpasses or subdues mankind, + Must look down on the hate of those below. + +In the course of 1790, after an attack of scarlet fever at Aberdeen he was +taken by his mother to Ballater, and on his recovery spent much of his +time in rambling about the country. "From this period," he says, "I date +my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, years +afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in +miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to +Cheltenham I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a +sensation which I cannot describe." Elsewhere, in _The Island_ he returns, +amid allusions to the Alps and Apennines, to the friends of his youth:-- + + The infant rapture still survived the boy, + And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy, + Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, + And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. + +The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we +are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the +easily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has made +such effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none the +less genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in _Don Juan_, to +Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of his +early training:-- + + But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred + A whole one; and my heart flies to my head + As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all-- + Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, + The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall-- + All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams + Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, + Like Banquo's offspring... + +Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent. His satire on +her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal +antipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady +remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst +out "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d----d country was +sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which we +have quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,-- + + I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit, + Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly. + Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit; + They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. + I scotch'd, not kill'd, the Scotchman in my blood, + And love the land of mountain and of flood. + +This suggests a few words on a question of more than local interest. +Byron's most careful biographer has said of him: "Although on his first +expedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yet +the whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anything +but Scottish. Scottish nationality is tainted with narrow and provincial +elements. Byron's poetic character, on the other hand, is universal and +cosmopolitan. He had no attachment to localities, and never devoted +himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." +Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the most +un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts +are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, +has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering +energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but +from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like +manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics +forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from +the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time +has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. Of +late years, the struggle for existence, the temptations of a too ambitious +and over active people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing effect of +the constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, have +for the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence. These +qualities have been adequately combined in Scott alone, the one massive +and complete literary type of his race. Burns, to his ruin, had only the +fire: the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects less +genuine, was indefinitely and inevitably wider. His intensely susceptible +nature took a dye from every scene, city, and society through which he +passed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of a descendant of the +Sea-Kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains he had first learned to +listen to the sound of the "two mighty voices" that haunted and inspired +him through life. + +In the autumn of 1798 the family, i.e. his mother--who had sold the whole +of her household furniture for 75 _l_--with himself, and a maid, set +south. The poet's only recorded impression of the journey is a gleam of +Loch Leven, to which he refers in one of his latest letters. He never +revisited the land of his childhood. Our next glimpse of him is on his +passing the toll-bar of Newstead. Mrs. Byron asked the old woman who kept +it, "Who is the next heir?" and on her answer "They say it is a little boy +who lives at Aberdeen," "This is he, bless him!" exclaimed the nurse. + +Returned to the ancestral Abbey, and finding it half ruined and desolate, +they migrated for a time to the neighbouring Nottingham. Here the child's +first experience was another course of surgical torture. He was placed +under the charge of a quack named Lavender, who rubbed his foot in oil, +and screwed it about in wooden machines. This useless treatment is +associated with two characteristic anecdotes. One relates to the endurance +which Byron, on every occasion of mere physical trial, was capable of +displaying. Mr. Rogers, a private tutor, with whom he was reading passages +of Virgil and Cicero, remarked, "It makes me uncomfortable, my lord, to +see you sitting them in such pain as I know you must be suffering." "Never +mind, Mr. Rogers." said the child, "you shall not see any signs of it in +me." The other illustrates his precocious delight in detecting imposture. +Having scribbled on a piece of paper several lines of mere gibberish, he +brought them to Lavender, and gravely asked what language it was; and on +receiving the answer "It is Italian," he broke into an exultant laugh at +the expense of his tormentor. Another story survives, of his vindictive +spirit giving birth to his first rhymes. A meddling old lady, who used to +visit his mother and was possessed of a curious belief in a future +transmigration to our satellite--the bleakness of whose scenery she had +not realized--having given him some cause of offence, he stormed out to +his nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented his +wrath in the quatrain.-- + + In Nottingham county there lives, at Swan Green, + As curst an old lady as ever was seen; + And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, + She firmly believes she will go to the moon. + +The poet himself dates his "first dash into poetry" a year later (1800), +from his juvenile passion for his cousin Margaret Parker, whose subsequent +death from an injury caused by a fall he afterwards deplored in a +forgotten elegy. "I do not recollect," he writes through the transfiguring +mists of memory, "anything equal to the _transparent_ beauty of my cousin, +or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our +intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbow--all beauty +and peace. My passion had the usual effects upon me--I could not sleep; I +could not eat; I could not rest. It was the texture of my life to think of +the time that must elapse before we could meet again. But I was a fool +then, and not much wiser now." _Sic transit secunda_. + +The departure at a somewhat earlier date of May Gray for her native +country, gave rise to evidence of another kind of affection. On her +leaving he presented her with his first watch, and a miniature by Kay of +Edinburgh, representing him with a bow and arrow in his hand and a +profusion of hair over his shoulders. He continued to correspond with her +at intervals. Byron was always beloved by his servants. This nurse +afterwards married well, and during her last illness, in 1827, +communicated to her attendant, Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, recollections of the +poet, from which his biographers have drawn. + +In the summer of 1799 he was sent to London, entrusted to the medical care +of Dr. Baillie (brother of Joanna, the dramatist), and placed in a +boarding school at Dulwich, under the charge of Dr. Glennie. The physician +advised a moderation in athletic sports, which the patient in his hours of +liberty was constantly apt to exceed. The teacher--who continued to +cherish an affectionate remembrance of his pupil, even when he was told, +on a visit to Geneva in 1817, that, he ought to have "made a better boy of +him"--testifies to the alacrity with which he entered on his tasks, his +playful good-humour with his comrades, his reading in history beyond his +age, and his intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. "In my study," he +states, "he found many books open to him; among others, a set of our poets +from Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more +than once perused from beginning to end." One of the books referred to was +the _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the "Juno,"_ which contains, almost +word for word, the account of the "two fathers," in _Don Juan_. Meanwhile +Mrs. Byron,--whose reduced income had been opportunely augmented by a +grant of a 300_l_. annuity from the Civil List,--after revisiting Newstead +followed her son to London, and took up her residence in a house in +Sloane-terrace. She was in the habit of having him with her there from +Saturday to Monday, kept him from school for weeks, introduced him to idle +company, and in other ways was continually hampering his progress. + +Byron on his accession to the peerage having become a ward in Chancery, +was handed over by the Court to the guardianship of Lord Carlisle, nephew +of the admiral, and son of the grand aunt of the poet. Like his mother +this Earl aspired to be a poet, and his tragedy, _The Father's Revenge_, +received some commendation from Dr. Johnson; but his relations with his +illustrious kinsman were from the first unsatisfactory. In answer to Dr. +Glennie's appeal, he exerted his authority against the interruptions to +his ward's education; but the attempt to mend matters led to such +outrageous exhibitions of temper that he said to the master, "I can have +nothing more to do with Mrs. Byron; you must now manage her as you can." +Finally, after two years of work, which she had done her best to mar, she +herself requested his guardian to have her son removed to a public school, +and accordingly he went to Harrow, where he remained till the autumn of +1805. The first vacation, in the summer of 1801, is marked by his visit to +Cheltenham, where his mother, from whom he inherited a fair amount of +Scotch superstition, consulted a fortune-teller, who said he would be +twice married, the second time to a foreigner. + +Harrow was then under the management of Dr. Joseph Drury, one of the most +estimable of its distinguished head-masters. His account of the first +impressions produced by his pupil, and his judicious manner of handling a +sensitive nature, cannot with advantage be condensed. "Mr. Hanson," he +writes, "Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of +thirteen and a half, with remarks that his education had been neglected; +that he was ill prepared for a public school; but that he thought there +was a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young disciple +into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by inquiries as to his +former amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or no +effect, and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to +my management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it was +necessary to attach him to an elder boy; but the information he received +gave him no pleasure when he heard of the advances of some much younger +than himself. This I discovered, and assured him that he should not be +placed till by diligence he might rank with those of his own age. His +manner and temper soon convinced me that he might be led by a silken +string to a point, rather than a cable: on that principle I acted." + +After a time, Dr. Drury tells us that he waited on Lord Carlisle, who +wished to give some information about his ward's property and to inquire +respecting his abilities, and continues: "On the former circumstance I +made no remark; as to the latter I replied, 'He has talents, my lord, +which will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed!' said his lordship, with a +degree of surprise that, according to my feeling, did not express in it +all the satisfaction I expected." With, perhaps, unconscious humour on the +part of the writer, we are left in doubt as to whether the indifference +proceeded from the jealousy that clings to poetasters, from incredulity, +or a feeling that no talent could add lustre to rank. + +In 1804 Byron refers to the antipathy his mother had to his guardian. +Later he expresses gratitude for some unknown service, in recognition of +which the second edition of the _Hours of Idleness_ was dedicated "by his +obliged ward and affectionate kinsman," to Lord Carlisle. The tribute +being coldly received, led to fresh estrangement, and when Byron, on his +coming of age, wrote to remind the Earl of the fact, in expectation of +being introduced to the House of Peers, he had for answer a mere formal +statement of its rules. This rebuff affected him as Addison's praise of +Tickell affected Pope, and the following lines, were published in the +March of the same year:-- + + Lords too are bards! such things at times befall, + And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all. + Yet did or taste or reason sway the times, + Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes. + Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled, + No future laurels deck a noble head; + No muse will cheer, with renovating smile + The paralytic puling of Carlisle. + +In prose he adds, "If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in +favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful +dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I +seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was +frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he +expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to +the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of _Childe +Harold_, he tried to make amends in the lines-- + + Yet one I would select from that proud throng, + Partly because they blend me with his line, + And partly that I did his sire some wrong. + +This is all of any interest we know regarding the fitful connection of the +guardian and ward. + +Towards Dr. Drury the poet continued through life to cherish sentiments of +gratitude, and always spoke of him with veneration. "He was," he says, +"the best, the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had; and I look +on him still as a father, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, +though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but followed +when I have done well or wisely." + +Great educational institutions must consult the greatest good of the +greatest number of common-place minds, by regulations against which genius +is apt to kick; and Byron, who was by nature and lack of discipline +peculiarly ill fitted to conform to routine, confesses that till the last +year and a half he hated Harrow. He never took kindly to the studies of +the place, and was at no time an accurate scholar. In the _Bards and +Reviewers_, and elsewhere, he evinces considerable familiarity with the +leading authors of antiquity, but it is doubtful whether he was able to +read any of the more difficult of them in the original. His translations +are generally commonplace, and from the marks on his books he must have +often failed to trust his memory for the meanings of the most ordinary +Greek words. To the well-known passage in _Childe Harold_ on Soracte and +the "Latian echoes" he appends a prose comment, which preserves its +interest as hearing on recent educational controversies:--"I wish to +express that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the +beauty; that we learn by rote, before we get by heart; that the freshness +is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and +destroyed, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of +composition, which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin +and Greek, to relish or to reason upon.... In some parts of the continent +young persons are taught from common authors, and do not read the best +classics till their maturity." + +Comparatively slight stress was then laid on modern languages. Byron +learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar +with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so +little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his +meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was +the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the +extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of +books, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and biography than most men +of education read during a long life; a fair load of philosophy; the poets +en masse; among orators, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debates +from the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, including +Blair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition--"all very +tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God +without the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of +"Miscellanies" we have _Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c_; among novels, +the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, +Rabelais, and Rousseau. He recommends Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ as +the best storehouse for second-hand quotations, as Sterne and others have +found it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perused +before the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of the +poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically _"Dichtang und Wahrheit,"_ +we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader--"I read eating, read in +bed, read when no one else reads"--and, having a memory only less +retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be +suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never +read a Review till he was eighteen years old--when, he himself wrote one, +utterly worthless, on Wordsworth. + +At Harrow, Byron proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of +"few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of +hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would +tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and +power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded +praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial +than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into +poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his +way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the +impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader +among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in +1805, the headship of Harrow changed hands. Dr. Drury retired, and was +succeeded by Dr. Butler. This event suggested the lines beginning,-- + + Where are those honours, Ida, once your own, + When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne? + +The appointment was generally unpopular among the boys, whose sympathies +were enlisted in favour of Mark Drury, brother of their former master, and +Dr. Butler seems for a time to have had considerable difficulty in +maintaining discipline. Byron, always "famous for rowing," was a +ringleader of the rebellious party, and compared himself to Tyrlaeus. On +one occasion he tore down the window gratings in a room of the +school-house, with the remark that they darkened the hall; on another he +is reported to have refused a dinner invitation from the master, with the +impertinent remark that he would never think of asking him in return to +dine at Newstead. On the other hand, he seems to have set limits to the +mutiny, and prevented some of the boys from setting their desks on fire by +pointing to their fathers' names carved on them. Byron afterwards +expressed regret for his rudeness; but Butler remains in his verse as +Pomposus "of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul." + +Of the poet's free hours, during the last years of his residence which he +refers to as among the happiest of his life, many were spent in solitary +musing by an elm-tree, near a tomb to which his name has been given--a +spot commanding a far view of London, of Windsor "bosomed high in tufted +trees," and of the green fields that stretch between, covered in spring +with the white and red snow of apple blossom. The others were devoted to +the society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was +one of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at the +choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling +he so pathetically expresses,-- + + Is there no cause beyond the common claim, + Endear'd to all in childhood's very name? + Ah, sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, + Which whispers Friendship will be doubly dear + To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, + And seek abroad the love denied at home. + Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee-- + A home, a world, a paradise to me. + +Of his Harrow intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, the +poet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the Lycus of the _Childish +Recollections_); Lord Delawarr (the Euryalus); John Wingfield (Alonzo), +who died at Coimbra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus); Edward Noel Long +(Cleon); Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead; and Sir Robert Peel. +Of the last, his form-fellow and most famous of his mates, the story is +told of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fag +master, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half the +blows. Peel was an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year, +1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were his +juniors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites. +But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him the +nickname of "the old English baron." To Wildman, who, as a senior, had a +right of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, "I find you have +got Delawarr on your list; pray don't lick him." "Why not?" was the reply. +"Why, I don't know, except that he is a brother peer." Again, he +interfered with the more effectual arm of physical force to rescue a +junior protégé--lame like himself, and otherwise much weaker--from the +ill-treatment of some hulking tyrant. "Harness," he said, "if any one +bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him if I can;" and he kept his word. +Harness became an accomplished clergyman and minor poet, and has left some +pleasing reminiscences of his former patron. The prodigy of the school, +George Sinclair, was in the habit of writing the poet's exercises, and +getting his battles fought for him in return. His bosom friend was Lord +Clare. To him his confidences were most freely given, and his most +affectionate verses addressed. In the characteristic stanzas entitled +"L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes," we feel as if between them the +qualifying phrase might have been omitted: for their letters, carefully +preserved on either side, are a record of the jealous complaints and the +reconciliations of lovers. In 1821 Byron writes, "I never hear the name +Clare without a beating of the heart even now; and I write it with the +feelings of 1803-4-5, ad infinitum." At the same date he says of an +accidental meeting: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between the +present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable +feeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was much +agitated--more in appearance than I was myself--for I could feel his heart +beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own +which made me think so. We were but five minutes together on the public +road, but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence that could be weighed +against them." They were "all that brothers should be but the name;" and +it is interesting to trace this relationship between the greatest genius +of the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age, +stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters and +ranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled. + +Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of a +passion of another kind, with a result that unhappily coloured his life. +Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, the +heiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of the +race that had held with his such varied relations. In one of his letters +ho dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seems +not to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, in +the autumn of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masquerade +there and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the +following year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the course +of a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at the +Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This was +the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, who +invited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return every +evening to Newstead, giving the excuse that the family pictures would come +down and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeated +in the _Siege of Corinth_. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley, +which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of +1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion to +Matlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, with +the exception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of his +first real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest; he wished to marry +Miss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have "joined broad lands, +healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart." + +The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought before us in an +account of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the lady +and the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he had +never told his love; but that she had discovered--it is obvious that she +never returned--it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when +she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of their +riding together in the country on their return to the family residence; +again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of +"Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her +maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs--"Do you +think I could care for that lame boy?"--upon which he rushed out of the +house, and ran, like a hunted creature, to Newstead. Thence he shortly +returned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at +Harrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of +Annesley--an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have +the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the next +time I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?" "I hope so," she replied (her +betrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). The +announcement of her marriage, which took place in August, 1805, was made +to him by his mother, with the remark, "I have some news for you. Take out +your handkerchief; you will require it." On hearing what she had to say, +with forced calm he turned the conversation to other subjects; but he was +long haunted by a loss which he has made the theme of many of his verses. +In 1807 he sent to the lady herself the lines beginning,-- + + O had my fate been join'd with thine. + +In the following year he accepted an invitation to dine at Annesley, and +was visibly affected by the sight of the infant daughter of Mrs. Chaworth, +to whom he addressed a touching congratulation. Shortly afterwards, when +about to leave England for the first time, he finally addressed her in the +stanzas,-- + + 'Tis done, and shivering in the gale, + The bark unfurls her snowy sail. + +Some years later, having an opportunity of revisiting the family of his +successful rival, Mrs. Leigh dissuaded him. "Don't go," she said, "for if +you do you will certainly fall in love again, and there will be a scene." +The romance of the story culminates in the famous _Dream_, a poem of +unequal merit, but containing passages of real pathos, written in the year +1816 at Diodati, as we are told, amid a flood of tears. + +Miss Chaworth's attractions, beyond those of personal beauty, seem to have +been mainly due--a common occurrence--to the poet's imagination. A young +lady, two years his senior, of a lively and volatile temper, she enjoyed +the stolen interviews at the gate between the grounds, and laughed at the +ardent letters, passed through a confidant, of the still awkward youth +whom she regarded as a boy. She had no intuition to divine the presence, +or appreciate the worship, of one of the future master-minds of England, +nor any ambition to ally herself with the wild race of Newstead, and +preferred her hale, commonplace, fox-hunting squire. "She was the beau +ideal," says Byron, in his first accurate prose account of the affair, +written 1823, a few days before his departure for Greece, "of all that my +youthful fancy could paint of beautiful. And I have taken all my fables +about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination +created in her. I say created; for I found her, like the rest of the sex, +anything but angelic." + +Mrs. Musters (her husband re-asserted his right to his own name) had in +the long-run reason to regret her choice. The ill-assorted pair after some +unhappy years resolved on separation; and falling into bad health and +worse spirits, the "bright morning star of Annesley" passed under a cloud +of mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottingham +riot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancient +family was sold by auction and scattered to the winds. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. + +In October, 1805, on the advice of Dr. Drury, Byron was removed to Trinity +College, Cambridge, and kept up a connexion with the University for less +than three years of very irregular attendance, during which we hear +nothing of his studies, except the contempt for them expressed in some of +the least effective passages of his early satires. He came into residence +in bad temper and low spirits. His attachment to Harrow characteristically +redoubled as the time drew near to leave it, and his rest was broken "for +the last quarter, with counting the hours that remained." He was about to +start by himself, with the heavy feeling that he was no longer a boy, and +yet, against his choice, for he wished to go to Oxford. The _Hours of +Idleness_, the product of this period, are fairly named. He was so idle as +regards "problems mathematic," and "barbarous Latin," that it is matter of +surprise to learn that he was able to take his degree, as he did in March, +1808. + +A good German critic, dwelling on the comparatively narrow range of +studies to which the energies of Cambridge were then mainly directed, adds +somewhat rashly, that English national literature stands for the most part +beyond the range of the academic circle, This statement is often +reiterated with persistent inaccuracy; but the most casual reference to +biography informs us that at least four-fifths of the leading statesmen, +reformers, and philosophers of England, have been nurtured within the +walls of her universities, and cherished a portion of their spirit. From +them have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of our +history, kindled the nation into a new life; from the age of Wycliffe, +through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign of +the Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have been +wholly "without the academic circle." Analysing with the same view the +lives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we find +the proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" and +if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, the +comparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activities +around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the +ancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its +resources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and +conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be +snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced for +his country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubbling +with spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, the +discipline is hard, and the restraint excessive; and that the men whom +their colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely. +Bacon inveighs against the scholastic trifling of his day; Milton talks of +the waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the logic of the +schools; Cowley complains of being taught words, not things; Gibbon +rejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen; +Wordsworth contemns the "trade in classic niceties," and roves "in +magisterial liberty" by the Cam, as afterwards among the hills. + +But all those hostile critics owe much to the object of their +animadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the preference of Light to Fruit in +the _Novum Organum_, half of _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, the stately periods of +the _Decline and Fall_, and the severe beauties of _Laodamia_, to the +better influences of academic training on the minds of their authors. +Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work--from the date of _The Curse +of Minerva_ to that of the "Isles of Greece"--are brightened by lights and +adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the +slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by +the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he +continued to rail as late as the publication of _Beppo_, in the 75th and +76th stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint,-- + + One hates an author that's all author, fellows + In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink-- + So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous, + One don't know what to say to them, or think. + +Then, after commending Scott, Bogers, and Moore for being men of the +world, he proceeds:-- + + But for the children of the "mighty mother's," + The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen, + I leave them to the daily "Tea is ready," + Snug coterie, and literary lady. + +This attack, which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity +from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound +enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, +of professional _littérateurs_, and was always haunted by a dread that +they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He +aspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction, that of a +"lord among wits, and among wits a lord." In this same spirit lie resented +the comparison frequently made between him and Rousseau, and insisted on +points of contrast. "He had a bad memory, I a good one. He was of the +people; I of the aristocracy." Byron was capable, of unbending, where the +difference of rank was so great that it could not be ignored. On this +principle we may explain his enthusiastic regard for the chorister +Eddlestone, from whom he received the cornelian that is the theme of some +of his verses, and whose untimely death in 1811 he sincerely mourned. + +Of his Harrow friends, Harness and Long in due course followed him to +Cambridge, where their common pursuits were renewed. With the latter, who +was drowned in 1809, on a passage to Lisbon with his regiment, he spent a +considerable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in which +art they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coins +from a depth of fourteen feet--incidents recalled to the poet's mind by +reading Milton's invocation to Sabrina. During the, same period he +distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of +his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted +marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them +wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed +a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge +as Scott, and more ready to send one. + +Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to +say. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he +commends the head of his college, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanour +in his office, and a past reputation for convivial wit. His attentions to +Professor Hailstones at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received; +but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account of +Porson, "hiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was first +introduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose +talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most +of whom are interesting on their own account as well as from their +connection with the subsequent phases of his career. By common consent +Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, was +the most remarkable of the group. Distinguished alike for scholarship, +physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humour of fancy, and +fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impression +on the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austin +on those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron always +regarded as an incalculable calamity. In a note to _Childe Harold_ he +writes, "I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, were +he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in the +attainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates, than those of +any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his +fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in +the recollection of friends, who loved him too well to envy his +superiority." He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of the +Cam, in the summer of 1811. + +In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request +for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much +autobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, he +writes: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, +talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to +Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to +some other subject, at which he was indignant. 'Come,' said he, 'don't let +us break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;' and so +he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had +previously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in +Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones (his tutor), in his odd way had +said, in putting him in, 'Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not +to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of +_tumultuous passions_.' Matthews was delighted with this, and whenever +anybody came, to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with +caution, and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner.... +He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Irishman, +named F., one evening beginning to say something at a large supper, +Matthews roared 'Silence!' and then pointing to F., cried out, in the +words of the oracle, 'Orson is endowed with reason.' When Sir Henry Smith +was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named 'Hiron,' +Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every +evening-- + + Ah me! what perils do environ + The man who meddles with hot Hiron! + +He was also of that band of scoffers who used to rouse Lort Mansel from +his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window, +foaming with wrath, and crying out, "I know you, gentlemen; I know you!" +were wont to reply, "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort. Good Lort, +deliver us!" + +The whole letter, written in the poet's mature and natural style, gives a +vivid picture of the social life and surroundings of his Cambridge days: +how much of the set and sententious moralizing of some of his formal +biographers might we not have spared, for a report of the conversation on +the road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the same +centre, Scrope Davies enlisted the largest share of Byron's affections. To +him he wrote after the catastrophe:--"Come to me, Scrope; I am almost +desolate--left alone in the world. I had but you, and H., and M., and let +me enjoy the survivors while I can." Later he says, "Matthews, Davies, +Hobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beaten +us all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and +kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D." The +last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: +he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet in one of his +fits of petulance exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, +"I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much more +like silliness than madness!" He was the only man who ever laid Byron +under any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him 4800_l_. in some +time of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat up +over champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scrope +could not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy and +pious on his knees." Davies was much disconcerted at the influence which +the sceptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron's +mind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John Cam Hobhouse, +afterwards Lord Broughton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life, +the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor of +his will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability is +abundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, his +published description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary and +political career. Byron bears witness to the warmth of his affections, and +the charms of his conversation, and to the candour which, as he confessed +to Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubt +that they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was a +passing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits that +Hobhouse was his best friend; and when he unexpectedly walked up the +stairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli informs us +that Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excess +of joy, that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sit +down in tears. + +On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated with it, +was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound +critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, +whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his +son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views +entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; they +both fought under the standards of the classic school; they resented the +same criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were bound +together by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson's +verses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the _Bards and +Reviewers_ and the early cantos of _Childe Harold_ the promise of +_Manfred_ and _Cain_. Among the associates who strove to bring the poet +back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of +his thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the +most judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultified +by pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank and +unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are +preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the +recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and +superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to +characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811, +Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with your +immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity +of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan +will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. I am no Platonist, I am +nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, +Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous +sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and +hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all in +good will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, +the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul +meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson to +Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; +and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is something +pagan in me that I cannot shake off. _In short, I deny nothing, but I +doubt everything_." But his early attitude on matters of religion is best +set forth in a letter to Gilford, of 1813, in which he says, "I am no +bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the +immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of a +God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, +when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom, +that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be +overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch +school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my +life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a +disease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria." + +Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which +had for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. To +no one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge in +more reckless sallies of humour; to no one did he more readily betray his +little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to +him the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrous +encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of +the poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence--a gift of 1000_l_., to +pay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle, +the former gratefully alludes to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew the +exultation of heart, aye, and of head to, I feel at being free from those +depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and +brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit +that was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver. + +Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry +Drury--long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law, +to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are +addressed--and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with various +associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and, +after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This +gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgotten +novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, +when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his +early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as +'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach an +absurd climax. + +Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron had +made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and +Southwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once a +refuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman Minster. Here +Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was +frequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medical +student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talents +above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a +number of his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J.T. Becher, author +of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for +encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he +found dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the +latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how I +curse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawks +who inhabit your kraals!" and adding, that his sole satisfaction during +his residence there was having pared off some pounds of flush. +Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inland +watering-place he passed on the whole a pleasant time--listening to the +music of the simple ballads in which he delighted, taking part in the +performances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses. +This otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of violence on the +part of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one more +outrageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the +neighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with +poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage +with stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed +her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as +ho calls her, followed: on their meeting a truce was patched, and they +withdrew in opposite directions, she back to Southwell, he to refresh +himself on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) he +again rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description of +a trip to Harrogate, when his lordship's favourite Newfoundland, +Boatswain, whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, or +Maida to Scott, sat on the box. + +In November Byron printed for private circulation the first issue of his +juvenile poems. Mr. Becher having called his attention to one which he +thought objectionable, the impression was destroyed; and the author set to +work upon another, which, at once weeded and amplified, saw the light in +January, 1807. He sent copies, under the title of _Juvenilia_, to several +of his friends, and among others to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling), +and to Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Encouraged by their favourable +notices, he determined in appeal to a wider audience, and in March, 1807, +the _Hours of Idleness_, still proceeding from the local press at Newark, +were given to the world. In June we find the poet again writing from his +college rooms, dwelling with boyish detail on his growth in height and +reduction in girth, his late hours and heavy potations, his comrades, and +the prospects of his book. From July to September he dates from London, +excited by the praises of some now obscure magazine, and planning a +journey to the Hebrides. In October he is again settled at Cambridge, and +in a letter to Miss Pigot, makes a humorous reference to one of his +fantastic freaks: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world--a +_tame bear_. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do +with him, and my reply was, 'He should sit for a fellowship.' This answer +delighted them not." The greater part of the spring and summer of 1808 was +spent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seems +during this period for the first time to have freely indulged in +dissipations, which are in most lives more or less carefully concealed. +But Byron, with almost unparalleled folly, was perpetually taking the +public into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the strange +additions of an imaginative effrontery, have been thrust before us in a +manner in which Rochester or Rousseau might have thought indelicate. +Nature and circumstances conspired the result. With passions which he is +fond of comparing to the fires of Vesuvius and Hecla, he was, on his +entrance into a social life which his rank helped to surround with +temptations, unconscious of any sufficient motive for resisting them; he +had no one to restrain him from the whim of the moment, or with sufficient +authority to give him effective advice. A temperament of general +despondency, relieved by reckless outbursts of animal spirits, is the +least favourable to habitual self-control. The melancholy of Byron was not +of the pensive and innocent kind attributed to Cowley, rather that of the, +[Greek: melancholikoi] of whom Aristotle asserts, with profound +psychological or physiological intuition, that they are [Greek: aei en +sphodra orexei]. The absurdity of Moore's frequent declaration, that all +great poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused by +the modesty which, in the saying so obviously excludes himself from the +list. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessant +irritation to their possessor, until they have found their proper vent in +the free exercise of his highest faculties. Byron had not yet done, this, +when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and +Newstead--shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and +trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling +with disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master, +Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished +professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his +"old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to +dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they +never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms +dishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want of +evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of +leading any one astray--a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moral +worshippers of Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name. + + [Footnote 1: In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter + from Mr. Minto to the _Athenaeum_ (Sept. 2nd, 1876), in which with + considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to + identify the girl with "Thyrza," and with "Astarté," whom he regards + as the same person.] + +Though much of this year of his life was passed unprofitably, from it +dates the impulse that provoked him to put forth his powers. The +_Edinburgh_, with the attack on the _Hours of Idleness_, appeared in +March, 1808. This production, by Lord Brougham, is a specimen of the +tomahawk style of criticism prevalent in the early years of the century, +in which the main motive of the critic was, not to deal fairly with his +author, but to acquire for himself an easy reputation for cleverness, by a +series of smart contemptuous sentences. Taken apart, most of the +strictures of the _Edinburgh_ are sufficiently just, and the passages +quoted for censure are all bad. Byron's genius as a poet was not +remarkably precocious. The _Hours of Idleness_ seldom rise, either in +thought or expression, very far above the average level of juvenile verse; +many of the pieces in the collection are weak imitations, or commonplace +descriptions; others suggested by circumstances of local or temporary +interest, had served their turn before coming into print. Their prevailing +sentiment is an affectation of misanthropy, conveyed in such lines as +these:-- + + Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen, + I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen. + +This mawkish element unfortunately survives in much of the author's later +verse. But even in this volume there are indications of force, and +command. The _Prayer of Nature_, indeed, though previously written, was +not included in the edition before the notice of the critic; but the sound +of _Loch-na-Gair_ and some of the stanzas on _Newstead_ ought to have +saved him from the mistake of his impudent advice. The poet, who through +life waited with feverish anxiety for every verdict on his work, is +reported after reading the review to have looked like a man about to send +a challenge. In the midst of a transparent show of indifference, he +confesses to have drunk three bottles of claret on the evening of its +appearance. But the wound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings' +blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collecting his +strength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by its +delay, twelve months later made it impossible for him to be contemned. + +The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, vacated by the tenant, +who had left the building in the tumble-down condition in which he found +it. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time, "heavily dipped," +generosities having combined with selfish extravagances to the result; he +had no funds to subject the place to anything like a thorough repair, but +he busied himself in arranging a few of the rooms for his own present and +his mother's after use. About this date he writes to her, beginning in his +usual style, "Dear Madam," saying he has as yet no rooms ready for her +reception, but that on his departure she shall be tenant till his return. +During this interval he was studying Pope, and carefully maturing his own +Satire. In November the dog Boatswain died in a fit of madness. The event +called forth the famous burst of misanthropic verse, ending with the +couplet,-- + + To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; + I never knew but _one_, and _here_ he lies;-- + +and the inscription on the monument that still remains in the gardens of +Newstead,-- + + Near this spot, + Are deposited the remains of one + Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, + Strength without Insolence, + Courage without Ferocity, + And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. + This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery + If inscribed over human ashes, + Is but a just tribute to the Memory of + Boatswain, a Dog, + Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, + And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808. + +On January 22, 1809, his lordship's coming of age was celebrated with +festivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early in +spring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to the +publisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, on +the death of Lord Falkland, who had been killed in a duel, and expresses a +sympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom he +proceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of +the manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, he +proceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, "Come what may, +Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot--I +have fixed my heart on it; and no pressure, present or future, shall +induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance." He was building +false hopes on the result of the suit for the Rochdale property, which, +being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with no +satisfactory result. He took his seat in the House of Lords on the 13th of +March, and Mr. Dallas, who accompanied him to the bar of the House, has +left an account of his somewhat unfortunate demeanour. + +"His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and +that he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a hand +and countenance in his introduction. There were very few persons in the +House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When Lord +Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went +towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, +though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. +This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put +the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not +press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byron +carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to +the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Opposition. When, +on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said 'If I had shaken +hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I will +have nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and now +I will go abroad.'" + +A few days later the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ appeared before +the public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; a +second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wont +at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many +of his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have been +dictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correction +of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame; i.e. he +wrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author,-- + + I leave topography to coxcomb Gell; + +we have his second thought in the first edition, before he saw the +Troad,-- + + I leave topography to classic Gell; + +and his third, half way in censure, in the fifth,-- + + I leave topography to rapid Gell. + +Of such materials are literary judgments made! + +The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the only +good thing of its kind since Churchill,--for in the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad_ +only butterflies were broken upon the wheel--and to its being the first +promise of a now power. The _Bards and Reviewers_ also enlisted sympathy, +from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed the +prerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own +milk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore +and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakers +fared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war, +only once relaxed, with Southey. Wordsworth--though against this passage +is written "unjust," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn,--is +dubbed an idiot, who-- + + Both by precept and example shows, + That prose is verse and verse is only prose; + +and Coleridge, a baby,-- + + To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear. + +The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey and Moore, are a fair +specimen of the accuracy with which the author had caught the ring of +Pope's antithesis:-- + + The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. + The Tolbooth felt--for marble sometimes can, + On such occasions, feel as much as man-- + The Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, + If Jeffrey died, except within her arms. + +Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited some +choice spirits to hold a few weeks of farewell revel. Matthews, one of +these, gives an account of the place, and the time they spent +there--entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo of +pistol-shots; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy, +poetry; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the Black +Brother; drinking their wine out of the skull cup which the owner had made +out of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden; breakfasting at +two, then reading, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, and +playing with the bear or teasing the wolf. The party broke up without +having made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which Childe +Harold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, when +the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way +"_outre mer_." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. + +There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the +adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first +expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of his +intrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particular +of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one of +them, which have all the same relation to reality as the _Arabian Nights_ +to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Those who wish to read them are referred to the three + large volumes--published in 1825, by Mr. Iley, Portman Street--of + anonymous authorship.] + +Byron had far more than an average share of the _émigré_ spirit, the +counterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. He +held with Wilhelm Meister-- + + To give space for wandering is it, + That the earth was made so wide. + +and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantages +of looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bitter +effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, +that I think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroad +for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us." + +On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mind +with information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattained +goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, +Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton the son +of one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in _Childe +Harold_. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his +health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar. + +Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full of +Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and +Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a +slight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excused +himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he +at one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving England +without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the +next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain of +boisterous buffoonery. On the 2nd of July, the packet, by which he was +bound, sailed for Lisbon and arrived there about the middle of the month, +when the English fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of his +stanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolate +dirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which were at that time +rendered dangerous by the frequency of religious and political +assassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, save +the statement of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more perilous, +though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing the +Hellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle, Byron praises the +neighbouring Cintra, as "the most beautiful village in the world," though +he joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Convention, and +extols the grandeur of Mafra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent of +which a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the English +had any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants by +sea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through the +south-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles, +performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty-four hours, was +Seville, where they lodged for three days in the house of two ladies, to +whose attractions, as well as the fascination he seems to have exerted +over them, the poet somewhat garrulously refers. Here, too, he saw, +parading on the Prado, the famous _Maid of Saragossa_, whom he celebrates +in his equally famous stanzas (_Childe Harold_, I., 54-58). Of Cadiz, the +next stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a modern Cythera, describing the +bull fights in his verse, and the beauties in glowing prose. The belles of +this city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain; and by reason of +them, rather than the sea-shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is the +first spot in the creation." Hence, by an English frigate, they sailed to +Gibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had no +sympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in our great +struggle with the tyranny of the First Empire, he may almost be said to +have sympathized with Napoleon. + +The ship stopped at Cagliari in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti on the +Sicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks--time +enough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs. +Spencer Smith, wife of our minister at Constantinople, sister-in-law of +the famous admiral, and the heroine of some exciting adventures. She is +the "Florence" of _Childe Harold_, and is afterwards addressed in some of +the most graceful verses of his cavalier minstrelsy-- + + Do thou, amidst the fair white walls, + If Cadiz yet be free, + At times from out her latticed halls + Look o'er the dark blue sea-- + Then think upon Calypso's isles, + Endear'd by days gone by,-- + To others give a thousand smiles, + To me a single sigh. + +The only other adventure of the visit is Byron's quarrel with an officer, +on some unrecorded ground, which Hobhouse tells us nearly resulted in a +duel. The friends left Malta on September 29th, in the war-ship "Spider," +and after anchoring off Patras, and spending a few hours on shore, they +skirted the coast of Acarnania, in view of localities--as Ithaca, the +Leucadian rock, and Actium--whose classic memories filtered through the +poet's mind and found a place in his masterpieces. Landing at Previsa, +they started on a tour through Albania,-- + + O'er many a mount sublime, + Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales. + +Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and the +half-savage independence of the people, described as "always strutting +about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his +companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the +famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Berat +in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia's +lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before +reaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, in +the midst of which they separated, and Byron's detachment lost its way for +nine hours, during which he composed the verses to Florence, quoted above. + +Some days later they together arrived at Tepaleni, and were there received +by Ali Pasha in person. The scene on entering the town is described as +recalling Scott's Branksome Castle and the feudal system; and the +introduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet's +corsairs,--is graphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. "His first +question was, why at so early an age I left my country, and without a +'lala,' or nurse? He then said the English minister had told him I was of +a great family, and desired his respects to my mother, which I now present +to you (date, November 12th). He said he was certain I was a man of birth, +because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. He told me +to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on +me as his son. Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds, +fruit, and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Byron shortly afterwards +discovered his host to be, a poisoner and an assassin. "Two days ago," he +proceeds in a passage which illustrates his character and a common +experience, "I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to the +ignorance of the captain and crew. Fletcher yelled after his wife; the +Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmen on Alla; the captain burst +into tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God. The sails were +split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting +in; and all our chance was to make for Corfu--or, as F. pathetically +called it, 'a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, but +finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and lay +down on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, says +Hobhouse, to be of any assistance, he in a short time was found amid the +trembling sailors, fast asleep. They got back to the coast of Suli, and +shortly afterwards started through Acarnania and AEtolia for the Morea, +again rejoicing in the wild scenery and the apparently kindred spirits of +the wild men among whom they passed. Byron was especially fascinated by +the firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes and +reproduces in _Childe Harold_. On the 21st of November he reached +Mesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most of +his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of +Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring sign +of Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet on +the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to save +it--the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and I +never did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." From +Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of +Trophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and +the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrived +before the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his first +glimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:-- + + Ancient of days, august Athena! where, + Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? + Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. + First in the race that led to glory's goal, + They won, and pass'd away: is this the whole-- + A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour? + +After which he reverts to his perpetually recurring moral, "Men come and +go; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars, endure"-- + + Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds; + Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; + Art, glory, freedom fail--but nature still is fair. + +The duration of Lord Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months, +and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica; Eleusis, +Hymettus, Cape Colonna, (Sunium, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck), the +Colonus of OEdipus, and Marathon, the plain of which is said to have been +placed at his disposal for about the same sum that, thirty years later, an +American offered to give for the bark with the poet's name on the tree at +Newstead. Byron had a poor opinion of the modern Athenians, who seem to +have at this period done their best to justify the Roman satirist. He +found them superficial, cunning, and false; but, with generous historic +insight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been much +better; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it would +require ages of freedom to emancipate them. + +In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widow +of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom, +Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens, +without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of the +heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's +genuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles +from the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of Lord +Elgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the _Curse of +Minerva_; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of the +old Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shed +tears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one of +ethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold London +in the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left; +a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Athenians +to concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, and +they are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum. + +Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissus +to some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accident +nearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve their +names on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus in +the evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an English +sloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the +28th of March, the second canto of _Childe Harold_, begun in the previous +autumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood, +visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to the +jackals, in the _Siege of Corinth_; and on April 11th left by the +"Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched at +the Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and rambling +among the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in _Don +Juan_ and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules the +belief. + + I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, + And heard Troy doubted! Time will doubt of Rome! + * * * * * + There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is, + Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea, + Entomb'd the bravest of the brave Achilles.-- + They say so: Bryant says the contrary. + +Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byron +landed on the European side, and swam, in company with Lieutenant +Ekenhead, from Sestos to Abydos--a performance of which he boasts some +twenty times. The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a +feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was a +tempting theme for classical allusions. At length, on May 14, he reached +Constantinople, exalted the Golden Horn above all the sights he had seen, +and now first abandoned his design of travelling to Persia. Galt, and +other more or less gossiping travellers, have accumulated a number of +incidents of the poet's life at this period, of his fanciful dress, +blazing in scarlet and gold, and of his sometimes absurd contentions for +the privileges of rank--as when he demanded precedence of the English +ambassador in an interview with the Sultan, and, on its refusal, could +only be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian internuncio. In +converse with indifferent persons he displayed a curious alternation of +frankness and hauteur, and indulged a habit of letting people up and down, +by which he frequently gave offence. More interesting are narratives of +the suggestion of some of his verses, as the slave-market in _Don Juan_, +and the spectacle of the dead criminal tossed on the waves, revived in the +_Bride of Abydos_. One example is, if we except Dante's _Ugolino_, the +most remarkable instance in literature of the expansion, without the +weakening, of the horrible. Take first Mr. Hobhouse's plain prose: "The +sensations produced by the state of the weather"--it was wretched and +stormy when they left the "Salsette" for the city--"and leaving a +comfortable cabin, were in unison with the impressions which we felt when, +passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypress +which rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." After +this we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imagination +brooding over the incident,-- + + And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall + Hold o'er the dead their carnival: + Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb, + They were too busy to bark at him. + From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, + As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; + And their white tusks crunch'd on the whiter skull, + As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grow dull. + +No one ever more persistently converted the incidents of travel into +poetic material; but sometimes in doing so he borrowed more largely from +his imagination than his memory, as in the description of the seraglio, of +which there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance. + +Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July, +1810--the latter to return direct to England, a determination which, from +no apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incident +of the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. Taking up, +and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found on the quarter deck, ho +remarked, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a +murder." This harmless piece of melodrama--the idea of which is expanded +in Mr. Dobell's _Balder_, and parodied in _Firmilian_--may have been the +basis of a report afterwards circulated, and accepted among others by +Goethe, that his lordship had committed a murder; hence, obviously, the +character of _Lara_, and the mystery of _Manfred!_ The poet parted from +his friend at Zea, (Ceos): after spending some time in solitude on the +little island, he returned to Athens, and there renewed acquaintance with +his school friend, the Marquis of Sligo, who after a few days accompanied +him to Corinth. They then separated, and Byron went on to Patras in the +Morea, where he had business with the Consul. He dates from there at the +close of July. It is impossible to give a consecutive account of his life +during the next ten months, a period consequently filled up with the +contradictory and absurd mass of legends before referred to. A few facts +only of any interest are extricable. During at least half of the time his +head-quarters were at Athens, where he again met his friend the Marquis, +associated with the English Consul and Lady Hester Stanhope, studied +Romaic in a Franciscan monastery--where he saw and conversed with a motley +crew of French, Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and Americans,--wrote to +his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick +of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped +on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to +_Harold_, composed the _Hints from Horace_ and the _Curse of Minerva_, and +presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse +romances. We hear no more of the, _Maid of Athens_, but there is no fair +ground to doubt that the _Giaour_ was suggested by his rescue of a young +woman whom, for the fault of an amour with some Frank, a party of +Janissaries were about to throw, sewn up in a sack, into the sea. Mr. Galt +gives no authority for his statement, that the girl's deliverer was the +original cause of her sentence. We may rest assured that if it had been +so, Byron himself would have told us of it. + +A note to the _Siege of Corinth_ is suggestive of his unequalled +restlessness. "I visited all three--Tripolitza, Napoli, and Argos--in +1810-11; and in the course of journeying through the country, from my +first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight times on my way from +Attica to the Morea." In the latter locality we find him during the autumn +the honoured guest of the Vizier Valhi (a son of Ali Pasha), who presented +him with a fine horse. During a second visit to Patras, in September, he +was attacked by the same sort of marsh fever from which, fourteen years +afterwards, in the near neighbourhood, he died. On his recovery, in +October, he complains of having been nearly killed by the heroic measures +of the native doctors: "One of them trusts to his genius, never having +studied; the other, to a campaign of eighteen months against the sick of +Otranto, which he made in his youth with great effect. When I was seized +with my disorder, I protested against both these assassins, but in vain." +He was saved by the zeal of his servants, who asseverated that if his +lordship died they would take good care the doctors should also; on which +the learned men discontinued their visits, and the patient revived. On his +final return to Athens, the restoration of his health was retarded by one +of his long courses of reducing diet; he lived mainly on rice, and vinegar +and water. From that city he writes in the early spring, intimating his +intention of proceeding to Egypt; but Mr. Hanson, his man of business, +ceasing to send him remittances, the scheme was abandoned. Beset by +letters about his debts, he again declares his determination to hold fast +by Newstead, adding that if the place which is his only tie to England is +sold, he won't come back at all. Life on the shores of the Archipelago is +far cheaper and happier, and "Ubi bene ibi patria," for such a citizen of +the world as he has become. Later he went to Malta, and was detained +there by another bad attack of tertian fever. The next record of +consequence is from the "Volage" frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811, when he +writes in a despondent strain to Hodgson, that he is returning home +"without a hope, and almost without a desire," to wrangle with creditors +and lawyers about executions and coal pits. "In short, I am sick and +sorry; and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I +shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where +I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence. I +am sick of fops, and poesy, and prate, and shall leave the whole Castalian +state to Bufo, or anybody else. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, +of one kind or another, on my travels." With these, and a collection of +marbles, and skulls, and hemlock, and tortoises, and servants, he reached +London about the middle of July, and remained there, making some +arrangements about business and publication. On the 23rd we have a short +but kind letter to his mother, promising to pay her a visit on his way to +Rochdale. "You know you are a vixen, but keep some champagne for me," he +had written from abroad. On receipt of the letter she remarked, "If I +should be dead before he comes down, what a strange thing it, would be." +Towards the close of the month she had an attack so alarming that he was +summoned; but before, he had time to arrive she had expired, on the 1st of +August, in a fit of rage brought on by reading an upholsterer's bill. On +the way Byron heard the intelligence, and wrote to Dr. Pigot: "I now feel +the truth of Gray's observation, that we can only have _one_ mother. Peace +be with her!" On arriving at Newstead, all their storms forgotten, the son +was so affected that he did not trust himself to go to the funeral, but +stood dreamily gazing at the cortège from the gate of the Abbey. Five days +later, Charles S. Matthews was drowned. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +SECOND PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT + +The deaths of Long, Wingfield, Eddlestone, Matthews, and of his mother, +had narrowed the circle of the poet's early companions; and, though he +talks of each loss in succession as if it had been that of an only friend, +we can credit a degree of loneliness, and excuse a certain amount of +bitterness in the feelings with which he returned to London. He had at +this time seen very little of the only relative whom he over deeply loved. +He and his half-sister met casually in 1804, and again in the following +year. After her marriage (1807), Byron writes from abroad (1810), +regretting having distressed her by his quarrel with Lord Carlisle. In +1811 she is mentioned as reversionary heiress of his estate. Towards the +close of 1813, there are two allusions which testify to their mutual +affection. Next wo come to the interesting series of letters of 1815-16, +published with the Memoir of Mr. Hodgson, to whom, along with Hobhouse and +Scrope Davies, his lordship in a will and codicil leaves the management of +his property. Harness appears frequently at this period among his +surviving intimates: to this list there was shortly added another. In +speaking of his _Bards and Reviewers_, the author makes occasional +reference to the possibility of his being called to account for some of +his attacks. His expectation was realized by a letter from the poet Moore, +dated Dublin, Jan. 1, 1810, couched in peremptory terms, demanding to know +if his lordship avowed the authorship of the insults contained in the +poem. This letter, being entrusted to Mr. Hodgson, was not forwarded to +Byron abroad; but shortly after his return, he received another in more +conciliatory terms, renewing the complaint. To this he replied, in a stiff +but manly letter, that he had never meant to insult Mr. Moore; but that he +was, if necessary, ready to give him satisfaction. Moore accepting the +explanation, somewhat querulously complained of his advances to friendship +not being received. Byron again replied that much as he would feel +honoured by Mr. Moore's acquaintance, he being practically threatened by +the irate Irishman could hardly make the first advances. This called forth +a sort of apology; the correspondents met at the house of Mr. Rogers, and +out of the somewhat awkward circumstances, owing to the frankness of the +"noble author," as the other ever after delights to call him, arose the +life-long intimacy which had such various and lasting results. Moore has +been called a false friend to Byron, and a traitor to his memory. The +judgment is somewhat harsh, but the association between them was +unfortunate. Thomas Moore had some sterling qualities. His best satirical +pieces are inspired by a real indignation, and lit up by a genuine humour. +He was also an exquisite musician in words, and must have been +occasionally a fascinating companion. But he was essentially a worldling, +and, as such, a superficial critic. He encouraged the shallow affectations +of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring +defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt +seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to +others on _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and _Don Juan_, are the expression of +sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the +author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure +by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard to his +opinions, and overestimated his genius. For the subsequent destruction of +the memoirs, urged by Mr. Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh, he was not wholly +responsible; though a braver man, having accepted the position of his +lordship's literary legatee, with the express understanding that he would +seue to the fulfilment of the wishes of his dead friend, would have to the +utmost resisted their total frustration. + +Meanwhile, on landing in England, the poet had placed in the hands of Mr. +Dallas the _Hints from Horace_, which he intended to have brought out by +the publisher Cawthorne. Of this performance--an inferior edition, +relieved by a few strong touches, of the _Bards and Reviewers_--Dallas +ventured to express his disapproval. "Have you no other result of your +travels?" he asked; and got for answer, "A few short pieces; and a lot of +Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to +them." Dallas took the remark literally, saw they were a safe success, and +assumed to himself the merit of the discovery, the risks, and the profits. +It is the converse of the story of Gabriel Harvey and the _Faery Queene_. +Tho first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ bear no comparison with the legend +of _Una and the Red Cross Knight_; but there was no mistake about their +proof of power, their novelty, and adaptation to a public taste as yet +unjaded by eloquent and imaginative descriptions of foreign scenery, +manners, and climates. + +The poem--after being submitted to Gifford, in defiance of the +protestations of the author, who feared that the reference might seem to +seek the favour of the august _Quarterly_--was accepted by Mr. Murray, and +proceeded through the press, subject to change and additions, during the +next five months. The _Hints from Horace_, fortunately postponed and then +suspended, appeared posthumously in 1831. Byron remained at Newstead till +the close of October, negotiating with creditors and lawyers, and engaged +in a correspondence about his publications, in the course of which he +deprecates any identification of himself and his hero, though he had at +first called him Childe Byron. "Instruct Mr. Murray," he entreats, "not to +allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage,' as he +has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my +_sanity_ on the occasion, as well they might." At the end of the month we +find him in London, again indulging in a voyage in "the ship of fools," in +which Moore claims to have accompanied him; but at the same time +exhibiting remarkable shrewdness in reference to the affairs of his +household. In February, 1812, he again declares to Hodgson his resolve to +leave England for ever, and fix himself in "one of the fairest islands of +the East." On the 27th he made in the House of Lords his speech on a Bill +to introduce special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham. +This effort, on which he received many compliments, led among other +results to a friendly correspondence with Lord Holland. On April 21st of +the same year, he again addressed the House on behalf of Roman Catholic +Emancipation; and in June, 1813, in favour of Major Cartwright's petition. +On all these occasions, as afterwards on the continent, Byron espoused the +Liberal side of politics. But his role was that of Manlius or Caesar, and +he never fails to remind us that he himself was _for_ the people, not _of_ +them. His latter speeches, owing partly to his delivery, blamed as too +Asiatic, were less successful. To a reader the three seem much on the same +level. They are clever, but evidently set performances, and leave us no +ground to suppose that the poet's abandonment of a parliamentary career +was a serious loss to the nation. + +On the 29th of February the first and second cantos of _Childe Harold_ +appeared. An early copy was sent to Mrs. Leigh, with the inscription: "To +Augusta, my dearest sister and my best friend, who has ever loved me much +better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son and +most affectionate brother, B." The book ran through seven editions in four +weeks. The effect of the first edition of Burns, and the sale of Scott's +_Lays_, are the only parallels in modern poetic literature to this +success. All eyes were suddenly fastened on the author, who let his satire +sleep, and threw politics aside, to be the romancer of his day and for two +years the darling of society. Previous to the publition, Mr. Moore +confesses to have gratified his lordship with the expression of the fear +that _Childe Harold_ was too good for the age. Its success was due to the +reverse being the truth. It was just on the level of its age. Its flowing +verse, defaced by rhymical faults perceptible only to finer ears, its +prevailing sentiment, occasional boldness relieved by pleasing platitudes, +its half affected rakishness, here and there elevated by a rush as of +morning air, and its frequent richness--not yet, as afterwards, +splendour--of description, were all appreciated by the fashionable London +of the Regency; while the comparatively mild satire, not keen enough to +scarify, only gave a more piquant flavour to the whole. Byron's genius, +yet in the green leaf, was not too far above the clever masses of +pleasure-loving manhood by which it was surrounded. It was natural that +the address on the reopening of Drury Lane theatre should be written by +"the world's new joy"--the first great English poet-peer; as natural as +that in his only published satire of the period he should inveigh against +almost the only amusement in which he could not share. The address was +written at the request of Lord Holland, when of some hundred competitive +pieces none had been found exactly suitable--a circumstance which gave +rise to the famous parodies entitled _The Rejected Addresses_--and it was +thought that the ultimate choice would conciliate all rivalry. The care +which Byron bestowed on the correction of the first draft of this piece, +is characteristic of his habit of writing off his poems at a gush, and +afterwards carefully elaborating them. + +_The Waltz_ was published anonymously in April, 1813. It was followed in +May by the _Giaour_, the first of the flood of verse romances which, +during the three succeeding years, he poured forth with impetuous fluency, +and which were received with almost unrestrained applause. The plots and +sentiments and imagery are similar in them all. The Giaour steals the +mistress of Hassan, who revenges his honour by drowning her. The Giaour +escapes; returns, kills Hassan, and then goes to a monastery. In the +_Bride of Abydos_, published in the December of the same year, Giaffir +wants to marry his daughter Zuleika to Carasman Pasha. She runs off with +Selim, her reputed brother--in reality her cousin, and so at last her +legitimate lover. They are caught; he is slain in fight; she dies, to slow +music. In the _Corsair_, published January, 1814, Conrad, a pirate, +"linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes!" is beloved by Medora, who +on his predatory expeditions, sits waiting for him (like Hassan's and +Sisera's mother) in a tower. On one of these he attacks Seyd Pasha, and is +overborne by superior force; but Gulnare, a female slave of Seyd, kills +her master, and runs off with Conrad, who finds Medora dead and vanishes. +In _Lara_, the sequel to this--written in May and June, published in +August--a man of mystery appears in the Morea, with a page, Kaled. After +adventures worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe--from whose Schledoni the Giaour is +said to have been drawn--Lara falls in battle with his deadly foe, +Ezzelin, and turns out to be Conrad, while Kaled is of course Gulnare. The +_Hebrew Melodies_, written in December, 1814, are interesting, in +connexion with the author's early familiarity with the Old Testament, and +from the force and music that mark the best of them; but they can hardly +be considered an important contribution to the devotional verse of +England. The _Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_, composed after his +marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year. +The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it +from Menotti; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, +another sketch from the same protoplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, +is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save +her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. +_Parisina_, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than +the others of the period. The trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, +and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo's funeral dirge lingers in +our ears, along with the convent bells-- + + In the grey square turret swinging, + With a deep sound, to and fro, + Heavily to the heart they go. + +These romances belong to the same period of the author's poetic career as +the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_. They followed one another like +brilliant fireworks. They all exhibit a command of words, a sense of +melody, and a flow of rhythm and rhyme, which mastered Moore and even +Scott on their own ground. None of them are wanting in passages, as "He +who hath bent him o'er the dead," and the description of Alp leaning +against a column, which strike deeper than any verse of either of those +writers. But there is an air of melodrama in them all. Harmonious delights +of novel readers, they will not stand against the winnowing wind of +deliberate criticism. They harp on the same string, without the variations +of a Paganini. They are potentially endless reproductions of one phase of +an ill-regulated mind--the picture of the same quasi-melancholy vengeful +man, who knows no friend but a dog, and reads on the tombs of the great +only "the glory and the nothing of a name," the exile who cannot flee from +himself, "the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind," who has not loved +the world nor the world him,-- + + Whose heart was form'd for softness, warp'd by wrong, + Betray'd too early, and beguiled too long-- + +all this, _decies repetita_, grows into a weariness and vexation. Mr. +Carlyle harshly compares it to the screaming of a meat-jack. The reviewers +and the public of the time thought differently. Jeffrey, penitent for the +early _faux pas_ of his _Review_, as Byron remained penitent for his +answering assault, writes of _Lara_, "Passages of it may be put into +competition with anything that poetry has produced in point either of +pathos or energy." Moore--who afterwards wrote, not to Byron, that seven +devils had entered into _Manfred_--professes himself "enraptured with it." +Fourteen thousand copies of the _Corsair_ wore sold in a day. But hear the +author's own half-boast, half-apology: "_Lara_ I wrote while undressing +after coming home from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. +The _Bride_ was written in four, the _Corsair_ in ten days. This I take to +he a humiliating confession, as it proves my own want of judgment in +publishing, and the public's in reading, things which cannot have stamina +for permanence." + +The pecuniary profits accruing to Byron from his works began with _Lara_, +for which he received 700_l_. He had made over to Mr. Dallas, besides +other gifts to the same ungrateful recipient, the profits of _Harold_, +amounting to 600_l_, and of the _Corsair_, which brought 525_l_. The +proceeds of the _Giaour_ and the _Bride_ were also surrendered. + +During this period, 1813-1816, he had become familiar with all the phases +of London society, "tasted their pleasures," and, towards the close, "felt +their decay." His associates in those years were of two classes--men of +the world, and authors. Fêted and courted in all quarters, he patronized +the theatres, became in 1815 a member of the Drury Lane Committee, "liked +the dandies," including Beau Brummell, and was introduced to the Regent. +Their interview, in June 1812, in the course of which the latter paid +unrestrained compliments to _Harold_ and the poetry of Scott, is naively +referred to by Mr. Moore "as reflecting even still more honour on the +Sovereign himself than on the two poets." Byron, in a different spirit, +writes to Lord Holland: "I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's +decease, of warbling truth at Court, like Mr. Mallet of indifferent +memory. Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the +disgrace." We can hardly conceive the future author of the _Vision of +Judgment_ writing odes to dictation. He does not seem to have been much +fascinated with the first gentleman of Europe, whom at no distant date he +assailed in the terrible "Avatar," and left the laureateship to Mr. +Southey. + +Among leaders in art and letters he was brought into more or less intimate +contact with Sir Humphry Davy, the Edgeworths, Sir James Mackintosh, +Colman the dramatic author, the older Kean, Monk Lewis, Grattan, Curran, +and Madame de Staël. Of a meeting of the last two he remarks, "It was like +the confluence of the Rhone and the Sâone, and they were both so ugly that +I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland +could have taken up respectively such residences." + +About this time a communication from Mr Murray in reference to the meeting +with the Regent led to a letter from Sir Walter Scott to Lord Byron, the +beginning of a life-long friendship, and one of the most pleasing pages of +biography. These two great men were for a season perpetually pitted +against one another, as the foremost competitors for literary favour. When +_Rokeby_ came out, contemporaneously with the _Giaour_, the undergraduates +of Oxford and Cambridge ran races to catch the first copies, and laid bets +as to which of the rivals would win. During the anti-Byronic fever of +1840-1860 they were perpetually contrasted as the representatives of the +manly and the morbid schools. A later sentimentalism has affected to +despise the work of both. The fact therefore that from an early period the +men themselves knew each other as they were, is worth illustrating. + +Scott's letter, in which a generous recognition of the pleasure he had +derived from tho work of the English poet, was followed by a manly +remonstrance on the subject of the attack in the _Bards and Reviewers_, +drew from Byron in the following month (July 1812) an answer in the same +strain, descanting on the Prince's praises of the _Lay_ and _Marmion_, and +candidly apologizing for the "evil works of his nonage." "The satire," he +remarks, "was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent +on displaying my wrath and my wit; and now I am haunted by the ghosts of +my wholesale assertions." This, in turn, called forth another letter to +Byron eager for more of his verses, with a cordial invitation to +Abbotsford on the ground of Scotland's maternal claim on him, and asking +for information about Pegasus and Parnassus. After this the correspondence +continues with greater freedom, and the same display on either side of +mutual respect. When Scott says "the _Giaour_ is praised among our +mountains," and Byron returns "_Waverley_ is the best novel I have read," +there is no suspicion of flattery--it is the interchange of compliments +between men, + + Et cantare pares et respondere parati. + +They talk in just the same manner to third parties. "I gave over writing +romances," says the elder, in the spirit of a great-hearted gentleman," +because Byron beat me. He hits the mark, where I don't even pretend to +fledge my arrow. He has access to a stream of sentiment unknown to me." +The younger, on the other hand, deprecates the comparisons that were being +invidiously drawn between them. He presents his copy of the _Giaour_ to +Scott, with the phrase "To the monarch of Parnassus," and compares the +feeling of those who cavilled at his fame to that of the Athenians towards +Aristides. From those sentiments, he never swerves, recognizing to the +last the breadth of character of the most generous of his critics, and +referring to him, during his later years in Italy, as the Wizard and the +Ariosto of the North. A meeting was at length arranged between them. Scott +looked forward to it with anxious interest, humorously remarking that +Byron should say,-- + + Art thou the man whom men famed Grissell call? + +And he reply-- + + Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small? + +They met in London during the spring of 1815. The following sentences are +from Sir Walter's account of it:--"Report had prepared me to meet a man +of peculiar habits and quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were +likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably disappointed in +this respect. I found Lord Byron in the highest degree courteous, and even +kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, +and found a great deal to say to each other. Our sentiments agreed a good +deal, except upon the subjects of religion and politics, upon neither of +which I was inclined to believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed +opinions. On politics he used sometimes to express a high strain of what +is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the pleasure it +afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against +individuals in office was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At +heart, I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle. His reading did +not seem to me to have been very extensive. I remember repeating to him +the fine poem of Hardyknute, and some one asked me what I could possibly +have been telling Byron by which he was so much agitated. I saw him for +the last time in (September) 1815, after I returned from France; he dined +or lunched with me at Long's in Bond Street. I never saw him so full of +gaiety and good humour. The day of this interview was the most interesting +I ever spent. Several letters passed between us--one perhaps every half +year. Like the old heroes in Homer we exchanged gifts; I gave Byron a +beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had been the property of the +redoubted Elfi Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the _Iliad_, +for Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral vase of silver, +full of dead men's bones, found within the land walls of Athens. He was +often melancholy, almost gloomy. When I observed him in this humour I used +either to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some natural +and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when the shadows +almost always left his countenance, like the mist arising from a +landscape. I think I also remarked in his temper starts of suspicion, when +he seemed to pause and consider whether there had not been a secret and +perhaps offensive meaning in something that was said to him. In this case +I also judged it best to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself +clear, which it did in a minute or two. A downright steadiness of manner +was the way to his good opinion. Will Rose, looking by accident at his +feet, saw him scowling furiously; but on his showing no consciousness, his +lordship resumed his easy manner. What I liked about him, besides his +boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as well as of purse, and +his utter contempt of all the affectations of literature. He liked Moore +and me because, with all our other differences, we were both good-natured +fellows, not caring to maintain our dignity, enjoying the _mot-pour-rire_. +He wrote from impulse never from effort, and therefore I have always +reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and +of half a century before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but +none of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." + +Scott, like all hale men of sound sense, regretted the almost fatal +incontinence which, in the year of his greatest private troubles, led his +friend to make a parade of them before the public. He speaks more than +once of his unhappy tendency to exhibit himself as the dying gladiator, +and even compares him to his peacock, screeching before his window because +he chooses to bivouack apart from his mate; but he read a copy of the +Ravenna diary without altering his view that his lordship was his own +worst maligner. Scott, says Lockhart, considered Byron the only poet of +transcendent talents we had had since Dryden. There is preserved a curious +record of his meeting with a greater poet than Dryden, but one whose +greatness neither he nor Scott suspected. Mr. Crabb Robinson reports +Wordsworth to have said, in Charles Lamb's chambers, about the year 1808, +"These reviewers put me out of patience. Here is a young man who has +written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, +set upon him. The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has +begun. But these reviewers seem to think that nobody may write poetry +unless he lives in a garret." Years after, Lady Byron, on being told this, +exclaimed, "Ah, if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked +Wordsworth. He went one day to meet him at dinner, and I said, 'Well, how +did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell the truth,' +said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the +end, and that was _reverence_.'" Similarly, he began by being on good +terms with Southey, and after a meeting at Holland House, wrote +enthusiastically of his prepossessing appearance. + +Byron and the leaders of the so-called Lake School were, at starting, +common heirs of the revolutionary spirit; they were, either in their +social views or personal feelings, to a large extent influenced by the +most morbid, though in some respects the most magnetic, genius of modern +France, J.J. Rousseau; but their temperaments were in many respects +fundamentally diverse; and the pre-established discord between them ere +long began to make itself manifest in their following out widely divergent +paths. Wordsworth's return to nature had been preluded by Cowper; that of +Byron by Burns. The revival of the one ripened into a restoration of +simpler manners and old beliefs; the other was the spirit of the storm. +When they had both become recognized powers, neither appreciated the work +of the other. A few years after this date Byron wrote of Wordsworth, to a +common admirer of both: "I take leave to differ from you as freely as I +once agreed with you. His performances, since the _Lyrical Ballads_, are +miserably inadequate to the ability that lurks within him. There is, +undoubtedly, much natural talent spilt over the _Excursion_; but it is +rain upon rocks, where it stands and stagnates; or rain upon sand, where +it falls without fertilizing." This criticism with others in like strain, +was addressed to Mr. Leigh Hunt, to whom, in 1812, when enduring for +radicalism's sake a very comfortable incarceration, Byron had, in company +with Moore, paid a courteous visit. + +Of the correspondence of this period--flippant, trenchant, or +sparkling--few portions are more calculated to excite a smile than the +record of his frequent resolutions made, reasseverated, and broken, to +have done with literature; even going the length on some occasions of +threatening to suppress his works, and, if possible, recall the existing +copies. He affected being a man of the world unmercifully, and had a real +delight in clever companions who assumed the same rôle. Frequent allusion +is made to his intercourse with Erskine and Sheridan: the latter he is +never tired of praising, as "the author of the best modern comedy (_School +for Scandal_), the best farce (_The Critic_), and the best oration (the +famous Begum speech) ever heard in this country." They spent many an +evening together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who +tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable +state; and, on some one asking "Who is this?" stammering out +"Wilberforce." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with +the dramatist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork-screw +condition: and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr. C----, who "had no notion +of meeting with a bon-vivant in a scribbler," and summed the poet's eulogy +with the phrase, "he drinks like a man." Hunt, the tattler, who observed +his lordship's habits in Italy, with the microscope of malice ensconced +within the same walls, makes it a charge against his host that he would +not drink like a man. Once for all it may be noted, that although there +was no kind of excess in which Byron, whether from bravado or inclination, +failed occasionally to indulge, he was never for any stretch of time given +over, like Burns, to what is technically termed intemperance. His head +does not seem to have been strong, and under the influence of stimulants +he may have been led to talk a great deal of his dangerous nonsense. But +though he could not say, with Wordsworth, that only once, at Cambridge, +had his brain been "excited by the fumes of wine," his prevailing sins +were in other directions. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. + +"As for poets," says Scott, "I have seen all the best of my time and +country, and, though Burns had the most glorious eye imaginable, I never +thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, +except Byron. His countenance is a thing to dream of." Coleridge writes to +the same effect, in language even stronger. We have from all sides similar +testimony to the personal beauty which led the unhappiest of his devotees +to exclaim, "That pale face is my fate!" + +Southern critics, as Chasles, Castelar, even Mazzini, have dealt leniently +with the poet's relations to the other sex; and Elze extends to him in +this regard the same excessive stretch of charity. "Dear Childe Harold," +exclaims the German professor, "was positively besieged by women. They +have, in truth, no right to complain of him: from his childhood he had +seen them on their worst side." It is the casuistry of hero-worship to +deny that Byron was unjust to women, not merely in isolated instances, but +in his prevailing views of their character and claims. "I regard them," he +says, in a passage only distinguished from others by more extravagant +petulance, "as very pretty but inferior creatures, who are as little in +their place at our tables as they would be in our council chambers. The +whole of the present system with regard to the female sex is a remnant of +the barbarism of the chivalry of our forefathers. I look on them as +grown-up children; but, like a foolish mamma, I am constantly the slave of +one of them. The Turks shut up their women, and are much happier; give a +woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she will be content." + +In contrast with this, we have the moods in which he drew his pictures of +Angiolina, and Haidee, and Aurora Raby, and wrote the invocations to the +shade of Astarte, and his letters in prose and verse to Augusta; but the +above passage could never have been written by Chaucer, or Spenser, or +Shakespeare, or Shelley. The class whom he was reviling seemed, however, +during "the day of his destiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the +blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splendour of +his verse, the romance of his travels, his picturesque melancholy and +affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence +to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as +prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who +had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing +books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn their tales, +often to point their fables with. He was by the one set caressed and +spoilt, and "beguiled too long;" by the other, "betrayed too late." The +recent memoirs of Frances Ann Kemble present a curious record of the +process of passing from one extreme to the other. She dwells on the +fascination exerted over her mind by the first reading of his poetry, and +tells how she "fastened on the book with a grip like steel," and carried +it off and hid it under her pillow; how it affected her "like an evil +potion," and stirred her whole being with a tempest of excitement, till +finally she, with equal weakness, flung it aside, "resolved to read that +grand poetry no more, and broke through the thraldom of that powerful +spell." The confession brings before us a type of the transitions of the +century, on its way from the Byronic to the anti-Byronic fever, of which +later state Mrs. Norton and Miss Martineau are among the most pronounced +representatives. + +Byron's garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of +more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often +the same practical effect as reticence; for he talks so much at +large--every page of his Journal being, by his own admission, apt to +"confute and abjure its predecessor"--that we are often none the wiser. +Amid a mass of conjecture, it is manifest that during the years between +his return from Greece and final expatriation (1811-1816), including the +whole period of his social glory--though not yet of his solid fame--he was +lured into liaisons of all sorts and shades. Some, now acknowledged as +innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention +than in distorting truth. On others, as commonplaces of a temperament "all +meridian," it were waste of time to dwell. Byron rarely put aside a +pleasure in his path; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by +affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted. The verses to the memory +of a lost love veiled as "Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not, +as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere +grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the +poet's career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name +from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first +Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their +romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in +her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards +Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she +married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning +belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities. +Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said +she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the +introduction took place in March, 1812. After the meeting, she wrote in +her journal, "Mad--bad--and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable +Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed +by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her +company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband +laughed at the worship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and +adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited +her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. "Medora," on +the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that they were +affinities, and offered him her jewels. But after the first excitement, he +began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her +indifferent verses: "he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual +egotisms jarred." Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a +season to her father's house in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of +his glowing farewell letters. When she came back, matters were little +better. The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one +occasion penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on another +threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing +into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him. "The +'Agnus' is furious," he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of +the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked. "You +can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done +since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage.... The +business of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle +fair is writing letters literally threatening my life." With one member of +the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb's mother, and sister of Sir Ralph +Milbanke, he remained throughout on terms of pleasant intimacy. He +appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the +experience and tact of "the cleverest of women." But her well-meant advice +had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a +suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke. Byron first proposed to +this lady in 1813; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they +continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate +terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was +accepted. + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on + this subject Byron was always reticent. Mr. Minto, as we have seen, + associates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8.] + +After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin +by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew +statistics, but was "not for Conrad, no, no, no!" Lady Caroline lapsed +into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and +her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost +forgotten novel of _Glenarvon_, in which some of Byron's real features +were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions. Madame de +Staël was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice when +they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to have been less moved by it +than by most attacks. We must however, bear in mind his own admission in a +parallel case. "I say I am perfectly calm; I am, nevertheless, in a fury." +Over the sad vista of the remaining years of the unhappy lady's life we +need not linger. During a considerable part of it she appears hovering +about the thin line that separates some kinds of wit and passion from +madness; writing more novels, burning her hero's effigy and letters, and +then clamouring for a lock of his hair, or a sight of his portrait; +separated from, and again reconciled to, a husband to whose magnanimous +forbearance and compassion she bears testimony to the last, comparing +herself to Jane Shore; attempting Byronic verses, loudly denouncing and +yet never ceasing inwardly to idolize, the man whom she regarded as her +betrayer, perhaps only with justice in that he had unwittingly helped to +overthrow her mental balance. After eight years of this life, lit up here +and there by gleams of social brilliancy, we find her carriage, on the +12th of July, 1824, suddenly confronted by a funeral. On hearing that the +remains of Byron were being carried to the tomb, she shrieked, and +fainted. Her health finally sank, and her mind gave way under this shock; +but she lingered till January, 1828, when she died, after writing a calm +letter to her husband, and bequeathing the poet's miniature to her friend, +Lady Morgan. + +"I have paid some of my debts, and contracted others," Byron writes to +Moore, on September 15th, 1814; "but I have a few thousand pounds which I +can't spend after my heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the +south. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look +at the coast of Greece from Italy. All this however depends upon an event +which may or may not happen. Whether it will I shall probably know +tomorrow, and if it does I can't well go abroad at present." "A wife," he +had written, in the January of the same year, "would be my salvation;" but +a marriage entered upon in such a flippant frame of mind could, scarcely +have been other than disastrous. In the autumn of the year we are told +that a friend,[2] observing how cheerless was the state both of his mind +and prospects, advised him to marry, and after much discussion he +consented, naming to his correspondent Miss Milbanke. To this his adviser +objected, remarking that she had, at present, no fortune, and that his +embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one, etc. +Accordingly, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal to another +lady, which was done. A refusal arrived as they were one morning sitting +together. "'You see,' said Lord Byron, 'that after all Miss Milbanke is to +be the person,' and wrote on the moment. His friend, still remonstrating +against his choice, took up the letter; but, on reading it, observed, +'Well, really, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not +go.' 'Then it _shall_ go,' said Lord Byron, and, in so saying, sealed and +sent off this fiat of his fate." The incident seems cut from a French +novel; but so does the whole strange story--one apparently insoluble +enigma in an otherwise only too transparent life. On the arrival of the +lady's answer he was seated at dinner, when his gardener came in, and +presented him with his mother's wedding-ring, lost many years before, and +which had just been found, buried in the mould beneath her window. Almost +at the same moment the letter arrived; and Byron exclaimed, "If it +contains a consent (which it did), I will be married with this very ring." +He had the highest anticipations of his bride, appreciating her "talents, +and excellent qualities;" and saying, "she is so good a person that I wish +I was a better." About the same date he writes to various friends in the +good spirits raised by his enthusiastic reception from the Cambridge +undergraduates, when in the course of the same month he went to the Senate +House to give his vote for a Professor of Anatomy. + + [Footnote 2: Doubtless Moore himself, who tells the story.] + +The most constant and best of those friends was his sister, Augusta Leigh, +whom, from the death of Miss Chaworth to his own, Byron, in the highest +and purest sense of the word, loved more than any other human being. +Tolerant of errors, which she lamented, and violences in which she had no +share, she had a touch of their common family pride, most conspicuous in +an almost cat-like clinging to their ancestral home. Her early published +letters are full of regrets about the threatened sale of Newstead, on the +adjournment of which, when the first purchaser had to pay 25,000_l_. for +breaking his bargain, she rejoices, and over the consummation of which she +mourns, in the manner of Milton's Eve-- + + Must I then leave thee, Paradise? + +In all her references to the approaching marriage there are blended notes +of hope and fear. In thanking Hodgson for his kind congratulations, she +trusts it will secure her brother's happiness. Later she adds her +testimony to that of all outsiders at this time, as to the graces and +genuine worth of the object of his choice. After the usual preliminaries, +the ill-fated pair were united, at Seaham House, on the 2nd of January, +1815. Byron was married like one walking in his sleep. He trembled like a +leaf, made the wrong responses, and almost from the first seems to have +been conscious of his irrevocable mistake. + + I saw him stand + Before an altar with a gentle bride: + Her face was fair, but was not that which made + The starlight of his boyhood. He could see + Not that which was--but that which should have been-- + But the old mansion, the accustom'd hall. + And she who was his destiny came back, + And thrust herself between him and the light. + +Here we have faint visions of Miss Chaworth, mingling with later memories. +In handing the bride into the carriage he said, "Miss Milbanke, are you +ready?"--a mistake said to be of evil omen. Byron never really loved his +wife; and though he has been absurdly accused of marrying for revenge, we +must suspect that he married in part for a settlement. On the other hand, +it is not unfair to say that she was fascinated by a name, and inspired by +the philanthropic zeal of reforming a literary Corsair. Both were +disappointed. Miss Milbanke's fortune was mainly settled on herself; and +Byron, in spite of plentiful resolutions gave little sign of reformation. +For a considerable time their life, which, after the "treacle moon," as +the bridegroom called it, spent at Halnaby, near Darlington, was divided +between residence at Seaham and visits to London, seemed to move smoothly. +In a letter, evidently mis-dated the 15th December, Mrs. Leigh writes to +Hodgson: "I have every reason to think that my beloved B. is very happy +and comfortable. I hear constantly from him and _his rib_. It appears to +me that Lady B. sets about making him happy in the right way. I had many +fears. Thank God that they do not appear likely to be realized. In short, +there seems to me to be but one drawback to all our felicity, and that, +alas, is the disposal of dear Newstead. I never shall feel reconciled to +the loss of that sacred revered Abbey. The thought makes me more +melancholy than perhaps the loss of an inanimate object ought to do. Did +you ever hear that _landed property_, the GIFT OF THE CROWN, could not be +sold? Lady B. writes me word that she never saw her father and mother so +happy; that she believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea +herself to find fish for B.'s dinner, &c." Augusta Ada was born in London +on the 10th of December, 1815. During the next months a few cynical +mutterings are the only interruptions to an ominous silence; but these +could be easily explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's +affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last +half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. +Their expectations were raised by exaggerated reports of his having +married money; and by a curious pertinacity of pride he still declined, +even when he had to sell his books, to accept advances from his publisher. +In January the storm which had been secretly gathering suddenly broke. On +the 15th, i.e. five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home +with the infant to pay a visit, as had been agreed, to her own family at +Kirkby Mallory in Leicestershire. On the way she despatched to her husband +a tenderly playful letter, which has been often quoted. Shortly afterwards +he was informed--first by her father, and then by herself--that she did +not intend ever to return to him. The accounts of their last interview, as +in the whole evidence bearing on the affair, not only differ but flatly +contradict one another. On behalf of Lord Byron it is asserted, that his +wife, infuriated by his offering some innocent hospitality on occasion of +bad weather to a respectable actress, Mrs. Mardyn, who had called on him +about Drury Lane business, rushed into the room exclaiming, "I leave you +for ever"--and did so. According to another story, Lady Byron, finding him +with a friend, and observing him to be annoyed at her entrance, said, "Am +I in your way, Byron?" whereupon he answered, "Damnably." Mrs. Leigh, +Hodgson, Moore, and others, did everything that mutual friends could do to +bring about the reconciliation for which Byron himself professed to be +eager, but in vain; and in vain the effort was renewed in later years. The +wife was inveterately bent on a separation, of the causes of which the +husband alleged he was never informed, and with regard to which as long as +he lived she preserved a rigid silence. + +For some time after the event Byron spoke of his wife with at least +apparent generosity. Rightly or wrongly, he blamed her parents, and her +maid--Mrs. Clermont, the theme of his scathing but not always dignified +"Sketch;" but of herself he wrote (March 8, 1816), "I do not believe that +there ever was a brighter, and a kinder, or a more amiable or agreeable +being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make to +her, when with me." Elsewhere he adds, that he would willingly, if he had +the chance, "renew his marriage on a lease of twenty years." But as time +passed and his overtures were rejected, his patience gave way, and in some +of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's +letters at the time of the separation, especially those first published in +the _Academy_ of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and +confidential, often pathetic, asking her advice "in this critical moment," +and protesting that, "independent of malady, she does not think of the +past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of +injury." In her communications to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand--the +first of almost the same date, the second a few weeks later--she writes +with intense bitterness, stating that her action was due to offences which +she could only condone on the supposition of her husband's insanity, and +distinctly implying that she was in danger of her life. This supposition +having been by her medical advisers pronounced erroneous, she felt, in the +words only too pungently recalled in _Don Juan_, that her duty both to man +and God prescribed her course of action. Her playful letter on leaving she +seems to defend on the ground of the fear of personal violence. Till Lord +Byron's death the intimacy between his wife and sister remained unbroken; +through the latter he continued to send numerous messages to the former, +and to his child, who became a ward in Chancery; but at a later date it +began to cool. On the appearance of Lady Byron's letter, in answer to +Moore's first volume, Augusta speaks of it as "a despicable tirade," feels +"disgusted at such unfeeling conduct," and thinks "nothing can justify any +one in defaming the dead." Soon after 1830 they had an open rupture on a +matter of business, which was never really healed, though the then +Puritanic precisian sent a message of relenting to Mrs. Leigh on her +death-bed (1851). + +The charge or charges which, during her husband's life, Lady Byron from +magnanimity or other motive reserved, she is ascertained after his death +to have delivered with important modifications to various persons, with +little regard to their capacity for reading evidence or to their +discretion. On one occasion her choice of a confidante was singularly +unfortunate. "These," wrote Lord Byron in his youth, "these are the first +tidings that have ever sounded like fame in my ears--to be redde on the +banks of the Ohio." Strangely enough, it is from the country of +Washington, whom the poet was wont to reverence as the purest patriot of +the modern world, that in 1869 there emanated the hideous story which +scandalized both continents, and ultimately recoiled on the retailer of +the scandal. The grounds of the reckless charge have been weighed by those +who have wished it to prove false, and by those who have wished it to +prove true, and found wanting. The chaff has been beaten in every way and +on all sides, without yielding an ounce of grain; and it were ill-advised +to rake up the noxious dust that alone remains. From nothing left on +record by either of the two persons most intimately concerned can we +derive any reliable information. It is plain that Lady Byron was during +the later years of her life the victim of hallucinations, and that if +Byron knew the secret, which he denies, he did not choose to tell it, +putting off Captain Medwin and others with absurdities, as that "He did +not like to see women eat," or with commonplaces, as "The causes, my dear +sir, were too simple to be found out." + +Thomas Moore, who had the Memoirs[3] supposed to have thrown light on the +mystery, in the full knowledge of Dr. Lushington's judgment and all the +gossip of the day, professes to believe that "the causes of disunion did +not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and +writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible +with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping +generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with +intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most +reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is +reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my +lady;" and Madame De Staël, on reading the _Farewell_, that "She would +have been glad to have been in Lady Byron's place." But it may be doubted +if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were +even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a +pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to +make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in +corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man +whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch +under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker? Or how could her +conscious virtue tolerate the recurring irregularities which he was +accustomed, not only to permit himself, but to parade? The harassment of +his affairs stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to suspect him +to be mad. Some of her recently printed letters--as that to Lady Anne +Barnard, and the reports of later observers of her character--as William +Howitt, tend to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent +amiability, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility of the pair. It +must have been trying to a poet to be asked by his wife, impatient of his +late hours, when he was going to leave off writing verses; to be told he +had no real enthusiasm; or to have his desk broken open, and its +compromising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least +intended. The smouldering elements of discontent may have been fanned by +the gossip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled +into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others beyond the +circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless believed some story which, when +communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the +mere fact of her believing it made reconciliation impossible; and the +inveterate obstinacy which lurked beneath her gracious exterior, made her +cling through life to the substance--not always to the form, whatever that +may have been--of her first impressions. Her later letters to Mrs. Leigh, +as that called forth by Moore's _Life_, are certainly as open to the +charge of self-righteousness, as those of her husband's are to +self-disparagement. + + [Footnote 3: Captain Trelawney, however, doubts if he ever read them.] + +Byron himself somewhere says, "Strength of endurance is worth all the +talent in the world." "I love the virtues that I cannot share." His own +courage was all active; he had no power of sustained endurance. At a time +when his proper refuge was silence, and his prevailing sentiment--for he +admits he was somehow to blame--should have been remorse, he foolishly +vented his anger and his grief in verses, most of them either peevish or +vindictive, and some of which he certainly permitted to be published. "Woe +to him," exclaims Voltaire, "who says all he could on any subject!" Woe to +him, he might have added, who says anything at all on the subject of his +domestic troubles! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a +host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some +degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men of whose adulation he +was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macaulay has +expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed. +Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles, were let loose, and they +anticipated the _Saturday_ and the _Spectator_ of 1869, so that the latter +might well have exclaimed, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." Byron +was accused of every possible and impossible vice, he was compared to +Sardanapalus, Nero, Tiberius, the Duke of Orleans, Heliogabalus, and +Satan--all the most disreputable persons mentioned in sacred and profane +history; his benevolences were maligned, his most disinterested actions +perverted. Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, was on his account, on one occasion, +driven off the public stage. He was advised not to go to the theatres, +lest he should be hissed; nor to Parliament, lest he should be insulted. +On the very day of his departure a friend told him that he feared violence +from mobs assembling at the door of his carriage. "Upon what grounds," the +poet writes, in a trenchant survey of the circumstances, in August, 1819, +"the public formed their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and +it was decisive. Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had +written poetry, was a nobleman, bad married, became a father, and was +involved in differences with my wife and her relatives--no one knew why, +because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances. + +"The press was active and scurrilous;.. my name--which had been a +knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for +William the Norman--was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and +muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England +was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other +countries--in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue +depth of the lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I +crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, +and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who +betakes himself to the waters." + +On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr. +Rogers: "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. We shall not +meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final +meeting), and under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you +and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening." In all +this storm and stress, Byron's one refuge was in the affection which rises +like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life. + + In the desert a fountain is springing, + In the wild waste there still is a tree; + And a bird in the solitude singing, + That speaks to my spirit of thee. + +The fashionable world was tired of its spoilt child, and he of it. Hunted +out of the country, bankrupt in purse and heart, he left it, never to +return; but he left it to find fresh inspiration by the "rushing of the +arrowy Rhone," and under Italian skies to write the works which have +immortalized his name. + + + DESCENT OF LADY BYRON AND LADY C. LAMB + + +Earl Spencer. Sir Ralph Milbanke. Viscount Wentworth + | _________________|_______________ | + | | | | +Henrietta Elizabeth (Lady Melbourne) Sir Ralph + Judith Noel +Frances. | m. Viscount Melbourne. | + + | | +F. Ponsonby | Lord Byron + Anna Isabella. +(Earl of | | +Bessborough). | Augusta Ada. + | | + | | +Lady Caroline + William Lamb. + + + DESCENT OF ALLEGRA + + William Godwin. + Married 1st + Mary Woolstonecraft. 2nd Mrs. Clairmont. + | She had by previous | + | alliance | + | | Claire Claremont + Byron. +P. B. Shelley + Mary Godwin Fanny Imlay. | + Allegra. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +LIFE ABROAD--SWITZERLAND TO VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP.--CHILDE +HAROLD, III., IV.--MANFRED. + +On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron embarked for Ostend. From the "burning +marl" of the staring streets he planted his foot again on the dock with a +genuine exultation. + + Once more upon the waters, yet once more, + And the waves bound beneath me as a steed + That knows her rider. Welcome to the roar! + +But he brought with him a relic of English extravagance, sotting out on +his land travels in a huge coach, copied from that of Napoleon taken at +Genappe, and being accompanied by Fletcher, Rushton, Berger, a Swiss, and +Polidori, a physician of Italian descent, son of Alfieri's secretary, a +man of some talent but indiscreet. A question arises as to the source from +which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking +contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's +financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance, +nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the +Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the Court of Exchequer, and +that his appeal to the House of Lords was still unsettled in 1822. The +sale of Newstead to Colonel Wildman in 1818, for 90,000 _l_., went mostly +to pay off mortgages and debts. In April, 1819, Mrs. Leigh writes, after a +last sigh over this event:--"Sixty thousand pounds was secured by his +(Byron's) marriage settlement, the interest of which he receives for life, +and which ought to make him very comfortable." This is unfortunately +decisive of the fact that he did not in spirit adhere to the resolution +expressed to Moore never to touch a farthing of his wife's money, though +we may accept his statement to Medwin, that he twice repaid the dowry of +10,000 _l_. brought to him at the marriage, as in so far diminishing the +obligation. None of the capital of Lady Byron's family came under his +control till 1822, when, on the death of her mother, Lady Noel, Byron +arranged the appointment of referees, Sir Francis Burdett on his behalf, +Lord Dacre on his wife's. The result was an equal division of a property +worth about 7000 _l_ a year. While in Italy the poet received besides +about 10,000 _l_ for his writings--4000 _l_. being given for _Childe +Harold_ (iii., iv.), and _Manfred_. "Ne pas être dupe" was one of his +determinations, and, though he began by caring little for making money, he +was always fond of spending it. "I tell you it is too much," he said to +Murray, in returning a thousand guineas for the _Corinth_ and _Partsina_. +Hodgson, Moore, Bland, Thomas Ashe, the family of Lord Falkland, the +British Consul at Venice, and a host of others, were ready to testify to +his superb munificence. On the other hand, he would stint his pleasures, +or his benevolences, which were among them, for no one; and when he found +that to spend money he had to make it, he saw neither rhyme nor reason in +accepting less than his due. In 1817 he begins to dun Murray, declaring, +with a frankness in which we can find no fault, "You offer 1500 guineas +for the new canto (_C. H_., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for +it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper." During the +remaining years of his life he grew more and more exact, driving hard +bargains for his houses, horses, and boats, and fitting himself, had he +lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-liberated State, +from which he took a bond securing a fair interest for his loan. He made +out an account in _£. s. d_. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh +Hunt threatened to sponge upon him he got a harsh reception; but there is +nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by +the "good old gentlemanly vice" of which lie wrote. The Skimpoles and +Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre: it is +equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men +of business. + +We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the +Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During his +stay in the Belgian capital lie paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo, +wrote the famous stanzas beginning, "Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's +dust!" and in unpatriotic prose, recorded his impressions of a plain which +appeared to him to "want little but a better cause" to make it vie in +interest with those of Platea and Marathon. + +The rest of his journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne, +Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hôtel Secheron, +on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary +relationship of his life, for here he first came in contact with the +impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in +proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont +Alégre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati; +and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with some +interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives. +The place for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of +their Italian partnership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as +fellow-excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion departing from +its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with +Hobhouse, off Meillerie. "The boat," says Byron, "was nearly wrecked near +the very spot where St. Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. +It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I +ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party +wore wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim, +was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary +or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a +storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being +still persecuted. "I was in a wretched state of health and worse spirits +when I was in Geneva; but quiet and the lake--better physicians than +Polidori--soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my +residence in that country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary, +there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was +watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, +that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening +drives. I believe they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his +arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a +daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage +of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, which resulted in the birth of +a daughter, Allegra, at Great Marlow, in February, 1817. The noticeable +events of the following two months are a joint excursion to Chamouni, and +a visit in July to Madame de Staël at Coppet, in the course of which he +met Frederick Schlegel. During a wet week, when the families were reading +together some German ghost stories, an idea occurred of imitating them, +the main result of which was Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_. Byron +contributed to the scheme a fragment of _The Vampire_, afterwards +completed and published in the name of his patron by Polidori. The +eccentricities of this otherwise amiable physician now began to give +serious annoyance; his jealousy of Shelley grew to such a pitch that it +resulted in the doctor's giving a challenge to the poet, at which the +latter only laughed; but Byron, to stop further outbreaks of the kind, +remarked, "Recollect that, though Shelley has scruples about duelling, I +have none, and shall be at all times ready to take his place." Polidori +had ultimately to be dismissed, and, after some years of vicissitude, +committed suicide. + +The Shelleys left for England in September, and Byron made an excursion +with Hobhouse through the Bernese Oberland. They went by the Col de Jaman +and the Simmenthal to Thun; then up the valley to the Staubbach, which he +compares to the tail of the pale horse in the Apocalypse--not a very +happy, though a striking comparison. Thence they proceeded over the +Wengern to Grindelwald and the Rosenlau glacier; then back by Berne, +Friburg, and Yverdun to Diodati. The following passage in reference to +this tour may be selected as a specimen of his prose description, and of +the ideas of mountaineering before the days of the Alpine Club:-- + +"Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent again, the sun upon it +forming a rainbow of the lower part, of all colours but principally purple +and gold, the bow moving as you move. I never saw anything like this; it +is only in the sunshine.... Left the horses, took off my coat, and went to +the summit, 7000 English feet above the level of the sea, and 5000 feet +above the valley we left in the morning. On one side our view comprised +the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like +truth; then the Eighers and the Wetterhorn. Heard the avalanches falling +every five minutes. From where we stood on the Wengern Alp we had all +these in view on one side; on the other, the clouds rose up from the +opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the +ocean of hell during a spring tide; it was white and sulphury, and +immeasurably deep in appearance.... Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined; +mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier--like a frozen hurricane; +starlight beautiful, but a devil of a path. Passed whole woods of withered +pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done +by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family." + +Students of _Manfred_ will recognize whole sentences, only slightly +modified in its verse. Though Byron talks with contempt of authorship, +there is scarce a fine phrase in his letters or journal which is not +pressed into the author's service. He turns his deepest griefs to artistic +gain, and uses five or six times for literary purposes the expression +which seems to have dropped from him naturally about his household gods +being shivered on his hearth. His account of this excursion concludes with +a passage equally characteristic of his melancholy and incessant +self-consciousness:-- + +"In the weather for this tour, I have been very fortunate.... I was +disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, &c.... But in all this the +recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home +desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me +here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the +avalanche, the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the +cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled +me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the +glory around, above, and beneath me." + +Such egotism in an idle man would only provoke impatience; but Byron was, +during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained +by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the _Prisoner +of Chillon_, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in +some respects surpasses any of his early romances. The opening lines,-- + + Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls; + A thousand feet in depth below, + Its massy waters meet and flow,-- + +bring before us in a few words the conditions of a hopeless bondage. The +account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the +brothers; the first frenzy of the survivor, and the desolation which +succeeds it-- + + I only loved: I only drew + The accursed breath of dungeon dew,-- + +the bird's song breaking on the night of his solitude; his growing +enamoured of despair, and regaining his freedom with a sigh, are all +strokes from a master hand. From the same place, at the same date, he +announces to Murray the completion of the third canto of _Childe Harold_. +The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the +_Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, Churchill's Grave_, the _Sonnet to Lake +Leman, Could I remount the River of my Years_, part of _Manfred, +Prometheus_, the _Stanzas to Augusta_, beginning, + + My sister! My sweet sister! If a name + Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; + +and the terrible dream of _Darkness_, which at least in the ghastly power +of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar +fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's _Last +Man_[1]. At Lausanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gibbon, +broke a sprig from his acacia-tree, and carried off some rose leaves from +his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M.G. Lewis and +Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned "the locust swarm of English +tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes; as when he heard one +of them at Chamouni inquire, "Did you ever see anything more truly rural?" +Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese--one of whom is said +to have swooned as he entered the room--and early in October set out with +Hobhouse for Italy. They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago +Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse +beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its +cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted +with "a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia +and Cardinal Bembo." He secured a lock of the golden hair of the Pope's +daughter, and wished himself a cardinal. + + [Footnote 1: This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have + given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subject.] + +At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as surpassing anything he +had seen even in Greece, and on the faith of the people in the story of +Juliet, from whose reputed tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and +his nieces. In November we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle +of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances +which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his +letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of +his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, "the wife of a merchant of +Venice," for some time his landlord. With this woman, whom he describes as +an antelope with oriental eyes, wavy hair, voice like the cooing of a +dove, and the spirit of a Bacchante, he remained on terms of intimacy +for about eighteen months, during which their mutual devotion was only +disturbed by some outbursts of jealousy. In December the poet took lessons +in Armenian, glad to find in the study something craggy to break his mind +upon. Ho translated into that language a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to +the Corinthians. Notes on the carnival, praises of _Christabel_, +instructions about the printing of _Childe Harold_ (iii.), protests +against the publication under his name of some spurious "domestic poems," +and constant references, doubtfully domestic, to his Adriatic lady, fill +up the records of 1816. On February 15, 1817, he announces to Murray the +completion of the first sketch of _Manfred_, and alludes to it in a +bantering manner as "a kind of poem in dialogue, of a wild metaphysical +and inexplicable kind;" concluding, "I have at least rendered it _quite +impossible_ for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has +given me the greatest contempt." + +About this time Byron seems to have entertained the idea of returning to +England in the spring, i.e. after a year's absence. This design, however, +was soon set aside, partly in consequence of a slow malarian fever, by +which he was prostrated for several weeks. On his partial recovery, +attributed to his having had neither medicine nor doctor, and a +determination to live till he had "put one or two people out of the +world," he started on an expedition to Rome. + +His first stage was Arqua; then Ferrara, where he was inspired, by a sight +of the Italian poet's prison, with the _Lament of Tasso_; the next, +Florence, where he describes himself as drunk with the beauty of the +galleries. Among the pictures, he was most impressed with the mistresses +of Raphael and Titian, to whom, along with Giorgione, he is always +reverential; and he recognized in Santa Croce the Westminster Abbey of +Italy. Passing through Foligno, he reached his destination early in May, +and met his old friends, Lord Lansdowne and Hobhouse. The poet employed +his short time at Rome in visiting on horseback the most famous sites in +the city and neighbourhood--as the Alban Mount, Tivoli, Frascati, the +Falls of Terni, and the Clitumnus--re-casting the crude first draft of the +third act of _Manfred_, and sitting for his bust to Thorwaldsen. Of this +sitting the sculptor afterwards gave some account to his compatriot, Hans +Andersen: "Byron placed himself opposite to me, but at once began to put +on a quite different expression from that usual to him. 'Will you not sit +still?' said I. 'You need not assume that look.' 'That is my expression,' +said Byron. 'Indeed,' said I; and I then represented him as I wished. When +the bust was finished he said, 'It is not at all like me; my expression is +more unhappy.'" West, the American, who five years later painted his +lordship at Leghorn, substantiates the above half-satirical anecdote, by +the remark, "He was a bad sitter; he assumed a countenance that did not +belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for _Chlde +Harold_." Thorwaldsen's bust, the first cast of which was sent to +Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous +likenesses of her brother, was often repeated. Professor Brandes, of +Copenhagen, introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to +the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great +sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character +so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight +impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the +restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to +hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant +impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power +(Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833) +executed the marble statue, first intended for the Abbey, which is now to +be seen in the library of Trinity College, in evidence that Cambridge is +still proud of her most brilliant son. + +Towards the close of the month--after almost fainting at the execution by +guillotine of three bandits--he professes impatience to get back to +Mariana, and early in the next we find him established with her near +Venice, at the villa of La Mira, where for some time he continued to +reside. His letters of June refer to the sale of Newstead, the mistake of +Mrs. Leigh and others in attributing to him the _Tales of a Landlord_, the +appearance of _Lalla Rookh_, preparations for _Marino Faliero_, and the +progress of _Childe Harold_ iv. This poem, completed in September, and +published early in 1818 (with a dedication to Hobhouse, who had supplied +most of the illustrative notes), first made manifest the range of the +poet's power. Only another slope of ascent lay between him and the +pinnacle, over which shines the red star of _Cain_. Had Lord Byron's +public career closed when he left England, he would have been remembered +for a generation as the author of some musical minor verses, a clever +satire, a journal in verse exhibiting flashes of genius, and a series of +fascinating romances--also giving promise of higher power--which had +enjoyed a marvellous popularity. The third and fourth cantos of _Childe +Harold_ placed him on another platform, that of the _Dii Majores_ of +English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by +a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown +how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand, +and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the +mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and +the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering. +Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of +Byron's; and even in the later parts of the _Childe_ there are careless +lines, and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again," +looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher +note. No familiarity can distract from "Waterloo," which holds its own by +Barbour's "Bannockburn," and Scott's "Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to +the climax of the opening, and the pathetic lament of the closing lines, +generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour. +There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an +appreciation of its exuberance of fancy, and negligence of diction; and +then the masterly sketch of Napoleon, with the implied reference to the +writer at the end. + +The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric +to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself, +in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set +beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint +pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is in verse a +splendid microcosm of the favourites, if not the prevailing mood, of the +writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It +is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The +poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhaetian hill, his +Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and +his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forgot +himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps, +Lake Leman, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the +stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame, as well as a +Diorama of Scenery. It is no mere versified Guide, because every +resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with +illustrious memories. Coblontz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens +an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and +Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in +Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the +lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back +Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and +Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and-- + + The starry Galileo and his woes. + +Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome, +that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous. +Hawthorne, in his _Marble Fawn_, comes nearest to him; but Byron's +Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of +Marius," says Scott, "could not sound more deep and solemn among the ruins +of Carthage, than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and +fallen statues of her subduer." As the third canto has a fitting close +with the poet's pathetic remembrance of his daughter, so the fourth is +wound up with consummate art,--the memorable dirge on the Princess +Charlotte being followed by the address to the sea, which, enduring +unwrinkled through all its ebbs and flows, seems to mock at the mutability +of human life. + +_Manfred_, his witch drama, as the author called it, has had a special +attraction for inquisitive biographers, because it has been supposed in +some dark manner to reveal the secrets of his prison house. Its lines have +been tortured, like the witches of the seventeenth century, to extort from +them the meaning of the "all nameless hour," and every conceivable horror +has been alleged as its _motif_. On this subject Goethe writes with a +humorous simplicity: "This singularly intellectual poet has extracted from +my _Faust_ the strongest nourishment for his hypochondria; but he has made +use of the impelling principles for his own purposes.... When a bold and +enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her +husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was +the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one to whom any +suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, but these +spirits have haunted him all his life. This romantic incident explains +innumerable allusions," e.g.,-- + + I have shed + Blood, but not hers,--and yet her blood was shed. + +Were it not for the fact that the poet had never seen the city in question +when he wrote the poem, this explanation would be more plausible than most +others, for the allusions are all to some lady who has been done to death. +Galt asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallowed +necromancy--a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous attributed to +Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot, but he kept teasing his +questioners with mysterious hints, e.g. "It was the Staubbach and the +Jungfrau, and something else more than Faustus, which made me write +_Manfred_;" and of one of his critics he says to Murray, "It had a better +origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him." In any case +most methods of reading between its lines would, if similarly applied, +convict Sophocles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakespeare of murder, +Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goethe of compacts with +the devil. Byron was no dramatist, but he had wit enough to vary at least +the circumstances of his projected personality. The memories of both +Fausts--the Elizabethan and the German--mingle, in the pages of this +piece, with shadows of the author's life; but to these it never gives, nor +could be intended to give, any substantial form. + +_Manfred_ is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of +Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and +sensational narrative. Like _Harold_, and Scott's _Marmion_, it just +misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description, +the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to +pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral +tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are +seldom absolutely fresh: that beginning, + + The mind, which is immortal, makes itself + Requital for its good or evil thoughts, + Is its own origin of ill and end, + And its own place and time, + +is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in +transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the +invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by +lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well, +e.g.,-- + + Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains; + They crowned him long ago, + On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, + With a null of snow; + +but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the +ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally; turn +to the incantation in the _Deformed Transformed_: the first line and a +half are in tune,-- + + Beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy, + Who sleeps in the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy. + +Nor Sternhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the +next two-- + + From the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape, + As the Being who made him, whose actions I ape(!) + +Of his songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in +beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation +"Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is +pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy +to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but +their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world. + +The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira, +and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the +Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in +his way; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories, +none of which wore "too improbable for the craving appetites of their +slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr. +Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards +given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the +_Academy_ of October 9th, 1869. In this document he says, "It has been +intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of +Lady Byron have declared their lips to be sealed up on the cause of the +separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up they are +not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will +be to open them." He goes on to state, that he repents having consented to +the separation--will be glad to cancel the deed, or to go before any +tribunal, to discuss the matter in the most public manner; adding, that +Mr. Hobhouse (in whose presence he was writing) proposed, on his part, to +go into court, and ending with a renewed asseveration of his ignorance of +the allegations against him, and his inability to understand for what +purpose they had been kept back, "unless it was to sanction the most +infamous calumnies by silence." Hobhouse, and others, during the four +succeeding years, ineffectually endeavoured to persuade the poet to return +to England. Moore and others insist that Byron's heart was at home when +his presence was abroad, and that, with all her faults, he loved his +country still. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, asserts that he cared nothing +for England or its affairs. Like many men of genius, Byron was never +satisfied with what he had at the time. "Romae Tibur amem ventosus Tibure +Romam." At Seaham he is bored to death, and pants for the excitement of +the clubs; in London society he longs for a desert or island in the +Cyclades; after their separation, he begins to regret his wife; after his +exile, his country. "Where," he exclaimed to Hobhouse, "is real comfort to +be found out of England?" He frequently fell into the mood in which he +wrote the verse,-- + + Yet I was born where men are proud to be, + Not without cause: and should I leave behind + Th'immortal island of the sage and free, + And seek me out a home by a remoter sea? + +But the following, to Murray (June 7, 1819), is equally sincere. "Some of +the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments +of Bologna; for instance-- + + 'Martini Luigi + Implora pace.' + + 'Lucrezia Picini + Implora eterna quiete.'" + +Can anything be more full of pathos? These few words say all that can be +said or sought; the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, +and this they implore. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and +death-like prayer that can arise from the grave--'implora pace.' "I hope, +whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigner's +burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see +these two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of +pickling and bringing me home to Clod, or Blunderbuss Hall. I am sure my +bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of +that country." Hunt's view is, in this as in other subtle respects, nearer +the truth than Moore's; for with all Byron's insight into Italian vice, he +hated more the master vice of England--hypocrisy; and much of his +greatest, and in a sense latest, because unfinished work, is the severest, +as it might be the wholesomest, satire ever directed against a great +nation since the days of Juvenal and Tacitus. + +In September (1817) Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed, +for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr. +Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his +kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in +Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters, in the Spezieria, and +afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand +Canal. Between this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La +Mira, he divided his time for the next two years. During the earlier part +of his Venetian career he had continued to frequent the salon of the +Countess Albrizzi, where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and +standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into +absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the company informing the hostess, in +answer to some inquiry regarding Canova's busts, that Washington, the +American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, "What, in the name of +folly, are you thinking of?" said Byron, perceiving that the speaker was +confounding Washington with Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards +transferred himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoni, and gave +himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on +this portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as +despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybele as a Sea-Sodom--when +he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad contemplation. +I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own +solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In +any case, he forsook the "Dame," and, by what his biographer calls a +"descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the wayward +state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours +among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818, +1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati +fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the +jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large +mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the +wife of a baker who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the +linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Señor Castelar has +almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown +shoulders, and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face +like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno--tall and energetic as a +pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as +"Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance. +Unable to read or write she intercepted his lordship's letters to little +purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half +the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when +her violences roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or +witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the +Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own +account, is sufficiently graphic:--"In the autumn one day, going to the +Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the +gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling +sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a +tight struggle, I found her on the open stops of the Mocenigo Palace on +the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and +the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her +brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her +dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made +her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest +that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that +moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me, +as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della +Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and +solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the +'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with +ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs." + +Some months after she became ungovernable--threw plates about, and +snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in +public places. Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to +break glass, and threaten "knives, poison, fire;" and on his calling his +boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the +canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which +he saw her only twice, at the theatre. Her whole picture is more like that +of Théroigne de Méricourt than that of Raphael's Fornarina, whose name she +received. + +Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life--personal +encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible +episodes; their basis being, that Byron on one occasion thrashed, on +another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, +and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called "the English fish," +"water-spaniel," "sea-devil," &c. One of the boatmen is reported to have +said, "He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord;" and in +answer to a traveller's inquiry, "Where does he get his poetry?" "He dives +for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally +abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, +and then took claret and soda in the morning. + +Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not +seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse +surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off _Beppo_, _Mazeppa_, and +the early books of _Don Juan_. The first canto of the last was written in +November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards +the close of the same year. _Beppo_, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like +a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the +author broke ground on his true satiric field--the satire of social +life--and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by _Whistlecraft_ +(Frere), was drafted in October, 1817, and appeared in May, 1818. It aims +at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and +unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease +of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In _Mazeppa_ the poet +reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the +headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it +a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling +of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as +anything in Burns-- + + The skies spun like a mighty wheel, + I saw the trees like drunkards reel. + +In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent +from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her +management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety +he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the +next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which +records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate +solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr. +Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in +that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing +like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference. +"Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous +as a vulture; health good, to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable, +but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do +as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her +mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of +the Shelleys then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of +Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had +thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care, +kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say +what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this +instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a _country_ town, in a +good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always +appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does _not_ proceed from a +_conventual_ education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of +their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state +of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is +like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the +sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he +says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education, +because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would +be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion +of 5000_l_. or 6000_l_. (his will leaving her 5000_l_., on condition that +she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she +might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a +pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that +she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as +it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It +only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of +fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the +news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly +prostrated. Next day he said, "Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than +we. It is God's will, let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath +the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the +date of birth and death, and the scripture-- + + I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me. + +The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his +life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at +Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the +midst of a thunderstorm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode +together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other +is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the +idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage +and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never +paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the +other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron +in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. + +The introduction to _Julian and Maddalo_, directly suggested by this +visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of +the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is +a person of the most consummate genius, and capable if he would direct his +energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. +But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his +own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an +intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and +his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead +of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have +mutually lent each other strength;" but "in social life no human being can +be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. +His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by +it as by a spell." + +Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este to his friend, and +during the autumn weeks of their residence there were written the lines +among the Euganean hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley +refers to the "tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the "music flung o'er +a mighty thunder-fit," and to the sunlike soul destined to immortalize his +ocean refuge,-- + + As the ghost of Homer clings + Round Seamander's wasting springs, + As divinest Shakespeare's might + Fills Avon and the world with light. + +"The sun," he says, at a later date, "has extinguished the glowworm;" and +again, "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no +other with whom it is worth contending." + +Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic; +and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade +of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be +lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of +the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a +greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest +characters in the history of our literature. There is at least no +difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed +by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense--easy to an +impassioned devotee--of inferiority. Similarly, most of the estimates-- +many already reversed, others reversible--by the men of that age, of each +other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated +both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats, +and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet +the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criticism is the respect +that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical +Tom Moore. + +This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short +tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble +friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing +expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this +visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's +personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his +life. Byron "had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had +suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the +features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other +times distinguished it, but although less romantic he appeared more +humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in +London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a +manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical +associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted +dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; +and when his companion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian +sunsets, he interrupted him with, "Come, d--n it, Tom, _don't_ be +poetical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would +be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace; +and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, +cried out, "Keep clear of the dog!" and a few paces farther, "Take care, +or the monkey will fly at you!" an incident recalling the old vagaries of +the menagerie at Newstead. The biographer's reminiscences mainly dwell on +his lordship's changing moods and tempers and gymnastic exercises, his +terror of interviewing strangers, his imperfect appreciation of art, his +preference of fish to flesh, his almost parsimonious economy in small +matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent +expressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the +city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mira, had a glimpse of +Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious +Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned +carrying in his hand a white leather bag. 'Look here,' he said, holding it +up; 'this would be worth something to Murray, though _you_, I dare say, +would not give sixpence for it.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'My life and +adventures,' he answered. 'It is not a thing,' he answered, 'that can be +published during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like. There, do +whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag, and thanking him most +warmly, I added, 'This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, who +shall astonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it.'"[2] +Shortly after, Moore for the last time bade his friend farewell, taking +with him from Madame Guiccioli, who did the honours of the house, an +introduction to her brother, Count Gamba, at Rome. "Theresa Guiccioli," +says Castelar, "appears like a star on the stormy horizon of the poet's +life." A young Romagnese, the daughter of a nobleman of Ravenna, of good +descent but limited means, she had been educated in a convent, and married +in her nineteenth year to a rich widower of sixty, in early life a friend +of Alfieri, and noted as the patron of the National Theatre. This +beautiful blonde, of pleasing manners, graceful presence, and a strong +vein of sentiment, fostered by the reading of Chateaubriand, met Byron for +the first time casually when she came in her bridal dress to one of the +Albrizzi reunions; but she was only introduced to him early in the April +of the following year, at the house of the Countess Benzoni. "Suddenly the +young Italian found herself inspired with a passion of which till that +moment her mind could not have formed the least idea; she had thought of +love but as an amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other +hand, gave what remained of a heart, never alienated from her by any other +mistress. Till the middle of the month they met every day; and when the +husband took her back to Ravenna she despatched to her idol a series of +impassioned letters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in +accordance with his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her +relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to the +summons, writing on his way the beautiful stanzas to the Po, beginning-- + + River that rollest by the ancient walls + Where dwells the lady of my love. + + [Footnote 2: In December, 1820, Byron sent several more sheets of + memoranda from Ravenna, and in the following year suggested an + arrangement by which Murray paid over to Moore, who was then in + difficulties, 2000_l_. for the right of publishing the whole, under + the condition, among others, that Lady Byron should see them, and have + the right of reply to anything that might seem to her objectionable. + She on her part declined to have anything to do with them. When the + Memoirs were destroyed, Moore paid back the 2000_l_., but obtained + four thousand guineas for editing the _Life and Correspondence_.] + +Again passing through Ferrara, and visiting Bologna, he left the latter on +the 8th, and on his arrival at his destination found the Countess +dangerously ill; but his presence, and the attentions of the famous +Venetian doctor, Aglietti, who was sent for by his advice, restored her. +The Count seems to have been proud of his guest. "I can't make him out at +all," Byron writes; "he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like +Whittington the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to +be, that he is completely governed by her--and, for that matter, so am I." +Later he speaks of having got his horses from Venice, and riding or +driving daily in the scenery reproduced in the third canto of _Don +Juan_:-- + + Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude + Of the pine forest, and the silent shore + Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. + +On Theresa's recovery, in dread of a possible separation he proposed to +fly with her to America, to the Alps, to "some unsuspected isle in the far +seas;" and she suggested the idea of feigning death, like Juliet, and +rising from the tomb. Neither expedient was called for. When the Count +went to Bologna, in August, with his wife, Lord Byron was allowed to +follow; and--after consoling himself during an excursion which the married +pair made to their estate, by hovering about her empty rooms and writing +in her books--he established himself, on the Count's return to his +headquarters, with her and Allegra at Bologna. Meanwhile, Byron had +written _The Prophecy of Dante_, and in August the prose letter, _To the +Editor of the British Review_, on the charge of bribery in _Don Juan_. +Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling composition +exists. About the same time, we hear of his leaving the theatre in a +convulsion of tears, occasioned by the representation of Alfieri's +_Mirra_. + +He left Bologna with the Countess on the 15th of September, when they +visited the Euganean hills and Arqua, and wrote their names together in +the Pilgrim's Book. On arriving at Venice, the physicians recommending +Madame Guiccioli to country air, they settled, still by her husband's +consent, for the autumn at La Mira, where Moore and others found them +domesticated. At the beginning of November the poet was prostrated by an +attack of tertian fever. In some of his hours of delirium he dictated to +his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Countess, a number of verses, which +she assures us were correct and sensible. He attributes his restoration to +cold water and the absence of doctors; but, ere his complete recovery, +Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his +own wife. The lovers had for a time not only to acquiesce in the +separation, but to agree to cease their correspondence. In December, Byron +in a fit of spleen had packed up his belongings, with a view to return to +England. "He was," we are told, "ready dressed for the journey, his boxes +on board the gondola, his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in +his hand, when my lord declares that if it should strike one--which it +did--before everything was in order, he would not go that day. It is +evident he had not the heart to go." Next day he heard that Madame +Guiccioli was again seriously ill, received and accepted the renewed +invitation which bound him to her and to the south. He left Venice for the +last time almost by stealth, rushed along the familiar roads, and was +welcomed at Ravenna. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +1820-1821. + +RAVENNA--DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. + +Byrons's life at Ravenna was during the first months comparatively calm; +nevertheless, he mingled in society, took part in the Carnival, and was +received at the parties of the Legate. "I may stay," he writes in January, +1820, "a day--a week--a year--all my life." Meanwhile, he imported his +movables from Venice, hired a suite of rooms in the Guiccioli palace, +executed his marvellously close translation of Pulci's _Morgante +Maggiore_, wrote his version of the story of _Francesca of Rimini_, and +received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Humphrey Davy. At +this time he was accustomed to ride about armed to the teeth, apprehending +a possible attack from assassins on the part of Count Guiccioli. In April +his letters refer to the insurrectionary movements then beginning against +the Holy Alliance. "We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they +have over-written all the city walls with 'Up with the Republic!' and +'Death to the Pope!' The police have been searching for the subscribers, +but have caught none as yet. The other day they confiscated the whole +translation of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, and have prosecuted +the translator." In July a Papal decree of separation between the Countess +and her husband was obtained, on condition of the latter paying from his +large income a pittance to the lady of 200 _l_. a year, and her +undertaking to live in her father's house--an engagement which was, first +in the spirit, and subsequently in the letter, violated. For a time, +however, she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where +she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of +July he had finished _Marino Faliero_, and ere the close of the year the +fifth canto of _Don Juan_. in September he says to Murray, "I am in a +fierce humour, at not having Scott's _Monastery_. No more Keats,[1] I +entreat. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. I +don't feel inclined to care further about _Don Juan_. What do you think a +very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that +'it would live longer than _Childe Harold_'? 'Ah! but I would rather have +the fame of _Childe Harold_ for three years than an immortality of _D. +J._'" This is to-day the common female judgment; it is known to have been +La Guiccioli's, as well as Mrs. Leigh's, and by their joint persuasion +Byron was for a season induced to lay aside "that horrid, wearisome Don." +About this time he wrote the memorable reply to the remarks on that poem +in _Blackwood's Magazine_', where he enters on a defence of his life, +attacks the Lakers, and champions Pope against the new school of poetry, +lamenting that his own practice did not square with his precept; and +adding, "We are all wrong, except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." + + [Footnote 1: In a note on a similar passage, bearing the date November + 12, 1821, he, however, confesses:--"My indignation at Mr. Keats' + depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own + genius, which malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style was + undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually + inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss + to our literature."] + +In November he refers to reports of his letters being opened by the +Austrian officials, and the unpleasant things the Huns, as he calls them, +are likely to find therein. Early in the next month he tells Moore that +the commandant of their troops, a brave officer, but obnoxious to the +people, had been found lying at his door, with five slugs in him, and, +bleeding inwardly, had died in the palace, where he had been brought to be +nursed. + +This incident is versified in _Don Juan_, v. 33-39, with anatomical +minuteness of detail. After trying in vain to wrench an answer out of +death, the poet ends in his accustomed strain-- + + But it was all a mystery. Here we are, + And there we go:--but _where_? Five bits of lead-- + Or three, or two, or one--send very far! + +Assassination has sometimes been the prelude to revolution, but it may be +questioned if it has over promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently +it has served as a pretext for reaction, or a red signal. In this +instance--as afterwards in 1848--overt acts of violence made the powers of +despotism more alert, and conduced with the half-hearted action of their +adversaries to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy +with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new associations. +Theresa's brother, Count Pietro, an enthusiastic young soldier, having +returned from Rome and Naples, surmounting a prejudice not wholly +unnatural, became attached to him, and they entered into a partnership in +behalf of what--adopting a phrase often flaunted in opposite camps--they +called constitutional principles. Finally the poet so committed himself to +the party of insurrection that, though his nationality secured him from +direct attack, his movements were necessarily affected by the fiasco. In +July the Gambas were banished from the Romagna, Pietro being actually +carried by force over the frontier; and, according to the articles of her +separation, the Countess had to follow them to Florence. Byron lingered +for some mouths, partly from a spirit of defiance, and partly from his +affection towards a place where he had enlisted the regards of numerous +beneficiaries. The Gambas were for some time bent on migrating to +Switzerland; but the poet, after first acquiescing, subsequently conceived +a violent repugnance to the idea, and early in August wrote to Shelley, +earnestly requesting his presence, aid, and counsel. Shelley at once +complied, and, entering into a correspondence with Madame Guiccioli, +succeeded in inducing her relatives to abandon their transmontane plans, +and agree to take up their headquarters at Pisa. This incident gave rise +to a series of interesting letters, in which the younger poet gives a +vivid and generous account of the surroundings and condition of his +friend. On the 2nd of August he writes from Ravenna:--"I arrived last +night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord B. till five this +morning. He was delighted to see me. He has, in fact, completely recovered +his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at +Venice.... Poor fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and +literature. We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night, +and, as usual, differed, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronize +a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, +although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance +of this system, yet I recognize the pernicious effects of it in the _Doge +of Venice_." Again, on the 15th: "Lord B. is greatly improved in every +respect--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, and happiness. +His connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He +lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about +4000_l_. a year, 1000_l_. of which he devotes to purposes of charity. +Switzerland is little fitted for him; the gossip and the cabals of those +Anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before. Ravenna is a +miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. He +has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of _Don Juan_. It sets him +not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day. Every word has +the stamp of immortality.... I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a +direct view of demanding a contribution. I am sure, if I asked, it would +not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. +Lord B. and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or +were I a writer who had no claim to a higher position than I possess, I +would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case." Later, after +stating that Byron had decided upon Tuscany, he says, in reference to La +Guiccioli, "At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she +says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, +la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accordarete +voi? _Non partite da Ravenna senza milord_.' Of course, being now by all +the laws of knighthood captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at +liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa." + +Shelley took his leave, after a visit of ten days' duration, about the +17th or 18th of April. In a letter, dated August 26, he mentions having +secured for his lordship the Palazzo Lanfranchi, an old spacious building +on the Lung' Arno, once the family residence of the destroyers of Ugolino, +and still said to be haunted by their ghosts. Towards the close of +October, he says they have been expecting him any day those six weeks. +Byron, however, did not leave till the morning of the 29th. On his road, +there occurred at Imola the accidental meeting with Lord Clare. Clare--who +on this occasion merely crossed his friend's path on his way to Rome--at a +later date came on purpose from Geneva before returning to England to +visit the poet, who, then at Leghorn, recorded in a letter to Moore his +sense of this proof of old affection undecayed. At Bologna--his next +stage--he met Rogers by appointment, and the latter has preserved his +memory of the event in well-known lines. Together they revisited Florence +and its galleries, where they were distracted by the crowds of +sight-seeing visitors. Byron must have reached Pisa not later than the 2nd +of November (1821), for his first letter from there bears the date of the +3rd. + +The later months of the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense +literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the +controversy with Bowles about Pope, i.e. between the extremes of Art +against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most +part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine expression +of a reaction against a reaction. To this year belong the greater number +of the poet's Historical Dramas. What was said of these, at the time by +Jeffrey, Heber, and others, was said with justice; it is seldom that the +criticism of our day finds so little to reverse in that of sixty years +ago. + +The author, having shown himself capable of being pathetic, sarcastic, +sentimental, comical, and sublime, we would be tempted to think that he +had written these plays to show, what no one before suspected, that he +could also be dull, were it not for his own exorbitant estimation of them. +Lord Byron had few of the powers of a great dramatist; he had little +architectural imagination, or capacity to conceive and build up a whole. +His works are mainly masses of fine, splendid, or humorous writing, heaped +together; the parts are seldom forged into one, or connected by any +indissoluble link. His so-called Dramas are only poems divided into +chapters. Further, he had little of what Mr. Ruskin calls penetrative +imagination. So it has been plausibly said that he made his men after his +own image, his women after his own heart. The former are, indeed, rather +types of what he wished to be than what he was. They are better, and +worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but +less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he +tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result +is either unreal or uninteresting. _Marino Faliero_, begun April, finished +July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe--which was, +however, suppressed--was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early +in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted--and damned. + +Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his +plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of +self-deception when he asserts that he did not mean them to be popular; +but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. _Marino Faliero_, in +particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins--old Grobius himself--"to +be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet +had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it +is none the less unnatural. The characters are comparatively commonplace, +the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the +inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of +Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative. The speeches of the Doge are +solemn, but prolix, if not ostentatious, and--perhaps the vital +defect--his cause fails to enlist our sympathies. Artistically, this play +was Byron's most elaborate attempt to revive the unities and other +restrictions of the severe style, which, when he wrote, had been +"vanquished in literature." "I am persuaded," he writes in the preface, +"that a great tragedy is not to be produced by following the old +dramatists, who are full of faults, but by producing regular dramas like +the Greeks." He forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek +dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a +confession of failure; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity +could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are, +first, the cry for vengeance--the feeling of affronted or unsatiated +pride,--that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the +enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The +following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit +of protest against the more selfish "greasy domesticity" of the Georgian +era:-- + + I. BER. Such ties are not + For those who are called to the high destinies + Which purify corrupted commonwealths: + We must forget all feelings save the one, + We must resign all passions save our purpose, + We must behold no object save our country, + And only look on death as beautiful + So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven, + And draw down freedom on her evermore. + + CAL. But if we fail--? + + I. BER. They never fail who die + In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; + Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs + Be strung to city gates and castle walls, + But still their spirit walks abroad. + +--a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the +precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty. + +Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna, +between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the +following December, is another record of the same failure and the same +mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points +out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect. +The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently +adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, +he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the +tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina +produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano, +though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not +rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace +of Iago's subtle genius. + +In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May, +and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last +reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme-- + + Thirteen hundred years + Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale, + +by the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the development of the +chief character, made more vivid by its being distinctly autobiographical. +Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing +himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been +often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen +Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife; but in his portrait of +the former the author's defective capacity to represent national character +is manifest: Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zuleika. In the +domestic play of _Werner_--completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and +published in November, there is no merit either of plan or execution; for +the plot is taken, with little change, from "The German's Tale," written +by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout prosaic. Byron was never a +master of blank verse; but _Werner_, his solo success on the modern +British stage, is written in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he +cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good +as any in the play. + +The _Deformed Transformed_, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten +novel called _The Three Brothers_, with reminiscences of _Faust_, and +possibly of Scott's _Black Dwarf_, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not +published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the +bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional +charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the +Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed +by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The +_Deformed Transformed_ bears somewhat the same relation to _Manfred as +Heaven and Earth_--an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the +Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's +_Loves of the Angels_, on a similar theme--does to _Cain_. The last named, +begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author's +highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century. In _Cain_ +Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either +accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death, +of good and ill. In dealing with these his position is not that of one +justifying the ways of God to man--though he somewhat disingenuously +appeals to Milton in his defence--nor that of the definite antagonism of +_Queen Mab_. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley +cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that +commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the +word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he +never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a +fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of _Cain_ is almost +wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a +dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside +with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted +tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.-- + + CAIN. Then my father's God did well + When he prohibited the fatal tree. + + LUCIFER. But had done better in not planting it. + +Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is +restored by antidotes-- + + Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil + Springs good! + + LUCIFER. What didst thou answer? + + CAIN. Nothing; for + He is my father; but I thought, that 'twere + A better portion for the animal + Never to have been stung at all. + +This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a +spirit in which much of the grandeur of Milton's Satan is added to the +subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced, +rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he +was born,--"I sought not to be born"--the answer, that toil is a good, +being precluded by its authoritative representation as a punishment; in +which mood he is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter, +who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful +visitation of the yet untasted death; when Adah, entering, takes him at +first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to +Eve, and comparison of the "heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss" in +Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose +fascination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as +is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female +character, to show that God cannot be alone,-- + + What else can joy be, but diffusing joy? + +Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other angels is more after the +style of Shelley than anything else in Byron-- + + As the silent sunny moon, + All light, they look upon us. But thou seemst + Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds + Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars + Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault + With things that look as if they would be suns-- + So beautiful, unnumber'd and endearing; + Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them, + They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou. + +The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and +through the Hades of "uncreated night," with the vision of long-wrecked +worlds, and the interminable gloomy realms + + Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes, + +--suggested, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier--leaves us +with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of +English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more +versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he +so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair +speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank, +like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is +summed in the lines on the fatal tree,-- + + It was a lying tree--for we _know_ nothing; + At least, it _promised knowledge_ at the price + Of death--but _knowledge_ still; but, what _knows_ man? + +A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, "Behold, +we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's +reply to the question--what is more beautiful to him than all that he has +seen in the "unimaginable ether"?-- + + My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven, + The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb + Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world-- + The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming-- + His setting indescribable, which fills + My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold + Him sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him + Along that western paradise of clouds + The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice-- + The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love, + And mingles with the song of cherubim, + As the day closes over Eden's walls:-- + All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, + Like Adah's face. + +Lucifer's speech, at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be +absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir +Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say +what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah, +especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the +'wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare, ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems +to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a +touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who +is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres +"singing in thunder round" him--the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek +of Zillah-- + + Father! Eve! + Adah! Come hither! Death is in the world; + +Cain's rallying from stupor-- + + I am awake at last--a dreary dream + Had madden'd me,--but he shall never wake: + +the curse of Eve; and the close--[Greek: meizon ae kata dakrua] + + CAIN. Leave me. + + ADAH. Why all have left thee. + + CAIN. And wherefore lingerest thou? Dost thou not fear? + + ADAH. I fear + Nothing, except to leave thee. + + * * * * * + + CAIN. Eastward from Eden will we take our way. + + ADAH. Leave! thou shalt be my guide; and may our God + Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children. + + CAIN. And _he_ who lieth there was childless. I + Have dried the fountain of a gentle race. + O Abel! + + ADAH. Peace be with him. + + CAIN. But with _me_! + +_Cain_, between which and the _Cenci_ lies the award of the greatest +single performance in dramatic shape of our century, raised a storm. It +was published, with _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two Foscari_ in December, +1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elze's remark-- +"In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of +thought. The converse is the case with us Germans; freedom of thought is +restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism +presents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it appeared as if a +literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the +cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage of insular +orthodoxy was in proportion to its impotence. Every scribbler with a +cassock denounced the book and its author, though few attempted to answer +him. The hubbub was such that Byron wrote to Murray, authorizing him to +disclaim all responsibility, and offering to refund the payment he had +received. "Say that both you and Mr. Gilford remonstrated. I will come to +England to stand trial. 'Me, me, adsum qui feci,'"--and much to the same +effect. The book was pirated; and on the publisher's application to have +an injunction, Lord Eldon refused to grant it. The majority of the minor +reviewers became hysterical, and Dr. Watkins, amid much almost +inarticulate raving, said that Sir Walter Scott, who had gratefully +accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of +_Cain_ upon his brow. Several even of the higher critics took fright. +Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the +work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its +"frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its +spirit was more dangerous than that of _Paradise Lost_--and succeeded. The +_Quarterly_ began to cool towards the author. Moore wrote to him, that +Cain was "wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but "dreaded and +deprecated" the influence of Shelley. Byron showed the letter to Shelley, +who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the +smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only +wished he had, as he would "employ it to eradicate from his great mind the +delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in +ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes: +"What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer +poetry than has appeared in England since _Paradise Lost_. Cain is +apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the +same strain, Scott says of the author of the "grand and tremendous drama:" +"He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The worst effect of +those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain +himself,--to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering +habit of mind. Great writers in our country have frequently stirred +difficult questions in religion and life, and then seemed to be half +scared, like Rouget de Lisle, by the reverberation of their own voices. +Shelley almost alone was always ready to declare, "I meant what I said, +and stand to it." + +Byron having, with or without design, arraigned some of the Thirty-Nine +Articles of his countrymen, proceeded in the following month (October +1821) to commit an outrage, yet more keenly resented, on the memory of +their sainted king, the pattern of private virtue and public vice, George +III. The perpetration of this occurred in the course of the last of his +numerous literary duels, of which it was the close. That Mr. Southey was a +well-meaning and independent man of letters, there can be no doubt. It +does not require the conclusive testimony of the esteem of Savage Landor +to compel our respect for the author of the _Life of Nelson_, and the +open-handed friend of Coleridge; nor is it any disparagement that, with +the last-named and with Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his +political and other opinions. But in his dealings with Lord Byron, Southey +had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior +powers, for whom his utter want of humour--save in its comparatively +childish forms--made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty +in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The +strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its +height when his lordship, in the humorous observations and serious defence +of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August), +accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander. + +In 1821, when the latter published his _Vision of Judgment_--the most +quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned--he prefixed to it a long +explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes _Don Juan_ as a +"monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," +regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes +the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of +Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his +death-bed. To which Byron, _inter alia_: "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly +ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance of the objects +of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,' +in prose, as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's +sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of +existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, +with most men of any reflection, _I_ have not waited for a death-bed to +repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which +this pitiful renegade in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him." +This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable; +but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To +this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive +denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding +iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public +panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old. + +In February Byron, having seen this assault in the _Courier_, writes off +in needless heat, "I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to +be done is to call him out,"--and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance. +Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judiciously suppressed +it, and the author's thirst for literary blood was destined to remain +unquenched. Meanwhile he had written his own _Vision of Judgment_. This +extraordinary work, having been refused by both Murray and Longman, +appeared in 1822 in the pages of the _Liberal_. It passed the bounds of +British endurance; and the publisher, Mr. John Hunt, was prosecuted and +fined for the publication. + +Readers of our day will generally admit that the "gouty hexameters" of the +original poem, which celebrates the apotheosis of King George in heaven, +are much more blasphemous than the _ottava rima_ of the travesty, which +professes to narrate the difficulties of his getting there. Byron's +_Vision of Judgment_ is as unmistakably the first of parodies as the +_Iliad_ is the first of epics, or the _Pilgrim's Progress_ the first of +allegories. In execution it is almost perfect. _Don Juan_ is in scope and +magnitude a far wider work; but no considerable series of stanzas in _Don +Juan_ are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every +epithet hits the white; every line that does not convulse with laughter +stings or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all +its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such +space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much +scathing satire. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +1821-1823. + +PISA--GENOA--DON JUAN. + +Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs, +fowls, servants, and a monkey, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo +Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in +the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed +in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received +visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his +pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the +most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good +shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his hand often shook, he made +allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he +set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The +early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La +Guiccioli--now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations, +established under the same roof--and then sat late over his verses. He was +disposed to be more sociable than at Venice or Ravenna, and occasionally +entertained strangers; but his intimate acquaintanceship was confined to +Captain Williams and his wife, and Shelley's cousin, Captain Medwin. The +latter used frequently to dine and sit with his host till the morning, +collecting materials for the _Conversations_ which he afterwards gave to +the world. The value of these reminiscences is impaired by the fact of +their recording, as serious revelations, the absurd confidences in which +the poet's humour for mystification was wont to indulge. Another of the +group, an Irishman, called Taafe, is made, in his Lordship's +correspondence of the period, to cut a somewhat comical figure. The +master-passion of this worthy and genial fellow was to get a publisher for +a fair commentary on Dante, to which he had firmly linked a very bad +translation, and for about six months Byron pesters Murray with constant +appeals to satisfy him; e.g. November l6, "He must be gratified, though +the reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his +original." March 6, "He will die if he is not published; he will be damned +if he is; but that he don't mind." March 8, "I make it a point that he +shall be in print; it will make the man so exuberantly happy. He is such a +good-natured Christian that we must give him a shove through the press. +Besides, he has had another fall from his horse into a ditch." Taafe, +whose horsemanship was on a par with his poetry, can hardly have been +consulted as to the form assumed by these apparently fruitless +recommendations, so characteristic of the writer's frequent kindliness and +constant love of mischief. About this time Byron received a letter from +Mr. Shepherd, a gentleman in Somersetshire, referring to the death of his +wife, among whose papers he had found the record of a touching, because +evidently heart-felt, prayer for the poet's reformation, conversion, and +restored peace of mind. To this letter he at once returned an answer. +marked by much of the fine feeling of his best moods. Pisa, December 8: +"Sir, I have received your letter. I need not say that the extract which +it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling +to have read it with indifference.... Your brief and simple picture of the +excellent person, whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated +without the admiration due to her virtues and her pure and unpretending +piety. I do not know that I ever met with anything so unostentatiously +beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great +advantage over all others--for this simple reason, that if true they will +have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be +with the infidel in his eternal sleep.... But a man's creed does not +depend upon _himself_: who can say, I _will_ believe this, that, or the +other? and least of all that which he least can comprehend.... I can +assure you that not all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher +notions of its own importance, would ever weigh in my mind against the +pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in +my behalf. In this point of view I would not exchange the prayer of the +deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and +Napoleon." + +The letter to Lady Byron, which he afterwards showed to Lady Blessington, +must have borne about the same date; and we have a further indication of +his thoughts reverting homeward in an urgent request to Murray--written on +December 10th, Ada's sixth birthday--to send his daughter's miniature. +After its arrival nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be told of its +strong likeness to himself. In the course of the same month an event +occurred which strangely illustrates the manners of the place, and the +character of the two poets. An unfortunate fanatic having taken it into +his head to steal the wafer-box out of a church at Lucca, and being +detected, was, in accordance with the ecclesiastical law till lately +maintained against sacrilege, condemned to be burnt alive. Shelley, who +believed that the sentence would really be carried into effect, proposed +to Byron that they should gallop off together, and by aid of their +servants rescue by force the intended victim. Byron, however, preferred in +the first place, to rely on diplomacy; some vigorous letters passed; +ultimately a representation, convoyed by Taafe to the English Ambassador, +led to a commutation of the sentence, and the man was sent to the galleys. + +The January of 1822 was marked by the addition to the small circle of +Captain E.J. Trelawny, the famous rover and bold free-lance (long sole +survivor of the remarkable group), who accompanied Lord Byron to Greece, +and has recorded a variety of incidents of the last months of his life. +Trelawny, who appreciated Shelley with an intensity that is often apt to +be exclusive, saw, or has reported, for the most part the weaker side of +Byron. We are constrained to accept as correct the conjecture that his +judgment was biassed by their rivalry in physical prowess, and the +political differences which afterwards developed between them. Letters to +his old correspondents--to Scott about the _Waverleys_, to Murray about +the Dramas, and the _Vision of Judgment_, and _Cain_--make up almost the +sole record of the poet's pursuits during the five following months. In +February 6th he sent, through Mr. Kinnaird, the challenge to Southey, of +the suppression of which he was not aware till May 17. The same letter +contains a sheaf of the random cynicisms, as--"Cash is virtue," "Money is +power; and when Socrates said he knew nothing, he meant he had not a +drachma"--by which he sharpened the shafts of his assailants. A little +later, on occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with +natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish +against his daughter Ada seeing his portrait. In March he sat, along with +La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini. On the 24th, when the company +were on one of their riding excursions outside the town, a half-drunken +dragoon on horseback broke through them, and by accident or design knocked +Shelley from his seat. Byron, pursuing him along the Lung' Arno, called +for his name, and, taking him for an officer, flung his glove. The sound +of the fray brought the servants of the Lanfranchi to the door; and one of +them, it was presumed--though in the scuffle everything remained +uncertain--seriously wounded the dragoon in the side. An investigation +ensued, as the result of which the Gambas were ultimately exiled from +Tuscany, and the party of friends was practically broken up. Shelley and +his wife, with the Williamses and Trelawny, soon after settled at the +Villa Magni at Lerici in the Gulf of Spezia. Byron, with the Countess and +her brother, established themselves in the Villa Rossa at Monte Nero, a +suburb of Leghorn, from which port at this date the remains of Allegra +were conveyed to England. + +Among the incidents of this residence were, the homage paid to the poet by +a party of Americans; the painting of his portrait (and that of La +Guiccioli) by the artist West, who has left a pleasing account of his +visits; Byron's letter making inquiry about the country of Bolivar (where +it was his fancy to settle); and another of those disturbances by which he +seemed destined to be harassed. One of his servants--among whom were +unruly spirits, apparently selected with a kind of _Corsair_ bravado,--had +made an assault on Count Pietro, wounding him in the face. This outburst, +though followed by tears and penitence, confirmed the impression of the +Tuscan police that the whole company were dangerous, and made the +Government press for their departure. In the midst of the uproar, there +suddenly appeared at the villa Mr. Leigh Hunt, with his wife and six +children. They had taken passage to Genoa, where they were received by +Trelawny, in command of the "Bolivar"--a yacht constructed in that port +for Lord Byron, simultaneously with the "Don Juan" for Shelley. The +latter, on hearing of the arrival of his friends, came to meet them at +Leghorn, and went with them to Pisa. Early in July they were all +established on the Lung' Arno, having assigned to them the ground floor of +the palazzo. + +We have now to deal briefly--amid conflicting asseverations it is hard to +deal fairly--with the last of the vexatiously controverted episodes which +need perplex our narrative. Byron, in wishing Moore from Ravenna a merry +Christmas for 1820, proposes that they shall embark together in a +newspaper, "with some improvement on the plan of the present scoundrels," +"to give the age some new lights on policy, poesy, biography, criticism, +morality, theology," &c. Moore absolutely refusing to entertain the idea, +Hunt's name was brought forward in connexion with it, during tho visit of +Shelley. Shortly after the return of the latter to Pisa, he writes (August +26) to Hunt, stating that Byron was anxious to start a periodical work, to +be conducted in Italy, and had proposed that they should both go shares in +the concern, on which follow some suggestions of difficulties about money. +Nevertheless, in August, 1821, he presses Hunt to come. Moore, on the +other hand, strongly remonstrates against the project. "I heard some days +ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to you with all his family; and the +idea seems to be that you and he and Shelley are to conspire together in +the _Examiner_. I deprecate such a plan with all my might. Partnerships in +fame, like those in trade, make the strongest party answer for the rest. I +tremble even for you with such a bankrupt Co.! You must stand alone." +Shelley--who had, in the meantime, given his bond to Byron for an advance +of 200_l_. towards the expenses of his friends, besides assisting them +himself to the utmost of his power--began, shortly before their arrival, +to express grave doubts as to the success of the alliance. His last +published letter--written July 5th, 1822--after they had settled at Pisa, +is full of forebodings. On the 8th he set sail in the "Don Juan"-- + + That fatal and perfidious bark, + Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, + +and was overtaken by the storm in which he perished. Three days after, +Trelawny rode to Pisa, and told Byron of his fears, when the poet's lips +quivered, and his voice faltered. On the 22nd of July the bodies of +Shelley, Williams, and Vivian, were cast ashore. On the 16th August, Hunt, +Byron, and Trelawny were present at the terribly weird cremation, which +they have all described. At a later date, the two former were seized with +a fit of delirium which is one of the phases of the tension of grief. +Byron's references to the event are expressions less of the loss which he +indubitably felt, than of his indignation at the "world's wrong." "Thus," +he writes, "there is another man gone, about whom the world was +ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do +him justice now, when he can be no better for it." Towards the end of the +same letter the spirit of his dead friend seems to inspire the sentence +--"With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present +clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is +against fearful odds, but the battle must be fought." + +Meanwhile, shortly after the new settlement at the Lanfranchi, the +preparations for issuing the _Liberal_, edited by Leigh Hunt in Italy, and +published by John Hunt in London, progressed. The first number, which +appeared in September, was introduced, after a few words of preface, by +the _Vision of Judgment_, with the signature Quevedo Redivivus, and +adorned by Shelley's translation of the "May-Day Night," in _Faust_. It +contained besides, the _Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review_, +an indifferent Florentine story, a German apologue, and a gossiping +account of Pisa, presumably by Hunt. Three others followed, containing +Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, his translation of the _Morgante Maggiore_, +and _The Blues_--a very slight, if not silly, satire on literary ladies; +some of Shelley's posthumous minor poems, among them "I arise from dreams +of thee," and a few of Hazlitt's essays, including, however, none of his +best. Leigh Hunt himself wrote most of the rest, one of his contributions +being a palpable imitation of _Don Juan_, entitled the _Book of +Beginnings_, but he confesses that owing to his weak health and low +spirits at the time, none of these did justice to his ability; and the +general manner of the magazine being insufficiently vigorous to carry off +the frequent eccentricity of its matter, the prejudices against it +prevailed, and the enterprise came to an end. Partners in failing concerns +are apt to dispute; in this instance the unpleasantness which arose at the +time rankled in the mind of the survivor, and gave rise to his singularly +tasteless and injudicious book--a performance which can be only in part +condoned by the fact of Hunt's afterwards expressing regret, and +practically withdrawing it. He represents himself throughout as a +much-injured man, lured to Italy by misrepresentations, that he might give +the aid of his journalistic experience and undeniable talents to the +advancement of a mercenary enterprise, and that when it failed he was +despised, insulted, and rejected. Byron, on the other hand, declares, "The +Hunts pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented;" +and his subsequent action in the matter, if not always gentle never +unjust, goes to verify his statements in the letters of the period. "I am +afraid," he writes from Genoa, Oct. 9, 1822, "the journal is a bad +business. I have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it +is almost useless. His wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, +and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child." Later he says to +Murray, "You and your friends, by your injudicious rudeness, cement a +connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered, +would not in all probability have continued. As it is ... I can't leave +them among the breakers." On February 20th we have, his last word on the +subject, to the same effect. + +In the following sentences, Moore seems to give a fair statement of the +motives which led to the establishment of the unfortunate journal--"The +chief inducements on the part of Lord Byron to this unworthy alliance +were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of his friend +Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to Italy; and in the next, a desire to avail +himself of the aid of one so experienced as an editor in the favourite +object he has so long contemplated of a periodical work in which all the +offspring of his genius might be received as they sprung to light." For +the accomplishment of this purpose Mr. Leigh Hunt was a singularly +ill-chosen associate. A man of Radical opinions on all matters, not only +of religion but of society--opinions which he acquired and held easily but +firmly--could never recognize the propriety of the claim to deference +which "the noble poet" was always too eager to assert, and was inclined to +take liberties which his patron perhaps superciliously repelled. Mrs. Hunt +does not seem to have been a very judicious person. "Trelawny here," said +Byron jocularly, "has been speaking against my morals." "It is the first +time I ever heard of them," she replied. Mr. Hunt, by his own admission, +had "peculiar notions on the subject of money." Byron, on his part, was +determined not to be "put upon," and doled out through his steward stated +allowances to Hunt, who says that only "stern necessity and a large +family" induced him to accept them. Hunt's expression that the 200_l_. +was, _in the first instance_, a debt to Shelley, points to the conclusion +that it was remitted on that poet's death. Besides this, Byron maintained +the family till they left Genoa for Florence in 1823, and defrayed up to +that date all their expenses. He gave his contributions to the _Liberal_ +gratis; and, again by Hunt's own confession, left to him and his brother +the profits of the proprietorship. According to Mr. Galt "The whole extent +of the pecuniary obligation appears not to have exceeded 500 _l_.; but, +little or great, the manner in which it was recollected reflects no credit +either on the head or heart of the debtor." + +Of the weaknesses on which the writer--bent on verifying Pope's lines on +Atossa--from his vantage in the ground-floor, was enabled to dilate, many +are but slightly magnified. We are told for instance, in very many words, +that Byron clung to the privileges of his rank while wishing to seem above +them; that he had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle +and Gibbon supplied him with the learning he had left at school; that, +being a good rider with a graceful seat, he liked to be told of it; that +he showed letters he ought not to have shown; that he pretended to think +worse of Wordsworth than he did; that he knew little of art or music, +adored Rossini, and called Rubens a dauber; that, though he wrote _Don +Juan_ under gin and water, he had not a strong head, &c., &c. It is true, +but not new. But when Hunt proceeds to say that Byron had no sentiment; +that La Guiccioli did not really care much about him; that he admired +Gifford because he was a sycophant, and Scott because he loved a lord; +that he had no heart for anything except a feverish notoriety; that he was +a miser from his birth, and had "as little regard for liberty as +Allieri,"--it is new enough, but it is manifestly not true. Hunt's book, +which begins with a caricature on the frontispiece, and is inspired in the +main by uncharitableness, yet contains here and there gleams of a deeper +insight than we find in all the volumes of Moore--an insight, which, in +spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of +a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to +avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much +admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in +his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory +a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him +for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as they supposed +themselves, and that they might take as well as give lessons of humanity, +by a candid comparison of notes with civilization at large." + +In July, when at Leghorn, the Gambas received orders to leave Tuscany; and +on his return to Pisa, Byron, being persecuted by the police, began to +prepare for another change. After entertaining projects about Greece, +America, and Switzerland--Trelawny undertaking to have the "Bolivar" +conveyed over the Alps to the Lake of Geneva--he decided on following his +friends to Genoa. He left in September with La Guiccioli, passed by Lerici +and Sestri, and then for the ten remaining mouths of his Italian life took +up his quarters at Albaro, about a mile to the east of the city, in the +Villa Saluzzo, which Mrs. Shelley had procured for him and his party. She +herself settled with the Hunts--who travelled about the same time, at +Byron's expense, but in their own company--in the neighbouring Casa +Negroto. Not far off, Mr. Savage Landor was in possession of the Casa +Pallavicini, but there was little intercourse between the three. Landor +and Byron, in many respects more akin than any other two Englishmen of +their age, were always separated by an unhappy bar or intervening mist. +The only family with whom the poet maintained any degree of intimacy was +that of the Earl of Blessington, consisting of the Earl himself--a gouty +old gentleman, with stories about him of the past--the Countess, and her +sister, Miss Power, and the "cupidon déchaîné," the Anglo-French Count +Alfred d'Orsay--who were to take part in stories of the future. In the +spring of 1823, Byron persuaded them to occupy the Villa Paradiso, and was +accustomed to accompany them frequently on horseback excursions along the +coast to their favourite Nervi. It has been said that Lady Blessington's +_Conversations with Lord Byron_ are, as regards trustworthiness, on a par +with Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_. Let this be so, they are still of +interest on points of fact which it must have been easier to record than +to imagine. However adorned, or the reverse, by the fancies of a habitual +novelist, they convey the impressions of a goodhumoured, lively, and +fascinating woman, derived from a more or less intimate association with +the most brilliant man of the age. Of his personal appearance--a matter of +which she was a good judge--we have the following: "One of Byron's eyes +was larger than the other; his nose was rather thick, so he was best seen +in profile; his mouth was splendid, and his scornful expression was real, +not affected; but a sweet smile often broke through his melancholy. He was +at this time very pale and thin (which indicates the success of his +regimen of reduction since leaving Venice). His hair was dark brown, here +and there turning grey. His voice was harmonious, clear and low. There is +some gaucherie in his walk, from his attempts to conceal his lameness. +Ada's portrait is like him, and he is pleased at the likeness, but hoped +she would not turn out to be clever--at any events not poetical. He is +fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but +is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of +self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, +by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of +the period ingenuously observes--"Certain persons will be chagrined to +hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for +calumny." Another says, "I never saw a countenance more composed and +still--I might even add, more sweet and prepossessing. But his temper was +easily ruffled and for a whole day; he could not endure the ringing of +bells, bribed his neighbours to repress their noises, and failing, +retaliated by surpassing them; he never forgave Colonel Carr for breaking +one of his dog's ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without +forgetting them. He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for +whatever he himself did he did with a will--'toto se corpore miscuit,' and +was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone--as if 'I have said it, and +it must be so' were enough." + +From these waifs and strays of gossip we return to a subject of deeper +interest. The Countess of Blessington, with natural curiosity, was anxious +to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs, +and renewed the attempt previously made by Madame de Staël, to induce him +to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife. His reply to this +overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from +Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the following extracts +must be a sufficient indication:--"I have to acknowledge the receipt of +Ada's hair.... I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; +and I will tell you why. I believe they are the only two or three words of +your hand-writing in my possession, for your letters I returned, and +except the two words--or rather the one word 'household' written twice--in +an old account book, I have no other. Every day which keeps us asunder +should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which +must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists. We both +made a bitter mistake, but now it is over, I considered our re-union as +not impossible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave +up the hope. I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations +can awaken my resentment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught, +this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is +something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most +offending are the least forgiving." "It is a strange business," says the +Countess, about Lady Byron. "When he was praising her mental and personal +qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain +sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook +his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was +wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters; +that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations +recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s +first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of +what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect +which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation, +into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed +to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased +my _mauvaise humeur_." To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always +spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and +respect. + +"My first impressions were melancholy--my poor mother gave them: but to my +sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I +owe the little good of which I can boast: and had I earlier known her it +might have influenced my destiny. Augusta was to me in the hour of need a +tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now +the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view. She +has given me such good advice--and yet finding me incapable of following +it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring." Similarly, in +the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt--"I believe there did exist +one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased: perhaps +was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always +spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh. He +told me she used to call him 'Baby Byron.' It was easy to see that of the +two persons she had by far the greater judgment." + +Byron having laid aside _Don Juan_ for more than a year, in deference to +La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a +promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa. +Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were +published by John Hunt. His other works of the period are of minor +consequence. The _Age of Bronze_ is a declamation, rather than a satire, +directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona, +especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from +its advice to the Greeks, to dread-- + + The false friend worse than the infuriate foe; + +i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the +great Bear-- + + Better still toil for masters, than await, + The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate. + +In the _Island_--a tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"--he reverts to the +manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific +for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical +adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from +Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in +any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to +plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the +sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading +it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if +not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on +the Conquest, and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was +executed. + +In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to +criticise the critics--to bring to a focus the most salient things that +have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the +discriminating from the commonplace. _Don Juan_, more than any of its +precursors, _is_ Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early +cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and +execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle-class respectability, +were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their +judgments. The _British Magazine_ said that "his lordship had degraded his +personal character by the composition;" the _London_, that the poem was "a +satire on decency;" the _Edinburgh Monthly_, that it was "a melancholy +spectacle;" the _Eclectic_, that it was "an outrage worthy of +detestation." _Blackwood_ declared that the author was "brutally outraging +all the best feelings of humanity." Moore characterizes it as "the most +painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for +succeeding ages to wonder at or deplore." Jeffrey found in the whole +composition "a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue;" +and Dr. John Watkins classically named it "the Odyssey of Immorality." +"_Don Juan_ will be read," wrote one critic, "as long as satire, wit, +mirth, and supreme excellence shall be esteemed among men." "Stick to _Don +Juan_," exhorted another; "it is the only sincere thing you have written, +and it will live after all your _Harolds_ have ceased to be 'a +schoolgirl's tale, the wonder of an hour.' It is the best of all your +works--the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, +the most poetical." "It is a work," said Goethe, "full of soul, bitterly +savage in its misanthropy, exquisitely delicate in its tenderness." +Shelley confessed, "It fulfils in a certain degree what I have long +preached, the task of producing something wholly new and relative to the +age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst +of a hearty panegyric: "It has the variety of Shakespeare himself. Neither +_Childe Harold_, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain +more exquisite poetry than is to be found scattered through the cantos of +_Don Juan_, amidst verses which the author seems to have thrown from him +with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves." + +One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity: reviewing, +however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register +of adverse or friendly cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict, +Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is, +the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt +to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in +pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the +most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of +the readers of _Don Juan_ have, it must be confessed, been found among +those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable--who have been +attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, +and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their +patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by +a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the +charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the +work in other quarters is as indubitably duo to higher qualities. In +writing _Don Juan_, Byron attempted something that had never been done +before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be +done again. "Down," cries M. Chasles, "with the imitators who did their +host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an +Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava +rima--the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet +a "breakdown"--for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may +have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in +Pulci, and the _Novelle Galanti_ of Casti, to whom he is indebted for +other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed +its characteristic jauntiness, by his almost constant use of the double +rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic +poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's _Pot of Basil_. +Many writers, from Tennant and Frere to Moultrie, have employed it in +burlesque or more society verse; but Byron alone has employed it +triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as +gay, of "black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling +fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of +his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality +that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready +to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a +ladder like other acrobats; but alone, like the Japanese master of the +art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of +_Don Juan_ is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his earlier work; it +has every mark of being written in hot haste. In the midst of the most +serious passages (e.g. the "Ave Maria") we are checked in our course by +bathos or commonplace and thrown where the writer did not mean to throw +us: but the mocking spirit is so prevailingly present that we are often +left in doubt as to his design, and what is in _Harold_ an outrage is in +this case only a flaw. His command over the verse itself is almost +miraculous: he glides from extreme to extreme, from punning to pathos, +from melancholy to mad merriment, sighing or laughing by the way at his +readers or at himself or at the stanzas. Into them he can fling anything +under the sun, from a doctor's prescription to a metaphysical theory. + + When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, + And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said, + +is as cogent a refutation of idealism as the cumbrous wit of Scotch +logicians. + +The popularity of the work is due not mainly to the verbal skill which +makes it rank as the _cleverest_ of English verse compositions, to its +shoals of witticisms, its winged words, telling phrases, and incomparable +transitions; but to the fact that it continues to address a large class +who are not in the ordinary sense of the word lovers of poetry. _Don Juan_ +is emphatically the poem of intelligent men of middle age, who have grown +weary of mere sentiment, and yet retain enough of sympathetic feeling to +desire at times to recall it. Such minds, crusted like Plato's Glaucus +with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives +beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can +they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and +they are apt to turn with some impatience even from _Romeo and Juliet_ to +_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of +_Hudibras_ is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend +is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the +contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in +laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does +not blend together the two phases, as they are blended in single sentences +or whole chapters of Sterne, in the April-sunshine of Richter, or in +_Sartor Resartus_; but he comes near to produce the same effect by his +unequalled power of alternating them. His wit is seldom hard, never dry, +for it is moistened by the constant juxtaposition of sentiment. His +tenderness is none the less genuine that he is perpetually jerking it +away--an equally favourite fashion with Carlyle,--as if he could not trust +himself to be serious for fear of becoming sentimental; and, in +recollection of his frequent exhibitions of unaffected hysteria, we accept +his own confession-- + + If I laugh at any mortal thing, + 'Tis that I may not weep, + +as a perfectly sincere comment on the most sincere, and therefore in many +respects the most effective, of his works. He has, after his way, +endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its +assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled +character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose +accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural +effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member +of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an +unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting +the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often +require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive," +is, however, more to the point: + + But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, + Unless it were to be a moment merry-- + A novel word in my vocabulary. + +_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every +large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the +author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in +which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is +reflected without distortion. After the audacious though brilliant +opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic +affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his +prevailing manner. Home-sickness, sea-sickness, the terror of the tempest, +"wailing, blasphemy, devotion," the crash of the wreck, the wild farewell, +"the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony," the horrors of +famine, the tale of the two fathers, the beautiful apparitions of the +rainbow and the bird, the feast on Juan's spaniel, his reluctance to dine +on "his pastor and his master," the consequences of eating Pedrillo,--all +follow each other like visions in the phantasmagoria of a nightmare, till +at last the remnant of the crew are drowned by a ridiculous rhyme-- + + Finding no place for their landing better, + They ran the boat ashore,--and overset her. + +Then comes the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient +days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold +running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page; +e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we have the +stanza:-- + + Thus sang, or would, or could, or should, have sung, + The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; + If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, + Yet in those days he might have done much worse-- + +with which the author dashes away the romance of the song, and then +launches into a tirade against Bob Southey's epic and Wordsworth's pedlar +poems. This vein exhausted, we come to the "Ave Maria," one of the most +musical, and seemingly heartfelt, hymns in the language. The close of the +ocean pastoral (in c. iv.) is the last of pathetic narrative in the book; +but the same feeling that "mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades," often +re-emerges in shorter passages. The fifth and sixth cantos, in spite of +the glittering sketch of Gulbeyaz, and tho fawn-like image of Dudù, are +open to the charge of diffuseness, and the character of Johnson is a +failure. From the seventh to the tenth, the poem decidedly dips, partly +because the writer had never been in Russia; then it again rises, and +shows no sign of falling off to the end. + +No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some +of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the +fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last +esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his +works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of +female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline. Conjectures as to +the originals of imaginary portraits, are generally futile; but Miss +Millpond--not Donna Inez--is obviously Lady Byron; in Adeline we may +suspect that at Genoa he was drawing from the life in the Villa Paradiso; +while Aurora Raby seems to be an idealization of La Guiccioli:-- + + Early in years, and yet more infantine + In figure, she had something of sublime + In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine: + All youth--but with an aspect beyond time; + Radiant and grave--us pitying man's decline; + Mournful--but mournful of another's crime, + She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, + And grieved for those who could return no more. + + She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere, + As far as her own gentle heart allow'd, + And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear, + Perhaps, because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud + Of deeds and days, when they had fill'd the ear + Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd + To novel power; and, as she was the last, + She held her old faith and old feelings fast. + + She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, + As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, + As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, + And kept her heart serene within its zone. + +Constantly, towards the close of the work, there is an echo of home and +country, a half involuntary cry after-- + + The love of higher things and better days; + Th'unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance + Of what is call'd the world and the world's ways. + +In the concluding stanza of the last completed canto, beginning-- + + Between two worlds life hovers like a star, + 'Twixt night and morn, on the horizon's verge-- + +we have a condensation of the refrain of the poet's philosophy; but the +main drift of the later books is a satire on London society. There are +elements in a great city which may be wrought into something nobler than +satire, for all the energies of the age are concentrated where passion is +fiercest and thought intensest, amid the myriad sights and sounds of its +glare and gloom. But those scenes, and the actors in them, are apt also to +induce the frame of mind in which a prose satirist describes himself as +reclining under an arcade of the Pantheon: "Not the Pantheon by the Piazza +Navona, where the immortal gods were worshipped--the immortal gods now +dead; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Have not Selwyn, and Walpole, and +March, and Carlisle figured there? Has not Prince Florizel flounced +through the hall in his rustling domino, and danced there in powdered +splendour? O my companions, I have drunk many a bout with you, and always +found 'Vanitas Vanitatum' written on the bottom of the pot." This is the +mind in which _Don Juan_ interprets the universe, and paints the still +living court of Florizel and his buffoons. A "nondescript and ever varying +rhyme"--"a versified aurora borealis," half cynical, half Epicurean, it +takes a partial though a subtle view of that microcosm on stilts called +the great world. It complains that in the days of old "men made the +manners--manners now make men." It concludes-- + + Good company's a chess-board, there are kings, + Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world's a game. + +It passes from a reflection on "the dreary _fuimus_ of all things here" to +the advice-- + + But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!" + To-morrow sees another race as gay + And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. + "Life's a poor player,"--then play out the play. + +It was the natural conclusion of the foregone stage of Byron's career. +Years had given him power, but they were years in which his energies were +largely wasted. Self-indulgence had not petrified his feeling, but it had +thrown wormwood into its springs. He had learnt to look on existence as a +walking shadow, and was strong only with the strength of a sincere +despair. + + Through life's road, so dim and dirty, + I have dragg'd to three and thirty. + What have those years left to me? + Nothing, except thirty-three. + +These lines are the summary of one who had drained the draught of pleasure +to the dregs of bitterness. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +1821-1824. + +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. + +In leaving Venice for Ravenna, Byron passed from the society of gondoliers +and successive sultanas to a comparatively domestic life, with a mistress +who at least endeavoured to stimulate some of his higher aspirations, and +smiled upon his wearing the sword along with the lyre. In the last episode +of his constantly chequered and too voluptuous career, we have the waking +of Sardanapalus realized in the transmutation of the fantastical Harold +into a practical strategist, financier, and soldier. No one ever lived +who, in the same space, more thoroughly ran the gauntlet of existence. +Having exhausted all other sources of vitality and intoxication--travel, +gallantry, and verse--it remained for the despairing poet to become a +hero. But he was also moved by a public passion, the genuineness of which +there is no reasonable ground to doubt. Like Alfieri and Rousseau, he had +taken for his motto, "I am of the opposition;" and, as Dante under a +republic called for a monarchy, Byron, under monarchies at home and +abroad, called for a commonwealth. Amid the inconsistencies of his +political sentiment, he had been consistent in so much love of liberty as +led him to denounce oppression, even when he had no great faith in the +oppressed--whether English, or Italians, or Greeks. + +Byron regarded the established dynasties of the continent with a sincere +hatred. He talks of the "more than infernal tyranny" of the House of +Austria. To his fancy, as to Shelley's, New England is the star of the +future. Attracted by a strength or rather force of character akin to his +own, he worshipped Napoleon, even when driven to confess that "the hero +had sunk into a king." He lamented his overthrow; but, above all, that he +was beaten by "three stupid, legitimate old dynasty boobies of regular +sovereigns." "I write in ipecacuanha that the Bourbons are restored." +"What right have we to prescribe laws to France? Here we are retrograding +to the dull, stupid old system, balance of Europe--poising straws on +kings' noses, instead of wringing them off." "The king-times are fast +finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but +the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I +foresee it." "Give me a republic. Look in the history of the earth--Rome, +Greece, Venice, Holland, France, America, our too short Commonwealth--and +compare it with what they did under masters." + +His serious political verses are all in the strain of the lines on +Wellington-- + + Never had mortal man such opportunity-- + Except Napoleon--or abused it more; + You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity + Of tyrants, and been blessed from shore to shore. + +An enthusiasm for Italy, which survived many disappointments, dictated +some of the most impressive passages of his _Harold_, and inspired the +_Lament of Tasso_ and the _Ode on Venice_. The _Prophecy of Dante_ +contains much that has since proved prophetic-- + + What is there wanting, then, to set thee free, + And show thy beauty in its fullest light? + To make the Alps impassable; and we, + Her sons, may do this with one deed--_Unite_! + +His letters reiterate the same idea, in language even more emphatic. "It +is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what +is sacrificed. It is a grand object--the very poetry of politics; only +think--a free Italy!" Byron acted on his assertion that a man ought to do +more for society than write verses. Mistrusting its leaders, and detesting +the wretched lazzaroni, who "would have betrayed themselves and all the +world," he yet threw himself heart and soul into the insurrection of 1820, +saying, "Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture +freely for their freedom." He joined the secret society of the Carbonari, +wrote an address to the Liberal government set up in Naples, supplied arms +and a refuge in his house, which he was prepared to convert into a +fortress. In February, 1821, on the rout of the Neapolitans by the +Austrians, the conspiracy was crushed. Byron, who "had always an idea that +it would be bungled," expressed his fear that the country would be thrown +back for 500 years into barbarism, and the Countess Guiccioli confessed +with tears that the Italians must return to composing and strumming +operatic airs. Carbonarism having collapsed, it of course made way for a +reaction; but the encouragement and countenance of the English poet and +peer helped to keep alive the smouldering fire that Mazzini fanned into a +flame, till Cavour turned it to a practical purpose, and the dreams of the +idealists of 1820 were finally realized. + +On the failure of the luckless conspiracy, Byron naturally betook himself +to history, speculation, satire, and ideas of a journalistic propaganda; +but all through, his mind was turning to the renewal of the action which +was his destiny. "If I live ten years longer," he writes in 1822, "you +will see that it is not all over with me. I don't mean in literature, for +that is nothing--and I do not think it was my vocation; but I shall do +something." The Greek war of liberation opened a new field for the +exercise of his indomitable energy. This romantic struggle, begun in +April, 1821, was carried on for two years with such remarkable success, +that at the close of 1822 Greece was beginning to be recognized as an +independent state; but in the following months the tide seemed to turn; +dissensions broke out among the leaders, the spirit of intrigue seemed to +stifle patriotism, and the energies of the insurgents were hampered for +want of the sinews of war. There was a danger of the movement being +starved out, and the committee of London sympathizers--of which the poet's +intimate friend and frequent correspondent, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, and +Captain Blaquière, were leading promoters--was impressed with the +necessity of procuring funds in support of the cause. With a view to this +it seemed of consequence to attach to it some shining name, and men's +thoughts almost inevitably turned to Byron. No other Englishman seemed so +fit to be associated with the enterprise as the warlike poet, who had +twelve years before linked his fame to that of "grey Marathon" and +"Athena's tower," and, more recently immortalized the isles on which he +cast so many a longing glance. Hobhouse broke the subject to him early in +the spring of 1823: the committee opened communications in April. After +hesitating through May, in June Byron consented to meet Blaquière at +Zante, and, on hearing the results of the captain's expedition to the +Morea, to decide on future steps. His share in this enterprise has been +assigned to purely personal and comparatively mean motives. He was, it is +said, disgusted with his periodical, sick of his editor, tired of his +mistress, and bent on any change, from China to Peru, that would give him +a new theatre for display. One grows weary of the perpetual half-truths of +inveterate detraction. It is granted that Byron was restless, vain, +imperious, never did anything without a desire to shine in the doing of +it, and was to a great degree the slave of circumstances. Had the +_Liberal_ proved a lamp to the nations, instead of a mere "red flag +flaunted in the face of John Bull," he might have cast anchor at Genoa; +but the whole drift of his work and life demonstrates that he was capable +on occasion of merging himself in what he conceived to be great causes, +especially in their evil days. Of the Hunts he may have had enough; but +the invidious statement about La Guiccioli has no foundation, other than a +somewhat random remark of Shelley, and the fact that he left her nothing +in his will. It is distinctly ascertained that she expressly prohibited +him from doing so; they continued to correspond to the last, and her +affectionate, though unreadable, reminiscences, are sufficient proof that +she at no time considered herself to be neglected, injured, or aggrieved. + +Byron indeed left Italy in an unsettled state of mind: he spoke of +returning in a few months, and as the period for his departure approached, +became more and more irresolute. A presentiment of his death seemed to +brood over a mind always superstitious, though never fanatical. Shortly +before his own departure, the Blessingtons were preparing to leave Genoa +for England. On the evening of his farewell call he began to speak of his +voyage with despondency, saying, "Here we are all now together; but when +and where shall we meet again? I have a sort of boding that we see each +other for the last time, as something tells me I shall never again return +from Greece:" after which remark he leant his head on the sofa, and burst +into one of his hysterical fits of tears. The next week was given to +preparations for an expedition, which, entered on with mingled +motives--sentimental, personal, public--became more real and earnest to +Byron at every step he took. He knew all the vices of the "hereditary +bondsmen" among whom he was going, and went among them, with yet +unquenched aspirations, but with the bridle of discipline in his hand, +resolved to pave the way towards the nation becoming better, by devoting +himself to making it free. + +On the morning of July 14th (1823) he embarked in the brig "Hercules," +with Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, who remained with him to the last, +Bruno a young Italian doctor, Scott the captain of the vessel, and eight +servants, including Fletcher, besides the crew. They had on board two +guns, with other arms and ammunition, five horses, an ample supply of +medicines, with 50,000 Spanish dollars in coin and bills. The start was +inauspicious. A violent squall drove them back to port, and in the course +of a last ride with Gamba to Albaro, Byron asked, "Where shall we be in a +year?" On the same day of the same month of 1824 he was carried to the +tomb of his ancestors. They again set sail on the following evening, and +in five days reached Leghorn, where the poet received a salutation in +verse, addressed to him by Goethe, and replied to it. Here Mr. Hamilton +Brown, a Scotch gentleman with considerable knowledge of Greek affairs, +joined the party, and induced them to change their course to Cephalonia, +for the purpose of obtaining the advice and assistance of the English +resident, Colonel Napier. The poet occupied himself during the voyage +mainly in reading--among other books, Scott's _Life of Swift_, Grimm's +_Correspondence_, La Rochefoucauld, and Las Casas--and watching the +classic or historic shores which they skirted, especially noting Elba, +Soracte, the Straits of Messina, and Etna. In passing Stromboli he said to +Trelawny, "You will see this scene in a fifth canto of _Childe Harold_." +On his companions suggesting that he should write some verses on the spot, +he tried to do so, but threw them away, with the remark, "I cannot write +poetry at will, as you smoke tobacco." Trelawny confesses that he was +never on shipboard with a better companion, and that a severer test of +good fellowship it is impossible to apply. Together they shot at gulls or +empty bottles, and swam every morning in the sea. Early in August they +reached their destination. Coming in sight of the Morea, the poet said to +Trelawny, "I feel as if the eleven long years of bitterness I have passed +through, since I was here, were taken from my shoulders, and I was +scudding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in his frigate." +Byron remained at or about Cephalonia till the close of the year. Not long +after his arrival he made an excursion to Ithaca, and, visiting the +monastery at Vathi, was received by the abbot with great ceremony, which, +in a fit of irritation, brought on by a tiresome ride on a mule, he +returned with unusual discourtesy; but next morning, on his giving a +donation to their alms-box, he was dismissed with the blessing of the +monks. "If this isle were mine," he declared on his way back, "I would +break my staff and bury my book." A little later, Brown and Trelawny being +sent off with letters to the provisional government, the former returned +with some Greek emissaries to London, to negotiate a loan; the latter +attached himself to Odysseus, the chief of the republican party at Athens, +and never again saw Byron alive. The poet, after spending a month on board +the "Hercules," dismissed the vessel, and hired a house for Gamba and +himself at Metaxata, a healthy village about four miles from the capital +of the island. Meanwhile, Blaquière, neglecting his appointment at Zante, +had gone to Corfu, and thence to England. Colonel Napier being absent from +Cephalonia, Byron had some pleasant social intercourse with his deputy, +but, unable to get from him any authoritative information, was left +without advice, to be besieged by letters and messages from the factions. +Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king, +and he is reported to have said, "If they make me the offer, I will +perhaps not reject it." + +The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never--amid +his many self-deceptions--affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who +can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add +lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a +day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had +his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard +of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to +despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and +anxiously waiting relief. During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was +gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents. Among +these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself +to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series +of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be +present at one of them. After listening, it is said, to a set of +discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for +one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and +found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards +published in a substantial book. This volume, interesting in several +respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the +language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the +abridgment of several of its pages. They bear testimony, on the one hand, +to Byron's capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under +trial; on the other, to Kennedy's utter want of humour, and to his +courageous honesty. The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course +of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the +ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith, +which Kennedy upheld without stint. The _Conversations_ add little to what +we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where +he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently +wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a +theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible, +though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to +which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is +explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal +punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were +to be damned, he "would rather keep them company than creep into heaven +alone." On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human +life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative +necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not +see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer +had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart. Byron showed +a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow, +Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy's lending for his +edification Boston's _Fourfold State_, he returned it with the remark that +it was too deep for him. On another occasion he said, "Do you know I am +nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between +the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the +character of both is equally vile." The good Scotchman's religious +self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own +confession, "This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it," might +perhaps be applied to the whole discussion. + +Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to +attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; +they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at +the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more, +confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The +Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber," +but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The +chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their +arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates +and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions--republican, monarchic, +aristocratic--representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and +each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only +representing their own. During the first two years of success they were +held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the +allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's +residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a +renewal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them +he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and +helped to betray the common cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, +to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, +collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, +endeavouring to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and +carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period +relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the +population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or +robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting +to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking +the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks +fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." +Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were "shrieking +and howling as in Ireland" over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he +snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants +unless they followed his example. On November 30th he despatched to the +central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the +fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are +established all hopes of a loan--which being every day more urgent, he was +in letters to England constantly pressing--are at an end. "I desire," he +concluded, "the well being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I +can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be +deceived as to the real state of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act +honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no +more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years, with the Roman +historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians." + +Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos--the most prominent of the practical +patriotic leaders--having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to +regulate the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way with a +fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco Bozzaris +had previously fallen. In a letter, opening communication with a man for +whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, "Colonel Stanhope +has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with +me.... Greece is at present placed between three measures--either to +reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of the sovereigns of Europe, +or to return to a Turkish province. She has the choice only of these three +alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter." + +At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, +with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. +Mavrocordatos on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the poet to +join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, "I need not tell you +to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a +prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs. Your counsels will +be listened to like oracles." + +At the same date Stanhope writes, "The people in the streets are looking +forward to his lordship's arrival as they would to the coming of the +Messiah." Byron was unable to start in the ship sent for him; but in spite +of medical warnings, a few days later, i.e. December 28th, he embarked in +a small fast-sailing sloop called a mistico, while the servants and +baggage were stowed in another and larger vessel under the charge of Count +Gamba. From Gamba's graphic account of the voyage we may take the +following:--"We sailed together till after ten at night; the wind +favourable, a clear sky, the air fresh, but not sharp. Our sailors sang +alternately patriotic songs, monotonous indeed, but to persons in our +situation extremely touching, and we took part in them. We were all, but +Lord Byron particularly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the +fastest. When the waves divided us, and our voices could no longer reach +each other, we made signals by firing pistols and carbines. To-morrow we +meet at Mesolonghi--to morrow. Thus, full of confidence and spirits, we +sailed along. At twelve we were out of sight of each other." + +Byron's vessel, separated from her consort, came into the close proximity +of a Turkish frigate, and had to take refuge among the Scrofes' rocks. +Emerging thence, he attained a small seaport of Acarnania, called +Dragomestri, whence sallying forth on the 2nd of January under the convoy +of some Greek gunboats, he was nearly wrecked. On the 4th Byron made, when +violently heated, an imprudent plunge in the sea, and was never afterwards +free from a pain in his bones. On the 5th he arrived at Mesolonghi, and +was received with salvoes of musketry and music. Gamba was waiting him. +His vessel, the "Bombarda," had been taken by the Ottoman frigate, but the +captain of the latter, recognizing the Count as having formerly saved his +life in the Black Sea, made interest in his behalf with Yussuf Pasha at +Patras, and obtained his discharge. In recompense, the poet subsequently +sent to the Pasha some Turkish prisoners, with a letter requesting him to +endeavour to mitigate the inhumanities of the war. Byron brought to the +Greeks at Mesolonghi the 4000_l_. of his personal loan (applied, in the +first place, to defraying the expenses of the fleet), with the spell of +his name and presence. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the command +of the intended expedition against Lepanto, and, with this view, again +took into his pay five hundred Suliotes. An approaching general assembly +to organize the forces of the west, had brought together a motley crew, +destitute, discontented, and more likely to wage war upon each other than +on their enemies. Byron's closest associates during the ensuing months, +were the engineer Parry, an energetic artilleryman, "extremely active, and +of strong practical talents," who had travelled in America, and Colonel +Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington) equally with himself devoted to the +emancipation of Greece, but at variance about the means of achieving it. +Stanhope, a moral enthusiast of the stamp of Kennedy, beset by the fallacy +of religious missions, wished to cover the Morea with Wesleyan tracts, and +liberate the country by the agency of the Press. He had imported a +converted blacksmith, with a cargo of Bibles, types, and paper, who on +20_l_. a year, undertook to accomplish the reform. Byron, backed by the +good sense of Mavrocordatos, proposed to make cartridges of the tracts, +and small shot of the type; he did not think that the turbulent tribes +were ripe for freedom of the press, and had begun to regard Republicanism +itself as a matter of secondary moment. The disputant allies in the common +cause occupied each a flat of the same small house, the soldier by +profession was bent on writing the Turks down, the poet on fighting them +down, holding that "the work of the sword must precede that of the pen, +and that camps must be the training schools of freedom." Their +altercations were sometimes fierce--"Despot!" cried Stanhope, "after +professing liberal principles from boyhood, you when called to act prove +yourself a Turk." "Radical!" retorted Byron, "if I had held up my finger I +could have crushed your press,"--but this did not prevent the recognition +by each of them of the excellent qualities of the other. + +Ultimately Stanhope went to Athens, and allied himself with Trelawny and +Odysseus and the party of the Left. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than +some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preceding period; +nothing more admirable than the spirit which inspires them. He had come +into the heart of a revolution, exposed to the same perils as those which +had wrecked the similar movement in Italy. Neither trusting too much nor +distrusting too much, with a clear head and a good will he set about +enforcing a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was +engaged in denouncing dissension, in advocating unity, in doing everything +that man could do to concentrate and utilize the disorderly elements with +which he had to work. He occupied himself in repairing fortifications, +managing ships, restraining licence, promoting courtesy between the foes, +and regulating the disposal of the sinews of war. + +On the morning of the 22nd of January, his last birthday, he came from his +room to Stanhope's, and said, smiling, "You were complaining that I never +write any poetry now," and read the familiar stanzas beginning-- + + 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, + +and ending-- + + Seek out--less often sought than found-- + A soldier's grave, for thee the best; + Then look around, and choose thy ground, + And take thy rest. + +High thoughts, high resolves; but the brain that was over-tasked, and the +frame that was outworn, would be tasked and worn little longer. The lamp +of a life that had burnt too fiercely was flickering to its close. "If we +are not taken off with the sword," he writes on February 5th, "we are like +to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very +bad pun, better _martially_ than _marsh-ally_. The dykes of Holland when +broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In +April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, +imploring him not to sacrifice health, and perhaps life, "in that bog." + +Byron's house stood in the midst of the exhalations of a muddy creek, and +his natural irritability was increased by a more than usually long ascetic +regimen. From the day of his arrival in Greece he discarded animal food +and lived mainly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, olives and light wine, +at the rate of forty paras a day. In spite of his strength of purpose, his +temper was not always proof against the rapacity and turbulence by which +he was surrounded. About the middle of February, when the artillery had +been got into readiness for the attack on Lepanto--the northern, as +Patras was the southern, gate of the gulf, still in the hands of the +Turks--the expedition was thrown back by the unexpected rising of the +Suliotes. These peculiarly Irish Greeks, chronically seditious by nature, +were on this occasion, as afterwards appeared, stirred up by emissaries of +Colocatroni, who, though assuming the position of the rival of +Mavrocordatos, was simply a brigand on a large scale in the Morca. +Exasperation at this mutiny, and the vexation of having to abandon a +cherished scheme, seem to have been the immediately provoking causes of a +violent convulsive fit which, on the evening of the 15th, attacked the +poet, and endangered his life. Next day he was better, but complained of +weight in the head; and the doctors applying leeches too close to the +temporal artery, he was bled till he fainted. And now occurred the last of +those striking incidents so frequent in his life, in reference to which we +may quote the joint testimony of two witnesses. Colonel Stanhope writes, +"Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, with +his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered +with dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing +their costly arms and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron, +electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness; +and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed. The +scene was truly sublime." "It is impossible," says Count Gamba, "to do +justice to the coolness and magnanimity which he displayed upon every +trying occasion. Upon trifling occasions he was certainly irritable; but +the aspect of danger calmed him in an instant, and restored him the free +exercise of all the powers of his noble nature. A more undaunted man in +the hour of peril never breathed." A few days later, the riot being +renewed, the disorderly crew were, on payment of their arrears, finally +dismissed; but several of the English artificers under Parry left about +the same time, in fear of their lives. + +On the 4th, the last of the long list of Byron's letters to Moore resents, +with some bitterness, the hasty acceptance of a rumour that he had been +quietly writing _Don Juan_ in some Ionian island. At the same date he +writes to Kennedy, "I am not unaware of the precarious state of my health. +But it is proper I should remain in Greece, and it were better to die +doing something than nothing." Visions of enlisting Europe and America on +behalf of the establishment of a new state, that might in course of time +develope itself over the realm of Alexander, floated and gleamed in his +fancy; but in his practical daily procedure the poet took as his text the +motto "festina lente," insisted on solid ground under his feet, and had no +notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged +Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the _Telegrapho_, and +disparaged Dr. Mayor, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he +is one of the pettiest, as are most demagogues." Byron had none of the +Sclavonic leanings, and almost personal hatred of Ottoman rule, of some of +our statesmen; but he saw on what side lay the forces and the hopes of the +future. "I cannot calculate," he said to Gamba, during one of their latest +rides together, "to what a height Greece may rise. Hitherto it has been a +subject for the hymns and elegies of fanatics and enthusiasts; but now it +will draw the attention of the politician.... At present there is little +difference, in many respects, between Greeks and Turks, nor could there +be; but the latter must, in the common course of events, decline in power; +and the former must as inevitably become better.... The English Government +deceived itself at first in thinking it possible to maintain the Turkish +Empire in its integrity; but it cannot be done, that unwieldy mass is +already putrified, and must dissolve. If anything like an equilibrium is +to be upheld, Greece must be supported." These words have been well +characterized as prophetic. During this time Byron rallied in health, and +displayed much of his old spirit, vivacity, and humour, took part in such +of his favourite amusements as circumstances admitted, fencing, shooting, +riding, and playing with his pet dog Lion. The last of his recorded +practical jokes is his rolling about cannon balls, and shaking the +rafters, to frighten Parry in the room below with the dread of an +earthquake. + +Towards the close of the month, after being solicited to accompany +Mavrocordatos, to share the governorship of the Morea, he made an +appointment to meet Colonel Stanhope and Odysseus at Salona, but was +prevented from keeping it by violent floods which blocked up the +communication. On the 30th he was presented with the freedom of the city +of Mesolonghi. On the 3rd of April he intervened to prevent an Italian +private, guilty of theft, from being flogged by order of some German +officers. On the 9th, exhilarated by a letter from Mrs. Leigh with good +accounts of her own and Ada's health, he took a long ride with Gamba and a +few of the remaining Suliotes, and after being violently heated, and then +drenched in a heavy shower, persisted in returning home in a boat, +remarking with a laugh, in answer to a remonstrance, "I should make a +pretty soldier if I were to care for such a trifle." It soon became +apparent that he had caught his death. Almost immediately on his return, +he was seized with shiverings and violent pain. The next day he rose as +usual, and had his last ride in the olive woods. On the 11th a rheumatic +fever set in. On the 14th, Bruno's skill being exhausted, it was proposed +to call Dr. Thomas from Zante, but a hurricane prevented any ship being +sent. On the 15th, another physician, Mr. Milligen, suggested bleeding to +allay the fever, but Byron held out against it, quoting Dr. Reid to the +effect that "less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet--that +minute instrument of mighty mischief;" and saying to Bruno, "If my hour is +come I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it." Next morning +Milligen induced him to yield, by a suggestion of the possible loss of his +reason. Throwing out his arm, he cried, "There! you are, I see, a d----d +set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with +it." The remedy, repeated on the following day with blistering, was either +too late or ill-advised. On the 18th he saw more doctors, but was +manifestly sinking, amid the tears and lamentations of attendants who +could not understand each other's language. In his last hours his delirium +bore him to the field of arms. He fancied he was leading the attack on +Lepanto, and was heard exclaiming, "Forwards! forwards! follow me!" Who is +not reminded of another death-bed, not remote in time from his, and the +_Tête d'armée_ of the great Emperor who with the great Poet divided the +wonder of Europe? The stormy vision passed, and his thoughts reverted +home. "Go to my sister," he faltered out to Fletcher; "tell her--go to +Lady Byron--you will see her, and say"--nothing more could be heard but +broken ejaculations: "Augusta--Ada--my sister, my child. Io lascio qualche +cosa di caro nel mondo. For the rest, I am content to die." At six on the +evening of the 18th he uttered his last words, "[Greek: _Dei me nun +katheudein_];" and on the 19th he passed away. + +Never perhaps was there such a national lamentation. By order of +Mavrocordatos, thirty-seven guns--one for each year of the poet's life-- +were fired from the battery, and answered by the Turks from Patras with an +exultant volley. All offices, tribunals, and shops were shut, and a +general mourning for twenty-one days proclaimed. Stanhope wrote, on +hearing the news, "England has lost her brightest genius--Greece her +noblest friend;" and Trelawny, on coming to Mesolonghi, heard nothing in +the streets but "Byron is dead!" like a bell tolling through the silence +and the gloom. Intending contributors to the cause of Greece turned back +when they heard the tidings, that seemed to them to mean she was headless. +Her cities contended for the body, as of old for the birth of a poet. +Athens wished him to rest in the Temple of Theseus. The funeral service +was performed at Mesolonghi. But on the 2nd of May the embalmed remains +left Zante, and on the 29th arrived in the Downs. His relatives applied +for permission to have them interred in Westminster Abbey, but it was +refused; and on the 16th July they were conveyed to the village church of +Hucknall. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE. + +Lord Jeffrey at the close of a once-famous review quaintly laments: "The +tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber, and the +rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of +Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the +field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry, and the +blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." Of the +poets of the early part of this century, Lord John Russell thought Byron +the greatest, then Scott, then Moore. "Such an opinion," wrote a +_National_ reviewer, in 1860, "is not worth a refutation; we only smile at +it." Nothing in the history of literature is more curious than the +shifting of the standard of excellence, which so perplexes criticism. But +the most remarkable feature of the matter is the frequent return to power +of the once discarded potentates. Byron is resuming his place: his spirit +has come again to our atmosphere; and every budding critic, as in 1820, is +impelled to pronounce a verdict on his genius and character. The present +times are, in many respects, an aftermath of the first quarter of the +century, which was an era of revolt, of doubt, of storm. There succeeded +an era of exhaustion, of quiescence, of reflection. The first years of the +third quarter saw a revival of turbulence and agitation; and, more than +our fathers, we are inclined to sympathize with our grandfathers. Macaulay +has popularized the story of the change of literary dynasty which in our +island marked the close of the last, and the first two decades of the +present, hundred years. + +The corresponding artistic revolt on the continent was closely connected +with changes in the political world. The originators of the romantic +literature in Italy, for the most part, died in Spielberg or in exile. The +same revolution which levelled the Bastille, and converted Versailles and +the Trianon--the classic school in stone and terrace--into a moral +Herculaneum and Pompeii, drove the models of the so-called Augustan ages +into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated +by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great +writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for +the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a +peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke +with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again. +Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the +literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed +law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and +regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their +conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new +Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they +practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied +with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and +passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in +Shelley and in Byron. + +A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters, were in +some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption. The ruins +of the Scotch cathedrals and of the French nobility are warnings at once +against the excess that provokes and the excess that avenges. The revolt +against the _ancien régime_ in letters made possible the Ode that is the +high-tide mark of modern English inspiration, but it was parodied in page +on page of maundering rusticity. Byron saw the danger, but was borne +headlong by the rapids. Hence the anomalous contrast between his theories +and his performance. Both Wordsworth and Byron were bitten by Rousseau; +but the former is, at furthest, a Girondin. The latter, acting like Danton +on the motto "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace," sighs after _Henri +Quatre et Gabrièlle_. There is more of the spirit of the French Revolution +in _Don Juan_ than in all the works of the author's contemporaries; but +his criticism is that of Boileau, and when deliberate is generally absurd. +He never recognized the meaning of the artistic movement of his age, and +overvalued those of his works which the Unities helped to destroy. He +hailed Gifford as his Magnus Apollo, and put Rogers next to Scott in his +comical pyramid. "Chaucer," he writes, "I think obscene and contemptible." +He could see no merit in Spenser, preferred Tasso to Milton, and called +the old English dramatists "mad and turbid mountebanks." In the same +spirit he writes: "In the time of Pope it was all Horace, now it is all +Claudian." He saw--what fanatics had begun to deny--that Pope was a great +writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both +was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his +controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his +earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age +can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all +times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence.... +Your whole generation are not worth a canto of the _Dunciad_, or anything +that is his." All the while he was himself writing prose and verse, in +grasp if not in vigour as far beyond the stretch of Pope, as Pope is in +"worth and wit and sense" removed above his mimics. The point of the +paradox is not merely that he deserted, but that he sometimes imitated his +model, and when he did so, failed. Macaulay's judgment, that "personal +taste led him to the eighteenth century, thirst for praise to the +nineteenth," is quite at fault. There can be no doubt that Byron loved +praise as much as he affected to despise it. His note, on reading the +_Quarterly_ on his dramas, "I am the most unpopular man in England," is +like the cry of a child under chastisement; but he had little affinity, +moral or artistic, with the spirit of our so-called Augustans, and his +determination to admire them was itself rebellious. Again we are reminded +of his phrase, "I am of the opposition." His vanity and pride were +perpetually struggling for the mastery, and though he thirsted for +popularity he was bent on compelling it; so he warred with the literary +impulse of which he was the child. + +Byron has no relation to the master-minds whose works reflect a nation or +an era, and who keep their own secrets. His verse and prose is alike +biographical, and the inequalities of his style are those of his career. +He lived in a glass case, and could not hide himself by his habit of +burning blue lights. He was too great to do violence to his nature, which +was not great enough to be really consistent. It was thus natural for him +to pose as the spokesman of two ages--as a critic and as an author; and of +two orders of society--as a peer, and as a poet of revolt. Sincere in +both, he could never forget the one character in the other. To the last, +he was an aristocrat in sentiment, a democrat in opinion. "Vulgarity," he +writes with a pithy half-truth, "is far worse than downright black +guardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at +times, while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, +signifying nothing." He could never reconcile himself to the English +radicals; and it has been acutely remarked, that part of his final +interest in Greece lay in the fact that he found it a country of classic +memories, "where a man might be the champion of liberty without soiling +himself in the arena." He owed much of his early influence to the fact of +his moving in the circles of rank and fashion; but though himself steeped +in the prejudices of caste, he struck at them at times with fatal force. +Aristocracy is the individual asserting a vital distinction between itself +and "the muck o' the world." Byron's heroes all rebel against the +associative tendency of the nineteenth century; they are self-worshippers +at war with society; but most of them come to bad ends. He maligned +himself in those caricatures, and has given more of himself in describing +one whom with special significance we call a brother poet. "Allen," he +writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished letters.... +What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness-- +sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling--dirt and deity--all mixed +up in that one compound of inspired clay!" We have only to add to these +antitheses, in applying them with slight modification to the writer. Byron +had, on occasion, more self-control than Burns, who yielded to every +thirst or gust, and could never have lived the life of the soldier at +Mesolonghi; but partly owing to meanness, partly to a sound instinct, his +memory has been more severely dealt with. The fact of his being a nobleman +helped to make him famous, but it also helped to make him hated. No doubt +it half spoiled him in making him a show; and the circumstance has +suggested the remark of a humourist, that it is as hard for a lord to be a +perfect gentleman as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye. But it +also exposed to the rancours of jealousy a man who had nearly everything +but domestic happiness to excite that most corroding of literary passions; +and when he got out of gear he became the quarry of Spenser's "blatant +beast." On the other hand, Burns was, beneath his disgust at Holy Fairs +and Willies, sincerely reverential; much of _Don Juan_ would have seemed +to him "an atheist's laugh," and--a more certain superiority--he was +absolutely frank. + +Byron, like Pope, was given to playing monkey-like tricks, mostly +harmless, but offensive to their victims. His peace of mind was dependent +on what people would say of him, to a degree unusual even in the irritable +race; and when they spoke ill he was, again like Pope, essentially +vindictive. The _Bards and Reviewers_ beats about, where the lines to +Atticus transfix with Philoctetes' arrows; but they are due to a like +impulse. Byron affected to contemn the world; but, say what he would, he +cared too much for it. He had a genuine love of solitude as an alterative; +but he could not subsist without society, and, Shelley tells us, wherever +he went, became the nucleus of it. He sprang up again when flung to the +earth, but he never attained to the disdain he desired. + +We find him at once munificent and careful about money; calmly asleep amid +a crowd of trembling sailors, yet never going to ride without a nervous +caution; defying augury, yet seriously disturbed by a gipsy's prattle. He +could be the most genial of comrades, the most considerate of masters, and +he secured the devotion of his servants, as of his friends; but he was too +overbearing to form many equal friendships, and apt to be ungenerous to +his real rivals. His shifting attitude towards Lady Byron, his wavering +purposes, his impulsive acts, are a part of the character we trace through +all his life and work,--a strange mixture of magnanimity and brutality, of +laughter and tears, consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride, +yet redeeming all his defects by his graces, and wearing a greatness that +his errors can only half obscure. + +Alternately the idol and the horror of his contemporaries, Byron was, +during his life, feared and respected as "the grand Napoleon of the realms +of rhyme." His works were the events of the literary world. The chief +among them were translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, Polish, +Russian, Spanish. On the publication of Moore's _Life_, Lord Macaulay had +no hesitation in referring to Byron as "the most celebrated Englishman of +the nineteenth century." Nor have we now; but in the interval between +1840-1870, it was the fashion to talk of him as a sentimentalist, a +romancer, a shallow wit, a nine days' wonder, a poet for "green unknowing +youth." It was a reaction, such as leads us to disestablish the heroes of +our crude imaginations till we learn that to admire nothing is as sure a +sign of immaturity as to admire everything. + +The weariness, if not disgust, induced by a throng of more than usually +absurd imitators, enabled Carlyle, the poet's successor in literary +influence (followed with even greater unfairness by Thackeray), more +effectively to lead the counter-revolt. "In my mind," writes the former, +in 1839, "Byron has been sinking at an accelerated rate for the last ten +years, and has now reached a very low level.... His fame has been very +great, but I do not see how it is to endure; neither does that make him +great. No genuine productive thought was ever revealed by him to mankind. +He taught me nothing that I had not again to forgot." The refrain of +Carlyle's advice during the most active years of his criticism was, "Close +thy Byron, open thy Goethe." We do so, and find that the refrain of +Goethe's advice in reference to Byron is--"nocturnâ versate manu, versate +diurnâ." He urged Eckermann to study English that he might read him; +remarking, "A character of such eminence has never existed before, and +probably will never come again. The beauty of _Cain_ is such as we shall +not see a second time in the world.... Byron issues from the sea-waves +ever fresh. In _Helena_, I could not make use of any man as the +representative of the modern poetic era except him, who is undoubtedly the +greatest genius[1] of our century." Again: "Tasso's epic has maintained +its fame, but Byron is the burning bush, which reduces the cedar of +Lebanon to ashes.... The English may think of him as they please; this is +certain, they can show no (living) poet who is comparable to him.... But +he is too worldly. Contrast _Macbeth_, and _Beppo_, where you are in a +nefarious empirical world." On Eckermann's doubting "whether there is a +gain for pure culture in Byron's work," Goethe conclusively replies, +"There I must contradict you. The audacity and grandeur of Byron must +certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always +looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great +promotes cultivation, as soon as we are aware of it." + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Arnold wrongly objects to this translation of the + German "talent."] + +This verdict of the Olympian as against the verdict of the Titan is +interesting in itself, and as being the verdict of the whole continental +world of letters. "What," exclaims Castelar, "does Spain not owe to Byron? +From his mouth come our hopes and fears. He has baptized us with his +blood. There is no one with whose being some song of his is not woven. His +life is like a funeral torch over our graves." Mazzini takes up the same +tune for Italy. Stendhal speaks of Byron's "Apollonic power;" and Sainte +Beuve writes to the same intent, with some judicious caveats. M. Taine +concludes his survey of the romantic movement with the remark: "In this +splendid effort, the greatest are exhausted. One alone--Byron--attains the +summit. He is so great and so English, that from him alone we shall learn +more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest together." +Dr. Elze, ranks the author of _Harold_ and _Juan_ among the four greatest +English poets, and claims for him the intellectual parentage of Lamartine +and Musset in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with +some modifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy. +So many voices of so various countries cannot be simply set aside: unless +we wrap ourselves in an insolent insularism, we are bound at least to ask +what is the meaning of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can +manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the +above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious +shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost nothing +by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist. +Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza +will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into +clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with +a big brush were never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast between +his theoretic worship of his idol and his own practice reaches a climax. +If, as he professed to believe, "the best poet is he who best executes his +work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and +slovenly; an improvisatore on the spot whore his fancy is kindled, writing +_currente calamo_, and disdaining the "art to blot." "I can never recast +anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling +back to my jungle." He said to Medwin, "Blank verse is the most difficult, +because every line must be good." Consequently, his own blank verse is +always defective--sometimes execrable. No one else--except, perhaps, +Wordsworth--who could write so well, could also write so ill. This fact in +Byron's case seems due not to mere carelessness, but to incapacity. +Something seems to stand behind him, like the slave in the chariot, to +check the current of his highest thought. The glow of his fancy fades with +the suddenness of a southern sunset. His best inspirations are spoilt by +the interruption of incongruous commonplace. He had none of the guardian +delicacy of taste, or the thirst after completeness, which mark the +consummate artist. He is more nearly a dwarf Shakespeare than a giant +Popo. This defect was most mischievous where he was weakest, in his dramas +and his lyrics, least so where he was strongest, in his mature satires. It +is almost transmuted into an excellence in the greatest of these, which +is by design and in detail a temple of incongruity. + +If we turn from his manner to his matter, we cannot claim for Byron any +absolute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, +Chateaubriand, Beaumarchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, +Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyore, Wieland, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goethe, scraps +of the classics, and the Book of Job. Absolute originality in a late age +is only possible to the hermit, the lunatic, or the sensation novelist. +Byron, like the rovers before Minos, was not ashamed of his piracy. He +transferred the random prose of his own letters and journals to his +dramas, and with the same complacency made use of the notes jotted down +from other writers as he sailed on the Lake of Geneva. But he made them +his own by smelting the rough ore into bell metal. He brewed a cauldron +like that of Macbeth's witches, and from it arose the images of crowned +kings. If he did not bring a new idea into the world, he quadrupled the +force of existing ideas and scattered them far and wide. Southern critics +have maintained that he had a southern nature and was in his true element +on the Lido or under an Andalusian night. Others dwell on the English +pride that went along with his Italian habits and Greek sympathies. The +truth is, he had the power of making himself poetically everywhere at +home; and this, along with the fact of all his writings being perfectly +intelligible, is the secret of his European influence. He was a citizen of +the world; because he not only painted the environs, but reflected the +passions and aspirations of every scene amid which he dwelt. + +A disparaging critic has said, "Byron is nothing without his +descriptions." The remark only emphasizes the fact that his genius was not +dramatic. All non-dramatic art is concerned with bringing before us +pictures of the world, the value of which lies half in their truth, half +in the amount of human interest with which they are invested. To +scientific accuracy few poets can lay claim, and Byron less than most; but +the general truth of his descriptions is acknowledged by all who have +travelled in the same countries. The Greek verses of his first +pilgrimage,--e.g. the night scene on the Gulf of Arta, many of the +Albanian sketches, with much of the _Siege of Corinth_ and the _Giaour_ +--have been invariably commended for their vivid realism. Attention has +been especially directed to the lines in the _Corsair_ beginning-- + + But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain, + +as being the veritable voice of one + + Spell-bound, within the clustering Cyclades. + +The opening lines of the same canto, transplanted from the _Curse of +Minerva_, are even more suggestive:-- + + Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, + Along Morea's hill the setting sun, + Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, + But one unclouded blaze of living light, &c. + +In the same way, the later cantos of _Harold_ are steeped in Switzerland +and in Italy. Byron's genius, it is true, required a stimulus; it could +not have revelled among the daisies of Chaucer, or pastured by the banks +of the Doon or the Ouse, or thriven among the Lincolnshire fens. He had a +sincere, if somewhat exclusive, delight in the storms and crags that +seemed to respond to his nature and to his age. There is no affectation in +the expression of the wish, "O that the desert were my dwelling-place!" +though we know that the writer on the shores of the Mediterranean still +craved for the gossip of the clubs. It only shows that-- + + Two desires toss about + The poet's feverish blood; + One drives him to the world without, + And one to solitude. + +Of Byron's two contemporary rivals, Wordsworth had no feverish blood; +nothing drove him to the world without; consequently his "eyes avert their +ken from half of human fate," and his influence, though perennial, will +always be limited. He conquered England from his hills and lakes; but his +spirit has never crossed the Straits which he thought too narrow. The +other, with a fever in his veins, calmed it in the sea and in the cloud, +and, in some degree because of his very excellencies, has failed as yet to +mark the world at large. The poets' poet, the cynosure of enthusiasts, he +bore the banner of the forlorn hope; but Byron, with his feet of clay, led +the ranks. Shelley, as pure a philanthropist as St. Francis or Howard, +could forget mankind, and, like his Adonaïs, become one with nature. +Byron, who professed to hate his fellows, was of them even more than for +them, and so appealed to them through a broader sympathy, and held them +with a firmer hand. By virtue of his passion, as well as his power, he was +enabled to represent the human tragedy in which he played so many parts, +and to which his external universe of cloudless moons, and vales of +evergreen, and lightning-riven peaks, are but the various background. He +set the "anguish, doubt, desire," the whole chaos of his age, to a music +whose thunder-roll seems to have inspired the opera of _Lohengrin_--a +music not designed to teach or to satisfy "the budge doctors of the Stoic +fur," but which will continue to arouse and delight the sons and daughters +of men. + +Madame de Staël said to Byron, at Ouchy, "It does not do to war with the +world: the world is too strong for the individual." Goethe only gives a +more philosophic form to this counsel when he remarks of the poet, "He put +himself into a false position by his assaults on Church and State. His +discontent ends in negation.... If I call _bad_ bad, what do I gain? But +if I call _good_ bad, I do mischief." The answer is obvious: as long as +men call _bad_ good, there is a call for iconoclasts: half the reforms of +the world have begun in negation. Such comments also point to the common +error of trying to make men other than they are by lecturing them. This +scion of a long line of lawless bloods--a Scandinavian Berserker, if there +ever was one--the literary heir of the Eddas--was specially created to +wage that war--to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England +with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles +the hollow hypocrisy--sham taste, sham morals, sham religion--of the +society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but +succeeded in seducing him. But for the ethereal essence,-- + + The fount of fiery life + Which served for that Titanic strife, + +Byron would have been merely a more melodious Moore and a more +accomplished Brummell. But the caged lion was only half tamed, and his +continual growls were his redemption. His restlessness was the sign of a +yet unbroken will. He fell and rose, and fell again; but never gave up the +struggle that keeps alive, if it does not save, the soul. His greatness as +well as his weakness lay, in the fact that from boyhood battle was the +breath of his being. To tell him not to fight, was like telling Wordsworth +not to reflect, or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of +challenge; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an +unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine +mosaic; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder +Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit +of action and of enterprise. + +In good portraits his head has a lurid look, as if it had been at a higher +temperature than that of other men. That high temperature was the source +of his inspiration, and the secret of a spell which, during his life, +commanded homage and drew forth love. Mere artists are often mannikins. +Byron's brilliant though unequal genius was subordinate to the power of +his personality; he + + Had the elements + So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up + And say to all the world--"This was a man." + +We may learn much from him still, when we have ceased to disparage, as our +fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is so much warning and so +much example. + + + + +INDEX. + +_Abydos, Bride of_ +Adeline (Lady), analysis of female character +Albrizzi (Countess), salon of +Ali Pasha, his reception of Byron +Allegra, Byron's daughter +Athenians, character of +Athens +Aurora Raby, La Guiccioli idealised + +Becher's, Rev. J.T., influence on Byron +_Beppo_ +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blessington, Lady +_Blues, The_ +Boatswain (Byron's dog) +Bologna +Boston's _Fourfold State_ +Bowers, Byron's tutor +Bowles, controversy about Pope +Bozzaris, Marco, death of +Brandes, Prof., criticism of Byron's bust +_British Review, To the Editor of the_ +_Bronze, The Age of_ +Brougham's, Lord, criticism of _Hours of Idleness_ +Brown, Hamilton +Bruno, Dr. +Brydges, Sir Egerton, criticism of _Cain_ +Burns +Burun, an ancestor of Byron +Butler, Dr., master of Harrow +Byron, Augusta Ada (the poet's daughter) +Byron, George Gordon, 6th Lord + genealogy; + birth; + residence at Ballater; + school-life; + early loves; + "first dash into poetry"; + accession to peerage; + Baillie, Dr., medical adviser; + at Harrow; + coming of age; + writes review on Wordsworth; + Annesley, residence at; + at Cambridge; + takes seat in House of Lords; + travels; + studies Romaic; + Armenian; + attacks of fever; + speeches in House of Lords; + writes address on re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre; + publishes the _Giaour_; + friendship with Sir Walter Scott; + marriage; + separation from wife; + departure from England; + friendship with Shelley; + in Switzerland; + in Italy; + life in Venice + completes _Childe Harold_ + life at Ravenna + at Pisa + relations with Leigh Hunt + life in Albaro + joins conspiracy in Italy + joins movement for liberation of Greece + leaves Italy + life in Greece + last illness and death + last words + funeral honours +Byron, Lord + allusions in his poetry to his training + appreciation of + aristocratic sentiments + Austria, hatred of, characteristics + characteristics of literature in Byron's age + cleverness + comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth + contemporary admiration + debts + defects of character + defects of his poetry + descriptive power + dislike of professional _littérateurs_ + dissipations + dogmatism + early friends + financial affairs + follower of Pope + garrulity + idleness + knowledge of languages + knowledge of Scripture + in London society + lameness + love of mountains + melancholy + pecuniary profits + personal appearance + physical endurance + poetic character + politics + reading + relations to female sex + scholarship + Scotch superstition + social views + solitude + sources of Byron's work + swimming, feats of + tame bear + temper + theological views + verse-romances + women + estimate of + works translated +Byron, John, Admiral +Byron, John, of Clayton +Byron, John (father) +Byron, Lady (wife) +Byron, Mrs. (mother) +Byron, Richard (2nd Lord) +Byron, Robert de +Byron, Sir John (1st Lord) +Byron, Sir Nicholas +Byron, William (3rd Lord) +Byron, William (4th Lord) +Byron, William (5th Lord) + +Cadiz, estimate of +_Cain_ +Cambridge +Campbell, Thomas +Carbonari, a secret society +Carlisle, Lord +Carlyle +Castelar +_Cenci_ +Charlotte, Princess +Chasles, criticism by +Chatterton +Chaucer +Chaworth, Mary Ann +Chaworth, Mr. +Chaworth, Viscount +Cheltenham +_Childe Harold_ + criticism of +_Chillon, Prisoner of_ +_Christabel_ +_Churchill's Grave_ +Civil Wars +Clairmont, Miss, intimacy with +Clare, Lord, friendship with +Clermont, Mrs., Lady Byron's maid +Cogni, Margarita, intimacy with +Coleridge +Colocatroni, the brigand +Constantinople +_Corinth, Siege of_ +_Corsair_ +_Could I remount the River of my Years_ +Cowley +Cowper +Crabbe +_Curse of Minerva_ + +Dallas, R.C. +Dante +D'Arcy, Amelia (Countess Conyers) +_Darkness_ +Davies, Scrope +Davy, Sir H. +_Deformed Transformed_ +_Don Juan_ + criticism of +Doomsday Book +Dramas (Byron's) +_Dream, The_ +Drury, Dr. Joseph +Drury, Henry +Drury Lane Theatre +Drury, Mark +Dryden +Duff, Mary, intimacy with +Dulwich + +Eddlestone, the chorister +_Edinburgh Review_ +Ekenhead, Lieutenant +Eldon, Lord +Elgin, Lord +Elze +England's vice of hypocrisy +_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ +English character +English literature + +_Faery Queene_ (Spenser's) +Falkland, Lord +_Faust_, influence of, on Byron +Ferrara +Fletcher (valet) +Florence +_Foscari, The Two_ +_Francesca of Rimini_ +Frere + +Galt +Gamba +Gell +Geneva +Genoa +George, Prince of Denmark +George III. +_Giaour_ +Gibbon +Gibraltar +Gifford +_Glenarvon_ (Lady Caroline Lamb's novel) +Glennie, Dr. +Goethe +Gray, May, her influence over Byron +Gray (poet) +Greece +Grindelwald +Guiccioli + +Hailstone, Prof. +Hanson, Mr., solicitor +Harness, a school-fellow +Harrogate, trip to +Harrow +Hawthorne +_Heaven and Earth_ +Heber, Bishop +_Hebrew Melodies_ +_Hints from Horace_ +Hiron, a Cambridge tradesman +Hobhouse +Hodgson, Rev. F. +Holderness, Earl of +Holland, Lord +Hoppner +_Hours of Idleness_ +Howard, Hon. F. +Howitt, William +Hucknall Torkard, church +_Hudibras_ +Hunt, John +Hunt, Leigh + +Ilissus +Ilium +_Island, The_ +Italy +Ithaca + +Jackson, Mr., a pugilist +Janina +Jeffrey +Jones (tutor) +Journal (Byron's) +Juliet, story of +Jungfrau +_Juvenilia_ + +Keats +Kemble, Frances Ann, memoirs of +Kennedy, Dr. +Kharyati +Kinnaird, Douglas +Kirkby Mallory + +_Lalla Rookh_ +Lamb, Lady Caroline +La Mira +_Landlord, Tales of a_ +Landor +Lanfranchi +_Lara_ +Lausanne +Lavender, a quack +Lee, Harriet +Leeds, Duke of +Leghorn +Leigh, Colonel +Leigh, Mrs. (poet's sister Augusta) +Loman, Lake +Lepanto +Lewis +_Liberal_, the +Lido +Lion (pet dog) +Lisbon +Lisle, Rouget de +Loch Leven +Locke +Lockhart +London +Londonderry, Lord +Long, Edward Noel +Longman +Loughborough +Lucca +Lucifer +Lushington, Dr. + +Macaulay +Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling) +Mafra +Magellan, Straits of +Mallet +Malta +Mandeville, Sir John +_Manfred_ + criticism of +Mansel, Dr. Lort +Marathon +Marilyn, Mrs. +_Marina Faliero_ + criticism of +Marius +Marlowe +Martineau, Miss +Matlock +Matthews, C.S. +Mavrocordatos, Prince Alexander +Mayor, Dr. +_Mazeppa_ +Mazzini +Medora (daughter of Mrs. Leigh) +Medwin, Captain +Meister, Wilhelm +Melbourne +Memoirs (Byron's) +Mesolonghi +Milan +Milbanke, Sir Ralph +Milligen (a physician) +Milton +Moore +Morea +Morgan, Lady +_Morgantc Maggiore_ +Murray, Joe (butler) +Murray, John +Musters + +Napier, Colonel +Naples +Napoleon +Newark +Newbury, battle of +Nowstead +Noel, Lady +Norton, Mrs. +_Nottingham_ + +Odysseus +Ossington +Oxford + +Paganini +_Parisina_ +Parker, Margaret, intimacy with +Parr, Dr. +Parry (engineer) +Parthenon +Paterson (a tutor) +Patras +Peel, Sir Robert +Peloponnesus +Pentelicus +Persia +Petrarch +Philopoemen +Pigot +Pisa +Plato's Glaucus +_Pleasures of Hope_ +Po (river) +Polidori +Pope +Porson, 39 +Power, Miss +_Prometheus_ +Pulci + +_Quarterly Review_ + +_Rambler_ +Raphael +Ravenna +Regent, the +Regillus +Reid, Dr. +_Rejected Addresses_ +Revolution, the French +Rhine +Rhoetian hill +Richter +Robinson, Crabb +Rochdale +Rochester +Rogers, Samuel, (poet) +Rogers (tutor) +Roman Catholic Emancipation, speech on behalf of +Roman Catholic religion +Rome +Ross (a tutor) +Rossina +Rousseau +Rubens +Rushton, Robert +Ruskin +Russell, Lord John +Russia +Ruthyn, Lord Grey de + +Sainte Beuve +Santa Croce +_Saragassa, Maid of_ +Sardanapalus +_Saturday Review_ +Schlegel, F. +Scotland, allusions to +Scott, Sir Walter +Seaham +Segati, Mariana, intimacy with +Seville +Shakespeare +Shelley +Shelley, Mrs. +Shepherd, Mrs., letter of +Sheridan +Siddons, Mrs. +Sinclair, George, friend of Byron +Sligo, Marquis of +Smith, Mrs. Spencer ("Florence") +Smith, Sir Henry +Smyrna +Socrates +Soraete +Southey +Southwell +Spain +Spectator +Spencer, Earl +Spenser +Spielberg +Spinoza +Stael, Madame de +Stanhope, Colonel +Stanhope, Lady Hester +Staubbach +Stendhal +Stephen, Leslie +Stromboli +Suliotes +Swift +Swinstead +Switzerland + +Taafe +Taine +Tasso +Tavell (a tutor) +_Telegrapho_(newspaper) +Tennant +Tennyson +Tepaleni +Thackeray +Thebes +Theresa (Maid of Athens) +Thorwaldsen +Tickhill +Titian +Trelawny +Turkey +Tusculum + +University training + +_Vampire, The_ +Vanessa +Vathi +Venice +Verona +"Victory," the +_Vision of Judgment_ +Voltaire + +"Wager," the +_Waltz, The,_ +Washington +Waterloo +Watkins, Dr. John +Wellington +Wengern +_Werner_ +West (artist) +Westminster Abbey +Wildman +Williams, Captain +Wingfield, John +Woodhouselee, Lord +Wordsworth +_World_ +Wycliffe + +York +Yussuf Pasha + +Zante +Zitza + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Byron, by John Nichol + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10100 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e02b25f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10100 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10100) diff --git a/old/10100-8.txt b/old/10100-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3cf8101 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10100-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7037 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Byron, by John Nichol + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Byron + +Author: John Nichol + +Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10100] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYRON *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +BYRON + +BY + +JOHN NICHOL + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY + +CHAPTER II. +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL-LIFE. 1788-1808. + +CHAPTER III. +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HOURS OF IDLENESS--BARDS AND +REVIEWERS. 1808-1809. + +CHAPTER IV. +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 1809-1811. + +CHAPTER V. +LIFE IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT AND MOORE--SECOND PERIOD OF +AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (I., II.). AND THE ROMANCES. 1811-1815. + +CHAPTER VI. +MARRIAGE AND SEPARATION--FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 1815-1816. + +CHAPTER VII. +SWITZERLAND--VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (III., IV.) +--MANFRED. 1816-1820. + +CHAPTER VIII. +RAVENNA--COUNTESS GUICCIOLI--THE DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. +1820-1821. + +CHAPTER IX. +PISA--GENOA--THE LIBERAL--DON JUAN. 1821-1823. + +CHAPTER. X. +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. 1821-1824. + +CHAPTER XI. +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE + +INDEX + + + + +BOOKS CONSULTED. + +1. The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, Commodore, in a late + Expedition Round the World, &c. (Baker and Leigh) 1768 + +2. Voyage of H.M.S. _Blonde_ to the Sandwich Islands in the years + 1824-1825, the Right Hon. Lord Byron, Commander (John Murray) 1826 + +3. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron (H. + Colburn) 1822 + +4. The Life, Writings, Opinions, and Times of G.G. Noel Byron, with + courtiers of tho present polished and enlightened age, &c., &c., + 3 vols. (M. Hey) 1825 + +5. Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to Greece, from Journal of + Count Peter Gamba 1825 + +6. Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron at Pisa, 2 vols. (H. Colburn) + 1825 + +7. Leigh Hunt's Byron and His Contemporaries (H. Colburn) + 1828 + +8. The Works of Lord Byron, with Life by Thomas Moore, 17 + vols. (Murray) 1832 + +9. Galt's Life of Lord Byron (Colburn and Buntley) 1830 + +10. Kennedy's Conversations on Religion (Murray) 1830 + +11. Countess of Blessington's Conversations (Colburn) 1834 + +12. Lady Morgan's Memoirs, 2 vols. (W.H. Allen) 1842 + +13. Recollections of the Countess Guiccioli (Bentley) 1869 + +14. Castelar's Genius and Character of Byron (Tinsley) 1870 + +15. Elze's Life of Lord Byron (Murray) 1872 + +16. Trelawny's Reminiscences of Byron and Shelley 1858 + +17. Torrens' Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne (Macmillan) 1878 + +18. Rev. F. Hodgson's Memoirs, 2 vols. (Macimillan) 1879 + +19. Essays and Articles, or Recorded Criticisms, by Macaulay, Scott, + Shelley, Goethe, G. Brandes, Mazzini, Sainte Beuve, Chasles, H. + Taine, &c. + +20. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage 1879 + + + + +GENEALOGY OF THE BYRON FAMILY. + + +THE BYRON FAMILY, FROM THE CONQUEST + +Ralph de Burun (estates in Nottingham and Derby). +| +Hugh de Burun (Lord of Horestan). +| +Hugh de Buron (became a monk). +| +Sir Roger de Buron (gave lands to monks of Swinstead). +| +| Sir Richard Clayton. +| | +Robert de Byron. = Cecelia +| +Robert de Byron +| +Sir John Byron (Governor of York under Edward I.). +| +-------------------------------- +| | +Sir Richard Byron. Sir John (knighted at siege of Calais) +| +Sir John (knighted in 3rd year of Henry V.). +| +| Sir John Butler. +| | +Sir Nicholas. = Alice. +| +----------------------------------- +| | +Sir Nicholas (made K.B. at Sir John (knighted by Richmond + marriage of Prince Arthur, at Milford; fought at Bosworth; + died 1503). died 1488). +| +Sir John Byron = 2nd wife, widow of George Halgh. + (received grant of Newstead from Henry VIII., May 26,1540). +| +Bar // Sinister +| Sir Nicholas Strelleye +| | +John Byron, of Clayton = Alice + (inherited by gift, knighted by Elizabeth, 1579). +| +------------------------------------- +| | +| Sir Nicholas +| Sir Richard Molyneux +| | +Sir John = Anne + (K.B. at coronation of James I; Governor of Tower). +| +-------------------------------------- +| | +RICHARD, 2nd Lord (1605-1679) Sir JOHN 1st Lord (created + (Buried at Hucknal Torkard) Baron Byron of Rochdale, +| Oct. 24, 1643; at Newbury, +| Edgehill, Chester, &c. +| Viscount Chaworth Governor of Duke of York; died +| | at Paris, 1652). +WILLIAM, 3rd Lord = Elizabeth. + (died 1695) +| Lord Berkeley. +| | +WILLIAM, 4th Lord = Frances (3rd wife) + (1669-1736) +| +--------------------------- +| | +Admiral John (1723-1786) |- WILLIAM, 5th Lord (1722-1798) (killed Mr. +| "Foul-weather Jack"). | Chaworth; survived his sons +| | and a grandson, who died 1794; +| | called "The wicked Lord"). +| | +| | - Isabella = Lord Carlisle +| | +| Lord Carlisle (the poet's +| guardian). +--------------------------- +| | +| |- A daughter +| | | +| | Colonel Leigh +| | +| |- George Anson (1758-1793). +| | +| Admiral GEORGE ANSON, 7th Lord +| (1789-1868) +| | +| ---- +| |- Frederick +| | | +| | GEORGE F. WILLIAM, 9th and present +| | Lord Byron. +| | +| |- GEORGE, 8th Lord (1818-1870) +| +------------------- + | +1. Marchioness = John Byron (1751-1791) = 2. Miss Gordon of Gight + of Carmarthen | | + | | +Colonel Leigh = Augusta GEORGE GORDON, 6th Lord + | | (1788-1824). Married + Several daughters | Anna Isabella (1792-1860), + | daughter of Sir Ralph + | Milbanke and Judith, + | daughter of Sir Edward + | Noel (Viscount Wentworth), + | and by her had + ------------------------- + | + Earl Lovelace = Augusta-Ada (1815-1852). + | + -------------------------------------- + | | | +Mr. Blunt = Lady Anne. Byron Noel Ralph Gordon, + (died 1862) now Lord Wentworth + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. + +Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an +intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished to +be--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century. +Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record various +impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or +patronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey, +in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; an +American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion: +to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to +have been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first English +poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France, +Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud of +his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil +of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a +matter of no idle antiquarianism. + +There are legends of old Norse Buruns migrating from their home in +Scandinavia, and settling, one branch in Normandy, another in Livonia. To +the latter belonged a distant Marshal de Burun, famous for the almost +absolute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two members +of the family came over with the Conqueror, and settled in England. Of +Erneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more. +Ralph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book--our first +authentic record--as having estates in Nottinghamshire and Derby. His son +Hugh was lord of Horestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son of +the same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossington to +the monks of Lenton. Tim latter Hugh joined their order; but the race was +continued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery of +Swinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry II. (1155-1189), when +Robert de Byron adopted the spelling of his name afterwards retained, and +by his marriage with Cecilia, heir of Sir Richard Clayton, added to the +family possessions an estate; in Lancashire, where, till the time of Henry +VIII., they fixed their seat. The poet, relying on old wood-carvings at +Newstead, claims for some of his ancestors a part in the crusades, and +mentions a name not apparently belonging to that age-- + + Near Ascalon's towers, John of Horestan slumbers-- + +a romance, like many of his, possibly founded on fact, but incapable of +verification. + +Two grandsons of Sir Robert have a more substantial fame, having served +with distinction in the wars of Edward I. The elder of these was governor +of the city of York. Some members of his family fought at Cressy, and one +of his sons, Sir John, was knighted by Edward III. at the siege of Calais. +Descending through the other, Sir Richard, we come to another Sir John, +knighted by Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., on his landing at Milford. He +fought, with his kin, on the field of Bosworth, and dying without issue, +left the estates to his brother, Sir Nicholas, knighted in 1502, at the +marriage of Prince Arthur. The son of Sir Nicholas, known as "little Sir +John of the great beard," appears to have been a favourite of Henry VIII., +who made him Steward of Manchester and Lieutenant of Sherwood, and on the +dissolution of the monasteries presented him with the Priory of Newstead, +the rents of which were equivalent to about 4000l. of our money. Sir John, +who stepped into the Abbey in 1540, married twice, and the premature +appearance of a son by the second wife--widow of Sir George Halgh--brought +the bar sinister of which so much has been made. No indication of this +fact, however, appears in the family arms, and it is doubtful if the poet +was aware of a reproach which in any case does not touch his descent. The +"filius naturalis," John Byron of Clayton, inherited by deed of gift, and +was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1579. His descendants were prominent as +staunch Royalists during the whole period of the Civil Wars. At Edgehill +there were seven Byrons on the field. + + On Marston, with Rupert 'gainst traitors contending, + Four brothers enrich'd with their blood the bleak field. + +Sir Nicholas, one of the seven, is extolled as "a person of great +affability and dexterity, as well as martial knowledge, which gave great +life to the designs of the well affected." He was taken prisoner by the +Parliament while acting as governor of Chester. Under his nephew, Sir +John, Newstead is said to have been besieged and taken; but the knight +escaped, in the words of the poet--never a Radical at heart--a "protecting +genius, + + For nobler combats here reserved his life, + To lead the band where godlike Falkland foil." + +Clarendon, indeed, informs us, that on the morning before the battle, +Falkland, "very cheerful, as always upon action, put himself into the +first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment." This slightly antedates his +title. The first battle of Newbury was fought on September, 1643. For his +services there, and at a previous royal victory, over Waller in July, Sir +John was, on October 24th of the same year, created Baron of Rochdale, and +so became the first Peer of the family. + +This first lord was succeeded by his brother Richard (1605-1079), famous +in the war for his government and gallant defence of Newark. He rests in +the vault that now contains the dust of the greatest of his race, Hucknall +Torkard Church, where his epitaph records the fact that the family lost +all their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, "yet it pleased God +so to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that he +repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his +posterity, with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity." His +eldest son, William, the third Lord (died 1695), is worth remembering on +two accounts. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, and +so wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance: he +was a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods nor +columns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself a +poetaster, capable of the couplet,-- + + My whole ambition only does extend + To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend,-- + +an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to have +attained its desire. + +His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to +Prince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by his +third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a +strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The +eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of +the poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the +"Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and +subsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of the +passing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the +whole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners of +the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an +aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and +Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course +of the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose between +them about the management of game, so frivolous that one conjectures the +quarrel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of offence. Bets +were offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matter +had blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs, +and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to show +them an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow candle being placed +on the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, and +the hotel master rushing in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded. +There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, having received the +first lunge harmlessly in his waistcoat, had shortened his sword and run +his adversary through the body, with the boast, not uncharacteristic of +his grand nephew, "By G-d, I have as much courage as any man in England." +A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on a +charge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took place +in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for +six guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned a +verdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying his +fees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted +man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a +baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the +wildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the +carriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried to +drown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weird +legends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's +only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive +stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus +in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in +pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries +of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated his +heir presumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale,--a proceeding afterwards +challenged--and cut down the trees of Newstead, to spite him; but he +survived his three sons, his brother, and his only grandson, who was +killed in Corsica in 1794. + +On his own death in 1798, the estates and title passed to George Gordon, +then a child of ten, whom he used to talk of, without a shadow of +interest, as "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen." His sister Isabella +married Lord Carlisle, and became the mother of the fifth Earl, the poet's +nominal guardian. She was a lady distinguished for eccentricity of +manners, and (like her son satirized in the _Bards and Reviewers_) for the +perpetration of indifferent verses. The career of the fourth lord's second +son, John, the poet's grandfather, recalls that of the sea-kings from whom +the family claim to have sprung. Born in 1723, he at an early age entered +the naval service, and till his death in 1786 was tossed from storm to +storm. "He had no rest on sea, nor I on shore," writes his illustrious +descendant. In 1740 a fleet of five ships was sent out under Commodore +Anson to annoy the Spaniards, with whom we were then at war, in the South +Seas. Byron took service as a midshipman in one of those ships--all more +or less unfortunate--called "The Wager." Being a bad sailor, and heavily +laden, she was blown from her company, and wrecked in the Straits of +Magellan. The majority of the crew were cast on a bleak rock, which they +christened Mount Misery. After encountering all the horrors of mutiny and +famine, and being in various ways deserted, five of the survivors, among +them Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to the +Island of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They were +kept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. Iago, the capital of Chili, +and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brest +in October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at Dover in a Dutch vessel. + +This voyage is the subject of a well-known apostrophe in _The Pleasures of +Hope_, beginning-- + + And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his + native shore. In torrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep + Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, 'Twas his to mourn + misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled by the + rock. + +Byron's own account of his adventures, published in 1768, is remarkable +for freshness of scenery like that of our first literary traveller, Sir +John Mandeville, and a force of description which recalls Defoe. It +interests us more especially from the use that has been made of it in that +marvellous mosaic of voyages, the shipwreck, in _Don Juan_, the hardships +of his hero being, according to the poet-- + + Comparative + To those related in my grand-dad's narrative. + +In June, 1764, Byron sailed with two ships, the "Dolphin" and the "Tamar," +on a voyage of discovery arranged by Lord Egmont, to seek a southern +continent, in the course of which he took possession of the largest of the +Falkland Islands, again passed through the Magellanic Straits, and sailing +home by the Pacific, circumnavigated the globe. The planets so conspired +that, though his affable manners and considerate treatment made him always +popular with his men, sailors became afraid to serve under "foul-weather +Jack." In 1748 he married the daughter of a Cornish squire, John +Trevanion. They had two sons and three daughters. One of the latter +married her cousin (the fifth lord's eldest son), who died in 1776, +leaving as his sole heir the youth who fell in the Mediterranean in 1794. + +The eldest son of the veteran, John Byron, father of the poet, was born in +1751, educated at Westminster, and, having received a commission, became a +captain in the guards; but his character, fundamentally unprincipled, soon +developed itself in such a manner as to alienate him from his family. In +1778, under circumstances of peculiar effrontery, he seduced Amelia +D'Arcy, the daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, in her own right Countess +Conyers, then wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds. +"Mad Jack," as he was called, seems to have boasted of his conquest; but +the marquis, to whom his wife had hitherto been devoted, refused to +believe the rumours that were afloat, till an intercepted letter, +containing a remittance of money, for which Byron, in reverse of the usual +relations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pair +decamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained a +divorce, they were regularly married. Byron seems to have been not only +profligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he was +even more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, having +given birth to two daughters. One died in infancy; the other was Augusta, +the half sister and good genius of the poet, whose memory remains like a +star on the fringe of a thunder-cloud, only brighter by the passing of the +smoke of calumny. In 1807 she married Colonel Leigh, and had a numerous +family, most of whom died young. Her eldest daughter, Georgiana, married +Mr. Henry Trevanion. The fourth, Medora, had an unfortunate history, the +nucleus of an impertinent and happily ephemeral romance. + +The year after the death of his first wife, John Byron, who seems to have +had the fascinations of a Barry Lyndon, succeeded in entrapping a second. +This was Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight, a lady with considerable estates +in Aberdeenshire--which attracted the adventurer--and an overweening +Highland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts, +through his daughter Annabella, and the second Earl of Huntly. This union +suggested the ballad of an old rhymer, beginning-- + + O whare are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, + O whare are ye gaen, sae bonny and braw? + Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron, + To squander the lands o' Gight awa'. + +The prophecy was soon fulfilled. The property of the Scotch heiress was +squandered with impetuous rapidity by the English rake. In 1780 she left +Scotland for France, and returned to England toward the close of the +following year. On the 22nd of January, 1788, in Holles Street, London, +Mrs. Byron gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, sixth Lord. +Shortly after, being pressed by his creditors, the father abandoned both, +and leaving them with a pittance of 150 _l_ a year, fled to Valenciennes, +where he died, in August, 1791. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. + +Soon after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron took him to Scotland. After +spending some time with a relation, she, early in 1790, settled in a small +house at Aberdeen. Ere long her husband, who had in the interval +dissipated away his remaining means, rejoined her; and they lived together +in humble lodgings, until their tempers, alike fiery and irritable, +compelled a definite separation. They occupied apartments, for some time, +at the opposite ends of the same street, and interchanged visits. Being +accustomed to meet the boy and his nurse, the father expressed a wish that +the former should be sent to live with him, at least for some days. "To +this request," Moore informs us, "Mrs. Byron was at first not very willing +to accede; but, on the representation of the nurse that if he kept him +over one night he would not do so another, she consented. On inquiring +next morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he had +had quite enough of his young visitor." After a short stay in the north, +the Captain, extorting enough money from his wife to enable him to fly +from his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been a +relief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, that +her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an +anecdote of a similar outburst--attested by Sir W. Scott, who was present +on the occasion--before her marriage. Being present at a representation, +in Edinburgh, of the _Fatal Marriage_, when Mrs. Siddons was personating +Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of the +theatre, screaming out "O my Biron, my Biron." All we know of her +character shows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward, +but hysterical. She constantly boasted of her descent, and clung to the +courtesy title of "honourable," to which she had no claim. Her affection +and anger were alike demonstrative, her temper never for an hour secure. +She half worshipped, half hated, the blackguard to whom she was married, +and took no steps to protect her property; her son she alternately petted +and abused. "Your mother's a fool!" said a school companion to him years +after. "I know it," was his unique and tragic reply. Never was poet born +to so much illustrious, and to so much bad blood. The records of his +infancy betray the temper which he preserved through life--passionate, +sullen, defiant of authority, but singularly amenable to kindness. On +being scolded by his first nurse for having soiled a dress, without +uttering a word he tore it from top to seam, as he had seen his mother +tear her caps and gowns; but her sister and successor in office, May Gray, +acquired and retained a hold over his affections, to which he has borne +grateful testimony. To her training is attributed the early and remarkable +knowledge of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms, which he possessed: +he was, according to her later testimony, peculiarly inquisitive and +puzzling about religion. Of the sense of solitude, induced by his earliest +impressions, he characteristically makes a boast. "My daughter, my wife, +my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural daughter, and +myself, are or were all only children. But the fiercest animals have the +fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, &c." + +To this practical orphanhood, and inheritance of feverish passion, there +was added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physical +defect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned to +a high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter Scott +was lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over that +serene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest prose and +verse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope, we must +remember that he was a cripple: and Byron never allows us to forget, +because he himself never forgot it. Accounts differ as to the extent and +origin of his deformity; and the doubts on the matter are not removed by +the inconsistent accounts of the indelicate post-mortem examination made +by Mr. Trelawny at Mesolonghi. It is certain that one of the poet's feet +was, either at birth or at a very early period, so seriously clubbed or +twisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable extent his habits. It +also appears that the surgical means--boots, bandages, &c.--adopted to +straighten the limb, only aggravated the evil. His sensitiveness on the +subject was early awakened by careless or unfeeling references. "What a +pretty boy Byron is," said a friend of his nurse. "What a pity he has such +a leg." On which the child, with flashing eyes, cutting at her with a +baby's whip, cried out, "Dinna speak of it." His mother herself, in her +violent fits, when the boy ran round the room laughing at her attempts to +catch him, used to say he was a little dog, as bad as his father, and to +call him "a lame brat"--an incident, which, notoriously suggested the +opening scene of the _Deformed Transformed_. In the height of his +popularity he fancied that the beggars and street-sweepers in London were +mocking him. He satirized and discouraged dancing; he preferred riding and +swimming to other exercises, because they concealed his weakness; and on +his death-bed asked to be blistered in such a way that he might not be +called on to expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and +others, assure us that in society few would have observed the defect if he +had not referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and therefore +never far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men. + +In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys, taught +by a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeat +monosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a devout and +clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to his own account he +made astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Roman +history, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Long +afterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum and looking down on +the little round lake, he remembered his young enthusiasm and his old +instructor. He next came under the charge of a tutor called Paterson, whom +he describes as "a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man. He was the +son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar. With him I began Latin, and +continued till I went to the grammar school, where I threaded all the +classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of my +uncle." + +Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn from +scattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low in +his class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand high; but +that he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuriating in the +_Arabian Nights_. He was an indifferent penman, and always disliked +mathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eager +for adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than to +take one, affectionate, though resentful. + +When his cousin was killed at Corsica, in 1794, he became the next heir to +the title. In 1797, a friend, meaning to compliment the boy, said, "We +shall have the pleasure some day of reading your speeches in the House of +Commons," he, with precocious consciousness, replied, "I hope not. If you +read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords." Similarly, +when, in the course of the following year, the fierce old man at Newstead +died, and the young lord's name was called at school with "Dominus" +prefixed to it, his emotion was so great that he was unable to answer, and +burst into tears. + +Belonging to this period is the somewhat shadowy record of a childish +passion for a distant cousin slightly his senior, Mary Duff, with whom he +claims to have fallen in love in his ninth year. We have a quaint picture +of the pair sitting on the grass together, the girl's younger sister +beside them playing with a doll. A German critic gravely remarks, "This +strange phenomenon places him beside Dante." Byron himself, dilating on +the strength of his attachment, tells us that he used to coax a maid to +write letters for him, and that when he was sixteen, on being informed, by +his mother, of Mary's marriage, he nearly fell into convulsions. But in +the history of the calf-loves of poets it is difficult to distinguish +between the imaginative afterthought and the reality. This equally applies +to other recollections of later years. Moore remarks--"that the charm of +scenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and association, should +be felt at an age when fancy is yet hardly awake and associations are but +few, can with difficulty he conceived." But between the ages of eight and +ten, an appreciation of external beauty is sufficiently common. No one +doubts the accuracy of Wordsworth's account, in the _Prelude_ of his early +half-sensuous delight in mountain glory. It is impossible to define the +influence of Nature, either on nations or individuals, or to say +beforehand what selection from his varied surroundings a poet will for +artistic purposes elect to make. Shakespeare rests in meadows and glades, +and leaves to Milton "Teneriffe and Atlas." Burns, who lived for a +considerable part of his life in daily view of the hills of Arran, never +alludes to them. But, in this respect like Shelley, Byron was inspired by +a passion for the high-places of the earth. Their shadow is on half his +verse. "The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow" perpetually +remind him of one of his constantly recurring refrains,-- + + He who surpasses or subdues mankind, + Must look down on the hate of those below. + +In the course of 1790, after an attack of scarlet fever at Aberdeen he was +taken by his mother to Ballater, and on his recovery spent much of his +time in rambling about the country. "From this period," he says, "I date +my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, years +afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in +miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to +Cheltenham I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a +sensation which I cannot describe." Elsewhere, in _The Island_ he returns, +amid allusions to the Alps and Apennines, to the friends of his youth:-- + + The infant rapture still survived the boy, + And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy, + Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, + And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. + +The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we +are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the +easily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has made +such effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none the +less genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in _Don Juan_, to +Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of his +early training:-- + + But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred + A whole one; and my heart flies to my head + As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all-- + Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, + The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall-- + All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams + Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, + Like Banquo's offspring... + +Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent. His satire on +her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal +antipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady +remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst +out "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d----d country was +sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which we +have quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,-- + + I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit, + Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly. + Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit; + They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. + I scotch'd, not kill'd, the Scotchman in my blood, + And love the land of mountain and of flood. + +This suggests a few words on a question of more than local interest. +Byron's most careful biographer has said of him: "Although on his first +expedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yet +the whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anything +but Scottish. Scottish nationality is tainted with narrow and provincial +elements. Byron's poetic character, on the other hand, is universal and +cosmopolitan. He had no attachment to localities, and never devoted +himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." +Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the most +un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts +are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, +has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering +energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but +from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like +manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics +forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from +the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time +has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. Of +late years, the struggle for existence, the temptations of a too ambitious +and over active people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing effect of +the constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, have +for the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence. These +qualities have been adequately combined in Scott alone, the one massive +and complete literary type of his race. Burns, to his ruin, had only the +fire: the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects less +genuine, was indefinitely and inevitably wider. His intensely susceptible +nature took a dye from every scene, city, and society through which he +passed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of a descendant of the +Sea-Kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains he had first learned to +listen to the sound of the "two mighty voices" that haunted and inspired +him through life. + +In the autumn of 1798 the family, i.e. his mother--who had sold the whole +of her household furniture for 75 _l_--with himself, and a maid, set +south. The poet's only recorded impression of the journey is a gleam of +Loch Leven, to which he refers in one of his latest letters. He never +revisited the land of his childhood. Our next glimpse of him is on his +passing the toll-bar of Newstead. Mrs. Byron asked the old woman who kept +it, "Who is the next heir?" and on her answer "They say it is a little boy +who lives at Aberdeen," "This is he, bless him!" exclaimed the nurse. + +Returned to the ancestral Abbey, and finding it half ruined and desolate, +they migrated for a time to the neighbouring Nottingham. Here the child's +first experience was another course of surgical torture. He was placed +under the charge of a quack named Lavender, who rubbed his foot in oil, +and screwed it about in wooden machines. This useless treatment is +associated with two characteristic anecdotes. One relates to the endurance +which Byron, on every occasion of mere physical trial, was capable of +displaying. Mr. Rogers, a private tutor, with whom he was reading passages +of Virgil and Cicero, remarked, "It makes me uncomfortable, my lord, to +see you sitting them in such pain as I know you must be suffering." "Never +mind, Mr. Rogers." said the child, "you shall not see any signs of it in +me." The other illustrates his precocious delight in detecting imposture. +Having scribbled on a piece of paper several lines of mere gibberish, he +brought them to Lavender, and gravely asked what language it was; and on +receiving the answer "It is Italian," he broke into an exultant laugh at +the expense of his tormentor. Another story survives, of his vindictive +spirit giving birth to his first rhymes. A meddling old lady, who used to +visit his mother and was possessed of a curious belief in a future +transmigration to our satellite--the bleakness of whose scenery she had +not realized--having given him some cause of offence, he stormed out to +his nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented his +wrath in the quatrain.-- + + In Nottingham county there lives, at Swan Green, + As curst an old lady as ever was seen; + And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, + She firmly believes she will go to the moon. + +The poet himself dates his "first dash into poetry" a year later (1800), +from his juvenile passion for his cousin Margaret Parker, whose subsequent +death from an injury caused by a fall he afterwards deplored in a +forgotten elegy. "I do not recollect," he writes through the transfiguring +mists of memory, "anything equal to the _transparent_ beauty of my cousin, +or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our +intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbow--all beauty +and peace. My passion had the usual effects upon me--I could not sleep; I +could not eat; I could not rest. It was the texture of my life to think of +the time that must elapse before we could meet again. But I was a fool +then, and not much wiser now." _Sic transit secunda_. + +The departure at a somewhat earlier date of May Gray for her native +country, gave rise to evidence of another kind of affection. On her +leaving he presented her with his first watch, and a miniature by Kay of +Edinburgh, representing him with a bow and arrow in his hand and a +profusion of hair over his shoulders. He continued to correspond with her +at intervals. Byron was always beloved by his servants. This nurse +afterwards married well, and during her last illness, in 1827, +communicated to her attendant, Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, recollections of the +poet, from which his biographers have drawn. + +In the summer of 1799 he was sent to London, entrusted to the medical care +of Dr. Baillie (brother of Joanna, the dramatist), and placed in a +boarding school at Dulwich, under the charge of Dr. Glennie. The physician +advised a moderation in athletic sports, which the patient in his hours of +liberty was constantly apt to exceed. The teacher--who continued to +cherish an affectionate remembrance of his pupil, even when he was told, +on a visit to Geneva in 1817, that, he ought to have "made a better boy of +him"--testifies to the alacrity with which he entered on his tasks, his +playful good-humour with his comrades, his reading in history beyond his +age, and his intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. "In my study," he +states, "he found many books open to him; among others, a set of our poets +from Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more +than once perused from beginning to end." One of the books referred to was +the _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the "Juno,"_ which contains, almost +word for word, the account of the "two fathers," in _Don Juan_. Meanwhile +Mrs. Byron,--whose reduced income had been opportunely augmented by a +grant of a 300_l_. annuity from the Civil List,--after revisiting Newstead +followed her son to London, and took up her residence in a house in +Sloane-terrace. She was in the habit of having him with her there from +Saturday to Monday, kept him from school for weeks, introduced him to idle +company, and in other ways was continually hampering his progress. + +Byron on his accession to the peerage having become a ward in Chancery, +was handed over by the Court to the guardianship of Lord Carlisle, nephew +of the admiral, and son of the grand aunt of the poet. Like his mother +this Earl aspired to be a poet, and his tragedy, _The Father's Revenge_, +received some commendation from Dr. Johnson; but his relations with his +illustrious kinsman were from the first unsatisfactory. In answer to Dr. +Glennie's appeal, he exerted his authority against the interruptions to +his ward's education; but the attempt to mend matters led to such +outrageous exhibitions of temper that he said to the master, "I can have +nothing more to do with Mrs. Byron; you must now manage her as you can." +Finally, after two years of work, which she had done her best to mar, she +herself requested his guardian to have her son removed to a public school, +and accordingly he went to Harrow, where he remained till the autumn of +1805. The first vacation, in the summer of 1801, is marked by his visit to +Cheltenham, where his mother, from whom he inherited a fair amount of +Scotch superstition, consulted a fortune-teller, who said he would be +twice married, the second time to a foreigner. + +Harrow was then under the management of Dr. Joseph Drury, one of the most +estimable of its distinguished head-masters. His account of the first +impressions produced by his pupil, and his judicious manner of handling a +sensitive nature, cannot with advantage be condensed. "Mr. Hanson," he +writes, "Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of +thirteen and a half, with remarks that his education had been neglected; +that he was ill prepared for a public school; but that he thought there +was a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young disciple +into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by inquiries as to his +former amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or no +effect, and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to +my management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it was +necessary to attach him to an elder boy; but the information he received +gave him no pleasure when he heard of the advances of some much younger +than himself. This I discovered, and assured him that he should not be +placed till by diligence he might rank with those of his own age. His +manner and temper soon convinced me that he might be led by a silken +string to a point, rather than a cable: on that principle I acted." + +After a time, Dr. Drury tells us that he waited on Lord Carlisle, who +wished to give some information about his ward's property and to inquire +respecting his abilities, and continues: "On the former circumstance I +made no remark; as to the latter I replied, 'He has talents, my lord, +which will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed!' said his lordship, with a +degree of surprise that, according to my feeling, did not express in it +all the satisfaction I expected." With, perhaps, unconscious humour on the +part of the writer, we are left in doubt as to whether the indifference +proceeded from the jealousy that clings to poetasters, from incredulity, +or a feeling that no talent could add lustre to rank. + +In 1804 Byron refers to the antipathy his mother had to his guardian. +Later he expresses gratitude for some unknown service, in recognition of +which the second edition of the _Hours of Idleness_ was dedicated "by his +obliged ward and affectionate kinsman," to Lord Carlisle. The tribute +being coldly received, led to fresh estrangement, and when Byron, on his +coming of age, wrote to remind the Earl of the fact, in expectation of +being introduced to the House of Peers, he had for answer a mere formal +statement of its rules. This rebuff affected him as Addison's praise of +Tickell affected Pope, and the following lines, were published in the +March of the same year:-- + + Lords too are bards! such things at times befall, + And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all. + Yet did or taste or reason sway the times, + Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes. + Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled, + No future laurels deck a noble head; + No muse will cheer, with renovating smile + The paralytic puling of Carlisle. + +In prose he adds, "If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in +favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful +dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I +seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was +frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he +expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to +the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of _Childe +Harold_, he tried to make amends in the lines-- + + Yet one I would select from that proud throng, + Partly because they blend me with his line, + And partly that I did his sire some wrong. + +This is all of any interest we know regarding the fitful connection of the +guardian and ward. + +Towards Dr. Drury the poet continued through life to cherish sentiments of +gratitude, and always spoke of him with veneration. "He was," he says, +"the best, the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had; and I look +on him still as a father, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, +though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but followed +when I have done well or wisely." + +Great educational institutions must consult the greatest good of the +greatest number of common-place minds, by regulations against which genius +is apt to kick; and Byron, who was by nature and lack of discipline +peculiarly ill fitted to conform to routine, confesses that till the last +year and a half he hated Harrow. He never took kindly to the studies of +the place, and was at no time an accurate scholar. In the _Bards and +Reviewers_, and elsewhere, he evinces considerable familiarity with the +leading authors of antiquity, but it is doubtful whether he was able to +read any of the more difficult of them in the original. His translations +are generally commonplace, and from the marks on his books he must have +often failed to trust his memory for the meanings of the most ordinary +Greek words. To the well-known passage in _Childe Harold_ on Soracte and +the "Latian echoes" he appends a prose comment, which preserves its +interest as hearing on recent educational controversies:--"I wish to +express that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the +beauty; that we learn by rote, before we get by heart; that the freshness +is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and +destroyed, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of +composition, which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin +and Greek, to relish or to reason upon.... In some parts of the continent +young persons are taught from common authors, and do not read the best +classics till their maturity." + +Comparatively slight stress was then laid on modern languages. Byron +learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar +with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so +little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his +meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was +the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the +extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of +books, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and biography than most men +of education read during a long life; a fair load of philosophy; the poets +en masse; among orators, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debates +from the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, including +Blair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition--"all very +tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God +without the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of +"Miscellanies" we have _Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c_; among novels, +the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, +Rabelais, and Rousseau. He recommends Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ as +the best storehouse for second-hand quotations, as Sterne and others have +found it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perused +before the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of the +poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically _"Dichtang und Wahrheit,"_ +we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader--"I read eating, read in +bed, read when no one else reads"--and, having a memory only less +retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be +suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never +read a Review till he was eighteen years old--when, he himself wrote one, +utterly worthless, on Wordsworth. + +At Harrow, Byron proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of +"few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of +hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would +tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and +power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded +praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial +than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into +poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his +way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the +impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader +among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in +1805, the headship of Harrow changed hands. Dr. Drury retired, and was +succeeded by Dr. Butler. This event suggested the lines beginning,-- + + Where are those honours, Ida, once your own, + When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne? + +The appointment was generally unpopular among the boys, whose sympathies +were enlisted in favour of Mark Drury, brother of their former master, and +Dr. Butler seems for a time to have had considerable difficulty in +maintaining discipline. Byron, always "famous for rowing," was a +ringleader of the rebellious party, and compared himself to Tyrlaeus. On +one occasion he tore down the window gratings in a room of the +school-house, with the remark that they darkened the hall; on another he +is reported to have refused a dinner invitation from the master, with the +impertinent remark that he would never think of asking him in return to +dine at Newstead. On the other hand, he seems to have set limits to the +mutiny, and prevented some of the boys from setting their desks on fire by +pointing to their fathers' names carved on them. Byron afterwards +expressed regret for his rudeness; but Butler remains in his verse as +Pomposus "of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul." + +Of the poet's free hours, during the last years of his residence which he +refers to as among the happiest of his life, many were spent in solitary +musing by an elm-tree, near a tomb to which his name has been given--a +spot commanding a far view of London, of Windsor "bosomed high in tufted +trees," and of the green fields that stretch between, covered in spring +with the white and red snow of apple blossom. The others were devoted to +the society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was +one of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at the +choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling +he so pathetically expresses,-- + + Is there no cause beyond the common claim, + Endear'd to all in childhood's very name? + Ah, sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, + Which whispers Friendship will be doubly dear + To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, + And seek abroad the love denied at home. + Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee-- + A home, a world, a paradise to me. + +Of his Harrow intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, the +poet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the Lycus of the _Childish +Recollections_); Lord Delawarr (the Euryalus); John Wingfield (Alonzo), +who died at Coimbra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus); Edward Noel Long +(Cleon); Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead; and Sir Robert Peel. +Of the last, his form-fellow and most famous of his mates, the story is +told of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fag +master, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half the +blows. Peel was an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year, +1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were his +juniors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites. +But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him the +nickname of "the old English baron." To Wildman, who, as a senior, had a +right of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, "I find you have +got Delawarr on your list; pray don't lick him." "Why not?" was the reply. +"Why, I don't know, except that he is a brother peer." Again, he +interfered with the more effectual arm of physical force to rescue a +junior protégé--lame like himself, and otherwise much weaker--from the +ill-treatment of some hulking tyrant. "Harness," he said, "if any one +bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him if I can;" and he kept his word. +Harness became an accomplished clergyman and minor poet, and has left some +pleasing reminiscences of his former patron. The prodigy of the school, +George Sinclair, was in the habit of writing the poet's exercises, and +getting his battles fought for him in return. His bosom friend was Lord +Clare. To him his confidences were most freely given, and his most +affectionate verses addressed. In the characteristic stanzas entitled +"L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes," we feel as if between them the +qualifying phrase might have been omitted: for their letters, carefully +preserved on either side, are a record of the jealous complaints and the +reconciliations of lovers. In 1821 Byron writes, "I never hear the name +Clare without a beating of the heart even now; and I write it with the +feelings of 1803-4-5, ad infinitum." At the same date he says of an +accidental meeting: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between the +present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable +feeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was much +agitated--more in appearance than I was myself--for I could feel his heart +beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own +which made me think so. We were but five minutes together on the public +road, but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence that could be weighed +against them." They were "all that brothers should be but the name;" and +it is interesting to trace this relationship between the greatest genius +of the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age, +stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters and +ranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled. + +Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of a +passion of another kind, with a result that unhappily coloured his life. +Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, the +heiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of the +race that had held with his such varied relations. In one of his letters +ho dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seems +not to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, in +the autumn of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masquerade +there and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the +following year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the course +of a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at the +Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This was +the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, who +invited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return every +evening to Newstead, giving the excuse that the family pictures would come +down and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeated +in the _Siege of Corinth_. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley, +which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of +1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion to +Matlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, with +the exception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of his +first real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest; he wished to marry +Miss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have "joined broad lands, +healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart." + +The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought before us in an +account of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the lady +and the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he had +never told his love; but that she had discovered--it is obvious that she +never returned--it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when +she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of their +riding together in the country on their return to the family residence; +again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of +"Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her +maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs--"Do you +think I could care for that lame boy?"--upon which he rushed out of the +house, and ran, like a hunted creature, to Newstead. Thence he shortly +returned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at +Harrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of +Annesley--an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have +the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the next +time I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?" "I hope so," she replied (her +betrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). The +announcement of her marriage, which took place in August, 1805, was made +to him by his mother, with the remark, "I have some news for you. Take out +your handkerchief; you will require it." On hearing what she had to say, +with forced calm he turned the conversation to other subjects; but he was +long haunted by a loss which he has made the theme of many of his verses. +In 1807 he sent to the lady herself the lines beginning,-- + + O had my fate been join'd with thine. + +In the following year he accepted an invitation to dine at Annesley, and +was visibly affected by the sight of the infant daughter of Mrs. Chaworth, +to whom he addressed a touching congratulation. Shortly afterwards, when +about to leave England for the first time, he finally addressed her in the +stanzas,-- + + 'Tis done, and shivering in the gale, + The bark unfurls her snowy sail. + +Some years later, having an opportunity of revisiting the family of his +successful rival, Mrs. Leigh dissuaded him. "Don't go," she said, "for if +you do you will certainly fall in love again, and there will be a scene." +The romance of the story culminates in the famous _Dream_, a poem of +unequal merit, but containing passages of real pathos, written in the year +1816 at Diodati, as we are told, amid a flood of tears. + +Miss Chaworth's attractions, beyond those of personal beauty, seem to have +been mainly due--a common occurrence--to the poet's imagination. A young +lady, two years his senior, of a lively and volatile temper, she enjoyed +the stolen interviews at the gate between the grounds, and laughed at the +ardent letters, passed through a confidant, of the still awkward youth +whom she regarded as a boy. She had no intuition to divine the presence, +or appreciate the worship, of one of the future master-minds of England, +nor any ambition to ally herself with the wild race of Newstead, and +preferred her hale, commonplace, fox-hunting squire. "She was the beau +ideal," says Byron, in his first accurate prose account of the affair, +written 1823, a few days before his departure for Greece, "of all that my +youthful fancy could paint of beautiful. And I have taken all my fables +about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination +created in her. I say created; for I found her, like the rest of the sex, +anything but angelic." + +Mrs. Musters (her husband re-asserted his right to his own name) had in +the long-run reason to regret her choice. The ill-assorted pair after some +unhappy years resolved on separation; and falling into bad health and +worse spirits, the "bright morning star of Annesley" passed under a cloud +of mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottingham +riot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancient +family was sold by auction and scattered to the winds. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. + +In October, 1805, on the advice of Dr. Drury, Byron was removed to Trinity +College, Cambridge, and kept up a connexion with the University for less +than three years of very irregular attendance, during which we hear +nothing of his studies, except the contempt for them expressed in some of +the least effective passages of his early satires. He came into residence +in bad temper and low spirits. His attachment to Harrow characteristically +redoubled as the time drew near to leave it, and his rest was broken "for +the last quarter, with counting the hours that remained." He was about to +start by himself, with the heavy feeling that he was no longer a boy, and +yet, against his choice, for he wished to go to Oxford. The _Hours of +Idleness_, the product of this period, are fairly named. He was so idle as +regards "problems mathematic," and "barbarous Latin," that it is matter of +surprise to learn that he was able to take his degree, as he did in March, +1808. + +A good German critic, dwelling on the comparatively narrow range of +studies to which the energies of Cambridge were then mainly directed, adds +somewhat rashly, that English national literature stands for the most part +beyond the range of the academic circle, This statement is often +reiterated with persistent inaccuracy; but the most casual reference to +biography informs us that at least four-fifths of the leading statesmen, +reformers, and philosophers of England, have been nurtured within the +walls of her universities, and cherished a portion of their spirit. From +them have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of our +history, kindled the nation into a new life; from the age of Wycliffe, +through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign of +the Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have been +wholly "without the academic circle." Analysing with the same view the +lives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we find +the proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" and +if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, the +comparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activities +around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the +ancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its +resources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and +conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be +snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced for +his country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubbling +with spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, the +discipline is hard, and the restraint excessive; and that the men whom +their colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely. +Bacon inveighs against the scholastic trifling of his day; Milton talks of +the waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the logic of the +schools; Cowley complains of being taught words, not things; Gibbon +rejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen; +Wordsworth contemns the "trade in classic niceties," and roves "in +magisterial liberty" by the Cam, as afterwards among the hills. + +But all those hostile critics owe much to the object of their +animadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the preference of Light to Fruit in +the _Novum Organum_, half of _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, the stately periods of +the _Decline and Fall_, and the severe beauties of _Laodamia_, to the +better influences of academic training on the minds of their authors. +Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work--from the date of _The Curse +of Minerva_ to that of the "Isles of Greece"--are brightened by lights and +adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the +slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by +the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he +continued to rail as late as the publication of _Beppo_, in the 75th and +76th stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint,-- + + One hates an author that's all author, fellows + In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink-- + So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous, + One don't know what to say to them, or think. + +Then, after commending Scott, Bogers, and Moore for being men of the +world, he proceeds:-- + + But for the children of the "mighty mother's," + The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen, + I leave them to the daily "Tea is ready," + Snug coterie, and literary lady. + +This attack, which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity +from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound +enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, +of professional _littérateurs_, and was always haunted by a dread that +they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He +aspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction, that of a +"lord among wits, and among wits a lord." In this same spirit lie resented +the comparison frequently made between him and Rousseau, and insisted on +points of contrast. "He had a bad memory, I a good one. He was of the +people; I of the aristocracy." Byron was capable, of unbending, where the +difference of rank was so great that it could not be ignored. On this +principle we may explain his enthusiastic regard for the chorister +Eddlestone, from whom he received the cornelian that is the theme of some +of his verses, and whose untimely death in 1811 he sincerely mourned. + +Of his Harrow friends, Harness and Long in due course followed him to +Cambridge, where their common pursuits were renewed. With the latter, who +was drowned in 1809, on a passage to Lisbon with his regiment, he spent a +considerable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in which +art they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coins +from a depth of fourteen feet--incidents recalled to the poet's mind by +reading Milton's invocation to Sabrina. During the, same period he +distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of +his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted +marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them +wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed +a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge +as Scott, and more ready to send one. + +Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to +say. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he +commends the head of his college, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanour +in his office, and a past reputation for convivial wit. His attentions to +Professor Hailstones at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received; +but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account of +Porson, "hiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was first +introduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose +talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most +of whom are interesting on their own account as well as from their +connection with the subsequent phases of his career. By common consent +Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, was +the most remarkable of the group. Distinguished alike for scholarship, +physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humour of fancy, and +fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impression +on the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austin +on those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron always +regarded as an incalculable calamity. In a note to _Childe Harold_ he +writes, "I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, were +he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in the +attainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates, than those of +any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his +fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in +the recollection of friends, who loved him too well to envy his +superiority." He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of the +Cam, in the summer of 1811. + +In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request +for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much +autobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, he +writes: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, +talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to +Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to +some other subject, at which he was indignant. 'Come,' said he, 'don't let +us break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;' and so +he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had +previously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in +Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones (his tutor), in his odd way had +said, in putting him in, 'Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not +to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of +_tumultuous passions_.' Matthews was delighted with this, and whenever +anybody came, to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with +caution, and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner.... +He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Irishman, +named F., one evening beginning to say something at a large supper, +Matthews roared 'Silence!' and then pointing to F., cried out, in the +words of the oracle, 'Orson is endowed with reason.' When Sir Henry Smith +was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named 'Hiron,' +Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every +evening-- + + Ah me! what perils do environ + The man who meddles with hot Hiron! + +He was also of that band of scoffers who used to rouse Lort Mansel from +his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window, +foaming with wrath, and crying out, "I know you, gentlemen; I know you!" +were wont to reply, "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort. Good Lort, +deliver us!" + +The whole letter, written in the poet's mature and natural style, gives a +vivid picture of the social life and surroundings of his Cambridge days: +how much of the set and sententious moralizing of some of his formal +biographers might we not have spared, for a report of the conversation on +the road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the same +centre, Scrope Davies enlisted the largest share of Byron's affections. To +him he wrote after the catastrophe:--"Come to me, Scrope; I am almost +desolate--left alone in the world. I had but you, and H., and M., and let +me enjoy the survivors while I can." Later he says, "Matthews, Davies, +Hobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beaten +us all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and +kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D." The +last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: +he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet in one of his +fits of petulance exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, +"I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much more +like silliness than madness!" He was the only man who ever laid Byron +under any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him 4800_l_. in some +time of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat up +over champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scrope +could not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy and +pious on his knees." Davies was much disconcerted at the influence which +the sceptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron's +mind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John Cam Hobhouse, +afterwards Lord Broughton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life, +the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor of +his will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability is +abundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, his +published description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary and +political career. Byron bears witness to the warmth of his affections, and +the charms of his conversation, and to the candour which, as he confessed +to Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubt +that they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was a +passing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits that +Hobhouse was his best friend; and when he unexpectedly walked up the +stairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli informs us +that Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excess +of joy, that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sit +down in tears. + +On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated with it, +was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound +critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, +whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his +son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views +entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; they +both fought under the standards of the classic school; they resented the +same criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were bound +together by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson's +verses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the _Bards and +Reviewers_ and the early cantos of _Childe Harold_ the promise of +_Manfred_ and _Cain_. Among the associates who strove to bring the poet +back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of +his thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the +most judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultified +by pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank and +unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are +preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the +recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and +superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to +characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811, +Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with your +immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity +of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan +will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. I am no Platonist, I am +nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, +Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous +sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and +hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all in +good will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, +the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul +meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson to +Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; +and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is something +pagan in me that I cannot shake off. _In short, I deny nothing, but I +doubt everything_." But his early attitude on matters of religion is best +set forth in a letter to Gilford, of 1813, in which he says, "I am no +bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the +immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of a +God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, +when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom, +that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be +overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch +school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my +life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a +disease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria." + +Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which +had for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. To +no one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge in +more reckless sallies of humour; to no one did he more readily betray his +little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to +him the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrous +encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of +the poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence--a gift of 1000_l_., to +pay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle, +the former gratefully alludes to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew the +exultation of heart, aye, and of head to, I feel at being free from those +depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and +brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit +that was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver. + +Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry +Drury--long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law, +to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are +addressed--and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with various +associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and, +after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This +gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgotten +novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, +when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his +early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as +'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach an +absurd climax. + +Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron had +made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and +Southwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once a +refuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman Minster. Here +Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was +frequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medical +student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talents +above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a +number of his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J.T. Becher, author +of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for +encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he +found dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the +latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how I +curse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawks +who inhabit your kraals!" and adding, that his sole satisfaction during +his residence there was having pared off some pounds of flush. +Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inland +watering-place he passed on the whole a pleasant time--listening to the +music of the simple ballads in which he delighted, taking part in the +performances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses. +This otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of violence on the +part of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one more +outrageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the +neighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with +poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage +with stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed +her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as +ho calls her, followed: on their meeting a truce was patched, and they +withdrew in opposite directions, she back to Southwell, he to refresh +himself on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) he +again rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description of +a trip to Harrogate, when his lordship's favourite Newfoundland, +Boatswain, whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, or +Maida to Scott, sat on the box. + +In November Byron printed for private circulation the first issue of his +juvenile poems. Mr. Becher having called his attention to one which he +thought objectionable, the impression was destroyed; and the author set to +work upon another, which, at once weeded and amplified, saw the light in +January, 1807. He sent copies, under the title of _Juvenilia_, to several +of his friends, and among others to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling), +and to Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Encouraged by their favourable +notices, he determined in appeal to a wider audience, and in March, 1807, +the _Hours of Idleness_, still proceeding from the local press at Newark, +were given to the world. In June we find the poet again writing from his +college rooms, dwelling with boyish detail on his growth in height and +reduction in girth, his late hours and heavy potations, his comrades, and +the prospects of his book. From July to September he dates from London, +excited by the praises of some now obscure magazine, and planning a +journey to the Hebrides. In October he is again settled at Cambridge, and +in a letter to Miss Pigot, makes a humorous reference to one of his +fantastic freaks: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world--a +_tame bear_. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do +with him, and my reply was, 'He should sit for a fellowship.' This answer +delighted them not." The greater part of the spring and summer of 1808 was +spent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seems +during this period for the first time to have freely indulged in +dissipations, which are in most lives more or less carefully concealed. +But Byron, with almost unparalleled folly, was perpetually taking the +public into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the strange +additions of an imaginative effrontery, have been thrust before us in a +manner in which Rochester or Rousseau might have thought indelicate. +Nature and circumstances conspired the result. With passions which he is +fond of comparing to the fires of Vesuvius and Hecla, he was, on his +entrance into a social life which his rank helped to surround with +temptations, unconscious of any sufficient motive for resisting them; he +had no one to restrain him from the whim of the moment, or with sufficient +authority to give him effective advice. A temperament of general +despondency, relieved by reckless outbursts of animal spirits, is the +least favourable to habitual self-control. The melancholy of Byron was not +of the pensive and innocent kind attributed to Cowley, rather that of the, +[Greek: melancholikoi] of whom Aristotle asserts, with profound +psychological or physiological intuition, that they are [Greek: aei en +sphodra orexei]. The absurdity of Moore's frequent declaration, that all +great poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused by +the modesty which, in the saying so obviously excludes himself from the +list. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessant +irritation to their possessor, until they have found their proper vent in +the free exercise of his highest faculties. Byron had not yet done, this, +when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and +Newstead--shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and +trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling +with disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master, +Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished +professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his +"old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to +dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they +never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms +dishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want of +evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of +leading any one astray--a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moral +worshippers of Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name. + + [Footnote 1: In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter + from Mr. Minto to the _Athenaeum_ (Sept. 2nd, 1876), in which with + considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to + identify the girl with "Thyrza," and with "Astarté," whom he regards + as the same person.] + +Though much of this year of his life was passed unprofitably, from it +dates the impulse that provoked him to put forth his powers. The +_Edinburgh_, with the attack on the _Hours of Idleness_, appeared in +March, 1808. This production, by Lord Brougham, is a specimen of the +tomahawk style of criticism prevalent in the early years of the century, +in which the main motive of the critic was, not to deal fairly with his +author, but to acquire for himself an easy reputation for cleverness, by a +series of smart contemptuous sentences. Taken apart, most of the +strictures of the _Edinburgh_ are sufficiently just, and the passages +quoted for censure are all bad. Byron's genius as a poet was not +remarkably precocious. The _Hours of Idleness_ seldom rise, either in +thought or expression, very far above the average level of juvenile verse; +many of the pieces in the collection are weak imitations, or commonplace +descriptions; others suggested by circumstances of local or temporary +interest, had served their turn before coming into print. Their prevailing +sentiment is an affectation of misanthropy, conveyed in such lines as +these:-- + + Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen, + I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen. + +This mawkish element unfortunately survives in much of the author's later +verse. But even in this volume there are indications of force, and +command. The _Prayer of Nature_, indeed, though previously written, was +not included in the edition before the notice of the critic; but the sound +of _Loch-na-Gair_ and some of the stanzas on _Newstead_ ought to have +saved him from the mistake of his impudent advice. The poet, who through +life waited with feverish anxiety for every verdict on his work, is +reported after reading the review to have looked like a man about to send +a challenge. In the midst of a transparent show of indifference, he +confesses to have drunk three bottles of claret on the evening of its +appearance. But the wound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings' +blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collecting his +strength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by its +delay, twelve months later made it impossible for him to be contemned. + +The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, vacated by the tenant, +who had left the building in the tumble-down condition in which he found +it. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time, "heavily dipped," +generosities having combined with selfish extravagances to the result; he +had no funds to subject the place to anything like a thorough repair, but +he busied himself in arranging a few of the rooms for his own present and +his mother's after use. About this date he writes to her, beginning in his +usual style, "Dear Madam," saying he has as yet no rooms ready for her +reception, but that on his departure she shall be tenant till his return. +During this interval he was studying Pope, and carefully maturing his own +Satire. In November the dog Boatswain died in a fit of madness. The event +called forth the famous burst of misanthropic verse, ending with the +couplet,-- + + To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; + I never knew but _one_, and _here_ he lies;-- + +and the inscription on the monument that still remains in the gardens of +Newstead,-- + + Near this spot, + Are deposited the remains of one + Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, + Strength without Insolence, + Courage without Ferocity, + And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. + This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery + If inscribed over human ashes, + Is but a just tribute to the Memory of + Boatswain, a Dog, + Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, + And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808. + +On January 22, 1809, his lordship's coming of age was celebrated with +festivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early in +spring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to the +publisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, on +the death of Lord Falkland, who had been killed in a duel, and expresses a +sympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom he +proceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of +the manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, he +proceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, "Come what may, +Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot--I +have fixed my heart on it; and no pressure, present or future, shall +induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance." He was building +false hopes on the result of the suit for the Rochdale property, which, +being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with no +satisfactory result. He took his seat in the House of Lords on the 13th of +March, and Mr. Dallas, who accompanied him to the bar of the House, has +left an account of his somewhat unfortunate demeanour. + +"His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and +that he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a hand +and countenance in his introduction. There were very few persons in the +House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When Lord +Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went +towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, +though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. +This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put +the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not +press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byron +carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to +the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Opposition. When, +on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said 'If I had shaken +hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I will +have nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and now +I will go abroad.'" + +A few days later the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ appeared before +the public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; a +second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wont +at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many +of his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have been +dictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correction +of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame; i.e. he +wrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author,-- + + I leave topography to coxcomb Gell; + +we have his second thought in the first edition, before he saw the +Troad,-- + + I leave topography to classic Gell; + +and his third, half way in censure, in the fifth,-- + + I leave topography to rapid Gell. + +Of such materials are literary judgments made! + +The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the only +good thing of its kind since Churchill,--for in the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad_ +only butterflies were broken upon the wheel--and to its being the first +promise of a now power. The _Bards and Reviewers_ also enlisted sympathy, +from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed the +prerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own +milk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore +and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakers +fared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war, +only once relaxed, with Southey. Wordsworth--though against this passage +is written "unjust," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn,--is +dubbed an idiot, who-- + + Both by precept and example shows, + That prose is verse and verse is only prose; + +and Coleridge, a baby,-- + + To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear. + +The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey and Moore, are a fair +specimen of the accuracy with which the author had caught the ring of +Pope's antithesis:-- + + The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. + The Tolbooth felt--for marble sometimes can, + On such occasions, feel as much as man-- + The Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, + If Jeffrey died, except within her arms. + +Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited some +choice spirits to hold a few weeks of farewell revel. Matthews, one of +these, gives an account of the place, and the time they spent +there--entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo of +pistol-shots; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy, +poetry; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the Black +Brother; drinking their wine out of the skull cup which the owner had made +out of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden; breakfasting at +two, then reading, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, and +playing with the bear or teasing the wolf. The party broke up without +having made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which Childe +Harold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, when +the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way +"_outre mer_." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. + +There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the +adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first +expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of his +intrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particular +of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one of +them, which have all the same relation to reality as the _Arabian Nights_ +to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Those who wish to read them are referred to the three + large volumes--published in 1825, by Mr. Iley, Portman Street--of + anonymous authorship.] + +Byron had far more than an average share of the _émigré_ spirit, the +counterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. He +held with Wilhelm Meister-- + + To give space for wandering is it, + That the earth was made so wide. + +and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantages +of looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bitter +effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, +that I think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroad +for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us." + +On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mind +with information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattained +goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, +Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton the son +of one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in _Childe +Harold_. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his +health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar. + +Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full of +Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and +Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a +slight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excused +himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he +at one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving England +without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the +next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain of +boisterous buffoonery. On the 2nd of July, the packet, by which he was +bound, sailed for Lisbon and arrived there about the middle of the month, +when the English fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of his +stanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolate +dirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which were at that time +rendered dangerous by the frequency of religious and political +assassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, save +the statement of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more perilous, +though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing the +Hellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle, Byron praises the +neighbouring Cintra, as "the most beautiful village in the world," though +he joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Convention, and +extols the grandeur of Mafra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent of +which a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the English +had any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants by +sea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through the +south-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles, +performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty-four hours, was +Seville, where they lodged for three days in the house of two ladies, to +whose attractions, as well as the fascination he seems to have exerted +over them, the poet somewhat garrulously refers. Here, too, he saw, +parading on the Prado, the famous _Maid of Saragossa_, whom he celebrates +in his equally famous stanzas (_Childe Harold_, I., 54-58). Of Cadiz, the +next stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a modern Cythera, describing the +bull fights in his verse, and the beauties in glowing prose. The belles of +this city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain; and by reason of +them, rather than the sea-shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is the +first spot in the creation." Hence, by an English frigate, they sailed to +Gibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had no +sympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in our great +struggle with the tyranny of the First Empire, he may almost be said to +have sympathized with Napoleon. + +The ship stopped at Cagliari in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti on the +Sicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks--time +enough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs. +Spencer Smith, wife of our minister at Constantinople, sister-in-law of +the famous admiral, and the heroine of some exciting adventures. She is +the "Florence" of _Childe Harold_, and is afterwards addressed in some of +the most graceful verses of his cavalier minstrelsy-- + + Do thou, amidst the fair white walls, + If Cadiz yet be free, + At times from out her latticed halls + Look o'er the dark blue sea-- + Then think upon Calypso's isles, + Endear'd by days gone by,-- + To others give a thousand smiles, + To me a single sigh. + +The only other adventure of the visit is Byron's quarrel with an officer, +on some unrecorded ground, which Hobhouse tells us nearly resulted in a +duel. The friends left Malta on September 29th, in the war-ship "Spider," +and after anchoring off Patras, and spending a few hours on shore, they +skirted the coast of Acarnania, in view of localities--as Ithaca, the +Leucadian rock, and Actium--whose classic memories filtered through the +poet's mind and found a place in his masterpieces. Landing at Previsa, +they started on a tour through Albania,-- + + O'er many a mount sublime, + Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales. + +Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and the +half-savage independence of the people, described as "always strutting +about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his +companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the +famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Berat +in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia's +lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before +reaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, in +the midst of which they separated, and Byron's detachment lost its way for +nine hours, during which he composed the verses to Florence, quoted above. + +Some days later they together arrived at Tepaleni, and were there received +by Ali Pasha in person. The scene on entering the town is described as +recalling Scott's Branksome Castle and the feudal system; and the +introduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet's +corsairs,--is graphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. "His first +question was, why at so early an age I left my country, and without a +'lala,' or nurse? He then said the English minister had told him I was of +a great family, and desired his respects to my mother, which I now present +to you (date, November 12th). He said he was certain I was a man of birth, +because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. He told me +to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on +me as his son. Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds, +fruit, and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Byron shortly afterwards +discovered his host to be, a poisoner and an assassin. "Two days ago," he +proceeds in a passage which illustrates his character and a common +experience, "I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to the +ignorance of the captain and crew. Fletcher yelled after his wife; the +Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmen on Alla; the captain burst +into tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God. The sails were +split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting +in; and all our chance was to make for Corfu--or, as F. pathetically +called it, 'a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, but +finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and lay +down on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, says +Hobhouse, to be of any assistance, he in a short time was found amid the +trembling sailors, fast asleep. They got back to the coast of Suli, and +shortly afterwards started through Acarnania and AEtolia for the Morea, +again rejoicing in the wild scenery and the apparently kindred spirits of +the wild men among whom they passed. Byron was especially fascinated by +the firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes and +reproduces in _Childe Harold_. On the 21st of November he reached +Mesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most of +his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of +Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring sign +of Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet on +the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to save +it--the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and I +never did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." From +Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of +Trophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and +the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrived +before the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his first +glimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:-- + + Ancient of days, august Athena! where, + Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? + Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. + First in the race that led to glory's goal, + They won, and pass'd away: is this the whole-- + A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour? + +After which he reverts to his perpetually recurring moral, "Men come and +go; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars, endure"-- + + Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds; + Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; + Art, glory, freedom fail--but nature still is fair. + +The duration of Lord Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months, +and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica; Eleusis, +Hymettus, Cape Colonna, (Sunium, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck), the +Colonus of OEdipus, and Marathon, the plain of which is said to have been +placed at his disposal for about the same sum that, thirty years later, an +American offered to give for the bark with the poet's name on the tree at +Newstead. Byron had a poor opinion of the modern Athenians, who seem to +have at this period done their best to justify the Roman satirist. He +found them superficial, cunning, and false; but, with generous historic +insight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been much +better; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it would +require ages of freedom to emancipate them. + +In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widow +of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom, +Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens, +without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of the +heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's +genuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles +from the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of Lord +Elgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the _Curse of +Minerva_; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of the +old Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shed +tears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one of +ethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold London +in the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left; +a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Athenians +to concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, and +they are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum. + +Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissus +to some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accident +nearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve their +names on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus in +the evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an English +sloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the +28th of March, the second canto of _Childe Harold_, begun in the previous +autumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood, +visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to the +jackals, in the _Siege of Corinth_; and on April 11th left by the +"Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched at +the Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and rambling +among the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in _Don +Juan_ and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules the +belief. + + I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, + And heard Troy doubted! Time will doubt of Rome! + * * * * * + There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is, + Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea, + Entomb'd the bravest of the brave Achilles.-- + They say so: Bryant says the contrary. + +Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byron +landed on the European side, and swam, in company with Lieutenant +Ekenhead, from Sestos to Abydos--a performance of which he boasts some +twenty times. The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a +feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was a +tempting theme for classical allusions. At length, on May 14, he reached +Constantinople, exalted the Golden Horn above all the sights he had seen, +and now first abandoned his design of travelling to Persia. Galt, and +other more or less gossiping travellers, have accumulated a number of +incidents of the poet's life at this period, of his fanciful dress, +blazing in scarlet and gold, and of his sometimes absurd contentions for +the privileges of rank--as when he demanded precedence of the English +ambassador in an interview with the Sultan, and, on its refusal, could +only be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian internuncio. In +converse with indifferent persons he displayed a curious alternation of +frankness and hauteur, and indulged a habit of letting people up and down, +by which he frequently gave offence. More interesting are narratives of +the suggestion of some of his verses, as the slave-market in _Don Juan_, +and the spectacle of the dead criminal tossed on the waves, revived in the +_Bride of Abydos_. One example is, if we except Dante's _Ugolino_, the +most remarkable instance in literature of the expansion, without the +weakening, of the horrible. Take first Mr. Hobhouse's plain prose: "The +sensations produced by the state of the weather"--it was wretched and +stormy when they left the "Salsette" for the city--"and leaving a +comfortable cabin, were in unison with the impressions which we felt when, +passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypress +which rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." After +this we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imagination +brooding over the incident,-- + + And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall + Hold o'er the dead their carnival: + Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb, + They were too busy to bark at him. + From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, + As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; + And their white tusks crunch'd on the whiter skull, + As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grow dull. + +No one ever more persistently converted the incidents of travel into +poetic material; but sometimes in doing so he borrowed more largely from +his imagination than his memory, as in the description of the seraglio, of +which there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance. + +Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July, +1810--the latter to return direct to England, a determination which, from +no apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incident +of the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. Taking up, +and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found on the quarter deck, ho +remarked, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a +murder." This harmless piece of melodrama--the idea of which is expanded +in Mr. Dobell's _Balder_, and parodied in _Firmilian_--may have been the +basis of a report afterwards circulated, and accepted among others by +Goethe, that his lordship had committed a murder; hence, obviously, the +character of _Lara_, and the mystery of _Manfred!_ The poet parted from +his friend at Zea, (Ceos): after spending some time in solitude on the +little island, he returned to Athens, and there renewed acquaintance with +his school friend, the Marquis of Sligo, who after a few days accompanied +him to Corinth. They then separated, and Byron went on to Patras in the +Morea, where he had business with the Consul. He dates from there at the +close of July. It is impossible to give a consecutive account of his life +during the next ten months, a period consequently filled up with the +contradictory and absurd mass of legends before referred to. A few facts +only of any interest are extricable. During at least half of the time his +head-quarters were at Athens, where he again met his friend the Marquis, +associated with the English Consul and Lady Hester Stanhope, studied +Romaic in a Franciscan monastery--where he saw and conversed with a motley +crew of French, Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and Americans,--wrote to +his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick +of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped +on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to +_Harold_, composed the _Hints from Horace_ and the _Curse of Minerva_, and +presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse +romances. We hear no more of the, _Maid of Athens_, but there is no fair +ground to doubt that the _Giaour_ was suggested by his rescue of a young +woman whom, for the fault of an amour with some Frank, a party of +Janissaries were about to throw, sewn up in a sack, into the sea. Mr. Galt +gives no authority for his statement, that the girl's deliverer was the +original cause of her sentence. We may rest assured that if it had been +so, Byron himself would have told us of it. + +A note to the _Siege of Corinth_ is suggestive of his unequalled +restlessness. "I visited all three--Tripolitza, Napoli, and Argos--in +1810-11; and in the course of journeying through the country, from my +first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight times on my way from +Attica to the Morea." In the latter locality we find him during the autumn +the honoured guest of the Vizier Valhi (a son of Ali Pasha), who presented +him with a fine horse. During a second visit to Patras, in September, he +was attacked by the same sort of marsh fever from which, fourteen years +afterwards, in the near neighbourhood, he died. On his recovery, in +October, he complains of having been nearly killed by the heroic measures +of the native doctors: "One of them trusts to his genius, never having +studied; the other, to a campaign of eighteen months against the sick of +Otranto, which he made in his youth with great effect. When I was seized +with my disorder, I protested against both these assassins, but in vain." +He was saved by the zeal of his servants, who asseverated that if his +lordship died they would take good care the doctors should also; on which +the learned men discontinued their visits, and the patient revived. On his +final return to Athens, the restoration of his health was retarded by one +of his long courses of reducing diet; he lived mainly on rice, and vinegar +and water. From that city he writes in the early spring, intimating his +intention of proceeding to Egypt; but Mr. Hanson, his man of business, +ceasing to send him remittances, the scheme was abandoned. Beset by +letters about his debts, he again declares his determination to hold fast +by Newstead, adding that if the place which is his only tie to England is +sold, he won't come back at all. Life on the shores of the Archipelago is +far cheaper and happier, and "Ubi bene ibi patria," for such a citizen of +the world as he has become. Later he went to Malta, and was detained +there by another bad attack of tertian fever. The next record of +consequence is from the "Volage" frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811, when he +writes in a despondent strain to Hodgson, that he is returning home +"without a hope, and almost without a desire," to wrangle with creditors +and lawyers about executions and coal pits. "In short, I am sick and +sorry; and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I +shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where +I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence. I +am sick of fops, and poesy, and prate, and shall leave the whole Castalian +state to Bufo, or anybody else. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, +of one kind or another, on my travels." With these, and a collection of +marbles, and skulls, and hemlock, and tortoises, and servants, he reached +London about the middle of July, and remained there, making some +arrangements about business and publication. On the 23rd we have a short +but kind letter to his mother, promising to pay her a visit on his way to +Rochdale. "You know you are a vixen, but keep some champagne for me," he +had written from abroad. On receipt of the letter she remarked, "If I +should be dead before he comes down, what a strange thing it, would be." +Towards the close of the month she had an attack so alarming that he was +summoned; but before, he had time to arrive she had expired, on the 1st of +August, in a fit of rage brought on by reading an upholsterer's bill. On +the way Byron heard the intelligence, and wrote to Dr. Pigot: "I now feel +the truth of Gray's observation, that we can only have _one_ mother. Peace +be with her!" On arriving at Newstead, all their storms forgotten, the son +was so affected that he did not trust himself to go to the funeral, but +stood dreamily gazing at the cortège from the gate of the Abbey. Five days +later, Charles S. Matthews was drowned. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +SECOND PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT + +The deaths of Long, Wingfield, Eddlestone, Matthews, and of his mother, +had narrowed the circle of the poet's early companions; and, though he +talks of each loss in succession as if it had been that of an only friend, +we can credit a degree of loneliness, and excuse a certain amount of +bitterness in the feelings with which he returned to London. He had at +this time seen very little of the only relative whom he over deeply loved. +He and his half-sister met casually in 1804, and again in the following +year. After her marriage (1807), Byron writes from abroad (1810), +regretting having distressed her by his quarrel with Lord Carlisle. In +1811 she is mentioned as reversionary heiress of his estate. Towards the +close of 1813, there are two allusions which testify to their mutual +affection. Next wo come to the interesting series of letters of 1815-16, +published with the Memoir of Mr. Hodgson, to whom, along with Hobhouse and +Scrope Davies, his lordship in a will and codicil leaves the management of +his property. Harness appears frequently at this period among his +surviving intimates: to this list there was shortly added another. In +speaking of his _Bards and Reviewers_, the author makes occasional +reference to the possibility of his being called to account for some of +his attacks. His expectation was realized by a letter from the poet Moore, +dated Dublin, Jan. 1, 1810, couched in peremptory terms, demanding to know +if his lordship avowed the authorship of the insults contained in the +poem. This letter, being entrusted to Mr. Hodgson, was not forwarded to +Byron abroad; but shortly after his return, he received another in more +conciliatory terms, renewing the complaint. To this he replied, in a stiff +but manly letter, that he had never meant to insult Mr. Moore; but that he +was, if necessary, ready to give him satisfaction. Moore accepting the +explanation, somewhat querulously complained of his advances to friendship +not being received. Byron again replied that much as he would feel +honoured by Mr. Moore's acquaintance, he being practically threatened by +the irate Irishman could hardly make the first advances. This called forth +a sort of apology; the correspondents met at the house of Mr. Rogers, and +out of the somewhat awkward circumstances, owing to the frankness of the +"noble author," as the other ever after delights to call him, arose the +life-long intimacy which had such various and lasting results. Moore has +been called a false friend to Byron, and a traitor to his memory. The +judgment is somewhat harsh, but the association between them was +unfortunate. Thomas Moore had some sterling qualities. His best satirical +pieces are inspired by a real indignation, and lit up by a genuine humour. +He was also an exquisite musician in words, and must have been +occasionally a fascinating companion. But he was essentially a worldling, +and, as such, a superficial critic. He encouraged the shallow affectations +of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring +defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt +seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to +others on _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and _Don Juan_, are the expression of +sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the +author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure +by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard to his +opinions, and overestimated his genius. For the subsequent destruction of +the memoirs, urged by Mr. Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh, he was not wholly +responsible; though a braver man, having accepted the position of his +lordship's literary legatee, with the express understanding that he would +seue to the fulfilment of the wishes of his dead friend, would have to the +utmost resisted their total frustration. + +Meanwhile, on landing in England, the poet had placed in the hands of Mr. +Dallas the _Hints from Horace_, which he intended to have brought out by +the publisher Cawthorne. Of this performance--an inferior edition, +relieved by a few strong touches, of the _Bards and Reviewers_--Dallas +ventured to express his disapproval. "Have you no other result of your +travels?" he asked; and got for answer, "A few short pieces; and a lot of +Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to +them." Dallas took the remark literally, saw they were a safe success, and +assumed to himself the merit of the discovery, the risks, and the profits. +It is the converse of the story of Gabriel Harvey and the _Faery Queene_. +Tho first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ bear no comparison with the legend +of _Una and the Red Cross Knight_; but there was no mistake about their +proof of power, their novelty, and adaptation to a public taste as yet +unjaded by eloquent and imaginative descriptions of foreign scenery, +manners, and climates. + +The poem--after being submitted to Gifford, in defiance of the +protestations of the author, who feared that the reference might seem to +seek the favour of the august _Quarterly_--was accepted by Mr. Murray, and +proceeded through the press, subject to change and additions, during the +next five months. The _Hints from Horace_, fortunately postponed and then +suspended, appeared posthumously in 1831. Byron remained at Newstead till +the close of October, negotiating with creditors and lawyers, and engaged +in a correspondence about his publications, in the course of which he +deprecates any identification of himself and his hero, though he had at +first called him Childe Byron. "Instruct Mr. Murray," he entreats, "not to +allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage,' as he +has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my +_sanity_ on the occasion, as well they might." At the end of the month we +find him in London, again indulging in a voyage in "the ship of fools," in +which Moore claims to have accompanied him; but at the same time +exhibiting remarkable shrewdness in reference to the affairs of his +household. In February, 1812, he again declares to Hodgson his resolve to +leave England for ever, and fix himself in "one of the fairest islands of +the East." On the 27th he made in the House of Lords his speech on a Bill +to introduce special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham. +This effort, on which he received many compliments, led among other +results to a friendly correspondence with Lord Holland. On April 21st of +the same year, he again addressed the House on behalf of Roman Catholic +Emancipation; and in June, 1813, in favour of Major Cartwright's petition. +On all these occasions, as afterwards on the continent, Byron espoused the +Liberal side of politics. But his role was that of Manlius or Caesar, and +he never fails to remind us that he himself was _for_ the people, not _of_ +them. His latter speeches, owing partly to his delivery, blamed as too +Asiatic, were less successful. To a reader the three seem much on the same +level. They are clever, but evidently set performances, and leave us no +ground to suppose that the poet's abandonment of a parliamentary career +was a serious loss to the nation. + +On the 29th of February the first and second cantos of _Childe Harold_ +appeared. An early copy was sent to Mrs. Leigh, with the inscription: "To +Augusta, my dearest sister and my best friend, who has ever loved me much +better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son and +most affectionate brother, B." The book ran through seven editions in four +weeks. The effect of the first edition of Burns, and the sale of Scott's +_Lays_, are the only parallels in modern poetic literature to this +success. All eyes were suddenly fastened on the author, who let his satire +sleep, and threw politics aside, to be the romancer of his day and for two +years the darling of society. Previous to the publition, Mr. Moore +confesses to have gratified his lordship with the expression of the fear +that _Childe Harold_ was too good for the age. Its success was due to the +reverse being the truth. It was just on the level of its age. Its flowing +verse, defaced by rhymical faults perceptible only to finer ears, its +prevailing sentiment, occasional boldness relieved by pleasing platitudes, +its half affected rakishness, here and there elevated by a rush as of +morning air, and its frequent richness--not yet, as afterwards, +splendour--of description, were all appreciated by the fashionable London +of the Regency; while the comparatively mild satire, not keen enough to +scarify, only gave a more piquant flavour to the whole. Byron's genius, +yet in the green leaf, was not too far above the clever masses of +pleasure-loving manhood by which it was surrounded. It was natural that +the address on the reopening of Drury Lane theatre should be written by +"the world's new joy"--the first great English poet-peer; as natural as +that in his only published satire of the period he should inveigh against +almost the only amusement in which he could not share. The address was +written at the request of Lord Holland, when of some hundred competitive +pieces none had been found exactly suitable--a circumstance which gave +rise to the famous parodies entitled _The Rejected Addresses_--and it was +thought that the ultimate choice would conciliate all rivalry. The care +which Byron bestowed on the correction of the first draft of this piece, +is characteristic of his habit of writing off his poems at a gush, and +afterwards carefully elaborating them. + +_The Waltz_ was published anonymously in April, 1813. It was followed in +May by the _Giaour_, the first of the flood of verse romances which, +during the three succeeding years, he poured forth with impetuous fluency, +and which were received with almost unrestrained applause. The plots and +sentiments and imagery are similar in them all. The Giaour steals the +mistress of Hassan, who revenges his honour by drowning her. The Giaour +escapes; returns, kills Hassan, and then goes to a monastery. In the +_Bride of Abydos_, published in the December of the same year, Giaffir +wants to marry his daughter Zuleika to Carasman Pasha. She runs off with +Selim, her reputed brother--in reality her cousin, and so at last her +legitimate lover. They are caught; he is slain in fight; she dies, to slow +music. In the _Corsair_, published January, 1814, Conrad, a pirate, +"linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes!" is beloved by Medora, who +on his predatory expeditions, sits waiting for him (like Hassan's and +Sisera's mother) in a tower. On one of these he attacks Seyd Pasha, and is +overborne by superior force; but Gulnare, a female slave of Seyd, kills +her master, and runs off with Conrad, who finds Medora dead and vanishes. +In _Lara_, the sequel to this--written in May and June, published in +August--a man of mystery appears in the Morea, with a page, Kaled. After +adventures worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe--from whose Schledoni the Giaour is +said to have been drawn--Lara falls in battle with his deadly foe, +Ezzelin, and turns out to be Conrad, while Kaled is of course Gulnare. The +_Hebrew Melodies_, written in December, 1814, are interesting, in +connexion with the author's early familiarity with the Old Testament, and +from the force and music that mark the best of them; but they can hardly +be considered an important contribution to the devotional verse of +England. The _Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_, composed after his +marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year. +The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it +from Menotti; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, +another sketch from the same protoplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, +is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save +her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. +_Parisina_, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than +the others of the period. The trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, +and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo's funeral dirge lingers in +our ears, along with the convent bells-- + + In the grey square turret swinging, + With a deep sound, to and fro, + Heavily to the heart they go. + +These romances belong to the same period of the author's poetic career as +the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_. They followed one another like +brilliant fireworks. They all exhibit a command of words, a sense of +melody, and a flow of rhythm and rhyme, which mastered Moore and even +Scott on their own ground. None of them are wanting in passages, as "He +who hath bent him o'er the dead," and the description of Alp leaning +against a column, which strike deeper than any verse of either of those +writers. But there is an air of melodrama in them all. Harmonious delights +of novel readers, they will not stand against the winnowing wind of +deliberate criticism. They harp on the same string, without the variations +of a Paganini. They are potentially endless reproductions of one phase of +an ill-regulated mind--the picture of the same quasi-melancholy vengeful +man, who knows no friend but a dog, and reads on the tombs of the great +only "the glory and the nothing of a name," the exile who cannot flee from +himself, "the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind," who has not loved +the world nor the world him,-- + + Whose heart was form'd for softness, warp'd by wrong, + Betray'd too early, and beguiled too long-- + +all this, _decies repetita_, grows into a weariness and vexation. Mr. +Carlyle harshly compares it to the screaming of a meat-jack. The reviewers +and the public of the time thought differently. Jeffrey, penitent for the +early _faux pas_ of his _Review_, as Byron remained penitent for his +answering assault, writes of _Lara_, "Passages of it may be put into +competition with anything that poetry has produced in point either of +pathos or energy." Moore--who afterwards wrote, not to Byron, that seven +devils had entered into _Manfred_--professes himself "enraptured with it." +Fourteen thousand copies of the _Corsair_ wore sold in a day. But hear the +author's own half-boast, half-apology: "_Lara_ I wrote while undressing +after coming home from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. +The _Bride_ was written in four, the _Corsair_ in ten days. This I take to +he a humiliating confession, as it proves my own want of judgment in +publishing, and the public's in reading, things which cannot have stamina +for permanence." + +The pecuniary profits accruing to Byron from his works began with _Lara_, +for which he received 700_l_. He had made over to Mr. Dallas, besides +other gifts to the same ungrateful recipient, the profits of _Harold_, +amounting to 600_l_, and of the _Corsair_, which brought 525_l_. The +proceeds of the _Giaour_ and the _Bride_ were also surrendered. + +During this period, 1813-1816, he had become familiar with all the phases +of London society, "tasted their pleasures," and, towards the close, "felt +their decay." His associates in those years were of two classes--men of +the world, and authors. Fêted and courted in all quarters, he patronized +the theatres, became in 1815 a member of the Drury Lane Committee, "liked +the dandies," including Beau Brummell, and was introduced to the Regent. +Their interview, in June 1812, in the course of which the latter paid +unrestrained compliments to _Harold_ and the poetry of Scott, is naively +referred to by Mr. Moore "as reflecting even still more honour on the +Sovereign himself than on the two poets." Byron, in a different spirit, +writes to Lord Holland: "I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's +decease, of warbling truth at Court, like Mr. Mallet of indifferent +memory. Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the +disgrace." We can hardly conceive the future author of the _Vision of +Judgment_ writing odes to dictation. He does not seem to have been much +fascinated with the first gentleman of Europe, whom at no distant date he +assailed in the terrible "Avatar," and left the laureateship to Mr. +Southey. + +Among leaders in art and letters he was brought into more or less intimate +contact with Sir Humphry Davy, the Edgeworths, Sir James Mackintosh, +Colman the dramatic author, the older Kean, Monk Lewis, Grattan, Curran, +and Madame de Staël. Of a meeting of the last two he remarks, "It was like +the confluence of the Rhone and the Sâone, and they were both so ugly that +I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland +could have taken up respectively such residences." + +About this time a communication from Mr Murray in reference to the meeting +with the Regent led to a letter from Sir Walter Scott to Lord Byron, the +beginning of a life-long friendship, and one of the most pleasing pages of +biography. These two great men were for a season perpetually pitted +against one another, as the foremost competitors for literary favour. When +_Rokeby_ came out, contemporaneously with the _Giaour_, the undergraduates +of Oxford and Cambridge ran races to catch the first copies, and laid bets +as to which of the rivals would win. During the anti-Byronic fever of +1840-1860 they were perpetually contrasted as the representatives of the +manly and the morbid schools. A later sentimentalism has affected to +despise the work of both. The fact therefore that from an early period the +men themselves knew each other as they were, is worth illustrating. + +Scott's letter, in which a generous recognition of the pleasure he had +derived from tho work of the English poet, was followed by a manly +remonstrance on the subject of the attack in the _Bards and Reviewers_, +drew from Byron in the following month (July 1812) an answer in the same +strain, descanting on the Prince's praises of the _Lay_ and _Marmion_, and +candidly apologizing for the "evil works of his nonage." "The satire," he +remarks, "was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent +on displaying my wrath and my wit; and now I am haunted by the ghosts of +my wholesale assertions." This, in turn, called forth another letter to +Byron eager for more of his verses, with a cordial invitation to +Abbotsford on the ground of Scotland's maternal claim on him, and asking +for information about Pegasus and Parnassus. After this the correspondence +continues with greater freedom, and the same display on either side of +mutual respect. When Scott says "the _Giaour_ is praised among our +mountains," and Byron returns "_Waverley_ is the best novel I have read," +there is no suspicion of flattery--it is the interchange of compliments +between men, + + Et cantare pares et respondere parati. + +They talk in just the same manner to third parties. "I gave over writing +romances," says the elder, in the spirit of a great-hearted gentleman," +because Byron beat me. He hits the mark, where I don't even pretend to +fledge my arrow. He has access to a stream of sentiment unknown to me." +The younger, on the other hand, deprecates the comparisons that were being +invidiously drawn between them. He presents his copy of the _Giaour_ to +Scott, with the phrase "To the monarch of Parnassus," and compares the +feeling of those who cavilled at his fame to that of the Athenians towards +Aristides. From those sentiments, he never swerves, recognizing to the +last the breadth of character of the most generous of his critics, and +referring to him, during his later years in Italy, as the Wizard and the +Ariosto of the North. A meeting was at length arranged between them. Scott +looked forward to it with anxious interest, humorously remarking that +Byron should say,-- + + Art thou the man whom men famed Grissell call? + +And he reply-- + + Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small? + +They met in London during the spring of 1815. The following sentences are +from Sir Walter's account of it:--"Report had prepared me to meet a man +of peculiar habits and quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were +likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably disappointed in +this respect. I found Lord Byron in the highest degree courteous, and even +kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, +and found a great deal to say to each other. Our sentiments agreed a good +deal, except upon the subjects of religion and politics, upon neither of +which I was inclined to believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed +opinions. On politics he used sometimes to express a high strain of what +is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the pleasure it +afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against +individuals in office was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At +heart, I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle. His reading did +not seem to me to have been very extensive. I remember repeating to him +the fine poem of Hardyknute, and some one asked me what I could possibly +have been telling Byron by which he was so much agitated. I saw him for +the last time in (September) 1815, after I returned from France; he dined +or lunched with me at Long's in Bond Street. I never saw him so full of +gaiety and good humour. The day of this interview was the most interesting +I ever spent. Several letters passed between us--one perhaps every half +year. Like the old heroes in Homer we exchanged gifts; I gave Byron a +beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had been the property of the +redoubted Elfi Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the _Iliad_, +for Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral vase of silver, +full of dead men's bones, found within the land walls of Athens. He was +often melancholy, almost gloomy. When I observed him in this humour I used +either to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some natural +and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when the shadows +almost always left his countenance, like the mist arising from a +landscape. I think I also remarked in his temper starts of suspicion, when +he seemed to pause and consider whether there had not been a secret and +perhaps offensive meaning in something that was said to him. In this case +I also judged it best to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself +clear, which it did in a minute or two. A downright steadiness of manner +was the way to his good opinion. Will Rose, looking by accident at his +feet, saw him scowling furiously; but on his showing no consciousness, his +lordship resumed his easy manner. What I liked about him, besides his +boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as well as of purse, and +his utter contempt of all the affectations of literature. He liked Moore +and me because, with all our other differences, we were both good-natured +fellows, not caring to maintain our dignity, enjoying the _mot-pour-rire_. +He wrote from impulse never from effort, and therefore I have always +reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and +of half a century before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but +none of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." + +Scott, like all hale men of sound sense, regretted the almost fatal +incontinence which, in the year of his greatest private troubles, led his +friend to make a parade of them before the public. He speaks more than +once of his unhappy tendency to exhibit himself as the dying gladiator, +and even compares him to his peacock, screeching before his window because +he chooses to bivouack apart from his mate; but he read a copy of the +Ravenna diary without altering his view that his lordship was his own +worst maligner. Scott, says Lockhart, considered Byron the only poet of +transcendent talents we had had since Dryden. There is preserved a curious +record of his meeting with a greater poet than Dryden, but one whose +greatness neither he nor Scott suspected. Mr. Crabb Robinson reports +Wordsworth to have said, in Charles Lamb's chambers, about the year 1808, +"These reviewers put me out of patience. Here is a young man who has +written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, +set upon him. The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has +begun. But these reviewers seem to think that nobody may write poetry +unless he lives in a garret." Years after, Lady Byron, on being told this, +exclaimed, "Ah, if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked +Wordsworth. He went one day to meet him at dinner, and I said, 'Well, how +did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell the truth,' +said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the +end, and that was _reverence_.'" Similarly, he began by being on good +terms with Southey, and after a meeting at Holland House, wrote +enthusiastically of his prepossessing appearance. + +Byron and the leaders of the so-called Lake School were, at starting, +common heirs of the revolutionary spirit; they were, either in their +social views or personal feelings, to a large extent influenced by the +most morbid, though in some respects the most magnetic, genius of modern +France, J.J. Rousseau; but their temperaments were in many respects +fundamentally diverse; and the pre-established discord between them ere +long began to make itself manifest in their following out widely divergent +paths. Wordsworth's return to nature had been preluded by Cowper; that of +Byron by Burns. The revival of the one ripened into a restoration of +simpler manners and old beliefs; the other was the spirit of the storm. +When they had both become recognized powers, neither appreciated the work +of the other. A few years after this date Byron wrote of Wordsworth, to a +common admirer of both: "I take leave to differ from you as freely as I +once agreed with you. His performances, since the _Lyrical Ballads_, are +miserably inadequate to the ability that lurks within him. There is, +undoubtedly, much natural talent spilt over the _Excursion_; but it is +rain upon rocks, where it stands and stagnates; or rain upon sand, where +it falls without fertilizing." This criticism with others in like strain, +was addressed to Mr. Leigh Hunt, to whom, in 1812, when enduring for +radicalism's sake a very comfortable incarceration, Byron had, in company +with Moore, paid a courteous visit. + +Of the correspondence of this period--flippant, trenchant, or +sparkling--few portions are more calculated to excite a smile than the +record of his frequent resolutions made, reasseverated, and broken, to +have done with literature; even going the length on some occasions of +threatening to suppress his works, and, if possible, recall the existing +copies. He affected being a man of the world unmercifully, and had a real +delight in clever companions who assumed the same rôle. Frequent allusion +is made to his intercourse with Erskine and Sheridan: the latter he is +never tired of praising, as "the author of the best modern comedy (_School +for Scandal_), the best farce (_The Critic_), and the best oration (the +famous Begum speech) ever heard in this country." They spent many an +evening together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who +tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable +state; and, on some one asking "Who is this?" stammering out +"Wilberforce." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with +the dramatist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork-screw +condition: and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr. C----, who "had no notion +of meeting with a bon-vivant in a scribbler," and summed the poet's eulogy +with the phrase, "he drinks like a man." Hunt, the tattler, who observed +his lordship's habits in Italy, with the microscope of malice ensconced +within the same walls, makes it a charge against his host that he would +not drink like a man. Once for all it may be noted, that although there +was no kind of excess in which Byron, whether from bravado or inclination, +failed occasionally to indulge, he was never for any stretch of time given +over, like Burns, to what is technically termed intemperance. His head +does not seem to have been strong, and under the influence of stimulants +he may have been led to talk a great deal of his dangerous nonsense. But +though he could not say, with Wordsworth, that only once, at Cambridge, +had his brain been "excited by the fumes of wine," his prevailing sins +were in other directions. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. + +"As for poets," says Scott, "I have seen all the best of my time and +country, and, though Burns had the most glorious eye imaginable, I never +thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, +except Byron. His countenance is a thing to dream of." Coleridge writes to +the same effect, in language even stronger. We have from all sides similar +testimony to the personal beauty which led the unhappiest of his devotees +to exclaim, "That pale face is my fate!" + +Southern critics, as Chasles, Castelar, even Mazzini, have dealt leniently +with the poet's relations to the other sex; and Elze extends to him in +this regard the same excessive stretch of charity. "Dear Childe Harold," +exclaims the German professor, "was positively besieged by women. They +have, in truth, no right to complain of him: from his childhood he had +seen them on their worst side." It is the casuistry of hero-worship to +deny that Byron was unjust to women, not merely in isolated instances, but +in his prevailing views of their character and claims. "I regard them," he +says, in a passage only distinguished from others by more extravagant +petulance, "as very pretty but inferior creatures, who are as little in +their place at our tables as they would be in our council chambers. The +whole of the present system with regard to the female sex is a remnant of +the barbarism of the chivalry of our forefathers. I look on them as +grown-up children; but, like a foolish mamma, I am constantly the slave of +one of them. The Turks shut up their women, and are much happier; give a +woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she will be content." + +In contrast with this, we have the moods in which he drew his pictures of +Angiolina, and Haidee, and Aurora Raby, and wrote the invocations to the +shade of Astarte, and his letters in prose and verse to Augusta; but the +above passage could never have been written by Chaucer, or Spenser, or +Shakespeare, or Shelley. The class whom he was reviling seemed, however, +during "the day of his destiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the +blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splendour of +his verse, the romance of his travels, his picturesque melancholy and +affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence +to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as +prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who +had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing +books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn their tales, +often to point their fables with. He was by the one set caressed and +spoilt, and "beguiled too long;" by the other, "betrayed too late." The +recent memoirs of Frances Ann Kemble present a curious record of the +process of passing from one extreme to the other. She dwells on the +fascination exerted over her mind by the first reading of his poetry, and +tells how she "fastened on the book with a grip like steel," and carried +it off and hid it under her pillow; how it affected her "like an evil +potion," and stirred her whole being with a tempest of excitement, till +finally she, with equal weakness, flung it aside, "resolved to read that +grand poetry no more, and broke through the thraldom of that powerful +spell." The confession brings before us a type of the transitions of the +century, on its way from the Byronic to the anti-Byronic fever, of which +later state Mrs. Norton and Miss Martineau are among the most pronounced +representatives. + +Byron's garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of +more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often +the same practical effect as reticence; for he talks so much at +large--every page of his Journal being, by his own admission, apt to +"confute and abjure its predecessor"--that we are often none the wiser. +Amid a mass of conjecture, it is manifest that during the years between +his return from Greece and final expatriation (1811-1816), including the +whole period of his social glory--though not yet of his solid fame--he was +lured into liaisons of all sorts and shades. Some, now acknowledged as +innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention +than in distorting truth. On others, as commonplaces of a temperament "all +meridian," it were waste of time to dwell. Byron rarely put aside a +pleasure in his path; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by +affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted. The verses to the memory +of a lost love veiled as "Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not, +as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere +grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the +poet's career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name +from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first +Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their +romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in +her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards +Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she +married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning +belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities. +Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said +she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the +introduction took place in March, 1812. After the meeting, she wrote in +her journal, "Mad--bad--and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable +Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed +by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her +company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband +laughed at the worship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and +adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited +her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. "Medora," on +the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that they were +affinities, and offered him her jewels. But after the first excitement, he +began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her +indifferent verses: "he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual +egotisms jarred." Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a +season to her father's house in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of +his glowing farewell letters. When she came back, matters were little +better. The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one +occasion penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on another +threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing +into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him. "The +'Agnus' is furious," he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of +the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked. "You +can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done +since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage.... The +business of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle +fair is writing letters literally threatening my life." With one member of +the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb's mother, and sister of Sir Ralph +Milbanke, he remained throughout on terms of pleasant intimacy. He +appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the +experience and tact of "the cleverest of women." But her well-meant advice +had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a +suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke. Byron first proposed to +this lady in 1813; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they +continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate +terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was +accepted. + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on + this subject Byron was always reticent. Mr. Minto, as we have seen, + associates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8.] + +After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin +by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew +statistics, but was "not for Conrad, no, no, no!" Lady Caroline lapsed +into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and +her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost +forgotten novel of _Glenarvon_, in which some of Byron's real features +were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions. Madame de +Staël was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice when +they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to have been less moved by it +than by most attacks. We must however, bear in mind his own admission in a +parallel case. "I say I am perfectly calm; I am, nevertheless, in a fury." +Over the sad vista of the remaining years of the unhappy lady's life we +need not linger. During a considerable part of it she appears hovering +about the thin line that separates some kinds of wit and passion from +madness; writing more novels, burning her hero's effigy and letters, and +then clamouring for a lock of his hair, or a sight of his portrait; +separated from, and again reconciled to, a husband to whose magnanimous +forbearance and compassion she bears testimony to the last, comparing +herself to Jane Shore; attempting Byronic verses, loudly denouncing and +yet never ceasing inwardly to idolize, the man whom she regarded as her +betrayer, perhaps only with justice in that he had unwittingly helped to +overthrow her mental balance. After eight years of this life, lit up here +and there by gleams of social brilliancy, we find her carriage, on the +12th of July, 1824, suddenly confronted by a funeral. On hearing that the +remains of Byron were being carried to the tomb, she shrieked, and +fainted. Her health finally sank, and her mind gave way under this shock; +but she lingered till January, 1828, when she died, after writing a calm +letter to her husband, and bequeathing the poet's miniature to her friend, +Lady Morgan. + +"I have paid some of my debts, and contracted others," Byron writes to +Moore, on September 15th, 1814; "but I have a few thousand pounds which I +can't spend after my heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the +south. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look +at the coast of Greece from Italy. All this however depends upon an event +which may or may not happen. Whether it will I shall probably know +tomorrow, and if it does I can't well go abroad at present." "A wife," he +had written, in the January of the same year, "would be my salvation;" but +a marriage entered upon in such a flippant frame of mind could, scarcely +have been other than disastrous. In the autumn of the year we are told +that a friend,[2] observing how cheerless was the state both of his mind +and prospects, advised him to marry, and after much discussion he +consented, naming to his correspondent Miss Milbanke. To this his adviser +objected, remarking that she had, at present, no fortune, and that his +embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one, etc. +Accordingly, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal to another +lady, which was done. A refusal arrived as they were one morning sitting +together. "'You see,' said Lord Byron, 'that after all Miss Milbanke is to +be the person,' and wrote on the moment. His friend, still remonstrating +against his choice, took up the letter; but, on reading it, observed, +'Well, really, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not +go.' 'Then it _shall_ go,' said Lord Byron, and, in so saying, sealed and +sent off this fiat of his fate." The incident seems cut from a French +novel; but so does the whole strange story--one apparently insoluble +enigma in an otherwise only too transparent life. On the arrival of the +lady's answer he was seated at dinner, when his gardener came in, and +presented him with his mother's wedding-ring, lost many years before, and +which had just been found, buried in the mould beneath her window. Almost +at the same moment the letter arrived; and Byron exclaimed, "If it +contains a consent (which it did), I will be married with this very ring." +He had the highest anticipations of his bride, appreciating her "talents, +and excellent qualities;" and saying, "she is so good a person that I wish +I was a better." About the same date he writes to various friends in the +good spirits raised by his enthusiastic reception from the Cambridge +undergraduates, when in the course of the same month he went to the Senate +House to give his vote for a Professor of Anatomy. + + [Footnote 2: Doubtless Moore himself, who tells the story.] + +The most constant and best of those friends was his sister, Augusta Leigh, +whom, from the death of Miss Chaworth to his own, Byron, in the highest +and purest sense of the word, loved more than any other human being. +Tolerant of errors, which she lamented, and violences in which she had no +share, she had a touch of their common family pride, most conspicuous in +an almost cat-like clinging to their ancestral home. Her early published +letters are full of regrets about the threatened sale of Newstead, on the +adjournment of which, when the first purchaser had to pay 25,000_l_. for +breaking his bargain, she rejoices, and over the consummation of which she +mourns, in the manner of Milton's Eve-- + + Must I then leave thee, Paradise? + +In all her references to the approaching marriage there are blended notes +of hope and fear. In thanking Hodgson for his kind congratulations, she +trusts it will secure her brother's happiness. Later she adds her +testimony to that of all outsiders at this time, as to the graces and +genuine worth of the object of his choice. After the usual preliminaries, +the ill-fated pair were united, at Seaham House, on the 2nd of January, +1815. Byron was married like one walking in his sleep. He trembled like a +leaf, made the wrong responses, and almost from the first seems to have +been conscious of his irrevocable mistake. + + I saw him stand + Before an altar with a gentle bride: + Her face was fair, but was not that which made + The starlight of his boyhood. He could see + Not that which was--but that which should have been-- + But the old mansion, the accustom'd hall. + And she who was his destiny came back, + And thrust herself between him and the light. + +Here we have faint visions of Miss Chaworth, mingling with later memories. +In handing the bride into the carriage he said, "Miss Milbanke, are you +ready?"--a mistake said to be of evil omen. Byron never really loved his +wife; and though he has been absurdly accused of marrying for revenge, we +must suspect that he married in part for a settlement. On the other hand, +it is not unfair to say that she was fascinated by a name, and inspired by +the philanthropic zeal of reforming a literary Corsair. Both were +disappointed. Miss Milbanke's fortune was mainly settled on herself; and +Byron, in spite of plentiful resolutions gave little sign of reformation. +For a considerable time their life, which, after the "treacle moon," as +the bridegroom called it, spent at Halnaby, near Darlington, was divided +between residence at Seaham and visits to London, seemed to move smoothly. +In a letter, evidently mis-dated the 15th December, Mrs. Leigh writes to +Hodgson: "I have every reason to think that my beloved B. is very happy +and comfortable. I hear constantly from him and _his rib_. It appears to +me that Lady B. sets about making him happy in the right way. I had many +fears. Thank God that they do not appear likely to be realized. In short, +there seems to me to be but one drawback to all our felicity, and that, +alas, is the disposal of dear Newstead. I never shall feel reconciled to +the loss of that sacred revered Abbey. The thought makes me more +melancholy than perhaps the loss of an inanimate object ought to do. Did +you ever hear that _landed property_, the GIFT OF THE CROWN, could not be +sold? Lady B. writes me word that she never saw her father and mother so +happy; that she believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea +herself to find fish for B.'s dinner, &c." Augusta Ada was born in London +on the 10th of December, 1815. During the next months a few cynical +mutterings are the only interruptions to an ominous silence; but these +could be easily explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's +affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last +half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. +Their expectations were raised by exaggerated reports of his having +married money; and by a curious pertinacity of pride he still declined, +even when he had to sell his books, to accept advances from his publisher. +In January the storm which had been secretly gathering suddenly broke. On +the 15th, i.e. five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home +with the infant to pay a visit, as had been agreed, to her own family at +Kirkby Mallory in Leicestershire. On the way she despatched to her husband +a tenderly playful letter, which has been often quoted. Shortly afterwards +he was informed--first by her father, and then by herself--that she did +not intend ever to return to him. The accounts of their last interview, as +in the whole evidence bearing on the affair, not only differ but flatly +contradict one another. On behalf of Lord Byron it is asserted, that his +wife, infuriated by his offering some innocent hospitality on occasion of +bad weather to a respectable actress, Mrs. Mardyn, who had called on him +about Drury Lane business, rushed into the room exclaiming, "I leave you +for ever"--and did so. According to another story, Lady Byron, finding him +with a friend, and observing him to be annoyed at her entrance, said, "Am +I in your way, Byron?" whereupon he answered, "Damnably." Mrs. Leigh, +Hodgson, Moore, and others, did everything that mutual friends could do to +bring about the reconciliation for which Byron himself professed to be +eager, but in vain; and in vain the effort was renewed in later years. The +wife was inveterately bent on a separation, of the causes of which the +husband alleged he was never informed, and with regard to which as long as +he lived she preserved a rigid silence. + +For some time after the event Byron spoke of his wife with at least +apparent generosity. Rightly or wrongly, he blamed her parents, and her +maid--Mrs. Clermont, the theme of his scathing but not always dignified +"Sketch;" but of herself he wrote (March 8, 1816), "I do not believe that +there ever was a brighter, and a kinder, or a more amiable or agreeable +being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make to +her, when with me." Elsewhere he adds, that he would willingly, if he had +the chance, "renew his marriage on a lease of twenty years." But as time +passed and his overtures were rejected, his patience gave way, and in some +of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's +letters at the time of the separation, especially those first published in +the _Academy_ of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and +confidential, often pathetic, asking her advice "in this critical moment," +and protesting that, "independent of malady, she does not think of the +past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of +injury." In her communications to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand--the +first of almost the same date, the second a few weeks later--she writes +with intense bitterness, stating that her action was due to offences which +she could only condone on the supposition of her husband's insanity, and +distinctly implying that she was in danger of her life. This supposition +having been by her medical advisers pronounced erroneous, she felt, in the +words only too pungently recalled in _Don Juan_, that her duty both to man +and God prescribed her course of action. Her playful letter on leaving she +seems to defend on the ground of the fear of personal violence. Till Lord +Byron's death the intimacy between his wife and sister remained unbroken; +through the latter he continued to send numerous messages to the former, +and to his child, who became a ward in Chancery; but at a later date it +began to cool. On the appearance of Lady Byron's letter, in answer to +Moore's first volume, Augusta speaks of it as "a despicable tirade," feels +"disgusted at such unfeeling conduct," and thinks "nothing can justify any +one in defaming the dead." Soon after 1830 they had an open rupture on a +matter of business, which was never really healed, though the then +Puritanic precisian sent a message of relenting to Mrs. Leigh on her +death-bed (1851). + +The charge or charges which, during her husband's life, Lady Byron from +magnanimity or other motive reserved, she is ascertained after his death +to have delivered with important modifications to various persons, with +little regard to their capacity for reading evidence or to their +discretion. On one occasion her choice of a confidante was singularly +unfortunate. "These," wrote Lord Byron in his youth, "these are the first +tidings that have ever sounded like fame in my ears--to be redde on the +banks of the Ohio." Strangely enough, it is from the country of +Washington, whom the poet was wont to reverence as the purest patriot of +the modern world, that in 1869 there emanated the hideous story which +scandalized both continents, and ultimately recoiled on the retailer of +the scandal. The grounds of the reckless charge have been weighed by those +who have wished it to prove false, and by those who have wished it to +prove true, and found wanting. The chaff has been beaten in every way and +on all sides, without yielding an ounce of grain; and it were ill-advised +to rake up the noxious dust that alone remains. From nothing left on +record by either of the two persons most intimately concerned can we +derive any reliable information. It is plain that Lady Byron was during +the later years of her life the victim of hallucinations, and that if +Byron knew the secret, which he denies, he did not choose to tell it, +putting off Captain Medwin and others with absurdities, as that "He did +not like to see women eat," or with commonplaces, as "The causes, my dear +sir, were too simple to be found out." + +Thomas Moore, who had the Memoirs[3] supposed to have thrown light on the +mystery, in the full knowledge of Dr. Lushington's judgment and all the +gossip of the day, professes to believe that "the causes of disunion did +not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and +writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible +with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping +generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with +intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most +reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is +reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my +lady;" and Madame De Staël, on reading the _Farewell_, that "She would +have been glad to have been in Lady Byron's place." But it may be doubted +if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were +even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a +pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to +make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in +corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man +whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch +under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker? Or how could her +conscious virtue tolerate the recurring irregularities which he was +accustomed, not only to permit himself, but to parade? The harassment of +his affairs stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to suspect him +to be mad. Some of her recently printed letters--as that to Lady Anne +Barnard, and the reports of later observers of her character--as William +Howitt, tend to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent +amiability, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility of the pair. It +must have been trying to a poet to be asked by his wife, impatient of his +late hours, when he was going to leave off writing verses; to be told he +had no real enthusiasm; or to have his desk broken open, and its +compromising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least +intended. The smouldering elements of discontent may have been fanned by +the gossip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled +into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others beyond the +circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless believed some story which, when +communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the +mere fact of her believing it made reconciliation impossible; and the +inveterate obstinacy which lurked beneath her gracious exterior, made her +cling through life to the substance--not always to the form, whatever that +may have been--of her first impressions. Her later letters to Mrs. Leigh, +as that called forth by Moore's _Life_, are certainly as open to the +charge of self-righteousness, as those of her husband's are to +self-disparagement. + + [Footnote 3: Captain Trelawney, however, doubts if he ever read them.] + +Byron himself somewhere says, "Strength of endurance is worth all the +talent in the world." "I love the virtues that I cannot share." His own +courage was all active; he had no power of sustained endurance. At a time +when his proper refuge was silence, and his prevailing sentiment--for he +admits he was somehow to blame--should have been remorse, he foolishly +vented his anger and his grief in verses, most of them either peevish or +vindictive, and some of which he certainly permitted to be published. "Woe +to him," exclaims Voltaire, "who says all he could on any subject!" Woe to +him, he might have added, who says anything at all on the subject of his +domestic troubles! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a +host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some +degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men of whose adulation he +was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macaulay has +expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed. +Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles, were let loose, and they +anticipated the _Saturday_ and the _Spectator_ of 1869, so that the latter +might well have exclaimed, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." Byron +was accused of every possible and impossible vice, he was compared to +Sardanapalus, Nero, Tiberius, the Duke of Orleans, Heliogabalus, and +Satan--all the most disreputable persons mentioned in sacred and profane +history; his benevolences were maligned, his most disinterested actions +perverted. Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, was on his account, on one occasion, +driven off the public stage. He was advised not to go to the theatres, +lest he should be hissed; nor to Parliament, lest he should be insulted. +On the very day of his departure a friend told him that he feared violence +from mobs assembling at the door of his carriage. "Upon what grounds," the +poet writes, in a trenchant survey of the circumstances, in August, 1819, +"the public formed their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and +it was decisive. Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had +written poetry, was a nobleman, bad married, became a father, and was +involved in differences with my wife and her relatives--no one knew why, +because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances. + +"The press was active and scurrilous;.. my name--which had been a +knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for +William the Norman--was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and +muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England +was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other +countries--in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue +depth of the lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I +crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, +and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who +betakes himself to the waters." + +On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr. +Rogers: "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. We shall not +meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final +meeting), and under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you +and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening." In all +this storm and stress, Byron's one refuge was in the affection which rises +like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life. + + In the desert a fountain is springing, + In the wild waste there still is a tree; + And a bird in the solitude singing, + That speaks to my spirit of thee. + +The fashionable world was tired of its spoilt child, and he of it. Hunted +out of the country, bankrupt in purse and heart, he left it, never to +return; but he left it to find fresh inspiration by the "rushing of the +arrowy Rhone," and under Italian skies to write the works which have +immortalized his name. + + + DESCENT OF LADY BYRON AND LADY C. LAMB + + +Earl Spencer. Sir Ralph Milbanke. Viscount Wentworth + | _________________|_______________ | + | | | | +Henrietta Elizabeth (Lady Melbourne) Sir Ralph + Judith Noel +Frances. | m. Viscount Melbourne. | + + | | +F. Ponsonby | Lord Byron + Anna Isabella. +(Earl of | | +Bessborough). | Augusta Ada. + | | + | | +Lady Caroline + William Lamb. + + + DESCENT OF ALLEGRA + + William Godwin. + Married 1st + Mary Woolstonecraft. 2nd Mrs. Clairmont. + | She had by previous | + | alliance | + | | Claire Claremont + Byron. +P. B. Shelley + Mary Godwin Fanny Imlay. | + Allegra. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +LIFE ABROAD--SWITZERLAND TO VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP.--CHILDE +HAROLD, III., IV.--MANFRED. + +On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron embarked for Ostend. From the "burning +marl" of the staring streets he planted his foot again on the dock with a +genuine exultation. + + Once more upon the waters, yet once more, + And the waves bound beneath me as a steed + That knows her rider. Welcome to the roar! + +But he brought with him a relic of English extravagance, sotting out on +his land travels in a huge coach, copied from that of Napoleon taken at +Genappe, and being accompanied by Fletcher, Rushton, Berger, a Swiss, and +Polidori, a physician of Italian descent, son of Alfieri's secretary, a +man of some talent but indiscreet. A question arises as to the source from +which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking +contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's +financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance, +nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the +Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the Court of Exchequer, and +that his appeal to the House of Lords was still unsettled in 1822. The +sale of Newstead to Colonel Wildman in 1818, for 90,000 _l_., went mostly +to pay off mortgages and debts. In April, 1819, Mrs. Leigh writes, after a +last sigh over this event:--"Sixty thousand pounds was secured by his +(Byron's) marriage settlement, the interest of which he receives for life, +and which ought to make him very comfortable." This is unfortunately +decisive of the fact that he did not in spirit adhere to the resolution +expressed to Moore never to touch a farthing of his wife's money, though +we may accept his statement to Medwin, that he twice repaid the dowry of +10,000 _l_. brought to him at the marriage, as in so far diminishing the +obligation. None of the capital of Lady Byron's family came under his +control till 1822, when, on the death of her mother, Lady Noel, Byron +arranged the appointment of referees, Sir Francis Burdett on his behalf, +Lord Dacre on his wife's. The result was an equal division of a property +worth about 7000 _l_ a year. While in Italy the poet received besides +about 10,000 _l_ for his writings--4000 _l_. being given for _Childe +Harold_ (iii., iv.), and _Manfred_. "Ne pas être dupe" was one of his +determinations, and, though he began by caring little for making money, he +was always fond of spending it. "I tell you it is too much," he said to +Murray, in returning a thousand guineas for the _Corinth_ and _Partsina_. +Hodgson, Moore, Bland, Thomas Ashe, the family of Lord Falkland, the +British Consul at Venice, and a host of others, were ready to testify to +his superb munificence. On the other hand, he would stint his pleasures, +or his benevolences, which were among them, for no one; and when he found +that to spend money he had to make it, he saw neither rhyme nor reason in +accepting less than his due. In 1817 he begins to dun Murray, declaring, +with a frankness in which we can find no fault, "You offer 1500 guineas +for the new canto (_C. H_., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for +it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper." During the +remaining years of his life he grew more and more exact, driving hard +bargains for his houses, horses, and boats, and fitting himself, had he +lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-liberated State, +from which he took a bond securing a fair interest for his loan. He made +out an account in _£. s. d_. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh +Hunt threatened to sponge upon him he got a harsh reception; but there is +nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by +the "good old gentlemanly vice" of which lie wrote. The Skimpoles and +Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre: it is +equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men +of business. + +We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the +Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During his +stay in the Belgian capital lie paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo, +wrote the famous stanzas beginning, "Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's +dust!" and in unpatriotic prose, recorded his impressions of a plain which +appeared to him to "want little but a better cause" to make it vie in +interest with those of Platea and Marathon. + +The rest of his journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne, +Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hôtel Secheron, +on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary +relationship of his life, for here he first came in contact with the +impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in +proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont +Alégre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati; +and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with some +interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives. +The place for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of +their Italian partnership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as +fellow-excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion departing from +its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with +Hobhouse, off Meillerie. "The boat," says Byron, "was nearly wrecked near +the very spot where St. Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. +It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I +ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party +wore wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim, +was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary +or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a +storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being +still persecuted. "I was in a wretched state of health and worse spirits +when I was in Geneva; but quiet and the lake--better physicians than +Polidori--soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my +residence in that country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary, +there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was +watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, +that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening +drives. I believe they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his +arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a +daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage +of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, which resulted in the birth of +a daughter, Allegra, at Great Marlow, in February, 1817. The noticeable +events of the following two months are a joint excursion to Chamouni, and +a visit in July to Madame de Staël at Coppet, in the course of which he +met Frederick Schlegel. During a wet week, when the families were reading +together some German ghost stories, an idea occurred of imitating them, +the main result of which was Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_. Byron +contributed to the scheme a fragment of _The Vampire_, afterwards +completed and published in the name of his patron by Polidori. The +eccentricities of this otherwise amiable physician now began to give +serious annoyance; his jealousy of Shelley grew to such a pitch that it +resulted in the doctor's giving a challenge to the poet, at which the +latter only laughed; but Byron, to stop further outbreaks of the kind, +remarked, "Recollect that, though Shelley has scruples about duelling, I +have none, and shall be at all times ready to take his place." Polidori +had ultimately to be dismissed, and, after some years of vicissitude, +committed suicide. + +The Shelleys left for England in September, and Byron made an excursion +with Hobhouse through the Bernese Oberland. They went by the Col de Jaman +and the Simmenthal to Thun; then up the valley to the Staubbach, which he +compares to the tail of the pale horse in the Apocalypse--not a very +happy, though a striking comparison. Thence they proceeded over the +Wengern to Grindelwald and the Rosenlau glacier; then back by Berne, +Friburg, and Yverdun to Diodati. The following passage in reference to +this tour may be selected as a specimen of his prose description, and of +the ideas of mountaineering before the days of the Alpine Club:-- + +"Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent again, the sun upon it +forming a rainbow of the lower part, of all colours but principally purple +and gold, the bow moving as you move. I never saw anything like this; it +is only in the sunshine.... Left the horses, took off my coat, and went to +the summit, 7000 English feet above the level of the sea, and 5000 feet +above the valley we left in the morning. On one side our view comprised +the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like +truth; then the Eighers and the Wetterhorn. Heard the avalanches falling +every five minutes. From where we stood on the Wengern Alp we had all +these in view on one side; on the other, the clouds rose up from the +opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the +ocean of hell during a spring tide; it was white and sulphury, and +immeasurably deep in appearance.... Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined; +mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier--like a frozen hurricane; +starlight beautiful, but a devil of a path. Passed whole woods of withered +pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done +by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family." + +Students of _Manfred_ will recognize whole sentences, only slightly +modified in its verse. Though Byron talks with contempt of authorship, +there is scarce a fine phrase in his letters or journal which is not +pressed into the author's service. He turns his deepest griefs to artistic +gain, and uses five or six times for literary purposes the expression +which seems to have dropped from him naturally about his household gods +being shivered on his hearth. His account of this excursion concludes with +a passage equally characteristic of his melancholy and incessant +self-consciousness:-- + +"In the weather for this tour, I have been very fortunate.... I was +disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, &c.... But in all this the +recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home +desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me +here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the +avalanche, the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the +cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled +me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the +glory around, above, and beneath me." + +Such egotism in an idle man would only provoke impatience; but Byron was, +during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained +by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the _Prisoner +of Chillon_, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in +some respects surpasses any of his early romances. The opening lines,-- + + Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls; + A thousand feet in depth below, + Its massy waters meet and flow,-- + +bring before us in a few words the conditions of a hopeless bondage. The +account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the +brothers; the first frenzy of the survivor, and the desolation which +succeeds it-- + + I only loved: I only drew + The accursed breath of dungeon dew,-- + +the bird's song breaking on the night of his solitude; his growing +enamoured of despair, and regaining his freedom with a sigh, are all +strokes from a master hand. From the same place, at the same date, he +announces to Murray the completion of the third canto of _Childe Harold_. +The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the +_Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, Churchill's Grave_, the _Sonnet to Lake +Leman, Could I remount the River of my Years_, part of _Manfred, +Prometheus_, the _Stanzas to Augusta_, beginning, + + My sister! My sweet sister! If a name + Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; + +and the terrible dream of _Darkness_, which at least in the ghastly power +of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar +fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's _Last +Man_[1]. At Lausanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gibbon, +broke a sprig from his acacia-tree, and carried off some rose leaves from +his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M.G. Lewis and +Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned "the locust swarm of English +tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes; as when he heard one +of them at Chamouni inquire, "Did you ever see anything more truly rural?" +Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese--one of whom is said +to have swooned as he entered the room--and early in October set out with +Hobhouse for Italy. They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago +Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse +beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its +cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted +with "a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia +and Cardinal Bembo." He secured a lock of the golden hair of the Pope's +daughter, and wished himself a cardinal. + + [Footnote 1: This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have + given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subject.] + +At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as surpassing anything he +had seen even in Greece, and on the faith of the people in the story of +Juliet, from whose reputed tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and +his nieces. In November we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle +of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances +which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his +letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of +his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, "the wife of a merchant of +Venice," for some time his landlord. With this woman, whom he describes as +an antelope with oriental eyes, wavy hair, voice like the cooing of a +dove, and the spirit of a Bacchante, he remained on terms of intimacy +for about eighteen months, during which their mutual devotion was only +disturbed by some outbursts of jealousy. In December the poet took lessons +in Armenian, glad to find in the study something craggy to break his mind +upon. Ho translated into that language a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to +the Corinthians. Notes on the carnival, praises of _Christabel_, +instructions about the printing of _Childe Harold_ (iii.), protests +against the publication under his name of some spurious "domestic poems," +and constant references, doubtfully domestic, to his Adriatic lady, fill +up the records of 1816. On February 15, 1817, he announces to Murray the +completion of the first sketch of _Manfred_, and alludes to it in a +bantering manner as "a kind of poem in dialogue, of a wild metaphysical +and inexplicable kind;" concluding, "I have at least rendered it _quite +impossible_ for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has +given me the greatest contempt." + +About this time Byron seems to have entertained the idea of returning to +England in the spring, i.e. after a year's absence. This design, however, +was soon set aside, partly in consequence of a slow malarian fever, by +which he was prostrated for several weeks. On his partial recovery, +attributed to his having had neither medicine nor doctor, and a +determination to live till he had "put one or two people out of the +world," he started on an expedition to Rome. + +His first stage was Arqua; then Ferrara, where he was inspired, by a sight +of the Italian poet's prison, with the _Lament of Tasso_; the next, +Florence, where he describes himself as drunk with the beauty of the +galleries. Among the pictures, he was most impressed with the mistresses +of Raphael and Titian, to whom, along with Giorgione, he is always +reverential; and he recognized in Santa Croce the Westminster Abbey of +Italy. Passing through Foligno, he reached his destination early in May, +and met his old friends, Lord Lansdowne and Hobhouse. The poet employed +his short time at Rome in visiting on horseback the most famous sites in +the city and neighbourhood--as the Alban Mount, Tivoli, Frascati, the +Falls of Terni, and the Clitumnus--re-casting the crude first draft of the +third act of _Manfred_, and sitting for his bust to Thorwaldsen. Of this +sitting the sculptor afterwards gave some account to his compatriot, Hans +Andersen: "Byron placed himself opposite to me, but at once began to put +on a quite different expression from that usual to him. 'Will you not sit +still?' said I. 'You need not assume that look.' 'That is my expression,' +said Byron. 'Indeed,' said I; and I then represented him as I wished. When +the bust was finished he said, 'It is not at all like me; my expression is +more unhappy.'" West, the American, who five years later painted his +lordship at Leghorn, substantiates the above half-satirical anecdote, by +the remark, "He was a bad sitter; he assumed a countenance that did not +belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for _Chlde +Harold_." Thorwaldsen's bust, the first cast of which was sent to +Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous +likenesses of her brother, was often repeated. Professor Brandes, of +Copenhagen, introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to +the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great +sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character +so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight +impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the +restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to +hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant +impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power +(Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833) +executed the marble statue, first intended for the Abbey, which is now to +be seen in the library of Trinity College, in evidence that Cambridge is +still proud of her most brilliant son. + +Towards the close of the month--after almost fainting at the execution by +guillotine of three bandits--he professes impatience to get back to +Mariana, and early in the next we find him established with her near +Venice, at the villa of La Mira, where for some time he continued to +reside. His letters of June refer to the sale of Newstead, the mistake of +Mrs. Leigh and others in attributing to him the _Tales of a Landlord_, the +appearance of _Lalla Rookh_, preparations for _Marino Faliero_, and the +progress of _Childe Harold_ iv. This poem, completed in September, and +published early in 1818 (with a dedication to Hobhouse, who had supplied +most of the illustrative notes), first made manifest the range of the +poet's power. Only another slope of ascent lay between him and the +pinnacle, over which shines the red star of _Cain_. Had Lord Byron's +public career closed when he left England, he would have been remembered +for a generation as the author of some musical minor verses, a clever +satire, a journal in verse exhibiting flashes of genius, and a series of +fascinating romances--also giving promise of higher power--which had +enjoyed a marvellous popularity. The third and fourth cantos of _Childe +Harold_ placed him on another platform, that of the _Dii Majores_ of +English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by +a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown +how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand, +and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the +mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and +the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering. +Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of +Byron's; and even in the later parts of the _Childe_ there are careless +lines, and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again," +looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher +note. No familiarity can distract from "Waterloo," which holds its own by +Barbour's "Bannockburn," and Scott's "Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to +the climax of the opening, and the pathetic lament of the closing lines, +generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour. +There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an +appreciation of its exuberance of fancy, and negligence of diction; and +then the masterly sketch of Napoleon, with the implied reference to the +writer at the end. + +The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric +to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself, +in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set +beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint +pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is in verse a +splendid microcosm of the favourites, if not the prevailing mood, of the +writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It +is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The +poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhaetian hill, his +Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and +his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forgot +himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps, +Lake Leman, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the +stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame, as well as a +Diorama of Scenery. It is no mere versified Guide, because every +resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with +illustrious memories. Coblontz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens +an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and +Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in +Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the +lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back +Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and +Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and-- + + The starry Galileo and his woes. + +Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome, +that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous. +Hawthorne, in his _Marble Fawn_, comes nearest to him; but Byron's +Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of +Marius," says Scott, "could not sound more deep and solemn among the ruins +of Carthage, than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and +fallen statues of her subduer." As the third canto has a fitting close +with the poet's pathetic remembrance of his daughter, so the fourth is +wound up with consummate art,--the memorable dirge on the Princess +Charlotte being followed by the address to the sea, which, enduring +unwrinkled through all its ebbs and flows, seems to mock at the mutability +of human life. + +_Manfred_, his witch drama, as the author called it, has had a special +attraction for inquisitive biographers, because it has been supposed in +some dark manner to reveal the secrets of his prison house. Its lines have +been tortured, like the witches of the seventeenth century, to extort from +them the meaning of the "all nameless hour," and every conceivable horror +has been alleged as its _motif_. On this subject Goethe writes with a +humorous simplicity: "This singularly intellectual poet has extracted from +my _Faust_ the strongest nourishment for his hypochondria; but he has made +use of the impelling principles for his own purposes.... When a bold and +enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her +husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was +the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one to whom any +suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, but these +spirits have haunted him all his life. This romantic incident explains +innumerable allusions," e.g.,-- + + I have shed + Blood, but not hers,--and yet her blood was shed. + +Were it not for the fact that the poet had never seen the city in question +when he wrote the poem, this explanation would be more plausible than most +others, for the allusions are all to some lady who has been done to death. +Galt asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallowed +necromancy--a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous attributed to +Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot, but he kept teasing his +questioners with mysterious hints, e.g. "It was the Staubbach and the +Jungfrau, and something else more than Faustus, which made me write +_Manfred_;" and of one of his critics he says to Murray, "It had a better +origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him." In any case +most methods of reading between its lines would, if similarly applied, +convict Sophocles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakespeare of murder, +Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goethe of compacts with +the devil. Byron was no dramatist, but he had wit enough to vary at least +the circumstances of his projected personality. The memories of both +Fausts--the Elizabethan and the German--mingle, in the pages of this +piece, with shadows of the author's life; but to these it never gives, nor +could be intended to give, any substantial form. + +_Manfred_ is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of +Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and +sensational narrative. Like _Harold_, and Scott's _Marmion_, it just +misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description, +the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to +pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral +tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are +seldom absolutely fresh: that beginning, + + The mind, which is immortal, makes itself + Requital for its good or evil thoughts, + Is its own origin of ill and end, + And its own place and time, + +is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in +transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the +invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by +lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well, +e.g.,-- + + Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains; + They crowned him long ago, + On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, + With a null of snow; + +but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the +ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally; turn +to the incantation in the _Deformed Transformed_: the first line and a +half are in tune,-- + + Beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy, + Who sleeps in the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy. + +Nor Sternhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the +next two-- + + From the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape, + As the Being who made him, whose actions I ape(!) + +Of his songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in +beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation +"Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is +pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy +to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but +their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world. + +The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira, +and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the +Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in +his way; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories, +none of which wore "too improbable for the craving appetites of their +slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr. +Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards +given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the +_Academy_ of October 9th, 1869. In this document he says, "It has been +intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of +Lady Byron have declared their lips to be sealed up on the cause of the +separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up they are +not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will +be to open them." He goes on to state, that he repents having consented to +the separation--will be glad to cancel the deed, or to go before any +tribunal, to discuss the matter in the most public manner; adding, that +Mr. Hobhouse (in whose presence he was writing) proposed, on his part, to +go into court, and ending with a renewed asseveration of his ignorance of +the allegations against him, and his inability to understand for what +purpose they had been kept back, "unless it was to sanction the most +infamous calumnies by silence." Hobhouse, and others, during the four +succeeding years, ineffectually endeavoured to persuade the poet to return +to England. Moore and others insist that Byron's heart was at home when +his presence was abroad, and that, with all her faults, he loved his +country still. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, asserts that he cared nothing +for England or its affairs. Like many men of genius, Byron was never +satisfied with what he had at the time. "Romae Tibur amem ventosus Tibure +Romam." At Seaham he is bored to death, and pants for the excitement of +the clubs; in London society he longs for a desert or island in the +Cyclades; after their separation, he begins to regret his wife; after his +exile, his country. "Where," he exclaimed to Hobhouse, "is real comfort to +be found out of England?" He frequently fell into the mood in which he +wrote the verse,-- + + Yet I was born where men are proud to be, + Not without cause: and should I leave behind + Th'immortal island of the sage and free, + And seek me out a home by a remoter sea? + +But the following, to Murray (June 7, 1819), is equally sincere. "Some of +the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments +of Bologna; for instance-- + + 'Martini Luigi + Implora pace.' + + 'Lucrezia Picini + Implora eterna quiete.'" + +Can anything be more full of pathos? These few words say all that can be +said or sought; the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, +and this they implore. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and +death-like prayer that can arise from the grave--'implora pace.' "I hope, +whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigner's +burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see +these two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of +pickling and bringing me home to Clod, or Blunderbuss Hall. I am sure my +bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of +that country." Hunt's view is, in this as in other subtle respects, nearer +the truth than Moore's; for with all Byron's insight into Italian vice, he +hated more the master vice of England--hypocrisy; and much of his +greatest, and in a sense latest, because unfinished work, is the severest, +as it might be the wholesomest, satire ever directed against a great +nation since the days of Juvenal and Tacitus. + +In September (1817) Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed, +for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr. +Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his +kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in +Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters, in the Spezieria, and +afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand +Canal. Between this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La +Mira, he divided his time for the next two years. During the earlier part +of his Venetian career he had continued to frequent the salon of the +Countess Albrizzi, where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and +standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into +absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the company informing the hostess, in +answer to some inquiry regarding Canova's busts, that Washington, the +American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, "What, in the name of +folly, are you thinking of?" said Byron, perceiving that the speaker was +confounding Washington with Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards +transferred himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoni, and gave +himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on +this portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as +despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybele as a Sea-Sodom--when +he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad contemplation. +I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own +solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In +any case, he forsook the "Dame," and, by what his biographer calls a +"descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the wayward +state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours +among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818, +1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati +fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the +jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large +mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the +wife of a baker who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the +linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Señor Castelar has +almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown +shoulders, and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face +like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno--tall and energetic as a +pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as +"Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance. +Unable to read or write she intercepted his lordship's letters to little +purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half +the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when +her violences roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or +witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the +Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own +account, is sufficiently graphic:--"In the autumn one day, going to the +Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the +gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling +sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a +tight struggle, I found her on the open stops of the Mocenigo Palace on +the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and +the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her +brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her +dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made +her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest +that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that +moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me, +as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della +Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and +solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the +'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with +ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs." + +Some months after she became ungovernable--threw plates about, and +snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in +public places. Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to +break glass, and threaten "knives, poison, fire;" and on his calling his +boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the +canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which +he saw her only twice, at the theatre. Her whole picture is more like that +of Théroigne de Méricourt than that of Raphael's Fornarina, whose name she +received. + +Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life--personal +encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible +episodes; their basis being, that Byron on one occasion thrashed, on +another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, +and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called "the English fish," +"water-spaniel," "sea-devil," &c. One of the boatmen is reported to have +said, "He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord;" and in +answer to a traveller's inquiry, "Where does he get his poetry?" "He dives +for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally +abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, +and then took claret and soda in the morning. + +Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not +seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse +surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off _Beppo_, _Mazeppa_, and +the early books of _Don Juan_. The first canto of the last was written in +November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards +the close of the same year. _Beppo_, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like +a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the +author broke ground on his true satiric field--the satire of social +life--and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by _Whistlecraft_ +(Frere), was drafted in October, 1817, and appeared in May, 1818. It aims +at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and +unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease +of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In _Mazeppa_ the poet +reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the +headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it +a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling +of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as +anything in Burns-- + + The skies spun like a mighty wheel, + I saw the trees like drunkards reel. + +In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent +from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her +management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety +he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the +next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which +records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate +solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr. +Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in +that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing +like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference. +"Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous +as a vulture; health good, to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable, +but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do +as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her +mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of +the Shelleys then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of +Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had +thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care, +kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say +what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this +instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a _country_ town, in a +good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always +appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does _not_ proceed from a +_conventual_ education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of +their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state +of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is +like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the +sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he +says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education, +because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would +be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion +of 5000_l_. or 6000_l_. (his will leaving her 5000_l_., on condition that +she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she +might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a +pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that +she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as +it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It +only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of +fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the +news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly +prostrated. Next day he said, "Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than +we. It is God's will, let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath +the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the +date of birth and death, and the scripture-- + + I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me. + +The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his +life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at +Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the +midst of a thunderstorm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode +together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other +is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the +idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage +and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never +paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the +other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron +in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. + +The introduction to _Julian and Maddalo_, directly suggested by this +visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of +the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is +a person of the most consummate genius, and capable if he would direct his +energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. +But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his +own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an +intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and +his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead +of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have +mutually lent each other strength;" but "in social life no human being can +be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. +His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by +it as by a spell." + +Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este to his friend, and +during the autumn weeks of their residence there were written the lines +among the Euganean hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley +refers to the "tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the "music flung o'er +a mighty thunder-fit," and to the sunlike soul destined to immortalize his +ocean refuge,-- + + As the ghost of Homer clings + Round Seamander's wasting springs, + As divinest Shakespeare's might + Fills Avon and the world with light. + +"The sun," he says, at a later date, "has extinguished the glowworm;" and +again, "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no +other with whom it is worth contending." + +Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic; +and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade +of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be +lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of +the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a +greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest +characters in the history of our literature. There is at least no +difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed +by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense--easy to an +impassioned devotee--of inferiority. Similarly, most of the estimates-- +many already reversed, others reversible--by the men of that age, of each +other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated +both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats, +and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet +the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criticism is the respect +that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical +Tom Moore. + +This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short +tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble +friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing +expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this +visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's +personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his +life. Byron "had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had +suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the +features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other +times distinguished it, but although less romantic he appeared more +humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in +London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a +manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical +associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted +dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; +and when his companion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian +sunsets, he interrupted him with, "Come, d--n it, Tom, _don't_ be +poetical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would +be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace; +and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, +cried out, "Keep clear of the dog!" and a few paces farther, "Take care, +or the monkey will fly at you!" an incident recalling the old vagaries of +the menagerie at Newstead. The biographer's reminiscences mainly dwell on +his lordship's changing moods and tempers and gymnastic exercises, his +terror of interviewing strangers, his imperfect appreciation of art, his +preference of fish to flesh, his almost parsimonious economy in small +matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent +expressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the +city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mira, had a glimpse of +Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious +Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned +carrying in his hand a white leather bag. 'Look here,' he said, holding it +up; 'this would be worth something to Murray, though _you_, I dare say, +would not give sixpence for it.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'My life and +adventures,' he answered. 'It is not a thing,' he answered, 'that can be +published during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like. There, do +whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag, and thanking him most +warmly, I added, 'This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, who +shall astonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it.'"[2] +Shortly after, Moore for the last time bade his friend farewell, taking +with him from Madame Guiccioli, who did the honours of the house, an +introduction to her brother, Count Gamba, at Rome. "Theresa Guiccioli," +says Castelar, "appears like a star on the stormy horizon of the poet's +life." A young Romagnese, the daughter of a nobleman of Ravenna, of good +descent but limited means, she had been educated in a convent, and married +in her nineteenth year to a rich widower of sixty, in early life a friend +of Alfieri, and noted as the patron of the National Theatre. This +beautiful blonde, of pleasing manners, graceful presence, and a strong +vein of sentiment, fostered by the reading of Chateaubriand, met Byron for +the first time casually when she came in her bridal dress to one of the +Albrizzi reunions; but she was only introduced to him early in the April +of the following year, at the house of the Countess Benzoni. "Suddenly the +young Italian found herself inspired with a passion of which till that +moment her mind could not have formed the least idea; she had thought of +love but as an amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other +hand, gave what remained of a heart, never alienated from her by any other +mistress. Till the middle of the month they met every day; and when the +husband took her back to Ravenna she despatched to her idol a series of +impassioned letters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in +accordance with his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her +relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to the +summons, writing on his way the beautiful stanzas to the Po, beginning-- + + River that rollest by the ancient walls + Where dwells the lady of my love. + + [Footnote 2: In December, 1820, Byron sent several more sheets of + memoranda from Ravenna, and in the following year suggested an + arrangement by which Murray paid over to Moore, who was then in + difficulties, 2000_l_. for the right of publishing the whole, under + the condition, among others, that Lady Byron should see them, and have + the right of reply to anything that might seem to her objectionable. + She on her part declined to have anything to do with them. When the + Memoirs were destroyed, Moore paid back the 2000_l_., but obtained + four thousand guineas for editing the _Life and Correspondence_.] + +Again passing through Ferrara, and visiting Bologna, he left the latter on +the 8th, and on his arrival at his destination found the Countess +dangerously ill; but his presence, and the attentions of the famous +Venetian doctor, Aglietti, who was sent for by his advice, restored her. +The Count seems to have been proud of his guest. "I can't make him out at +all," Byron writes; "he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like +Whittington the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to +be, that he is completely governed by her--and, for that matter, so am I." +Later he speaks of having got his horses from Venice, and riding or +driving daily in the scenery reproduced in the third canto of _Don +Juan_:-- + + Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude + Of the pine forest, and the silent shore + Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. + +On Theresa's recovery, in dread of a possible separation he proposed to +fly with her to America, to the Alps, to "some unsuspected isle in the far +seas;" and she suggested the idea of feigning death, like Juliet, and +rising from the tomb. Neither expedient was called for. When the Count +went to Bologna, in August, with his wife, Lord Byron was allowed to +follow; and--after consoling himself during an excursion which the married +pair made to their estate, by hovering about her empty rooms and writing +in her books--he established himself, on the Count's return to his +headquarters, with her and Allegra at Bologna. Meanwhile, Byron had +written _The Prophecy of Dante_, and in August the prose letter, _To the +Editor of the British Review_, on the charge of bribery in _Don Juan_. +Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling composition +exists. About the same time, we hear of his leaving the theatre in a +convulsion of tears, occasioned by the representation of Alfieri's +_Mirra_. + +He left Bologna with the Countess on the 15th of September, when they +visited the Euganean hills and Arqua, and wrote their names together in +the Pilgrim's Book. On arriving at Venice, the physicians recommending +Madame Guiccioli to country air, they settled, still by her husband's +consent, for the autumn at La Mira, where Moore and others found them +domesticated. At the beginning of November the poet was prostrated by an +attack of tertian fever. In some of his hours of delirium he dictated to +his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Countess, a number of verses, which +she assures us were correct and sensible. He attributes his restoration to +cold water and the absence of doctors; but, ere his complete recovery, +Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his +own wife. The lovers had for a time not only to acquiesce in the +separation, but to agree to cease their correspondence. In December, Byron +in a fit of spleen had packed up his belongings, with a view to return to +England. "He was," we are told, "ready dressed for the journey, his boxes +on board the gondola, his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in +his hand, when my lord declares that if it should strike one--which it +did--before everything was in order, he would not go that day. It is +evident he had not the heart to go." Next day he heard that Madame +Guiccioli was again seriously ill, received and accepted the renewed +invitation which bound him to her and to the south. He left Venice for the +last time almost by stealth, rushed along the familiar roads, and was +welcomed at Ravenna. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +1820-1821. + +RAVENNA--DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. + +Byrons's life at Ravenna was during the first months comparatively calm; +nevertheless, he mingled in society, took part in the Carnival, and was +received at the parties of the Legate. "I may stay," he writes in January, +1820, "a day--a week--a year--all my life." Meanwhile, he imported his +movables from Venice, hired a suite of rooms in the Guiccioli palace, +executed his marvellously close translation of Pulci's _Morgante +Maggiore_, wrote his version of the story of _Francesca of Rimini_, and +received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Humphrey Davy. At +this time he was accustomed to ride about armed to the teeth, apprehending +a possible attack from assassins on the part of Count Guiccioli. In April +his letters refer to the insurrectionary movements then beginning against +the Holy Alliance. "We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they +have over-written all the city walls with 'Up with the Republic!' and +'Death to the Pope!' The police have been searching for the subscribers, +but have caught none as yet. The other day they confiscated the whole +translation of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, and have prosecuted +the translator." In July a Papal decree of separation between the Countess +and her husband was obtained, on condition of the latter paying from his +large income a pittance to the lady of 200 _l_. a year, and her +undertaking to live in her father's house--an engagement which was, first +in the spirit, and subsequently in the letter, violated. For a time, +however, she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where +she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of +July he had finished _Marino Faliero_, and ere the close of the year the +fifth canto of _Don Juan_. in September he says to Murray, "I am in a +fierce humour, at not having Scott's _Monastery_. No more Keats,[1] I +entreat. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. I +don't feel inclined to care further about _Don Juan_. What do you think a +very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that +'it would live longer than _Childe Harold_'? 'Ah! but I would rather have +the fame of _Childe Harold_ for three years than an immortality of _D. +J._'" This is to-day the common female judgment; it is known to have been +La Guiccioli's, as well as Mrs. Leigh's, and by their joint persuasion +Byron was for a season induced to lay aside "that horrid, wearisome Don." +About this time he wrote the memorable reply to the remarks on that poem +in _Blackwood's Magazine_', where he enters on a defence of his life, +attacks the Lakers, and champions Pope against the new school of poetry, +lamenting that his own practice did not square with his precept; and +adding, "We are all wrong, except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." + + [Footnote 1: In a note on a similar passage, bearing the date November + 12, 1821, he, however, confesses:--"My indignation at Mr. Keats' + depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own + genius, which malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style was + undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually + inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss + to our literature."] + +In November he refers to reports of his letters being opened by the +Austrian officials, and the unpleasant things the Huns, as he calls them, +are likely to find therein. Early in the next month he tells Moore that +the commandant of their troops, a brave officer, but obnoxious to the +people, had been found lying at his door, with five slugs in him, and, +bleeding inwardly, had died in the palace, where he had been brought to be +nursed. + +This incident is versified in _Don Juan_, v. 33-39, with anatomical +minuteness of detail. After trying in vain to wrench an answer out of +death, the poet ends in his accustomed strain-- + + But it was all a mystery. Here we are, + And there we go:--but _where_? Five bits of lead-- + Or three, or two, or one--send very far! + +Assassination has sometimes been the prelude to revolution, but it may be +questioned if it has over promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently +it has served as a pretext for reaction, or a red signal. In this +instance--as afterwards in 1848--overt acts of violence made the powers of +despotism more alert, and conduced with the half-hearted action of their +adversaries to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy +with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new associations. +Theresa's brother, Count Pietro, an enthusiastic young soldier, having +returned from Rome and Naples, surmounting a prejudice not wholly +unnatural, became attached to him, and they entered into a partnership in +behalf of what--adopting a phrase often flaunted in opposite camps--they +called constitutional principles. Finally the poet so committed himself to +the party of insurrection that, though his nationality secured him from +direct attack, his movements were necessarily affected by the fiasco. In +July the Gambas were banished from the Romagna, Pietro being actually +carried by force over the frontier; and, according to the articles of her +separation, the Countess had to follow them to Florence. Byron lingered +for some mouths, partly from a spirit of defiance, and partly from his +affection towards a place where he had enlisted the regards of numerous +beneficiaries. The Gambas were for some time bent on migrating to +Switzerland; but the poet, after first acquiescing, subsequently conceived +a violent repugnance to the idea, and early in August wrote to Shelley, +earnestly requesting his presence, aid, and counsel. Shelley at once +complied, and, entering into a correspondence with Madame Guiccioli, +succeeded in inducing her relatives to abandon their transmontane plans, +and agree to take up their headquarters at Pisa. This incident gave rise +to a series of interesting letters, in which the younger poet gives a +vivid and generous account of the surroundings and condition of his +friend. On the 2nd of August he writes from Ravenna:--"I arrived last +night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord B. till five this +morning. He was delighted to see me. He has, in fact, completely recovered +his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at +Venice.... Poor fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and +literature. We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night, +and, as usual, differed, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronize +a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, +although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance +of this system, yet I recognize the pernicious effects of it in the _Doge +of Venice_." Again, on the 15th: "Lord B. is greatly improved in every +respect--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, and happiness. +His connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He +lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about +4000_l_. a year, 1000_l_. of which he devotes to purposes of charity. +Switzerland is little fitted for him; the gossip and the cabals of those +Anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before. Ravenna is a +miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. He +has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of _Don Juan_. It sets him +not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day. Every word has +the stamp of immortality.... I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a +direct view of demanding a contribution. I am sure, if I asked, it would +not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. +Lord B. and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or +were I a writer who had no claim to a higher position than I possess, I +would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case." Later, after +stating that Byron had decided upon Tuscany, he says, in reference to La +Guiccioli, "At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she +says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, +la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accordarete +voi? _Non partite da Ravenna senza milord_.' Of course, being now by all +the laws of knighthood captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at +liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa." + +Shelley took his leave, after a visit of ten days' duration, about the +17th or 18th of April. In a letter, dated August 26, he mentions having +secured for his lordship the Palazzo Lanfranchi, an old spacious building +on the Lung' Arno, once the family residence of the destroyers of Ugolino, +and still said to be haunted by their ghosts. Towards the close of +October, he says they have been expecting him any day those six weeks. +Byron, however, did not leave till the morning of the 29th. On his road, +there occurred at Imola the accidental meeting with Lord Clare. Clare--who +on this occasion merely crossed his friend's path on his way to Rome--at a +later date came on purpose from Geneva before returning to England to +visit the poet, who, then at Leghorn, recorded in a letter to Moore his +sense of this proof of old affection undecayed. At Bologna--his next +stage--he met Rogers by appointment, and the latter has preserved his +memory of the event in well-known lines. Together they revisited Florence +and its galleries, where they were distracted by the crowds of +sight-seeing visitors. Byron must have reached Pisa not later than the 2nd +of November (1821), for his first letter from there bears the date of the +3rd. + +The later months of the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense +literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the +controversy with Bowles about Pope, i.e. between the extremes of Art +against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most +part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine expression +of a reaction against a reaction. To this year belong the greater number +of the poet's Historical Dramas. What was said of these, at the time by +Jeffrey, Heber, and others, was said with justice; it is seldom that the +criticism of our day finds so little to reverse in that of sixty years +ago. + +The author, having shown himself capable of being pathetic, sarcastic, +sentimental, comical, and sublime, we would be tempted to think that he +had written these plays to show, what no one before suspected, that he +could also be dull, were it not for his own exorbitant estimation of them. +Lord Byron had few of the powers of a great dramatist; he had little +architectural imagination, or capacity to conceive and build up a whole. +His works are mainly masses of fine, splendid, or humorous writing, heaped +together; the parts are seldom forged into one, or connected by any +indissoluble link. His so-called Dramas are only poems divided into +chapters. Further, he had little of what Mr. Ruskin calls penetrative +imagination. So it has been plausibly said that he made his men after his +own image, his women after his own heart. The former are, indeed, rather +types of what he wished to be than what he was. They are better, and +worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but +less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he +tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result +is either unreal or uninteresting. _Marino Faliero_, begun April, finished +July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe--which was, +however, suppressed--was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early +in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted--and damned. + +Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his +plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of +self-deception when he asserts that he did not mean them to be popular; +but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. _Marino Faliero_, in +particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins--old Grobius himself--"to +be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet +had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it +is none the less unnatural. The characters are comparatively commonplace, +the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the +inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of +Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative. The speeches of the Doge are +solemn, but prolix, if not ostentatious, and--perhaps the vital +defect--his cause fails to enlist our sympathies. Artistically, this play +was Byron's most elaborate attempt to revive the unities and other +restrictions of the severe style, which, when he wrote, had been +"vanquished in literature." "I am persuaded," he writes in the preface, +"that a great tragedy is not to be produced by following the old +dramatists, who are full of faults, but by producing regular dramas like +the Greeks." He forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek +dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a +confession of failure; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity +could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are, +first, the cry for vengeance--the feeling of affronted or unsatiated +pride,--that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the +enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The +following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit +of protest against the more selfish "greasy domesticity" of the Georgian +era:-- + + I. BER. Such ties are not + For those who are called to the high destinies + Which purify corrupted commonwealths: + We must forget all feelings save the one, + We must resign all passions save our purpose, + We must behold no object save our country, + And only look on death as beautiful + So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven, + And draw down freedom on her evermore. + + CAL. But if we fail--? + + I. BER. They never fail who die + In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; + Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs + Be strung to city gates and castle walls, + But still their spirit walks abroad. + +--a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the +precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty. + +Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna, +between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the +following December, is another record of the same failure and the same +mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points +out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect. +The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently +adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, +he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the +tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina +produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano, +though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not +rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace +of Iago's subtle genius. + +In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May, +and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last +reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme-- + + Thirteen hundred years + Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale, + +by the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the development of the +chief character, made more vivid by its being distinctly autobiographical. +Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing +himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been +often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen +Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife; but in his portrait of +the former the author's defective capacity to represent national character +is manifest: Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zuleika. In the +domestic play of _Werner_--completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and +published in November, there is no merit either of plan or execution; for +the plot is taken, with little change, from "The German's Tale," written +by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout prosaic. Byron was never a +master of blank verse; but _Werner_, his solo success on the modern +British stage, is written in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he +cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good +as any in the play. + +The _Deformed Transformed_, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten +novel called _The Three Brothers_, with reminiscences of _Faust_, and +possibly of Scott's _Black Dwarf_, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not +published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the +bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional +charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the +Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed +by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The +_Deformed Transformed_ bears somewhat the same relation to _Manfred as +Heaven and Earth_--an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the +Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's +_Loves of the Angels_, on a similar theme--does to _Cain_. The last named, +begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author's +highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century. In _Cain_ +Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either +accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death, +of good and ill. In dealing with these his position is not that of one +justifying the ways of God to man--though he somewhat disingenuously +appeals to Milton in his defence--nor that of the definite antagonism of +_Queen Mab_. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley +cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that +commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the +word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he +never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a +fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of _Cain_ is almost +wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a +dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside +with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted +tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.-- + + CAIN. Then my father's God did well + When he prohibited the fatal tree. + + LUCIFER. But had done better in not planting it. + +Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is +restored by antidotes-- + + Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil + Springs good! + + LUCIFER. What didst thou answer? + + CAIN. Nothing; for + He is my father; but I thought, that 'twere + A better portion for the animal + Never to have been stung at all. + +This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a +spirit in which much of the grandeur of Milton's Satan is added to the +subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced, +rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he +was born,--"I sought not to be born"--the answer, that toil is a good, +being precluded by its authoritative representation as a punishment; in +which mood he is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter, +who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful +visitation of the yet untasted death; when Adah, entering, takes him at +first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to +Eve, and comparison of the "heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss" in +Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose +fascination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as +is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female +character, to show that God cannot be alone,-- + + What else can joy be, but diffusing joy? + +Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other angels is more after the +style of Shelley than anything else in Byron-- + + As the silent sunny moon, + All light, they look upon us. But thou seemst + Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds + Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars + Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault + With things that look as if they would be suns-- + So beautiful, unnumber'd and endearing; + Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them, + They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou. + +The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and +through the Hades of "uncreated night," with the vision of long-wrecked +worlds, and the interminable gloomy realms + + Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes, + +--suggested, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier--leaves us +with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of +English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more +versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he +so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair +speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank, +like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is +summed in the lines on the fatal tree,-- + + It was a lying tree--for we _know_ nothing; + At least, it _promised knowledge_ at the price + Of death--but _knowledge_ still; but, what _knows_ man? + +A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, "Behold, +we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's +reply to the question--what is more beautiful to him than all that he has +seen in the "unimaginable ether"?-- + + My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven, + The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb + Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world-- + The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming-- + His setting indescribable, which fills + My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold + Him sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him + Along that western paradise of clouds + The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice-- + The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love, + And mingles with the song of cherubim, + As the day closes over Eden's walls:-- + All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, + Like Adah's face. + +Lucifer's speech, at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be +absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir +Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say +what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah, +especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the +'wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare, ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems +to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a +touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who +is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres +"singing in thunder round" him--the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek +of Zillah-- + + Father! Eve! + Adah! Come hither! Death is in the world; + +Cain's rallying from stupor-- + + I am awake at last--a dreary dream + Had madden'd me,--but he shall never wake: + +the curse of Eve; and the close--[Greek: meizon ae kata dakrua] + + CAIN. Leave me. + + ADAH. Why all have left thee. + + CAIN. And wherefore lingerest thou? Dost thou not fear? + + ADAH. I fear + Nothing, except to leave thee. + + * * * * * + + CAIN. Eastward from Eden will we take our way. + + ADAH. Leave! thou shalt be my guide; and may our God + Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children. + + CAIN. And _he_ who lieth there was childless. I + Have dried the fountain of a gentle race. + O Abel! + + ADAH. Peace be with him. + + CAIN. But with _me_! + +_Cain_, between which and the _Cenci_ lies the award of the greatest +single performance in dramatic shape of our century, raised a storm. It +was published, with _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two Foscari_ in December, +1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elze's remark-- +"In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of +thought. The converse is the case with us Germans; freedom of thought is +restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism +presents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it appeared as if a +literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the +cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage of insular +orthodoxy was in proportion to its impotence. Every scribbler with a +cassock denounced the book and its author, though few attempted to answer +him. The hubbub was such that Byron wrote to Murray, authorizing him to +disclaim all responsibility, and offering to refund the payment he had +received. "Say that both you and Mr. Gilford remonstrated. I will come to +England to stand trial. 'Me, me, adsum qui feci,'"--and much to the same +effect. The book was pirated; and on the publisher's application to have +an injunction, Lord Eldon refused to grant it. The majority of the minor +reviewers became hysterical, and Dr. Watkins, amid much almost +inarticulate raving, said that Sir Walter Scott, who had gratefully +accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of +_Cain_ upon his brow. Several even of the higher critics took fright. +Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the +work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its +"frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its +spirit was more dangerous than that of _Paradise Lost_--and succeeded. The +_Quarterly_ began to cool towards the author. Moore wrote to him, that +Cain was "wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but "dreaded and +deprecated" the influence of Shelley. Byron showed the letter to Shelley, +who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the +smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only +wished he had, as he would "employ it to eradicate from his great mind the +delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in +ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes: +"What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer +poetry than has appeared in England since _Paradise Lost_. Cain is +apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the +same strain, Scott says of the author of the "grand and tremendous drama:" +"He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The worst effect of +those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain +himself,--to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering +habit of mind. Great writers in our country have frequently stirred +difficult questions in religion and life, and then seemed to be half +scared, like Rouget de Lisle, by the reverberation of their own voices. +Shelley almost alone was always ready to declare, "I meant what I said, +and stand to it." + +Byron having, with or without design, arraigned some of the Thirty-Nine +Articles of his countrymen, proceeded in the following month (October +1821) to commit an outrage, yet more keenly resented, on the memory of +their sainted king, the pattern of private virtue and public vice, George +III. The perpetration of this occurred in the course of the last of his +numerous literary duels, of which it was the close. That Mr. Southey was a +well-meaning and independent man of letters, there can be no doubt. It +does not require the conclusive testimony of the esteem of Savage Landor +to compel our respect for the author of the _Life of Nelson_, and the +open-handed friend of Coleridge; nor is it any disparagement that, with +the last-named and with Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his +political and other opinions. But in his dealings with Lord Byron, Southey +had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior +powers, for whom his utter want of humour--save in its comparatively +childish forms--made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty +in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The +strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its +height when his lordship, in the humorous observations and serious defence +of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August), +accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander. + +In 1821, when the latter published his _Vision of Judgment_--the most +quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned--he prefixed to it a long +explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes _Don Juan_ as a +"monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," +regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes +the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of +Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his +death-bed. To which Byron, _inter alia_: "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly +ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance of the objects +of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,' +in prose, as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's +sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of +existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, +with most men of any reflection, _I_ have not waited for a death-bed to +repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which +this pitiful renegade in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him." +This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable; +but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To +this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive +denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding +iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public +panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old. + +In February Byron, having seen this assault in the _Courier_, writes off +in needless heat, "I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to +be done is to call him out,"--and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance. +Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judiciously suppressed +it, and the author's thirst for literary blood was destined to remain +unquenched. Meanwhile he had written his own _Vision of Judgment_. This +extraordinary work, having been refused by both Murray and Longman, +appeared in 1822 in the pages of the _Liberal_. It passed the bounds of +British endurance; and the publisher, Mr. John Hunt, was prosecuted and +fined for the publication. + +Readers of our day will generally admit that the "gouty hexameters" of the +original poem, which celebrates the apotheosis of King George in heaven, +are much more blasphemous than the _ottava rima_ of the travesty, which +professes to narrate the difficulties of his getting there. Byron's +_Vision of Judgment_ is as unmistakably the first of parodies as the +_Iliad_ is the first of epics, or the _Pilgrim's Progress_ the first of +allegories. In execution it is almost perfect. _Don Juan_ is in scope and +magnitude a far wider work; but no considerable series of stanzas in _Don +Juan_ are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every +epithet hits the white; every line that does not convulse with laughter +stings or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all +its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such +space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much +scathing satire. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +1821-1823. + +PISA--GENOA--DON JUAN. + +Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs, +fowls, servants, and a monkey, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo +Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in +the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed +in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received +visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his +pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the +most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good +shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his hand often shook, he made +allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he +set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The +early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La +Guiccioli--now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations, +established under the same roof--and then sat late over his verses. He was +disposed to be more sociable than at Venice or Ravenna, and occasionally +entertained strangers; but his intimate acquaintanceship was confined to +Captain Williams and his wife, and Shelley's cousin, Captain Medwin. The +latter used frequently to dine and sit with his host till the morning, +collecting materials for the _Conversations_ which he afterwards gave to +the world. The value of these reminiscences is impaired by the fact of +their recording, as serious revelations, the absurd confidences in which +the poet's humour for mystification was wont to indulge. Another of the +group, an Irishman, called Taafe, is made, in his Lordship's +correspondence of the period, to cut a somewhat comical figure. The +master-passion of this worthy and genial fellow was to get a publisher for +a fair commentary on Dante, to which he had firmly linked a very bad +translation, and for about six months Byron pesters Murray with constant +appeals to satisfy him; e.g. November l6, "He must be gratified, though +the reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his +original." March 6, "He will die if he is not published; he will be damned +if he is; but that he don't mind." March 8, "I make it a point that he +shall be in print; it will make the man so exuberantly happy. He is such a +good-natured Christian that we must give him a shove through the press. +Besides, he has had another fall from his horse into a ditch." Taafe, +whose horsemanship was on a par with his poetry, can hardly have been +consulted as to the form assumed by these apparently fruitless +recommendations, so characteristic of the writer's frequent kindliness and +constant love of mischief. About this time Byron received a letter from +Mr. Shepherd, a gentleman in Somersetshire, referring to the death of his +wife, among whose papers he had found the record of a touching, because +evidently heart-felt, prayer for the poet's reformation, conversion, and +restored peace of mind. To this letter he at once returned an answer. +marked by much of the fine feeling of his best moods. Pisa, December 8: +"Sir, I have received your letter. I need not say that the extract which +it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling +to have read it with indifference.... Your brief and simple picture of the +excellent person, whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated +without the admiration due to her virtues and her pure and unpretending +piety. I do not know that I ever met with anything so unostentatiously +beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great +advantage over all others--for this simple reason, that if true they will +have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be +with the infidel in his eternal sleep.... But a man's creed does not +depend upon _himself_: who can say, I _will_ believe this, that, or the +other? and least of all that which he least can comprehend.... I can +assure you that not all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher +notions of its own importance, would ever weigh in my mind against the +pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in +my behalf. In this point of view I would not exchange the prayer of the +deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and +Napoleon." + +The letter to Lady Byron, which he afterwards showed to Lady Blessington, +must have borne about the same date; and we have a further indication of +his thoughts reverting homeward in an urgent request to Murray--written on +December 10th, Ada's sixth birthday--to send his daughter's miniature. +After its arrival nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be told of its +strong likeness to himself. In the course of the same month an event +occurred which strangely illustrates the manners of the place, and the +character of the two poets. An unfortunate fanatic having taken it into +his head to steal the wafer-box out of a church at Lucca, and being +detected, was, in accordance with the ecclesiastical law till lately +maintained against sacrilege, condemned to be burnt alive. Shelley, who +believed that the sentence would really be carried into effect, proposed +to Byron that they should gallop off together, and by aid of their +servants rescue by force the intended victim. Byron, however, preferred in +the first place, to rely on diplomacy; some vigorous letters passed; +ultimately a representation, convoyed by Taafe to the English Ambassador, +led to a commutation of the sentence, and the man was sent to the galleys. + +The January of 1822 was marked by the addition to the small circle of +Captain E.J. Trelawny, the famous rover and bold free-lance (long sole +survivor of the remarkable group), who accompanied Lord Byron to Greece, +and has recorded a variety of incidents of the last months of his life. +Trelawny, who appreciated Shelley with an intensity that is often apt to +be exclusive, saw, or has reported, for the most part the weaker side of +Byron. We are constrained to accept as correct the conjecture that his +judgment was biassed by their rivalry in physical prowess, and the +political differences which afterwards developed between them. Letters to +his old correspondents--to Scott about the _Waverleys_, to Murray about +the Dramas, and the _Vision of Judgment_, and _Cain_--make up almost the +sole record of the poet's pursuits during the five following months. In +February 6th he sent, through Mr. Kinnaird, the challenge to Southey, of +the suppression of which he was not aware till May 17. The same letter +contains a sheaf of the random cynicisms, as--"Cash is virtue," "Money is +power; and when Socrates said he knew nothing, he meant he had not a +drachma"--by which he sharpened the shafts of his assailants. A little +later, on occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with +natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish +against his daughter Ada seeing his portrait. In March he sat, along with +La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini. On the 24th, when the company +were on one of their riding excursions outside the town, a half-drunken +dragoon on horseback broke through them, and by accident or design knocked +Shelley from his seat. Byron, pursuing him along the Lung' Arno, called +for his name, and, taking him for an officer, flung his glove. The sound +of the fray brought the servants of the Lanfranchi to the door; and one of +them, it was presumed--though in the scuffle everything remained +uncertain--seriously wounded the dragoon in the side. An investigation +ensued, as the result of which the Gambas were ultimately exiled from +Tuscany, and the party of friends was practically broken up. Shelley and +his wife, with the Williamses and Trelawny, soon after settled at the +Villa Magni at Lerici in the Gulf of Spezia. Byron, with the Countess and +her brother, established themselves in the Villa Rossa at Monte Nero, a +suburb of Leghorn, from which port at this date the remains of Allegra +were conveyed to England. + +Among the incidents of this residence were, the homage paid to the poet by +a party of Americans; the painting of his portrait (and that of La +Guiccioli) by the artist West, who has left a pleasing account of his +visits; Byron's letter making inquiry about the country of Bolivar (where +it was his fancy to settle); and another of those disturbances by which he +seemed destined to be harassed. One of his servants--among whom were +unruly spirits, apparently selected with a kind of _Corsair_ bravado,--had +made an assault on Count Pietro, wounding him in the face. This outburst, +though followed by tears and penitence, confirmed the impression of the +Tuscan police that the whole company were dangerous, and made the +Government press for their departure. In the midst of the uproar, there +suddenly appeared at the villa Mr. Leigh Hunt, with his wife and six +children. They had taken passage to Genoa, where they were received by +Trelawny, in command of the "Bolivar"--a yacht constructed in that port +for Lord Byron, simultaneously with the "Don Juan" for Shelley. The +latter, on hearing of the arrival of his friends, came to meet them at +Leghorn, and went with them to Pisa. Early in July they were all +established on the Lung' Arno, having assigned to them the ground floor of +the palazzo. + +We have now to deal briefly--amid conflicting asseverations it is hard to +deal fairly--with the last of the vexatiously controverted episodes which +need perplex our narrative. Byron, in wishing Moore from Ravenna a merry +Christmas for 1820, proposes that they shall embark together in a +newspaper, "with some improvement on the plan of the present scoundrels," +"to give the age some new lights on policy, poesy, biography, criticism, +morality, theology," &c. Moore absolutely refusing to entertain the idea, +Hunt's name was brought forward in connexion with it, during tho visit of +Shelley. Shortly after the return of the latter to Pisa, he writes (August +26) to Hunt, stating that Byron was anxious to start a periodical work, to +be conducted in Italy, and had proposed that they should both go shares in +the concern, on which follow some suggestions of difficulties about money. +Nevertheless, in August, 1821, he presses Hunt to come. Moore, on the +other hand, strongly remonstrates against the project. "I heard some days +ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to you with all his family; and the +idea seems to be that you and he and Shelley are to conspire together in +the _Examiner_. I deprecate such a plan with all my might. Partnerships in +fame, like those in trade, make the strongest party answer for the rest. I +tremble even for you with such a bankrupt Co.! You must stand alone." +Shelley--who had, in the meantime, given his bond to Byron for an advance +of 200_l_. towards the expenses of his friends, besides assisting them +himself to the utmost of his power--began, shortly before their arrival, +to express grave doubts as to the success of the alliance. His last +published letter--written July 5th, 1822--after they had settled at Pisa, +is full of forebodings. On the 8th he set sail in the "Don Juan"-- + + That fatal and perfidious bark, + Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, + +and was overtaken by the storm in which he perished. Three days after, +Trelawny rode to Pisa, and told Byron of his fears, when the poet's lips +quivered, and his voice faltered. On the 22nd of July the bodies of +Shelley, Williams, and Vivian, were cast ashore. On the 16th August, Hunt, +Byron, and Trelawny were present at the terribly weird cremation, which +they have all described. At a later date, the two former were seized with +a fit of delirium which is one of the phases of the tension of grief. +Byron's references to the event are expressions less of the loss which he +indubitably felt, than of his indignation at the "world's wrong." "Thus," +he writes, "there is another man gone, about whom the world was +ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do +him justice now, when he can be no better for it." Towards the end of the +same letter the spirit of his dead friend seems to inspire the sentence +--"With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present +clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is +against fearful odds, but the battle must be fought." + +Meanwhile, shortly after the new settlement at the Lanfranchi, the +preparations for issuing the _Liberal_, edited by Leigh Hunt in Italy, and +published by John Hunt in London, progressed. The first number, which +appeared in September, was introduced, after a few words of preface, by +the _Vision of Judgment_, with the signature Quevedo Redivivus, and +adorned by Shelley's translation of the "May-Day Night," in _Faust_. It +contained besides, the _Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review_, +an indifferent Florentine story, a German apologue, and a gossiping +account of Pisa, presumably by Hunt. Three others followed, containing +Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, his translation of the _Morgante Maggiore_, +and _The Blues_--a very slight, if not silly, satire on literary ladies; +some of Shelley's posthumous minor poems, among them "I arise from dreams +of thee," and a few of Hazlitt's essays, including, however, none of his +best. Leigh Hunt himself wrote most of the rest, one of his contributions +being a palpable imitation of _Don Juan_, entitled the _Book of +Beginnings_, but he confesses that owing to his weak health and low +spirits at the time, none of these did justice to his ability; and the +general manner of the magazine being insufficiently vigorous to carry off +the frequent eccentricity of its matter, the prejudices against it +prevailed, and the enterprise came to an end. Partners in failing concerns +are apt to dispute; in this instance the unpleasantness which arose at the +time rankled in the mind of the survivor, and gave rise to his singularly +tasteless and injudicious book--a performance which can be only in part +condoned by the fact of Hunt's afterwards expressing regret, and +practically withdrawing it. He represents himself throughout as a +much-injured man, lured to Italy by misrepresentations, that he might give +the aid of his journalistic experience and undeniable talents to the +advancement of a mercenary enterprise, and that when it failed he was +despised, insulted, and rejected. Byron, on the other hand, declares, "The +Hunts pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented;" +and his subsequent action in the matter, if not always gentle never +unjust, goes to verify his statements in the letters of the period. "I am +afraid," he writes from Genoa, Oct. 9, 1822, "the journal is a bad +business. I have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it +is almost useless. His wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, +and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child." Later he says to +Murray, "You and your friends, by your injudicious rudeness, cement a +connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered, +would not in all probability have continued. As it is ... I can't leave +them among the breakers." On February 20th we have, his last word on the +subject, to the same effect. + +In the following sentences, Moore seems to give a fair statement of the +motives which led to the establishment of the unfortunate journal--"The +chief inducements on the part of Lord Byron to this unworthy alliance +were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of his friend +Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to Italy; and in the next, a desire to avail +himself of the aid of one so experienced as an editor in the favourite +object he has so long contemplated of a periodical work in which all the +offspring of his genius might be received as they sprung to light." For +the accomplishment of this purpose Mr. Leigh Hunt was a singularly +ill-chosen associate. A man of Radical opinions on all matters, not only +of religion but of society--opinions which he acquired and held easily but +firmly--could never recognize the propriety of the claim to deference +which "the noble poet" was always too eager to assert, and was inclined to +take liberties which his patron perhaps superciliously repelled. Mrs. Hunt +does not seem to have been a very judicious person. "Trelawny here," said +Byron jocularly, "has been speaking against my morals." "It is the first +time I ever heard of them," she replied. Mr. Hunt, by his own admission, +had "peculiar notions on the subject of money." Byron, on his part, was +determined not to be "put upon," and doled out through his steward stated +allowances to Hunt, who says that only "stern necessity and a large +family" induced him to accept them. Hunt's expression that the 200_l_. +was, _in the first instance_, a debt to Shelley, points to the conclusion +that it was remitted on that poet's death. Besides this, Byron maintained +the family till they left Genoa for Florence in 1823, and defrayed up to +that date all their expenses. He gave his contributions to the _Liberal_ +gratis; and, again by Hunt's own confession, left to him and his brother +the profits of the proprietorship. According to Mr. Galt "The whole extent +of the pecuniary obligation appears not to have exceeded 500 _l_.; but, +little or great, the manner in which it was recollected reflects no credit +either on the head or heart of the debtor." + +Of the weaknesses on which the writer--bent on verifying Pope's lines on +Atossa--from his vantage in the ground-floor, was enabled to dilate, many +are but slightly magnified. We are told for instance, in very many words, +that Byron clung to the privileges of his rank while wishing to seem above +them; that he had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle +and Gibbon supplied him with the learning he had left at school; that, +being a good rider with a graceful seat, he liked to be told of it; that +he showed letters he ought not to have shown; that he pretended to think +worse of Wordsworth than he did; that he knew little of art or music, +adored Rossini, and called Rubens a dauber; that, though he wrote _Don +Juan_ under gin and water, he had not a strong head, &c., &c. It is true, +but not new. But when Hunt proceeds to say that Byron had no sentiment; +that La Guiccioli did not really care much about him; that he admired +Gifford because he was a sycophant, and Scott because he loved a lord; +that he had no heart for anything except a feverish notoriety; that he was +a miser from his birth, and had "as little regard for liberty as +Allieri,"--it is new enough, but it is manifestly not true. Hunt's book, +which begins with a caricature on the frontispiece, and is inspired in the +main by uncharitableness, yet contains here and there gleams of a deeper +insight than we find in all the volumes of Moore--an insight, which, in +spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of +a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to +avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much +admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in +his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory +a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him +for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as they supposed +themselves, and that they might take as well as give lessons of humanity, +by a candid comparison of notes with civilization at large." + +In July, when at Leghorn, the Gambas received orders to leave Tuscany; and +on his return to Pisa, Byron, being persecuted by the police, began to +prepare for another change. After entertaining projects about Greece, +America, and Switzerland--Trelawny undertaking to have the "Bolivar" +conveyed over the Alps to the Lake of Geneva--he decided on following his +friends to Genoa. He left in September with La Guiccioli, passed by Lerici +and Sestri, and then for the ten remaining mouths of his Italian life took +up his quarters at Albaro, about a mile to the east of the city, in the +Villa Saluzzo, which Mrs. Shelley had procured for him and his party. She +herself settled with the Hunts--who travelled about the same time, at +Byron's expense, but in their own company--in the neighbouring Casa +Negroto. Not far off, Mr. Savage Landor was in possession of the Casa +Pallavicini, but there was little intercourse between the three. Landor +and Byron, in many respects more akin than any other two Englishmen of +their age, were always separated by an unhappy bar or intervening mist. +The only family with whom the poet maintained any degree of intimacy was +that of the Earl of Blessington, consisting of the Earl himself--a gouty +old gentleman, with stories about him of the past--the Countess, and her +sister, Miss Power, and the "cupidon déchaîné," the Anglo-French Count +Alfred d'Orsay--who were to take part in stories of the future. In the +spring of 1823, Byron persuaded them to occupy the Villa Paradiso, and was +accustomed to accompany them frequently on horseback excursions along the +coast to their favourite Nervi. It has been said that Lady Blessington's +_Conversations with Lord Byron_ are, as regards trustworthiness, on a par +with Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_. Let this be so, they are still of +interest on points of fact which it must have been easier to record than +to imagine. However adorned, or the reverse, by the fancies of a habitual +novelist, they convey the impressions of a goodhumoured, lively, and +fascinating woman, derived from a more or less intimate association with +the most brilliant man of the age. Of his personal appearance--a matter of +which she was a good judge--we have the following: "One of Byron's eyes +was larger than the other; his nose was rather thick, so he was best seen +in profile; his mouth was splendid, and his scornful expression was real, +not affected; but a sweet smile often broke through his melancholy. He was +at this time very pale and thin (which indicates the success of his +regimen of reduction since leaving Venice). His hair was dark brown, here +and there turning grey. His voice was harmonious, clear and low. There is +some gaucherie in his walk, from his attempts to conceal his lameness. +Ada's portrait is like him, and he is pleased at the likeness, but hoped +she would not turn out to be clever--at any events not poetical. He is +fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but +is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of +self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, +by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of +the period ingenuously observes--"Certain persons will be chagrined to +hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for +calumny." Another says, "I never saw a countenance more composed and +still--I might even add, more sweet and prepossessing. But his temper was +easily ruffled and for a whole day; he could not endure the ringing of +bells, bribed his neighbours to repress their noises, and failing, +retaliated by surpassing them; he never forgave Colonel Carr for breaking +one of his dog's ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without +forgetting them. He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for +whatever he himself did he did with a will--'toto se corpore miscuit,' and +was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone--as if 'I have said it, and +it must be so' were enough." + +From these waifs and strays of gossip we return to a subject of deeper +interest. The Countess of Blessington, with natural curiosity, was anxious +to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs, +and renewed the attempt previously made by Madame de Staël, to induce him +to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife. His reply to this +overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from +Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the following extracts +must be a sufficient indication:--"I have to acknowledge the receipt of +Ada's hair.... I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; +and I will tell you why. I believe they are the only two or three words of +your hand-writing in my possession, for your letters I returned, and +except the two words--or rather the one word 'household' written twice--in +an old account book, I have no other. Every day which keeps us asunder +should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which +must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists. We both +made a bitter mistake, but now it is over, I considered our re-union as +not impossible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave +up the hope. I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations +can awaken my resentment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught, +this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is +something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most +offending are the least forgiving." "It is a strange business," says the +Countess, about Lady Byron. "When he was praising her mental and personal +qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain +sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook +his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was +wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters; +that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations +recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s +first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of +what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect +which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation, +into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed +to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased +my _mauvaise humeur_." To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always +spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and +respect. + +"My first impressions were melancholy--my poor mother gave them: but to my +sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I +owe the little good of which I can boast: and had I earlier known her it +might have influenced my destiny. Augusta was to me in the hour of need a +tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now +the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view. She +has given me such good advice--and yet finding me incapable of following +it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring." Similarly, in +the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt--"I believe there did exist +one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased: perhaps +was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always +spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh. He +told me she used to call him 'Baby Byron.' It was easy to see that of the +two persons she had by far the greater judgment." + +Byron having laid aside _Don Juan_ for more than a year, in deference to +La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a +promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa. +Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were +published by John Hunt. His other works of the period are of minor +consequence. The _Age of Bronze_ is a declamation, rather than a satire, +directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona, +especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from +its advice to the Greeks, to dread-- + + The false friend worse than the infuriate foe; + +i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the +great Bear-- + + Better still toil for masters, than await, + The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate. + +In the _Island_--a tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"--he reverts to the +manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific +for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical +adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from +Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in +any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to +plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the +sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading +it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if +not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on +the Conquest, and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was +executed. + +In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to +criticise the critics--to bring to a focus the most salient things that +have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the +discriminating from the commonplace. _Don Juan_, more than any of its +precursors, _is_ Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early +cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and +execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle-class respectability, +were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their +judgments. The _British Magazine_ said that "his lordship had degraded his +personal character by the composition;" the _London_, that the poem was "a +satire on decency;" the _Edinburgh Monthly_, that it was "a melancholy +spectacle;" the _Eclectic_, that it was "an outrage worthy of +detestation." _Blackwood_ declared that the author was "brutally outraging +all the best feelings of humanity." Moore characterizes it as "the most +painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for +succeeding ages to wonder at or deplore." Jeffrey found in the whole +composition "a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue;" +and Dr. John Watkins classically named it "the Odyssey of Immorality." +"_Don Juan_ will be read," wrote one critic, "as long as satire, wit, +mirth, and supreme excellence shall be esteemed among men." "Stick to _Don +Juan_," exhorted another; "it is the only sincere thing you have written, +and it will live after all your _Harolds_ have ceased to be 'a +schoolgirl's tale, the wonder of an hour.' It is the best of all your +works--the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, +the most poetical." "It is a work," said Goethe, "full of soul, bitterly +savage in its misanthropy, exquisitely delicate in its tenderness." +Shelley confessed, "It fulfils in a certain degree what I have long +preached, the task of producing something wholly new and relative to the +age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst +of a hearty panegyric: "It has the variety of Shakespeare himself. Neither +_Childe Harold_, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain +more exquisite poetry than is to be found scattered through the cantos of +_Don Juan_, amidst verses which the author seems to have thrown from him +with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves." + +One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity: reviewing, +however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register +of adverse or friendly cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict, +Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is, +the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt +to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in +pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the +most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of +the readers of _Don Juan_ have, it must be confessed, been found among +those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable--who have been +attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, +and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their +patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by +a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the +charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the +work in other quarters is as indubitably duo to higher qualities. In +writing _Don Juan_, Byron attempted something that had never been done +before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be +done again. "Down," cries M. Chasles, "with the imitators who did their +host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an +Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava +rima--the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet +a "breakdown"--for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may +have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in +Pulci, and the _Novelle Galanti_ of Casti, to whom he is indebted for +other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed +its characteristic jauntiness, by his almost constant use of the double +rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic +poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's _Pot of Basil_. +Many writers, from Tennant and Frere to Moultrie, have employed it in +burlesque or more society verse; but Byron alone has employed it +triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as +gay, of "black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling +fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of +his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality +that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready +to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a +ladder like other acrobats; but alone, like the Japanese master of the +art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of +_Don Juan_ is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his earlier work; it +has every mark of being written in hot haste. In the midst of the most +serious passages (e.g. the "Ave Maria") we are checked in our course by +bathos or commonplace and thrown where the writer did not mean to throw +us: but the mocking spirit is so prevailingly present that we are often +left in doubt as to his design, and what is in _Harold_ an outrage is in +this case only a flaw. His command over the verse itself is almost +miraculous: he glides from extreme to extreme, from punning to pathos, +from melancholy to mad merriment, sighing or laughing by the way at his +readers or at himself or at the stanzas. Into them he can fling anything +under the sun, from a doctor's prescription to a metaphysical theory. + + When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, + And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said, + +is as cogent a refutation of idealism as the cumbrous wit of Scotch +logicians. + +The popularity of the work is due not mainly to the verbal skill which +makes it rank as the _cleverest_ of English verse compositions, to its +shoals of witticisms, its winged words, telling phrases, and incomparable +transitions; but to the fact that it continues to address a large class +who are not in the ordinary sense of the word lovers of poetry. _Don Juan_ +is emphatically the poem of intelligent men of middle age, who have grown +weary of mere sentiment, and yet retain enough of sympathetic feeling to +desire at times to recall it. Such minds, crusted like Plato's Glaucus +with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives +beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can +they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and +they are apt to turn with some impatience even from _Romeo and Juliet_ to +_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of +_Hudibras_ is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend +is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the +contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in +laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does +not blend together the two phases, as they are blended in single sentences +or whole chapters of Sterne, in the April-sunshine of Richter, or in +_Sartor Resartus_; but he comes near to produce the same effect by his +unequalled power of alternating them. His wit is seldom hard, never dry, +for it is moistened by the constant juxtaposition of sentiment. His +tenderness is none the less genuine that he is perpetually jerking it +away--an equally favourite fashion with Carlyle,--as if he could not trust +himself to be serious for fear of becoming sentimental; and, in +recollection of his frequent exhibitions of unaffected hysteria, we accept +his own confession-- + + If I laugh at any mortal thing, + 'Tis that I may not weep, + +as a perfectly sincere comment on the most sincere, and therefore in many +respects the most effective, of his works. He has, after his way, +endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its +assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled +character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose +accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural +effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member +of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an +unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting +the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often +require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive," +is, however, more to the point: + + But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, + Unless it were to be a moment merry-- + A novel word in my vocabulary. + +_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every +large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the +author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in +which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is +reflected without distortion. After the audacious though brilliant +opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic +affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his +prevailing manner. Home-sickness, sea-sickness, the terror of the tempest, +"wailing, blasphemy, devotion," the crash of the wreck, the wild farewell, +"the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony," the horrors of +famine, the tale of the two fathers, the beautiful apparitions of the +rainbow and the bird, the feast on Juan's spaniel, his reluctance to dine +on "his pastor and his master," the consequences of eating Pedrillo,--all +follow each other like visions in the phantasmagoria of a nightmare, till +at last the remnant of the crew are drowned by a ridiculous rhyme-- + + Finding no place for their landing better, + They ran the boat ashore,--and overset her. + +Then comes the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient +days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold +running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page; +e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we have the +stanza:-- + + Thus sang, or would, or could, or should, have sung, + The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; + If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, + Yet in those days he might have done much worse-- + +with which the author dashes away the romance of the song, and then +launches into a tirade against Bob Southey's epic and Wordsworth's pedlar +poems. This vein exhausted, we come to the "Ave Maria," one of the most +musical, and seemingly heartfelt, hymns in the language. The close of the +ocean pastoral (in c. iv.) is the last of pathetic narrative in the book; +but the same feeling that "mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades," often +re-emerges in shorter passages. The fifth and sixth cantos, in spite of +the glittering sketch of Gulbeyaz, and tho fawn-like image of Dudù, are +open to the charge of diffuseness, and the character of Johnson is a +failure. From the seventh to the tenth, the poem decidedly dips, partly +because the writer had never been in Russia; then it again rises, and +shows no sign of falling off to the end. + +No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some +of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the +fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last +esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his +works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of +female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline. Conjectures as to +the originals of imaginary portraits, are generally futile; but Miss +Millpond--not Donna Inez--is obviously Lady Byron; in Adeline we may +suspect that at Genoa he was drawing from the life in the Villa Paradiso; +while Aurora Raby seems to be an idealization of La Guiccioli:-- + + Early in years, and yet more infantine + In figure, she had something of sublime + In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine: + All youth--but with an aspect beyond time; + Radiant and grave--us pitying man's decline; + Mournful--but mournful of another's crime, + She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, + And grieved for those who could return no more. + + She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere, + As far as her own gentle heart allow'd, + And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear, + Perhaps, because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud + Of deeds and days, when they had fill'd the ear + Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd + To novel power; and, as she was the last, + She held her old faith and old feelings fast. + + She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, + As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, + As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, + And kept her heart serene within its zone. + +Constantly, towards the close of the work, there is an echo of home and +country, a half involuntary cry after-- + + The love of higher things and better days; + Th'unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance + Of what is call'd the world and the world's ways. + +In the concluding stanza of the last completed canto, beginning-- + + Between two worlds life hovers like a star, + 'Twixt night and morn, on the horizon's verge-- + +we have a condensation of the refrain of the poet's philosophy; but the +main drift of the later books is a satire on London society. There are +elements in a great city which may be wrought into something nobler than +satire, for all the energies of the age are concentrated where passion is +fiercest and thought intensest, amid the myriad sights and sounds of its +glare and gloom. But those scenes, and the actors in them, are apt also to +induce the frame of mind in which a prose satirist describes himself as +reclining under an arcade of the Pantheon: "Not the Pantheon by the Piazza +Navona, where the immortal gods were worshipped--the immortal gods now +dead; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Have not Selwyn, and Walpole, and +March, and Carlisle figured there? Has not Prince Florizel flounced +through the hall in his rustling domino, and danced there in powdered +splendour? O my companions, I have drunk many a bout with you, and always +found 'Vanitas Vanitatum' written on the bottom of the pot." This is the +mind in which _Don Juan_ interprets the universe, and paints the still +living court of Florizel and his buffoons. A "nondescript and ever varying +rhyme"--"a versified aurora borealis," half cynical, half Epicurean, it +takes a partial though a subtle view of that microcosm on stilts called +the great world. It complains that in the days of old "men made the +manners--manners now make men." It concludes-- + + Good company's a chess-board, there are kings, + Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world's a game. + +It passes from a reflection on "the dreary _fuimus_ of all things here" to +the advice-- + + But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!" + To-morrow sees another race as gay + And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. + "Life's a poor player,"--then play out the play. + +It was the natural conclusion of the foregone stage of Byron's career. +Years had given him power, but they were years in which his energies were +largely wasted. Self-indulgence had not petrified his feeling, but it had +thrown wormwood into its springs. He had learnt to look on existence as a +walking shadow, and was strong only with the strength of a sincere +despair. + + Through life's road, so dim and dirty, + I have dragg'd to three and thirty. + What have those years left to me? + Nothing, except thirty-three. + +These lines are the summary of one who had drained the draught of pleasure +to the dregs of bitterness. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +1821-1824. + +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. + +In leaving Venice for Ravenna, Byron passed from the society of gondoliers +and successive sultanas to a comparatively domestic life, with a mistress +who at least endeavoured to stimulate some of his higher aspirations, and +smiled upon his wearing the sword along with the lyre. In the last episode +of his constantly chequered and too voluptuous career, we have the waking +of Sardanapalus realized in the transmutation of the fantastical Harold +into a practical strategist, financier, and soldier. No one ever lived +who, in the same space, more thoroughly ran the gauntlet of existence. +Having exhausted all other sources of vitality and intoxication--travel, +gallantry, and verse--it remained for the despairing poet to become a +hero. But he was also moved by a public passion, the genuineness of which +there is no reasonable ground to doubt. Like Alfieri and Rousseau, he had +taken for his motto, "I am of the opposition;" and, as Dante under a +republic called for a monarchy, Byron, under monarchies at home and +abroad, called for a commonwealth. Amid the inconsistencies of his +political sentiment, he had been consistent in so much love of liberty as +led him to denounce oppression, even when he had no great faith in the +oppressed--whether English, or Italians, or Greeks. + +Byron regarded the established dynasties of the continent with a sincere +hatred. He talks of the "more than infernal tyranny" of the House of +Austria. To his fancy, as to Shelley's, New England is the star of the +future. Attracted by a strength or rather force of character akin to his +own, he worshipped Napoleon, even when driven to confess that "the hero +had sunk into a king." He lamented his overthrow; but, above all, that he +was beaten by "three stupid, legitimate old dynasty boobies of regular +sovereigns." "I write in ipecacuanha that the Bourbons are restored." +"What right have we to prescribe laws to France? Here we are retrograding +to the dull, stupid old system, balance of Europe--poising straws on +kings' noses, instead of wringing them off." "The king-times are fast +finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but +the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I +foresee it." "Give me a republic. Look in the history of the earth--Rome, +Greece, Venice, Holland, France, America, our too short Commonwealth--and +compare it with what they did under masters." + +His serious political verses are all in the strain of the lines on +Wellington-- + + Never had mortal man such opportunity-- + Except Napoleon--or abused it more; + You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity + Of tyrants, and been blessed from shore to shore. + +An enthusiasm for Italy, which survived many disappointments, dictated +some of the most impressive passages of his _Harold_, and inspired the +_Lament of Tasso_ and the _Ode on Venice_. The _Prophecy of Dante_ +contains much that has since proved prophetic-- + + What is there wanting, then, to set thee free, + And show thy beauty in its fullest light? + To make the Alps impassable; and we, + Her sons, may do this with one deed--_Unite_! + +His letters reiterate the same idea, in language even more emphatic. "It +is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what +is sacrificed. It is a grand object--the very poetry of politics; only +think--a free Italy!" Byron acted on his assertion that a man ought to do +more for society than write verses. Mistrusting its leaders, and detesting +the wretched lazzaroni, who "would have betrayed themselves and all the +world," he yet threw himself heart and soul into the insurrection of 1820, +saying, "Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture +freely for their freedom." He joined the secret society of the Carbonari, +wrote an address to the Liberal government set up in Naples, supplied arms +and a refuge in his house, which he was prepared to convert into a +fortress. In February, 1821, on the rout of the Neapolitans by the +Austrians, the conspiracy was crushed. Byron, who "had always an idea that +it would be bungled," expressed his fear that the country would be thrown +back for 500 years into barbarism, and the Countess Guiccioli confessed +with tears that the Italians must return to composing and strumming +operatic airs. Carbonarism having collapsed, it of course made way for a +reaction; but the encouragement and countenance of the English poet and +peer helped to keep alive the smouldering fire that Mazzini fanned into a +flame, till Cavour turned it to a practical purpose, and the dreams of the +idealists of 1820 were finally realized. + +On the failure of the luckless conspiracy, Byron naturally betook himself +to history, speculation, satire, and ideas of a journalistic propaganda; +but all through, his mind was turning to the renewal of the action which +was his destiny. "If I live ten years longer," he writes in 1822, "you +will see that it is not all over with me. I don't mean in literature, for +that is nothing--and I do not think it was my vocation; but I shall do +something." The Greek war of liberation opened a new field for the +exercise of his indomitable energy. This romantic struggle, begun in +April, 1821, was carried on for two years with such remarkable success, +that at the close of 1822 Greece was beginning to be recognized as an +independent state; but in the following months the tide seemed to turn; +dissensions broke out among the leaders, the spirit of intrigue seemed to +stifle patriotism, and the energies of the insurgents were hampered for +want of the sinews of war. There was a danger of the movement being +starved out, and the committee of London sympathizers--of which the poet's +intimate friend and frequent correspondent, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, and +Captain Blaquière, were leading promoters--was impressed with the +necessity of procuring funds in support of the cause. With a view to this +it seemed of consequence to attach to it some shining name, and men's +thoughts almost inevitably turned to Byron. No other Englishman seemed so +fit to be associated with the enterprise as the warlike poet, who had +twelve years before linked his fame to that of "grey Marathon" and +"Athena's tower," and, more recently immortalized the isles on which he +cast so many a longing glance. Hobhouse broke the subject to him early in +the spring of 1823: the committee opened communications in April. After +hesitating through May, in June Byron consented to meet Blaquière at +Zante, and, on hearing the results of the captain's expedition to the +Morea, to decide on future steps. His share in this enterprise has been +assigned to purely personal and comparatively mean motives. He was, it is +said, disgusted with his periodical, sick of his editor, tired of his +mistress, and bent on any change, from China to Peru, that would give him +a new theatre for display. One grows weary of the perpetual half-truths of +inveterate detraction. It is granted that Byron was restless, vain, +imperious, never did anything without a desire to shine in the doing of +it, and was to a great degree the slave of circumstances. Had the +_Liberal_ proved a lamp to the nations, instead of a mere "red flag +flaunted in the face of John Bull," he might have cast anchor at Genoa; +but the whole drift of his work and life demonstrates that he was capable +on occasion of merging himself in what he conceived to be great causes, +especially in their evil days. Of the Hunts he may have had enough; but +the invidious statement about La Guiccioli has no foundation, other than a +somewhat random remark of Shelley, and the fact that he left her nothing +in his will. It is distinctly ascertained that she expressly prohibited +him from doing so; they continued to correspond to the last, and her +affectionate, though unreadable, reminiscences, are sufficient proof that +she at no time considered herself to be neglected, injured, or aggrieved. + +Byron indeed left Italy in an unsettled state of mind: he spoke of +returning in a few months, and as the period for his departure approached, +became more and more irresolute. A presentiment of his death seemed to +brood over a mind always superstitious, though never fanatical. Shortly +before his own departure, the Blessingtons were preparing to leave Genoa +for England. On the evening of his farewell call he began to speak of his +voyage with despondency, saying, "Here we are all now together; but when +and where shall we meet again? I have a sort of boding that we see each +other for the last time, as something tells me I shall never again return +from Greece:" after which remark he leant his head on the sofa, and burst +into one of his hysterical fits of tears. The next week was given to +preparations for an expedition, which, entered on with mingled +motives--sentimental, personal, public--became more real and earnest to +Byron at every step he took. He knew all the vices of the "hereditary +bondsmen" among whom he was going, and went among them, with yet +unquenched aspirations, but with the bridle of discipline in his hand, +resolved to pave the way towards the nation becoming better, by devoting +himself to making it free. + +On the morning of July 14th (1823) he embarked in the brig "Hercules," +with Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, who remained with him to the last, +Bruno a young Italian doctor, Scott the captain of the vessel, and eight +servants, including Fletcher, besides the crew. They had on board two +guns, with other arms and ammunition, five horses, an ample supply of +medicines, with 50,000 Spanish dollars in coin and bills. The start was +inauspicious. A violent squall drove them back to port, and in the course +of a last ride with Gamba to Albaro, Byron asked, "Where shall we be in a +year?" On the same day of the same month of 1824 he was carried to the +tomb of his ancestors. They again set sail on the following evening, and +in five days reached Leghorn, where the poet received a salutation in +verse, addressed to him by Goethe, and replied to it. Here Mr. Hamilton +Brown, a Scotch gentleman with considerable knowledge of Greek affairs, +joined the party, and induced them to change their course to Cephalonia, +for the purpose of obtaining the advice and assistance of the English +resident, Colonel Napier. The poet occupied himself during the voyage +mainly in reading--among other books, Scott's _Life of Swift_, Grimm's +_Correspondence_, La Rochefoucauld, and Las Casas--and watching the +classic or historic shores which they skirted, especially noting Elba, +Soracte, the Straits of Messina, and Etna. In passing Stromboli he said to +Trelawny, "You will see this scene in a fifth canto of _Childe Harold_." +On his companions suggesting that he should write some verses on the spot, +he tried to do so, but threw them away, with the remark, "I cannot write +poetry at will, as you smoke tobacco." Trelawny confesses that he was +never on shipboard with a better companion, and that a severer test of +good fellowship it is impossible to apply. Together they shot at gulls or +empty bottles, and swam every morning in the sea. Early in August they +reached their destination. Coming in sight of the Morea, the poet said to +Trelawny, "I feel as if the eleven long years of bitterness I have passed +through, since I was here, were taken from my shoulders, and I was +scudding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in his frigate." +Byron remained at or about Cephalonia till the close of the year. Not long +after his arrival he made an excursion to Ithaca, and, visiting the +monastery at Vathi, was received by the abbot with great ceremony, which, +in a fit of irritation, brought on by a tiresome ride on a mule, he +returned with unusual discourtesy; but next morning, on his giving a +donation to their alms-box, he was dismissed with the blessing of the +monks. "If this isle were mine," he declared on his way back, "I would +break my staff and bury my book." A little later, Brown and Trelawny being +sent off with letters to the provisional government, the former returned +with some Greek emissaries to London, to negotiate a loan; the latter +attached himself to Odysseus, the chief of the republican party at Athens, +and never again saw Byron alive. The poet, after spending a month on board +the "Hercules," dismissed the vessel, and hired a house for Gamba and +himself at Metaxata, a healthy village about four miles from the capital +of the island. Meanwhile, Blaquière, neglecting his appointment at Zante, +had gone to Corfu, and thence to England. Colonel Napier being absent from +Cephalonia, Byron had some pleasant social intercourse with his deputy, +but, unable to get from him any authoritative information, was left +without advice, to be besieged by letters and messages from the factions. +Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king, +and he is reported to have said, "If they make me the offer, I will +perhaps not reject it." + +The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never--amid +his many self-deceptions--affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who +can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add +lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a +day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had +his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard +of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to +despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and +anxiously waiting relief. During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was +gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents. Among +these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself +to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series +of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be +present at one of them. After listening, it is said, to a set of +discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for +one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and +found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards +published in a substantial book. This volume, interesting in several +respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the +language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the +abridgment of several of its pages. They bear testimony, on the one hand, +to Byron's capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under +trial; on the other, to Kennedy's utter want of humour, and to his +courageous honesty. The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course +of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the +ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith, +which Kennedy upheld without stint. The _Conversations_ add little to what +we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where +he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently +wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a +theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible, +though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to +which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is +explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal +punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were +to be damned, he "would rather keep them company than creep into heaven +alone." On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human +life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative +necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not +see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer +had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart. Byron showed +a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow, +Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy's lending for his +edification Boston's _Fourfold State_, he returned it with the remark that +it was too deep for him. On another occasion he said, "Do you know I am +nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between +the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the +character of both is equally vile." The good Scotchman's religious +self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own +confession, "This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it," might +perhaps be applied to the whole discussion. + +Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to +attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; +they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at +the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more, +confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The +Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber," +but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The +chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their +arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates +and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions--republican, monarchic, +aristocratic--representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and +each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only +representing their own. During the first two years of success they were +held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the +allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's +residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a +renewal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them +he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and +helped to betray the common cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, +to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, +collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, +endeavouring to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and +carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period +relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the +population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or +robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting +to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking +the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks +fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." +Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were "shrieking +and howling as in Ireland" over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he +snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants +unless they followed his example. On November 30th he despatched to the +central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the +fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are +established all hopes of a loan--which being every day more urgent, he was +in letters to England constantly pressing--are at an end. "I desire," he +concluded, "the well being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I +can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be +deceived as to the real state of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act +honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no +more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years, with the Roman +historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians." + +Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos--the most prominent of the practical +patriotic leaders--having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to +regulate the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way with a +fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco Bozzaris +had previously fallen. In a letter, opening communication with a man for +whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, "Colonel Stanhope +has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with +me.... Greece is at present placed between three measures--either to +reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of the sovereigns of Europe, +or to return to a Turkish province. She has the choice only of these three +alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter." + +At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, +with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. +Mavrocordatos on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the poet to +join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, "I need not tell you +to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a +prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs. Your counsels will +be listened to like oracles." + +At the same date Stanhope writes, "The people in the streets are looking +forward to his lordship's arrival as they would to the coming of the +Messiah." Byron was unable to start in the ship sent for him; but in spite +of medical warnings, a few days later, i.e. December 28th, he embarked in +a small fast-sailing sloop called a mistico, while the servants and +baggage were stowed in another and larger vessel under the charge of Count +Gamba. From Gamba's graphic account of the voyage we may take the +following:--"We sailed together till after ten at night; the wind +favourable, a clear sky, the air fresh, but not sharp. Our sailors sang +alternately patriotic songs, monotonous indeed, but to persons in our +situation extremely touching, and we took part in them. We were all, but +Lord Byron particularly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the +fastest. When the waves divided us, and our voices could no longer reach +each other, we made signals by firing pistols and carbines. To-morrow we +meet at Mesolonghi--to morrow. Thus, full of confidence and spirits, we +sailed along. At twelve we were out of sight of each other." + +Byron's vessel, separated from her consort, came into the close proximity +of a Turkish frigate, and had to take refuge among the Scrofes' rocks. +Emerging thence, he attained a small seaport of Acarnania, called +Dragomestri, whence sallying forth on the 2nd of January under the convoy +of some Greek gunboats, he was nearly wrecked. On the 4th Byron made, when +violently heated, an imprudent plunge in the sea, and was never afterwards +free from a pain in his bones. On the 5th he arrived at Mesolonghi, and +was received with salvoes of musketry and music. Gamba was waiting him. +His vessel, the "Bombarda," had been taken by the Ottoman frigate, but the +captain of the latter, recognizing the Count as having formerly saved his +life in the Black Sea, made interest in his behalf with Yussuf Pasha at +Patras, and obtained his discharge. In recompense, the poet subsequently +sent to the Pasha some Turkish prisoners, with a letter requesting him to +endeavour to mitigate the inhumanities of the war. Byron brought to the +Greeks at Mesolonghi the 4000_l_. of his personal loan (applied, in the +first place, to defraying the expenses of the fleet), with the spell of +his name and presence. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the command +of the intended expedition against Lepanto, and, with this view, again +took into his pay five hundred Suliotes. An approaching general assembly +to organize the forces of the west, had brought together a motley crew, +destitute, discontented, and more likely to wage war upon each other than +on their enemies. Byron's closest associates during the ensuing months, +were the engineer Parry, an energetic artilleryman, "extremely active, and +of strong practical talents," who had travelled in America, and Colonel +Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington) equally with himself devoted to the +emancipation of Greece, but at variance about the means of achieving it. +Stanhope, a moral enthusiast of the stamp of Kennedy, beset by the fallacy +of religious missions, wished to cover the Morea with Wesleyan tracts, and +liberate the country by the agency of the Press. He had imported a +converted blacksmith, with a cargo of Bibles, types, and paper, who on +20_l_. a year, undertook to accomplish the reform. Byron, backed by the +good sense of Mavrocordatos, proposed to make cartridges of the tracts, +and small shot of the type; he did not think that the turbulent tribes +were ripe for freedom of the press, and had begun to regard Republicanism +itself as a matter of secondary moment. The disputant allies in the common +cause occupied each a flat of the same small house, the soldier by +profession was bent on writing the Turks down, the poet on fighting them +down, holding that "the work of the sword must precede that of the pen, +and that camps must be the training schools of freedom." Their +altercations were sometimes fierce--"Despot!" cried Stanhope, "after +professing liberal principles from boyhood, you when called to act prove +yourself a Turk." "Radical!" retorted Byron, "if I had held up my finger I +could have crushed your press,"--but this did not prevent the recognition +by each of them of the excellent qualities of the other. + +Ultimately Stanhope went to Athens, and allied himself with Trelawny and +Odysseus and the party of the Left. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than +some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preceding period; +nothing more admirable than the spirit which inspires them. He had come +into the heart of a revolution, exposed to the same perils as those which +had wrecked the similar movement in Italy. Neither trusting too much nor +distrusting too much, with a clear head and a good will he set about +enforcing a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was +engaged in denouncing dissension, in advocating unity, in doing everything +that man could do to concentrate and utilize the disorderly elements with +which he had to work. He occupied himself in repairing fortifications, +managing ships, restraining licence, promoting courtesy between the foes, +and regulating the disposal of the sinews of war. + +On the morning of the 22nd of January, his last birthday, he came from his +room to Stanhope's, and said, smiling, "You were complaining that I never +write any poetry now," and read the familiar stanzas beginning-- + + 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, + +and ending-- + + Seek out--less often sought than found-- + A soldier's grave, for thee the best; + Then look around, and choose thy ground, + And take thy rest. + +High thoughts, high resolves; but the brain that was over-tasked, and the +frame that was outworn, would be tasked and worn little longer. The lamp +of a life that had burnt too fiercely was flickering to its close. "If we +are not taken off with the sword," he writes on February 5th, "we are like +to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very +bad pun, better _martially_ than _marsh-ally_. The dykes of Holland when +broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In +April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, +imploring him not to sacrifice health, and perhaps life, "in that bog." + +Byron's house stood in the midst of the exhalations of a muddy creek, and +his natural irritability was increased by a more than usually long ascetic +regimen. From the day of his arrival in Greece he discarded animal food +and lived mainly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, olives and light wine, +at the rate of forty paras a day. In spite of his strength of purpose, his +temper was not always proof against the rapacity and turbulence by which +he was surrounded. About the middle of February, when the artillery had +been got into readiness for the attack on Lepanto--the northern, as +Patras was the southern, gate of the gulf, still in the hands of the +Turks--the expedition was thrown back by the unexpected rising of the +Suliotes. These peculiarly Irish Greeks, chronically seditious by nature, +were on this occasion, as afterwards appeared, stirred up by emissaries of +Colocatroni, who, though assuming the position of the rival of +Mavrocordatos, was simply a brigand on a large scale in the Morca. +Exasperation at this mutiny, and the vexation of having to abandon a +cherished scheme, seem to have been the immediately provoking causes of a +violent convulsive fit which, on the evening of the 15th, attacked the +poet, and endangered his life. Next day he was better, but complained of +weight in the head; and the doctors applying leeches too close to the +temporal artery, he was bled till he fainted. And now occurred the last of +those striking incidents so frequent in his life, in reference to which we +may quote the joint testimony of two witnesses. Colonel Stanhope writes, +"Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, with +his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered +with dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing +their costly arms and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron, +electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness; +and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed. The +scene was truly sublime." "It is impossible," says Count Gamba, "to do +justice to the coolness and magnanimity which he displayed upon every +trying occasion. Upon trifling occasions he was certainly irritable; but +the aspect of danger calmed him in an instant, and restored him the free +exercise of all the powers of his noble nature. A more undaunted man in +the hour of peril never breathed." A few days later, the riot being +renewed, the disorderly crew were, on payment of their arrears, finally +dismissed; but several of the English artificers under Parry left about +the same time, in fear of their lives. + +On the 4th, the last of the long list of Byron's letters to Moore resents, +with some bitterness, the hasty acceptance of a rumour that he had been +quietly writing _Don Juan_ in some Ionian island. At the same date he +writes to Kennedy, "I am not unaware of the precarious state of my health. +But it is proper I should remain in Greece, and it were better to die +doing something than nothing." Visions of enlisting Europe and America on +behalf of the establishment of a new state, that might in course of time +develope itself over the realm of Alexander, floated and gleamed in his +fancy; but in his practical daily procedure the poet took as his text the +motto "festina lente," insisted on solid ground under his feet, and had no +notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged +Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the _Telegrapho_, and +disparaged Dr. Mayor, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he +is one of the pettiest, as are most demagogues." Byron had none of the +Sclavonic leanings, and almost personal hatred of Ottoman rule, of some of +our statesmen; but he saw on what side lay the forces and the hopes of the +future. "I cannot calculate," he said to Gamba, during one of their latest +rides together, "to what a height Greece may rise. Hitherto it has been a +subject for the hymns and elegies of fanatics and enthusiasts; but now it +will draw the attention of the politician.... At present there is little +difference, in many respects, between Greeks and Turks, nor could there +be; but the latter must, in the common course of events, decline in power; +and the former must as inevitably become better.... The English Government +deceived itself at first in thinking it possible to maintain the Turkish +Empire in its integrity; but it cannot be done, that unwieldy mass is +already putrified, and must dissolve. If anything like an equilibrium is +to be upheld, Greece must be supported." These words have been well +characterized as prophetic. During this time Byron rallied in health, and +displayed much of his old spirit, vivacity, and humour, took part in such +of his favourite amusements as circumstances admitted, fencing, shooting, +riding, and playing with his pet dog Lion. The last of his recorded +practical jokes is his rolling about cannon balls, and shaking the +rafters, to frighten Parry in the room below with the dread of an +earthquake. + +Towards the close of the month, after being solicited to accompany +Mavrocordatos, to share the governorship of the Morea, he made an +appointment to meet Colonel Stanhope and Odysseus at Salona, but was +prevented from keeping it by violent floods which blocked up the +communication. On the 30th he was presented with the freedom of the city +of Mesolonghi. On the 3rd of April he intervened to prevent an Italian +private, guilty of theft, from being flogged by order of some German +officers. On the 9th, exhilarated by a letter from Mrs. Leigh with good +accounts of her own and Ada's health, he took a long ride with Gamba and a +few of the remaining Suliotes, and after being violently heated, and then +drenched in a heavy shower, persisted in returning home in a boat, +remarking with a laugh, in answer to a remonstrance, "I should make a +pretty soldier if I were to care for such a trifle." It soon became +apparent that he had caught his death. Almost immediately on his return, +he was seized with shiverings and violent pain. The next day he rose as +usual, and had his last ride in the olive woods. On the 11th a rheumatic +fever set in. On the 14th, Bruno's skill being exhausted, it was proposed +to call Dr. Thomas from Zante, but a hurricane prevented any ship being +sent. On the 15th, another physician, Mr. Milligen, suggested bleeding to +allay the fever, but Byron held out against it, quoting Dr. Reid to the +effect that "less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet--that +minute instrument of mighty mischief;" and saying to Bruno, "If my hour is +come I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it." Next morning +Milligen induced him to yield, by a suggestion of the possible loss of his +reason. Throwing out his arm, he cried, "There! you are, I see, a d----d +set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with +it." The remedy, repeated on the following day with blistering, was either +too late or ill-advised. On the 18th he saw more doctors, but was +manifestly sinking, amid the tears and lamentations of attendants who +could not understand each other's language. In his last hours his delirium +bore him to the field of arms. He fancied he was leading the attack on +Lepanto, and was heard exclaiming, "Forwards! forwards! follow me!" Who is +not reminded of another death-bed, not remote in time from his, and the +_Tête d'armée_ of the great Emperor who with the great Poet divided the +wonder of Europe? The stormy vision passed, and his thoughts reverted +home. "Go to my sister," he faltered out to Fletcher; "tell her--go to +Lady Byron--you will see her, and say"--nothing more could be heard but +broken ejaculations: "Augusta--Ada--my sister, my child. Io lascio qualche +cosa di caro nel mondo. For the rest, I am content to die." At six on the +evening of the 18th he uttered his last words, "[Greek: _Dei me nun +katheudein_];" and on the 19th he passed away. + +Never perhaps was there such a national lamentation. By order of +Mavrocordatos, thirty-seven guns--one for each year of the poet's life-- +were fired from the battery, and answered by the Turks from Patras with an +exultant volley. All offices, tribunals, and shops were shut, and a +general mourning for twenty-one days proclaimed. Stanhope wrote, on +hearing the news, "England has lost her brightest genius--Greece her +noblest friend;" and Trelawny, on coming to Mesolonghi, heard nothing in +the streets but "Byron is dead!" like a bell tolling through the silence +and the gloom. Intending contributors to the cause of Greece turned back +when they heard the tidings, that seemed to them to mean she was headless. +Her cities contended for the body, as of old for the birth of a poet. +Athens wished him to rest in the Temple of Theseus. The funeral service +was performed at Mesolonghi. But on the 2nd of May the embalmed remains +left Zante, and on the 29th arrived in the Downs. His relatives applied +for permission to have them interred in Westminster Abbey, but it was +refused; and on the 16th July they were conveyed to the village church of +Hucknall. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE. + +Lord Jeffrey at the close of a once-famous review quaintly laments: "The +tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber, and the +rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of +Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the +field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry, and the +blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." Of the +poets of the early part of this century, Lord John Russell thought Byron +the greatest, then Scott, then Moore. "Such an opinion," wrote a +_National_ reviewer, in 1860, "is not worth a refutation; we only smile at +it." Nothing in the history of literature is more curious than the +shifting of the standard of excellence, which so perplexes criticism. But +the most remarkable feature of the matter is the frequent return to power +of the once discarded potentates. Byron is resuming his place: his spirit +has come again to our atmosphere; and every budding critic, as in 1820, is +impelled to pronounce a verdict on his genius and character. The present +times are, in many respects, an aftermath of the first quarter of the +century, which was an era of revolt, of doubt, of storm. There succeeded +an era of exhaustion, of quiescence, of reflection. The first years of the +third quarter saw a revival of turbulence and agitation; and, more than +our fathers, we are inclined to sympathize with our grandfathers. Macaulay +has popularized the story of the change of literary dynasty which in our +island marked the close of the last, and the first two decades of the +present, hundred years. + +The corresponding artistic revolt on the continent was closely connected +with changes in the political world. The originators of the romantic +literature in Italy, for the most part, died in Spielberg or in exile. The +same revolution which levelled the Bastille, and converted Versailles and +the Trianon--the classic school in stone and terrace--into a moral +Herculaneum and Pompeii, drove the models of the so-called Augustan ages +into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated +by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great +writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for +the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a +peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke +with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again. +Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the +literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed +law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and +regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their +conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new +Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they +practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied +with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and +passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in +Shelley and in Byron. + +A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters, were in +some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption. The ruins +of the Scotch cathedrals and of the French nobility are warnings at once +against the excess that provokes and the excess that avenges. The revolt +against the _ancien régime_ in letters made possible the Ode that is the +high-tide mark of modern English inspiration, but it was parodied in page +on page of maundering rusticity. Byron saw the danger, but was borne +headlong by the rapids. Hence the anomalous contrast between his theories +and his performance. Both Wordsworth and Byron were bitten by Rousseau; +but the former is, at furthest, a Girondin. The latter, acting like Danton +on the motto "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace," sighs after _Henri +Quatre et Gabrièlle_. There is more of the spirit of the French Revolution +in _Don Juan_ than in all the works of the author's contemporaries; but +his criticism is that of Boileau, and when deliberate is generally absurd. +He never recognized the meaning of the artistic movement of his age, and +overvalued those of his works which the Unities helped to destroy. He +hailed Gifford as his Magnus Apollo, and put Rogers next to Scott in his +comical pyramid. "Chaucer," he writes, "I think obscene and contemptible." +He could see no merit in Spenser, preferred Tasso to Milton, and called +the old English dramatists "mad and turbid mountebanks." In the same +spirit he writes: "In the time of Pope it was all Horace, now it is all +Claudian." He saw--what fanatics had begun to deny--that Pope was a great +writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both +was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his +controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his +earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age +can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all +times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence.... +Your whole generation are not worth a canto of the _Dunciad_, or anything +that is his." All the while he was himself writing prose and verse, in +grasp if not in vigour as far beyond the stretch of Pope, as Pope is in +"worth and wit and sense" removed above his mimics. The point of the +paradox is not merely that he deserted, but that he sometimes imitated his +model, and when he did so, failed. Macaulay's judgment, that "personal +taste led him to the eighteenth century, thirst for praise to the +nineteenth," is quite at fault. There can be no doubt that Byron loved +praise as much as he affected to despise it. His note, on reading the +_Quarterly_ on his dramas, "I am the most unpopular man in England," is +like the cry of a child under chastisement; but he had little affinity, +moral or artistic, with the spirit of our so-called Augustans, and his +determination to admire them was itself rebellious. Again we are reminded +of his phrase, "I am of the opposition." His vanity and pride were +perpetually struggling for the mastery, and though he thirsted for +popularity he was bent on compelling it; so he warred with the literary +impulse of which he was the child. + +Byron has no relation to the master-minds whose works reflect a nation or +an era, and who keep their own secrets. His verse and prose is alike +biographical, and the inequalities of his style are those of his career. +He lived in a glass case, and could not hide himself by his habit of +burning blue lights. He was too great to do violence to his nature, which +was not great enough to be really consistent. It was thus natural for him +to pose as the spokesman of two ages--as a critic and as an author; and of +two orders of society--as a peer, and as a poet of revolt. Sincere in +both, he could never forget the one character in the other. To the last, +he was an aristocrat in sentiment, a democrat in opinion. "Vulgarity," he +writes with a pithy half-truth, "is far worse than downright black +guardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at +times, while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, +signifying nothing." He could never reconcile himself to the English +radicals; and it has been acutely remarked, that part of his final +interest in Greece lay in the fact that he found it a country of classic +memories, "where a man might be the champion of liberty without soiling +himself in the arena." He owed much of his early influence to the fact of +his moving in the circles of rank and fashion; but though himself steeped +in the prejudices of caste, he struck at them at times with fatal force. +Aristocracy is the individual asserting a vital distinction between itself +and "the muck o' the world." Byron's heroes all rebel against the +associative tendency of the nineteenth century; they are self-worshippers +at war with society; but most of them come to bad ends. He maligned +himself in those caricatures, and has given more of himself in describing +one whom with special significance we call a brother poet. "Allen," he +writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished letters.... +What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness-- +sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling--dirt and deity--all mixed +up in that one compound of inspired clay!" We have only to add to these +antitheses, in applying them with slight modification to the writer. Byron +had, on occasion, more self-control than Burns, who yielded to every +thirst or gust, and could never have lived the life of the soldier at +Mesolonghi; but partly owing to meanness, partly to a sound instinct, his +memory has been more severely dealt with. The fact of his being a nobleman +helped to make him famous, but it also helped to make him hated. No doubt +it half spoiled him in making him a show; and the circumstance has +suggested the remark of a humourist, that it is as hard for a lord to be a +perfect gentleman as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye. But it +also exposed to the rancours of jealousy a man who had nearly everything +but domestic happiness to excite that most corroding of literary passions; +and when he got out of gear he became the quarry of Spenser's "blatant +beast." On the other hand, Burns was, beneath his disgust at Holy Fairs +and Willies, sincerely reverential; much of _Don Juan_ would have seemed +to him "an atheist's laugh," and--a more certain superiority--he was +absolutely frank. + +Byron, like Pope, was given to playing monkey-like tricks, mostly +harmless, but offensive to their victims. His peace of mind was dependent +on what people would say of him, to a degree unusual even in the irritable +race; and when they spoke ill he was, again like Pope, essentially +vindictive. The _Bards and Reviewers_ beats about, where the lines to +Atticus transfix with Philoctetes' arrows; but they are due to a like +impulse. Byron affected to contemn the world; but, say what he would, he +cared too much for it. He had a genuine love of solitude as an alterative; +but he could not subsist without society, and, Shelley tells us, wherever +he went, became the nucleus of it. He sprang up again when flung to the +earth, but he never attained to the disdain he desired. + +We find him at once munificent and careful about money; calmly asleep amid +a crowd of trembling sailors, yet never going to ride without a nervous +caution; defying augury, yet seriously disturbed by a gipsy's prattle. He +could be the most genial of comrades, the most considerate of masters, and +he secured the devotion of his servants, as of his friends; but he was too +overbearing to form many equal friendships, and apt to be ungenerous to +his real rivals. His shifting attitude towards Lady Byron, his wavering +purposes, his impulsive acts, are a part of the character we trace through +all his life and work,--a strange mixture of magnanimity and brutality, of +laughter and tears, consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride, +yet redeeming all his defects by his graces, and wearing a greatness that +his errors can only half obscure. + +Alternately the idol and the horror of his contemporaries, Byron was, +during his life, feared and respected as "the grand Napoleon of the realms +of rhyme." His works were the events of the literary world. The chief +among them were translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, Polish, +Russian, Spanish. On the publication of Moore's _Life_, Lord Macaulay had +no hesitation in referring to Byron as "the most celebrated Englishman of +the nineteenth century." Nor have we now; but in the interval between +1840-1870, it was the fashion to talk of him as a sentimentalist, a +romancer, a shallow wit, a nine days' wonder, a poet for "green unknowing +youth." It was a reaction, such as leads us to disestablish the heroes of +our crude imaginations till we learn that to admire nothing is as sure a +sign of immaturity as to admire everything. + +The weariness, if not disgust, induced by a throng of more than usually +absurd imitators, enabled Carlyle, the poet's successor in literary +influence (followed with even greater unfairness by Thackeray), more +effectively to lead the counter-revolt. "In my mind," writes the former, +in 1839, "Byron has been sinking at an accelerated rate for the last ten +years, and has now reached a very low level.... His fame has been very +great, but I do not see how it is to endure; neither does that make him +great. No genuine productive thought was ever revealed by him to mankind. +He taught me nothing that I had not again to forgot." The refrain of +Carlyle's advice during the most active years of his criticism was, "Close +thy Byron, open thy Goethe." We do so, and find that the refrain of +Goethe's advice in reference to Byron is--"nocturnâ versate manu, versate +diurnâ." He urged Eckermann to study English that he might read him; +remarking, "A character of such eminence has never existed before, and +probably will never come again. The beauty of _Cain_ is such as we shall +not see a second time in the world.... Byron issues from the sea-waves +ever fresh. In _Helena_, I could not make use of any man as the +representative of the modern poetic era except him, who is undoubtedly the +greatest genius[1] of our century." Again: "Tasso's epic has maintained +its fame, but Byron is the burning bush, which reduces the cedar of +Lebanon to ashes.... The English may think of him as they please; this is +certain, they can show no (living) poet who is comparable to him.... But +he is too worldly. Contrast _Macbeth_, and _Beppo_, where you are in a +nefarious empirical world." On Eckermann's doubting "whether there is a +gain for pure culture in Byron's work," Goethe conclusively replies, +"There I must contradict you. The audacity and grandeur of Byron must +certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always +looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great +promotes cultivation, as soon as we are aware of it." + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Arnold wrongly objects to this translation of the + German "talent."] + +This verdict of the Olympian as against the verdict of the Titan is +interesting in itself, and as being the verdict of the whole continental +world of letters. "What," exclaims Castelar, "does Spain not owe to Byron? +From his mouth come our hopes and fears. He has baptized us with his +blood. There is no one with whose being some song of his is not woven. His +life is like a funeral torch over our graves." Mazzini takes up the same +tune for Italy. Stendhal speaks of Byron's "Apollonic power;" and Sainte +Beuve writes to the same intent, with some judicious caveats. M. Taine +concludes his survey of the romantic movement with the remark: "In this +splendid effort, the greatest are exhausted. One alone--Byron--attains the +summit. He is so great and so English, that from him alone we shall learn +more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest together." +Dr. Elze, ranks the author of _Harold_ and _Juan_ among the four greatest +English poets, and claims for him the intellectual parentage of Lamartine +and Musset in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with +some modifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy. +So many voices of so various countries cannot be simply set aside: unless +we wrap ourselves in an insolent insularism, we are bound at least to ask +what is the meaning of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can +manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the +above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious +shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost nothing +by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist. +Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza +will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into +clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with +a big brush were never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast between +his theoretic worship of his idol and his own practice reaches a climax. +If, as he professed to believe, "the best poet is he who best executes his +work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and +slovenly; an improvisatore on the spot whore his fancy is kindled, writing +_currente calamo_, and disdaining the "art to blot." "I can never recast +anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling +back to my jungle." He said to Medwin, "Blank verse is the most difficult, +because every line must be good." Consequently, his own blank verse is +always defective--sometimes execrable. No one else--except, perhaps, +Wordsworth--who could write so well, could also write so ill. This fact in +Byron's case seems due not to mere carelessness, but to incapacity. +Something seems to stand behind him, like the slave in the chariot, to +check the current of his highest thought. The glow of his fancy fades with +the suddenness of a southern sunset. His best inspirations are spoilt by +the interruption of incongruous commonplace. He had none of the guardian +delicacy of taste, or the thirst after completeness, which mark the +consummate artist. He is more nearly a dwarf Shakespeare than a giant +Popo. This defect was most mischievous where he was weakest, in his dramas +and his lyrics, least so where he was strongest, in his mature satires. It +is almost transmuted into an excellence in the greatest of these, which +is by design and in detail a temple of incongruity. + +If we turn from his manner to his matter, we cannot claim for Byron any +absolute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, +Chateaubriand, Beaumarchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, +Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyore, Wieland, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goethe, scraps +of the classics, and the Book of Job. Absolute originality in a late age +is only possible to the hermit, the lunatic, or the sensation novelist. +Byron, like the rovers before Minos, was not ashamed of his piracy. He +transferred the random prose of his own letters and journals to his +dramas, and with the same complacency made use of the notes jotted down +from other writers as he sailed on the Lake of Geneva. But he made them +his own by smelting the rough ore into bell metal. He brewed a cauldron +like that of Macbeth's witches, and from it arose the images of crowned +kings. If he did not bring a new idea into the world, he quadrupled the +force of existing ideas and scattered them far and wide. Southern critics +have maintained that he had a southern nature and was in his true element +on the Lido or under an Andalusian night. Others dwell on the English +pride that went along with his Italian habits and Greek sympathies. The +truth is, he had the power of making himself poetically everywhere at +home; and this, along with the fact of all his writings being perfectly +intelligible, is the secret of his European influence. He was a citizen of +the world; because he not only painted the environs, but reflected the +passions and aspirations of every scene amid which he dwelt. + +A disparaging critic has said, "Byron is nothing without his +descriptions." The remark only emphasizes the fact that his genius was not +dramatic. All non-dramatic art is concerned with bringing before us +pictures of the world, the value of which lies half in their truth, half +in the amount of human interest with which they are invested. To +scientific accuracy few poets can lay claim, and Byron less than most; but +the general truth of his descriptions is acknowledged by all who have +travelled in the same countries. The Greek verses of his first +pilgrimage,--e.g. the night scene on the Gulf of Arta, many of the +Albanian sketches, with much of the _Siege of Corinth_ and the _Giaour_ +--have been invariably commended for their vivid realism. Attention has +been especially directed to the lines in the _Corsair_ beginning-- + + But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain, + +as being the veritable voice of one + + Spell-bound, within the clustering Cyclades. + +The opening lines of the same canto, transplanted from the _Curse of +Minerva_, are even more suggestive:-- + + Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, + Along Morea's hill the setting sun, + Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, + But one unclouded blaze of living light, &c. + +In the same way, the later cantos of _Harold_ are steeped in Switzerland +and in Italy. Byron's genius, it is true, required a stimulus; it could +not have revelled among the daisies of Chaucer, or pastured by the banks +of the Doon or the Ouse, or thriven among the Lincolnshire fens. He had a +sincere, if somewhat exclusive, delight in the storms and crags that +seemed to respond to his nature and to his age. There is no affectation in +the expression of the wish, "O that the desert were my dwelling-place!" +though we know that the writer on the shores of the Mediterranean still +craved for the gossip of the clubs. It only shows that-- + + Two desires toss about + The poet's feverish blood; + One drives him to the world without, + And one to solitude. + +Of Byron's two contemporary rivals, Wordsworth had no feverish blood; +nothing drove him to the world without; consequently his "eyes avert their +ken from half of human fate," and his influence, though perennial, will +always be limited. He conquered England from his hills and lakes; but his +spirit has never crossed the Straits which he thought too narrow. The +other, with a fever in his veins, calmed it in the sea and in the cloud, +and, in some degree because of his very excellencies, has failed as yet to +mark the world at large. The poets' poet, the cynosure of enthusiasts, he +bore the banner of the forlorn hope; but Byron, with his feet of clay, led +the ranks. Shelley, as pure a philanthropist as St. Francis or Howard, +could forget mankind, and, like his Adonaïs, become one with nature. +Byron, who professed to hate his fellows, was of them even more than for +them, and so appealed to them through a broader sympathy, and held them +with a firmer hand. By virtue of his passion, as well as his power, he was +enabled to represent the human tragedy in which he played so many parts, +and to which his external universe of cloudless moons, and vales of +evergreen, and lightning-riven peaks, are but the various background. He +set the "anguish, doubt, desire," the whole chaos of his age, to a music +whose thunder-roll seems to have inspired the opera of _Lohengrin_--a +music not designed to teach or to satisfy "the budge doctors of the Stoic +fur," but which will continue to arouse and delight the sons and daughters +of men. + +Madame de Staël said to Byron, at Ouchy, "It does not do to war with the +world: the world is too strong for the individual." Goethe only gives a +more philosophic form to this counsel when he remarks of the poet, "He put +himself into a false position by his assaults on Church and State. His +discontent ends in negation.... If I call _bad_ bad, what do I gain? But +if I call _good_ bad, I do mischief." The answer is obvious: as long as +men call _bad_ good, there is a call for iconoclasts: half the reforms of +the world have begun in negation. Such comments also point to the common +error of trying to make men other than they are by lecturing them. This +scion of a long line of lawless bloods--a Scandinavian Berserker, if there +ever was one--the literary heir of the Eddas--was specially created to +wage that war--to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England +with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles +the hollow hypocrisy--sham taste, sham morals, sham religion--of the +society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but +succeeded in seducing him. But for the ethereal essence,-- + + The fount of fiery life + Which served for that Titanic strife, + +Byron would have been merely a more melodious Moore and a more +accomplished Brummell. But the caged lion was only half tamed, and his +continual growls were his redemption. His restlessness was the sign of a +yet unbroken will. He fell and rose, and fell again; but never gave up the +struggle that keeps alive, if it does not save, the soul. His greatness as +well as his weakness lay, in the fact that from boyhood battle was the +breath of his being. To tell him not to fight, was like telling Wordsworth +not to reflect, or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of +challenge; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an +unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine +mosaic; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder +Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit +of action and of enterprise. + +In good portraits his head has a lurid look, as if it had been at a higher +temperature than that of other men. That high temperature was the source +of his inspiration, and the secret of a spell which, during his life, +commanded homage and drew forth love. Mere artists are often mannikins. +Byron's brilliant though unequal genius was subordinate to the power of +his personality; he + + Had the elements + So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up + And say to all the world--"This was a man." + +We may learn much from him still, when we have ceased to disparage, as our +fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is so much warning and so +much example. + + + + +INDEX. + +_Abydos, Bride of_ +Adeline (Lady), analysis of female character +Albrizzi (Countess), salon of +Ali Pasha, his reception of Byron +Allegra, Byron's daughter +Athenians, character of +Athens +Aurora Raby, La Guiccioli idealised + +Becher's, Rev. J.T., influence on Byron +_Beppo_ +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blessington, Lady +_Blues, The_ +Boatswain (Byron's dog) +Bologna +Boston's _Fourfold State_ +Bowers, Byron's tutor +Bowles, controversy about Pope +Bozzaris, Marco, death of +Brandes, Prof., criticism of Byron's bust +_British Review, To the Editor of the_ +_Bronze, The Age of_ +Brougham's, Lord, criticism of _Hours of Idleness_ +Brown, Hamilton +Bruno, Dr. +Brydges, Sir Egerton, criticism of _Cain_ +Burns +Burun, an ancestor of Byron +Butler, Dr., master of Harrow +Byron, Augusta Ada (the poet's daughter) +Byron, George Gordon, 6th Lord + genealogy; + birth; + residence at Ballater; + school-life; + early loves; + "first dash into poetry"; + accession to peerage; + Baillie, Dr., medical adviser; + at Harrow; + coming of age; + writes review on Wordsworth; + Annesley, residence at; + at Cambridge; + takes seat in House of Lords; + travels; + studies Romaic; + Armenian; + attacks of fever; + speeches in House of Lords; + writes address on re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre; + publishes the _Giaour_; + friendship with Sir Walter Scott; + marriage; + separation from wife; + departure from England; + friendship with Shelley; + in Switzerland; + in Italy; + life in Venice + completes _Childe Harold_ + life at Ravenna + at Pisa + relations with Leigh Hunt + life in Albaro + joins conspiracy in Italy + joins movement for liberation of Greece + leaves Italy + life in Greece + last illness and death + last words + funeral honours +Byron, Lord + allusions in his poetry to his training + appreciation of + aristocratic sentiments + Austria, hatred of, characteristics + characteristics of literature in Byron's age + cleverness + comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth + contemporary admiration + debts + defects of character + defects of his poetry + descriptive power + dislike of professional _littérateurs_ + dissipations + dogmatism + early friends + financial affairs + follower of Pope + garrulity + idleness + knowledge of languages + knowledge of Scripture + in London society + lameness + love of mountains + melancholy + pecuniary profits + personal appearance + physical endurance + poetic character + politics + reading + relations to female sex + scholarship + Scotch superstition + social views + solitude + sources of Byron's work + swimming, feats of + tame bear + temper + theological views + verse-romances + women + estimate of + works translated +Byron, John, Admiral +Byron, John, of Clayton +Byron, John (father) +Byron, Lady (wife) +Byron, Mrs. (mother) +Byron, Richard (2nd Lord) +Byron, Robert de +Byron, Sir John (1st Lord) +Byron, Sir Nicholas +Byron, William (3rd Lord) +Byron, William (4th Lord) +Byron, William (5th Lord) + +Cadiz, estimate of +_Cain_ +Cambridge +Campbell, Thomas +Carbonari, a secret society +Carlisle, Lord +Carlyle +Castelar +_Cenci_ +Charlotte, Princess +Chasles, criticism by +Chatterton +Chaucer +Chaworth, Mary Ann +Chaworth, Mr. +Chaworth, Viscount +Cheltenham +_Childe Harold_ + criticism of +_Chillon, Prisoner of_ +_Christabel_ +_Churchill's Grave_ +Civil Wars +Clairmont, Miss, intimacy with +Clare, Lord, friendship with +Clermont, Mrs., Lady Byron's maid +Cogni, Margarita, intimacy with +Coleridge +Colocatroni, the brigand +Constantinople +_Corinth, Siege of_ +_Corsair_ +_Could I remount the River of my Years_ +Cowley +Cowper +Crabbe +_Curse of Minerva_ + +Dallas, R.C. +Dante +D'Arcy, Amelia (Countess Conyers) +_Darkness_ +Davies, Scrope +Davy, Sir H. +_Deformed Transformed_ +_Don Juan_ + criticism of +Doomsday Book +Dramas (Byron's) +_Dream, The_ +Drury, Dr. Joseph +Drury, Henry +Drury Lane Theatre +Drury, Mark +Dryden +Duff, Mary, intimacy with +Dulwich + +Eddlestone, the chorister +_Edinburgh Review_ +Ekenhead, Lieutenant +Eldon, Lord +Elgin, Lord +Elze +England's vice of hypocrisy +_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ +English character +English literature + +_Faery Queene_ (Spenser's) +Falkland, Lord +_Faust_, influence of, on Byron +Ferrara +Fletcher (valet) +Florence +_Foscari, The Two_ +_Francesca of Rimini_ +Frere + +Galt +Gamba +Gell +Geneva +Genoa +George, Prince of Denmark +George III. +_Giaour_ +Gibbon +Gibraltar +Gifford +_Glenarvon_ (Lady Caroline Lamb's novel) +Glennie, Dr. +Goethe +Gray, May, her influence over Byron +Gray (poet) +Greece +Grindelwald +Guiccioli + +Hailstone, Prof. +Hanson, Mr., solicitor +Harness, a school-fellow +Harrogate, trip to +Harrow +Hawthorne +_Heaven and Earth_ +Heber, Bishop +_Hebrew Melodies_ +_Hints from Horace_ +Hiron, a Cambridge tradesman +Hobhouse +Hodgson, Rev. F. +Holderness, Earl of +Holland, Lord +Hoppner +_Hours of Idleness_ +Howard, Hon. F. +Howitt, William +Hucknall Torkard, church +_Hudibras_ +Hunt, John +Hunt, Leigh + +Ilissus +Ilium +_Island, The_ +Italy +Ithaca + +Jackson, Mr., a pugilist +Janina +Jeffrey +Jones (tutor) +Journal (Byron's) +Juliet, story of +Jungfrau +_Juvenilia_ + +Keats +Kemble, Frances Ann, memoirs of +Kennedy, Dr. +Kharyati +Kinnaird, Douglas +Kirkby Mallory + +_Lalla Rookh_ +Lamb, Lady Caroline +La Mira +_Landlord, Tales of a_ +Landor +Lanfranchi +_Lara_ +Lausanne +Lavender, a quack +Lee, Harriet +Leeds, Duke of +Leghorn +Leigh, Colonel +Leigh, Mrs. (poet's sister Augusta) +Loman, Lake +Lepanto +Lewis +_Liberal_, the +Lido +Lion (pet dog) +Lisbon +Lisle, Rouget de +Loch Leven +Locke +Lockhart +London +Londonderry, Lord +Long, Edward Noel +Longman +Loughborough +Lucca +Lucifer +Lushington, Dr. + +Macaulay +Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling) +Mafra +Magellan, Straits of +Mallet +Malta +Mandeville, Sir John +_Manfred_ + criticism of +Mansel, Dr. Lort +Marathon +Marilyn, Mrs. +_Marina Faliero_ + criticism of +Marius +Marlowe +Martineau, Miss +Matlock +Matthews, C.S. +Mavrocordatos, Prince Alexander +Mayor, Dr. +_Mazeppa_ +Mazzini +Medora (daughter of Mrs. Leigh) +Medwin, Captain +Meister, Wilhelm +Melbourne +Memoirs (Byron's) +Mesolonghi +Milan +Milbanke, Sir Ralph +Milligen (a physician) +Milton +Moore +Morea +Morgan, Lady +_Morgantc Maggiore_ +Murray, Joe (butler) +Murray, John +Musters + +Napier, Colonel +Naples +Napoleon +Newark +Newbury, battle of +Nowstead +Noel, Lady +Norton, Mrs. +_Nottingham_ + +Odysseus +Ossington +Oxford + +Paganini +_Parisina_ +Parker, Margaret, intimacy with +Parr, Dr. +Parry (engineer) +Parthenon +Paterson (a tutor) +Patras +Peel, Sir Robert +Peloponnesus +Pentelicus +Persia +Petrarch +Philopoemen +Pigot +Pisa +Plato's Glaucus +_Pleasures of Hope_ +Po (river) +Polidori +Pope +Porson, 39 +Power, Miss +_Prometheus_ +Pulci + +_Quarterly Review_ + +_Rambler_ +Raphael +Ravenna +Regent, the +Regillus +Reid, Dr. +_Rejected Addresses_ +Revolution, the French +Rhine +Rhoetian hill +Richter +Robinson, Crabb +Rochdale +Rochester +Rogers, Samuel, (poet) +Rogers (tutor) +Roman Catholic Emancipation, speech on behalf of +Roman Catholic religion +Rome +Ross (a tutor) +Rossina +Rousseau +Rubens +Rushton, Robert +Ruskin +Russell, Lord John +Russia +Ruthyn, Lord Grey de + +Sainte Beuve +Santa Croce +_Saragassa, Maid of_ +Sardanapalus +_Saturday Review_ +Schlegel, F. +Scotland, allusions to +Scott, Sir Walter +Seaham +Segati, Mariana, intimacy with +Seville +Shakespeare +Shelley +Shelley, Mrs. +Shepherd, Mrs., letter of +Sheridan +Siddons, Mrs. +Sinclair, George, friend of Byron +Sligo, Marquis of +Smith, Mrs. Spencer ("Florence") +Smith, Sir Henry +Smyrna +Socrates +Soraete +Southey +Southwell +Spain +Spectator +Spencer, Earl +Spenser +Spielberg +Spinoza +Stael, Madame de +Stanhope, Colonel +Stanhope, Lady Hester +Staubbach +Stendhal +Stephen, Leslie +Stromboli +Suliotes +Swift +Swinstead +Switzerland + +Taafe +Taine +Tasso +Tavell (a tutor) +_Telegrapho_(newspaper) +Tennant +Tennyson +Tepaleni +Thackeray +Thebes +Theresa (Maid of Athens) +Thorwaldsen +Tickhill +Titian +Trelawny +Turkey +Tusculum + +University training + +_Vampire, The_ +Vanessa +Vathi +Venice +Verona +"Victory," the +_Vision of Judgment_ +Voltaire + +"Wager," the +_Waltz, The,_ +Washington +Waterloo +Watkins, Dr. John +Wellington +Wengern +_Werner_ +West (artist) +Westminster Abbey +Wildman +Williams, Captain +Wingfield, John +Woodhouselee, Lord +Wordsworth +_World_ +Wycliffe + +York +Yussuf Pasha + +Zante +Zitza + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Byron, by John Nichol + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYRON *** + +***** This file should be named 10100-8.txt or 10100-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/0/10100/ + +Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Byron + +Author: John Nichol + +Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10100] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYRON *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +BYRON + +BY + +JOHN NICHOL + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY + +CHAPTER II. +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL-LIFE. 1788-1808. + +CHAPTER III. +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HOURS OF IDLENESS--BARDS AND +REVIEWERS. 1808-1809. + +CHAPTER IV. +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 1809-1811. + +CHAPTER V. +LIFE IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT AND MOORE--SECOND PERIOD OF +AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (I., II.). AND THE ROMANCES. 1811-1815. + +CHAPTER VI. +MARRIAGE AND SEPARATION--FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 1815-1816. + +CHAPTER VII. +SWITZERLAND--VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--HAROLD (III., IV.) +--MANFRED. 1816-1820. + +CHAPTER VIII. +RAVENNA--COUNTESS GUICCIOLI--THE DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. +1820-1821. + +CHAPTER IX. +PISA--GENOA--THE LIBERAL--DON JUAN. 1821-1823. + +CHAPTER. X. +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. 1821-1824. + +CHAPTER XI. +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE + +INDEX + + + + +BOOKS CONSULTED. + +1. The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, Commodore, in a late + Expedition Round the World, &c. (Baker and Leigh) 1768 + +2. Voyage of H.M.S. _Blonde_ to the Sandwich Islands in the years + 1824-1825, the Right Hon. Lord Byron, Commander (John Murray) 1826 + +3. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron (H. + Colburn) 1822 + +4. The Life, Writings, Opinions, and Times of G.G. Noel Byron, with + courtiers of tho present polished and enlightened age, &c., &c., + 3 vols. (M. Hey) 1825 + +5. Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to Greece, from Journal of + Count Peter Gamba 1825 + +6. Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron at Pisa, 2 vols. (H. Colburn) + 1825 + +7. Leigh Hunt's Byron and His Contemporaries (H. Colburn) + 1828 + +8. The Works of Lord Byron, with Life by Thomas Moore, 17 + vols. (Murray) 1832 + +9. Galt's Life of Lord Byron (Colburn and Buntley) 1830 + +10. Kennedy's Conversations on Religion (Murray) 1830 + +11. Countess of Blessington's Conversations (Colburn) 1834 + +12. Lady Morgan's Memoirs, 2 vols. (W.H. Allen) 1842 + +13. Recollections of the Countess Guiccioli (Bentley) 1869 + +14. Castelar's Genius and Character of Byron (Tinsley) 1870 + +15. Elze's Life of Lord Byron (Murray) 1872 + +16. Trelawny's Reminiscences of Byron and Shelley 1858 + +17. Torrens' Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne (Macmillan) 1878 + +18. Rev. F. Hodgson's Memoirs, 2 vols. (Macimillan) 1879 + +19. Essays and Articles, or Recorded Criticisms, by Macaulay, Scott, + Shelley, Goethe, G. Brandes, Mazzini, Sainte Beuve, Chasles, H. + Taine, &c. + +20. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage 1879 + + + + +GENEALOGY OF THE BYRON FAMILY. + + +THE BYRON FAMILY, FROM THE CONQUEST + +Ralph de Burun (estates in Nottingham and Derby). +| +Hugh de Burun (Lord of Horestan). +| +Hugh de Buron (became a monk). +| +Sir Roger de Buron (gave lands to monks of Swinstead). +| +| Sir Richard Clayton. +| | +Robert de Byron. = Cecelia +| +Robert de Byron +| +Sir John Byron (Governor of York under Edward I.). +| +-------------------------------- +| | +Sir Richard Byron. Sir John (knighted at siege of Calais) +| +Sir John (knighted in 3rd year of Henry V.). +| +| Sir John Butler. +| | +Sir Nicholas. = Alice. +| +----------------------------------- +| | +Sir Nicholas (made K.B. at Sir John (knighted by Richmond + marriage of Prince Arthur, at Milford; fought at Bosworth; + died 1503). died 1488). +| +Sir John Byron = 2nd wife, widow of George Halgh. + (received grant of Newstead from Henry VIII., May 26,1540). +| +Bar // Sinister +| Sir Nicholas Strelleye +| | +John Byron, of Clayton = Alice + (inherited by gift, knighted by Elizabeth, 1579). +| +------------------------------------- +| | +| Sir Nicholas +| Sir Richard Molyneux +| | +Sir John = Anne + (K.B. at coronation of James I; Governor of Tower). +| +-------------------------------------- +| | +RICHARD, 2nd Lord (1605-1679) Sir JOHN 1st Lord (created + (Buried at Hucknal Torkard) Baron Byron of Rochdale, +| Oct. 24, 1643; at Newbury, +| Edgehill, Chester, &c. +| Viscount Chaworth Governor of Duke of York; died +| | at Paris, 1652). +WILLIAM, 3rd Lord = Elizabeth. + (died 1695) +| Lord Berkeley. +| | +WILLIAM, 4th Lord = Frances (3rd wife) + (1669-1736) +| +--------------------------- +| | +Admiral John (1723-1786) |- WILLIAM, 5th Lord (1722-1798) (killed Mr. +| "Foul-weather Jack"). | Chaworth; survived his sons +| | and a grandson, who died 1794; +| | called "The wicked Lord"). +| | +| | - Isabella = Lord Carlisle +| | +| Lord Carlisle (the poet's +| guardian). +--------------------------- +| | +| |- A daughter +| | | +| | Colonel Leigh +| | +| |- George Anson (1758-1793). +| | +| Admiral GEORGE ANSON, 7th Lord +| (1789-1868) +| | +| ---- +| |- Frederick +| | | +| | GEORGE F. WILLIAM, 9th and present +| | Lord Byron. +| | +| |- GEORGE, 8th Lord (1818-1870) +| +------------------- + | +1. Marchioness = John Byron (1751-1791) = 2. Miss Gordon of Gight + of Carmarthen | | + | | +Colonel Leigh = Augusta GEORGE GORDON, 6th Lord + | | (1788-1824). Married + Several daughters | Anna Isabella (1792-1860), + | daughter of Sir Ralph + | Milbanke and Judith, + | daughter of Sir Edward + | Noel (Viscount Wentworth), + | and by her had + ------------------------- + | + Earl Lovelace = Augusta-Ada (1815-1852). + | + -------------------------------------- + | | | +Mr. Blunt = Lady Anne. Byron Noel Ralph Gordon, + (died 1862) now Lord Wentworth + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. + +Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an +intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished to +be--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century. +Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record various +impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or +patronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey, +in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; an +American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion: +to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to +have been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first English +poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France, +Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud of +his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil +of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a +matter of no idle antiquarianism. + +There are legends of old Norse Buruns migrating from their home in +Scandinavia, and settling, one branch in Normandy, another in Livonia. To +the latter belonged a distant Marshal de Burun, famous for the almost +absolute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two members +of the family came over with the Conqueror, and settled in England. Of +Erneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more. +Ralph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book--our first +authentic record--as having estates in Nottinghamshire and Derby. His son +Hugh was lord of Horestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son of +the same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossington to +the monks of Lenton. Tim latter Hugh joined their order; but the race was +continued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery of +Swinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry II. (1155-1189), when +Robert de Byron adopted the spelling of his name afterwards retained, and +by his marriage with Cecilia, heir of Sir Richard Clayton, added to the +family possessions an estate; in Lancashire, where, till the time of Henry +VIII., they fixed their seat. The poet, relying on old wood-carvings at +Newstead, claims for some of his ancestors a part in the crusades, and +mentions a name not apparently belonging to that age-- + + Near Ascalon's towers, John of Horestan slumbers-- + +a romance, like many of his, possibly founded on fact, but incapable of +verification. + +Two grandsons of Sir Robert have a more substantial fame, having served +with distinction in the wars of Edward I. The elder of these was governor +of the city of York. Some members of his family fought at Cressy, and one +of his sons, Sir John, was knighted by Edward III. at the siege of Calais. +Descending through the other, Sir Richard, we come to another Sir John, +knighted by Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., on his landing at Milford. He +fought, with his kin, on the field of Bosworth, and dying without issue, +left the estates to his brother, Sir Nicholas, knighted in 1502, at the +marriage of Prince Arthur. The son of Sir Nicholas, known as "little Sir +John of the great beard," appears to have been a favourite of Henry VIII., +who made him Steward of Manchester and Lieutenant of Sherwood, and on the +dissolution of the monasteries presented him with the Priory of Newstead, +the rents of which were equivalent to about 4000l. of our money. Sir John, +who stepped into the Abbey in 1540, married twice, and the premature +appearance of a son by the second wife--widow of Sir George Halgh--brought +the bar sinister of which so much has been made. No indication of this +fact, however, appears in the family arms, and it is doubtful if the poet +was aware of a reproach which in any case does not touch his descent. The +"filius naturalis," John Byron of Clayton, inherited by deed of gift, and +was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1579. His descendants were prominent as +staunch Royalists during the whole period of the Civil Wars. At Edgehill +there were seven Byrons on the field. + + On Marston, with Rupert 'gainst traitors contending, + Four brothers enrich'd with their blood the bleak field. + +Sir Nicholas, one of the seven, is extolled as "a person of great +affability and dexterity, as well as martial knowledge, which gave great +life to the designs of the well affected." He was taken prisoner by the +Parliament while acting as governor of Chester. Under his nephew, Sir +John, Newstead is said to have been besieged and taken; but the knight +escaped, in the words of the poet--never a Radical at heart--a "protecting +genius, + + For nobler combats here reserved his life, + To lead the band where godlike Falkland foil." + +Clarendon, indeed, informs us, that on the morning before the battle, +Falkland, "very cheerful, as always upon action, put himself into the +first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment." This slightly antedates his +title. The first battle of Newbury was fought on September, 1643. For his +services there, and at a previous royal victory, over Waller in July, Sir +John was, on October 24th of the same year, created Baron of Rochdale, and +so became the first Peer of the family. + +This first lord was succeeded by his brother Richard (1605-1079), famous +in the war for his government and gallant defence of Newark. He rests in +the vault that now contains the dust of the greatest of his race, Hucknall +Torkard Church, where his epitaph records the fact that the family lost +all their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, "yet it pleased God +so to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that he +repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his +posterity, with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity." His +eldest son, William, the third Lord (died 1695), is worth remembering on +two accounts. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, and +so wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance: he +was a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods nor +columns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself a +poetaster, capable of the couplet,-- + + My whole ambition only does extend + To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend,-- + +an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to have +attained its desire. + +His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to +Prince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by his +third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a +strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The +eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of +the poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the +"Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and +subsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of the +passing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the +whole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners of +the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an +aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and +Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course +of the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose between +them about the management of game, so frivolous that one conjectures the +quarrel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of offence. Bets +were offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matter +had blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs, +and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to show +them an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow candle being placed +on the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, and +the hotel master rushing in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded. +There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, having received the +first lunge harmlessly in his waistcoat, had shortened his sword and run +his adversary through the body, with the boast, not uncharacteristic of +his grand nephew, "By G-d, I have as much courage as any man in England." +A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on a +charge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took place +in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for +six guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned a +verdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying his +fees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted +man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a +baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the +wildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the +carriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried to +drown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weird +legends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's +only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive +stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus +in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in +pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries +of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated his +heir presumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale,--a proceeding afterwards +challenged--and cut down the trees of Newstead, to spite him; but he +survived his three sons, his brother, and his only grandson, who was +killed in Corsica in 1794. + +On his own death in 1798, the estates and title passed to George Gordon, +then a child of ten, whom he used to talk of, without a shadow of +interest, as "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen." His sister Isabella +married Lord Carlisle, and became the mother of the fifth Earl, the poet's +nominal guardian. She was a lady distinguished for eccentricity of +manners, and (like her son satirized in the _Bards and Reviewers_) for the +perpetration of indifferent verses. The career of the fourth lord's second +son, John, the poet's grandfather, recalls that of the sea-kings from whom +the family claim to have sprung. Born in 1723, he at an early age entered +the naval service, and till his death in 1786 was tossed from storm to +storm. "He had no rest on sea, nor I on shore," writes his illustrious +descendant. In 1740 a fleet of five ships was sent out under Commodore +Anson to annoy the Spaniards, with whom we were then at war, in the South +Seas. Byron took service as a midshipman in one of those ships--all more +or less unfortunate--called "The Wager." Being a bad sailor, and heavily +laden, she was blown from her company, and wrecked in the Straits of +Magellan. The majority of the crew were cast on a bleak rock, which they +christened Mount Misery. After encountering all the horrors of mutiny and +famine, and being in various ways deserted, five of the survivors, among +them Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to the +Island of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They were +kept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. Iago, the capital of Chili, +and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brest +in October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at Dover in a Dutch vessel. + +This voyage is the subject of a well-known apostrophe in _The Pleasures of +Hope_, beginning-- + + And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his + native shore. In torrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep + Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, 'Twas his to mourn + misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled by the + rock. + +Byron's own account of his adventures, published in 1768, is remarkable +for freshness of scenery like that of our first literary traveller, Sir +John Mandeville, and a force of description which recalls Defoe. It +interests us more especially from the use that has been made of it in that +marvellous mosaic of voyages, the shipwreck, in _Don Juan_, the hardships +of his hero being, according to the poet-- + + Comparative + To those related in my grand-dad's narrative. + +In June, 1764, Byron sailed with two ships, the "Dolphin" and the "Tamar," +on a voyage of discovery arranged by Lord Egmont, to seek a southern +continent, in the course of which he took possession of the largest of the +Falkland Islands, again passed through the Magellanic Straits, and sailing +home by the Pacific, circumnavigated the globe. The planets so conspired +that, though his affable manners and considerate treatment made him always +popular with his men, sailors became afraid to serve under "foul-weather +Jack." In 1748 he married the daughter of a Cornish squire, John +Trevanion. They had two sons and three daughters. One of the latter +married her cousin (the fifth lord's eldest son), who died in 1776, +leaving as his sole heir the youth who fell in the Mediterranean in 1794. + +The eldest son of the veteran, John Byron, father of the poet, was born in +1751, educated at Westminster, and, having received a commission, became a +captain in the guards; but his character, fundamentally unprincipled, soon +developed itself in such a manner as to alienate him from his family. In +1778, under circumstances of peculiar effrontery, he seduced Amelia +D'Arcy, the daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, in her own right Countess +Conyers, then wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds. +"Mad Jack," as he was called, seems to have boasted of his conquest; but +the marquis, to whom his wife had hitherto been devoted, refused to +believe the rumours that were afloat, till an intercepted letter, +containing a remittance of money, for which Byron, in reverse of the usual +relations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pair +decamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained a +divorce, they were regularly married. Byron seems to have been not only +profligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he was +even more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, having +given birth to two daughters. One died in infancy; the other was Augusta, +the half sister and good genius of the poet, whose memory remains like a +star on the fringe of a thunder-cloud, only brighter by the passing of the +smoke of calumny. In 1807 she married Colonel Leigh, and had a numerous +family, most of whom died young. Her eldest daughter, Georgiana, married +Mr. Henry Trevanion. The fourth, Medora, had an unfortunate history, the +nucleus of an impertinent and happily ephemeral romance. + +The year after the death of his first wife, John Byron, who seems to have +had the fascinations of a Barry Lyndon, succeeded in entrapping a second. +This was Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight, a lady with considerable estates +in Aberdeenshire--which attracted the adventurer--and an overweening +Highland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts, +through his daughter Annabella, and the second Earl of Huntly. This union +suggested the ballad of an old rhymer, beginning-- + + O whare are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, + O whare are ye gaen, sae bonny and braw? + Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron, + To squander the lands o' Gight awa'. + +The prophecy was soon fulfilled. The property of the Scotch heiress was +squandered with impetuous rapidity by the English rake. In 1780 she left +Scotland for France, and returned to England toward the close of the +following year. On the 22nd of January, 1788, in Holles Street, London, +Mrs. Byron gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, sixth Lord. +Shortly after, being pressed by his creditors, the father abandoned both, +and leaving them with a pittance of 150 _l_ a year, fled to Valenciennes, +where he died, in August, 1791. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. + +Soon after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron took him to Scotland. After +spending some time with a relation, she, early in 1790, settled in a small +house at Aberdeen. Ere long her husband, who had in the interval +dissipated away his remaining means, rejoined her; and they lived together +in humble lodgings, until their tempers, alike fiery and irritable, +compelled a definite separation. They occupied apartments, for some time, +at the opposite ends of the same street, and interchanged visits. Being +accustomed to meet the boy and his nurse, the father expressed a wish that +the former should be sent to live with him, at least for some days. "To +this request," Moore informs us, "Mrs. Byron was at first not very willing +to accede; but, on the representation of the nurse that if he kept him +over one night he would not do so another, she consented. On inquiring +next morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he had +had quite enough of his young visitor." After a short stay in the north, +the Captain, extorting enough money from his wife to enable him to fly +from his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been a +relief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, that +her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an +anecdote of a similar outburst--attested by Sir W. Scott, who was present +on the occasion--before her marriage. Being present at a representation, +in Edinburgh, of the _Fatal Marriage_, when Mrs. Siddons was personating +Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of the +theatre, screaming out "O my Biron, my Biron." All we know of her +character shows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward, +but hysterical. She constantly boasted of her descent, and clung to the +courtesy title of "honourable," to which she had no claim. Her affection +and anger were alike demonstrative, her temper never for an hour secure. +She half worshipped, half hated, the blackguard to whom she was married, +and took no steps to protect her property; her son she alternately petted +and abused. "Your mother's a fool!" said a school companion to him years +after. "I know it," was his unique and tragic reply. Never was poet born +to so much illustrious, and to so much bad blood. The records of his +infancy betray the temper which he preserved through life--passionate, +sullen, defiant of authority, but singularly amenable to kindness. On +being scolded by his first nurse for having soiled a dress, without +uttering a word he tore it from top to seam, as he had seen his mother +tear her caps and gowns; but her sister and successor in office, May Gray, +acquired and retained a hold over his affections, to which he has borne +grateful testimony. To her training is attributed the early and remarkable +knowledge of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms, which he possessed: +he was, according to her later testimony, peculiarly inquisitive and +puzzling about religion. Of the sense of solitude, induced by his earliest +impressions, he characteristically makes a boast. "My daughter, my wife, +my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural daughter, and +myself, are or were all only children. But the fiercest animals have the +fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, &c." + +To this practical orphanhood, and inheritance of feverish passion, there +was added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physical +defect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned to +a high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter Scott +was lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over that +serene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest prose and +verse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope, we must +remember that he was a cripple: and Byron never allows us to forget, +because he himself never forgot it. Accounts differ as to the extent and +origin of his deformity; and the doubts on the matter are not removed by +the inconsistent accounts of the indelicate post-mortem examination made +by Mr. Trelawny at Mesolonghi. It is certain that one of the poet's feet +was, either at birth or at a very early period, so seriously clubbed or +twisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable extent his habits. It +also appears that the surgical means--boots, bandages, &c.--adopted to +straighten the limb, only aggravated the evil. His sensitiveness on the +subject was early awakened by careless or unfeeling references. "What a +pretty boy Byron is," said a friend of his nurse. "What a pity he has such +a leg." On which the child, with flashing eyes, cutting at her with a +baby's whip, cried out, "Dinna speak of it." His mother herself, in her +violent fits, when the boy ran round the room laughing at her attempts to +catch him, used to say he was a little dog, as bad as his father, and to +call him "a lame brat"--an incident, which, notoriously suggested the +opening scene of the _Deformed Transformed_. In the height of his +popularity he fancied that the beggars and street-sweepers in London were +mocking him. He satirized and discouraged dancing; he preferred riding and +swimming to other exercises, because they concealed his weakness; and on +his death-bed asked to be blistered in such a way that he might not be +called on to expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and +others, assure us that in society few would have observed the defect if he +had not referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and therefore +never far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men. + +In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys, taught +by a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeat +monosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a devout and +clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to his own account he +made astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Roman +history, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Long +afterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum and looking down on +the little round lake, he remembered his young enthusiasm and his old +instructor. He next came under the charge of a tutor called Paterson, whom +he describes as "a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man. He was the +son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar. With him I began Latin, and +continued till I went to the grammar school, where I threaded all the +classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of my +uncle." + +Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn from +scattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low in +his class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand high; but +that he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuriating in the +_Arabian Nights_. He was an indifferent penman, and always disliked +mathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eager +for adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than to +take one, affectionate, though resentful. + +When his cousin was killed at Corsica, in 1794, he became the next heir to +the title. In 1797, a friend, meaning to compliment the boy, said, "We +shall have the pleasure some day of reading your speeches in the House of +Commons," he, with precocious consciousness, replied, "I hope not. If you +read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords." Similarly, +when, in the course of the following year, the fierce old man at Newstead +died, and the young lord's name was called at school with "Dominus" +prefixed to it, his emotion was so great that he was unable to answer, and +burst into tears. + +Belonging to this period is the somewhat shadowy record of a childish +passion for a distant cousin slightly his senior, Mary Duff, with whom he +claims to have fallen in love in his ninth year. We have a quaint picture +of the pair sitting on the grass together, the girl's younger sister +beside them playing with a doll. A German critic gravely remarks, "This +strange phenomenon places him beside Dante." Byron himself, dilating on +the strength of his attachment, tells us that he used to coax a maid to +write letters for him, and that when he was sixteen, on being informed, by +his mother, of Mary's marriage, he nearly fell into convulsions. But in +the history of the calf-loves of poets it is difficult to distinguish +between the imaginative afterthought and the reality. This equally applies +to other recollections of later years. Moore remarks--"that the charm of +scenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and association, should +be felt at an age when fancy is yet hardly awake and associations are but +few, can with difficulty he conceived." But between the ages of eight and +ten, an appreciation of external beauty is sufficiently common. No one +doubts the accuracy of Wordsworth's account, in the _Prelude_ of his early +half-sensuous delight in mountain glory. It is impossible to define the +influence of Nature, either on nations or individuals, or to say +beforehand what selection from his varied surroundings a poet will for +artistic purposes elect to make. Shakespeare rests in meadows and glades, +and leaves to Milton "Teneriffe and Atlas." Burns, who lived for a +considerable part of his life in daily view of the hills of Arran, never +alludes to them. But, in this respect like Shelley, Byron was inspired by +a passion for the high-places of the earth. Their shadow is on half his +verse. "The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow" perpetually +remind him of one of his constantly recurring refrains,-- + + He who surpasses or subdues mankind, + Must look down on the hate of those below. + +In the course of 1790, after an attack of scarlet fever at Aberdeen he was +taken by his mother to Ballater, and on his recovery spent much of his +time in rambling about the country. "From this period," he says, "I date +my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, years +afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in +miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to +Cheltenham I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a +sensation which I cannot describe." Elsewhere, in _The Island_ he returns, +amid allusions to the Alps and Apennines, to the friends of his youth:-- + + The infant rapture still survived the boy, + And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy, + Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, + And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. + +The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we +are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the +easily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has made +such effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none the +less genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in _Don Juan_, to +Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of his +early training:-- + + But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred + A whole one; and my heart flies to my head + As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all-- + Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, + The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall-- + All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams + Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, + Like Banquo's offspring... + +Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent. His satire on +her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal +antipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady +remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst +out "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d----d country was +sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which we +have quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,-- + + I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit, + Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly. + Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit; + They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. + I scotch'd, not kill'd, the Scotchman in my blood, + And love the land of mountain and of flood. + +This suggests a few words on a question of more than local interest. +Byron's most careful biographer has said of him: "Although on his first +expedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yet +the whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anything +but Scottish. Scottish nationality is tainted with narrow and provincial +elements. Byron's poetic character, on the other hand, is universal and +cosmopolitan. He had no attachment to localities, and never devoted +himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." +Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the most +un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts +are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, +has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering +energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but +from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like +manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics +forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from +the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time +has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. Of +late years, the struggle for existence, the temptations of a too ambitious +and over active people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing effect of +the constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, have +for the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence. These +qualities have been adequately combined in Scott alone, the one massive +and complete literary type of his race. Burns, to his ruin, had only the +fire: the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects less +genuine, was indefinitely and inevitably wider. His intensely susceptible +nature took a dye from every scene, city, and society through which he +passed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of a descendant of the +Sea-Kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains he had first learned to +listen to the sound of the "two mighty voices" that haunted and inspired +him through life. + +In the autumn of 1798 the family, i.e. his mother--who had sold the whole +of her household furniture for 75 _l_--with himself, and a maid, set +south. The poet's only recorded impression of the journey is a gleam of +Loch Leven, to which he refers in one of his latest letters. He never +revisited the land of his childhood. Our next glimpse of him is on his +passing the toll-bar of Newstead. Mrs. Byron asked the old woman who kept +it, "Who is the next heir?" and on her answer "They say it is a little boy +who lives at Aberdeen," "This is he, bless him!" exclaimed the nurse. + +Returned to the ancestral Abbey, and finding it half ruined and desolate, +they migrated for a time to the neighbouring Nottingham. Here the child's +first experience was another course of surgical torture. He was placed +under the charge of a quack named Lavender, who rubbed his foot in oil, +and screwed it about in wooden machines. This useless treatment is +associated with two characteristic anecdotes. One relates to the endurance +which Byron, on every occasion of mere physical trial, was capable of +displaying. Mr. Rogers, a private tutor, with whom he was reading passages +of Virgil and Cicero, remarked, "It makes me uncomfortable, my lord, to +see you sitting them in such pain as I know you must be suffering." "Never +mind, Mr. Rogers." said the child, "you shall not see any signs of it in +me." The other illustrates his precocious delight in detecting imposture. +Having scribbled on a piece of paper several lines of mere gibberish, he +brought them to Lavender, and gravely asked what language it was; and on +receiving the answer "It is Italian," he broke into an exultant laugh at +the expense of his tormentor. Another story survives, of his vindictive +spirit giving birth to his first rhymes. A meddling old lady, who used to +visit his mother and was possessed of a curious belief in a future +transmigration to our satellite--the bleakness of whose scenery she had +not realized--having given him some cause of offence, he stormed out to +his nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented his +wrath in the quatrain.-- + + In Nottingham county there lives, at Swan Green, + As curst an old lady as ever was seen; + And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, + She firmly believes she will go to the moon. + +The poet himself dates his "first dash into poetry" a year later (1800), +from his juvenile passion for his cousin Margaret Parker, whose subsequent +death from an injury caused by a fall he afterwards deplored in a +forgotten elegy. "I do not recollect," he writes through the transfiguring +mists of memory, "anything equal to the _transparent_ beauty of my cousin, +or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our +intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbow--all beauty +and peace. My passion had the usual effects upon me--I could not sleep; I +could not eat; I could not rest. It was the texture of my life to think of +the time that must elapse before we could meet again. But I was a fool +then, and not much wiser now." _Sic transit secunda_. + +The departure at a somewhat earlier date of May Gray for her native +country, gave rise to evidence of another kind of affection. On her +leaving he presented her with his first watch, and a miniature by Kay of +Edinburgh, representing him with a bow and arrow in his hand and a +profusion of hair over his shoulders. He continued to correspond with her +at intervals. Byron was always beloved by his servants. This nurse +afterwards married well, and during her last illness, in 1827, +communicated to her attendant, Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, recollections of the +poet, from which his biographers have drawn. + +In the summer of 1799 he was sent to London, entrusted to the medical care +of Dr. Baillie (brother of Joanna, the dramatist), and placed in a +boarding school at Dulwich, under the charge of Dr. Glennie. The physician +advised a moderation in athletic sports, which the patient in his hours of +liberty was constantly apt to exceed. The teacher--who continued to +cherish an affectionate remembrance of his pupil, even when he was told, +on a visit to Geneva in 1817, that, he ought to have "made a better boy of +him"--testifies to the alacrity with which he entered on his tasks, his +playful good-humour with his comrades, his reading in history beyond his +age, and his intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. "In my study," he +states, "he found many books open to him; among others, a set of our poets +from Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more +than once perused from beginning to end." One of the books referred to was +the _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the "Juno,"_ which contains, almost +word for word, the account of the "two fathers," in _Don Juan_. Meanwhile +Mrs. Byron,--whose reduced income had been opportunely augmented by a +grant of a 300_l_. annuity from the Civil List,--after revisiting Newstead +followed her son to London, and took up her residence in a house in +Sloane-terrace. She was in the habit of having him with her there from +Saturday to Monday, kept him from school for weeks, introduced him to idle +company, and in other ways was continually hampering his progress. + +Byron on his accession to the peerage having become a ward in Chancery, +was handed over by the Court to the guardianship of Lord Carlisle, nephew +of the admiral, and son of the grand aunt of the poet. Like his mother +this Earl aspired to be a poet, and his tragedy, _The Father's Revenge_, +received some commendation from Dr. Johnson; but his relations with his +illustrious kinsman were from the first unsatisfactory. In answer to Dr. +Glennie's appeal, he exerted his authority against the interruptions to +his ward's education; but the attempt to mend matters led to such +outrageous exhibitions of temper that he said to the master, "I can have +nothing more to do with Mrs. Byron; you must now manage her as you can." +Finally, after two years of work, which she had done her best to mar, she +herself requested his guardian to have her son removed to a public school, +and accordingly he went to Harrow, where he remained till the autumn of +1805. The first vacation, in the summer of 1801, is marked by his visit to +Cheltenham, where his mother, from whom he inherited a fair amount of +Scotch superstition, consulted a fortune-teller, who said he would be +twice married, the second time to a foreigner. + +Harrow was then under the management of Dr. Joseph Drury, one of the most +estimable of its distinguished head-masters. His account of the first +impressions produced by his pupil, and his judicious manner of handling a +sensitive nature, cannot with advantage be condensed. "Mr. Hanson," he +writes, "Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of +thirteen and a half, with remarks that his education had been neglected; +that he was ill prepared for a public school; but that he thought there +was a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young disciple +into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by inquiries as to his +former amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or no +effect, and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to +my management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it was +necessary to attach him to an elder boy; but the information he received +gave him no pleasure when he heard of the advances of some much younger +than himself. This I discovered, and assured him that he should not be +placed till by diligence he might rank with those of his own age. His +manner and temper soon convinced me that he might be led by a silken +string to a point, rather than a cable: on that principle I acted." + +After a time, Dr. Drury tells us that he waited on Lord Carlisle, who +wished to give some information about his ward's property and to inquire +respecting his abilities, and continues: "On the former circumstance I +made no remark; as to the latter I replied, 'He has talents, my lord, +which will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed!' said his lordship, with a +degree of surprise that, according to my feeling, did not express in it +all the satisfaction I expected." With, perhaps, unconscious humour on the +part of the writer, we are left in doubt as to whether the indifference +proceeded from the jealousy that clings to poetasters, from incredulity, +or a feeling that no talent could add lustre to rank. + +In 1804 Byron refers to the antipathy his mother had to his guardian. +Later he expresses gratitude for some unknown service, in recognition of +which the second edition of the _Hours of Idleness_ was dedicated "by his +obliged ward and affectionate kinsman," to Lord Carlisle. The tribute +being coldly received, led to fresh estrangement, and when Byron, on his +coming of age, wrote to remind the Earl of the fact, in expectation of +being introduced to the House of Peers, he had for answer a mere formal +statement of its rules. This rebuff affected him as Addison's praise of +Tickell affected Pope, and the following lines, were published in the +March of the same year:-- + + Lords too are bards! such things at times befall, + And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all. + Yet did or taste or reason sway the times, + Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes. + Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled, + No future laurels deck a noble head; + No muse will cheer, with renovating smile + The paralytic puling of Carlisle. + +In prose he adds, "If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in +favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful +dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I +seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was +frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he +expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to +the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of _Childe +Harold_, he tried to make amends in the lines-- + + Yet one I would select from that proud throng, + Partly because they blend me with his line, + And partly that I did his sire some wrong. + +This is all of any interest we know regarding the fitful connection of the +guardian and ward. + +Towards Dr. Drury the poet continued through life to cherish sentiments of +gratitude, and always spoke of him with veneration. "He was," he says, +"the best, the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had; and I look +on him still as a father, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, +though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but followed +when I have done well or wisely." + +Great educational institutions must consult the greatest good of the +greatest number of common-place minds, by regulations against which genius +is apt to kick; and Byron, who was by nature and lack of discipline +peculiarly ill fitted to conform to routine, confesses that till the last +year and a half he hated Harrow. He never took kindly to the studies of +the place, and was at no time an accurate scholar. In the _Bards and +Reviewers_, and elsewhere, he evinces considerable familiarity with the +leading authors of antiquity, but it is doubtful whether he was able to +read any of the more difficult of them in the original. His translations +are generally commonplace, and from the marks on his books he must have +often failed to trust his memory for the meanings of the most ordinary +Greek words. To the well-known passage in _Childe Harold_ on Soracte and +the "Latian echoes" he appends a prose comment, which preserves its +interest as hearing on recent educational controversies:--"I wish to +express that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the +beauty; that we learn by rote, before we get by heart; that the freshness +is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and +destroyed, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of +composition, which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin +and Greek, to relish or to reason upon.... In some parts of the continent +young persons are taught from common authors, and do not read the best +classics till their maturity." + +Comparatively slight stress was then laid on modern languages. Byron +learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar +with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so +little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his +meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was +the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the +extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of +books, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and biography than most men +of education read during a long life; a fair load of philosophy; the poets +en masse; among orators, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debates +from the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, including +Blair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition--"all very +tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God +without the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of +"Miscellanies" we have _Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c_; among novels, +the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, +Rabelais, and Rousseau. He recommends Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ as +the best storehouse for second-hand quotations, as Sterne and others have +found it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perused +before the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of the +poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically _"Dichtang und Wahrheit,"_ +we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader--"I read eating, read in +bed, read when no one else reads"--and, having a memory only less +retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be +suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never +read a Review till he was eighteen years old--when, he himself wrote one, +utterly worthless, on Wordsworth. + +At Harrow, Byron proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of +"few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of +hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would +tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and +power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded +praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial +than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into +poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his +way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the +impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader +among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in +1805, the headship of Harrow changed hands. Dr. Drury retired, and was +succeeded by Dr. Butler. This event suggested the lines beginning,-- + + Where are those honours, Ida, once your own, + When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne? + +The appointment was generally unpopular among the boys, whose sympathies +were enlisted in favour of Mark Drury, brother of their former master, and +Dr. Butler seems for a time to have had considerable difficulty in +maintaining discipline. Byron, always "famous for rowing," was a +ringleader of the rebellious party, and compared himself to Tyrlaeus. On +one occasion he tore down the window gratings in a room of the +school-house, with the remark that they darkened the hall; on another he +is reported to have refused a dinner invitation from the master, with the +impertinent remark that he would never think of asking him in return to +dine at Newstead. On the other hand, he seems to have set limits to the +mutiny, and prevented some of the boys from setting their desks on fire by +pointing to their fathers' names carved on them. Byron afterwards +expressed regret for his rudeness; but Butler remains in his verse as +Pomposus "of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul." + +Of the poet's free hours, during the last years of his residence which he +refers to as among the happiest of his life, many were spent in solitary +musing by an elm-tree, near a tomb to which his name has been given--a +spot commanding a far view of London, of Windsor "bosomed high in tufted +trees," and of the green fields that stretch between, covered in spring +with the white and red snow of apple blossom. The others were devoted to +the society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was +one of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at the +choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling +he so pathetically expresses,-- + + Is there no cause beyond the common claim, + Endear'd to all in childhood's very name? + Ah, sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, + Which whispers Friendship will be doubly dear + To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, + And seek abroad the love denied at home. + Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee-- + A home, a world, a paradise to me. + +Of his Harrow intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, the +poet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the Lycus of the _Childish +Recollections_); Lord Delawarr (the Euryalus); John Wingfield (Alonzo), +who died at Coimbra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus); Edward Noel Long +(Cleon); Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead; and Sir Robert Peel. +Of the last, his form-fellow and most famous of his mates, the story is +told of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fag +master, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half the +blows. Peel was an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year, +1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were his +juniors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites. +But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him the +nickname of "the old English baron." To Wildman, who, as a senior, had a +right of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, "I find you have +got Delawarr on your list; pray don't lick him." "Why not?" was the reply. +"Why, I don't know, except that he is a brother peer." Again, he +interfered with the more effectual arm of physical force to rescue a +junior protege--lame like himself, and otherwise much weaker--from the +ill-treatment of some hulking tyrant. "Harness," he said, "if any one +bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him if I can;" and he kept his word. +Harness became an accomplished clergyman and minor poet, and has left some +pleasing reminiscences of his former patron. The prodigy of the school, +George Sinclair, was in the habit of writing the poet's exercises, and +getting his battles fought for him in return. His bosom friend was Lord +Clare. To him his confidences were most freely given, and his most +affectionate verses addressed. In the characteristic stanzas entitled +"L'amitie est l'amour sans ailes," we feel as if between them the +qualifying phrase might have been omitted: for their letters, carefully +preserved on either side, are a record of the jealous complaints and the +reconciliations of lovers. In 1821 Byron writes, "I never hear the name +Clare without a beating of the heart even now; and I write it with the +feelings of 1803-4-5, ad infinitum." At the same date he says of an +accidental meeting: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between the +present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable +feeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was much +agitated--more in appearance than I was myself--for I could feel his heart +beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own +which made me think so. We were but five minutes together on the public +road, but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence that could be weighed +against them." They were "all that brothers should be but the name;" and +it is interesting to trace this relationship between the greatest genius +of the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age, +stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters and +ranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled. + +Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of a +passion of another kind, with a result that unhappily coloured his life. +Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, the +heiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of the +race that had held with his such varied relations. In one of his letters +ho dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seems +not to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, in +the autumn of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masquerade +there and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the +following year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the course +of a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at the +Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This was +the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, who +invited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return every +evening to Newstead, giving the excuse that the family pictures would come +down and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeated +in the _Siege of Corinth_. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley, +which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of +1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion to +Matlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, with +the exception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of his +first real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest; he wished to marry +Miss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have "joined broad lands, +healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart." + +The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought before us in an +account of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the lady +and the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he had +never told his love; but that she had discovered--it is obvious that she +never returned--it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when +she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of their +riding together in the country on their return to the family residence; +again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of +"Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her +maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs--"Do you +think I could care for that lame boy?"--upon which he rushed out of the +house, and ran, like a hunted creature, to Newstead. Thence he shortly +returned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at +Harrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of +Annesley--an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have +the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the next +time I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?" "I hope so," she replied (her +betrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). The +announcement of her marriage, which took place in August, 1805, was made +to him by his mother, with the remark, "I have some news for you. Take out +your handkerchief; you will require it." On hearing what she had to say, +with forced calm he turned the conversation to other subjects; but he was +long haunted by a loss which he has made the theme of many of his verses. +In 1807 he sent to the lady herself the lines beginning,-- + + O had my fate been join'd with thine. + +In the following year he accepted an invitation to dine at Annesley, and +was visibly affected by the sight of the infant daughter of Mrs. Chaworth, +to whom he addressed a touching congratulation. Shortly afterwards, when +about to leave England for the first time, he finally addressed her in the +stanzas,-- + + 'Tis done, and shivering in the gale, + The bark unfurls her snowy sail. + +Some years later, having an opportunity of revisiting the family of his +successful rival, Mrs. Leigh dissuaded him. "Don't go," she said, "for if +you do you will certainly fall in love again, and there will be a scene." +The romance of the story culminates in the famous _Dream_, a poem of +unequal merit, but containing passages of real pathos, written in the year +1816 at Diodati, as we are told, amid a flood of tears. + +Miss Chaworth's attractions, beyond those of personal beauty, seem to have +been mainly due--a common occurrence--to the poet's imagination. A young +lady, two years his senior, of a lively and volatile temper, she enjoyed +the stolen interviews at the gate between the grounds, and laughed at the +ardent letters, passed through a confidant, of the still awkward youth +whom she regarded as a boy. She had no intuition to divine the presence, +or appreciate the worship, of one of the future master-minds of England, +nor any ambition to ally herself with the wild race of Newstead, and +preferred her hale, commonplace, fox-hunting squire. "She was the beau +ideal," says Byron, in his first accurate prose account of the affair, +written 1823, a few days before his departure for Greece, "of all that my +youthful fancy could paint of beautiful. And I have taken all my fables +about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination +created in her. I say created; for I found her, like the rest of the sex, +anything but angelic." + +Mrs. Musters (her husband re-asserted his right to his own name) had in +the long-run reason to regret her choice. The ill-assorted pair after some +unhappy years resolved on separation; and falling into bad health and +worse spirits, the "bright morning star of Annesley" passed under a cloud +of mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottingham +riot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancient +family was sold by auction and scattered to the winds. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. + +In October, 1805, on the advice of Dr. Drury, Byron was removed to Trinity +College, Cambridge, and kept up a connexion with the University for less +than three years of very irregular attendance, during which we hear +nothing of his studies, except the contempt for them expressed in some of +the least effective passages of his early satires. He came into residence +in bad temper and low spirits. His attachment to Harrow characteristically +redoubled as the time drew near to leave it, and his rest was broken "for +the last quarter, with counting the hours that remained." He was about to +start by himself, with the heavy feeling that he was no longer a boy, and +yet, against his choice, for he wished to go to Oxford. The _Hours of +Idleness_, the product of this period, are fairly named. He was so idle as +regards "problems mathematic," and "barbarous Latin," that it is matter of +surprise to learn that he was able to take his degree, as he did in March, +1808. + +A good German critic, dwelling on the comparatively narrow range of +studies to which the energies of Cambridge were then mainly directed, adds +somewhat rashly, that English national literature stands for the most part +beyond the range of the academic circle, This statement is often +reiterated with persistent inaccuracy; but the most casual reference to +biography informs us that at least four-fifths of the leading statesmen, +reformers, and philosophers of England, have been nurtured within the +walls of her universities, and cherished a portion of their spirit. From +them have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of our +history, kindled the nation into a new life; from the age of Wycliffe, +through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign of +the Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have been +wholly "without the academic circle." Analysing with the same view the +lives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we find +the proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" and +if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, the +comparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activities +around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the +ancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its +resources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and +conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be +snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced for +his country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubbling +with spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, the +discipline is hard, and the restraint excessive; and that the men whom +their colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely. +Bacon inveighs against the scholastic trifling of his day; Milton talks of +the waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the logic of the +schools; Cowley complains of being taught words, not things; Gibbon +rejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen; +Wordsworth contemns the "trade in classic niceties," and roves "in +magisterial liberty" by the Cam, as afterwards among the hills. + +But all those hostile critics owe much to the object of their +animadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the preference of Light to Fruit in +the _Novum Organum_, half of _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, the stately periods of +the _Decline and Fall_, and the severe beauties of _Laodamia_, to the +better influences of academic training on the minds of their authors. +Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work--from the date of _The Curse +of Minerva_ to that of the "Isles of Greece"--are brightened by lights and +adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the +slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by +the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he +continued to rail as late as the publication of _Beppo_, in the 75th and +76th stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint,-- + + One hates an author that's all author, fellows + In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink-- + So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous, + One don't know what to say to them, or think. + +Then, after commending Scott, Bogers, and Moore for being men of the +world, he proceeds:-- + + But for the children of the "mighty mother's," + The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen, + I leave them to the daily "Tea is ready," + Snug coterie, and literary lady. + +This attack, which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity +from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound +enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, +of professional _litterateurs_, and was always haunted by a dread that +they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He +aspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction, that of a +"lord among wits, and among wits a lord." In this same spirit lie resented +the comparison frequently made between him and Rousseau, and insisted on +points of contrast. "He had a bad memory, I a good one. He was of the +people; I of the aristocracy." Byron was capable, of unbending, where the +difference of rank was so great that it could not be ignored. On this +principle we may explain his enthusiastic regard for the chorister +Eddlestone, from whom he received the cornelian that is the theme of some +of his verses, and whose untimely death in 1811 he sincerely mourned. + +Of his Harrow friends, Harness and Long in due course followed him to +Cambridge, where their common pursuits were renewed. With the latter, who +was drowned in 1809, on a passage to Lisbon with his regiment, he spent a +considerable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in which +art they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coins +from a depth of fourteen feet--incidents recalled to the poet's mind by +reading Milton's invocation to Sabrina. During the, same period he +distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of +his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted +marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them +wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed +a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge +as Scott, and more ready to send one. + +Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to +say. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he +commends the head of his college, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanour +in his office, and a past reputation for convivial wit. His attentions to +Professor Hailstones at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received; +but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account of +Porson, "hiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was first +introduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose +talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most +of whom are interesting on their own account as well as from their +connection with the subsequent phases of his career. By common consent +Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, was +the most remarkable of the group. Distinguished alike for scholarship, +physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humour of fancy, and +fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impression +on the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austin +on those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron always +regarded as an incalculable calamity. In a note to _Childe Harold_ he +writes, "I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, were +he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in the +attainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates, than those of +any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his +fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in +the recollection of friends, who loved him too well to envy his +superiority." He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of the +Cam, in the summer of 1811. + +In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request +for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much +autobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, he +writes: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, +talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to +Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to +some other subject, at which he was indignant. 'Come,' said he, 'don't let +us break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;' and so +he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had +previously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in +Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones (his tutor), in his odd way had +said, in putting him in, 'Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not +to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of +_tumultuous passions_.' Matthews was delighted with this, and whenever +anybody came, to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with +caution, and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner.... +He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Irishman, +named F., one evening beginning to say something at a large supper, +Matthews roared 'Silence!' and then pointing to F., cried out, in the +words of the oracle, 'Orson is endowed with reason.' When Sir Henry Smith +was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named 'Hiron,' +Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every +evening-- + + Ah me! what perils do environ + The man who meddles with hot Hiron! + +He was also of that band of scoffers who used to rouse Lort Mansel from +his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window, +foaming with wrath, and crying out, "I know you, gentlemen; I know you!" +were wont to reply, "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort. Good Lort, +deliver us!" + +The whole letter, written in the poet's mature and natural style, gives a +vivid picture of the social life and surroundings of his Cambridge days: +how much of the set and sententious moralizing of some of his formal +biographers might we not have spared, for a report of the conversation on +the road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the same +centre, Scrope Davies enlisted the largest share of Byron's affections. To +him he wrote after the catastrophe:--"Come to me, Scrope; I am almost +desolate--left alone in the world. I had but you, and H., and M., and let +me enjoy the survivors while I can." Later he says, "Matthews, Davies, +Hobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beaten +us all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and +kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D." The +last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: +he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet in one of his +fits of petulance exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, +"I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much more +like silliness than madness!" He was the only man who ever laid Byron +under any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him 4800_l_. in some +time of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat up +over champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scrope +could not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy and +pious on his knees." Davies was much disconcerted at the influence which +the sceptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron's +mind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John Cam Hobhouse, +afterwards Lord Broughton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life, +the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor of +his will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability is +abundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, his +published description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary and +political career. Byron bears witness to the warmth of his affections, and +the charms of his conversation, and to the candour which, as he confessed +to Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubt +that they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was a +passing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits that +Hobhouse was his best friend; and when he unexpectedly walked up the +stairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli informs us +that Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excess +of joy, that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sit +down in tears. + +On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated with it, +was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound +critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, +whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his +son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views +entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; they +both fought under the standards of the classic school; they resented the +same criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were bound +together by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson's +verses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the _Bards and +Reviewers_ and the early cantos of _Childe Harold_ the promise of +_Manfred_ and _Cain_. Among the associates who strove to bring the poet +back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of +his thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the +most judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultified +by pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank and +unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are +preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the +recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and +superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to +characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811, +Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with your +immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity +of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan +will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. I am no Platonist, I am +nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, +Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous +sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and +hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all in +good will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, +the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul +meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson to +Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; +and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is something +pagan in me that I cannot shake off. _In short, I deny nothing, but I +doubt everything_." But his early attitude on matters of religion is best +set forth in a letter to Gilford, of 1813, in which he says, "I am no +bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the +immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of a +God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, +when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom, +that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be +overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch +school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my +life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a +disease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria." + +Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which +had for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. To +no one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge in +more reckless sallies of humour; to no one did he more readily betray his +little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to +him the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrous +encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of +the poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence--a gift of 1000_l_., to +pay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle, +the former gratefully alludes to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew the +exultation of heart, aye, and of head to, I feel at being free from those +depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and +brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit +that was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver. + +Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry +Drury--long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law, +to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are +addressed--and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with various +associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and, +after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This +gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgotten +novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, +when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his +early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as +'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach an +absurd climax. + +Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron had +made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and +Southwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once a +refuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman Minster. Here +Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was +frequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medical +student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talents +above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a +number of his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J.T. Becher, author +of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for +encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he +found dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the +latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how I +curse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawks +who inhabit your kraals!" and adding, that his sole satisfaction during +his residence there was having pared off some pounds of flush. +Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inland +watering-place he passed on the whole a pleasant time--listening to the +music of the simple ballads in which he delighted, taking part in the +performances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses. +This otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of violence on the +part of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one more +outrageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the +neighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with +poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage +with stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed +her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as +ho calls her, followed: on their meeting a truce was patched, and they +withdrew in opposite directions, she back to Southwell, he to refresh +himself on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) he +again rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description of +a trip to Harrogate, when his lordship's favourite Newfoundland, +Boatswain, whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, or +Maida to Scott, sat on the box. + +In November Byron printed for private circulation the first issue of his +juvenile poems. Mr. Becher having called his attention to one which he +thought objectionable, the impression was destroyed; and the author set to +work upon another, which, at once weeded and amplified, saw the light in +January, 1807. He sent copies, under the title of _Juvenilia_, to several +of his friends, and among others to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling), +and to Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Encouraged by their favourable +notices, he determined in appeal to a wider audience, and in March, 1807, +the _Hours of Idleness_, still proceeding from the local press at Newark, +were given to the world. In June we find the poet again writing from his +college rooms, dwelling with boyish detail on his growth in height and +reduction in girth, his late hours and heavy potations, his comrades, and +the prospects of his book. From July to September he dates from London, +excited by the praises of some now obscure magazine, and planning a +journey to the Hebrides. In October he is again settled at Cambridge, and +in a letter to Miss Pigot, makes a humorous reference to one of his +fantastic freaks: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world--a +_tame bear_. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do +with him, and my reply was, 'He should sit for a fellowship.' This answer +delighted them not." The greater part of the spring and summer of 1808 was +spent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seems +during this period for the first time to have freely indulged in +dissipations, which are in most lives more or less carefully concealed. +But Byron, with almost unparalleled folly, was perpetually taking the +public into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the strange +additions of an imaginative effrontery, have been thrust before us in a +manner in which Rochester or Rousseau might have thought indelicate. +Nature and circumstances conspired the result. With passions which he is +fond of comparing to the fires of Vesuvius and Hecla, he was, on his +entrance into a social life which his rank helped to surround with +temptations, unconscious of any sufficient motive for resisting them; he +had no one to restrain him from the whim of the moment, or with sufficient +authority to give him effective advice. A temperament of general +despondency, relieved by reckless outbursts of animal spirits, is the +least favourable to habitual self-control. The melancholy of Byron was not +of the pensive and innocent kind attributed to Cowley, rather that of the, +[Greek: melancholikoi] of whom Aristotle asserts, with profound +psychological or physiological intuition, that they are [Greek: aei en +sphodra orexei]. The absurdity of Moore's frequent declaration, that all +great poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused by +the modesty which, in the saying so obviously excludes himself from the +list. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessant +irritation to their possessor, until they have found their proper vent in +the free exercise of his highest faculties. Byron had not yet done, this, +when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and +Newstead--shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and +trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling +with disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master, +Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished +professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his +"old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to +dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they +never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms +dishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want of +evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of +leading any one astray--a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moral +worshippers of Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name. + + [Footnote 1: In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter + from Mr. Minto to the _Athenaeum_ (Sept. 2nd, 1876), in which with + considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to + identify the girl with "Thyrza," and with "Astarte," whom he regards + as the same person.] + +Though much of this year of his life was passed unprofitably, from it +dates the impulse that provoked him to put forth his powers. The +_Edinburgh_, with the attack on the _Hours of Idleness_, appeared in +March, 1808. This production, by Lord Brougham, is a specimen of the +tomahawk style of criticism prevalent in the early years of the century, +in which the main motive of the critic was, not to deal fairly with his +author, but to acquire for himself an easy reputation for cleverness, by a +series of smart contemptuous sentences. Taken apart, most of the +strictures of the _Edinburgh_ are sufficiently just, and the passages +quoted for censure are all bad. Byron's genius as a poet was not +remarkably precocious. The _Hours of Idleness_ seldom rise, either in +thought or expression, very far above the average level of juvenile verse; +many of the pieces in the collection are weak imitations, or commonplace +descriptions; others suggested by circumstances of local or temporary +interest, had served their turn before coming into print. Their prevailing +sentiment is an affectation of misanthropy, conveyed in such lines as +these:-- + + Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen, + I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen. + +This mawkish element unfortunately survives in much of the author's later +verse. But even in this volume there are indications of force, and +command. The _Prayer of Nature_, indeed, though previously written, was +not included in the edition before the notice of the critic; but the sound +of _Loch-na-Gair_ and some of the stanzas on _Newstead_ ought to have +saved him from the mistake of his impudent advice. The poet, who through +life waited with feverish anxiety for every verdict on his work, is +reported after reading the review to have looked like a man about to send +a challenge. In the midst of a transparent show of indifference, he +confesses to have drunk three bottles of claret on the evening of its +appearance. But the wound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings' +blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collecting his +strength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by its +delay, twelve months later made it impossible for him to be contemned. + +The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, vacated by the tenant, +who had left the building in the tumble-down condition in which he found +it. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time, "heavily dipped," +generosities having combined with selfish extravagances to the result; he +had no funds to subject the place to anything like a thorough repair, but +he busied himself in arranging a few of the rooms for his own present and +his mother's after use. About this date he writes to her, beginning in his +usual style, "Dear Madam," saying he has as yet no rooms ready for her +reception, but that on his departure she shall be tenant till his return. +During this interval he was studying Pope, and carefully maturing his own +Satire. In November the dog Boatswain died in a fit of madness. The event +called forth the famous burst of misanthropic verse, ending with the +couplet,-- + + To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; + I never knew but _one_, and _here_ he lies;-- + +and the inscription on the monument that still remains in the gardens of +Newstead,-- + + Near this spot, + Are deposited the remains of one + Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, + Strength without Insolence, + Courage without Ferocity, + And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. + This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery + If inscribed over human ashes, + Is but a just tribute to the Memory of + Boatswain, a Dog, + Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, + And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808. + +On January 22, 1809, his lordship's coming of age was celebrated with +festivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early in +spring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to the +publisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, on +the death of Lord Falkland, who had been killed in a duel, and expresses a +sympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom he +proceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of +the manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, he +proceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, "Come what may, +Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot--I +have fixed my heart on it; and no pressure, present or future, shall +induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance." He was building +false hopes on the result of the suit for the Rochdale property, which, +being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with no +satisfactory result. He took his seat in the House of Lords on the 13th of +March, and Mr. Dallas, who accompanied him to the bar of the House, has +left an account of his somewhat unfortunate demeanour. + +"His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and +that he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a hand +and countenance in his introduction. There were very few persons in the +House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When Lord +Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went +towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, +though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. +This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put +the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not +press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byron +carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to +the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Opposition. When, +on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said 'If I had shaken +hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I will +have nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and now +I will go abroad.'" + +A few days later the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ appeared before +the public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; a +second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wont +at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many +of his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have been +dictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correction +of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame; i.e. he +wrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author,-- + + I leave topography to coxcomb Gell; + +we have his second thought in the first edition, before he saw the +Troad,-- + + I leave topography to classic Gell; + +and his third, half way in censure, in the fifth,-- + + I leave topography to rapid Gell. + +Of such materials are literary judgments made! + +The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the only +good thing of its kind since Churchill,--for in the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad_ +only butterflies were broken upon the wheel--and to its being the first +promise of a now power. The _Bards and Reviewers_ also enlisted sympathy, +from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed the +prerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own +milk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore +and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakers +fared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war, +only once relaxed, with Southey. Wordsworth--though against this passage +is written "unjust," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn,--is +dubbed an idiot, who-- + + Both by precept and example shows, + That prose is verse and verse is only prose; + +and Coleridge, a baby,-- + + To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear. + +The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey and Moore, are a fair +specimen of the accuracy with which the author had caught the ring of +Pope's antithesis:-- + + The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. + The Tolbooth felt--for marble sometimes can, + On such occasions, feel as much as man-- + The Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, + If Jeffrey died, except within her arms. + +Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited some +choice spirits to hold a few weeks of farewell revel. Matthews, one of +these, gives an account of the place, and the time they spent +there--entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo of +pistol-shots; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy, +poetry; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the Black +Brother; drinking their wine out of the skull cup which the owner had made +out of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden; breakfasting at +two, then reading, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, and +playing with the bear or teasing the wolf. The party broke up without +having made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which Childe +Harold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, when +the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way +"_outre mer_." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. + +There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the +adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first +expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of his +intrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particular +of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one of +them, which have all the same relation to reality as the _Arabian Nights_ +to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Those who wish to read them are referred to the three + large volumes--published in 1825, by Mr. Iley, Portman Street--of + anonymous authorship.] + +Byron had far more than an average share of the _emigre_ spirit, the +counterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. He +held with Wilhelm Meister-- + + To give space for wandering is it, + That the earth was made so wide. + +and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantages +of looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bitter +effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, +that I think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroad +for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us." + +On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mind +with information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattained +goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, +Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton the son +of one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in _Childe +Harold_. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his +health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar. + +Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full of +Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and +Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a +slight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excused +himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he +at one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving England +without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the +next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain of +boisterous buffoonery. On the 2nd of July, the packet, by which he was +bound, sailed for Lisbon and arrived there about the middle of the month, +when the English fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of his +stanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolate +dirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which were at that time +rendered dangerous by the frequency of religious and political +assassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, save +the statement of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more perilous, +though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing the +Hellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle, Byron praises the +neighbouring Cintra, as "the most beautiful village in the world," though +he joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Convention, and +extols the grandeur of Mafra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent of +which a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the English +had any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants by +sea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through the +south-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles, +performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty-four hours, was +Seville, where they lodged for three days in the house of two ladies, to +whose attractions, as well as the fascination he seems to have exerted +over them, the poet somewhat garrulously refers. Here, too, he saw, +parading on the Prado, the famous _Maid of Saragossa_, whom he celebrates +in his equally famous stanzas (_Childe Harold_, I., 54-58). Of Cadiz, the +next stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a modern Cythera, describing the +bull fights in his verse, and the beauties in glowing prose. The belles of +this city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain; and by reason of +them, rather than the sea-shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is the +first spot in the creation." Hence, by an English frigate, they sailed to +Gibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had no +sympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in our great +struggle with the tyranny of the First Empire, he may almost be said to +have sympathized with Napoleon. + +The ship stopped at Cagliari in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti on the +Sicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks--time +enough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs. +Spencer Smith, wife of our minister at Constantinople, sister-in-law of +the famous admiral, and the heroine of some exciting adventures. She is +the "Florence" of _Childe Harold_, and is afterwards addressed in some of +the most graceful verses of his cavalier minstrelsy-- + + Do thou, amidst the fair white walls, + If Cadiz yet be free, + At times from out her latticed halls + Look o'er the dark blue sea-- + Then think upon Calypso's isles, + Endear'd by days gone by,-- + To others give a thousand smiles, + To me a single sigh. + +The only other adventure of the visit is Byron's quarrel with an officer, +on some unrecorded ground, which Hobhouse tells us nearly resulted in a +duel. The friends left Malta on September 29th, in the war-ship "Spider," +and after anchoring off Patras, and spending a few hours on shore, they +skirted the coast of Acarnania, in view of localities--as Ithaca, the +Leucadian rock, and Actium--whose classic memories filtered through the +poet's mind and found a place in his masterpieces. Landing at Previsa, +they started on a tour through Albania,-- + + O'er many a mount sublime, + Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales. + +Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and the +half-savage independence of the people, described as "always strutting +about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his +companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the +famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Berat +in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia's +lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before +reaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, in +the midst of which they separated, and Byron's detachment lost its way for +nine hours, during which he composed the verses to Florence, quoted above. + +Some days later they together arrived at Tepaleni, and were there received +by Ali Pasha in person. The scene on entering the town is described as +recalling Scott's Branksome Castle and the feudal system; and the +introduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet's +corsairs,--is graphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. "His first +question was, why at so early an age I left my country, and without a +'lala,' or nurse? He then said the English minister had told him I was of +a great family, and desired his respects to my mother, which I now present +to you (date, November 12th). He said he was certain I was a man of birth, +because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. He told me +to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on +me as his son. Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds, +fruit, and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Byron shortly afterwards +discovered his host to be, a poisoner and an assassin. "Two days ago," he +proceeds in a passage which illustrates his character and a common +experience, "I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to the +ignorance of the captain and crew. Fletcher yelled after his wife; the +Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmen on Alla; the captain burst +into tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God. The sails were +split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting +in; and all our chance was to make for Corfu--or, as F. pathetically +called it, 'a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, but +finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and lay +down on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, says +Hobhouse, to be of any assistance, he in a short time was found amid the +trembling sailors, fast asleep. They got back to the coast of Suli, and +shortly afterwards started through Acarnania and AEtolia for the Morea, +again rejoicing in the wild scenery and the apparently kindred spirits of +the wild men among whom they passed. Byron was especially fascinated by +the firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes and +reproduces in _Childe Harold_. On the 21st of November he reached +Mesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most of +his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of +Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring sign +of Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet on +the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to save +it--the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and I +never did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." From +Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of +Trophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and +the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrived +before the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his first +glimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:-- + + Ancient of days, august Athena! where, + Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? + Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. + First in the race that led to glory's goal, + They won, and pass'd away: is this the whole-- + A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour? + +After which he reverts to his perpetually recurring moral, "Men come and +go; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars, endure"-- + + Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds; + Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; + Art, glory, freedom fail--but nature still is fair. + +The duration of Lord Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months, +and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica; Eleusis, +Hymettus, Cape Colonna, (Sunium, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck), the +Colonus of OEdipus, and Marathon, the plain of which is said to have been +placed at his disposal for about the same sum that, thirty years later, an +American offered to give for the bark with the poet's name on the tree at +Newstead. Byron had a poor opinion of the modern Athenians, who seem to +have at this period done their best to justify the Roman satirist. He +found them superficial, cunning, and false; but, with generous historic +insight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been much +better; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it would +require ages of freedom to emancipate them. + +In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widow +of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom, +Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens, +without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of the +heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's +genuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles +from the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of Lord +Elgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the _Curse of +Minerva_; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of the +old Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shed +tears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one of +ethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold London +in the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left; +a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Athenians +to concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, and +they are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum. + +Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissus +to some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accident +nearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve their +names on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus in +the evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an English +sloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the +28th of March, the second canto of _Childe Harold_, begun in the previous +autumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood, +visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to the +jackals, in the _Siege of Corinth_; and on April 11th left by the +"Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched at +the Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and rambling +among the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in _Don +Juan_ and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules the +belief. + + I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, + And heard Troy doubted! Time will doubt of Rome! + * * * * * + There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is, + Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea, + Entomb'd the bravest of the brave Achilles.-- + They say so: Bryant says the contrary. + +Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byron +landed on the European side, and swam, in company with Lieutenant +Ekenhead, from Sestos to Abydos--a performance of which he boasts some +twenty times. The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a +feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was a +tempting theme for classical allusions. At length, on May 14, he reached +Constantinople, exalted the Golden Horn above all the sights he had seen, +and now first abandoned his design of travelling to Persia. Galt, and +other more or less gossiping travellers, have accumulated a number of +incidents of the poet's life at this period, of his fanciful dress, +blazing in scarlet and gold, and of his sometimes absurd contentions for +the privileges of rank--as when he demanded precedence of the English +ambassador in an interview with the Sultan, and, on its refusal, could +only be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian internuncio. In +converse with indifferent persons he displayed a curious alternation of +frankness and hauteur, and indulged a habit of letting people up and down, +by which he frequently gave offence. More interesting are narratives of +the suggestion of some of his verses, as the slave-market in _Don Juan_, +and the spectacle of the dead criminal tossed on the waves, revived in the +_Bride of Abydos_. One example is, if we except Dante's _Ugolino_, the +most remarkable instance in literature of the expansion, without the +weakening, of the horrible. Take first Mr. Hobhouse's plain prose: "The +sensations produced by the state of the weather"--it was wretched and +stormy when they left the "Salsette" for the city--"and leaving a +comfortable cabin, were in unison with the impressions which we felt when, +passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypress +which rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." After +this we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imagination +brooding over the incident,-- + + And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall + Hold o'er the dead their carnival: + Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb, + They were too busy to bark at him. + From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, + As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; + And their white tusks crunch'd on the whiter skull, + As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grow dull. + +No one ever more persistently converted the incidents of travel into +poetic material; but sometimes in doing so he borrowed more largely from +his imagination than his memory, as in the description of the seraglio, of +which there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance. + +Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July, +1810--the latter to return direct to England, a determination which, from +no apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incident +of the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. Taking up, +and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found on the quarter deck, ho +remarked, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a +murder." This harmless piece of melodrama--the idea of which is expanded +in Mr. Dobell's _Balder_, and parodied in _Firmilian_--may have been the +basis of a report afterwards circulated, and accepted among others by +Goethe, that his lordship had committed a murder; hence, obviously, the +character of _Lara_, and the mystery of _Manfred!_ The poet parted from +his friend at Zea, (Ceos): after spending some time in solitude on the +little island, he returned to Athens, and there renewed acquaintance with +his school friend, the Marquis of Sligo, who after a few days accompanied +him to Corinth. They then separated, and Byron went on to Patras in the +Morea, where he had business with the Consul. He dates from there at the +close of July. It is impossible to give a consecutive account of his life +during the next ten months, a period consequently filled up with the +contradictory and absurd mass of legends before referred to. A few facts +only of any interest are extricable. During at least half of the time his +head-quarters were at Athens, where he again met his friend the Marquis, +associated with the English Consul and Lady Hester Stanhope, studied +Romaic in a Franciscan monastery--where he saw and conversed with a motley +crew of French, Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and Americans,--wrote to +his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick +of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped +on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to +_Harold_, composed the _Hints from Horace_ and the _Curse of Minerva_, and +presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse +romances. We hear no more of the, _Maid of Athens_, but there is no fair +ground to doubt that the _Giaour_ was suggested by his rescue of a young +woman whom, for the fault of an amour with some Frank, a party of +Janissaries were about to throw, sewn up in a sack, into the sea. Mr. Galt +gives no authority for his statement, that the girl's deliverer was the +original cause of her sentence. We may rest assured that if it had been +so, Byron himself would have told us of it. + +A note to the _Siege of Corinth_ is suggestive of his unequalled +restlessness. "I visited all three--Tripolitza, Napoli, and Argos--in +1810-11; and in the course of journeying through the country, from my +first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight times on my way from +Attica to the Morea." In the latter locality we find him during the autumn +the honoured guest of the Vizier Valhi (a son of Ali Pasha), who presented +him with a fine horse. During a second visit to Patras, in September, he +was attacked by the same sort of marsh fever from which, fourteen years +afterwards, in the near neighbourhood, he died. On his recovery, in +October, he complains of having been nearly killed by the heroic measures +of the native doctors: "One of them trusts to his genius, never having +studied; the other, to a campaign of eighteen months against the sick of +Otranto, which he made in his youth with great effect. When I was seized +with my disorder, I protested against both these assassins, but in vain." +He was saved by the zeal of his servants, who asseverated that if his +lordship died they would take good care the doctors should also; on which +the learned men discontinued their visits, and the patient revived. On his +final return to Athens, the restoration of his health was retarded by one +of his long courses of reducing diet; he lived mainly on rice, and vinegar +and water. From that city he writes in the early spring, intimating his +intention of proceeding to Egypt; but Mr. Hanson, his man of business, +ceasing to send him remittances, the scheme was abandoned. Beset by +letters about his debts, he again declares his determination to hold fast +by Newstead, adding that if the place which is his only tie to England is +sold, he won't come back at all. Life on the shores of the Archipelago is +far cheaper and happier, and "Ubi bene ibi patria," for such a citizen of +the world as he has become. Later he went to Malta, and was detained +there by another bad attack of tertian fever. The next record of +consequence is from the "Volage" frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811, when he +writes in a despondent strain to Hodgson, that he is returning home +"without a hope, and almost without a desire," to wrangle with creditors +and lawyers about executions and coal pits. "In short, I am sick and +sorry; and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I +shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where +I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence. I +am sick of fops, and poesy, and prate, and shall leave the whole Castalian +state to Bufo, or anybody else. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, +of one kind or another, on my travels." With these, and a collection of +marbles, and skulls, and hemlock, and tortoises, and servants, he reached +London about the middle of July, and remained there, making some +arrangements about business and publication. On the 23rd we have a short +but kind letter to his mother, promising to pay her a visit on his way to +Rochdale. "You know you are a vixen, but keep some champagne for me," he +had written from abroad. On receipt of the letter she remarked, "If I +should be dead before he comes down, what a strange thing it, would be." +Towards the close of the month she had an attack so alarming that he was +summoned; but before, he had time to arrive she had expired, on the 1st of +August, in a fit of rage brought on by reading an upholsterer's bill. On +the way Byron heard the intelligence, and wrote to Dr. Pigot: "I now feel +the truth of Gray's observation, that we can only have _one_ mother. Peace +be with her!" On arriving at Newstead, all their storms forgotten, the son +was so affected that he did not trust himself to go to the funeral, but +stood dreamily gazing at the cortege from the gate of the Abbey. Five days +later, Charles S. Matthews was drowned. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +SECOND PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP--IN LONDON--CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT + +The deaths of Long, Wingfield, Eddlestone, Matthews, and of his mother, +had narrowed the circle of the poet's early companions; and, though he +talks of each loss in succession as if it had been that of an only friend, +we can credit a degree of loneliness, and excuse a certain amount of +bitterness in the feelings with which he returned to London. He had at +this time seen very little of the only relative whom he over deeply loved. +He and his half-sister met casually in 1804, and again in the following +year. After her marriage (1807), Byron writes from abroad (1810), +regretting having distressed her by his quarrel with Lord Carlisle. In +1811 she is mentioned as reversionary heiress of his estate. Towards the +close of 1813, there are two allusions which testify to their mutual +affection. Next wo come to the interesting series of letters of 1815-16, +published with the Memoir of Mr. Hodgson, to whom, along with Hobhouse and +Scrope Davies, his lordship in a will and codicil leaves the management of +his property. Harness appears frequently at this period among his +surviving intimates: to this list there was shortly added another. In +speaking of his _Bards and Reviewers_, the author makes occasional +reference to the possibility of his being called to account for some of +his attacks. His expectation was realized by a letter from the poet Moore, +dated Dublin, Jan. 1, 1810, couched in peremptory terms, demanding to know +if his lordship avowed the authorship of the insults contained in the +poem. This letter, being entrusted to Mr. Hodgson, was not forwarded to +Byron abroad; but shortly after his return, he received another in more +conciliatory terms, renewing the complaint. To this he replied, in a stiff +but manly letter, that he had never meant to insult Mr. Moore; but that he +was, if necessary, ready to give him satisfaction. Moore accepting the +explanation, somewhat querulously complained of his advances to friendship +not being received. Byron again replied that much as he would feel +honoured by Mr. Moore's acquaintance, he being practically threatened by +the irate Irishman could hardly make the first advances. This called forth +a sort of apology; the correspondents met at the house of Mr. Rogers, and +out of the somewhat awkward circumstances, owing to the frankness of the +"noble author," as the other ever after delights to call him, arose the +life-long intimacy which had such various and lasting results. Moore has +been called a false friend to Byron, and a traitor to his memory. The +judgment is somewhat harsh, but the association between them was +unfortunate. Thomas Moore had some sterling qualities. His best satirical +pieces are inspired by a real indignation, and lit up by a genuine humour. +He was also an exquisite musician in words, and must have been +occasionally a fascinating companion. But he was essentially a worldling, +and, as such, a superficial critic. He encouraged the shallow affectations +of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring +defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt +seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to +others on _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and _Don Juan_, are the expression of +sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the +author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure +by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard to his +opinions, and overestimated his genius. For the subsequent destruction of +the memoirs, urged by Mr. Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh, he was not wholly +responsible; though a braver man, having accepted the position of his +lordship's literary legatee, with the express understanding that he would +seue to the fulfilment of the wishes of his dead friend, would have to the +utmost resisted their total frustration. + +Meanwhile, on landing in England, the poet had placed in the hands of Mr. +Dallas the _Hints from Horace_, which he intended to have brought out by +the publisher Cawthorne. Of this performance--an inferior edition, +relieved by a few strong touches, of the _Bards and Reviewers_--Dallas +ventured to express his disapproval. "Have you no other result of your +travels?" he asked; and got for answer, "A few short pieces; and a lot of +Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to +them." Dallas took the remark literally, saw they were a safe success, and +assumed to himself the merit of the discovery, the risks, and the profits. +It is the converse of the story of Gabriel Harvey and the _Faery Queene_. +Tho first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ bear no comparison with the legend +of _Una and the Red Cross Knight_; but there was no mistake about their +proof of power, their novelty, and adaptation to a public taste as yet +unjaded by eloquent and imaginative descriptions of foreign scenery, +manners, and climates. + +The poem--after being submitted to Gifford, in defiance of the +protestations of the author, who feared that the reference might seem to +seek the favour of the august _Quarterly_--was accepted by Mr. Murray, and +proceeded through the press, subject to change and additions, during the +next five months. The _Hints from Horace_, fortunately postponed and then +suspended, appeared posthumously in 1831. Byron remained at Newstead till +the close of October, negotiating with creditors and lawyers, and engaged +in a correspondence about his publications, in the course of which he +deprecates any identification of himself and his hero, though he had at +first called him Childe Byron. "Instruct Mr. Murray," he entreats, "not to +allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage,' as he +has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my +_sanity_ on the occasion, as well they might." At the end of the month we +find him in London, again indulging in a voyage in "the ship of fools," in +which Moore claims to have accompanied him; but at the same time +exhibiting remarkable shrewdness in reference to the affairs of his +household. In February, 1812, he again declares to Hodgson his resolve to +leave England for ever, and fix himself in "one of the fairest islands of +the East." On the 27th he made in the House of Lords his speech on a Bill +to introduce special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham. +This effort, on which he received many compliments, led among other +results to a friendly correspondence with Lord Holland. On April 21st of +the same year, he again addressed the House on behalf of Roman Catholic +Emancipation; and in June, 1813, in favour of Major Cartwright's petition. +On all these occasions, as afterwards on the continent, Byron espoused the +Liberal side of politics. But his role was that of Manlius or Caesar, and +he never fails to remind us that he himself was _for_ the people, not _of_ +them. His latter speeches, owing partly to his delivery, blamed as too +Asiatic, were less successful. To a reader the three seem much on the same +level. They are clever, but evidently set performances, and leave us no +ground to suppose that the poet's abandonment of a parliamentary career +was a serious loss to the nation. + +On the 29th of February the first and second cantos of _Childe Harold_ +appeared. An early copy was sent to Mrs. Leigh, with the inscription: "To +Augusta, my dearest sister and my best friend, who has ever loved me much +better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son and +most affectionate brother, B." The book ran through seven editions in four +weeks. The effect of the first edition of Burns, and the sale of Scott's +_Lays_, are the only parallels in modern poetic literature to this +success. All eyes were suddenly fastened on the author, who let his satire +sleep, and threw politics aside, to be the romancer of his day and for two +years the darling of society. Previous to the publition, Mr. Moore +confesses to have gratified his lordship with the expression of the fear +that _Childe Harold_ was too good for the age. Its success was due to the +reverse being the truth. It was just on the level of its age. Its flowing +verse, defaced by rhymical faults perceptible only to finer ears, its +prevailing sentiment, occasional boldness relieved by pleasing platitudes, +its half affected rakishness, here and there elevated by a rush as of +morning air, and its frequent richness--not yet, as afterwards, +splendour--of description, were all appreciated by the fashionable London +of the Regency; while the comparatively mild satire, not keen enough to +scarify, only gave a more piquant flavour to the whole. Byron's genius, +yet in the green leaf, was not too far above the clever masses of +pleasure-loving manhood by which it was surrounded. It was natural that +the address on the reopening of Drury Lane theatre should be written by +"the world's new joy"--the first great English poet-peer; as natural as +that in his only published satire of the period he should inveigh against +almost the only amusement in which he could not share. The address was +written at the request of Lord Holland, when of some hundred competitive +pieces none had been found exactly suitable--a circumstance which gave +rise to the famous parodies entitled _The Rejected Addresses_--and it was +thought that the ultimate choice would conciliate all rivalry. The care +which Byron bestowed on the correction of the first draft of this piece, +is characteristic of his habit of writing off his poems at a gush, and +afterwards carefully elaborating them. + +_The Waltz_ was published anonymously in April, 1813. It was followed in +May by the _Giaour_, the first of the flood of verse romances which, +during the three succeeding years, he poured forth with impetuous fluency, +and which were received with almost unrestrained applause. The plots and +sentiments and imagery are similar in them all. The Giaour steals the +mistress of Hassan, who revenges his honour by drowning her. The Giaour +escapes; returns, kills Hassan, and then goes to a monastery. In the +_Bride of Abydos_, published in the December of the same year, Giaffir +wants to marry his daughter Zuleika to Carasman Pasha. She runs off with +Selim, her reputed brother--in reality her cousin, and so at last her +legitimate lover. They are caught; he is slain in fight; she dies, to slow +music. In the _Corsair_, published January, 1814, Conrad, a pirate, +"linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes!" is beloved by Medora, who +on his predatory expeditions, sits waiting for him (like Hassan's and +Sisera's mother) in a tower. On one of these he attacks Seyd Pasha, and is +overborne by superior force; but Gulnare, a female slave of Seyd, kills +her master, and runs off with Conrad, who finds Medora dead and vanishes. +In _Lara_, the sequel to this--written in May and June, published in +August--a man of mystery appears in the Morea, with a page, Kaled. After +adventures worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe--from whose Schledoni the Giaour is +said to have been drawn--Lara falls in battle with his deadly foe, +Ezzelin, and turns out to be Conrad, while Kaled is of course Gulnare. The +_Hebrew Melodies_, written in December, 1814, are interesting, in +connexion with the author's early familiarity with the Old Testament, and +from the force and music that mark the best of them; but they can hardly +be considered an important contribution to the devotional verse of +England. The _Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_, composed after his +marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year. +The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it +from Menotti; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, +another sketch from the same protoplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, +is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save +her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. +_Parisina_, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than +the others of the period. The trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, +and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo's funeral dirge lingers in +our ears, along with the convent bells-- + + In the grey square turret swinging, + With a deep sound, to and fro, + Heavily to the heart they go. + +These romances belong to the same period of the author's poetic career as +the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_. They followed one another like +brilliant fireworks. They all exhibit a command of words, a sense of +melody, and a flow of rhythm and rhyme, which mastered Moore and even +Scott on their own ground. None of them are wanting in passages, as "He +who hath bent him o'er the dead," and the description of Alp leaning +against a column, which strike deeper than any verse of either of those +writers. But there is an air of melodrama in them all. Harmonious delights +of novel readers, they will not stand against the winnowing wind of +deliberate criticism. They harp on the same string, without the variations +of a Paganini. They are potentially endless reproductions of one phase of +an ill-regulated mind--the picture of the same quasi-melancholy vengeful +man, who knows no friend but a dog, and reads on the tombs of the great +only "the glory and the nothing of a name," the exile who cannot flee from +himself, "the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind," who has not loved +the world nor the world him,-- + + Whose heart was form'd for softness, warp'd by wrong, + Betray'd too early, and beguiled too long-- + +all this, _decies repetita_, grows into a weariness and vexation. Mr. +Carlyle harshly compares it to the screaming of a meat-jack. The reviewers +and the public of the time thought differently. Jeffrey, penitent for the +early _faux pas_ of his _Review_, as Byron remained penitent for his +answering assault, writes of _Lara_, "Passages of it may be put into +competition with anything that poetry has produced in point either of +pathos or energy." Moore--who afterwards wrote, not to Byron, that seven +devils had entered into _Manfred_--professes himself "enraptured with it." +Fourteen thousand copies of the _Corsair_ wore sold in a day. But hear the +author's own half-boast, half-apology: "_Lara_ I wrote while undressing +after coming home from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. +The _Bride_ was written in four, the _Corsair_ in ten days. This I take to +he a humiliating confession, as it proves my own want of judgment in +publishing, and the public's in reading, things which cannot have stamina +for permanence." + +The pecuniary profits accruing to Byron from his works began with _Lara_, +for which he received 700_l_. He had made over to Mr. Dallas, besides +other gifts to the same ungrateful recipient, the profits of _Harold_, +amounting to 600_l_, and of the _Corsair_, which brought 525_l_. The +proceeds of the _Giaour_ and the _Bride_ were also surrendered. + +During this period, 1813-1816, he had become familiar with all the phases +of London society, "tasted their pleasures," and, towards the close, "felt +their decay." His associates in those years were of two classes--men of +the world, and authors. Feted and courted in all quarters, he patronized +the theatres, became in 1815 a member of the Drury Lane Committee, "liked +the dandies," including Beau Brummell, and was introduced to the Regent. +Their interview, in June 1812, in the course of which the latter paid +unrestrained compliments to _Harold_ and the poetry of Scott, is naively +referred to by Mr. Moore "as reflecting even still more honour on the +Sovereign himself than on the two poets." Byron, in a different spirit, +writes to Lord Holland: "I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's +decease, of warbling truth at Court, like Mr. Mallet of indifferent +memory. Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the +disgrace." We can hardly conceive the future author of the _Vision of +Judgment_ writing odes to dictation. He does not seem to have been much +fascinated with the first gentleman of Europe, whom at no distant date he +assailed in the terrible "Avatar," and left the laureateship to Mr. +Southey. + +Among leaders in art and letters he was brought into more or less intimate +contact with Sir Humphry Davy, the Edgeworths, Sir James Mackintosh, +Colman the dramatic author, the older Kean, Monk Lewis, Grattan, Curran, +and Madame de Stael. Of a meeting of the last two he remarks, "It was like +the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so ugly that +I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland +could have taken up respectively such residences." + +About this time a communication from Mr Murray in reference to the meeting +with the Regent led to a letter from Sir Walter Scott to Lord Byron, the +beginning of a life-long friendship, and one of the most pleasing pages of +biography. These two great men were for a season perpetually pitted +against one another, as the foremost competitors for literary favour. When +_Rokeby_ came out, contemporaneously with the _Giaour_, the undergraduates +of Oxford and Cambridge ran races to catch the first copies, and laid bets +as to which of the rivals would win. During the anti-Byronic fever of +1840-1860 they were perpetually contrasted as the representatives of the +manly and the morbid schools. A later sentimentalism has affected to +despise the work of both. The fact therefore that from an early period the +men themselves knew each other as they were, is worth illustrating. + +Scott's letter, in which a generous recognition of the pleasure he had +derived from tho work of the English poet, was followed by a manly +remonstrance on the subject of the attack in the _Bards and Reviewers_, +drew from Byron in the following month (July 1812) an answer in the same +strain, descanting on the Prince's praises of the _Lay_ and _Marmion_, and +candidly apologizing for the "evil works of his nonage." "The satire," he +remarks, "was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent +on displaying my wrath and my wit; and now I am haunted by the ghosts of +my wholesale assertions." This, in turn, called forth another letter to +Byron eager for more of his verses, with a cordial invitation to +Abbotsford on the ground of Scotland's maternal claim on him, and asking +for information about Pegasus and Parnassus. After this the correspondence +continues with greater freedom, and the same display on either side of +mutual respect. When Scott says "the _Giaour_ is praised among our +mountains," and Byron returns "_Waverley_ is the best novel I have read," +there is no suspicion of flattery--it is the interchange of compliments +between men, + + Et cantare pares et respondere parati. + +They talk in just the same manner to third parties. "I gave over writing +romances," says the elder, in the spirit of a great-hearted gentleman," +because Byron beat me. He hits the mark, where I don't even pretend to +fledge my arrow. He has access to a stream of sentiment unknown to me." +The younger, on the other hand, deprecates the comparisons that were being +invidiously drawn between them. He presents his copy of the _Giaour_ to +Scott, with the phrase "To the monarch of Parnassus," and compares the +feeling of those who cavilled at his fame to that of the Athenians towards +Aristides. From those sentiments, he never swerves, recognizing to the +last the breadth of character of the most generous of his critics, and +referring to him, during his later years in Italy, as the Wizard and the +Ariosto of the North. A meeting was at length arranged between them. Scott +looked forward to it with anxious interest, humorously remarking that +Byron should say,-- + + Art thou the man whom men famed Grissell call? + +And he reply-- + + Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small? + +They met in London during the spring of 1815. The following sentences are +from Sir Walter's account of it:--"Report had prepared me to meet a man +of peculiar habits and quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were +likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably disappointed in +this respect. I found Lord Byron in the highest degree courteous, and even +kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, +and found a great deal to say to each other. Our sentiments agreed a good +deal, except upon the subjects of religion and politics, upon neither of +which I was inclined to believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed +opinions. On politics he used sometimes to express a high strain of what +is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the pleasure it +afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against +individuals in office was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At +heart, I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle. His reading did +not seem to me to have been very extensive. I remember repeating to him +the fine poem of Hardyknute, and some one asked me what I could possibly +have been telling Byron by which he was so much agitated. I saw him for +the last time in (September) 1815, after I returned from France; he dined +or lunched with me at Long's in Bond Street. I never saw him so full of +gaiety and good humour. The day of this interview was the most interesting +I ever spent. Several letters passed between us--one perhaps every half +year. Like the old heroes in Homer we exchanged gifts; I gave Byron a +beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had been the property of the +redoubted Elfi Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the _Iliad_, +for Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral vase of silver, +full of dead men's bones, found within the land walls of Athens. He was +often melancholy, almost gloomy. When I observed him in this humour I used +either to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some natural +and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when the shadows +almost always left his countenance, like the mist arising from a +landscape. I think I also remarked in his temper starts of suspicion, when +he seemed to pause and consider whether there had not been a secret and +perhaps offensive meaning in something that was said to him. In this case +I also judged it best to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself +clear, which it did in a minute or two. A downright steadiness of manner +was the way to his good opinion. Will Rose, looking by accident at his +feet, saw him scowling furiously; but on his showing no consciousness, his +lordship resumed his easy manner. What I liked about him, besides his +boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as well as of purse, and +his utter contempt of all the affectations of literature. He liked Moore +and me because, with all our other differences, we were both good-natured +fellows, not caring to maintain our dignity, enjoying the _mot-pour-rire_. +He wrote from impulse never from effort, and therefore I have always +reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and +of half a century before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but +none of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." + +Scott, like all hale men of sound sense, regretted the almost fatal +incontinence which, in the year of his greatest private troubles, led his +friend to make a parade of them before the public. He speaks more than +once of his unhappy tendency to exhibit himself as the dying gladiator, +and even compares him to his peacock, screeching before his window because +he chooses to bivouack apart from his mate; but he read a copy of the +Ravenna diary without altering his view that his lordship was his own +worst maligner. Scott, says Lockhart, considered Byron the only poet of +transcendent talents we had had since Dryden. There is preserved a curious +record of his meeting with a greater poet than Dryden, but one whose +greatness neither he nor Scott suspected. Mr. Crabb Robinson reports +Wordsworth to have said, in Charles Lamb's chambers, about the year 1808, +"These reviewers put me out of patience. Here is a young man who has +written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, +set upon him. The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has +begun. But these reviewers seem to think that nobody may write poetry +unless he lives in a garret." Years after, Lady Byron, on being told this, +exclaimed, "Ah, if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked +Wordsworth. He went one day to meet him at dinner, and I said, 'Well, how +did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell the truth,' +said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the +end, and that was _reverence_.'" Similarly, he began by being on good +terms with Southey, and after a meeting at Holland House, wrote +enthusiastically of his prepossessing appearance. + +Byron and the leaders of the so-called Lake School were, at starting, +common heirs of the revolutionary spirit; they were, either in their +social views or personal feelings, to a large extent influenced by the +most morbid, though in some respects the most magnetic, genius of modern +France, J.J. Rousseau; but their temperaments were in many respects +fundamentally diverse; and the pre-established discord between them ere +long began to make itself manifest in their following out widely divergent +paths. Wordsworth's return to nature had been preluded by Cowper; that of +Byron by Burns. The revival of the one ripened into a restoration of +simpler manners and old beliefs; the other was the spirit of the storm. +When they had both become recognized powers, neither appreciated the work +of the other. A few years after this date Byron wrote of Wordsworth, to a +common admirer of both: "I take leave to differ from you as freely as I +once agreed with you. His performances, since the _Lyrical Ballads_, are +miserably inadequate to the ability that lurks within him. There is, +undoubtedly, much natural talent spilt over the _Excursion_; but it is +rain upon rocks, where it stands and stagnates; or rain upon sand, where +it falls without fertilizing." This criticism with others in like strain, +was addressed to Mr. Leigh Hunt, to whom, in 1812, when enduring for +radicalism's sake a very comfortable incarceration, Byron had, in company +with Moore, paid a courteous visit. + +Of the correspondence of this period--flippant, trenchant, or +sparkling--few portions are more calculated to excite a smile than the +record of his frequent resolutions made, reasseverated, and broken, to +have done with literature; even going the length on some occasions of +threatening to suppress his works, and, if possible, recall the existing +copies. He affected being a man of the world unmercifully, and had a real +delight in clever companions who assumed the same role. Frequent allusion +is made to his intercourse with Erskine and Sheridan: the latter he is +never tired of praising, as "the author of the best modern comedy (_School +for Scandal_), the best farce (_The Critic_), and the best oration (the +famous Begum speech) ever heard in this country." They spent many an +evening together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who +tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable +state; and, on some one asking "Who is this?" stammering out +"Wilberforce." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with +the dramatist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork-screw +condition: and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr. C----, who "had no notion +of meeting with a bon-vivant in a scribbler," and summed the poet's eulogy +with the phrase, "he drinks like a man." Hunt, the tattler, who observed +his lordship's habits in Italy, with the microscope of malice ensconced +within the same walls, makes it a charge against his host that he would +not drink like a man. Once for all it may be noted, that although there +was no kind of excess in which Byron, whether from bravado or inclination, +failed occasionally to indulge, he was never for any stretch of time given +over, like Burns, to what is technically termed intemperance. His head +does not seem to have been strong, and under the influence of stimulants +he may have been led to talk a great deal of his dangerous nonsense. But +though he could not say, with Wordsworth, that only once, at Cambridge, +had his brain been "excited by the fumes of wine," his prevailing sins +were in other directions. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. + +"As for poets," says Scott, "I have seen all the best of my time and +country, and, though Burns had the most glorious eye imaginable, I never +thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, +except Byron. His countenance is a thing to dream of." Coleridge writes to +the same effect, in language even stronger. We have from all sides similar +testimony to the personal beauty which led the unhappiest of his devotees +to exclaim, "That pale face is my fate!" + +Southern critics, as Chasles, Castelar, even Mazzini, have dealt leniently +with the poet's relations to the other sex; and Elze extends to him in +this regard the same excessive stretch of charity. "Dear Childe Harold," +exclaims the German professor, "was positively besieged by women. They +have, in truth, no right to complain of him: from his childhood he had +seen them on their worst side." It is the casuistry of hero-worship to +deny that Byron was unjust to women, not merely in isolated instances, but +in his prevailing views of their character and claims. "I regard them," he +says, in a passage only distinguished from others by more extravagant +petulance, "as very pretty but inferior creatures, who are as little in +their place at our tables as they would be in our council chambers. The +whole of the present system with regard to the female sex is a remnant of +the barbarism of the chivalry of our forefathers. I look on them as +grown-up children; but, like a foolish mamma, I am constantly the slave of +one of them. The Turks shut up their women, and are much happier; give a +woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she will be content." + +In contrast with this, we have the moods in which he drew his pictures of +Angiolina, and Haidee, and Aurora Raby, and wrote the invocations to the +shade of Astarte, and his letters in prose and verse to Augusta; but the +above passage could never have been written by Chaucer, or Spenser, or +Shakespeare, or Shelley. The class whom he was reviling seemed, however, +during "the day of his destiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the +blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splendour of +his verse, the romance of his travels, his picturesque melancholy and +affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence +to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as +prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who +had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing +books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn their tales, +often to point their fables with. He was by the one set caressed and +spoilt, and "beguiled too long;" by the other, "betrayed too late." The +recent memoirs of Frances Ann Kemble present a curious record of the +process of passing from one extreme to the other. She dwells on the +fascination exerted over her mind by the first reading of his poetry, and +tells how she "fastened on the book with a grip like steel," and carried +it off and hid it under her pillow; how it affected her "like an evil +potion," and stirred her whole being with a tempest of excitement, till +finally she, with equal weakness, flung it aside, "resolved to read that +grand poetry no more, and broke through the thraldom of that powerful +spell." The confession brings before us a type of the transitions of the +century, on its way from the Byronic to the anti-Byronic fever, of which +later state Mrs. Norton and Miss Martineau are among the most pronounced +representatives. + +Byron's garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of +more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often +the same practical effect as reticence; for he talks so much at +large--every page of his Journal being, by his own admission, apt to +"confute and abjure its predecessor"--that we are often none the wiser. +Amid a mass of conjecture, it is manifest that during the years between +his return from Greece and final expatriation (1811-1816), including the +whole period of his social glory--though not yet of his solid fame--he was +lured into liaisons of all sorts and shades. Some, now acknowledged as +innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention +than in distorting truth. On others, as commonplaces of a temperament "all +meridian," it were waste of time to dwell. Byron rarely put aside a +pleasure in his path; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by +affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted. The verses to the memory +of a lost love veiled as "Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not, +as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere +grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the +poet's career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name +from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first +Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their +romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in +her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards +Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she +married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning +belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities. +Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said +she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the +introduction took place in March, 1812. After the meeting, she wrote in +her journal, "Mad--bad--and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable +Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed +by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her +company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband +laughed at the worship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and +adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited +her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. "Medora," on +the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that they were +affinities, and offered him her jewels. But after the first excitement, he +began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her +indifferent verses: "he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual +egotisms jarred." Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a +season to her father's house in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of +his glowing farewell letters. When she came back, matters were little +better. The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one +occasion penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on another +threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing +into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him. "The +'Agnus' is furious," he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of +the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked. "You +can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done +since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage.... The +business of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle +fair is writing letters literally threatening my life." With one member of +the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb's mother, and sister of Sir Ralph +Milbanke, he remained throughout on terms of pleasant intimacy. He +appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the +experience and tact of "the cleverest of women." But her well-meant advice +had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a +suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke. Byron first proposed to +this lady in 1813; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they +continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate +terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was +accepted. + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on + this subject Byron was always reticent. Mr. Minto, as we have seen, + associates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8.] + +After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin +by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew +statistics, but was "not for Conrad, no, no, no!" Lady Caroline lapsed +into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and +her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost +forgotten novel of _Glenarvon_, in which some of Byron's real features +were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions. Madame de +Stael was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice when +they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to have been less moved by it +than by most attacks. We must however, bear in mind his own admission in a +parallel case. "I say I am perfectly calm; I am, nevertheless, in a fury." +Over the sad vista of the remaining years of the unhappy lady's life we +need not linger. During a considerable part of it she appears hovering +about the thin line that separates some kinds of wit and passion from +madness; writing more novels, burning her hero's effigy and letters, and +then clamouring for a lock of his hair, or a sight of his portrait; +separated from, and again reconciled to, a husband to whose magnanimous +forbearance and compassion she bears testimony to the last, comparing +herself to Jane Shore; attempting Byronic verses, loudly denouncing and +yet never ceasing inwardly to idolize, the man whom she regarded as her +betrayer, perhaps only with justice in that he had unwittingly helped to +overthrow her mental balance. After eight years of this life, lit up here +and there by gleams of social brilliancy, we find her carriage, on the +12th of July, 1824, suddenly confronted by a funeral. On hearing that the +remains of Byron were being carried to the tomb, she shrieked, and +fainted. Her health finally sank, and her mind gave way under this shock; +but she lingered till January, 1828, when she died, after writing a calm +letter to her husband, and bequeathing the poet's miniature to her friend, +Lady Morgan. + +"I have paid some of my debts, and contracted others," Byron writes to +Moore, on September 15th, 1814; "but I have a few thousand pounds which I +can't spend after my heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the +south. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look +at the coast of Greece from Italy. All this however depends upon an event +which may or may not happen. Whether it will I shall probably know +tomorrow, and if it does I can't well go abroad at present." "A wife," he +had written, in the January of the same year, "would be my salvation;" but +a marriage entered upon in such a flippant frame of mind could, scarcely +have been other than disastrous. In the autumn of the year we are told +that a friend,[2] observing how cheerless was the state both of his mind +and prospects, advised him to marry, and after much discussion he +consented, naming to his correspondent Miss Milbanke. To this his adviser +objected, remarking that she had, at present, no fortune, and that his +embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one, etc. +Accordingly, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal to another +lady, which was done. A refusal arrived as they were one morning sitting +together. "'You see,' said Lord Byron, 'that after all Miss Milbanke is to +be the person,' and wrote on the moment. His friend, still remonstrating +against his choice, took up the letter; but, on reading it, observed, +'Well, really, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not +go.' 'Then it _shall_ go,' said Lord Byron, and, in so saying, sealed and +sent off this fiat of his fate." The incident seems cut from a French +novel; but so does the whole strange story--one apparently insoluble +enigma in an otherwise only too transparent life. On the arrival of the +lady's answer he was seated at dinner, when his gardener came in, and +presented him with his mother's wedding-ring, lost many years before, and +which had just been found, buried in the mould beneath her window. Almost +at the same moment the letter arrived; and Byron exclaimed, "If it +contains a consent (which it did), I will be married with this very ring." +He had the highest anticipations of his bride, appreciating her "talents, +and excellent qualities;" and saying, "she is so good a person that I wish +I was a better." About the same date he writes to various friends in the +good spirits raised by his enthusiastic reception from the Cambridge +undergraduates, when in the course of the same month he went to the Senate +House to give his vote for a Professor of Anatomy. + + [Footnote 2: Doubtless Moore himself, who tells the story.] + +The most constant and best of those friends was his sister, Augusta Leigh, +whom, from the death of Miss Chaworth to his own, Byron, in the highest +and purest sense of the word, loved more than any other human being. +Tolerant of errors, which she lamented, and violences in which she had no +share, she had a touch of their common family pride, most conspicuous in +an almost cat-like clinging to their ancestral home. Her early published +letters are full of regrets about the threatened sale of Newstead, on the +adjournment of which, when the first purchaser had to pay 25,000_l_. for +breaking his bargain, she rejoices, and over the consummation of which she +mourns, in the manner of Milton's Eve-- + + Must I then leave thee, Paradise? + +In all her references to the approaching marriage there are blended notes +of hope and fear. In thanking Hodgson for his kind congratulations, she +trusts it will secure her brother's happiness. Later she adds her +testimony to that of all outsiders at this time, as to the graces and +genuine worth of the object of his choice. After the usual preliminaries, +the ill-fated pair were united, at Seaham House, on the 2nd of January, +1815. Byron was married like one walking in his sleep. He trembled like a +leaf, made the wrong responses, and almost from the first seems to have +been conscious of his irrevocable mistake. + + I saw him stand + Before an altar with a gentle bride: + Her face was fair, but was not that which made + The starlight of his boyhood. He could see + Not that which was--but that which should have been-- + But the old mansion, the accustom'd hall. + And she who was his destiny came back, + And thrust herself between him and the light. + +Here we have faint visions of Miss Chaworth, mingling with later memories. +In handing the bride into the carriage he said, "Miss Milbanke, are you +ready?"--a mistake said to be of evil omen. Byron never really loved his +wife; and though he has been absurdly accused of marrying for revenge, we +must suspect that he married in part for a settlement. On the other hand, +it is not unfair to say that she was fascinated by a name, and inspired by +the philanthropic zeal of reforming a literary Corsair. Both were +disappointed. Miss Milbanke's fortune was mainly settled on herself; and +Byron, in spite of plentiful resolutions gave little sign of reformation. +For a considerable time their life, which, after the "treacle moon," as +the bridegroom called it, spent at Halnaby, near Darlington, was divided +between residence at Seaham and visits to London, seemed to move smoothly. +In a letter, evidently mis-dated the 15th December, Mrs. Leigh writes to +Hodgson: "I have every reason to think that my beloved B. is very happy +and comfortable. I hear constantly from him and _his rib_. It appears to +me that Lady B. sets about making him happy in the right way. I had many +fears. Thank God that they do not appear likely to be realized. In short, +there seems to me to be but one drawback to all our felicity, and that, +alas, is the disposal of dear Newstead. I never shall feel reconciled to +the loss of that sacred revered Abbey. The thought makes me more +melancholy than perhaps the loss of an inanimate object ought to do. Did +you ever hear that _landed property_, the GIFT OF THE CROWN, could not be +sold? Lady B. writes me word that she never saw her father and mother so +happy; that she believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea +herself to find fish for B.'s dinner, &c." Augusta Ada was born in London +on the 10th of December, 1815. During the next months a few cynical +mutterings are the only interruptions to an ominous silence; but these +could be easily explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's +affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last +half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. +Their expectations were raised by exaggerated reports of his having +married money; and by a curious pertinacity of pride he still declined, +even when he had to sell his books, to accept advances from his publisher. +In January the storm which had been secretly gathering suddenly broke. On +the 15th, i.e. five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home +with the infant to pay a visit, as had been agreed, to her own family at +Kirkby Mallory in Leicestershire. On the way she despatched to her husband +a tenderly playful letter, which has been often quoted. Shortly afterwards +he was informed--first by her father, and then by herself--that she did +not intend ever to return to him. The accounts of their last interview, as +in the whole evidence bearing on the affair, not only differ but flatly +contradict one another. On behalf of Lord Byron it is asserted, that his +wife, infuriated by his offering some innocent hospitality on occasion of +bad weather to a respectable actress, Mrs. Mardyn, who had called on him +about Drury Lane business, rushed into the room exclaiming, "I leave you +for ever"--and did so. According to another story, Lady Byron, finding him +with a friend, and observing him to be annoyed at her entrance, said, "Am +I in your way, Byron?" whereupon he answered, "Damnably." Mrs. Leigh, +Hodgson, Moore, and others, did everything that mutual friends could do to +bring about the reconciliation for which Byron himself professed to be +eager, but in vain; and in vain the effort was renewed in later years. The +wife was inveterately bent on a separation, of the causes of which the +husband alleged he was never informed, and with regard to which as long as +he lived she preserved a rigid silence. + +For some time after the event Byron spoke of his wife with at least +apparent generosity. Rightly or wrongly, he blamed her parents, and her +maid--Mrs. Clermont, the theme of his scathing but not always dignified +"Sketch;" but of herself he wrote (March 8, 1816), "I do not believe that +there ever was a brighter, and a kinder, or a more amiable or agreeable +being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make to +her, when with me." Elsewhere he adds, that he would willingly, if he had +the chance, "renew his marriage on a lease of twenty years." But as time +passed and his overtures were rejected, his patience gave way, and in some +of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's +letters at the time of the separation, especially those first published in +the _Academy_ of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and +confidential, often pathetic, asking her advice "in this critical moment," +and protesting that, "independent of malady, she does not think of the +past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of +injury." In her communications to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand--the +first of almost the same date, the second a few weeks later--she writes +with intense bitterness, stating that her action was due to offences which +she could only condone on the supposition of her husband's insanity, and +distinctly implying that she was in danger of her life. This supposition +having been by her medical advisers pronounced erroneous, she felt, in the +words only too pungently recalled in _Don Juan_, that her duty both to man +and God prescribed her course of action. Her playful letter on leaving she +seems to defend on the ground of the fear of personal violence. Till Lord +Byron's death the intimacy between his wife and sister remained unbroken; +through the latter he continued to send numerous messages to the former, +and to his child, who became a ward in Chancery; but at a later date it +began to cool. On the appearance of Lady Byron's letter, in answer to +Moore's first volume, Augusta speaks of it as "a despicable tirade," feels +"disgusted at such unfeeling conduct," and thinks "nothing can justify any +one in defaming the dead." Soon after 1830 they had an open rupture on a +matter of business, which was never really healed, though the then +Puritanic precisian sent a message of relenting to Mrs. Leigh on her +death-bed (1851). + +The charge or charges which, during her husband's life, Lady Byron from +magnanimity or other motive reserved, she is ascertained after his death +to have delivered with important modifications to various persons, with +little regard to their capacity for reading evidence or to their +discretion. On one occasion her choice of a confidante was singularly +unfortunate. "These," wrote Lord Byron in his youth, "these are the first +tidings that have ever sounded like fame in my ears--to be redde on the +banks of the Ohio." Strangely enough, it is from the country of +Washington, whom the poet was wont to reverence as the purest patriot of +the modern world, that in 1869 there emanated the hideous story which +scandalized both continents, and ultimately recoiled on the retailer of +the scandal. The grounds of the reckless charge have been weighed by those +who have wished it to prove false, and by those who have wished it to +prove true, and found wanting. The chaff has been beaten in every way and +on all sides, without yielding an ounce of grain; and it were ill-advised +to rake up the noxious dust that alone remains. From nothing left on +record by either of the two persons most intimately concerned can we +derive any reliable information. It is plain that Lady Byron was during +the later years of her life the victim of hallucinations, and that if +Byron knew the secret, which he denies, he did not choose to tell it, +putting off Captain Medwin and others with absurdities, as that "He did +not like to see women eat," or with commonplaces, as "The causes, my dear +sir, were too simple to be found out." + +Thomas Moore, who had the Memoirs[3] supposed to have thrown light on the +mystery, in the full knowledge of Dr. Lushington's judgment and all the +gossip of the day, professes to believe that "the causes of disunion did +not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and +writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible +with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping +generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with +intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most +reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is +reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my +lady;" and Madame De Stael, on reading the _Farewell_, that "She would +have been glad to have been in Lady Byron's place." But it may be doubted +if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were +even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a +pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to +make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in +corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man +whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch +under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker? Or how could her +conscious virtue tolerate the recurring irregularities which he was +accustomed, not only to permit himself, but to parade? The harassment of +his affairs stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to suspect him +to be mad. Some of her recently printed letters--as that to Lady Anne +Barnard, and the reports of later observers of her character--as William +Howitt, tend to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent +amiability, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility of the pair. It +must have been trying to a poet to be asked by his wife, impatient of his +late hours, when he was going to leave off writing verses; to be told he +had no real enthusiasm; or to have his desk broken open, and its +compromising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least +intended. The smouldering elements of discontent may have been fanned by +the gossip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled +into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others beyond the +circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless believed some story which, when +communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the +mere fact of her believing it made reconciliation impossible; and the +inveterate obstinacy which lurked beneath her gracious exterior, made her +cling through life to the substance--not always to the form, whatever that +may have been--of her first impressions. Her later letters to Mrs. Leigh, +as that called forth by Moore's _Life_, are certainly as open to the +charge of self-righteousness, as those of her husband's are to +self-disparagement. + + [Footnote 3: Captain Trelawney, however, doubts if he ever read them.] + +Byron himself somewhere says, "Strength of endurance is worth all the +talent in the world." "I love the virtues that I cannot share." His own +courage was all active; he had no power of sustained endurance. At a time +when his proper refuge was silence, and his prevailing sentiment--for he +admits he was somehow to blame--should have been remorse, he foolishly +vented his anger and his grief in verses, most of them either peevish or +vindictive, and some of which he certainly permitted to be published. "Woe +to him," exclaims Voltaire, "who says all he could on any subject!" Woe to +him, he might have added, who says anything at all on the subject of his +domestic troubles! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a +host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some +degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men of whose adulation he +was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macaulay has +expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed. +Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles, were let loose, and they +anticipated the _Saturday_ and the _Spectator_ of 1869, so that the latter +might well have exclaimed, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." Byron +was accused of every possible and impossible vice, he was compared to +Sardanapalus, Nero, Tiberius, the Duke of Orleans, Heliogabalus, and +Satan--all the most disreputable persons mentioned in sacred and profane +history; his benevolences were maligned, his most disinterested actions +perverted. Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, was on his account, on one occasion, +driven off the public stage. He was advised not to go to the theatres, +lest he should be hissed; nor to Parliament, lest he should be insulted. +On the very day of his departure a friend told him that he feared violence +from mobs assembling at the door of his carriage. "Upon what grounds," the +poet writes, in a trenchant survey of the circumstances, in August, 1819, +"the public formed their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and +it was decisive. Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had +written poetry, was a nobleman, bad married, became a father, and was +involved in differences with my wife and her relatives--no one knew why, +because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances. + +"The press was active and scurrilous;.. my name--which had been a +knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for +William the Norman--was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and +muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England +was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other +countries--in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue +depth of the lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I +crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, +and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who +betakes himself to the waters." + +On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr. +Rogers: "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. We shall not +meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final +meeting), and under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you +and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening." In all +this storm and stress, Byron's one refuge was in the affection which rises +like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life. + + In the desert a fountain is springing, + In the wild waste there still is a tree; + And a bird in the solitude singing, + That speaks to my spirit of thee. + +The fashionable world was tired of its spoilt child, and he of it. Hunted +out of the country, bankrupt in purse and heart, he left it, never to +return; but he left it to find fresh inspiration by the "rushing of the +arrowy Rhone," and under Italian skies to write the works which have +immortalized his name. + + + DESCENT OF LADY BYRON AND LADY C. LAMB + + +Earl Spencer. Sir Ralph Milbanke. Viscount Wentworth + | _________________|_______________ | + | | | | +Henrietta Elizabeth (Lady Melbourne) Sir Ralph + Judith Noel +Frances. | m. Viscount Melbourne. | + + | | +F. Ponsonby | Lord Byron + Anna Isabella. +(Earl of | | +Bessborough). | Augusta Ada. + | | + | | +Lady Caroline + William Lamb. + + + DESCENT OF ALLEGRA + + William Godwin. + Married 1st + Mary Woolstonecraft. 2nd Mrs. Clairmont. + | She had by previous | + | alliance | + | | Claire Claremont + Byron. +P. B. Shelley + Mary Godwin Fanny Imlay. | + Allegra. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +LIFE ABROAD--SWITZERLAND TO VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP.--CHILDE +HAROLD, III., IV.--MANFRED. + +On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron embarked for Ostend. From the "burning +marl" of the staring streets he planted his foot again on the dock with a +genuine exultation. + + Once more upon the waters, yet once more, + And the waves bound beneath me as a steed + That knows her rider. Welcome to the roar! + +But he brought with him a relic of English extravagance, sotting out on +his land travels in a huge coach, copied from that of Napoleon taken at +Genappe, and being accompanied by Fletcher, Rushton, Berger, a Swiss, and +Polidori, a physician of Italian descent, son of Alfieri's secretary, a +man of some talent but indiscreet. A question arises as to the source from +which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking +contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's +financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance, +nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the +Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the Court of Exchequer, and +that his appeal to the House of Lords was still unsettled in 1822. The +sale of Newstead to Colonel Wildman in 1818, for 90,000 _l_., went mostly +to pay off mortgages and debts. In April, 1819, Mrs. Leigh writes, after a +last sigh over this event:--"Sixty thousand pounds was secured by his +(Byron's) marriage settlement, the interest of which he receives for life, +and which ought to make him very comfortable." This is unfortunately +decisive of the fact that he did not in spirit adhere to the resolution +expressed to Moore never to touch a farthing of his wife's money, though +we may accept his statement to Medwin, that he twice repaid the dowry of +10,000 _l_. brought to him at the marriage, as in so far diminishing the +obligation. None of the capital of Lady Byron's family came under his +control till 1822, when, on the death of her mother, Lady Noel, Byron +arranged the appointment of referees, Sir Francis Burdett on his behalf, +Lord Dacre on his wife's. The result was an equal division of a property +worth about 7000 _l_ a year. While in Italy the poet received besides +about 10,000 _l_ for his writings--4000 _l_. being given for _Childe +Harold_ (iii., iv.), and _Manfred_. "Ne pas etre dupe" was one of his +determinations, and, though he began by caring little for making money, he +was always fond of spending it. "I tell you it is too much," he said to +Murray, in returning a thousand guineas for the _Corinth_ and _Partsina_. +Hodgson, Moore, Bland, Thomas Ashe, the family of Lord Falkland, the +British Consul at Venice, and a host of others, were ready to testify to +his superb munificence. On the other hand, he would stint his pleasures, +or his benevolences, which were among them, for no one; and when he found +that to spend money he had to make it, he saw neither rhyme nor reason in +accepting less than his due. In 1817 he begins to dun Murray, declaring, +with a frankness in which we can find no fault, "You offer 1500 guineas +for the new canto (_C. H_., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for +it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper." During the +remaining years of his life he grew more and more exact, driving hard +bargains for his houses, horses, and boats, and fitting himself, had he +lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-liberated State, +from which he took a bond securing a fair interest for his loan. He made +out an account in _L. s. d_. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh +Hunt threatened to sponge upon him he got a harsh reception; but there is +nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by +the "good old gentlemanly vice" of which lie wrote. The Skimpoles and +Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre: it is +equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men +of business. + +We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the +Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During his +stay in the Belgian capital lie paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo, +wrote the famous stanzas beginning, "Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's +dust!" and in unpatriotic prose, recorded his impressions of a plain which +appeared to him to "want little but a better cause" to make it vie in +interest with those of Platea and Marathon. + +The rest of his journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne, +Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hotel Secheron, +on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary +relationship of his life, for here he first came in contact with the +impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in +proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont +Alegre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati; +and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with some +interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives. +The place for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of +their Italian partnership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as +fellow-excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion departing from +its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with +Hobhouse, off Meillerie. "The boat," says Byron, "was nearly wrecked near +the very spot where St. Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. +It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I +ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party +wore wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim, +was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary +or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a +storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being +still persecuted. "I was in a wretched state of health and worse spirits +when I was in Geneva; but quiet and the lake--better physicians than +Polidori--soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my +residence in that country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary, +there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was +watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, +that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening +drives. I believe they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his +arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a +daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage +of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, which resulted in the birth of +a daughter, Allegra, at Great Marlow, in February, 1817. The noticeable +events of the following two months are a joint excursion to Chamouni, and +a visit in July to Madame de Stael at Coppet, in the course of which he +met Frederick Schlegel. During a wet week, when the families were reading +together some German ghost stories, an idea occurred of imitating them, +the main result of which was Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_. Byron +contributed to the scheme a fragment of _The Vampire_, afterwards +completed and published in the name of his patron by Polidori. The +eccentricities of this otherwise amiable physician now began to give +serious annoyance; his jealousy of Shelley grew to such a pitch that it +resulted in the doctor's giving a challenge to the poet, at which the +latter only laughed; but Byron, to stop further outbreaks of the kind, +remarked, "Recollect that, though Shelley has scruples about duelling, I +have none, and shall be at all times ready to take his place." Polidori +had ultimately to be dismissed, and, after some years of vicissitude, +committed suicide. + +The Shelleys left for England in September, and Byron made an excursion +with Hobhouse through the Bernese Oberland. They went by the Col de Jaman +and the Simmenthal to Thun; then up the valley to the Staubbach, which he +compares to the tail of the pale horse in the Apocalypse--not a very +happy, though a striking comparison. Thence they proceeded over the +Wengern to Grindelwald and the Rosenlau glacier; then back by Berne, +Friburg, and Yverdun to Diodati. The following passage in reference to +this tour may be selected as a specimen of his prose description, and of +the ideas of mountaineering before the days of the Alpine Club:-- + +"Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent again, the sun upon it +forming a rainbow of the lower part, of all colours but principally purple +and gold, the bow moving as you move. I never saw anything like this; it +is only in the sunshine.... Left the horses, took off my coat, and went to +the summit, 7000 English feet above the level of the sea, and 5000 feet +above the valley we left in the morning. On one side our view comprised +the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like +truth; then the Eighers and the Wetterhorn. Heard the avalanches falling +every five minutes. From where we stood on the Wengern Alp we had all +these in view on one side; on the other, the clouds rose up from the +opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the +ocean of hell during a spring tide; it was white and sulphury, and +immeasurably deep in appearance.... Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined; +mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier--like a frozen hurricane; +starlight beautiful, but a devil of a path. Passed whole woods of withered +pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done +by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family." + +Students of _Manfred_ will recognize whole sentences, only slightly +modified in its verse. Though Byron talks with contempt of authorship, +there is scarce a fine phrase in his letters or journal which is not +pressed into the author's service. He turns his deepest griefs to artistic +gain, and uses five or six times for literary purposes the expression +which seems to have dropped from him naturally about his household gods +being shivered on his hearth. His account of this excursion concludes with +a passage equally characteristic of his melancholy and incessant +self-consciousness:-- + +"In the weather for this tour, I have been very fortunate.... I was +disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, &c.... But in all this the +recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home +desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me +here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the +avalanche, the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the +cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled +me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the +glory around, above, and beneath me." + +Such egotism in an idle man would only provoke impatience; but Byron was, +during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained +by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the _Prisoner +of Chillon_, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in +some respects surpasses any of his early romances. The opening lines,-- + + Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls; + A thousand feet in depth below, + Its massy waters meet and flow,-- + +bring before us in a few words the conditions of a hopeless bondage. The +account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the +brothers; the first frenzy of the survivor, and the desolation which +succeeds it-- + + I only loved: I only drew + The accursed breath of dungeon dew,-- + +the bird's song breaking on the night of his solitude; his growing +enamoured of despair, and regaining his freedom with a sigh, are all +strokes from a master hand. From the same place, at the same date, he +announces to Murray the completion of the third canto of _Childe Harold_. +The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the +_Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, Churchill's Grave_, the _Sonnet to Lake +Leman, Could I remount the River of my Years_, part of _Manfred, +Prometheus_, the _Stanzas to Augusta_, beginning, + + My sister! My sweet sister! If a name + Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; + +and the terrible dream of _Darkness_, which at least in the ghastly power +of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar +fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's _Last +Man_[1]. At Lausanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gibbon, +broke a sprig from his acacia-tree, and carried off some rose leaves from +his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M.G. Lewis and +Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned "the locust swarm of English +tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes; as when he heard one +of them at Chamouni inquire, "Did you ever see anything more truly rural?" +Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese--one of whom is said +to have swooned as he entered the room--and early in October set out with +Hobhouse for Italy. They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago +Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse +beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its +cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted +with "a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia +and Cardinal Bembo." He secured a lock of the golden hair of the Pope's +daughter, and wished himself a cardinal. + + [Footnote 1: This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have + given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subject.] + +At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as surpassing anything he +had seen even in Greece, and on the faith of the people in the story of +Juliet, from whose reputed tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and +his nieces. In November we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle +of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances +which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his +letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of +his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, "the wife of a merchant of +Venice," for some time his landlord. With this woman, whom he describes as +an antelope with oriental eyes, wavy hair, voice like the cooing of a +dove, and the spirit of a Bacchante, he remained on terms of intimacy +for about eighteen months, during which their mutual devotion was only +disturbed by some outbursts of jealousy. In December the poet took lessons +in Armenian, glad to find in the study something craggy to break his mind +upon. Ho translated into that language a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to +the Corinthians. Notes on the carnival, praises of _Christabel_, +instructions about the printing of _Childe Harold_ (iii.), protests +against the publication under his name of some spurious "domestic poems," +and constant references, doubtfully domestic, to his Adriatic lady, fill +up the records of 1816. On February 15, 1817, he announces to Murray the +completion of the first sketch of _Manfred_, and alludes to it in a +bantering manner as "a kind of poem in dialogue, of a wild metaphysical +and inexplicable kind;" concluding, "I have at least rendered it _quite +impossible_ for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has +given me the greatest contempt." + +About this time Byron seems to have entertained the idea of returning to +England in the spring, i.e. after a year's absence. This design, however, +was soon set aside, partly in consequence of a slow malarian fever, by +which he was prostrated for several weeks. On his partial recovery, +attributed to his having had neither medicine nor doctor, and a +determination to live till he had "put one or two people out of the +world," he started on an expedition to Rome. + +His first stage was Arqua; then Ferrara, where he was inspired, by a sight +of the Italian poet's prison, with the _Lament of Tasso_; the next, +Florence, where he describes himself as drunk with the beauty of the +galleries. Among the pictures, he was most impressed with the mistresses +of Raphael and Titian, to whom, along with Giorgione, he is always +reverential; and he recognized in Santa Croce the Westminster Abbey of +Italy. Passing through Foligno, he reached his destination early in May, +and met his old friends, Lord Lansdowne and Hobhouse. The poet employed +his short time at Rome in visiting on horseback the most famous sites in +the city and neighbourhood--as the Alban Mount, Tivoli, Frascati, the +Falls of Terni, and the Clitumnus--re-casting the crude first draft of the +third act of _Manfred_, and sitting for his bust to Thorwaldsen. Of this +sitting the sculptor afterwards gave some account to his compatriot, Hans +Andersen: "Byron placed himself opposite to me, but at once began to put +on a quite different expression from that usual to him. 'Will you not sit +still?' said I. 'You need not assume that look.' 'That is my expression,' +said Byron. 'Indeed,' said I; and I then represented him as I wished. When +the bust was finished he said, 'It is not at all like me; my expression is +more unhappy.'" West, the American, who five years later painted his +lordship at Leghorn, substantiates the above half-satirical anecdote, by +the remark, "He was a bad sitter; he assumed a countenance that did not +belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for _Chlde +Harold_." Thorwaldsen's bust, the first cast of which was sent to +Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous +likenesses of her brother, was often repeated. Professor Brandes, of +Copenhagen, introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to +the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great +sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character +so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight +impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the +restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to +hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant +impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power +(Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833) +executed the marble statue, first intended for the Abbey, which is now to +be seen in the library of Trinity College, in evidence that Cambridge is +still proud of her most brilliant son. + +Towards the close of the month--after almost fainting at the execution by +guillotine of three bandits--he professes impatience to get back to +Mariana, and early in the next we find him established with her near +Venice, at the villa of La Mira, where for some time he continued to +reside. His letters of June refer to the sale of Newstead, the mistake of +Mrs. Leigh and others in attributing to him the _Tales of a Landlord_, the +appearance of _Lalla Rookh_, preparations for _Marino Faliero_, and the +progress of _Childe Harold_ iv. This poem, completed in September, and +published early in 1818 (with a dedication to Hobhouse, who had supplied +most of the illustrative notes), first made manifest the range of the +poet's power. Only another slope of ascent lay between him and the +pinnacle, over which shines the red star of _Cain_. Had Lord Byron's +public career closed when he left England, he would have been remembered +for a generation as the author of some musical minor verses, a clever +satire, a journal in verse exhibiting flashes of genius, and a series of +fascinating romances--also giving promise of higher power--which had +enjoyed a marvellous popularity. The third and fourth cantos of _Childe +Harold_ placed him on another platform, that of the _Dii Majores_ of +English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by +a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown +how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand, +and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the +mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and +the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering. +Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of +Byron's; and even in the later parts of the _Childe_ there are careless +lines, and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again," +looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher +note. No familiarity can distract from "Waterloo," which holds its own by +Barbour's "Bannockburn," and Scott's "Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to +the climax of the opening, and the pathetic lament of the closing lines, +generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour. +There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an +appreciation of its exuberance of fancy, and negligence of diction; and +then the masterly sketch of Napoleon, with the implied reference to the +writer at the end. + +The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric +to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself, +in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set +beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint +pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is in verse a +splendid microcosm of the favourites, if not the prevailing mood, of the +writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It +is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The +poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhaetian hill, his +Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and +his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forgot +himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps, +Lake Leman, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the +stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame, as well as a +Diorama of Scenery. It is no mere versified Guide, because every +resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with +illustrious memories. Coblontz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens +an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and +Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in +Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the +lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back +Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and +Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and-- + + The starry Galileo and his woes. + +Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome, +that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous. +Hawthorne, in his _Marble Fawn_, comes nearest to him; but Byron's +Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of +Marius," says Scott, "could not sound more deep and solemn among the ruins +of Carthage, than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and +fallen statues of her subduer." As the third canto has a fitting close +with the poet's pathetic remembrance of his daughter, so the fourth is +wound up with consummate art,--the memorable dirge on the Princess +Charlotte being followed by the address to the sea, which, enduring +unwrinkled through all its ebbs and flows, seems to mock at the mutability +of human life. + +_Manfred_, his witch drama, as the author called it, has had a special +attraction for inquisitive biographers, because it has been supposed in +some dark manner to reveal the secrets of his prison house. Its lines have +been tortured, like the witches of the seventeenth century, to extort from +them the meaning of the "all nameless hour," and every conceivable horror +has been alleged as its _motif_. On this subject Goethe writes with a +humorous simplicity: "This singularly intellectual poet has extracted from +my _Faust_ the strongest nourishment for his hypochondria; but he has made +use of the impelling principles for his own purposes.... When a bold and +enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her +husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was +the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one to whom any +suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, but these +spirits have haunted him all his life. This romantic incident explains +innumerable allusions," e.g.,-- + + I have shed + Blood, but not hers,--and yet her blood was shed. + +Were it not for the fact that the poet had never seen the city in question +when he wrote the poem, this explanation would be more plausible than most +others, for the allusions are all to some lady who has been done to death. +Galt asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallowed +necromancy--a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous attributed to +Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot, but he kept teasing his +questioners with mysterious hints, e.g. "It was the Staubbach and the +Jungfrau, and something else more than Faustus, which made me write +_Manfred_;" and of one of his critics he says to Murray, "It had a better +origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him." In any case +most methods of reading between its lines would, if similarly applied, +convict Sophocles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakespeare of murder, +Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goethe of compacts with +the devil. Byron was no dramatist, but he had wit enough to vary at least +the circumstances of his projected personality. The memories of both +Fausts--the Elizabethan and the German--mingle, in the pages of this +piece, with shadows of the author's life; but to these it never gives, nor +could be intended to give, any substantial form. + +_Manfred_ is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of +Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and +sensational narrative. Like _Harold_, and Scott's _Marmion_, it just +misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description, +the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to +pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral +tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are +seldom absolutely fresh: that beginning, + + The mind, which is immortal, makes itself + Requital for its good or evil thoughts, + Is its own origin of ill and end, + And its own place and time, + +is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in +transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the +invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by +lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well, +e.g.,-- + + Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains; + They crowned him long ago, + On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, + With a null of snow; + +but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the +ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally; turn +to the incantation in the _Deformed Transformed_: the first line and a +half are in tune,-- + + Beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy, + Who sleeps in the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy. + +Nor Sternhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the +next two-- + + From the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape, + As the Being who made him, whose actions I ape(!) + +Of his songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in +beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation +"Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is +pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy +to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but +their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world. + +The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira, +and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the +Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in +his way; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories, +none of which wore "too improbable for the craving appetites of their +slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr. +Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards +given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the +_Academy_ of October 9th, 1869. In this document he says, "It has been +intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of +Lady Byron have declared their lips to be sealed up on the cause of the +separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up they are +not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will +be to open them." He goes on to state, that he repents having consented to +the separation--will be glad to cancel the deed, or to go before any +tribunal, to discuss the matter in the most public manner; adding, that +Mr. Hobhouse (in whose presence he was writing) proposed, on his part, to +go into court, and ending with a renewed asseveration of his ignorance of +the allegations against him, and his inability to understand for what +purpose they had been kept back, "unless it was to sanction the most +infamous calumnies by silence." Hobhouse, and others, during the four +succeeding years, ineffectually endeavoured to persuade the poet to return +to England. Moore and others insist that Byron's heart was at home when +his presence was abroad, and that, with all her faults, he loved his +country still. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, asserts that he cared nothing +for England or its affairs. Like many men of genius, Byron was never +satisfied with what he had at the time. "Romae Tibur amem ventosus Tibure +Romam." At Seaham he is bored to death, and pants for the excitement of +the clubs; in London society he longs for a desert or island in the +Cyclades; after their separation, he begins to regret his wife; after his +exile, his country. "Where," he exclaimed to Hobhouse, "is real comfort to +be found out of England?" He frequently fell into the mood in which he +wrote the verse,-- + + Yet I was born where men are proud to be, + Not without cause: and should I leave behind + Th'immortal island of the sage and free, + And seek me out a home by a remoter sea? + +But the following, to Murray (June 7, 1819), is equally sincere. "Some of +the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments +of Bologna; for instance-- + + 'Martini Luigi + Implora pace.' + + 'Lucrezia Picini + Implora eterna quiete.'" + +Can anything be more full of pathos? These few words say all that can be +said or sought; the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, +and this they implore. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and +death-like prayer that can arise from the grave--'implora pace.' "I hope, +whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigner's +burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see +these two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of +pickling and bringing me home to Clod, or Blunderbuss Hall. I am sure my +bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of +that country." Hunt's view is, in this as in other subtle respects, nearer +the truth than Moore's; for with all Byron's insight into Italian vice, he +hated more the master vice of England--hypocrisy; and much of his +greatest, and in a sense latest, because unfinished work, is the severest, +as it might be the wholesomest, satire ever directed against a great +nation since the days of Juvenal and Tacitus. + +In September (1817) Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed, +for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr. +Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his +kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in +Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters, in the Spezieria, and +afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand +Canal. Between this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La +Mira, he divided his time for the next two years. During the earlier part +of his Venetian career he had continued to frequent the salon of the +Countess Albrizzi, where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and +standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into +absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the company informing the hostess, in +answer to some inquiry regarding Canova's busts, that Washington, the +American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, "What, in the name of +folly, are you thinking of?" said Byron, perceiving that the speaker was +confounding Washington with Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards +transferred himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoni, and gave +himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on +this portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as +despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybele as a Sea-Sodom--when +he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad contemplation. +I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own +solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In +any case, he forsook the "Dame," and, by what his biographer calls a +"descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the wayward +state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours +among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818, +1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati +fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the +jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large +mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the +wife of a baker who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the +linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Senor Castelar has +almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown +shoulders, and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face +like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno--tall and energetic as a +pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as +"Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance. +Unable to read or write she intercepted his lordship's letters to little +purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half +the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when +her violences roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or +witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the +Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own +account, is sufficiently graphic:--"In the autumn one day, going to the +Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the +gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling +sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a +tight struggle, I found her on the open stops of the Mocenigo Palace on +the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and +the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her +brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her +dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made +her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest +that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that +moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me, +as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della +Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and +solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the +'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with +ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs." + +Some months after she became ungovernable--threw plates about, and +snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in +public places. Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to +break glass, and threaten "knives, poison, fire;" and on his calling his +boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the +canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which +he saw her only twice, at the theatre. Her whole picture is more like that +of Theroigne de Mericourt than that of Raphael's Fornarina, whose name she +received. + +Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life--personal +encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible +episodes; their basis being, that Byron on one occasion thrashed, on +another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, +and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called "the English fish," +"water-spaniel," "sea-devil," &c. One of the boatmen is reported to have +said, "He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord;" and in +answer to a traveller's inquiry, "Where does he get his poetry?" "He dives +for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally +abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, +and then took claret and soda in the morning. + +Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not +seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse +surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off _Beppo_, _Mazeppa_, and +the early books of _Don Juan_. The first canto of the last was written in +November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards +the close of the same year. _Beppo_, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like +a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the +author broke ground on his true satiric field--the satire of social +life--and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by _Whistlecraft_ +(Frere), was drafted in October, 1817, and appeared in May, 1818. It aims +at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and +unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease +of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In _Mazeppa_ the poet +reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the +headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it +a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling +of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as +anything in Burns-- + + The skies spun like a mighty wheel, + I saw the trees like drunkards reel. + +In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent +from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her +management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety +he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the +next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which +records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate +solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr. +Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in +that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing +like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference. +"Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous +as a vulture; health good, to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable, +but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do +as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her +mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of +the Shelleys then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of +Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had +thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care, +kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say +what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this +instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a _country_ town, in a +good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always +appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does _not_ proceed from a +_conventual_ education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of +their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state +of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is +like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the +sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he +says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education, +because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would +be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion +of 5000_l_. or 6000_l_. (his will leaving her 5000_l_., on condition that +she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she +might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a +pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that +she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as +it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It +only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of +fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the +news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly +prostrated. Next day he said, "Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than +we. It is God's will, let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath +the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the +date of birth and death, and the scripture-- + + I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me. + +The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his +life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at +Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the +midst of a thunderstorm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode +together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other +is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the +idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage +and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never +paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the +other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron +in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. + +The introduction to _Julian and Maddalo_, directly suggested by this +visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of +the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is +a person of the most consummate genius, and capable if he would direct his +energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. +But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his +own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an +intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and +his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead +of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have +mutually lent each other strength;" but "in social life no human being can +be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. +His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by +it as by a spell." + +Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este to his friend, and +during the autumn weeks of their residence there were written the lines +among the Euganean hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley +refers to the "tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the "music flung o'er +a mighty thunder-fit," and to the sunlike soul destined to immortalize his +ocean refuge,-- + + As the ghost of Homer clings + Round Seamander's wasting springs, + As divinest Shakespeare's might + Fills Avon and the world with light. + +"The sun," he says, at a later date, "has extinguished the glowworm;" and +again, "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no +other with whom it is worth contending." + +Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic; +and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade +of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be +lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of +the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a +greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest +characters in the history of our literature. There is at least no +difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed +by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense--easy to an +impassioned devotee--of inferiority. Similarly, most of the estimates-- +many already reversed, others reversible--by the men of that age, of each +other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated +both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats, +and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet +the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criticism is the respect +that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical +Tom Moore. + +This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short +tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble +friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing +expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this +visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's +personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his +life. Byron "had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had +suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the +features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other +times distinguished it, but although less romantic he appeared more +humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in +London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a +manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical +associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted +dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; +and when his companion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian +sunsets, he interrupted him with, "Come, d--n it, Tom, _don't_ be +poetical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would +be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace; +and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, +cried out, "Keep clear of the dog!" and a few paces farther, "Take care, +or the monkey will fly at you!" an incident recalling the old vagaries of +the menagerie at Newstead. The biographer's reminiscences mainly dwell on +his lordship's changing moods and tempers and gymnastic exercises, his +terror of interviewing strangers, his imperfect appreciation of art, his +preference of fish to flesh, his almost parsimonious economy in small +matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent +expressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the +city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mira, had a glimpse of +Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious +Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned +carrying in his hand a white leather bag. 'Look here,' he said, holding it +up; 'this would be worth something to Murray, though _you_, I dare say, +would not give sixpence for it.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'My life and +adventures,' he answered. 'It is not a thing,' he answered, 'that can be +published during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like. There, do +whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag, and thanking him most +warmly, I added, 'This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, who +shall astonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it.'"[2] +Shortly after, Moore for the last time bade his friend farewell, taking +with him from Madame Guiccioli, who did the honours of the house, an +introduction to her brother, Count Gamba, at Rome. "Theresa Guiccioli," +says Castelar, "appears like a star on the stormy horizon of the poet's +life." A young Romagnese, the daughter of a nobleman of Ravenna, of good +descent but limited means, she had been educated in a convent, and married +in her nineteenth year to a rich widower of sixty, in early life a friend +of Alfieri, and noted as the patron of the National Theatre. This +beautiful blonde, of pleasing manners, graceful presence, and a strong +vein of sentiment, fostered by the reading of Chateaubriand, met Byron for +the first time casually when she came in her bridal dress to one of the +Albrizzi reunions; but she was only introduced to him early in the April +of the following year, at the house of the Countess Benzoni. "Suddenly the +young Italian found herself inspired with a passion of which till that +moment her mind could not have formed the least idea; she had thought of +love but as an amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other +hand, gave what remained of a heart, never alienated from her by any other +mistress. Till the middle of the month they met every day; and when the +husband took her back to Ravenna she despatched to her idol a series of +impassioned letters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in +accordance with his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her +relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to the +summons, writing on his way the beautiful stanzas to the Po, beginning-- + + River that rollest by the ancient walls + Where dwells the lady of my love. + + [Footnote 2: In December, 1820, Byron sent several more sheets of + memoranda from Ravenna, and in the following year suggested an + arrangement by which Murray paid over to Moore, who was then in + difficulties, 2000_l_. for the right of publishing the whole, under + the condition, among others, that Lady Byron should see them, and have + the right of reply to anything that might seem to her objectionable. + She on her part declined to have anything to do with them. When the + Memoirs were destroyed, Moore paid back the 2000_l_., but obtained + four thousand guineas for editing the _Life and Correspondence_.] + +Again passing through Ferrara, and visiting Bologna, he left the latter on +the 8th, and on his arrival at his destination found the Countess +dangerously ill; but his presence, and the attentions of the famous +Venetian doctor, Aglietti, who was sent for by his advice, restored her. +The Count seems to have been proud of his guest. "I can't make him out at +all," Byron writes; "he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like +Whittington the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to +be, that he is completely governed by her--and, for that matter, so am I." +Later he speaks of having got his horses from Venice, and riding or +driving daily in the scenery reproduced in the third canto of _Don +Juan_:-- + + Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude + Of the pine forest, and the silent shore + Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. + +On Theresa's recovery, in dread of a possible separation he proposed to +fly with her to America, to the Alps, to "some unsuspected isle in the far +seas;" and she suggested the idea of feigning death, like Juliet, and +rising from the tomb. Neither expedient was called for. When the Count +went to Bologna, in August, with his wife, Lord Byron was allowed to +follow; and--after consoling himself during an excursion which the married +pair made to their estate, by hovering about her empty rooms and writing +in her books--he established himself, on the Count's return to his +headquarters, with her and Allegra at Bologna. Meanwhile, Byron had +written _The Prophecy of Dante_, and in August the prose letter, _To the +Editor of the British Review_, on the charge of bribery in _Don Juan_. +Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling composition +exists. About the same time, we hear of his leaving the theatre in a +convulsion of tears, occasioned by the representation of Alfieri's +_Mirra_. + +He left Bologna with the Countess on the 15th of September, when they +visited the Euganean hills and Arqua, and wrote their names together in +the Pilgrim's Book. On arriving at Venice, the physicians recommending +Madame Guiccioli to country air, they settled, still by her husband's +consent, for the autumn at La Mira, where Moore and others found them +domesticated. At the beginning of November the poet was prostrated by an +attack of tertian fever. In some of his hours of delirium he dictated to +his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Countess, a number of verses, which +she assures us were correct and sensible. He attributes his restoration to +cold water and the absence of doctors; but, ere his complete recovery, +Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his +own wife. The lovers had for a time not only to acquiesce in the +separation, but to agree to cease their correspondence. In December, Byron +in a fit of spleen had packed up his belongings, with a view to return to +England. "He was," we are told, "ready dressed for the journey, his boxes +on board the gondola, his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in +his hand, when my lord declares that if it should strike one--which it +did--before everything was in order, he would not go that day. It is +evident he had not the heart to go." Next day he heard that Madame +Guiccioli was again seriously ill, received and accepted the renewed +invitation which bound him to her and to the south. He left Venice for the +last time almost by stealth, rushed along the familiar roads, and was +welcomed at Ravenna. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +1820-1821. + +RAVENNA--DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT. + +Byrons's life at Ravenna was during the first months comparatively calm; +nevertheless, he mingled in society, took part in the Carnival, and was +received at the parties of the Legate. "I may stay," he writes in January, +1820, "a day--a week--a year--all my life." Meanwhile, he imported his +movables from Venice, hired a suite of rooms in the Guiccioli palace, +executed his marvellously close translation of Pulci's _Morgante +Maggiore_, wrote his version of the story of _Francesca of Rimini_, and +received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Humphrey Davy. At +this time he was accustomed to ride about armed to the teeth, apprehending +a possible attack from assassins on the part of Count Guiccioli. In April +his letters refer to the insurrectionary movements then beginning against +the Holy Alliance. "We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they +have over-written all the city walls with 'Up with the Republic!' and +'Death to the Pope!' The police have been searching for the subscribers, +but have caught none as yet. The other day they confiscated the whole +translation of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, and have prosecuted +the translator." In July a Papal decree of separation between the Countess +and her husband was obtained, on condition of the latter paying from his +large income a pittance to the lady of 200 _l_. a year, and her +undertaking to live in her father's house--an engagement which was, first +in the spirit, and subsequently in the letter, violated. For a time, +however, she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where +she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of +July he had finished _Marino Faliero_, and ere the close of the year the +fifth canto of _Don Juan_. in September he says to Murray, "I am in a +fierce humour, at not having Scott's _Monastery_. No more Keats,[1] I +entreat. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. I +don't feel inclined to care further about _Don Juan_. What do you think a +very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that +'it would live longer than _Childe Harold_'? 'Ah! but I would rather have +the fame of _Childe Harold_ for three years than an immortality of _D. +J._'" This is to-day the common female judgment; it is known to have been +La Guiccioli's, as well as Mrs. Leigh's, and by their joint persuasion +Byron was for a season induced to lay aside "that horrid, wearisome Don." +About this time he wrote the memorable reply to the remarks on that poem +in _Blackwood's Magazine_', where he enters on a defence of his life, +attacks the Lakers, and champions Pope against the new school of poetry, +lamenting that his own practice did not square with his precept; and +adding, "We are all wrong, except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." + + [Footnote 1: In a note on a similar passage, bearing the date November + 12, 1821, he, however, confesses:--"My indignation at Mr. Keats' + depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own + genius, which malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style was + undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually + inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss + to our literature."] + +In November he refers to reports of his letters being opened by the +Austrian officials, and the unpleasant things the Huns, as he calls them, +are likely to find therein. Early in the next month he tells Moore that +the commandant of their troops, a brave officer, but obnoxious to the +people, had been found lying at his door, with five slugs in him, and, +bleeding inwardly, had died in the palace, where he had been brought to be +nursed. + +This incident is versified in _Don Juan_, v. 33-39, with anatomical +minuteness of detail. After trying in vain to wrench an answer out of +death, the poet ends in his accustomed strain-- + + But it was all a mystery. Here we are, + And there we go:--but _where_? Five bits of lead-- + Or three, or two, or one--send very far! + +Assassination has sometimes been the prelude to revolution, but it may be +questioned if it has over promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently +it has served as a pretext for reaction, or a red signal. In this +instance--as afterwards in 1848--overt acts of violence made the powers of +despotism more alert, and conduced with the half-hearted action of their +adversaries to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy +with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new associations. +Theresa's brother, Count Pietro, an enthusiastic young soldier, having +returned from Rome and Naples, surmounting a prejudice not wholly +unnatural, became attached to him, and they entered into a partnership in +behalf of what--adopting a phrase often flaunted in opposite camps--they +called constitutional principles. Finally the poet so committed himself to +the party of insurrection that, though his nationality secured him from +direct attack, his movements were necessarily affected by the fiasco. In +July the Gambas were banished from the Romagna, Pietro being actually +carried by force over the frontier; and, according to the articles of her +separation, the Countess had to follow them to Florence. Byron lingered +for some mouths, partly from a spirit of defiance, and partly from his +affection towards a place where he had enlisted the regards of numerous +beneficiaries. The Gambas were for some time bent on migrating to +Switzerland; but the poet, after first acquiescing, subsequently conceived +a violent repugnance to the idea, and early in August wrote to Shelley, +earnestly requesting his presence, aid, and counsel. Shelley at once +complied, and, entering into a correspondence with Madame Guiccioli, +succeeded in inducing her relatives to abandon their transmontane plans, +and agree to take up their headquarters at Pisa. This incident gave rise +to a series of interesting letters, in which the younger poet gives a +vivid and generous account of the surroundings and condition of his +friend. On the 2nd of August he writes from Ravenna:--"I arrived last +night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord B. till five this +morning. He was delighted to see me. He has, in fact, completely recovered +his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at +Venice.... Poor fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and +literature. We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night, +and, as usual, differed, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronize +a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, +although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance +of this system, yet I recognize the pernicious effects of it in the _Doge +of Venice_." Again, on the 15th: "Lord B. is greatly improved in every +respect--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, and happiness. +His connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He +lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about +4000_l_. a year, 1000_l_. of which he devotes to purposes of charity. +Switzerland is little fitted for him; the gossip and the cabals of those +Anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before. Ravenna is a +miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. He +has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of _Don Juan_. It sets him +not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day. Every word has +the stamp of immortality.... I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a +direct view of demanding a contribution. I am sure, if I asked, it would +not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. +Lord B. and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or +were I a writer who had no claim to a higher position than I possess, I +would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case." Later, after +stating that Byron had decided upon Tuscany, he says, in reference to La +Guiccioli, "At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she +says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, +la vostra bonta mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accordarete +voi? _Non partite da Ravenna senza milord_.' Of course, being now by all +the laws of knighthood captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at +liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa." + +Shelley took his leave, after a visit of ten days' duration, about the +17th or 18th of April. In a letter, dated August 26, he mentions having +secured for his lordship the Palazzo Lanfranchi, an old spacious building +on the Lung' Arno, once the family residence of the destroyers of Ugolino, +and still said to be haunted by their ghosts. Towards the close of +October, he says they have been expecting him any day those six weeks. +Byron, however, did not leave till the morning of the 29th. On his road, +there occurred at Imola the accidental meeting with Lord Clare. Clare--who +on this occasion merely crossed his friend's path on his way to Rome--at a +later date came on purpose from Geneva before returning to England to +visit the poet, who, then at Leghorn, recorded in a letter to Moore his +sense of this proof of old affection undecayed. At Bologna--his next +stage--he met Rogers by appointment, and the latter has preserved his +memory of the event in well-known lines. Together they revisited Florence +and its galleries, where they were distracted by the crowds of +sight-seeing visitors. Byron must have reached Pisa not later than the 2nd +of November (1821), for his first letter from there bears the date of the +3rd. + +The later months of the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense +literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the +controversy with Bowles about Pope, i.e. between the extremes of Art +against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most +part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine expression +of a reaction against a reaction. To this year belong the greater number +of the poet's Historical Dramas. What was said of these, at the time by +Jeffrey, Heber, and others, was said with justice; it is seldom that the +criticism of our day finds so little to reverse in that of sixty years +ago. + +The author, having shown himself capable of being pathetic, sarcastic, +sentimental, comical, and sublime, we would be tempted to think that he +had written these plays to show, what no one before suspected, that he +could also be dull, were it not for his own exorbitant estimation of them. +Lord Byron had few of the powers of a great dramatist; he had little +architectural imagination, or capacity to conceive and build up a whole. +His works are mainly masses of fine, splendid, or humorous writing, heaped +together; the parts are seldom forged into one, or connected by any +indissoluble link. His so-called Dramas are only poems divided into +chapters. Further, he had little of what Mr. Ruskin calls penetrative +imagination. So it has been plausibly said that he made his men after his +own image, his women after his own heart. The former are, indeed, rather +types of what he wished to be than what he was. They are better, and +worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but +less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he +tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result +is either unreal or uninteresting. _Marino Faliero_, begun April, finished +July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe--which was, +however, suppressed--was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early +in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted--and damned. + +Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his +plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of +self-deception when he asserts that he did not mean them to be popular; +but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. _Marino Faliero_, in +particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins--old Grobius himself--"to +be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet +had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it +is none the less unnatural. The characters are comparatively commonplace, +the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the +inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of +Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative. The speeches of the Doge are +solemn, but prolix, if not ostentatious, and--perhaps the vital +defect--his cause fails to enlist our sympathies. Artistically, this play +was Byron's most elaborate attempt to revive the unities and other +restrictions of the severe style, which, when he wrote, had been +"vanquished in literature." "I am persuaded," he writes in the preface, +"that a great tragedy is not to be produced by following the old +dramatists, who are full of faults, but by producing regular dramas like +the Greeks." He forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek +dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a +confession of failure; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity +could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are, +first, the cry for vengeance--the feeling of affronted or unsatiated +pride,--that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the +enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The +following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit +of protest against the more selfish "greasy domesticity" of the Georgian +era:-- + + I. BER. Such ties are not + For those who are called to the high destinies + Which purify corrupted commonwealths: + We must forget all feelings save the one, + We must resign all passions save our purpose, + We must behold no object save our country, + And only look on death as beautiful + So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven, + And draw down freedom on her evermore. + + CAL. But if we fail--? + + I. BER. They never fail who die + In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; + Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs + Be strung to city gates and castle walls, + But still their spirit walks abroad. + +--a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the +precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty. + +Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna, +between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the +following December, is another record of the same failure and the same +mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points +out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect. +The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently +adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, +he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the +tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina +produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano, +though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not +rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace +of Iago's subtle genius. + +In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May, +and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last +reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme-- + + Thirteen hundred years + Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale, + +by the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the development of the +chief character, made more vivid by its being distinctly autobiographical. +Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing +himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been +often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen +Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife; but in his portrait of +the former the author's defective capacity to represent national character +is manifest: Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zuleika. In the +domestic play of _Werner_--completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and +published in November, there is no merit either of plan or execution; for +the plot is taken, with little change, from "The German's Tale," written +by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout prosaic. Byron was never a +master of blank verse; but _Werner_, his solo success on the modern +British stage, is written in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he +cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good +as any in the play. + +The _Deformed Transformed_, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten +novel called _The Three Brothers_, with reminiscences of _Faust_, and +possibly of Scott's _Black Dwarf_, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not +published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the +bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional +charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the +Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed +by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The +_Deformed Transformed_ bears somewhat the same relation to _Manfred as +Heaven and Earth_--an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the +Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's +_Loves of the Angels_, on a similar theme--does to _Cain_. The last named, +begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author's +highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century. In _Cain_ +Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either +accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death, +of good and ill. In dealing with these his position is not that of one +justifying the ways of God to man--though he somewhat disingenuously +appeals to Milton in his defence--nor that of the definite antagonism of +_Queen Mab_. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley +cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that +commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the +word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he +never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a +fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of _Cain_ is almost +wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a +dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside +with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted +tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.-- + + CAIN. Then my father's God did well + When he prohibited the fatal tree. + + LUCIFER. But had done better in not planting it. + +Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is +restored by antidotes-- + + Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil + Springs good! + + LUCIFER. What didst thou answer? + + CAIN. Nothing; for + He is my father; but I thought, that 'twere + A better portion for the animal + Never to have been stung at all. + +This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a +spirit in which much of the grandeur of Milton's Satan is added to the +subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced, +rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he +was born,--"I sought not to be born"--the answer, that toil is a good, +being precluded by its authoritative representation as a punishment; in +which mood he is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter, +who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful +visitation of the yet untasted death; when Adah, entering, takes him at +first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to +Eve, and comparison of the "heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss" in +Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose +fascination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as +is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female +character, to show that God cannot be alone,-- + + What else can joy be, but diffusing joy? + +Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other angels is more after the +style of Shelley than anything else in Byron-- + + As the silent sunny moon, + All light, they look upon us. But thou seemst + Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds + Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars + Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault + With things that look as if they would be suns-- + So beautiful, unnumber'd and endearing; + Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them, + They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou. + +The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and +through the Hades of "uncreated night," with the vision of long-wrecked +worlds, and the interminable gloomy realms + + Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes, + +--suggested, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier--leaves us +with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of +English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more +versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he +so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair +speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank, +like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is +summed in the lines on the fatal tree,-- + + It was a lying tree--for we _know_ nothing; + At least, it _promised knowledge_ at the price + Of death--but _knowledge_ still; but, what _knows_ man? + +A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, "Behold, +we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's +reply to the question--what is more beautiful to him than all that he has +seen in the "unimaginable ether"?-- + + My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven, + The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb + Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world-- + The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming-- + His setting indescribable, which fills + My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold + Him sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him + Along that western paradise of clouds + The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice-- + The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love, + And mingles with the song of cherubim, + As the day closes over Eden's walls:-- + All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, + Like Adah's face. + +Lucifer's speech, at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be +absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir +Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say +what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah, +especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the +'wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare, ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems +to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a +touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who +is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres +"singing in thunder round" him--the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek +of Zillah-- + + Father! Eve! + Adah! Come hither! Death is in the world; + +Cain's rallying from stupor-- + + I am awake at last--a dreary dream + Had madden'd me,--but he shall never wake: + +the curse of Eve; and the close--[Greek: meizon ae kata dakrua] + + CAIN. Leave me. + + ADAH. Why all have left thee. + + CAIN. And wherefore lingerest thou? Dost thou not fear? + + ADAH. I fear + Nothing, except to leave thee. + + * * * * * + + CAIN. Eastward from Eden will we take our way. + + ADAH. Leave! thou shalt be my guide; and may our God + Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children. + + CAIN. And _he_ who lieth there was childless. I + Have dried the fountain of a gentle race. + O Abel! + + ADAH. Peace be with him. + + CAIN. But with _me_! + +_Cain_, between which and the _Cenci_ lies the award of the greatest +single performance in dramatic shape of our century, raised a storm. It +was published, with _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two Foscari_ in December, +1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elze's remark-- +"In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of +thought. The converse is the case with us Germans; freedom of thought is +restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism +presents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it appeared as if a +literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the +cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage of insular +orthodoxy was in proportion to its impotence. Every scribbler with a +cassock denounced the book and its author, though few attempted to answer +him. The hubbub was such that Byron wrote to Murray, authorizing him to +disclaim all responsibility, and offering to refund the payment he had +received. "Say that both you and Mr. Gilford remonstrated. I will come to +England to stand trial. 'Me, me, adsum qui feci,'"--and much to the same +effect. The book was pirated; and on the publisher's application to have +an injunction, Lord Eldon refused to grant it. The majority of the minor +reviewers became hysterical, and Dr. Watkins, amid much almost +inarticulate raving, said that Sir Walter Scott, who had gratefully +accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of +_Cain_ upon his brow. Several even of the higher critics took fright. +Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the +work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its +"frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its +spirit was more dangerous than that of _Paradise Lost_--and succeeded. The +_Quarterly_ began to cool towards the author. Moore wrote to him, that +Cain was "wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but "dreaded and +deprecated" the influence of Shelley. Byron showed the letter to Shelley, +who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the +smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only +wished he had, as he would "employ it to eradicate from his great mind the +delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in +ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes: +"What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer +poetry than has appeared in England since _Paradise Lost_. Cain is +apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the +same strain, Scott says of the author of the "grand and tremendous drama:" +"He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The worst effect of +those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain +himself,--to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering +habit of mind. Great writers in our country have frequently stirred +difficult questions in religion and life, and then seemed to be half +scared, like Rouget de Lisle, by the reverberation of their own voices. +Shelley almost alone was always ready to declare, "I meant what I said, +and stand to it." + +Byron having, with or without design, arraigned some of the Thirty-Nine +Articles of his countrymen, proceeded in the following month (October +1821) to commit an outrage, yet more keenly resented, on the memory of +their sainted king, the pattern of private virtue and public vice, George +III. The perpetration of this occurred in the course of the last of his +numerous literary duels, of which it was the close. That Mr. Southey was a +well-meaning and independent man of letters, there can be no doubt. It +does not require the conclusive testimony of the esteem of Savage Landor +to compel our respect for the author of the _Life of Nelson_, and the +open-handed friend of Coleridge; nor is it any disparagement that, with +the last-named and with Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his +political and other opinions. But in his dealings with Lord Byron, Southey +had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior +powers, for whom his utter want of humour--save in its comparatively +childish forms--made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty +in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The +strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its +height when his lordship, in the humorous observations and serious defence +of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August), +accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander. + +In 1821, when the latter published his _Vision of Judgment_--the most +quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned--he prefixed to it a long +explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes _Don Juan_ as a +"monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," +regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes +the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of +Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his +death-bed. To which Byron, _inter alia_: "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly +ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance of the objects +of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,' +in prose, as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's +sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of +existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, +with most men of any reflection, _I_ have not waited for a death-bed to +repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which +this pitiful renegade in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him." +This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable; +but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To +this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive +denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding +iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public +panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old. + +In February Byron, having seen this assault in the _Courier_, writes off +in needless heat, "I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to +be done is to call him out,"--and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance. +Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judiciously suppressed +it, and the author's thirst for literary blood was destined to remain +unquenched. Meanwhile he had written his own _Vision of Judgment_. This +extraordinary work, having been refused by both Murray and Longman, +appeared in 1822 in the pages of the _Liberal_. It passed the bounds of +British endurance; and the publisher, Mr. John Hunt, was prosecuted and +fined for the publication. + +Readers of our day will generally admit that the "gouty hexameters" of the +original poem, which celebrates the apotheosis of King George in heaven, +are much more blasphemous than the _ottava rima_ of the travesty, which +professes to narrate the difficulties of his getting there. Byron's +_Vision of Judgment_ is as unmistakably the first of parodies as the +_Iliad_ is the first of epics, or the _Pilgrim's Progress_ the first of +allegories. In execution it is almost perfect. _Don Juan_ is in scope and +magnitude a far wider work; but no considerable series of stanzas in _Don +Juan_ are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every +epithet hits the white; every line that does not convulse with laughter +stings or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all +its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such +space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much +scathing satire. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +1821-1823. + +PISA--GENOA--DON JUAN. + +Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs, +fowls, servants, and a monkey, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo +Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in +the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed +in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received +visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his +pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the +most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good +shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his hand often shook, he made +allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he +set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The +early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La +Guiccioli--now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations, +established under the same roof--and then sat late over his verses. He was +disposed to be more sociable than at Venice or Ravenna, and occasionally +entertained strangers; but his intimate acquaintanceship was confined to +Captain Williams and his wife, and Shelley's cousin, Captain Medwin. The +latter used frequently to dine and sit with his host till the morning, +collecting materials for the _Conversations_ which he afterwards gave to +the world. The value of these reminiscences is impaired by the fact of +their recording, as serious revelations, the absurd confidences in which +the poet's humour for mystification was wont to indulge. Another of the +group, an Irishman, called Taafe, is made, in his Lordship's +correspondence of the period, to cut a somewhat comical figure. The +master-passion of this worthy and genial fellow was to get a publisher for +a fair commentary on Dante, to which he had firmly linked a very bad +translation, and for about six months Byron pesters Murray with constant +appeals to satisfy him; e.g. November l6, "He must be gratified, though +the reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his +original." March 6, "He will die if he is not published; he will be damned +if he is; but that he don't mind." March 8, "I make it a point that he +shall be in print; it will make the man so exuberantly happy. He is such a +good-natured Christian that we must give him a shove through the press. +Besides, he has had another fall from his horse into a ditch." Taafe, +whose horsemanship was on a par with his poetry, can hardly have been +consulted as to the form assumed by these apparently fruitless +recommendations, so characteristic of the writer's frequent kindliness and +constant love of mischief. About this time Byron received a letter from +Mr. Shepherd, a gentleman in Somersetshire, referring to the death of his +wife, among whose papers he had found the record of a touching, because +evidently heart-felt, prayer for the poet's reformation, conversion, and +restored peace of mind. To this letter he at once returned an answer. +marked by much of the fine feeling of his best moods. Pisa, December 8: +"Sir, I have received your letter. I need not say that the extract which +it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling +to have read it with indifference.... Your brief and simple picture of the +excellent person, whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated +without the admiration due to her virtues and her pure and unpretending +piety. I do not know that I ever met with anything so unostentatiously +beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great +advantage over all others--for this simple reason, that if true they will +have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be +with the infidel in his eternal sleep.... But a man's creed does not +depend upon _himself_: who can say, I _will_ believe this, that, or the +other? and least of all that which he least can comprehend.... I can +assure you that not all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher +notions of its own importance, would ever weigh in my mind against the +pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in +my behalf. In this point of view I would not exchange the prayer of the +deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and +Napoleon." + +The letter to Lady Byron, which he afterwards showed to Lady Blessington, +must have borne about the same date; and we have a further indication of +his thoughts reverting homeward in an urgent request to Murray--written on +December 10th, Ada's sixth birthday--to send his daughter's miniature. +After its arrival nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be told of its +strong likeness to himself. In the course of the same month an event +occurred which strangely illustrates the manners of the place, and the +character of the two poets. An unfortunate fanatic having taken it into +his head to steal the wafer-box out of a church at Lucca, and being +detected, was, in accordance with the ecclesiastical law till lately +maintained against sacrilege, condemned to be burnt alive. Shelley, who +believed that the sentence would really be carried into effect, proposed +to Byron that they should gallop off together, and by aid of their +servants rescue by force the intended victim. Byron, however, preferred in +the first place, to rely on diplomacy; some vigorous letters passed; +ultimately a representation, convoyed by Taafe to the English Ambassador, +led to a commutation of the sentence, and the man was sent to the galleys. + +The January of 1822 was marked by the addition to the small circle of +Captain E.J. Trelawny, the famous rover and bold free-lance (long sole +survivor of the remarkable group), who accompanied Lord Byron to Greece, +and has recorded a variety of incidents of the last months of his life. +Trelawny, who appreciated Shelley with an intensity that is often apt to +be exclusive, saw, or has reported, for the most part the weaker side of +Byron. We are constrained to accept as correct the conjecture that his +judgment was biassed by their rivalry in physical prowess, and the +political differences which afterwards developed between them. Letters to +his old correspondents--to Scott about the _Waverleys_, to Murray about +the Dramas, and the _Vision of Judgment_, and _Cain_--make up almost the +sole record of the poet's pursuits during the five following months. In +February 6th he sent, through Mr. Kinnaird, the challenge to Southey, of +the suppression of which he was not aware till May 17. The same letter +contains a sheaf of the random cynicisms, as--"Cash is virtue," "Money is +power; and when Socrates said he knew nothing, he meant he had not a +drachma"--by which he sharpened the shafts of his assailants. A little +later, on occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with +natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish +against his daughter Ada seeing his portrait. In March he sat, along with +La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini. On the 24th, when the company +were on one of their riding excursions outside the town, a half-drunken +dragoon on horseback broke through them, and by accident or design knocked +Shelley from his seat. Byron, pursuing him along the Lung' Arno, called +for his name, and, taking him for an officer, flung his glove. The sound +of the fray brought the servants of the Lanfranchi to the door; and one of +them, it was presumed--though in the scuffle everything remained +uncertain--seriously wounded the dragoon in the side. An investigation +ensued, as the result of which the Gambas were ultimately exiled from +Tuscany, and the party of friends was practically broken up. Shelley and +his wife, with the Williamses and Trelawny, soon after settled at the +Villa Magni at Lerici in the Gulf of Spezia. Byron, with the Countess and +her brother, established themselves in the Villa Rossa at Monte Nero, a +suburb of Leghorn, from which port at this date the remains of Allegra +were conveyed to England. + +Among the incidents of this residence were, the homage paid to the poet by +a party of Americans; the painting of his portrait (and that of La +Guiccioli) by the artist West, who has left a pleasing account of his +visits; Byron's letter making inquiry about the country of Bolivar (where +it was his fancy to settle); and another of those disturbances by which he +seemed destined to be harassed. One of his servants--among whom were +unruly spirits, apparently selected with a kind of _Corsair_ bravado,--had +made an assault on Count Pietro, wounding him in the face. This outburst, +though followed by tears and penitence, confirmed the impression of the +Tuscan police that the whole company were dangerous, and made the +Government press for their departure. In the midst of the uproar, there +suddenly appeared at the villa Mr. Leigh Hunt, with his wife and six +children. They had taken passage to Genoa, where they were received by +Trelawny, in command of the "Bolivar"--a yacht constructed in that port +for Lord Byron, simultaneously with the "Don Juan" for Shelley. The +latter, on hearing of the arrival of his friends, came to meet them at +Leghorn, and went with them to Pisa. Early in July they were all +established on the Lung' Arno, having assigned to them the ground floor of +the palazzo. + +We have now to deal briefly--amid conflicting asseverations it is hard to +deal fairly--with the last of the vexatiously controverted episodes which +need perplex our narrative. Byron, in wishing Moore from Ravenna a merry +Christmas for 1820, proposes that they shall embark together in a +newspaper, "with some improvement on the plan of the present scoundrels," +"to give the age some new lights on policy, poesy, biography, criticism, +morality, theology," &c. Moore absolutely refusing to entertain the idea, +Hunt's name was brought forward in connexion with it, during tho visit of +Shelley. Shortly after the return of the latter to Pisa, he writes (August +26) to Hunt, stating that Byron was anxious to start a periodical work, to +be conducted in Italy, and had proposed that they should both go shares in +the concern, on which follow some suggestions of difficulties about money. +Nevertheless, in August, 1821, he presses Hunt to come. Moore, on the +other hand, strongly remonstrates against the project. "I heard some days +ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to you with all his family; and the +idea seems to be that you and he and Shelley are to conspire together in +the _Examiner_. I deprecate such a plan with all my might. Partnerships in +fame, like those in trade, make the strongest party answer for the rest. I +tremble even for you with such a bankrupt Co.! You must stand alone." +Shelley--who had, in the meantime, given his bond to Byron for an advance +of 200_l_. towards the expenses of his friends, besides assisting them +himself to the utmost of his power--began, shortly before their arrival, +to express grave doubts as to the success of the alliance. His last +published letter--written July 5th, 1822--after they had settled at Pisa, +is full of forebodings. On the 8th he set sail in the "Don Juan"-- + + That fatal and perfidious bark, + Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, + +and was overtaken by the storm in which he perished. Three days after, +Trelawny rode to Pisa, and told Byron of his fears, when the poet's lips +quivered, and his voice faltered. On the 22nd of July the bodies of +Shelley, Williams, and Vivian, were cast ashore. On the 16th August, Hunt, +Byron, and Trelawny were present at the terribly weird cremation, which +they have all described. At a later date, the two former were seized with +a fit of delirium which is one of the phases of the tension of grief. +Byron's references to the event are expressions less of the loss which he +indubitably felt, than of his indignation at the "world's wrong." "Thus," +he writes, "there is another man gone, about whom the world was +ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do +him justice now, when he can be no better for it." Towards the end of the +same letter the spirit of his dead friend seems to inspire the sentence +--"With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present +clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is +against fearful odds, but the battle must be fought." + +Meanwhile, shortly after the new settlement at the Lanfranchi, the +preparations for issuing the _Liberal_, edited by Leigh Hunt in Italy, and +published by John Hunt in London, progressed. The first number, which +appeared in September, was introduced, after a few words of preface, by +the _Vision of Judgment_, with the signature Quevedo Redivivus, and +adorned by Shelley's translation of the "May-Day Night," in _Faust_. It +contained besides, the _Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review_, +an indifferent Florentine story, a German apologue, and a gossiping +account of Pisa, presumably by Hunt. Three others followed, containing +Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, his translation of the _Morgante Maggiore_, +and _The Blues_--a very slight, if not silly, satire on literary ladies; +some of Shelley's posthumous minor poems, among them "I arise from dreams +of thee," and a few of Hazlitt's essays, including, however, none of his +best. Leigh Hunt himself wrote most of the rest, one of his contributions +being a palpable imitation of _Don Juan_, entitled the _Book of +Beginnings_, but he confesses that owing to his weak health and low +spirits at the time, none of these did justice to his ability; and the +general manner of the magazine being insufficiently vigorous to carry off +the frequent eccentricity of its matter, the prejudices against it +prevailed, and the enterprise came to an end. Partners in failing concerns +are apt to dispute; in this instance the unpleasantness which arose at the +time rankled in the mind of the survivor, and gave rise to his singularly +tasteless and injudicious book--a performance which can be only in part +condoned by the fact of Hunt's afterwards expressing regret, and +practically withdrawing it. He represents himself throughout as a +much-injured man, lured to Italy by misrepresentations, that he might give +the aid of his journalistic experience and undeniable talents to the +advancement of a mercenary enterprise, and that when it failed he was +despised, insulted, and rejected. Byron, on the other hand, declares, "The +Hunts pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented;" +and his subsequent action in the matter, if not always gentle never +unjust, goes to verify his statements in the letters of the period. "I am +afraid," he writes from Genoa, Oct. 9, 1822, "the journal is a bad +business. I have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it +is almost useless. His wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, +and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child." Later he says to +Murray, "You and your friends, by your injudicious rudeness, cement a +connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered, +would not in all probability have continued. As it is ... I can't leave +them among the breakers." On February 20th we have, his last word on the +subject, to the same effect. + +In the following sentences, Moore seems to give a fair statement of the +motives which led to the establishment of the unfortunate journal--"The +chief inducements on the part of Lord Byron to this unworthy alliance +were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of his friend +Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to Italy; and in the next, a desire to avail +himself of the aid of one so experienced as an editor in the favourite +object he has so long contemplated of a periodical work in which all the +offspring of his genius might be received as they sprung to light." For +the accomplishment of this purpose Mr. Leigh Hunt was a singularly +ill-chosen associate. A man of Radical opinions on all matters, not only +of religion but of society--opinions which he acquired and held easily but +firmly--could never recognize the propriety of the claim to deference +which "the noble poet" was always too eager to assert, and was inclined to +take liberties which his patron perhaps superciliously repelled. Mrs. Hunt +does not seem to have been a very judicious person. "Trelawny here," said +Byron jocularly, "has been speaking against my morals." "It is the first +time I ever heard of them," she replied. Mr. Hunt, by his own admission, +had "peculiar notions on the subject of money." Byron, on his part, was +determined not to be "put upon," and doled out through his steward stated +allowances to Hunt, who says that only "stern necessity and a large +family" induced him to accept them. Hunt's expression that the 200_l_. +was, _in the first instance_, a debt to Shelley, points to the conclusion +that it was remitted on that poet's death. Besides this, Byron maintained +the family till they left Genoa for Florence in 1823, and defrayed up to +that date all their expenses. He gave his contributions to the _Liberal_ +gratis; and, again by Hunt's own confession, left to him and his brother +the profits of the proprietorship. According to Mr. Galt "The whole extent +of the pecuniary obligation appears not to have exceeded 500 _l_.; but, +little or great, the manner in which it was recollected reflects no credit +either on the head or heart of the debtor." + +Of the weaknesses on which the writer--bent on verifying Pope's lines on +Atossa--from his vantage in the ground-floor, was enabled to dilate, many +are but slightly magnified. We are told for instance, in very many words, +that Byron clung to the privileges of his rank while wishing to seem above +them; that he had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle +and Gibbon supplied him with the learning he had left at school; that, +being a good rider with a graceful seat, he liked to be told of it; that +he showed letters he ought not to have shown; that he pretended to think +worse of Wordsworth than he did; that he knew little of art or music, +adored Rossini, and called Rubens a dauber; that, though he wrote _Don +Juan_ under gin and water, he had not a strong head, &c., &c. It is true, +but not new. But when Hunt proceeds to say that Byron had no sentiment; +that La Guiccioli did not really care much about him; that he admired +Gifford because he was a sycophant, and Scott because he loved a lord; +that he had no heart for anything except a feverish notoriety; that he was +a miser from his birth, and had "as little regard for liberty as +Allieri,"--it is new enough, but it is manifestly not true. Hunt's book, +which begins with a caricature on the frontispiece, and is inspired in the +main by uncharitableness, yet contains here and there gleams of a deeper +insight than we find in all the volumes of Moore--an insight, which, in +spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of +a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to +avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much +admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in +his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory +a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him +for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as they supposed +themselves, and that they might take as well as give lessons of humanity, +by a candid comparison of notes with civilization at large." + +In July, when at Leghorn, the Gambas received orders to leave Tuscany; and +on his return to Pisa, Byron, being persecuted by the police, began to +prepare for another change. After entertaining projects about Greece, +America, and Switzerland--Trelawny undertaking to have the "Bolivar" +conveyed over the Alps to the Lake of Geneva--he decided on following his +friends to Genoa. He left in September with La Guiccioli, passed by Lerici +and Sestri, and then for the ten remaining mouths of his Italian life took +up his quarters at Albaro, about a mile to the east of the city, in the +Villa Saluzzo, which Mrs. Shelley had procured for him and his party. She +herself settled with the Hunts--who travelled about the same time, at +Byron's expense, but in their own company--in the neighbouring Casa +Negroto. Not far off, Mr. Savage Landor was in possession of the Casa +Pallavicini, but there was little intercourse between the three. Landor +and Byron, in many respects more akin than any other two Englishmen of +their age, were always separated by an unhappy bar or intervening mist. +The only family with whom the poet maintained any degree of intimacy was +that of the Earl of Blessington, consisting of the Earl himself--a gouty +old gentleman, with stories about him of the past--the Countess, and her +sister, Miss Power, and the "cupidon dechaine," the Anglo-French Count +Alfred d'Orsay--who were to take part in stories of the future. In the +spring of 1823, Byron persuaded them to occupy the Villa Paradiso, and was +accustomed to accompany them frequently on horseback excursions along the +coast to their favourite Nervi. It has been said that Lady Blessington's +_Conversations with Lord Byron_ are, as regards trustworthiness, on a par +with Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_. Let this be so, they are still of +interest on points of fact which it must have been easier to record than +to imagine. However adorned, or the reverse, by the fancies of a habitual +novelist, they convey the impressions of a goodhumoured, lively, and +fascinating woman, derived from a more or less intimate association with +the most brilliant man of the age. Of his personal appearance--a matter of +which she was a good judge--we have the following: "One of Byron's eyes +was larger than the other; his nose was rather thick, so he was best seen +in profile; his mouth was splendid, and his scornful expression was real, +not affected; but a sweet smile often broke through his melancholy. He was +at this time very pale and thin (which indicates the success of his +regimen of reduction since leaving Venice). His hair was dark brown, here +and there turning grey. His voice was harmonious, clear and low. There is +some gaucherie in his walk, from his attempts to conceal his lameness. +Ada's portrait is like him, and he is pleased at the likeness, but hoped +she would not turn out to be clever--at any events not poetical. He is +fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but +is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of +self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, +by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of +the period ingenuously observes--"Certain persons will be chagrined to +hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for +calumny." Another says, "I never saw a countenance more composed and +still--I might even add, more sweet and prepossessing. But his temper was +easily ruffled and for a whole day; he could not endure the ringing of +bells, bribed his neighbours to repress their noises, and failing, +retaliated by surpassing them; he never forgave Colonel Carr for breaking +one of his dog's ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without +forgetting them. He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for +whatever he himself did he did with a will--'toto se corpore miscuit,' and +was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone--as if 'I have said it, and +it must be so' were enough." + +From these waifs and strays of gossip we return to a subject of deeper +interest. The Countess of Blessington, with natural curiosity, was anxious +to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs, +and renewed the attempt previously made by Madame de Stael, to induce him +to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife. His reply to this +overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from +Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the following extracts +must be a sufficient indication:--"I have to acknowledge the receipt of +Ada's hair.... I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; +and I will tell you why. I believe they are the only two or three words of +your hand-writing in my possession, for your letters I returned, and +except the two words--or rather the one word 'household' written twice--in +an old account book, I have no other. Every day which keeps us asunder +should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which +must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists. We both +made a bitter mistake, but now it is over, I considered our re-union as +not impossible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave +up the hope. I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations +can awaken my resentment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught, +this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is +something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most +offending are the least forgiving." "It is a strange business," says the +Countess, about Lady Byron. "When he was praising her mental and personal +qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain +sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook +his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was +wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters; +that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations +recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s +first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of +what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect +which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation, +into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed +to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased +my _mauvaise humeur_." To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always +spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and +respect. + +"My first impressions were melancholy--my poor mother gave them: but to my +sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I +owe the little good of which I can boast: and had I earlier known her it +might have influenced my destiny. Augusta was to me in the hour of need a +tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now +the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view. She +has given me such good advice--and yet finding me incapable of following +it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring." Similarly, in +the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt--"I believe there did exist +one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased: perhaps +was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always +spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh. He +told me she used to call him 'Baby Byron.' It was easy to see that of the +two persons she had by far the greater judgment." + +Byron having laid aside _Don Juan_ for more than a year, in deference to +La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a +promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa. +Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were +published by John Hunt. His other works of the period are of minor +consequence. The _Age of Bronze_ is a declamation, rather than a satire, +directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona, +especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from +its advice to the Greeks, to dread-- + + The false friend worse than the infuriate foe; + +i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the +great Bear-- + + Better still toil for masters, than await, + The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate. + +In the _Island_--a tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"--he reverts to the +manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific +for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical +adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from +Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in +any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to +plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the +sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading +it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if +not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on +the Conquest, and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was +executed. + +In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to +criticise the critics--to bring to a focus the most salient things that +have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the +discriminating from the commonplace. _Don Juan_, more than any of its +precursors, _is_ Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early +cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and +execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle-class respectability, +were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their +judgments. The _British Magazine_ said that "his lordship had degraded his +personal character by the composition;" the _London_, that the poem was "a +satire on decency;" the _Edinburgh Monthly_, that it was "a melancholy +spectacle;" the _Eclectic_, that it was "an outrage worthy of +detestation." _Blackwood_ declared that the author was "brutally outraging +all the best feelings of humanity." Moore characterizes it as "the most +painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for +succeeding ages to wonder at or deplore." Jeffrey found in the whole +composition "a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue;" +and Dr. John Watkins classically named it "the Odyssey of Immorality." +"_Don Juan_ will be read," wrote one critic, "as long as satire, wit, +mirth, and supreme excellence shall be esteemed among men." "Stick to _Don +Juan_," exhorted another; "it is the only sincere thing you have written, +and it will live after all your _Harolds_ have ceased to be 'a +schoolgirl's tale, the wonder of an hour.' It is the best of all your +works--the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, +the most poetical." "It is a work," said Goethe, "full of soul, bitterly +savage in its misanthropy, exquisitely delicate in its tenderness." +Shelley confessed, "It fulfils in a certain degree what I have long +preached, the task of producing something wholly new and relative to the +age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst +of a hearty panegyric: "It has the variety of Shakespeare himself. Neither +_Childe Harold_, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain +more exquisite poetry than is to be found scattered through the cantos of +_Don Juan_, amidst verses which the author seems to have thrown from him +with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves." + +One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity: reviewing, +however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register +of adverse or friendly cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict, +Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is, +the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt +to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in +pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the +most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of +the readers of _Don Juan_ have, it must be confessed, been found among +those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable--who have been +attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, +and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their +patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by +a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the +charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the +work in other quarters is as indubitably duo to higher qualities. In +writing _Don Juan_, Byron attempted something that had never been done +before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be +done again. "Down," cries M. Chasles, "with the imitators who did their +host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an +Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava +rima--the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet +a "breakdown"--for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may +have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in +Pulci, and the _Novelle Galanti_ of Casti, to whom he is indebted for +other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed +its characteristic jauntiness, by his almost constant use of the double +rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic +poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's _Pot of Basil_. +Many writers, from Tennant and Frere to Moultrie, have employed it in +burlesque or more society verse; but Byron alone has employed it +triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as +gay, of "black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling +fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of +his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality +that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready +to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a +ladder like other acrobats; but alone, like the Japanese master of the +art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of +_Don Juan_ is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his earlier work; it +has every mark of being written in hot haste. In the midst of the most +serious passages (e.g. the "Ave Maria") we are checked in our course by +bathos or commonplace and thrown where the writer did not mean to throw +us: but the mocking spirit is so prevailingly present that we are often +left in doubt as to his design, and what is in _Harold_ an outrage is in +this case only a flaw. His command over the verse itself is almost +miraculous: he glides from extreme to extreme, from punning to pathos, +from melancholy to mad merriment, sighing or laughing by the way at his +readers or at himself or at the stanzas. Into them he can fling anything +under the sun, from a doctor's prescription to a metaphysical theory. + + When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, + And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said, + +is as cogent a refutation of idealism as the cumbrous wit of Scotch +logicians. + +The popularity of the work is due not mainly to the verbal skill which +makes it rank as the _cleverest_ of English verse compositions, to its +shoals of witticisms, its winged words, telling phrases, and incomparable +transitions; but to the fact that it continues to address a large class +who are not in the ordinary sense of the word lovers of poetry. _Don Juan_ +is emphatically the poem of intelligent men of middle age, who have grown +weary of mere sentiment, and yet retain enough of sympathetic feeling to +desire at times to recall it. Such minds, crusted like Plato's Glaucus +with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives +beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can +they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and +they are apt to turn with some impatience even from _Romeo and Juliet_ to +_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of +_Hudibras_ is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend +is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the +contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in +laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does +not blend together the two phases, as they are blended in single sentences +or whole chapters of Sterne, in the April-sunshine of Richter, or in +_Sartor Resartus_; but he comes near to produce the same effect by his +unequalled power of alternating them. His wit is seldom hard, never dry, +for it is moistened by the constant juxtaposition of sentiment. His +tenderness is none the less genuine that he is perpetually jerking it +away--an equally favourite fashion with Carlyle,--as if he could not trust +himself to be serious for fear of becoming sentimental; and, in +recollection of his frequent exhibitions of unaffected hysteria, we accept +his own confession-- + + If I laugh at any mortal thing, + 'Tis that I may not weep, + +as a perfectly sincere comment on the most sincere, and therefore in many +respects the most effective, of his works. He has, after his way, +endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its +assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled +character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose +accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural +effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member +of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an +unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting +the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often +require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive," +is, however, more to the point: + + But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, + Unless it were to be a moment merry-- + A novel word in my vocabulary. + +_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every +large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the +author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in +which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is +reflected without distortion. After the audacious though brilliant +opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic +affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his +prevailing manner. Home-sickness, sea-sickness, the terror of the tempest, +"wailing, blasphemy, devotion," the crash of the wreck, the wild farewell, +"the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony," the horrors of +famine, the tale of the two fathers, the beautiful apparitions of the +rainbow and the bird, the feast on Juan's spaniel, his reluctance to dine +on "his pastor and his master," the consequences of eating Pedrillo,--all +follow each other like visions in the phantasmagoria of a nightmare, till +at last the remnant of the crew are drowned by a ridiculous rhyme-- + + Finding no place for their landing better, + They ran the boat ashore,--and overset her. + +Then comes the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient +days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold +running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page; +e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we have the +stanza:-- + + Thus sang, or would, or could, or should, have sung, + The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; + If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, + Yet in those days he might have done much worse-- + +with which the author dashes away the romance of the song, and then +launches into a tirade against Bob Southey's epic and Wordsworth's pedlar +poems. This vein exhausted, we come to the "Ave Maria," one of the most +musical, and seemingly heartfelt, hymns in the language. The close of the +ocean pastoral (in c. iv.) is the last of pathetic narrative in the book; +but the same feeling that "mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades," often +re-emerges in shorter passages. The fifth and sixth cantos, in spite of +the glittering sketch of Gulbeyaz, and tho fawn-like image of Dudu, are +open to the charge of diffuseness, and the character of Johnson is a +failure. From the seventh to the tenth, the poem decidedly dips, partly +because the writer had never been in Russia; then it again rises, and +shows no sign of falling off to the end. + +No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some +of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the +fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last +esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his +works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of +female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline. Conjectures as to +the originals of imaginary portraits, are generally futile; but Miss +Millpond--not Donna Inez--is obviously Lady Byron; in Adeline we may +suspect that at Genoa he was drawing from the life in the Villa Paradiso; +while Aurora Raby seems to be an idealization of La Guiccioli:-- + + Early in years, and yet more infantine + In figure, she had something of sublime + In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine: + All youth--but with an aspect beyond time; + Radiant and grave--us pitying man's decline; + Mournful--but mournful of another's crime, + She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, + And grieved for those who could return no more. + + She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere, + As far as her own gentle heart allow'd, + And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear, + Perhaps, because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud + Of deeds and days, when they had fill'd the ear + Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd + To novel power; and, as she was the last, + She held her old faith and old feelings fast. + + She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, + As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, + As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, + And kept her heart serene within its zone. + +Constantly, towards the close of the work, there is an echo of home and +country, a half involuntary cry after-- + + The love of higher things and better days; + Th'unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance + Of what is call'd the world and the world's ways. + +In the concluding stanza of the last completed canto, beginning-- + + Between two worlds life hovers like a star, + 'Twixt night and morn, on the horizon's verge-- + +we have a condensation of the refrain of the poet's philosophy; but the +main drift of the later books is a satire on London society. There are +elements in a great city which may be wrought into something nobler than +satire, for all the energies of the age are concentrated where passion is +fiercest and thought intensest, amid the myriad sights and sounds of its +glare and gloom. But those scenes, and the actors in them, are apt also to +induce the frame of mind in which a prose satirist describes himself as +reclining under an arcade of the Pantheon: "Not the Pantheon by the Piazza +Navona, where the immortal gods were worshipped--the immortal gods now +dead; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Have not Selwyn, and Walpole, and +March, and Carlisle figured there? Has not Prince Florizel flounced +through the hall in his rustling domino, and danced there in powdered +splendour? O my companions, I have drunk many a bout with you, and always +found 'Vanitas Vanitatum' written on the bottom of the pot." This is the +mind in which _Don Juan_ interprets the universe, and paints the still +living court of Florizel and his buffoons. A "nondescript and ever varying +rhyme"--"a versified aurora borealis," half cynical, half Epicurean, it +takes a partial though a subtle view of that microcosm on stilts called +the great world. It complains that in the days of old "men made the +manners--manners now make men." It concludes-- + + Good company's a chess-board, there are kings, + Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world's a game. + +It passes from a reflection on "the dreary _fuimus_ of all things here" to +the advice-- + + But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!" + To-morrow sees another race as gay + And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. + "Life's a poor player,"--then play out the play. + +It was the natural conclusion of the foregone stage of Byron's career. +Years had given him power, but they were years in which his energies were +largely wasted. Self-indulgence had not petrified his feeling, but it had +thrown wormwood into its springs. He had learnt to look on existence as a +walking shadow, and was strong only with the strength of a sincere +despair. + + Through life's road, so dim and dirty, + I have dragg'd to three and thirty. + What have those years left to me? + Nothing, except thirty-three. + +These lines are the summary of one who had drained the draught of pleasure +to the dregs of bitterness. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +1821-1824. + +POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH. + +In leaving Venice for Ravenna, Byron passed from the society of gondoliers +and successive sultanas to a comparatively domestic life, with a mistress +who at least endeavoured to stimulate some of his higher aspirations, and +smiled upon his wearing the sword along with the lyre. In the last episode +of his constantly chequered and too voluptuous career, we have the waking +of Sardanapalus realized in the transmutation of the fantastical Harold +into a practical strategist, financier, and soldier. No one ever lived +who, in the same space, more thoroughly ran the gauntlet of existence. +Having exhausted all other sources of vitality and intoxication--travel, +gallantry, and verse--it remained for the despairing poet to become a +hero. But he was also moved by a public passion, the genuineness of which +there is no reasonable ground to doubt. Like Alfieri and Rousseau, he had +taken for his motto, "I am of the opposition;" and, as Dante under a +republic called for a monarchy, Byron, under monarchies at home and +abroad, called for a commonwealth. Amid the inconsistencies of his +political sentiment, he had been consistent in so much love of liberty as +led him to denounce oppression, even when he had no great faith in the +oppressed--whether English, or Italians, or Greeks. + +Byron regarded the established dynasties of the continent with a sincere +hatred. He talks of the "more than infernal tyranny" of the House of +Austria. To his fancy, as to Shelley's, New England is the star of the +future. Attracted by a strength or rather force of character akin to his +own, he worshipped Napoleon, even when driven to confess that "the hero +had sunk into a king." He lamented his overthrow; but, above all, that he +was beaten by "three stupid, legitimate old dynasty boobies of regular +sovereigns." "I write in ipecacuanha that the Bourbons are restored." +"What right have we to prescribe laws to France? Here we are retrograding +to the dull, stupid old system, balance of Europe--poising straws on +kings' noses, instead of wringing them off." "The king-times are fast +finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but +the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I +foresee it." "Give me a republic. Look in the history of the earth--Rome, +Greece, Venice, Holland, France, America, our too short Commonwealth--and +compare it with what they did under masters." + +His serious political verses are all in the strain of the lines on +Wellington-- + + Never had mortal man such opportunity-- + Except Napoleon--or abused it more; + You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity + Of tyrants, and been blessed from shore to shore. + +An enthusiasm for Italy, which survived many disappointments, dictated +some of the most impressive passages of his _Harold_, and inspired the +_Lament of Tasso_ and the _Ode on Venice_. The _Prophecy of Dante_ +contains much that has since proved prophetic-- + + What is there wanting, then, to set thee free, + And show thy beauty in its fullest light? + To make the Alps impassable; and we, + Her sons, may do this with one deed--_Unite_! + +His letters reiterate the same idea, in language even more emphatic. "It +is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what +is sacrificed. It is a grand object--the very poetry of politics; only +think--a free Italy!" Byron acted on his assertion that a man ought to do +more for society than write verses. Mistrusting its leaders, and detesting +the wretched lazzaroni, who "would have betrayed themselves and all the +world," he yet threw himself heart and soul into the insurrection of 1820, +saying, "Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture +freely for their freedom." He joined the secret society of the Carbonari, +wrote an address to the Liberal government set up in Naples, supplied arms +and a refuge in his house, which he was prepared to convert into a +fortress. In February, 1821, on the rout of the Neapolitans by the +Austrians, the conspiracy was crushed. Byron, who "had always an idea that +it would be bungled," expressed his fear that the country would be thrown +back for 500 years into barbarism, and the Countess Guiccioli confessed +with tears that the Italians must return to composing and strumming +operatic airs. Carbonarism having collapsed, it of course made way for a +reaction; but the encouragement and countenance of the English poet and +peer helped to keep alive the smouldering fire that Mazzini fanned into a +flame, till Cavour turned it to a practical purpose, and the dreams of the +idealists of 1820 were finally realized. + +On the failure of the luckless conspiracy, Byron naturally betook himself +to history, speculation, satire, and ideas of a journalistic propaganda; +but all through, his mind was turning to the renewal of the action which +was his destiny. "If I live ten years longer," he writes in 1822, "you +will see that it is not all over with me. I don't mean in literature, for +that is nothing--and I do not think it was my vocation; but I shall do +something." The Greek war of liberation opened a new field for the +exercise of his indomitable energy. This romantic struggle, begun in +April, 1821, was carried on for two years with such remarkable success, +that at the close of 1822 Greece was beginning to be recognized as an +independent state; but in the following months the tide seemed to turn; +dissensions broke out among the leaders, the spirit of intrigue seemed to +stifle patriotism, and the energies of the insurgents were hampered for +want of the sinews of war. There was a danger of the movement being +starved out, and the committee of London sympathizers--of which the poet's +intimate friend and frequent correspondent, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, and +Captain Blaquiere, were leading promoters--was impressed with the +necessity of procuring funds in support of the cause. With a view to this +it seemed of consequence to attach to it some shining name, and men's +thoughts almost inevitably turned to Byron. No other Englishman seemed so +fit to be associated with the enterprise as the warlike poet, who had +twelve years before linked his fame to that of "grey Marathon" and +"Athena's tower," and, more recently immortalized the isles on which he +cast so many a longing glance. Hobhouse broke the subject to him early in +the spring of 1823: the committee opened communications in April. After +hesitating through May, in June Byron consented to meet Blaquiere at +Zante, and, on hearing the results of the captain's expedition to the +Morea, to decide on future steps. His share in this enterprise has been +assigned to purely personal and comparatively mean motives. He was, it is +said, disgusted with his periodical, sick of his editor, tired of his +mistress, and bent on any change, from China to Peru, that would give him +a new theatre for display. One grows weary of the perpetual half-truths of +inveterate detraction. It is granted that Byron was restless, vain, +imperious, never did anything without a desire to shine in the doing of +it, and was to a great degree the slave of circumstances. Had the +_Liberal_ proved a lamp to the nations, instead of a mere "red flag +flaunted in the face of John Bull," he might have cast anchor at Genoa; +but the whole drift of his work and life demonstrates that he was capable +on occasion of merging himself in what he conceived to be great causes, +especially in their evil days. Of the Hunts he may have had enough; but +the invidious statement about La Guiccioli has no foundation, other than a +somewhat random remark of Shelley, and the fact that he left her nothing +in his will. It is distinctly ascertained that she expressly prohibited +him from doing so; they continued to correspond to the last, and her +affectionate, though unreadable, reminiscences, are sufficient proof that +she at no time considered herself to be neglected, injured, or aggrieved. + +Byron indeed left Italy in an unsettled state of mind: he spoke of +returning in a few months, and as the period for his departure approached, +became more and more irresolute. A presentiment of his death seemed to +brood over a mind always superstitious, though never fanatical. Shortly +before his own departure, the Blessingtons were preparing to leave Genoa +for England. On the evening of his farewell call he began to speak of his +voyage with despondency, saying, "Here we are all now together; but when +and where shall we meet again? I have a sort of boding that we see each +other for the last time, as something tells me I shall never again return +from Greece:" after which remark he leant his head on the sofa, and burst +into one of his hysterical fits of tears. The next week was given to +preparations for an expedition, which, entered on with mingled +motives--sentimental, personal, public--became more real and earnest to +Byron at every step he took. He knew all the vices of the "hereditary +bondsmen" among whom he was going, and went among them, with yet +unquenched aspirations, but with the bridle of discipline in his hand, +resolved to pave the way towards the nation becoming better, by devoting +himself to making it free. + +On the morning of July 14th (1823) he embarked in the brig "Hercules," +with Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, who remained with him to the last, +Bruno a young Italian doctor, Scott the captain of the vessel, and eight +servants, including Fletcher, besides the crew. They had on board two +guns, with other arms and ammunition, five horses, an ample supply of +medicines, with 50,000 Spanish dollars in coin and bills. The start was +inauspicious. A violent squall drove them back to port, and in the course +of a last ride with Gamba to Albaro, Byron asked, "Where shall we be in a +year?" On the same day of the same month of 1824 he was carried to the +tomb of his ancestors. They again set sail on the following evening, and +in five days reached Leghorn, where the poet received a salutation in +verse, addressed to him by Goethe, and replied to it. Here Mr. Hamilton +Brown, a Scotch gentleman with considerable knowledge of Greek affairs, +joined the party, and induced them to change their course to Cephalonia, +for the purpose of obtaining the advice and assistance of the English +resident, Colonel Napier. The poet occupied himself during the voyage +mainly in reading--among other books, Scott's _Life of Swift_, Grimm's +_Correspondence_, La Rochefoucauld, and Las Casas--and watching the +classic or historic shores which they skirted, especially noting Elba, +Soracte, the Straits of Messina, and Etna. In passing Stromboli he said to +Trelawny, "You will see this scene in a fifth canto of _Childe Harold_." +On his companions suggesting that he should write some verses on the spot, +he tried to do so, but threw them away, with the remark, "I cannot write +poetry at will, as you smoke tobacco." Trelawny confesses that he was +never on shipboard with a better companion, and that a severer test of +good fellowship it is impossible to apply. Together they shot at gulls or +empty bottles, and swam every morning in the sea. Early in August they +reached their destination. Coming in sight of the Morea, the poet said to +Trelawny, "I feel as if the eleven long years of bitterness I have passed +through, since I was here, were taken from my shoulders, and I was +scudding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in his frigate." +Byron remained at or about Cephalonia till the close of the year. Not long +after his arrival he made an excursion to Ithaca, and, visiting the +monastery at Vathi, was received by the abbot with great ceremony, which, +in a fit of irritation, brought on by a tiresome ride on a mule, he +returned with unusual discourtesy; but next morning, on his giving a +donation to their alms-box, he was dismissed with the blessing of the +monks. "If this isle were mine," he declared on his way back, "I would +break my staff and bury my book." A little later, Brown and Trelawny being +sent off with letters to the provisional government, the former returned +with some Greek emissaries to London, to negotiate a loan; the latter +attached himself to Odysseus, the chief of the republican party at Athens, +and never again saw Byron alive. The poet, after spending a month on board +the "Hercules," dismissed the vessel, and hired a house for Gamba and +himself at Metaxata, a healthy village about four miles from the capital +of the island. Meanwhile, Blaquiere, neglecting his appointment at Zante, +had gone to Corfu, and thence to England. Colonel Napier being absent from +Cephalonia, Byron had some pleasant social intercourse with his deputy, +but, unable to get from him any authoritative information, was left +without advice, to be besieged by letters and messages from the factions. +Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king, +and he is reported to have said, "If they make me the offer, I will +perhaps not reject it." + +The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never--amid +his many self-deceptions--affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who +can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add +lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a +day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had +his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard +of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to +despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and +anxiously waiting relief. During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was +gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents. Among +these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself +to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series +of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be +present at one of them. After listening, it is said, to a set of +discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for +one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and +found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards +published in a substantial book. This volume, interesting in several +respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the +language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the +abridgment of several of its pages. They bear testimony, on the one hand, +to Byron's capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under +trial; on the other, to Kennedy's utter want of humour, and to his +courageous honesty. The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course +of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the +ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith, +which Kennedy upheld without stint. The _Conversations_ add little to what +we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where +he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently +wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a +theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible, +though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to +which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is +explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal +punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were +to be damned, he "would rather keep them company than creep into heaven +alone." On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human +life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative +necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not +see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer +had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart. Byron showed +a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow, +Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy's lending for his +edification Boston's _Fourfold State_, he returned it with the remark that +it was too deep for him. On another occasion he said, "Do you know I am +nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between +the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the +character of both is equally vile." The good Scotchman's religious +self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own +confession, "This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it," might +perhaps be applied to the whole discussion. + +Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to +attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; +they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at +the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more, +confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The +Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber," +but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The +chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their +arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates +and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions--republican, monarchic, +aristocratic--representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and +each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only +representing their own. During the first two years of success they were +held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the +allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's +residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a +renewal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them +he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and +helped to betray the common cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, +to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, +collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, +endeavouring to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and +carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period +relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the +population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or +robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting +to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking +the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks +fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." +Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were "shrieking +and howling as in Ireland" over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he +snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants +unless they followed his example. On November 30th he despatched to the +central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the +fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are +established all hopes of a loan--which being every day more urgent, he was +in letters to England constantly pressing--are at an end. "I desire," he +concluded, "the well being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I +can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be +deceived as to the real state of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act +honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no +more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years, with the Roman +historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians." + +Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos--the most prominent of the practical +patriotic leaders--having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to +regulate the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way with a +fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco Bozzaris +had previously fallen. In a letter, opening communication with a man for +whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, "Colonel Stanhope +has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with +me.... Greece is at present placed between three measures--either to +reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of the sovereigns of Europe, +or to return to a Turkish province. She has the choice only of these three +alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter." + +At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, +with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. +Mavrocordatos on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the poet to +join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, "I need not tell you +to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a +prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs. Your counsels will +be listened to like oracles." + +At the same date Stanhope writes, "The people in the streets are looking +forward to his lordship's arrival as they would to the coming of the +Messiah." Byron was unable to start in the ship sent for him; but in spite +of medical warnings, a few days later, i.e. December 28th, he embarked in +a small fast-sailing sloop called a mistico, while the servants and +baggage were stowed in another and larger vessel under the charge of Count +Gamba. From Gamba's graphic account of the voyage we may take the +following:--"We sailed together till after ten at night; the wind +favourable, a clear sky, the air fresh, but not sharp. Our sailors sang +alternately patriotic songs, monotonous indeed, but to persons in our +situation extremely touching, and we took part in them. We were all, but +Lord Byron particularly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the +fastest. When the waves divided us, and our voices could no longer reach +each other, we made signals by firing pistols and carbines. To-morrow we +meet at Mesolonghi--to morrow. Thus, full of confidence and spirits, we +sailed along. At twelve we were out of sight of each other." + +Byron's vessel, separated from her consort, came into the close proximity +of a Turkish frigate, and had to take refuge among the Scrofes' rocks. +Emerging thence, he attained a small seaport of Acarnania, called +Dragomestri, whence sallying forth on the 2nd of January under the convoy +of some Greek gunboats, he was nearly wrecked. On the 4th Byron made, when +violently heated, an imprudent plunge in the sea, and was never afterwards +free from a pain in his bones. On the 5th he arrived at Mesolonghi, and +was received with salvoes of musketry and music. Gamba was waiting him. +His vessel, the "Bombarda," had been taken by the Ottoman frigate, but the +captain of the latter, recognizing the Count as having formerly saved his +life in the Black Sea, made interest in his behalf with Yussuf Pasha at +Patras, and obtained his discharge. In recompense, the poet subsequently +sent to the Pasha some Turkish prisoners, with a letter requesting him to +endeavour to mitigate the inhumanities of the war. Byron brought to the +Greeks at Mesolonghi the 4000_l_. of his personal loan (applied, in the +first place, to defraying the expenses of the fleet), with the spell of +his name and presence. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the command +of the intended expedition against Lepanto, and, with this view, again +took into his pay five hundred Suliotes. An approaching general assembly +to organize the forces of the west, had brought together a motley crew, +destitute, discontented, and more likely to wage war upon each other than +on their enemies. Byron's closest associates during the ensuing months, +were the engineer Parry, an energetic artilleryman, "extremely active, and +of strong practical talents," who had travelled in America, and Colonel +Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington) equally with himself devoted to the +emancipation of Greece, but at variance about the means of achieving it. +Stanhope, a moral enthusiast of the stamp of Kennedy, beset by the fallacy +of religious missions, wished to cover the Morea with Wesleyan tracts, and +liberate the country by the agency of the Press. He had imported a +converted blacksmith, with a cargo of Bibles, types, and paper, who on +20_l_. a year, undertook to accomplish the reform. Byron, backed by the +good sense of Mavrocordatos, proposed to make cartridges of the tracts, +and small shot of the type; he did not think that the turbulent tribes +were ripe for freedom of the press, and had begun to regard Republicanism +itself as a matter of secondary moment. The disputant allies in the common +cause occupied each a flat of the same small house, the soldier by +profession was bent on writing the Turks down, the poet on fighting them +down, holding that "the work of the sword must precede that of the pen, +and that camps must be the training schools of freedom." Their +altercations were sometimes fierce--"Despot!" cried Stanhope, "after +professing liberal principles from boyhood, you when called to act prove +yourself a Turk." "Radical!" retorted Byron, "if I had held up my finger I +could have crushed your press,"--but this did not prevent the recognition +by each of them of the excellent qualities of the other. + +Ultimately Stanhope went to Athens, and allied himself with Trelawny and +Odysseus and the party of the Left. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than +some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preceding period; +nothing more admirable than the spirit which inspires them. He had come +into the heart of a revolution, exposed to the same perils as those which +had wrecked the similar movement in Italy. Neither trusting too much nor +distrusting too much, with a clear head and a good will he set about +enforcing a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was +engaged in denouncing dissension, in advocating unity, in doing everything +that man could do to concentrate and utilize the disorderly elements with +which he had to work. He occupied himself in repairing fortifications, +managing ships, restraining licence, promoting courtesy between the foes, +and regulating the disposal of the sinews of war. + +On the morning of the 22nd of January, his last birthday, he came from his +room to Stanhope's, and said, smiling, "You were complaining that I never +write any poetry now," and read the familiar stanzas beginning-- + + 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, + +and ending-- + + Seek out--less often sought than found-- + A soldier's grave, for thee the best; + Then look around, and choose thy ground, + And take thy rest. + +High thoughts, high resolves; but the brain that was over-tasked, and the +frame that was outworn, would be tasked and worn little longer. The lamp +of a life that had burnt too fiercely was flickering to its close. "If we +are not taken off with the sword," he writes on February 5th, "we are like +to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very +bad pun, better _martially_ than _marsh-ally_. The dykes of Holland when +broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In +April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, +imploring him not to sacrifice health, and perhaps life, "in that bog." + +Byron's house stood in the midst of the exhalations of a muddy creek, and +his natural irritability was increased by a more than usually long ascetic +regimen. From the day of his arrival in Greece he discarded animal food +and lived mainly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, olives and light wine, +at the rate of forty paras a day. In spite of his strength of purpose, his +temper was not always proof against the rapacity and turbulence by which +he was surrounded. About the middle of February, when the artillery had +been got into readiness for the attack on Lepanto--the northern, as +Patras was the southern, gate of the gulf, still in the hands of the +Turks--the expedition was thrown back by the unexpected rising of the +Suliotes. These peculiarly Irish Greeks, chronically seditious by nature, +were on this occasion, as afterwards appeared, stirred up by emissaries of +Colocatroni, who, though assuming the position of the rival of +Mavrocordatos, was simply a brigand on a large scale in the Morca. +Exasperation at this mutiny, and the vexation of having to abandon a +cherished scheme, seem to have been the immediately provoking causes of a +violent convulsive fit which, on the evening of the 15th, attacked the +poet, and endangered his life. Next day he was better, but complained of +weight in the head; and the doctors applying leeches too close to the +temporal artery, he was bled till he fainted. And now occurred the last of +those striking incidents so frequent in his life, in reference to which we +may quote the joint testimony of two witnesses. Colonel Stanhope writes, +"Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, with +his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered +with dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing +their costly arms and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron, +electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness; +and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed. The +scene was truly sublime." "It is impossible," says Count Gamba, "to do +justice to the coolness and magnanimity which he displayed upon every +trying occasion. Upon trifling occasions he was certainly irritable; but +the aspect of danger calmed him in an instant, and restored him the free +exercise of all the powers of his noble nature. A more undaunted man in +the hour of peril never breathed." A few days later, the riot being +renewed, the disorderly crew were, on payment of their arrears, finally +dismissed; but several of the English artificers under Parry left about +the same time, in fear of their lives. + +On the 4th, the last of the long list of Byron's letters to Moore resents, +with some bitterness, the hasty acceptance of a rumour that he had been +quietly writing _Don Juan_ in some Ionian island. At the same date he +writes to Kennedy, "I am not unaware of the precarious state of my health. +But it is proper I should remain in Greece, and it were better to die +doing something than nothing." Visions of enlisting Europe and America on +behalf of the establishment of a new state, that might in course of time +develope itself over the realm of Alexander, floated and gleamed in his +fancy; but in his practical daily procedure the poet took as his text the +motto "festina lente," insisted on solid ground under his feet, and had no +notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged +Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the _Telegrapho_, and +disparaged Dr. Mayor, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he +is one of the pettiest, as are most demagogues." Byron had none of the +Sclavonic leanings, and almost personal hatred of Ottoman rule, of some of +our statesmen; but he saw on what side lay the forces and the hopes of the +future. "I cannot calculate," he said to Gamba, during one of their latest +rides together, "to what a height Greece may rise. Hitherto it has been a +subject for the hymns and elegies of fanatics and enthusiasts; but now it +will draw the attention of the politician.... At present there is little +difference, in many respects, between Greeks and Turks, nor could there +be; but the latter must, in the common course of events, decline in power; +and the former must as inevitably become better.... The English Government +deceived itself at first in thinking it possible to maintain the Turkish +Empire in its integrity; but it cannot be done, that unwieldy mass is +already putrified, and must dissolve. If anything like an equilibrium is +to be upheld, Greece must be supported." These words have been well +characterized as prophetic. During this time Byron rallied in health, and +displayed much of his old spirit, vivacity, and humour, took part in such +of his favourite amusements as circumstances admitted, fencing, shooting, +riding, and playing with his pet dog Lion. The last of his recorded +practical jokes is his rolling about cannon balls, and shaking the +rafters, to frighten Parry in the room below with the dread of an +earthquake. + +Towards the close of the month, after being solicited to accompany +Mavrocordatos, to share the governorship of the Morea, he made an +appointment to meet Colonel Stanhope and Odysseus at Salona, but was +prevented from keeping it by violent floods which blocked up the +communication. On the 30th he was presented with the freedom of the city +of Mesolonghi. On the 3rd of April he intervened to prevent an Italian +private, guilty of theft, from being flogged by order of some German +officers. On the 9th, exhilarated by a letter from Mrs. Leigh with good +accounts of her own and Ada's health, he took a long ride with Gamba and a +few of the remaining Suliotes, and after being violently heated, and then +drenched in a heavy shower, persisted in returning home in a boat, +remarking with a laugh, in answer to a remonstrance, "I should make a +pretty soldier if I were to care for such a trifle." It soon became +apparent that he had caught his death. Almost immediately on his return, +he was seized with shiverings and violent pain. The next day he rose as +usual, and had his last ride in the olive woods. On the 11th a rheumatic +fever set in. On the 14th, Bruno's skill being exhausted, it was proposed +to call Dr. Thomas from Zante, but a hurricane prevented any ship being +sent. On the 15th, another physician, Mr. Milligen, suggested bleeding to +allay the fever, but Byron held out against it, quoting Dr. Reid to the +effect that "less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet--that +minute instrument of mighty mischief;" and saying to Bruno, "If my hour is +come I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it." Next morning +Milligen induced him to yield, by a suggestion of the possible loss of his +reason. Throwing out his arm, he cried, "There! you are, I see, a d----d +set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with +it." The remedy, repeated on the following day with blistering, was either +too late or ill-advised. On the 18th he saw more doctors, but was +manifestly sinking, amid the tears and lamentations of attendants who +could not understand each other's language. In his last hours his delirium +bore him to the field of arms. He fancied he was leading the attack on +Lepanto, and was heard exclaiming, "Forwards! forwards! follow me!" Who is +not reminded of another death-bed, not remote in time from his, and the +_Tete d'armee_ of the great Emperor who with the great Poet divided the +wonder of Europe? The stormy vision passed, and his thoughts reverted +home. "Go to my sister," he faltered out to Fletcher; "tell her--go to +Lady Byron--you will see her, and say"--nothing more could be heard but +broken ejaculations: "Augusta--Ada--my sister, my child. Io lascio qualche +cosa di caro nel mondo. For the rest, I am content to die." At six on the +evening of the 18th he uttered his last words, "[Greek: _Dei me nun +katheudein_];" and on the 19th he passed away. + +Never perhaps was there such a national lamentation. By order of +Mavrocordatos, thirty-seven guns--one for each year of the poet's life-- +were fired from the battery, and answered by the Turks from Patras with an +exultant volley. All offices, tribunals, and shops were shut, and a +general mourning for twenty-one days proclaimed. Stanhope wrote, on +hearing the news, "England has lost her brightest genius--Greece her +noblest friend;" and Trelawny, on coming to Mesolonghi, heard nothing in +the streets but "Byron is dead!" like a bell tolling through the silence +and the gloom. Intending contributors to the cause of Greece turned back +when they heard the tidings, that seemed to them to mean she was headless. +Her cities contended for the body, as of old for the birth of a poet. +Athens wished him to rest in the Temple of Theseus. The funeral service +was performed at Mesolonghi. But on the 2nd of May the embalmed remains +left Zante, and on the 29th arrived in the Downs. His relatives applied +for permission to have them interred in Westminster Abbey, but it was +refused; and on the 16th July they were conveyed to the village church of +Hucknall. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE. + +Lord Jeffrey at the close of a once-famous review quaintly laments: "The +tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber, and the +rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of +Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the +field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry, and the +blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." Of the +poets of the early part of this century, Lord John Russell thought Byron +the greatest, then Scott, then Moore. "Such an opinion," wrote a +_National_ reviewer, in 1860, "is not worth a refutation; we only smile at +it." Nothing in the history of literature is more curious than the +shifting of the standard of excellence, which so perplexes criticism. But +the most remarkable feature of the matter is the frequent return to power +of the once discarded potentates. Byron is resuming his place: his spirit +has come again to our atmosphere; and every budding critic, as in 1820, is +impelled to pronounce a verdict on his genius and character. The present +times are, in many respects, an aftermath of the first quarter of the +century, which was an era of revolt, of doubt, of storm. There succeeded +an era of exhaustion, of quiescence, of reflection. The first years of the +third quarter saw a revival of turbulence and agitation; and, more than +our fathers, we are inclined to sympathize with our grandfathers. Macaulay +has popularized the story of the change of literary dynasty which in our +island marked the close of the last, and the first two decades of the +present, hundred years. + +The corresponding artistic revolt on the continent was closely connected +with changes in the political world. The originators of the romantic +literature in Italy, for the most part, died in Spielberg or in exile. The +same revolution which levelled the Bastille, and converted Versailles and +the Trianon--the classic school in stone and terrace--into a moral +Herculaneum and Pompeii, drove the models of the so-called Augustan ages +into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated +by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great +writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for +the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a +peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke +with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again. +Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the +literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed +law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and +regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their +conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new +Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they +practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied +with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and +passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in +Shelley and in Byron. + +A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters, were in +some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption. The ruins +of the Scotch cathedrals and of the French nobility are warnings at once +against the excess that provokes and the excess that avenges. The revolt +against the _ancien regime_ in letters made possible the Ode that is the +high-tide mark of modern English inspiration, but it was parodied in page +on page of maundering rusticity. Byron saw the danger, but was borne +headlong by the rapids. Hence the anomalous contrast between his theories +and his performance. Both Wordsworth and Byron were bitten by Rousseau; +but the former is, at furthest, a Girondin. The latter, acting like Danton +on the motto "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace," sighs after _Henri +Quatre et Gabrielle_. There is more of the spirit of the French Revolution +in _Don Juan_ than in all the works of the author's contemporaries; but +his criticism is that of Boileau, and when deliberate is generally absurd. +He never recognized the meaning of the artistic movement of his age, and +overvalued those of his works which the Unities helped to destroy. He +hailed Gifford as his Magnus Apollo, and put Rogers next to Scott in his +comical pyramid. "Chaucer," he writes, "I think obscene and contemptible." +He could see no merit in Spenser, preferred Tasso to Milton, and called +the old English dramatists "mad and turbid mountebanks." In the same +spirit he writes: "In the time of Pope it was all Horace, now it is all +Claudian." He saw--what fanatics had begun to deny--that Pope was a great +writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both +was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his +controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his +earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age +can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all +times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence.... +Your whole generation are not worth a canto of the _Dunciad_, or anything +that is his." All the while he was himself writing prose and verse, in +grasp if not in vigour as far beyond the stretch of Pope, as Pope is in +"worth and wit and sense" removed above his mimics. The point of the +paradox is not merely that he deserted, but that he sometimes imitated his +model, and when he did so, failed. Macaulay's judgment, that "personal +taste led him to the eighteenth century, thirst for praise to the +nineteenth," is quite at fault. There can be no doubt that Byron loved +praise as much as he affected to despise it. His note, on reading the +_Quarterly_ on his dramas, "I am the most unpopular man in England," is +like the cry of a child under chastisement; but he had little affinity, +moral or artistic, with the spirit of our so-called Augustans, and his +determination to admire them was itself rebellious. Again we are reminded +of his phrase, "I am of the opposition." His vanity and pride were +perpetually struggling for the mastery, and though he thirsted for +popularity he was bent on compelling it; so he warred with the literary +impulse of which he was the child. + +Byron has no relation to the master-minds whose works reflect a nation or +an era, and who keep their own secrets. His verse and prose is alike +biographical, and the inequalities of his style are those of his career. +He lived in a glass case, and could not hide himself by his habit of +burning blue lights. He was too great to do violence to his nature, which +was not great enough to be really consistent. It was thus natural for him +to pose as the spokesman of two ages--as a critic and as an author; and of +two orders of society--as a peer, and as a poet of revolt. Sincere in +both, he could never forget the one character in the other. To the last, +he was an aristocrat in sentiment, a democrat in opinion. "Vulgarity," he +writes with a pithy half-truth, "is far worse than downright black +guardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at +times, while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, +signifying nothing." He could never reconcile himself to the English +radicals; and it has been acutely remarked, that part of his final +interest in Greece lay in the fact that he found it a country of classic +memories, "where a man might be the champion of liberty without soiling +himself in the arena." He owed much of his early influence to the fact of +his moving in the circles of rank and fashion; but though himself steeped +in the prejudices of caste, he struck at them at times with fatal force. +Aristocracy is the individual asserting a vital distinction between itself +and "the muck o' the world." Byron's heroes all rebel against the +associative tendency of the nineteenth century; they are self-worshippers +at war with society; but most of them come to bad ends. He maligned +himself in those caricatures, and has given more of himself in describing +one whom with special significance we call a brother poet. "Allen," he +writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished letters.... +What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness-- +sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling--dirt and deity--all mixed +up in that one compound of inspired clay!" We have only to add to these +antitheses, in applying them with slight modification to the writer. Byron +had, on occasion, more self-control than Burns, who yielded to every +thirst or gust, and could never have lived the life of the soldier at +Mesolonghi; but partly owing to meanness, partly to a sound instinct, his +memory has been more severely dealt with. The fact of his being a nobleman +helped to make him famous, but it also helped to make him hated. No doubt +it half spoiled him in making him a show; and the circumstance has +suggested the remark of a humourist, that it is as hard for a lord to be a +perfect gentleman as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye. But it +also exposed to the rancours of jealousy a man who had nearly everything +but domestic happiness to excite that most corroding of literary passions; +and when he got out of gear he became the quarry of Spenser's "blatant +beast." On the other hand, Burns was, beneath his disgust at Holy Fairs +and Willies, sincerely reverential; much of _Don Juan_ would have seemed +to him "an atheist's laugh," and--a more certain superiority--he was +absolutely frank. + +Byron, like Pope, was given to playing monkey-like tricks, mostly +harmless, but offensive to their victims. His peace of mind was dependent +on what people would say of him, to a degree unusual even in the irritable +race; and when they spoke ill he was, again like Pope, essentially +vindictive. The _Bards and Reviewers_ beats about, where the lines to +Atticus transfix with Philoctetes' arrows; but they are due to a like +impulse. Byron affected to contemn the world; but, say what he would, he +cared too much for it. He had a genuine love of solitude as an alterative; +but he could not subsist without society, and, Shelley tells us, wherever +he went, became the nucleus of it. He sprang up again when flung to the +earth, but he never attained to the disdain he desired. + +We find him at once munificent and careful about money; calmly asleep amid +a crowd of trembling sailors, yet never going to ride without a nervous +caution; defying augury, yet seriously disturbed by a gipsy's prattle. He +could be the most genial of comrades, the most considerate of masters, and +he secured the devotion of his servants, as of his friends; but he was too +overbearing to form many equal friendships, and apt to be ungenerous to +his real rivals. His shifting attitude towards Lady Byron, his wavering +purposes, his impulsive acts, are a part of the character we trace through +all his life and work,--a strange mixture of magnanimity and brutality, of +laughter and tears, consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride, +yet redeeming all his defects by his graces, and wearing a greatness that +his errors can only half obscure. + +Alternately the idol and the horror of his contemporaries, Byron was, +during his life, feared and respected as "the grand Napoleon of the realms +of rhyme." His works were the events of the literary world. The chief +among them were translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, Polish, +Russian, Spanish. On the publication of Moore's _Life_, Lord Macaulay had +no hesitation in referring to Byron as "the most celebrated Englishman of +the nineteenth century." Nor have we now; but in the interval between +1840-1870, it was the fashion to talk of him as a sentimentalist, a +romancer, a shallow wit, a nine days' wonder, a poet for "green unknowing +youth." It was a reaction, such as leads us to disestablish the heroes of +our crude imaginations till we learn that to admire nothing is as sure a +sign of immaturity as to admire everything. + +The weariness, if not disgust, induced by a throng of more than usually +absurd imitators, enabled Carlyle, the poet's successor in literary +influence (followed with even greater unfairness by Thackeray), more +effectively to lead the counter-revolt. "In my mind," writes the former, +in 1839, "Byron has been sinking at an accelerated rate for the last ten +years, and has now reached a very low level.... His fame has been very +great, but I do not see how it is to endure; neither does that make him +great. No genuine productive thought was ever revealed by him to mankind. +He taught me nothing that I had not again to forgot." The refrain of +Carlyle's advice during the most active years of his criticism was, "Close +thy Byron, open thy Goethe." We do so, and find that the refrain of +Goethe's advice in reference to Byron is--"nocturna versate manu, versate +diurna." He urged Eckermann to study English that he might read him; +remarking, "A character of such eminence has never existed before, and +probably will never come again. The beauty of _Cain_ is such as we shall +not see a second time in the world.... Byron issues from the sea-waves +ever fresh. In _Helena_, I could not make use of any man as the +representative of the modern poetic era except him, who is undoubtedly the +greatest genius[1] of our century." Again: "Tasso's epic has maintained +its fame, but Byron is the burning bush, which reduces the cedar of +Lebanon to ashes.... The English may think of him as they please; this is +certain, they can show no (living) poet who is comparable to him.... But +he is too worldly. Contrast _Macbeth_, and _Beppo_, where you are in a +nefarious empirical world." On Eckermann's doubting "whether there is a +gain for pure culture in Byron's work," Goethe conclusively replies, +"There I must contradict you. The audacity and grandeur of Byron must +certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always +looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great +promotes cultivation, as soon as we are aware of it." + + [Footnote 1: Mr. Arnold wrongly objects to this translation of the + German "talent."] + +This verdict of the Olympian as against the verdict of the Titan is +interesting in itself, and as being the verdict of the whole continental +world of letters. "What," exclaims Castelar, "does Spain not owe to Byron? +From his mouth come our hopes and fears. He has baptized us with his +blood. There is no one with whose being some song of his is not woven. His +life is like a funeral torch over our graves." Mazzini takes up the same +tune for Italy. Stendhal speaks of Byron's "Apollonic power;" and Sainte +Beuve writes to the same intent, with some judicious caveats. M. Taine +concludes his survey of the romantic movement with the remark: "In this +splendid effort, the greatest are exhausted. One alone--Byron--attains the +summit. He is so great and so English, that from him alone we shall learn +more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest together." +Dr. Elze, ranks the author of _Harold_ and _Juan_ among the four greatest +English poets, and claims for him the intellectual parentage of Lamartine +and Musset in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with +some modifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy. +So many voices of so various countries cannot be simply set aside: unless +we wrap ourselves in an insolent insularism, we are bound at least to ask +what is the meaning of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can +manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the +above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious +shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost nothing +by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist. +Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza +will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into +clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with +a big brush were never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast between +his theoretic worship of his idol and his own practice reaches a climax. +If, as he professed to believe, "the best poet is he who best executes his +work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and +slovenly; an improvisatore on the spot whore his fancy is kindled, writing +_currente calamo_, and disdaining the "art to blot." "I can never recast +anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling +back to my jungle." He said to Medwin, "Blank verse is the most difficult, +because every line must be good." Consequently, his own blank verse is +always defective--sometimes execrable. No one else--except, perhaps, +Wordsworth--who could write so well, could also write so ill. This fact in +Byron's case seems due not to mere carelessness, but to incapacity. +Something seems to stand behind him, like the slave in the chariot, to +check the current of his highest thought. The glow of his fancy fades with +the suddenness of a southern sunset. His best inspirations are spoilt by +the interruption of incongruous commonplace. He had none of the guardian +delicacy of taste, or the thirst after completeness, which mark the +consummate artist. He is more nearly a dwarf Shakespeare than a giant +Popo. This defect was most mischievous where he was weakest, in his dramas +and his lyrics, least so where he was strongest, in his mature satires. It +is almost transmuted into an excellence in the greatest of these, which +is by design and in detail a temple of incongruity. + +If we turn from his manner to his matter, we cannot claim for Byron any +absolute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, +Chateaubriand, Beaumarchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, +Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyore, Wieland, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goethe, scraps +of the classics, and the Book of Job. Absolute originality in a late age +is only possible to the hermit, the lunatic, or the sensation novelist. +Byron, like the rovers before Minos, was not ashamed of his piracy. He +transferred the random prose of his own letters and journals to his +dramas, and with the same complacency made use of the notes jotted down +from other writers as he sailed on the Lake of Geneva. But he made them +his own by smelting the rough ore into bell metal. He brewed a cauldron +like that of Macbeth's witches, and from it arose the images of crowned +kings. If he did not bring a new idea into the world, he quadrupled the +force of existing ideas and scattered them far and wide. Southern critics +have maintained that he had a southern nature and was in his true element +on the Lido or under an Andalusian night. Others dwell on the English +pride that went along with his Italian habits and Greek sympathies. The +truth is, he had the power of making himself poetically everywhere at +home; and this, along with the fact of all his writings being perfectly +intelligible, is the secret of his European influence. He was a citizen of +the world; because he not only painted the environs, but reflected the +passions and aspirations of every scene amid which he dwelt. + +A disparaging critic has said, "Byron is nothing without his +descriptions." The remark only emphasizes the fact that his genius was not +dramatic. All non-dramatic art is concerned with bringing before us +pictures of the world, the value of which lies half in their truth, half +in the amount of human interest with which they are invested. To +scientific accuracy few poets can lay claim, and Byron less than most; but +the general truth of his descriptions is acknowledged by all who have +travelled in the same countries. The Greek verses of his first +pilgrimage,--e.g. the night scene on the Gulf of Arta, many of the +Albanian sketches, with much of the _Siege of Corinth_ and the _Giaour_ +--have been invariably commended for their vivid realism. Attention has +been especially directed to the lines in the _Corsair_ beginning-- + + But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain, + +as being the veritable voice of one + + Spell-bound, within the clustering Cyclades. + +The opening lines of the same canto, transplanted from the _Curse of +Minerva_, are even more suggestive:-- + + Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, + Along Morea's hill the setting sun, + Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, + But one unclouded blaze of living light, &c. + +In the same way, the later cantos of _Harold_ are steeped in Switzerland +and in Italy. Byron's genius, it is true, required a stimulus; it could +not have revelled among the daisies of Chaucer, or pastured by the banks +of the Doon or the Ouse, or thriven among the Lincolnshire fens. He had a +sincere, if somewhat exclusive, delight in the storms and crags that +seemed to respond to his nature and to his age. There is no affectation in +the expression of the wish, "O that the desert were my dwelling-place!" +though we know that the writer on the shores of the Mediterranean still +craved for the gossip of the clubs. It only shows that-- + + Two desires toss about + The poet's feverish blood; + One drives him to the world without, + And one to solitude. + +Of Byron's two contemporary rivals, Wordsworth had no feverish blood; +nothing drove him to the world without; consequently his "eyes avert their +ken from half of human fate," and his influence, though perennial, will +always be limited. He conquered England from his hills and lakes; but his +spirit has never crossed the Straits which he thought too narrow. The +other, with a fever in his veins, calmed it in the sea and in the cloud, +and, in some degree because of his very excellencies, has failed as yet to +mark the world at large. The poets' poet, the cynosure of enthusiasts, he +bore the banner of the forlorn hope; but Byron, with his feet of clay, led +the ranks. Shelley, as pure a philanthropist as St. Francis or Howard, +could forget mankind, and, like his Adonais, become one with nature. +Byron, who professed to hate his fellows, was of them even more than for +them, and so appealed to them through a broader sympathy, and held them +with a firmer hand. By virtue of his passion, as well as his power, he was +enabled to represent the human tragedy in which he played so many parts, +and to which his external universe of cloudless moons, and vales of +evergreen, and lightning-riven peaks, are but the various background. He +set the "anguish, doubt, desire," the whole chaos of his age, to a music +whose thunder-roll seems to have inspired the opera of _Lohengrin_--a +music not designed to teach or to satisfy "the budge doctors of the Stoic +fur," but which will continue to arouse and delight the sons and daughters +of men. + +Madame de Stael said to Byron, at Ouchy, "It does not do to war with the +world: the world is too strong for the individual." Goethe only gives a +more philosophic form to this counsel when he remarks of the poet, "He put +himself into a false position by his assaults on Church and State. His +discontent ends in negation.... If I call _bad_ bad, what do I gain? But +if I call _good_ bad, I do mischief." The answer is obvious: as long as +men call _bad_ good, there is a call for iconoclasts: half the reforms of +the world have begun in negation. Such comments also point to the common +error of trying to make men other than they are by lecturing them. This +scion of a long line of lawless bloods--a Scandinavian Berserker, if there +ever was one--the literary heir of the Eddas--was specially created to +wage that war--to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England +with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles +the hollow hypocrisy--sham taste, sham morals, sham religion--of the +society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but +succeeded in seducing him. But for the ethereal essence,-- + + The fount of fiery life + Which served for that Titanic strife, + +Byron would have been merely a more melodious Moore and a more +accomplished Brummell. But the caged lion was only half tamed, and his +continual growls were his redemption. His restlessness was the sign of a +yet unbroken will. He fell and rose, and fell again; but never gave up the +struggle that keeps alive, if it does not save, the soul. His greatness as +well as his weakness lay, in the fact that from boyhood battle was the +breath of his being. To tell him not to fight, was like telling Wordsworth +not to reflect, or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of +challenge; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an +unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine +mosaic; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder +Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit +of action and of enterprise. + +In good portraits his head has a lurid look, as if it had been at a higher +temperature than that of other men. That high temperature was the source +of his inspiration, and the secret of a spell which, during his life, +commanded homage and drew forth love. Mere artists are often mannikins. +Byron's brilliant though unequal genius was subordinate to the power of +his personality; he + + Had the elements + So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up + And say to all the world--"This was a man." + +We may learn much from him still, when we have ceased to disparage, as our +fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is so much warning and so +much example. + + + + +INDEX. + +_Abydos, Bride of_ +Adeline (Lady), analysis of female character +Albrizzi (Countess), salon of +Ali Pasha, his reception of Byron +Allegra, Byron's daughter +Athenians, character of +Athens +Aurora Raby, La Guiccioli idealised + +Becher's, Rev. J.T., influence on Byron +_Beppo_ +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blessington, Lady +_Blues, The_ +Boatswain (Byron's dog) +Bologna +Boston's _Fourfold State_ +Bowers, Byron's tutor +Bowles, controversy about Pope +Bozzaris, Marco, death of +Brandes, Prof., criticism of Byron's bust +_British Review, To the Editor of the_ +_Bronze, The Age of_ +Brougham's, Lord, criticism of _Hours of Idleness_ +Brown, Hamilton +Bruno, Dr. +Brydges, Sir Egerton, criticism of _Cain_ +Burns +Burun, an ancestor of Byron +Butler, Dr., master of Harrow +Byron, Augusta Ada (the poet's daughter) +Byron, George Gordon, 6th Lord + genealogy; + birth; + residence at Ballater; + school-life; + early loves; + "first dash into poetry"; + accession to peerage; + Baillie, Dr., medical adviser; + at Harrow; + coming of age; + writes review on Wordsworth; + Annesley, residence at; + at Cambridge; + takes seat in House of Lords; + travels; + studies Romaic; + Armenian; + attacks of fever; + speeches in House of Lords; + writes address on re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre; + publishes the _Giaour_; + friendship with Sir Walter Scott; + marriage; + separation from wife; + departure from England; + friendship with Shelley; + in Switzerland; + in Italy; + life in Venice + completes _Childe Harold_ + life at Ravenna + at Pisa + relations with Leigh Hunt + life in Albaro + joins conspiracy in Italy + joins movement for liberation of Greece + leaves Italy + life in Greece + last illness and death + last words + funeral honours +Byron, Lord + allusions in his poetry to his training + appreciation of + aristocratic sentiments + Austria, hatred of, characteristics + characteristics of literature in Byron's age + cleverness + comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth + contemporary admiration + debts + defects of character + defects of his poetry + descriptive power + dislike of professional _litterateurs_ + dissipations + dogmatism + early friends + financial affairs + follower of Pope + garrulity + idleness + knowledge of languages + knowledge of Scripture + in London society + lameness + love of mountains + melancholy + pecuniary profits + personal appearance + physical endurance + poetic character + politics + reading + relations to female sex + scholarship + Scotch superstition + social views + solitude + sources of Byron's work + swimming, feats of + tame bear + temper + theological views + verse-romances + women + estimate of + works translated +Byron, John, Admiral +Byron, John, of Clayton +Byron, John (father) +Byron, Lady (wife) +Byron, Mrs. (mother) +Byron, Richard (2nd Lord) +Byron, Robert de +Byron, Sir John (1st Lord) +Byron, Sir Nicholas +Byron, William (3rd Lord) +Byron, William (4th Lord) +Byron, William (5th Lord) + +Cadiz, estimate of +_Cain_ +Cambridge +Campbell, Thomas +Carbonari, a secret society +Carlisle, Lord +Carlyle +Castelar +_Cenci_ +Charlotte, Princess +Chasles, criticism by +Chatterton +Chaucer +Chaworth, Mary Ann +Chaworth, Mr. +Chaworth, Viscount +Cheltenham +_Childe Harold_ + criticism of +_Chillon, Prisoner of_ +_Christabel_ +_Churchill's Grave_ +Civil Wars +Clairmont, Miss, intimacy with +Clare, Lord, friendship with +Clermont, Mrs., Lady Byron's maid +Cogni, Margarita, intimacy with +Coleridge +Colocatroni, the brigand +Constantinople +_Corinth, Siege of_ +_Corsair_ +_Could I remount the River of my Years_ +Cowley +Cowper +Crabbe +_Curse of Minerva_ + +Dallas, R.C. +Dante +D'Arcy, Amelia (Countess Conyers) +_Darkness_ +Davies, Scrope +Davy, Sir H. +_Deformed Transformed_ +_Don Juan_ + criticism of +Doomsday Book +Dramas (Byron's) +_Dream, The_ +Drury, Dr. Joseph +Drury, Henry +Drury Lane Theatre +Drury, Mark +Dryden +Duff, Mary, intimacy with +Dulwich + +Eddlestone, the chorister +_Edinburgh Review_ +Ekenhead, Lieutenant +Eldon, Lord +Elgin, Lord +Elze +England's vice of hypocrisy +_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ +English character +English literature + +_Faery Queene_ (Spenser's) +Falkland, Lord +_Faust_, influence of, on Byron +Ferrara +Fletcher (valet) +Florence +_Foscari, The Two_ +_Francesca of Rimini_ +Frere + +Galt +Gamba +Gell +Geneva +Genoa +George, Prince of Denmark +George III. +_Giaour_ +Gibbon +Gibraltar +Gifford +_Glenarvon_ (Lady Caroline Lamb's novel) +Glennie, Dr. +Goethe +Gray, May, her influence over Byron +Gray (poet) +Greece +Grindelwald +Guiccioli + +Hailstone, Prof. +Hanson, Mr., solicitor +Harness, a school-fellow +Harrogate, trip to +Harrow +Hawthorne +_Heaven and Earth_ +Heber, Bishop +_Hebrew Melodies_ +_Hints from Horace_ +Hiron, a Cambridge tradesman +Hobhouse +Hodgson, Rev. F. +Holderness, Earl of +Holland, Lord +Hoppner +_Hours of Idleness_ +Howard, Hon. F. +Howitt, William +Hucknall Torkard, church +_Hudibras_ +Hunt, John +Hunt, Leigh + +Ilissus +Ilium +_Island, The_ +Italy +Ithaca + +Jackson, Mr., a pugilist +Janina +Jeffrey +Jones (tutor) +Journal (Byron's) +Juliet, story of +Jungfrau +_Juvenilia_ + +Keats +Kemble, Frances Ann, memoirs of +Kennedy, Dr. +Kharyati +Kinnaird, Douglas +Kirkby Mallory + +_Lalla Rookh_ +Lamb, Lady Caroline +La Mira +_Landlord, Tales of a_ +Landor +Lanfranchi +_Lara_ +Lausanne +Lavender, a quack +Lee, Harriet +Leeds, Duke of +Leghorn +Leigh, Colonel +Leigh, Mrs. (poet's sister Augusta) +Loman, Lake +Lepanto +Lewis +_Liberal_, the +Lido +Lion (pet dog) +Lisbon +Lisle, Rouget de +Loch Leven +Locke +Lockhart +London +Londonderry, Lord +Long, Edward Noel +Longman +Loughborough +Lucca +Lucifer +Lushington, Dr. + +Macaulay +Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling) +Mafra +Magellan, Straits of +Mallet +Malta +Mandeville, Sir John +_Manfred_ + criticism of +Mansel, Dr. Lort +Marathon +Marilyn, Mrs. +_Marina Faliero_ + criticism of +Marius +Marlowe +Martineau, Miss +Matlock +Matthews, C.S. +Mavrocordatos, Prince Alexander +Mayor, Dr. +_Mazeppa_ +Mazzini +Medora (daughter of Mrs. Leigh) +Medwin, Captain +Meister, Wilhelm +Melbourne +Memoirs (Byron's) +Mesolonghi +Milan +Milbanke, Sir Ralph +Milligen (a physician) +Milton +Moore +Morea +Morgan, Lady +_Morgantc Maggiore_ +Murray, Joe (butler) +Murray, John +Musters + +Napier, Colonel +Naples +Napoleon +Newark +Newbury, battle of +Nowstead +Noel, Lady +Norton, Mrs. +_Nottingham_ + +Odysseus +Ossington +Oxford + +Paganini +_Parisina_ +Parker, Margaret, intimacy with +Parr, Dr. +Parry (engineer) +Parthenon +Paterson (a tutor) +Patras +Peel, Sir Robert +Peloponnesus +Pentelicus +Persia +Petrarch +Philopoemen +Pigot +Pisa +Plato's Glaucus +_Pleasures of Hope_ +Po (river) +Polidori +Pope +Porson, 39 +Power, Miss +_Prometheus_ +Pulci + +_Quarterly Review_ + +_Rambler_ +Raphael +Ravenna +Regent, the +Regillus +Reid, Dr. +_Rejected Addresses_ +Revolution, the French +Rhine +Rhoetian hill +Richter +Robinson, Crabb +Rochdale +Rochester +Rogers, Samuel, (poet) +Rogers (tutor) +Roman Catholic Emancipation, speech on behalf of +Roman Catholic religion +Rome +Ross (a tutor) +Rossina +Rousseau +Rubens +Rushton, Robert +Ruskin +Russell, Lord John +Russia +Ruthyn, Lord Grey de + +Sainte Beuve +Santa Croce +_Saragassa, Maid of_ +Sardanapalus +_Saturday Review_ +Schlegel, F. +Scotland, allusions to +Scott, Sir Walter +Seaham +Segati, Mariana, intimacy with +Seville +Shakespeare +Shelley +Shelley, Mrs. +Shepherd, Mrs., letter of +Sheridan +Siddons, Mrs. +Sinclair, George, friend of Byron +Sligo, Marquis of +Smith, Mrs. Spencer ("Florence") +Smith, Sir Henry +Smyrna +Socrates +Soraete +Southey +Southwell +Spain +Spectator +Spencer, Earl +Spenser +Spielberg +Spinoza +Stael, Madame de +Stanhope, Colonel +Stanhope, Lady Hester +Staubbach +Stendhal +Stephen, Leslie +Stromboli +Suliotes +Swift +Swinstead +Switzerland + +Taafe +Taine +Tasso +Tavell (a tutor) +_Telegrapho_(newspaper) +Tennant +Tennyson +Tepaleni +Thackeray +Thebes +Theresa (Maid of Athens) +Thorwaldsen +Tickhill +Titian +Trelawny +Turkey +Tusculum + +University training + +_Vampire, The_ +Vanessa +Vathi +Venice +Verona +"Victory," the +_Vision of Judgment_ +Voltaire + +"Wager," the +_Waltz, The,_ +Washington +Waterloo +Watkins, Dr. John +Wellington +Wengern +_Werner_ +West (artist) +Westminster Abbey +Wildman +Williams, Captain +Wingfield, John +Woodhouselee, Lord +Wordsworth +_World_ +Wycliffe + +York +Yussuf Pasha + +Zante +Zitza + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Byron, by John Nichol + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYRON *** + +***** This file should be named 10100.txt or 10100.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/0/10100/ + +Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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