VI. THE FRIENDSHIPS OF LORD BYRON
The extraordinary part which friendship played in Lord Byron's life is another proof of his goodness. His friendships may be divided into two categories: the friendships of his heart, and those of his mind. To the first class belong those which he made at Harrow and in his early Cambridge days, while his later acquaintances at the University matured into friends of the second category. These had great influence over his mind. The names of those of the first category who were dearest to him, and who were alive when he left Harrow for Cambridge (for he had lost some very intimate friends while still at Harrow, and among these Curzon), were--
WINGFIELD. DELAWARE. TATTERSALL. CLARE. LONG. EDDLESTON. HARNESS.
I will say a word of each, so as to show that Byron in the selection of his friends was guided instinctively by the qualities of those he loved.
WINGFIELD.
The Hon. John Wingfield, of the Coldstream Guards, was a brother of Richard, fourth Viscount Powerscourt, and died of fever at Coimbra, on the 14th of May, 1811, in his 20th year.
"Of all beings on earth," says Byron, "I was perhaps at one time more attached to poor Wingfield than to any. I knew him during the best part of his life and the happiest portion of mine."
When he heard of the death of this beloved companion of his youth, he added the two following stanzas to the first canto of "Childe Harold:"
XCI.
"And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain-- Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low, Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain: But thus unlaurell'd to descend in vain, By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain, While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest! What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest?
XCII.
"Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most! Dear to a heart where naught was left so dear! Though to my hopeless days forever lost, In dreams deny me not to see thee here! And Morn in secret shall renew the tear Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose."
Writing to Dallas on the 7th of August, 1812, he says, "Wingfield was among my best and dearest friends; one of the very few I can never regret to have loved." And on the 7th of September, speaking of the death of Matthews, in whom he said he had lost a friend and a guide, he wrote to Dallas to say: "In Wingfield I have lost a friend only; but one I could have wished to precede in his long journey."
TATTERSALL (DAVUS).
The Rev. John Cecil Tattersall, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford, died on the 8th of October, 1812, aged 24.
"His knowledge," says a writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," "was extensive and deep; his affections were sincere and great. By his extreme aversion to hypocrisy, he was so far from assuming the appearance of virtue, that most of his good qualities remained hidden, while he was most anxious to reveal the slightest fault into which he had fallen. He was a stanch friend, and a stranger to all enmity; he behaved loyally to men when alive, and died full of confidence and trust in God."
DELAWARE (EURYALUS).
George John, fifth Earl of Delaware, born in October, 1791, succeeded to his father in July, 1795.
Lord Byron wrote from Harrow on the 25th of October, 1804:--
"I am very comfortable here; my friends are not numerous, but choice. Among the first of these I place Delaware, who is very amiable, and my great friend. He is younger than I am, but is gifted with the finest character. He is the most intelligent creature on earth, and is besides particularly good-looking, which is a charm in women's eyes."
In consequence of a misunderstanding, or rather of a false accusation,--of which I shall speak elsewhere, in order to show the generosity of Lord Byron's character,--a coolness took place in their friendship. A charming piece in the "Hours of Idleness" alludes to it, and shows well the nature of his mind. I will only quote the seventh stanza:--
"You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, If danger demanded, were wholly your own; You knew me unalter'd by years or by distance, Devoted to love and to friendship alone."
CLARE (LYCUS).
John Fitzgibbon, second Earl of Clare, succeeded to his father in 1802; was twelve years Chancellor of Ireland, and, later, Governor of Bombay.
Lord Byron wrote of him at Ravenna:--
"I never hear the name of Clare without my heart beating even now, and I am writing in 1821, with all the feelings of 1803, 4, 5, and ad infinitum."
He had kept all the letters of his early friends, and among these is one of Lord Clare's, in which the energy of his mind appears even through the language of the child. At the bottom of this letter and in Byron's hand, is a note written years after, showing his tender and amiable feelings:--
"This letter was written at Harrow by Lord Clare, then, and I trust ever, my beloved friend. When we were both students, he sent it to me in my study, in consequence of a brief childish misunderstanding, the only one we ever had. I keep this note only to show him, and laugh with him at the remembrance of the insignificance of our first and last quarrel.
BYRON."
Besides mentioning Lord Clare in "Childish Recollections," his "Hours of Idleness" contain another poem addressed to him, which begins thus:--
TO THE EARL OF CLARE.
"Tu semper amoris Sis memor, et cari comitis ne abscedat imago."--VAL. FLAC.
Friend of my youth! when young we roved, Like striplings, mutually beloved, With friendship's purest glow, The bliss which winged those rosy hours Was such as pleasure seldom showers On mortals here below.
The recollection seems alone Dearer than all the joys I've known, When distant far from you: Though pain, 'tis still a pleasing pain, To trace those days and hours again, And sigh again, adieu!
* * * * *
Our souls, my friend! which once supplied One wish, nor breathed a thought beside, Now flow in different channels: Disdaining humbler rural sports, 'Tis yours to mix in polish'd courts, And shine in fashion's annals:
* * * * *
I think I said 'twould be your fate To add one star to royal state:-- May regal smiles attend you! And should a noble monarch reign, You will not seek his smiles in vain, If worth can recommend you.
Yet since in danger courts abound, Where specious rivals glitter round, From snares may saints preserve you; And grant your love or friendship ne'er From any claim a kindred care, But those who best deserve you!
Not for a moment may you stray From truth's secure, unerring way! May no delights decoy! O'er roses may your footsteps move, Your smiles be ever smiles of love, Your tears be tears of joy!
Oh! if you wish that happiness Your coming days and years may bless, And virtues crown your brow; Be still, as you were wont to be, Spotless as you've been known to me,-- Be still as you are now.
And though some trifling share of praise, To cheer my last declining days, To me were doubly dear, While blessing your beloved name, I'd waive at once a poet's fame, To prove a prophet here.
In 1821, as he was going to Pisa, Byron met his old and dear friend Clare on the route to Bologna, and speaks of their meeting in the following terms:--
"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne, in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I have often found it. At page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two afterward I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after an interval of seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.
"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like 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. He told me, that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys--he for Rome, I for Pisa--but with the promise to meet again in the spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against those few minutes.... Of all I have ever known he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions.
"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others during absence and distance."
"My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to Moore from Pisa, in March, 1822: "we met on the road, and our meeting was quite sentimental--really pathetic on both sides. I have always loved him better than any male thing in the world."
In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th of that month Byron wrote to Moore:--
"A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I have always loved him, since I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any male thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately."
On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleasure in existence like that of meeting an early friend.
"Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G----, "gave Byron the greatest joy. The last day they spent together at Leghorn was most melancholy. Byron had a kind of presentiment that he should never see his friend again, and in speaking of him, for a long time after, his eyes always filled with tears."
LONG (CLEON).
Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at Cambridge. He entered the Guards, and distinguished himself in the expedition to Copenhagen. As he was on his way to join the army in the Peninsula, in 1809, the ship in which he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was drowned with several others.
Long's friendship contributed to render Byron's stay at Cambridge bearable after his beloved Harrow days.
"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and amiable creatures who live but a short time. He had talents and qualities far too rare not to make him very much regretted." He depicts him as a lively companion, with an occasional strange touch of melancholy. One would have said he anticipated, as it were, the fate which awaited him.
The letter which he wrote to Byron, on leaving the University to enter the Guards, was so full of sadness that it contrasted strangely with his habitual humor.
"His manners," says Lord Byron, "were amiable and gentle, and he had a great disposition to look at the comical side of things. He was a musician, and played on several instruments, especially the flute and the violincello. We spent our evenings with music, but I was only a listener. Our principal beverage consisted in soda-water. During the day we rode, swam, walked, and read together; but we only spent one summer with each other."
On his leaving Cambridge, Byron addressed to him the following lines:--
TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.
"Nil ego contulerim jocundo sanus amico."--HORACE.
Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene, While all around in slumber lie, The joyous days which ours have been Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye; Thus if amid the gathering storm, While clouds the darken'd noon deform, Yon heaven assumes a varied glow, I hail the sky's celestial bow, Which spreads the sign of future peace, And bids the war of tempests cease. Ah! though the present brings but pain, I think those days may come again; Or if, in melancholy mood, Some lurking envious fear intrude, To check my bosom's fondest thought, And interrupt the golden dream, I crush the fiend with malice fraught, And still indulge my wonted theme. Although we ne'er again can trace In Granta's vale the pedant's lore; Nor through the groves of Ida chase Our raptured visions as before, Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion, And Manhood claims his stern dominion, Age will not every hope destroy, But yield some hours of sober joy.
Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers, Where smiling youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul, Congeals the tear of Pity's eye, Or checks the sympathetic sigh, Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan, And bids me feel for self alone; Oh, may my bosom never learn To soothe its wonted heedless flow, Still, still despise the censor stern, But ne'er forget another's woe. Yes, as you knew me in the days O'er which Remembrance yet delays, Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild, And even in age at heart a child.
Though now on airy visions borne, To you my soul is still the same. Oft has it been my fate to mourn, And all my former joys are tame. But hence! ye hours of sable hue! Your frowns are gone, my sorrows o'er: By every bliss my childhood knew, I'll think upon your shade no more. Thus, when the whirlwind's rage is past, And caves their sullen roar inclose, We heed no more the wintry blast, When lull'd by zephyr to repose.
Long's death was the cause of great grief to Lord Byron.
"Long's father," said he, "has written to ask me to write his son's epitaph. I promised to do it, but I never had the strength to finish it."
I will add that Mr. Wathen having gone to visit Lord Byron at Ravenna, and having told him that he knew Long, Byron henceforth treated him with the utmost cordiality. He spoke of Long and of his amiable qualities, until he could no longer hide his tears.
In the month of October, 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1821 he thus described himself, and his own feelings on leaving his beloved Ida for a new scene of life:--
"When I went to college it was for me a most painful event. I left Harrow against my wish, and so took it to heart, that before I left I never slept for counting the days which I had still to spend there. In the second place, I wished to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge; and, in the third place, I found myself so isolated in this new world, that my mind was perfectly depressed by it.
"Not that my companions were not sociable: quite the contrary; they were particularly lively, hospitable, rich, noble, and much more gay than myself. I mixed, dined, and supped with them; but, I don't know why, the most painful and galling sensation of life was that of feeling I was no longer a child."
His grief was such that he fell ill, and it was during that illness that he wrote and partly dictated the poem "Recollections of Childhood," in which he mentions and describes all his dear comrades of Harrow, with that particular charm of expression and thought which the heart alone can inspire.
It was again under the same impression that he wrote the most melancholy lines in the "Hours of Idleness," where the regret of the past delightful days of his childhood, spent at his dear Ida, ever comes prominently forward.
"I would I were a careless child,"
he exclaims in one poem, and finishes the same by the lines,--
"Oh that to me the wings were given Which bear the turtle to her nest! Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven To flee away, and be at rest."
Life at Harrow appears to have been for him then the ideal of happiness. At times the distant view of the village and college of Harrow, inspires his muse, at others a visit to the college itself, and an hour spent under the shade of an elm in the church-yard. His whole soul is so revealed in these two poems, that I can not forbear quoting them in extenso:--
ON A DISTANT VIEW OF THE VILLAGE AND SCHOOL OF HARROW-ON-THE-HILL.
"Oh! mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos."--VIRGIL.
Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection Embitters the present, compared with the past; Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection, And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last;
Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied, How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance, Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!
Again I revisit the hills where we sported, The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought; The school where, loud warn'd by the bell, we resorted, To pore o'er the precepts by pedagogues taught.
Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd, As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay; Or round the steep brow of the church-yard I wander'd, To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.
I once more view the room, with spectators surrounded, Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alonzo o'erthrown; While, to swell my young pride, such applauses resounded, I fancied that Mossop himself was outshown.[24]
Or, as Lear, I pour'd forth the deep imprecation, By my daughters of kingdom and reason deprived; Till, fired by loud plaudits and self-adulation, I regarded myself as a Garrick revived.
Ye dreams of my boyhood, how much I regret you! Unfaded your memory dwells in my breast; Though sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget you. Your pleasures may still be in fancy possest.
To Ida full oft may remembrance restore me, While fate shall the shades of the future unroll! Since darkness o'ershadows the prospect before me, More dear is the beam of the past to my soul!
But if, through the course of the years which await me, Some new scene of pleasure should open to view, I will say, while with rapture the thought shall elate me, "Oh! such were the days which my infancy knew!"
* * * * *
LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCH-YARD OF HARROW.
Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore, Like me, the happy scenes they knew before: Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill, Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still, Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay, And frequent mused the twilight hours away; Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline, But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine: How do thy branches, moaning to the blast, Invite the bosom to recall the past, And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, "Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"
When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast, And calm its cares and passions into rest, Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe my dying hour-- If aught may soothe when life resigns her power-- To know some humble grave, some narrow cell, Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell. With this fond dream, methinks, 'twere sweet to die-- And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie; Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose; Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose; Forever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade, Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd; Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved, Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved; Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear, Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here; Deplored by those in early days allied, And unremember'd by the world beside.
"But although he may for a time," says Moore, "have experienced this kind of moral atomy, it was not in his nature to be long without attaching himself to somebody, and the friendship which he conceived for Eddleston--a man younger than himself, and not at all of his rank in society--even surpassed in ardor all the other attachments of his youth."
EDDLESTON
was one of the choristers at Cambridge. His talent for music attracted Byron's attention. When he lost the society of Long, who had been his sole comfort at Cambridge, he took very much to the company of young Eddleston. One feels how much he was attached to him, on reading those lines in which he thanks Eddleston for a cornelian heart he had sent him:--
THE CORNELIAN.
No specious splendor of this stone Endears it to my memory ever; With lustre only once it shone, And blushes modest as the giver.
Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties, Have for my weakness oft reproved me; Yet still the simple gift I prize, For I am sure the giver loved me.
He offer'd it with downcast look, As fearful that I might refuse it; I told him, when the gift I took, My only fear should be to lose it.
When Eddleston left college, Lord Byron wrote to Miss Pigott a letter full of regret at having lost his youthful friend, and thanking her for having taken an interest in him.
"During the whole time we were at Cambridge together," says Byron, "we saw each other every day, summer and winter, and never once found a moment of ennui, but parted each day with greater regret. I trust," he added, at the end of his letter, "that you will some day see us together; that is the being I esteem most, though I love several others."
But in the year 1811 Eddleston died of consumption; and Lord Byron wrote to Miss Pigott's mother, to beg of her to return the cornelian heart which he had intrusted to her care, because it had "now acquired a value which he wished it had never had;" the original donor having died at the age of twenty-one, a few months before, and being "the sixth in the space of four months of a series of friends and relations whom he had lost since May."
The cornelian heart was restored, and Byron was informed that he had only intrusted it, but not given it to Miss Pigott. It was on learning of Eddleston's death that Byron added the touching ninth stanza to the second canto of "Childe Harold."
After speaking of the hope of meeting again in a celestial abode, those whom he loved on earth, and all those who taught the truth, he exclaims,--
"There, thou!--whose love and life together fled, Have left me here to love and live in vain-- Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead When busy Memory flashes on my brain? Well--I will dream that we may meet again, And woo the vision to my vacant breast: If aught of young Remembrance then remain, Be as it may Futurity's behest, For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!"
Among the children younger than himself of whom he established himself the protector, one of those he loved best was his fag William Harness.
HARNESS.
The Rev. William Harness is the author of the work entitled the "Relations between Christianity and Happiness, by one of the oldest and most esteemed friends of Lord Byron."
Harness was four years younger than Byron, and one of the earliest friends he made at Harrow. Lord Byron had not been long at the school, and had not yet formed any friendship with other boys, when he saw a boy, "still lame from an accident of his childhood, and but just recovered from a severe illness, bullied by a boy much older and stronger than himself." Byron interfered and took his part.
"We both seem perfectly to recollect," says he, "with a mixture of pleasure and regret, the hours we once passed together; and I assure you, most sincerely, they are numbered among the happiest of my brief chronicle of enjoyment. I am now getting into years, that is to say, I was twenty a month ago, and another year will send me into the world, to run my career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen--you were almost the first of my Harrow friends, certainly the first in my esteem, if not in date; but an absence from Harrow for some time shortly after, and new connections on your side, and the difference in our conduct, from that turbulent and riotous disposition of mine which impelled me into every species of mischief, all these circumstances combined to destroy our intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and Memory compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my mind at this moment.
"There is another circumstance you do not know:--the first lines I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to you; but as on our return from the holidays we were strangers, the lines were destroyed.
"I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have begun. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often, and, if we meet, let us be what we should be, and what we were."
Young Harness, gifted with a calm and mild temperament, was being educated for the Church. Besides being always at Harrow, and four years younger than Byron, the life which the latter led at Newstead and at Cambridge did not suit one destined to a career which requires greater severity of demeanor. But the two friends corresponded, and Lord Byron sent him one of his early copies of "Hours of Idleness." In the letter which the Rev. W. Harness wrote to Moore, after Byron's death, to tell him the nature of the quarrel which he and Byron had had together, and their subsequent reconciliation, he ends by saying:--
"Our conversation was renewed and continued from that time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron may have exhibited toward others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate.... I can not call to mind a single instance of caprice or unkindness in the whole course of our intimacy to allege against him."
The fault to which Harness alludes, and which he acknowledges, was one of the kind to which Byron was most sensitive, namely, coldness. Having lost some of his early and best friends, Edward Long, and all the others being spread far and near, abroad and in England, following out their respective careers and destiny, Harness was about the only early friend he had near him.
The time was approaching when he was going to leave England, to travel and to learn by study the great book of Nature. His heart was wounded by the injustice which had been done him, by the many disenchantments which he had experienced, by the brutal criticism of his "Hours of Idleness" from the pen of his relation Lord Carlisle, and by his money difficulties. Unable as yet to foretell the effects of his satire, which had not yet appeared, and the success of which might have consoled him a little for past mortifications, he found in friendship his sole relief, and particularly in the friendship of Harness. At this very critical time, Harness--(be it either through the influence of his family and relations, or through a notion that his principles were rather unsuited to the heterodox opinions of Lord Byron)--behaved coldly toward Byron. Dallas, however, who from puritanism and family pride, and even from jealousy, was rather an enemy of Lord Byron's intellectual friends--(contending that it was they who had instilled into Byron all the anti-orthodox views which the poet had adopted)--makes an exception in favor of Harness.
Byron spoke of Harness with an affection which he hoped was repaid to him. I often met him at Newstead, and both he and Byron had had their portraits taken, which they were to make a present of to one another. It was not until some unknown cause sprung up to establish a coldness between the two friends that their intimacy ceased, and at the same time Harness's visits to Newstead. Byron felt it very keenly.
In what degree the conduct of Harness hurt Lord Byron and contributed to those explosions of misanthropy which, slight and passing as they were, have nevertheless been urged as a reproach against his first and second cantos of "Childe Harold," I shall examine later.
Here it is only necessary to say that in a soul such as his, where rancor could never live, such a coldness wounded him without altering his sentiments in any way. After two years' absence he returned to England, and so heartily forgave Harness that he actually wished to dedicate to him the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and only gave up this idea from a generous fear that its dedication might injure him in his clerical profession, on account of certain stanzas in the poem which were not quite orthodox.
"The letter," says Moore, "in which he expresses these delicate sentiments is, unfortunately, lost."
Some months after his return to England he resumed his correspondence with Harness, and both the friends assembled at Newstead. Harness, however, as a clergyman, was severe in his judgments. Byron wrote to him:--
"You are censorious, child: when you are a little older, you will learn to dislike every body, but abuse nobody.... I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and I am not the less pleased to meet with it again from one to whom I had known it earliest. I have not changed in all my ramblings; Harrow, and of course yourself, never left me, and the
'Dulces reminiscitur Argos.'
attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the mind of the fallen Argive. Our intimacy began before we began to date at all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it and me with the things that were."
Two days afterward, he writes to him again a letter full of endearing expressions, couched in a friendly tone of interest, of which the following extracts are instances:--
"And now, child, what art thou doing? Reading, I trust. I want to see you take a degree. Remember, this is the most important period of your life; and don't disappoint your papa and your aunt and all your kin, besides myself.
"You see, mio carissimo, what a pestilent correspondent I am likely to become; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead as you please, and I won't disturb your studies as I do now."
On the 11th of December, of the same year, he invites Moore to Newstead and says, "H---- will be here, and a young friend named Harness, the earliest and dearest I ever had from the third form at Harrow to this hour."
And, finally, he wrote to Harness that he had no greater pleasure than to hear from him; indeed, that it was more than a pleasure.
HIS LATER FRIENDS.
When he had reached his nineteenth year, which was the second of his stay at Cambridge, Byron (having lost sight of most of his Harrow friends to whom he dedicated his verses, and having lost both Long and Eddleston) suddenly found himself launched into the vortex of a university life, for which he had no liking. Happily, however, he was thrown among young men of great distinction, whom fate had then gathered at Cambridge.
"It was so brilliant a constellation," says Moore, "that perhaps such a one will never be seen again." Among these he selected his friends from their literary merit. Those he most distinguished were Hobhouse, Matthews, Banks, and Scroope Davies. They formed a coterie at Cambridge, and spent most of their holidays at Newstead.
HOBHOUSE.
Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Bart., since created a peer, under the name of Lord Broughton, is one of the statesmen and writers the memory of whom England most reveres. It is he whom Byron addresses as Moschus in the "Hints from Horace." After being Byron's friend at college, he became his faithful companion likewise in his travels, and throughout his short-lived but brilliant career. It was he who accompanied Byron in the fatal journey to Seaham, where Byron wedded Miss Milbank. It was he who stood best man on that occasion, and it was he whom Byron selected as his executor.
As soon as Byron became of age in 1809, the two friends left England together to visit Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. The results of these travels were, Byron's first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and Hobhouse's "Journey across Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and in Asia."
On their return to England, their intimacy did not cease. "Hobhouse," Byron was wont to say, "ever gets me out of difficulty;" and in his journal of 1814 he says, "Hobhouse has returned. He is my best friend, the most animated and most amusing, and one whose knowledge is very deep and extensive. Hobhouse told me ten thousand anecdotes of Napoleon, which must be true. Hobhouse is the most interesting of travelling companions, and really excellent."
Lord Byron wished him to be his best man when he married Miss Milbank at Seaham, and after his separation from her Hobhouse joined him in Switzerland. They travelled together through the Oberland, and visited all the scenes which inspired that magnificent poem entitled "Manfred." Thence they left for Italy, and visited it from North to South; from the Alps to Rome. The result of this journey was the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" from Byron, and from Hobhouse a volume of notes, which constitutes a work of very great merit. If such a companion was agreeable to Byron, Byron was not less so to Hobhouse, who deplores a journey he had made without the company of that friend, whose perspicacity of observation and ingenious remarks united in producing that liveliness and good-humor, which take away half the sting of fatigue, and soften the aspect of danger and of difficulties.
During his absence from England Byron always insisted that all matters relating to the settlement of his affairs should pass through the hands of Hobhouse, his "alter ego" when near or when absent. His highest testimony of regard and friendship for Hobhouse, however, is to be found in the dedication of the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," which was written in Italy in 1815, and which is as follows:--
CANTO THE FOURTH.
To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.M., F.R.S., etc.
Venice, January 2, 1818.
MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,--After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favor reflected through the poem on the poet,--to one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to yourself.
In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you, in its complete or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honor to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence,[25] but which can not poison my future while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself.
It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects.
With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are now a matter of indifference: the work is to depend on itself and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.
In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.
It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us--though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people among whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary as well as political party appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte le vie diverse si possouo tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still: Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the departments of art, sciences, and belles-lettres; and in some the very highest. Europe--the World--has but one Canova.
It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition--a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbors--that man must be willfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched "longing after immortality"--the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me,--
"Non movero mai corda Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."
What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily they will have their reward," and at no very distant period.
Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,
BYRON.
MATTHEWS.
"Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews," says Moore, "I have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler tribute to his memory.
"There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Among all these young men of learning and talent, the superiority in almost every department of intellect seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to Matthews.... Young Matthews appears--in spite of some little asperities of temper and manner, which he was already beginning to soften down when snatched away--to have been one of those rare individuals who, while they command deference, can at the same time win regard, and who, as it were, relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by blending it with love."
Matthews died while bathing in the Cam.
On the 7th of September, 1811, Byron wrote to Dallas as follows:--"Matthews, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of our own at Cambridge and elsewhere.... Davies, who is not a scribbler, has always beaten us all in the war of words. H---- and myself always had the worst of it with the other two, and even M---- yielded to the dashing vivacity of S. D----."
And in another letter:--"You did not know M----: he was a man of the most astonishing powers."
And again, speaking of his death to Mr. Hodgson, he writes:--
"You will feel for poor Hobhouse; Matthews was the god of his idolatry: and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one would refuse him pre-eminence."
Matthews died at the time when he was offering himself to compete for a lucrative and honorable position in the University. As soon as his death was known, it was said that if the highest talents could be sure of success, if the strictest principles of honor, and the devotion to him of a multitude of friends could have assured it, his dream would have been realized.
Besides a great superiority of intellect, Matthews was gifted with a very amusing originality of thought, which, joined to a very keen sense of the ridiculous, exercised a kind of irresistible fascination. Lord Byron, who loved a joke better than any one, took great pleasure in all the amusing eccentricities of him who was styled the Dean of Newstead; while Byron had been christened by him the Abbot of that place.
Shortly before his death, in 1821, Byron wrote a very amusing letter from Ravenna to Murray, recalling a host of anecdotes relating to Matthews, and which well set forth the clever eccentricity of the man for whom Byron professed so much esteem and admiration.
SCROOPE DAVIES.
We have already seen what Byron thought of Davies. His cleverness, his great vivacity, and his gayety, were great resources to Byron in his moments of affliction. When, in 1811, Byron experienced the bitterest loss of his life--that of his mother--he wrote from Newstead to beg that Davies would come and console him.
Shortly after, he wrote to Hodgson to say, "Davies has been here. His gayety, which death itself can not change, has been of great service to me: but it must be allowed that our laughter was very false."
We must not forget to mention, among the friends of Byron, William Banks, Mr. Pigott, of Southwell, and Mr. Hodgson, a writer of great merit, who was one of his companions at Newstead, and with whom he corresponded even during his voyage in the East. For all these he maintained throughout life the kindest remembrance, as also for Mr. Beecher, for whom he entertained a regard equal to his affection. Mr. Beecher having disapproved of the moral tendency of his early poems, Lord Byron destroyed in one night the whole of the first edition of those poems, in order to prove his sense of esteem for Mr. Beecher's opinion. In the same category we should place Lord Byron's friendship for Dr. Drury, his tutor at Harrow; but this latter friendship is so marked with feelings of respect, veneration, and gratitude, that I had rather speak of it later, when I shall treat of the last-named quality, as one of the most noticeable in Lord Byron's character.
GRIEF WHICH HE EXPERIENCED AT THE LOSS OF HIS FRIENDS.
The grief which the loss of his friends occasioned to him was proportioned to the degree of affection which he entertained for them. By a curious fatality he had the misfortune to lose at an early age, almost all those he loved. This grief reached its climax on his return from his first travels.
"If," says Moore, "to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. In the short space of one month," he says in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable." Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favorites, died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at Cambridge, was drowned while bathing in the Cam. The following letter, written shortly after, shows so powerful a feeling of regret, and displays such real grief, that it is almost painful to peruse it:
"MY DEAREST DAVIES,--Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews? Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had but you and H---- and M----, and let me enjoy the survivors while I can."
Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says:--
"Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, has perished miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam; my poor school-fellow Wingfield, at Coimbra, within a month: and while I had heard from all three, but not seen one. But let this pass; we shall all one day pass along with the rest; the world is too full of such things, and our very sorrow is selfish."
To Hodgson he writes:--
"Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.
"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before."
Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Eddleston, of which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms:
"I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times. But 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered."
On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a prey to such grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advising him to banish all cares and to find in pleasure the distraction he needed. Lord Byron replied by some lines which Moore has reproduced; but the last of which he omitted to give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every one in a bright light, and whom Byron wished to frighten.
Here are the first lines:--
"Oh! banish care, such ever be The motto of thy revelry! Perchance of mine when wassail nights Renew those riotous delights, Wherewith the children of Despair Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care,' But not in morn's reflecting hour."
Two days after replying in verse, he answered him in prose.
"I am growing nervous--it is really true--really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless."
The same day, 11th October, 1811, one of the darkest in his life, he wrote also his first stanza, addressed to Thyrza, of which the pathetic charm seems to rise to the highest pitch.
"To no other but an imaginary being," says Moore, "could he have addressed such tender and melancholy poetical lines."
BYRON'S FRIENDSHIP FOR MOORE.
At this time of his life, whether from the numerous injuries inflicted on him by men and by fate, or from some other circumstance, Byron seemed to be less given to friendships than formerly. He felt the force of friendship as deeply as before, but he became less expansive. Death, in taking so many of his friends away from him, had endeared those who remained still more to his heart, and caused him to seek among these the consolation he wanted. It is not true to say that Lord Byron was left alone entirely, at any time of his life: quite the contrary, he at all times lived in the midst of friends more or less devoted to him. Dallas and Moore pretend that there was a time in his early youth when he had no friends at all; but this time can not be stated, unless one forgets the names of Hobhouse, Hodgson, Harness, Clare, and many others who never lost sight of him, and unless one forgets the life of devotion which he led at Southwell and at Newstead both before and after his travels in the East.
Dallas and Moore, in speaking of this momentary isolation, in all probability adopted a common prejudice which causes them to believe that a lord must ever be lonely unless he is surrounded by a circle of rich and fashionable companions. The truth is that Byron, having left England immediately on quitting college, only had college connections, with all of whom he renewed his friendship on his return to the mother-country. But it is equally true, and this is to his credit, that he long hesitated to replace departed friends by new ones.
To conquer this repugnance he required a very high degree of esteem for the friend he was about to make, a similarity of tastes, and above all a sympathy based upon real goodness. This was the time of his greatest mental depression. It preceded that splendid epoch in his life, when his star shone with such brilliancy in the literary sphere, thanks to "Childe Harold," and in the world of politics through his parliamentary successes, which had earned for him the praises of the whole nation. Then did friends present themselves in scores, but out of these few were chosen.
Among the great men of the day who surrounded him, he took to several, and in particular to Lord Holland, a Whig like himself, and a man equally distinguished for the excellence of his heart as for his rare intellect. Lord Holland's hospitality was the pride of England. Byron also conceived a liking for Lord Lansdowne,--the model of every virtue, social and domestic; for Lord Dudley, whose wit so charmed him; for Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, brother to Lord Kinnaird, whom Byron called his most devoted friend in politics and in literature; for all those first notabilities of the day, Rogers, Sheridan, Curran, Mackintosh, for all of whom he may be said to have entertained a feeling akin to friendship. But all these were friends of the moment; friends whom the relations of every-day life in the world of fashion had brought together, and whose talents exacted admiration, and hence he formed ties which may be styled friendship, provided the strict sense of that word is not understood. Byron felt this more than any one.
One man, however, contrived to get such a hold on his mind and heart, that he became truly his friend, and exercised a salutary influence over him. This man, who contributed to dispel the dark clouds which hung over Byron's mind, and was the first to charm him in his new life of fashion, was no other than Thomas Moore.
This new intimacy had not, it is true, the freshness of his early friendships, formed, as these were, in the freshness of a young heart, and therefore without any worldly calculations. Moore was even ten years his senior. But his affection for Moore, founded as it was upon a similarity of tastes, upon mutual reminiscences, esteem and admiration, soon developed itself into a friendship which never changed. The circumstances under which Byron and Moore became friends speak too highly for the credit of both not to be mentioned here, and we must therefore say a few words on the subject.
Byron, as the reader knows, had in his famous satire of "English Bards," etc., attacked the poems of Moore as having an immoral tendency. Instead of interpreting the beautiful Irish melodies in their figurative sense, Byron had taken the direct sense conveyed in their love-inspiring words, and considered them as likely to produce effeminate and unhealthy impressions.
"Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire, With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd, Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd? 'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day, As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay! * * * * * * * Yet kind to youth,... She bids thee 'mend thy line and sin no more.'"
Lord Byron was always of opinion that literature, when it tends to exalt the more tender sentiments of our nature, pure as these may be, is ever injurious to the preservation of those manly and energetic qualities which are so essential for the accomplishment of a noble mission here below. This opinion is illustrated by the occasional extreme energy of his heroes, and by his repugnance to introduce love into his dramas. If this reproach offended Moore a little, Lord Byron's allusion to his duel with Jeffrey at Chalk Farm in 1806, where it was said that the pistols of each were not loaded, must have wounded him still more, and he wrote a letter to Lord Byron which must, it would seem, have brought on a duel.
Lord Byron was then travelling in the Levant, and the letter remained with his agent in London. It was only two years after, on his return from his travels, that he received it. An exchange of letters with Moore took place, and such was the "good sense, self-possession and frankness" of Byron's conduct in the matter, that Moore was quite pacified, and all chances of a duel disappeared with the reconciliation of both, at the request of each.
The reconciliation took place under the auspices of Rogers, and at a dinner given by the latter for that purpose. After speaking of his extraordinary beauty, and of the delicacy and prudence of his conduct, Moore, in referring to this dinner, ends by saying, "Such did I find Lord Byron on my first experience of him, and such, so open and manly-minded did I find him to the last."
Byron, too, was influenced by the charm of Moore's acquaintance, and so dear to him became the latter's society through that kind of electric current which appears to run through some people and forms between them an unbounded sympathy, that it actually succeeded in dispelling the sombre ideas which then possessed his soul.
Their similarity of tastes, and at the same time those differences of character which are so essential to the development of the intellect of two sympathetic minds, were admirably adapted to form the charm which existed in their relations with one another.
This sympathy, however, would never have found a place in the mind of Lord Byron had it not sprung from his heart. Amiability was essential in his friends before he could love them; and though Moore had not that quality in its highest degree, still he had it sufficiently for Lord Byron to say in one of his notes, "I have received the most amiable letter possible from Moore. I really think him the most kind-hearted man I ever met. Besides which, his talents are equal to his sentiments."
His sympathy for Moore was such that the mention of his name was enough to awaken his spirits and give him joy. This is palpable in his letters to Moore, which are masterpieces of talent.
His cordial friendship for Moore was never once affected by the series of triumphs which followed its formation, and which made the whole world bow before his genius. "The new scenes which opened before him with his successes," says Moore, "far from detaching us from one another, multiplied, on the contrary, the opportunities of meeting each other, and thereby strengthening our intimacy."
This excessive liking for Moore was kept up by all the force which constancy lends to affection. One of Byron's most remarkable qualities was great constancy in his likes, tastes, and a particular attachment to the recollections of his childhood. At the age of fifteen, Moore's "Melodies" already delighted him. "I have just been looking over Little Moore's Melodies, which I knew by heart at fifteen." In 1803 he wrote from Ravenna: "Hum! I really believe that all the bad things I ever wrote or did are attributable to that rascally book."
We have seen that at Southwell he used even to ask Miss Chaworth and Miss Pigott to sing him songs of Moore. At Cambridge, what reconciled him to leaving Harrow were the hours which he spent with his beloved Edward Long, with whom he used to read Moore's poetry after having listened to Long's music.
He already then had a sympathy for Moore, and a wish to know him. The latter's place was therefore already marked out in Byron's heart, even before he was fortunate enough to know him.
Moore's straitened means often obliged him to leave London. Then Byron was seized with a fit of melancholy.
"I might be sentimental to-day, but I won't," he said. "The truth is that I have done all I can since I am in this world to harden my heart, and have not yet succeeded, though there is a good chance of my doing so.
"I wish your line and mine were a little less parallel, they might occasionally meet, which they do not now.
"I am sometimes inclined to write that I am ill, so as to see you arrive in London, where no one was ever so happy to see you as I am, and where there is no one I would sooner seek consolation from, were I ill."
Then, according to his habitual custom of ever depreciating himself morally, he writes to Moore, in answer to the latter's compliments about his goodness: "But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company."
His sympathy for Moore went so far as to induce him to believe that he was capable of every thing that is good.
"Moore," says he, in his memoranda of 1813, "has a reunion of exceptional talents--poetry, music, voice, he has all--and an expression of countenance such as no one will ever have.
"What humor in his poet's bag! There is nothing that Moore can not do if he wishes.
"He has but one fault, which I mourn every day--he is not here."
He even liked to attribute to Moore successes which the latter only owed to himself. Byron had, as the reader knows, the most musical of voices. Once heard, it could not be forgotten.[26] He had never learned music, but his ear was so just, that when he hummed a tune his voice was so touching as to move one to tears.
"Not a day passes," he wrote to Moore, "that I don't think and speak of you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, waiving personal friendship for the present. I have you by rote and by heart, of which ecce signum."
He then goes on to tell him his adventure when at Lady O----'s:--
"I have a habit of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh, breathe not,' and others; they are my matins and vespers. I did not intend them to be overheard, but one morning in comes not la Donna, but il Marita, with a very grave face, and said, 'Byron, I must request you not to sing any more, at least of those songs.'--'Why?'--'They make my wife cry, and so melancholy that I wish her to hear no more of them.'
"Now, my dear Moore, the effect must have been from your words, and certainly not my music."
To give Moore the benefit of effecting a great success with an Oriental poem, Byron gave up his own idea of writing one, and sent him some Turkish books.
"I have been thinking of a story," says he, "grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal, something like Cayotte's 'Diable Amoureux.' Tenderness is not my forte; for that reason I have given up the idea, but I think it a subject you might make much of."
Moore actually wished to write a poem on an Oriental subject, but dreaded such a rival as Byron, and expressed his fears in writing to him. Byron replied:--
"Your Peri, my dear Moore, is sacred and inviolable. I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But it really puts me out of humor to hear you talk thus."
Not only did Byron encourage Moore in his task, but effaced himself completely in order to make room for him.
When he published the "Bride of Abydos," Moore remarked that there existed some connection in that poem with an incident he had to introduce in his own poem of "Lalla Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron to say that he would stop his own work, because to aspire after him to describe the energy of passion would be the work of a Caesar.
Byron replied:--
"I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of your own powers, which I can not account for, and which must be unaccountable when a Cossack like me can appall a cuirassier.
"Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with you. The success of mine is yet problematical ... Come out, screw your courage to the sticking-place--no man stands higher, whatever you may think on a rainy day in your provincial retreat."
To Moore he dedicated his "Corsair," and to read the preface is to see how sincerely attached Byron was to his friend.
When at Venice he heard of some domestic affliction which had befallen Moore; he wrote to him with that admirable simplicity of style which can not be imitated, because the true accents of the heart defy imitation.
"Your domestic afflictions distress me sincerely; and, as far as you are concerned, my feelings will always reach the furthest limits to which I may still venture. Throughout life your losses shall be mine, your gains mine also, and, however much I may lose in sensibility, there will always remain a drop of it for you."
When Moore obtained his greatest success, and arrived at the summit of popularity, by the publication of "Lalla Rookh," Byron's pleasure was equal to the encouragements he had given him. But of his noble soul, in which no feeling of jealousy could enter, we shall speak elsewhere. Here, in conclusion, I must add that his friendship for Moore remained stanch through time and circumstances, and even notwithstanding Moore's wrongs toward him, of which I shall speak in another chapter.
In treating of Byron's friendships, I have endeavored to in set forth the wrongs which some of his friends, and Moore particular, have committed against him both before and after his death.
If, as Moore observes, it be true that Byron never lost a friend, was their friendship a like friendship with his own? Has it ever gone so far as to make sacrifices for his sake, and has not Lord Byron ever given more as a friend than he ever received in return? Had he found in his friendship among men that reciprocity of feeling which he ever found among women, would so many injuries and calumnies have been heaped upon his head? Would not his friends, had they shown a little more warmth of affection, have been able to silence those numerous rivals who rendered his life a burden to him? Had they been conscientious in their opinions, they would certainly not have drawn upon them the rather bitter lines in "Childe Harold:"--
"I do believe, Though I have found them not, that there may be Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive, And virtues which are merciful, nor weave Snares for the failing; I would also deem O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve, That two, or one, are almost what they seem, That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
And later, in "Don Juan," Byron would not have said with a smile, but also with a pain which sprang from the heart:--
"O Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough, Especially when we are ill at ease; They are but bad pilots when the weather's rough, Doctors less famous for their cures than fees.
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off, As they will do like leaves at the first breeze; When your affairs come round, one way or t'other, Go to the coffee-house and take another."
It is, however, also true that he would not have had the opportunity of showing us so perfectly the beauty of his mind, and his admirable constancy, notwithstanding the conduct of those on whom he had bestowed his friendship. This constancy is shown even by his own words, for immediately after the lines quoted above, he adds:--
"But this is not my maxim; had it been, Some heart-aches had been spared me."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: Mossop, a contemporary of Garrick, famous for his performance of Zanga.]
[Footnote 25: His marriage.]
[Footnote 26: Lord Holland's youngest son, in speaking of Byron, styled him "the gentleman with the beautiful voice."]
Chapter VII
LORD BYRON CONSIDERED AS A FATHER, AS A BROTHER, AND AS A SON.
HIS GOODNESS SHOWN BY THE STRENGTH OF HIS INSTINCTIVE AFFECTIONS.
LORD BYRON AS A FATHER.
If, as a great moralist has said, our natural affections have power only upon sensitive and virtuous natures, but are despised by men of corrupt and dissipated habits, then must we find a proof again of Lord Byron's excellence in the influence which his affections exercised over him.
His tenderness for his child, and for his sister, was like a ray of sunshine which lit up his whole heart, and in the moments of greatest depression prevented desolation from completely absorbing his nature.
His thoughts were never far from the objects of his affection.
CXV.
"My daughter! with thy name this song begun; My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end; I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far years extend: Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold, My voice shall with thy future visions blend. And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
CXVI.
"To aid thy mind's development, to watch Thy dawn of little joys, to sit and see Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee! To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss, This, it should seem, was not reserved for me, Yet this was in my nature: as it is, I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
CXVIII.
* * * * * * * "Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me."
Who ever read "Childe Harold" and was not touched by the delightful stanzas of the third canto,--a perfect chef-d'oeuvre of tenderness and kindness, inclosed, as it were, in another master-piece, like, were it possible, a jewel found in a diamond?
Those only, however, who lived with him in Greece and in Italy are able to bear witness to his paternal tenderness. This sentiment really developed itself on his leaving England, and only appears from that time forward in his poems. Byron loved all children, but his heart beat really when he met children of Ada's age.
Hearing at Venice that Moore had lost a child, he wrote to him, "I enter fully into your misery, for I feel myself entirely absorbed in my children. I have such tenderness for my little Ada."
Both at Ravenna and at Pisa he was miserable if he did not hear from Ada. Whenever he received any portraits of her or a piece of her hair, these were solemn days of rejoicing for him, but they usually increased his melancholy. When in Greece he heard of Ada's illness, he was seized with such anxiety that he could no longer give his attention to any thing. "His journal (which, by-the-by, was lost or destroyed after his death) was interrupted on account of the news of his child's illness," says Count Gamba, in his narrative of Byron's last voyage to Greece.
The thought of his child was ever present to him when he wrote, and she was the centre of all his hopes and his fears.
The persecution to which he was subjected for having written "Don Juan," having made him fear one day at Pisa that its effect upon his daughter might be to diminish her affection for him, he said:--
"I am so jealous of my daughter's entire sympathy, that, were this work, 'Don Juan'--(written to while away hours of pain and sorrow),--to diminish her affection for me, I would never write a word more; and would to God I had not written a word of it!"
He likewise said that he was often wont to think of the time when his daughter would know her father by his works. "Then," said he, "shall I triumph, and the tears which my daughter will then shed, together with the knowledge that she will share the feelings with which the various allusions to herself and me have been written, will console me in my darkest hours. Ada's mother may have enjoyed the smiles of her youth and childhood, but the tears of her maturer age will be for me."
He distinctly foresaw that his daughter would be brought up to look indifferently upon her father; but he never could have believed that such means would be adopted, as were used, to alienate from him the heart of his own child. We will give one instance only, mentioned by Colonel Wildman, the companion and friend of Byron, who had bought Newstead, of which he took the most religious care. Having in London made the acquaintance of Ada, then Lady Lovelace, the colonel invited her to pay a visit to the late residence of her illustrious father, and she went to see it sixteen months before Byron's death. As Lady Lovelace was looking over the library one morning, the colonel took a book of poems and read out a poem with all the force of the soul and heart. Lady Lovelace, in rapture with this poem, asked the name of its writer. "There he is," said the colonel, pointing to a portrait of Byron, painted by Phillips, which hung over the wall, and he accompanied his gesture by certain remarks which showed what he felt at the ignorance of the daughter. Lady Lovelace remained stupefied, and, from that moment, a kind of revolution took place in her feelings toward her father. "Do not think, colonel," she said, "that it is affectation in me to declare that I have been brought up in complete ignorance of all that concerned my father."
Never had Lady Lovelace seen even the writing of her father; and it was Murray who showed it to her for the first time.
From that moment an enthusiasm for her father filled her whole soul. She shut herself up for hours in the rooms which he had inhabited, and which were still filled with the things which he had used. Here she devoted herself to her favorite studies. She chose to sleep in the apartments which were most particularly hallowed by the reminiscences of her father, and appeared never to have been happier than during this stay at Newstead, absorbed as she had become for the first time in all the glory of him whose tenderness for her had been so carefully concealed from her. From that time all appeared insipid and tasteless to her; existence became a pain. Every thing told her of her father's renown, and nothing could replace it. All these feelings so possessed her that she fell ill, and when she was on the point of death she wrote to Colonel Wildman to beg that she might be buried next to her illustrious father. There, in the modest village church of Hucknell, lie the father and the daughter, who, separated from one another during their lifetime, became united in death, and thus were realized, in a truly prophetic way, the words which close the admirable third canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Words of consolation for those who loved Byron, and whom religion and philosophy inspire with hope; for they think that, despite his enemies, this union of their mortal remains must be the symbol of their union above, and that the prophetic sense of the words pronounced in the agony of despair will be realized by an eternal happiness.
CXVII.
"Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, I know that thou wilt love me; though my name Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation, and a broken claim: Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same, I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain My blood from out thy being were an aim And an attainment,--all would be in vain,-- Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain."
LORD BYRON AS A BROTHER.
Fraternal love was no less conspicuous in him than his paternal affection. It may be easily conceived how great must have been the influence over one who cared so much for friends in general, of that affection which is the perfection of love, and, at the same time, the most delicate, peaceful, and charming of sentiments. Such a love has neither misunderstandings to dread, nor misrepresentations to fear. It is above the caprices, ennui, and changes which often rule the friendships of our choice.
From his return from his first travels in the East, to the time of his publishing the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," Byron may be said not to have known his sister. The daughter of another mother, and older by several years than himself,--living as she did with relations of her mother, brought up as she was by her grandmother, Lady Carmarthen, and married as she had been at an early age to the Hon. Colonel Leigh, Lord Byron had had very few opportunities of seeing her. It was only on his return from the East that he began to have some correspondence with her, on the occasion of his publication of "Childe Harold." Notwithstanding all these circumstances, which might tend to lessen in him his love for his sister, his affection for her on the contrary increased.
The reader has observed that about this time, under the pressure of repeated sorrows, a shade of misanthropy had spread itself over his character, notwithstanding that such a failing was totally contrary to his nature. The acquaintance with his sister helped greatly to dispel this veil, and, thanks to it, he was able to get rid of the first sorrowful impressions of youth.
His dear Augusta became the confidant of his heart; and his pen on the one hand, and his sister on the other, were the means of curing him of all ills. Her influence over him is shown by the love expressed for her in his letters and his notes at that time, and her prudent advice often puts to flight the more unruly dictates of his imagination. Thus, on one occasion, Mrs. Musters (Miss Chaworth) wrote to ask Byron to come and see her. She was miserable that she had preferred her husband to the handsome young man now the celebrated Byron. Byron is tempted to go and see her; he loved her so dearly when a boy. But Augusta thought it dangerous that he should go and see her, and Byron does not.
"Augusta wishes that I should be reconciled with Lord Carlisle," he says. "I have refused this to every body, but I can not to my sister. I shall, therefore, have to do it, though I had as lief 'Drink up Esil,' or 'eat a crocodile.'"
"We will see. Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, every one has, more or less, tried to settle these matters during the past two years, but unsuccessfully; if Augusta succeeds it will be odd, and I shall laugh."
To refuse his sister any thing was out of the question. He loved her so much that the least likeness to her in any woman was enough to attract his sympathy. If ill, he would not have his sister know it; if she was unwell, he can not rest until he received better accounts of her health. Nothing, however, shows better his love for her than the lines with which she inspired him at the time of his deepest distress; that is, on leaving England for Switzerland. I can not transcribe them altogether, but I can not refuse myself the satisfaction of quoting some extracts from them.
I.
"When all around grew drear and dark, And reason half withheld her ray-- And hope but shed a dying spark, Which more misled my lonely way, * * * * * * * Thou wert the solitary star Which rose and set not to the last.
IV.
"Oh! blest be thine unbroken light! That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, And stood between me and the night, Forever shining sweetly nigh.
VI.
"Still may the spirit dwell on mine, And teach it what to brave or brook; There's more in one soft word of thine Than in the world's defied rebuke."
Again,
"Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, though forborest to grieve me, Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though parted, it was not to fly, Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, Nor, mute, that the world might belie. * * * * * * * "From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, Thus much I at least may recall, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd Deserved to be dearest of all."
This deep fraternal affection, assumed at times under the influence of his powerful genius, and under exceptional circumstances an almost too passionate expression, which opened a fresh field to his enemies. But it was to him a consolation and a benefit, which did him good throughout his short career; and even at the times when troubles came pouring down upon him, the love of his sister, though not sufficient to give him courage enough to bear up, still always appeared to him as a hope and an encouragement to do well.
LORD BYRON AS A SON.
The two sentiments of which we have just spoken were so strong and so proved in Lord Byron, that it would be almost useless to speak of them, were it not for the pleasure which there is in recalling them.
But there is another natural affection which, though less manifested, was not less felt by Byron; I mean his filial love.
Many biographers, and Moore at their head, have not, for reasons to which I have alluded in another chapter, been fair to his mother. Besides the motives which seem always to have actuated them in the exaggeration of his faults, and of the smallest particulars of his life, they wished, I believe, to give to their narrative a more amusing character. Moore would seem to say that Byron's childhood was badly directed; but how so? Does he mean that his mother did not justly appreciate the peculiarities of her child's character, or promote the fine dispositions of his nature? But such a discernment in parents is matter of rare occurrence, and can it be said that many known characters have been handled according to the scientific rules here laid down? Those who speak of these fine theories would, we fear, be rather puzzled by their application, were they called to do so.
It is matter of note that Byron was surrounded as a child with the tenderest care. At a very early age he was handed over, by his over-indulgent mother and nurses, to most respectable, intelligent, and devoted masters; and at no time of his youth was either his physical, intellectual, or moral education ever neglected. I may add that Byron's mother was respected, both as a wife and as a mother. She was an heiress belonging to a most ancient Scotch family, and closely allied to the royal house of Stuart, and was the second wife of the youngest son of Admiral Byron,--an unusually handsome man, and father to the poet.
Though this man had been rather spoiled by the world, and had not rendered her life perfectly happy, she loved him passionately, and was most devoted to him. When he died, four years after their marriage, her grief was such that it completely changed her nature.
A widow at twenty-three, she centred in her only child all the depth of her affection, and though her fortune was considerably reduced, she still had enough to render her child's life comfortable, so that his education did not suffer by it. He was scarcely six years of age when he succeeded to the barony of his great-uncle, and this circumstance in a young Englishman's life always means increased prosperity. His childhood was, therefore, most decidedly fortunate in many respects. This is all the more certain that Byron, throughout his life, always spoke of his happy childhood, and that his ideal of human happiness never seems to have been realized except at that time.
But, notwithstanding Moore's exaggerations, and the excessive kindness of his mother, whose whole life was centred in the one thought of amusing her child, it is very likely that Byron's passionate nature may have rendered his relations at home less agreeable than they might have been. However much this may have been the case, it is still more certain that such little family dissensions never produced in his mind the slightest germ of ingratitude toward or want of care for his mother, and that the recollection of his passionate moments only served to make him acquire by his own efforts that wonderful self-possession for which he was afterward remarkable.
His filial sentiments betrayed themselves at every period, and in every circumstance of his life. The reader has seen how, at Harrow, by showing the names of their parents written on the wall, he prevented his comrades from setting fire to the school.
On attaining his majority, his first care was to improve the financial condition of his mother, notwithstanding the shattered state of his fortune, and to prepare a suitable apartment for her at Newstead.
When the cruel criticisms of the "Edinburgh Review" condemned his first steps in the career of literature, his chief care after the first explosion of his own sorrow, was to allay, as far as he could, the sensitiveness of his mother, who, not having the same motive or power to summon up a spirit of resistance, was, of course, more helplessly alive to this attack upon his fame, and felt it far more than, after the first burst of indignation, he did himself.
During his first travels to the East his affairs were in a very embarrassed state. But, nevertheless, here are the terms in which he wrote to his mother from Constantinople:--
"If you have occasion for any pecuniary supply, pray use my funds as far as they go, without reserve; and, lest this should not be enough, in my next to Mr. H---- I will direct him to advance any sum you may want."
There is a degree of melancholy in the letter which he wrote to his mother on his return to England. He had received most deplorable accounts of his affairs when at Malta, and he applied the terms apathy and indifference to the sentiments with which he approached his native land. He goes on to say, however, that the word apathy is not to be applied to his mother, as he will show; that he wishes her to be the mistress of Newstead, and to consider him only as the visitor. He brings her presents of all kinds, etc. "That notwithstanding this alienation," adds Moore, "which her own unfortunate temper produced, he should have continued to consult her wishes, and minister to her comforts with such unfailing thoughtfulness (as is evinced not only in the frequency of his letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her use), redounds in no ordinary degree to his honor."
This want of affection never existed but in the minds of some of Byron's biographers. Lord Byron knew that his mother doted upon him, and that she watched his growing fame with feverish anxiety.
His successes were passionately looked forward to by her. She had collected in one volume all the articles which had appeared upon his first poems and satires, and had written her own remarks in the margin, which showed that she was possessed of great good sense and considerable talent. Could, then, such a heart as Lord Byron's be ungrateful, and not love such a mother? Mr. Galt, a biographer of Byron's, who is certainly not to be suspected of partiality, renders him, however, full justice in regard to his filial devotion during the life of his mother, and to the deep distress which he felt at her death.
"In the mean time, while busily engaged in his literary projects with Mr. Dallas, and in law affairs with his agent, he was suddenly summoned to Newstead by the state of his mother's health. Before he reached the Abbey she had breathed her last. The event deeply affected him. Notwithstanding her violent temper, her affection for him had been so fond and ardent that he undoubtedly returned it with unaffected sincerity; and, from many casual and incidental expressions which I have heard him employ concerning her, I am persuaded that this filial love was not at any time even of an ordinary kind."
On the night after his arrival at the Abbey, the waiting-woman of Mrs. Byron, in passing the door of the room where the corpse lay, heard the sound of some one sighing heavily within, and, on entering, found his lordship sitting in the dark beside the bed. She remonstrated, when he burst into tears, and exclaimed, "I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone!" This same filial devotion often inspired him with beautiful lines, such as those in the third canto of "Childe Harold," when standing before the tomb of Julia Alpinula, he exclaims:
LXVI.
"And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!-- Julia--the daughter, the devoted--gave Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave The life she lived in; but the Judge was just, And then she died on him she could not save. Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.
LXVII.
"But these are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wither, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay, The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth; The high, the mountain-majesty of worth Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, And from its immortality look forth In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, Imperishably pure beyond all things below."
As a note to the above, Byron writes:
"Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain attempt to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Coecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago; it is thus:
"JULIA ALPINULA: HIC JACEO. INFELICIS PATRIS, INFELIX PROLES. DEAE AVENTIAE SACERDOS. EXORARE PATRIS NECEM NON POTUI: MALE MORI IN FATIS ILLE ERAT. VIXI ANNOS XXIII.
"I know," adds Byron, "of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness."
His father having died in 1793, when Byron was only four years of age, he could not know him; but to show how keen were his sentiments toward his memory, I must transcribe a note of Murray's after the following lines in "Hours of Idleness:"--
"Stern Death forbade my orphan youth to share The tender guidance of a father's care; Can rank, or e'en a guardian's name supply The love which glistens in a father's eye?"
"In all the biographies which have yet been published of Byron," remarks Murray, "undue severity has been the light by which the character of Byron's father has been judged. Like his son, he was unfortunately brought up by a mother only. Admiral Byron, his father, being compelled by his duties to live away from his family, the son was brought up in a French military academy, which was not likely at that time to do his morals much good. He passed from school into the Coldstream Guards, where he was launched into every species of temptation imaginable, and likely to present themselves to a young man of singular beauty, and heir to a fine name, in the metropolis of England."
The unfortunate intrigue, of which so much has been said, as if it had compromised his reputation as a man of honor, took place when he was just of age, and he died in France at the age of thirty-five. One can hardly understand why the biographers of Byron have insisted upon depreciating the personal qualities of his father, apart from the positively injurious and wicked assertions made against him in memoirs of Lord Byron's life, and in reviews of such memoirs.
Some severe reflections of this kind having found their way into the preface to a French translation of Byron's works, which appeared shortly before the latter's departure for Greece, called for an expostulation by the son himself on behalf of his father, in a letter addressed to Mr. Coulmann, who had been charged to offer to the poet the homage of the French literary men of the day. This letter is interesting in more than one particular, as it re-establishes in their true light several facts wrongly stated with regard to Byron's family, and because it is, perhaps, the last letter which Byron wrote from Italy. It is quoted in extenso in the chapter entitled "Byron's Life in Italy."[27] I can only repeat here the words which apply more particularly to his father:--
"The author of the essay (M. Pichot) has cruelly calumniated my father. Far from being brutal, he was, according to the testimony of all those who knew him, extremely amiable, and of a lively character, though careless and dissipated. He had the reputation of being a good officer, and had proved himself such in America. The facts themselves belie the assertion. It is not by brutal means that a young officer seduces and elopes with a marchioness, and then marries two heiresses in succession. It is true that he was young, and very handsome, which is a great point.
"His first wife, Lady Conyers, Marchioness of Carmarthen, did not die of a broken heart, but of an illness which she contracted because she insisted on following my father out hunting before she had completely recovered from her confinement, immediately after the birth of my sister Augusta. His second wife, my mother, who claims every respect, had, I assure you, far too proud a nature ever to stand ill-treatment from any body, and would have proved it had it been the case. I must add, that my father lived a long time in Paris, where he saw a great deal of the Marechal de Biron, the commander of the French Guards, who, from the similarity of our names, and of our Norman extraction, believed himself to be our cousin. My father died at thirty-seven years of age, and whatever faults he may have had, cruelty was not one of them. If the essay were to be circulated in England, I am sure that the part relating to my father would pain my sister Augusta even more than myself, and she does not deserve it; for there is not a more angelic being on earth. Both Augusta and I have always cherished the memory of our father as much as we cherished one another,--a proof, at least, that we had no recollection of any harsh treatment on his part. If he dissipated his fortune, that concerns us, since we are his heirs; but until we reproach him with the fact, I know of no one who has a right to do so.
BYRON."
From all that has been said it will be seen that Byron's sensitive heart was eminently adapted to family affections. Affection alone made him happy, and his nature craved for it. He was often rather influenced by passion than a seeker of its pleasures, and whenever he found relief in the satisfaction of his passions, it was only because there was real affection at the bottom,--an affection which tended to give him those pleasures of intimacy in which he delighted.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: This chapter is to be published separately, at no very distant period, by the author.--Note of the translator.]
VIII. QUALITIES OF LORD BYRON'S HEART
Gratitude,--that honesty of the soul which is even greater than social honesty, since it is regulated by no express law, and that most uncommon virtue, since it proscribes selfishness,--was pre-eminently conspicuous in Lord Byron.
To forget a kindness done, a service rendered, or a good-natured proceeding, was for him an impossibility. The memories of his heart were even more astonishing than those of his mind.
His affection for his nurses, for his masters, for all those who had taken care of him when a boy, is well known; and how great was his gratitude for all that Doctor Drury had done for him! His early poems are full of it. His grateful affection for Drury he felt until his last hour.
This quality was so strong in him, that it not only permitted him to forget all past offenses, but even rendered him blind to any fresh wrongs. It sufficed to have been kind to him once, to claim his indulgence. The reader remembers that Jeffrey had been the most cruel of the persecutors of his early poems, but that later he had shown more impartiality. This act of justice appeared to Byron a generous act, and one sufficient for him in return to forget all the harm done to him in the past. We accordingly find in his memoranda of 1814:--
"It does honor to the editor (Jeffrey), because he once abused me: many a man will retract praise; none but a high-spirited mind will revoke its censure, or can praise the man it has once attacked."
Yet Jeffrey, who was eminently a critic, gave fresh causes of displeasure to Byron at a later period, and then it was that he forgot the present on recalling the past.
In speaking of this Scotch critic, he considered himself quite disarmed. When at Venice, he heard that he had been attacked about Coleridge in the "Edinburgh Review," he wrote as follows to Murray:--
"The article in the 'Edinburgh Review' on Coleridge, I have not seen; but whether I am attacked in it or not, or in any other of the same journal, I shall never think ill of Mr. Jeffrey on that account, nor forget that his conduct toward me has been certainly most handsome during the last four or more years."[28]
And instead of complaining of this attack, he laughed at it with Moore:--
"The 'Edinburgh Review' had attacked me.... Et tu, Jeffrey! 'there is nothing but roguery in villainous man.' But I absolve him of all attacks, present and future; for I think he had already pushed his clemency in my behoof to the utmost, and I shall always think well of him. I only wonder he did not begin before, as my domestic destruction was a fine opening for all who wished to avail themselves of the opportunity."[29]
His great sympathy for Walter Scott became quite enthusiastic, owing also to a feeling of gratitude for a service rendered to him by Scott. Shortly after his arrival in Italy, and the publication of the third canto of "Childe Harold," public opinion in England went completely against him, and an article appeared in the "Quarterly Review," by an anonymous pen, in his defense. Byron was so touched by this, that he endeavored to find out the name of its writer.
"I can not," he said to Murray, "express myself better than in the words of my sister Augusta, who (speaking of it) says, 'that it is written in a spirit of the most feeling and kind nature.' It is, however, something more: it seems to me (as far as the subject of it may be permitted to judge) to be very well written as a composition, and I think will do the journal no discredit; because, even those who condemn its partiality, must praise its generosity. The temptations to take another and a less favorable view of the question have been so great and numerous, that what with public opinion, politics, etc., he must be a gallant as well as a good man, who has ventured in that place, and at this time, to write such an article even anonymously.
"Perhaps, some day or other, you will know or tell me the writer's name. Be assured, had the article been a harsh one, I should not have asked it."
He afterward learnt that the article had been written by Walter Scott, and his sympathy was so increased by his gratitude for the service rendered, that he never after seemed happier than when he could extol Scott's talents and kindness.
Gratitude, which often weighs upon one as a duty, so captivated his soul, that the remembrance of the kindness done to him was wont to turn into an affectionate devotion, which time could not change. Long after the appearance of the article, he wrote as follows to Scott from Pisa:--
"I owe to you far more than the usual obligations for the courtesies of literature and common friendship, for you went out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it required, not merely kindness, but courage to do so; to have been mentioned by you, in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time, 'when all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still more complimentary to my self-esteem. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations. The very tardiness of this acknowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can assure you, that my sense of it has been out at compound interest during the delay."
Gratitude, with him, was oftentimes a magnifying-glass which he used when he had to appreciate certain merits. No doubt Gifford was a judicious, clear-sighted, and impartial critic, but Byron extolled him as an oracle of good taste, and submitted like a child to his decisions.
Gratitude levelled every social condition in his eyes, as we may see by his correspondence with Murray, where the proud aristocrat considers his publisher on a par with himself. Moore marvelled at this; but Moore forgets that Murray was no ordinary publisher, and that, generous by nature, he made to Byron on one occasion, in 1815, when the noble poet was in great difficulties, the handsomest offers. Lord Byron refused them; but the act was so noble, that its impression was never effaced from Byron's mind, and modified the nature of their relations.
When he had recovered his fortune, he wrote to Murray from Ravenna:--"I only know of three men who would have raised a finger on my behalf; and one of those is yourself. It was in 1815, when I was not even sure of a five-pound note. I refused your offer, but have preserved the recollection of it, though you may have lost it."
To calculate the degree of gratitude due to a service rendered, would have seemed ingratitude in his eyes. He could create beings who were capable of doling it out in that way, but to apply it to himself was an impossibility.
His predilection for the inhabitants of Epirus, of Albania, and for the Suliotes, is known. This predilection originated in the gratitude which he felt for the care taken of him by two Albanian servants who doted on him, during an illness which he had at Patras at the time when he visited that place for the first time. It was also on the Albanian coast that he was wrecked on one occasion, and where he received that hospitality which he has immortalized in Don Juan.
Byron's predilection for this people even overcame the effects which their ingratitude might have produced, for it is matter of history, how badly the barbarous Suliotes behaved to him at Missolonghi a short time before his death; they who had been so benefited by his kindness to them.
The memory of services done to him was not susceptible of change, and neither time nor distance could in the least affect it. The moment he had contracted a debt of gratitude, he believed himself obliged to pay interest upon it all his life, even had he discharged his debt. One single anecdote will serve to illustrate the truth of these remarks. On the eve of his last departure from London in 1816, when the cruelty of his enemies, powerfully seconded by the spite of Lady Byron, had succeeded in so perverting facts as to give their calumnies the color of truth, and to throw upon his conduct as a husband so false a light as to hold him up to universal execration, it required great courage to venture on his defense. Lady Jersey did it. She--who was then quite the mistress of fashion by her beauty, her youth, her rank, her fortune, and her irreproachable conduct--organized a fete in honor of Byron, and invited all that was most distinguished in London to come and wish Byron farewell.
Among those who responded to the noble courage of Lady Jersey was one equally deserving of praise, Miss Mercer, now Lady K----. This conduct of Miss Mercer was all the more creditable that there had been a question of her marriage with Lord Byron, and that Miss Milbank had been preferred to her.
This party gave Byron a great insight into the human heart, and showed him all its beauty and all its baseness. The reflections which it caused him to make, and the frank account he gave of it in his memoirs--(the loss of which can never be too much regretted)--would not have pleased his survivors. This was unquestionably a powerful reason why the memoirs were destroyed. But Byron cared not so much for the painful portion of this recollection, as he loved to remember the noble conduct of these two ladies.
"How often he spoke to me of Lady Jersey, of her beauty and her goodness," says Madame G----. "As to Miss M----," he said, "she was a woman of elevated ideas, who had shown him more friendship than he deserved."
One of the noblest tributes of gratitude and admiration which can be rendered to a woman was paid by Lord Byron to Miss Mercer. As he was embarking at Dover, Byron turned round to Mr. Scroope Davies, who was with him, and giving him a little parcel which he had forgotten to give her when in London, he added: "Tell her that had I been fortunate enough to marry a woman like her, I should not now be obliged to exile myself from my country."
"If," pursues Arthur Dudley (evidently a name adopted by a very distinguished woman biographer), "the rare instances of devotion which he met in life reconciled him to humanity, with what touching glory used he not to repay it. The last accents of the illustrious fugitive will not be forgotten, and history will preserve through centuries the name of her to whom Byron at such a time could send so flattering a message."
But, as if all this were not enough, he actually consecrated in verse, a short time before his death, the memory of his gratitude to the noble women who had done so much honor to their sex:--
"I've also seen some female friends ('tis odd, But true--as, if expedient, I could prove), That faithful were through thick and thin abroad, At home, far more than ever yet was Love-- Who did not quit me when Oppression trod Upon me; whom no scandal could remove; Who fought, and fight, in absence, too, my battles, Despite the snake Society's loud rattles."
It was on that occasion that Hobhouse said to Lady Jersey, "Who would not consent to be attacked in this way, to boast such a defense?" To which Lady Jersey might have replied, "But who would not be sufficiently rewarded by such gratitude, preserved in such a heart and immortalized in such verses?"
IMPULSES OF LORD BYRON.
All those who have studied human nature agree that impulses show the natural qualities of the soul. "Beware of your first impulses, they are always true," said a diplomatist, the same who insisted that speech was given us to conceal our thoughts. If such be the case, Lord Byron's goodness of heart is palpable, for all who knew him agree in bearing testimony to the extraordinary goodness of all his impulses. "His lordship," says Parry, "was keenly sensitive at the recital of any case of distress, in the first instance; and advantage being taken of this feeling immediately, he would always relieve it when in his power. If this passion, however, was allowed to cool, he was no longer to be excited. This was a fault of Lord Byron's, as he frequently offered, upon the impulse of a moment, assistance which he would not afterward give, and therefore occasionally compromise his friends."
To multiply quotations would only be to repeat the same proof. I shall therefore merely add that it was often the necessity of modifying the nobility of his first impulses which made him appear inconstant and changeable.
EFFECTS OF HAPPINESS AND MISFORTUNE UPON BYRON.
"The effect of a great success," writes some one, "is ever bad in bad natures, but does good only to such as are really good in themselves."
As the rays of the sun soften the honey and harden the mud, so the rays of happiness soften a good and tender heart, while they harden a base and egotistical nature. This proof has not been wanting in Byron. His wonderful successes, which laid at his feet the homage of nations, and which might easily have made him vain and proud, only rendered him better, more amiable, and brighter.
"I am happy," said Dallas, on the occasion of the great success which greeted the publication of the first canto of "Childe Harold," "to think that his triumph, and the attention which he has attracted, have already produced upon him the soothing effect I had hoped. He was very lively to day."
Moore says the same; and Galt is obliged to grant that, as Byron became the object of public curiosity, his desire to oblige others increased. After giving a personal proof of Byron's goodness to him, he ends by saying:--
"His conversation was then so lively, that gayety seemed to have passed into habit with him." It was also at that time that he wrote in his memoranda:--"I love Ward, I love A----, I love B----," and then, as if afraid of those numerous sympathies, he adds: "oh! shall I begin to love the whole world?" This universal love was only the expression of the want of his soul which had mollified under the rays of that mild sun which is called happiness.
EFFECTS OF MISFORTUNE AND INJUSTICE UPON BYRON.
If his natural goodness had so large a field to develop itself in happiness, it reached a degree of sublimity in misfortune.
That Byron's short life was full of real sorrows, I have shown in another chapter, when I had to prove their reality against those imputations of their being imaginary made by some of his biographers. He required a strength of mind equal to his genius and to his sensibility, to be able to resist the numerous ills with which he was assailed, throughout his life:--
"Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?"
Such beautiful lines speak loudly enough of the intensity of his sufferings. Great as they were, they did not, however, produce in him any feeling of hatred. To forgive was his only revenge; and not only did he forgive, but, the paroxysm of passion over, there was only room in his soul for those nobler feelings of patience, of toleration, of resignation, and of abnegation, of which no one in London can have formed a notion. The storms to which his soul was at times a prey only purified it, and discovered a host of qualities which are kept back often by the more powerful passions of youth. If he never attained that calmness of spirit which is the gift of those who can not feel, or perhaps of the saints, he at any rate, at the age of thirty-two, began to feel a contempt of all worldly and frivolous matters, and came to the resolution of forgiving most generously all offenses against him.
Shelley, who went to see him at Ravenna, wrote to his wife "that if he had mischievous passions he seemed to have subdued them; and that he was becoming, what he should be,--a virtuous man."
Mme. de Bury, in her excellent essay upon Byron, expresses herself thus: "Had his natural goodness not been great, the events which compelled him to leave his country, and which followed upon his departure, must have exercised over his mind the effect of drying it up; and, in lessening its power, would have forced him to give full vent to his passions." Instead of producing such a result, they on the contrary purified it, and developed in him the germs of a host of virtues. I shall not tarry any longer, however, on this subject, as in another chapter I intend to consider Byron's kindness of disposition from a far higher point of view. I shall only add his own words, which prove his goodness of character. "I can not," said he, "bear malice to any one, nor can I go to sleep with an ill thought against any body."
ABSENCE OF ALL JEALOUS FEELINGS IN LORD BYRON.
Among the infirmities of human nature, one of the most general, serious, and incurable, is certainly that of jealousy. Being the essence of a disordered self-love, it presents several aspects, according to the different social positions of those whom it afflicts, and the degree of goodness of the people. It might, in my mind, almost be called the thermometer of the heart. But of all the jealousies, that which has done most harm on earth has been the jealousy of artists and of literary men.
This kind of fever has at times risen to a degree inconceivable. It has raged so high as to call poison to its aid, to invoke the help of daggers and create assassins.
But even putting aside these excesses, proper to Southern countries, it is certain that everywhere and at all times jealousy has caused numberless cases of ingratitude, and has set brothers against brothers, friends against friends, and pupils against masters.
Great minds in France have not been altogether free from it. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, became a prey to its disastrous influences. In England Dryden, Addison, Swift, Shaftesbury, were its victims. So it has been everywhere, and in Italy even Petrarch, the meek and excellent Petrarch, was not exempted from it.
This moral infirmity is of so subtle a nature, that not only does it injure those who are devoted to those works of the mind, which can not be said to establish a solid claim to glory inasmuch as public opinion is judge, but also those whose influence being confined to a more limited sphere, should be less anxious about obtaining it. It finds so easy an access into the souls of men, that it is said that even Plato was jealous of Socrates, Aristotle of Plato, Leibnitz of Locke, and so forth.
When we behold so many great minds at all times unable to avoid this jealousy, and that we see nowadays jealousy animating the pen of some of the best writers, and completely changing their moral sense, must we not admire the great goodness of him whom, though living in such a heated atmosphere of jealous rivalry, contrived wholly to escape its effects?
This right I claim for Lord Byron, that he was the least jealous of any man, as the proofs which I shall bring forward will abundantly attest.
If Byron was jealous of the living, of whom could he have been so? Of course of such who may have become his rivals in the sphere of literature which he had adopted. When Byron appeared in the literary world, those who were most in repute were Sir Walter Scott, Rogers, Moore, Campbell, and the lakers Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and, later, Shelley.
On one occasion, in 1813, Byron amused himself by tracing what he called a "triangular gradus ad Parnassum," in which the names of the principal poets then in renown are thus classified:--
SIR W. SCOTT, ROGERS, MORRE, CAMPBELL, SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, THE MANY
To know best his feelings with respect to his rivals, we must listen to himself; and to preserve the order given in the triangle, let us begin by Walter Scott. We read in Byron's memorandum of the 17th of September, 1813:--
"George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me, George pro Scoto--and very right too. If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had my choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the kings he ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry and prose. I like Scott--and admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls Entusymusy. All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good."
And elsewhere: "I have not answered W. Scott's last letter, but I will. I regret to hear from others that he has lately been unfortunate in pecuniary involvements. He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of bards."
When these expressions were written, Byron did not know Scott personally; but notwithstanding his satire, of which he had often made a generous retractation, he had always felt a great sympathy for Scott, who, on the other hand, appeared to have forgotten the wound inflicted by Byron's youthful pen, only to remember the latter's heartfelt praises.
A few years after the publication of "English Bards" and just after that of "Childe Harold," Byron and Sir W. Scott manifested a mutual desire to make each other's acquaintance through the medium of Murray, who was then travelling in Scotland. An exchange of letters full of mutual generosity had taken place, when George IV., then regent, expressed the wish to make Byron's acquaintance.
After speaking to him of "Childe Harold," in terms which Byron was always proud to recall, the prince went on to speak of Walter Scott in the most enthusiastic terms. Byron seemed almost as pleased as if the praise had been addressed to himself, and hastened to make his illustrious rival acquainted with the flattering words used by royalty with regard to him.
It was only in the summer of 1815 that they became personally acquainted. Scott was then passing through London on his way to France. Their sympathy was mutual. Byron, who had been married seven months, already foresaw that a storm was brewing in his domestic affairs, which explains the mysterious melancholy, observed by Scott, upon the countenance of his young friend. Scott's liveliness, however, always brought about a return of Byron's spirits, and their meetings were always very gay, "the gayest even," says Scott, "that I ever spent."
Byron's handsomeness produced a great impression upon Scott. "It is a beauty," said he, "which causes one to reflect and to dream;" as if he wished one to understand that he thought Byron's beauty superhuman.
"Report had prepared me to meet a man of peculiar habits and a quick temper, and I had some doubt 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.
"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. It was full of dead men's bones, and had inscriptions on the sides of the base. One ran thus:--"The bones contained in this urn were found in certain ancient sepulchres within the land walls of Athens in the month of February, 1811. The other face bears the lines of Juvenal--
'Expende quot libras in duce summo invenies. Mors sola fatetur quantula hominum corpuscula.'
"A letter," adds W. Scott, "accompanied this vase, which was more valuable to me than the gift itself, from the kindness with which the donor expressed himself toward me. I left it, naturally, in the urn with the bones, but it is now missing. As the theft was not of a nature to be practiced by a mere domestic, I am compelled to suspect the inhospitality of some individual of higher station,--most gratuitously exercised certainly, since, after what I have here said, no one will probably choose to boast of possessing this literary curiosity."
Their mutual sympathy increased upon improved acquaintance with one another. When at Venice Byron was informed that Scott was ill, he said that he would not for all the world have him ill. "I suppose it is from sympathy that I have suffered from fever at the same time." At Ravenna a little later, on the 12th of January, 1821, he wrote down in his memoranda:--
"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any, if not better (only on an erroneous system), and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, and Scott the Best, and ostracized them.
"I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature toward myself personally. May he prosper! for he deserves it.
"I know no reading to which I fall with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give the seal with his bust on it to Mlle. la Comtesse Guiccioli this evening, who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated."
He did take the seal to the Countess Guiccioli, and she said that Byron's expressions about Scott were always most affectionate. "How I wish you knew him!" he often repeated.
He used to say that it was not the poetry of "Child Harold," but Scott's own superior prose that had done his poetry harm, and that if ever the public could by chance get tired of his novels, Scott might write in verse with equal success. He insisted that Scott had a dramatic talent, "talent," he said, "which people are loth to grant me." He said that the success of Scott's novels was not in the least due to the anonymous character he had adopted, and that he could not understand why he would not sign his name to works of such merit. He likewise asserted that of all the authors of his period, Scott was the least jealous. "He is too sure of his fame to fear any rivals, nor does he think of good works as Tuscans do of fever; that there is only a certain amount of it in the world, and that in communicating it to others, one gets rid of it."
"I never travel without taking Scott's novels with me," said Byron to Medwin, at Pisa; "it is a real library, a literary treasure; I can read them yearly with renewed pleasure."
A few days before his departure for Greece, he learned that M. Stendhall had published an article upon Racine and Shakspeare, wherein there were some unfavorable remarks about Walter Scott.
Notwithstanding his occupations preparatory to departure, he found time to write to Stendhall, and tell him how much he felt the injustice of these remarks, and to request that they should be rectified.
This letter of Byron's to M. Beyle will no doubt be read with universal admiration, as it points out most prominently all the goodness of his character:--
"SIR,--Now that I know to whom I am indebted for a very flattering mention in the 'Rome, Naples, and Florence, in 1817,' by Monsieur Stendhall, it is fit that I should return my thanks (however undesired or undesirable) to Monsieur Beyle, with whom I had the honor of being acquainted at Milan in 1816.[30] You only did me too much honor in what you were pleased to say in that work, but it has hardly given me less pleasure than the praise itself, to become at length aware (which I have done by mere accident) that I am indebted for it to one of whose good opinion I was really ambitious. So many changes have taken place since that period in the Milan circle, that I hardly dare recur to it--some dead, some banished, and some in the Austrian dungeons. Poor Pelico! I trust that in his iron solitude his muse is consoling him in some measure, one day to delight us again, when both she and her poet are restored to freedom.
"There is one part of your observations in the pamphlet, which I shall venture to remark upon: it regards Walter Scott. You say that 'his character is little worthy of enthusiasm,' at the same time that you mention his productions in the manner they deserve. I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character, and I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration; that of all men, he is the most open, the most honorable, the most amiable," etc.
BYRON."
Even at Missolonghi, where certainly literary thoughts were little in harmony with his occupations, Byron found occasion to speak of his sentiments as regards Scott, since even the simple and anti-poetic Parry tells us, in his interesting narrative of "The Last Days of Lord Byron," of the admiration and affection with which Byron always spoke of Walter Scott. "He never wearied of his praise of 'Waverley,' and continually quoted passages from it."
May we be allowed to observe, in conclusion, that such a generous desire on the part of Byron constantly to put forward the merits of Scott deserved from the latter a warmer acknowledgment. The homage paid to his memory by Scott came late, and is cold. Be it from a Tory or Protestant spirit, Scott in his eulogy of Lord Byron did not disclaim openly the calumnies uttered against the great poet's fame, but almost sided with his hypocritical apologists, by assuming a kind of tone of indulgence in speaking of him.
ROGERS.
Rogers comes next in the triangular order.
Byron's esteem for Rogers was such, that not only did he spare him in his famous satire, but even addressed him a real compliment in the lines:--
"And thou, melodious Rogers! rise at last, Recall the pleasing memory of the past; Arise! let blest remembrance still inspire, And strike to wonted tones thy hallow'd lyre; Restore Apollo to his vacant throne, Assert thy country's honor and thine own."
He equally declared that, after the "Essay on Man" of Pope, the "Pleasures of Memory" constituted the finest English didactic poem. This opinion he maintained always.
"I have read again the 'Pleasures of Memory,'" he wrote in September, 1813. "The elegance of this poem is quite marvellous. Not a vulgar line throughout the whole book."
About the same time he read, in the "Edinburgh Review," a eulogy of Rogers. "He is placed very high," he exclaimed, "but not higher than he has a right to be. There is a summary review of every body. Moore and I included: we were both--he justly--praised; but both very justly ranked under Rogers.
At another time he wrote in his memoranda:
"When he does talk (Rogers), on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is as pure as his poetry. If you enter his house, his drawing-room, his library, you involuntarily say, 'This is not the dwelling of a common mind.' There is not a gem, a coin, a book, thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his existence. Oh! the jarrings this disposition must have encountered through life!"
On one occasion he borrows one of Rogers's ideas, to write upon it the "Bride of Abydos;" and in confessing that the "Pleasures of Memory" have suggested his theme, he adds in a note, that "it is useless to say that the idea is taken from a poem so well known, and to which one has such pleasurable recourse."
To Rogers he dedicates the "Giaour," a slight but sincere token of admiration.
When Rogers sent him "Jacqueline," Byron replied that he could not receive a more acceptable gift. "It is grace, delicacy, poetry itself." What astonishes him is that Rogers should not be tempted to write oftener such charming poetry. He sympathized with that kind of soft affection, though he would say that he lacked the talent to express it.
From Venice he wrote to Moore, "I hope Rogers is flourishing. He is the Titan of poetry, already immortal. You and I must wait to become so."
At Pisa he took the part of Rogers against his detractors in the warmest manner. Not only did the "Pleasures of Memory" always enchant him, not only did he insist that the work was immortal, but added that Rogers was kind and good to him. And as people persisted in blaming Rogers for being jealous and susceptible, which Byron knew from experience to be so, he replied, that "these things are, as Lord Kenyon said of Erskine, little spots in the sun. Rogers has qualities which outweigh the little weaknesses of his character."
MOORE.
Moore is third in the order of the triangle. We have seen Byron's sentiments and conduct with regard to this friend. It remains for us to note the feelings of the author for another very popular writer, who was in many respects a worthy rival.
Byron had often recommended Moore to write other poetry than melodies, and to apply his talent to a work of more serious importance. When he learned that he was writing an Oriental poem he was charmed.
"It may be, and would appear to a third person," he wrote to him, "an incredible thing; but I know you will believe me, when I say that I am as anxious for your success as one human being can be for another's--as much as if I had never scribbled a line. Surely the field of fame is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbor of a rood of it."
And he goes on to praise Moore and to depreciate himself, as was his custom.
After two years' intimacy he dedicated the "Corsair" to Moore, and, in speaking of it to him, he adds:--
"If I can but testify to you and the world how truly I admire and esteem you, I shall be quite satisfied."
And, in dedicating his work to him, he expresses himself thus:--
"My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame, and with my most hearty admiration of your talents, and delight in your conversation, you are already acquainted."
I have already said that he almost wished to be eclipsed, that Moore might shine the more prominently.
"The best way to make the public 'forget' me is to remind them of yourself. You can not suppose that I would ask you or advise you to publish, if I thought you would fail. I really have no literary envy; and I do not believe a friend's success ever sat nearer another's heart, than yours does to the wishes of mine. It is for elderly gentlemen to 'bear no brother near,' and can not become our disease for more years than we may perhaps number. I wish you to be out before Eastern subjects are again before the public."
He meanwhile got Murray to use his influence to point out to Moore the best time for appearing.
"I need not say, that I have his success much at heart; not only because he is my friend, but something much better--a man of great talent, of which he is less sensible than, I believe, any even of his enemies. If you can so far oblige me as to step down, do so," etc.
Lord Byron had never ceased to press Moore to publish his poem. When it appeared, he wrote to him from Venice:--
"I am glad that we are to have it at last. Really and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; and I have no doubt you will--I am sure you can. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a devil of a pucker, and I am not at your elbow, and Rogers is. I envy him; which is not fair, because he does not envy any body.[31] Mind you send to me--that is, make Murray send--the moment you are forth."
"I feel as anxious for Moore as I could do for myself, for the soul of me; and I would not have him succeed otherwise than splendidly, which I trust he will do."
And then, writing again to Murray, from Venice (June, 1817):--
"It gives me great pleasure to hear of Moore's success, and the more so that I never doubted that it would be complete. Whatever good you can tell me of him and his poem will be most acceptable; I feel very anxious indeed to receive it. I hope that he is as happy in his fame and reward as I wish him to be; for I know no one who deserves both more, if any so much."
A month later he added:--
"I have got the sketch and extracts from 'Lalla Rookh'--which I humbly suspect will knock up ..." (he intended himself), "and show young gentlemen that something more than having been across a camel's hump is necessary to write a good Oriental tale. The plan, as well as the extracts I have seen, please me very much indeed, and I feel impatient for the whole."
And, lastly, after he had received it:--
"I have read 'Lalla Rookh.' ... I am very glad to hear of his popularity, for Moore is a very noble fellow, in all respects, and will enjoy it without any of the bad feelings which success, good or evil, sometimes engenders in the men of rhyme."
He wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in a sort of jest,--"I am not quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons to read 'Lalla Rookh,'--in the first place, on account of this sad passion, and in the second, that they mayn't discover that there was a better poet than Papa."[32]
To end these quotations, let us add that, shortly before his death, he said to Medwin:--"Moore is one of the small number of writers, who will survive the century which has appreciated his worth. The Irish Melodies will go to posterity with their music, and the poems and the music will last as long as Ireland, or music or poetry."
CAMPBELL.
Campbell, the author of "Pleasures of Hope," and who stands fourth in the triangle, was spared, with Rogers, in the famous satire--
"Come forth, oh! Campbell, give thy talents scope: Who dare aspire, if thou must cease to hope?"
This homage was strengthened by a note, in which Byron called the "Pleasures of Hope" one of the finest didactic poems in the English language.
Byron's relations with Campbell were never as intimate as with other poets. Not only because circumstances prevented it, but also in consequence of a fault in Campbell's character, which lessened the sympathy raised by the admiration of his talent and of his worth. This fault consisted in an excessive opinion of himself, which prevented his being just toward his rivals, and bearing patiently with their successes, or the criticisms of his own work.
Coleridge at this time was giving lectures upon poetry, in which he taught a new system of poetry.
"He attacks," says Lord Byron, "the 'Pleasures of Hope,' and all other pleasure whatever.... Campbell will be desperately annoyed. I never saw a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive. What a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what can he fear from criticism?"
Lord Byron had just published the "Bride of Abydos," when he wrote in his journal, "Campbell last night seemed a little nettled at something or other--I know not what. We were standing in the ante-saloon, when Lord H---- brought out of the other room a vessel of some composition similar to that which is used in Catholic churches for burning incense, and seeing us, he exclaimed, 'Here is some incense for you.' Campbell answered, 'Carry it to Lord Byron; he is used to it.'
"Now this comes of 'bearing no brother near the throne.' I who have no throne am at perfect peace with all the poetical fraternity."
But if this weakness of Campbell lessened Byron's sympathy for him, or rather interfered with his intimacy, it never altered his just appreciation of his merits, or made him less generous to him.
"By-the-by," writes Byron to Moore, "Campbell has a printed poem which is not yet published, the scene of which is laid in Germany. It is perfectly magnificent, and equal to himself. I wonder why he does not publish it."
Later on, in Italy, when in his reply to Blackwood, Byron criticises modern poetry, and gives, without sparing any body, not even himself, his unbiased opinion about the poets of the day, he says: "We are all on a false track, except Rogers, Campbell, and Crabbe."
And in his memoranda in 1821, at Ravenna, we find the following passage:----
"Read Campbell's 'Poets' ... justly celebrated. His defense of Pope is glorious. To be sure, it is his own cause too--but no matter, it is very good, and does him great credit.... If any thing could add to my esteem of this gentleman poet, it would be his classical defense of Pope against the cant of the present day."
On the fifth line of the triangle come the names of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, commonly called the "Lakers," because they had resided near the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. He was certainly bitter against these in his satire; but owing simply to their efforts to upset the school of Pope, of which he had made a deep study, and to their endeavors to start an aesthetical school, which he strenuously opposed. As, however, in blaming, he allowed his passion at times to master his opinions and judgments of their merits, he generously made amends and owned his error some years later. He kept to his own notions of poetry and art, but nobly recognized the talent of the Lakers, knowing, however, very well that he would never obtain from them a reciprocity of good feeling.
SOUTHEY.
"Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to Southey,--the best-looking bard I have seen for some time. To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would almost have written his 'Sapphics.' He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, and a man of talent, and all that--and--there is his eulogy."
"Southey I have not seen much of. His appearance is epic; and he is the only existing entire man of letters. His manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation--posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present he has a party, but no public--except for his prose writings. The 'Life of Nelson' is beautiful."
WORDSWORTH.
Underneath some lines of his satire upon Wordsworth, Byron in 1816 wrote in Switzerland the word "unjust!"
He often praised Wordsworth, even at times when the latter had, for reasons which I will mention hereafter, lost all claims to Byron's indulgence. Even in his poem of the "Island," written shortly before his departure for Greece, where he was to die, Byron found means of inserting a passage from Wordsworth's poem, which he considered exquisite.
COLERIDGE.
Among the three Lakers, Coleridge was the one to whom he showed the most generous feeling. He was poor, and lived by his pen. Lord Byron, putting this consideration above all others, wished to assist at his readings, and praised them warmly. Coleridge having asked him on one occasion to interest himself with the director of Drury-lane Theatre (on the committee of which Byron then stood) the latter did his best to gratify the wishes of Coleridge, and wrote him the most flattering letter, blaming the satire which had been the effect of a youthful ebullition of feeling:--
"P.S.--You mention my 'satire,' lampoon, or whatever you or others please to call it. I can only say that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side ever since; more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends, which is 'heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attacks. If Coleridge writes his promised tragedy, Drury Lane will be set up." Though harassed with pecuniary difficulties of all kinds, Byron contrived to help Coleridge, who he had heard was in the greatest distress.
He wrote to Moore:--"By the way, if poor Coleridge--who is a man of wonderful talent, and in distress, and about to publish two volumes of poesy and biography, and who has been worse used by the critics than ever we were--will you, if he comes out, promise me to review him favorably in the E.R.? Praise him I think you must; but will you also praise him well,--of all things the most difficult? It will be the making of him.
"This must be a secret between you and me, as Jeffrey might not like such a project: nor, indeed, might he himself like it. But I do think he only wants a pioneer and a spark or two to explode most gloriously."
He sent Murray a MS. tragedy of Coleridge, begging him to read it and to publish it:----
"When you have been enabled to form an opinion on Mr. Coleridge's MS., you will oblige me by returning it, as, in fact, I have no authority to let it out of my hands. I think most highly of it, and feel anxious that you should be the publisher; but if you are not, I do not despair of finding those who will."
As the reader knows, Byron, while in England, always gave away the produce of his poems. To Coleridge he destined part of the sum offered to him by Murray for "Parisina" and the "Siege of Corinth." Some difficulty, however, having arisen, because Murray refused to pay the 100 guineas to any other than Byron himself, he borrowed it himself to give it to Coleridge.
At the same time Byron paid so noble a tribute to Coleridge's talent, and to his poem of "Christabel," by inserting a note on the subject in his preface to the "Siege of Corinth," that Coleridge's editor took this note as the epigraph.
"Christabel!--I won't have any one," he said, "sneer at 'Christabel;' it is a fine wild poem."
In 1816 he wrote from Venice to Moore:--
"I hear that the E.R. has cut up Coleridge's 'Christabel,' and declared against me for praising it. I praised it, firstly, because I thought well of it; secondly, because Coleridge was in great distress, and after doing what little I could for him in essentials, I thought that the public avowal of my good opinion might help him further, at least with the booksellers. I am very sorry that J---- has attacked him, because, poor fellow, it will hurt him in mind and pocket. As for me, he's welcome--I shall never think less of Jeffrey for any thing he may say against me or mine in future."
At Genoa he declared, in a memorandum, that Crabbe and Coleridge were pre-eminent in point of power and talent.
At Pisa he blamed those who refused to see in "Christabel" a work of rare merit, notwithstanding the knowledge which he had of Coleridge's ingratitude to him; and refused to believe that W. Scott did not admire the poem, "for we all owe Coleridge a great deal," said he, "and even Scott himself."
And Medwin adds: "Lord Byron thinks Coleridge's poem very fine. He paraphrased and imitated one passage. He considers the idea excellent, and enters into it."
And speaking of Coleridge's psychological poem, he said: "What perfect harmony! 'Kubla Khan' delights me."
SHELLEY.
If Shelley did not find a place in the triangle, it is only because he was not yet known, except by the eccentricities of his conduct as a boy. But so soon as Byron was able to appreciate his genius, he lavished praises upon the poet and the man, while he blamed his metaphysics.
In all his letters we find proofs of his affectionate regard for Shelley; and during his last days in Greece, he said to Finlay,--"Shelley was really a most extraordinary genius; but those who know him only from his works, know but half his merits: it was from his thoughts and his conversation poor Shelley ought to be judged. He was romance itself in his manners and his style of thinking."
"You were all mistaken," he wrote from Pisa to Murray, "about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew."
And when he learned his death, he wrote to Moore:--"There is thus 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."
Such were Byron's expressions in behalf of poets of whose school he disapproved, before the calumnies spread about, and the perfidious provocations of some, joined to the ingratitude and jealousy of others, obliged him to turn his generosity into bitter retaliation. We will speak elsewhere of this epoch in their mutual relations, and we hope to show, if jealousy caused the change, that it sprang from them and not from him.
To praise was almost a besetting sin in Lord Byron. So amiable a fault was not only committed in favor of his rivals, but also by way of encouragement to young authors. What did he not do to promote the success of M.N. N----, the author of Bertram's dramas, whom Walter Scott had recommended to him?
After reading a tragedy which a young man had submitted to him, Byron wrote in his memoranda:----
"This young man has talent; he has, no doubt, stolen his ideas from another, but I shall not betray him. His critics will be but too prone to proclaim it. I hate to discourage a beginner."
Indulgent to mediocrity, compassionate with the weakness and defects of all, incapable of causing the slightest pain to those who were destitute of talent, even when art required that he should condemn them, his goodness was such, that he almost felt remorse whenever he had been led to criticise a work too severely. He deplored his having dealt too harshly with poor Blackett, as soon as the latter's position became known to him; and also with Keats, whose talent, though great, was raw in many respects, and who had become a follower of the Lakist school, which Byron abhorred.
To praise the humble, however, in order to humble the great, was an action incompatible with his noble character. Great minds constituted his great attractions, and on these he bestowed such praise as could not be deemed too partial or unjust.
Happy in the unqualified praise of Pope, of the classical poets, of the great German and Italian poets, he sometimes made exceptions, and Shakspeare was one. This is not to be wondered at. Lord Byron's mind was as well regulated as it was powerful. His admiration of Pope proves it.
"As to Pope," he writes to Moore from Ravenna, in 1821, "I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our Poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek temple, with a Gothic cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, if you please; but I prefer the Temple of Theseus, or the Parthenon, to a mountain of burnt brick-work."[33]
Order and proportion were necessities of his nature, so much so that he condemned his writings whenever they departed from his ideal of the beautiful, the essential constituents of which were order and power.
His admiration, therefore, was entirely centred in classical works. But has not Shakspeare a little disregarded the eternal laws of the beautiful observed by Homer, Pindar, and a host of other poets, ancient and modern?
If Byron, then, did not see in Shakspeare all that perfection which an aesthetical school just sprung from the North attributed to him, was he to be blamed? Has he, on this account, disregarded the great merits of that glorious mind? Even had Byron seen in Shakspeare the founder of a dramatic school, rather than a genius more powerful than orderly, who acted against his will upon certain principles, and who scrutinized the human heart to an almost supernatural depth, was he interdicted from finding fault with that school?
Does Shakspeare so economize both time and mind, as to make the action of his dramas continuous, without fatiguing the mind or weakening the dramatic effect? Are not the unities and the proportions disregarded in his plays? What necessity is there at times to put one piece into another? Are not his discussions and monologues too long? Does not his own exuberant genius become a fatigue to himself and to his readers? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real? and do they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime into the ridiculous? Would Hamlet have appeared less interesting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel words to Ophelia? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved on hearing of the death of his sister had he not made so unnecessary a play on the words?
Was not Byron, therefore, right when he said, with Pope, that Shakspeare was "the worst of models?" And could he possibly be called jealous, because he added that, "notwithstanding his defects, Shakspeare was still the most extraordinary of men of genius?"
This opinion of Byron was decidedly serious, though his opinions did not always partake of that character. His humor was rather French: he liked to laugh, to joke, to mystify, and astonish people who wished to understand him. He used, then, to employ a particular measure in his praise and his condemnation.
"On one occasion at Missolonghi, and shortly before his death," says Colonel Stanhope, "the drama was mentioned in conversation, and Byron at once attacked Shakspeare by defending the unities. A gentleman present, on hearing his anti-Shakspearean opinions rushed out of the room, and afterward entered his protest most earnestly against such doctrines. Lord Byron was quite delighted with this, and redoubled the severity of his criticism.
"He said once, when we were alone,--'I like to astonish Englishmen; they come abroad full of Shakspeare, and contempt for the dramatic literature of other nations. They think it blasphemy to find a fault in his writings, which are full of them. People talk of my writings, and yet read the sonnets to Master Hughes.'
"And yet," continues Finlay, "he continually had the most melodious lines of Shakspeare in his mouth, as examples of blank verse."
The jealousy of Shakspeare attributed to Byron is, however, nothing when compared to the ridiculous assertion, that he was jealous of Keats, simply because he had repeated in joke what the papers and Shelley himself, a friend of Keats, had said, namely, "that the young poet had been killed by a criticism of the 'Quarterly.'"
But since a French critic, M. Philarete Chasles, has made the same accusation, we must pause and consider it.
At the time when Byron was more than ever penetrated with the perfection of Pope, and opposed to the romantic school,--at the time when he himself wrote his dramas according to all classical rules,--he received at Ravenna the poems of a young disciple of the Lakists, who united in himself all their exaggerated faults. This young man had the audacity--(which was almost unpardonable in the eyes of Byron)--to despise Pope, and to constitute himself at nineteen a lawgiver of poetical rules in England.
Such ridiculous pride, added to the contempt shown to his idol, incensed Byron and prevented his showing Keats the same indulgence he had shown Maturin and Blackett. He spoke severely of Keats in his famous reply to "Blackwood's Magazine," and to his Cambridge friends--followers of the good old traditions. He quoted some lines of Keats, and remarked that "they were taken from the book of a young man who was learning how to write in verse, but who began by teaching others the art of poetry." Then, after a long quotation, he adds--"What precedes will show the ideas and principles professed by the regenerators of the English lyre in regard to the man who most of any contributed to its harmony, and the progress visible in their innovation."
Let us not forget to add that he styled Keats "the tadpole of the Lakists."
But the following year, when he heard that Keats had died at Rome, the victim of his inordinate self-love, and unable to be consoled for the criticism directed against his poetry, he wrote the following heartfelt, and, as it were, repentant words to Shelley:--
"I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats--is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though, with such inordinate self-love, he would probably have not been very happy.... Had I known that Keats was dead, or that he was 'alive,' and so 'sensitive,' I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing."
To Murray he wrote the same day:--
"Is it true what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome of the 'Quarterly Review?' I am very sorry for it; though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and suburbing, and versifying Tooke's 'Pantheon' and Lempriere's 'Dictionary.' I know by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced the 'English Bards,' etc.) knocked me down; but I got up again. Instead of bursting a bloodvessel, I drank three bottles of claret, and began an answer, finding that there was nothing in the article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an honorable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article for all the honor and glory in the world, though I by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats upon."
Some time after he wrote again to Murray, saying,--"You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poetry, nor of his poetical principles, nor of his abuse of Pope. But he is dead. I beg that you will therefore omit all I have said of him either in my manuscripts or in my publications. His 'Hyperion' is a fine monument, and will cause his name to last. I do not envy the man who wrote the article against Keats."
Several months later he made complete amends. He added to his severe article in answer to Blackwood, a note in the following terms:
"I have read the article before and since; and although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me 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; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language."
Were we wrong in saying that the accusations against Byron, with respect to Keats, did not deserve a notice? If we have noticed them, it has been merely to show, that the French critic should have judged matters in this instance with greater conscientiousness and reflection.
Influenced as Byron always was by his own ideas of beauty, he required in the authors themselves certain moral qualities which would demand for their works the bestowal of his praise. It was not only their talent, but their loyalty, their independence of character, their political consistency, and their perfect honesty, which endeared Walter Scott, Moore, and others, to him.
Byron, on the other hand, had never found these qualities in the Lakists, and especially in the head of their school, whose whole life, on the contrary, bore the marks of quite opposite characteristics. Since Southey's dream of a life of intimacy with other poets of his school, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, in some blissful remote spot from which they would publish their works in common, and where they would live with their wives and children in community of interests, some change had taken place; for Southey had so far deviated from his purpose as to become Laureate, to write for himself, and to profess ultra-Tory principles, the ultimate objects of which could not but be palpable.
All this called for Byron's contempt. To this contempt, however, he gave no expression, for fear of wounding without reason, until that reason did arise by the Laureate's unforgiving spirit. "The Laureate," says Byron, "is not one of those who can forgive." Incapable of forgetting that Byron's genius had obscured his own reputation, Southey hated Byron with an intensity, such as to make him look out for opportunities of doing him an injury. This opportunity Southey found in Byron's departure for the Continent, subsequently to the unfortunate result of his marriage; and not only did he join in all the calumnies which were set forth against him in England, but actually followed him to Switzerland, there to invent new ones, in the hope of crushing his reputation and ruining the fame of the poet by the depreciation of the man.
Lord Byron for some time was ignorant of the Laureate's baseness, for oftentimes friends deem it prudent to hide the truth which it would perhaps be better to make known. But when he came to know of them, his whole soul revolted, as naturally must be the case with a man of honor, and in "Don Juan" he came down upon Southey with a double-edged sword, throwing ridicule upon the author's writings, and odium upon his conduct as a calumniator.
This revenge was well deserved. It was not only natural but just, and even necessary, for it was requisite to show up the man, to judge of the value to be attached to his calumnies; and later, when he called him out, he did what honor required of him.
We have seen elsewhere how far the Laureate's conduct justified Byron's retaliation. It is enough, therefore, that I should have shown here that Byron's anger was rather the result of Southey's envy than his own, and that his sarcasms were due entirely to the disgust which he felt for such dishonorable proceedings.
From that time his language, when speaking of Wordsworth and Coleridge, always reflected the same disgust. Both had made themselves the echoes of Southey, and both had been inconstant from interested motives, and had solicited favors from the party in power, which they had abused in their writings. "They have each a price," said Byron at Pisa.
On one occasion, as Shelley and Medwin were laughing at some of Wordsworth's last poems, which disgusted them, not only from the subservient spirit to Toryism which pervaded them, but also excited their laughter from their absurdity, Byron, in whose house they were, said to them, "It is satisfactory to see that a man who becomes mercenary, and traffics upon the independence of his character, loses at the same time his talent as a poet."
Byron had such a notion of political consistency, that he ceased having any regard for those who failed in this respect.
"I was at dinner," says Stendhall, "at the Marquis of Breno's at Milan, in 1816, with Byron and the celebrated poet Monti, the author of 'Basvilliana.' The conversation fell upon poetry, and the question was asked which were the twelve most beautiful lines written in a century, either in English, in Italian, or in French. The Italians present agreed in declaring that Monti's first twelve lines in the 'Mascheroniana' were the finest Italian lines written for a century. Monti recited them. I observed Byron. He was in raptures. That kind of haughty look which a man often puts on when he has to get rid of an inopportune question, and which rather took away from the beauty of his magnificent countenance, suddenly disappeared to make way for an expression of happiness. The whole of the first canto to the 'Mascheroniana,' which Conti was made to recite, enchanted all hearers, and caused the liveliest pleasure to the author of 'Childe Harold.' Never shall I forget the sublime expression of his countenance: it was the peaceful look of power united with genius."
He learned, later, that Monti was a man inconsistent in his politics, and that on the sole impulse of his passions he had passed from one party to another, and had called from the pen of another poet the remark that he justified Dante's saying,--
"Il verso si non l' animo costante."
Byron's sympathy for Monti ceased from that time, and he even called him the "Giuda del Parnaso," whereas his esteem and sympathy for Silvio Pellico, for Manzoni, and for many other Italians, remained perfectly unshaken.
His sense of justice extended to all nationalities. He was a cosmopolite, and, provided the elements essential to claim his admiration existed both in the man's work, and in his character, no personal consideration ever came in the way of his bestowing praise,--the most pleasing duty that could befall him. The great minds of antiquity, those of the middle ages--especially the Italians,--all the modern great men, of whatever nation, were all for him of one country, the country of great intellects, and the degree of his sympathy for each was calculated upon the degree of their merit.
We know how ably he defended Dante, the greatest of Italian poets; how ably he translated "Francesca da Rimini," and how he exposed the error of those who did not find that Dante was not sufficiently pathetic.
We know his admiration for Goethe, who was not only his contemporary, but also his rival. Could Goethe see with pleasure another star rise in the horizon, when his own was at its zenith? Some say that he could. Without sharing altogether in this opinion, it is impossible, however, not to find that the first impressions which he gave to the world with respect to Byron do not justify the accusations of those who said he was jealous of him.
While at Ravenna, Byron received several numbers of a German paper edited and written by Goethe. It contained several articles upon English literature, and, among others, upon "Manfred." Curious to know what the patriarch of German literature thought of him, and being unable to read German, Byron sent these articles to Hoppner, at Venice, begging him to translate them.
" ... If I may judge by two notes of admiration (generally put after something ridiculous by us), and the word 'hypocondrisch,' they are any thing but favorable. I shall regret this; for I should have been proud of Goethe's good word; but I sha'n't alter my opinion of him, even though he should be (savage).... Never mind--soften nothing--I am literary proof--as one says of a material object, when he puts it to the proof of fire and water," etc.
The article was any thing but favorable. After recognizing that the author of "Manfred" is gifted with wonderful genius, Goethe pretends that it is an imitation of his "Faust," and thereupon writes a tissue of fanciful notions which he palms off upon the world.
On learning all this, Byron was by no means put out, but laughed heartily at the notion of the author of "Werther" accusing him of inciting others to a disgust of life. He wondered at such a man as Goethe giving credence to such silly fables, and giving out as authentic what were merely suppositions. Instead of being angry at this evident hostility, he declared that the article was intended as favorable to him, and, as an acknowledgment, wished to dedicate to him the tragedy of "Marino Faliero," upon which he was engaged. In the dedication, which was only projected, the reality of his admiration for Goethe soars above some jesting expressions.
To Goethe also he wished to dedicate "Sardanapalus." "I mean," said he, at Pisa, "to dedicate 'Werner' to Goethe. I look upon him as the greatest genius that the age has produced. I desired Murray to inscribe his name to a former work; but he said my letter containing the order came too late. It would have been more worthy of him than this. I have a great curiosity about every thing relating to Goethe, and please myself with thinking there is some analogy between our characters and writings. So much interest do I take in him, that I offered to give L100 to any person who would translate his memoirs for my own reading. Shelley has sometimes explained part of them to me. He seems to be very superstitious, and is a believer in astrology, or rather was, for he was very young when he wrote the first part of his 'Life.' I would give the world to read 'Faust' in the original. I have been urging Shelley to translate it." In comparing 'Cain' to 'Faust,' he said, "'Faust' itself is not so fine a subject as 'Cain,' which is a grand mystery. The mark that was put upon Cain is a sublime and shadowy act; Goethe would have made more of it than I have done."
Not being able to dedicate "Sardanapalus" to him, he dedicated "Werner" "to the illustrious Goethe, by one of his humblest admirers."
All these tokens of sympathy pleased Goethe. Their mutual admiration of one another brought on an exchange of courtesies, which ended by creating on both sides quite a warm feeling. In a letter which Goethe wrote to M. M----, after Byron's death, he speaks of his relation with the noble poet; after saying how "Sardanapalus" appeared without a dedication, of which, however, he was happy to possess a lithographed fac-simile, he adds:--
"It appeared, however, that the noble lord had not renounced his project of showing his contemporary and companion in letters a striking testimony of his friendly intentions, of which the tragedy of 'Werner' contains an extremely precious evidence."
It might naturally be expected that the aged German poet, after receiving from so celebrated a person such an unhoped-for kindness (proof of a disposition so thoroughly amiable, and the more to be prized from its rarity in the world), should also prepare, on his part, to express most clearly and forcibly a sense of the gratitude and esteem with which he was affected:--
"But this undertaking was so great, and every day seemed to make it so much more difficult; for what could be said of an earthly being whose merit could not be exhausted by thought, or comprehended by words?
"But when, in the spring of 1823, a young man of amiable and engaging manners, a M. St.----, brought direct from Genoa to Weimar, a few words under the hand of this estimable friend, by way of recommendation, and when, shortly after, there was spread a report that the noble lord was about to consecrate his great powers and varied talents to high and perilous enterprise, I had no longer a plea for delay, and addressed to him the stanzas which ends by the lines,--'And he self-known, e'en as to me he's known!'
"These verses," continued Goethe, "arrived at Genoa, but found him not. This excellent friend had already sailed; but being driven back by contrary winds, he landed at Leghorn, where this effusion of my heart reached him. On the era of his departure, July 23, 1823, he found time to send me a reply, full of the most beautiful ideas and the divinest sentiments, which will be treasured as an invaluable testimony of worth and friendship, among the choicest documents which I possess.
"What emotions of joy and hope did not that paper at once excite! but now it has become, by the premature death of its noble writer, an inestimable relic, and a source of unspeakable regret; for it aggravates, to a peculiar degree in me, the mourning and melancholy that pervade the whole moral and poetical world,--in me, who looked forward (after the success of his great efforts) to the prospect of being blessed with the sight of this master-spirit of the age--this friend so fortunately acquired: and of having to welcome, on his return, the most humane of conquerors."
These are, no doubt, most noble words, but they were called forth by the still nobler conduct of Byron toward him. It can not be said that Goethe ever appreciated all that there was of worth in his young rival, and a few words at the end of his letter make one believe that he still credited some of the absurd stories which he had been told about Byron's youth, and whom he still believed to be identified in the person of "Manfred." He entertained a great affection for Byron, no doubt, but he believed, however, that indulgence and forgiveness were not only necessary on his part, but actually generous in him.
Lord Byron's sympathetic admiration had this peculiarity,--that it did not attach to one class of individuals devoted like himself to poetry, but extended to every class of society. The statesman, the orator, the philosopher, the prince, the subject, the learned, women, general, or literary men, all were equally sure of having justice done to them. At every page of his memoranda, we find instances of this. Thus of Mackintosh he says: "He is a rare instance of the union of every transcendent talent and great good-nature."
Of Curran he speaks in the most enthusiastic terms:--
"I have met Curran at Holland House--he beats every body;--his imagination is beyond conception, and his humor (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics; I never met his equal. Now, were I a woman, and e'en a virgin, that is the man I should make my Seamander. He is quite fascinating. Remember, I have met him only once, and I almost fear to meet him again, lest the impression should be lowered.
"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such imagination! There never was any thing like it, that ever I saw or heard of. His published life--his published speeches--give you no idea of the man, none at all."
In his memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises of Curran. "The riches," said he, "of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever written--though I saw him seldom, and but occasionally."
In speaking of Colman, he said, "He was most agreeable and sociable. He can laugh so well, which Sheridan can not. If I could not have them both together, I should like to begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman."
He praised loudly the eloquence of Grattan:--
"I differ with him in politics, but I agree with all those who admire his eloquence."
As to Sheridan, he never ceased his eulogies:--
"At Lord Holland's the other night, we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him and other hommes marquants, and mine was this:--'Whatever Sheridan has done, or chosen to do, has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy ("School for Scandal"), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the "Beggars' Opera"), the best farce (the "Critic,"--it is only too good for a farce), and the best address ("Monologue on Garrick"), and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration (the famous "Begum Speech") ever conceived or heard in this country.'"
His enthusiasm for Sheridan partook even of a kind of tender compassion for his great weaknesses and misfortunes. He wrote in his memoranda, on one occasion, when Sheridan had cried with joy on hearing that Byron had warmly praised him:--
"Poor Brinsley, if they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said those few, but most sincere words, than have written the "Iliad," or made his own celebrated "Philippic." Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more, than to hear that he had derived a moment's gratification from any praise of mine, humble as it must appear to 'my elders, and my betters.'"
And also:--
"Poor, dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day when he, Rogers, Moore, and myself, spent the time from six at night till one o'clock in the morning, without a single yawn; we listening to him, and he talking all the time."
When he speaks of great men recently dead,--of Burke, Pitt, Burns, Goldsmith, and others of his distinguished contemporaries,--he is never-ending in his praise of them. His affectionate admiration for so many went so far, almost, as to frighten him into the belief that it was a weakness: after having said--"I like A----, I like B----. By Mohammed!" he exclaims in his memoranda, "I begin to think I like every body; a disposition not to be encouraged; a sort of social gluttony, that swallows every thing set before it."
Not only was it a pleasure to him to praise those who deserved it, but he would not allow the dead to be blamed, nor the illustrious among the living; we all know how much he admired the talents of Madame de Stael: "Il avait pour elle des admirations obstinees." "Campbell abused Corinne," he says in his journal, 1813: "I reverence and admire him; but I won't give up my opinion. Why should I? I read her again and again, and there can be no affectation in this. I can not be mistaken (except in taste) in a book I read and lay down and take up again; and no book can be totally bad, which finds some, even one reader, who can say as much sincerely."
And elsewhere:
"H---- laughed, as he does at every thing German, in which, however, I think he goes a little too far. B----, I hear, contemns it too. But there are fine passages; and, after all, what is a work--any or every work--but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two every day's journey? To be sure, in mademoiselle, what we often mistake and 'pant for' as the 'cooling stream,' turns out to be the 'mirage' (critice, verbiage); but we do, at last, get to something like the temple of Jupiter Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only remembered to gladden the contrast."
He who was so sparing of answers to his own detractors, could not allow a criticism against a friend to be left unanswered. We have seen how he defended Scott, Shelley, Coleridge, and numerous other remarkable persons, whenever they were unjustly attacked, although they were alive to defend themselves. The respect and justice which he claimed for the dead was equally proportioned. "Do not forget," he wrote to Moore on hearing that he was about to write the "Life of Sheridan;" "do not forget to spare the living without insulting the dead."
On reading, at Ravenna, that Schlegel said, that Dante was not popular in Italy, and accused him of want of pathos: "'Tis false," said he, with indignation; "there have been more editors and commentators (and imitators ultimately) of Dante, than of all their poets put together. Not a favorite! Why they talk Dante, write Dante, and think and dream Dante at this moment (1821) to an excess which would be ridiculous, but that he deserves it.
"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno--a precious fellow to dare to speak of Italy!
"He says, also, that Dante's chief defect is a want, in a word, of gentle feelings. Of gentle feelings! and this in the face of 'Francesca of Rimini'--and the father's feelings in 'Ugolino'--and 'Beatrice'--and 'La Pia!' Why, there is a gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness, when he is tender. It is true, that in treating of the Christian Hades, or Hell, there is not much scope or room for gentleness; but who but Dante could have introduced any 'softness' at all into Hell? Is there any in Milton? No--and Dante's heaven is all love, and glory, and majesty."
We have alluded to his admiration for Pope. It was such as to appear almost a kind of filial love. He was sorry, mortified, and humbled, not to find in Westminster Abbey the monument of so great a man:--
"Of all the disgraces that attach to England, the greatest," said he, "is that there should be no place assigned to Pope in Poets' Corner. I have often thought of erecting a monument to him at my own expense in Westminster Abbey; and hope to do so yet."
To add any thing more to show how totally Byron was free from all sentiments of an envious nature, would be to exhaust the subject, and to abuse the reader's patience. This absence of envy in him shows itself so clearly in all his sayings and doings, that it appears to be impossible to doubt it, and yet he has not been spared even such a calumny! I do not allude to the French critics, who neither knew the man nor the author, and whose systematic attacks have no value; but I allude to a certain article in the "London Magazine," which appeared shortly before his death, under the title of "Personal Character of Lord Byron," and which caused some sensation because it appeared to have been written by some one who had known Byron intimately. It was all the more perfidious because it gave an appearance of truth to a great many falsehoods, derived from the truth with which these falsehoods were mixed. It was the work of one who had gone to Greece, there to play a great part, but who, having failed in his attempt and exposed himself to the laughter of his friends, felt a kind of jealousy for Byron's success in that line, and revenged himself by saying, among other things, "that it was dangerous for Byron's friends to rise in the world, if they preferred his friendship to their glory, because, as soon as they arrived at a certain pre-eminence, he was sure to hate them."
Such a calumny exasperated Byron's real friends, and among these Count Gamba, who hastened to reply to it, by publishing an interesting book, precious from its veracity, and which does equal credit to Byron and to the young man honored with his friendship. After analyzing the anonymous article, Count Gamba goes on to say: "My own opinion is just the contrary to that of the writer in the magazine. I think he prided himself on the successes of his friends, and cited them as a proof of discernment in the choice of some of his companions. This I know, that of envy he had not the least spark in his whole disposition: he had strong antipathies, certainly, to one or two individuals; but I have always understood, from those most likely to know, that he never broke with any of the friends of his youth, and that his earliest attachments were also his last."
It may be remarked that Byron's popularity made it difficult for him to indulge sentiments of envy. But without referring to the unstable character of popularity, was not his own attacked by the jealousy of those who wished to pull him down from the pedestal of fame, to which they hoped themselves to rise? Did he not think, some years before his death, that his popularity was wavering, and that his rivals would profit by it? Was he less pleased at the success of his friends? Does not all he said, and all he did, prove that where he blamed he did so unwillingly, from a sense of justice and truth; but that when he praised, he did so to satisfy a desire of his heart?
We have dwelt at considerable length upon this subject, because we believe that a total absence of envy is so rare among poets, and so conspicuous in Lord Byron, that we can take it to be the criterion of his nobility of soul. We can sum up, therefore, all we have said, by declaring, that if Byron has been envied by all his enemies, and even his friends, with, perhaps, the exception of Shelley, and has not himself envied one, though he suffered personally from the consequences of their jealousy, it is because the great kindness of his nature made him the least envious of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 28: Moore, Letter 261.]
[Footnote 29: Venice, 1817.]
[Footnote 30: Why has the passage in the first edition of Stendhall's works, which treats in enthusiastic terms of Byron's genius, been cut out of the subsequent editions?]
[Footnote 31: Was this a little irony? I think so, for it was believed that jealousy was the weak point of Rogers.]
[Footnote 32: Moore, Letter 435.]
[Footnote 33: Moore, Letter 422.]