Letters on the character and poetical genius of Lord Byron

Preface

JVj.^ J than twenty of the first of these letters were wTitten with little intention to publish them. They were the successive daily impressions which a continued musing on the subject produced in my mind, registered as they occurred with the utmost frankness and fearlessness. If tne reader shall suspect that he now and then perceives some inconsistency in them, a little candour and reflection will, I hope, induce him to alter his opinion. He must recollect that these are Letters^ — not a formal essay or dissertation^ where a

VI PREFACE.

an author is bound to digest the whole before he commences to Vv^rite it.

As to any deprecation of censure and criticism, or any anxiety about it, he who has had intercourse with the Hterary world for more than forty years must know too much of its private history, its passions, prejudices, and intrigues, to concern himself with any thing of such utter inutility. He who cannot endure heartless and fitful criticism, or is not prepared even for foul and perverted criticism, must not write. All Jlrst reception is at best a chance : what is just and solid will some day find its due place in the public mind ; what is not so will receive little benefit from temporary favour : — it is much more mortifying to be lifted up, and then to sink again, than never to have risen. What good

PREFACE. Vll

did the fame of Dar^xvin or of Hayley do either of them ?

Some will censure my warmth : if they cannot prove it affected, they are welcome to all which they can make of the objection.

Genevay July 14. 1824.

LETTERS.

LETTER I, Saturday, May 22. 1824

Yesterday the papers brought me the news of Lord Byron's death, on Monday April 19th, at Missolonghi in Greece, of a ten days' inflammatory fever. He was born in January I788, and was, therefore, aged thirty-six years, and three months, wanting a few days.

On the first emotion of such intelligence it is too early to discuss calmly his genius, his merits or demerits.

It will be always difficult to separate one from the other, because they are almost always found together. His splendours and his extravagances ; his beauties and his offences against morality and taste, too commonly occur in the same work, and even frequently in the same page.

There is, indeed, a great difference between the fault which arises from ideas unckastised, and ideas exaggerated. The former comes from excess of force ; the latter, from weakness which endeavours to supply the place of strength by unnatural and artificial efforts : Lord Byron's fault is of the former kindj never of the latter.

It seems as if he always disdained to chastise his first impressions ; and yielded to all their unpoised violence. He saw things therefore in detached lights : and though his impressions were those of a faithful as well as brilliant mirror, which reflected objects under one single aspect; like a landscape under a burning and unshaded sun ; yet he never seems to have received those mingled and graduated views, where gilded clouds soften, and a thousand counteracting tints correct excesses, and turn glare into mellowed beauty.

Either his faculty of reason was very much inferior to his fancy and his imagination, or he little exercised it. He seemed always resolved to take things in the shape and colour in which his momentary passion would have them appear, and relied on the force of his fancy to make them appear so to others. He placed his spectators, like a magician, in the sole point of view where what he presented to them appeared just as he would have it ; but as he, when his humour altered, could change the position both of himself and the object, he was often likely to laugh at those whom he had misled by his partial exhibitions.

I think that this will account for the instability of opinion, which he so often discovered. He was not considerate ; B 2 he would not give himself time to be profound, and comprehensive. He could not see good working out of evil ; and how that, which on a narrow aspect of it, seemed severe, unreasonable, or foolish, would on a broader regard of all the circumstances be found beneficial and wise. He was ingenious, acute, and vigorous, and therefore could enforce whatever impression he chose to take : but he had not that moral monitor within, which is independent of the intellect and the genius ; and which is a guard against partial views ; against the freaks of ability ; and against the indulgence of the temptation,

" To make the worse appear the better cause."

He had a sort of self-confidence and arrogance, which made him feel as if he exulted to sport with the public mind ; as if he had dominion over it, like an evil spirit ; as if his powers by some irresistible destiny were fated to defy control ; as if he was ordained to ride in mockery on the necks of the people ; to spurn public opinion ; and to trample down morality, in order to show his strength !

He who was endowed with this almost superhuman audacity of spirit, combined with a rare splendour of intellectual gifts, was free to produce compositions, which would possess a striking character, such as more restrained pens had no chance of reaching. All regions of possible thought were open to him ; and in the universal license of his mind, he could see views and gather flowers, which no other could visit, or collect. There was the chance of barrenness, of barbarism, of terror, of deformity, and disgust, in his excursions ; but this mattered not to him : he laughed at the objections to what he produced of rude, or dry, or revolting ; it was a part of his sport 'y a part of the trial of his power, to

B 3 which he was destined ; and it set off the brilliant and magnificent parts more strongly by the contrast.

He had the powers of copious and rich fiction : but it wanted one essential part of the fiction which is requisite to the highest poetry — it was not cast in the mould of truth. All the characters of his creation partook of the defects of his own mental and moral composition. They are beings of violence ; of extravagant and partial endowment ; of scorn at moral ties ; of splendid vice ; of disdain of the state of existence in which they are moving ; of mysterious claims to excellence above their destiny, which exempt them from the common restraints of life, and entitle them to do whatever eccentric and audacious things passion or caprice prompts, without loss of esteem or admiration, as if in revenge for their degradation among creatures of an inferior order.

These are mysteries into which genius may throw the beings of its invention ; and such fictions may open a thousand opportunities for splendid imagery, glowing description, and striking sentiment ; — but they are not mysteries out of which they can so easily get them again. Truth, — eternal truth, — is against them; and truth only will allow of developments, which may justify the temporary agitation of the passions, and the excitement of temporary wonder.

Lord Byron, accordingly, leaves almost all his fictions at last under the veil of the darkness in which they commenced, and with which they have been carried on. — The Corsair ; — Lara ;• — Manfred, &c. how is our curiosity satisfied in these ? To what end do they lead ? What truth is exemplified by them ?

An exercise of imagination without producing an end, is like " long pas- '* sages" in a palace, or castle, " which *« lead to nothing!"

B 4

So far as there is an undeveloped result, — . so far as inferences rise from the qualities and conduct of the characters in the progress of these fictions, — it is contrary to what our sober reason and conscience can admit, — contrary to the necessary duties of morality, which bind society together, — and such only as in the momentary demands of our passions can please us, or be admitted by us ; because we cannot admit that generosity is connected with selfish indulgences ; kindness with ferocity ; and aflTection with violence, rapine, revenge, and reckless audacity.

They who are incHned to defend such indulgences of the imagination as Lord Byron gave way to, will probably meet me here, and charge me with begging the question, even if they admit the position that TRUTH ought to be the result of the Jiction, — They will contend, that the qualities, of which I deny the union, are.

in fact, often united ; they will say that it is necessary to tear off the disguise of hypocrisy, and that we must look at human nature as it is ; — that the vigour of virtue is often joined to great vices ; — and that the boldness which dares to paint things as they are, however contrary to prejudices, deserves all the distinction it has obtained, for force of mind, as well as of heart.

Undoubtedly, if these counter-assumptions be just, there is an end of my objections. — But are they just? Is such mysterious conduct as is attributed to Lara consistent with a predominance of virtuous over vicious qualities?

Wickedness may be painted, but then it must be painted, not as an object of attraction, but as an object of avoidance. It must not be so painted in colours of unqualified darkness, that we feel no interest in it; but the consequence of its ill qualities or ill deeds must be unhappiness ; and we must be the more affected by that unhappiness by the mixture of some attractive quahties with those which we condemn.

Is it not dangerous to the morahty of the popular mind, to represent crime in attractive hues, and temporarily triumphant, without following it by the antidote of misery, regret, and punishment ?

LETTER II. May 23

1 HE fiercer passions seem to have prevailed exclusively over the mind of Lord Byron. Tender affection, timidity, sorrow, sympathy, appear to have had little influence over him ; a love of power and of the unlimited exercise of his caprice, and anger and violent resentment at whatever thwarted his purposes, were his habitual temperament. It did not seem, that any hold could be made upon his conscience, or the nicety of his regard to the interests or happiness of others. He was one who lived according to his own humours, and whose will was his law.

In one sense he could not be properly said to have any enthusiasm, because enthusiasm is uniform, sincere, and cannot change ; whereas in his fits of highest fervour he could change at once to raillery, sarcasm, and jest ; he could ridicule what he himself had the moment before admired most, and could turn round upon those who agreed with him, by taking the direct contrary side.

When he w^as pleased, he could be generous and kind ; but no one was certain of being able to please him, or to continue to please him. He took offence without cause ; and revenged, without bounds, trifling or imagined injuries. Goodness gave him no pleasure, as goodness ; but only so far as it happened to suit some transient humour.

This disposition of mind and temper aided the Jbrce and direct vigour of whatever he wrote or said. He compromised nothing; he took every object in the single unbroken light of the moment ; he had no qualms, no reserves, but drove onward to his point with a reckless energy. He had risen above the breath not only of vulgar opinion, but of all pubUc opinion. He found himself, or thought himself; above the reach of any assault which should endanger his fame ; and, therefore, that, in the chances which he was free to run, all that was good would elevate him, nothing which was bad could depress him ; — a state of extraordinary advantage for the due expansion of powers magnificent in degree, as well as rare in kind.

But still it was a dangerous and too tempting license : it encouraged him to let out all the dregs, as well as all the splendours of his great genius ; he, therefore, let out many things trite, many coarse, some foolish, and some execrable ; he put no guard upon the bitterness of a temper sometimes foul, and sometimes ungenerous ; and it will be well, if this vast mass of objectionable matter does not finally hang heavy on his fame.

It must not be understood that by these objections to the poems or the genius of Lord Byron any idea is meant to be conveyed, that it ought in any respect to be brought down to the level of minor authors, or compared with those faint fabricators of artificial poetry, who, though they may sometimes acquire an ephemeral celebrity, yet are in truth gifted with nothing worth regard, and have produced nothing worthy of the labour of criticism.

Lord Byron always communicated images, or sentiments, or thoughts ; he never dealt in mere empty language, — in the poetry of words and style. He conveyed some unaffected, undisguised, unqualified, and, for the most part, some unlaboured conception. He dashed out, with bold and able strokes, the impressions which had dominion over his mind. They were often impressions which others would contend to be partial, diseased, over-deep, and discoloured, and not sufficiently softened by reflection ; but still they were impressions received and communicated with splendour, fidelity, and skill. There is a magic in impressions powerfully represented, even though they are themselves not such as we approve. We delight to see the secrets which lie in the penetration of the mind and heart broadly developed to our gaze. We often suspect that there are private movements in the recesses of the bosom, contradictory to what is spoken, which too many feel, though scarcely any one is bold enough to avow. There is something of the pleasure and surprise of discovery in seeing these hidden impressions brought from their lurking holes out into day. There is a frankness in the confession, which wins by the charm of generosity.

There are, however, many tendencies to give to this sort of merit a little more weight than it deserves. In admiring the confession, we ought not, therefore, to admire the thing confessed ; but this we are often incUned to do. Hypocrisy is bad, but open error or vice of opinion is not therefore good. Not all who have been famed for virtue have been virtuous ; but it does not follow, that all who have been pursued by scorn, or indignation, or obloquy, have been meritorious. To strain the eye to behold with an excess of severity, whatever has been sanctioned by time, and concurrent opinion, and with an excess of candour, whatever has been damned by it, is an inconsistent alternation of contrary extremes.

The general love of novelty, the impulse that is given by the attempt to change the current of popular judgment, will always render such an attempt acceptable, if executed with talent. It will possess a temporary attraction for its native strength and justness. Even when it is erroneous, still, it may be the means of discovering truth, by the broad and distinct light in which it thus shows itself.

So far, then, wrong impressions of the fancy, wrong combinations of the imagination, wrong sentiments of the heart, and wrong conclusions of the head, may produce good by a bold, able, and striking picture of them. But this is a sort of praise, with which the poet and his admirers would be in no degree content. They would say, " We scorn the praise " of having afforded a warning ; and not « a model !"

Others would say, *' We do not enter " into the question whether what is re- " presented does or does not exist in " nature, or what are its moral effects ; " whether it is desirable that it should " exist ; whether its existence does or " would produce good or evil : our " business is with the picture as a picc

" ture. Is it or is it not forcibly de- " signed, drawn, coloured, and executed ? " If it is, the question is decided ; the " poet's power and merit is established ; " and we need go no farther !"

But to argue thus, is surely to build on a narrow theory. It puts aside the quality, the character, the dignity, and rank of the design, and supposes all to lie in the execution. It is admitted that many essentials of poetical power would be thus exhibited ; but not all, nor even the most essential of all, — that of truth or verisimiliti/y in magnificence, pathos, or beauty.

GENIUS OF LORD BYRON^. IQ

LETTER III. May 24

JLoRD Byron, however, was a very extraordinary man, not only in his own country and age ; but, compared with any country and age, the brilliancy of Jiis fancy and the power of his imagination have not been surpassed ; and the active use of them was almost as wonderful as the gift itself. For twelve years, — from the age of twenty-four to his death at the age of thirty-six, — he never let them sleep ; and he exerted them with this unexampled vigour in a course of life which seemed in some respects a great impediment to them. He was a wanderer ; he gave himself up to sensual pleasures ; and he delighted in personal dangers and the fatigues of the body. c 2

On the other hand, it must be admitted, that in some other regards his eccentric habits were extremely favourable to the nutriment and display of those daring faculties which he so pre-eminently possessed. His solitude ; his defiance of the petty formalities of the world ; his frequent abstinence from those ordinary indulgences of the table, which cloud and enfeeble the mind, while they inflame the body, — all tended to aid and invigorate the energies of his intellect : while his enterprises, his change of scenery, his observation of new manners, his search after striking incidents, and his intercourse with what abounded both with energy and novelty, continually supplied new mental stores ; kept all his talents fresh and in constant activity ; and gave force, life, and novelty to all his inventions.

He was endowed by nature with a feverish and burning intensity of intellect and genius ; a restless vigour which never slept, and which consumed him at an early age. Had it not been fed and refreshed by variety, it probably could not have lasted so long. There is a point beyond which intensity defeats itself: it penetrates beyond the depth of life, and loses the charm of which it was in search. This would probably have been Lord Byron's case, had he not sought variety and adventure.

But it is curious to observe how that native intensity of faculties gradually developed itself It shows itself little, if at all, in his earliest compositions : some of them show taste and poetical feeling — but not force ; — he seems to have been fearful of unwrought ideas, and the attempt to touch upon new ground ; he keeps near the shore, and uses the materials already worked into form, and polished. There can be no doubt that these were but a very inadequate picture of what was already passing in his mind ; c 3

2S LETTERS ON THE

but he had not yet strength enough to appear in his own poetical character.

Even in his jirst two cantos of Childe Harold there is much mixture of common-place ; and an ambition rather to catch and rival the tones of some of his predecessors, than the original and inspired strain of one who spoke directly from the muse herself; — and the charm consisted more in frankness of confession, and force of daring and undisguised feeling, than of eminent vigour and novelty of poetry.

There were, indeed, passages which showed a commencing disposition to express his own strong thoughts and feelings in his own fearless words : but they were scarcely more than preludes, and such as proved that practice and labour were still necessary to give him an adequate command over his own resources. Luckily for the expansion of intellect, the public received this production with high favour. How much of this favour arose from a due appreciation of the merits of his poem, — and how much from the eccentric reputation of the author, and from the boldness with which he had repelled the unprovoked assaults of criticism, and the powerful bitterness with which he had turned back on the critics their own w^eapons, — matters not. It had at once the effect of setting free those rare powers, which have ever since been exerted in the production of public fruit, that has always astonished and often delighted the world. Encouragement will not confer powers which did not previously exist ; but encouragement will bring them forth. It seems clear that Lord Byron himself had no strong consciousness of them, till the warmth of the sun put them into due motion.

They were powers which did not lie upon the surface. They sprang from gloomy musings ; from watchfulness of c 4 his own fierce passions ; from a habit of looking, not only without pain, but with a dark delight, on objects of terror ; of contemplating with an unaccountable sort of scornful triumph the strange inconsistencies of frail human nature, — its occasional mixture of horrible crimes, with the splendour of magnificent quahties, — and its seeming propensity to evil, as if born to be unhappy, and to incur punishment for that which it could not avoid, — and in exercising the severity of a sarcastic and relentless talent for tearing the disguise fi-om hypocrisy, — and of an unsparing acuteness in piercing the robes of power, and detecting oppression and selfishness where the world had given credit for beneficence and public virtue. To this task, and these mental occupations, both his talents and his temper were qualified to a degree beyond those of other men. The violence of his feelings was of a very peculiar cast ; he had few of the ordinary sympathies of mankind ; — his sympathy was with contradictions eccentricities, impetuosities, wonders, terrors, violences, hatreds, resentments, scorns, indignations; — to play upon the brinks of precipices ; — to snatch at forbidden fruit, while death stood to guard it; — and enjoy pleasure in the midst of storm and tumult. This appetite for the joys which arise from strong excitement, this love of extreme contrasts, this passion to battle with the tempest, to live in agitated waters, ruled over his intellectual, as strongly as over his material, nature. But such a state and such results were not to be produced by slight and gentle efforts. It required a constant mental travel out of beaten tracks ; an eye perpetually in search of all peculiar appearances ; a steadiness of sight in regarding objects from which others would shrink ; and a fearless notice of

S6 circumstances which others would not trust themselves to mention.

It is not strange, therefore, that these characteristics of his genius did not break out in the compositions which he first gave to the pubhc. It is not in the nature of such fruits to be matured without much culture, and a strong sun. They cannot for the first time be embodied without long and familiar intercourse with them : they are too flitting and evanescent to be easily pictured ; — not a glimpse of them can be traced by a common eye. The paths to them are intricate, mysterious, and forbidding : they are like a forest of terrible enchantment, enveloped in black clouds, which none but a daring spirit, of dazzling brightness, dares to enter.

The world would have lost whatever delight it has received from Lord Byron, but for an accidental coincidence of circumstances that encouraged his rare faculties into the path in which they were most fitted to shine. Whatever be the amount or the benefit of that delight, it is not likely that one will soon arise again, capable of producing the same, or similar. The most powerful invention cannot by mere simple, uninstructed, undisciphned, unlaboured, exertion effect it.

LETTER IV. May 25

OOME minds are cast in so sombre a mould, that they seem naturally disposed to delight in gloom, mysteries, and terrors. There is something in human existence which dissatisfies them, and produces a discontent and ill humour that drive them to seek familiarity with painful emotions. They love *' to enforce the *< awful, darken the gloomy, and aggra- " vate the dreadful." No one, I think, will deny that this was the bent and ruling genius of Lord Byron.

Our nature is in some respects inscrutable, wonderful, and strange : we are often seized with an irresistible impulse to gaze curiously and intently on that which fills us with horror while we .gaze. There are impressions sometimes made on a sensitive intellect or heart in early life, before reason has gained dominion, which nothing afterwards can efface. We know not what accidental circumstance may have given an impression of horror or bitterness to Lord Byron in his infancy.

LETTER V. May 26

It seems natural to the mind to love mysterious agitation. The tales of the nursery are principally characterised by the purpose of working upon ignorant and superstitious fear. Lord Byron's active mind, fond of strong emotion, probably always delighted itself with this violent food. Irascible, gloomy, perverse, proud, it nursed, perhaps, the seeds of discontent from infancy. The belief in evil spirits, whose dominion could not be resisted, may have been a strange sort of balm which reconciled him to himself. His family were under a cloud : his great-uncle, who possessed the peerage, had been thrown into sad and misanthropic seclusion by the unfortunate result of the duel with Mr. Cha-

GENIUS OF LORD BYUOX. 31

worth ; and a great declension of fortune darkened the veil which hung over the waning splendours of his ancient and eminent house. His father's Jirst marriage, at least, had been unhappy ; and his temper was said to have been harsh and despotic.

When Lord Byron entered a great public school, somewhat late and backward in the attainments pursued at these exclusively-classical institutions, with a person marked out by one of those defects which boys treat so mercilessly in each other, and with the reputation of a fortune very far below his rank, his proud and supercilious spirit received a shock, which seems to have operated on the colour of the rest of his life. He was ambitious, ardent for distinction, and vain. Obstructed and oppressed in the regular course, his energies, prompted by a daring and bitter temper, broke out into the most eccentric pursuits and amusements. He grew defiant, misanthropic, and careless of moral character. He felt within him the stirrings of a genius, of which he perceived that others had not only no suspicion, but of which they even scoffed at the pretension. In the midst of this discouragement, in the midst of the rude and coarse habits in which it encouraged a temper naturally fierce, he still had returns of that higher ambition, of those more refined and more noble occupations, of which his mighty gifts of intellect had in the happier moments of his boyhood given him glimpses.

He wrote a variety of small poems, which he collected into a volume, and printed under the title of Hours of Idleness. Though these productions were unequal, a discerning eye could see in them passages which could not have sprung but from a true poetical feeling, and which could not have been brought forth but by a considerable command of language and power of execution. But perhaps it will at first seem a little singular, that this volume was marked by no hint of any one of the striking traits of the author's tcharacter. It approached to elegance, and sometimes betrayed a tender melancholy ; but it was not remarkable for vigour and daring originality.

It is a proof that the author did not yet know his own strength ; or, perhaps, had not yet felt the commencement of it. But still conscious to himself that the domains of the Muse were his proper province, he paid his offerings to her, though with timidity, and in the forms which common usage had prescribed.

We may imagine him now soothing himself with the hope that a new aera was dawning upon him ; that they who had looked upon him as one formed of gross, hard, and savage materials ; as one

D aspiring to vulgar distinctions by ferocious eccentricities ; as one *' fit for trea- ** sons, stratagems, and wars ;" as one not of melting mood, who was insensible to the elevated refinements of literature ; would now see with surprise their illiberal and unjust misconception of his character and endowments, and receive them perhaps with the more favour from the contrast to the outward appearances he had lately exhibited.

But he was first disappointed, and then outraged. His volume for some time attracted no notice. In truth, there must be something very fortunate, or very singular, in the first work of a young poet, which shall in these days engage the public attention. Verses from a young nobleman had nothing in the announcement to awaken curiosity ; and Lord Byron had not yet raised in the world any rumour of genius to counteract the general indifference to such announcements.