CVIII.

"The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise, Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance The heart in an existence of its own, Of which another's bosom is the zone."[50]

And then, in describing the happiness of two lovers, in his poem of "The Island," a few days before setting out for Greece, he says again:--

"Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre, With such devotion to their ecstasy, That life knows no such rapture as to die; And die they do; for earthly life has naught Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought; And all our dreams of better life above But close in one eternal gush of love."

After speaking of the religious enthusiast, and saying that his soul preceded his dust to heaven, he adds:--

"Is love less potent? No--his path is trod, Alike uplifted gloriously to God; Or link'd to all we know of heaven below, The other better self, whose joy or woe Is more than ours."

But enough of quotations; and now what poet has ever written or spoken of love with words and images more chaste, more truly welling from his own heart? We feel that he has given us the key to that. And if, after all these demonstrations, there still remain any readers who continue to accept as true the pleasantries, satires, and mystifications contained in some of his verses, I do not pretend to write for them. They are to be pitied, but there is no hope of convincing them. That depends on their quality of mind. The only thing possible, then, is to recall some of those anecdotes which, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the same time illustrate Lord Byron's way of acting. I will select one. When Lord Byron was at Pisa a friend of Shelley's, whom he sometimes saw, had formed a close intimacy with Lady B----, a woman of middle-age but of high birth. The tie between them was evidently the result of vanity on Mr. M----'s side, and, as she was the mother of a large family, it was doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that did not prevent Mr. M---- from boasting of his success, and even (that he might be believed) from going into disgusting details in his eagerness for praise.

One day that Mr. M---- was in the same _salon_ (at Mrs. Sh----'s house) with Lord Byron and the Countess G----, the conversation turned upon women and love in general, whereupon Mr. M---- lauded to the skies the devotedness, constancy, and truth of the sex. When he had finished his sentimental "tirade," Lord Byron took up the opposite side, going on as Don Juan or Childe Harold might. It was easy to see he was playing a part, and that his words, partly in jest, partly ironical, did not express his thoughts. Nevertheless they gave pain to Mme. G----, and, as soon as they were alone, Lord Byron having asked her why she was sad, she told him the cause.

"I am very sorry to have grieved you," said he, "but how could you think that I was talking seriously?"

"I did not think it," she said, "but those who do not know you will believe all; M---- will not fail to repeat your words as if they were your real opinions; and the world, knowing neither him nor you, will remain convinced that he is a man full of noble sentiments, and you a real Don Juan, not indeed your own charming youth, but Moliere's Don Juan!"

"Very probably," said Lord Byron; "and that will be another true page to add to M----'s note-book. I can't help it. I couldn't resist the temptation of punishing M---- for his vanity. All those eulogiums and sentimentalities about women were to make us believe how charming they had always been toward him, how they had always appreciated his merits, and how passionately in love with him Lady B---- is now. My words were meant to throw water on his imaginary fire."

Alas! it was on such false appearances that they made up, then and since, the Lord Byron still believed in by the generality of persons.

Lord Byron by his marriage gave another pledge of having renounced the foibles of the heart and the allurements of the senses; and it is very certain that he redeemed his word. If, through susceptibility or any other defect, Lady Byron, going back to the past or trusting to vile, revengeful, and interested spies, did not know how to understand him, all Lord Byron's friends did, whether or not they dared to say so. And he himself, who never could tell a lie, has assured us of his married fidelity.[51] His life in Switzerland was devoted to study, retreat, and even austerity. How little this stood him in stead with his enemies is well known. "I never lived in a more edifying manner than at Geneva," he said to Mr. Medwin. "My reputation has not gained by it. Nevertheless, when there is mortification, there ought to be a reward."[52]

When he arrived at Milan many ladies belonging to the great world were most anxious to know him; these presentations were proposed to him, and he refused. As to his life at Venice, a wicked sort of romance has been made of it, by exaggerating most ordinary things, and heaping invention upon invention; but this has been explained with sufficient detail in another chapter, where all the different causes of these exaggerations have been shown in their just measure of truth.[53]

Here, then, I will only say, that if, on arriving at Venice, he relaxed his austerity to lead the life common to young men without legitimate ties: if, under the influence of that lovely sky, he did not remain insensible to the songs of the beautiful Adriatic siren, nor trample under foot the few flowers fate scattered on his path, to make amends perhaps for the thorns that had so long beset it; if he sometimes accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the Alps, was written at Venice; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was conceived and written at Venice. The "Lament of Tasso," "Mazeppa," the "Ode to Venice," "Beppo" (from his studies of Berni), the first two cantos of "Don Juan," were all written at Venice.

Moreover, it was there he collected materials for his dramas; there he studied the Armenian language, making sufficient progress to translate St. Paul's Epistles into English. And all that, in less than twenty-six months, including his journeys to Rome and to Florence. Let moralists say whether a man steeped in sensual pleasures could have done all that.

"The truth is," says Moore, "that, so far from the strength of his intellect being impaired or dissipated by these irregularities, it never was perhaps at any period of his life more than at Venice in full possession of all its energies."[55]

All the concessions Moore was obliged to make, from a sort of weakness, not to compromise his position, to certain extreme opinions in politics or religion, cloaking in reality personal hatred; are they not all destroyed by this single avowal?

Shelley, who came to Venice to see Lord Byron, said that all he observed of Lord Byron's state during his visit gave him a much higher idea of his intellectual grandeur than what he had noticed before. Then it was, and under this impression, that Shelley sketched almost the whole poem of "Julian and Maddalo." "It is in this latter character," says Moore, "that he has so picturesquely personated his noble friend; his allusions to the 'Swan of Albion,' in the verses written on the Engancennes hills, are also the result of this fit of enthusiastic admiration." At Venice Lord Byron saw few English; but those he did see, and who have spoken of him, have expressed themselves in the same way as Shelley; which caused Galt to say, that even at Venice, with regard to his pleasures, his conduct had been that of most young men! but that the whole difference must have consisted in the extravagant delight he took in exaggerating, through his conversation, not what was conducive to honor, but, on the contrary, what was likely to do him harm. The whole difference, however, does not lie here, but rather in the indiscretion shown by some friends.[56] Among the best testimonies borne to his way of living at Venice we must not forget that of Hoppner, who bore so high a character, and who was the constant companion of his daily afternoon walks; nor that of the excellent Father Pascal, who shared his morning studies at the Armenian convent.[57]

But in this united homage to truth I can not pass over in silence nor refrain from quoting the words of a very great mind, who, under the veil of fiction, has written almost a biography of Lord Byron, and who too independent, _though a Tory_, to _wish_ to conceal his thought, has declared in the preface to his charming work of "Venetia" that Lord Byron was really his hero.

This writer, after speaking of all the silly calumnies with which Lord Byron was overwhelmed at one time, says of the two more especially calculated to stir up opinion against him, those which accused him of _libertinism_ and _atheism_:--

"A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that abandoned profligacy is not very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings. A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and his writings, those who admired his genius and the generosity of his soul were not content with advocating, principally out of pique to his adversaries, his extreme opinions on every subject--moral, political, and religious. Besides, it must be confessed, there was another circumstance almost as fatal to Herbert's character in England as his loose and heretical opinions. The travelling English, during their visits to Geneva, found out that their countryman solaced or enlivened his solitude by unhallowed ties. It is a habit to which very young men, who are separated from or deserted by their wives, occasionally have recourse. Wrong, no doubt, as most things are, but, it is to be hoped, venial; at least in the case of any man who is not also an atheist. This unfortunate mistress of Herbert was magnified into a _seraglio_; extraordinary tales of the voluptuous life of one who generally _at his studies outwatched the stars_, were rife in English society; and

'Hoary marquises and stripling dukes,'

who were either _protecting opera-dancers_, or, still worse, _making love to their neighbors' wives_, either looked grave when the name of Herbert (Lord Byron) was mentioned in female society, or affectedly confused, as if they could a tale unfold, if they were not convinced, that the sense of propriety among all present was infinitely superior to their sense of curiosity."

In addition to all the proofs given by the varied uses Lord Byron made of his intellect we must not omit those furnished by the state of his heart. If, too readily yielding at Venice to momentary and fleeting attractions, Lord Byron had been led to squander the powers of youth, to wish to extinguish his senses in order to open out a more vast horizon to his intelligence; if, thus mistaking the means, he had, nevertheless, weakened, enervated, degraded himself, would not his heart have been the first victim sacrificed on the altar of light pleasures?

But, on the contrary, this heart which he had never succeeded in lulling into more than a slumber, when the hour of awakening came, held dominion by its own natural energy over the proud aspirations of his intelligence, and found both his youth and faculty of loving unweakened, and that he had a love capable of every sacrifice, a love as fresh as in his very spring-tide.

Are such metamorphoses possible to withered souls? Moralists have never met with a like phenomenon. On the contrary, they certify that in hearts withered by the enjoyments of sense all generous feelings, all noble aspirations become extinct.

If Lord Byron's anti-sensuality were not sufficiently proved by his

## actions, words, writings, and by the undeniable testimony of those who

knew him, it might still be abundantly proved by his habits of life, and all his tastes; to begin with his sobriety, which really was wonderful. So much so, that if the proverb, _Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are_, be true, and founded on psychological observation, one must admit that Lord Byron was almost an immaterial being.

His fine health, his strong and vigorous constitution, lead to the presumption that, at least in childhood and during his boyish days, his rule of life could not have differed from that of the class to which he belonged. Nevertheless, his sobriety was remarkable even in early youth; at eighteen he went with a friend, Mr. Pigott, to Tunbridge Wells, and this gentleman says, "We retired to our own rooms directly after dinner, for Byron did not care for drinking any more than myself."

But this natural sobriety became soon after the sobriety of an anchorite, which lasted more or less all his life, and was a perfect phenomenon. Not that he was insensible to the pleasures of good living, and still less did he act from any vanity (as has been said by some incapable of sacrificing the bodily appetites to the soul); his conduct proceeded from the desire and resolution of making _matter_ subservient to the _spirit_.

His rule of life was already in full force when he left England for the first time. Mr. Galt, whom chance associated with Lord Byron on board the same vessel bound from Gibraltar to Malta, affirms that Lord Byron, during the whole voyage, seldom tasted wine; and that, when he did occasionally take some, it was never more than half a glass mixed with water. He ate but little; and never any meat; only bread and vegetables. He made me think of the ghoul taking rice with a needle."

On board "La Salsette," returning from Constantinople, he himself wrote to his friend and preceptor Drury, that the gnats which devoured the _delicate body_ of Hobhouse had not much effect on him, because he lived in a _more sober manner_.

As to his mode of living during his two years' absence from England we can say nothing, except that he lived in climates where sobriety is the rule, and that his letters expressed profound disgust at the complaints, exacting tone, and effeminate tastes of his servants, and his own preference for a monastic mode of life, and very probably also for monastic diet. The testimony to his extraordinary sobriety becomes unanimous as soon as he returns home.

Dallas, who saw him immediately on his landing in 1811, writes:--

"Lord Byron has adopted a mode of diet that any one else would have called dying of hunger, and to which several persons even attributed his lowness of spirits. He lived simply on small sea-biscuits, very thin; only eating two of these, and often but one, a day, with one cup of _green tea_, which he generally drank at one in the afternoon. He assured me that was all the nourishment he took during the twenty-four hours, and that, so far from this regime affecting his spirits, it made him feel lighter and more lively; and, in short, gave him _greater command over himself in all respects. This great abstinence is almost incredible.... He thought great eaters were generally prone to anger, and stupid._"[58]

It was about this time that he made the personal acquaintance of Moore at a dinner given by Rogers for the purpose of bringing them together and of reconciling them.

"As none of us," says Moore, "knew about his singular regime, our host was not a little embarrassed on discovering, that there was nothing on the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not touch meat, fish, or wine; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he asked for, there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared he was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on this meagre pittance he succeeded in making an agreeable dinner."[59]

About the same time, being questioned by one of his friends, who liked good living, as to what sort of table they had at the Alfred Club, to which he belonged, "It is not worth much," answered Lord Byron. "I speak from hearsay; for what does cookery signify to a vegetable-eater? But there are books and quiet; so, for what I care, they may serve up their dishes as they like."

"Frequently," says Moore again, "during the first part of our acquaintance we dined together alone, either at St. Alban's, or at his old asylum, Stevens's. Although occasionally he consented to take a little Bordeaux, he _always held to his system of abstaining from meat_. He seemed truly persuaded that animal food must have some particular influence on character. And I remember one day being seated opposite to him, engaged in eating a beefsteak with good appetite, that, after having looked at me attentively for several seconds, he said, gravely, 'Moore, does not this eating beefsteaks make you ferocious?'

"Among the numerous hours we passed together this spring, I remember

## particularly his extreme gayety one evening on returning from a soiree,

when, after having accompanied Rogers home, Lord Byron--who, according to his frequent custom, had not dined the last two days--feeling his appetite no longer governable, asked for something to eat. Our repast, at his choice, consisted only of bread and cheese; but I have rarely made a gayer meal in my life."

In 1814 he relaxed his diet a little, so far as to eat fish now and then; but he considered this an excessive indulgence. "I have made a regular dinner for the first time since Sunday," he writes in his journal. "Every other day tea and six dry biscuits. This dinner makes me heavy, stupid, gives me horrible dreams (nevertheless, it only consisted of a pint of Bucellas and fish; I do not touch meat, and take but little vegetable). I wish I were in the country for exercise, instead of refreshing myself with abstinence. _I am not afraid of a slight addition of flesh; my bones can well support that! but the worst of it is, that the devil arrives with plumpness, and I must drive him away through hunger!_ I DO NOT WISH TO BE THE SLAVE OF MY APPETITE. If I fall, my heart at least shall herald the race."[60]

Except the last phrase, which is more worldly or more human, might not one fancy one's self listening to the confession or soliloquy of some Christian philosopher of the fourth century: one of those who sought the Theban deserts to measure their strength of soul and body in desperate struggles with Nature; the confession of a Hilarion or a Jerome, rather than that of a young man of twenty-three, brought up amid the conveniences and luxuries surrounding the aristocracy of the most aristocratic country in the world, where material comfort is best appreciated?

Thus it was, nevertheless, that Lord Byron practiced epicureanism with regard to his food, making very rare exceptions when he consented to dine out.

If time, change of circumstances, and climate, caused some slight modifications in his manner of living, his mode of life did not vary. At Venice, Ravenna, and Genoa, this epicurean would never suffer meat on his table; and he only made some rare exceptions, to avoid too much singularity, at Pisa, where he invited some friends to dinner. Count Gamba, after having spoken of the sobriety of his regimen on board the vessel that took him to Greece, the Ionian Islands, and finally to Missolonghi, says, "He ate nothing but vegetables and fish, and drank only water. Our fear was," says he, "lest this excessive abstinence should be injurious to his health!"

Alas! we know that it was. It is certain that this debilitating regime, joined to such strong moral impressions, too strongly felt, undermined Lord Byron's fine constitution, which had only resisted so long through its extreme vigor and the rare purity of his blood.

The bodily exercise he took had the same object, and further added to the injurious effect of his obstinate fasts. "I have not left my room these four days past," he writes in his memorandum, April, 1814, at a moment when his heart was agitated by a passion; "but I have been fencing with Jackson an hour a day by way of exercise, _so as to get matter under, and give sway to the ethereal part of my nature_. The more I fatigue myself, the better my mind is for the rest of the day; and then my evenings acquire that calm, that prostration and languor, that are such a happiness to me. To-day I fenced for an hour, wrote an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, copied it out, ate six biscuits, drank four bottles of soda-water, read the rest of the time, and then gave a load of advice to poor H---- about his mistress, who torments him intolerably, enough to make him consumptive. Ah! to be sure, it suits me well to be giving lessons to----; it is true they are thrown to the winds."[61]

This desire of giving mind dominion over matter is shown equally in all his tastes, all his preferences. Beauty in art consisted wholly for him in the expression of heart and soul. He had a horror of realism in art; the Flemish school inspired him with a sort of nausea. Certain material points of beauty in women, that are generally admired, had no beauty for him. The music he liked, and of which he never grew tired, was not brilliant or difficult, but simple; that which awakens the most delicate sentiments of the soul, which brings tears to the eye.

"I have known few persons," says Moore, "more alive than he to the charms of simple music; and I have often seen tears in his eyes when listening to the Irish Melodies. Among those that caused him these emotions was the one beginning--

"When first I met thee, warm and young."

The words of this melody, besides the moral sentiment they express, also admit a political meaning. Lord Byron rejected this meaning, and delivered his soul over, with the liveliest motion, to the more natural sentiment conveyed in that song."

"Only the fear of seeming to affect sensibility could have restrained my tears," he said once, on hearing Mrs. D---- sing

"Could'st thou look."

"Very often," said Mme. G----, "I have seen him with tears in his eyes when I was playing favorite airs to him on the piano, of which he never got tired."[62]

Stendhall also speaks of Lord Byron's emotion while listening to a piece of music by Mayer at Milan, and says that if he lived a hundred years he could never forget the divine expression of his physiognomy while thus engaged.

At most, Lord Byron could only admire for a moment material beauty without expression in women; it might give rise to sensations, but could never inspire him with the slightest sentiment.

We have said enough of the female characters he created: sweet incarnations of the most amiable qualities of heart and soul. Let us add here, that although greatly alive to beauty of form, he could not believe in a fine woman's delicate feeling, unless her beauty were accompanied by expression denoting her qualities of heart and mind. Beauty of form, of feature, and of color were nothing to him, if a woman had not also beauty of expression; if he could not see, he said, beauty of soul in her eyes. "Beauty and goodness have always been associated in my idea," said he, at Genoa, to the Countess B----, "for in my experience I have generally seen them go together. What constitutes true beauty for me," added he, "is the soul looking through the eyes. Sometimes women that were called beautiful have been pointed out to me that could never in the least have excited my feelings, because they wanted physiognomy, or expression, which is the same thing; while others, scarcely noticed, quite struck and attracted me by their expression of face."

He admired Lady C---- very much, because, he said, her beauty expressed purity, peace, dreaminess, giving the idea that she had never inspired or experienced aught but holy emotions. He once thought of marrying another young lady, because she excited the same feelings. All the women who more or less interested him in England were remarkable for their intellect or their education, including her whom he selected for his companion through life. Only, with regard to her, he trusted too much to reputation and appearance; he saw what she had, not what was wanting. She was in great part the cause of his deadly antipathy to regular "blue stockings;" but that did not change the necessity of intellect for exciting his interest. It only required, he said, for the _dress to hide the color of the stockings_. The name he gave to his natural daughter belonged to a Venetian lady, whose cleverness he admired, and with whom his acquaintance consisted in a mere exchange of thought. Often he has been heard to say that he could never have loved a silly woman, however beautiful; nor yet a vulgar woman, whether the defect were the result of birth, or education, or tastes. He felt no attraction for that style of woman since called "fast." Even among the light characters whose acquaintance he permitted to himself at Venice, he avoided those who were too bold. There lived then at Venice Mme. V----, a perfect siren. All Venice was at her feet; Lord Byron would not know her, and at Bologna he refused to make acquaintance with a person of still higher rank, Countess M----, who was both charming and estimable, but who had the fault in his eyes of attracting too much general admiration. Her air of modesty and reserve was what principally drew him toward Miss Milbank. At Ferrara, where he met Countess Mosti and thought her most delightful, he did not feel the same sympathy for her sister, who was, however, much more brilliant, and whose singing excited the admiration of every one.

In order to be truly loved by Lord Byron, it was requisite for a woman to live in a sort of illusive atmosphere for him, to appear somewhat like an immaterial being, not subject to vulgar corporeal necessities. Thence arose his antipathy (considered so singular) to see the woman he loved eat. In short, spiritual and manly in his habits, he was equally so with his person.

It sufficed to see his face, upon which there reigned such gentleness allied to so much dignity; and his look, never to be forgotten; and the unrivalled mouth, which seemed incapable of lending itself to any material use; a simple glance enabled one to understand that this privileged being was endowed with all noble passions, joined to an instinctive horror of all that is low and vulgar in human nature. "His beauty was quite independent of his dress," said Lady Blessington.

If, then, his nails were roseate as the shells of the ocean (according to her expression); if his complexion was transparent; his teeth like pearls; his hair glossy and curling; he had only to thank Providence for having lavished on him and preserved to him so many free gifts. But it is not easy to persuade others of such remarkable exceptions to the general rule. Those who do not possess the same advantages are incredulous; and, indeed, there were not wanting persons to deny, at least in part, that he had them.

Soon after his death an account of him was published in the "London Magazine," containing some truths mixed up with a heap of calumnies. Among other things, it was said "that Lord Byron constantly wore gloves." To which Count Pietro Gamba replied, "_That is not true_; Lord Byron wore them less than any other man of his standing."

Another declared that his fingers were loaded with rings; he only wore one, which was a token of affection. In his rooms hardly ordinary comforts could be found. He was not one to carry about with him the habits of his own country. Indeed, his habits consisted in having none. During his travels, the most difficult to please were his valet and other servants. "On his last journey," says Count Gamba, "he passed six days without undressing."

His sole self-indulgence consisted in frequent bathing; for his only craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just as the disciples of Epicurus would never have adopted his regimen, so would they equally have refused to imitate this last enjoyment; which was a little too manly for them, for his baths were mostly taken on Ocean's back; struggling against the stormy wave, and that in all seasons, up to mid-December. Such was the fastidious delicacy of this epicurean![63]

But to acknowledge all these things, or even any thing extraordinarily good in the author of "Don Juan," the "Age of Bronze," the "Vision;" in a son so _wanting in respect_ for the weaknesses of his mother-country; in a poet that had dared to chastise powerful enemies, and the limit of whose audacity was not even yet known, for his death had just condemned, through revelations and imprudent biographies, many persons and things to a sorry kind of immortality; to praise him, declare him guiltless, do him justice,--truly that would have been asking too much from England at that time. England has since made great strides in the path of generous toleration and even toward justice to Lord Byron. For vain is calumny after a time: truth destroys calumny by evoking facts. These form a clear atmosphere, wherein truth becomes luminous, as the sun in its atmosphere: for facts give birth to truth, and are mortal to calumny.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: The history of the page is, however, true. Lord Byron was then nineteen years of age. Not to give his mother the grief of seeing that he had made an acquaintance she would have disapproved, he brought Miss ---- from Brighton to the Abbey, dressed as a page, that she might pass for her brother Gordon.]

[Footnote 43: See "Newstead Abbey," by Washington Irving.]

[Footnote 44: Moore, vol. i. p. 346.]

[Footnote 45: See Galt, "Life of Lord Byron."]

[Footnote 46: See chapter on "Generosity."]

[Footnote 47: See "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 48: The heroism of the young Zuleika, says Mr. G. Ellis in his criticism, is full of purity and loveliness. Never was a more perfect character traced with greater delicacy and truth; her piety, intelligence, her exquisite sentiment of duty and her unalterable love of truth seem born in her soul rather than acquired by education. She is ever natural, seductive, affectionate, and we must confess that her affection for Selim is well placed.]

[Footnote 49: "Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 177.]

[Footnote 50: See "Don Juan," canto xvi.]

[Footnote 51: See chapter on Marriage.]

[Footnote 52: Medwin, p. 13.]

[Footnote 53: See "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 54: Ibid.]

[Footnote 55: Moore, vol. ii, p. 182.]

[Footnote 56: See "Life in Italy," at Venice.]

[Footnote 57: See "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 58: Dallas, 171.]

[Footnote 59: Moore, 315.]

[Footnote 60: Moore, first vol.]

[Footnote 61: Moore, 315.]

[Footnote 62: See "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 63: "He was more a mental being, if I may use this phrase," said Captain Parry, who knew him at Missolonghi, "than any one I ever saw; he lived on thoughts more than on food."]

## CHAPTER XI.

THE CONSTANCY OF LORD BYRON.

Among Lord Byron's moral virtues, may we count that of constancy? Men in general, not finding this virtue in their own lives, refuse to believe in its existence among those who, in exception to the common rule, do possess it. They must be forced to this act of justice as to many others. This is comprehensible; constancy is so rare!

"I less easily believe constancy in men than any thing else," says Montaigne, "and nothing more easily than inconstancy."

Besides the difficulties common to every one, Lord Byron had also to fight against those difficulties peculiar to his sensitive nature and his vast intelligence.

"The largest minds," says Bacon, "are the least constant, because they find reasons for deliberating, where others only see occasion for

## acting."

But if these difficulties overcame Lord Bacon's constancy, could they have the same power over Lord Byron, who was indeed his equal in mind, but his opposite in conduct and strength of soul? There are three sorts of constancy: that of affection, which has its source in goodness of heart; that of taste, flowing from beauty of soul; that of idea, derived from rectitude of intelligence.

Did Lord Byron possess the whole of these, or only a part? As this may be chiefly proved, not from writings or words, but by conduct, let us ask the question of those who knew him personally and at all periods of his life.

Was he constant in his ideas? Moore, speaking of Lord Byron's intellectual faculties, of his variableness, of which he makes too much, for the reasons I have mentioned,[64] and of the danger to which it exposed his consistency and oneness of character, says:--

"The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was not only forever present to his mind, but, aware as he was of the suspicion of weakness attached by the world to any retractation or abandonment of long-professed opinions, had the effect of keeping him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects, which, notwithstanding occasional fluctuations and contradictions as to the details of these very subjects, he continued to preserve throughout life. A passage from one of his manuscripts will show how sagaciously he saw the necessity of guarding himself against his own instability in this respect:--'The world,' he says, 'visits change of politics or change of religion with a more severe censure than a mere difference of opinion would appear to me to deserve. But there must be some reason for this feeling, and I think it is that this departure from the earliest instilled ideas of our childhood, and from the line of conduct chosen by us when we first enter into public life, have been seen to have more mischievous results for society, and to prove more weakness of mind than other actions, in themselves more immoral.'"

"To superficial observers," says the Hon. Col. Stanhope, "his conduct might appear uncertain; and that was the case sometimes, but only _up to a certain point_. His genius was limitless and versatile, and in conversation he passed boldly from grave to gay, from light to serious topics; but nevertheless, _upon the whole and in reality_, no man was more constant, I might almost say _more obstinate_, than Lord Byron _in the pursuit of great objects_. For instance, in religion and in politics, he seemed as firm as a rock, though, like a rock, he was sometimes subject to great shocks, to the convulsions of nature in commotion. What I affirm is, that Lord Byron had very fixed opinions on important matters. It is not from the opinion he wished to give of himself, nor from what he allowed to escape his lips, that I could have drawn this conclusion; for, in conversing with me on politics or religion, and passing capriciously over this latter subject, sometimes laughing and making strings of jests, he would say, for instance, '_the more I think the more I doubt--I am a thorough skeptic_;' but I find these words contradicted in _all his actions, and in all his sentiments seriously expressed from childhood to death_. And I opine that although occasionally he may have appeared changeable, still he always came back to certain fixed ideas in his mind; that he always entertained a constant attachment to liberty according to his notions of liberty; and that, although not orthodox in religion, he _firmly believed_ in the existence of a God. It is then equally false to represent him as an atheist or as an orthodox Christian. Lord Byron was, as he often told me, _a thorough deist_."[65]

It would be easy to prove in a thousand ways that, despite the danger of inconstancy resulting from his great sensibility, imagination, and intellect, no one, more than Lord Byron, steadily and firmly adhered _through life_ in his actions to the principles which _constitute the man of honor_. Chances, caprices, inequalities of temper, which are to sensitive natures what bubbles are on a lake, all disappeared when these great principles required to be acted upon; and the effects even of his well-nigh inexhaustible benevolence were checked, if he had to struggle against his principles. We find in his memoranda, 1813:--"I like George Byron" (his cousin, the present lord); "I like him much more than one generally does one's heirs. He is a fine fellow. I would do any thing to see him advance in his career as a sailor; _any thing except apostatize_!" (Lord Byron was a _Whig_, and his cousin a _Tory_.)

As it is impossible to quote every thing, I will only say that his passion for firmness and constancy in the principles of honor, went so far as to inspire him with repugnance for those characters lacking the firmness and oneness of action which he considered it a sacred duty to practice. It is even to this sentiment that must be attributed certain antipathies which he expressed, sometimes by words and sometimes by silence, and which have been laid to totally different, and quite impossible motives. For instance, his silence concerning Chateaubriand, expressive of his little sympathy for the individual (a silence so much resented by this proud vindictive poet, and for which he revenged himself in different ways), was not caused solely by the radical antagonism existing between their two natures. Assuredly, the literary affectation, the want of sincerity, the theatrical and declamatory nature of Chateaubriand's soul, who was positively ill with insatiable pride, innate and incurable ennui, all this could little assimilate with the simplicity, sincerity, passionate tenderness and devotion of Lord Byron. But his repugnance was especially directed against the skeptic, who made himself the champion of Catholicism, and the liberal who upheld the divine right of kings.[66]

A few days before Lord Byron set out for his last journey to Greece, a young man (M. Coullmann) arrived at Genoa, bringing him the admiring homage of many celebrated men in France, who sent him their respective works. Among the number were Delavigne and Lamartine. Chateaubriand, of course, was conspicuous by his absence: but an anecdote Coullmann related, of what had just occurred at Turin, greatly amused Lord Byron. Chateaubriand had lately been presented in his capacity of ambassador, whereupon the queen said to him: "Are you any relation to that Chateaubriand who has written _something_?"

Lord Byron, laughing heartily at the anecdote, hastened to go and repeat it to the Countess G----.

The same sentiment had disenchanted him with Monti, whom he had so much admired at Milan, and with several other rival poets.

When Lord Byron heard it said of any one, "he has changed sides, he has abandoned his party, he has forfeited his word," one might feel sure that all his natural indulgence, generally so great, was gone: he looked upon such a fault as forming only a despicable variety of the vice he never forgave, viz., untruth. At most, he could only make an exception in favor of women.

"I have received a very pretty note from Madame de Stael," we read in his memoranda of 1813; "her works are my delight, and she also (for half an hour). But I do not like her politics, or, at least, _her changes_ in politics. If she had been, _aequalis ab incepto_, that would be nothing. But, she is a woman, ... and, intellectually, she has done more than all the rest of her sex put together."

Nevertheless, constancy in idea being subservient to the consent of the mind, must undoubtedly have undergone oscillations with Lord Byron. That was, however, only the case with regard to ideas which could be discussed, and which required to pass through the ordeal of long reflection and practice, before being fully adopted by him. But religious ideas were not of this number; on the contrary, they held the first place in the order of those to be accepted and raised into principles by every man of honor and good sense. For, whatever may have been his fluctuations with regard to certain points of religious doctrine, sects and modes of worship, it is certain that in great fundamental matters his mind never seriously doubted, and thus escaped the influence of friends less sensible,--of Matthews in his early youth, and of Shelley at a later period.[67] That touching Prayer to the Divinity, written in boyhood, and which is so full of hope and faith in the soul's immortality, and in the existence of a personal God, he might have signed again when he came to act instead of writing, as also on his death-bed.[68]

Between the commencement of his career at eighteen and its close at the age of thirty-six, it is easy to see, by his language, correspondence, and works, that his mind had passed successively through different phases before arriving at the last result. The religious idea is more or less clear. Nevertheless, one perceives a golden ray ever present, connecting the different periods of his life, keeping up heat and light in his soul, and giving unity to his whole career. Hope, desire, and I may almost say, a sort of latent faith, always influenced him until they merged into the conviction whose light never more abandoned him.

At fifteen years of age, while at Harrow, he fought with Lord Calthorpe for calling him an _atheist_; at eighteen, he wrote his beautiful profession of faith in the Prayer to the Divinity, and in the touching "Adieu," which he wrote when he thought he would soon die. At nineteen, giving the list in his memoranda of books already read (a list hardly credible), he says: "With regard to books on religion, I have read Blair, Porteous, Tillotson, Hooker,--all very tiresome. I detest books about religion, but I adore and love my God, apart from the blasphemous notions of sectarians, and without believing in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, etc." At twenty-one, when he had passed through the double influence exercised by Pagan classical literature and German philosophies, and was in a transition state, he wrote "Childe Harold;" but the skeptical tendencies to be found in one stanza appear like a bravado, the result of spleen, a feeling that made him suffer, and which he speedily threw aside. For he wrote, at the same time, the stanza upon the death of a friend, whom he _hopes to see again in the land of souls_, and afterward, the elegies to Thyrza, which are full of _faith in immortality_. At thirty, writing some philosophical reflections in his memorandum-book, he says: "One can not doubt the immortality of the soul."

And, elsewhere, he also says that Christianity appears to him essentially founded on the immateriality of the soul, and that, for this reason, the Christian materialism of Priestley had always struck him as being a deadly sort of doctrine. "Believe, if you please," added he, "in the material resurrection of the body, but not without a soul: it would be cruel indeed, if, after having had a soul in this world (and our mind, by whatever name you call it, is really a soul), we were to be separated from it in the other, even for material immortality! I confess my partiality for mind."

Alluding to the systems of philosophy that do not admit creation according to Genesis, he says, that "even if we could get rid of Adam and Eve, of the apple and the serpent, we should not know what to put in their place; that the difficulty would not be overcome; that things must have had a beginning, it matters not when and how; that creation must have had an origin and a Creator. For creation is much more natural and easy to imagine than a concurrence of atoms; that all things may be traced to their sources even though they end by emptying themselves into an ocean."

We have seen what he said to Parry upon religion[69] and its ministers, upon God Almighty and the hope of enjoying eternal life, only a few weeks before his glorious death.

And when the hand of death was already upon him, a few moments before his agony, did he not say that eternity and space were already before his eyes, but that on this point, thanks to God, _he was happy and tranquil?_ that the thought of living _eternally_, of living another life, was a great consolation to him? that Christianity was the purest and most liberal of all religions (although a little spoiled by the ministers of Christ, often the worst enemies of its liberal and charitable doctrines); but that, as to the questions depending on these doctrines, and which God alone, all powerful, can determine, in Him alone did he wish to rest?

But if Lord Byron was constant to a certain order of ideas, was he equally constant in his affections? Moore again shall answer:--

"The same distrust in his own steadiness, thus keeping alive in him a conscientious self-watchfulness, concurred not a little, I have no doubt, with the innate, kindness of his nature, to preserve so constant and unbroken the greater number of his attachments through life--some of them, as in the instance of his mother, owing evidently more to a sense of duty than of real affection, the consistency with which, so creditably to the strength of his character, they were maintained."

But, putting aside family affections, where constancy may appear a duty and a necessity, let us see what Lord Byron was in affections of his own choice,--such as friendship and love, where inconstancy is a sin that the world easily forgives.

We have seen what the friendship of Lord Byron meant. Death destroyed several of the young existences with which his heart was bound up, and his first sorrows sprang from these misfortunes. But _never_ by his will, caprice, or fault, did he lose a single friend! Even the wrongs they inflicted, while they weighed upon his mind, altered his opinions sometimes, dispelled some sweet illusions and grieved his heart, yet could not succeed in changing it. He contented himself with judging the individual in such cases, sometimes with philosophical indulgence which he was only too much accustomed to hide under the veil of pleasantry, and sometimes in showing openly how much his heart was wounded.[70]

This constancy of heart that he showed in friendship, was it equally his in matters of love? By his energy of soul, unable ever to forget any thing, Lord Byron possessed the first condition toward constancy in love. Contrary to those unstable persons who say that they cease to love, for the simple reason that they have already loved too much, it might rather be said of Lord Byron that he still loved on only because he had loved. In all his poems, he has idealized fidelity and constancy in love. All the heroes of his poems are faithful and constant, from Conrad, Lara, Selim, all those of the Oriental poems of his youth, up to those of his latter life, to his Biblical mysteries. Even the angels, the seraphim, in that beautiful poem, written shortly before his death, "Heaven and Earth," prefer suffering to inconstancy,--to forfeit heaven rather than return there without their beloved. In vain the archangel Raphael presses the two amorous seraphim to come back to the celestial sphere, to abandon the two sisters, and menaces them. Samiasa replies:--

"It may not be: We have chosen, and will endure."

The poet gives it to be understood that they will be punished; which forms the moral of the piece. Don Juan himself refuses the love of a beautiful sultana, from fidelity to the remembrance of his Haidee; and when, afterward, he does yield, he seems to bear with, rather than to have sought success. One feels that this idealization of fidelity and constancy really has its source in Lord Byron's heart, and not in his imagination. Still, however, the chief and undeniable proof must be drawn from his own life.

The first condition for judging any one impartially with regard to inconstancy in love, is not only to know the facts and real circumstances connected with an intimacy, but especially to know the nature of the sentiment to which the name of love has been applied. We are aware that, at fifteen years of age, Lord Byron's heart was already under the influence of a young girl of eighteen.[71] The mere disproportion of age prevents such an affection from offering any grounds on which to examine his capability of being constant. It is well known how much suffering this early passion caused him. The object of it, after denying him no token of reciprocal love that was innocent, giving him her picture, agreeing to meetings, receiving all the spontaneous, innocent, confiding tenderness of his young and ardent heart, left him in the lurch one fine day, on account of his youth, in order to marry a fashionable, vulgar man. And thus did she destroy the charm which governed his heart. Precocious reflection, with its accompaniment of knowledge, agitating, confusing, throwing young souls on the road to error, succeeded to his enchantment. He then began (at sixteen) to talk of vanished illusions; and, for want of something better, allowed himself to be carried away, and to lead the ordinary university life. He evidently only did what others did; but he was made of different materials; and while they thought this dissipation very natural, and, tranquil in their inferiority, believed themselves innocent, he alone disapproved of his own conduct and blamed it. The better to escape all this, he went in search of forgetfulness amid the fresh breezes of ocean, across the Pyrenees, among the ruins of ancient civilization. Yet, after two years' travelling, on his return to England, his soul all love, his heart burning with an infinite ardor, through that intoxication of success which weakens, through that eagerness for emotion caused by his vivacity of mind, and even by a sort of psychological curiosity, Lord Byron did fall into new attachments. And these attachments, not being of a nature that could stand the trial of reflection, caused him to give up known for unknown objects. But his soul was ever agitated, in commotion, and, even when he changed, it was through necessity rather than caprice. In order to escape once more from himself, from the allurements of the senses, from the effects of the enthusiasm which his personal beauty and his genius excited among women, he resolved to take refuge in an indissoluble tie, in a tie formed by duty, not love. Perhaps he might have found strength for perseverance in the beauty of the sacrifice. His soul was quite capable of it. But destiny pursued him in his choice, and rendered it impossible. To his misfortune, he married Miss Milbank.[72] Again he drifted away from the right path, but, this time, with the resolution of keeping his heart independent, his soul free and unfettered by any indissoluble tie.[73] But in coming to this determination at the age of twenty-eight, he had not consulted his heart, ever athirst for infinitude. Vainly he sought to lull it, to keep it earthward, to laugh at his own aspirations--useless labor! One day it broke loose. Nature is like water; sooner or later it must find its equilibrium. From that day forth Psyche's lamp had no more light; reflection had no more power; and the love which had taken possession of his soul left him not again, but accompanied him to his last hour, through the modifications inevitable in earthly affections. This constancy maintained thenceforth without a struggle, he understood at once; and felt that the unchanging sentiment belonged equally to his will and to his destiny. "_Coelum, non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt_," wrote he one day at Ravenna, on the opening page of "Jacopo Ortis," Foscolo's work, that had just fallen into his hands; for he knew that no one could read this avowal of his heart where he had traced it. After having remarked the strange coincidence by which this volume was brought a second time before him, just when he was, as once before, in extreme agitation, he continued thus:--

"Most men bewail not having attained the object of their desires. I had oftener to deplore the obtaining mine, for I can not love moderately, nor quiet my heart with mere fruition. The letters of this Italian Werther are very interesting; at least I think so, but my present feelings hardly render me a competent judge."

Another time, a volume of "Corinne," translated into Italian, fell under his notice at Ravenna. In the same language, which no one then about him could read, he confided to this book the secret of his heart, and, after having poured out its fullness in words of noble melting tenderness, concluded thus:--"Think of me when Alps and sea shall separate us; _but that will never come to pass, unless you so will it_."

It was not willed, and therefore the separation did not take place. But, alas! the day arrived when he was so entangled in a multiplicity of complications, and honor spoke so loudly, that both sides were forced to will it.

Whoever should consider this departure the result of inconstancy, is incapable to form an estimate of his great soul. His affection, that had lasted for years, admitted no longer of any uneasiness, for it was brought into complete harmony with that of her he loved. Naturally his heart underwent the transformation produced by time. His affection was gradually acquiring the sweetness of unchanging friendship, without losing the charm appertaining to ardor of passion. The sacrifice entailed by this departure was in proportion to these sentiments. "Often," says M----, "during the passage we saw his eyes filled with tears." The sadness described by Mr. Barry of his last visit to Albano has been seen.[74] These tears and this sadness betray the extent of his sublime sacrifice! And then, when once arrived in Greece, although determined to brave all the storms gathering above his head, he wrote unceasingly to Madame G----, with that ease and simplicity which not only forbade any exaggeration of sentiment, but even made him restrain its expression; which was also rendered imperative by the circumstances then surrounding her.

"I shall fulfill the object of my mission from the committee, and then ... return to Italy.... Pray be as cheerful and tranquil as you can, and be assured that there is nothing here that can excite any thing but a wish to be with you again, though we are very kindly treated by the English here of all descriptions."

"September 11.

"You may be sure that the moment I can join you again will be as welcome to me as at any period of our acquaintance. There is nothing very attractive here to occupy my attention; but both honor and inclination demand that I should serve the Greek cause. I wish that this cause, as well as the affairs of Spain, were favorably settled, that I might return to Italy and relate all my adventures to you."

Thus much for his constancy when he truly loved. It would be worth inquiry how many men and how many writers have carried their ideal of constancy into their own life to a higher degree than Lord Byron? My opinion is that if, the same circumstances given, the number went a little beyond one, we might consider the result very satisfactory.

After having seen that Lord Byron was unchangeable in great principles and ideas, as soon as his mind was convinced, and that he was constant to all the true sentiments of his heart, it still remains to be shown whether he was equally so in his tastes and habits.

It may be said of most men that they have no character, because they often vary in taste, and without even perceiving it. That could not be asserted of Lord Byron, although sometimes, according to his self-accusing custom, he declared himself to be inconstant.

The truth is that he was, on the contrary, remarkably steadfast in his tastes. The nature of his preferences, and the conclusions to be drawn from them, will form the subject of another chapter. We shall only speak of them here as relating to constancy.

"We shall often have occasion," says Moore, "to remark the fidelity to early habits and tastes which distinguished Lord Byron." Moore then observes the extraordinary constancy Lord Byron showed in clinging to all the impressions of youth; and he adduces as a proof the care with which he preserved the notes and letters written by his favorite comrades at school, even when they were younger than himself. These letters he enriched with dates and notes, after years of long interval, while very few of his childish effusions have been kept by the opposite

## parties. Moore also notes several other features of this constancy,

which he continued to practice throughout life. For instance, his punctuality in answering letters immediately, despite his distaste for epistolary effusions; and his love for simple music, such as that of the ballads that used to attract him at sixteen to Miss Pigott's saloon. It was partly this same taste that made him enjoy so much, at twenty-six, the evenings he passed at his friend Kinnaird's house (some months before his marriage, the last of his London life), when Moore would sing his favorite songs, bringing tears to Byron's eyes. And it was this same taste that subsequently drew him to the piano at which Madame G---- sat, at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa; and which, when she played or sung Mozart's and Rossini's favorite motets, made him say that he no longer loved any other music but hers.

What he had once loved never tired him. Memory was to him like an enchanter's wand, throwing some charm into objects which in themselves possessed none. He loved the land where he had loved, however naturally unattractive it might be: witness Ravenna, and Italy in general.

"Possession of what I truly love," said he, in the very rare moments when he did himself justice "does not cloy me." He loved the mountains of Greece, because they recalled those of Scotland; he would have loved other mountains, because they recalled those of Greece.

A few months before his death, he said in his charming poem "The Island,"--

"Long have I roam'd through lands which are not mine, Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep: But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all _Their_ nature held me in their thrilling thrall; The infant rapture still survived the boy, And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy, Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. Forgive me, Homer's universal shade! Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy stray'd; The north and nature taught me to adore Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before."[75]

He would love a place of abode because he had loved when in it. The same with regard to a dwelling, a walk, a melody, a perfume, a form, and even a dish; he who cared so little for any sort of food. His childish impressions, his readings at that age, had a great deal to do with his choice of poetic subjects afterward; and we find them again reproduced even in his last dramatic work. "Werner," written in such a fine moral sense, is the result of the "Canterbury Tale" read in childhood. Never was man more constant in his habits and tastes than he; and, indeed, it required that indefinable charm of soul he possessed, and which pervaded his whole being, to prevent monotony from perverting this quality into a fault.

Why, then, have his biographers talked so much of his mobility, if it were not to make Lord Byron pass for a creature swayed by every fresh impulse, and incapable of steady feeling? I have given the first reason elsewhere.[76] But I will add another, namely, that they have transferred the qualities of the _poet to the man_ in an erroneous manner; that to the versatility of his genius (one of his great gifts, and which ever belong to him) they have added mobility of character such as often, too often, perhaps, influenced his conversation, and tinctured his external fictitious nature. But they have done so without examining his actions, without reflecting that this mobility vanished as it was written, or in the light play of his witty conversation, or the trivial acts of his life. Otherwise they would have been forced to confess, that it never had any influence on his conduct in matters of moment, that he was persevering and firm to an extremely rare degree in all things _essential_ and which constitute _man in his moral and social capacity_.

We may then sum up by saying that Lord Byron generally established on an impregnable rock, guarded by unbending principles, those great virtues to which principles are essential; but that, after making these treasures secure--for treasures they are to the man of honor and worth--once having placed them beyond the reach of sensibility and sentiment, he may sometimes have allowed the _lesser virtues_ (within ordinary bonds) such indulgence as flowed from his kindly nature, and such as his youth rendered natural to a feeling heart and ardent imagination. Like all men, he was only truly firm under serious circumstances, when he wished to show energy in fulfilling a duty. Thus Lord Byron allowed his pen to jest, to mark the follies of men: sometimes attacking them boldly in front, sometimes aiming light arrows aslant, ridiculing, chastising, as humor or fancy prompted; and he gave himself the same liberty of language in private conversation, according to the character of those with whom he conversed. On all these occasions his genius undoubtedly gave itself up to versatility. But let us not forget that all that which changes and becomes effaced in hearts of inconstant mood, and which ought not to change in men of honor and worth, never did vary in him. Let us acknowledge, in short, that, if mobility belonged to the _sensitive_ parts of his nature, constancy no less characterized his _moral and intellectual_ being.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: See chapter on "Mobility."]

[Footnote 65: Stanhope, Parry, 235.]

[Footnote 66: See Sainte-Beuve, vol. i. p. 286.]

[Footnote 67: See chapter on "Religion."]

[Footnote 68: See this prayer in chapter on "Religion."]

[Footnote 69: See chapter on "Religion."]

[Footnote 70: See octaves 48, 49 and 50, canto xiv. "Don Juan;" and several in "Childe Harold," cantos iii. and iv.]

[Footnote 71: See chapter on "Generosity."]

[Footnote 72: See chapter on "Marriage."]

[Footnote 73: See "Life at Venice, at Milan."]

[Footnote 74: See chapter on "Strength of Soul."]

[Footnote 75: "The Island," canto ii. stanza 12.]

[Footnote 76: See chapter on "Mobility."]

## CHAPTER XII.

THE COURAGE AND FORTITUDE OF LORD BYRON.

All the moral qualities that flow from energy--courage, intrepidity, fortitude; in a word, self-control--shone with too much lustre in Lord Byron's soul for us to pass them over in silence, or even to call only superficial attention to them.

But, it may be said, Why speak of his courage? No one ever called it in question. Besides, is courage a virtue? It is hardly a quality; in reality it is but a duty. Yes, undoubtedly, that is true, but there are different kinds of courage, and Lord Byron's was of such a peculiar nature, and showed itself under such uncommon circumstances as to justify observation, for it evinces a quality necessary to be noticed by all who seek to portray his great soul with the wish of arriving at a close resemblance.

"Whatever virtue may be allowed to belong to personal courage, it is most assuredly those who are endowed by nature with the liveliest imaginations, and who have, therefore, most vividly and simultaneously before their eyes all the remote and possible consequences of danger, that are most deserving of whatever praise attends the exercise of that virtue."

Certainly Lord Byron made part of the category, so that Moore adds:--

"The courage of Lord Byron, as all his companions in peril testify, was of that noblest kind which rises with the greatness of the occasion, and becomes the more self-collected and resisting the more imminent the danger."

Thus, far from its being the natural impetuosity that causes rash natures to rush into danger, Lord Byron's courage was quite as much the result of reflection as of impulse. _His was courage of the noblest kind_, a quality mixed up with other fine moral faculties, shining with light of its own, yet all combining to lend mutual lustre. This is, indeed, what ought to be called _fortitude_ and _self-control_, and this is what we remark in Lord Byron. But, in order not to sin against the scientific classification used by moralists, and which requires subdivisions, we will isolate it for a moment, and examine it under the name of courage, presence of mind, and coolness.

Unaffected in his bravery, as in all things else, Lord Byron did not seek dangers, but when they presented themselves to him he met them with lofty intrepidity.

To give some examples--and the difficulty is to choose--let us consider him under different circumstances that occurred during his first travels in the East.

While at Malta he was on the point of fighting a duel, through some misunderstanding with an officer on General Oakes's staff. The meeting had been fixed for an early hour, but Lord Byron slept so soundly that his companion was obliged to awaken him. On arriving at the spot, which was near the shore, his adversary was not yet there; and Lord Byron, although his luggage had already been taken on board the brig that was to convey him to Albania, wished to give him the chance at least of another hour. During all this long interval he amused himself very quietly walking about the beach perfectly unconcerned.

At last an officer, sent by his antagonist, arrived on the ground, bringing not only an explanation of how the delay had arisen, but likewise all the excuses and satisfaction Lord Byron could desire for the supposed offense. Thus the duel did not take place.

The gentleman who was to be his second could not sufficiently praise the coolness and firm courage shown by Lord Byron throughout this affair.

Some time later Lord Byron was on the mountains of Epirus with his friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Hobhouse (now Lord Broughton). These mountains being then infested with banditti, they were accompanied by a numerous escort, and even by one of the secretaries, as well as several retainers belonging to the famous Ali Pasha of Joannina, whom they had just been visiting. One evening, seeing a storm impending, Mr. Hobhouse hastened on in front with part of their suite, in order sooner to reach a neighboring hamlet, and get shelter prepared. Lord Byron followed with the remainder of the escort. Before he could arrive, however, the storm burst, and soon became terrific. Mr. Hobhouse, who had long been safe under cover in the village, could see nothing of his friend.

"It was seven in the evening," says Mr. Hobhouse, in his account of it, "and the fury of the storm had become quite alarming. Never before or since have I witnessed one so terrible. The roof of the hovel in which we had taken shelter trembled beneath violent gusts of rain and wind, and the thunder kept roaring without intermission, for the echo from one mountain crest had not ceased ere another frightful crash broke above our heads. The plain, and distant hills, visible through the chinks of the hut, seemed on fire. In short, the tempest was terrific; quite worthy of the Jupiter of ancient Greece. The peasants, no less religious than their ancestors, confessed their fears; the women were crying around, and the men, at every new flash of lightning, invoked the name of God, making the sign of the cross."

Meanwhile hours passed, midnight drew near, the storm was far from abating, and Lord Byron had not appeared. Mr. Hobhouse, in great alarm, ordered fires to be lighted on the heights, and guns to be let off in all directions. At length, toward one in the morning, a man, all pale and panic-stricken, soaked through to the skin, suddenly entered the cabin, making loud cries, exclamations, and gestures of despair. He belonged to the escort, and speedily related the danger to which they had been exposed, and in which Lord Byron and his followers still were, and urging the necessity of sending off at once horses, guides, and men with torches, to extricate them from it.

It appears that at the commencement of the storm, when only three miles from the village, Lord Byron, through the fault of his escort, lost the right path. After wandering about as chance directed, in complete ignorance of their whereabouts, and on the brink of precipices, they had stopped at last near a Turkish cemetery and close to a torrent, which they had been enabled to distinguish through the flashes of lightning. Lord Byron was exposed to _all the fury of the storm for nine consecutive hours_; his guides, instead of lending him any assistance, only increased the general confusion, running about on all sides, because they had been menaced with death by the dragoman George, who, in a paroxysm of rage and fear, had fired off his pistols without warning any body, and Lord Byron's English servants, fancying they were attacked by robbers, set up loud cries.

It was three in the morning before the party could reach the shelter where their friends awaited them. During these nine consecutive hours of danger, Lord Byron never once lost his self-possession or serenity, or even that pleasant vein of humor which made him always see the ridiculous side of things.

About the same period Lord Byron and his companion, after having visited Eleusis, were obliged, by stress of weather, to stop some days at Keratea. Having heard of a wonderful cavern situated on Mount Parne, they determined to visit it. On arriving at the entrance they lighted torches of resinous wood, and, preceded by a guide, penetrated through a small aperture, dragging themselves along the ground until they reached a sort of subterranean hall, ornamented with arcades and high cupolas of crystal, supported by columns of shining marcasite; the hall itself opened out into large horizontal chambers, or else conducted to dark, deep yawning abysses toward the centre of the mountain. After having strayed from one grotto to another, the travellers arrived near a fountain of crystal water. There they stopped, till, seeing their torches wane low, they thought of retracing their steps. But, after walking for some minutes in the labyrinth, they again found themselves beside the mysterious fountain. Then they grew alarmed, for their guide acknowledged with _terror that he had forgotten the itinerary of the cavern, and no longer knew where to find the outlet_.

While they were wandering thus from one grotto to another, in a sort of despair, and occasionally dragging themselves along to get through narrow openings, their last torch was consumed. They remained a long time in total darkness, not knowing what to do, when, as if by miracle, a feeble ray of light made itself visible, and, directing their steps toward it, they ended by reaching the mouth of the cavern. Certainly, it would be difficult to meet with a more alarming situation. Mr. Hobhouse, while confessing that for some moments it had been impossible to look forward to any thing else but the chance of a horrible death, declared that, not only Lord Byron's presence of mind and coolness were admirable in the teeth of such a prospect, but also that his playful humor never forsook him, and helped to keep up their spirits during minutes that must have seemed years to all of them.

It was during this same journey that, finding the mountains which separated them from the Morea were infested with banditti, they embarked on board a vessel of war, called the "Turk." A tempest broke out, and its violence, joined to the ignorance betrayed by the captain and sailors, put the vessel in great danger. Shipwreck seemed inevitable, and close at hand. Nothing was heard on board but cries, lamentations, and prayers. Lord Byron alone remained calm, doing every thing in his power to console and encourage the rest; and then at length, when he saw that his efforts were useless, he wrapped himself up in his Albanian cloak, and lay down on the deck, _going tranquilly to sleep until fate should decide his destiny_.

After having given his mother a simple description of this tempest, he adds:--"I have learned to philosophize during my travels, and, if I had not, what use is there in complaining?"

And Moore says:--

"I have heard the poet's fellow-traveller describe this remarkable instance of his coolness and courage even still more strikingly than it is here stated by himself. Finding that he was unable to be of any service in the exertions which their very serious danger called for, after a laugh or two at the panic of his valet, he not only wrapped himself up and lay down, in the manner here mentioned, but, when their difficulties were surmounted, was found fast asleep."

These adventures happened to him when he was only twenty-one years of age, and within the course of a few weeks. But all his life he gave the same proofs of courage when circumstances called for them.

And since we have chosen these examples from his first journey into Greece, at the beginning of his career, let us select some others from the last, which took place near its close.

Mr. H. Brown having been asked by Lord Harrington what his impressions were of Lord Byron, replied, "Lord Byron was extremely calm in presence of danger. Here are two instances that I witnessed myself:--A Greek, named Costantino Zalichi, to whom his lordship had given his passage, once took up one of Manton's pistols, belonging to Lord Byron. It went off by accident, and the ball passed quite close to Lord Byron's temple. Without the least emotion Lord Byron began explaining to the Greek how such accidents could be avoided.

"On another occasion, near the Roman coast, we observed a suspicious-looking little vessel, armed, and apparently full of people. It was toward the end of the last war with Spain, during which many acts of piracy had been committed in the Mediterranean. And our captain was much alarmed. We were followed all day by this vessel, and toward evening, it seemed so ready for action that we no longer doubted being attacked. However a breeze arose, and darkness came on soon after, whereupon we lost sight of it. Lord Byron, while the danger lasted, remained perfectly calm, giving his orders with the greatest tranquility and reflection."[77]

And Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says himself, in his Essay on Lord Byron:--

"Lord Byron was the _beau ideal_ of chivalry. It might have lowered him in the esteem of wise men, if he had not given such extraordinary proofs of the noblest courage.

"Even at moments of the greatest danger, Lord Byron _contemplated death with philosophical calm_. For instance, at the moment of returning from the alarming attack which had surprised him in my room (at Missolonghi), he immediately asked, with the most perfect self-possession, whether his life were in danger, as, in that case, he required the doctor to tell him so, _for he was not afraid of death_.

"Shortly after that frightful convulsion, when, weakened by loss of blood, he was lying on his bed of suffering, with his nervous system completely shaken, a band of mutinous Suliotes, in their splendid dirty costumes, burst suddenly into his room, brandishing their weapons, and loudly demanding their savage rights. Lord Byron, as if electrified by the unexpected act, appeared to have recovered his health, and, the more the Suliotes cried out and threatened, the more _his cool courage triumphed_. _The scene was really sublime._"[78]

And Count Gamba, in his interesting narrative of "Lord Byron's Last Journey into Greece," adds:--

"It is impossible to do justice to the coolness and magnanimity Lord Byron showed on all great occasions. Under ordinary circumstances he was irritable, but the sight of danger calmed him instantly, restoring the free exercise of all the faculties of his noble nature. A man _more indomitable, or firmer in the hour of danger than Lord Byron was, never existed_."[79]

But enough of these proofs, which, perhaps, say nothing new to the reader. Nevertheless, as they may call up again the pleasure ever afforded by the spectacle of great moral beauty, let us further add--the better to set forth the nature of Lord Byron's wonderful intrepidity in face of danger--that his energetic soul loved to contemplate those sublime things in Nature that are usually endured with terror. Tempests, the thunder's roll, the lightning's flash--any mysterious display of Nature's forces, so that its violence occasioned neither misfortune nor suffering to sensitive beings--aroused in him the keenest sense of enjoyment, which in turn ministered to his genius, incapable of finding complete satisfaction in the beautiful, and ever yearning passionately after the sublime.

As to his fortitude, that self-control which makes one bear affliction with external serenity, Lord Byron possessed it in as high a degree as he did firmness with regard to material obstacles and dangers.

Endowed with exquisite sensibility, the great poet assuredly went through cruel trials during his stormy career; but instead of ostentatiously exhibiting his sorrows, Lord Byron on many occasions rather exaggerated the delicacy that led him to veil them under an appearance of stoicism. Only very rarely did his poetry echo back the sufferings endured within.

Once, nevertheless, he wished, and rightly, to perpetuate in his verses the memory of the indignities heaped upon him by a guilty world. He wished that the great struggle he had been obliged to sustain against his destiny should not be forgotten; he wished to show how much his heart had been torn, his hopes sapped, his name blighted by the deepest injuries, the meanest perfidy. He had seen, he said, of what beings with a human semblance were capable, from the frightful roar of foaming calumny to the low whisper of vile reptiles, adroitly distilling poison; double-visaged Januses, who supply the place of words by the language of the eyes, who lie without saying a syllable, and, by dint of a shrug or an affected sigh, impose on fools their unspoken calumnies. Yes, he had to undergo all that, and for once he wished it to be known.

He owed it to himself to make this complaint; his total silence would have been wrong; it was necessary once for all to defend his _character_ and reputation, and when he ran the risk of losing the esteem of the world his sensibility could not show itself in too lively a manner.

But if he thus raised his voice to immortalize these indignities, it was not because he recoiled from suffering.

"Let him come forward," exclaimed he, "whoever has seen me bow the head, or has remarked my courage wane with suffering."

Already, at the time of the unexampled persecution raised against him in London, when the separation from his wife took place, he wrote to Murray:--

"February 20th, 1816.

"You need not be in any apprehension or grief on my account. Were I to be beaten down by the world and its inheritors, I should have succumbed to many things years ago. You must not mistake my not bullying for dejection; nor imagine that because I feel, I am to faint."[80]

In all he wrote at this fatal period of his life, one perceives the wide gaping wound, which is however endured with the strength of a Titan, who at twenty-nine is to become quite a philosopher, good, gentle, almost resigned.

"The camel labors with the heaviest load, And the wolf dies in silence,--not bestow'd In vain should such example be; if they, Things of ignoble or of savage mood, Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day."[81]

Like all those who feel deeply the joys and griefs of their fellow-men, Lord Byron had received from nature all that could render him capable of moderating the external expression of his sensibility, when injustice was personal to himself. Moreover, circumstances, alas! had only too much favored the development of this noble faculty in him. For, very early, he had received severe lessons from those terrible masters who nurture great souls to self-control; from reverses, vanished illusions, perils, wrongs. The storms however it was his destiny to encounter, though violent, not only did not cause him to be shipwrecked, but even helped to encircle his brow with the martyr's halo.

But, we may be asked, whether this great control which Lord Byron exercised over himself, with regard to obstacles, dangers, and human injustice, existed equally with regard to his own passions. To those who should doubt it, and who, forgetting that Lord Byron only lived the age of passions, without taking into consideration all the circumstances that rendered difficult to him what is easier for others, should pretend that Lord Byron gave way to his passions oftener than he warred against them, to such we would say: "What was he doing, then, when, at barely twenty-two years of age, he adopted an anchorite's _regime_, so as to render his soul more _independent_ of _matter_? When he shut himself up at home, with the self-imposed task of writing whole poems before he came out, in order to _overcome his thoughts, and maintain them in a line contrary to that which his passions demanded_? When, grieved, calumniated, outraged, he _preferred exile rather than yield to just resentment_, and in order to avoid the danger of finding himself in situations where he _might not have preserved his self-control_?"

Have they forgotten that at Venice he subjected himself to the ungrateful task of learning languages _more than difficult_, and of working at other _dry studies_, in order to _fix his thoughts on them, and divert them from resentment and anger_?

He writes to Murray: "I find the Armenian language, which is double (_the literary and the vulgar tongue_), difficult, but not insuperably so (at least I hope not). I shall continue. I have found it necessary to chain my mind down to very severe studies, and as this is the most difficult I can find here, it will be a _net for the serpent_."

And have we not seen him overcome himself, just as he was setting out to go where his heart called him (for, notwithstanding all his efforts, it had ceased to be independent), and thus defer a journey he sighed for, only to _exercise acts of generosity, and liberate one of his gondoliers from the Austrian conscription_?

If a true biography could be written of Lord Byron we should see a constant struggle going on in this young man against his passions. And can more be asked of men than to fight against them? Victory is the proof and the reward of combat. If sometimes, as with every man, victory failed him, oftener still he did achieve it; and it is certain that his great desire always was to free himself from the tyranny of his passions.

His last triumphs were not only great--they were sublime.

The sadness that overwhelmed him during the latter part of his stay at Genoa is known. The struggles he had to maintain against his own heart may be conceived.

It is also known how, being driven back into port by a storm, he resolved on visiting the palace of Albaro; and it may well be imagined that the hours passed in this dwelling, then silent and deserted, must have seemed like those that count as years of anguish in the life of great and feeling souls, among whom visions of the future float before the over-excited mind. It can not be doubted that he would then willingly have given up his fatal idea of leaving Italy; indeed he declared so to Mr. Barry, who was with him; but the sentiment of his own dignity and of his promise given triumphed over his feelings.

The night which followed this gloomy day again saw Lord Byron struggling against stormy waves, and not only determined on pursuing his voyage, but also on appearing calm and serene to his fellow-travellers.

Could peace, however, have dwelt within his soul? To show it outwardly must he not have struggled?

"I often saw Lord Byron during his last voyage from Genoa to Greece," says Mr. H. Browne, in a letter written to Colonel Stanhope; "I often saw him in the midst of the greatest gayety suddenly become pensive, _and his eyes fill with tears_, doubtless from some painful remembrance. On these occasions he generally got up and retired to the solitude of his cabin."

And Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who only knew Lord Byron later at Missolonghi, also says: "I have often observed Lord Byron in the middle of some gay animated conversation, stop, meditate, and his eyes to fill with tears."

And all that he did in that fatal Greece, was it not a perpetual triumph over himself, his tastes, his desires, the wants of his nature and his heart?

He saw nothing in Greece, he wrote to Mme. G----, that did not make him wish to return to Italy, and yet he remained in Greece. He would have preferred waiting in the Ionian Islands, and yet he set out for that fatal Missolonghi! Liberal by principle, and aristocratic by birth, taste, and habits, he was condemned to continual intercourse with vulgar, turbulent, barbarous men, to come into contact with things repugnant to his nature and his tastes, and to struggle against a thousand difficulties--a thousand torments, moral and physical; he felt, and knew, that even life would fail him if he did not leave Missolonghi, yet he remained. Every thing, in short, throughout this last stage of the noble pilgrim, proclaims his empire over self. His triumph was always beautiful, and often sublime, but, alas! he paid for it with his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: Parry, 206.]

[Footnote 78: Essay by Colonel Stanhope.]

[Footnote 79: "Last Journey to Greece," p. 174.]

[Footnote 80: Moore, "Letters," p. 241.]

[Footnote 81: "Childe Harold."]

## CHAPTER XIII.

THE MODESTY OF LORD BYRON.

Among the qualities that belong to his genius, the one which formed its chief ornament has been too much forgotten.

Modesty constituted a beautiful quality of his soul. If it has not been formally denied him; if, even among those whom we term his biographers, some have conceded modesty as pertaining to Lord Byron's genius, they have done so timidly; and have at the same time indirectly denied it by accusing him of pride.

Was Lord Byron proud as a poet and as a man? We shall have occasion to answer this question in another chapter. Here we shall only examine his claims to modesty; and we say, without hesitation, that it was as great in him as it has ever been in others. It shines in every line of his poetry and his prose, at every age and in all the circumstances of his life.

"There is no real modesty" (says a great moralist of the present day) "without diffidence of self, inspired by a deep sense of the beautiful and by the fear of not being able to reach the perfection we conceive."

As a poet, Lord Byron always undervalued or despised himself. As a man, he did so still more; he exaggerated this quality so far as to convert it into a fault, for he calumniated himself.

We have seen how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, and with what facility he allowed his comrades to surpass him in intellectual exercises, reserving for his sole ambition the wish of excelling them in boyish games and in bodily exercises.

As a youth he did nothing but censure his own conduct, which, was not at all different from that which his comrades thought allowable in themselves. We have seen with what modest feelings he published his first poems; with what docility he accepted criticisms, and yielded to the advice of friends whom he esteemed.

When cruel criticism showed him neither mercy nor justice, notwithstanding his youthful age, he lost, it is true, serenity and moderation of spirit, but never once put aside his modesty.

Instigated by a passion for truth, he exclaims in his first satire,--

"Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand To drive this pestilence from out the land."

Certainly, he does not spare censure in this passionate satire; but, while inflicting it, he questions whether he should be the one to apply the lash:--

"E'en I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng, Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong."

It was during the time of his first travels that Lord Byron wrote his first _chef-d'oeuvre_,[82] but so little was he aware of possessing great faculties that, while suffering from the exactions and torments they created within him, he only asked in return some amusement, an occupation for long hours of solitude.

Having begun "Childe Harold" as a memorial of his travelling impressions, he communicated it, on his return to England, to the friend who had been his companion throughout. But, instead of meeting with indulgence and encouragement, this friend only blamed the poem, and called it an extravagant conception.

He was, nevertheless, a competent judge and a poet himself. Why, then, such severity? Did he wish to sacrifice the poet to the man, fearing for his friend lest the allusions therein made should lend further weapons to the malice of his enemies? Did he dread for himself, and for those among their comrades who, two years before, had donned the preacher's garb at Newstead Abbey, lest the voice of public opinion should mix them up in the pretended disorders of which the Abbey had been the theatre, and which the poem either exaggerated or invented? Whatsoever his motive, this friend was not certainly then a John of Bologna for Lord Byron; but the modesty of the poet surpassed the severity of his judge; for, accepting the blame as if it were merited, he restored the poem to its portfolio with such humility that when Mr. Dallas afterward heard of it almost by chance, and, fired with enthusiasm on reading it, pronounced this extravagant thing to be a sublime _chef-d'oeuvre_, he had the greatest difficulty in persuading Lord Byron to make it public.

Gifford's criticisms were always received by Lord Byron not only with docility and modesty but even with gratitude.

He never lost an occasion of blaming himself as a poet and of depreciating his genius. Living only for affection, more than once when he feared that the war going on against him might warp feeling, he was on the point of consigning all he had written to the flames; of destroying forever every vestige of it; and only the fear of harming his publisher made him at last withdraw the given order.

He knew only how to praise his rivals, and to assist those requiring help or encouragement.

Notwithstanding the favor shown him by the public, it always appeared to him that he would weary it with any new production.

When about to publish the "Bride of Abydos," he said, "I know what I risk, and with good reason,--losing the small reputation I have gained by putting the public to this new test; but really I have ceased to attach any importance to that. I write and publish solely for the sake of occupation, to draw my thoughts away from reality, and take refuge in imagination, however dreadful."

In 1814, when Murray (who was thinking of establishing a periodical for bringing out the works of living authors) consulted Lord Byron on the subject, he, whose splendid fame had already thrown all his contemporaries into the shade, answered simply, that supported by such poets as Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and many others, the undertaking would of course succeed; and that for his part, he would unite with Hobhouse and Moore so as to furnish occasionally--a failure! and at the same time he made use of the opportunity to praise Campbell and Canning.

His memorandum-book is one perpetual record of his humility, even at a time when the public, of all classes and sexes, had made him their idol.

After having expressed in his memoranda for 1813 his sublime aspirations after glory--that is to say, the happiness he should experience in being _not a ruler, but a guide and benefactor of humanity, a Washington, a Franklin, a Penn_; "but no," added he; "no, I shall never be any thing: or rather, I shall always be nothing. The most I can hope is that some one may say of me, '_He might_, _perhaps_, if he would.'"

The low estimation in which he held his poetical genius, to which he preferred action, amounted almost to a fault; for he forgot that grand and beautiful truths, couched in burning words and lighted up by genius, are also actions. He really seemed to have difficulty in forgiving himself for writing at all. Even at the outset of his literary career he was indignant with his publisher for having taken steps with Gifford which looked like asking for praise.

"It is bad enough to be a scribbler," said he, "without having recourse to such subterfuges for extorting praise or warding off criticism."

"I have never contemplated the prospect," wrote he, in 1819, "of occupying a permanent place in the literature of my country. Those who know me best are aware of that; and they also know that I have been considerably astonished at even the transient success of my works, never having flattered any one person or party, and having expressed opinions which are not those of readers in general. If I could have guessed the high degree of attention that has been awarded to them, I should certainly have made all possible efforts to merit it. But I have lived abroad, in distant countries, or else in the midst of worldly dissipation in England: circumstances by no means favorable to study and reflection. So that almost all I have written is but passion; for in me (if it is not Irishism to say so) indifference itself was a _sort of passion_, the result of experience and not the philosophy of nature."

The same contempt, manifested in a thousand ways throughout his life, was again expressed by Lord Byron, a few days before his death, to Lord Harrington, on being told by the latter that, notwithstanding the war he had waged against English prejudices and national susceptibility, he had nevertheless been the pride and even the idol of his country.

"Oh!" exclaimed he, "it would be a stupid race that should adore such an idol. It is true, they laid aside their superstition, as to my divinity, after 'Cain.'"

We find in his memoranda, with regard to a comparison made between himself and Napoleon, these significant words: "I, an _insect_, compared to that creature!"[83]

Sometimes he ascribes his poetical success to accidental causes, or else to some merit not personal to himself but transmitted by inheritance; that is, to his rank.

The generality of authors, especially poets, love to read their productions over and over again, just as a fine woman likes to admire herself in the glass. He, on the contrary, avoided this reflection of his genius, which seemed to displease him.

"Here are two wretched proof-sheets from the printer. I have looked over one; but, on my soul, I can not read that 'Giaour' again--at least not now and at this hour (midnight); yet there is no moonlight."

He never read his compositions to any one. On inviting Moore to Newstead Abbey, soon after having made his acquaintance, he said, "I can promise you Balnea Vina, and, if you like shooting, a manor of four thousand acres, fire, books, full liberty. H----, I fear, will pester you with verses, but, for my part, I can conclude with Martial, '_nil recitabo tibi_;' and certainly this last promise ought not to be the least tempting for you."

Nevertheless, this was a great moment for a young author, as "Childe Harold" was then going through the press. He never would speak of his works; and when any translation of them was mentioned to him, they were sure to cause annoyance to him. Several times in Italy he paid large sums to prevent his works from being translated, at the same time not to injure the translator; but while refusing these homages for himself he desired them for others, and with that view praised and assisted them. We have already seen all he did to magnify Moore, as well as others, both friends and rivals. The Gospel says, "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you;" but for him the precept should rather have been reversed thus, "Do for yourself what you would do for others."

In the midst of his matrimonial sufferings, at the most cruel moments of his existence, he still found time to write and warmly recommend to his publisher works written by Hunt and Coleridge, who afterward rewarded all his kindness with the most dire ingratitude. And after praising them greatly, he adds, speaking of one of his own works, "And now let us come to the last, my own, of which I am ashamed to speak after the others. Publish it or not, as you like; I don't care a straw about it. If it seems to you that it merits a place in the fourth volume, put it there, or anywhere else; and if not, throw it into the fire." This poem, so despised, was the "Siege of Corinth!"

About the same time, on learning that Jeffrey had lauded "Hebrew Melodies"--poems so much above all praise that one might believe them (said a great mind lately)[84] thought by Isaiah and written by Shakspeare--Lord Byron considered Jeffrey very kind to have been so indulgent.

With what simplicity or contempt does he always introduce his _chefs-d'oeuvre_, either by dedication to his friends, or to his publisher.

"I have put in press a devil of a story or tale, called the 'Corsair.' It is of a pirate island, peopled with my own creatures, and you may easily imagine that they will do a host of wicked things, in the course of three cantos."

And this _devil of a story or tale_ had numberless editions. Several thousand copies were sold in one day. We have already seen the modest terms in which he announced to his friend Moore the termination of his poem "Manfred." This is how he mentioned it to his publisher:--

"I forgot to mention to you that a kind of poem in dialogue (in blank verse), or drama, from which the translation is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts, but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind.

BYRON."

He describes to Murray the causes, and adds:--

"You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it _quite impossible_ for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt.

"I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it to you, and you may either throw it into the fire or not.

"I have really and truly no notion whether it is good or bad, and as this was not the case with the principal of my former publications, I am, therefore, inclined to rank it very humbly. You will submit it to Mr. Gifford, and to whomsoever you please besides. With regard to the question of copyright (if it ever comes to publication), I do not know whether you would think _three hundred_ guineas an overestimate, if you do you may diminish it. I do not think it worth more.

BYRON.[85]

"Venice, March 9, 1817."

Lord Byron never protested against or complained of any criticism as to the talent displayed in his works. His protests (much too rare, alas!) never had any other object than to repel some abominable calumny. When they criticised without good faith and without measure his beautiful dramas, saying they were not adapted for the stage, what did he reply?

"It appears that I do not possess dramatic genius."

His observations on that wicked and unmerited article in "Blackwood's Magazine" for 1819, are quite a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of reasoning and modesty. There again, if he defends the man a little, he condemns the poet.

His modesty was such that he almost went so far as to see, in the enmity stirred up against him during his latter years, a symptom of the decay of his talent. He really seemed to attach value to his genius only when it could be enlisted in the service of his heart.

In 1821, being at Ravenna, and writing his memoranda, he recalls that one day in London (1814), just as he was stepping into a carriage with Moore (whom he calls with all his heart the poet _par excellence_), he received a Java Gazette, sent by Murray, and that on looking over it, he found a discussion on his merits and those of Moore. And, after some modest amusing sentences, he goes on to say:--

"It was a great fame to be named with Moore; greater to be compared with him; greatest _pleasure_, at least, to be _with_ him; and, surely, an odd coincidence, that we should be dining together while they were quarrelling about us beyond the equinoctial line. Well, the same evening, I met Lawrence the painter, and heard one of Lord Grey's daughters (a fine, tall, spirited-looking girl, with much of the patrician thorough-bred look of her father, which I dote upon) play on the harp, so modestly and ingenuously, that she looked music. Well, I would rather have had my talk with Lawrence (who talked delightfully) and heard the girl, than have had all the fame of Moore and me put together. The only pleasure of fame is that it paves the way to pleasure; and the more intellectual our pleasure, the better for the pleasure and for us too."[86]

This modesty sometimes even carried him so far as to lead him into most extraordinary appreciation of things. For instance, he almost thought it blamable to have one's own bust done in marble, unless it were for the sake of a friend. Apropos of a young American who came to see him at Ravenna, and who told him he was commissioned by Thorwaldsen to have a copy of his bust made and sent to America, Lord Byron wrote in his journal:--

"_I_ would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my children's or some _absurd womankind's_, as Monkbarns calls them, or my sister's. If asked why, then, I sat for my own? Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq., and for no one else. A picture is a different matter; every body sits for their picture; but a bust looks like putting up _pretensions to permanency_, and smacks something of a _hankering for public fame rather than private remembrance_."

Let us add to all these proofs of Lord Byron's modesty, that his great experience of men and things, the doubts inseparable from deep learning, and his indulgence for human weakness, rendered his reason most tolerant in its exigencies, and that he never endeavored to impose his opinions on others. But while remaining essentially a modest genius, Lord Byron did not, however, ignore his own value. If he had doubted himself, if he had wanted a just measure of confidence in his genius, could he have found in his soul the energy necessary for accomplishing in a few years such a marvellous literary career? His modesty did not proceed from conscious inferiority with regard to others.

Could the intellect that caused him to appreciate others so well fail to make him feel his own great superiority? But that _relative superiority_ which he felt in himself left him _perfectly modest_, or he knew it was subject to other relations that showed it to him in extreme littleness: that is to say, the relation of the finite with the aspiration toward the infinite. It was the appreciation of the immense distance existing between what we know and what we ignore, between what we are and what we would be; the consciousness, in fact, of the limits imposed by God on man, and which neither study nor excellence of faculties can ever enable us to pass beyond.

Those rare beings, whose greatness of soul equals their penetration of mind, can not themselves feel the fascination they exercise over others; and while performing miracles of genius, devotion, and heroism, remain admirably simple, natural, and modest, believing that they do not outstep the humblest limits.

Such was Lord Byron. We may then sum up by saying that he was not only a modest genius, but also that, instead of being too proud of his genius, he may rather be accused of having too little appreciated this great gift, as well as many others bestowed by Heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 82: The first two cantos of "Childe Harold."]

[Footnote 83: Moore, vol. i. p. 512.]

[Footnote 84: The present Dean of Westminster.]

[Footnote 85: Moore, Letter 265.]

[Footnote 86: Moore, vol. v. p. 76.]

## CHAPTER XIV.

THE VIRTUES OF HIS SOUL.

HIS GENEROSITY A VIRTUE.

All that we have hitherto said, proves that Lord Byron's generosity has never been disputed; but the generosity usually attributed to him was an innate quality, the impulse of a good heart, naturally inclined to bestow benefits.

Certainly, to distribute among the poor our superfluities, and very often more than that, to borrow rather than suffer the unfortunate to wait for assistance; to subtract from our pleasures, and even to bear privations, the better to help all the afflicted, without distinction of opinion, age, or sex; to measure the kindness done rather by their wants, than our own resources, and to do all that, without ostentation, habitually, in secret and unknown, with God and our conscience for sole witnesses: certainly, all that is full of moral beauty; and we know on what a large scale Lord Byron practiced it all his life. We have seen him in childhood, of which we should vainly seek one more amiable and more admirable, wish to take upon himself the punishments destined for his comrades; rescue their hall from the senseless fury of his school-fellows, by showing them the dear names of their parents written on the walls; desire to expose himself to death, to save a comrade, who had two parents to regret his loss, while he himself had only one; and send his good nurse the first watch of which he became possessed,--and we know what a treasure the first watch is to a child. We have followed him later, a youth at college, at the university, and at Newstead, in his devoted passionate affections; a young man on his travels, and in the midst of the great world, and we have seen his compassion for every kind of misfortune, and his mode of assuaging them.

When we perceive, despite the ardor and mobility of his heart, where so many contrary elements combined, contradicted, jarred against, or succeeded each other, that there never was a single instant in his life when generosity did not reign supreme over every impulse and consideration, not only are we compelled to pronounce him generous, but we are likewise forced to acknowledge that generosity, with a passion for truth, divided the empire of his soul, and formed the two principal features of his character. But if his generosity had ended in only satisfying the fine tendencies of his nature, would it have acquired the right to be called virtuous? We do not think so. For generosity, to merit that sacred epithet, must express sentiments rarer and more elevated, arrive at the highest triumph of moral strength, at the greatest self-abnegation; it must succeed in overcoming appetite, in forgetting the most just resentments, in returning good for evil. Then, alone, can generosity attain that sublime degree which entitles it to be called a virtue.

Did Lord Byron's generosity reach this great moral height? Let us examine facts; they alone can answer.

If a young man lends assistance to a young and beautiful girl, without any interested motive, and with exquisite delicacy, he certainly gives proof that he possesses delicacy of soul. His merit becomes much greater if he acts thus solely to save her honor. But if the young girl, full of gratitude, falls deeply in love with her benefactor; if, unable to hide the impression produced on her heart by his presence and his generosity, she makes him understand that her gratitude would have no limits; and if he, at the age when passion is all awake, though touched by the sentiments this charming person has conceived, nevertheless shuts his senses against all temptations, does not the greatness of his soul then become admirable? Well, this was fully realized in Lord Byron. And not only in a single instance; but often during his life. For, if temptations were numerous, so were victories also. We will only quote one example, with sufficient details to make it justly appreciated.

Miss S----, who had been bred in ease, but who, with her family, had been reduced, through a series of misfortunes, to absolute want, found herself exposed to the greatest evil that can menace a portionless girl. Her mother, whose temper had been soured by reverses which had likewise quite overthrown her sense of morality, had become one of those women who consider poverty the worst of all evils. Unscrupulous as to the means of putting an end to it, she did not think it necessary to fortify her daughter's mind by good counsels. Happily the young girl had lofty sentiments and natural dignity. Secure from vulgar seduction, and guided by wholesome steady principles, she desired to depend only on her talents for gaining a livelihood, and for assisting her parents. Having written a small volume of poetry, she had already got subscriptions from persons of high position; but her great desire was to obtain Lord Byron's name.

An impulse, often recurring, induced her to apply to the young nobleman, who was then still unmarried. She only knew him through his works, and by report, which already associated with admiration for his talents a thousand calumnies concerning his moral character. The skeptical stanzas of "Childe Harold" still troubled orthodox repose; the lines on the tears of the Princess Royal irritated the Tories, and his last success with the "Corsair," added to those he had already gained, further embittered his jealous rivals. Thus calumnies made up from these different elements besieged the poet's house, so as to prevent truth concerning the man from being known. Even in her family, Miss S---- found hostility against him; for her mother, who called herself a Tory, only discovered moral delicacy when she wished to show her repugnance for the Whig party, to which Lord Byron belonged. Miss S----, in a moment of extreme anguish and pressing embarrassment, resolved upon applying to the young nobleman. He received her with respect and consideration, and soon perceived how intimidated she was by the rather bold step she had taken, and also by the cause that prompted it. Lord Byron reassured her, by treating her with peculiar kindness, as he questioned her respecting her circumstances. When she had related the sad reasons that determined her to ask him for a subscription, Lord Byron rang for his valet, and ordered a desk to be brought to him. Then, with that delicacy of heart which formed such a remarkable trait in his character, he wrote down, while still conversing, a few words, which he wrapped up in an envelope, and gave to the young lady. She soon after withdrew, thinking she had obtained the coveted subscription.

When fairly out, all she had seen and heard appeared to her like a dream. The door which had just closed behind her seemed the gate of Eden, opening on a land of exile. Nevertheless, she was to see him again. He had consented to receive her volume. Lord Byron was not for her the angel with the flaming sword, but rather an angel of gentleness, mercy, and love. Never had she seen or imagined such a combination of enchantments; never had she seen so much beauty, nor heard such a voice; never had such a sweet expressive glance met hers. "No;" she repeated to herself, "he is not a man, but some celestial being. _Oh, mamma, Lord Byron is an angel!_" were the first words that escaped her on returning home. The envelope was opened; and a new surprise awaited them. Together with his subscription, she found, wrapped up, fifty pounds. That sum was, indeed, a treasure for her. She fell on her knees with all her family; even her mother forgot for the moment that it was Whig money to which they owed their deliverance, and seemed almost to agree with her eldest daughter, whose enthusiasm communicated itself to the younger one, who never wearied in questioning her sister about Lord Byron's perfections, until the night was far spent.

But if the family was thus relieved, if the young girl's honor was safe, her peace of mind was gone. The contempt and dislike she already felt for several men who were hovering about her with alarming offers of protection, were now further increased by the comparison she was enabled to make between their vulgar and low, basely hypocritical or openly licentious natures, and that of the noble being she had just seen.

Thenceforth Byron's dazzling image never left her mind. It remained fixed there during the day, to reappear at night in her dreams and visions. Such a hold had it gained over her entire being, that Miss S---- seemed from that hour to live heart and soul only in the hope of seeing him again.

When she returned to take him her book, she found that she had to add to all the other charms of this superior being that respect which the wisdom of mature age seems only able to inspire. For he not only spoke to her of what might best suit her position, and disapproved some of her mother's projects, as dangerous for her honor, but even refused to go and see her as she requested; nor would he give her a letter of introduction to the Duke of Devonshire, simply, because a handsome girl could not be introduced by a young man without having her reputation compromised.

The more Miss S---- saw of Lord Byron, the more intense her passion for him became. It seemed to her that all to which heart could aspire, all of happiness that heaven could give here below, must be found in the love of such a pre-eminent being. Lord Byron soon perceived the danger of these visits. Miss S---- was beautiful, witty, and charming; Lord Byron was twenty-six years of age. How many young men, in a similar case, would not without a scruple have thought that he had only to cull this flower which seemed voluntarily to tempt him? Lord Byron never entertained such an idea. Innocent of all intentional seduction, unable to render her happy, even if he could have returned her sentiments, instead of being proud of having inspired them, he was distressed at having done so. He did not wish to prove the source of new misfortunes to this young girl, already so tried by fate, and without guide or counsellor. So he resolved to use all his efforts toward restoring her peace. It would be too long to tell the delicate mode he used to attain this end, the generous stratagems he employed to heal this poor wounded heart. He went so far as to try to appear less amiable. For the sake of destroying any hope, he assumed a cold, stern, troubled air; but on perceiving that he had only aggravated the evil, his kindliness of heart could resist no longer, and he hit on other expedients. Finally he succeeded in making her comprehend the necessity of putting an end to her visits. She left his house, having ever been treated with respect, the innocence of their mutual intercourse unstained; and the young man's sacrifice only permitted one kiss imprinted on the lovely brow of her whose strong feelings for himself he well knew.

What this victory, gained by his will and his sentiment as a man of honor over his senses and his heart, cost Lord Byron, has remained his own secret. But those who will imagine themselves in similar circumstances at the age of twenty-six, may conceive it. As to Miss S----, the excess of her emotions made her ill; and she long hung between life and death. Nevertheless, the strength of youth prevailed, and ended by giving her back physical health. But was her mind equally cured? The only light that had brightened her path had gone out, and, plunged in darkness, how did she pursue her course through life? Was her heart henceforth closed to every affection? Or did she chain it down to the fulfillment of some austere duty, that stood her in lieu of happiness? Or, as it sometimes happens to stricken hearts, did a color, a sound, a breeze, one feature in a face, call up hallucinations, give her vain longings, make her build fresh hopes and prepare for her new deceptions? Proof against all meannesses, but young and most unhappy, was she always able to resist the promptings of a warm, feeling, grateful heart? We are ignorant of all this. We only know of her, that never again in her long career did she meet united in one man that profusion of gifts, physical, intellectual, and moral, that made Lord Byron seem like a being above humanity. She tells it to us herself, in letters written at the distance that separates 1814 from 1864, lately published in French, preceding and accompanying a narrative composed in her own language, in which she has related her impressions of Lord Byron, and given the details of all that took place between her and him. It was a duty, she says, that remained for her to accomplish here below.

Her narrative and these letters are charming from their simplicity and naivete; what she says bears the stamp of plain truth, her admiration has nothing high-flown in it, and her style is never wanting in the sobriety which ought always to accompany truth, in order to make it penetrate into other minds.

We would fain transcribe these pages, that evidently flow from an elevated and sincerely grateful heart. For they reflect great honor on Lord Byron, since, in showing the strength of the impression made on the young girl, they bring out more fully all the self-denial he must have exercised in regard to her; likewise, because, in her letters, this lady, after so long an experience of life, never ceases proclaiming Lord Byron the handsomest, the most generous, and the best of men she ever knew. But though it is impossible for me to reproduce all she says, still I feel it necessary to quote some passages from her book. In the first letter addressed to Mrs. B----, she says:--

"At the moment of the separation between Lord Byron and that woman who caused the misery of his life, I was not in London; and I was so ill, that I could neither go to see him nor write as I wished. For he had shown me so much goodness and generosity that my heart was bursting with gratitude and sorrow; and never have I had any means of expressing either to him, except through my little offering.[87] Even now my heart is breaking at the thought of the injustice with which he has been treated.

"His friend Moore, to whom he had confided his memoirs, written with his own hand, had not the courage to fulfill faithfully the desire of his generous friend. Lady Blessington made a book upon him very profitable _to herself_, but in which she does not always paint Lord Byron _en beau_, and where she has related a thousand things that Lord Byron only meant in joke, and which ought not to have been either written or published. And when it is remembered that this lady (as I am assured) never saw or conversed with Lord Byron but out of doors, when she happened to meet him on horseback, and very rarely (two or three times) when he consented to dine at her house, in both of these cases, in too numerous a company for the conversation to be of an intimate nature; when it is known (as I am further assured) that Lord Byron was so much on his guard with this lady (aware of her being an authoress), that he never accepted an invitation to dine with her, unless when his friend Count Gamba did: truly, we may then conclude that these conversations were materially impossible, and must have been a clever mystification,--a composition got up on the biographies of Lord Byron that had already appeared, on Moore's works, Medwin's, Lord Byron's correspondence, and, above all, on "Don Juan." She must have made her choice, without any regard to truth or to Lord Byron's honor; rather selecting such facts, expressions, and observations as allowed her to assume the part of a moral, sensitive woman, to sermonize, by way of gaining favor with the strict set of people in high society, and to be able to bring out her own opinions on a number of things and persons, without fear of compromising herself, since she put them into Lord Byron's mouth.

"Verily these conversations can not be explained in any other way. At any rate, I confess this production of her ladyship so displeased me that I threw it aside, unable to read it without ill-humor and disgust. At that time (1814) he was not married; and I beheld in him a young man of the rarest beauty. Superior intellect shone in his countenance; his manners were at once full of simplicity and dignity; his voice was sweet, rich, and melodious. If Lord Byron had defects (and who has not?) he also possessed very great virtues, with a dignity and sincerity of character seldom to be found. The more I have known the world, the more have I rendered homage to Lord Byron's memory."

Miss S---- wrote thus to a person with whom she was not acquainted; but, encouraged by the answer she received, she dispatched a second letter, opening her heart still further, and sending some details of her intercourse with Lord Byron,--what she had seen and known of him.

"Ah! madam," she exclaims, "if you knew the happiness, the consolation I feel in writing to you, knowing that all I say of him will be well received, and that you believe all these details so creditable to him!"

In the same letter, she declares "that when he was exposed to the attacks of jealousy and a thousand calumnies spread against him, he always said, 'Do not defend me.'

"But, madam, how can we be silent when we hear such infamous things said against one so incapable of them? I have always said frankly what I thought of him, and defended him in such a way as to carry conviction into the minds of those who heard me. But a combat between one person and many is not equal, and I have several times been ill with vexation. Never mind; what I can do, I will."

She announced her intention of communicating the whole history of her acquaintance with Lord Byron.

"I am about to commence, madam, the account of my acquaintance with our great and noble poet. I shall write all concerning him in English, because I can thus make use of his own words, which are graven in my heart, as well as all the circumstances relating to him. I will give you these details, madam, in all their simplicity; but their value consists less in the words he made use of, than in the manner accompanying them, in the sweetness of his voice, his delicacy and politeness at the moment when he was granting a favor, rendering me such a great service. Oh! yes, he was really good and generous; never, in all my long years, have I seen a man _worthy to be compared to him_."

She wrote again on the 10th of November, 1864:--

"Here, madam, are the details I promised you about my first interview with Lord Byron. I give them to you in all their simplicity. I make no attempt at style; but simply tell unvarnished truth; for, with regard to Lord Byron, I consider truth the most important thing,--his name is the greatest ornament of the page whereon it is inscribed. I will also send you, madam, if you desire, my second and third interview with this noble, admirable man, who was so _misjudged_. To write this history is a great happiness for me; since I know that, in so doing, I render him that justice so often denied him by the envious and the wicked.

"His conduct toward me was always so beautiful and noble, that I would fain make it known to the whole world. I think they are beginning to render him the justice that is his due; everywhere now he is quoted--_Byron said this, Byron thought that_--that is what I hear continually, and many persons who formerly spoke against him, now testify in his favor.

"They say we ought not to speak evil of the dead; that is very well, but as this maxim was not observed toward Lord Byron, I also will repeat what I have heard said of his wife--I mean that the blame was hers--that her temper was so bad, her manners so harsh and disagreeable, that no one could endure her society; that she was avaricious, wicked, scolding; that people hated to wait upon her or live near her. How dared this lady to marry a man so distinguished, and then to treat him ill and tyrannically? Truly it is inconceivable. If she were charitable for the poor (as some one has pretended), she certainly wanted Christian charity. And I also am wanting in it perhaps; but, when I think of her, I lose all patience."

On announcing to Mrs. B---- the sequel of her narrative, she says:--

"It contains the history of the two days that passed after my first interview with him whom I ever found the _noblest and most generous_ of men, whose memory lives in my heart like a brilliant star amid the dark and gloomy clouds that have often surrounded me in life; it is the single ray of sunshine illumining my remembrances of the past."

Miss S---- had not forgotten a look, a word, not even the material external part of things; and when Mrs. B---- expressed her astonishment at this lively recollection,--

"All that concerned Lord Byron," said she, "has been retained by my heart. I recall his words, gestures, looks, now, as if it had all taken place yesterday. I believe this is owing to his great and beautiful qualities, such a rare assemblage of which I never saw in any other human being.

"There was so much truth in all he said, so much simplicity in all he did, that every thing became indelibly engraven on heart and memory."

After having said that Lord Byron gave her the best counsels, and among others that of living with her mother ("not knowing," she adds, "to what it would expose me"), she continues:

"You say, madam, there is no cause for astonishment that I so admire and respect Lord Byron. In all he said, or advised, there was so much right reason, goodness and judgment far above his age, that one remained enthralled."

On sending the conclusion of her history to Mrs. B----, she says:--

"You who knew Lord Byron, will not be surprised that I loved him so much. But a woman does not pass through such a trial with impunity. On returning home, I threw myself on my knees and tried to pray, imploring Heaven for strength and patience. But the sound of his voice, his looks, pierced to my very heart, my soul felt torn asunder; I could not even weep. For two years and a half I was no longer myself. A man of high position offered me his hand. He would have placed me in the first society; but he wished for love, and I could only offer him friendship."

And, finally, when the reception of the concluding part of her narrative was acknowledged, she further added:--

"I am very glad that the history of my heart appears to you a precious document for proving the virtues of one whom I have ever looked upon as the _first of men, as well for his qualities as for his genius_."

Her last letter ends exactly as did her first:--"_Ah! there never was but one Lord Byron!_" In her narrative, which is quite as natural in style as her letters, no detail of her interviews with Lord Byron has escaped her memory.[88]

We have already seen how, in a moment of despair, the young girl, full of confidence in Lord Byron, whom she considered as one of the noblest characters that ever existed, thought she might go and ask his protection. A fashionable young man, and still unmarried, the reports current about him might well lead to the belief that his house was not quite the temple of order. She was surprised on knocking timidly at his door, on explaining to the _valet-de-chambre_ who opened it, her great desire to speak to Lord Byron, to see Fletcher listen to her with a civil, compassionate air, that predisposed her in favor of his master.

He conducted her into a small room, where all Lord Byron's servants were assembled, and there also she was greatly surprised at the order and simplicity in the establishment of the young lord.

"I never saw servants more polite and respectful," says she. "Fletcher and the coachman remained standing, only the old house-keeper kept her seat."

Miss S---- had dried her tears when admitted into Lord Byron's presence.

"Surprise and admiration," says she, "were the first emotions I experienced on seeing him. He was only twenty-six years of age, but he looked still younger. I had been told that he was gloomy, severe, and often out of temper: _I saw, on the contrary, a most attractive physiognomy, wearing a look of charming sweetness._"

Miss S---- soon found cause to appreciate Lord Byron's delicacy. She began by excusing herself for having come to him, saying she had taken this step in consequence of family misfortunes. She remained standing. After some moments of silence, during which Lord Byron appeared to interrogate memory, he said:--

"Pray be seated; I will not hear another word until you are. You appear to have an independent spirit, and this step must have cost you much."

Having already partly seen the results of this interview, we refrain from giving further details here, although they are full of interest on account of the goodness, generosity, and delicacy they reveal.

Miss S---- endeavored to draw his portrait, but the pencil dropped from her hands:--

"I feel that unless I could portray his look, and repeat his words as pronounced by him, I could not even do justice to his actions."

She does it, however in a few bold touches which, on account of their truth, we have quoted in the chapter entitled _Portrait_ of Lord Byron.

After having said that it was impossible to see finer eyes, a more beautiful expression of face, manners more graceful, hands more exquisite, or to hear such a tone of voice, she adds:--

"All that formed such an assemblage of seductive qualities, that never before or since have I remarked any man who could be compared to him. What particularly struck me was the serene, gentle dignity of his manner. Lady Blessington says, that she did not find in Lord Byron quite the dignity she had expected; but surely, then, she does not understand what dignity is? Indeed she did not understand Lord Byron at all. With me he was unaffected, amiable, and natural. The hours passed in his society I look upon as the brightest of my life, and even now I think of them with an effusion of gratitude and admiration, rather increased than diminished by time."

Lord Byron saw directly that Miss S---- had a noble nature. It must have been such; it must even have been, so to say, _incorruptible_, since she had been able to preserve her purity of soul and simplicity in the position to which she was, despite her surroundings and with such a mother. Lord Byron, seeing her so unprotected and ill-advised, took an interest in her, and instead of profiting by her isolation, resolved to save her. With virtue superior to his years, he opposed the best counsels to the more than imprudent projects of a mother who thought only of repairing her fortune by whatever means. Miss S----, attracted toward him with her whole heart and soul, begged her young and noble benefactor to come and see her, if it were only once a month. "I should be so happy, my lord, if you would sometimes grant me the favor of a visit, and guide my life," said she to him.

But Lord Byron had perceived the excited state of feeling in which the young girl was. Besides, he was betrothed, and did not wish to expose her and himself to the consequences. Honor and prudence alike counselled a refusal, and he refused.

"My dear child," answered he, "I can not. I will tell you my present position, and you will understand that I ought not: I am going to marry."

"At these words," said she, "my heart sunk within me, as if a piece of lead had fallen on my chest. At the same instant I experienced an acute pain in it. It seemed as if a chilly steel had pierced me. A horrible, indescribable sensation shook my whole frame. For some moments I could not possibly articulate a single word. Lord Byron looked at me with an expression full of interest, for indeed I must have changed countenance."

Lord Byron, already aware that his image was graven on this young heart, and might become dangerous to her, then understood still better the silent ravages that love must be making there. He pitied her more than ever, he felt the necessity of refusal and sacrifice, and, from that moment, all struggle between will and desire ceased.

He also refused, after some hesitation, to recommend her to the Duke of Devonshire.

"You are young and pretty," said he, "and that is sufficient to place any man, wishing to serve you, in a false position. You know how the world understands a young man's friendship and interest for a young woman. No; my name must not appear in a recommendation to the duke. Don't think me disobliging, therefore. On the contrary, I wish you to make an appeal to Devonshire, but without naming me; I have told you my reasons for refusing to be openly your advocate."

"Another time," adds she, "I ventured to express the wish of being presented to the future Lady Byron. But he again answered by a refusal. 'Though amiable and unsuspicious,' said he, 'persons about Lady Byron might put jealous suspicions, devoid of foundation, into her head.'"

Thus equally by what he refused her and what he granted her, he proved his great generosity, the elevation of his character, his virtuous abnegation and self-control.

Although Miss S---- was then in an humble and humiliating position, she had received a fine classical and intellectual education from her uncle, who was a professor at Cambridge. Her natural wit, the _naivete_ and sincerity of her ideas, uncontaminated by worldly knowledge, were appreciated by Lord Byron. He understood her worth, despite the difficulties that made virtue of greater merit in her, and notwithstanding appearances that were against her; and he showed interest in her conversation during the different interviews she obtained from him. He talked to her of literature, the news of the day; and even had the goodness to read with indulgence and approbation the verses she had composed. One day, among others, she had the happiness of remaining with him till a late hour, and when his carriage was announced, to take him to a _soiree_, he had her conducted home in the same carriage.

"Oh! how delightful that evening was to me," says she. "Lord Byron's abode at the Albany recalled some collegiate dwelling, so perfectly quiet was it, though situated at the West End, the noisiest quarter of the metropolis. His conversation so varied and delightful, the purity of his English, his refined pronunciation, all offered such a contrast even with the most distinguished men I had had the good fortune to meet, that I really learned what happiness was."

These conversations afforded her the opportunity of knowing and admiring him still more. In conversing on literature, she was able to appreciate his modesty by the praises he lavished on the talents of others, and by the slight importance he attached to his own; and also his love of truth when, _a propos_ of some book of travels she was praising, he told her that he preferred a simple but true tale of voyages to all the pomp of lies. In speaking about an adventure in high life that was then making a great noise in England, she was able to appreciate his high sentiments of delicacy and honor. When the conversation fell on religion, she had the happiness of hearing him declare he abhorred atheism and unbelief; and when his childhood was touched upon, of hearing him say that it had been pleasant and happy. Finally, when she asked his advice with regard to her future conduct, he displayed, at twenty-six years of age, the wisdom that seldom comes before the advent of gray hairs. In short, by word and by action, he manifested that nobleness of soul which always unveiled itself to pure open natures, but which closed against artificial ones; and which makes Miss S---- say at the beginning as well as at the end of her account:--"There has been but one Byron on earth: how could I not love him?"

But it is especially on account of the great love she felt for him, on going over it, reflecting, comparing the depth of feelings she had been unable to hide from him, with the conduct of this young man of twenty-six, who drew from duty alone a degree of strength superior to his age and sex, that she expressed herself thus. She can still see his looks of tenderness; she can judge what the struggle was, the combat that was going on in him as soft and stern glances chased each other; at length she sees honor gain the victory, and remain triumphant.

It is this spectacle of such great moral beauty, still before her eyes, that can be so well appreciated after the lapse of long years, and which justifies the words that begin and close her recital by divesting it of all semblance of exaggeration:--"There has been but one Byron!"

When we have known such beings, admiration and love outlive all else. And while the causes that may have led to transient emotions in a long career--an error, a fault--pass away and are forgotten like some beautiful vision, these glorious remembrances, these more than human images, tower above, living and radiant, in memory, and even come to visit us in our dreams, sometimes to reproach us with our useless and imprudent doubts, ever to sustain us amid the sadnesses of life; and if the love has been reciprocal, then to console us with the prospect of another life, in that blessed abode where we shall meet again forever.

After this long narrative, it would be useless and perhaps wearisome for the reader if we quoted many other similar facts in Lord Byron's life. They might differ in circumstances, but would all wear the same moral character.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 87: She had dedicated to him a small collection of poems, which she sent to Pisa, in 1821, with a letter, _to which she received no answer_.]

[Footnote 88: "All that," says she, "lives in my heart and soul, as if these things had taken place a few weeks ago, instead of so many years" (1864).]

## CHAPTER XV.

GENEROSITY A HEROISM.

PARDON, MAGNANIMITY.

It remains for us to examine Lord Byron's generosity under another form. I mean that which, after having passed by different degrees of moral beauty, may reach the highest summit of virtue, and become the greatest triumph of moral strength, because it overcomes the most just resentments, forgives, returns good for evil, and constitutes the very heroism of Christian charity.

Did Lord Byron's generosity really attain such a high degree? To convince ourselves of it, we must again examine his life.

Clemency and forgiveness showed themselves in Lord Byron at all periods of his life. In childhood, in youth, though so passionate, and so sensitive at school and at college, so soon as the first explosion was over, he was ever ready to make peace.

In the poems composed during his boyhood and early youth, he was always the first to forgive. He even forgave his wicked guardian (Lord Carlisle). Although this latter only evinced indifference, or worse, with regard to his ward, Lord Byron dedicated his first poems to him. The noble earl having further aggravated his faults by behaving in an unjustifiable manner, Lord Byron was of course greatly irritated, since he hurled some satirical lines at him. But soon after, at the intercession of friends, and especially at that of his sister, he showed himself disposed to forget the faults of his bad guardian with all the clemency inherent to his generous nature. He writes to Rogers, 27th June, 1814:--"Are there any chances or possibility of ending this, and making our peace with Carlisle? I am disposed to do all that is reasonable (or unreasonable) to arrive at it. I would even have done so sooner; but the 'Courier' newspaper, and a thousand disagreeable interpretations, have prevented me."

Afterward, he further sealed this generous pardon by those fine verses in the third canto of "Childe Harold," where he laments the death of Major Howard, Lord Carlisle's son, killed at Waterloo.[89]

He forgave Miss Chaworth; and in this case also there was great generosity. The history of this boyish love is well known. Even if the name of love should be refused to the feeling entertained by a child of fifteen for a girl of eighteen, who only looked upon him, it is said, as a boy, and liked him as a brother, not only on account of the difference of age, but also because she was already attached to the young man whom she afterward married, still it can not be denied that these first awakenings of the heart, though full of illusion, cause great suffering. For if Lord Byron was a child in years, he was already a young man in intellect, soul, imagination, and sensibility. That Miss Chaworth should raise emotion in his heart is very comprehensible, for every girl has good chances of appearing an angel to youths, whose preference invariably falls on women older than themselves. Besides, Miss Chaworth was placed in quite exceptional circumstances with regard to Lord Byron, such as were well calculated to act powerfully on the imagination of a boy, and render the dispelling of his poetic dream a most painful reality.

Miss Chaworth was heiress of the noble family whose name she bore, and her uncle had been killed in a duel by the last Lord Byron, grand-uncle of the poet. She resided with her family at Annesley, a seat two miles distant from Newstead Abbey. Their two properties touched each other; but the slight barrier separating them was marked with blood. The two children then, despite their near vicinity, only saw each other by chance, or by secretly getting over the boundary of their respective grounds. The chief obstacle to the reconciliation of the two families was the young girl's father. But when Lord Byron reached his fourteenth year, and, according to custom, came from Harrow to pass his holidays at Newstead, Mr. Chaworth was dead, and the mother of the young heiress received him at Annesley with open arms, for she did not partake her husband's feelings, but, on the contrary, looked forward with pleasure to the possibility of a union with her daughter, despite the difference of age between them. The development of their mutual sympathy was equally encouraged by the professors, governesses, and all surrounding the young lady, for they liked young Byron extremely.

From that time he had his room at Annesley, and was looked upon as one of the family. As to the young lady, she made him the companion of her amusements. In the gardens, parks, on horseback, in all excursions, he was constantly by her side. For him she played, and sang to the piano. What was her love for him? Were there not moments in which she did not look upon him only as a brother, or a child? Did she ever contemplate the possibility of becoming his wife?

Moore does not think so.

"Neither is it, indeed, probable," says he, "had even her affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, 'on the eve of womanhood,' an advance into life with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. His manners, too, were not yet formed, and his great beauty was still in its promise and not developed."

Galt is still more explicit in the same sense. Washington Irving appears to think the contrary:--

"Was this love returned?" says he. "Byron sometimes speaks as if it had been; at other times he says, on the contrary, that she never gave him reason to believe so. It is, however, probable, that at the commencement her heart experienced at least fluctuations of feeling: she was at a dangerous age. Though a child in years, Lord Byron was already a man in intelligence, a poet in imagination, and possessed of great beauty."

This opinion is the most probable. We may add that every thing must have contributed to keep up his illusion. Miss Chaworth gave him her portrait, her hair, and a ring. Mrs. Chaworth, the governess, all the family of the young heiress liked him so much, that after his death, when Washington Irving visited Annesley, he found proofs of this affection in the welcome given to, and the emotion caused even by the presence of a dog that had belonged to Lord Byron. This beautiful waking dream lasted, however, only the space of a dream in sleep.

At the expiration of his six weeks' holidays, young Byron returned to Harrow.

While he was cherishing the sacred flame with his purest energies of soul, what did she? She had forgotten him! The impression made on her heart by the schoolboy's love could not withstand the test of absence. She gave her heart to another.

"I thought myself a man," says he; "I was in earnest, she was fickle."

It was natural, however. She had arrived at the age when girls become women, and leave their childish loves behind them.

While young Byron was pursuing his studies, Miss Chaworth mixed in society. She met with a young man, named Musters, remarkable for his handsome person, and whose property lay contiguous to her own.

She had perceived him one day from her terrace, galloping toward the park followed by his hounds, the horn sounding in front, and he leading a fox hunt; she had been struck with his manly beauty and graceful carriage. From that day his image seated itself in her remembrance, and probably in her heart. It was under these favorable auspices that he made her acquaintance in society. Soon he gained her love. And when young Byron at the next vacation saw her again, she was already the willing betrothed of another.

That was still, however, a secret locked up in her heart. Her parents would not have wished this union. She had not then declared her intentions, and Lord Byron could not of course guess them. He was still welcomed at Annesley, and treated as heretofore. The young lady herself, instead of repelling him, continued to accept his attentions. This lasted until one day when Musters was bathing with Byron in a river that ran through the park he perceived a ring which he recognized as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. This discovery, and the scenes it gave rise to, obliged the lady to declare her preference.

The grief this broken illusion caused Lord Byron is shown by some of his early verses, and by the "Dream," written at Geneva, while musing how different his fate might have been if he had married Miss Chaworth, instead of Miss Milbank. It might be objected that sorrows, the proof of which rests on poetry, are not very authentic, and that it is not quite certain they really did pass through his heart. One might consider with Galt that this childish sentiment was less a real feeling of love than the phantom of an enthusiastic attachment, quite intellectual in its nature, like others that possessed such power over Lord Byron, since Miss Chaworth was not the sole object of his attention, but divided it with study and passionate friendships. One might say, with Moore, that the poetic description given by Lord Byron of this childish love, ought to serve especially to show how genius and sentiment may raise the realities of life, and give an immense lustre to the most ordinary events and objects. In short, one might think that Lord Byron perceived all the poetic advantages accruing from the remembrance of a youthful passion, at once innocent, pure, and unhappy; how it would furnish him with a magic tint to enrich his palette with an inexhaustible fund of sweet, graceful, and pathetic fancies, with delicate, lofty, and noble sentiments, and therefore that he resolved to shut it up in his heart, so as to preserve its freshness amid the withering atmosphere of the world; and in order to draw thence those exquisite images that so often shed ineffable grace and tenderness over his poems. It may, then, be said that, by maintaining alive in his mind scenes passed at Annesley, which recall the chaste, unhappy loves of Romeo and Juliet, and Lucy, he thereby satisfied an intellectual want of the poet that was quite independent of his heart as a man.

But, nevertheless, all those who can feel the heart's beatings through the veil of poetic language will understand that Lord Byron's verses on Mary Chaworth owe their origin to real grief.

Could it be otherwise? The experience resulting from reflection and comparison, which made him afterward say, that the perfections of the girl were the creation of his imagination at fifteen, because he found her in reality quite other than angelic;[90] that she was fickle, and had deceived him. This experience, I say, was wanting to the child. Thus, then, Miss Chaworth was for him at that period the beau ideal of all his young fancy could paint as best and most charming.

At the same time, this love, notwithstanding the difference of age, was not, on his side, the giddy result of too much ardor. It was composed of a thousand circumstances and feelings,--of practical, wise, and generous thoughts. A far-off prospect of happiness heightened all the noble instincts of the boy, and all the ideas of order that belonged to his fine moral nature.

To reunite two noble families,--to efface the stain of blood and hatred through love,--to revive again the ancient splendor of his ancestral halls,--all these thoughts mingled with the idea of his union with Miss Chaworth, and made his heart beat with hope. If there were excess in such hope,--if there were illusion,--the fault lies with the relatives of the young lady and herself, rather than with him. Generosity was on his side alone, because he alone had a right to feel rancor.

"She jilted me," says he in prose, and in verse we read,--

"She knew she was by him beloved,--she knew, For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched."

If, then, it was natural for a girl to prefer a young man of more suitable age, handsome and fashionable, to a boy whose features were yet undeveloped, and whom she treated as a child and a brother; was it quite as natural to flatter him,--load him with caresses,--with those gifts likely to foster illusion and hope,--pledges considered as love tokens? Was it natural that in order to justify certain coquetries to her affianced, she should make use of insulting expressions with regard to young Byron? But, on the other hand, would it not have been very natural for him, having heard them, to feel a little rancor against her? Surely she was guilty if she had spoken in jest, and more guilty still if she were in earnest.

And yet what was his conduct? In his poem called the "Dream," where he sings this romance of his boyhood, he tells us how he quitted Annesley, after having learned that Miss Chaworth was engaged to Mr. Musters:--

"He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles; he pass'd From out the massy gate of that old hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more."

Then he jumped upon his horse, intending to gallop over the distance separating Annesley from Newstead. But when he arrived at the last hill overlooking Annesley, he stopped his horse, and cast a glance of mingled sorrow and tenderness at what he left behind,--the groves, the old house, the lovely one inhabiting there. But then the thought that she could never be his dispelled his reverie, and putting spurs to his horse he set off anew, as if rapid motion could drown reflection. However, instead of the reflections he could not succeed in drowning, _he cast away all rancor_.

When he alludes to her in his early poems it is always with tenderness and respect.[91] He contents himself with calling her once, _deceitful girl_, and another time, _a false fair face_.

After an interval of some years, when the boy had become a fine young man, before setting out for the East, he accepted the proffered hospitality of Annesley.

He never ceased to welcome Musters at Newstead, and, lest he should disturb the peace of Mrs. Musters, he had even concealed his agitation on kissing his rival's child. Heretofore she had only seen the boy or youth, now she beheld the young man whose genius and personal attractions lent to each other light and charm.

It was about this time that the bright star of Annesley began to pale. On her brow, formerly so gay, a veil of sadness was overspread. It seemed as if the gardens had lost their charm for her; as if the spreading foliage of Annesley had become dark for her. What caused this change? On seeing again the companion of her childhood, did she contrast her now solitary walks with those of earlier days in his beautiful park, where beside her was the youth who would fain have kissed the ground on which she trod? The sound of that hunting horn, which anon made her thrill with joy, when it announced the approach of her handsome betrothed, and awakened all the illusions of love,--had it now become to her more discordant and painful by its contrast with the harmonious voice and sweet smile of him whom she had just seen again so changed to his advantage?

It was during his travels in the East that Lord Byron heard of this mysterious melancholy. Given the circumstances, such a report would not have displeased, even if it had not pleased, vulgar, rancorous souls. But it produced quite a contrary effect on him. The feeling of his own worth, doubtless, must and ought to have brought certain ideas to his mind; but they saddened his generous nature, and he experienced a desire to drive them away by saying, "Has she not the husband of her choice, and lovely children to caress her?"

"What could her grief be?--she had all she loved. * * * * * * * What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, * * * * * * * Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd Upon her mind--a spectre of the past."

Lord Byron returned from his travels, and by degrees, as he rose in the admiration of England, the melancholy observable in Mrs. Musters deepened.

One day she felt such a longing to see again the companion of her childhood, that she asked for an interview. Could he not desire the meeting? But ought he to grant it? He had had the courage to meet her again when he thought her happy, when sorrow for the past belonged to him alone, when she appeared neither to understand nor to share it. But would his heart be equally strong--would it not yield on seeing her unhappy?[92] And yet, what could he then do for her happiness? With the same generosity that induced him always to sacrifice his pleasure to the happiness of others, he listened to his reason, his heart, and the prudent counsels of his sister; he refrained from an interview which could only augment the troubles of that devastated soul, soon to become the "_queen of a fantastic kingdom_" in reason's night. But he ever preserved a tender remembrance of Miss Chaworth, only forgetting the wrong she had done him.[93]

Lord Byron's conduct had been no less generous toward Mr. Musters, his triumphant rival in the affections of Miss Chaworth. Mr. Musters, though several years older than Lord Byron, was, nevertheless, among his early companions. The parents of this young man resided at their country-seat, called Colwich, a few miles distant from Newstead, and Lord Byron often accepted their hospitality. One day the two youths were bathing in the Trent (a river which runs through the grounds of Colwich), when Mr. Musters perceived a ring among Lord Byron's clothes, left on the bank. To see and take possession of it was the affair of a moment. He had recognized it as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. Lord Byron claimed it, but Musters would not restore the ring. High words were exchanged. On returning to the house, Musters jumped on a horse and galloped off to ask an explanation from Miss Chaworth, who, being forced to confess that Lord Byron wore the ring with her consent, felt obliged to make amends to Musters by promising to declare immediately her engagement with him. Proud of his success, he returned home and acquainted Lord Byron with Miss Chaworth's determination. Dinner was announced. The family sat down, and soon perceived there was something amiss between the two friends, whose gloomy silence spoke more eloquently than words. Before the end of dinner Lord Byron left the table, unable to endure the provocations of his rival.

The parents of Musters, though completely ignorant of what had caused the quarrel, were uneasy for the consequences. After dinner bitter words were again exchanged between the two young men, and Musters used such coarse, insolent language that Lord Byron could ill restrain his indignation. Anger flashing from his eyes expressed itself as warmly in words. In this frame of mind he retired to his room, and remained long shut up there, while Musters believed he was preparing to leave Colwich that very night. But the magnanimous youth, on reflection, understood that at fifteen he ought not to pretend to carry off the fair prize of seventeen from a man nine years his senior; and that it was not generous to grieve his hosts and hurt the reputation of the lady he loved. Accordingly, he suppressed his sorrow, his pride, his anger. Instead of returning to Newstead, he made his appearance as usual in the drawing-room, and to the astonishment of his rival, excused himself for having shown anger, and thus failed in politeness to his hosts. Candidly, and with regret, he acknowledged that the excess of his feelings had caused the outburst. From that day forth he gave up all pretensions to Miss Chaworth's love, and, forgiving them both with equal magnanimity, he even continued inviting his rival to Newstead. "But," said he, "now my heart would hate him if he loved her not."

On declaring to Moore, in a letter written from Pisa, that he would still forgive fresh wrongs, Lord Byron made this avowal:--"The truth is, I can not keep up resentment, however violent may be its explosion."

At all periods of his life, he remained the young man of 1814, saying that he could not go to rest with anger at his heart. In Greece, a few weeks before his glorious death, he gave another proof of it by his conduct toward Colonel Stanhope (afterward Lord Harrington). They had persuaded Lord Byron that the colonel was very jealous of his influence, and of the enthusiasm manifested for him. True or not, Lord Byron could not but believe it. The colonel arrived in Greece (sent by the London committee), for the purpose, it was said, of uniting with Lord Byron, and acting jointly in favor of Greek independence; but in reality, it would have seemed as if he came only to counteract what Byron wished. Their ideas on matters of administration and on political economy, their principles with regard to institutions and means of government, were totally opposed. Bentham was the colonel's idol and model, while Lord Byron particularly disliked the moral and social consequences flowing from Bentham's doctrines. Ever straightforward and practical, Lord Byron thought the Greeks ought to begin by gaining their independence, _and that they had better be taught to read before they were made to buy books, and the liberty of the press were given them_. Good and honorable, but fond of systems, the colonel always wished to begin by the end. Thence resulted long discussions between them, which produced hours of ennui for Lord Byron, and many annoyances, most prejudicial to his health, which was then very delicate. One evening, among others, the colonel grew so excited, that he told him he believed him to be a friend of the Turks. Lord Byron only answered: "Judge me by my actions." Both appeared angry; the colonel got up to leave. Lord Byron, who was the offended party, instead of bearing rancor, rose also, and, going straight to the colonel, said: "Give me your honest hand, and good-night." The night would not have passed tranquilly for Lord Byron without this reconciliation.

Among numerous proofs of this generous spirit of forgiveness,--so numerous that choice is difficult--we shall select his behavior toward a certain Mr. Scott, who, at the time of his separation, had attacked him in a savage, cruel manner,--not only unjustly, but even without any provocation.

"I beg to call particular attention," says Moore, "to the extract about to follow.

"Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and violence, with which Mr. Scott had assailed Lord Byron, at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration, in reading these sentences, such as they were penned by Lord Byron, for his own expressions can alone convey any adequate notion of the proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them:--

"'Poor Scott is no more! In the exercise of his vocation, he contrived, at last, to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly; although several years my senior, we had been school-fellows together, at the grammar-school of Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely, in his capacity of editor, a few years ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. _The moment was too tempting for many friends, and for all enemies._ At a time when all my relations (save one) fell from me, like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my few friends became still fewer,--when the whole periodical press (I mean the daily and weekly, not the _literary_, press) was let loose against me, in every shape of reproach, with the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of, "The Courier" and "The Examiner,"--the paper of which Scott had the direction was neither the last nor the least vituperative. Two years ago, I met him at Venice, when he was bowed in grief, by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the bitterness of domestic privation. He was then earnest with me to return to England, and on my telling him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he replied to me, "_that he, and others, had been greatly misled; and that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to excite them_." Scott is no more, but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very considerable talents and of great acquirements. He had made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy, at some appointment, which he had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevented the further extension (unless by a rapid run to Rome) of his travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would conduct him. _Peace be with him! and may all such other faults as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him as the little injury which he had done to one who respected his talents and regrets his loss._

BYRON.'"

Nor did his magnanimity stop here. After Scott's death, a subscription for his widow was got up, and Lord Byron was requested to contribute ten pounds.

"You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow thirty pounds, instead of the proposed ten," answered he; "but do not put down _my name_. As I mentioned him in the pamphlet, it would look indelicate."

But this refined generosity was only one of the forms which Lord Byron's kindliness took. To act thus, was a necessity for this privileged nature, that could not endure to hate, and loved to pardon. Still, his generosity had not yet entered on the road of great sacrifices. It had not yet reached the highest degree of power over self. It did attain to that, when it led him to comprise in one general pardon the so-called friends who had abandoned him in his hour of sacrifice, and those bitter enemies who knew no reconciliation, _when he forgave Lady Byron_. Then his generosity merited the name of virtue.

Pusillanimity, which binds with an invisible chain the hearts and tongues of vulgar souls, in unreal exacting society, had carried away some; jealousy of his superiority had rendered others ferocious; and an absolute moral monstrosity--an anomaly in the history of types of female hideousness--had succeeded in showing itself in the light of magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so did it shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which cause such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act?--what did he say? I will not speak of his "Farewell," of the care he took to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too large a share to himself, when in reality his sole fault lay in having married her; because it might be objected that, when he acted thus, he had _not given up the wish of reunion_.

But at Venice, and more especially at Ravenna and Pisa, this project certainly had ceased to exist; the measure of insult was filled up to overflowing. And yet, in one of those days of exasperation which letters from London never failed to produce, and precisely when he was writing pages on Lady Byron that could scarcely be complimentary, he learned that she had been taken ill. His anger and his pen both fell simultaneously, and he hastened to throw into the fire what he had written. Another time he was told that Lady Byron lived in constant dread of having Ada forcibly taken from her.

"Yes," he replied, "I might claim her in Chancery, without having recourse to any other means; but I would rather be unhappy myself than make Lady Byron so."

And he said this, well knowing how his name was kept from his daughter, like a forbidden thing; and that his picture was hidden from her sight by a curtain.

One day at Rome, while he was walking amid the ruins of the Forum, treading upon those mighty relics that, to him, breathed language and well-nigh sentiments, that seemed like some magic temple of the past, Lord Byron traced back, in thought, his own career. The meannesses of which he had been, and still was, the victim rose up to view. He allowed his thoughts to wander amid the saddest memories. All the wounds of his still bleeding heart opened afresh. The serenity of the starry sky, the silence of that solemn hour, the ideas of order, peace, and justice, which such a scene ever awakens, contrasted strangely with the material devastation around worked by time. The natural effect of a grand spectacle like this, is to render sadder still those moral ruins accumulated within by the wickedness of man.

Then did his past, so recent still, rise up before him in all its bitterness. And, taking earth and heaven to witness, he exclaimed:--

"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? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

"From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy, Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming calumny To the small whisper of the as paltry few, And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance of whose significant eye, _Learning to lie with silence, would_ SEEM _true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_."

His spirit stirred with excitement, he invoked the aid of the divinity whose shrine these Roman remains appeared to be:--

"O Time! the beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled; Time! the corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love--sole philosopher, For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift, Which never loses though it doth defer-- Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift."

And what was this gift? Was it vengeance? No! It was the _repentance_ of those who had done and were still doing him wrong; that was the prayer he sent up to heaven, so as not to have worn in vain this iron in his soul, and so that, when his earthly life should cease, his spirit,--

"_Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move, In hearts all rocky now, the late remorse of love._"[94]

Arrived before the temple of Nemesis,--that dread divinity who has never left unpunished human injustice,--Lord Byron evokes her thus:--

"Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must."

He feels that the guilty will not escape the vengeance of the goddess, since it is _inevitable_; but, as to him, he will not wreak it. Nemesis shall watch; he will sleep. _He reserves to himself, however, one revenge. Which? Ever the same:--Forgiveness!_

"That curse shall be forgiveness."[95]

Now, we have seen that his generosity did not recoil from any sacrifice of fortune, repose, affection; we have seen it strong against all privations, all instincts, all interests; in short, we have looked at it under all the aspects that constitute great beauty of soul. There remains only one degree more for him to attain--heroism. But the constant exercise of generosity of soul, in inferior degrees, will give him power to reach that sublime height, and, summing up all in one, arrive at _the crowning sacrifice of his life_.

Already more than once, in Italy, and especially in Romagna, when that peninsula was preparing a grand struggle for independence, Lord Byron had shown himself ready to make any sacrifice, to aid in throwing off Austrian chains. But, owing to subsequent events, his extreme devotedness could not then go beyond the offer made. Two years later it was accepted; an enslaved nation, eager for redemption, asked Lord Byron's assistance toward regaining its liberty. In this sacrifice on his part, no single feature of greatness is wanting. Lord Byron would have been great, had he sacrificed himself for his country; but how much greater was he in sacrificing himself for a foreign nation, for the general cause of humanity? He would still have remained great, had he been led into this noble sacrifice by his own enthusiasm, by his illusions, by personal hopes. But no illusion, no enthusiasm, impelled him toward Greece; naught save the satisfaction caused in a noble mind by the performance of a great action. He did not even hope to escape ingratitude or to silence calumny; for, although so young, he had already acquired the experience of mature years. He knew Greece, and was well aware what he should find there, in exchange for his repose and for all dear to him in this world. We know what sadness overwhelmed his soul during the last period of his sojourn at Genoa. The struggles he had with his own heart may be imagined, when we reflect, that despite his self-control, he was more than once surprised with tears in his eyes.

When hardly out of port from Genoa, a tempest cast him back. He landed, and resolved on visiting the abode he had left with such anguish the day before. While climbing the hill of Albano, the darkest presentiments took possession of his soul. "Where shall we be this day next year?" said he to Count Gamba, who was walking by his side. Alas! we know that precisely that day next year, his mortal remains were carried through the streets of London, on their way to repose with his ancestors, near Newstead. His sorrow only increased on arriving at the palace. His friends were gone; all within that dwelling was silent, deserted, solitary. He asked to be left alone; and then shut himself up in his apartments, remaining there for several hours. What was his occupation? What were his thoughts? Through what strange agony did he pass? Who shall tell us (since he concealed it), of that last struggle between the Man and the Hero?

The sadnesses of great souls are _unspeakable_, almost _superhuman_. They are beyond the scales where we would weigh them. But we know that he understood and tasted the bitterness of this chalice,[96] without drawing back, without failing to drain it to the last.

Night came, and behold him once more on board the vessel. The tempest roared again, then ceased; but the storm within his soul did not cease. Only when a tear sometimes threatened betrayal, did he hasten to the privacy of his cabin.

We will not give here the narrative of this voyage. These pages, we again repeat, are not a biography, but the picture of a soul.

On arriving at the Ionian Islands, he soon understood that his sacrifice, though not beyond what circumstances demanded, certainly far transcended any hope that could exist of regenerating this fallen race, and constituting a nation worthy to bear the glorious name of Greece. But it mattered not: he had given his word, and he was resolved to remain in the country. He even quitted the asylum afforded by the Ionian Islands, and determined to encounter all dangers, the better to accomplish his mission.

Then he went to Missolonghi. The privations he underwent there, the moral and physical fatigue, the effluvia from the adjoining marshes, and the mode of life he was forced to lead, all combined to affect his naturally good health. He was entreated to leave this unhealthy place, and told that his life depended on it. He felt it and knew it. Already he perceived the spectre of the future, and, at the same time, the image of his beloved Italy floated before his eyes,--all that he had left, and would still find there; he represented to himself the existence he might lead there, quiet and happy, surrounded with love and respect. Still so young, handsome, rich, and almost adored, for whom could life have more value? But, if he left, what would become of Greece? His presence was worth an army to that unhappy country. So, then, he would not desert his post; _he resolved to remain, come what might_. "_No, Tita; no, we will not return to Italy_," said he sadly to his faithful Venetian follower a few days before he fell ill. _He did remain, and he died._

By this action, in which he overcame himself, Lord Byron gave one of those rare examples of self-immolation, of virtue, and heroism, which, says a noble mind of our day,[97] "afford real consolation to the soul, and reflect the greatest honor on the human race."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 89:

"Their praise is hymn'd by loftier hearts than mine, Yet one I would select from that proud throng,

## Partly because they blend me with his line,

And partly that I did his sire some wrong."]

[Footnote 90: See Medwin.]

[Footnote 91:

"In the shade of her bower, I remember the hour She rewarded those vows with a Tear.

By another possest, may she live ever blest! Her name still my heart must revere; With a sigh I resign what I once thought was mine, And forgive her deceit with a Tear."

"_The Tear_" (October, 1806).]

[Footnote 92: She had been obliged to separate from her husband, who returned her sacrifices by bad and even brutal treatment.]

[Footnote 93:

"Oh! she was changed As by the sickness of the soul; her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes They had not their own lustre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things; And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight familiar were to hers. And this the world calls frenzy."]

[Footnote 94: "Childe Harold," canto iv.]

[Footnote 95: Ibid.]

[Footnote 96: See his "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 97: M. Janet.]

## CHAPTER XVI.

FAULTS OF LORD BYRON.

After having shown the virtues Lord Byron possessed, it might seem useless to inquire whether he had not the faults whose absence they prove. Still, however, it is well to look at the subject from another point of view, and to offer, so to say, counter-proof. For, in judging him, all rules have been disregarded, not only those of justice and equity, but likewise those of logic. And, as it has been variously asserted of him, that he was constant and inconstant, firm and fickle, guided by principle, yet giving way to every impulse; that he was both chaste and profligate, a sensual man and an anchorite; calumny alone can not be accused of all these contradictions. We must then seek out conscientiously whether there were not other causes for this _inconsistency_, so as to return back within due bounds, and bring contradiction in accord with truth. It is, of course, beyond dispute that the first cause of the unjust verdicts passed upon him lay in the bad passions stirred up by his success, by the independent language he used, and his contempt for a thousand national prejudices. Nevertheless, as the degree of injustice dealt out toward him was quite extraordinary, it may be asked whether some real defects did not lend specious reason to his enemies, and thus we are forced to confess that he had one great fault, which did powerfully aid their wickedness; it consisted in a species of _cruelty_ toward himself, _a positive necessity of calumniating himself_.

Although the origin of this fault or defect must have been principally in the greatness of his soul, it certainly had other secondary and lesser causes, and, in common with many other qualities, it was fatal to his happiness; for men accustomed to exaggerate their own virtues only too readily believed him. This mode of doing harm to and _persecuting_ himself, of casting shadows over his brilliant destiny, was so strange and so real, that it is necessary to show to what extent he did it, by collecting some of the numerous testimonies given among those who knew him, before we bring out the real cause of his fault, as well as the effect it had on his happiness and his reputation.

In no hands could his character have been less safe than his own, nor any greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he affected to be, for what he was.

While yet a student at Cambridge, he wrote a letter to Miss Pigott, full of gayety and fun, giving as an excuse for his silence the dissipated life he was leading, and which he calls _a wretched chaos of noise and drunkenness, doing nothing but hunt, drink Burgundy, play, intrigue, libertinize_. Then he exclaims:--

"What misery to have nothing else to do but make love and verses, and create enemies for one's self."

But while avowing this misery, he adds that he has _just written 214 pages of prose and 1200 verses_.

And Moore remarks, in a note annexed to this curious letter:--

"We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters, that sort of display and boast of _rakishness_ which is but too common a folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily, this boyish desire to be thought worse than he really was remained with Lord Byron, as did some other failings and foibles, long after the period when, with others, they are past and forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but beginning to outgrow them when he was snatched away."

When Moore speaks of the letter in which Lord Byron, replying to the praise given by Mr. Dallas, says he did not merit it, and depreciates himself morally in every possible way, Moore adds:--

"Here again, however, we should recollect there must be a considerable share of allowance for the _usual tendency to make the most and the worst of his own obliquities_. There occurs, indeed, in his first letter to Mr. Dallas, an account of this strange ambition, the _very reverse_, it must be allowed, of hypocrisy--which led him to court rather than avoid the reputation of profligacy, and to put, at all times, the worst face on his own character and conduct."

Mr. Dallas, writing for the first time to Lord Byron after having read his early poems, paid him some compliments on the moral beauties and charitable sentiments contained in his verses, remarking that they recalled another noble author, who was not only a poet, an orator, and a distinguished historian, but one of the most vigorous reasoners in England on the truths of that religion of which forgiveness forms the ruling principle, viz., the good and great Lord Lyttelton. Lord Byron answered, depreciating himself in a literary sense, and calumniating himself morally, by the assertion that he resembled Lord Lyttelton's son--a bad, though talented man--rather than the great author.

Dallas had the good sense to take this appreciation for what it was worth, and asked permission to pay the young nobleman a visit. Lord Byron answered politely that he should be happy to make his acquaintance, but continued to paint himself, especially as regarded his opinions, in the most unfavorable colors. Moore gives the whole of this letter, and then adds:--

"It must be recollected, before we attach any particular importance to the details of his creed, that in addition to the temptation--never easily resisted by him--of displaying his wit, at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those _officious self-satisfied advisers_ whom it was the delight of Lord Byron, at all times, to _astonish_ and _mystify_.

"The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavander, were but the first of a long series, with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous quacks whom his celebrity and sociability drew around him."

In the first satire he gave to the world, and which attracted sympathy for his talent as well as for the justice of his cause, the horror he entertained of hypocrisy already made him speak against himself:--

"E'en I--least thinking of a thoughtless throng, Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong."

After having quoted an early poem of Lord Byron, written in an hour of great depression, and which would seem, inspired by momentary madness, Moore makes the following declaration:--

"These concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, to awaken more of horror than of interest, were we not prepared, by so many instances of his exaggeration in this respect, not to be startled at any lengths to which the spirit of _self-libelling_ would carry him. It seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the ambition to be himself the dark 'sublime he drew,' and that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavored to fancy, where he could not find in his own character, fit subjects for his pencil."

Moore, mentioning another article in his memoranda, where Lord Byron accuses himself of irritability of temperament in his early youth, follows up with this reflection:--

"In all his portraits of himself, the pencil he uses is so dark that the picture of his temperament and his self-attempts, covering as they do with _a dark shadow the shade itself_, must be taken with large allowance for exaggeration."

In another passage of his work, Moore further says:--

"To the perverse fancy he had for falsifying his own character, and even imputing to himself faults the most alien to his nature, I have already frequently adverted. I had another striking instance of it one day at La Mira."

Moore then relates that, on leaving Venice, he went to La Mira to bid Lord Byron farewell. Passing through the hall, he saw the little Allegra, who had just returned from a walk. Moore made some remark on the beauty of the child, and Byron answered, "Have you any notion--but I suppose you have--of what they call the parental feeling? For myself, I have not the least." And yet, when that child died, in a year or two afterward, he who had uttered this artificial speech was so overwhelmed by the event, that those who were about him at the time actually trembled for his reason.[98]

Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who knew Lord Byron in Greece, shortly before his death, says:--

"Most men affect a virtuous character; Lord Byron's ambition, on the contrary, seemed to be to make the world believe that he was a sort of _Satan_, though impelled by high sentiments to accomplish great actions. _Happily for his reputation, he possessed another quality that unmasked him completely: he was the most open and most sincere of men, and his nature, inclined to good, ever swayed all his actions._"[99]

Mr. Finlay, who knew Lord Byron about the same time, says _that not only he calumniated himself, but that he hid his best sentiments_.

Speaking of the simplicity of his manners, and his repugnance for all _emphasis_:--

"I have always observed," continues Mr. Finlay, "that he adopted a very simple and even monotonous tone, when he had to say any thing not quite in the ordinary style of conversation. Whenever he had begun a sentence which showed that the subject interested him, and which contained sublime thought, he would check himself suddenly, and come to an end without concluding, either with a smile of indifference or in a careless tone. I thought he had adopted this mode _to hide his real sentiments when he feared lest his tongue should be carried away by his heart_; and often he did so evidently to hide the author or rather the poet. But in satire or clever conversation his genius took full flight."[100]

And Stanhope further adds:--

"I also have observed that Lord Byron acted in this way. He often liked to hide the noble sentiments that filled his soul, and even tried to turn them into ridicule."[101]

This was only too true. The spirit of repartee and fun often made him display his intellectual faculties at the expense of his moral nature and his truest sentiments.

Moore says that when Lord Byron went to Ravenna to see Countess G---- again, he wrote to Hoppner, who looked after his affairs, in such a light vein of pleasantry, that it would have been difficult for any one not knowing him thoroughly to conceive the possibility of his expressing himself thus, while under the influence of a passion so sincere:--

"But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, from which nothing--not even love--remains sacred; and which at last, for want of other food, turns upon self. The same horror, too, of hypocrisy that led Lord Byron to exaggerate his own errors led him also to disguise, under a seemingly heartless ridicule, all those natural and kindly qualities by which they were redeemed."

And by way of contrast with the strange lightness of his letter to Hoppner, as well as to do justice to the reality of his passion, Moore then quotes the whole of those beautiful stanzas, called "The Po," which Lord Byron wrote while crossing that river on his way from Venice to Ravenna.[102]

We might multiply quotations, in order to prove that all those who knew him have more or less remarked this phenomenon. But no one has well determined its principal cause; or else it has been too much confounded with the strange caprices he showed, especially in early youth; for subsequently, says Moore, "_when he saw that the world gravely believed the opinion he had given of himself, he refused any longer to echo it_."

There is certainly truth in the judgment passed by Moore and others. It can not be denied that, when as a boy, he boasted of his dissipated life at the University, the chief reason of it lay in the folly common to that period of life, which impels human beings while yet children to seek to appear like men by aping the vices of riper years. It can not be denied, either, that the pleasure of mystifying suggested his answer to Dallas; that an exaggerated horror of hypocrisy taught his pen a thousand censures of himself beginning with his first satire; that a sort of over-excitement and reaction of imagination gave him, at times, the strange ambition of appearing to be one of those dark, proud heroes he loved to paint for the sake of effect. Moreover, we must not forget that witty turn of mind which his extraordinary perception of the ridiculous, and his facility for seeing the two sides of things, often made him to display at the expense of his better nature, by seeming to mock his truest sentiments, as when he wrote to Hoppner: a psychological phenomenon, of which the cause has been more particularly sought elsewhere. Finally, we may also add that he might have believed he was disarming envy and malice by speaking against himself; and that he was to a certain extent escaping from the effects of those evil passions by throwing them something whereon to feed. Who knows whether he also did not--a little through goodness of heart, and greatly through the tactics that make good politicians complain of the unpleasantnesses attached to their greatness--ascribe to himself imaginary defects, so as to let some compassion, under the form of blame, mix with the malice that hemmed him in on all sides; and whether he did not think it well to make use of this means, as of a shield, to ward off their blows? This sort of generous artifice, which I more than once suspected in him, may serve as long as public favor lasts; but when persecution gets the upper hand,--which is the case sooner or later with all greatness and all virtues--when Envy triumphs by means of calumny, she converts into poison, benefits, virtues, gratitude. Thus, if our hypothesis be correct, Lord Byron would have been cruelly punished for his weakness in allowing that to be believed of him which was not true. Still, all we have observed can only furnish, at best, the secondary and evanescent causes of the moral phenomenon described, and those who would fain penetrate the recesses of Lord Byron's soul must search deeper for explanation. Our idea is, the first cause will be found to lie in some sentiment that reigned all powerful in his breast. I mean that he placed _his ideal standard too high_, and the influence it exercised over him was manifest _even to his last moments_.

In the severe judgments which he has pronounced upon himself in the first place, on mankind in general, and on some particular individuals, the ideal model of all the intellectual, moral, and physical beauty which he found in the depth of his own mind, shone with divine lustre before his imagination, by the union of faculties imbued with extraordinary energy.

We see, by a thousand traits, that his ideal was formed much earlier than is common with ordinary children. In his first youthful poems it already displayed itself much developed. Ever attracted toward truth, his first desire was to seek after that; and the better to do so, he searched into himself, analyzed what was passing within and without, and finally proclaimed it without any consideration for himself or others.

At Harrow we see him leaving off play to go and sit down alone and meditate on the stone now called _Byron's tomb_.

At Cambridge afterward, despite the dissipation he shared equally with his comrades, amid games and exercises in which he greatly excelled, we still find him courting meditation under shady trees. On returning to his home, the Abbey, when surrounded with the noise and frolic of boisterous companions, we see him devote himself to study and solitary reflection; finally, during his travels, and after his return, when all England was at his feet, we behold him still and ever experiencing that imperious _want_ of scanning himself, of descending into the depths of his own heart, interrogating his conscience, and very often of writing down in his memorandum-books the severe sentences pronounced by that inflexible judge. And, as he could not put away from sight his divine model, he came out from these examinations _humbled, dissatisfied, reproaching and punishing himself for having strayed from it_. For he discovered too many terrestrial elements in all human virtues. For instance, in friendships, though so generous on his side, he found the satisfaction of a personal want, consequently, an egotistical element; the same, and much more strongly, with regard to love. He found something personal in the best instincts, in the passion for glory, in patriotism, even in the sentiment of veneration, since that is an echo of our tastes and personal sympathies. That the high standard of his ideal was the first cause of injustice toward himself, a thousand proofs might be offered. I will choose some only. We read in his memoranda:--

"It has lately been in my power to make two men happy. I am delighted at it, especially as regards the last, for he is excellent. _But I wish there had been a little more sacrifice on my part, and less satisfaction for my self-love in doing that, because then there would have been more merit._"

Such was this great culprit. He actually felt pleasure in doing good! Another time he was asked to present a petition to Parliament. "I am not in a humor for this business," writes he in the evening journal, where he examined his conscience. He was suffering then from grief, caused by the absence of a person he loved, and he apostrophizes himself in these terms:--"Had ---- been here she would have _made_ me do it. _There_ is a woman who, amid all her fascination, always urged a man to usefulness or glory. Had she remained, she had been my tutelar genius.

"Baldwin is very unfortunate; but, poor fellow, 'I can't get out; I can't get out,' said the starling. _Ah! I am as bad as that dog Sterne, who preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother. Villain! hypocrite! slave! sycophant! But I am no better. Here I can not stimulate myself to a speech for the sake of these unfortunates, and three words and half a smile of----, had she been here to urge it (and urge it she infallibly would; at least, she always pressed me on in senatorial duties, and particularly in the cause of weakness), would have made me an advocate, if not an orator. Curse on Rochefoucault for being always right!_"

Another time _he also accused himself of selfishness, because he wrote only for amusement_! He was then but twenty-three years of age:--

"To withdraw myself from myself (_oh, that cursed selfishness!_) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all; and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself."

This hard opinion of man's virtue, formed by many moralists, and especially by those who see virtue only in pure disinterested benevolence, was an impulse with Lord Byron rather than the result of reason; and I much doubt whether this craving for equity and truth were ever practically combined and harmonized with the faculty of benevolence in any one else as it was with Lord Byron, for this combination evidently formed the most striking part of his character. Montaigne himself,--who, if he did not possess as much innate benevolence, had nevertheless the faculty, and even felt the want of entering into his conscience, and examining it, so as to draw forth general notions,--says, "When I examine myself conscientiously, I find that my best sort of goodness has a _vicious tint_."

And he fears that even Plato, in his _brightest virtue_, had he analyzed it well, would have found _some human admixture_. And then he sums up by saying, "Man is made up of bits and oddities."[103]

But these sincere philosophers are few in number, and their maxims can never be popular. For men in general experience rather the want of magnifying than of depreciating themselves, and, instead of taking their best models from an ideal, they choose them from reality, judge characters, compare themselves to other men, and, living like other people, see no guilt in themselves; while Lord Byron, living as they did, discovered in himself weaknesses, reasons for modesty, regret, repentance. If he could have done as they did, he would have been satisfied, and he would either have escaped or vanquished calumny. But he could not and would not, though conscious of the harm thence resulting to himself.

"You censure my life, Harness. When I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence,--a walking statue, without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general has given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations; but I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love. Romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!"

One of his biographers pretends that he rendered himself justice another time, and represents him as saying, speaking of M----:

"See how well he has got on in the world! He is just as little inclined to commit a bad action as incapable of doing a good one; fear keeps him from the former, and wickedness from the latter. The difference between him and me is that I attack a great many people, and truly, with one or two exceptions (and note that they are persons of my own sex), I do not hate one; while he says no harm of any one, but hates a great many, if not every body. Fancy, then, how amusing it would be to see him in the palace of Truth, when he would be thinking he was making the sweetest compliments, while all the time he would be giving vent to the accumulated spite and rancor of years, and then to see the person he had flattered so long listen to his real sentiments for the first time. Oh! that would truly be a comic sight. As to me, I should appear to great advantage in the palace of Truth, for while I should be thinking to vex friends and enemies with harsh speeches, I should be saying pretty things on the contrary; for at bottom, _I have no malice or ill-nature,--at least, not of that kind which lasts more than a moment_."

"Never," adds the biographer, "was a truer observation made. Lord Byron's nature is _very fine_, despite all the bad weeds that might have attempted to spring up in it; and I am convinced that it is the excellence of the poet, or rather the effect of such excellence, which has caused the faults of the man.

"The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased in proportion to the admiration excited by the poet, and often with the greatest injustice. The world offered up incense to the poet, while heaping ashes on the head of the man. He was indignant at such usage, and wounded pride avenged itself by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to give a deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forcing them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was their disapprobation of his supposed character."[104]

Is this conversation real or imaginary? Doubt is allowable; but, however it may be, the reflections of the biographer in this case are too sensible and too true for us not to quote them with pleasure.

In concluding these remarks, which prove how high was the ideal type that impelled Lord Byron to be unjust to himself, I will further observe, that it was the exaggeration of his great characteristic faculties which made him fail in some little virtue (such as prudence, when it has its source _solely in our personal interest_). For it was only to this degree, and from this point of view, that Lord Byron lacked it. And it appears singular that his great mind should not have made him see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he _felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain enough sacrifice_; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties that can have no alloy of egotism, and which were very evidently the most _striking qualities of his character_. But he was, with regard to himself, like the torch which, lighting up distant objects, leaves those near it in obscurity. Lord Byron did not know himself; he had by no means overcome that difficulty which the oracles of Greece pronounced _the greatest_. Only he was sometimes conscious of it. In his memoranda, written at Ravenna, in 1821, after having said that he does not think the world judges him well, he adds:--

"I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German as (interpreted to me), Italian and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretin, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, an Alabaster Vase lighted up within, Satan, Shakspeare, Bonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin the clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the Phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to Young, R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a _petit maitre_, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in 'Beppo,' to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to 'oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Byron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, etc., etc. The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what _that_ is is more than I know, or any body else."

But had he known himself, he would have found that he realized one of the finest types of character that humanity can offer; for his two characteristic faculties were, his attraction toward truth and benevolence. And in ceasing to calumniate himself, he would have snatched from the hands of the envious and the enemies of truth, the principal weapon they made use of to defame him.

When one reflects on all this, one questions with astonishment how it is that all his biographers should have remained outside of truth. But it is useless insisting thereupon, for we have given sufficient answer.[105]

I will, then, confine myself to remarking here that one characteristic peculiar to the biographers of great men in general, is the extreme repugnance they feel toward praising their own subjects. What is the cause? Do they fear being told they have made a panegyric, passing for flatterers, appearing to get through a task? Do they believe that, in order to show cleverness, perspicacity, and deep knowledge of the human heart, it is necessary to put in place of simple truth a sort of malice, not very intelligible, and often contradictory? All that may well be, but I believe that what they especially feel is, that if their books were only written for noble minds, possessing such qualities as only belong to the minority of the human race, they might run the risk of being less sought after and less bought. Thus they search for faults with ardor, just as miners do for diamonds; and when they think they have discovered a vice in their hero, they look upon it as the "Mogul" of their book. They make it shine, polish it up, show it in a thousand lights, bring it out as the striking part of their work,--the chief quality of their hero, who, unable to defend himself, is handed down, disfigured, to posterity. Such are the strange perils incurred, as regards truth and justice, and the wrong done toward the great departed; and this is why their surviving friends are called on to protest against the false assertions of biographers. Those who have written on Lord Byron, unable to find this great "Mogul" (for Lord Byron had no vices), have all, more or less, sought at least to draw the attention of their readers to a thousand little weaknesses, mostly devoid of reality. Upon what basis, indeed, do they rest?--Almost always on Lord Byron's words. Now we know what account should be made of his testimony when he speaks against himself. For instance, he has called himself irritable and prone to anger, and biographers have found it very convenient to paint him with his own brush. Men never fail to treat those who depreciate themselves with equal injustice. Nor is this surprising. If it be true that we are always judged on our faulty side, even though we endeavor to show the best, what must be the case if our efforts tend only to display our worst? And besides, why should others give themselves the trouble of exonerating a man from blame who depreciated himself? As it requires great discernment, great generosity, and very rare qualities, not to go beyond truth in self-esteem, biographers have not hesitated to declare Lord Byron, on his own testimony, _very irritable_, and even very passionate; but was he really so? This is a question to be examined.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: Moore's "Life," vol. iv. p. 241.]

[Footnote 99: Parry, 273.]

[Footnote 100: Letter from Finlay to Stanhope, Parry, 210.]

[Footnote 101: Parry, 210.]

[Footnote 102: Moore, 214, vol. ii. in 4to.]

[Footnote 103: Montaigne, vol. iii. p. 87.]

[Footnote 104: "Journal of Conversation," p. 195.]

[Footnote 105: See chapter on Lord Byron's biographers.]

## CHAPTER XVII.

IRRITABILITY OF LORD BYRON.

Was Lord Byron irritable? With his poetic temperament, his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility, so grievously tried by circumstances, it would be equally absurd and untrue to pretend that he was as impassible as a stoic, or phlegmatic as some good citizen who vegetates rather than lives. Did such qualities, or rather faults,--for they betoken a cold nature,--ever belong to Milton, Dante, Alfieri, and those master-spirits whose strength of passion, combined with force of intellect, have merited for them the rank of geniuses?

All more or less were, and could not fail to have been, susceptible of irritation and anger; for such susceptibility was indispensable in the peculiar constitution of their minds. But he who finds sufficient strength of will to control himself, when over-excitement is caused by some wounded feeling, does not that person approach to virtue? Did Lord Byron possess this power? Every thing, even to the testimony of his servants, his masters, his comrades, proves that he did. In childhood he showed that he knew how to conquer himself, and would use his power. He says, himself, that his anger was of a silent nature, and made him grow pale. Now, is not pale and silent anger of the kind that is overcome? We know that Lord Byron's mother, while still young, suffered so cruelly from the simultaneous loss of her fortune and a husband she adored, that her temper became changed and embittered. She gave way to violent bursts of passion, quite at variance with her excellent qualities of heart; thus she loved her son, but being very jealous of his affection, a trifle sufficed to make her launch out into reproaches and disagreeable scenes. This disposition on her part was not calculated to inspire the tenderness which her passionate fondness for him would otherwise have merited. But it was his disapprobation of such scenes that taught him to overcome in himself all outward tokens of anger, and to keep guard over his temper. Thus he opposed to the violence displayed by his poor mother a calm and silent demeanor that provoked her still more, it is true, but which proved great strength of will in him. After a violent scene that took place with her during one of his Cambridge vacations, he even determined on leaving home.

"It was very seldom," says Moore, "that he allowed himself to be so far provoked by her as to come out of his passivity."

And by what he himself declares in his memoranda, written at the age of twenty-two, we see that he did not permit any external demonstration of his temper, and that under this discipline it certainly had already improved. "It is especially when I wish to keep silence, and when I feel my cheeks and brow grow pale," says he, "that it becomes very difficult for me to control myself; but the presence of a woman, though not of all women, suffices to calm me."

To proceed with justice in any psychological study, we should never lose sight of the particular circumstances of the subject under treatment. Now, the circumstances amid which Lord Byron's moral and social life first began to unfold itself were very irritating.

While yet a boy we see his heart expand to love, to tenderness, excited by the way in which the young lady received his attentions, by the gift she made him of her portrait, by meetings, by the encouragement her parents afforded; for, notwithstanding the disproportion of age, they looked favorably on a union that was equal with regard to fortune and position. And while he was thus beguiled, this girl--whom he considered an angel--deemed the timid youth too childish, and entered into a union with a man of fashion.

On the eve of a long farewell to England, a friend whom he loved with all the devotedness that belonged to a heart like his, showed the utmost indifference at his departure. Having attained his majority, he ought to have taken his seat in the House of Peers; but his noble guardian, Lord Carlisle, whom he had always treated with respect, and to whom he had lately shown the attention of dedicating his early poems to him, behaved toward him in an unjustifiable manner. Not only did he refuse to present him to the House of Lords, but he even delayed sending the documents necessary for his admission, because forsooth the noble earl _did not like his ward's mother_! Lord Byron had published a charming collection of poems that won for him equal applause and sympathy; but an all-powerful Review sought to humiliate him and crush his talent in the bud by bringing out a brutal and stupid article against him. Nor was this all; he had likewise the annoyance of money embarrassments inherited from his predecessors in the estate. Leaving England under the sting of all these insults from men and fate, which a phlegmatic temper could alone have borne with patience, would it have been astonishing if his young heart had felt irritation? But could it have existed without being perceived by those who lived with him? Yet they say nothing about it. His fellow-traveller was a friend and comrade of old,--Lord Broughton, then the Hon. Mr. Hobhouse. If Lord Byron had been of an irritable, violent temper, who more than his daily companion would have perceived it, and suffered from it in that constant intercourse which tries the gentlest natures? Mr. Hobhouse had lived with Lord Byron at Cambridge, was one of his inseparable companions of Newstead, and was a member of the confraternity of the chapter. Thus he knew him well, and if Lord Byron's temper had been unamiable, would he have undertaken such a long journey with him? Lord Byron did not then possess even the prestige of celerity to render him desirable as a fellow-traveller. Well, on returning from this journey, Mr. Hobhouse was more attached than ever to Lord Byron, and, speaking of his qualities, expressed himself thus:--"To perspicacity of observation and ingenious remarks, Lord Byron united that gayety and good-humor which keeps attention alive under the pressure of fatigue, smoothing all difficulties and dangers."

Journeys taken together test tempers so much, that a good understanding which has withstood the trial of twenty years, is often compromised in a journey of twenty-four hours. Thus to choose again for our travelling companions those with whom we have already long journeyed, is the best testimony that can be rendered to their amiable disposition. Well, this testimony was given by Mr. Hobhouse; and while proving Lord Byron's excellent temper, it also proves the high character of Mr. Hobhouse. For we must not forget that malice and stupidity were inflicting a real persecution on Lord Byron at the very moment when Mr. Hobhouse hastened to rejoin him at Geneva, so as to travel again in company with his noble friend. They accomplished together an excursion into the Alps, and afterward crossed over them to visit Italy. On arriving at Venice, the two friends separated for several months; but in the spring they met again to visit together Rome and Florence. It was beside Mr. Hobhouse, while scaling the Alps, that the plan of "Manfred" was conceived; and it was on the road from Venice to Rome that the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was written: it is dedicated to Mr. Hobhouse, and he it was who made the volume of notes, which forms, even independently of the text, a work so well appreciated in England.

Having gathered from Lord Byron's first journey proofs of his good natural disposition, and of the control he exercised over himself, I shall also draw others from his last: that journey from Cephalonia to Missolonghi which proved so fatal, and which alone, from all Lord Byron did, said, and wrote during the time it lasted, would suffice to reveal his fine character, and almost every one of his virtues.

It is well known, that during this journey he underwent still greater annoyances than in the one from Genoa to Cephalonia, which had already tried him so much. On seeing both destiny and the elements so pertinaciously combine against its success, one might really be tempted to embrace superstitious ideas, and see therein the efforts of his good genius raising up all sorts of obstacles in order to save him, and keep him from that fatal shore. I have already given the description of this journey so full of dramatic incidents; and I have related Lord Byron's admirable conduct throughout, in the passages where proofs are adduced of his courage in danger, of his extraordinary coolness and extreme generosity. But that is not enough; we must also examine him with regard to amiability of temper and the self-control he was able to exercise.

We have seen him, when pressed on all sides to quit the Ionian Islands for the continent of Greece, yield to these entreaties, although it was the most severe season of the year (28th December), and, notwithstanding a stormy sea, set out for Missolonghi.

He refused the honor of an escort of Greek vessels, hiring instead a Cephalonian _Mistico_, and a heavy _Bombarda_ that waited for him at St. Euphemia. But on arriving near the harbor, he was driven back by contrary winds. Forced to remain on shore and wait, what sort of humor did he display under these annoyances? Mr. Kennedy, who went to wish him a pleasant journey, shall tell us.

"I found him," says he, "quietly reading 'Quentin Durward,' and, as usual, in high spirits."

Meanwhile, the sea grew calm. They set sail, and embarked; Lord Byron on the little _Mistico_, with his doctor, two or three servants, and his dogs; Count Gamba on the _Bombarda_, with the arms, horses, followers, baggage, papers, money, etc. On arriving at Zante, persons came to offer Lord Byron means of amusement, various comforts, etc. To accept might have been very pleasant for him; but he knew that he was wanted at Missolonghi; and not an hour would he lose after having transacted business with his bankers. He believed (for it had been announced) that Greek vessels were coming to meet him; nor did he doubt that the Turkish fleet was still anchored at Lepanto. Sea and wind were favorable, the sky serene, fortune for once seemed to smile; but it was only the better to deceive him. The Turks had been informed of his departure; and hoped to make an easy prey of him and his riches. They left the waters of Lepanto, and heading their course toward Patras, set off in pursuit of Lord Byron and his suite.

At the close of a few hours, the _Mistico_, which was a good sailer, lost sight of the _Bombarda_, of slower motion. They halted opposite the Scrophes (rocks in Roumelia), to wait for it; and meanwhile Lord Byron saw a large vessel bearing down upon him. Could it be the Greek vessel sent to meet him? The _Mistico_ fired a pistol at its approach, but the vessel did not answer fire. Was it the enemy, then? On hearing the cries of the sailors on board, the captain could no longer doubt it: it was an Ottoman frigate, calling on them to surrender. Their sole hope of safety lay in the swiftness of their sails. Under cover of the darkness, which left the Turks in fear lest the _Mistico_ should be a fire-ship, and aided by the almost miraculous silence that reigned,--for even the dogs, that had been barking all night, now held their peace,--the _Mistico_ sped onward rapidly. At dawn of day it had arrived opposite the coast, but, owing to a contrary wind, was unable to get into port. At the same moment, another Turkish vessel, on the watch, closed the passage toward the Gulf. An Ionian boat perceived the danger, and made signals from the shore for the _Mistico_ not to approach. They then succeeded, all sails set, in throwing themselves between the rocks of Roumelia, called Scrophes, where the Turkish vessel could not penetrate. It was amid these rocks, where he hardly remained an hour, that Lord Byron wrote Colonel Stanhope a letter, truly admirable for its generosity, patience, courage, coolness, and good temper; a letter which it would seem impossible to pen under such circumstances, and which makes Count Gamba say, when he quotes it in his work entitled "Last Voyage of Lord Byron in Greece:"--

"Such was Lord Byron's style in the midst of great dangers. There was always immense gayety in him, under circumstances that render other men serious and full of care. This disposition of mind gave him an air of frankness and sincerity, quite irresistible, even with persons previously less well disposed toward him."

Having hardly, and as if by a miracle, escaped from this danger, and being exposed every instant to assault from the Turks, having seen the _Bombarda_ captured by the Ottoman frigate, did he complain of any thing personal to himself? No. His sole anxiety was for Count Gamba; his uneasiness was the danger to which the Greeks with him were exposed. As to his money losses--"_Never mind_," said he,"_don't think about it, we have some left._ But we have no arms, except two carbines and some pistols; and if our friends, the Turks, took a fancy to send their vessels to attack us, I greatly fear that we should only be four on board to defend ourselves."

Not being able to know that the _unexpected apparition_ of the Turkish fleet had put out all their calculations, and prevented the Greek government from collecting the vessels sent from Missolonghi to meet him; not knowing that Missolonghi, in great consternation, on learning the danger to which he was exposed, was about to send other vessels in quest of him, other vessels that would no longer find him near the Scrophes rocks, he necessarily believed that nothing had been done to keep the promises made him. Under such a persuasion, would not some few harsh words have been most natural? And yet this is the language Lord Byron used:--

"But where has it gone to; the fleet that lets us advance without giving the least sign of any Moslems in these latitudes? Present my respects to Mavrocordato, and tell him I am here at his disposal. I am ill at ease here (among the rocks), not so much for myself, as for the Greek child with me; for you know what his destiny would be! We are all in good health."

The _Mistico_ had hardly been an hour among these rocks, Lord Byron's letter to Colonel Stanhope was hardly finished, when the Turkish vessel on the lookout made toward them to give chase; and they were obliged to fly without delay. Issuing from the rocks, they directed their course, full sail, toward a little port of Acarnania, called Dragomestri, where they arrived before night.

Lord Byron wished to continue his route by land; but it was impossible. The mountains did not afford him better hospitality than the sea. It was the 1st of January; his sole resting-place was the damp deck of the _Mistico_. There he slept, there he eat the coarse sailors' food; and his fingers were so cramped with cold, that he could scarcely write. If he had complained a little of his hard fate, could one be much astonished? Yet these are the terms in which he wrote to his two correspondents at Cephalonia.--_It was the month of January; he wished every one a happy new year; apparently forgetting only himself. He then entered into some details about his "Odyssey" with so much calmness, that nothing seemed to touch him personally; but his heart protested meanwhile, and he could not help showing uneasiness about the fate of his friend Count Gamba, although persuaded that his detention was only temporary:_--

"I regret the detention of Gamba, etc., but the rest we can make up again, so tell Hancock to set my bills into cash as soon as possible, and Corgialegno to prepare the remainder of my credit with Messrs. Webb to be turned into money. We are here for the _fifth day without taking our clothes off, and sleeping on deck in all weathers, but are all very well and in good spirits_. I shall remain here, unless something extraordinary occurs, till Mavrocordato sends, and then go on, and act according to circumstances. My respects to the two colonels, and remembrances to all friends. Tell _Ultima Analise_[106] that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken with us in or off Zante, to give us a gentle hint of what we had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen and the frosty morning at daybreak.

BYRON."

He writes at the same time to Hancock:--

"Here we are--the _Bombarda_ taken--or at least missing, with all the Committee stores, my friend Gamba, the horses, negro, bull-dog, steward, and domestics, with all our implements of peace and war--also 8000 dollars; but whether she will be a lawful prize or no, is for the decision of the governor of the Seven Islands. We are in good condition, considering wind and weather, being hunted by the Turks, and the difficulty of sleeping on deck; we are in tolerable seasoning for the country and circumstances. But I foresee that we shall have occasion for all the cash I can muster at Zante and elsewhere. Tell our friends to keep up their spirits--and we may yet do well. I hope that Gamba's detention will only be temporary. As for the effects and money, if we have them, well; if otherwise, patience! I disembarked the boy and another Greek, who were in most terrible alarm. As for me and mine, we must stick to our goods. I wish you a happy new year; and all our friends the same. Yours,

BYRON."

Would an impatient, irritable temper have acted thus, and preserved such serenity amid so many annoyances, privations, and sufferings, of which one alone might suffice to make a stoic bitter?

But this was not yet all. After six days of this life, hopeless of being able to continue by land, and getting no answer from Missolonghi (from whence, nevertheless, several gun-boats had been dispatched to meet him, and also the brig "Leonidas," which he only fell in with near the Scrophes), he resolved on setting out. But the wind, which had never ceased being contrary, soon changed into a furious tempest. Then Byron was truly sublime. His bark was thrown against enormous rocks; the affrighted sailors, seeing their lives in danger, and excited by fear, abandoned the vessel to seek refuge on the rocks. But he remained there, on board the vessel, which every one saw was sinking.[107]

Encouraged by such an example, the sailors let go their hold on the rocks to try and free the vessel, which they succeeded in setting afloat again; but it was only for it to be forced back a second time by the angry waves. Then despair seized on them all; they trembled for the general safety, and for the illustrious personage on board. He alone showed no emotion; but calmly said to his doctor, who, in great alarm, was about to swim for the shore: "Do not leave the vessel while we have sufficient strength to guide her; only when the water covers us entirely, then throw yourself into the sea, and I will undertake to save you."

And in the midst of those dangers he not only appeared calm, but his gay, playful humor, and his habit of observing the different aspects of every thing, did not abandon him. After having soothed and consoled those around him, he likewise found means of amusement in the strong traits of individuality which fear brought to light among his followers. The sailors who had remained on board, seeing the danger become so imminent, were about to betake themselves, like the rest, to the rocks; but encouraged by Lord Byron's words and example, they remained at their post, and succeeded in bringing the vessel between two little islands, where they cast anchor. Thus Lord Byron, by his courage, firmness, and his great experience in the art of navigation, overcame this great peril, saving several lives, together with the money and other means of assistance he was conveying to Greece! The sailors esteemed themselves happy to be able to cast anchor between these islands, or rather these rocks, in order to pass the night; but even what appeared fortunate, was destined to turn out the reverse in this fatal journey.

If Lord Byron did not complain of the privation and ennui he experienced, he did not, therefore, feel them less. After so many nights passed on the damp and dirty deck of his _Mistico_, he could not resist the desire of refreshing himself, and seeking amid the waves that cleanliness which was an imperative want for his refined nature. And so, without reflecting on the rigor of the season (it was the month of January), he plunged into the troubled sea, and swam there for half an hour. Imprudence no less fatal to him than to Alexander.[108] For it was then, undoubtedly, that he contracted the seeds of the malady which showed itself soon after, and under which he succumbed. At last he arrived at Missolonghi, without having ceased for one instant to be threatened by the sea. He was expected there as if he had been the Messiah, says Stanhope; and the consternation caused by the dangers he had gone through, gave place, on his arrival, to the most lively joy. Lord Byron met with a reception worthy of himself.[109] But this enthusiastic joy, which found expression in songs as well as tears, subjected his patience and good-nature to another sort of trial.

"After eight days of such fatigue," says Count Gamba, "he had scarcely time to refresh himself, and converse with Mavrocordato, and his friends and countrymen, before he was assailed by the tumultuous visits of the primates and chiefs. These latter, not content with coming all together, each had a suite of twenty or thirty, and not unfrequently, fifty soldiers! It was difficult to make them understand that he had fixed certain hours to receive them. Their visits began at seven in the morning, and the greater part of them were without any object." This is one of the most insupportable annoyances to which a man of influence and consideration is exposed in the East.

"_I saw Lord Byron bear all this with the greatest patience._"

Could an irritable temper have done so? For my part, I think that this journey alone, borne, as we have seen, by his letters and the unanimous testimony of his companions, with such perfect good-humor, that he could jest, be quite resigned to unavoidable evils, show indulgence to the faults of others, however great the sufferings entailed thereby on himself; and display great self-denial, strength of mind, and imperturbable serenity, amid frightful dangers; all these qualities, I say, paint the moral nature of the man better than all analyses and commentaries.

But alas! while displaying his virtues, this journey also brings out his faults: since, prudent in behalf of others, he was not at all so for himself; and his want of prudence planted in him the germs of the disease which was so soon to be fatally developed in that stifling atmosphere of Greece, then full of tumult and confusion. If the limits of this chapter allowed, we could multiply proofs of his naturally amiable disposition at all periods of his life; and we would show what he was in Switzerland, at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in Greece, up to his last hour, as he has been described by Shelley, Hoppner, M. de G----, Medwin, Lady B----, and so many others. But to those who have said he was irritable because, feeling himself susceptible of irritation and anger, he declared himself to be so, I will content myself with answering simply by a few lines borrowed from the truthful conversations of Mr. Kennedy:--

"Even during his last days on earth, he calumniated himself. For instance, he told me, that at a certain hour, every evening, he had intolerable fits of ill-humor. Well, Mr. Finlay and M---- always went to see him precisely at that fatal hour, and they invariably found him gay, pleasant, and amiable, as usual."

Mr. Finlay, a young English officer of merit and high intelligence, whom Lord Byron thought very like Shelley, which, perhaps, increased his sympathy for him, and who only knew him two months before his death, says, in a letter written on Lord Byron to Colonel Stanhope:--

"What astonished me most was the indifference with which Lord Byron spoke to us of all the lying reports his enemies spread against him. He gave his vindication and explanation with as much calm frankness as if it had concerned another person."

And he declares his astonishment at seeing him submit to the lessons of morality, and the censures on his opinions and principles which Kennedy, in his extreme orthodoxy, made him undergo.[110]

I will also add, that Lord Byron was often heard to say that he had been in a frightful rage with his servants; but, if they were questioned, _they knew nothing at all about it_. It is known, moreover, that his toleration and gentleness with them almost exceeded due bounds, and that, even when he had serious cause for chiding them, his severest reprimands were conveyed in jests and pleasantries.

Persons who will not change their convictions, go so far as to say,--"Well, be it so. We admit that he may have been calumniated in his private life, and that his strange fancy of speaking against himself may have contributed toward it. But how do you explain the anger expressed by his pen? Do you forget his misanthropical invectives, his personal attacks, his 'Avatar,' his epigrams?"

And I answer them:--"Do you forget that there are different kinds of anger? some that can never be vicious, and others that can never be virtuous? The anger expressed by his pen--the sole kind that was real with him--requires to be explained, not excused or forgotten."

"Let us beware," says a great contemporary philosopher, "of him who is never irritated, and can not understand the existence of a noble anger."[111]

Be so good as to examine, without preconceived opinions, and without prejudice, the nature of every kind of anger he displayed; see if any were personal, egotistical, or whether they did not rather spring from some noble cause; whether they were not rather the generous explosions of a soul burning with indignation at evil and injustice, because it ever held in view the contrast afforded by an ideal of its own that was only too perfect?

It is impossible, for instance, not to see that his pen was guided by one of these generous impulses when he spoke of Lord Castlereagh. He had no personal, malevolent, interested antipathy toward this gay and fashionable nobleman. His pen was inspired simply by his conscience, that revolted at sight of the evils which he attributed to Lord Castlereagh's policy. It was not the colleague, but the minister, that he wished to stigmatize together with his policy, which appeared to Lord Byron inhuman, selfish, and unjust. It was this same policy that caused Pitt to say:--

"If we were just for one hour, we should not live a day." And again:--"Perish every principle rather than England!"

What other statesman did Lord Byron attack except Castlereagh? But him he did detest with a noble hatred.

"By what right do you attack Lord C----?" he was asked.

"By the right," he replied, "that every honest man has to denounce the minister who ruins his country, and treads under foot every sentiment of equity and humanity."

A few days before setting out on his last journey to Greece, he said to an English lady passing through Genoa:--

"With regard to Lord Castlereagh personally, whom you hear that I have attacked, I can only say that a bad minister's memory is as much an object of investigation as his conduct while alive. He is a matter of history; and wherever I find a tyrant or a _villain_, I will mark him. I attacked him no more than I had the right to do, and than was necessary.

"Do not defend me, you will only make yourself enemies--mine are neither to be diminished nor softened."

When Lord Byron wrote about Lord Castlereagh, imagination beheld in him the author of all the evils inflicted on Ireland, the man who through a selfish feeling of nationality, dangerous even to England, had riveted the chains of all Europe.

"If he spoke and wrote thus of Lord Castlereagh," says Kennedy himself, "the reason was that he really thought him an enemy to the true interests of his country; and this sentiment, carried perhaps to excess, made him consider it just to condemn him to the execration of humanity."[112]

What I have said with regard to his attacks on Lord Castlereagh, may equally apply to all the satire hurled against other individuals, against governments and nations. His benevolence was so great and universal, that it rendered the idea of the sufferings endured by humanity quite intolerable to him. His love of justice likewise was so great, that he became thoroughly indignant at seeing what he worshiped trampled under foot by individual or national selfishness, while deceit and injustice were reigning triumphant. Lord Byron conceived a sort of hatred and dislike for the wicked, and those who voluntarily prevented the well-being of men. And when thus indignant at some injustice, if he snatched up a pen, he could not help expressing himself with a certain kind of violence, in order to chastise, if he could not change, the guilty men who martyrized Ireland, crushed and degraded Italy, and condemned England to the hatred of the whole world. The sparkling, witty strain, mocking at all human things, which had served as a weapon for his reason while asserting the interests of truth and injustice in Italy, and protesting against folly and evil, no longer sufficed him then. He required to brand with fire the limit where folly stops and crime begins. Thus it was not mocking, joking satire he would inflict on these great culprits; but burning words to mark the limits where this should stop, and stigmatize them by condemning moral deformity. This is what he did, and wished to do, with regard to Castlereagh, and also with regard to the Austrians in Italy. Shall it be said that his language was occasionally too violent; that the punishment went beyond the crime? But, in the first place, condemnation was pronounced in the language of poetry; and then, does not appreciation of the measure kept depend solely on the point of view taken by reason and conscience when they sat in judgment?

Shall it be said that the moral sense of these invectives was not always brought forward with all the clearness desirable? But let them be examined attentively, and then the fine sentiments to which they owe their origin will be understood.

Let us read "Avatar," for instance,--"Avatar," teeming with noble anger,--and say if any poetry exists emitting flame and light purer, and more intense in its moral life, more efficacious for keeping within the boundaries of that humane just policy from which Lord Byron never swerved.

If, in the war he waged against evil and its perpetrators, he did not outstep the limits of merited punishment, nevertheless he often did go beyond the limits of a quality (he possessed not) which is raised to the rank of a virtue, but which applied, despite conscience, to our personal interests, is but selfishness and cowardice. And therein was he truly sublime; for in attacking thus, not only the great men of the day, but likewise the prejudices, idolatries, and passions belonging to such a proud nation, he well knew the harm that would result to himself. But Lord Byron was a real hero. So soon as his conscience spoke, he heard no other voice, but kept his glance fixed on the light of justice and truth beaming at the end of his career. Without looking to the right or to the left, without taking into account the obstacles and dangers which personal prudence counselled him to avoid, he held on his course; exposed his noble breast to British vengeance pursuing him across the Channel and the Alps, and then also to Genevan and Austrian shafts that flew back again across the Alps and the Channel on the wings of dark, fierce calumny.

Still I do not pretend to assert that, on some rare occasions, personal suffering did not give rise to irritation and anger. He belonged to humanity; and if, despite the harsh trials to which his sensibility was exposed, he had escaped entirely from nature's laws, he would have been not only heroic, but superhuman.

It is then very possible that, in the sad days preceding, accompanying, and following on his separation from Lady Byron, he may have been irritable. Such a host of evils overwhelmed him at once! He may have allowed to escape his lips at that time some drops of the ocean of bitterness with which his soul was overflowing. It is certain also that when the Edinburgh critics made such cruel havoc with his heart and mind, the over-excitement caused by this review had likewise for its source the wounds inflicted on his self-love. Can we be astonished at it, when we reflect that this senseless, wicked criticism succeeded to, and contrasted strangely with, the praises awarded by such judges as Mackenzie and Lord Woodhouse? They both had expressed their admiration spontaneously, and without knowing the writer: one of them was the celebrated author of the "Man of Feeling," and the other had brought out many esteemed works, and was considered to be at the head of Scottish literature. Besides, these cutting criticisms followed close on the strong admiration expressed by his friends, by all the society in which he was then moving, and by a mother who idolized him! These verses, though not yet the highest expression of his genius, were certainly full of charming tenderness, grace, and naive sensibility; moreover, they had been given to the public in such a modest way by a man so young that he might almost be called a child! If he were not conscious of his great superiority, of which he must nevertheless have felt some prophetic presentiment--restrained, doubtless, by modesty and timidity,--he must at least have been conscious that he had not, in any way, merited the brutality displayed in attacks which violated all the laws of just and allowable criticism.

Lord Byron's soul revolted at it, and in his indignation repelling assault by assault, he overstepped his aim; for he certainly went to extremes. And yet, in the very paroxysm of such irritation, was a personal sentiment his first incentive? No! it was a good, generous, affectionate feeling that actuated him: fear lest his mother should be grieved at what had occurred.

He had scarcely been told how biting the criticism was, and he had not read it, when he hastened to write to his friend Beecher:--

"Tell Mrs. Byron not to be out of humor with them, and to prepare her mind for the greatest hostility on their part. It will do no injury whatever, and I trust her mind will not be ruffled. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never praise, except the

## partisans of Lord Holland and Co. It is nothing to be abused when

Southey and Moore share the same fate."

In assuming this philosophical calm, which he really did arrive at later, but which he was very far from possessing at this time,--in forcing this language on his just resentment to console his mother, when his whole being was agitated, he certainly made one of those efforts which betoken a soul as vigorous as it was beautiful. He used his pen as soon as he had satisfied this first want of his heart; but the intensity of passion destroyed his equilibrium.

When at Ravenna he wrote:--

"I recollect well the effect that criticism produced on me; it was rage, and resistance, and redress, but not despondency nor despair. A savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; the one on me knocked me down--but I got up again. This criticism was a master-piece of low jests, a tissue of coarse invectives. It contained many commonplace expressions, lowlived insults; for instance, that one should be grateful for what one got; that a gift horse ought not to be looked at in the mouth, and other stable vocabulary; but that did not frighten me. I resolved on giving the lie to their predictions, and on showing them, that, however discordant my voice, it was not the last time they were to hear it."

But when this heat had passed away, his innate passion for that justice so cruelly violated toward himself, made him quickly recover his self-possession. He repented having written this satire, which he designated as insensate, and wished to suppress it. He even judged it more severely than others.

He wrote to Coleridge in 1815:--

"You mention my satire, lampoon, or whatever you like 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 on 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 its attempted attacks."[113]

On examining his conscience with regard to this satire, and passing judgment on himself, he adds, in a note to his own verses, after having given great praise to Jeffrey for his magnanimity, etc.:--

"_I was really too ferocious--this is mere insanity._--B., 1816."

And farther on:--

"_This is bad; because personal._--B., 1816."

With regard to his verses on his guardian, Lord Carlisle, so culpable toward himself, he generously remarks:

"_Wrong also_--_the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity._--B., 1816."

To what he said against Wordsworth he simply adds the word, "_Unjust._"

And again, with reference to Lord Carlisle:--

"_Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be._--B., 1816."

And at Geneva, 14th of July, 1816, he writes:--

"_The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written_: not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such as I can not approve.--BYRON, _Villa Diodati_, 1816."

Lastly, from Venice he wrote to Murray, who wished to make a superior edition of his works:--

"With regard to a future large edition, you may print all, or any thing, _except_ '_English Bards_,' to the republication of which at no time will I consent. I would not reprint them on any consideration. I don't think them good for much, even in point of poetry; and, as to other things, you are to recollect that I gave up the publication on account of the Hollands, and I do not think that any time or circumstances should cancel the suppression. Add to which, that, after being on terms with almost all the bards and critics of the day, it would be savage at any time, but worst of all _now_,[114] to revive this foolish lampoon."

"Whatever may have been the faults or indiscretion of this satire," says Moore, "there are few who would now sit in judgment upon it so severely as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years after, when he had quitted England, never to return. The copy which he then perused is now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing. On the first leaf we find:--

"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its contents. Nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames.

BYRON."

To this ample reparation offered on account of his early satire we must add the following paragraph, from the first letter he addressed to Sir Walter Scott, in 1812:--

"I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the '_evil works of my nonage_,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily; and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I can not sufficiently thank you for your praise."

Thus scrupulously did this conscientious man judge himself. And not only do we find him repeating the same fine sentiment a hundred times, but he caused the whole edition, then still in the hands of the publisher, to be destroyed, which of course entailed a great sacrifice of money. He became intimate with the principal personages whom he had attacked; and even, in order to testify that no resentment continued to exist in his mind against his guardian, Lord Carlisle, he seized the first opportunity that presented itself of writing in "Childe Harold" those pathetic generous lines on the death of his son, Major Howard. He acted just in the same way every time he thought he had any fault to repair. But could this same love of justice, that had guided him through life, have caused him equally to disavow what he said of Lord Castlereagh and of Ireland in "Avatar?" of Southey and the Austrians at Venice? or the greater part of the satirical traits contained in "Don Juan" and the "Age of Bronze?" I do not think so. I believe, even, that if on his death-bed, he had been asked to retract some of his writings, he would have answered as Pascal did. And this because the sentiment which under all circumstances guided his pen did not arise from any personal interest, but was only, to use the beautiful language of a great contemporary philosopher, "the indignation and revolt of the generous faculties of the soul, which, hurt by injustice, rose up proudly, to protest against human dignity, offended in one's own person or in that of others."

This sentiment not being capable of change, neither could its consequences bring any repentance. According to Lord Byron, Castlereagh was a scourge for mankind. Faithful to this opinion, as to all his great principles, he wrote to Moore in 1815:--

"I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh, is only a proof of the little value the gods set upon prosperity, when they permit such rogues as he and that drunken corporal, old Bl----, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington should be excepted. He _is_ a man, and the Scipio of our Hannibal."

Let people read the "Avatar," the eleventh octave and following of the dedication of "Don Juan," the forty-ninth and fiftieth stanzas of the ninth canto of "Don Juan," as well as the epigrams; and they will have a fair idea of the generous sentiments that provoked his indignation against the inhuman policy of this minister. They will understand why he wished to denounce him to the execration of posterity. As to his satirical verses and anger against the poet laureate, it has already been seen on whose side lay the fault, and how this jealous poet, through a combination of bad feelings, in which envy and revenge predominated, spared no means, no occasion, of doing him harm. Thus Lord Byron saw himself and his friends enveloped in one of those darksome conspiracies, forming a labyrinth of calumny, whence the purest innocence has no escape; and he felt that justice violated in the person of his friends, by a man unworthy of respect, required him, in justice, to brand the individual. And rightly did he so with his words of fire. When Ireland, that he would fain have seen heroic under misfortune, degraded herself by her conduct toward this minister and the king, on the occasion of their visit, he, touched with noble indignation, resolved to punish and warn her; and his "Avatar" expressed these fine sentiments. When the prince regent, after having shown himself a Liberal and a Whig, denied his part, betrayed his party, and leagued with the Tories, Lord Byron's noble indignation burst forth in his verses, and, whenever occasion offered, he stigmatized such unworthy conduct.

And a proof that it was the conduct of the individual, and not personal animosity, that guided his pen, may be found in the fact that a single ray of hope of seeing this moral deformity transformed into beauty, sufficed to make him change his tone immediately. When he learned the pardon that had just been granted by George the Fourth to the guilty Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he forgot all past offenses; his soul expanded to admiration and hope; and he composed that beautiful sonnet, which so well reveals the aspirations of his great heart:--

"To be the father of the fatherless, To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise _His_ offspring, who expired in other days To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,-- _This_ is to be a monarch, and repress Envy into unutterable praise. Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand except to bless? Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete: A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us."

_Bologna, August 12, 1819._

And then, as if poetry did not suffice, he adds these lines in prose:--

"So the prince has annulled Lord E. Fitzgerald's condemnation. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was truly a princely act."

All Lord Byron's expressions of indignation that have been attributed to anger, belong really to his disinterested, heroic, generous nature. We may convince ourselves of this by following him through life, beginning from childhood, at college, when he would plant himself in front of school tyrants, asking to share the punishments inflicted on his friend Peel, and always taking the part of his weak or oppressed companions; then, during his first youth, when an accumulation of unmerited griefs and injustice cast over him a shade of misanthropy, so contrary to his nature; and, lastly, up to the moment when that noble indignation burst forth which he experienced in Greece, and which hastened his end.[115]

This is the truth. Nevertheless, if, in early youth, he did sometimes go beyond the limits of what may be fairly conceded to extreme sensibility,--to a certain hypochondriacal tendency of race, and more especially of his intellectual life; if he really was sometimes wearied, fatigued, discouraged, inclined to irritation, and to view things darkly, can it, therefore, be said that he weakly gave way to a morbid disposition? By no means. He always wished to sift his conscience thoroughly,--never ceased analyzing causes and symptoms, proclaiming his state morbid, and blaming himself beyond measure, far beyond what justice warranted, for a single word that had escaped his lips under the pressure of intense suffering. And even in the few moments of impatience occasioned by his last illness, he said, "Do not take the language of a sick man for his real sentiments." Lastly, he never gave over struggling against himself; seeking to acquire dominion over his faculties and passions intellectually by hard study, and materially by the strictest regime. What could he do more? it may be said. But if it be true that he had been irritable in his youth, that would only show how much he achieved; for he must have conquered himself immensely, since at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in Greece, he certainly displayed no traces of temper, and all those causes which usually excite irritation and anger in others had quite ceased to produce any in him.

"A mild philosophy," says the Countess G----, "every day more and more took possession of his soul. Adversity and the companionship of great thoughts strengthened him so much, that he was able to cast off the yoke of even ordinary passions, only retaining those among the number which impel to good.[116]

"I have seen him sometimes at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, when receiving news of some stupid, savage attack, from those who, in violating justice, also did him considerable harm. No emotion of anger any longer mixed itself up with his generous indignation. He appeared rather to experience a mixture of contempt, almost of quiet austere pleasure, in the struggle his great soul sustained against fools."

When Shelley saw him again at Venice, in 1818, and painted him under the name of Count Maddalo, he said:--

"In social life there is not a human being _gentler, more patient, more natural, and modest_, than Lord Byron. He is gay, open, and witty; his graver conversations steep you in a kind of inebriation. He has travelled a great deal, and possesses ineffable charm when he relates his adventures in the different countries he has visited."

Mr. Hoppner, English consul at Venice, and Lord Byron's friend, who was living constantly with him at this time, sums up his own impressions in these remarkable terms:--

"Of one thing I am certain, that I never met with goodness more real than Lord Byron's."

And some years later, when Shelley saw Lord Byron again at Ravenna, he wrote to Mrs. Shelley:--

"Lord Byron has made great progress in all respects; in genius, _temper_, moral views, health, and happiness. His intimacy with the Countess G---- has been of inestimable benefit to him. A fourth part of his revenue is devoted to beneficence. He has conquered his passions, and become what nature meant him to be, _a virtuous man_."

In concluding these quotations, no longer requisite, I hope, I will only make one last observation, _that all which infallibly changes in a bad nature never did change in him_. Friendship, real love, all devoted feelings, lived on in him _unchanged_ to his last hour. If he had had a bad disposition, been capricious, irritable, or given to anger, would this have been the case?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 106: Count Delladecima, to whom he gives this name in consequence of a habit which that gentleman had of using the phrase "in ultima analise" frequently in conversation.]

[Footnote 107: See the account given by Mr. Bruno, his physician.]

[Footnote 108: Alexander the Great imprudently bathed in the Cydnus, etc.]

[Footnote 109: "Life in Italy." See how he was received at Missolonghi.]

[Footnote 110: Parry, 215.]

[Footnote 111: Jules Simon.]

[Footnote 112: Kennedy, 330.]

[Footnote 113: Moore, vol. iii, p. 159.]

[Footnote 114: _Now_ alludes to the ungenerous treatment received from many of these persons at the time of his separation.]

[Footnote 115: See his "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 116: Ibid.]

## CHAPTER XVIII.

LORD BYRON'S MOBILITY.

So much has been said of Lord Byron's mobility that it is necessary to analyze it well, and examine it under different aspects, so as to define and bring it within due limits. In the first place, we may ask on what grounds his biographers rested their opinion of this extraordinary mobility, which, according to them, went beyond the scope of intellectual qualities rather into the category of faults of temper? Evidently it was again through accepting a testimony the small value of which we have already shown; namely, Lord Byron's own words at twenty-three years of age--that period when passion is hardly ever a regular wind, simply swelling sails, but rather a gusty tempest, tearing them to pieces; and then again they grounded their opinion on verses in "Don Juan," where he explains the meaning of these expressions,--versatility and mobility. Moore, from motives we shall examine hereafter, found it expedient to take Lord Byron at his word, and to make a great fuss about this quality. In summing up his character, he reasons very cleverly on the unexampled extent, as he calls it, of this faculty, and the consequences to which it led in Lord Byron. Following in Moore's wake, other biographers have proclaimed Lord Byron versatile. Moore exaggerates so far as to pretend that this faculty made it almost impossible to find a dominant characteristic in Lord Byron. As if mobility were not, in reality, a universal quality or defect,--as if men could so govern themselves throughout life as to resemble the hero of a drama, where the action is confined within classical rules.

"A man possessing the highest order of mind is, nevertheless, unequal," says La Bruyere. "He suffers from increase and diminution; he gets into a good train of thought, and falls out of it likewise.

"It is different with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,--a spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes. Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At best, he is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird whistling; he is fixed and stamped by nature, and I may say by species. What shows least in him is his soul; that never acts,--is never brought into play,--perpetually reposes. Such a man will be a gainer by death."

La Bruyere also says, "There is a certain mediocrity that helps to make a man appear wise."

And what says Montaigne, that great connoisseur of the human heart?--

"Our usual custom is to go right or left, over mountains or valleys, just as we are drifted by the wind of opportunity. We change like that animal which assumes the color of the spots where it is placed. All is vacillation and inconstancy. We do not walk of ourselves; we are carried away like unto things that float now gently and now impetuously, according to the uncertain mood of the waters. Every day some new fancy arises, and our tempers vary with the weather. This fluctuation and contradiction ever succeeding in us, has caused it to be imagined by some that we possess two souls; by others, that two faculties are perpetually at work within us, one inclining us toward good, and the other toward evil."

Montaigne also says:--"I give my soul sometimes one appearance, and sometimes another, according to the side on which I look at it; if I speak variously of myself, it is because I look at myself variously: all contrarieties, in one degree or other, are found in me, according to the number of turns given. Thus I am shamefaced, insolent, chaste, sensual, talkative, taciturn, laborious, delicate, ingenious, stupid, sad, good-natured, deceitful, true, learned, ignorant, liberal, avaricious, and prodigal, just according to the way in which I look at myself; and whoever studies himself attentively, will find this _variety and discordancy_ even in his judgment.

"We are all _parts of a whole_, and formed of such shapeless, mixed materials, that every part and every moment does its own work."

If, then, we all experience the varied influences of our passions a hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twenty-four hours; if we are sensible of a thousand physical and moral causes, perpetually modifying our dispositions, and our words, making us differ to-day from what we were yesterday; if even the coldest and most stoical temperaments do not wholly escape from these influences, how could Moore be surprised that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of passion, so hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove invulnerable? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is true; he only made-believe to be so, and that because Lord Byron was wanting in some of those virtues called peculiarly English. Lord Byron had no superstitious patriotism; he did not love his country through sentiment or passion, but on duty and principle. He loved her, but justice also! and he loved justice best. And in order to do homage to truth, he had committed the fault of saying a host of irreverential truths concerning that country, and also many individuals belonging to it; consequently he had made many enemies for himself. Indeed, his enemies might be found in every camp: among the orthodox, in the literary world, and the world of fashion, among the fair sex, and in the political world. Moore, for his part, wished to live in peace with all these potentates,--the warm, comfortable, and brilliant atmosphere of their society had become a necessity for him; and wishing also, perhaps, to obtain pardon for his friend's boldness, he probably thought to conciliate all things by sparing the susceptibility of the great. Instead, then, of attributing Lord Byron's severe appreciations to observation, experience, and serious reflection, he preferred declaring them the result of capricious and inconsistent mobility. But more just in the depths of his soul than he was in words, Moore, it is easy to see, felt painfully conscious of the wrong done to his illustrious friend, and ardently wished to make his own weakness tally with truth. What was the result? The brilliant edifice he had raised was so unstable of basis, that it could not stand the logic of facts and conclusions. While appearing to consider the excess of this quality as a defect, and calling it dangerous, he was all the time showing that Lord Byron had strength to overcome any real danger it contained; he was giving it to be understood that this versatility of intellect might exist without the least mobility of principle; he made out that mobility was the ornament of his intelligence, just as he had shown constancy to be the ornament of his soul. Then, after having reasoned cleverly on this quality, yclept versatility when applied to the intelligence, and mobility when applied to conduct; after having shown how predominant it must have been in Lord Byron through his great impressionability; Moore says that Lord Byron did yield to his versatile humor, without scruple or resistance, in all things attracting his mind, in all the excursions of reason or fancy assuming all the forms in which his genius could manifest its power, transporting himself into all the regions of thought where there were any new conquests to make; and that thereby he gave to the world a grand spectacle, displayed a variety of unlimited and almost contradictory powers, and finally achieved a succession of unexampled triumphs in every intellectual field. Then, in order to characterize completely this quality of Lord Byron, Moore further adds:--

"It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and particularly by those who, being gifted with but a small portion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace with his changes, that the suddenness with which he passes from one strain of sentiment to another, from the gay to the sad, from the cynical to the tender,--begets a distrust in the sincerity of one or both moods of mind which interferes with, if not chills, the sympathy that a more natural transition would inspire. In general, such a suspicion would do him injustice; as among the singular combinations which his mind presented, that of uniting at once versatility and depth of feeling was not the least remarkable."

But, throughout this analysis by Moore, do we see aught save an intellectual quality? Does it not stand out in relief, a pure, high attribute of genius? For this to be a defect, it would be necessary that, leaving the domain of intelligence, it should become mobility, by entering into the course of his daily life in _extraordinary_ proportions. And how does it, in reality, enter there? Were his principles in politics, in religion, in all that constitutes the man of honor in the highest acceptation of the term, at all affected by it? Did his true affections, or even his simple tastes, suffer from the varied impresses of his versatile genius? In short, was Lord Byron inconstant? Moore has sufficiently answered, since all he remarked and said oblige us to rank _constancy_ among Lord Byron's most shining virtues.[117] And as a human heart can not at the same time be governed by a virtue and its opposite vice, what must we say to those who should persist (for there are some, doubtless, who will), despite all axioms, in considering Lord Byron as a changeable, capricious, fickle man? I reply, that Lord Byron proved, once more, the truth of the observation made by that moralist, who said: "The most beautiful souls are those possessing the greatest variety and pliancy," and that he realized in himself, after a splendid fashion, the moral phenomenon remarked in _Cato the Elder_, who, according to Livy, possessed a mind at once so versatile and so comprehensive, that whatever he did it might be thought he was born solely for that.

I will acknowledge, then, the intellectual versatility and the mobility of Lord Byron, but on condition of their being reduced to their real proportions; of their being shown as they ever existed in him, that is to say, under subjection to duty, honor, and feeling. Through his extreme impressionability, and his power of combining, in the liveliest manner, the greatest contrasts, through the pleasure he took in exercising such extraordinary faculties, and in manifesting them to others, Lord Byron sometimes assumed such an appearance of skeptical indifference and caprice, that he might almost be said to show a certain intermission of faculties, and even of ideas. But if his words and writings are examined, it will be seen that this mobility was only skin-deep. It might affect his nerves and muscles, but did not penetrate into his system. It animated his writings occasionally, and oftener his words, _but never his actions!_ for, if in some rare moments of life, he abandoned his will to the sway of light breezes, that was only for very evanescent fancies of youth, in which neither heart nor honor were at stake. And even then it was rather by word than by deed, as occurred at Newstead, when he was twenty years of age, and at Venice when he was twenty-eight. His energetic soul did not, like feebler natures, require inconstancy to awaken it. As to ideas, they were only changeable in him, when they were by nature open to discussion or _accessory_; and they remained floating, until having been elaborated by his great reason, he could admit them into the small number of such as he considered chosen and indisputable. Then they found a sort of sanctuary in his mind, remaining there sacred and unmoved, just like his true sentiments of heart.

His mobility, thus limited and circumscribed within due bounds by unswerving principles and the dictates of an excellent heart, _was thus shorn of all danger_, and had for its first result to contribute toward producing that amiability and that wonderful fascination which he exercised over all those who came near him. Moore quotes, on this head, the words of Cooper, who, speaking of persons with a changeful intellectual temperament, says, that their society "_ought to be preferred in this world, for, all scenes in life having two sides, one dark and the other brilliant, the mind possessing an equal admixture of melancholy and vivacity, is the one best organised for contemplating both._" Moore adds:--"It would not be difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet, but those powers of _fascination_ which he possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him were so active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, and brought whatever was most agreeable in his nature into play."

All those who knew him have said the same thing. This charm was the immediate consequence of his qualities; but they produced another result, that justice requires to be mentioned. Mobility being united in him with constancy and the most heroic firmness, added lustre to his soul through that great difficulty overcome which amounts to virtue. Moralists of all ages have generally found the virtue of constancy so rare, that they have said,--

"Wait for death to judge a man."

"In all antiquity," says Montaigne, "it would be difficult to find a dozen men who shaped their lives in a certain steady course which is the chief end of wisdom."

This is true as regards the generality of minds; but to overcome this difficulty, when one has a mind eager for emotion, variable, with width and depth capable of discerning simultaneously the for and against of every thing, and thus being necessarily exposed to perplexity of choice, it is surely marvellous if a mind so constituted be also constant. Now, Lord Byron personified this marvel. In him was seen the realization of that rare thing in nature, intellectual versatility combined with unswerving principle; mobility of mind united to a constant heart. In short, to sum up:--He possessed the amount of versatility requisite to manifest his genius under all its aspects; a degree of mobility most charming in social intercourse; and such constancy as is always estimable, always a virtue, and which, united to a temperament like his,[118] becomes positively wonderful.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 117: See the chapter on "Constancy."]

[Footnote 118: See the chapter on "Constancy."]

## CHAPTER XIX.

LORD BYRON'S MISANTHROPY AND SOCIABILITY.

Lord Byron has also been accused of misanthropy. But what is a misanthrope? Since Lucian, this name has been bestowed on the man who owns no friend but himself; who looks upon all others as so many rogues, for whom relatives, friends, country, are but empty names; who despises fame, and aims at no distinction except that conferred by his strange manners, savage anger, and inhumanity.

When those who have known Lord Byron, and studied his life, compare him to this type, it may well be asked whether such persons be in their right understanding. The famous tower of Babel, and all the confusion ensuing, rise up to view.

The excess of absurdity may give way, however, to some little moderation in judgment. It will be said, for instance, that there are different kinds of misanthropy. Lucian's "Timon" does not at all resemble Moliere's "Alceste:" Lord Byron's misanthropy was not like either of theirs; his was only of the kind that mars sociability, good temper, and other amiable qualities. In short, we shall be given to understand that Lord Byron is only accused of _having liked solitude too much, of having shunned his fellow-creatures too much, and thought too ill of humanity_.

But these modifications can not satisfy our conscience. Still too many reasons of astonishment may be offered to allow us to resist the desire of adding other facts and indisputable proofs to those already adduced in the chapter where we examined the nature and limits of his melancholy at all periods of life, and throughout all its phases.[119] This chapter might even suffice as a response to the above strange accusation.

A better answer still would be found in all the proofs we have given of his goodness, generosity, and humanity. Nevertheless, we think it right rather to appeal to the patience of our readers; so that they may consider with us, more especially, one of the peculiar aspects of Lord Byron's character; namely, his sociability.

That Lord Byron loved solitude, and that it was a want of his nature who can doubt? As a child, we know, his delight was to wander alone on the sea-shore, on the Scottish strand. At school, he was wont to withdraw from his beloved companions, and the games he liked so well, in order to pass whole hours seated on the solitary stone in the church-yard at Harrow, which has been fitly called _Byron's Tomb_. He himself describes these inclinations of his childhood in the "Lament of Tasso:"--

"Of objects all inanimate I made Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise, Where I did lay me down within the shade Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours, Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said, Of such materials wretched men were made."

Arrived at adolescence, he showed so little inclination to mix in society that his friends reproached him with his over-weening love for solitude. Amid the gay dissipation of university life, he was often a prey to vague disquietude. Like the majority of great spirits that had preceded him at Cambridge,--Milton, Gray, Locke, etc.,--he did not enjoy his stay there. He even made a satire upon it in his early poems. At a later period, when he had acquired fame, at the very height of his triumphs, when he was _the observed of all observers_, he often caught himself dreaming on the happiness of escaping from fashionable society, and getting home; for, like Pope, he greatly preferred quiet reading to the most agreeable conversation.

All his life there were hours and days wherein his mind absolutely required this repose.

It may, then, truly be said that he loved solitude, and felt a real attraction for it. But would it be equally just to attribute this taste to melancholy, and then to call his melancholy _misanthropy_? Those who have deeply studied the nature of a certain order of genius, and the phases of its development, will discover something very different in the impulse that attracted the child Byron to the sea-shore in Scotland, and to the sepulchral stone shaded over by the tall trees of Harrow? They will see therein, not the melancholy apparent to vulgar eyes, but the forecast of genius, to be revealed sooner or later, and with a further promise, in the antipathy shown for the routine of schools, and especially of the University of Cambridge,--a suffocating atmosphere for genius, equally uncongenial to Milton, Dryden, Gray, and Locke, who all, like Lord Byron, and more bitterly than he, exercised their satiric vein on it. As for the slight attraction he sometimes showed for the world in his youth--in his seventeenth year--and which the excellent Mr. Beecher reproached him with, his feelings are too well defined by the noble boy himself for us to dare to substitute any words of ours in lieu of those used by him, in justification to his friend.

Dear Beecher, you tell me to mix with mankind; I can not deny such a precept is wise; But retirement accords with the tone of my mind; I will not descend to a world I despise.

Did the senate or camp my exertions require, Ambition might prompt me at once to go forth; And, when infancy's years of probation expire, Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.

The fire in the cavern of Etna concealed Still mantles unseen in its secret recess: At length in a volume terrific revealed, No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.

Oh! thus the desire in my bosom for fame Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise. Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame, With him I would wish to expire in the blaze.

For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave! Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath; Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave.

Yet why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd? Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules? Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd, Why search for delight in the friendship of fools?

I have tasted the sweets and the bitters of love; In friendship I early was taught to believe; My passion the matrons of prudence reprove; I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.

To me what is wealth?--it may pass in an hour, If tyrant's prevail, or if Fortune should frown: To me what is title? the phantom of power; To me what is fashion?--I seek but renown.

Deceit is a stranger as yet to my soul: I still am unpracticed to varnish the truth: Then why should I live in a hateful control? Why waste upon folly the days of my youth? 1806.

Thus it was the desire of fame that then engrossed his whole soul; the wish of adding some great action to illustrate a name already ennobled by his ancestors.

Subsequently, this ardent desire may have become weakened. Alas! he had been made to pay so dearly for satisfying it. But at the outset of his career this aspiration after glory, that belongs to the noblest souls, was the strongest impulse he had,--the one that often made him prefer the solitary exercise of intelligence to even the usual dissipation of youth, and when he did yield, like others, he punished himself by self-inflicted blame and contempt, often expressed in an imprudent, exaggerated manner.

Nevertheless, the paths that lead to glory are various, and trod by many; which should he choose? Then did he feel the further torment of uncertainty. His faculties were various, and he was to learn this to his cost. He was to feel, though vaguely, that he might just as well aspire to the civic as to the military crown; be an orator in the senate, or a hero on the field of battle.

Among all the careers presenting themselves before him, the one that flattered him least was to be an author or a literary man. But he was living in the midst of young men well versed in letters. Most of them amused themselves with making verses. To tranquillize his heart, and exercise his activity of mind, he also made some, but without attaching any great importance to them. These verses were charming; the first flower and perfume of a young, pure soul, devoted to friendship and other generous emotions. Nevertheless, a criticism that was at once malignant, unjust, and cruel, fell foul of these delightful, clever inspirations. The injustice committed was great. The modest, gentle, but no less sensitive mind of the youth was both indignant and overwhelmed at it. Other sorrows, other illusions dispelled, further increased his agitation, making a wound that might really have become misanthropy, had his heart been less excellent by nature. But it could not rankle thus in him, and his sufferings only resulted in making him quit England with less regret, and throw into his verses and letters misanthropical expressions, no sooner written than disavowed by the general tone of cordiality and good-humor that reigned throughout them; and, lastly, by suggesting the imprudent idea of choosing a misanthrope as the hero of the poem in which he was to sing his own pilgrimage.

This necessity of essaying and giving expression to his genius also made him desire solitude yet more. He found poetic loneliness beneath the bright skies of the East, where he pitched his tent, slowly to seek the road to that fame for which his soul thirsted. But when he arrived at it,--when he became transformed, so to say, into an idol,--did this necessity for solitude abandon him? By no means.

"_April 10th._--I do not know that I am happiest when alone," he writes in his memoranda; "but this I am sure of, I never am long in the society even of her I love--and God knows how I love her--without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. Even in the day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it."

This desire, this craving for his lamp and his library,--this absence of taste for certain realities of life,--show affinities between Lord Byron and another great spirit, Montaigne. One might fancy one hears Lord Byron saying, with the other:--

"The continual intercourse I hold with ancient thought, and the ideas caught from those wondrous spirits of by-gone times, disgust me with others and with myself."

He also felt _ennui_ at living in an age that _only produced very ordinary things_.

But whether he felt happy or sad, it was always in silence, in retirement, and contemplation of the great visible nature, carrying his thought away to what does not the less exist though veiled from our feeble sight and intellect; it was there, I say, that his mind and heart sought strength, peace, and consolation.

His soul was bursting with mighty griefs when he arrived in Switzerland, on the borders of Lake Leman. He loved this beautiful spot, but did not deem himself sufficiently alone to enjoy it fully.

"There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold,"

said he; and he promised himself soon to arrive at that beloved solitude, so necessary to him for enjoying well the grand spectacle presented by Helvetian nature; but, he added:--

"To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: * * * * * * * Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it over boil In the hot throng."

And then he continues:--

"I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling."

Thus, even in the midst of the beloved solitude so necessary to him, there was no misanthropy in his thoughts or feelings, but simply the desire of not being disturbed in his studies and reveries. Lord Byron often said, that solitude made him better. He thought, on that head, like La Bruyere:--"_All the evil in us_," says that great moralist, "_springs from the impossibility of our being alone. Thence we fall into gambling, luxury, dissipation, wine, women, ignorance, slandering, envy, forgetfulness of self, and of God._" If the satisfaction of this noble want were to be called _misanthropy_, few of our great spirits, whether philosophers, poets, or orators, could escape the accusation. For, with almost all of them, the taste for retirement and solitude has been likewise a necessity: a condition without which we should have lost their greatest _chefs-d'oeuvre_. The biography of the noblest minds leaves no doubt on this head. But if Lord Byron did not use solitude like a misanthrope, if he loved it solely as a means, and not as an end, so that we may even say it was with him an antidote to misanthropy, can we equally give proof of his sociability? To clear up this point, we have only to glance at his whole life. For the sake of avoiding repetition, let us pass over his childhood, so full of tenderness, and ardor for youthful pastimes; his boyhood, all devoted to feelings affectionate and passionate; his university life, where sociability seemed to predominate over regular study; the vacations, when it was such pleasure to act plays, and he was the life of amateur theatres,--a time that has left behind it such an enthusiastic memory of him, that when Moore, some years after Lord Byron's death, went to obtain information about it from the amiable Pigott family, not one member could be found to admit that Lord Byron _had the smallest defect_. Let us also pass over his sojourn at Newstead, when his sociability and gayety appear even to have been too noisy; and let us arrive at that period of his life when he began to be called a misanthrope, because he gave himself that appellation, because real sorrows had cast a shade over his life, and because, wishing to devote himself to graver things, his object was to withdraw from the society of gay, noisy companions, and then to mature his mind in distant travel. He left his native land, but in company with his friend Hobhouse, a man distinguished for his intelligence, and who, instead of testifying to his fellow-traveller's misanthropy, bears witness, on the contrary, to his amiable, sociable disposition.

When this friend was obliged to take leave of him in Greece, and return to England, Lord Byron frequented the society of pleasant persons like Lord Sligo, Mr. Bruce, and Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he met at Athens, alleviating his studious solitude by intercourse with them.

When he also returned to England, after two years of absence, great misfortunes overwhelmed him. He lost successively his mother, dear friends, and other loved ones. Not to sink beneath these accumulated blows, and mistrusting his own strength, he called in to aid him the society of his friends.

"My dear Scroope," wrote he, "if you have an instant, come and join me, I entreat you. I want a friend; I am in utter desolation. Come and see me; let me enjoy as long as I can the company of those friends that yet remain."

Some time after, having attained the highest popularity, and his mind being soothed by friendship even more than by fame, he entered into the fashionable society in which his rank entitled him to move.

He frequented the world very much at this period, cultivating it assiduously. A moment even came when he seemed to be completely absorbed by gayety. Sometimes going to as many as fourteen assemblies, balls, etc., in one evening. "He acknowledged to me," says Dallas, "that it amused him." Did not his genius suffer then from the new infatuation? So courted, flattered, and surrounded by temptations, did not this worldly life prove too seductive, hurtful to his mind, heart, and independence of character? Did he draw from the world's votaries his rules of judgment, his ways of thought? Did he yield when brought in contact with that terrible _English law of opinion_? No; Lord Byron was safe from all such dangers. Amid the vortex in which he allowed himself to be whirled along, his mind was never idle. In the drawing-rooms he frequented, his intellectual curiosity found field for exercise. Though so young, he had already reflected much on human nature in general; but he still required to study individuals. It was in society that his extraordinary penetration could find out true character, discover the reality lurking under a borrowed mask. The great world formed an excellent school to discipline his mind. There he found subjects for observation that he afterward put in order, and brought to maturity in retirement.

"Wherever he went," says Moore, "Lord Byron found field for observation and study. To a mind with a glance so deep, lively, and varied, every place, and every occupation, presented some view of interest; and, whether he were at a ball, in the boxing-school, or the senate, a genius like his turned every thing to advantage."

And if _salons_ in general were powerless to exercise any bad influence over him, this impossibility was still greater with regard to London _salons_. Without adopting as exact the picture drawn of them by a learned academician,[120] in a book more witty than true, wherein we read:--"that under pain of passing for eccentric, of giving scandal or exciting alarm, English people are forbidden to speak of others or themselves, of politics, religion, or intellectual things or matters of taste; but only of the environs, the roundabouts, a picnic, a visit to some ruin, a fashionable preacher, a fox-hunt, and the rain,--that never-ending theme kindly furnished by the inconstant climate;" without, I say, adopting this picture as true, for in England it must be considered a clever caricature, it is nevertheless certain, that the discipline of fashionable London _salons_ requires independence of mind to be in a measure sacrificed. The tone reigning in these _salons_, which are only opened during the season, is quite different from that produced by the open-hearted hospitality which renders English country residences so very agreeable. Could Lord Byron long take pleasure in the salons of the metropolis, where every thing is on the surface and noisy, where one may say that people are content with simply showing themselves, intending concealment all the while; or where they show themselves _what they are not_; where set forms, or a vocabulary of their own, so far limits allowable subjects of conversation, that fools may easily have the advantage over clever men (for intellect is looked upon as suspicious, dangerous, bold, and called an eccentricity). Lord Byron, so frank, and open-hearted, loving fame, and having a sort of presentiment that Heaven would not accord him sufficient time to reap his full harvest of genius, consequently regretting the moments he was forced to lose; must he not, after seeking amusement in these assemblies, soon have found that they lasted too long, and were too fatiguing? Must he not often have well-nigh revolted against himself, felt something cold and heavy restraining his outburst of soul, something like a sort of slavery; must he not have understood that it was requisite for him to escape from such useless pastimes in order to re-invigorate himself by study, in the society of his own thoughts, and those of the master-spirits of ages? Yes, Lord Byron did experience all that. _Ennui_ of the world called him back to solitude. We can not doubt it, he said so himself:--

"Last night, _party_ at Lansdowne House; to-night, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's--_deplorable waste of time_, and loss of _temper, nothing imparted, nothing acquired_--_talking without ideas_--if any thing like thought were in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho! and in this way half London pass what is called life. To-morrow, there is Lady Heathcote's--shall I go? Yes; to punish myself for not having a pursuit."

And, elsewhere:--

"Shall I go to Lansdowne's? to the Berry's? They are all pleasant; but I don't know, I don't think that _soirees_ improve one."

He will not go into the world:--

"I don't believe this worldly life does any good; how could such a world ever be made? Of what use are dandies, for instance, and kings, and fellows at college, and women of a certain age, and many men of my age, myself foremost?"

Having changed his apartments, he had not yet got all his books; was reading without order, composing nothing; and he suffered in consequence. "I must set myself to do something directly; my heart already begins to feed on itself." He accuses himself of not profiting enough by time. "Twenty-six years of age! I might and ought to be a Pasha at that age. '_I 'gin to be weary of the sun._'" But let him be with a clever friend, like Moore, for instance, and, oh! then the _ennui_ of salons becomes metamorphosed into pleasure for him, without taking away his clearsightedness as to the world's worth.

"Are you going this evening," writes he to Moore, "to Lady Cahir's? I will, if you do; and wherever we can unite in follies, let us embark on the _same ship of fools_. I went to bed at five, and got up at nine."

And elsewhere, after having expressed his disappointment at seeing Moore so little during the season, he calls London "a populous desert, where one should be able to keep one's thirst like the camel. _The streams are so few, and for the most part so muddy._"

And ten years later, in the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," he said, speaking of fashionable London society:--

"Although it seems both prominent and pleasant, There is a sameness in its gems and ermine, A dull and family likeness through all ages, Of no great promise for poetic pages.