^gnglisl) illcn of betters EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY S^ ^ ~ - B Y R O INT BY JOHN' NICHOL NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FKANKLIN SQUARE > , > ) > ;.- i\ >',' ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. Edited by John Morley. Johnson Leslie Stephen. GiDUON J. C. Morison. Scott R. H. Hutton. Shkllby J. A. Syraonds. Hlmb T. H. Huxley. Goldsmith William Hlack. Dbfub William Minto. XuRNS J. C. Shairp. Spbnsbr R. W. Church. Thackbrav Anthony TroUope. Ik'RKB John Morley. Milton ^ Mark I'attison. Hawthorns Henry James, Jr. SouTHBY E. Dowden. Chauckr A. W. Ward. BuNVAN J. A. Froude. Sheridan . . CowpKR Goldwin Smith. PopB Leslie Stephen. BvRoN John Nichol. LocKR Thomas I'owler. Wordsworth V. Myers. Drydbn G. Saintsbury. Landor Sidney Colvin. De Quincbv David Masson. Lamb Alfred Ainger. lip-NTLBV R. C. Jebb. Dick-ENS A. W. Ward. Gray E. W. Gosse. Swift Leslie Stephen. Sterne H. D. Traill. Macaulay J. Cotter Morison. Fielding Austin Dobton. Mrs. Oliphant. iimo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Any of tk* ab«vt works mill b* stnt by maU, foitage prtf'aid, to any part ef the Unittd Statts, en rtctipt o/ tfu pric*. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAQK Ancestry and Family 1 CHAPTER n. [1TS8-1S08.] Early Years and School Life 11 CHAPTER m. [1S0S-1S09.] Cambridge, and First Period of Authorship. — Hours of Idle- ness. — Bards and Reviewers ^ ... 34 CHAPTER IV. [1809-lSll.] ^"^^ Two Years op Travel / . 5 CHAPTER V. [1811-1815.] Life in London. — Correspondence with Scott and Moore. Second Period of Authorship. — Harold (i., ii.), and te Romances \. 6*7 , CHAPTER YI. [1815-1816.] Marriage and Separation. — Farewell to England .... 83 VI CONTENTS. CILUTER VII. [181(^-1820.] p^o, SwrnrERLANT). — Venice. — Timu) Pekiod of ArrnoRsiiip. — Hau- ULD (111., IV.). — Ma.nkked 101 CILVrTER VIII. [1820-1821.] Ravenna. — Countess Guiccioli. — The Dramas. — Cain. — Vision OK JlUUME.NT 132 CHAPTER IX. [1S21-1S23.] Pisa. — Ge.noa. — Tue Liberal. — Don Jlan 151 CHAPTER X. [1821-1824.] Politics. — The Carbonari. — Expepition to Greece. — Death. 177 CHAPTER XI. Characteristics, AND Place in Literature 198 BOOKS CONSULTED. 1. The Narrative of tlie Honourable John Byron, Com- modore, in a late Expedition Eound the World, &c. (Baker and Leigh) 1768 2. Voyage of H. M. S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands in the years 1824-1825, the Eight Hon. Lord By- ron, Commander (John Murray) 1826 3. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron (H.Colburn) 1823 4. The Life, Writings, Opinions, and Times of G. G. Noel Byron, with courtiers of the present polished and enlightened age, &c., &c., 3 vols. (M. Iley) . . . 1825 5. Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to Greece, from Journal of Count Peter Gamha 1825 6. Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron at Pisa, 2 vols. (H. Colburn) 1825 7. Leigh Hunt's Byron and His Contemporaries (H. Colburn) 1828 8. The Works of Lord Byron, with Life by Thomas Moore, 17 vols. (Murray) 1832 9. Gait's Life of Lord Byron (Harpers) 1830 10. Kennedy's Conversations on Religion (Murray) . . 1830 11. Countess of Blessington's Conversations (Harpers) . 1834 12. Lady Morgan's Memoirs, 2 vols. (W.H. Alien) . . 1342 viil BOOKS CONSULTED. 13. Kocollections of the Countess Guiccicdi (Harpers) . 1869 14. Casti'lar's Gonius and Character of IJyron (Harpers) 1870 15. Elzo's Life of Lord Byron (Murray) 1872 16. Trelawny's Keminiscences of Byron an«l Sbelley . . 18iJ8 17. Torren's Memoii-s of Viscount Melbourne (Macmillan) 1878 18. Rev. F. Ilodgsoii's Memoirs, 2 vols. (Macmillan) . . 1879 19. Essays and Articles, or Recorded Criticisms, by Mac- aulay, Scott, Shelley, Goethe, G. Braudes, Mazzini, Sainto Beuve, De Chasles, H. Taine, &c. 20. Burke's Knightage and Peerage 1879 ^ GENEALOGY OF THE BYRON FAMIL I C a Or o o o fa O pq ^ o C E a Si n g — ~ ^ it c £ g >'■ fe E 3 = 1 a o u s sa •o o a E o i: . ■°s o ^ •-■5 a o - c: •S J J3 c. te 60 § ^ OQ 2 -to — "- C/5 « 1 o n o CQ .•5 fl_ a: o] c: a ■o 00 03 W 3 a o OQ ui S Z J3 ■0-3 c o to £ 5? O J. ■^ o III O O o p -^ 5 ■8 O it o 1-5 p o a!> "H b S ■a a o ^ a O ^ >^ o •a'2 03 :-= — S M a lO D H ^ m ~^ ^^ > -s "3 A-" 3 03 a o ■3 o si be T— -? 'I o a o >> C3 a < ■a a 9 %. BYRON. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself — what he wished to be — the most notorious per- sonality in the world of letters of our century. Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on rec- ord various impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or patronized, maligned ; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey, in all sin- cerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate ; an American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion : to the Countess Guiccioli he is an arch- angel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to have been a mere "sulky dand)^" Goethe ranks him as the first English poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France, Italy, and Spain. All concur in the ad- mission that Byron was as proud of his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a matter of no idle antiquarianism. 1* 2 IJVKO.N'. [chap. There arc legends of olJ Norse Buniiis iiiigniliiiLj from tlitir home in Sciindin.-ivhi, and 8uttling, one branch in Nprinandy, aiiulher in Livonia. To the latter belonged a shAdowy Marshal de Buriin, famons for the almost abso- lute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two members of the family came over with the Conquer- em^ and settled in England. Of Erneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more, llalph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book — our first authentic record — as liaving estates in Notting- hamshire and Derby. Uis son Hugh was lord of IJorestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son of the same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossing- ton to the monks of Lenton. The latter Hugh joined their order; but the race was continued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery of Swinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry H. (1155-1189), when Robert de Byron adopted the spelling of his nanie afterwards retained, and by his marriage with Cecilia, heir of Sir Richard Clayton, added to the family possessions an estate in Lancasliire, where, till the time of Henry \'1IL, they fixed their scat. The poet, relying on old wood- carvings at Newstcad, claims for some of his ancestors a part in the crusades, and mentions a name not api)arently belonuint; to that at^c — " Near Ascalon's towers, John of Horestan slumbers — " a romance, like many of his, possibly founded on fact, but incapable of verification. Two grandsons of Sir Robert have a more substantial fame, having served with distinction in the wars of Edward 1. The elder of these was governor of the city of York. Some members of his family fought at Cressy, and one of I.] ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. 3 his sons, Sir Jolm, was knighted by Edward III. at the siege of Calais. Descending through the other, Sir Rich- ard, we come to another Sir John, knighted by Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., on his landing at Milford. He fought, with his kin, on the field of Bosworth, and dying without issue, left the estates to his brother, Sir Nicholas, knia'hted in 1502, at the marriage of Prince Arthur. Tlie son of Sir Nicholas, known as " little Sir John of the great beard," appears to have been a favourite of Henry VIIL, who made him Steward of Manchester and Lieutenant of Sherwood, and on the dissolution of the monasteries pre- sented him with the Priory of Newstead, the rents of which were equivalent to about 4000^. of our nione}'. Sir John, who stepped into the Abbey in 1540, married twice, and the premature appearance of a son by the second wife — widow of Sir Georo;e Halijh — brought the bar sinister of which so much has been made. No indication of this fact, however, appears in the family arms, and it is doubt- ful if the poet was aware of a reproach which in any case does not touch his descent. The " filius naturalis," John Byron of Clayton, inherited by deed of gift, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1579. His descendants were prominent as staunch Royalists during the whole period of the Civil Wars. At Edgehill there were seven Byrons on the field. " On Marston, with Rupert 'gainst traitors contending, Four brothers enrich'd witli their blood the bleak field." Sir Nicholas, one of the seven, is extolled as " a person of great affability and dexterity, as well as martial knowledge, which gave great life to the designs of the well affected." He was taken prisoner by the Parliament wliile acting as governor of Chester. Under his nephew. Sir John, New- 4 bVHOX. [cUAP. stcail is said to have been besieged and taken ; but tlio lvni«5lit escaped, in the words of the poet — never a Radical at heart — a " protecting genius, For nobler combats here reserved his life, To lead the baud where godlike Falkland fell." Clarendon, indeed, informs us, that on the morning before the battle, Falkland, " very cheerful, as always upon action, put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's regi- ment." This slightly antedates his title. The first bat- tle of Newbury was fought on September, 1043. For his services there, and at a previous royal victory, over Waller in July, Sir John was, on October 24th of the same year, created Baron of Rochdale, and so became the first Peer of the family. This first lord was succeeded by his brother Riohard (1605-1679), famous in the war for his government and gallant defence of Newark. He rests in the vault that now contains the dust of the greatest of his race, in lluck- nall Torkard Church, where his epitaph records the fact that the family lost all their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, " yet it pleased God so to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that he re- purchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his posterity, witli a laudable memory for his great pie- tv and charity." His eldest son, William, the third lord (died IGOo), is worth remembering on two accounts, lie married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, and so wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance : he was a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods nor columns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself a poetaster capable of the couplet, — I.] ANCESTRY AXD FAMILY. 5 " My whole ambition only does extend To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend " — an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to have attained its desire. His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, himself living a qniet life, became, by his third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of the poet, was born in 1722, entered the na- val service, left his ship, the " Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and subsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of the pass- ing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the whole of his after-life, and is curiously illus- trative of the manners of the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course of the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose between them about the manage- ment of game, so frivolous that one conjectures the quar- rel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of of- fence. Bets were offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matter had blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs, and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to show them an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow-candle being placed on the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, and the hotel master rushinff in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortallv wounded. There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, HYROX. [ciiAi>. liavinjT received the first lunge liarmlossly in his waist- coat, liail shortened his sword and run his adversary tliroui^h the hody, with the boast, not uncharacteristic of his ijraiul-ncphew, " By G — d, I have as much coura<;e as any man in Enu;hind." A coroner's inquest was lield, and lie was Committed to the Tower on a charge of murder. The interest in tlie trial, which subsequently took place in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for six guineas. The peers, after two days' dis- cussion, unanimously returned a verdict of manslaugliter. Byron, jiieading his privileges, and paying his fees, was set at liberty ; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the wiMest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the carriage be- side his wife, who very sensibly left him ; that he tried to drown her; that he ])ad devils to attend him — were among the many weird legends of " the wicked lord.'' The poet himself says that bis ancestor's only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over liira, receive stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus in procession from the house. "When at home he spent his time in pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated his heir pre- sumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale — a proceeding after- wards challenged — and cut down the trees of Newstead, to spite him ; but he survived his three sons, his brother, and his only grandson, wlio was killed in Corsica in 1T94. On his own death in 1798, the estates and title passed to rjcorge Gordon, then a child of ten, whom lie used to talk of, without a shadow of ijitercst, as " the little boy I.] ANCESTRY AXD FAMILY. 1 who lives at Aberdeen." His sister Isabella married Lord Carlisle, and became tbe mother of the fifth earl, the poet's nominal guardian. She was a lady distinguished for ec- centricity of manners, and (like her son satirized in the Bards and Revieioers) for the perpetration of indifferent verses. The career of the fourth lord's second son, John, the poet's grandfather, recalls that of the sea-kings from whom the family claim to have sprung. Born in 1723, he at an early age entered the naval service, and till his death in 1786 was tossed from storm to storm. " He had no rest on sea, nor I on shore," writes his illustrious de- scendaiit. In 1740 a fleet of five ships was sent out un- der Commodore Anson to annoy the Spaniards, with whom ■we were then at war, in the South Seas. Byron took ser- vice as a midshipman in one of those ships — all more or less unfortunate — called "The Waiter." Beino- a bad sailer, and heavily laden, she was blown from her compa- ny, and wrecked in the Straits of Magellan. The majority of the crew were cast on a bleak rock, which they chris- tened Mount Miserv. After encounterino- all the horrors of mutiny and famine, and being in various ways deserted, five of the survivors, among them Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to the Island of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They were kept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. lago, the capital of Chili, and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brest in October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at Dover in a Dutch, vessel. This voyage is the subject of a well-known apostrophe in The Pleasures of Hope, beginning — " And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his native shore. 8 liYKON. [chap. In torrid climes, wlicrc Chiloc's tempests sweep Tumultuous murmurs o'er the trouljled deep, *Twas his to mourn misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled by the rock." Byron's own account of his adventures, published in 1768, is remarkable for freshness of scenery like that of our first literary traveller. Sir John Mandcville, and a force of de- scription which recalls Defoe. It interests us more espe- cially from the use that has been made of it in that mar- vellous mosaic of voyages, the shipwreck, in Don Juan, the hardships of his hero being, according to the poet — " Comparative To those related in my graud-dad's narrative." In June, 1V64, Byron sailed with two ships, the "Dol- phin" and the "Tamar," on a voyage of discovery ar- ranged by Lord Egmont, to seek a southern continent, in the course of which he took possession of the largest of the Falkland Islands, again passed through the Magellanic Straits, and sailing home by the Pacific, circumnavigated the globe. Tlie planets so conspired that, though his affa- ble manners and considerate treatment made him always popular with his men, sailors became afraid to serve under " foul-we.'ithor Jack." In 1748 he married the dautrhter of a Cornish squire, John Trevanion. They had two sons and three daughters. One of the latter married her cousin (tlie fifth lord's eldest son), who died in 1776, leaving as his sole heir the youth who fell in the Mediterranean in 1704. The eldest son of the veteran, John Byron, father of the poet, was born in 1751, educated at Westminster, and, having received a commission, became a captain in the guards; but his character, fundamentally unprincipled, I.] AXCESTRY AND FAMILY. 9 soon developed itself in such a manner as to alienate him from his family. In 1778, under circumstances of pecul- iar effrontery, he seduced Amelia D'Arcy, the daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, in her own right Countess Conyers, then wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, after- wards Duke of Leeds. "Mad Jack," as he was called, seems to have boasted of his conquest ; but the marquis, to whom his wife had hitherto been devoted, refused to believe the rumours that were afloat, till an intercepted let- ter, containing a remittance of money, for which Byron, in reverse of the usual relations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pair decamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained a divorce, they were regularly married.' Byron seems to have been not only profligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he was even more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, having given birth to two daughters. One died in infancy ; the other was Augusta, the half-sister and good genius of the poet, whose memory remains like a star on the fringe of a thunder-cloud, only brighter by the passing of the smoke of calumny. In 1807 she married Colonel Leio-h, and had a numerous family, most of whom died young. Her eldest daughter, Georgiana, married Mr. Henry Trevanion. The fourth, Medora, had an unfortunate history, the nu- cleus of an impertinent and happily ephemeral romance. The year after the death of his first wife, John Byron, who seems to have had the fascinations of a Barry Lyn- don, succeeded in entrapping a second. This was Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight, a lady with considerable es- tates in Aberdeenshire — which attracted the adventurer — and an overweening Highland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts, through his daughter 1" UVKOX. [chap. I. Annubella, and the second Karl of Iluntly. This union su^^gcsted the ballad of an old rliymer, beginning — " whare arc ye gacn, bonny Miss Gordon, whare are ye Raeii, sac bonny aiul braw ? Yc've married, ye've married wi' Jolinny Hyron, To squander the lands o' Gight awa'." The prophecy was soon fultillod. The property of tiie Scotch heiress was squandered with impetuous rapidity by the English rake. .In 1786 she left Scotland for France, and returnod to England towards the close of the following year. On the 22nd of January, 1788, in Holies Street, London, Mrs. Byron gave birth to lier only child, George Gordon, sixth lord. Shortly after, being pressed by his creditors, the father abandoned both, and leaving thetu with a pittance of 150/. a year, fled to Valenciennes, where he died, in August, 1791. • \ CHAPTER 11. KARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. Soon after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron took him to Scotland. After spending some time with a relation, she, early in 1790, settled in a small house at Aberdeen. Ere long her husband, who had in the interval dissipated away his remaining means, rejoined her; and they lived togeth- er in humble lodgings, until their tempers, alike fiery and irritable, compelled a definite separation. They occupied apartments, for some time, at the opposite ends of the same street, and interchanged visits. Being accustomed to meet the boy and his nurse, the father expressed a wish that the former should be sent to live with him, at least for some days. "To this request," Moore informs us, "Mrs. Byron was at first not very willing to accede; but, on the representation of the nurse that if he kept him over one night he would not do so another, she consented. On inquiring next morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he had had quite enough of his young visitor." After a short stay in the north, the Cap- tain, extorting enough money from his wife to enable him to fly from his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been a relief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, that her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an anecdote of a similar outburst — attested by Sir W. Scott, who was k 12 BYROX. [chap. present on the occasion — before lior marriage. Being present at a representation, in EdinburLcli, of the Fatal Marriage, when Mrs. Siddons was personating Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of the theatre, screaming out " O my IJiron, my Biron." All we know of her character sliows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward, but hysterical. She con- stantly boasted of her descent, and clung to the courtesy title of " honourable," to which she had no claim. Her affection and anger were alike demonstrative, her temper never for an hour secure. She half worshipped, half hated, the blackguard to whom she was married, and took no steps to protect her property ; her son she alternately petted and abused. " Your mother's a fool I" said a school companion to him years after. " I know it," was his unique and tragic reply. Never was poet born to s v^ IJVKUN. [niAP. street-sweepers in London were mocking him. lie sat- irized and discouraged dancing ; lie preferred riding and swimming to other exercises, because tlicy concealed his weakness ; and on his dcatli-bcd asked to be blistered in siich a way that he might not be called on to expose it. Tlic Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blcssington, and others, as- sure us that in society fow ^^'ould have observed the defect if he had not referred to it ;\ but it was never far from the mind, and therefore ncrcT"f?tr from the mouth, of the least reticent of men. In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls atid boys, taught by a Mr. Uowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeat monosyllables by rote, lie next passed through the hands of a devout and clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom, according to his own account, lie made astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Roman history, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Long afterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum and lookinrj down on the lit- tie round lake, he remembered his young enthusiasm and his old instructor. lie next came under the charsre of a tutor called Paterson, whom he describes as "a very seri- ous, saturnine, but kind young man. He was the son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar. With him I began Latin, and continued till I went to the grammar school, where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of my uncle." "^ Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn from scattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low in his class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand liigh ; but that he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuri- ating in the Arabian Nighls. lie was an indifferent pen- STMt NUKWAL ouuuut II.] EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL Llt'M®'*^' 15 man, and always disliked mathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eager for adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than to take one, affectionate, though resentful. AVhen his cousin was killed at Corsica, in 1794, he be- came the next heir to the title. In 1797, a friend, mean- ing to compliment the boy, said, " We shall have the pleasure some day of reading your speeches in the House of Commons," he, with precocious consciousness, replied, " I hope not. If you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords." Similarly, when, in the course of the following year, the fierce old man at Newstead died, and the young lord's name was called at school with " Dom- inus " prefixed to it, his emotion was so great that he was unable to answer, and burst into tears. Belonging to this period is the somewhat shadowy rec- ord of a childish passion for a distant cousin slightly his senior, Mary Duff, with whom he claims to have fallen in love in his ninth year. We have a quaint picture of the pair sitting on the grass together, the girl's younger sister beside them playing with a doll. A German critic gravely remarks, " This strange phenomenon places him beside Dante." Byron himself, dilating on the strength of his attachment, tells us that he used to coax a maid to write letters for him, and that when he was sixteen, on being in- formed by his mother of Mary's marriage, he nearly fell into convulsions. But in the history of the calf-loves of poets it is difficult to distinguish between the imaginative afterthought and the reality. This equally applies to oth- er recollections of later years. Moore remarks — " that the charm of scenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and association, should be felt at an age when fancy is yet hardlv awake and associations are but few, can with diffi- 16 BYRON. [cUAP. culty be conceived." But between the ages of eight and ten an appreciation of external beauty is sufficiently com- mon. No one doubts the accuracy of Wordsworth's ac- count, in the Prelude, of his early half-sensuous delight in mountain glory. It is impossible to define the influence of Nature, either on nations or individuals, or to say be- forehand what selection from bis varied surroundings a poet will, for artistic purposes, elect to make. Shakspeare rests in meadows and glades, and leaves to Milton " Tene- riffc and Atlas." Burns, who lived for a considerable part of bis life in daily view of the hills of Arran, never alludes lo them. But in this respect, like Shelley, Byron was in- spired by a passion for the high-places of the earth. Their shadow is on half bis verse. "The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow " perpetually remind him of one of bis constantly recurring refrains — . " He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below." In the course of 179G, after an attack of scarlet fever at Aberdeen, be was taken by bis mother to Ballater, and on his recovery spent much of his time in rambling about the country. " From this period," be says, " I date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Uills. After I returned to Cheltenham 1 used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a sensation which I cannot de- scribe." Elsewhere, in The Island, be returns, amid allu- sions to the Alps and Apennines, to the friends of bis youth : — " The infant rapture still survived tlic boy, And LacIi-ua-'Mir witli Ida look'd o'er Troy, 11.] EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 11 Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount." The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the easily attainable sum- mit of the " steep frowning " hill of which he has made such effective use. But the impression of it from a dis- tance was none the less genuine. In the midst of a gen- erous address, in Don Juan, to Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of his early traininir : — s " But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred A whole one ; and my heart flies to my head As ' Auld Lang Syne ' brings Scotland, one and all- Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounic's brig's black wall — All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, Like Banquo's offspring. . . ." Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and incon- sistent. His satire on her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal antipathy ; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady re- marked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst out, " Good God ! I hope not. I would rather the whole d — d country was sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent !" But in the passage from which we have quoted the swirl of feeling on the other side con- tinues, — " I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit. Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly. Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit ; They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. 2 18 IJVKUX. [chap. I scotch'd, not kill'd, the Pcoteliinan in my blood, And luvo the lund of niountuiu and of tluud." This sugfrcsts a few words on a question of more than local interest. Byron's most careful bioi;Ta{)her has said of him: "Although on his first expedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yet the whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anything but Scottish. Scottish nationality is taint- ed with narrow and provincial elements. Byron's poetic character, on the other hand, is universal and cosmopoli- tan. He had no attachment to localities, and never do- voted himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, " lie was the most un-Scots- manlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough na- tional verdicts arc apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Ste- phen, in a review of Hawthorne, has commented on the ex- tent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreign- ers, but from ourselves, by the " detestable lay figure " of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time has been the source of so much strong feeling •and persistent purpose. Of late years, the struggle for ex- istence, the temptations of a too ambitious and over-ac- tive people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing ef- fect of the constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, have for the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence. These qualities have been ade- quately combined in Scott alone, the one massive and com- plete literary type of his race. Burns, to his ruin, had II.] EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 19 only the fire : the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects less genuine, was indefinitely and inevi- tably wider. His intensely susceptible nature took a dye from every scene, city, and society through which he pass- ed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of a de- scendant of the Sea-Kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains he had first learned to listen to the sound of the " two mighty voices " that haunted and inspired him through life. In the autumn of 1798 the family, /. «'., his mother — who had sold the whole of her household furniture for 751. — with himself, and a maid, set south. The poet's only recorded impression of the journey is a gleam of Loch Leven, to which he refers in one of his latest letters. He never revisited the land of his birth. Our next glimpse of him is on his passing the toll-bar of Newstead. Mrs. By- ron asked the old woman who kept it, " Who is the next heir ?" and on her answer " They say it is a little boy who lives at Aberdeen," " This is he, bless him !" exclaimed the nurse. Returned to the ancestral Abbey, and finding it half ruined and desolate, they migrated for a time to the neigh- bouring Nottingham. Here the child's first experience was another course of surgical torture. He was placed under the charge of a quack named Lavender, who rubbed his foot in oil, and screwed it about in wooden machines. This useless treatment is associated with two characteris- tic anecdotes. One relates to the endurance which Byron, on every occasion of mere physical trial, was capable of displaying, Mr. Rogers, a private tutor, with whom he was reading passages of Yirgil and Cicero, remarked, " It makes me uncomfortable, my lord, to see you sitting there in such pain as I know you must be suffering." " Never 20 HYKON. [chap. niiinl, Mr. Rogers," said the child, " you shall not see any siii;ns of it in inc." Tlic oUnr illustrates his precocious delight in detecting ini[)yron after- wards expressed regret for his rudeness; but Butler re- mains in his verse as " Pomposus of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul." Of the poet's free hours, during the last years of his residence, which he refers to as among the happiest of his life, many were spent in solitary musing by an elm-tree, near a tomb to which his name has been given — a spot commanding a far view of London, of Windsor " blos- somed high in tufted trees," and of the green fields that stretch between, covered in spring with the white and red snow of apple blossom. Tlie others were devoted to the society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was one of the warmest of friends, and he plucked the more eagerly at the choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling he so pathetically express- es, — " Is there no cause beyond the common claim, Endear'd to all in ciiiidliooil's very name? Ah, sure sonic stronger inijiulse vibrates here, Wliicli whispers Kriendsliip will be doubly dear To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, And seek abroad the love denied at home. Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee — A home, a world, a paradise to inc." Of his ITarnnv intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, tlio poet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the II.] EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 29 Lycus of the Childish RecoUections) ; Lord Delawarr (tlie Eiii-yalus) ; John Wingfield (Alonzo), who died at Coim- bra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus) ; Edward Noel Long (Cleon) ; Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead ; and Sir Robert Peel. Of the last, his form -fellow and most famous of his mates, the story is told of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fag mas- ter, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half the blows. Peel w'as an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year, 1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were his jun- iors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites. But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him the nickname of " the old English baron." To "Wildman, who, as a senior, had a right of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, " I find you have got Delawarr on your list ; pray don't lick him." " Why not ?" was the reply. " Why, I don't know, ex- cept that he is a brother peer." Again, he interfered with the more effectual arm of physical force to rescue a junior protege — lame like himself, and otherwise much weaker — from the ill-treatment of some hulking tyrant. " Harness," he said, " if any one bullies you, tell me, and ril thrash him if I can ;" and he kept his word. Harness became an accomplished clergyman and minor poet, and has left some pleasing reminiscences of his former pa- tron. The prodigy of the school, George Sinclair, was in the habit of writing the poet's exercises, and getting his battles fought for him in return. His bosom friend was Lord Clare. To him his confidences were most freely given, and his most affectionate verses addressed. In the characteristic stanzas entitled " L'amitie est I'amour sans ailes," we feel as if between them the qualifying phrase :!U UYRON. [chap. iiiii^lit liavc been omitted ; for their letters, carefully pre- served on cither side, are a record of the jealous com- jilaints and the reconciliations of lovers. In 1821 Byron writes, " 1 never hear the name Clare without a beatinp; of tlie heart even now ; and I write it with the feelings of 1 803-4-5, ad injinitian.'"' At the same date he says of an accidental meetini;: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Ilar- iDw. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was much agitated — more in appearance than I was myself — for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was tlie pulse of my own which made me think so, "We were but five minutes together on the public road, but I hardly recollect an hour of mv existence that could be weiirhed against them.'' They were " all that brothers should be but the name ;" and it is interesting to trace this relation- ship between the greatest genius of the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age, stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters and ranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled. Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of a passion of another kind, with a result that unhap}»ily coloured his life. Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, the heiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of the race that had held with his such varied relations. In one of his letters he dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seems not to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, in the autunm of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masquerade there, and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the following year Mrs. Byron again n.] EARLY YEAES AND SCHOOL LIFE. 31 settled at Nottingham, and in the course of a second and longer visit to lier he frequently passed the night at the Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthven was then a tem- porary tenant. This was the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, who invited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return every even- ing to Xewstead, giving the excuse that the family pict- ures would come down and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeated in the Siege of Cor- inth. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley, which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of 1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion to Matlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, with the ex- ception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of his first real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest ; he wished to marry Miss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have " joined broad lands, healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart." The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought be- fore us in an account of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the lady and the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he had never told his love ; but that she had discovered — it is obvious that she never returned — it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock ; then an account of their riding together in the country on their return to the family residence ; again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of " Mary Anne ;" and, lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs — " Do you think I could care for that lame boy f ' — upon which he rushed out of the 82 I{YR()\. [ciiAK house, and ran, like a liuntcJ creature, to Newstead. Thence he sliortly returned from tlie rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at Harrow, A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of Anuesley — an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. " I suppose," he said, " the next lime I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth ?" " I hope so," she replied (her betrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). The announcement of her marriage, wliicli took place in August, 1805, was made to him by his mother, with the remark, "I have some news for you. Take out your handkerchief; you will reijuire it." On hearing what she had to say, with forced calm he turned the conversation to other subjects ; but he was long haunted by a loss which he has made the theme of many of his verses. In 1807 he sent to the lady herself the lines beginning — " had my fate been joined with thine." In the following year he accepted an invitation to dine at Annesley, and was visibly affected by the sight of the infant daughter of Mrs. Chaworth, to whom he addressed a touching congratulation. Shortly afterwards, when about to leave England for the first time, he finally addressed her in the stanzas — " 'Tis done, and shivering in tlic gale, The bark unfurls her snowy sail." Some years later, having an opportunity of revisiting the family of his successful rival, Mrs. Leigh dissuaded liim. "Don't go," she said, "for if you do you will certainly fall in love again, and there will be a scene." The ro- mance of the story culminates in the famous Dream, a II.] EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 33 poem of unequal merit, but containing passages of real pathos, written in tlie year 1816 at Diodati, as we are told, araid a flood of tears. Miss Chaworth's attractions, beyond those of personal beauty, seem to have been mainly due — a common occur- rence — to the poet's imagination. A young lady, two years his senior, of a lively and volatile temper, she enjoy- ed the stolen interviews at the gate between the grounds, and laughed at the ardent letters, passed through a confi- dant, of the still awkward youth whom she regarded as a boy. She had no intuition to divine the presence, or ap- preciate the worship, of one of the future master-minds of England, nor any ambition to ally herself with the wild race of Newstead, and preferred her hale, commonplace, fox-hunting squire. " She w'as the beau ideal," says By- ron, in his first accurate prose account of the affair, writ- ten 1823, a few days before his departure for Greece, " of all that my youthful fancy could paint of beautiful. And I have taken all my fables about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination created in her. I say created ; for I found her, like the rest of the sex, anything but angelic." Mrs. Musters (her husband re-asserted his right to his own name) had in the long-run reason to regret her choice. The ill-assorted pair, after some unhappy years, resolved on separation ; and falling into bad health and worse spir- its, the " bright morning star of Annesley " passed under a cloud of mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottingham riot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancient family was sold by auction and scattered to the winds. CHAPTER III. CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTFIORSHIP. >ix October, 1805, on tlic advice of Dr. Driirv, Byron was removed to Trinity Cullege, Cambridge, and kept up a connexion with the University for less than three years of very irregular attendance, during which we hear nothing of his studies, except the contempt for them expressed in some of the least cfiFectivo passages of his early satires. He came into residence in bad temper and low spirits. His attachment to Harrow characteristically redoubled as the time drew near to leave it, and his rest was broken "for the last quarter, with counting the hours that re- mained." He was about to start by himself, with the heavy feeling that he was no longer a boy, and yet against his choice, for he wished to go to Oxford. The Hours of Idleness, the product of this period, are fairly named. He was so idle as regards "problems mathematic," and "bar- barous Latin," that it is matter of surprise to learn that he was able to take his degree, as he did, in March, 1808. A good German critic, dwelling on the comparatively narrow range of studies to which the energies of Cam- bridge were then mainly directed, adds, somewhat rashly, that English national literature stands for the most part beyond the range of the academic circle. This statement is often reiterated with persistent inaccuracy ; but tho CHAP. III.] CAMBRIDGE. 35 most casual reference to biography informs us tliat at least four-fifths of the leading statesmen, reformers, and philos- ophers of England have been nurtured within the walls of her universities, and cherished a portion of their spirit. From them have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of our history, kindled the nation into a new life ; from the age of "Wycliffe, through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign of the Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have been wholly " without the academic circle." Ana- lysing with the same view the lives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we find the propor- tion of University men increases. " Poeta nascitur et fit ;" and if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle the comparative repose of a seclusion " unravaged " by the fierce activities around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the an- cient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its resources. The discourao-ino- effect of a some- times supercilious and conservative criticism is not an un- mixed evil. The verse-writer who can be snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone is a poetaster silenced for his country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubbling with spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, the discipline is hard, and the re- straint excessive ; and that the men whom their colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely. Bacon inveiirhs ao-ainst the scholastic trifling of his dav ; Milton talks of the waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the loo-ic of the schools ; Cowlev com- plains of being taught words, not things ; Gibbon rejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen ; Wordsworth contemns the " trade in classic niceties," and "0 liVliuX. [nui: roves " in magisterial liberty " by the Cam, as afterwards amonc; the bills. But all those hostile critics owe iiuich to the object of their animadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the prefer- ence of Liu;ht to P'ruit in the Novum Organum, half of Comns and Lycidas, the stately periods of the Decline and Full, and the severe beauties of Laodainia, to the better influences of academic training on the minds of their au- thors. Similarly, tlic richest pages of Byron's work — from the date of The Curse of Minerva to that of the " Isles of Greece" — are brightened by lights and adorned by allu- sions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by the sluggish stream of his " Injusta noverca." At her, however, he continued to rail as late as the publication of Bcppo, in the 7 5th and 7Gth stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint — " One hates an author that's all author, fellows III foolscap uniforms turn'd up with iuk — So very auxious, clever, fine, aud jealous, One don't know what to say to tiiem, or think." Then, after commending Scott, Rogers, and Moore for be- ing men of the world, he proceeds : — "But fur tlie eliildreu of tlie 'nighty mothers,' Tiie would-be wits and ean't-be gentlemen, I leave them to the daily ' Tea is ready,' Suug coterie, and literary lady." This attack, which called forth a counter-invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the ex- ])ression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, I>yron pushed to an extreme, lie had a rooted dislike of Iirofcssioual litterateurs, and was always haunted by a dread ui,] CAMBRIDGE. 37 that they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He aspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction — that of a peer among poets, and a poet among peers. In this same spirit he re- sented the comparison frequently made between him and Rousseau, and insisted on points of contrast. " He had a bad memory — I a good one. He was of the people — I of the aristocracy." Byron was capable of unbending where the difference of rank was so great that it could not be ignored. On this principle we may explain his enthusi- astic regard for the chorister Eddlestone, from whom he received the cornelian that is the theme of some of his verses, and whose untimely death in 1811 he sincerely mourned. Of his Harrow friends, Harness and Long in due course followed him to Cambridge, where their common pursuits were renewed. With the latter — who was drowned in 1809, on a passage to Lisbon with his regiment — he spent a considerable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in which art they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coins from a depth of fourteen feet — incidents recalled to the poet's mind by reading Mil- ton's invocation to Sabrina. During the same period he distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted marksman, and his habit of carrfing about pistols, and use of them wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed a theo- retical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge as Scott, and more ready to send one. Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to say. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he commends the head 88 DVauX, [ciiAP. of Ilia college, Dr. Lort Maiisel, for dignified demeanour in his office and a past reputation for convivial wit. His at- tentions to Professor Hailstone at Harrowgate were gra- ciously offeri'd and received ; but in a letter to Murray ho gives a graphically abusive account of I'orson, "liiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was first intro- duced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most of whom arc interesting on their own account as well as from their connexion with the sub- sequent phases of his career. By common consent Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-G, was the most remarkable of the group. Distin- guished alike for scholarship, physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, liuiiinur of fancy, and fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impres- sion on the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austin on those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron always regarded as an incalcula- ble calamity. In a note to Childe Harold he writes : " I should have ventured on a verse to tlic memory of Mat- thews, were he not too munh above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in llic attainment of greater hon- ours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any grad- uate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was actjuired ; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority." He was drowned when balliing alone among the reeds of the Cam, in the summer of 1811. In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in an- swer ti> a request for contributions to a jiroposcMl memoir, introduces inlo his notes mucii autobiographical matter. III.] CAMBRIDGE. 39 In reference to a joint visit to Newstead he writes : " Mat- thews and myself bad travelled down from London to- gether, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. "When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant. ' Come,' said he, ' don't let us break through ; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end ;' and so he continued, and was as entertain- ing as ever to the very end. Ue had previously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture ; and Jones (the gyp), in his odd way, had said, in putting him in, ' Mr. Matthews, I rec- ommend to your attention not to damage any of the mov- ables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.'' Matthews was delighted with this, and when- ever anybody came to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution, and used to repeat Jones's ad- monition in his tone and manner. . . . He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Lishman, named R, one evening beginning to say something at a large supper, Matthews roared, ' Silence !' and then, point- ing to R, cried out, in the words of the oracle, ' Orson is endowed with reason.' When Sir Henry Smith was ex- pelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named ' Hiron,' Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every evening — 'Ah me! what perils do environ The man who meddles with hot Hiron !' He was also of that band of scoffers who used to rouse Lort Mansel from his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity ; and when he appeared at the window, foaming with wrath, and crying out, ' I know you, gentlemen — I know you !' 40 BYROX. [uiAP. were wont to reply, ' ^^'o bescccli thee to bear us, good Lort. Good Lort, deliver us !' " The whole letter, writteu iu the poet's mature and nat- ural style, i:;ives a vivid picture of the social life and sur- roundinLCs of his Cambridge days: how nuich of the set and sententious moraliziufj of some of his formal biogra- pliers might we not have spared, fur a rcj)ort of the con- versation on the road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the same centre, Scrope Davies en- listed the largest share of Byron's affections. To liim he wrote after the catastrophe : " Come to me, Scrope ; I am almost desolate- — left alone in the world. I had but you, and II., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors while I can." Later he says, " Matthews, Davies, llobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beaten us all iu the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S. D." The last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet, in one of his fits of petulance, exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, " I shall go madP'' Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, " It is much more like silli- ness than madness !" He was the only man who ever laid Byron under any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him 4800/. in some time of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat up over champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scrope could not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy and pious on his knees," Davies was much disconcerted at the influence which the sceptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron's mind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John m.] CAMBRIDGE. 41 Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Brongliton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life, the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor of his will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability is abundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, his published description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary and political career. Byron bears witness to the warmth of his affections and the charms of his conversation, and to the candour which, as he confess- ed to Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubt that they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was a passing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits that Hobhouse was his best friend ; and when he unexpectedly walked up the stairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli informs us that Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excess of jo}', that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sit down in tears. On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated Avith it, was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, whose corre- spondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical ; they both fought under the standards of the classic school ; they resented the same criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were bound together by the strong tie of mutual ad- miration. Byron commends Hodgson's verses, and en- courages him to write ; Hodgson recognizes in the Bards and Reviewers and the early cantos of Childe Harold the 3 42 liYKUN. [cUAP. promise of Manfred and Cain. Amono; the associiites who strove to bring the poet back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of his thouglits, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the most judicious. That his cautions and exliortations were never stultified by pedantry or excessive dogniatism, is apparent from the frank and unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are preserved, and some for the first time reprt)duced in the recently-publish- ed Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and superficial dogmatism, sometimes amuunting to effrontery, that is apt to characterize the negations of a youthful scep- j9cl In September, 1811, Byron writes from Newstead: iri-vvill have nothing to do with your immortality; wc arc miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of ^^culating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Xazarcne to hell. I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all ; but I would sooner be a Paiilician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyr- rhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulmen, shall shame you all in good-will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, the Rev. F. |Iodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, " I have read Watson to Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy creed ; and I want a better ; but there is something pagan in mc that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.'''' ]5ut his early attitude on matters of religion is best set forth in a letter to Gifford, of 1813, in which he says, " I am no bigot m.] CAMBrxIDGE. 43 to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying* the existence of a God. It was the comparative insig- nificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in com- parison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eterni- ty might be overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with this malady ; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria." Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which had for their return a perfect open- heartedness in his correspondent. To no one did the poet more freely abuse himself ; to no one did he indulge in more reckless sallies of humour ; to no one did he more readily betray his little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to him the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrous encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of the poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence — a gift of 1000/., to pay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle, the former gratefully alludes to this generosity : " Oh, if you knew the exultation of heart, aye, and of head too, I feel at being free from those depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit that was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver. Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry Drury — long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law, to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are addressed — 44 IJYUON. [cuAP. ami Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded witli various associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's liistory, and, after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgutten novels, first made ac- quaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, wlien we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some com- pliment on his early volume, in which, though addressing Lis correspondent merely as " Sir," his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach an absurd climax. Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at col- lege, Byron had made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and Southwell, a small town on the road finm Mansfield and Newark, once a refuge of Charles L, and still adorned by an old Norman minster. Here Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was frequently joined by her son. He was in- troduced to John Pigot, a medical student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talents above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a number of his letters arc addressed; also to the Rev. J. T. Beclicr, author of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he fiMind dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee ! and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawks who iidiabit your kraals I" and adding that his sole satis- faction during his residence there was having pared off some pounds of flesh. Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inland watering-place he passed, on the wliole, a pleasant time — listening to the music of the la.J CAMBRIDGE— FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 45 simple ballads iu which he delighted, taking part in the performances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses. This otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of violence on the part of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one more out- rageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the neighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage with stub- born mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as he calls her, followed : on their meeting, a truce was patched, and they withdrew in oppo- site directions, she back to Southwell, he to refresh him- self on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) he again rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description of a trip to Ilarrowgate, when his lordship's favourite Newfoundland, Boatswain, whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, or Maida to Scott, sat on the box. In November Byron printed for private circulation the first issue of his juvenile poems, Mr. Becher having call- ed his attention to one which he thought objectionable, the impression was destroyed ; and the author set to work upon another, which, at once weeded and amplified, saw the light in January, 1807. He sent copies, under the title of Juvenilia, to several of his friends, and among oth- ers to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling), and to Fraser Tytlcr, Lord Woodhouselee. Encouraged by their favourable notices, he determined to appeal to a wider au- dience, and in March, 1807, the Hours of Idleness, still proceeding from the local press at Newark, were given to 4G BY RON. [tiiAP. llio worlil. In June wc find the poet again writing from liis college rooms, dwelling with boyish detail on liis growth in height and reduetion in girth, his late hours and heavy potiitions, his comrades, and the prospects of his book. From July to September he dates from Lon- don, excited by the praises of some now obscure magazine, and planning a journey to the Ucbridcs. In October he is again settled at Cambridge, and in a letter to Miss Pig- ot, makes a^umorous reference to one of his fantastic •^ freaks :-^^-X'4wv< — a tatne bear. AVhen 1 brdught him here, they asked mc what I meant to do with him, and my rci>ly was, ' lie should »it for a fellowslnp.' This answer delighted them not." Tlib^ greater ^rt of the spring and summer of 1808 was spent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seems during this period for the first time to have freely indulged in dissipations, wliich are in most lives more or less carefully concealed. But Byron, with almost unparalleled folly, was perpetually taking the public into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the straniie additions of an ima<>inative effrontery, have been thrust before us in a manner which even Theophile Gau- tier might have thought indelicate. Nature and circum- stances conspired to the result. With passions which he •<^&-fond of comparing to tlie fires of Vesuvius and Ilecla, Nrf*he was, on his entrance into a social life which his rank helped to surround with temptations, unconscious of any suflicient motive for resisting them ; he had no one to re- strain ^ im from the wliim of the moment, or with suf- J>, fi^' hority to give him effective advice. A tempera- \ Mieral despondency, relieved by reckless out- lal spirits, is the least favourable to habitual m.] CAMBRIDGE— FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 47 self-control. The melancholy of Byron was not of the pensive and innocent kind attributed to Cowley, rather that of the fi£\ayxo\iicoi of whom Aristotle asserts, with profound psychological or physiological intuition, that they are ael iv acpodpa ope^ei. The absurdity of Mr. Moore's frequent declaration, that all great poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused by the modesty which, in the saying so, obviously excludes him- self from the list. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessant irritation to their possessor, unti. they have found their proper vent in the free exercise of bis highest faculties. Byron had not yet done this, when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cam- bridge, and Newstead — shooting, gambling, swimming, al- ternately drinking deep and trying to starve himself into elegance, green - room hunting, travelling with disguised companions,* patronizing D'Egville the dancing- master, Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, tbe distinguished professor of pugilism, to whom he after- wards affectionately refers as his " old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terras dishonour. We may believe tbe poet's later assertion, backed by want of evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of leading any one astray — a fact perhaps worthy the atten- ' In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter from Mr. Minto to the Athenceum in the year 1876, in which, with considera- ble though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to identify the girl with " Thyrza " and with " Astarte," whom he regards as the same person. 48 liVKU.V. [chap. tion of those moral worshippers of Goethe and Piiirns who hiss at Lord Byron's name. Thoutrh much of this year of his life was passed unprof- itably, from it dates the impulse that provoked him to put forth his powers. The Edinl>Hr(jh, with the attaek on the Hours of Idlcnvm, appeared in March, 1808. This pro- duction, hy Lord lirougham, is a specimen of tlic toma- hawk style of criticism prevalent in tlie early years of tlie century, in which the main motive of the critic was, not to deal fairly with his author, but to acquire for liimsclf an easy reputation for cleverness, by a series of smart, con- temptuous sentences. Taken separately, the strictures of the Edinburgh are sufliciently just, and the passages quoted for censure are all had. Byron's genius as a poet •was not remarkably precocious. Tlie Hours of Idleness seldom rise, either in thought or expression, very far above the average level of juvenile verse ; many of the pieces in the collection are weak imitations, or common- place descriptions; others, suggested by circumstances of local or temporary interest, had served their turn before coming into print. Their prevailing sentiment is an affec- tation of misanthropy, conveyed in such lines as these : — " Weary of love, of life, dcvour'd with spleen, I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen." This mawkish element unfortunately survives in much of the author's later verse. But even in this volume there are indications of force and command. The Prayer of Nature indeed, though previously written, was not in- cluded in the edition before the notice of the critic ; but the sound of Loch-na-Gair and some of the stanzas on Neiostead ought to have saved him from the mistake of III.] CAMBRIDGE— FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. his impudent advice. The poet, who through hfe waited with fevei-isli anxiety for every verdict on his work, is re- \iA ported, after reading the review, to have looked like a man /^ about to send a challenge. In the midst of a transparo^^f show of indifference, he confesses to have drunk three bot- tles of claret on the evening of its appearance. But the Avound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings' blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collect- ing his strength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by its delay, twelve months later made it impos- sible for him to be contemned. The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, va- cated by the tenant, who had left the building in the tum- ble-down condition in which he found it. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time " heavily dipped," generosities having combined with selfish extravagances to the result ; he had no funds to subject the place to any- thing like a thorough repair, but he busied himself in ar- ranging a few of the rooms for his own present and his mother's after use. About this date he writes to her, be- ginning in his usual style, " Dear Madam," saying he has as yet no rooms ready for her reception, but that on his departurtf she shall be tenant till his return. During this interval he was studying Pope, and carefully maturing his own satire. In November the dog Boatswain died in a fit of madness. The event called forth the famous burst of misanthropic verse, ending with the couplet — "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; I never linew but one, and here he lies ;" — and the inscription on the monument that still remains in the o'ardens of Newstead — 60 1JV1:0N. [ciJAP. " Xfiir this spot Are deposited the remains of one Wliu possessed Beauty without Vauity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstcad Abbey, November 18, 1808." On January 22, 1809, his lordsliip's coming of age was celebrated witii festivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early in spring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to the publisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, on the death of Lord Falkland, who had been kill- ed in a duel, and expresses a sympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom he proceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of the manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, he proceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, " Come what may, Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived. on the spot — I have fixed my heart on it; and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our inherit- ance." lie was building false hopes on the result of the suit for the Rochdale property, which, being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with no satisfactory result. He took liis seat in the House of Lords on the 13th of March, and Mr. Dallas, who accom- panied him to the bar of the House, has left an account of his somewhat unfortunate demeanour. III.] CAMBRIDGE— FIKST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 61 "His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and that he was thinking of the noble- man to whom he had once looked for a hand and counte- nance in his introduction. There were very few persons in the House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordi- nary business. When Lord Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him ■with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him ; and, though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. This was all throwi away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put\y^ the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not press a welcome so received, but re- sumed his seat; while Lord Byron cai'elessly seated him self for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Oppo- sition. When, on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said, ' If I had shaken hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party ; but I will have nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and now I will go abroad.' " A few days later the English Bards and Scotch Re- viewers appeared before the public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month ; a second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wont at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many of his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have been dictated by feelings so transi- tory, that in the course of the correction of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame ; ^.e., he wrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author — 1/ o " I leave topography to coxcomb Gell ;" 62 liVRON. [iiiAP. we have liis second thought in the first edition, before he saw the Troad — " I leave topography to classic Gell ;" and his third, half-way in censure, in the fifth — " I leave topography to rapid Gell." Of such materials are literary judgments made ! The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the only good thing of its kind since Churchill — for in the Baviad and Mccviad only butterflies were broken upon the wheel — and to its being the first promise of a new power. The Bards and Reviewers also enlisted sym- pathy, from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitlierto assumed the prerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own milk ; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakers fared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war, only once relaxed, with Soutliey. "Wordsworth — though against this passage is written " un- just," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn — is dubbed an idiot, who — " Both by precept and example shows, That prose is verse, and verse is only prose ;" and Coleridge, a baby — " To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear." The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey and Moore are a fair specimen of the accuracy with wliich the author had caught the ring of Pope's antithesis : — III.] CAMBRIDGE— FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 53 " The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. The Tolbooth felt — for marble sometimes can, On such occasions, feel as much as man — The Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, If Jeffrey died, except within her arms." Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited some choice spirits to hold a few weeks of fare- well revel. Matthews, one of these, gives an account of the place, and the time they spent there — entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo of pistol- shots ; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy, poetry ; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the Black Brother; drinking their wine out of the skull-cup which the owner had made out of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden ; breakfasting at two, then reading, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, and playing with the bear or teasing the w^olf. The party broke up without having made themselves re- sponsible for any of the orgies of which Childe Harold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as vera- cious, when the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way *' outre merP CHArTER IV. TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. There is no romance of Miincliausen or Dnmas more niarvc'llous tlian llie adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of liis intrigues, en- counters, acts of diablerie and of mnniticence, in particular of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking pos- session of one of them, which have all the same relation to reality as the Arabian Nir/hts to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid/ Byron liad far more than an average share of the cmif/re spirit, the counterpoise in the English race of their other- wise arroffant isolation, lie held with Wilhelm Meister — ■'o' " To give space for wamleiing is it, That the earth was made so wide ;" and wrote to his mother from Athens : " I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind, instead of read- ing about them, and the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, that 1 think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroad for a term, among the few allies our wars have left iis." , ' Those who wish to read them are referred to the large three vol- umes — published in 1825, by Mr. Ilcy, Portman Square— of anony- mous authorship. CUA]>. IV.] TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 65 On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy inter- est, and stored his mind with information about Persia and India, the contemphited but unattained goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Eushton, the son of one of his tenants, supposed to be rep- resented by the Page in Childe Harold. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar. Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as " full of Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a slight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excused himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he at one moment talks of his des- olation, and says that, " leaving England without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain of boisterous buffoonery. On the 2nd of July, the packet by which he was bound sailed for Lisbon, and ar- rived there about the middle of the month, when the Eng- lish fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of his stanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolate dirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which Avere at that time rendered dangerous by the fre- quency of religious and political assassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, save the state- ment of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more peril- ous, though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing the Hellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle. Byron praises the neighbouring Cintra as " the most beautiful village in the world," though he 66 BYKOX. [chap. joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Con- vention, ajid extols the grandeur of XHifra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent of which a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the English had any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants by sea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through the south-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles, performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty -four hours, was Se- villg^Avhere they lodged for three days in the house of two l^ies, to whose attractions, as well as the fascination he scems-t^rliave exerted over them, the poet somewhat gar- rulously refers. Here, too, he saw, parading on the Prado, the famous Maid of Saragassa, whom he celebnites in his equally famous stanzas {Chllde Harold, I., 54-58). Of Cadiz, the next stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a mod- ern Cythera, describing the bull-fights irLliis vj^sc, and the beauties in glowing prose. The iQles of this city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain ; and by reason of them, rather than the sea -shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is the first spot in the creation." llence, by an English frigate, they sailed to Gibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had no sympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in our great struggle with tlxe tyranny of the Firsl'^Empire, he may almost be said t^Oii^c sympathized with Napole^yi/ The ship stopped at Cagliari, in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti, on the Sicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks — time enough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs. Spencer Smith, wife of our minister at Constantinople, sister-in-law of the famous admiral, and the heroine of some exciting adventures. She is the " Florence " of Childe Harold, IV.] TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 57 and is afterwards addressed in some of the most graceful verses of his cavalier minstrelsy — " Do thou, amidst the fair white walls, If Cadiz yet be free, At times from out her latticed halls Look o'er the dark blue sea — Then think upon Calypso's isles, Endear'd by days gone by — To others give a thousand smiles, To me a single sigh." The only other adventure of the visit is Byron's quarrel "with an officer, on some unrecorded ground, which Hob- house tells us nearly resulted in a duel. The friends left Malta on September 29th, in the war-ship "Spider," and after anchoring off Patras, and spending a few hours on shore, they skirted the coast of Acarnania, in view of local- ities — as Ithaca, the Leucadian rock, and Actium — whose classic memories filtered through the poet's mind and found a place in his mastefpiece*. Landing at Previsa, they started on a tour through Alpania — " O'er many JL mount sublime, " Through lands scarce n(^ticed in historic tales." Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and the half-savage independence of the people, described as " always strutting about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then engaged in besieging Ibrahim in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by " bleak Pindus," Acherusia's lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before reaching the latter place they encountered a terrific thunder-storm, 68 BYROX. [ciLtP. in the midst of which they separated, aiid Byron's detach- ment lost its way for nine lionrs, durini^ which he com- posed the verses to Florence, quoted ahovc. ' Some days later they tt>f;;ctlier arrived at Tcpelleni, and were there received by Ali I'asha in person. The scene on cnterin;; the town is described as recallinij Scott's Brank- some Castle and the feudal system ; and the introduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet's cyfsiurs_/ is oraphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. ""TTis first question was, why at so early an age I left my coun- try, and without a ' lala,' or nurse ? lie then said the Eng- lish minister had told him I was of a great family, and de- sired his respects to my mother, which I now present to you (date, November 12th). lie said he was certain I was man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and liRle white hands. He told me to consider him as a fa- ther whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed he treated mc like a child, sending me almonds, fruit, and sweetmeats twenty times a day." By- ron shortly afterwards discovered his host to be a poisoner and an assassin. " Two days ago," he proceeds, in a pas- sage which illustrates his character and a common experi- ence, " I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to the ignorance of the captain and crew, Fletcher yelled after his wife; the Greeks called on all the saints, the Mus- sulmen on Alia; the captain burst into tears and ran be- low deck, telling us to call on God. The sails were split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting in ; and all our chance was to make for Corfu— or, as F. pathetically called it, ' a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, but finding him ^corrigibHe, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and fTTj^-dtTlni on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, IT.] TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 59 says nobbouse, to be of any assistance, be in a sbort time was found amid tbe trembling sailors fast asleep. Tbey got back to tbe coast of Suli, and sbortly afterwards start- ed tbroLigb Acarnania and ^Etolia for tbe Morea, again re- joicing in the wild scenery and tbe apparently kindred spirits of tbe wild men among whom tbey passed. Byron was especially fascinated by tbe fire-ligbt dance and song of tbe robber band, wbicb he describes and reproduces in Childe Harold. On the 21st of November be reached Mesolongbi, where, fifteen years later, be died. Here be dismissed most of his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi a^jLfi»*otH4»g-sign_of Apollo. "The last bird," be wjifeeg^I ever fired at was anT^igtefoT) the shore of tbeGulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded, and I tried toNsave it — tbe eye was so bright. Bir^'it pined and died inSi few days; and I never did siiie^', and never will, attempt the life of aaothcr Jbirdr'*''^ From Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of Tropho- nius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christ- mas, 1809, arrived before the defile, near tbe ruins of Phyle, where he bad bis first glimpse of Athens, which evoked tbe famous lines : — " Ancient of days, august Athena ! where. Where are thy men of miglit ? thy grand in soul ? Gone, glimmering through the dreams of things that were. First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away : is this the whole— A schoolboyVtale^Ae_wondeJCJiLaaJ[iouiL?'L7 C ,-j c After which he reverts to bis perpetually recurring moral, " Men come and go ; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars endure " — CO BYUON. [^HAP. "ApDlIo .-(ill thy lonfr, loni:; suninier j,'il''..-^ ; yUU in his beam Meiideh's iiiailtks gluie ; Art, glory, freedom fail — but nature still is fair." The (lur;itl<>ii of L'-nl Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months, and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica — Eleusis, Ilymettus, Cape Colon- na, Siiniuni, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck, the Colo- nos of Qidipus, and Marathon, the phiin of wliicli is said to have been placed at his disposal for iibont the same sum that thirty years later an American volunteered to give for the bark with his name, on the tree at Newstead. Byron liad a poor opinion of the modern Atlicnians, who seem to have at this period done their best to justify the Koman satirist. He found them superficial, cunnintr, and false ; but, with generous historic insight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been much bet- ter; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it would recjuire ages of freedom to emancipate them. In the Greek capital he lodged at the liouse of a re- spectable lady, w idow of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom, Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens, without the dangerous glory of hiving taken any very firm hold of the heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's genuine indignation on the " lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles from the PartheuonT^aniT tltbir being taken to England by order of Lord (Elgin. ByrotilHJver wrote anything more sincere than U\e Curse of Minerihi ; and he has recorded few in- cidents rai^s-5nTTT0, twenty times. The strength of the current is the main dmtcuity of a feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from no- e ; hut it was a tempting theme for classical allusions, t length, on May 14, he reached Constantinople, exalted he Golden Uorn above all the sights he had seen, and ow first abandoned his design of travcllintr to Persia. Talt, and other more jir4i>ss-^ossipping travellers, have ac- fcunuilated a number of incidents of the poet's life at this- period, of ^ his fan ciful dress^ blazing in scarlet aji4 g**}d^ and of his sometimes'absurd cdntcntlbnsTfortlie privileges of -rank — as when he demanded precedence of the Eng- lish ambassador in an interview with the Bultan, and, on its refusal, could only be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian Nitcrnuncio. In converse with, indifferent per- ■ sons he displayed a curious alternation ;of frankness and I hauteur, and indulged a habit of letti_ng people up and ^^down, by wliich he frequently gave offence. More inter- / cstitJg are narratives of the suggestion of some of his I prscsTartkc slave-market in Don Juan, and the specta- j cle of the dead>i4iiiinal^,tossed on the waves, revived in thcN^m/r' nf Ahi/dos. One example is, if we except I)ante\s r^f>/TWv±liiLjnost_jvi^^^ instance in litera- ture of the expansion, without the weakening, of the hor- ■ible. Take first Mr, ITobhouse's plain prose : " The sen- sations produced by the state of the weather" — it was wretched and stormy when they left the ** Salsettc " for the city — " and leaving a comfortable cabin, were in uni- son with the impressions which we felt when, passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy fc IV.] TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. 63 cypress which rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." After this we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imagination brooding over the incident — " And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wa Hold o'er the dead their carnival : Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb, They were too busy to bark at him. From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ; And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull, As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull/^ No one ever more persistently converted the- incid ents of travel into poetic material ; but sometimes, in doing so, he ""Borrowed more largely from his imagination than his mem- ory, as in the description of the seraglio, of which there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance. Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July, 1810 — the latter to return direct to Eng- land, a determination which, from no apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incident of \ the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. V\ Taking up, and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found ji on the quarter-deck, he remarked, '^^hould like to know J/ how a person ^eels^^alter-ctjnamitting a murderT^-^-TWs , harmless piece of melodrama- — tlie idea of which is ex- panded in Mr. Dobell's Balder, and parodied in Firmilian — may have been the basis of a report afterwards circu- lated, and accepted among others by Goethe, that his lord- sship had committed a murder ; hence, obviously, the cha aHe Hints from Horace and the Curse of Minevva,tttMi K^' " tlie world's new joy " — the first great EngIl4i_£oet-pcer ; as natural as that in his only published satire of the period he should inveigh against almost the only amusement in which he eould not share. The address was written at the request of Lord Holland, when of some hundred com- petitive pieces none had been found exactly suitable — a circumstance which gave rise to the famous parodies en- titled The Rejected Addresses — and it was thought that the ultimate choice would conciliate all rivalry. The care which Byron bestowed on the correction of the first draft of this piece is characteristic of his habit of writing oflE his poems at a gush, and afterwards carefully elaborating them. The Waltz was published anonymously in April, 1813. Ikjvas followed in May by the Giaour, the first -of ^he ^^^^vflood of verse romances which, durino; the three succeed- ing years, he poured forth witli^urpetuous fluency, and which were received with almost-Jinrestrained applause^ The plots and sentiments and imagery are siiinTar'm them all. The Giaour steals the niisiress of Hassan, who re- venges his honour by drowning lier. The Giaour escapes; returns, kills Hassan, and then goes to a monastery. In the Bride of Ab//dos, published in the December of tho same year, Giaftir wants to marry his daughter Zuleika to Carasman Pasha. She runs off with Selim, her reputed brother — in reality her cousin, and so at last her legiti- mate lover. They are caught; he is slain in fight; sho dies, to slow music. In the Corsair, published January, 1814, Conrad, a pirate, and man of "one virtue and a thousand crimes!" is beloved by Medora, who, on his predatory expeditions, sits waiting for him (like Hassan's v.] SECOND TERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 73 and Sisera's motlier) in a tower. On one of these he at- tacks Seyd Pasha, and is overborne by superior force ; but Gulnare, a female slave of Seyd, kills her master, and runs off with Conrad, who finds Medora dead and vanishes. In Lara, the sequel to this-=— written in^Iay and June, pub- lished in August — a man of mystery affpeirs in the Morea, with a page, Kaled. After adventures worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe — from whose Schledoni the Giaour is said to have been drawn — Lara falls in battle with his deadly foe, Ezzelin, and turns j3ut to be Conrad, while Kaled is of course Gulnare. The Hebrew Melodies, written in Decem- ber, 1814, are interesting, in connexion with the author's early familiarity with the Old Testament, and from the force and music that mark the best of them ; but they can hardly be considered an important contribution to the devotional verse of England," The Siege of Corinth and Farisina, composed after his marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year. The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it from Menotti ; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, another sketch from the same pro- toplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly, Parisina, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than the others of the period, Tlie trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo's funeral dirge lingers in our ears, alona: vvith the convent bells — o "In the grey square turret swinging, With a deep sound, to and fro, Heavily to the heart they go." 4* A ^ 74 BYRON. L'^"-^^- \ These romances belong to the same period of the au- , thor's poetic career as the first two cantos of Chihle Har- old. Tliev followed one anotlier like brilliant fireworks. ^ They all exhibit a coin'mand of words, a sense of melody, ) and a flow of rhythm and rhyiiTrV-w'+ntririnastered Moore ^ and even Scott on their own ground. None of them are ? wanting in passages, as " He that hatU bent him o'er the \ dead," and the description of Alp IcTwmtg-iigaiust a column, ^S7hich strike deeper than any verse of cither of those '/writers. But there is an air of melodrama in thctn all. Harmonious delights o^ novel readers, they will not stand rainst the winnowing wind of deliberate criticisip. They the same strhur without th e varj atiens of a Pa- anini. They are potentially endless reproductions of one ^ if'^hase of an ill-regulated mind — the picture of the same quasi-melancholy vengeful man, who knows no friend but dog, and reads on the tombs of the great only " the ;lory and the nothing of a name," the exile who cannot ee from himself, " the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind," who has not loved the world nor the world him — " Wliose heart was form'd for softness, warp'd by wrong, Betray'd too early, and beguiled too long" — all this, decies repetita, grows into a weariness and vexa- tion. Mr. Carlyle harshly compares it to the screaming of a meat-jack. The reviewers and the public of the time thought differently. Jeffrey, penitent for the early faux pas of his Heview, as Byrop remained jrenitent for his an- swering assault, writes of Lara, " Passages of it may be put into competition with anything^iat poetry has pro- duced in point either of pathos or ener^'." Moore — who afterwards wrote, not to Byron, -tbwt seven devils had en- tered into Manfred — professes himself " enraptured with > ] LIFE IN LUNDON. it." Fourteen thousand copies of th^-Corsair were sold m a day. But hear the author's own halFUiJast, fodf-apot ogy: ^^Lara I wrote while undressing after coming homeV'/vj. from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. A/f The JBride was written in four, the Corsair in ten days. ^fi,( This I take to be a humiliating confession, as it proves my own want of judgment in publishing, and the public's in reading, things which cannot have stamina for pfitBia=— ^ nence. The pecuniary profits accruing to Byron from his works began with Lara, for which he received 700^. He had made over to Mr. Dallas, besides other gifts to the same ungrateful recipient, the profits of Harold, amounting to 600/., and of the Corsair, which brought 5-251. The pro- . ceeds of the Giaour and the Bride were also surrendered. During this period, 1813-1816, he had become familiar with all the phases of London society, " tasted their pleas- ures," and, towards the close, " felt their decay." His as- sociates in those years were of two classes — men ollhe'' world, and authors. Feted and courted in all quarters, he patronized the theatres, became in 1815 a member of the Drury Lane Committee, ''liked the dandies," including Beau Brummell, and was introduced to the Regent. Their interview, in June, 1812, in the course of which the latter paid unrestrained compliments to Harold and the poetry of Scott, is naively referred to by Mr. Moore " as reflect- ing even still more honour on the Sov^ereign himself than on the two poets." Byron, in a different spirit, writes to Lord Holland : " I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's decease, of warbling truth at Court, like Mr. Mallet of indifferent memory. Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the disgrace." We can hardly conceive the future author of the Vision of 70 liYKUX. [ciup. Judgment writing odes to dictation. He does not seem to liavo l)ocn much fasc.-inated with the first gentleman of Europe, whom at no distant date he assailed in the terri- ble "Avatar," and left the laiircateship to Mr. Southey. Among leaders in art and littLis lie was brought into more or luss intimate contact with Sir Humphry Davy, the Edgeworths, Sir James Mackintosh, Colman the dramatic author, the elder Kean, Monk Lewis, Grattan, Curran, and Madame de Statil. Of the meeting of the last two he marks, " It was like the confluence of J.he Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences." About this time a communication from Mr. Murray, in reference to the meeting with the Regent, led to a letter from Sir Walter Scott to Lord Byron, the beginning of a life-long friendship, and one of the most pleasing pages of biography. These two great men were for a season per- petually pitted against one another as the foremost com- ^piL'titors for literary favour. When Rokehy came out, con- temporaneously with the Giaour, the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge ran races to catch the first copies, Lailiiaid bets as to which of the rivals would win. During the_anti-liyronic fever of 1840-1 800 they were perpetual- ly contnihted as the representatives of the manly and the morbid schools./7A later sentimentalism has affected to despise the woiAi^of both. The fact, therefore, that from an early period the men themselves knew each other as they were is worth illustrating. Scott's letter, in which a generous recognition of the pleasure he had derived from the work of the English ])(iot, was followed by a manly remonstrance on the sub- ject of the attack in the Bards and Reviewers, drew from v.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT. V7 Byrou in the following montli (July, 1812) an answer in the same strain, descanting on the Prince's praises of the Lay and Marmion, and candidly apologizing for the " evil works of his nonage." " This satire," he remarks, " was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit ; and now I am liaunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions." This, in turn, called forth another letter to Byron, eager for more of his verses, with a cordial invitation to Abbotsford on the ground of Scotland's maternal claim on him, and asking for information about Pegasus and Parnassus. Af- ter this the correspondence continues with greater free- dom, and the same display on either side of mutual re- spect. When Scott says, " the Giaour is praised among our mountains," and Byron returns/^ \\ 'aver ley is the best novel I have read," there is no suspicion of flattery — it is the interchange of compliments between men, "Et cantare pares et respondere parati." They talk in just the same manner to third parties. " I gave over writing romances," says the elder, in the spirit of a great-hearted gentleman, " because Byron beat me. He hits the mark where I don't even pretend to fledge my arrow. He has access to a stream of sentiment unknown to me." The younger, on the other hand, deprecates the comparisons that were being invidiously drawn between them. He presents bis copy of the Giaour to Scott, with the phrase, " To the monarch of Parnassus," and compares the feeling of those who cavilled at his fame to that of the Athenians towards Aristides. From those sentiments he never swerves, recognizing to the last the breadth of character of the most generous of his critics, and referring to him, during his later years in Italy, as the Wizard and 78 BVKOX. L*-"^- the Ariosto of the North. A mectiiiL^ was at length ar- raiii^eJ between tliein. Scott looked forward to it with anxious interest, humorously remarking that Byron should say — "Art thou the man whom men famed Grissell call?" And he re{)ly — "Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small?" They met in London during the spring of 1815. The following sentences are from Sir Walter's account of it : " Report had prepared me to meet a man of peculiar hab- its and quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably disappointed in this respect. I found Lord By- ron in the highest degree courteous, and even kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily in Mr. Murray's draw- ing-room, and found a great deal to say to each other. Our sentiments agreed a good deal, except upon the subjects of religion and politics, upon neither of which I was in- clined to believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed opinions. On politics he used sometimes to express a high strain of what is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the pleasure it afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office was at the bottom t>f this habit of thinking. At heart, I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle. Ilis reading did not seem to me to have been very extensive. I remember repeating to him the fine poem of Ilardyknute, and some one asked me what I could possibly have been telling Byron by which he was so much agitated. I saw liiin for the last time in (September) 1815, after I return- ed from France; he dined or lunched with me at Longs in Bond Street. 1 never saw him so full of gaiety and v.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT. 79 good humour. The day of this interview was the most interesting I ever spent. Several letters passed between us — one perhaps every half year. Like the old heroes in Homer, we exchanged gifts; I gave Byron a beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had been the property of the redoubted Elti Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the Iliad, for Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral vase of silver, full of dead men's bones, found within the land walls of Athens. He was often melancholy, almost gloomy. When I observed him in this humour I used either to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some natural and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when the shadows almost always left his countenance, like the mist arising from a landscape. I think I also remarked in his temper starts of suspicion, when he seemed to pause and consider whether there had not been a secret and perhaps offen- sive meaning in something that was said to him. In this case I also judged it best to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself clear, which it did in a minute or two. A downright steadiness of manner was the way to his good opinion. Will Rose, looking by accident at his feetjsaw him scowling furiously ; but on his showing no »ftsy — ttlAUUl!.! ' . ITatT liked about him, besides his boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit asjveiLa s-of-pxir se, and his utter conteerpT'oT'air the affectations of literature. He liked Sfoore and me because, with all our other differences, we Wj:e both good-natured fellows, not caring to maintain /our dIghitTT-«*4^jing the jnot-jwur-rire. He wrote from impulse, never from effort, and therefore I have ,ahvays reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic gen- iuses of my time, and of half a century before me. We K^v rfi' i -) ^ 80 BYRON. [chap. have many men of higli poetic talents, but none of that cvcr-r!;usliing and perennial fountain of natural waters." Scott, like all hale men of sound sense, regretted the al- most fatal incontinence which, in the year of his greatest private troubles, led his friend to make a parade of them before the 2)ublic. Uc speaks more than once of his un- happy tendency to exhibit himself as the dying gladiator, and even com})arcs him to his peacock, screeching before his window because he chooses to bivouac apart from his mate; but he read a copy of the Ravenna diary without altering his view that his lordship was his own worst ina- ligner. Scott, says Lockhart, considered Byron the only poet of transcendent talents we had had since Dryden. There is preserved a curious record of his meeting with a greater poet than Dryden, but one whose greatness neither he nor Scott suspected. Mr. Crabbe liobinson reports "Wordsworth to have said, in Charles Lamb's chambers, about the year 1808, "These reviewers put me out of pa- tience. Here is a young man who has written a volume of poetry ; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, set upon him. The young man will do somctliing, if he goes on as lie has begun. But these reviewers seem to think that nobody may write poetry unless he lives in a garret." Years after. Lady Byron, on being told this, exclaimed, " Ah, if Byron had known that, he would never have at- tacked Wordsworth. He went one day to meet him at dinner, and I said, ' Well, how did the young poet get on with the old one?' ' Wljy, to tell the truth,' said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the end, and that was reverence.'' '''' Similarly, he began by be- ing on good terms with Southey, and after a meeting at IIi)lland House, wrote enthusiastically of his prepossessing appearance. v.] THE LAKE SCHOUL. 81 Byron and the leaders of the so-called Lake School wore, at starting, common heirs of the revolutionary spir- it ; they were, either in their social views or personal feel- ings, to a large extent influenced by the most morbid, though in some respects the most magnetic, genius of modern France, J. J. Rousseau ; but their temperaments were in many respects fundamentally diverse ; and the pre-established discord between them ere long began to make itself manifest in their following out widely diver- gent paths. Wordsworth's return to nature had been pre- luded by Cowper ; that of Byron by Burns. The revival of the one ripened into a restoration of simpler manners and old beliefs ; the other was the spirit of the storm. "When they had both become recognized powers, neither appreciated the work of the other. A few years after this date Bvron wrote of Wordsworth, to a common ad- mirer of both : " I take leave to differ from you as freely as I once agreed with you. His performances, since the Lyrical Ballads, are miserably inadequate to the ability that lurks within hira. There is, undoubtedly, much nat- ural talent spilt over the Excursion; but it is rain upon rocks, where it stands and stagnates ; or rain upon sand, where it falls without fertilizing." This criticism, with others in like strain, was addressed to Mr. Leigh Hunt, to whom, in 1812, when enduring for radicalism's sake a very comfortable incarceration, Byron had, in company with Moore, paid a courteous visit. Of the correspondence of this period — flippant, trench- ant, or sparkling — few portions are more calculated to excite a smile than the record of his frequent resolutions made, reasseverated, and broken, to have done with litera- ture ; even going the length on some occasions of threat- ening to suppress his works, and, if possible, recall the ex- isting copies. ITe effected being a man of the workl un- mercifully, and hud a real delight in clever companions wlio assumed, the same rule, rreciuent allusion is made to his intercoih:se with t^rskine and Siieridan ; the latter be is never tireo^ jjraising, as " the author of the best modern comedy {School for Scandal), the best farce {The Critic), and the best oration (the famous Begum speech) ever heard in this country." Tliey spent many an even- ing together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable state; and, on some one asking " "Who is this?" stammering out " AVilberforee." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with the dram- atist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork- screw condition; and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr, C , who " had no notion of meeting with a bon-vivant in a s"cribbler," and summed the poet's eulogy with the phrase, "he drinks like a man." Hunt, the tattler, who observed his lordship's habits in Italy, with the microscope of malice ensconced within the same walls, makes it a charcre against his host that he would not drink like a man. Once for all it may be noted, that althougli there was no kind of excess in which Byron, whether from bravado or incli- nation, failed occasionally to indulge, he was never for any stretch of time given over, like Burns, to what is techni- cally termed intemperance. His head does not seem to have been strong, and under the influence of stimulants be may have been led to talk a great deal of his danger- ous nonsense. But though he could not say, with Words- worth, that only once, at Cambridge, had his brain been "excited by the fumes of wine," his prevailing sins were in other directions. CHAPTER Yl. MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO EXGLAXD, " As for poets," says Scott, " I have seen all the best of my time and country, and, though Burns had the most glorious eye imaginable, I never thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, ex- cept Byron. His countenance is a thing to dream of." Coleridge writes to the same effect, in language even stronger. "We have from all sides similar testimony to the personal beauty which led the unhappiest of his dev- otees to exclaim, " That pale face is my fate !" Southern critics, as De Chasles, Castelar, even Mazzini, have dealt leniently with the poet's relations to the other sex ; and Elze extends to him in this regard the same ex- cessive stretch of charity. " Dear Childe Harold," ex- claims the German professor, " was positively besieged by women. They have, in truth, no right to complain of him : from his childhood he had seen them on their worst side." It is the casuistry of hero-worship to deny that Byron was unjust to women, not merely in isolated in- stances, but in his prevailing views of their character and claims. " I regard them," he says, in a passage only dis- tinguished from others by more extravagant petulance, "as very pretty but inferior creatures, who are as little in their place at our tables as they would be in our council chaiu- bers. The whole of the present system with regard to the 84 BYKON. [chap. fcMiialo SOX is a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalry of our forefathers. I look on them as irrown-up children; but, like a foolish mamma, I am constantly the slave of one of them. The Turks shut up thiir svomeji, and are inucli hai)|)ier ; give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she will be content." In contrast with this, we have the moods in which he drew his pictures of Angiolina, and llaidee, and Aurora Raby, and wrote the invocations to the sliade of Astarte, and his letters in prose and verse to Augusta ; but the above passage could never have been written by Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shakspeare, <.r Slullcy. The class whom he was reviling seemed, however, during " the day of his des- tiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splen- dour of his verse, the romance of his travels, his pictu- resque melancholy and affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn their tales, often to point their fables with. He was by the one set caressed and spoilt, and "beguiled too long;" by the other, " betrayi'd too late." The recent memoirs of Trances Ann Kemble present a curious record of the process of passing from one extreme to the other. She dwells on the fascination exerted over her mind by the first reading of his poetry, and tells how she " fastened on the book with a grip like steel," and carried it off and hid it under her pillow ; how it affected lier " like an evil potion," and stirred her whole being with a tempest of VI.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO EXGLAND. 85 excitement, till finally she, with equal weakness, flung it aside, " resolved to read that grand poetry no more, and broke through the thraldom of that powerful spell." The confession brings before us a type of the transitions of the century, on its way from the Byronic to the anti-Byronic fever, of which later state Mrs. Jamieson, Mrs. Norton, and Miss Martineau are among the most pronounced repre- sentatives. Byron's garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often the same practical effect as reticence ; for he talks so much at large — every page of his Journal being, by his own admission, apt to " confute and abjure its predecessor" — that we are often none the wiser. Amid a mass of conjecture, it is manifest that during the years between his return from Greece and final expatriation (1811-1816), including the whole pe- riod of his social glory — though not yet of his solid fame — he was lured into liaisons of all sorts and shades. Some, now acknowledged as innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention than in distort- ing truth. On others, as commonplaces of a temperament "all meridian," it were waste of time to dwell. Byron rarely put aside a pleasure in his path ; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted. The verses to the memory of a lost love veiled as " Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not, as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere grief.' Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the poet's career, that to ' Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on this subject Byron was always reticent. Mr. Minto, as we have seen, as- sociates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8. 86 BYRON. [chap. pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first Earl Spencer, was one of tho.se few women of our climate who, by their romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities. Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said she ought to know the new poet, who was three years lier junior, and the introduction took place in March, 1812. fter the meeting, she wrote in her journal, " Mad — bad and dangerous to know ;" but, when the fashionable )oIlo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband laughed at the Avorship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and adventures, interested her by his woes, dictated her amuse- ments, invited her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. " Medora," on the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that tliey were affinities, and offered him her jewels. But after the first excite- ment, he began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her indifferent verses: "he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual egotisms jarred." Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a season to her father's liouse in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of his glowing farewell letters. AVhen she came back, matters were little better. The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one occasion VI.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 87 penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on an- other threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him. " The ' Agnus ' is furi- ous," he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked. " You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage. . . . The busi- ness of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle fair is writing letters literally threatening my life." With one member of the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb's mother, and sister of Sir Ralph Milbanke, he remained throughout on terras of pleasant intimacy. lie appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the experience and tact of " the cleverest of women." But her well-meant advice had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke! Byron first proposed to this lady in 1813 ; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was accepted. After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew statistics, but was " not for Conrad, no, no, no !" Lady Caroline lapsed into an at- titude of fixed hostility ; and shortly after the crash came, and her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost forgotten novel of Glenarvon, in which some of Byron's real features were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions. Madame de Stael was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice 88 BYRON. [chap. when they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to liave been less moved by it tliaii by most attacks. Wo must, however, bear in mind his own adinissicm in a parallel case. " I say I am perfectly calm ; I am, tievertlieless, in a fury." Over the sad vista of the remainini; years of the unhappy lady's life we need not linger. During a con- siderable part of it she appears hovering about tlie thin line that separates some kinds of wit and passion from madness; writing more novels, burning her hero's effigy and letters, and then clamouring for a lock of his hair, or a sight of his portrait ; separated from, and again recon- ciled to, a husband to whose niagnanimous forbearance and compassion she bears testimony to the last, comparino- herself to Jane Shore; attempting Byronic verses, loudly denouncing and yet never ceasing inwardly to idolize, the man whom she regarded as her betrayer, perliaps onlv with justice in that he had unwittingly helped to overthrow her mental balance. After eight years of tliis life, lit up here and there by gleams of social brilliancy, we find lier car- riage, on the 12th of July, 1824, suddenly confronted by a funeral. On hearing that the remains of Byron were being carried to the tomb, she shrieked, and fainted. Her health finally sank, and her mind gave way under this shock; but she lingered till January, 1828, when she died, after writing a calm letter to her husband, and bequeathing the poet's miniature to her friend. Lady Morgan. " I have paid some of my debts, and contracted others," Byron writes to Moore, on September 15, 1814; "but I have a few thousand pounds which I can't spend after my heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the south. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look at the coast of Greece from Italv. All this, however, depends upon an event which mav or may Ti.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 89 not happen. "\Mietlier it will, I shall probably know to- morrow ; and if it does, I can't well go abroad at present." " A wife," he had written, in the January of the same year, " would be my salvation ;" but a marriage entered upon in such a flippant frame of mind could scarcely have been other than disastrous. In the autumn of the year we are told that a friend,' observing how cheerless was the state both of his mind and prospects, advised him to marry, and after much discussion he consented, naming to his corre- spondent Miss Milbanke. To this his adviser objected, remarking that she had, at present, no fortune, and that his embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one, &c. Accordingly, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal to another lady, which was done. A refusal arrived as they were one morning sitting to- gether. " ' You see,' said Lord Byron, ' that after all Miss Milbanke is to be the person,' and wrote on the moment. His friend, still remonstrating against his choice, took up the letter ; but, on reading it, observed, ' Well, really, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not go.' ' Then it shall go,' said Lord Byron, and, in so saying, seal- ed and sent off this fiat of his fate." The incident seems cut from a French novel ; but so does the whole strange story — the one apparently insoluble enigma in an other- wise only too transparent life. On the arrival of the lady's answer he was seated at dinner, when his gardener came in and presented liim with his mother's wedding-ring, lost many years before, and which had just been found, buried in the mould beneath her window. Almost at the same moment the letter arrived ; and Byron exclaimed, " If it contains a consent (which it did), I will be married with tliis very ring." He had the highest anticipations of his bride, ' Doubtless Moore himself, who tells the story. 5 90 BYRON. [chap. approclatiiif; licr " talents, and excellent qualities;" and saying, "she is so good a person that I wish I was a bet- ter." About the same date he writes to various friends in the good spirits raised by his enthusiastic reception from the Cambridge undergi'aduatcs, when in the course of the same month he went to the Senate House to give his vote for a Professor of Anatomy. The most constant and best of those friends was his sister, Augusta Leigh, whom, from the death of Miss Cha- worth to his own, Byron, in the highest and })urest sense of the word, loved more than any other human being. Tolerant of errors which she lamented, and violences in which she had no share, she had a touch of their common family pride, most conspicuous in an almost cat-like cling- ing to their ancestral home. Her early published letters are full of regrets about the threatened sale of Newstead, on the adjournment of which, when the first purchaser had to pay 25,000/. for breaking his bargain, she rejoices, and over the consummation of which she mourns, in the man- ner of Milton's Eve — " Must I then leave thee, Paradise ?" In all her references to the approaching marriage there are blended notes pf hope and fear. In thanking Ibtdgson for his kind congratulations, she trusts it will secure her brother's happiness. Later she adds her testimony to that of all outsiders at this time, as to the graces and genuine worth of the object of his choice. After the usual pre- liminaries, the ill-fated pair were united, at Seaham House, on the 2nd of January, 1815. Byron was married like one walking in his sleep. He trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and almost from the first seems to have been conscious of his irrevocable mistake. Ti.] MARRIAGE, A^s^D FAREWELL TO EXGLAXD. " I saw him stand Before an altar with a gentle bride : Her face was fair, but was not that which made The starlight of his boyhood. He could see Not that which was — but that which should have been — But the old mansion, the accustom'd hall. And she who was his destiny came back. And thrust herself between him and the light." Here we have faint visions of Miss Chaworth, mingling with later memories. In handing the bride into the car- riage he said, " Miss Milbanke, are you ready ?" — a mis.take said to be of evil omen. Bvron never really loved his wife ; and though he has been absurdly accused of marry- ing for revenge, we must suspect that he married in part for a settlement. On the other hand, it is not unfair to say that she was fascinated by a name, and inspired by the philanthropic zeal of reforming a literary Corsair. Both were disappointed. Miss Milbanke's fortune was mainly settled on herself ; "and Byron, in spite of plentiful resolutions, gave little sign of reformation. For a con- siderable time their life, which, after the " treacle moon," as the bridegroom called it, spent at Halnaby, near Darling- ton, was divided between residence at Seaham and visits to London, seemed to move smoothly. In a letter, evi- dently mis-dated the 15th December, Mrs. Leigh writes to Hodgson : " I have every reason to think that my beloved B. is very happy and comfortable. I hear constantly from him and Ms rib. It appears to me that Lady B. sets about making him happy in the right way. I had many fears. Thank God that they do not appear likely to be realized. In short, there seems to me to be but one drawback to all our felicit\', and that, alas, is the disposal of dear Ncwstead. I never shall feel reconciled to the loss of that sacred re- 92 mnOS. [chap. vered Abbey. The tliouL,']it makes me more melancholy than perhaps the loss of an inanimate object ought to do. Did you ever hear that landed projycrty, the gift op the Crown, could not be sold? Lady B. writes me word that she never saw her father and mother so happy ; that she believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea her- self to find fish for B.'s dinner, ifcc." Augusta Ada was born in London on the 10th of December, 1815. Durino- the next months a few cynical mutterings are the only in- terruptions to an ominous silence ; but these could be easi- ly explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. Their expectations were raised by exaggerated reports of his having married money ; and by a curious pertinacity of pride be still declined, even when he had to sell his books to accept advances from liis publisher. In January the storm which had been .secretly gathering suddenly broke. On the 15th, ^. c, five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home with the infant to pay a visit, as had been agreed, to her own fam- ily at Kirkby Mallory, in Leicestershire. On the way she despatched to her husband a tenderly playful letter, which has been often quoted. Shortly afterwards he was inform- ed — first by her father, and then by herself — that she did not intend ever to return to him. The accounts of their last interview, as in the whole evidence bearinjr on the affair, not only differ, but flatly contradict one another. On behalf of Lord Byron it is asserted that his wife, infu- riated by his offering some innocent hospitality on occa- sion of bad weather to a respectable actress, Mrs. Mardyn, who had called on him about Drnry Lane business, rushed i'lto the room, exclaiming, *' I leave you for ever " — and did VI.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 93 so. According to another story, Lady Byron, finding him with a friend, and observing him to be annoyed at her en- trance, said, "Am I in your way, Byron?" whereupon he answered, "Damnably," Mrs. Leigh, Hodgson, Moore, and others did everything that mutual friends could do to bring about the reconciliation for which Byron himself professed to be eager, but in vain ; and in vain the effort was renewed in later years. The wife was inveterately bent on a separation, of the causes of w^hich the husband alleged he w^as never informed, and with regard to which as long as he lived she preserved a rigid silence. For some time after the event Byron spoke of his wife ■with at least apparent generosity. Rightly or wrongly, he blamed her parents, and her maid — Mrs. Clermont, the theme of his scathing but not always dignified "Sketch;" but of herself he wrote (March 8, 1816), "I do not be- lieve that there ever was a brighter, and a kinder, or a more amiable or agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make to her, when with me." Elsewhere he adds, that he would will- ingly, if he had the chance, " renew his marriage on a lease of twenty years." But as time passed and his over- tures were rejected, his patience gave way, and in some of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's letters at the time of the separation, espe- cially those first published in the Academy of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and confiden- tial, often pathetic, asking her advice " in this critical mo- ment," and protesting that, " independent of malady, she does not think of the past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of injury." In her communi- cations to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand — the first of almost the same date, the second a few weeks later — she 94 BYRON. [cuAP. writes with intense bitterness, stating that her action was due to offences which she could only condone on the sup- position of her husband's insanity, and distinctly iniplviiii; that she was in dant^or of her life. Tiiis supposition liav- ing been by her medical advisci's pronounced erroneous, she felt, in the words only too pungently recalled in Don Juan, that her duty both to man and God prescribed her course of action. Iler playful letter on leaving she seems G;o defend on the ground of the fear of person;d violence. Till Lord DyroiTs death the intiniac}' between his wife and sister remained unbroken ; through the latter he con- tinued to send numerous messages to the former, and to his child, who became a ward in Chancery ; but at a later date it began to cool. On the appearance of Lady By- ron's letter, in answer to Moore's iirst volume, Augusta speaks of it as " a despicable tirade ;" feels " disgusted at such unfeeling conduct ;" and thinks "nothing can justify any one in defaming the dead." Soon after 1830 they had an open rupture on a matter of business, which w;i3 never really healed, though the then Puritanic precisian sent a message of relenting to Mrs. Leigh on her death- bed (1851). The charge or charges which, during her husband's life, Lady Byron from magnanimity or other motive reserved, she is ascertained, after bis death, to have delivered with important modiKcations to various persons, with little re- gard to their capacity for reading evidence or to their dis- cretion. On one occasion her choice of a confidante was singularly unfortunate. "These," wrote Lord Byron in bis youth, " these are the first tidings that liave ever sounded like fame in my ears — to be redde on the banks of the Ohio." Strangely enough, it is from the country of AVashington, whom the poet was wont to reverence as VI.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 95 the purest patriot of the modern world, that in 1869 there emanated the hideous story which scandalized both conti- nents, and ultimately recoiled on the retailer of the scandal. The grounds of the reckless charge have been weighed by those who have wished it to prove false, and by those who/ have wished it prove true, and found wanting. The chaff has been beaten in every way and on all sides, without yielding a particle of grain ; and it were ill-advised to rake up the noxious dust that alone remains. From nothing left on record by either of the two persons most intimate- ly concerned_iiaB---w«^erive--mtj-Tellable information. It [La is plain that Lady ByrOTTwas during illB4ater years of her jp life the victim of hallucinations, and that if Byron knew, y the secret, which he denies, he did not choose to tell putting off Captain Medwin and others with absurdities, as that " He did not like to see women eat," or with com- monplaces, as " The causes, my dear sir, were too simple to be found out." Thomas Moore, who had the Memoirs' supposed to have thrown light on the mystery, in the full knowledge of Dr. Lushington's judgment and all the gossip of the day, pro- fesses to believe that " the causes of disunion did not dif- fer from those that loosen the links of most such mar- riages," and writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping gen- eralization ; but there is a kind of genius, closely associ- ated with intense irritability, which it is difficult to sub- ject to the most reasonable yoke ; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my lady;" and Madame De Stael, on reading the Farewell, that " She ' Captain Trelawny, however, doubts if he ever read them. 90 BYROX. [.iiAP. would liavc been glad to have been in Lady I>yron's j»lacc." ]>iit it may be doubted if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman ; his wife and he were even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to make a constant butt, she was no fit con- sort for that " mens insana in corporc insano." What could her placid temperament conjecture of a man whom > ^ slie saw, in one of his tits of passiun, throwing a favourite ^ watch under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker ? Or liow could her conscious virtue tolerate the -rl'ourring irregularities which he was accustomed not only to permit himself but to parade? The harassment of his M^ffairs stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to sus- ^^ect him to be mad. Some of her recently printed let- ters — as that to Lady Anne Barnard, and the reports of later observers of her character — as William llowitt, tend to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent amia- bility, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility of the pair. It must have been trying to a poet to be asked by liis wife, impatient of las late hours, when he was going to leave off writing verses ; to be told he had no real en- thusiasm ; or to have his desk broken open, and its com- promising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least intended. The smouldering elements of dis- content may have been fanned by the gossip of depend- ants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others be- yond the circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless be- lieved some story which, when communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the mere fact of her believing it made reconciliation impossible ; and the inveterate obstinacy which lurked beneath her gracious VI.] MARRIAGE, AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 97 exterior made Ler cling through life to the substance — not always to the form, whatever that may have been — of her first impressions. Her later letters to Mrs. Leigh, as that called forth by Moore's Life^ are certainly as open to the charge of self-righteousness, as those of her husband's are to self-disparagement. Byron himself somewhere says, " Strength of endurance is worth all the talent in the world." " I love the virtues that I cannot share." His own courage was all active ; he had no power of sustained endurance. At a time when his proper refuge was silence, and his prevailing sentiment — for he admits he was somehow to blame — should have 7 1 been remorse, he foolishly vented his anger and his grief /"R in verses, most of them either peevish or vindictive, and I) some of which he certainly permitted to be published." "Woe to him," exclaims Voltaire, " who says all he could on any subject !" Woe to him, he might have added, who says anything at all on the subject of his domestic troubles ! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men with whose adulation he was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macau- lay has expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed. Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles were let loose, and they anticipated the Satur- day and the Spectator of 1869, so that the latter might well have exclaimed, " Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixe- runt." Byron was accused of every possible and impossi- ble vice. He was compared to Sardanapalus, Nero, Tibe- rius, the Duke of Orleans, Heliogabalus, and Satan — all the most disreputable persons mentioned in sacred and pro- fane history ; his benevolences were maligned, his most 5* 98 BYRON. . [chap. disinterested actions perverted, Mrs. Mard) ii, tlie actress, was on his account, on one occasion, driven off the public stage. lie was advised not to go to tlie theatres, lest he should be hissed ; nor to Parliament, lest he should be in- sulted. On the very day of his departure a friend told him that he feared violence from mobs assemblins; at the door of his carriage. " Upon what grounds," the poet writes, in an incisive survey of the circumstances, in Au- gust, 1819, "the public formed their opinion, I am not aware ; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had written poetry, was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my wife and her relatives — no one knew why, because the persons complaining re- fused to state their grievances. *' The press was active and scurrilous ; . . . my name — which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fa- thers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman — was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for Eng- land ; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew ; but this was not enough. In other countries — in Switz- erland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes — I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same ; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes himself to the waters." On the 16th of April, 1810, shortly before his depart- ure, he wrote to Mr. Rogers : " My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. We shall not meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final meet- ing), and under these circumstances I trust to stand ex- Ti.] MARRIAGE, AXD FAREWELL TO EXGLAND. 99 cused to you and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon bim this evening." In all this storm and stress, By- ron's one refuo^e was in the affection which rises like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life. " In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wild waste there still is a tree; And a bird in the solitude singing, That speaks to my spirit of thee." The fashionable world was tired of its spoilt child, and he of it. Hunted out of the country, bankrupt in purse and heart, he left it, never to return ; but he left it to find fresh inspiration by the " rushing of the arrowy Rhone," and under Italian skies to write the works which have im- mortalized his name. 4 o if u o 5^ a O a C3 cs Pi c2 3 43 02 I— I a c <1 + - C o I'. o 1^ 3 to 3 d I 1 .a d 2 S S o m O - ci ~ 3 O a OS ■a 03 3 Is + c- — UJ C ci o a c4 te^ 2 H rrl 1 o fe-J) ^ e '^ ^-k C3 1^ 9?, O CQ — j cog u O CHAPTER VII. LIFE ABROAD. SWITZERLAND TO VENICE. THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. CHILDE HAROLD, IIL, IV. MANFRED. On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron embarked for Ostend. From the " burning marl " of the staring streets he planted his foot again on the deck with a genuine exultation. " Once more upon the waters, yet once more, And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows her rider. Welcome to the roar !" But he brought with him a relic of English extravagance, setting out on his land travels in a huge coach, copied from that of Napoleon taken at Genappe, and being ac- companied by Fletcher, Rushton, Berger, a Swiss, and an Italian physician, called Polidori, son of Alfieri's secreta- ry — a man of some talent but fatal conceit. A question arises as to the source from which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance, nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the Court of Exchequer, and that his appeal to the House of Lords was still unsettled in 1822. The sale of Newstead to Colonel Wildman in 1818, for 90,000/., went mostly to pay off mortgages and debts. In April, 102 BTRON. [chap. 1819, Mrs. Lcii^h writes, after a last sigh over this event: " Sixty thousand pounds was secured by his (Byron's) marriage settlement, the interest of which he receives for life, and which ought to make him very comfortable." This is unfortunately decisive of the fact that he did not in spirit adhere to tlic resolution expressed to Moore never to touch a farthing of his wife's money, though we may accept his statement to Medwin, that he twice repaid the dowry of 10,000/. brought to him at the marriage, as in so far diminishing the obligation. None of the capital of Lady Byron's family came under his control till 1822, when, on the death of her mother. Lady Noel, Byron ar- ranged the appointment of referees — Sir Francis Burdett on his behalf, Lord Dacre on his wife's. The result was an equal division of a property worth about 7000/. a year. "While in Italy, the poet received, besides, about 10,000/. for his writings — 4000/. being given for Childe Harold (iii., iv.) and Manfred. " Ne pas 6tre dupe" was one of his determinations, and, though he began by caring little for making money, he was always fond of spending it. " I tell you it is too much," he said to Murray, in return- ing a thousand guineas for the Corinth and Parmna. Hodgson, Moore, Bland, Thomas Ashe, the family of Lord Falkland, the British Consul at Venice, and a host of oth- ers were ready to testify to his superb munificence. On the other hand, he would stint his pleasures, or his benev- olences, which were among them, for no one ; and when he found that to spend money he had to make it, he saw neither rhyme nor reason in accepting less than his due. In 1817 he begins to dun Murray, declaring, with a frank- ness in which we can find no fault, "You offer 1500 guin- eas for the new canto (C H., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for it, which you will either give or not, as VII.] SWITZERLAND. 103 you think proper." During tlie remaining years of bis life lie grew more and more exact, driving hard bargains for bis bouses, borses, and boats, and fitting bimself, bad be lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-lib- erated State, from which be took a bond securing a fair interest for bis loan. He made out an account in £ s. d. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh Hunt threat- ened to sponge upon bim, be got a harsh reception ; but there is nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by the " good old gentlemanly vice " of which be wrote. The Skimpoles and Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre : it is equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men of business. We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During bis stay in the Belgian capi- tal be paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo, wrote the fa- mous stanzas beginning, " Stop, for thy tread is on an em- pire's dust !" and, in unpatriotic prose, recorded bis im- pressions of a plain which appeared to bim to " want little but a better cause " to make it vie in interest with those of Platea and Marathon. The rest of bis journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne, Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hotel Secberon, on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary relation- ship of bis life, for here he first came in contact with the impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont Alegre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati ; and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with 104 BYRON. [ciue. some interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives. The phice for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of their Italian part- nership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as fellow- excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion, de- parting from its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with llobhouse, off Meillerie. " The boat," says Byron, " was nearly wrecked near the very spot where St. I'reux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party were wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim, was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being still persecuted. " I was in ;i \vretched state of health and worse spirits when I was in (j encva; but quiet atui the lake — better physicians than loiidori — suon set uie up. never led so moral a life as during my residence Tii tirat country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary, there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was \vatched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening drives. I believo they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clalrmont, a daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, which resulted in the birth of a daughter, Allegra, at Great Marlow, in February, 1817. The noticeable events of the following two mouths are VII.] SWITZERLAND. 105 a joint excursion to Charaoiuii, and a visit in July to Madame de Stael at Coppet, in tlie course of whicli he met Frederick Schlegel. During a wet week, when tlie families were reading together some German ghost stories, an idea occurred of imitating them, the main result of which was Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein. Byron contrib- uted to the scheme a fragment of The Vampire, after- wards completed and published in the name of his patron by Polidori. This eccentric physician now began to de- velope a vein of half insanity ; his jealousy of Shelley grew to such a pitch that it resulted in the doctor's sending a challenge to the poet. Shelley only laughed at this ; but Byron, to stop further impertinences of the kind, remark- ed, "Recollect that, though Shelley has scruples about duel- ling, I have none, and shall be at all times ready to take| liis place," Polidori had ultimately to be dismissed, and^ after some years of absurd adventure, committed suicide. The Sbelleys left for England in September, and Byron made an excursion with Hobhouse through the Bernese Oberland. They went by the Col de Jaman and the Simmenthal to Thun ; then up the valley to the Staub- bach, which he compares to the tail of the pale horse in the Apocalypse — not a very happy, though a striking comparison. Thence they proceeded over the Wengern to Grindelwald and the Rosenlau glacier ; then back by Berne, Friburg, and Yverdun to Diodati. The following passage in reference to this tour may be selected as a specimen of his prose description, and of the ideas of mountaineering before the days of the Alpine Club :^ "Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent again, the sun upon it forming a rainbow of the lower part, of all colours, but principally purple and gold, the bow moving as you move. I never saw anything like this ; it i06 BYRON. [chap. is oi)ly in the siinsliine. . . . Left tlie horses, took off my coat, and went to the .summit, VOOO Enti;li.sh feet above the level of tlie sea, and 50U0 feet above tlie valley wc left in the morning. On one side our view comprised the Jung- frau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d' Argent, shining like truth ; then the Eighers and the Wetterhorn. Heard the avalanches falling every five minutes. From where we stood on the Wengern Alp we had all these in view on one side ; on the other, the clouds rose up from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring tide; it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appear- ance. . . , Arrived at the Grindelwald ; dined; mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier — like a frozen hurri- cane ; starlight beautiful, but a devil of a path. Tass- ed whole woods of withered pines, all withered ; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless ; done by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family." Students of Manfred will recognize whole sentences, only slightly modified in its verse. Though Byron talks with contempt of autliorship, there is scarce a fine phrase in his letters or journal which is not pressed into the author's service, lie turns his deepest griefs to artistic gain, and uses five or six times, for literary purposes, the expression which seems to have dropped from him natu- rally about his household gods being shivered on liis hearth. His account of this excursion concludes with a l)assagc equally characteristic of his melancholy and inces- sant .self-consciousness: — " In the weather for this tour I have been very fortu- nate. ... I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, «kc. . . . iJut in all this the recollection of bit- Til.] SWITZERLAND. 101 terness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here ; and neither the music of the shep- herd, the crashing of the avalanche, the torrent, the moun- tain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory around, above, and beneath me." Such egotism in an idle man would only provoke im- patience ; but Byron was, during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (June 26, 27),^he wrote the Pris- oner of Chilloti, which, with his noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in some respects surpasses any of his early romances. The opening lines — " Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls ; A thousand feet in depth below, Its massy waters meet and flow " — bring before us in a few words the conditions of a hope- less bondage. The account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the brothers ; the first frenzy of the survivor, and the desolation which succeeds it — " I only loved : I only drew The accursed breath of dungeon dew " — the bird's song breaking on the night of his solitude ; his growing enamoured of despair, and regaining his freedom with a sigh, are all strokes from a master handy From the same place, at the same date, he announces to Mur- ray the completion of the third canto of Childe Harold. The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, 108 HYROX. [chap. Churchiirs Grave, the Sonnet to Lake Lcman, Could I remount the River of my Years, part of Man/red, Prome- theus, the Stanzas to Augusta, beginning, "My sister! my sweet sister! If a. niinie Dearer and purer were, it sliould be thine;" and the terrible dream of Darkness, wliich at least in the ghastly power of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's Last Man.' At Lau- sanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gib- bon, broke a sprig from his acacia -tree, and carried off some rose leaves from his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M. G. Lewis and Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned " the locust swarm of English tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes ; as when he heard one of them at Chamouni inquire, " Did you ever see anytliing more truly rural?" Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese — one of whom is said to have swooned as he entered the room — and early in Octo- ber set out with Ilobhouse for Ital}-. They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted with " a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia and Car- dinal Bembo." He secured a lock of tlie golden hair of the Pope's daughter, and wished himself a cardinal. At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as sur- passing anything he liad seen even in Greece, and on the ' This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subjeot. vn.] SWITZERLAND TO VEXICE. 109 faith of the people in the story of Juliet, from whose re- puted tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and his nieces. In Xovember we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, " the wife of a mer- chant of Venice," for some time his landlord. With this woman, whom he describes as an antelope with oriental eyes, wavy hair, a voice like the cooing of a dove, and the spirit of a Bacchante, he remained on terms of intimacy for about eighteen months, during which their mutual de- votion was only disturbed by some outbursts of jealousy. In December the poet took lessons in Armenian, glad to find in the study something craggy to break his mind upon. He translated into that language a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. Notes on the carnival, praises of Ckristabel, instructions about the printing of Childe Harold (iii.), protests against the publication under his name of some spurious " domestic poems," and con- stant references, doubtfully domestic, to his Adriatic lady, fill up the records of 1816. On February 15, 1817, he announces to Murray the completion of the first sketch of Manfred, and alludes to it in a bantering manner as " a kind of poem in dialogue, of a wild metaphysical and in- explicable kind ;" concluding, " I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, tor wMtrh^-mj Trrtercourse with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt." About this time Byron seems to have entertained the idea of returning to England in the spring, i. e., after a year's absence. This design, however, was soon set aside, partly in consequence of a slow malarial fever, by which 110 BYRON. [crap. he was prostrated for several weeks. On his partial recov- ery, attributed to liis having had neither medicine nor doctor, and a determination to live till he had "put one or two people out of the world," he started on an expedi- tion to Rome. His first stage was Arqua; then Ferrara, where he was inspired, by a sight of the Italian poet's prison, with the Lament of Tastso ; t he next, Flore nce, where he describes himself as drunk with the beaut y of the fralleries. Amon"' "Tliop irtures, he was most impressed with the mi stresses of Uaphael and Titian, to wIkjui, along with Giorad sitter ; he assumed a countenance that did not be- long to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece VII.] THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. Ill for Childe Harold.^'' Thorwaidsen's bust, the first cast of wliicli was sent to Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous likenesses of her brother, was often repeated. Professor Brandes, of Co- penhagen, introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a chai-acter so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight impresses one with an undefinable classic grace ; on closer examination, the restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power (XJnwiderstehlich- keit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833), executed the marble statue, first intended for the Abbey, which is now to be seen "in the library of Trinity College, in evidence that Cambridge is still proud of her most brill- iant son. Towards the close of the month — after almost faintinsf at the execution by guillotine of three bandits — he pro- fesses impatience to get back to Mariana, and early in the next we find him established with her near Venice, at the villa of La Mira, where for some time he continued to reside. His letters of June refer to the sale of New- stead, the mistake of Mrs. Leigh and others in attributing to him the Tales of a Landlord, the appearance of Lalla Rookh, preparations for Marino Faliero, and the progress of Childe Harold (iv.). This poem, completed in Septem- ber, and published early in 1818 (with a dedication to Hobhouse, who had supplied most of the illustrative notes), first made manifest the range of the poet's power. Only another slope of ascent lay between him and the 112 BYROX. [ciiAP. pinnacle, over wlii.-h shines the red star of Cain. Had Lord Byron's public career closed when he left England, he would have been remembered for a generation as the author of some musical minor verses, a clever satire, a journal in verse exhibiting flashes of genius, and a series of fascinating romances — also giving promise of higher power — which had enjoyed a marvellous popularity. Tho third and fourth cantos of Ch'dde Harold placed him on another platform, that of the Dii Majorca of English verse. These cantos arc separated from their predeces- sors, not by a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown how far the force of rhap- sody could go; now he struck with his right hand, and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nat- ure were the mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering. Faultlcssness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verso, never of By- ron's ; (and even in the later parts of the Chihic there are careless lines and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again," looking " pale^and interesting ;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher note^ No familiaii- ty can detract from " Waterloo," which holds its own by Barbour's " Bannockburn " and Scott's " Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to the climax of the opening, and the jiatlietic lament of tlie closing lines, generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour. There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an appreciation of its exuberance of fancy and neg- ligence of diction ; and then the masterly sketch of Na- poleon, with the implied reference to the writer at the end. (llie descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from VII.] THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 113 a basis of rhetoric to a real height of poetry. Byron's " Rhine " flows, like the river itself, in a stream of " exult- ing and abounding" stanzasj His "Venice" may be set beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are to- gether the joint pride of Italy and England. vThe tem- pest in the third canto is in verse a splendid microcosm of the favourite, if not the prevailing moojd of the writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas begin- ning "It is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The poet's dying day, his sun and moon contendini; over the Rhoetian hill, his Thras- yniene, Clituranus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forget himself in his surround- ings. The Drachenfells, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps, Lake Leraan, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the stability of the book depends on its being a Tem- ple of Fame, as well as a Diorama of Scenery, j It is no mere versified Guide, because every resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with illustri- ous raeraories. Coblentz introduces the tribute to Mar- ceau ; Clarens an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau ; Lausanne and Ferney the quintessence of criti- cism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in Arqua suggests Petrarch ; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the lines on Tasso ; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and Dante, " buried by the upbraid- ing shore," and " The starry Galileo and his woes." Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome, that almost everything else that has 6 114 IJVROX. [chap. been said of them seems superfluous.) Ilawtliornc, in his Marble Faun, comes nearest to him ; but Byron's Gladia- tor and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of Marius," says Scott, " could not sound more deep and solenm among the ruins of Carthage than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and fallen stat- ues of her 8ubduer."([' As tlie third canto has a fitting close with the poet's pathetic remembrance of his daugh- ter, so the fourth is woimd up with consummate art — the memorable dirjre on the Princess Charlotte being followed by the address to the sea, which, enduring unwrinkled through all its ebbs and flows, seems to mock at the muta- bility of human life.) Manfred, his witch drama, as the author called it, has liad a special attraction for inquisitive biographers, be- cause it has been supposed in some dark manner to reveal the secrets of his prison-house. Its lines have been tort- ured, like the Avitches of the seventeenth century, to ex- tort from them the meaning of the "all nameless hour," and every conceivable horror has been alleged as its motif. On this subject Goethe writes with a humorous simplici- ty : "This singularly intellectual poet has extracted from my Faust the strongest nourishment for his hypochon- dria; but he has made use of the impelling princi))les for his own purposes, . . . When a bold and enter[)rising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife ; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one to whom any sus- picion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, but these spirits have haunted him all his life. This romantic incident explains innumerable allu- sions," e. g., vu.] THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. 115 " I have shed Blood, but not hers ; and yet her blood was shed." Were it not for the fact that the poet had never seen the \ city in question when he wrote the poem, tliis explanation would be more plausible than most others, for the allu- sions are all to some lady who has been done to death. Gait asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallow- ed necromancy — a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous fittributed to Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot ; but he kept teasing his questioners with mysterious hints,\\ e. g., " It was the Staubbach and the Jungfrau, and some- I thing else more than Faustus, which made me write Man~l fred ;" and of one of his critics he says to Murray, " It had a better origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him." In any case most methods of reading be- tween its lines would, if similarly applied, convict Sopho- cles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakspeare of murder, Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goe- the of compacts with the devil. Byron was no dramatist, but he had wit enough to vary at least the circumstances of his projected personality. The memories of both Fausts — the Elizabethan and the German — mingle, in the pages of this piece, w^ith shadows of the author's life ; but to these it never gives, nor could be intended to give, any substantial form. Manfred is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the see-' nery of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelvvald, half animated by vague personifications and sensational narrative. Like Harold and Scott's Marmion, it just misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description i the appeal, " Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest] approach to pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral tumult of the preceding 116 BYRON. [cuAP. scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are seldom ab- solutely fresh : that beginning, " The mind, which is immortal, makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts. Is its own origin of ill and end. And its own place and time," is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by lapses. The lyrics scatter- ed through the poem sometimes open well, e.g., — " Mont nianc ia tlie monarch of mountains ; They crowned him long ago, On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow ;" but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally ; turn to the incantation in the Deformed Transformed : the first two lines are in tune — " Beautiful shadow of Thctis's boy, Who sleeps iu the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy." Nor Stcrnhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the next two — " Yrom the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape. As tlie Being who made l)ini, whose actions I ape(l)" Of his songs : " There be none of Beauty's daughters," " She walks in beauty," " Maid of Athens," " I enter thy garden of roses," the translation " Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is pedantry to Til.] THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP. llV ignore ; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world. The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira, and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in his way ; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories, none of which were " too improbable for the craving appetites of their slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr. Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the Academy of October 9, 1869. In this document he says, " It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared their lips to be sealed up on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their lips are seal- ed up they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest fa- vour they can confer upon me will be to open them." He goes on to state that he repents having consented to the separation — will be glad to cancel the deed, or to go be- fore any tribunal to discuss the matter in the most public manner ; adding, that Mr. Hobhouse (in whose presence he was writing) proposed, on his part, to go into court, and ending with a renewed asseveration of his ignorance of the allegations against him, and his inability to understand for what purpose they had been kept back, "unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by silence." Hob- house and others, during the four succeeding years, inef- fectually endeavoured to persuade the poet to return to England. Moore and others insist that Byron's heart was lis BVRON. [chap. at home when his presence was abroad, and that, with all her faults, he loved his country still. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, asserts that he cared nothing for England or its affairs. Like many men of genius, Byron was never satis- fied with what he had at the time. " Roma? Tibur amem ventosus Tibure Roinam." At Scaham he is bored to death, and pants for the excitement of the clubs; in Lon- don society he longs for a desert or island in the Cyclades; after their separation, he begins to regret his wife ; after his exile, his country. " Where," he exclaimed to llob- house, " is real comfort to be found out of England ?" lie frequently fell into the mood iu which he wrote the verse — " Yet I was born wlierc men are proud to be, Not without cause : and should I leave behind Th' immortal island of the sage and free, And seek me out a home by a remoter sea ?" But the following, to Murray (June 7, 1819), is equally sincere : " Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments of Bologna ; for instance — " ' Martini Luigi Implora pace.' " ' Lucrezia Picini Implora cterne quiete.' Can anything be more full of pathos ? These few words say all that can be said or sought; the dead had had enough of life ; all they wanted was rest, and this they implore. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and death-like prayer that can arise from the grave — ' im- plora pace.' I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall vn.] LIFE AT YEXICE. 119 see me put in the foreigners burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see these two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of pickling and bringing me home to Clod, or Blun- derbuss Hall. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that coun- try." Hunt's view is, in this as in other subtle respects, nearer the truth than Moore's; for with all Byron's in- sight into Italian vice, he hated more the master vice of England — hypocrisy ; and much of his greatest, and in a sense latest, because unfinished work, is the severest, as it might be the wholesomest, satire ever directed against a great nation since the days of Juvenal and Tacitus. In September (1817) Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed, for renting a country house among the Eugancan hills near Este, from Mr. Hoppner, the Eng- lish Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters in the Spezieria, and afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand Canal. Between this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La Mira, he divided his time for the next tw^o years. During the earlier part of his Venetian career he had con- tinued to frequent the salon of the Countess Albrizzi, ■where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the com- pany informing the hostess, in answer to some inquiry reo-ardino; Canova's busts, that Washington, the American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, " What in the name of folly are you thinking of ?" said Byron, perceiv- ing that the speaker was confounding Washington with 120 BYRON. [chap. Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards transfer- red himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoiii, and j^ave himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on tliis portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybelc as a Sea-Sodom — when he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad con- templation. I souglit to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own solitude, by i»lunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In any case, he forsook the "Dame," and by what his biographer calls a "descent in the scale of refinement for which nothing but the wayward state of his mind can account," songlit the companions of his leisure liours among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818, 1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detect- ed her in selling the jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large mercenary clement in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the wife of a baker, who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a chai-acter, and Scnor Castclar has almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown shoulders and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face like Faustma's, and the figure of a Juno — tall and energetic as a pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as "Donna dl guverno," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance. Unable to read or write, she intercepted his lordship's letters to little purpose ; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when her violences roused bis wrath, turned it Til.] LIFE AT VENICE. 121 off with some ready retort or witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the Ange- las. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own account, is sufficiently graphic : " In the autumn one day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo Palace on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm ; and the wind blowing her dress about her thin figure, and the lio-htnino- flashino- round her, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected ; but, calling out to me, ' Ah ! can' della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and sol- aced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the 'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moder- ately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs." Some months after, she became ungovernable — threw plates about, and snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in public places. Byron told her she must go home ; whereupon she proceeded to break glass, and threaten " knives, poison, fire ;" and on bis calling his boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed ; after which he saw 6* 122 BYKUX. [chap. her only twice, at the theatre. Iler whole picture is more like that of Tlieroii^iie de Mericourt than that of Raphael's Foriiarina, whose name she received. Other stories, of course, gathcrod round this strange life — personal encounters, aquatic feats, and all nianmr of ro- mantic and impossible episodes; their basis being that Byron on one occasion tlirashcd, on another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called " the Eng- lish fish," "water-spaniel," "sea-devil," «tc. One of the boatmen is reported to have said, " lie is a good gondo- lier, s[)oilt by being a poet and a lord;" and in answer to a traveller's inquiry, " Where does he get his poetry?'' "He dives for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, and then took claret and soda in the morning. Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Aiuong these adverse surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early books of Don Juan. The first canto of the last was written in November, 1818; the second in January, 1819; the third and fourth towards the close of the same year. Beppo, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the author broke ground on his true satiric field — the satire of social life — and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by Frere's Whistlecraft, was drafted in October, 1817, and ajjpeared in May, 1818. It aims at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In Ma- VII.] LIFE AT VEIsICE. 12a zeppa the poet reverts to bis earlier style, and tliat of Scott ; the description of the headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howl- ing of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as anything in Burns — "The skies spun like a miglity wlieel, I saw tiie trees like drunkards reel." In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Al- legra, had been sent from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which records a mere affectation of in- difference, full of affectionate solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, " Her temper and her ways, Mr. Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features ; she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as " flourishing like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference. "Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as raven- ous as a vulture ; health good to judge by the complex- ion, temper tolerable but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the ap- proval of the Shelleys, then at Pisa, he placed her for ed- ucation in the convent of Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. " I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had thought of hav- ing her boarded in Switzerland, " neither spared care, kind- ness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The 124 BYRON. [cuAP. people may say what they please. I must content my- self with not deserving, in this instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a country town, in a good air, and loss liable to objections of every kind. It has always ap- peared to me that the moral defect in Italy does not pro- ceed from a conventual education ; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral (■\il ; but to the state of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the sea and throwing him into it, and de- siring him to swim." Elsewhere he says, " I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education, be- cause, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settle- ment would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair for- eign education, and a portion of 5000/, or 6000/. (his will leaving her 5000/., on condition that she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, ray wish that she should be a Roman Catho- lic, which I look upon as the best religion, as it is assured- ly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of fever in 1822, Byron was almost speech- less with agitation, and, on the news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly pros- trated. Next day he said, " Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than we. It is God's will ; let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the date of birth and death, and the verse — *' I sliall go to her, but she shall not return to me." VII.] SHELLEY. 125 The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leavino- his wife and children at Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the midst of a thunder-storm ; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other is curious ; the comparative- ly shrewd man of the world often relied on the idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. The introduction to Julian and Maddalo, directly sug- gested by this visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. " He is a per- son of the most comsummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weak- ness to be proud ; he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incom- parably greater than those of other men ; and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength ;" but " in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication ; men are held by it as by a spell." Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este 126 UVKUX. [cuAi-. to his frieml, and during the autumn weeks of their resi- dence tliere were written the lines among the Eugancan hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley refers to the " tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the " music flung: o'er a miirhtv thunder-fit," and to the sun-like soul destined to immortalize his ocean refuge — "As the ghost of Homer clings Koiind Sciiniiinder's wasting springs, As (iivinest Shakspeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light." " The sun," he says, at a later date, " has extinguished the glowworm ;" and again, " I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may ; and there is no other with whom it is worth contending." Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic ; and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be lightly set aside, nor arc they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt liim to the rank of a greater poet, arc misled by the amiable love of one of the purest characters in the liistory of our literature. There is at least no difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense — easy to a man half bard, half saint — of inferiori- ty. Similarly, most of the estimates — many already re- versed, others reversible — by the men of that age, of each other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated both the character and the jjowers of Hunt; and liyron depreciated Keats, and was ultimate- ly repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet Til.] MOORE. 121 the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criti- cism is the respect that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical Tom Moore. This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing ex- pedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his life. Byron " had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlaro-ement of the features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other times distinguished it ; but although less romantic, he appeared more humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in London, and compared them wdth later experi- ences of Bores and Blues, in a manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; and when his coihpanion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian sunsets, he in- terrupted him with, " Come, d — n it, Tom, don't be po- etical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would be the greater comforts of an hotel, tak- ing up his quarters in his palace ; and as they were grop- ing their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, cried out, " Keep clear of the dog !" and a few paces farther, " Take care, or the monkey will fly at you !" an incident recalling the old vagaries of the menagerie at Xewstead. The biographer's reminiscences mainly dwell on his lord- 128 BYRON. [chap. ship's cliangiiig moods and tempers and gymnastic exer- cises, Ins terror of interviewing strangers, his imperfect ai)prcciation of art, liis preference of tish to flesh, his al- most j)arsimoiiious economy in small matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent ex- l)ressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mini, liad a glimpse of Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned carrying in his hand a white leather bag. ' Look here,' he said, holding it up; 'this would be worth something to Mur- ray, though you, I dare say, would not give sixpence for it.' ' What is it?' I asked. ' My life and adventiu'es,' he answered. ' It is not a thing,' he answered, ' that can be l)ublished during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like. There, do whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag, and thanking him most warmly, I added, ' This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, who shall as- tonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it."" Shortly after, Moore for the last time bade his friend fare- well, taking with liiin from Madame Guiccioli, who did the honours of the house, an introduction to her brother, Count Gamba, at Rome. "Theresa Guiccioli," says Cas- ' In December, 1820, Byron sent several more sheets of memo- randa from Ravenna; an(J in the following year suggested an ar- ranfjement l)y wliicli Murray paid over to Moore, who was then ia dinicuUies, 2000/. for tlie riglit of publishing tlie whole, under the condition, among others, that Lady Byron .should see them, and have tin- riglit of reply to anything that might seem to her objectionable. Siic on her part declined to have anything to do with them. When tlie Memoirs were destroyed, Moore paid back the 2000/., but ob- tained four thousand guineas for editing the Life and Correspond- ence. VII.] THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI. 129 telar, " appears like a star on tlie stormy horizon of the poet's life." A young Eomagnese, the daughter of a no- bleman of Ravenna, of good descent but limited means, she had been educated in a convent, and married in her nineteenth year to a rich widower of sixty, in early life a friend of Alfieri, and noted as the patron of the National Theatre. Tliis beautiful blonde, of pleasing manners,' graceful presence, and a strong vein of sentiment, fostered by the reading of Chateaubriand, met Byron for the first time casually when she came in her bridal dress to one of the Albrizzi reunions; but she was only introduced to him early in the April of the following year, at the house of the Countess Benzoni. "Suddenly the young Italian found herself inspired with a passion of which till that moment her mind could not have formed the least idea ; she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other hand, gave what remained of a heart never alienated from her by any oth- er mistress. Till the middle of the month they met ev- ery day ; and when the husband took her back to Raven- na she despatched to her idol a series of impassioned let- ters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in accord- ance wdth his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to the summons, writing on his way the beautiful stanzas to the Po, beginning — " River that rollest by the ancient walls Where dwells the lady of my love." Again passing through Ferrara, and visiting Bologna, he left the latter on the 8th, and on his arrival at his destina- tion found the Countess dangerously ill ; but his presence, and the attentions of the famous Venetian doctor Aglietti, 130 BYRON. [ciiAP. wlio was sent for by liis advice, restored licr. The Count seems to Lave been proud of his guest. " I can't make Lini out at all," Byron writes ; " he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like Whittington the Lord Maytn) in a coacli and six horses. The fact appears to be, that he is completely governed by her — and, for that matter, so am I." Later he speaks of having got his horses from Ven- ice, and riding or driving daily in the scenery reproduced in the third canto of Don Juan : — "Sweet hour of twilight ! in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Raveunu'ri iinmuniorial wood." On Theresa's recovery, in dread of a possible separation, he proposed to fly with her to America, to the Alps, to " some unsuspected isle in the far seas ;" and she suggest- ed the idea of feigning death, like Juliet, and rising from the tomb. Neither expedient was called for. When the Count went to Bologna, in August, with his wife. Lord Byron was allowed to follow ; and after consoling himself during an excursion which the married pair made to their estate, by hovering about her empty rooms and writing in her books, he established himself, on the Count's re- turn to his headquarters, with her and Allegra at Bologna. Meanwhile, Byron had written The Prophec}/ of Dante, and in August the prose letter, To the Editor of the British JRevieiv, on the charge of bribery in Don Juan. Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling com- position exists. About the same time, we hear of his leav- ing the tlieatre in a convulsion of tears, occasioned by the reprost-ntation of Alfieri's Mirra. Ik' left Bologna with the Countess on the 15th of Sep- tember, when they visited the Euganean hills and Arqua, yii.] DErARTURE FROM YEXICE. 131 and wrote their names together in the nigrim's Book. On arriving at Venice, the physicians recommending Ma- dame Guiccioli to country air, they settled, still by her husband's consent, for the autumn at La Mira, where Moore and others found them domesticated. At the be- ginning of November the poet was prostrated by an at- tack of tertian fever. In some of his hours of delirium lie dictated to his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Count- ess, a number of verses, which she assures us were correct and sensible. lie attributes his restoration to cold water and the absence of doctors-, but, ere his complete recov- ery, Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his own wife. The lovers had for a time not only to acquiesce in the separation, but to agree to cease their correspondence. In December Byron, in a fit of spleen, had packed up his belongiugs, with a view to return to England. "He was," we are told, "ready dress- ed for the journey, his boxes on board the gondola, his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in his hand, when my lord declares that if it should strike one — which it did — before everything was in order, he would not go that day. It is evident he had not the heart to go." Next day he heard that Madame Guiccioli was again se- riously ill, received and accepted the renewed invitation •which bound him to her and to the south. He left Yen- ice for the last time almost by stealth, rushed along the familiar roads, and was welcomed at Ravenna. CHAPTER VTIT. [1820-1821.] RAVENNA. DRAM AS.- -CAIN. VISION OF JUDGMENT. Byron's life at Ravenna was during the first months comparatively story of Francesca of Rimini, and received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Hmnphry Davy. At tills time lie w;is accustomed to ride about armed to the teeth, apprehending a possible attack from assassins on the part of Count Gniccioli. In April his letters refer to the insurrectionary movements then beginning against the Holy Alliance. " We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they have over-written all the city walls with 'Up with the Repnbli.- !' and ' Death to the Pope!' The police have been searching for the subscribers, but have caught none as yet. The other day they confiscated the whole translation of the fourth canto of Childe Harold, and have prosecuted the translator." In July a Papal decree of separation between the Countess and her hus- band was obtained, on condition of the latter paying from CHAP. Till.] RAVENNA. 133 his large income a pittance to the lady of 2001. a year, and her undertaking to live in her father's house — an engage- ment which was, first in the spirit, and subsequently in the letter, violated. For a time, however, she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of July he had finished Marino Faliero, and ere the close of the year the fifth canto of Bon Juan. In September he says to Murray, " I am in a fierce humour at not having Scott's Monastery. No more Keats,' I entreat. There is no bearino- the drivellinc; idiotism of the manikin. I don't feel inclined to care further about Don Juan. What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that ' it would live longer than Childe Harold r *Ah! but I would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an immortal- ity of D. «/.' " This is to-day the common female judg- ment; it is known to have been La Guiccioli's, as well as Mrs. Leigh's, and by their joint persuasion Byron was for a season induced to lay aside " that horrid, wearisome Don." About this time he wrote the memorable reply to the remarks on that poem in Blackwood'' s Magazine, where he enters on a defence of his life, attacks the Lakers, and champions Pope against the new school of poetry, lament- ing that his own practice did not square with his precept; and adding, " We are all wrong, except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." 1 111 a note on a similar passage, bearing the date November 12, 1821, he, however, confesses: "My indignation at Mr. Keats' de- preciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius, which malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style was un- doubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actual- ly inspired by the Titans, and is as subhme as JEschylus. He is a loss to our literature," 134 BYltoX. [chap. In November he refers to reports of his letters being opened by the Austrian officials, and the unpleasant things the Huns, as he calls them, are likely to find therein. Early in the next month he tells Moore that the com- mandant of their troops, a brave officer, but obnoxious to the people, had been found lying at his door, with five slugs in him, and, bleeding inwardly, had died iu the pal- ace, where he had been brought to be nursed. This incident is versified in Don Juan, v. 33-39, with anatomical minuteness of detail. After trying in vain to wrench an answer out of death, the poet ends in his ac- customed strain — " But it was all a mystery. Ilere we arc, And there we go: — but where? Five bits of lead — Or tliree, or two, or one — send very far !" Assassination has sometimes been the prelude to revolu- tion, but it may be questioned if it has ever promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently it has served as a pre- text for reaction, or a red signal. In this instance — as afterwards in 1848 — overt acts of violence made the powers of despotism more alert, and conduced, with the half-hearted action of their adversaries, to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new as- sociations. Theresa's brother. Count Pietro, an enthu- siastic young soldier, having returned from Rome and Naples, surmounting a i)rcjudice not wholly unnatural, became attached to him, and they entered into a partner- ship ill lu.'liaif of what — adopting a phrase often flaunted in opposite camps — they called constitutional principles. Finally, the poet so committed himself to the party of insurrection thai, though his nationality secured him from VIII.] RAVENNA. 135 direct attack, his movements were necessarily affected by the fiasco. In July the Gambas were banished from the Romagna, Pietro being actually carried by force over the frontier; and, according to the articles of her separation, the Countess had to follow them to Florence. Byron lin- gered for some months, partly from a spirit of defiance, and partly from his affection towards a place where he had enlisted the regards of nun:erous beneficiaries. The Gambas were for some time bent on migrating to Switzer- land; but the poet, after first acquiescing, subsequently conceived a violent repugnance to the idea, and early in August wrote to Shelley, earnestly requesting his presence, aid, and counsel. Shelley at once complied, and, entering into a correspondence with Madame Guiccioli, succeeded in inducing her relatives to abandon their transmontane plans, and agree to take up their headquarters at Pisa. This incident gave rise to a series of interesting letters, in which the younger poet gives a vivid and generous account of the surroundings and condition of his friend. On the 2nd of August he writes from Ptavenna : " I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord B. till five this morning. He was delighted to see me. He has, in fact, completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at Venice. . . . Poor fellow ! he is now quite well, and immersed in pol- itics and literature. We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night, and, as usual, differed, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronize a system of crit- icism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, al- though all his finer poems and passages have been pro- duced in defiance of this system, yet I recognize the per- nicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice.''^ Again, on the 15th: "Lord B. is greatly improved in every respect — in no BYRON. [niAP. potiius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. Ilis connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. lie lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about 4000/. a year, lUOO/. of which he devotes to purposes of charity. Switz- erland is little fitted for him ; the gossip and the cabals of those Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before. Ravenna is a miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. lie has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan. It sets him not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. ... I have spoken to him of Uunt, but not with a direct view of demanding a contribution. I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused ; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. Lord B. and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claim to a higher position than I possess, I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case." Later, after stating that Byron had decided upon Tuscany, he says, in reference to La Guiccioli: "At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of rae, is this request, which I transcribe: 'Signore, la vostra bonta mi fa ardita di chiedcrvi un favore, me lo accor- darete voi? Non imrtite da Ravenna senza milord.'' Of course, being now by all the laws of knighthood captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa." Shelley took his leave, after a visit of ten days' duration, about the l7th or 18th of April. In a letter, dated Au- gust 26, he mentions having secured for his lordship the Palazzo Lanfranchi, an old spacious building on the Lung' Arno, once the family residence of the destroyers of Ugo- VIII.] THE HISTORICAL DRAMAS. 137 lino, and still said to be haunted by their ghosts. To- wards the close of October, he says they have been ex- pecting hiin any day these six weeks. Byron, however, did not leave till the morning of the 29th. On his road, there occurred at Imola the accidental meeting with Lord Clare. Clare — who on this occasion merely crossed his friend's path on his way to Rome — at a later date came on purpose from Geneva before returning to England to visit the poet, who, then at Leghorn, recorded in a letter to Moore his sense of this proof of old affection unde- cayed. At Bologna — his next stage — he met Rogers by appointment, and the latter has preserved his memory of the event in well-known lines. Together they revisited Florence and its galleries, where they were distracted by the crowds of sight -seeing visitors. Bvron must have reached Pisa not later than the 2nd of November (1821), for his first letter from there bears the date of the 3rd. The later months of the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the controversy with Bowles about Pope, i. e., between the extremes of Art against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine expression of a reaction against a reaction. To this year belong the greater number of the poet's His- torical Dramas. What was said of these at the time by Jeffrey, Ileber, and others, was said with justice ; it is sel- dom that the criticism of our day finds so little to reverse in that of sixty years ago. The author, having shown himself capable of being pathetic, sarcastic, sentimental, comical, and sublime, we would be tempted to think that he had written these plays to show, what no one before suspected, that he could also 138 BYRON. [chap. be dull, were it not for his own exorbitant estimation of tbera. Lord Byron bad few of the powers of a great dramatist; he had little architectural im;igination, or ca- pacity to conceive and build up a whole. His works are mainly masses of fine, splendid, or humorous writing, heaped together; the parts are seldom forged into one, or connected by any indissoluble link. His so-called Dramas are only poems divided into chapters. Further, he had little of what Mr. Ruskin calls Penetrative Imagination. So it has been plausibly said that he made his men after his own image, his women after his own heart. The for- mer arc, indeed, rather types of what he wished to be than what he was. They are better, and worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result is either unreal or uninteresting. Marino Faliero, begun April, finished July, 1820, and pre- fixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe — which was, however, suppressed — was brouglit on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted — and damned. Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of self-deception when lie asserts that he did not mean them to be popular ; but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. Marino Fa- liero, in particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins — old Grobius himself — "to be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it is none the less unnatural. The characters are compar- atively commonplace, the women especially being mere viii.J THE UISTORICAL DKAMAS. • 139 shadows ; the motion is slow ; and the inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of Lioni, rath- er rhetorical than imaginative. The speeches of the Doge are solemn, but prolix, if not ostentatious, and — perhaps the vital defect — his cause fails to enlist our sympathies. Artistically, this play was Byron's most elaborate attempt to revive the unities and other restrictions of the severe style, which, when he wrote, had been " vanquished in lit- erature." " I am persuaded," he writes in the preface, "that a great tragedy is not to be produced by following the old dramatists, who are fall of faults, but by producing regular dramas like the Greeks." lie forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a confes- sion of failure ; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are, first, the cry for vengeance — the feel- ing of affronted or unsatiated pride — that runs through so much of the author's writing; and, second, the enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit of protest against the mere selfish "greasy domesticity " of the Georgian era : — I. Ber. " Such ties are not For those who are called to the high destinies Which purify corrupted comraonwealths : We must forget all feelings save the one, We must resign all passions save our purpose, We must behold no object save our country, And only look on death as beautiful So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven, And draw down freedom on her evermore. Cal. "But if we fail—? HO BYRON. [ciup. I. Bku. " Thoy never fail who die In a great cavisc : the blocit niny ^oak tlioir fjore ; Tiiuir heads may tioddon ui llie sun ; their liiubs Be strung to city gates and castle walls, But still their spirit walks abroad " — a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by phititudes about the precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty. Byron's other Venetian Drama, tlie Two Foscari, com- posed at Ravenna, between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the following December, is another record of the same failure and the same morti- fication, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect. The author's dctLTiuinatioii to avoid rant did not hinder his freijuently adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, he for- gets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano, though effectively pointed in the closing words, " He has paid me," is not rendered interesting, cither by a well established injury, or by any trace of lago's subtle genius. Til llu" same volume appeared Sardanapalus, written in the previous May, and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks tlie author's last reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme — " Thirteen hundred years Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale" — Ity the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the de- velopment of the chief character, made more vivid by its Till.] HISTORICAL ROMANCES. 141 being distinctly autobiographical. Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife ; but in his portrait of the former the au- thor's defective capacity to represent national character is manifest : Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zu- leika. In the domestic play of Weriier — completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and published in November — there is- no merit either of plan or execution ; for the plot is taken, with little change, from " The German's Tale," writ- ten by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout pro- saic. Byron was never a master of blank verse ; but Wer- ner, his sole success on the modern British stage, is Avrit- ten in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good as any in the play. The Deformed Transformed, another adaptation, sug- gested by a forgotten novel called The Three Brothers, with reminiscences of Faust, and possibly of Scott's Black Dwarf was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional charm to the march of some of the lines, es- pecially those describing the Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The De- formed Transformed bears somewhat the same relation to Manfred, as Heaven and Earth — an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's Loves of the Angels, on a similar theme — does to Cain. The last 142 BYRON. [chap. named, begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in Septem- ber, is the author's highest contribution to the metaphys- ical poetry of the century. In Cain Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death, of good and ill. In dealing with these, his position is not that of one justifying the ways of God to man — though he somewhat disingenuously appeals to Milton in his defence — nor that of the definite antagonism of Queen Mah. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the word, a sceptic, be- set with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he never fi)und, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of Cain is almost wholly negative ; for under the guise of a drama, which is maiiilv a dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside with some- thing approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly ac- cepted tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g. — Cain. " Then my father's God did well When he prohibited the fatal tree. Lucifer. " But had doue better in not planting it." Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is restored by antidotes — " Behold, my son ! said Adam, how from evil Springs good ! LucmcR. " What didst thou answer ? Cain. "Nothing; for He is my father; but I thouj,'lit that 'twere A better portion for the animal Never to have been stung at all." VIII.] CAIN. 143 This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a spirit in which much of the grandeur of Mil- ton's Satan is added to the subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced, rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he was born — " I sought not to be born " — the answer, that toil is a good, being precluded by its authoritative representa- tion as a punishment ; in which mood lie is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter, who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful visitation of the yet untasted death ; when Adah, entering, takes him at first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to Eve, and comparison of the " heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss " in Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose fas- cination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female character, to show that God cannot be alone — " What else can joy be, but diffusing joy ?" Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other an- gels is more after the style of Shelley than anything else in Byron — "As the silent sunny moon, All light, they look upon us. But thou seem'st Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault With things that look as if they would be suns — So beautiful, unnumber'd, and endearing ; Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them, They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou." The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and through the Hades of " uncreated night," 144 BYROX. [ciup. \sitli tlic vision of long-wrecked worlds, and tlic "inter- minable gloomy realms " Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes " — snggcstcd, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cu- vier — leaves us with impressions of grandeur and desola- tion which no othiT passages of English poetry can con- vey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more versatil- ity of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair speed on, cleaving the blue with niighty wings, but linding in all a blank, like that in Rich- ter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is summed in the lines on the fatal tree — " It was a lying tree — for we hiow nothing ; At least, it promixcd kuowleih/e at the price Of death — but knowhdge still ; but what knows man ?" A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, " Beliokl, we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's reply to the question — what is more beautiful to him than all that he has seen in the "unimaginable ether?" — "My sister Ailali. — All the stars of heaven, The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb Wliieh looks a spirit, or a spirit's world — The hues of twilight — the sun's gorgeous coming — His setting indescribable, which fills My eyes wiili pleasant tears as I behold Ilini sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him Along that western paradise of clouds — The forest shade — the green bough — the bird's voice — The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love, And mingles with the song of cherubim. Till.] CAIN. 145 As the day closes over Eden's walls : — All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, Like Adah's face." Lucifer's speech at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah, especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the ' wood-notes wild ' of Shakspeare ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres " singing in thunder round " him — the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek of Zillah— " Father ! Eve ! Adah ! come hither ! Death is in the world ;" Cain's rallying from stupor — " I am awake at last — a dreary dream Had madden'd me, — but he shall never wake :" the curse of Eve ; and the close — fxeTi^oi' ij /caret ^aKpva— Cain. " Leave me. Adah. " Why all have left thee. Cain. " And wherefore lingerest thou ? Dost thou not fear ? Adah. " I fear Nothing except to leave thee. * * * * * * * Cain. " Eastward from Eden will we take our way. Adah. " Leave ! thou shalt be my guide ; and may our God Be thine ! Now let us carry forth our children. V* 146 BYRON. [cuAP. Cain. " And he who lieth there was childless. I Have dried the fountain of a gentle race. O Abel ! Adah. " Peace be with him. Cain. '" But with me .'" Cain, between wliicli and the Cenci lies the award of the greatest single performance in dramatic shape of our century, raised a storm. It was published, with Sarda- napalus and The Two Foscari, in December, 1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elzc's remark — *' In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of thought. Tlie converse is the case with us Germans ; freedom of thought is restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism pre- sents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it ap- peared as if a literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage of insular orthodoxy Avas in proportion to its impotence. Every scribbler with a cassock denounced the book and its author, though few attemped to answer him. The hubbub was such that Byron wrote to Murray, authorizing him to disclaim all responsibility, and offering to refund the payment he had received. "Say that both you dnd Mr. GiflFord remon- strated. I will come to Enoland to stand trial. 'Me me adsum qui feci'" — and much to the same effect. The book was pirated ; and on the publisher's application to have an injunction. Lord Eldon refused to grant it. The majority of the minor reviewers became hysterical, and Dr. Watkins, amid much almost inarticulate raving, said that Sir Walter Scott, who had gratefully accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of Cain upon his brow. Several even of the higher crit- vm.] CAIN. 147 ics took frlglit. Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its " frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its spirit was more dangerous than that of Paradise Lost — and succeeded. The Quarterly began to cool to- wards the author. Moore wrote to him, that Cain was " wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but " dread- ed and deprecated " the influence of Shelley. Byrou showed the letter to Shelley, who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only wished he had, as he would " employ it to eradicate from his great mind the delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes : "What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer poetry than has appeared in England since Paradise Lost. Cain is apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the same strain, Scott says of the author of the " grand and tremendous drama:" "He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The w^orst effect of those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain himself — to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering habit of mind. Great writers in our country have frequently stirred difficult questions in re- liofion and life, and then seemed to be half scared, like Rouget de Lisle, by the reverberation of their own voices. Shelley almost alone was always ready to declare, " I meant what I said, and stand to it." Byron having, with or without design, arraigned some of the Thirty -nine Articles of his countrymen, proceeded 148 BYROX. [ciiAi-. in the following month (October, 1821) to commit an out- rage, yet more keenly resented, on the memory of their sainted king, the pattern of private virtue and public vice, George III. The perpetration of this occurred in the course of the last of his numerous literary duels, of wliicli it was the close. That Mr. Suuthey was a well-meaning and independent iiiaii of letters there can be no doubt. It does not require the conclusive testimony of the es- teem of Savage Landor to compel our respect for the au- thor of the Life of jVelson, and the open-handed friend of Coleridge ; nor is it any disparagement that, with the last-named and with Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his political and other opinions. But in his deal- ings with Lord Byron, Southey had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior powers, for whom his utter want of humour — save in its comparatively childish forms — made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its height when his lordship, in the humorous ob- servations and serious defence of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August), accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander. In 1821, when the latter published his Vision of Jadrj- ment — the most quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned — he prefixed to it a long explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes Don Juan as a " monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," regrets that it has not been brought un- der the lash of the law, salutes the writer as chief of the Satanic scliool, inspired by the spirits of Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him viii.] VISION OF JUDGMENT. 149 on his death -bed. To which Byron, inter alia: "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the antici- pated death-bed repentance of the objects of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleasant ' Vision of Judgment,' in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, / have not waited for a death-bed to repent of many of my actions, notwithstand- ing the ' diabolical pride ' which this pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him." This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been un- answerable ; but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the " whip and branding iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliaths," " public panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old. In February, Byron, having seen this assault in the Courier, writes ofE in needless heat, " I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to be done is to call him out" — and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance. Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judicious- ly suppressed it, and the author's thirst for literary blood was destined to remain unquenched. Meanwhile he had written his own Vision of Judgment. This extraordinary work, having been refused by both Murray and Longman, appeared in 1822 in the pages of the Liberal. It passed the bounds of British endurance ; and the publisher, Mr. John Hunt, was prosecuted and fined for the publication. Readers of our day will generally admit that the "gouty 150 liVliUN. [cuAi-. via. hexameters" of the original poem, which celebrates the apotheosis of King George in heaven, are much more blasphemous than the ottava rima of the travesty, which ]>rofesscs to narrate the difliculties of his getting there. Byron's Vision of Juihjmcnt is as unmistakably the first of parodies as the Iliad is the first of epics, or the Pil- grivi's Progress the first of allegories. In execution it is almost perfect. Don Juan is in scope and magnitude a far wider work ; but no considerable scries of stanzas in Don Juan are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every epithet hits the white ; every line that does not convulse with laughter stints or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much scathing satire. CHAPTER IX. [1821-1823.] PISA. GENOA. DON JUAN. Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs, fowls, monkeys, and servants, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo Lanfranchi for ten months, inter- rupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in the neighbour- hood of Leshorn. His life in the old feudal buildino- followed in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his pistols in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as " the most com- panionable man under thirty " he had ever met. Both poets were good shots, but Byron the safest ; for, though his hand often shook, he made allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La Guiccioli — now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations, established under the same roof — and then sat late over his verses. He was disposed to be more sociable than at Venice or Ravenna, and occasionally entertained strangers ; but his intimate acquaintanceship was confined to Captain Williams and his wife, and Shelley's cousin. Captain Medwin. The lat- 162 BYRON. [tUAP. ter used frcquoiitly to dine and sit with his host till the inoriiiiisx, eollcotinjj: materials fur the Conversations which he afterwards wrnt alive. Shelley, who believed that the sentence would really be carried into effect, proposed to Byron that they should gallop off together, and by aid of their, servants rescue by force the intended victim. l>yron, however, preferred, in the first l»lace, to rely on diplomacy; some vig(jrous letters passed; ultimately a representation, conveyed by Taafe to the Eng- lish Ambassador, led to a commutation of the sentence, and the man was sent to. the tcallevs. The January of 1822 was marked by the addition to the small circle of Captain E. J. Trelawny, the famous rover and bold free-lance (now sole survivor of the re- markable group), who accompanied Lord Byron to Greece, and has recorded a variety of incidents of the last mouths of his life. Trelawny, who appreciated Shelley with an intensity that is often apt to be exclusive, saw, or has re- ported, for the most part the weaker side of Byron. We arc constrained to accept as correct the conjecture that his judgment was biassed by their rivalry in physical prowess, and the political differences which afterwards developed between them. Letters to his old correspondents — to Sc(jtt about the Wavcrleys, to Murray about the Dram;is, and the Vision of J lulff men (, and C'ltin — make up almost the sole record of the poet's pursuits during the five fol- lowing months. On February 6 he sent, through Mr. Kinnaird, the challenge to Southey, of the suppression of which he was not aware till May 17. The same letter con- tains a shoaf of the random cynicisms, as — "Cash is vir- tue," " Money is power ; and when Socrates said he knew nothing, he meant he had not a drachma" — by which he sharpened 4he shafts of his assailants. A little later, ou IX.] PISA. 155 occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish against his daughter Ada seeing his por- trait. In March he sat, along with La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini. On the 24th, when the company were on one of their riding excursions outside the town, a half- drunken dragoon on horseback broke through them, and by accident or design knocked Shelley from his seat. Byron, pursuing him along the Lung' Arno, called for his name, and, taking him for an officer, flung his glove. The sound of the fray brought the servants of the Lanf ranch i to the door; and one of them, it was presumed — though in the scutfle everything remained uncertain — seriously wounded the drao-oon in the side. An investigation en- sued, as the result of which the Gambas were ultimately exiled from Tuscany, and the party of friends was practi- cally broken up. Shelley and his wife, with the AYilliarases and Trelawny, soon after settled at the Villa Magni at Le- rici, in the Gulf of Spezia. Byron, with the Countess and her brother, established themselves in the Villa Rossa, a^^ Monte Nero, a suburb of Leghorn, from which port at this date the remains of Allegra were conveyed to England. Among the incidents of this residence were, the homage paid to the poet by a party of Americans ; the painting of his portrait and that of La Guiccioli by their compa- triot. West, who has left a pleasing account of his visits ; Byron's letter making inquiry about the country of Boli- var (where it was his fancy to settle) ; and another of those disturbances by which he seemed destined to be harassed. One of his servants — among whom were un- ruly spirits, apparently selected with a kind of Corsair bravado — had made an assault on Count Pietro, wounding him in the face. This outburst, though followed by tears ir.6 BVROy. [cuAP. iiiitl ponitoncc, coufiriiUMl the impression of the Tuscan po- lice tliat llie whole company were (lanij;erous, and made the Government press for their departure. In the midst of the uproar, there suddenly appoiwed at the villa Mr. Lei<;h Hunt, with his wife and six children. They had taken passage to Genoa, where they were received by Trelawny, in com- mand of the "Bolivar" — a yacht constructed in that port for Lord J\vron, simultaneously with the "Don Juan" for Shelley. The latter, on hearing of the arrival of his friends, came to meet them at Leghorn, and went with them to Pisa. Early in July they were all established on the Lung' Arno, having assigned to them the ground-floor of the palazzo. We have now to deal briefly — amid conflicting assever- ations it is bard to deal fairly — with the last of the vexa- tiously controverted episodes which need perplex our nar- rative. Byron, in wishing Moore from Ravenna a merry Christmas for 1820, proposes that they shall embark to- gether in a newspaper, " with some improvement on the plan of the present scoundrels," " to give the age some new lights on policy, poesy, biography, criticism, morality, theology," &c. Moore absolutely refusing to entertain the idea, Hunt's name was brought forward in connexion witli it, during the visit of Shelley. Shortly after the return of the latter to Pisa, he writes (August 2G) to Hunt, stating that Byron was anxious to start a jieriodical work, to be conducted in Italy, and had proposed that they should both iro shares in the concern, on which follow some sug- gestions of ditticulties about money. Nevertheless, in Au- gust, 1821, ho presses Hunt to come. Moore, on the other hand, strongly remonstrates against the project. " I heard some (lavs ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to vou with all his family; and the idea seems to be that you and IX.] PISA. 157 he and Shelley are to conspire together in the Examiner. I deprecate such a plan with all my might. Partnerships in fame, like those in trade, mate the strongest party an- swer for the rest. I tremble "even for you with such a bankrupt Co. ! You must stand alone." Shelley — who had in the meantime given his bond to Byron for an ad- vance of 200^. towards tlie expenses of his friends, besides assisting them himself to the utmost of his power — began, shortly before their arrival, to express grave doubts as to the success of the alliance. His last published letter, writ- ten July 5, 1822, after they had settled at Pisa, is full of forebodino;s. On the 8th he set sail in the "Don Juan" — » " That fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark," and was overtaken by the storm in which he perished. Three days after, Trelawny rode to Pisa, and told Byron of his fears, when the poet's lips quivered, and his voice faltered. On the 22nd of July the bodies of Shelley, Wil- liams, and Vivian were cast ashore. On the 16th August, Hunt, Byron, and Trelawny were present at the terribly weird cremation, which they have all described, and after which they were seized with a fit of the hilarious delirium which is one of the phases of the tension of grief. By- ron's references to the event are expressions less of the loss which he indubitably felt, than of his indignation at the " w^orld's wrong." " Thus," he writes, " there is an- other man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it." Towards the end of the same letter the spirit of his dead friend seems to inspire the sentence — " With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present clash of 168 nVROX. [chap. philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. 1 know it is against fearful odds, but the battle must be fouj;ht." Moanwiiilc, shortly after the new settlement at the Lan- franehi, the preparations for issuinj^ the Liberal — edited by Leii^h Hunt in Italy, and published by John Hunt in London — progressed. The first number, which appeared in September, was introduced, after a few words of pref- ace, by the Vision of Judgment, with the signature, Que- vedo Redivivus, and adorned by Shelley's translation of the "May-Day Night," in Faust. It contained, besides, the Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother s Review, an indifferent Florentine story, a German apologue, and a gossipping account of Pisa, presumal)ly by Hunt. Three others followed, containing Byron's Heaven and Earth, his translation of the Morgante Magcjiore, and The Blues — a very slight, if not silly, satire on literary ladies; some of Shelley's posthumous minor poems, among them " I arise from dreams of thee," and a few of Hazlitt's essays, in- cluding, however, none of his best. Leigh Hunt himself wrote most of the rest, one of his contributions being a palpable imitation of Don Juan, entitled the Book of Be- ginnings; but he confesses that, owing to his weak health and low spirits at the time, none of these did justice to his ability ; and the general manner of the magazine being in- sufliciently vigorous to carry off the frequent eccentricity of its matter, the prejudices against it prevailed, and the enterprise came to an end. Partners in failing concerns are apt to dispute ; in this instance the unpleasantness which arose at the time rankled in the mind of the sur- vivor, and gave rise to his singularly tasteless- and injudi- cious book — a performance which can be only in j)art con- doned by the fact of Hunt's afterwards expressing regret, IX.] PISA. 159 and practically withdrawing it. He represents himself throughout as a much-injured man, lured to Italy by mis- representations that he might give the aid of his journal- istic experience and undeniable talents to the advancement of a mercenary enterprise, and that when it failed he was despised, insulted, and rejected. Byron, on the other hand, declares, " The Hunts pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented ;" and his subsequent ac- tion in the matter — if not always gentle, never unjust — - goes to verify his statements in the letters of the period. "I am afraid," he writes from Genoa, October 9, 1822, " the journal is a bad business. 1 have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here ; but it is almost useless. His wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child." Later he says to Murray, "You and your friends, by your injudi- cious rudeness, cement a connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered, would not in all probability have continued. As it is ... I can't leave them among the breakers." On February 20 we have his last word on the subject, to the same effect. In the following sentences Moore seems to give a fair statement of the motives which led to the establishment of the unfortunate journal : " The chief inducements on the part of Lord Byron to this unworthy alliance were, in the first place, a wash to second the kind views of his friend Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to Italy ; and in the next, a desire to avail himself of the aid of one so experi- enced as an editor in the favourite object he has so long contemplated of a periodical work in which all the off- spring of his genius might be received as they sprung to light." For the accomplishment of this purpose Mr. Leigh Hunt was a singularly ill -chosen associate. A man of 160 BYRON. [tiLvr. Radical opinions on all matters, not only of religion but of society — opinions which ho acquired and held easily but tirnily — could never recognize the propriety of the claim to deference which "the noble poet" was always too eager to assert, and was inclined to take liberties which his pa- tron perhaps superciliously repelled. Mrs. Hunt does not seem to have been a very judicious person. " Trelawny here," said Byron, jocularly, " has been speaking against ray morals." " It is the first time I ever heard of them," she replied. Mr. Hunt, by his own admission, had " pecul- iar notions on the subject of money." Byron, on his part, was determined not to be "put upon," and doled out through his steward stated allowances to Hunt, who says that only " stern necessity and a large family " induced liim to accept them. Hunt's expression that the 200/. was, in the first instance, a debt to Shelley, points to the conclusion that it was remitted on that poet's death. Be- sides this, Byron maintained the family till they left Genoa for Florence, in 1823, and defrayed up to that date all their expenses. He gave his contributions to the Liberal gratis; and, again by Hunt's own confession, left to him and his brother the profits of the proprietorship. Accord- ing to Mr. Gait, " The whole extent of the pecuniary obli- gation appears not to have exceeded 500/. ; but, little or great, the manner in which it was recollected rcfiects no credit either on the head or heart of the debtor." Of the weaknesses on which the writer — bent on veri- fying Pope's lines on Atossa — from his vantage in the ground-fioor, was enabled to dilate, many are but slightly magnified. We are told, for instance, in very many words, that Byron clung to the piix iloges of his rank while wish- ing to seem above tbtiii ; tli.it lie had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle and Gibbon supplit'a«l opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for wliatevt T he himself did he did with a will — ' toto se cor- poro niiscuit,' and was wont to assume a sort of dictato- rial tone — as if ' I have said it, and it must be so,' were enough." From these waifs and strays of gossip wc return to a subject of deeper interest. The Countess of Blcssinj^on, with natural curiosity, was anxious to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs, and re- newed the attempt previously made by Madame de Stael, to induce him to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife. His reply to this overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the fol- lowinix extracts must be a sufficient indication : " I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's hair. ... I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will tell you why. I believe they are the only two or three words of your handwriting in my possession, for your let- ters I returned, and except the two words — or rather the one word 'household' written twice — in an old account- book, I have no other. Every day which keeps us asun- der should, after so long a period, rather soften our mut- ual feelings, which must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists. Wc both made a bitter mistake, but now it is over. I considered our reunion as not im- possible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave up the hope. I am violent, but not malig- nant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resent- ment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something, and tliat if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most offending are the least forgiving." IX.] GENOA. 166 " It is a strange business," says the Countess, about Lady- Byron, " ^Yhen he was praising her mental and personal qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was wouuded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his let- ters ; that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, " Lady B.'s first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self- respect which she has in excess. AVhen I have broken out, on slight provocation, into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed to reproach me ; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and in- creased my mauvaise humeur.'''' To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and respect. *' My first impressions were melancholy — my poor moth- er gave them ; but to my sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I owe the little good of which I can boast; and had I earlier known her it might have influenced my destiny. Augusta was to me in the hour of need a tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view. She has given me such good advice — and yet, finding me incapable of following it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring." Similarly, in the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt — "I believe there did exist one per- son to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased : perhaps was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his ir.tt UYRON. [niAP. property, and always spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was Ills sister, Mrs. Leit^h. lie told me slie used to call him 'Bahy Byron.' It was easy to see that of the two persons she had by far the greater judgment." -" Byron, having laid aside Don Juan for more than a year, in deference to La Guiecioli, was permitted to re- sume it again in July, 1822, on a promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. wore written at Pisa. Can- tos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were published by John Uunt. Ilis other works of the period are of minor consequence. The Age of Bronze is a declamation, rather than a satire, directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona, especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from its advice to the Greeks, to dread, " The false friend worse than the infuriate foe ;" i. e., to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the pater- nal huu of the great Bear — " Better still toil for masters, than await, The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate." In the Island — a talc of the mutiny of the " Bounty " — be reverts to the manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical adventure reap- pears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. " ' Byron, the sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading it. As the swan -song of the poet's sentimental IX.] DON JUAN. 167 verse, it has a pleasing if not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on the Conquest and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was executed. In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to criticise the critics — to bring to a focus the most salient things that have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the discriminating from the commonplace. ( Don Juan, more than any of its precursors, is Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle - class respectability, were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their judgments. The British Magazine said that " his lordship had degraded his personal character by the composition ;" the London, that the poem was " a satire on decency ;" the Edinburgh Monthly, that it was " a melancholy spectacle ;" the Eclectic, that it was " an out- rage worthy of detestation." Blackwood declared that the author was " brutally outraging all the best feelings of humanity." Moore characterizes it as "the most pain- ful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder at or deplore." Jeffrey found in the whole composition "a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue ;" and Dr. John Wat- kins classically named it " the Odyssey of Immorality." ''''Don Juan will be read," wrote one critic, "as long as satire, wit, mirth, and supreme excellence shall be esteemed among men." " Stick to Don Juan,'''' exhorted another ; " it is the only sincere thing you have written, and it will live after all your Harolds have ceased to be 'a school- girl's tale, the wonder of an hour.' It is the best of all / 168 BYRON. [chap. your works — the most spirited, the most s^ightforward, the most interesting, the most poetical." ^^^^ It is a work," said Goethe, " full of soul, bitterly savage in iW misanthro- py, exquisitely delicate in its tenderness."/ Shelley con- fessed, "it fulfils in a certain degree what I have long preached, the task of producing something wholly new -^nd relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." / And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst of a licarty panegyric, " It has the variety of Shakspcare himself. Neither Childe JIarold, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite poetry than is to be found scatter- ed through the cantos of Don Juan, amid verses which the author seems to have thrown from him with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves." One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity : reviewing, however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register of adverse or friend- ly cliques ; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict, Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull : in pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale ; and the most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of the readers of Don Juan liavc, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to ad- mire in it what is most admirable — who have been attract- ed by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by a showy Shakspea- rian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the charge of being adapted " laudari ab illaudatis." But the wel- IX.] DON JUAN. 169 come of the work in other quarters is as indubitably due to higher qualities. In writing Don Juan, Byron attempt- ed something that had never been done before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be done again. " Down," cries M. Chasles, " with the imi- tators who did their best to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an excellent critic has ex- plained the pre-established fitness of the ottava rima — the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet a "breakdown" — for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may have been suggested by Whis- tlecraft ; but he had studied its cadence in Pulci, and the Novelle Galanti of Casti, to whom he is indebted for other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed its characteristic jauntiness, by his al- most constant use of the double rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's Pot of Basil. Many writers, from Frere to Moultrie, have employed it successfully in burlesque or mere society verse ; but Byron alone has employed it triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as gay, of " black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a ladder like other acrobats ; but alone, like the Japanese master of the art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of Don Juan is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his -earlier work ; it has every mark of being written in hot haste. In the midst of the 8* 170 BYROX. [ciup. most serious passacjes (e. y wore held in embryo ; during the later years X.] GREECE. 187 of disaster, terminated by the allies at Navarino, they were buried ; daring the interlude of Byron's residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a re- newal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and helped to betray the com- mon cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, endeavouring to conciliate rival claimants for pension or place, and carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the population of the island ; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting to find the Pelo- ponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned think- ino; the inhabitants of Newo-ji.te more moral. Lord Bvron judged the Greeks fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were " shrieking and howling as in Ireland " over some men buried in the fall of a bank ; he snatched a spade, began to dig, and threat- ened to horsewhip the peasants unless they followed his example. On November 30 he despatched to the cen- tral government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that, unless union and order are established, all hopes of a loan — which, being every day more urgent, he was in letters to" England constantly pressing — are at an end. " I desire," he concluded, " the wellbeing of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be deceived as to the real state of 188 BYKOX. [chap. alTairs. You liavc fouglit gloriously ; act honourably to- wards your fcllow-citizctis and the world, and it will then no more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand vears, with the Roman historians, that I'hilopa'iueu was the last of the Grecians." Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos — the most prominent of the practical patriotic leaders — having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to regulate the affairs of \Vestern Greece, and was now on his way with a fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco J)ozzaris had previously fallen. In a letter, opening com- iiuiiiication with a man for whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, *' Colonel Stanhope has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with me. . . . Greece is at present placed between three measures — either to reconquer her liberty, to become a de- pendence of the sovereigns of Europe, or to return to a Turkish province. She has the choice only of these three alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter." At length the long -looked -for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. Mavrocordatos, on entering Mes- olonghi, lost no time in inviting the poet to join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, " I need not tell you to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs. Your counsels will be listened to like oracles." At the same date Stanhope writes, "The people in the streets are looking forward to his lordship's arrival as they would to the coming of the Messiah." Byron was unable to start in the ship sent for him ; but in spite of medical warnings, a few days later, /. c, December 28, he embark- X.] GREECE. 189 cd in a small fast-sailing sloop called a mistico, wliile the servants and baivoiao-e were stowed in another and laro-er vessel under the charge of Count Gamba. From Gamba's graphic account of the voyage we may take the following : " We sailed together till after ten at night ; the wind fa- vourable, a clear sky, the air fresh, but not sharp. Our sail- ors sang alternately patriotic songs, monotonous indeed, but to persons in our situation extremely touching, and we took part in them. We were all, but Lord Byron par- ticulai'ly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the fast- est. When the waves divided us, and our voices could no longer reach each other, we made signals by firing pistols and carbines. To-morrow we meet at Mesolonghi — to- morrow. Thus, full of confidence and spirits, we sailed along. At twelve we were out of sight of each other." Byron's vessel, separated from her consort, came into the close proximity of a Turkish frigate, and had to take refuo-e amono- the Scrofcs' rocks. Emero-ino- thence, he attained a small seaport of Acarnania, called Dragomestri, whence sallying forth on the 2nd of January under the convoy of some Greek gunboats, he was nearly wrecked. On the 4th Byron made, when violently heated, an impru- dent plunge in the sea, and was never afterwards free from a pain in his bones. On the 5th he arrived at Mesolon- ghi, and was received with salvoes of musketry and music. Gamba was waiting him. His vessel, the " Bombarda," had been taken by the Ottoman frigate, but the captain of the latter, recognizing the Count as having formerly saved his life in the Black Sea, made interest in his behalf with Yussuf Pasha at Patras, and obtained his discharge. In recompense, the poet subsequently sent to the Pasha some Turkish prisoners, with a letter requesting him to endeav- our to mitigate the inhumanities of the war. Byron 100 * BYRON. [chap. lirj)licHl, in tlic first place, to defraying the expenses of the tleet), with the spell of his name and pres- .cnce. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the eom- mand of the intended expedition against Lepanto, and, with this view, again took into his pay five hundred Suli- otes. An approaching general assembly to organize the forces of the West had brought together a motley crew, destitute, discontented, and more likely to wage war upon each other than on their enemies. Byron's closest associ- ates during the ensuing months were the engineer Parry, an energetic artilleryman, "extremely active, and of strong practical talents," who had travelled in America, and Col- onel Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington), equally with liimself devoted to the emancipation of Greece, but at variance about the means of achieving it. Stanhope, a moral enthusiast of the stamp of Kennedy, beset by the fallacy of religious missions, wished to cover the Morca with Weslcyan tracts, and liberate the country by the agency of the press. lie had imported a converted black- smith, with a cargo of Bibles, types, and paper, who on 20/. a year undertook to accomplish the reform. Byron, back- ed by the good sense of Mavrocordatos, proposed to make cartridges of the tracts, and small shot of the type ; he did not think that the turbulent tribes were ripe for free- dom of the press, and had begun to regard Republicanism itself as a matter of secondary moment. The disputant allies in the common cause occupied each a flat of the same small liousc; tlie soldier by profession was bent on writing the Turks down, the poet on fighting them down, liolding that "the work of the sword must precede that of the pen, and tliat camps must be the training-schools of freedom." Their altercations were sometimes fierce — X.] GREECE. 191 "Despot!" cried Stanhope, "after professing liberal prin- ciples from boyhood, you, when called to act, prove your- self a Turk." " Radical !" retorted Byron, " if I had held up my finger I could have crushed your press" — but this did not prevent the recognition by each of them of the excellent qualities of the other. Ultimately Stanhope went to Athens, and allied him- self with Trelawny and Odysseus and the party of the Left. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preceding- period, nothing more admirable than the spirit which in- spires them. He had come into the heart of a revolution, exposed to the same perils as those which had wrecked the similar movement in Italy. Neither trusting too much nor distrusting too much, with a clear head and a good will he set about enforcing a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was engaged in denouncing dissen- sion, in advocating unity, in doing everything that man could do to concentrate and utilize the disorderly elements with which he had to work. He occupied himself in re- pairing fortifications, managing ships, restraining licence, promoting courtesy between the foes, and regulating the disposal of the sinews of war. On the morning of the 22nd of January, his last birth- day, he came from his room to Stanhope's, and said, smil- ing, "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now," and read the familiar stanzas beginning — " 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved," and ending — " Seek out — less often sought than found — A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest." Vri HYRON. [chap. lli«j;li thoiiijlits, liigli resolves; but the brain that was over- tasked, and tbe frame that was outworn, would be tasked and worn little lon pelling it; so he warred with the literary impulse of wliich he was the child. Byron has no relation to the master-minds whose works reflect a nation or an era, and who keep their own secrets. His verse and prose is alike biographical, and the inequali- ties of his style are those of his career. He lived in a glass case, and could not hide himself by his habit of burning blue lights. He was too great to do violence to his nature, which was not great enough to be really con- sistent. It was thus natural for him to pose as the spokes- man of two ages — as a critic and as an author; and of 202 BYRON. [cuap. two orders of society — as a peer, and as a poet of revolt. Sincere in both, he could never forget the one character in the other. To the last he was an aristocrat in sentiment, a democrat in opinion. " Vulgarity," he writes, with a pithy half-truth, "is far worse than downright black- guardism ; fur tlic latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times, while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, signifying nothing." He could nev- er reconcile himself to the English radicals ; and it has been acutely remarked that part of his final interest in Greece lay in the fact that he found it a country of chissic memories, " where a man might be the champion of lib- erty without soiling himself in the arena." He owed much of his early influence to the fact of his moving in the circles of rank and fashion ; but though himself steep- ed in the prejudices of caste, he struck at them at times with fatal force. Aristocracy is the individual asserting a vital distinction between itself and "the muck o' the world." Bvron's heroes all rebel against the associative tendency of the nineteenth century ; they arc self-worship- pers at war with society ; but most of them come to bad ends. He maligned himself in those caricatures, and has given more of himself in describing one whom with special significance we call a brother poet. " Allen," he writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished let- ters. . . . What an antithetical mind ! — tenderness, rough- ness — delicacy, coarseness — sentiment, sensuality — soar- ing and grovelling — dirt and deity — all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay !" We have only to add to these antitheses, in applying them with slight modifi- cation to the writer. Byron had, on occasion, more self- control than Burns, who yielded to every thirst or gust, and could never have lived the life of the soldier at Meso- XI.] CHARACTEKISTIUS— PLACE IX LITERATURE. 203 longlu ; but, partly owing to meanness, partly to a sound instinct, his memory has been more severely dealt with. The fact of his being a nobleman helped to make hiin famous, but it also helped to make him hated. No doubt it half spoiled him in making him a show ; and tlie cir- cumstance has suggested the remark of a humourist, that it is as hard for a lord to be a perfect gentleman as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye. But it also ex- posed to the rancours of jealousy a man who had nearly everything but domestic happiness to excite that most cor- roding of literary passions ; and when he got out of gear he became the quarry of Spenser's "blatant beast." On the other hand, Burns was, beneath his disgust at Holy Fairs and Willies, sincerely reverential ; much of Don Juan would have seemed to him " an atheist's laugh," and — a more certain superiority — he was absolutely frank. Byron, like Pope, was given to playing monkey - like tricks, mostly harmless, but offensive to their victims. His peace of mind was dependent on what people would say of him, to a degree unusual even in the irritable rac and when they spoke ill he was, again like Pope, esse tially vindictive. The Bards and Reviewers beats about, where the lines to Atticus transfix with Philoctetes' ar- rows ; but they are due to a like impulse. Byron affected to contemn the world ; but, say what he would, he cared too much for it. He had a genuine love of solitude as alterative ; but he could not subsist without society, and, Shelley tells us, wherever he went, became the nucleus of it. He sprang up again when flung to the earth, but he never attained to the disdain he desired. We find him at once munificent and careful about mon- ey ; calmly asleep amid a crowd of trembling sailors, yet never going to ride without a nervous caution ; defyinir 2iM nVKOX. (fiup. Mii;urv, yet seriously disturbed by a gipsy's prattle. He (ould be tlic most gcniiil of comrades, the nu)st considerate f masters, and lie secured the devotion of his servants, as f his friends; but he was too overbearing to form many qual friendships, and apt to be ungenerous to his real ri- als. His shifting attitude towards Lady Byron, his wav- M'cring purposes, his impulsive acts, are a part of the char- aetcr we trace through all his life and work — a strange mixture of magnanimity and brutality, "of laughter and tears, consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride, yet redeeming all his defects by his graces, and wearing a greatness that his errors can only half obscure. Alternately the idol and the horror of his eontem- pnraries, Byron was, during his life, feared and respected as "the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme." His works were the events of the literary world. The chief among them were translated into French, Gorman, Italian, Danish, I'olish, Russian, Spanish. On the publication of Moore's Life, Lord Mncaulay had no hesitation in refer- ring to Byron as "the most celebrated Englishman of the nineteenth century." Nor have we now ; but in the in- terval between 1840-1870 it was the fashion to talk of liim as a sentimentalist, a romancer, a shallow wit, a nine days' wonder, a poet for "green unknowing youth." It Avas a reaction such as leads us to disestablish the heroes of our crude imaginations till wc learn that to admire nothing is as sure a sign of immaturity as to admire everything. The weariness, if not disgust, induced by a throng of more than usually absurd imitators, enabled Mr. Carlyle, the poet's successor in literary influence, more effectively to lead the counter -revolt. "In my mind," writes this c, in 1839, " Byron has been sinking at an accelerated XI.] CILiEACTEIlISTICS— rLACE IN LITERATURE. 205 rate for the last ten years, and has now reached a very low level. . . . His fame has been very great, but I do not sec how it is to endure ; neither does that make him great. No genuine productive thought was ever revealed by him to mankind. He taught me nothing that I had not again to fora-et." The refrain of Carlvle's advice during the most active years of his criticism was, " Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe." We do so, and find that the refrain of Goethe's advice in reference to Byron is — " Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna." He urged Eckermann to study Euii'lish that he mio-ht read him; remarking, "A character of such eminence has never existed before, and probably will never come again. The beauty of Cain is such as we shall not see a second time in the world. . . . Byron issues from the sea-waves ever fresh. I did right to present him with that monument of love in Helena. I could not make use of any man as the representative of the modern poetic era except him, who is undoubtedly to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century." Again : "Tasso's epic has maintained its fame, but Byron is the burning bush which reduces the cedar of Lebanon to ashes. . . . The English may think of him as they please ; this is certain, they can show no (living) poet who is to be compared to him. . . . But he is too worldly. Contrast Macbeth and Bepioo, where you are in a nefarious em- pirical world. On Eckermann's doubting " whether there is a gain for pure culture in Byron's work," Goethe con- clusively replies, " There I must contradict you. The au- dacity and grandeur of Byron must certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Evei'ything that is great promotes cultivation, as soon as we are aware of it." This verdict of the Olympian as against the verdict of 206 liVRON*. [ciup, tlic Titan is intcrcstincf in itself, and as beinsj the verdict of the whole continental world of letters. " AVhat," ex- claims Castelar, " does Spain not owe to Byron? From his month come onr hopes and fears. He has bai)tized ns with his blood. There is no one with whose being some song of his is not woven. His life is like a funeral torch over our graves." Mazzini takes up the same tune for Italy. Stendhal speaks of Byron's "Apollonic power;" and Sainte Beuve writes to the same intent, witli some judicious caveats. M. Taine concludes his survey of the romantic movement with the remark : " In this splendid effort, the greatest are exhausted. One alone — liyron — attains the summit. He is so great and so English, that from liim alone we shall learn more truths of his coun- try and his age than from all the rest together." Dr. Elze ranks the author of Harold and Juan amonjr the four greatest English poets, and claims for him the intellect- ual parentage of Lamartinc and Musset in France, of Es- pronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with some mod- ifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy. So many voices of so various countries cannot be sim[ily set aside: unless we wrap ourselves in an insolent insnlarism, we are bound at least to ask what is the mean- ing of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious shortcomings which Byron himself rec- ognized. That he loses almost nothing by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to the artist. Scarce a page of his verse even aspires to perfection ; hard- ly a stanza will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson ; his pictures with a big brush were XI.] CHAEACTERISTICS— rLACE IX LITERATURE. 207 . never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast be- tween his theoretic worship of his idol and his own prac- tice reaches a climax. If, as he professed to believe, " the best poet is he who best executes his work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and slovenly ; an iraprovisatore on the spot where his fancy is kindled, writing currente calamo, and disdaining the " art to blot." " I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger ; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to niy jungle." He said to Medwin, "Blank verse is the most difficult, be- cause every line must be good." Consequently, his own blank verse is always defective — sometimes execrable. No one else — except, perhaps, Wordsworth — who could write so well, could also write so ill. This fact in Byron's case seems due not to mere carelessness, but to incapacity. Something seems to stand behind him, like the slave in the chariot, to check the current of his highest thought. The glow of his fancy fades with the suddenness of a southern sunset. His best inspirations are spoilt by the interruption of incongruous commonplace. He had none of the guardian delicacy of taste, or the thirst after com- pleteness, which mark the consummate artist. He is more nearly a dwarf Shakspeare than a giant Pope. This de- fect was most mischievous where he was w-eakest, in his dramas and his lyrics, least so where he was strongest, in his mature satires. It is almost transmuted into an ex- cellence in the greatest of these, which is by design and in detail a temple of incongruity. If we turn from his manner to his matter, we cannot claim for Byron any absolute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Beau- marchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyere, Wielaud, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goc- 208 BYRON. [chap. the, scraps of the classics, and the Book of Joh. Ahso- hitc orij^inahty in a late age is only possible to the her- n)it, the lunatic, or the sensation novelist. Byron, like the rovers before Minus, was not ashamed of his piracy, lie transferred the random prose of his own letters and journals to his dramas, and with the same complacency made use of the notes jotted down from uthcr writers as he sailed on the Lake of Geneva. But he made them liis own by re-casting the rough ore into bell-metal. lie brewed a cauldron like that of Macbeth's witches, and from it arose the images of crowned kings. If he did not bring a new idea into the world, he quadrupled the force of existing ideas and scattered them far and wide. Southern critics have maintained that he had a southern nature, and was in his true element on the Lido or under an Andalusian night. Others dwell on the English pride that went along with his Italian habits and Greek sympathies. The truth is, he had the power of making himself poetically every- where at home ; and this, along with the fact of all his writings being perfectly intelligible, is the secret of his European influence. He was a citizen of the world ; be- cause he not only painted the environs, but reflected the passions and aspirations of every scene amid which he dwelt. A disparafrinnr critic has said, " Bvron is nothing with- out his descriptions." The remark only em[)hasizes the fact that his genius was not dramatic. All non-dramatic art is concerned with bringing before us pictures of the world, the value of which lies half in tluir truth, half in the amount of human interest with which they are invest- ed. To scientific accuracy few poets can lay claim, and Byron less than most; but the general truth of his de- scriptions is acknowledged by all who have travelled in XI.] CHAEACTERISTICS—PLACE IN LITEHATUKE. 209 the same countries. The Greek verses of his first pilgrim- age — e. g., the night scene on the Gulf of Arta, many of the Albanian sketches, -with much of the Siege of Corinth and the Giaour — have been invariably commended for their vivid realism. Attention has been especially direct- ed to the lines in the Corsair beginning — "But, lo ! from high Hvmettus to the plain," as being the veritable voice of one "Spell-bound, within the clustering Cyclades." The opening lines of the same canto, transplanted from the Curse of Minerva, are ewn more sufjarestive : — " Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, Along Morea's hill the setting sun, Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright. But one unclouded blaze of living light," &c. In the same M'ay, the later cantos of Harold are steeped in Switzerland and in Italy. Byron's genius, it is true, re- quired a stimulus ; it could not have revelled among the daisies of Chaucer, or pastured by the banks of the Doon or the Ouse, or thriven among the Lincolnshire fens. He had a sincere, if somewhat exclusive, delight in the storms and crags that seemed to respond to his nature and to his age. There is no affectation in the expression of the wish, " O that the desert were my dwelling-place !" though we know that the writer on the shores of the Mediterranean still craved for the gossip of the clubs. It only shows that — " Two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood ; One drives him to the world without. And one to solitude." Of Byron's two contemporary rivals, "Wordsworth had 10 210 nVROX. [chap. no feverish blood; notliing drove liim to the world with- out; consequently his "eyes avert their ken from half of human fate," and his inrincncc, though perennial, will al- ways be limited, lie eoiujuered England from his hills and lakes; but his spirit has never crossed the Straits which he thought too narrow. The other, with a fever ill his veins, calmed it in the sea and in the cloud, and, in some degree because of his very excellencies, has failed as yet to mark the world at large. The poets' poet, the cynosure of enthusiasts, he bore the banner of the forlorn hoj)e; but Byron, with his feet of clay, led the ranks. Shelley, as pure a philanthropist as St. Francis or Uow- ard, could forget mankind, and, like his AdonaTs, becou>e one with nature. Byron, who professed to hate his fel- lows, was of them even more than for them, and so ap- pealed to them through a broader sympathy, and held them with a firmer hand. By virtue of his passion, as well as his power, he was enabled to represent the human tragedy in which he played so many parts, and to which liis external universe of cloudless moons, and vales of ev- ergreen, and lightning-riven peaks, are but the various background, lie set the " anguish, doubt, desire," the whole chaos of his age, to a music whose thunder- roll seems to have inspired the opera of Lohengrin — a music not designed to teach or to satisfy " the budge doctors of the Stoic fur," but which will continue to arouse and de- light the sons and daughters of men. Madame de Stael said to Byron, at Ouchy, " It does not do to war with the world : the world is too strong for the individual." Goethe only gives a more philosophic form to this counsel when he remarks of the poet, "lie put himself into a false position by his assaults on Church and State. His discontent ends in negation. ... If I call had bad, XI.] CHARACTERISTICS— PLACE IN LITERATURE. 211 what do I gain ? But if I call good bad, I do miscliief." The answer is obvious : as long as men call had good, there is a call for iconoclasts: half the reforms of the world have begun in negation. Such comments also point to the common error of trying to make men other than they are by lecturing them. This scion of a long- line of lawless bloods — a Scandinavian Berserker, if there ever was one — the literary heir of the Eddas — was special- ly created to wage that war — to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles the hollow hypocrisy — sham taste, sham morals, sham religion — of the society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but succeeded in seducing him. But for the ethereal essence — " The fount of fiery life Which served for that Titanic strife," Byron would have been merely a more melodious Moore and a more accomplished Brummell. But the caged lion was only half tamed, and his continual growls were his re- demption. His restlessness was the sign of a yet unbroken will. He fell and rose, and fell again ; but never gave up the struggle that keeps alive, if it does not save, the soul. His greatness, as well as his weakness, lay in the fact that from boyhood battle was the breath of his being. |To tell him not to fight was like telling Wordsworth not to re- flect, or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of challenge ; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine mosaic ; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit of action and of enterprise. 212 liYliUN. [ciiAP. XI. « In jfood portraits his head lias a lurid look, as if it had boon at a hii^iicr tt'in[)crature than that of other men. That high temperature was the source of his inspiration, ,and the secret of a spell which, during his life, commanded homage and drew forth love. Mere artists are often man- ikins. Byron's brilliant though unequal genius was sub- ordinate to the power of his personality ; he " Had the elements So mixM ill liiin, tliiit Nature might stand up And say to all the world — ' This was a man.' " We may learn much from him still, when we have ceased to disparage, as our fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is so much warning and so much example. THE END. This book i» DUE on the last d»»<" stamped belov Wi i UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on Uie last date stamped below. ' JUL k: 9 1988 LD/URL ^ ' tCT i ^ ^^ 3, li 3 n58 01012 1365 PR ^381 N51 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITi' AA 000 369 572 3