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 LORD BYRON
 
 LONDON : PlilNTED BY 
 
 M'OTTISWOOIIB ANT CO. XBW-STIIKKT SQUAHK 
 A5D FAKL.1AMBST 8TKEKT
 
 LOUD BYEON 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 WITH A CRITICAL ESSAY ON 
 
 HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE 
 
 BY KARL ELZE 
 
 TRANSLATED WITH THE AUTHOR'S SA.VCHOy, AXD EDITED WITH NOTES 
 
 Utlj portrait anb ^facsimile 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1872 
 
 The right of translation w rctcrvfd
 
 TO 
 
 WILLIAM NAPIER 
 
 THIS TRANSLATION 
 
 UNDERTAKEN AT HIS SUGGESTION 
 
 TRANSLATOR 
 
 1586348
 
 TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 
 
 PROFESSOR ELZE enjoys the reputation in Germany of 
 possessing a deep and extensive acquaintance with, the 
 language and literature of England. He began his 
 literary career, we believe, by the publication of a volume 
 of ' Selections from the best English Poets.' His ' Remi- 
 niscences of a Tour through England and Scotland ' com- 
 municated to Germany the results of his more personal 
 observations. These were succeeded by a ' Life of Sir 
 Walter Scott,' in 2 vols. 8vo., for whom he entertains the 
 most sincere respect, and of whose genius he forms a still 
 higher estimate than is generally held by the critics 
 of Germany. Some of the results of his profound and 
 original studies in Shakespeare and his contemporaries he 
 published in a ' Critical Edition of Hamlet ; ' and the manner 
 in which his knowledge and labours are regarded in Ger- 
 many is evinced by the fact, that he has been appointed 
 the editor of the ' Year-book of the German Shakespeare- 
 Society,' a publication devoted to the study of our great 
 poet the sixth volume of which has recently been pub- 
 lished. In 1870 appeared his * Life of Lord Byron.' In no 
 country of Europe, not even in England, had Byron's 
 poems been more widely read or more enthusiastically
 
 viii TRANSLATORS PKEFACE. 
 
 admired than in Germany. Goethe tells us, 1 that the 
 youth of both sexes had, in the ardour of their love for his 
 poetry, almost forgotten their own nationality. But not- 
 withstanding the interest thus felt for the creations of his 
 genius, no substantive Life of Byron had, as far as we 
 are aware, appeared in Germany, with the exception of 
 Willkomm's Biography, which we know only from the 
 contemptuous mention made of it by Treitschke in 
 his able essay 2 on ' Byron and Eadicalism.' It seems, 
 to judge from the terms in which it is there spoken of, 
 to resemble those fantastic and spasmodic attempts at 
 a biography of Byron which appeared in France shortly 
 after and, indeed, even before, his death. Professor 
 Elze's volume is of a totally different character. He 
 professes, indeed, to have no access to new or original 
 documents ; he makes no claim, therefore, to the interest 
 attaching itself to a biography which enriches our previous 
 knowledge with information derived from private and 
 hitherto unused papers, journals, or letters. The materials 
 from which he has constructed his ' Life ' are open to all 
 enquirers. Its merits as a narrative depend on the skilful 
 and artistic use which he has made of these materials, and, 
 as a work of criticism, on the truth and soundness of the 
 critical judgments which he has formed and expressed. 
 Nor have his labours been without success, if the opinion 
 of his translator may be trusted. Professor Elze has pro- 
 duced so he ventures to think a clear, compact, well- 
 arranged narrative of the external facts of Byron's life ; 
 he has endeavoured to seize and fix the rich and varied 
 
 1 Aimalen. Sammtliche Werke, xxvi. p. 245. 1858. 
 
 2 P. 317. Historische und politische Aufsalze. Dritte Auflage. 1867.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix 
 
 traits of his character in an analysis as elaborate as it is, 
 perhaps, unsparing ; and in his last chapter he seeks 
 to assign to Byron the place which is his due, not merely 
 in the literature of England, but in the literature of 
 Europe. 
 
 It is undeniable that, partly from the fluctuations to 
 which taste especially in poetry is exposed, and partly 
 from the rise of new poetic schools, the vast influence, 
 once exercised by the works of Byron, had to a certain 
 extent waned among us. But various signs may be 
 discerned which seem to point to a revival of the old 
 interest, not indeed in the fervour, hardly admitting of 
 calm and thoughtful appreciation, which greeted the 
 appearance of ' Childe Harold,' but in a more chastened 
 and intelligent fashion, which will lead us, after all 
 abatements are made, to see in Byron the most vigor- 
 ous, the most original, poetical genius which England 
 has produced since Milton. The attempts to darken the 
 shadows that lay on some portions of his life may, 
 perhaps, have contributed to produce this revulsion of 
 feeling ; but, even apart from this, it would have been 
 an ill sign of the vigour and manliness of our own minds, 
 if the fire, the force, the passion, the intense vitality, of 
 Byron's poetry should have remained for any long period 
 of time unknown or unrecognised. Another biography, 
 coming from a nation standing at the head of the culture 
 of Europe, written, if not with new materials yet from a 
 somewhat different point of view, and which is not only 
 narrative but critical, will, we trust, be as welcome to 
 English readers as it seems to be opportune. 
 
 There is 110 want, indeed, in our own literature, of so-
 
 X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 called Lives of Lord Byron. Their abundance testifies, at 
 least, to the interest with which everything relating to 
 him and promising to add to our information was greedily 
 received. A host of small men that hung round the 
 skirts of the great poet, more intent on spying out his 
 foibles and infirmities, than eager to apprehend the force 
 of his genius, who noted down with vulgar alacrity the 
 unguarded words and actions of one of the most free, 
 frank, fearless, outspoken men that ever lived for such 
 was Byron big with the importance of having seen, or 
 talked, or dined with him, or stung, it may be, by the 
 scorn he could not dissemble, rushed into print, some to 
 gratify the curiosity, not in itself unlaudable, of the 
 English public, some to vent their own spleen and 
 malignity. Hence the baneful crop of ' Lives ' and ' Re- 
 collections ' and ' Conversations ' of the Leigh Hunts, the 
 Gaits, the Medwins, the Trelawnys books, the very exist- 
 ence of which is a stigma on our literature. From our 
 memories let their records of things great and small con- 
 cerning Byron be studiously spunged out, if we would 
 guard ourselves against the shame of attempting to under- 
 stand a great genius through a medium coloured and tainted 
 by prejudice, ignorance, and vulgarity. Our only source, at 
 present open, of authentic information remains in ' The 
 Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his 
 Life,' by Moore, published at first (1829-1830) in two quarto 
 volumes, and repeatedly since then in numerous editions. 
 The ' Notices,' however, cannot be said to add much to the 
 literary reputation of their author. They are encumbered 
 with tedious, turgid reflections, which, however, not un- 
 frequently act as a foil to those portions where Byron him-
 
 TEANSLATOE'S PEEFACE. xi 
 
 self comes before us in his letters or journals, which exhibit 
 the man and his character with marvellous distinctness. 
 These Professor Elze has studied with evident interest and 
 attention ; and justly indeed, for they are open and sincere 
 to an astonishing degree. That dangerous frankness which 
 Hobhouse mentions as one of the traits of Byron's character 
 is conspicuous in every line of them. But they abound in 
 other merits. What letters or journals in the English lan- 
 guage surpass or equal them for masculine vigour of under- 
 standing, for clearness, force, or directness of expression, 
 for traits of feeling so tender yet so manly, for the wit and 
 humour, for the fun and drollery, which sparkle throughout 
 them? Our author is truest, we apprehend, in his de- 
 lineations, when he reposes most simply and unreservedly 
 on Byron's self-portraiture in those charming letters and 
 journals. 
 
 But another and far different task was imposed on 
 Professor Elze, from which, as he himself avows, he would 
 most gladly have withdrawn, had his duties as biographer 
 allowed it. The spirit of slander that had followed Byron 
 throughout his life, and which seemed to slumber for a 
 time after his death, awoke refreshed with the sleep of more 
 than thirty years, to fashion and publish charges of darker 
 hue and of more systematic purpose than the world had 
 heard before. We have felt ourselves bound to speak with 
 disrespect of the earlier records of certain authors ; but 
 even these, we firmly believe, though justly chargeable 
 with detraction, would have scorned to circulate the 
 calumnies of more recent times. This new phasis of 
 slander was ushered into the world by the pretentious effu- 
 sions we regret to say it of a lady who, though often
 
 xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 happy in her ' Sketches,' cannot have enhanced her repu- 
 tation by condescending to relate, with such inelo-dramatic 
 vividness, the scene, as her imagination beheld it, that 
 occurred 011 the evening of Byron's marriage day. That 
 lady saw, not indeed, with the eye of the flesh, but with 
 a deeper eye, ' in fine frenzy rolling,' ' a young creature 
 led to the altar as a sacrifice. At that altar ' we are 
 afraid it was only a table in the drawing-room at Seaham 1 
 * she did not know that she was a sacrifice ; but before 
 sunset of that winter-day ' again we are sorry to interrupt 
 the poetic flow of the lady's narrative, but no doubt the 
 sun had set and darkness had come on, when the 
 carriage with the victim arrived at Halnaby House 
 * she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from her face 
 and attitude, when she alighted from the carriage on the 
 afternoon of her marriage day. It was not the traces of 
 tears which won the sympathy of the old butler, who stood 
 at the open door. The bridegroom jumped out of the 
 carriage and walked away. The bride alighted and came 
 up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame agon- 
 ised and listless with evident horror and despair. The old 
 servant longed to offer his arm to the young and lonely 
 creature, as an assurance of sympathy and protection.' 2 
 The scene is touching, the narrative painfully circum- 
 stantial. The fair narrator speaks as if she had stood 
 nigh to the very door, at which the remarkable old butler 
 was standing, who longed to rush out, when the barbarian 
 left the lonely creature, and offer his arm to his young 
 mistress ? But shall we summon the lady's maid, who still 
 
 1 See note, p. 154. 
 
 2 Biographical Sketches by Harriet Martineau, p, 319. 1869.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xiii 
 
 lives, to correct with her young eyes the failing perceptive 
 faculties of the old butler ? She survives to tell us that she 
 saw the bride (the young and lonely creature) alight from 
 the carriage ' buoyant and happy as a bride should be.' l 
 Gracious heavens ! to what depth have we fallen ! the 
 reputation of one of England's greatest poets bandied to 
 and fro between an old butler on the one hand and a 
 lady's maid on the other. But these and other like tones, 
 the comparatively finer touches of slander, were but the 
 preludes to the deeper notes which we were ere long 
 doomed to hear. In September 1869, Mrs. Beecher 
 Stowe burst on English readers with those ' Eevelations,' 
 which, if posterity remember them, will be regarded as 
 a phenomenon without a parallel in literary history, 
 or even in the history of calumny itself, but which, 
 strange to say, she found an English editor credulous 
 enough to publish as ' the first complete and authentic ac- 
 count of the whole circumstances of that disastrous affair. 1 
 These revelations flung themselves across our author's 
 path, so that evasion of them became impossible. Like 
 the stories of Miss Martineau, which become dovelike 
 and innocent in comparison, these terrible charges derived 
 importance solely from the source from which, in the 
 former case it was surmised, but in the latter it was pro- 
 claimed, they were derived. All of them were evidently 
 coined at the same mint, and are stamped with the same 
 image. In the filth of these legends Professor Elze had 
 to dip his pen, not without the danger of polluting his 
 own fingers in the process ; and if readers be shocked by 
 
 1 See note, p. 155.
 
 xiv TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 
 
 their re-statement in this volume, let them remember that 
 the biographer could not but do his best to refute and 
 expose them. But even thus his painful task was not 
 ended. The revelations of that article ere long generated 
 an unclean thing after its image and likeness. To that 
 article we owe the publication of ' Medora Leigh/ a story 
 of crime, utter wretchedness and misery, which must 
 scare the imagination and harrow the feelings of every 
 reader. The tale itself, occupying about twenty widely 
 printed pages, embedded in 260 of editorial remarks pre- 
 fixed and post-fixed, constitutes on the whole the most 
 shameless piece of book-making that ever fell under our 
 notice. It must remain a marvel, how any man could be 
 found to edit, or any publisher to give to the world, a 
 narrative against the publication of which every motive 
 held sacred among men loudly protested, and for the pub- 
 lication of which not a fragment of ground or reason could 
 be alleged or specified. This sad story also Professor 
 Elze considered himself bound to enter upon, and has so 
 interwoven with his narrative as to make the excision 
 of it an insuperable difficulty to his translator. 
 
 The last two chapters, the one on the ' Characteristics,' 
 and the other on the ' Place of Byron in literature,' will 
 probably be regarded as the most important and novel of 
 the volume. Great care has evidently been bestowed on 
 the composition of the former ; but the translator cannot 
 repress the expression of his conviction, that Professor 
 Elze's analysis of Byron's character would have gained in 
 truthfulness and generosity, if he had been less swayed 
 and guided by the authorities by which he has conducted 
 it. To none of them belong the wise reverence which
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XV 
 
 Lockhart so finely expresses in the concluding remarks of 
 his Life of Scott. Speaking of the extreme difficulty of 
 interpreting human character, he says : * Such consider- 
 ations have always induced me to regard with small res- 
 pect the attempt to delineate fully and exactly any human 
 being's character. I distrust, even in very humble cases, 
 our capacity for judging our neighbours fairly ; and I 
 cannot but pity the presumption that must swell in the 
 heart and brain of any ordinary brother of the race, when 
 he dares to pronounce ex cathedra on the whole structure 
 and complexion of a great mind, from the comparatively 
 narrow and scanty materials which can by possibility have 
 been placed before him. Nor is the difficulty to my view 
 lessened perhaps, it is rather increased when the great 
 man is a great artist.' 1 What character so demanded the 
 exercise of the wise and considerate spirit of these 
 remarks as Lord Byron's ? But, alas ! how seldom has he 
 received this generous measure. He, whose mobility was 
 the most exquisite, who was as easily acted on by external 
 circumstances and agitated by the passion or even humours 
 of the moment, as an .ZEolian harp by the breezes of 
 heaven, was too often subjected to a microscopic scrutiny, 
 under which no character could ever " appear harmonious 
 and which must distort even its good, while it magnified 
 its evil traits. We would, therefore, that Professor Elze 
 had sifted before he used so implicitly his authorities; 
 though, perhaps, it be unreasonable to complain, that the 
 German biographer should have drawn the weapons he has, 
 
 1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. x. p. 222. Edin. 1857. 
 a
 
 XVI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 employed to disparage the character of Byron from the 
 abundant armoury furnished by English detraction. 
 
 It is pleasant to dwell for a moment on the relations, 
 though they never, alas ! became personal, that subsisted 
 between Goethe and Byron. No contemporary more 
 thoroughly understood or more joyously recognised the 
 genius of Byron, or followed with more loving interest his 
 wandering steps through life, than Goethe ; and, on the 
 other hand, by no Englishman of his generation were the 
 vast capacities of Goethe more instinctively felt and 
 discerned than by Byron. Ignorant though he was of 
 the German language, and dependent on the good offices 
 of Shelley or M. G. Lewis to translate for him some of 
 his masterpieces, he had penetration of mind to apprehend 
 the might, and sympathy of genius to feel the inspira- 
 tion, of his elder brother in the noble art, while English 
 critics of great repute in their day were laboriously 
 striving, in the plenitude of their ignorance and prejudice, 
 and in the unconsciousness of their own impotence, to 
 grin down one of the mightiest intellects the world ever 
 saw. 
 
 To Goethe he dedicated his ' Sardanapalus,' as an ' act 
 of homage of a literary vassal to his liege lord,' and 
 afterwards his ' Werner,' ' as one of his humblest admirers.' 
 On his last voyage to Greece he received at Leghorn, 
 July 24, 1823, through a young Englishman, Mr. Sterling, 
 the verses which Goethe wrote and sent to cheer him in 
 his noble enterprise for the liberation of Greece. 1 Byron 
 returned his sincere acknowledgments on the same day 
 in the letter which is to be found in Moore's * Life/ vol. vi. 
 1 See Goethe's Werke, xxvi. p. 436.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XVli 
 
 p. 70, and which Goethe laid up to be preserved among 
 his most precious documents and as the worthiest evidence 
 of the relation that had subsisted between them. Both 
 poets fondly cherished the hope that they should one day 
 meet, should the younger return from Greece. 
 
 The news of Byron's death, within less than a year after 
 this exchange of mutual homage and respect, filled Goethe 
 with a deep and tender grief, and inspired him to utter the 
 prophecy, which our readers will find in the final words of 
 the last chapter of Professor Elze's * Life. ' 
 
 If our generation is to see the fulfilment of those 
 remarkable words, one pre-eminent duty remains to be per- 
 formed. The stains which have rested on Byron's character 
 must be wiped away at once and decisively. The foul 
 calumnies and even from the evidence we possess we 
 venture fearlessly to call them such whispered in former 
 years and loudly and unblushingly uttered in recent days, 
 must be proved to be such. England has waited long 
 for the final and complete vindication which the friend of 
 Byron was known to have written. In 1830 that vindi- 
 cation was all but published, 1 but, overruled by Lord 
 Holland's advice, Lord Broughton withheld it. With 
 the profoundest deference to his memory and judgment, 
 we regret and lament his decision. If that vindication 
 had then been published being what it is averred by 
 Lord Broughton himself to be could the morality of 
 England have been shocked, and the literary histoiy of 
 England defiled, by the pollutions of the Stowe *Ee- 
 velations ' ? Is it possible that these would ever have 
 poisoned the air, if the truth regarding the separation and 
 
 1 See Edinburgh Review, April number, 1871, p. 298. 
 a2
 
 xviii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 its causes had then been given to the world ? But that 
 vindication, though withheld, still exists. ' My sole wish ' 
 so writes Lord Broughton in his posthumous ' Memoirs ' 
 * was to do my duty by my friend ; and I hope I have 
 done that sufficiently by leaving behind me, to be used if 
 necessary, a full and scrupulously accurate account of the 
 transaction in question,' i.e. of the separation and its 
 causes. That full and scrupulously accurate account 
 has been read by excellent and impartial judges by 
 one, specially, who occupies a prominent position in 
 the world of letters, and who, though in no wise 
 blind to the faults of Byron, sees in it at once the 
 judgment and fidelity of the friend, but above all the 
 exculpation, thorough and complete, of Lord Byron from 
 those charges which it is revolting even to think of. The 
 publication of this 'Memoir' seems to be imperatively 
 demanded, if we are to place Byron, as Goethe prophesies, 
 permanently beside those in whom England may ever- 
 more take pride, the great names of our literature. Let 
 us see him as he was ; no perfect or faultless man ; but 
 an object of contemplation far more interesting if not 
 better, a man of noblest gifts, sorely tried and tempted, 
 erring too often and too sadly, but who withal has given 
 to the English-speaking race poems of such fiery vigour 
 and originality as place him high, if not highest, among 
 our poets of the past, and higher than any of his own or 
 subsequent day ; and who extended the name and fame of 
 England more widely than any Englishman of the nine- 
 teenth century. Bound the very name of Byron an 
 atmosphere of foul vapours has collected ; surely if the 
 Uieans of deodorising that atmosphere exist, England, to
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xix 
 
 whom Byron belongs, has some right to expect they -will 
 be so employed. 
 
 With regard to the translation, an endeavour has been 
 made to render it faithful to the original yet idiomatic in 
 its English. The sheets, while passing through the press, 
 were sent to the author, and have had the benefit there- 
 fore of his careful inspection. Some of the notes in the 
 original, useful merely to German readers, have been 
 omitted in the translation, to which, on the other hand, 
 have been added by the translator others which seem to 
 throw light on the text. In the Appendix will be found 
 information on some points of interest regarding Lord 
 Byron, which the translator has collected, but which 
 exceed the measure which mere foot-notes can claim. 
 Nor will readers, we trust, regret to find there the more 
 generous delineations of Byron, which his friends Harness, 
 Hobhouse, Finlay, and Stanhope have drawn, specially the 
 two first named, who knew the poet, one from boyhood, 
 the other from youth, and who knowing him loved him 
 with an affection that bore the strong test of more than 
 forty years' reflection. 
 
 The translator and publisher desire to return their 
 sincere thanks to Mrs. Webb for her permission, so 
 graciously conceded, to engrave the portrait in her pos- 
 session prefixed to this present volume. It represents Lord 
 Byron in the gown worn by noblemen at Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, on festive occasions. It was long in the pos- 
 session of the late Mr. Litchfield of Cambridge, well 
 known to the members of that University for half a century, 
 for whom, indeed, the original water-colour, we believe, 
 was made by Mr. Gilchrist. After many refusals to part
 
 XX TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 with his treasure, Mr. Litchfield, not long before his death, 
 gave it to the Duke of St. Albans, by whom it was given 
 to Mrs. Webb, and at Newstead it is preserved among 
 many other memorials of the poet. 
 
 The translator and publisher have also to thank the 
 Master and Seniors of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 
 their permission to have the boy Byron's first letter 
 engraved, in facsimile, for this volume. 
 
 Nor must the translator omit to acknowledge the kind- 
 ness of Mrs. Becher in allowing him to collate the unique 
 volume of the early poems of Byron in her possession, 
 which she treasures with a care proportionate to its extra- 
 ordinary rarity and interest ; or of the Rev. Alfred and 
 Mrs. Tatham, who is the daughter of Byron's old friend 
 and monitor the Rev. John Thomas Becher, and who still 
 preserves the traditions, fast fading away, of Byron's life 
 - at Southwell. 
 
 Sir Albert Woods, Garter, revised, with much courtesy, 
 the Note (A) on the Byron lineage, and will accept, we 
 trust, the grateful thanks of the translator who ventured 
 on ground totally new and strange to him, and who feels 
 that his aid only saved him from grievous blunders. 
 
 Nor, lastly, must he forget to record thankfully the aid 
 he received from Mr. John Place, of Nottingham; and 
 from M. Albert Patte of Paris, who transcribed, from the 
 Journal in the ' Bibliotheque Imperiale,' the whole of 
 the ' Fragment ' in which M. Coulmann * records his ex- 
 periences. 
 
 December 15, 1871. 
 
 1 See Appendix note (c) p. 441, et scg.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAOB 
 
 I. FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD. 1788-1798 .... 1 
 
 II. SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY. 1798-1808 . . . .30 
 
 III. NEWSTEAD ABBEY. 1808-1809 68 
 
 IV. THE PILGRIMAGE. 1809-1811 . ' . . . . .85 
 V. LONDON. 1811-1815 ......... 114 
 
 VI. MARRIAGE. 1815-1816 141 
 
 VII. SWITZERLAND AND VENICE. 1816-1819 .... 203 
 
 VIII. RAVENNA, PISA, GENOA. 1820-1823 . . . .243 
 
 IX. GREECE. 1823-24 278 
 
 X. CHARACTERISTICS 330 
 
 XI. BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE 377 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE (A). SOME REMARKS ON THE BYRON LINEAGE . . . 435 
 NOTE (B). PLACE AND DATE OF BYRON'S BIRTH . . . 438 
 
 NOTE (C). M. J. J. COTJLMANN IN HIS RELATIONS WITH LORD 
 BYRON . 441
 
 XXli CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NOTE (D). ON THE EARLY POEMS OP BYRON .... 44(5 
 
 NOTE (E). ON THE DESTRUCTION OP LORD BYRON'S MEMOIRS OP 
 HIMSELF 450 
 
 NOTE (F). CONCERNING THE ARRIVAL OP LORD BYRON'S RE- 
 MAINS IN ENGLAND 402 
 
 NOTE (G). CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON AS DRAWN BY THE REV. 
 WILLIAM HARNESS, LORD BROTJGHTON, MR. 'GEORGE FINLAY, 
 AND COLONEL THE HON. LEICESTER STANHOPE (AFTERWARDS 
 EARL OP HARRINGTON) 407 
 
 NOTE (H). WILHELM MULLER'S POEM ON THE DEATH OP 
 
 BYRON . . . 490 
 
 Directions to Hinder. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON Frontispiece 
 
 FACSIMILE OF THE BOY BYRON'S FIRST LETTER . . To face page I
 
 

 
 
 1
 
 ^ 
 
 I 

 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 LORD BYRON. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD. 
 1788-1798. 
 
 THE Byron family ranks among those historical races, in 
 which a strongly-marked, ominous family type has been 
 propagated from generation to generation. With Schiller's 
 Thekla Byron might have said : 
 
 There's a dark spirit walking in our house, 
 And swiftly will the Destiny close on us. 1 
 
 Es geht ein finstrer Geist durch unser Haus, 
 Und schleunig will das Schicksal mit uns enden. 
 
 For unbridled passions, defiant self-will, arrogant con- 
 tempt of the received order of things and of the world's 
 opinion, associated with high - endowments and much 
 resolute energy of character, formed the inauspicious 
 inheritance, which, in full measure, accumulated on the 
 head of the poet. Of this Byron was conscious, and 
 repeatedly expressed it. * Some curse ' he writes, in a 
 
 1 Coleridge's translation. Die Piccolomini, Act ii. sc. 8. 
 B
 
 2 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [1788- 
 
 letter 1 to his friend Davies on the death, of his mother 
 ' hangs over me and mine.' He was nevertheless proud, 
 to an extraordinary degree, of his descent, prouder, it has 
 been said, than of his works. He laid great stress on his 
 being of a Norman not of a Saxon family, and lost no 
 opportunity of asserting it ; nor, strange to say, was his 
 pride in any wise ruffled by the undeniable blot in his 
 genealogical tree, indicated in his escutcheon by the 
 'bordure,' the sign of illegitimacy; for that he had no 
 knowledge of this circumstance is inconceivable, though 
 he constantly concealed it by his reticence from himself 
 and others. 2 
 
 The legendary genealogy of the family reaches back, as 
 a matter of course, to a hoar antiquity. A branch of the 
 original Scandinavian Buruns settled, according to this 
 authority, in Normandy, from whence two members of the 
 family, Erneis and Ealph de Burun, followed the Conqueror 
 to England, where the former received important posses- 
 sions in Yorkshire and Lancashire, while the latter is 
 mentioned in Domesday Book as a great landed pro- 
 prietor in Nottinghamshire. The accounts, however, re- 
 garding these two heroic progenitors, as well as of their 
 successors, are too vague and unauthentic to reward the 
 trouble of repeating them in fuller detail ; though, perhaps, 
 it may be remarked, that the growth of the possessions of 
 the family was rapid ; that, about the time of Henry II. 
 (1155-1189), the present form of the name 'Byron' seems 
 to have been fixed; 3 that a requisite in every correct 
 
 1 Moore's Life and Letters of Lord Byron, ii. 39. 
 
 J Gait's Life of Lord Byron, preface, p. v. Life, p. 6. 2nd edition. 
 London, 1830. [Thomas Watts] Athenceum, May 16, 1868, p. 687 et seq. 
 See also Appendix (A). 
 
 3 The poet pronounced his name in different -ways, yet generally 
 almost as a monosyllable with the short y. In Italy his friends, following 
 perhaps his own example, used to quiz the Countess Guiccioli for pro-
 
 1798.] EAELY HISTORY OF THE BYRON FAMILY. 3 
 
 genealogical tree some members of the family are said to 
 have taken part in the Crusades, a fact to which the poet 
 in his lines ' On leaving Newstead Abbey,' and elsewhere, 
 refers with pride. 1 Probably, however, this tradition owed 
 its origin to an old wood-carving at Newstead representing 
 a Saracen between a Christian knight and a Western 
 maiden. Not to mention that Newstead came into the 
 possession of the family only in the reign of Henry VIII., 
 this carving belonged undoubtedly to a later period than 
 that of the Crusades, and had a Biblical meaning, referring 
 probably to the history of Susannah. 
 
 At a later period the family possessions passed to an 
 illegitimate scion, John Byron, who was knighted by 
 Queen Elizabeth in 1559 and who continued the race. 
 His descendants were among the most faithful and de- 
 voted adherents of the Stuarts, and a second Sir John 
 Byron, the eldest of seven brothers, was raised, October 
 24, 1643, to the peerage as Baron Byron of Rochdale in 
 the county palatine of Lancaster; and as Governor of 
 the Tower and commander of a part of the royal forces, 
 this first baron naturally incurred the enmity of the Par- 
 liament. His second wife was a daughter of Lord Kil- 
 morey and the widow of Peter Warburton. Of her 
 Pepys in his journal relates, that she was the seventeenth 
 mistress of Charles II. when abroad, and did not leave 
 him, till she had extorted from him an assignment of silver 
 plate to the value of 4000Z., * but by delays, thanks be to 
 God, she died before she had it.' 2 In default of sons the 
 
 nouncing Byron very broadly with the long y. But England, and with 
 England the world, follows the Countess, while Byron's own pronuncia- 
 tion has fallen into forgetfulness as an aristocratic whim. Leigh Hunt's 
 yron, i. 179. Medwin's Conversations, p. 37. 
 
 1 One of the poems in the Hours of Idleness. Compare ' Elegy on 
 Newstead Abbey,' in the same collection. 
 
 3 Pepys' Diary, p. 434. London, Alex. Murray, 1870. 
 
 H 2
 
 4 LIFE OP LOED BYRON. [1788 
 
 peerage devolved on this Lord Byron's brother, Eichard 
 (1605-1679), whose epitaph in the vault at Hucknall- 
 Torkard Church proclaims, that, though like his brothers 
 he lost his property and possessions through his faithful 
 service to Charles L, he yet succeeded in repurchasing a 
 portion of the family inheritance. 1 
 
 Richard's eldest son William, the third Lord, married 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Viscount Chaworth, after whose 
 death, 1683, he married a second time ; and died November 
 13, 1695, and was also buried in the church of Hucknall- 
 Torkard. He had formed an intimate friendship with 
 Thomas Shipman, a very inferior poet, who frequently 
 sang the praises of his Lordship's family, and, indeed, in 
 Shipman's ''Carolina or Loyal Poems' (1683), there is a 
 poem written by this nobleman, from which it appears 
 that he was himself a verse-maker, and wherein he thus 
 expresses his supreme desire : 
 
 My whole ambition only does extend 
 
 To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend. 2 
 
 These verses, whatever else they may be, are certainly 
 not Byronic. Shipman is now mentioned only because of 
 
 1 The following is the epitaph in extenso : ' Beneath in a vault is 
 interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of hia 
 family, being seven brothers, faithfully served King Charles I. in the 
 Civil War, who suffered much for their loyalty, and lost all their present 
 fortune ; yet it pleased God so to bless the honest endeavours of the said 
 Richard Lord Byron that he repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, 
 which he left to his posterity with a laudable memory for his great piety 
 and charity; he departed this life on the 4th day of October, A.D. 1679, 
 in the 74th year of his age. In the same vault is interred the Lady 
 Elizabeth his first wife, daughter of Geo. Rossel. Esq., by whom he 
 had ten children, and the Lady Elizabeth his second wife, daughter to 
 Sir George Booth, Knight and Baronet, who appointed this monument 
 to be erected to the memory of her dear husband, and for her great piety 
 and goodness acquired a name better than that of sons and daughters.' 
 
 2 See the Essay, ' Another poetic Lord Byron,' by Thomas Watts in 
 the Ativnceum, March 27, 1858, p. 401.
 
 1798.] THE 'WICKED' LORD BYEOX. 5 
 
 his intimacy with this Lord Byron, who, again, is remem- 
 bered solely on account of his great descendant. 
 
 It was the grandson of this poetic Byron, William, the 
 fifth Lord (1722-1798), who attained so sad a celebrity by 
 the duel with his kinsman and neighbour, Mr. Chaworth. 
 At a dinner at the Star and Garter Hotel, Pall Mall, 
 January 29, 1765, this peer, a licentious, quarrelsome, 
 vindictive man, fell into a dispute with Mr. Chaworth on 
 the quantity of game in their respective parks according 
 to another account, on the mode of preserving game and 
 became at last so heated, that he insisted on settling the 
 quarrel on the spot. Forcing Chaworth into another 
 room, he closed the door, and there by the feeble light 
 of a single candle, without seconds or witnesses, the 
 so-called duel took place, in which Chaworth, although 
 a better swordsman than his antagonist, was mortally 
 wounded. On the ground of the testimony of the dying 
 man, the coroner's jury had no other course than 
 to give a verdict of 'Wilful murder,' and Lord Byron 
 was consequently imprisoned in the Tower, and in due 
 course tried in Westminster Hall. The interest excited 
 by the event was prodigious ; peers' tickets of admission 
 sold for six guineas each ; and after a trial, which lasted 
 for two days, the accused was unanimously declared ' guilty 
 of manslaughter.' Pleading, however, his privilege as a 
 peer, he was accordingly set at liberty without farther 
 punishment. But no privilege could protect him from 
 the punishment whose sources are within ; henceforward 
 he secluded himself entirely from the world, or, to speak 
 more correctly, he was excluded by the world. When 
 compelled by business to go to London, he travelled under 
 the name of Mr. Waters. By all the world he was called 
 the mad, or the wicked, Lord Byron. His neighbours 
 hated him, his inferiors avoided him, his wife separated
 
 6 LIFE OF LOUD BYRON. [1788- 
 
 from him. The populace, always inclined to fantastic 
 exaggerations, told the most incredible stories of him. 
 Thus he was said, while taking a drive, to have shot his 
 coachman for some small offence, to have then thrown 
 his body inside to his wife, and, mounting the box, to 
 have driven off himself. On another occasion he was said 
 to have pushed his wife into the lake at Newstead, whence 
 she was rescued by the gardener, who happened to be 
 near. From hatred to his son and heir, whose marriage 
 he disapproved, he not only allowed Newstead to fall 
 into decay, but cut down the trees on the estate to such 
 an extent, that at his death it was almost entirely 
 without timber. He sold also illegally the property of 
 Rochdale. His son, however, died before him, in the 
 same year in which the poet was born. He found his 
 only amusement on the lake in front of the Abbey ; on 
 its banks he built those tasteless miniature citadels, 
 which are still standing, and the further to ornament it he 
 had a small vessel conveyed thither on wheels from the 
 Eastern coast. His only companions were, according to 
 the account of the poet himself, 1 the crickets, which he 
 used to feed with his own hand and had so tamed that 
 they crawled over him. If they misbehaved he beat them 
 with a wisp of straw ; and at his death they are said to 
 have left the house in a body. 
 
 The brother of this, the fifth Lord Byron, was the 
 celebrated Admiral John Byron (1733-1786), the grand- 
 father of the poet, who found in his life at sea a sphere suited 
 to bring forth the better sides of the family character, and 
 who enjoyed universal respect in the Navy. His courage 
 and endurance in extraordinary dangers and adventures 
 gained for him the honourable epithet of ' hardy Byron/ 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 31. Med win's Conversations, p. 75.
 
 1798.] ADMIRAL BYRON. 7 
 
 while his proverbial ill-luck with regard to stormy weather 
 was the origin among the sailors of his nickname of 
 ' foul weather Jack.' He never made a voyage without 
 encountering dreadful storms ; and in allusion to this, his 
 grandson, after his separation from his wife, says, that his 
 grandsire's fate had been reversed in him : * he had no 
 rest at sea, nor I on shore. ' l He served as a midshipman 
 while a youth of seventeen, in the squadron under Com- 
 modore Anson sent against the Spanish settlements in 
 the Pacific. Every vessel of the fleet, one after the other, 
 was wrecked, his own ship, the * Wager,' May 15, 1740, 
 on the west coast of America. The crew were saved and 
 took refuge on a desolate island, to which they gave the 
 name of ' Mount Misery,' and whence they ventured, after 
 some months, to attempt the voyage home in the cutter 
 and long-boat through the Magellan Straits. The cutter 
 was lost in the attempt, while Byron in the long-boat suc- 
 ceeded in reaching the Portuguese settlements in the 
 Brazils, whence, 1746, he returned to Europe, and twenty 
 years afterwards astonished the world by the description 
 of his voyage. 2 He subsequently distinguished himself in 
 the war against France: from 1764 to 1766 in command 
 of two ships he made a voyage of discovery in the South 
 Sea, during which he sailed round the world. 3 He was 
 
 1 Epistle to Augusta. 
 
 3 'A Narrative of the Hon. John Byron (Commodore in a late Expedition 
 round the World), containing an Account of the great distresses suffered 
 by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia, from the year 
 1740 till their arrival in England 1746 ; written by himself. London, 
 1768.' Byron made use of his ' grand-dad's ' narrative in the description 
 of the shipwreck in the second Canto of ' Don Juan.' 
 
 s A Voyage round the World in His Majesty's ship the ' Dolphin,' 
 commanded by the Hon. Commodore Byron. By an Officer on board 
 the said ship. London, 1767 ; reprinted in Hawkesworth's Account of 
 the Voyages of Byron, Wallis, Cartaret, and Cook, 3 vols. 4to. London, 
 1773, and in Callander's Terra Australia cognita.
 
 8 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [1 788- 
 
 afterwards appointed Governor of Newfoundland, and, 
 finally, again fought against the French in the waters of 
 the West Indies. His passion for the sea and love of 
 adventure are plainly discernible in his grandson. 
 
 Admiral Byron had two sons, John Byron (1755-1791), 
 the father of the poet, and George Anson Byron (1758- 
 1793), who entered the Navy and distinguished himself 
 under Admiral Rodney, and three daughters. When 
 William Byron, the only grandson of the fifth Lord, lost his 
 life in a skirmish in the Mediterranean (1794), the father of 
 the poet, and on his decease the poet himself, became heir 
 presumptive of the peerage. The * mad Lord Byron ' (he 
 who killed Chaworth in the duel), who survived both his 
 son and his grandson, could, however, never bring himself 
 to recognise his grand-nephew, the poet, as his heir ; he 
 used to speak of him as the ' little boy who lives at Aber- 
 deen.' The father of the poet inherited pre-eminently 
 the darker sides of the family character. He received 
 his education at the celebrated School of Westminster, 
 and afterwards at a French military academy, and then 
 entered the Guards, with whom he served some years 
 in America. He soon gave himself up to such a disso- 
 lute life, that he fell into general disrepute, and became 
 known as 'mad Jack Byron,' and was disowned by his 
 father. His bad reputation attained its climax, when 
 in the year 1778 he ran oif, in a way that occasioned 
 great scandal, with the Marchioness Carmarthen, whom 
 after her divorce he married. Lady Carmarthen (nee 
 Lady Amelia D'Arcy) was the only daughter and heiress 
 of the last Earl of Holderness, and the poet was, in after 
 years, a visitor in the very house which she had brought 
 to his father. 1 
 
 The couple lived in Paris, where the Captain became 
 1 Moore'a Life, ii. 244.
 
 1798.] CAPTAIN BYRON MARRIES MISS GORDON. 9 
 
 intimate with the old Marshal Biron, commander of 
 the French Guard, who regarded him as a distant kins- 
 man. His conduct to his wife is said to have been so 
 execrable that she died (1784), after a few years, of a 
 broken heart. The fruit of this unhappy marriage was 
 Augusta (born 1783), afterwards Mrs. Leigh. In a short 
 time Captain Byron ran through her fortune, a recollection 
 which, perhaps, induced the poet to make provision in 
 his will for his half-sister, Mrs. Leigh, and her children. 
 
 Captain Byron returned to England, and as he needed 
 considerable means for his extravagant mode of living, he 
 soon began the search for another wife, whom he found in 
 a Scottish heiress, Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight in 
 Aberdeenshire, an orphan, probably, both on father's and 
 mother's side. Her family also was not without its dark 
 shadow. Her father, a respected, sensible, and amiable 
 man, but subject to fits of despondency, was found dead in 
 the Avon at Bath, having scarcely completed his fortieth 
 year, and it was conjectured that his death was not 
 accidental. Another near relative made an attempt to 
 poison himself. The ancestors of Miss Gordon had served 
 the cause of the Stuarts, especially of the Pretender, with 
 not less zealous devotion than the Byrons. They were, 
 besides, related to the Stuarts, George, Earl Huntly, 
 having married Annabella, a daughter of James I. From 
 Sir William Gordon, the third son of this marriage, 
 Byron's mother was descended, so that on his mother's 
 side also he had ample food for his pride of ancestry. As 
 a boy he insisted on being called George Byron Gordon, 
 and his mother he always called 'the honourable,' to 
 which she was not, strictly speaking, entitled. At a 
 later period, however, he spoke only of his paternal, 
 never of his maternal ancestry. His mother exceeded him, 
 if that were possible, in pride of birth. She was, says
 
 10 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [1788- 
 
 Byron, 1 as proud as Lucifer of her descent from the Stuarts, 
 and looked down with contempt on the ducal line of 
 the Gordons as on the younger branch. Still lower she 
 placed, as a matter of course, the Byrons, although these, 
 as her son so carefully points out, traced their descent 
 uninterruptedly in the male line. 2 There is no account 
 of the manner in which Miss Gordon became acquainted 
 with Captain Byron. A creature of mere impulse, she was 
 probably won by the manly beauty of his person and espe- 
 cially by his fine eyes. To beauty she herself had no pre- 
 tensions ; she was short and corpulent, and was thoroughly 
 Scottish in her whole nature. A strange anecdote is told 
 of the excitability of her feelings even before her marriage. 
 When, one evening in the year 1 784, at the theatre in Edin- 
 burgh, she saw Mrs. Siddons perform the part of Isabella 
 in Southern's * Fatal Marriage,' she was so overcome that 
 she fell into convulsions, and had to be carried out, uttering 
 with a loud cry an exclamation belonging to the character 
 represented by Mrs. Siddons ' O my Biron, my Biron.' 3 
 On May 17, 1786, a contract of marriage in the Scottish 
 form was concluded between them ; and an unknown 
 Scottish rhymester took occasion to compose a warning 
 poem addressed to the bride, whose gloomy prediction 
 
 Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron, 
 To squander the lands o' Gight awa' 
 
 was only too soon to receive its fulfilment. 4 That Captain 
 Byron had married her merely in order to extricate himself 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 37. 3 Ibid. 
 
 3 Ibid. i. 7, 8. [Sir Walter Scott, then in his fourteenth year, was in 
 the theatre on this occasion, and has described the scene in his most 
 interesting letter to Moore giving his recollections of Byron. See 
 Moore's Life, iii. 160 (note).] 
 
 4 That the marriage, as Moore (Ibid.) believes, was celebrated at Bath, 
 is extremely improbable. At any rate this could only have been a 
 supplementary marriage, according to the English form, after the young 
 couple had left Scotland,
 
 1798.] BIRTH OF THE POET. 11 
 
 from the debts lie had contracted, cannot be disputed ; 
 indeed, he did not hesitate to avow this as his purpose. 
 Within the space of a year he had not only spent the 
 ready money he received with his wife in the liquidation of 
 his debts, but had also cut down the timber and borrowed 
 8,0001. by a mortgage on the estate ; and in the following 
 year the estate itself had to be sold to Lord Haddo (son 
 of the Earl of Aberdeen), for the sum of 1 7,850?. ! Of her 
 whole fortune, which may have amounted to twenty -three 
 or twenty -four thousand pounds, there remained to the poor 
 lady the small sum of 3,OOOZ., from the interest of which 
 she was soon obliged to support herself and her child. In 
 the course of the summer of 1786, Captain and Mrs. Byron 
 left Gight, never to see it again, and went to France, for 
 which country Captain Byron seems to have cherished a 
 peculiar predilection ; there they lived a considerable time 
 at Chantilly. 
 
 At the end of the following year they returned to 
 England accompanied by Augusta, then about six years 
 old, and very soon after their arrival in London, where 
 they occupied furnished lodgings in 24 Holies Street, 
 Cavendish Square, Mrs. Byron was delivered, January 
 22, 1788, of a boy, her first and only child. 2 This 
 was the future poet. The false modesty of Mrs. Byron 
 
 1 Previous to the sale of the property, all the doves so runs the 
 legend and a flock of herons which for many years had built their 
 nests near a large loch there, left the house of Gight and came to Lord 
 Haddo's. When this was told to Lord Haddo, ' Let the birds come ' 
 said he ' and do them no harm, for the land will soon follow.' This 
 was the fulfilment of a Scottish legendary prophecy 
 
 ' When the heron leaves the tree, 
 The Lairds o' Gight shall landless be.' 
 
 Gight, the situation of which is extremely beautiful, has since remained 
 in the possession of the Aberdeen family ; at first Lord Haddo occupied 
 it for some time, but the house afterwards fell into complete decay. 
 8 See Appendix (B).
 
 12 LIFE OF LORI) BYRON. [1788- 
 
 is said to have been the cause of one foot of the 
 infant receiving an injury or twist at the birth, which 
 laid the foundation of the deformity that threw so dark 
 a shadow over the poet's whole life ; ' for while Scott's 
 lameness left his heart untouched, Byrort's was ever em- 
 bittered from this source, especially as he appears early 
 to have been made acquainted with the cause to which he 
 owed it. This unhappy circumstance was so significant 
 for him and for his poetry, that we shall have to return to 
 it more fully in the sequel. According to a condition im- 
 posed by will, he who married the heiress of Gight must 
 assume the name of Gordon ; as this does not appear to 
 have been done by Captain Byron (nothing definite is ever 
 said about the matter), in order to be just to the spirit of 
 this provision, the name of Gordon was given to the child. 
 The Duke of Gordon, as head of the family, Colonel Duff 
 of Fetteresso (near Stonehaven, to the south of Aberdeen), 
 and George Anson Byron, uncle of the infant, acted as 
 godfathers the two former probably by representatives, 
 if the baptism did not take place in Scotland. 
 
 The circumstances of the family were already so 
 shattered, that Mrs. Byron soon afterwards went alone with 
 her child to Scotland, where she was at first received at 
 the house of a relation, until, in the beginning of the 
 year 1790, she settled in a humble dwelling at Aberdeen. 
 As the little Augusta was about the same time sent to her 
 mother's relations, and henceforward appears to have been 
 educated by her grandmother the Countess of Holderness 
 with her step-sister, who was afterwards the Countess of 
 Chichester, Captain Byron was again left to himself, and 
 
 1 See Lord Byron's conversation with the Marquis of Sligo, Moore's 
 Life, i. 347. Whether the alleged cause of the deformity be the right 
 one, so far amounts to very little, as it is transparent from Byron's own 
 expressions he believed it was.
 
 1VJ8.J CHILDHOOD OF THE POET. 13. 
 
 could without hindrance indulge in dissipation so far as his 
 limited means permitted him. It was the failure of these 
 which induced him to follow his wife to Aberdeen. Mrs. 
 Byron at first received him into her house, but their incom- 
 patibility of temper grew to such a height that they soon 
 occupied separate dwellings, although for a considerable 
 time they continued to visit each other, and occasionally 
 even to drink tea together. Yet even this amount of inter- 
 course at last ceased. His interest in the welfare of the 
 child, the Captain now showed by kindly greeting the nurse 
 as often as he met her with her charge in their walks. He 
 even expressed a strong desire to have the boy with him for 
 a day or two on a visit. Mrs. Byron was only to be moved 
 to give her consent by the representation of the nurse, that 
 if his father kept the child but one night, he certainly 
 would not do so for a second. The result corresponded per- 
 fectly with her prediction. The child, as might have been 
 expected, could not possibly be a very quiet or peaceable 
 inmate without his nurse in a house utterly strange to him, 
 even if the same uncontrollably passionate temper had not 
 already displayed itself in him, by which subsequently 
 he was so completely mastered. The sole aim of Captain 
 Byron in Aberdeen had been to extort, if possible, more 
 money from his miserable wife : and, in spite of her poverty, 
 he actually succeeded in obtaining from her the requisite 
 means to enable him to fly (1790) to France to escape 
 from his creditors. Tenderness for him was not altogether 
 extinct in his wife, who displayed towards him alternate 
 sallies of violence and affection ; and when, in the follow- 
 ing year, she received the account of his death at Valen- 
 ciennes, she broke forth into such vehement lamentations 
 that her shrieks were heard in the street. 
 
 Things being thus, the death of the father was, in fact, 
 a blessing to the family, which was thus delivered from
 
 14 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [1788- 
 
 an oppressor. Byron, indeed, in after life, shortly before 
 setting out for Missolonghi, took up the defence of his 
 father, endeavouring to represent the charges made against 
 him as calumnies. 1 Little weight, however, is to be given 
 to this apology, and, in the letter in question, pride of 
 family, which would not endure that a member of his 
 house should be ' depreciated by a stranger, is the most 
 apparent trait. Especially he will not admit, that his 
 father was brutal and ill-treated his wives ; Lady Carmar- 
 then, he says, did not die from grief, but because she 
 insisted on accompanying her husband to the hunting 
 field too soon after Augusta's birth. That he was careless 
 and dissipated, and squandered the fortune of his two 
 wives, he cannot deny ; but, he argues, this concerns none 
 but his heirs, i.e. himself and his sister Augusta. The 
 prejudical influence which the character of the father, his 
 immoral course of life, and his early death (probably caused 
 by his excesses), exercised on Byron, was of yet greater 
 importance than the mere loss of property. Byron after- 
 wards, indeed, admitted and deeply lamented, that he was 
 deprived of the love and guidance of a father, especially 
 as he himself never possessed the moral power to repair 
 by self-education the injury he had thus sustained. 2 His 
 
 1 In a letter to Monsieur J. J. Coulmann (dated Genoa, July 12, 1823), 
 occasioned by the essay which Atnede"e Pichot had prefixed to his 
 translation of Byron's works. Notes and Queries, 4th series, iii. 224 
 et seq. See also Appendix (C). 
 
 2 Compare the poem entitled ' Childish Recollections ' in the Hours 
 of Idleness : 
 
 ' Stern death forbade my orphan youth to share 
 The tender guidance of a father's care. 
 Can rank or e'en a guardian's name supply 
 The love which glistens in a father's eye ? 
 For this can wealth or titles' sound atone, 
 Made by a parent's early loss my own ? 
 What brother springs a brother's love to seek ? 
 What sister's gentle kiss has pressed my cheek ? '-
 
 1798.] CHARACTER OF MRS. BYRON. 15 
 
 want of brothers or sisters also, for lie learnt to know 
 Augusta only after he was grown up, he felt deeply, and 
 describes it as a part of his fatality, that the later genera- 
 tions of his family had been continued by only children. 
 * My daughter ' (so he says in his Diary), ' my wife, my 
 half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural 
 daughter and myself, are or were all only children.' l But 
 (he adds characteristically enough) ' the fiercest animals 
 have the rarest number in their litters as lions, tigers, 
 and even elephants, which are mild in comparison.' 
 
 After the death of the father, all parental duties and 
 the care of his education devolved entirely on his mother. 
 By true motherly love, by a noble womanly example, by 
 gentle yet firm intelligent guidance, Mrs. Byron might 
 have done much to supply the loss of the head of the 
 family. But, on the contrary, it is almost to be deplored 
 that the poor boy had not lost his mother at the same 
 time with his father ; the sad lot of being an orphan, and 
 of growing up among strangers, would, in many respects, 
 have been fortunate for him. The first impressions 
 which the child received were poisoned by domestic dis- 
 cord and the feeling of poverty. If the father were a 
 heartless, selfish rake, the mother, destitute of all self- 
 control, blindly yielded herself to all the impulses of the 
 moment, and was as much wanting in solemn feelings of 
 duty as her husband. A slave to the most violent tempers, 
 she overwhelmed the child alternately with outbursts of 
 rage and love, so that he could feel for her neither affection 
 nor respect. At one time she beat him, called him ' a 
 lame brat,' and railed at him : * You little dog, you are a 
 thorough Byron, you are just as bad as your father ; ' at 
 another she covered him with kisses, and declared his 
 
 1 Note to Don Juan, canto i. 37, Life and Works, xv. 129.
 
 16 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 4. 
 
 eyes were as beautiful as his father's. The caresses of the 
 child she sometimes repelled, sometimes laughed at. 
 Where was the moral stay to be found, on which the 
 child might have leaned, and by which the training of 
 his heart and mind might have been regulated? Of what 
 incalculable influence are the impressions of the first years 
 of childhood, and how true it is that education must 
 begin from the cradle, was never shown more truly than in 
 the case of Byron; and his was a nature pre-eminently 
 receptive, a soil on which the seed which was scattered 
 bore fruit a thousand-fold. Moore relates l how, when 
 the child once tore his new frock in one of his 'silent 
 rages,' as Byron himself called them, he had to endure 
 not the silent but the very loud explosion of his mother's 
 rage. Thus it was that the child attached himself far 
 more to the nurse than to the mother, and showed far 
 more obedience and affection to the former than to the 
 latter. 
 
 It was also from this servant, called May Gray, that 
 Byron received his first, though, certainly, not very 
 scholastic instruction. According to the advice of the 
 celebrated John Hunter, with whom Dr. Livingstone, the 
 family-physician, had corresponded on the subject, the 
 lame leg of the child was for a long time placed in 
 bandages and machines, and when at bed-time these were 
 applied by May Gray a different mother would not have 
 committed this duty to a servant she used to sing him to 
 sleep, or told him stories and legends, with which, child- 
 like, he was delighted. She also taught him to repeat a 
 number of the Psalms, the first and the twenty-third being 
 the earliest impressed on his memory. In a letter from 
 Italy, written in the year 1821, Byron asked Mr. Murray, 
 
 1 [The story is given somewhat differently in the Life, i. 13.]
 
 1793.] BYKON'S FIRST SCHOOL. 17 
 
 his publisher, to send him a Bible, and adds : ' Don't 
 forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those 
 books, and had read them through and through before I 
 was eight years old that is to say the Old Testament, 
 for the New struck me as a task, but the other as^ a 
 pleasure.' 1 It may be supposed also, that beside the 
 narratives of the Bible, stories of his paternal and maternal 
 ancestors specially of his grandpapa the admiral would 
 be told to pass away the time : hence would be awakened in 
 him a love for sea-voyages, and for lands and adventures 
 lying beyond the seas. By the death of his cousin, in the 
 year 1794, the spirit and fancy of the precocious child 
 would scarcely fail to be directed to the Mediterranean. 
 He would hear too accounts of his grand-uncle at New- 
 stead, and of his duel (probably not represented in its 
 true character) with Mr. Cha worth ; 2 this disastrous event, 
 at any rate, made so deep an impression upon him, that 
 he came to regard this mode of redress for real or 
 supposed injuries and insults as a kind of family right, 
 and even as a boy he is said to have carried small pistols 
 loaded in his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 Before Byron had completed his fifth year, he was sent 
 to school, probably more in order that the house should 
 be rid of a restless inmate than that he should learn 
 anything. The school which was chosen appears, in fact, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 265. 
 
 8 In the above-mentioned letter to Monsieur J. J. Coulmarm we read 
 the following account : ' As to the Lord Byron who killed Mr. Chaworth in 
 a duel, so far from retiring from the world, he made the tour of Europe, 
 and was appointed the master of the stag-hounds after that event, and 
 did not give up society until his son had offended him, by marrying 
 in a manner contrary to his duty. So far from feeling any remorse at 
 having killed Mr. Chaworth, who was a spadassin and celebrated for his 
 quarrelsome disposition, he always kept the sword which be used on 
 that occasion in his bed-chamber, and there it still was when he died.' 
 There could scarcely be a representation more one-sided or incorrect. 
 Was this the result of self-delusion or was it deliberate falsehood ? 
 
 C
 
 18 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [J&s. o. 
 
 to have been little suited for the latter purpose. Under 
 the direction of a Mr. Bowers, the children it was a 
 mixed school of boys and girls were taught to read. 
 Byron in one of his journals says, 1 that he learnt to 
 repeat fluently by rote his first lessons of monosyllables 
 (God made man Let us love Him), but merely by ear, 
 without knowing a single letter. When this fact was 
 detected at home, his ears were boxed very undeservedly, 
 adds Byron, for it was by ear only that he had acquired 
 his letters. 2 After a year there, the child was removed 
 from this school (Nov. 19. 1793), whose chief merit con- 
 sisted in its cheapness one guinea only being the charge 
 for a whole year's tuition. 
 
 Byron was now taught by several masters in succession ; 
 first, by ' a devout clever little clergyman, named Ross,' 
 whose mild manners and good-natured painstaking he much 
 praises, and with whom, according to his own statement, 
 he made astonishing progress. 3 His next master was a 
 Mr. Paterson, ' a very serious, saturnine, but kind young 
 man,' a rigid Presbyterian minister, the son of his shoe- 
 maker, but a good scholar ; 4 with him he began Latin 
 in Euddiman's Grammar, and remained with him, till 
 he was admitted (1794) into the Grammar School. He 
 attended besides, according to Dallas's 5 account, De 
 Loyaute's (probably the assumed name of a French 
 emigre] academy, at which he made himself acquainted 
 with- the elements of French. The Latin school con- 
 sisted of five classes under four teachers, and about 
 150 pupils ; the fourth and fifth (the two highest) being 
 taught by the rector. Byron began at the lowest and 
 * threaded all the classes to the fourth,' G when he left 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 17-19. 2 Ibid. i. 18. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 
 
 6 Recollections of the Life of Lord Byrm, p. 2. London, 1824. 
 6 Moore, ut supra.
 
 1794.] BYRON AT THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL OF ABERDEEN. 19 
 
 Aberdeen. Like Walter Scott, lie did not distinguish 
 himself at school, being deficient not so much in quick- 
 ness of apprehension, as in love of study and perseverance. 
 His place was generally in the lower regions, and he 
 displayed little ambition to rise higher. To stimulate 
 emulation among the boys, it was the custom of the 
 school to invert the order of the class, so that the highest 
 stood lowest. On these occasions, and these only, it 
 sometimes happened that Byron was at the head of the 
 class, and the master, bantering him, would say : ' Now, 
 George man, let me see how soon you will be at the foot 
 again.' l Again, as in Scott, so also in Byron, his mind 
 was occupied and developed by subjects that lay beyond 
 the sphere of the school ; though, alas ! no particulars 
 exist making it possible for us to follow that development 
 step by step in its course. What little we know, we owe to 
 the occasional communications of the poet himself. As 
 soon as he could read, history, he says, 2 became his grand 
 passion, and in Roman history, the battle of Lake Regillus 
 had especial charms for him. Besides this, descriptions of 
 travels in the East, Turkish history, and the Arabian 
 Nights, particularly interested him. ' " Old Knolles," ' he 
 said shortly before his death, 'was one of the first books 
 which gave me pleasure.' ' Cantemir,' he says elsewhere, 
 * De Tott, Lady M. W. Montagu, Hawkins's translation 
 of Mignot's History of the Turks, all travels or histories 
 or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read 
 before I was ten years old.' 3 In all probability, accident 
 more than choice brought into his hand those books, by 
 which his mind and imagination, even in childhood, were 
 directed to the Levant. Regarded in this light, it appears 
 as the very natural course of his development that he 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 21. 2 Ibid, p. 18. . 
 
 8 Note of the Editor's prefixed to the Giaour. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 LIFE OF LOKD BYEON. [JET. 5. 
 
 should in later life have turned his pilgrim's steps towards 
 Turkey, and have laid there the scenes of his poetic 
 tales, although other motives co-operated, with which the 
 course of our narrative will make us acquainted. It is 
 to be lamented, that we possess no knowledge of the 
 time and manner he was introduced into the realms of 
 poetry ; what poets first opened to him the gates of 
 Parnassus, and what impressions they stamped on his 
 mind. 
 
 The circumstance that he was thus early left to himself, 
 which is the characteristic in the formation of the mental 
 qualities of the boy, constitutes also the main feature in 
 the development of his character. According to the recol- 
 lections of those who then knew him, he was affectionate 
 and companionable with his school-fellows, but passionate, 
 resentful, pre-eminently fearless and venturesome, and 
 1 always more ready to give a blow than to take one.' x 
 Passion and self-will that brooked no restraint, a tem- 
 perament partly inherited, partly strengthened by educa- 
 tion, or rather the absence of it, formed from his earliest 
 days the essence of his character. Between Zeluco, the 
 hero of a romance which at that time enjoyed great 
 celebrity, and himself, a striking similarity was recognised 
 even by Byron himself, though, in his usual fashion, he 
 represents himself by this comparison in colours far too 
 dark ; it was, indeed, his expressed design to describe in 
 Childe Harold a kind of * poetical Zeluco.' 2 The life of 
 Zeluco such is the author's plan 3 in spite of rank, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 19. 2 Preface to Childe Harold, viii. 7. 
 
 3 Zeluco. Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and 
 Manners, Foreign and Domestic. In two volumes, Lond. 1789. Dr. John 
 Moore, the author of this romance, who was born at Stirling, 1729, and 
 died at Richmond, 1802, spent much of his life in Holland, France, 
 Germany, and Italy. He wrote also many other works, and was the father 
 of the celebrated General Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna.
 
 1794.] CHAEACTEKISTICS OF BYRON IN BOYHOOD. 21 
 
 rich.es, and abilities, turns out unhappy and miserable, 
 and this, merely because his self-will had been unre- 
 strained in childhood. Zeluco, like Byron, loses his 
 father early in life. As a child, he had displayed un- 
 mistakable symptoms of that vehement and imperious 
 temper, to which he was by nature so disposed, and 
 which had been held in check only by his father. ' But 
 very soon after his death ' so it is said in the romance 
 ' he indulged every humour and caprice ; and his mis- 
 taken mother applauding the blusterings of petulance and 
 pride as indications of spirit, his temper became more 
 and more ungovernable, and at length seemed as inflam- 
 mable as gunpowder, bursting into flashes of rage at 
 the slightest touch of provocation.' As an example the 
 following story is then given : * Zeluco had a favourite 
 sparrow, so tame that it picked crumbs from his hand 
 and hopped familiarly on the table. One day it did not 
 perform certain tricks which he had taught it to his 
 satisfaction. This put the boy into a passion : the bird 
 being frightened attempted to fly off the table. He 
 suddenly seized it with his hand, and while it struggled 
 to get free, with a curse he squeezed the little animal to 
 death.' 1 But Zeluco was not merely passionate, but 
 endued with great intellectual gifts and of an exceedingly 
 engaging character, and in this respect presents a simi- 
 larity with Byron, which, however, does not extend 
 beyond the years of childhood, or at least diminishes as 
 he grows up ; for Zeluco ends as a consummate scoundrel. 
 The exceeding freedom and absence of control, which 
 were allowed to the boy, acted most beneficially on his 
 bodily development. As in Scott's case, so also in Byron's, 
 his growth and strength suffered little from his deformity 
 
 1 Zeluco, i. 3, 4.
 
 22 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 6. 
 
 and the play- ground was the place where he displayed his 
 energy and ambition. He was distinguished in all games 
 and exercises, even in those which demanded swiftness of 
 foot. That in after life he became an excellent swimmer, 
 and rider and shot, is well known. As a boy he knew no 
 fear, and rather sought than avoided danger. Various 
 anecdotes belonging to this period are preserved, which 
 serve to give completeness and animation to the portrait ; 
 such only, it is true, as redound to his credit, charac- 
 teristics of an opposite tendency being, as usual, suppressed 
 by biographers. The boys were accustomed to go at noon 
 to the writing school, the road to which passed through the 
 churchyard of St. Nicholas. In this churchyard Byron, 
 with two companions, was once (Feb. 5, 1795), surprised 
 by a sudden and fearful snowstorm. The two boys 
 fortunately reached the writing school, and were fetched 
 home by their inaid- servants. Byron, on the other hand, 
 did not return, and towards evening the servant of his 
 agonised mother made her appearance at the houses of 
 his two companions, to make enquiries after him. To her 
 horror she found him not, and forthwith hastened, by the 
 advice of one of the boys, to the sexton, in order with him 
 to search the churchyard. By the gleam of the lantern 
 they found the boy, cowering under a high gravestone, 
 covered with snow. 1 Another time Byron, on his way 
 from school, meeting with a boy who had insulted him, 
 when he was unable to resent it, told him with a 
 
 1 Such is the account of one of these two companions in Notes and 
 Queries, November 29, 1862, p. 426 et seq. A far more probable account 
 of this anecdote is found in the Athen&um, November 9, 1861, p. 618. 
 According to this, little Byron with two companions took refuge in the 
 kitchen of a stocking weaver, whence they were brought away in the 
 evening. While their clothes were being dried before the fire, Byron 
 whiled away the time by telling his companions one of the tales of the 
 Arabian Nights.
 
 1794.] ANECDOTES OF BYEON'S BOYHOOD. 23 
 
 threat that he would pay him off for it. This he did 
 accordingly, though his opponent was supported by other 
 boys. Returning home at full speed, and asked why he 
 was so much out of breath, he answered that he had 
 been beating a boy according to his promise, 'for that 
 he was a Byron and would never belie his motto, " Trust 
 Byron." ' l When May Gray once took the boy to the 
 theatre to see the 'Taming of the Shrew,' he watched 
 the performance with silent interest; but in the scene 
 between Catherine and Petruchio, where the following 
 dialogue takes place : 
 
 * Cath. I know it is the moon. 
 
 ' Petruch. Nay, then, you lie it is the blessed sun ' 
 Geordie (as they called the child), starting from his 
 seat, cried out boldly, ' But I say it is the moon, sir.' 2 
 
 Mrs. Byron being evidently no friend to walking, Geordie 
 was left pretty much to himself, and learned to love 
 lonely walks and rambles, for which he often stole away 
 unobserved from home. On one of these, directed, as 
 was often the case, towards the sea-shore, he fell into a 
 morass, whence he could not extricate himself, and where 
 he was found only after long and anxious search. On 
 another occasion he and a friend went for a ramble, with 
 a pony between them on the principle of * ride and tie.' 
 When they came to the romantic Brig of Balgounie, which 
 spans the Don, the old prediction occurred to Byron's 
 memory : 
 
 Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa' : 
 With a wife's ae son and a mare's ae foal 
 Doun ye shall fa'. 
 
 Holding back his friend, whose turn it was to ride next, 
 he reminded him of the verses and of the fact that they 
 were both only sons, and that neither of them knew, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 20. z Ilidi. 15.
 
 24 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEn. 8. 
 
 whether the pony also might not be the only foal of a 
 mare. Under these circumstances, he proposed to ride 
 first over the bridge, for that only his mother would have 
 to mourn for him, while for his friend a father also would 
 have to lament. Byron's proposal was accepted ; but, 
 contrary to expectation, the bridge did not fall in, and the 
 boys came therefore to the conclusion, that the pony must 
 necessarily have either brothers or sisters. 1 
 
 Along with his mother, Byron paid occasional visits to 
 the country seats of relations and friends, specially to 
 Eetteresso, the seat of his godfather Colonel Duff, formerly 
 belonging to the Earls Marischal of Scotland. A longer 
 residence in the Highlands, whither his mother was 
 induced to take him in order to try the 'goat's-whey 
 cure,' after an attack of scarlet fever, contributed power- 
 fully to his mental development. They occupied the farm- 
 house of Ballatrech in the neighbourhood of Ballater 
 on the Dee, famous for its beautiful situation and salu- 
 brious air. The house, and even the bed on which Byron 
 is said to have slept, is still shown, and has become 
 a place of pilgrimage for reverent and still more for 
 irreverent Highland tourists. Here the boy found himself 
 transported into the very heart of the beautiful romantic 
 scenery of the Highlands. Here the Dee rushes through 
 wild and bare crags, and here Lochin-y-gair, crowned 
 with snow even in summer, towered aloft before the 
 eyes of the future poet. What friend of -English poetry 
 knows not the impassioned stanzas, in which he has 
 celebrated this mountain and the remembrance of the 
 days which he had spent there? On a later excursion 
 he penetrated still further, through the romantic passes of 
 Invercauld, up to the linn of Dee, where, for the third 
 time, he was nearly losing his life. As he was scrambling 
 
 1 Lake, p. 25. Comp. Moore, i. 35. Don Juan, x. 18.
 
 1796.] INFLUENCE OF SCOTLAND ON BYKON. 25 
 
 along a declivity overhanging the fall, his foot was caught 
 in some heather and he fell, and just as he was beginning 
 to roll down, the guide fortunately caught hold of him and 
 pulled him up again. 
 
 From this residence in the Highlands Byron dated his 
 love of mountainous countries. 1 Moore 2 has, indeed, re- 
 marked, that the imagination easily deceives itself by 
 referring to an earlier period what is in reality of later 
 growth ; but yet it is certain that Byron first learned in 
 Scotland to know those two forms of nature which most 
 harmonised with his mind, and in which he felt himself 
 most at home the mountains and the sea. The Scottish 
 Highlands became so much the more intimately blended 
 with the recollections of childhood, as he never revisited 
 them in after life. In the spring of 1807 he formed the 
 plan of a tour to his old home, which, however, was not 
 carried out. When he roamed among similar mountains 
 in Albania and Greece, memory transported him to Morven, 
 and at a still later period, in the second canto of ' The 
 Island,' he paid his homage to the unforgotten mountains 
 of the land of his home. 
 
 Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine, 
 
 Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, 
 
 Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep 
 
 Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep ; 
 
 But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all 
 
 Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall ; 
 
 The infant rapture still survived the boy, 
 
 And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o'er Troy, 
 
 Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, 
 
 And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. 
 
 Forgive me, Homer's universal shade ! 
 
 Forgive me, Phoebus ! that my fancy strayed ; 
 
 The North and Nature taught me to adore 
 
 Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before. 
 
 1 See Note to The Island, canto ii. 12, Life and Works, xiv. 321. 
 
 2 Life, i. 24-26.
 
 26 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 8. 
 
 This, however, is the extent of the influence which 
 Scotland exercised on the course of his development. 
 For although he once says of himself, that he was ' half a 
 Scot by birth and bred a whole one ; ' : although he re- 
 joiced at all times to meet an inhabitant of the granite 
 city, and was not averse to speak of the haunts of his 
 childhood ; although on his first expedition to Greece he 
 was dressed in Scottish tartan, the tartan of the Gordon 
 Clan, yet the bent of his mind and the character of his 
 poetry are anything but Scottish. Scottish nationality is 
 tainted with narrow and provincial elements; Byron's 
 poetical character, on the other hand, is universal and 
 cosmopolitan. He had no attachment to localities, and 
 never devoted himself to the study of the history of 
 Scotland and its romantic legends. With his strong 
 sense of the ridiculous it could not escape him how easily 
 Scottish provincialism degenerates into the ludicrous, and 
 with his too common habit of rushing from one extreme 
 to the other, it was not difficult to betray him into a 
 rage, half serious, half playful, against Scotland. In his 
 * English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' there is no lack of 
 bitterness against the once much loved home of his child- 
 hood : and, when a young lady, on a certain occasion, 
 incautiously remarked to him, that he had a little of the 
 Scottish accent : ' Good God, I hope not,' he exclaimed ; 
 
 ' I am sure I haven't. I would rather the whole d d 
 
 country was sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent !' 2 That 
 Byron, however, as a child, spoke with the Scottish accent 
 can scarcely be denied; his mother and his nurse, who 
 was at the same time his teacher, spoke with it, like 
 everyone else around him, and it is hardly possible that 
 
 1 Don Juan, x. 17. 2 Moore's Life, i. 36.
 
 1796.] BYRON'S EAELY LOVE FOR MARY DUFF. 27 
 
 he should have entirely discarded the accent to which his 
 ear had been accustomed from his cradle. 
 
 One more significant circumstance belonging to Byron's 
 childhood remains to be mentioned, his love for Mary 
 Duff when he was only eight years old, Mary being two 
 years older. This strange phenomenon places him beside 
 Dante, who, it is well known, fell in love in his ninth year 
 with Beatrice at the May day Festival at Florence. 
 Canova pretended to have fallen in love even when he 
 was only five years old; and Alfieri sees in this almost 
 incredible precocity a sure characteristic of genius. Mary 
 Duff was a distant cousin of Byron, and had a younger 
 sister Helen, who played with her doll while she herself 
 made love . with Byron. According to his own account, 
 Byron, during this childish passion, was restless and 
 sleepless, and tormented his mother's maid until she 
 wrote in his name to the little object of his affections, 
 who had been removed to her grandmother's at Banff. 
 She was afterwards married to a wine merchant in Edin- 
 burgh, Mr. Robert Cockburn, Byron being then sixteen 
 years old. When his mother communicated this piece of 
 news to him, it nearly threw him, according to his own 
 account, into convulsions, so that his mother scarcely ever 
 ventured to return to the subject. 1 
 
 After the death of William Byron, the grandson of the 
 fifth lord, it was natural that the boy's thoughts should 
 turn to his succession to the peerage ; his mother had 
 long before believed him destined for great things, es- 
 pecially after some village fortune-teller, who founded 
 her prediction on the lameness of the boy, confirmed her 
 in this belief. When, in the winter of 1797, his mother 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 27.
 
 28 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. [^T. 10. 
 
 happened to read aloud a speech which had been delivered 
 in the House of Commons, a friend who was present re- 
 marked to ' Geordie,' 'We shall have the pleasure, some time 
 or other, of reading your speeches in the House ; ' ' I hope 
 not ' was his answer ; ' if you read any speeches of mine, 
 it will be in the House of Lords.' 1 The day after the 
 arrival of the news of the death of the old lord, the boy 
 ran into his mother's room, and asked her ' whether she 
 perceived any difference in him since he had been made a 
 lord, as he perceived none himself.' 2 Not externally, 
 indeed, but that ' the lame boy who lived at Aberdeen ' 
 was not unconscious of the great change which had taken 
 place in his position, is shown by his conduct in the 
 school. Next morning when the names of the boys 
 were called out, and his was pronounced with the title 
 ' Dominus ' prefixed, such an impression was made on him, 
 that he was unable to utter the usual answer 'Adsum,' 
 and at last burst into tears. 3 Moore 4 very rightly remarks 
 that it would have been a decided advantage for the 
 formation of Byron's character, if he had had to wait 
 ten years longer ere he inherited the peerage, and 
 had continued to live in his limited circumstances and 
 been obliged to struggle against them. The elevation of 
 rank at his tender age acted the more prejudicially, as it 
 did not extend to his mother, he standing above her in 
 rank and property, while she was and continued simply 
 Mrs. Byron. The family, i.e. mother, son, and faithful 
 maid-servant, had now only to set out (in the autumn of 
 1798) for the new inheritance of Newstead. With the 
 exception of the silver plate and linen, Mrs. Byron sold 
 all the furniture before their departure, the proceeds of 
 the whole amounting to less than 75L ; little enough for 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 29. 2 Ibid. i. 30/ 3 Ibid. I 30. 4 Ibid. i. 29.
 
 1798.] THE FAMILY LEAVE ABERDEEN. 29 
 
 the mother of a peer and a descendant of the royal 
 house of Scotland. In what way the journey was made 
 is not related : only Byron mentions in one of his last 
 letters, that he recollected Loch Leven, by which they 
 passed, ' as if it were but yesterday.' l 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 37.
 
 30 LIl'E OF LORD BYEON. [JET. 10. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY. 
 1798-1808. 
 
 WHEN the travellers arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, his 
 mother, affecting ignorance, asked the woman of the 
 toll- house to whom the park and house belonged ; she 
 answered, that Lord Byron, the owner of it, had been dead 
 for some months. * And who is the next heir ? ' asked the 
 proud and happy mother. ( They say,' answered the 
 woman, ' it is a little boy who lives at Aberdeen.' ' And 
 this is he, bless him ! ' exclaimed the nurse, no longer able 
 to contain herself, and turning to kiss with delight the 
 young lord who was seated on her lap. 1 
 
 Thus did the young lord, in his eleventh year, make his 
 entrance into Newstead Abbey. There, everything wore a 
 dreary and desolate look ; and though Mrs. Byron had not 
 been accustomed to luxury, she could not bring herself 
 to make Newstead her home, but retired with her son to 
 the neighbouring town of Nottingham, a step which was 
 moreover rendered needful from a regard to the young 
 peer's training both of body and mind. Byron himself, 
 as soon as he inherited the peerage, had become a ward of 
 the Court of Chancery, which appointed the Earl of Carlisle 
 his guardian. This nobleman (1784-1826) was a near 
 relation, his mother, Isabella Byron (1721-1795), being a 
 
 1 Moore s Life, \. 37.
 
 1708.] BYRON AND HIS GUARDIAN. 31 
 
 sister of the fifth Lord Byron, the duellist. This lady 
 belied in nowise the family character; she was full of 
 talent and wit, wrote tolerable verses 1 and some pungent 
 epigrams. In eccentricity she equalled her brother, and, 
 like him, though without the grounds he had, secluded 
 herself in her later years entirely from the world, in 
 which she had shone in earlier life as one of the stars of 
 society. Fox, to whom she was known, characterised her 
 in a satire as 
 
 Carlisle, recluse in pride and rags ; 2 
 
 and they are said to have spoken or written yet coarser 
 things of each other. Her son was distinguished in the 
 world of fashion, made a figure in Parliament, and had 
 been Viceroy of Ireland in the year 1780. He was, 
 moreover, a wit and a poet, who soared even to the lofty 
 regions of tragedy. 3 His tragedy, ' The Father's Eevenge,' 
 which had been submitted to Dr. Johnson, met with some 
 favour from the great critic. It is well known that 
 Byron, who, not without reason, believed himself neglected 
 by his guardian, so harshly criticised his poetry in the 
 ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' that he en- 
 deavoured, at a later period, to make every reparation for 
 the wrong he had been guilty of. To him he dedicated the 
 second edition of ' The Hours of Idleness,' as his obliged 
 ward and affectionate kinsman. The two men were 
 evidently, both poetically and otherwise, of minds too 
 much opposed as not mutually to repel each other. The 
 Earl of Carlisle appears at first to have little concerned 
 
 1 One or two in Pearch's Collection are ascribed to her ; she composed 
 also a small treatise on Education. 
 
 2 Gait's Life of Byron, chap. iv. p. 33. 
 
 3 He was the author of the following works: Poems, 1773; Unite or 
 Fall, 1798; The Step-mother, a tragedy, 1800; Tragedies and Poems, 
 1801 ; Verses on the Death of Lord Nelson, 1806 ; Thoughts on the Stage.
 
 32 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mr. 11. 
 
 himself in the education of his ward, but to have entrusted 
 it to his mother, who directed her attention chiefly to the 
 cure of the deformed foot. She, like Scott's parents, who 
 hoped to succeed in removing his lameness by the so- 
 called earth-bath of Dr. Graham, applied to a quack of 
 the name of Lavender l with a like object. This man, rub- 
 bing the foot with oil, forcibly twisted it round, and then 
 screwed it up in a wooden machine, causing of course 
 dreadful suffering to the poor boy. 2 
 
 That he might lose no ground in the studies of the 
 school, Byron received instruction in Latin from a respect- 
 able teacher of the name of Rogers, 3 who read Virgil and 
 Cicero with him rather prematurely, certainly, for a 
 boy of eleven years of age. Teacher and scholar were, 
 however, mutually satisfied. Mr. Rogers, remarking one 
 day the pain which Byron endured with his foot in the 
 machine while he was teaching him, could not with- 
 hold his sympathy : * It makes me uncomfortable, my 
 Lord, to see you sitting there in such pain, as I know you 
 must be suffering ' ' Never mind, Mr. Rogers,' answered 
 the boy, ' you shall not see any signs of it in me.' 4 Of 
 him, as of almost all his masters, he preserved a respectful 
 and kindly recollection, while for his tormentor Lavender 
 he had nothing but hatred, and delighted to practise jokes 
 upon him. Thus on one occasion writing down all the letters 
 of the alphabet and putting them together at random in 
 the form of words, he asked the pompous ignoramus 
 what language it was : ' Italian,' he answered with his 
 
 1 It is said that Lavender often sent the boy across the street for a jug 
 of beer. (Notes and Qumes, 4th series, vol. iii. pp. 284, 418, 661.) The 
 thing seems scarcely credible. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, i. 41. 
 
 3 According to Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. iii. p. 561, Rogers 
 was an American royalist, who enjoyed a pension from the English 
 Government. 
 
 4 Moore's Life, i. 41.
 
 1799.] BYRON'S MOTHER SETTLES IN LONDON. 33 
 
 accustomed confidence, and brought down on himself a 
 shout of triumphant laughter from the boy. 1 
 
 When Mrs. Byron herself could no longer doubt that 
 Lavender's so-called cure was nothing but the infliction of 
 useless torture, she was advised by Lord Carlisle to consult 
 the celebrated Dr. Baillie in London, brother of the still 
 more celebrated dramatic poetess Joanna Baillie. This 
 advice was probably in harmony with the personal wishes 
 and inclinations of Mrs. Byron, and led to her settling in 
 London in the summer of 1799, where she took a house in 
 Sloane Terrace, and sent her son to the private school of a 
 Dr. Glennie in Dulwich, one of the most charming dis- 
 tricts to the south of London. Her personal resources, 
 which the young Lord, as long as he was a minor, could 
 not from his own means augment, received about this time 
 a seasonable addition, inasmuch as she obtained (July 5, 
 1799), a pension of 300L a year on the Civil List; who 
 interceded for her with the king, or on what grounds the 
 king granted it, is however unknown. 2 About this 
 time also the faithful nurse of the child, May Gray, 
 returned to her home in Scotland, where she was married, 
 and died about the year 1827. In parting with her 
 Byron gave her his watch, the first he had possessed, and 
 a full-length miniature of himself (painted by Kay of 
 Edinburgh in 1795), which represented him standing 
 with a bow and arrow in his hand and a profusion 
 of hair falling over his shoulders. 3 Some years after- 
 wards Byron wrote to tell her, among other matters, that 
 his foot was so far restored that he was able to put 
 on a common boot * an event for which he had long 
 anxiously wished, and which he was sure would give 
 her great pleasure.' 4 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 41. 2 Ibid. i. 43. 
 
 3 JIM. i. 55. * Ibid. i. 56.
 
 34 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. iJEt. 12. 
 
 It was in many respects a happy thing for Byron that 
 he was now separated from his mother ; already she began 
 to appear to him under a ludicrous aspect. Her outbursts 
 of rage no longer made him afraid, but caused him much 
 amusement. 1 When with her short and corpulent figure 
 she ran round the room to catch him and punish him, he 
 managed, in spite of his lameness, always to escape from 
 her, and laughed at her rage. Of her coarse invectives 
 one only left a sting, which was never eradicated ; in one 
 of her fits of passion she called him * a lame brat,' although 
 to her he believed himself indebted for this deformity. 2 
 These outbursts of temper she displayed even in Dr. 
 Glennie's school, who once heard one of his pupils say to 
 Byron : ' Byron, your mother is a fool.' ' I know it ' said 
 he gloomily. 3 Dr. Glennie, himself a Scotchman, gave 
 Moore the following description of Mrs. Byron : ( Mrs. 
 Byron was a total stranger to English society and English 
 manners ; with an exterior far from prepossessing, an 
 understanding where nature had not been more bountiful, 
 a mind almost wholly without cultivation, and the pe- 
 culiarities of northern opinions, northern habits, and 
 northern accent, I trust I do no great prejudice to the 
 memory of my country-woman, if I say Mrs. Byron was 
 not a Madame de Lambert, endowed with powers to 
 retrieve the fortune and form the character and manners 
 of a young nobleman, her son.' 4 In a word, she was 
 deficient in mental culture, and even in mere external 
 refinement : there was something even childish in her 
 character. If Disraeli may be regarded as an authority, 
 Mrs. Byron was wont to pour out her heart to everyone 
 on the enormities of her husband, on her miserable 
 condition, on the fifth Lord Byron, who had brought 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 38. 2 Ibid. i. 38. 
 
 Ibid. i. 48. 4 Ibid. i. 47.
 
 1800.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON'S MOTHER. 35 
 
 Newstead to such a ruinous condition, and generally on 
 everything which vexed and annoyed her. He hints, too, 
 that she was partial to strong drinks, especially to 
 whisky ; and a letter of Byron to his mother, hereafter to 
 be cited, appears to corroborate this. The worst was that 
 Mrs. Byron incessantly interfered with the instruction 
 arid education of the boy ; for not only from Saturday to 
 Monday was Geordie kept at home, but often for the 
 whole week ; and in all the complaints which were made, 
 she appears always to have taken the part of the pupil 
 against the masters. Thus all the efforts of Dr. Glennie 
 and Lord Carlisle were continually thwarted, so that 
 the latter withdrew more and more from all concern for 
 his ward, and at last declared that he would have nothing 
 more to do with Mrs. Byron, and that Dr. Glennie must 
 manage her as he could. 1 Young Byron himself, tortured 
 by a new machine applied to his foot, and enjoined to ab- 
 stain as much as possible from all bodily exertion, had to 
 devote all his powers to accommodate himself to the course 
 of instruction pursued in English schools, which differed 
 from the system followed at Aberdeen, and in some 
 measure to fill up the gaps. Dr. Glennie, who appears to 
 have taken a fatherly interest in him, testifies that he 
 showed diligence and zeal ; that he was playful and good- 
 humoured, and beloved by his companions ; only that his 
 aristocratic pride frequently excited the ridicule of the 
 other boys, and gained for him the nickname of the old 
 English Baron, 2 in allusion to the celebrated romance of 
 that name by Miss Clara Eeeve (1777) ; that his reading in 
 history and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of 
 his age, especially that he had an intimate acquaintance 
 with the historical writings of the Bible and delighted 
 to converse on them. Dr. Glennie believed that Byron 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 48. 3 Ibid. i. 70. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LIFE OF LOETJ BYEON. [Mr. 13. 
 
 had read more than once from beginning to end a collec- 
 tion of English poets from Chaucer to Churchill, which 
 he found in the Doctor's library. 1 As Byron, on account 
 of the medical treatment to which he was subjected, 
 slept in the Doctor's study, he had an unusually good 
 opportunity to use his books, openly as well as secretly. 
 Notwithstanding these favourable circumstances, Mrs. 
 Byron was by no means satisfied with the progress of her 
 son, and in spite of the assurances of Dr. Glennie that he 
 was not yet sufficiently prepared, she insisted on sending 
 him to one of the great public schools. It is possible that 
 Dr. Glennie's school was not adequate to all the require- 
 ments which might be made. We have only his own 
 account of Byron's residence with him, and it is remark- 
 able that Byron never, for good or evil, makes mention 
 of him ; but substantially the right appears to have been 
 on Dr. Glennie's side. However this may be, it is enough 
 that Byron, with the consent of his guardian, in the 
 summer of 1801 was sent to Harrow. 
 
 Before we accompany him further, we must dwell on 
 one circumstance belonging to this stage of his boyhood. 
 Byron's first attempt in poetry was, according to the 
 account of May Gray, an epigram, which he made at 
 Newstead on an old lady who paid frequent visits to 
 his mother, and who made herself disagreeable to him 
 by her strange opinions and her unpleasing manners. 
 This lady, among other views, entertaining the notion 
 that the soul, after death, took its flight to the moon, he 
 at last vented his anger against her in the following lines, 
 which he delighted to repeat over and over again : 
 
 Iii Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green 
 As curst an old lady as ever was seen : 
 And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, 
 She firmly believes she will go to the moon. 2 
 
 1 Moore's Lif*, i, 42. 2 Ibid. i. 42.
 
 1801.] BYRON'S FIRST ATTEMPT IN POETKY. 37 
 
 These early verses suggest three remarks : that the first 
 lisping attempt of Byron's muse connects itself with 
 Newstead ; that it was of a satirical character ; and that 
 we are indebted for the knowledge of it to his nurse 
 instead of to his mother. Byron aspired, however, to far 
 higher aims with extraordinary rapidity ; when only in his 
 thirteenth year, he made an attempt at a play, ' Ulrich 
 and Ilvina,' which fortunately he soon burnt. About the 
 same time lyrical efforts, more appropriate to his age, 
 strove to find utterance. During his residence at Dulwich 
 (1800) he fell in love with his cousin, Margaret Parker, 
 the daughter and grand-daughter of two admirals of this 
 name, and this attachment, to use his own words, 1 led to 
 his first dash into poetiy. The verses which she inspired 
 him to write, he had long ago (he says) forgotten perhaps 
 they deserved no better fate but the dark eyes, the long 
 eyelashes, the completely Greek cast of the face and figure 
 of the girl, then in her twelfth or thirteenth year, appear 
 never to have passed from his memory. ' She was,' he 
 writes, 'of a transparent beauty. She looked as if she 
 had been made out of a rainbow all beauty and peace.' 2 
 Like Mary Duff, she had a sister, Augusta, who by many 
 persons was thought still more beautiful. Both sisters 
 died not long afterwards of consumption, the fatal issue 
 of which, in Margaret's case, was accelerated by a fall 
 which injured her spine. The first poem in the ( Hours of 
 Idleness,' bearing the date 1802, is dedicated to the 
 memory of Margaret. 
 
 Just before going to Harrow, Byron accompanied his 
 mother on a tour to Cheltenham, where the Malvern 
 Hills, and especially the sunsets on them, produced a 
 deep effect upon his mind. 3 Here his superstitious mother 
 went with him to a fortune-teller, who predicted that 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 52. 2 Ibid, i. 53. 3 Ibid. i. 25.
 
 38 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \_Mt. 13. 
 
 before coming of age he would run some danger of being 
 poisoned, and that he would be twice married the second 
 time to a foreign lady. 1 
 
 Harrow, one of the great English public schools, stood 
 at that time high in the favour of the aristocracy, a cir- 
 cumstance which, combined with its short distance from 
 London, certainly helped to influence and determine the 
 choice of Mrs. Byron. Harrow, moreover, possessed in 
 the person of Dr. Joseph Drury a distinguished head- 
 master, 2 whose merits in the education of Byron were 
 truly great, and who, therefore, enjoyed his life-long 
 honour and respect. His pupil described Dr. Drury as a 
 perfect gentleman, of the mildest disposition, and utterly 
 free from pedantry. 3 When Byron was consigned to his 
 care by Mr. Hanson, the family solicitor, with the remark 
 that his education had been neglected, but that he pos- 
 sessed some cleverness, Dr. Drury attempted to find out 
 from the youth himself some particulars concerning the 
 direction of his previous studies, the persons with whom 
 he had associated, and his inclinations, but soon disco- 
 vered that a wild mountain colt had been committed to 
 his management, and became convinced that his new 
 pupil might be led by a silken string, rather than by 
 a cable. 4 Byron, already accustomed to habits of com- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 56. 
 
 2 Joseph Drury, born in London in the year 1750, was educated at 
 "Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Before he had 
 completed his twentieth year he was appointed one of the under-m asters 
 at Harrow, of which school he was head-master from the year 1784 to 
 the year 1805. He then retired to Cockwood in Devonshire, where he 
 devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, and died in January 
 1834. A memorial of him has been placed in the Church at Harrow. 
 Without achieving any distinction in literature, he left behind him the 
 reputation of an excellent teacher, pre-eminently fitted and endowed for 
 his position. 
 
 3 See note to the ' Hours of Idleness/ Works, vii. p. 147. 
 
 4 Moore's Life, i. 5*.
 
 1801.] BYRON AT HARROW. 39 
 
 mand, showed himself refractory to all school discipline 
 and subordination. His natural shyness, also, was in- 
 creased by the sudden transition from a quiet private 
 school to the vigorous life of a great public institu- 
 tion. His position with regard to the other boys of the 
 school was so far difficult, that they knew he came from 
 circles enjoying no distinction in the fashionable world, 
 and that his fortune little corresponded with his rank. 
 To this was superadded the proud dread, lest, through 
 his insufficient preparation, he might be placed below 
 younger and smaller boys. Dr. Drury calmed his appre- 
 hensions by assuring him, that his place in the school 
 should not be fixed, until by his diligence he might rank 
 with those of his own age. He committed him to the 
 care of one of the masters as his tutor, and did every- 
 thing in his power to accustom him to the ways of the 
 school. Notwithstanding this, Byron confesses that for 
 the first year and a half he hated Harrow ; l that only 
 in the two last years of his residence was he reconciled 
 to it, after he had risen to be a leader, not so much by 
 his proficiency in the studies of the school, as by his 
 character, i.e. his courage and his independence, as well 
 as by excelling in all games and sports, and from being 
 a very unpopular, had become a very popular boy. To 
 the elder and bigger boys he was undaunted and brave, to 
 the younger kind and amiable, often playing the part 
 of their protector. Against wrong and pretension his 
 attitude was bold and decisive. His intellectual capacity 
 naturally could be hid neither from the pupils nor from 
 the masters, and Dr. Drury was among the first who 
 recognised it. After he had been some time at Harrow, 
 Lord Carlisle, considering it his duty to make some 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 57.
 
 40 LIFE OF LORD Bi'KON. [^E-r. 13-16. 
 
 enquiries about him, desired to see Dr. Drury in town : 
 ' I waited on his Lordship,' says Dr. Drury ; ( his object 
 was to inform me of Lord Byron's expectations of property 
 when he came of age, which he represented as contracted, 
 and to enquire concerning his abilities. On the former cir- 
 cumstance I made no remark : as to the latter I replied : 
 He has talents, my Lord, which will add lustre to his rank. 
 " Indeed !" said his Lordship, with a degree of surprise, 
 that, according to my feeling, did not express in it all the 
 satisfaction I expected.' 1 
 
 Byron's high estimation of his master was, under such 
 circumstances, very natural. When at a later period 
 they met in London, the master reproachfully asked his 
 former pupil, now become femous, why he had never sent 
 his poems to him : ' Because,' said Byron, ' you are the 
 only man I never wish to read them ;' but in a few mo- 
 ments he added, 'What do you think of "The Corsair"? ' 2 
 In one of his journals he says, * Dr. Drury was the best, 
 the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had, and I 
 look on him still as a father.' 3 In another place in a 
 note to ' Childe Harold,' iv. 75 he speaks of his pre- 
 ceptor as the best and worthiest friend he ever pos- 
 sessed, ' whose warnings I have remembered but. too well 
 though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsels I 
 have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If 
 ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him 
 should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never 
 thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration, of one 
 who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, 
 if by more closely following his injunctions he could 
 reflect any honour on his instruction.' 
 
 To this beautiful relation between master and pupil, 
 
 1 Dr. Drury's Recollections, Moore's Life, i. 58, 59. 
 Ibid. i. 09. 3 Ibid, i, 66.
 
 1801-4.] BYRON'S DISLIKE TO DR. BUTLER. 41 
 
 Byron's relation to Dr. Butler presented, alas ! a complete 
 contrast. In the * Hours of Idleness/ which are rich in 
 allusions to the poet's school and university life, he is 
 described under the character of Pomposus, as ' of narrow 
 brain yet of a narrower soul,' as vain and conceited, 
 pedantic and destitute of social virtues, and the decay 
 of the school is reckoned from his assumption of the 
 head-mastership. 1 In maturer years, indeed, Byron de- 
 plored this as well as many other attacks. A recon- 
 ciliation with Dr. Butler, which he intended to com- 
 memorate in a later edition of the 'Hours of Idleness,' 
 (never, however, called for,) took place in the year 1809, 
 before he departed on his travels to Greece. When Dr. 
 Butler, according to custom, invited the pupils of the 
 higher classes to dinner at the end of the term, it is 
 said that Byron, contrary to all rules of propriety, refused 
 the invitation, and when interrogated by Dr. Butler as to 
 the grounds of this strange conduct, is also said to have 
 given him the less courteous than manly and sincere 
 answer : ' If you, Dr. Butler, should happen to come into 
 my neighbourhood, when I was staying at Newstead, I 
 certainly should not ask you to dine with me, and there- 
 fore feel that I ought not to dine with you.' 2 Dr. Butler, 
 indeed, assured Moore 3 that this anecdote, communicated 
 by a school companion of the poet, had very little founda- 
 tion in fact ; but the qualification ' very little ' proves that 
 the story is, notwithstanding, not without some ground. 
 On another occasion, when Byi^on to the great vexation of 
 Dr. Butler, tore down all the gratings from the window 
 of the hall in the doctor's house, he answered, on being 
 asked the reason for his conduct, ' Because they darkened 
 
 1 ' On a Change of Masters at a great Public School,' Works, vii. 37. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, i. 87, 88. 
 
 3 Note in 2nd edition of Moore's Life, i. 88.
 
 42 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JE-i. 13-16 
 
 the hall.' l His conduct was, however, not always in 
 opposition nor destructive, as the following anecdote, 
 omitted in Moore's narrative, will show. In one of their 
 rebellious moods the boys, wanting to set fire to a class- 
 room, Byron restrained them from the attempt by pointing 
 to the names, written and carved on the desks, of their 
 fathers and grandfathers who had become the ornaments 
 of their country. 2 
 
 How under such circumstances it would fare with 
 Byron's progress and studies, may easily be conceived. 
 For a mind of his stamp, Harrow, with its almost exclu- 
 sive devotion to the dead languages, was not the appro- 
 priate place of culture: the too predominant classical 
 element failed to interest him ; and again he was more 
 or less left to his own self-instruction. Horace, by con- 
 tinual repetition, was made odious to him for his whole 
 life. It is the old story exemplified in Shakspeare, Scott, 
 and many others : Byron learnt little Latin and less Greek. 
 Learning and poetry are only to a certain extent compat- 
 ible with each other in the same mind ; either attaining 
 perfection excludes the other. The poetical translations 
 from Greek and Latin poets in the ' Hours of Idleness ' 
 prove nothing to the contrary ; they are mere school exer- 
 cises. In his Greek school-books the easiest Greek words 
 are underlined with their English equivalents, as if he 
 were not very sure of their meaning. 3 He was generally 
 regarded by all his masters as an idle boy, and, as he 
 himself says, ' no one had the least notion that I should 
 subside into poetry.' 4 It was the talent of an orator 
 which was ascribed to him. Dr. Drury 5 saw in him the 
 future distinguished parliamentary speaker. This ex- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, I 87. 
 
 3 Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 85, 2nd edition. 1824. 
 
 3 Moore's Life, i. 88. 4 Moore's Life, i. 62. 5 Ibid.
 
 180 1-4. J BYRON NO STUDENT AT HARROW. 43 
 
 pectation was chiefly founded on the fact, that he chose 
 for his recitations the most passionate pieces, as, for 
 instance, Lear's address to the storm. 1 Harrow, like the 
 other public schools, and even the universities, bestowed 
 little attention on that which would have had pre-eminent 
 attractions for Byron the modern languages and their 
 literature, the English language not excepted. History 
 and geography were almost entirely left to private dili- 
 gence. Thus it was that Byron never acquired a facility 
 in speaking French, a defect which in later life he often 
 enough had occasion to deplore. Of German he learnt 
 still less, and the little he acquired he soon forgot. On 
 the other hand, works of history, of biography, of poetry 
 and even of philosophy, he read, both during his school 
 and university days, in profusion, and with his fine 
 memory not without lasting benefit ; but it was a strange 
 medley without plan or purpose. 2 Besides Little's (Moore's) 
 poems, 3 we find in this mass of reading Lord Straugford's 
 Camoens, 4 and the autobiography of Lord Herbert, of 
 Cherbury, the father of the English Deists. He was also, 
 of course, a great reader of novels. The favourite place, 
 to which he was wont to retire with his books and his 
 thoughts, was a venerable elm near a tomb in the church- 
 yard, which by the boys was generally called Byron's 
 tomb, and under this name is shown to this day. 5 From 
 thence he enjoyed a view unique in its way which the 
 situation of Harrow, on one of the most considerable 
 heights which surround the basin of London, afforded 
 
 1 Moore's Life, vii. 50. 2 Ibid. i. 140 et seq. 
 
 3 In a letter to Moore (June 9, 1820) he thus humorously speaks of 
 the effects of these poems : ' I have just been turning over Little, which 
 I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth summer. Heigho ! 
 I believe all the mischief I have ever done, or sung, has been owing to 
 that confounded book of yours.' (iv. 326.) 
 4 Ibid. i. 119. 5 'Lines wri/^n beneath an Elm,' Works, vii. 187.
 
 44 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 13-] 6. 
 
 him. He saw, indeed, on the bounds of the horizon, no 
 mountains in the blue distance, no lakes sparkling, no 
 ships dancing on the distant waves of the sea : but before 
 him the green landscape stretched in lovely undulations 
 like a garden, and the battlements and towers of Windsor 
 shone in the evening light, and, veiled in perpetual mist, 
 the domes and spires of London uprose as from a sea, like 
 phantom forms of supernatural magnitude from out the 
 mirage of the desert. In this churchyard the young poet 
 desired to be committed to his mother earth ; and when 
 in the year 1822 his natural daughter Allegra died, he 
 caused her to be buried there. 
 
 His Harrow life was for Byron the period of enthusiastic 
 youthful friendships. ' My school friendships,' he says 
 himself in his Journal of 1821, * were with me passions, for 
 I was always violent.' * This may be explained from his 
 natural disposition, from his having no brothers, and from 
 want of the discipline of a well-regulated family; only 
 here he found objects for his affections. TO this passion 
 Byron gave the most eloquent expression in his youthful 
 poem (first printed in the year 1832) ' L'Amitie estl'Amour 
 sans Ailes,' 2 which, from some unknown motives, he did 
 not admit into the ' Hours of Idleness,' but in which he 
 has immortalised all the friends of his youth. Of these 
 the greater number were younger than Byron, but he 
 loved to play the part of their protector and Mentor, and 
 to regard them, to a certain extent, as his satellites. With 
 one or two exceptions they all belonged to the aristocracy, 
 and save Robert Peel none of them afterwards attained 
 distinction ; several of them died prematurely in early life. 
 Byron, indeed, once said, that almost all his school com- 
 panions had become famous, but he had formed no friend- 
 ships there with those whom he cites in proof of this 
 
 1 Mi ore's Life, i. 63. a Ibid. vii. 161.
 
 1801-4.] HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIPS. 45 
 
 assertion. His most intimate friends were Wildman, who 
 afterwards became the proprietor of Newste ad, the Duke of 
 Dorset, who was his fag, Tatersall, Wingfield, Lord Dela- 
 ware, Lord Clare, and Sir Robert Peel. His friendship with 
 Lord Clare was one of the earliest, the most tender and 
 enduring. ' I never hear the word " Clare," ' he writes in 
 his Journal of 1821, ' without a beating of the heart even 
 now, and I write it with the feelings of ] 803-4-5 ad 
 infinitum.' l The accidental meeting of the two friends 
 in the year 1821, on the road between Imola and Bologna, 
 profoundly agitated both, and transported them to the 
 happy days of their youth. His relations with Peel, who 
 was born in the same year with himself, Byron has de- 
 scribed in the following words : ' We were on good terms, 
 but his brother was my intimate friend. There were 
 always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and 
 scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar 
 he was greatly my superior ; as a declaimer and actor I 
 was reckoned at least his equal ; as a schoolboy out of 
 school I was always in scrapes, and he never ; and in 
 school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely. But when 
 I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general informa- 
 tion, history, &c., I think I was his superior, as well 
 as of most boys of my standing.' 2 When Peel was once 
 being unmercifully beaten by an older boy, who claimed 
 the right to fag little Peel, Byron ventured to interrupt 
 the tormentor with the question, how many stripes he 
 meant to inflict ? ' Why ? ' returned he, f you little rascal, 
 what is that to you ? ' ' Because, if you please,' said 
 Byron, holding out his arm, * I would take half.' 3 In like 
 manner to William Harness, 4 suffering from a severe ill- 
 ness, and lame like himself, he offered his protection with 
 
 1 Moore's Life, I 63. 2 Ibid. i. 62. 
 
 3 Ibid. i. 61).' 4 Ibid. i. 71.
 
 46 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [J&r. 16. 
 
 these words : f Harness, if anyone bullies you, tell me, 
 and I'll thrash him if I can.' l 
 
 But Byron was not content with the passion of friend- 
 ship, the * Amour sans ailes,' he became the slave of 
 ' friendship with wings.' In Aberdeen it was Mary Duff, 
 with whom he played, in Dulwich it was Margaret Parker, 
 who kindled in him the spark of poetry, in Harrow it was 
 Mary Ann Chaworth and her he hoped to make his bride. 
 So far the gradation was very natural ; and of all his love 
 affairs that with Miss Chaworth most enlists our sympathy. 
 After another visit to Bath in the autumn of 1802, in 
 which she was accompanied by her son, Mrs. Byron had 
 settled at Nottingham, Newstead, at that time, having been 
 let to Lord Grey de Euthen. Here with his mother Byron 
 spent the summer holidays of the following year (1803). 
 He was, however, so attracted by Newstead, that he almost 
 daily wandered thither, and thankfully accepted the offer 
 made to him by Lord Grey of a room, where he might pass 
 the night whenever he chose. From Newstead he paid 
 visits to the Chaworth family at Annesley, to whom he had 
 before been introduced in London, and here learned to know 
 and to love the young heiress, Mary Ann Chaworth. Miss 
 Chaworth's father had died a short time before, and the 
 mother is said to have favoured Byron. The young lady 
 was equally endowed with amiability of character and 
 personal charms, and was now in her eighteenth year, 
 while Byron was in his sixteenth. Although an apart- 
 
 1 Harness, four years younger than Byron, died Nov. 1869 : he became 
 a clergyman in London and published, among other works, TTie Con- 
 nection of Christianity with Human Happiness, 2 vols. London, 1823; and 
 Parochial Sermons, 1838. He wrote also some dramas and poems. Henry 
 Crabb Robinson (Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, iii. 212) 
 characterises him thus : 'A clergyman with Oxford propensities, and a 
 worshipper of the heathen muses as well as the Christian graces.' 
 Harness published also a variorum edition of Shakespeare in 8 vols. 1825. 
 See Athenceum, Nov. 20, 1869, p. 663 ; Nov. 27, 1869, p. 701 et, seq.
 
 1804.] BYRON'S LOVE FOR MARY CHAWORTH. 47 
 
 ment was offered to the youth at Annesley, he at first 
 returned every evening to Newstead ; he was afraid, he 
 said jestingly, of the family pictures in Annesley Hall, par- 
 ticularly of the portrait of the Mr. Chaworth who had been 
 killed in the duel. Love for the living, however, rapidly 
 overcame his dread of the dead ; and he soon remained 
 to pass the night at the house of the object of his love : a 
 ghost, he again playfully asserted, had met him on the 
 way home, and he dreaded ghosts even more than he did 
 the ancestors. He even accompanied the family to the 
 watering-place of Matlock, and to the romantic Castleton, 
 famous for its caverns (both in Derbyshire); and Matlock 
 furnished a scene which presents a striking similarity with 
 one from Scott's life. There was a ball at Matlock, at 
 which Miss Chaworth shone as a dancer, whilst her lame 
 worshipper was obliged to look on in all the torture of 
 jealousy, and had not even the satisfaction, which Scott 
 had, of leading his fair one in to supper. At Annesley he 
 spent his time in riding with Miss Chaworth and her 
 cousin, or in firing at an old door or he sat in idle 
 reverie playing with his handkerchief beside her, whom 
 he called his ' bright morning star of Annesley.' He was 
 delighted when she sang to him the pensive music of 
 popular melodies, for like all poets he loved the simple 
 pathos of such airs. Six weeks the sweet dream lasted, 
 but these six weeks sufficed to stamp their impress on 
 the whole course of his life. Contradicting his own 
 
 saying : 
 
 Man's love is of man's life' a thing apart, 
 'Tis woman's whole existence ; l 
 
 he never found the strength of a man to shake off the 
 past, but loved to revel in the old memories the more pain- 
 ful they became. Washington Irving, indeed, is convinced 
 
 1 Dan Juan, i. 194.
 
 48 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [IBis. 16. 
 
 that he intentionally hrooded over the past, because he knew 
 that this intoxication of memory was for him a mine of 
 poetry ; and certainly the 'Dream,' in which he has de- 
 scribed his relation to Miss Chaworth, and which he wrote 
 in the year 1816 at Diodati amid a flood of tears, is among 
 the most touching productions not only of Byron's muse 
 but of all lyrical poetry. The dream came to an end, in a 
 way most painful to Byron. One evening he heard or 
 was it some tale-bearer who reported it ? Miss Chaworth. 
 saying to her maid : ' Do you think I could care anything 
 for that lame boy ? ' ' Like the sting of a scorpion, the 
 mention of his lameness pierced his heart, and spite 
 of the lateness of the hour, he rushed out of the house, 
 not caring whither he went, and never stopped till he 
 found himself at Newstead. He discovered that at the 
 best Miss Chaworth cherished only a sister's feeling for 
 him. In the nature of things it could not be otherwise ; 
 Miss Chaworth was then in the first stage and bloom of 
 womanhood, Byron in the last and most unpleasing of 
 boyhood, and spite of the apparently small difference of 
 years, no bridge leads over this abyss. Byron at a later 
 period flattered himself that a marriage with her would 
 have joined together two neighbouring properties, have 
 extinguished old family feuds, and given to his whole 
 life a different and a happier turn : but speculation on 
 possibilities of this nature must naturally be barren and 
 fruitless. Notwithstanding his rushing away from her 
 house in the night, the pain of a formal farewell was 
 not spared him. This took place the year after on a 
 hill at Annesley, which he describes in the ' Dream ' as 
 ' crowned with a peculiar diadem.' 2 ( The next time I 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 83. 
 
 2 The ' diadem of trees ' has long ceased to stand ; in a fit of jealous 
 anger at the poem which Byron addressed to his wife, Mr. Musters 
 levelled the place with the ground.
 
 1805.] BYRON'S DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE. 49 
 
 see you ' were his last words to her ' I suppose you 
 will be Mrs. Chaworth.' 'I hope so' was her answer. 1 
 Immediately after this holiday dream, she was betrothed 
 to Mr. John Musters, a handsome man, distinguished 
 in the sporting world she is said to have seen him for the 
 first time at the head of a fox-hunt and the heir of Colwick 
 Hall, close to Nottingham. The marriage took place in 
 August, 1805, Mr. Musters assuming the name of Chaworth, 
 which, however, he bore for a few years only. A person 
 who was present when the intelligence was broken to him 
 thus describes the scene : ' Byron,' said his mother, ( I have 
 some news for you.' 'Well, what is it ? ' ' Take out your 
 handkerchief, for you will want it.' ' Nonsense.' ' Take 
 out your handkerchief, I say.' He did so, to humour her. 
 { Miss Chaworth is married.' He hurried his handkerchief 
 into his pocket, saying, with an affected indifference, ' Is 
 that all ? ' though a deadly paleness overspread his coun- 
 tenance. To his mother's remark, 'Why I expected you 
 would have been plunged in grief ! ' he made no reply, and 
 turned the conversation to another subject. 2 Had his 
 mother treated the matter more gravely and worthily, he 
 would not have shut up his feelings so defiantly in his own 
 breast ; and in this example we see very plainly how the 
 heartlessness of those to whom he was allied by the ties 
 of nature influenced his character, and how the same 
 heartlessness drove him to poetry. Henceforward the 
 Muse became his confidant, and took the place of mother 
 and of mistress. Byron saw Mrs. Chaworth in the year 
 1808, when he was invited to dine at Annesley by her 
 husband. After dinner, on her little daughter being in- 
 troduced, he started involuntarily and with the greatest 
 difficulty concealed his emotion. On his departure for 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 85. 2 Ibid. \. SO.
 
 50 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [J*r. 17. 
 
 Greece in the following year his thoughts unbidden re- 
 turned to her, and he took farewell of her in several 
 poems. 
 
 Mrs. Chaworth's future life was still more melancholy 
 than Byron's. Her husband was destitute of all high 
 culture : his favourite and almost his only occupation 
 was sport, especially fox-hunting, and his conduct to his 
 wife was unkind and unfeeling. ' Domestic sorrows,' says 
 Washington Irving, ' long preyed in secret on her heart.' 
 In ' The Dream ' it is said of her : 
 
 Upon her face there was the tint of grief, 
 The settled shadow of an inward strife, 
 And an unquiet drooping of the eye, 
 As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. 
 
 The more painfully must she have felt her position, as 
 she saw the growth of Byron's fame, casting its beams 
 over the world. Hours, surely, must have come over her, 
 when she would have been proud to call ' the lame boy ' 
 her own. It is said that at a later period she asked to 
 meet Byron, who, however, following his sister's advice, 
 declined the request. 1 At last she separated from her 
 husband, fell into bad health, and ' the bright Morning 
 Star of Annesley ' passed under the cloud of mental dark- 
 ness. In the beginning of 1832, when the rioters of 
 Nottingham plundered Colwick Hall, she and her daughter 
 were obliged to conceal themselves in the shrubbery. Fear 
 and the consequent exposure so shattered her, that she 
 succumbed to her sufferings in February 1832, at Wiverton 
 Hall near Nottingham. Her life too by Byron's side how 
 different might it have become, and perhaps happier far ! 
 Her husband died in 1850, and after his death every me- 
 mento of his wife and her ancient family was sold by 
 public auction. 
 
 1 See Bvron's own statement in his letter to Monsieur J. J. Coulmann.
 
 1805.] BYRON AT TRINITY COLLEGE. 51 
 
 A few weeks after Miss Chaworth's marriage Byron 
 went to the University of Cambridge (October 1805), 
 where he became a member of Trinity College. The 
 advice of Dr. Drury, who belonged to the same college, 
 probably led to this step. Byron's own wishes leaned 
 towards Oxford, and he freely vented his indignation 
 against Cambridge, which had thus been forced on him. 
 He escaped from the University as often as he could, so 
 that it is very difficult to form a connected notion of his 
 outer and inner college life. In one of his rank and social 
 position, the study of any special science qualifying him 
 for a profession would not of course be considered. This 
 is not, indeed, the principle or purpose of the English 
 universities, which are but the termination and completion 
 of the liberal education which befits an English gentle- 
 man. Byron's mind, with its universal tendencies, could 
 never be attracted by either of the two centres, classics 
 and mathematics, round which, even to the present hour, 
 the studies of Cambridge revolve; on the contrary, in 
 the satire ' Granta ' one of the feeblest pieces, indeed, 
 in the ' Hours of Idleness' he repelled these studies with 
 disdain, as useless knowledge. He refused to be con- 
 strained to work according to any fixed and uniform 
 scheme ; the free universitas litterarum of our German uni- 
 versities would have been more in harmony with his nature. 
 The intellectual nourishment, which would have har- 
 monised with his inclinations and abilities, was precisely 
 that which was never offered to him philosophy, political 
 history, the history of literature, aesthetics, poetry, &c. 
 These studies, the glory of the German universities, play 
 a lamentably subordinate part, even to this day, at the Eng- 
 lish universities. These institutions have been condemned 
 by the greatest minds of England herself, and English 
 national literature stands for the most part beyond 
 
 E 2
 
 52 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [J2r. 17. 
 
 academic circle, if not in an attitude of hostility to it. The 
 warmth of enthusiasm never possessed his spirit at Cam- 
 bridge, which could there find no stay, outward or inward. 
 Without aim or purpose, he divided his university years 
 between the pedantic learning of Cambridge, the fashion- 
 able follies of the great city, and the provincial retirement 
 of Southwell. These were years of leisure or idleness, the 
 only visible fruits of which were the * Hours of Idleness.' 
 From these circumstances may be explained the paucity 
 of the notices of Byron's academical life and doings. Of 
 the professors a few only are incidentally mentioned. The 
 master of the college was Dr. William Lort Mansell, 
 appointed to that post in 1 798 ; he afterwards became (1808) 
 Bishop of Bristol, and died in 1820. Though in early 
 life celebrated as a wit and man of the world, he yet dis- 
 charged his duties with ability and dignity, and Byron 
 could not refuse him his respect.' The students, and among 
 them Byron's friend Matthews, of whom we shall speak 
 immediately, often played tricks at his expense : they 
 awoke him at night by hideous noises under his bedroom, 
 and when he appeared at the window, foaming with rage 
 and crying out, ' I know you, gentlemen, I know you,' they 
 answered him profanely using his Christian name : 'We 
 beseech thee to hear us, good Lort good Lort, deliver 
 us.' Byron's tutor in college was the Rev. George Tavell, 
 who zealously but vainly endeavoured to put a stop to his 
 excesses. 2 To Professor Hailstone, Byron always showed 
 the greatest courtesy, while of the celebrated Hellenist, 
 Porson, he draws, as he could not but do, a revolting 
 picture. 3 Instruction he gained neither from the one 
 nor from the other. With his innate shyness Byron did 
 not at first feel himself at home among the students : one 
 
 1 See Hours of Idleness, vii. 94. 
 
 8 See Hints from Horace, ix. 65. 3 Hid. \v. 85.
 
 1805.] BYRON'S COLLEGE FKIENDS A"ND ASSOCIATES. 53 
 
 friend only he had brought with him from Harrow, Noel 
 Long, 1 who was also a member of Trinity College and his 
 companion and rival in all sports and amusements. After- 
 wards a second school companion, William Harness, came 
 from Harrow. In the choice of his associates he was no 
 longer guided exclusively by his aristocratic tendencies ; 
 intellectual accomplishments also determined his choice. 
 Thus he formed an enthusiastic friendship with a chorister 
 of the name of Eddlestone, a delicate youth in humble 
 circumstances, who, as usual with his friends, was two 
 years younger than himself; a cornelian, which he had 
 received as a present from him, he valued and preserved 
 as a kind of amulet. 2 
 
 Without regard to the order of time, which is not to be 
 ascertained, in which Byron came first in contact with 
 them, the most prominent members of his Cambridge 
 circle may here at once be mentioned, Matthews, Davies, 
 Hodgson, Bankes, and Hobhouse. Charles Skinner Mat- 
 thews is described, specially by the prejudiced Dallas, 3 as 
 a rank atheist, who caused the ruin of Byron's soul, and 
 whose early death he was drowned while bathing in the 
 Cam, August 2, 1811 was regarded by him as a manifest 
 judgment. But in truth he was not only an amiable 
 man, but a man of distinguished abilities, of great pro- 
 mise, and of extraordinary wit and humour, to whom 
 Byron looked up as he did to no other of his friends, and 
 who undoubtedly exercised no inconsiderable influence 
 over him. To Byron's heart Scrope Berdmore Davies 
 probably stood nearer than Matthews. From him Byron 
 sought consolation, when he felt himself utterly desolate 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 94. 
 
 3 See Hours of Idleness, vii. 99. See also Childe Harold, ii. 9, 
 viii. 70. 
 
 * Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, p. 325. London, 1824.
 
 r>4 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 17- 
 
 and bowed down by the almost simultaneous death of his 
 mother and their common friend Matthews. ' Come to 
 me, Scrope, I am almost desolate left almost alone in the 
 world. I had but you and Hobhouse and Matthews, and 
 let me enjoy the survivors whilst I can.' 1 Davies also 
 relieved him by a loan of 4,80(K., which Byron repaid in 
 the year 1814. To him ' Parisina ' was dedicated, in the 
 year 1816. Though obliged to borrow for his own neces- 
 sities, Byron was nevertheless generous to others, and at 
 the same period, to a third friend, Francis Hodgson, he 
 repeatedly made most liberal advances. Hodgson, to 
 whom several of his poems are addressed, afterwards 
 attained a respectable position in literature, and died as 
 Provost of Eton in the year 1852. William Bankes was, 
 like Byron, a member of Trinity College. Byron highly 
 esteemed him, and while in Italy maintained a corre- 
 spondence with him. Returning from his great scientific 
 travels, Bankes paid him a visit at Ravenna. Lastly, John 
 Cam Hobhouse was, as is well known, on several occa- 
 sions Byron's travelling companion, and his description of 
 their common pilgrimage 2 is still held in much respect 
 as a work abounding in peculiar merit. He also belonged 
 to Trinity College. At a later period he was Byron's best 
 man at his marriage and the executor of his will. To him 
 the 'Siege of Corinth' and the Fourth Canto of 'Childe 
 Harold' are inscribed. According to Medwin, 3 Byron's 
 friendship with him, like that with Moore, originated in 
 a contemplated duel. So much Byron himself confirms, 
 
 1 Letter to S. Davies, Moore's Life, ii. 39. 
 
 3 Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turlanj with Lord 
 By ran, third edition, 2 vols. 1856. 
 
 3 Otrnwritttiotu with Lord Byron, p. 18. [Lord Byron was never con- 
 cenied in a duel in his life, either as second or principal. He was once 
 rntlicr near fighting a duel, nnd that was with an officer of the staff of 
 General Oakes, at Malta. Hobhouse in the West. Itcriftv, January 1815, 
 p. 21.]
 
 1805.] BYRON'S FRIENDSHIP WITH HOBHOUSE. 55 
 
 that Hobhouse hated him for two years, because he wore 
 a white hat and a grey coat and rode a grey horse. 1 
 Their friendship, moreover, was no passing youthful in- 
 toxication, but ripened into an intimate life-long union, 
 firmly based in mutual respect. Next to Moore there 
 was no one, in the true sense of the word, more Byron's 
 friend than Hobhouse, although Byron complained to 
 Lady Blessington that Hobhouse, too often, spoke the 
 unvarnished truth to him, a point on which Byron was, 
 or became, extremely sensitive. 2 How affecting is the 
 description which the Countess Guiccioli gives of the 
 meeting of the friends at Pisa ! 3 it is the counterpart to 
 the scene with Lord Clare. 
 
 Byron has the reputation of having spent his time at 
 Cambridge in a dissipated and licentious manner. The 
 greater part of this ill repute he owes to himself, from the 
 intentionally exaggerated description he ever gives of his 
 youthful follies and excesses. We shall often have occa- 
 sion to notice the zest, arising partly from vanity, partly 
 from bitterness, with which he loves to paint himself in 
 the darkest colours. To this also must be superadded his 
 undisguised antipathy to all conditions and surroundings 
 which seemed to thwart him there, the love of making 
 himself remarkable, the family headstrong character which 
 he inherited, and the want of the discipline of domestic 
 life, and of refined society, especially of women. He was 
 not, however, at Cambridge at least, either licentious or 
 vicious, godless or wicked. Rather he was eccentric, but 
 not morally worse than the majority of those young men 
 who, during their student life, according to the English 
 proverb, ' sow their wild oats.' He did not walk in the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 182. 2 Canvcrsations with Lord Byron, p. 93. 
 
 3 See Moore's Life, v. 360 ; Edinburgh Review, No, cclxxii. p. 294 
 (April, 1871).
 
 5(5 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^T. 18. 
 
 customary rut, but went his own way ; a transgression 
 which is never forgiven by those narrow minds who 
 regard the keeping of the beaten track as the highest 
 duty and conditio sine qua nan of the respectable man. 
 Even at this early period Byron showed his determined 
 opposition to the theological, not to say priestly, spirit 
 which predominates at the English Universities. Unable, 
 under such circumstances, to develope the energy of his 
 nature and his intellectual ambition, he continued to read 
 only in the most desultory manner; he devoted himself 
 with the utmost vehemence to all athletic exercises. To dis- 
 tinguish himself in riding, swimming, and diving, in shoot- 
 ing, boxing, and cricket, was, in his estimation, the highest 
 and most desirable accomplishment of youth. Drinking, 
 too, and perhaps play, he considered a constituent portion of 
 these manly diversions. In riding he is said at first to have 
 made no proficiency, and Moore 1 indeed doubts whether he 
 ever acquired any special dexterity in it, a surmise which 
 Byron himself seems to confirm in a letter to Miss Pigot. 2 
 In Southwell he is said not to have known his own horses; 
 as they once passed by his window he praised their great 
 beauty and expressed a desire to buy them. 3 In shooting 
 at a mark he greatly excelled. In diving he was the rival 
 of his friend Long ; they were wont to practise their art 
 in a place where the Cam is fourteen feet deep, and, from 
 its by no means crystal waters, to bring up plates and 
 eggs, and even shillings. 4 It is known that he kept for 
 some time a tame bear in his rooms, and on his departure 
 from College gave offence to the Cambridge dons by the 
 remark, that he left the bear behind, in order that it 
 might be elected a fellow of the college in his stead. 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 133. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 175. Compare Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord 
 liyron, p. 55. 
 
 ' Moore's Life, i. 133. 4 Ibid. i. 94.
 
 1806.] BYKON AT SOUTHWELL. 57 
 
 From the summer of 1806 to the June of 1807, Byron 
 spent a whole year at Southwell, to which his mother had 
 removed in the year 1804. Southwell, at the present day 
 with its 3,500 inhabitants, is a quiet country spot, half 
 town, half village, situated in an undulating plain, rich in 
 pastures, a few miles to the north of Nottingham and the 
 east of Newstead. It is not without a cultivated body of 
 inhabitants, consisting principally of clergy and retired 
 professional men, nor without important historical recol- 
 lections. A noble old Minster in the Norman style, 
 surrounded by not less noble trees, rises majestically above 
 surrounding houses enclosed in gardens, and opposite to it 
 stand the picturesque ivy-clad ruins of a former palace of 
 the Archbishops of York. It is still remembered that 
 Charles I. once took refuge here ; and that Cromwell, * the 
 immortal rebel,' 1 besieged the archiepiscopal residence, 
 and quartered his cavalry in the cathedral. Here on an 
 open green space, Burgage Green, Mrs. Byron hired a 
 house, in which Byron in 1804 spent his Harrow holidays. 
 To the distinguished social position which he assumed, 
 a play-bill, still preserved, of a strolling company oi 
 actors, dated in the above-mentioned year, bears witness ; 
 for the piece to be performed is described as ordered 
 by Mrs. and Lord Byron. Byron appears to have felt 
 himself far more at home here than at Cambridge, 
 although, after he came to know the charms of London 
 life, he repeatedly execrated the ennui and vulgarity of 
 Southwell, and declared that he hated it ; and assuredly, 
 for a place so retired, he was, for any long period, 
 utterly unfitted. The chief advantage was that he found 
 some compensation for the domestic life, which was so 
 painfully wanting in his own home, and particularly 
 that he enjoyed the society of cultivated women. Of 
 
 1 Childe Harold, iv. 85.
 
 58 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [jfir. 18. 
 
 the Pigot family, which lived in a house on the opposite 
 side of the Green, he became, during this period, 
 almost a member. With the son, John Pigot, 1 who 
 studied medicine in Edinburgh and spent his university 
 vacations at home, as with his sister, Miss Elizabeth 
 Bridget Pigot, 2 he formed an almost fraternal intimacy. 
 In their society he laid aside, to a certain extent, the 
 shyness which so over-mastered him, that on the arrival 
 of a visitor he often sprang out of the window, and which 
 made him averse to returning the visits of neighbours, 
 and this all the more as though of inferior social rank, 
 they lived for the most part in much better style. For 
 his poetical efforts, also, he found in the Pigot family 
 a warm, and to him hitherto unknown, sympathy and 
 encouragement. John Pigot likewise possessed a poetical 
 vein, and to his sister Byron once jestingly wrote, that her 
 brother was now rhyming away at the rate of three lines 
 per hour. 3 A worthy clergyman also, Mr. J. T. Becher, 4 
 took great interest in his first poetical attempts, and gave 
 him much well-meant advice; and directed him specially 
 to the study of Milton and Shakspeare, and, above all, of 
 the Bible. 
 
 His own domestic condition was, alas ! flagrantly con- 
 trasted with this cheerful pleasant society. The young 
 man, conscious of his position as a peer, refused to be 
 
 1 [J. M. B. Pigot, Esq., M.D., the last survivor, in all probability, of 
 the Southwell circle, died at Ruddington (Notts), March 26, 1871, in 
 his 86th year.] 
 
 2 Miss Pigot, who died in the year 1866, at a good old age in her 
 paternal town, regarded it as the business of her life and heart to pre- 
 serve the memory of Byron. But to her he ever remained the poet of 
 the Hours of Idleness ; his youth was to her, even with regard to his 
 poetry, the period of his glory. 
 
 8 Moore's Life, i. 113. 
 
 4 Mr. Becher devoted himself to the improvement of the state of the 
 poor, and published at a later period a treatise, The Anti-Pauper System, 
 London, 1828.
 
 1806.] QUARRELS BETWEEN BYRON AND HIS MOTHER. 59 
 
 treated any longer as a child, but claimed a corresponding 
 independence. His pride and self-will on the one hand, 
 and still more the unmeasured violence of the mother on 
 the other, led to terrible, and, were they not raised above 
 all doubt, to almost incredible scenes. Things came to 
 such a pass, that after a quarrel one evening, both 
 mother and son secretly stole out during the night to the 
 apothecary's, each making enquiry whether the other 
 had not bought poison, and warning the apothecary not 
 to attend to any such application. Byron beheld in 
 all this the fulfilment of what the fortune-teller in 
 Cheltenham had formerly predicted about him. On 
 a certain occasion, when Mrs. Byron, not content with 
 smashing plates and cups, seized the fire-irons, and threw 
 the poker at her son, he, after advising with his friends, 
 the Pigots, thought it most advisable to take flight at 
 once. He hastened to London ; his mother his amiable 
 Alecto, as he calls her on this occasion as soon as she 
 learnt his place of abode, pursued him thither. Here a 
 peace, or rather a truce, was made between them, from 
 which Byron, according to his own assertion, came forth 
 victor. 1 His mother returned to Southwell, while he 
 repaired to the small watering-places of Worthing and 
 Little Hampton on the coast of Sussex, and in spite of 
 her opposition ordered his groom to follow him thither 
 with his horses and dogs. 2 
 
 When the domestic storm had blown over Byron re- 
 turned at the end of August to Southwell, whence shortly 
 afterwards, accompanied by his friend Pigot, he made an 
 excursion to the watering-place of Harrogate in York- 
 shire. They drove in Byron's own carriage with post-horses, 
 Byron's favourite dog, Boatswain, sitting by the side of 
 the servant on the box. Another dog, a formidable bull- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 107. 
 
 2 See Letters to Mr. Pigot, Moore's Life, i. 108, 109.
 
 60 LIFE OF LORD BYBON. [jEr. 19. 
 
 dog called Nelson, who could not be left unmuzzled, 
 followed with the groom and the riding horses. Byron 
 sometimes took delight in removing the muzzle from 
 the bull-dog, and setting him to fight with the New- 
 foundland Boatswain. On one such occasion Nelson dis- 
 appeared, rushed into the stable, and so bit one of the 
 horses in the throat that the servant, to Byron's great 
 regret, was obliged to shoot him with one of his master's 
 constantly loaded pistols. John Pigot, to whom we owe 
 these little details, 1 dwells much on the shyness before 
 strangers which Byron displayed on this tour, and which 
 had been considered by many, falsely, as pride. To Pro- 
 fessor Hailstone alone, whom he knew at Cambridge, did 
 he make any advances, but to him he showed the most 
 respectful attention. 
 
 During his subsequent residence at Southwell, Byron 
 occupied himself partly with an amateur theatre, in which 
 he played a prominent part, and partly with the printing 
 of his youthful poems. For the performances at the 
 theatre, which took place at the house of a family of 
 the name of Leacroft with which he was intimate, he 
 wrote the prologue. 2 He played with great applause, 
 among other parts, that of Penruddock in the ' Wheel 
 of Fortune/ and Tristram Fickle in Allingham's farce 
 of ' The Weathercock,' being types, as it were, of the 
 two extremes between which his own character, in 
 after life, so singularly oscillated. 3 Byron spoke also 
 the epilogue, written by Mr. Becher, in which the persons 
 who took part in the performance were humorously 
 portrayed ; at the rehearsal he delivered it in so pointless 
 a manner that no one observed its drift and purpose, 
 and all were the more surprised, when at the actual 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, i. 113-15. 2 ' Hours of Idleness/ Works, vii. 10. 
 3 See Moore's Life, i. 117.
 
 1807.] BYRON PUBLISHES HIS EARLY POEMS. 61 
 
 representation, throwing into it all his talent for mimicry, 
 he brought .out its true meaning, amid the general 
 laughter of the company. 
 
 The printing of the poems, which Byron with Pigot's 
 help had carried on for some time, was finished in 
 November. 1 It was a thin volume of a few quarto sheets 
 printed by Kidge, a bookseller in Newark, at the author's 
 expense. From his heartless mother, whom he describes 
 as the ' upas tree and antidote of poetry,' Byron had 
 kept back his poetical effusions, making it an express 
 condition with his friend Pigot, that he would not, under 
 any condition, allow her to see or touch his manuscripts. 2 
 The first complete copy he sent to Mr. Becher, who, 
 objecting to a certain poem for its too warm colouring, 
 forthwith expressed his well-meant censure to the young 
 author in some verses. Byron replied both in verse 3 and 
 in prose, and called in immediately the copies which had 
 been distributed, and in Mr. Becher's presence burnt the 
 impression ; Mr. Becher's own copy, and a second which 
 had been sent to Edinburgh, probably to Pigot who had 
 returned thither, alone escaped the auto-da-fe. Surely 
 no poet ever showed greater docility or modesty. 
 
 But Byron was now possessed with the printing fever 
 through which every author has to pass, and considered 
 himself, moreover, bound to make compensation to his 
 friends for the copies he had called in. He accordingly set 
 to work at once upon an expurgated and enlarged edition, 
 which, to the extent of one hundred copies, was ready in 
 the beginning of January 1807. This second impression 
 of the ' Early Poems ' has also disappeared with the 
 exception of a few copies : for this impression too appears 
 partly to have been called in at a later period by the 
 
 1 See Appendix (B). 
 
 2 See Letter to Mr. Pigot, Moore's Life, i. 109. 
 8 See 'Hours of Idleness,' Wwks, vii. 11<3.
 
 62 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [jEt. 19. 
 
 author. One copy lie gave to Henry Edward Pigot, 1 a 
 younger brother of John and Elizabeth, to whom he had 
 stood godfather, and whose grandfather instead of god- 
 father he loved in jest to call himself. Two other copies 
 fell into the hands of Henry Mackenzie (the author of 
 the 'Man of Feeling') and Lord Woodhouselee, 2 both 
 of whom expressed their approbation by letter to the 
 young poet in an encouraging manner. Cheered by this 
 favourable reception, Byron ventured to step beyond the 
 circle of his friends and to appear before the public with 
 his poetical attempts, transforming his ' Early Poems ' 
 into the ' Hours of Idleness,' which were published in 
 March 1807, by Ridge at Newark, a place utterly unknown 
 in the literary world, and again at his own expense. To 
 the poems themselves we shall return. 
 
 Byron went back to Cambridge about the end of June 
 1807, as a poet, who had made his appearance before 
 the public, and who had attained a certain recognition, 
 though in a limited circle, in order to take leave of 
 the University. He changed his mind, however, and 
 consented to remain there another year, at least in 
 name. It is evident that he accommodated himself to 
 college life even less than before, and henceforth he really 
 
 1 It bore the inscription, written in Byron's own hand : 'Harry Edward 
 Pigot : the gift of his grandfather, George Gordon Byron, 1807.' II. E. 
 Pigot entered into the service of the East Inrlia Company, and died 
 October 28, 1830, he being then captain in the Twenty-third regiment 
 of Native Infantry. In the sudden sinking of the vessel in which he 
 was, on the river Coosy, this book, which he had just been reading, was 
 about the only thing which he saved. After his death his daughter 
 
 ought it back to England, where, in September 18(32, it formed the 
 ornament of a bazaar in behalf of the volunteers in East Eetford, and 
 was sold by auction for the sum of 251. Habent sua fata libelli! See 
 the account in No'es and Queries, November 1, 1862, p. 346. 
 
 2 Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, is known by his trans- 
 lation of Schiller's Robbers (1792), which exercised a considerable influ- 
 ence on the study of German literature in Scotland.
 
 1807] BYRON'S LAST YEAR AT CAMBRIDGE. 63 
 
 divided his time between the dissipations of Cambridge 
 and London, until, in the September of the following 
 year, he took up his residence at Newstead. On his 
 return to Cambridge, his friends scarcely recognised him. 
 He had already in Southwell begun his notorious system 
 of reducing himself, and to his great joy had lessened his 
 weight, by means of strong exercise, much medicine, 
 and frequent warm baths, by twenty-seven pounds. The 
 summer vacations of this year he spent at Dorant's Hotel 
 in London, completely left to himself, without family and 
 relations, without the love of father, mother, brothers or 
 sisters a dangerous existence for a youth of nineteen, 
 with such rich endowments and with such strong passions ! 
 The description which Byron gives of Lara's youth he 
 evidently means for his own : 
 
 Left by his sire, too young such loss to know, 
 Lord of himself that heritage of woe, 
 That fearful empire, which the human breast 
 But holds to rob the heart within of rest ! 
 With none to check, and few to point in time 
 The thousand paths that slope the way to crime; 
 Then, when he most required commandment, then 
 Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men. 
 It skills not, boots not, step by step to trace 
 His youth through all the mazes of its race; 
 Short was the course his restlessness had run, 
 But long enough to leave him half undone. 1 
 
 It is only a matter of wonder that he survived all this. 
 He threw himself into the vortex of pleasure and fashion- 
 able life, played the precocious dandy, took instruction 
 in the noble art of boxing with the well-known prize- 
 fighter John Jackson, whom he calls his ' corporeal master 
 and pastor,' 2 swam in the Thames, and played hazard. 
 Accompanied by a fair mistress, who travelled with him 
 in male attire under the name of a younger brother or 
 
 1 Lara, canto i. st. 2. 
 
 8 Note to Don Juan, canto xi. st. 19.
 
 64, LIFE OF LORD BYRON. IXr. 19. 
 
 page, he made excursions to Brighton and elsewhere: 
 he afterwards took her with him on a visit to Newstead. 
 As a matter of course he fell deeper and deeper into 
 debt, and reckoned quite coolly that before he was of age, 
 his debts would amount to nine or ten thousand pounds. 
 At the same time he brooded over plans of travel to the 
 Scottish Highlands, and even to Iceland, but forbids a 
 correspondent to inform his mother of his intentions, 
 dreading, as he says, the ' usual maternal war-whoop.' l 
 
 His budding authorship formed, strange to say, the only 
 counterpoise to these ruinous excesses. He saw, with 
 gratified vanity, his youthful work in the windows of the 
 booksellers' shops, heard of its not inconsiderable sale, and 
 read the favourable criticisms which appeared of it in the 
 ' Literary Recreations,' and the ' Critical Review '- 
 periodicals which have been long forgotten. In a third, 
 the ' Satirist,' he was censured in a spirit in harmony with 
 its title. His poems were graciously received especially 
 among the ranks of the nobility, and the Duchess of 
 Gordon, wife of the chief of his clan on the mother's side, 
 wished to make his acquaintance. Stimulated by this 
 success he set himself to greater poetical works ; he began 
 an epic poem, 'Bosworth Field,' and a romance, neither 
 of which, was ever completed. He wrote also a review of 
 Wordsworth's poems for the periodical first mentioned, 
 ' Monthly Literary Recreations.' 2 
 
 During the winter of 1807-8, which he spent in Cam- 
 bridge, his associates appear to have been of a graver 
 and more thoughtful character, and to have exercised 
 a good influence upon him. To this period belongs his 
 intimacy with Hobhouse, who, like him, was devoting 
 himself to literary pursuits. His aversion to the Uni- 
 
 1 Letter to Miss Pigot, Moore's Life, i. 173. 
 
 8 Reprinted in vol. vi. (App.) of the Life nnd Works, p. 293-295.
 
 1808.] ' THE HOUES OF IDLENESS.' 65 
 
 versity, however, continued if possible to increase : he 
 complains that Alma Mater had been to him an injusta 
 noverca,* though he cannot but admit that he had done 
 little to gain either her love or respect. That the University 
 at his departure gave him the degree of Artium Magister, 
 was simply because she could not avoid it. 2 Years after- 
 wards Byron, in the poem of ' Beppo,' could not let the 
 occasion escape him of giving vent in bitter words to his 
 hatred of Cambridge. 3 This and the recollections of his 
 earlier attacks in the ' Hours of Idleness ' called forth a 
 poetical reply from an unknown rhymester, who assumed 
 to speak in the name of Alma Mater, the chief force of 
 which consisted in abuse. The following lines may be 
 taken as a specimen : 4 
 
 Degenerate son, indeed it makes me smile 
 
 To hear thee thus our sacred domes revile, 
 
 In language to my better sons applied, 
 
 Which scullions ofttinies use whene'er they chide. 
 
 Quack of the Mount, Pierian Charlatan, 
 
 Keally, my Lord, your numbers I could swear 
 Were grunted has he left you by your bear. 
 
 Yours is the trade of authorship no more ; 
 You vend your crazy couplets by the score. 
 
 Then might due praises wait on Crabbe and Scott, 
 And thine unhallowed ravings be forgot. 
 
 Thus Cambridge and Byron separated, and only after his 
 death did a reconciliation take place. Trinity College, 
 honouring him and herself, has placed the statue of the 
 
 1 Letter to Harness, Moore's Life, i. 238. 
 
 2 Ibid. 3 Stanza 76. 
 
 4 A Poetical Epistle from Alma Mater to Lord Byron, occasioned by 
 some lines in ' Beppo.' Cambridge, 1819. 
 
 F
 
 66 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19. 
 
 poet, excluded from Westminster Abbey, in her Library, 
 and has thus ranked him with her other great members, 
 Newton and Macaulay, whose statues (by Roubiliac and 
 Woolner) stand in the ante-chapel. A number of his ad- 
 mirers, with Hobhouse at their head, raised by sub- 
 scription the sum of 1,OOOZ., which, however, was in- 
 adequate to secure the services of any eminent British 
 artist; but Thorwaldsen having offered to undertake 
 the work for that sum, the Committee closed with the 
 generous proposal of that illustrious sculptor. The statue, 
 though begun at the end of the year 1829, was not 
 sent to England till 1834. Westminster Abbey, St. 
 Paul's, the British Museum, the National Gallery were 
 each in its turn considered as appropriate places for its 
 reception ; but all even the secular institutions refused 
 to receive it, and the statue remained for ten years or 
 longer unpacked in the cellars of the Custom House. Its 
 exclusion from Westminster Abbey led to an animated 
 controversy, and was the occasion of Hobhouse's ' Remarks 
 on the Exclusion of Lord Byron's Monument from West- 
 minster Abbey.' l The subscribers had not failed to point 
 out to the artist that ' le pied droit de Byron etait un peu 
 contrefait,' and suggested that this defect might be best 
 concealed by a sitting attitude. Thorwaldsen, accordingly, 
 represents Byron seated on some broken fragments of 
 Greek art, on which are carved a lyre and the owl of 
 Athene. In his left hand he holds ' Childe Harold ' half 
 open, while with the right he leans the stylus on his 
 chin, as if he were pursuing a thought which he wished 
 to write down. The left foot rests on the fragment of 
 a Doric column ; the right leg is stretched out, the 
 position suggesting, almost insensibly, the notion of a bodily 
 
 1 Originally printed for private circulation, but afterwards published 
 in the 3rd editiou of his Travels in Albania, i. 522-544.
 
 1808.] THORWALDSEN'S STATUE OF BYRON. 67 
 
 defect. On the ground lies a skull, with reference perhaps 
 to the gloomy and melancholy feelings of the poet, or 
 more particularly to his skull-cup. 1 The head is a repeti- 
 tion of the bust made by Thorwaldsen from life, of which 
 we shall hereafter speak. 
 
 1 Or rather to the stanzas 5 and 6 of the second canto of ' Childe 
 Harold : ' 
 
 ' Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps,' &c/ 
 
 F 2
 
 68 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEx. 20. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NEW8TEAD ABBEY. 
 1808-1809. 
 
 THE priory of Xewstead (de novo Loco) was founded by 
 Henry II. soon after 1170, and dedicated to God and the 
 Yirgin. In all probability its foundation was partly 
 prompted by the desire to expiate the murder of Thomas 
 a Beckett; though on the other hand, along with its 
 religious purposes, there was evidently the intention of 
 securing a strong position for the settling and civilising 
 of the wild district in Sherwoo'd Forest, where, amid 
 the hilly region of Annesley, Newstead lay a few miles 
 to the north-west of Nottingham. It is a peculiar co- 
 incidence, that as Ettrick Forest formed the romantic 
 background of Walter Scott's home and life, so Sherwood 
 Forest, made famous by Robin Hood and his merry 
 men, forms the background of Byron's. Scarcely any 
 other traces, indeed, than poetical legends and re- 
 miniscences, either of Sherwood or of Ettrick Forest, have 
 withstood the destructive influence of time. At and 
 around Newstead are still pointed out Robin Hood's hills, 
 Robin Hood's stable, and Friar Tuck's cell; there is 
 Fountain Dale, where Tuck lived for seven years, and at 
 Mansfield, in close vicinity, now a thriving manufacturing 
 town, is the scene of the ballad ' The King and the Miller 
 of Mansfield.' This poetry of merry Sherwood Forest 
 exercised, however, not the least perceptible influence on
 
 1808.] ACCOUNT 0*' NEW STEAD. 69 
 
 the poetical development of Byron ; while the echo of 
 Ettrick Forest sounds, so to speak, like a refrain through 
 all the life and fictions of Scott. It is remarkable also 
 that it was Scott, and not Byron, who, in ' Ivanhoe,' 
 enchanted us with the old life of Sherwood Forest. The 
 monks at ISTewstead contributed without doubt to put an 
 end to the practices and wild ways of the outlaws of 
 Sherwood. They were canons regular of the order of 
 Saint Augustine, and their merits in the work of civilisa- 
 tion were perhaps the cause of their enjoying the royal 
 favour in things spiritual and temporal. They afterwards 
 sank, in all probability, into luxury, and the Reformation 
 extinguished their power and influence. Henry VIII. ga.ve 
 JSTewstead to the Byron family in reward for faithful and 
 distinguished services. ' Sir John Byron the little, with 
 the great beard,' was the fortunate recipient, and was at 
 the same time appointed Lieutenant of Sherwood Forest. 
 The Abbey was now adapted as much as possible to its 
 secular character; its ecclesiastical character could not, 
 however, be altogether obliterated, and much was still 
 left which recalled its earlier destination. 
 
 The accession of property which the Byrons received 
 by this secularisation was by no means inconsiderable. 
 Newstead at the present day comprises, in wood, meadow 
 and arable land 3,226 acres, with some lakes, well stocked 
 with fish, of about forty-eight acres in extent. The latter 
 were formed by the monks, by damming up a little stream, 
 in order the more conveniently to supply themselves with 
 the fish diet prescribed by their fasts. In one of these 
 lakes, during the life of the fifth lord, a brazen eagle was 
 found, which evidently had been used as a lectern, and 
 within which the monks had concealed many valuable 
 documents and charters belonging to the foundation. 
 These documents have since disappeared, one only of their
 
 70 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [JET. 20. 
 
 number having been saved from destruction by Colonel 
 Wildman ; but the eagle itself, restored to its ancient and 
 original purpose, is now in Southwell Minster. The most 
 beautiful description of Newstead and its park Byron has 
 himself given in * Don Juan.' 
 
 It stood embosom'd in a happy valley, 
 
 Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak 
 Stood like Caractacus, in act to rally 
 
 His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke ; 
 And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally 
 
 The dappled foresters ; as day awoke, 
 The branching stag swept down with all his herd, 
 To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird. 
 
 Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, 
 
 Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed 
 
 By a river, which its soften'd way did take 
 In currents through the calmer water spread 
 
 Around : the wildfowl nestled in the brake 
 And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed : 
 
 The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood 
 
 With their green faces fix'd upon the flood. 
 
 Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade, 
 
 Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding, 
 
 Its shriller echoes like an infant made 
 Quiet sank into softer ripples, gliding 
 
 Into a rivulet ; and thus allay'd, 
 
 Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding 
 
 Its windings through the woods ; now clear, now blue, 
 
 According as the skies their shadows threw. 
 
 A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile 
 
 (While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart 
 In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. 
 
 These last had disappear' d a loss to art : 
 The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil, 
 
 And kindled feelings in the roughest heart, 
 Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march, 
 In gazing on that venerable arch.
 
 1808.] BEAUTIES OF NEWSTEAD. 71 
 
 Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, 
 Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone ; 
 
 But these had fallen, not when the friars fell, 
 
 But in the war which struck Charles from his throne, 
 
 When each house was a fortalice as tell 
 The annals of full many a line undone, 
 
 The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain 
 
 For those who knew not to resign or reign. 
 
 But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd, 
 
 The Virgin-Mother of the God-born child, 
 With her Son in her blessed arms, look'd round ; 
 
 Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd ; 
 She made the earth below seem holy ground. 
 
 This may be superstition, weak or wild, 
 But even the faintest relics of a shrine 
 Of any worship wake some thoughts divine. 1 
 
 We feel as we read this, with how profound a melancholy he 
 is filled at the loss of his ancestral seat. Another descrip- 
 tion, in prose, we owe to his friend Matthews : ' Though 
 sadly fallen into decay, it is still completely an abbey, and 
 most part of it is still standing in the same state as when 
 it was first built. There are two tiers of cloisters, with a 
 variety of cells and rooms above them, which, though not 
 inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state, might easily be 
 made so ; and many of the original rooms, among which 
 is a fine stone hall, are still in use. Of the Abbey 
 Church only one end remains ; and the old kitchen, with 
 a long range of apartments, is reduced to a heap of 
 rubbish. Leading from the Abbey to the modern part 
 of the habitation, is a noble room, seventy feet in 
 length and twenty-three in breadth ; but every part of 
 the house displays neglect and decay, save those which 
 the present lord has lately fitted up. The house and 
 gardens are entirely surrounded by a wall with battle- 
 ments. In front is a large lake, bordered here and there 
 with castellated buildings, the chief of which stands on 
 1 Cant. xiii. 56-61.
 
 72 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEt. 20. 
 
 an eminence at the further extremity of it.' l So far 
 Matthews. These castellated buildings are the little forts 
 erected by the fifth Lord, which have already been men- 
 tioned. But Matthews does not dwell, although it is 
 the most striking part of the whole, on the ivy-mantled 
 west front, with its great arched window, which Byron 
 celebrates in an exquisite stanza : 
 
 A mighty window, hollow in the centre, 
 
 Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, 
 Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter, 
 
 Streaming from off the sun like seraphs' wings, 
 Now yawns all desolate ; now loud, now fainter, 
 
 The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings 
 The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire 
 Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire. 
 
 The Gothic fountain also, in the midst of the court, 
 
 decked with carvings quaint, 
 Strange faces, like to men in masquerade, 
 And here perhaps a monster, there a saint, 
 
 has its peculiar charm. Thus the whole is a mixture of 
 abbey and baronial mansion, of which, in its way, but 
 few finer examples are to be found. 
 
 As we have seen, Mrs. Byron, when she first came to 
 Newstead with her son, could not reside there, but lived, 
 up to the time of Byron's majority, successively in London, 
 Nottingham, and Southwell. But in spite of the decay 
 into which Newstead had fallen, an admirer of its beauties 
 was found in the person of Lord Grey de Euthen, who, 
 during the minority of the heir, hired and occupied it. 
 His lease terminated April 1808, and in the September of 
 this year, Byron, after he had turned his back on Cam- 
 bridge, here took up his residence. His first care was to 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, i. 248.
 
 1808.] BYRON AND HIS COLLEGE FRIENDS AT NEWSTEAD. 73 
 
 put the house, partially at least, into a habitable condi- 
 tion, and to Ms honour it must be said, that in this he 
 considered his mother's convenience not less than his own. 
 For each two rooms were furnished ; as the means, how- 
 ever, taken for the repairing of the roof were insufficient, 
 the rain again after a few years came through, and 
 reduced them to the state of the other uninhabited parts 
 of the mansion. A thorough restoration would have de- 
 manded so great an expenditure, that Byron could not 
 for a moment think of attempting it. Besides this, too, 
 as his intention to travel became more and more con- 
 firmed, he thought chiefly of providing a refuge and home 
 for his mother. During his absence, she was to live at 
 Newstead, and in case of any accident to himself, was to 
 have the house and property for life. 1 
 
 Not only during the arrangements at Newstead, but 
 until Byron's departure for the Levant, his mother remained 
 in Southwell, which, considering her relations with her 
 son, was at any rate the preferable course. She appears, 
 indeed, to have had a longing for Newstead, which, how- 
 ever, Byron refused to gratify : he knew their incompati- 
 bility of temper. He invited instead some friends to 
 pay him a visit, in order that, free from restraint and 
 observation, they might continue the foolish extravagances 
 of their university life. Matthews, one of these com- 
 panions, draws, in connection with the already quoted 
 description of the mansion, a very lively picture of their 
 wild mode of living. At the entrance door of the great 
 hall lay chained, on the right hand, a bear, and, on the 
 left, a wolf; and in the hall itself the young inmates 
 of the abbey fired at a mark with pistols ; so that anyone 
 entering had to give notice of his approach by a loud 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 217.
 
 74 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^E-r. 20. 
 
 cry, if lie would not expose himself to the danger of a 
 stray bullet. Far beyond the bad English custom, day was 
 turned into night and night into day. About one o'clock 
 the young men were accustomed to rise; Matthews, 
 who got up between eleven and twelve, was regarded as a 
 prodigy of early rising. The morning, i.e. the afternoon 
 from two till seven o'clock, was devoted to boxing, riding, 
 cricket, sailing and swimming on the lake, and, occasion- 
 ally, to reading. Then came dinner, during which the often- 
 mentioned cup made of a human skull filled with Burgundy 
 went round. 1 Imagining that the monks at the Reforma- 
 tion might have buried their treasures, Byron began to 
 excavate, though nothing but stone coffins and skulls were 
 discovered. One of these coffins he placed in the hall, and 
 a skull of unusual size he caused to be polished and set in 
 silver the notorious skull-cup, which was regarded by 
 severe religionists as an infallible proof of Byron's utter 
 profanity and atheism. 2 Some other skulls, to the horror 
 of the maid-servants, were placed in Byron's study. The 
 young men went still further : they profanely imitated the 
 costumes of the old monks, and appeared in them at dinner ; 
 the part of Abbot being played by the host. The conver- 
 sation sparkled with wit and fun, and was continued deep 
 into the night. To Byron's delight .Newstead had also 
 its ghost, and half in earnest and half in irony, he 
 encouraged the belief in it. 3 In order to pass the time 
 in another and a better fashion, Byron proposed to attempt 
 some dramatic representations with his friends, in which, 
 for want of ladies, the women's parts were to be under- 
 taken by the young men ; but it does not appear that 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 250. 
 
 2 See ' Lines inscribed upon a Cup formed from a Skull;' and Lockhart's 
 note, Life and Works, vii. 217. 
 
 3 Compare the ballad of the ' Black Brother ' in Don Juan, canto xvi. 
 36 ; et seqq.
 
 1808.J BYRON'S GLOOMY THOUGHTS AT NEWSTEAD. 75 
 
 the plan was carried out, or at least only on one occasion. 
 This ' Sturm und Drang ' of the young men bore, indeed, 
 a different character from the doings of Robin Hood and 
 his companions in merry Sherwood Forest, or from the 
 sleek luxury and the sanctimonious worldliness of the 
 later monks. What a change of life and manners on the 
 same spot ! Byron and his companions were gay, wild, 
 and thoughtless, but by no means so corrupt and depraved 
 as Byron afterwards painted himself and them, or as 
 narrow-minded bigots believed. Their follies were but 
 the exuberance of youthful energies which had not as 
 yet found their vent. The breaking up of the party was 
 characteristic : Matthews and Hobhouse walked for a 
 freak to London, but were a week on the road, being de- 
 tained by the rain. On the way they quarrelled and 
 parted, and repeatedly passed each other without ex- 
 changing a word. Matthews arrived at home without a 
 penny in his pocket. 
 
 That Byron found no real satisfaction in these practices 
 is evident from various circumstances. He was the only 
 one of the party who read much ; he spent many hours 
 plunged in melancholy. He brooded over the future, and 
 anticipated it without joyousness. When he came first 
 as a boy to Newstead, he planted an oak in the park, 
 which is still shown to strangers as 'Byron's oak,' and 
 with this tree he superstitiously connected a fancy, that 
 their fortunes would be linked together. When now 
 again he visited it he found it overgrown with weeds and 
 almost destroyed. The gloomy thoughts that arose in 
 his mind, he expressed in the lines ( To an Oak at New- 
 stead.' l The death also of his favourite dog Boatswain 
 threw him into a deeper gloom. This faithful animal, 
 
 1 See Lockhart's note, Life and Works, vii. 206.
 
 76 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [JET. 21. 
 
 who had gained the goodwill of all the guests, and had 
 become, so to speak, a personality inseparable from New- 
 stead his progeny long bore the name of Boatswain 
 there died of madness, and his master, little aware 
 of the existence of the malady, is said to have wiped 
 the slaver from the dog's mouth. The epitaph com- 
 posed on him by Byron is well known, 1 and the 'dog's 
 grave ' is to the present day shown among the conspicuous 
 objects at Newstead. Byron went so far as to give in- 
 structions, in a provision of his will (ultimately, however, 
 cancelled) that his own body should be buried by the 
 side of Boatswain, as his truest and only friend. We can, 
 to a certain extent, understand and palliate his misan- 
 thropy when we read the accounts of the celebration of 
 his majority (January 22, 1809). The customary ox was, 
 indeed, roasted, and, as it appears from Moore, 2 a ball 
 was given, but we hear not a syllable of either mother 
 or sister, or guardian, or any other relative taking any 
 part in these festivities. The money, too, requisite to 
 defray the expenses had to be borrowed from money- 
 lenders at extravagant interest ; how far this necessity of 
 raising money was the consequence of Byron's own extra- 
 
 NEAR THIS SPOT 
 
 ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OP 
 
 ONE WHO POSSESSED BEAUTY WITHOUT VANITY, 
 
 STRENGTH WITHOUT INSOLENCE, 
 
 COURAGE WITHOUT FEROCITY, 
 
 AND ALL THE VIRTUES OF MAN WITHOUT HIS VICES. 
 THIS PRAISE, WHICH WOULD BE UNMEANING FLATTERY 
 
 IF INSCRIBED OVER HUMAN ASHES, 
 IS BUT A JUST TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 BOATSWAIN, A DOO, 
 
 WHO WAS BORN IN NEWFOUNDLAND MAY 1803, 
 AND DIED AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY NOVEMBER 18, 1808. 
 
 Moore's Life, i. 222. 
 2 Moore's Life, i. 227.
 
 1809.] EFFECT OF AETICLE IN ' EDINBURGH REVIEW.' 77 
 
 vagance, or how far his guardian had failed to husband the 
 resources of his property, it is now impossible to ascertain. 
 Under such circumstances, is it to be wondered at that he 
 professed to be so deeply attached to an animal ? 
 
 It was mainly owing to the celebrated article on his 
 youthful poems in the ' Edinburgh Eeview' that Byron 
 did not waste his powers in such idle pursuits, but began 
 to aspire to higher aims. This paper written according 
 to general belief, either by Jeffrey l or by Brougham, ap- 
 peared in the January number of 1808, and produced the 
 bitterest disgust both in Byron himself and his mother. 
 He affected, indeed, great indifference, and played the part 
 of the well-schooled author hardened to such things ; he 
 tells us that he had heard of the article six weeks before 
 it appeared, that immediately on the day of its publication 
 he read it, and then dined with his friend Davies, drank 
 three bottles of claret, and slept well ; 2 but these same 
 three bottles of claret would seem to indicate a state of 
 feeling neither calm nor indifferent. His indifference 
 was, at all events, feigned, for he felt deeply mortified, 
 not only as a poet, but probably also as a peer. Nor, to 
 own the truth, could the * Hours of Idleness ' make any 
 great claim to praise and respect ; their poetical horizon 
 does not extend beyond the experiences, external and in- 
 ternal, of school life ; and much in the volume is not even 
 original but free translation. Only on account of his later 
 creations and as exhibiting the first stage of his poetical 
 development do these poems possess any importance. 
 Compared with the youthful productions mentioned in 
 that article of the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' of Cowley or 
 Pope, or with those of Chatterton, Keats, or Shelley, they 
 are manifestly insignificant, and in no respect betray the 
 
 1 He'appears to have regarded Jeffrey as the author. 
 3 Moore's Life, v. 146.
 
 78 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. ' [_MT. 21. 
 
 great genius of Byron. Their attacks on institutions and 
 persons standing high in the estimation of men, and 
 which could be tolerated only from undoubted pre-emi- 
 nence, seemed to demand and justify a castigation; so 
 that, if these things be taken into account, we cannot 
 join in the cry of reprobation raised against the Reviewer, 
 whoever he may be. He might, certainly, have shown 
 more indulgence ; but it is difficult to dispute with a 
 reviewer on the more or less of tenderness to be exer- 
 cised. Besides, severity and irony formed constituents 
 of the critical tone of the times, and especially of the 
 * Edinburgh Review,' whose Whiggism also may have 
 been gratified in making an example of a young noble- 
 man. Be this as it may, the Reviewer, undesignedly, 
 rendered an extraordinary service to poetry and to the 
 world ; he roused the genius of Byron, as steel draws forth 
 the spark from flint. Byron himself admits that he was 
 born for opposition ;' nor would 
 
 I have worn the motley mantle of a poet, 
 If some one had not told me to forego it. 2 
 
 That he had no thought of a poetical career, he expressly 
 testifies in the ' Hours of Idleness : ' ' Poetry,' he says 
 in the preface, ' is not my primary vocation ; ' he is only 
 an intruder in the groves of the Muses, and looks to the 
 few who will hear with patience that dulce est desipere in loco. 
 This is in accordance with another expression, that poetic 
 fame was by no means the acme of his wishes. 3 Agreeably 
 to the expectations which were so often cherished of him, 
 he probably meditated the career of a statesman. He 
 declares also in the same preface, that the * Hours of 
 Idleness ' should be his ' first and last attempt ' in poetry 
 
 1 Don Juan, canto xv. 22. 2 Ibid. st. 24. 
 
 3 Moore's Life, i. 126.
 
 1809.] 'ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.' 79 
 
 a threat which in later life he often repeated. His 
 youthful poems, therefore, professed to be only the aristo- 
 cratic diversion of a young nobleman, could they, then, 
 extort great respect from a critic ? 
 
 The tables were, however, now to be turned. During his 
 residence at Newstead, and, as it appears, unknown to his 
 friends, Byron was working at a poetical retaliation, which 
 was to crush his foes and prove his vocation as a poet. 
 This was the celebrated satire ' English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers.' It would seem as if he had been conscious 
 of the decisive importance of this venture ; for on none 
 of his poems did he bestow so much labour, relatively, 
 as on this. Between the publication of the review and 
 the satire a whole year elapsed, and yet he had begun 
 to work at it immediately after his perusal of the article. 
 When he returned to London, in the early spring of 1809, 
 he took the manuscript with him, ready for the press, 
 though even to the last moment he found something to 
 amend or to add. 
 
 We here anticipate the course of events, in order to 
 glance at Byron's further connections with Newstead 
 Abbey, and its destinies when it ceased to be his. Byron 
 could have been no poet at least, not the poet so sus- 
 ceptible of impressions which he was if a property 
 so rich in historical, poetical, and aristocratic associa- 
 tions had not furnished ample food for his fancy, and 
 filled his heart with complacency and pride. From the 
 ' Hours of Idleness ' to ' Don Juan,' the recollection of 
 Newstead steals through his poetry like the wail of an 
 JEolian harp, and the already mentioned description of 
 it in the latter, is among the gems of his poetical crea- 
 tions. Nor could he hide from himself that Newstead 
 gave a powerful' support and brilliant background to his 
 social position. He shows his consciousness of this when
 
 80 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [a&r. 21 
 
 he writes (March 6, 1809) to his mother : * Come what 
 may, Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have 
 now lived on the spot, I have fixed my heart on it, and 
 no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter 
 the last vestige of our inheritance. I have that pride 
 within me which will enable me to support difficulties. 
 I can endure privations ; but could I obtain in exchange 
 for Newstead Abbey the first fortune in the country I. 
 would reject the proposition. Set your mind at ease on 
 that score; Mr. Hanson talks like a man of business on 
 the subject 1 feel like a man of honour, and I will not 
 sell Newstead.' l 
 
 So thought and so felt Byron the youth ; but a few 
 years sufficed to produce a change in these resolutions, 
 and Byron the man allowed himself to be determined by 
 other considerations in his mode of action. The state of 
 his affairs was, indeed, beset with extraordinary diffi- 
 culties which threatened to overwhelm him. His great- 
 uncle had, as already mentioned, illegally sold Rochdale, 
 with which the barony was connected, and by the Court 
 of Chancery, or by his guardian, a lawsuit had been insti- 
 tuted for its recovery. In this process, which was won 
 at last, large sums were spent, Medwin 2 states them 
 as 14,OOOZ. and as it continued for many years, during 
 which Byron was deprived of the income arising from 
 this property, he found himself restricted exclusively to 
 the proceeds of Newstead, which were by no means ex- 
 cessive, amounting only to about 1,500Z. per annum, an 
 income utterly inadequate to the rank and position of 
 an English peer; and Byron, who had been trained to 
 anything but economy, must have possessed an inclination 
 and taste for a life of sober and modest retirement, had he 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 234. 
 
 8 Conversations with Lord Eyron, p. 49,
 
 1809.] THE SALE OF NEWSTEAD. 81 
 
 been content to accommodate himself to this. But instead 
 of it, he lived extravagantly, contracted debts, and even 
 gave to others the Jwnorarium he derived from his works. 
 With the best-regulated economy, however, a thorough 
 restoration of Newstead would have far exceeded his means. 
 The sale of Newstead became, therefore, a matter of neces- 
 sity ; and accordingly Byron, in the autumn of 1812, 
 resolved to sell it by auction; but, the sum of 90,OOOZ. 
 only being offered, no sale took place. 1 Two years later 
 a sale was privately agreed upon for 140,OOOZ. ; but again 
 the business fell through, the purchaser, as it appears, 
 being unable to pay the purchase-money. 2 Byron received, 
 however, from the latter indemnification to the amount 
 of 25,OOOZ., which he applied, partly, to the liquidation 
 of debts, and partly squandered away. It was at this 
 period 3 (Sept. 1814) that he was at Newstead, probably 
 for the last time, accompanied by his sister, and took 
 farewell of it. He wandered with her through the park, 
 and on a tree with a double stem cut the two names 
 ' Byron ' and ' Augusta.' 4 In November 1817, the estate 
 was at last sold, although the formal conveyance of the 
 property was delayed till the summer of the following 
 year. The purchaser was Major (afterwards Colonel) 
 
 1 See Dallas' Recollections, p. 249. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, iii. 112. 3 Ibid. iii. 112. 
 
 4 [The stem on which the names were cut being threatened with decay 
 has been removed by Mr. Webb, and the interesting portion of the trunk 
 is preserved in a glass case at Newstead, on which is inscribed : ' This 
 portion of the tree, on which George Noel Lord Byron engraved his and 
 his sister's names on his last visit to Newstead, was cut from the trunk in 
 1861, to preserve it from decay.' The names and the date stand thus : 
 
 BTRON, 
 
 20th Sept. 1814, 
 ATTGTTSTA. 
 
 TKANSLATOB.] 
 G
 
 82 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [^Ex. 21. 
 
 Wildman, the school companion of the poet at Harrow, 
 who had meanwhile served with honour in the wars 
 against Napoleon, and had been present at the battles of 
 Corunna, Pampeluna, Quatre-Bras, and lastly Waterloo. 
 In Colonel Wildman a new era began for Newstead. He 
 regarded it as the darling business of his life, not only to 
 restore the former seat of his celebrated school companion 
 to its ancient glory, in which object he expended above 
 SOjOOOL, 1 but to preserve and cherish all recollections of the 
 Byron family, especially of the poet, with devoted reverence. 
 He looked on himself, especially after Byron's death, to a 
 certain extent, as the guardian of a national monument, and 
 with this feeling exercised the noblest hospitality. 2 At the 
 same time, Colonel Wildman watched over the tenants and 
 labourers, who, according to Washington Irving's expres- 
 sion, had, under ' the dynasty of the Byrons, borne their 
 part in the general mismanagement and decay, and yet 
 had been too devoted or too dull to tear themselves from 
 their native soil.' He improved and renovated their dwell- 
 ings, fostered and encouraged their industry, and spread 
 over the whole estate kindness and care, two good things 
 which had long been wanting to it. The poet, although 
 attached to some individuals among his subordinates and 
 looking to their interests, yet neither heeded nor under- 
 stood the economical relations of his property ; these lay 
 beyond the sphere of his sympathies. 
 
 At the time when Colonel Wildman had finished this 
 restoration of Newstead, and while Byron was still alive, 
 there lived in one of the farmhouses an eccentric character 
 who, from Washington Irving's description, has become 
 famous under the name of 'the little white lady.' She 
 
 1 Washington Irving's Newstead Abbey, p. 109. 
 
 2 Among many others, Washington Irving was his guest for three 
 weeks, and wrote during this time his charming book on Newstead.
 
 1809.] NEWSTEAD UNDEE COLONEL WILDMAN. 83 
 
 was called Sophia Hyatt, and was the daughter of a country 
 bookseller. She had lost both her parents, and had been 
 deprived of the sense of hearing by a severe illness, which 
 at the same time entailed the almost complete loss of 
 speech; even her vision also was singularly weak. Without 
 relatives and friends (her only brother had died in the 
 West Indies), she was, as it were, excluded from human 
 society, and her only means of support consisted of an 
 annual pension of about 201. which a cousin in London 
 caused to be paid to her, that she might not fall on the 
 parish. This unfortunate person was filled with an 
 enthusiasm bordering on monomania for Byron, whom 
 she had never seen, and for his poetry. Day by day 
 she flitted like an owl about the park and around the 
 Abbey, and gave utterance to her dreams in touching 
 though mediocre verses, of which Irving has communicated 
 some specimens. Colonel Wildman and his wife showed 
 a sincere interest in her, and when at last * the little white 
 lady ' was compelled by necessity to go to her cousin in 
 London, in order to obtain some further aid from him, she 
 handed to Mrs. Wildman a long farewell letter together 
 with a packet of her poems. The letter contained an un- 
 reserved statement of her circumstances. Acting in har- 
 mony with her husband, Mrs. Wildman decided at once to 
 offer her a permanent home in one of their farmhouses. 
 The servant sent with the message, finding that she had 
 left her home, hastened after her on horseback to Notting- 
 ham. The first thing which he saw there, was a crowd of 
 people in the street standing round a person who had met 
 with an accident. It was ' the little white lady,' who had 
 been driven over by a heavy waggon, the approach of which 
 she had not heard : she had died instantly, without 
 suffering. 
 
 It only remains briefly to say, that at the death of 
 
 G 2
 
 84 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 21. 
 
 Colonel Wildman, the estate was again sold in the year 
 1860, and became the property of W. F. Webb, Esq. 
 The work of restoration commenced by his predecessor 
 has been continued and perfected in admirable taste by 
 the present proprietor ; and the most ardent admirers of 
 the great poet could not desire more touching proofs, that 
 due honour is done to the memory of Byron in his old 
 historical home, than those which meet the eyes of 
 pilgrims from far and near at Newstead.
 
 1809.] THE PILGRIMAGE. 85 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE PILGRIMAGE. 
 1809-1811. 
 
 AT the beginning of 1809 Byron, having attained his 
 majority, repaired to London to assume his place in 
 the political world, by taking his seat in the House of 
 Lords ; in the literary, by the publication of his Satire, 
 by which, as Schiller by his ' Robbers,' he announced to 
 the world that he had reached his intellectual manhood ; 
 and lastly in the social, by preparing for his long-in- 
 tended grand tour. 
 
 If Byron had often occasion, during his minority, to 
 feel his friendless and lonely condition, he had now again, 
 when he took his seat in the senate of the realm, to 
 experience the bitterness of his desolation. His guardian 
 and kinsman the Earl of Carlisle, to whom, according to 
 long-established custom, it belonged to introduce the 
 young peer to the House, declined this honorary duty, 
 although Byron had expressly requested him to undertake 
 it. That Byron's demeanour in the mode of making this 
 request had anything to do with this refusal, is nowhere 
 hinted at and must not be assumed. The attack on his 
 guardian in the passage of the Satire originally meant 
 for a panegyric, thus becomes intelligible and in some 
 degree more excusable. Byron had, therefore, to take 
 (March 13) this important step alone; just, however, as 
 he was on the point of getting into his carriage, his
 
 86 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^Er. 21. 
 
 kinsman Dallas, whose personal acquaintance he had first 
 made in January 1808, and whose attentions to him had 
 been obliging and well-meant, happened to call on him. 1 
 In default of a better companion, Byron asked him to 
 accompany him, a request he was only too glad to comply 
 with. Dallas, therefore, relates what took place as an 
 eye-witness. Before starting, he says, it was visible that 
 Byron was inwardly agitated. In the Upper House there 
 were but few peers present, as the proceedings related to 
 some ordinary business; when Byron entered, he looked 
 paler than usual, and in the expression of his coun- 
 tenance mortification struggled with indignation. *He 
 passed by the woolsack without looking round and ad- 
 vanced to the table where the proper officer was attending 
 to administer the oaths; when he had gone through 
 them, the Chancellor (Lord Eldon) quitted his seat, and 
 went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand 
 warmly to welcome him. This was all thrown away upon 
 Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow and put the tips of his 
 fingers into a hand the amiable offer of which demanded 
 
 the whole of his and carelessly seated himself 
 
 for a few moments on one of the empty benches to the left 
 of the throne, usually occupied by the Lords in opposition. 
 "If I had shaken hands heartily" so Byron justified 
 
 1 Robert Charles Dallas (born 1754, died 1824) was born at Kingstown 
 in the Island of Jamaica and educated in Scotland. He entered the 
 Inner Temple, intending to be called to the bar, but returned to Jamaica 
 again. He afterwards resided successively in France, in the United 
 States, and in England, where he attained some reputation by his writings. 
 He wrote several romances the collective edition of which he dedicated 
 to Lord Byron some plays and other things, and translated much from 
 the French (among other books, Bertrand de Moleville's Histoire de la 
 Revolution Fran^aise, Paris, 1800-1803, 14 vols. 8vo, under the English 
 title Annals of the French Revolution, 5 vols. 8vo, London, 1813). He 
 died at St. Adresse in Normandy, to which he had retired in his later 
 years.
 
 1809.] 'ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.' 87 
 
 afterwards his conduct to Dallas "he would have set 
 me down for one of his party ; but I will have nothing to 
 do with any of them on either side : I have taken my 
 seat, and now I will go abroad." ' l 
 
 A few days after this step, which should have been so 
 gratifying instead of being, as it was, so depressing to 
 Byron, the ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' was 
 published (March 16) by Cawthorn, a bookseller of little 
 note, who undertook the publication, after it had been 
 declined by the Longmans' house. The negotiations with 
 him had been conducted by Dallas, who also carried the 
 volume through the press, 2 during which he induced the 
 poet to make various improvements and to soften many 
 asperities. The copyright was reserved ; 3 Byron, however, 
 made over all the profits to the publisher. The title was 
 originally to have been ' The British Bards ; ' instead of 
 which Dallas suggested 'The Parish Poor of Parnassus;' 4 
 Byron, however, rejected both, and substituted the actual 
 title, ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' To the 
 poem itself Dallas, with true discernment, assigned a 
 place beside Gifford's ' Baviad and Mseviad.' The anony- 
 
 1 Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, pp. 53, 54. 
 
 2 It has been already mentioned that Byron continually made additions 
 while the volume was passing through the press, so that in one of his 
 short notes to Dallas he says : ' Print soon or I shall overflow with rhyme.' 
 (Moore's Life, i. 232.) One of these insertions the passage referring 
 to Lord Falkland deserves mention, as it illustrates one of the noblest 
 characteristics of Byron. Viscount Falkland, a personal acquaintance 
 of Byron's, was a gallant but dissipated naval officer, who in the begin- 
 ning of March 1809 was killed in a duel by Mr. Powell, and left a widow 
 with several children in deep distress. Byron undertook the office of god- 
 father to the youngest child, born just before the father's death, and 
 managed to conceal a 5001. bank-note so dexterously in the cup which 
 he gave as godfather, that it was discovered only after his departure ; 
 and this act he performed while he himself was overwhelmed with em- 
 barrassments. 
 
 3 See Dallas' Recollections, p. 41. 
 
 4 See Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, pp. 21, 22.
 
 88 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 21. 
 
 inotis veil was speedily seen through. Not less speedily 
 was the first edition sold off, and within short periods of 
 time the first was followed by a second edition augmented 
 by nearly 400 lines, and then by a third and fourth. 
 Critical opinions, especially in the ' Anti- Jacobin,' and 
 the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' declared in favour of the 
 Satire; the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, however, 
 took no notice of it, not at least till the publication of 
 the fourth edition. Byron had now taken a brilliant 
 revenge on the Edinburgh Reviewers, and could so far 
 leave his country with a feeling of satisfaction. But, at 
 the same time, he had scattered the seeds of many con- 
 troversies and much unpleasantness ; for he had attacked 
 many without sufficient cause and with excessive bitter- 
 ness ; although the best among those whom he had thus 
 assailed, as Moore, Scott, and Lord Holland, became 
 afterwards his firmest friends. 
 
 Nothing now stood in the way of carrying out his 
 plans for travelling. The conviction long had grown in 
 Byron's mind that, in order to be just, we must learn to 
 know men not merely from books, but from observation 
 and experience. ' I am,' he writes to his mother, ' so 
 convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind 
 instead of reading about them, and the bitter effects of 
 staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an 
 islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to 
 send our young men abroad, for a term, among the few 
 allies our wars have left us.' * But practical and material 
 reasons were also associated with this ideal ground of 
 action. The shattered state of his finances made travelling 
 expedient, for Byron knew well that, with his limited 
 income, he could live, according to his rank, only on the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 361.
 
 1809.] BYRON BEGINS HIS PILGRIMAGE. 89 
 
 Continent, or in the East. He was in every way tired of 
 England, and longed to step beyond the narrow precincts 
 of English society and culture, the bitter cup of which he 
 had, according to his own opinion, drained to the dregs. 
 His inclination leaned at first towards Persia and India ; 
 he would, as he says in the introduction to ' Childe 
 Harold,' l pass the ' Earth's central line.' He accordingly 
 collected information about India from the Professor of 
 Arabic at Cambridge and from a friend of his mother, 
 and took into his service a German servant who had been 
 in Persia: he provided himself also with the requisite 
 introductions to embassies and consulates. Gradually, 
 however, he shrank from these extensive undertakings, 
 the costs of which, considering the means of intercourse, 
 which at that period had not attained their present per- 
 fection, far exceeded his resources ; the journey to Persia, 
 however, he entirely renounced only at Constantinople. 
 How the mind and imagination of Byron had from child- 
 hood been directed to the lands of the Mediterranean and 
 the Levant has been already related. 
 
 After these preparations and the necessary arrangements 
 with his faithful travelling companion Hobhouse, he started 
 from London June 11, 1809, not without having again to 
 experience how ' friendless a being ' he was. He left his 
 mother and sister without bidding them farewell; the 
 latter he had not seen for three years : on the other hand, 
 he had set his affections on one of his school friends, by 
 whom he believed them returned. They had lived much 
 together and were about to exchange portraits. This 
 friend, who had recently in a marked manner withdrawn 
 from him, Byron invited to spend with him the last day 
 before his departure; the invitation, however, was de- 
 
 1 See canto i. at 11.
 
 90 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 21. 
 
 cliued. ' And what do you think was his excuse ? ' said 
 Byron, bursting with indignation, to Dallas ; " he was 
 engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shop- 
 ping ! " And he knows I set out to-morrow to be absent 
 for years, perhaps never to return. Friendship ! I do not 
 believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and family 
 excepted, and, perhaps, my mother, a single being who 
 will care what becomes of me.' l 
 
 With a retinue of servants more in accordance with his 
 rank than with his fortune, Byron embarked, July 2, at 
 Falmouth 2 on board the packet for Lisbon, where he 
 arrived, after a favourable passage, on the 7th, and found 
 the English fleet lying at anchor in the Tagus. Of Lisbon 
 apart from its situation Byron has little good to say ; 
 Cintra, however, surprised him by its beauty and Mafra 
 by its magnificence, but still more by the ignorance of its 
 monks, who, while they showed him their library, asked 
 him whether the English had any books in their country. 3 
 While Byron sent oft 7 a part of his baggage and some of 
 his servants from Lisbon by ship to Gibraltar, he himself 
 with the remainder rode on horseback from Aldea Gallega 
 (the next stage, to be reached only by water, from Lisbon) 
 to Seville, according to his own account a distance of 
 almost 400 English miles. 4 The ride, so he tells his 
 mother, 5 had not, in spite of the July heat, exhausted 
 him ; the roads were excellent, far better than the best 
 English roads, and were besides free from tolls, the horses 
 good, and as an English nobleman in an English uniform 
 (which he had got made expressly for his travels) he 
 
 1 Dallas' Recollections, pp. 63, 64. 
 
 2 Of the exuberance of his spirits the farewell verses to Hodgson 
 are the liveliest witness. See Life and Works, vii. 305. 
 
 3 See Moore's Life, i. 281. 4 See Moore's Life, i. 278. 
 5 Dallas' Correspondence, i. 89.
 
 1809.] HIS STAY AT SEVILLE. 91 
 
 found all the security and convenience he desired. At 
 Seville, the women chiefly excited the interest of Byron, 
 and about them he expressed himself with singular 
 candour to his mother. During their three days' stay 
 the travellers were lodged in the house of two un- 
 married ladies, the elder of whom, engaged to be mar- 
 ried to an officer, offered to share her own apartment 
 with Byron, which ' my virtue induced me to decline.' l 
 At parting she gave him, in return for one of his, a lock 
 of her own hair ' three feet long,' which he sent to his 
 mother, and dismissed him with a tender kiss, saying: 
 4 Adieu, you pretty fellow ! you please me much.' 2 That 
 Byron, in his twenty-second year, preferred the Spanish 
 women to his own countrywomen, and was bewitched with 
 their sensuous charms and southern glow, cannot of course 
 excite our surprise. The bull-fights, and especially their 
 unpoetic politics, were the other objects which occupied 
 his mind. His social position gave him here, as every- 
 where, the opportunity of coming in contact with distin- 
 guished men, as for instance with General Castanos and 
 Admiral Cordova, and of seeing more deeply into political 
 movements. He saw also at Seville the famous Maid of 
 Saragossa. 3 Nor does he forget to remark that here was 
 the seat of the Junta, or to mock at the so-called victory 
 of the English at Madrid, in which they lost 5,000 killed, 
 among whom were 200 officers, without inflicting any loss 
 on the French ; he generally, indeed, takes every oppor- 
 tunity of speaking scornfully of the foreign policy of his 
 country. The Alcazar and other magnificent monuments 
 of Seville, the grave of Columbus, the memorials of Roman 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 282. 
 
 2 Ibid. Who does not recognise here the germs of the first canto of 
 Don Juan ? 
 
 * See note to Childe Harold, canto i. st. 66.
 
 92 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [^T. 9.1. 
 
 and Moorish rule, in which Scott's fancy would have 
 revelled, left him cold and unmoved. 1 
 
 From Seville they went, again on horseback, to Cadiz, 
 which Byron regarded as the crown of Spanish cities, 
 ' full/ as he writes to his mother, 2 ' of the finest women in 
 Spain; the Cadiz belles being the Lancashire witches of 
 their land.' To his great regret he could not prolong his 
 stay in this paradise of women, but purposed to pay it 
 another and a longer visit. From hence the English 
 Admiral Purvis granted him a passage to Gibraltar 
 on board an English frigate. As an English town 
 Gibraltar is to him of course ' a cursed place,' 3 and 
 its magnificent natural beauty elicits but one stanza 
 devoted to admiration of its grandeur. 4 An intended ex- 
 cursion to the African coast, for which Byron had been 
 already provided with letters of introduction from General 
 Castanos to Moorish chiefs, had to be renounced that he 
 might not miss the packet to Malta; a passage thither 
 in an English man-of-war was not, to his great regret, 
 to be obtained. From Gibraltar Byron sent home his 
 old servant Joe Murray and his page Robert Eushton, 
 retaining in his service only the well-known Fletcher; the 
 two former he recommends in almost all his letters to the 
 kind attention and care of his mother. 5 
 
 Among other passengers on board the packet was Gait, 
 who, in his Life of Byron, 6 dwells at some length on what 
 he considers the aristocratic assumption of his manners, 
 and on what he calls ' the influence of the incomprehen- 
 sible phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron.' They 
 touched at Cagliari, where they were all hospitably 
 received by the English Ambassador Mr. Hill, and in the 
 
 1 Life and Works, x. 298. * Moore's Life, i. 282. Ibid. 
 
 4 Child* Harold, ii. st. 22. 6 See Moore's Life, i. 284, 285. 
 
 6 Pp. 59-63.
 
 1809.] BYRON MEETS MRS. SPENCER SMITH. 93 
 
 theatre saw the Sardinian royal family ; after landing the 
 mail at Girgenti, they arrived September 1 at Malta, where 
 Byron and Hobhouse took up their abode till the 21st of 
 the same month. Gait would have us believe, that Byron 
 delayed his landing, because he hoped to be received as 
 a peer with a salute from the fortress ! As the two 
 travellers could not find lodgings, the Governor, Sir 
 Alexander Ball, the next day provided them with a house. 
 Byron's first care was to take lessons in Arabic from a 
 monk, but his whole time and interest were very soon 
 absorbed by 'a beautiful and amiable lady,' to whom, 
 under the name of Florence, he addressed several poems, 1 
 and whom he describes as a modern Calypso. This was 
 Mrs. Spencer Smith, then in her twenty-fifth year, one of 
 the daughters of Baron Herbert, for many years Austrian 
 Internuncio at Constantinople, and wife of Spencer Smith, 
 English Minister at Stuttgard, and brother of the cele- 
 brated Admiral Sir Sidney Smith. This lady, while re- 
 siding with her sister, the Countess Attems, at Venice, on 
 account of her health, had there, in the year 1806, been 
 arrested by the order of Napoleon, who contemplated, it was 
 said, sending her as a state prisoner to Valenciennes. The 
 Marquis de Salvo, a young Sicilian nobleman, a friend of 
 the Countess Attems, and a profound admirer of the beau- 
 tiful and accomplished Mrs. Spencer Smith, generously 
 and courageously determined to rescue the fair prisoner 
 from the power of the French police, and succeeded with 
 much address in conveying her to a place of safety in the 
 Austrian dominions to Gratz in Styria. The strange ad- 
 ventures which befell them in making their escape, Byron 2 
 
 1 Beside Childe Harold, ii. 30 et seq., the following poems refer to her : 
 ' To Florence/ Life and Works, vii. 308 ; ( Lines written in an Album,' 
 Ibid. 308 ; ' Stanzas composed during a Thunderstorm/ Hid. 311 ; 
 ' Stanzas written in passing the Ambracian Gulf/ Ibid. 314. 
 
 Moore's Life, i. 286.
 
 94 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 21. 
 
 in a letter to his mother says, were related and published by 
 the Marquis himself in a special narrative; and the Duchesse 
 d'Abrantes has devoted two chapters of one of the volumes 
 of her memoirs 1 to a very vivid account of them. The 
 story has so many romantic incidents, that we can only 
 say : ' Si non e vero e ben trovato.' Madame Junot 
 describes her as bewitchingly beautiful and graceful, with 
 fair hair, transparent complexion, and perfectly formed. 
 She was well acquainted with seven languages and their 
 literatures, very musical, and a pattern of refined manners 
 and of virtue in one word, perfect, if we may believe her 
 testimony. Her marriage however, according to Byron, 2 
 was by no means a happy one. Mrs. Smith was now, when 
 Byron met her, on her way from Trieste where she had 
 been living with her mother to join her husband in 
 England. As she intended to sail from Malta in an English 
 ship of war, Byron gave her a letter to his mother. That 
 she had completely captivated Byron's susceptible heart 
 may be taken as a matter of course, but Gait admits that 
 the relation was purely Platonic. 3 Amid a present so full 
 of fascination, Byron completely forgot the romantic past 
 of the island, which at a later period kindled the failing 
 intellect of Scott, to its final gleam. Gait, indeed, thinks 4 
 that some unpleasantness perhaps the quarrel into which 
 Byron fell with an officer was the cause why Byron 
 punished, so to speak, the island with his silence. But 
 no such supposition is really needed; Byron's mind, as 
 was repeatedly shown, seldom turned to the romance of 
 history or locality. 
 
 The travellers left Malta in the * Spider ' brig of war, 
 and on September 29, stepped on the soil of Albania at 
 
 1 Vol. xv. p. 1-74. 2 See letter cited above. 
 
 3 Life of Lord Byron, p. 68. 4 Ibid. p. 69.
 
 1809.] BYKON IN ALBANIA. 95 
 
 Prevesa, over against Actium. It is very possible that 
 the opportunity afforded by the ship had some influence in 
 determining the route of the travellers ; they appear at 
 least to have had no very definite pre-arranged plan. 
 Byron was in raptures with the scenes which are for ever 
 associated with the great classic memories : he sailed 
 past Ithaca, and the Rock of Leucadia (Santa Maura), 
 from which Sappho had thrown herself into the sea; he 
 saw where the battles of Actium and Lepanto had been 
 fought, trod the soil where Mount Pindus towered on 
 high, watered by Acheron and Achelous ; looked on the 
 waters of the Acherusian Lake, and where the sacred 
 oaks of Dodona had rustled. Could his mind be filled 
 with recollections more lofty or hallowed? Could richer 
 nourishment be presented to his heart brooding over the 
 transitoriness of things earthly? And yet life asserted 
 its rights, and the present fascinated him still more than 
 the past. He found himself transported, as if by the 
 stroke of a magic wand, from the very centre of civilisa- 
 tion and refinement to that part of the Turkish empire 
 which, even at the present day, 'contains most of the 
 elements of mediaeval barbarism.' He greets Albania as 
 ' the rugged nurse of savage men.' 1 
 
 Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, 
 
 Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, 
 
 And gathering storms around convulse the closing year. 2 
 
 The country too, though separated from Italy merely by 
 a narrow arm of the sea, was more remote and unknown 
 than many an American wild, and completely shut off 
 from intercourse with the world. Byron could not but 
 feel the liveliest sympathy with a condition of society, 
 where individuality of character developed itself unimpeded 
 
 1 Childe Harold, ii. 38. 2 Ibid., stanza 42.
 
 96 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \_JE-r. 21. 
 
 by conventional barriers, and where to power and energy 
 an unbounded field was opened. ' The Albanians, a people 
 of warriors and bandits ' says Mendelssohn Bartholdy l 
 'have not advanced, even at the present day, beyond 
 the stage of culture of the Pelasgians, their fathers.' The 
 land and its people carried Byron back to Morven. ' The 
 mountains,' he says, * appeared Caledonian, only with a 
 milder climate. The kilt of the Albanians (although 
 white), their spare vigorous form, their Celtic-sounding 
 dialect, and their hardy habits ' all reminded him of the 
 highlands of Scotland. 2 The women astonished him by 
 their beauty and their stately carriage. 
 
 Arriving, after a journey of three days over the moun- 
 tains, at Janina, Byron learned that Ali Pacha was en- 
 gaged in besieging Ibrahim Pacha in his castle of Berat. 
 Ali, however, informed by the English Eesident, Captain 
 Leake, of the expected arrival of an Englishman of rank, 
 had given the fullest orders for the hospitable reception of 
 the strangers in true Eastern style, and invited them to 
 his summer residence at Tepeleni, only one day's journey 
 from Berat. Janina itself, which had hardly ever been 
 trod by the foot of a traveller, and which, so to speak, 
 Byron discovered, impressed him with its picturesque 
 beauty ; but the travellers shuddered when they suddenly 
 saw hanging in a street the arm of a man who had been 
 executed. 3 It is universally admitted among the Greeks, 
 according to Byron, 4 that Janina takes the precedence of 
 Athens in the wealth, refinement, learning and dialect of 
 its inhabitants. Near the romantically situated monastery 
 
 1 Compare Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Ali-Pacha of Janina in 
 Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch, 1867, pp. 87-176. 
 8 Note B. to canto ii. of CJiilde Harold, 
 8 See Hohhouse's Albania, i. 45. London, 1855. 
 4 See note D. to canto ii. of Childe Harold,
 
 1809.] BYRON IN ALBANIA. 97 
 
 of Zitza, which reminded him of Cintra, Byron's guides 
 lost the road and wandered about with him in the moun- 
 tains during a tremendous storm for nine hours. Hob- 
 house, who had ridden forward, and taken refuge at 
 the approach of night in the village, anxious at the non- 
 appearance of his companion, ordered muskets to be fired 
 from time to time, and signal fires to be kindled on the 
 heights. Byron had not, however, for a moment lost his 
 composure or betrayed any weakness. 1 After a journey 
 of nine days, they at last reached Tepeleni, where they 
 remained three days. On their arrival here, the strangest 
 spectacle presented itself to them. ' I shall never forget 
 the singular scene on entering Tepeleni at five in the 
 afternoon, as the sun was going down. It brought to 
 rny mind (with some change of dress, however,) Scott's 
 description of Branksome Castle in his Lay, and the feudal 
 system. The Albanians in their dresses (the most magnifi- 
 cent in the world. . . .), the Tartars with their high caps, 
 the Turks in their vast pelisses and turbans, the soldiers 
 and black slaves with the horses, the former in groups 
 in an immense large open gallery in front of the palace, 
 the latter placed in a kind of cloister below it, two hundred 
 steeds ready caparisoned to move in a moment, couriers 
 entering or passing out with despatches, the kettle-drums 
 beating, boys calling the hour from the minaret of the 
 mosque, altogether, with the singular appearance of the 
 building itself, formed a new and delightful spectacle to a 
 stranger.' 2 Tepeleni (where AH was born in the year 
 ] 741) is enclosed on all sides by lofty and steep calcareous 
 mountains : no tree or shrub flourishes on the barren 
 precipices, and the narrow gorges through which the 
 
 1 See the account in Hobhouse's Albania, i. 70-72. 
 
 2 Byron's Letter to bis Mother, Moore's Life, i. 291-294. Compare 
 also Hobhouse's Account, i. 92, 93. 
 
 H
 
 98 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 21. 
 
 Vojussa (the river of sighs) rushes are the constant abode 
 of winds and storms. 
 
 Next day (October 12) the 'Englishman of rank' was 
 presented to the dreaded Pacha in a lofty marble hall, in 
 the centre of which played a fountain. Byron made his 
 appearance here also, as he does not forget to relate, in { a 
 full suit of staff uniform with a very magnificent sabre.' l 
 AH received him standing, made him sit down on his 
 right hand, and asked him first why he had left his 
 country at so early an age ? Like the Turks of that day, 
 he had not the least conception of travelling for culture 
 or pleasure. He desired his respects to his mother, and 
 flattered Byron by telling him, that he discovered his 
 high birth by his small ears, his curling hair, and his 
 small white hands. 2 He also begged him to regard him 
 as his father, as long as he continued in Turkey, and 
 sent to him as to a spoilt child twenty times a day 
 almonds and fruit, sugared sherbet, and sweetmeats. It 
 was now the fast of Ramasan, when, to the disgust of our 
 travellers, believers made up for the fasting observed 
 during the day by carousing all night. Ali's personal 
 appearance made a very favourable impression, betraying 
 nothing of the cruelty and barbarity of his character. 
 He was nearly seventy years of age, short and corpulent, 
 but with pleasing features, a white beard and a clear blue 
 eye. His manners, like those of all Turks, were dignified 
 and courteous. 
 
 It is evident that these scenes and occurrences made 
 on Byron a deep and lasting impression, which we find 
 reflected in his poetry; they suggested especially the 
 subjects of his poetical tales. The character of Ali 
 himself profoundly impressed him. He writes, indeed, to 
 
 1 Letter to his Mother. Moore's Life, i. 294 
 8 Ibid. i. 294.
 
 1809.] IMPRESSED WITH THE CHARACTER OF ALI PACHA. 99 
 
 his mother, that he is ' a tyrant without conscience, who 
 had been guilty of the greatest cruelties ;' ' but he adds, 
 immediately afterwards, that he is e so brave and good a 
 general, that he is called the Mahometan Bonaparte.' 
 Who can say whether Byron was not conscious of some 
 ' elective affinities ' with certain points of his character, 
 and may not perhaps have looked up to him with envy ? 
 ' All the actions of Ali,' says K. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 
 ' bear the character of the inspiration of the moment and 
 of capricious self-will ; ' but action on sudden inspiration 
 and from the caprices of self-will is the unmistakable 
 characteristic of Byron. We do not mean to say by this 
 that Byron could have resembled him in his cruelty, but 
 he discerned the grandeur of Ali's character and the 
 traits of genius which it indicated, and was evidently 
 dazzled by him. In Ali there met him no Zeluco of 
 romance but of political life, who never bridling his 
 passions and always asserting without control his in- 
 dividuality mounted to his high and dreaded position 
 from the condition of a poor freebooter, and scarcely 
 brooked a rival in the whole Turkish Empire.' ' Napoleon,' 
 he says, ' has twice offered to make him King of Epirus, 
 but he prefers the English interest and abhors the 
 French, as he himself told me.' Napoleon sent him a 
 snuff-box with his portrait : ' the box,' he says, ' is very 
 well, but the picture he could have dispensed with, since 
 he neither liked it nor the original.' Even without 
 Napoleon's co-operation, and the title of king, Ali was in 
 
 1 Dallas' Correspondence, i. 103. Byron says (Medwiris Conversations, 
 p. 119), that during his residence in Albania a young girl was stoned 
 to death, on account of a love affair with & Neapolitan, although she 
 was in the fourth month of her pregnancy. The Neapolitan was sent 
 to a town where the plague was raging, to which he speedily fell a 
 victim. Byron had once thought of founding a tale upon this story, but 
 it was too terrible. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. iJEr. 21. 
 
 reality all but supreme monarch, of Epirus or Albania, and 
 K. Mendelssohn Bartholdy sees in him the man who broke 
 with the feudalism of the Middle Ages and became the 
 pioneer of civilisation in the form of modern absolutism. 
 Ali's ceaseless efforts to acquire power, his contempt of 
 custom, the mysterious nimbus with which he loved to 
 surround his person, and perhaps too his thirst for revenge 
 all these corresponded to similar emotions in Byron. 
 The position, too, in which he stood to religion had its 
 counterpart in Byron ; like the latter, he greatly respected 
 the views of free-thinkers, though he was not free from 
 superstition. Ali subsequently showed that he had not 
 forgot his young English guest ; through Dr. Holland, he 
 sent to Byron, in 1813, a Latin letter beginning with the 
 friendly address, ' Excellentissime necnon carissime,' and 
 ending with an order for a gun he wanted made for 
 himself. 1 Ali's death was in harmony with his life : 
 attacked by the troops of the Grand Signior, he was be- 
 headed (February, 1822), and his head was sent to Con- 
 stantinople to be stuck up there on the gate of the Seraglio. 
 A speculative merchant of Constantinople endeavoured to 
 purchase it, in order to consign it to a London showman ; 
 this plan was, however, frustrated by a faithful servant 
 of the Pacha, who bribing the executioner with a higher 
 price, saved his master's head from this disgrace, and 
 gave it decent burial. 
 
 Ali Pacha furnished Byron with letters of introduction, 
 with guides, and an armed escort for the return journey 
 through Janina to Salora. In order to avoid some robber- 
 bands, Byron and his retinue at the latter place embarked 
 on board a war galliot, which had been placed at his com- 
 mand, to convey them to Prevesa. They had scarcely, 
 
 1 See Mo<Wa Life, ii. 242.
 
 1809.] HIS PERILOUS VOYAGE. 101 
 
 however, got under sail before a storm arose, which, 
 owing to the incapacity of the Turkish captain and his 
 sailors, exposed the vessel to the greatest danger. The 
 captain stood wringing his hands and weeping. Being 
 asked whether he could not return to land, he answered : 
 ' Tf it pleases God ; ' whether he could not make Corfu, 
 ' If it pleases God,' was again his truly Turkish answer. 1 
 Still worse was the conduct of Byron's servant Fletcher, 
 who resigned himself with piteous lamentations to ' a 
 watery grave ' (as he pathetically expressed it), and refused 
 to be consoled by his master. 2 Byron, unable to render 
 any assistance and tired with his attempts at consolation, 
 wrapt himself in his Albanian capote, laid down on the 
 deck, and, in spite of the raging of the elements and of 
 men, fell fast asleep, and awoke to find the danger had 
 passed away. Happily they were driven on shore in the 
 Bay of Fanari, in the neighbourhood of Suli, where in 
 a village called Volondorako they were hospitably re- 
 ceived and entertained. The chief of this place per- 
 sistently refused to accept money : ' I wish you to love 
 me, not to pay me,' he said, and petitioned only for a 
 written testimony as to his conduct. 3 The next station 
 was Prevesa, from whence it had been their intention to 
 proceed in another war galliot to Patras; but Byron de- 
 clining to trust himself again to a Turkish vessel, preferred 
 to make the journey by land. He considered it advisable, 
 however, on account of the above-mentioned robber- 
 bands, to provide himself with a strong escort of armed 
 Albanians, whom he dismissed when he arrived at Misso- 
 longhi. Accompanied by these he crossed the Gulf of 
 Atra to Vonitza, and thence to TJtraikey, a lonely village 
 on the seacoast, where that night-scene took place which 
 
 1 See Hobhouse's Albania, i. 158. 2 Moore's Life, i. 296, 
 
 3 Ibid. i. 2S9.
 
 102 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 22. 
 
 the poet in ' Childe Harold ' has painted in unfading 
 colours. 1 Properly speaking, Utraikey consisted only of 
 a custom-house and a barrack intended for the reception 
 of soldiers, surrounded on the land side by a high wall, 
 the gates of which were shut at nightfall. Here fires 
 were kindled, a goat was killed and roasted, and, after an 
 almost Homeric supper, the Albanians performed their 
 Pyrrhic war-dance, accompanied by the song Tarnbourgi, 
 Tainbourgi. He makes his robbers sing : 
 
 Since the days of our prophet the crescent ne'er saw 
 A chief ever glorious like Ali Pashaw ; 
 
 and rightly from his point of view, for at any rate he 
 owed to Ali the security he enjoyed amid such bands in 
 this spot, so remote and so suggestive of crime. The 
 travellers, here as elsewhere, found scarcely any of the 
 comforts of civilised life ; a stable often served them as a 
 place of shelter, their Albanian capotes for beds, and 
 their saddles for pillows : their hardships never however 
 interfered with that good humour so becoming in travellers, 
 which Byron has so vigorously expressed in the intro- 
 duction to the ' Siege of Corinth.' Thus they journeyed 
 through Katuna, Makala, Natolico to Missolonghi (where 
 they arrived November 21), and from thence to Patras, 
 which then lay half in ruins. After a residence there of 
 about fourteen days, they proceeded (December 4) to 
 Vostizza, whence they again returned (December 14) to 
 the northern shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. They visited 
 Crisso and Delphi (Castri), rode up Mount Parnassus, 
 with which they were disappointed, drank of the Castalian 
 Fount, and from Livadia visited the cave of Trophonius, 
 and the battlefield of Chseronea. They then proceeded to 
 Thebes, and on Christmas-eve (1809) reached the ruins 
 
 1 Canto ii. st. 67, et seq.
 
 1810.] BYEON AT ATHENS. 103 
 
 of Phyle, whence they saw Athens, the object of their 
 longings, and the mountains of JEgina lying in the blue 
 mist. 
 
 But neither archaeological nor topographical pursuits 
 had brought Byron to Athens ; Athens was to him then 
 what Eome was at a later period, a mere theme on which 
 to build his views of history, or a well-spring whence to 
 draw his poetic inspirations. But though he saw things 
 from this point of view, the incomparable remains of 
 antiquity filled him with admiration and awe. Who does 
 not remember how in ' Childe Harold ' and the ' Curse of 
 Minerva ' he execrates the plundering of those monu- 
 ments, not pausing to consider whether the master- works 
 of Greek art had not thereby been preserved for posterity. 
 In the same spirit he visited the classical spots of Attica, 
 Colonos, Eleusis, Mount Hymettus, Cape Colonna (which 
 excited his interest also as the scene of Falconer's Ship- 
 wreck), 1 the marble quarries of Pentelicon, and the 
 battlefield of Marathon, the plain of which was offered to 
 him for sale for the sum of 16,000 piastres. ' Was the 
 dust of Miltiades worth no more ? ' he exclaims. 2 The 
 beauties of Nature, not less than the memories of history, 
 charmed the soul of Byron. ( Greece ' so he writes to 
 his mother * particularly in the vicinity of Athens, is 
 delightful cloudless skies and lovely landscapes.' 3 His 
 letters, however, give us not the most distant conception 
 of the profound impression which Greece made upon him. 
 It is in his poems we see this ; the descriptions and tales 
 relative to Greece which we have among them are among 
 the most beautiful that ever flowed from his pen: the 
 celebrated lines at the commencement of the * Giaour ' 
 
 1 Note to Childe Harold, ii. 86. Compare also Letter on Bowies' Stric- 
 tures on Pope, vi. 359. 
 
 2 Note to Childe Harold, ii. 89. 3 Ibid, i. 314.
 
 104 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. [>I*r. 22. 
 
 and ' Bride of Abydosj' aud the ode in the third cauto of 
 ' Don Juan,' 
 
 The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ! 
 Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
 
 occur at once to the memory. By no other modern poet 
 has Greece been sung with such sublimity and enthusiasm 
 as by Byron. 
 
 But as usual, the state of society and, above all, women, 
 occupied the attention of Byron. He lodged with the 
 widow of the English Vice-consul Macri, who in her 
 reduced circumstances supported herself and her three 
 daughters, Theresa, Katinka, and Mariana, by letting her 
 apartments to strangers, especially to the English ; but 
 who, notwithstanding, enjoyed an unimpeachable character 
 of respectability. These girls, young and beautiful after 
 the genuine Greek type, quickly fired the heart of Byron. 
 In accordance with the oriental mode of professing love, he 
 once, in the presence of one of them, gashed his breast 
 with his dagger ; an act, however, which she took very 
 calmly, accepting it as a homage due to her beauty, but 
 which in no degree moved her to any display of feeling. 1 
 It was to the eldest that he addressed the well-known 
 poem : 
 
 Maid of Athens, ere we part, 
 Give, oh give me back my heart ! 
 
 According to Gait, who again, about the end of February, 
 joined our travellers at Athens, she was pale, with regular 
 Greek features, and of a somewhat pensive expression. 2 
 
 His stay in Athens would probably have been still 
 longer extended, if a desirable passage to Smyrna in the 
 English sloop of war 'Pylades' had not been offered to 
 
 1 See note in Moore's Life, i. 320. 
 * Life of Lord Hynm, p. 119.
 
 1810.] BYRON AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 105 
 
 the travellers. At Smyrna Byron was received into the 
 house of the English Consul, and finished there (March 
 28) the second canto of 'Childe Harold ; ' the first he began, 
 October 31, 1809, at Janina. The only excursion which 
 he undertook from thence was to the ruins of Ephesus, 
 which, however, made no very warm impression upon 
 him ; at least they never called forth a poetical echo in 
 his works. He proceeded (April 14) to Constantinople on 
 board the English frigate ' Salsette,' which came to 
 anchor at Tenedos, near the entrance of the Dardanelles 
 under Cape Janissary, and there, for more than fourteen 
 days, awaited the firman to permit their entrance into 
 the Bosphorus. Byron employed this leisure in an ex- 
 cursion to Troy, and (May 3) swam across the Dardanelles 
 from Sestos to Abydos ; a feat of which throughout his 
 life he was inordinately proud. He was accompanied by a 
 lieutenant of the ship, Mr. Ekenhead, who swam the 
 distance in an hour and five minutes, while Byron himself 
 took five minutes longer. The main difficulty lies, as is 
 well known, in the strength of the current, and those 
 who had hitherto attempted it maintain that it is im- 
 possible, on account of this current, to swim from the 
 Asiatic side to the European. Byron, however, insisted 
 that there was no difference between the two directions, 
 and that he had proved the possibility of Leander's heroic 
 deed. The exertion and the cold of the water brought 
 on, however, a fever of several days' duration. -Byron 
 loved such feats of swimming, and was proud of his 
 performances in this line. In Portugal he swam from 
 Lisbon across the Tagus to Belem ; and at Venice, in the 
 year 1818, he had a swimming match with a Mr. Scott, in 
 the presence of a great crowd of spectators, against a 
 celebrated Italian swimmer, from the Lido to the City, 
 and through the Great Canal to the Lagune of Fusina ;
 
 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 22. 
 
 during which lie was four hours and twenty minutes in 
 the water. The Italian never reached even the Piazza, of 
 St. Mark. Among the gondoliers and fishermen of Venice 
 Byron was called from this ' il pesce Inglese.' ' 
 
 On landing at Constantinople on the evening of May 13, 
 the travellers were particularly struck with the darkness 
 of the city, and its unexpected stillness, arising chiefly 
 from the absence of all wheel carriages. Next morning on 
 their way to the principal Frank hotel in Pera, a similar 
 spectacle presented itself to them as at Janina : they saw 
 a corpse tying in the street gnawed by dogs a terrible 
 spectacle, which Byron, in the ' Siege of Corinth,' repro- 
 duced in fearful colours. The impression usually made 
 by Constantinople lost some of its effect on Byron from 
 the knowledge he already had of Turkish cities ; yet the 
 incomparable beauty of the site exercised on him its 
 magical spell: 
 
 The European with the Asian shore 
 
 Sprinkled with palaces ; the ocean stream 
 Here and there studded with a seventy-four ; 
 
 Sophia's cupola with golden gleam ; 
 The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar; 
 
 The twelve isles and the more than I could dream, 
 Far less describe, .... 
 
 2 
 
 The descriptions of the slave market and the Seraglio, 
 which Byron sketched in * Don Juan,' were founded, to a 
 very small extent, on personal observation. He* failed 
 not, indeed, to visit the slave market, but, according to 
 
 1 Marquis de Salvo, Lord Byron en Italic et en Grece (Londres et 
 Paris, 1823, p. 81). Trelawney depreciates Byron's performances in 
 swimming; he says that Byron was generally exhausted, while he 
 himself hardly felt the exertion. Byron too had not the least know- 
 ledge of sea-life, not even of sea-terms, although from his writings it 
 might appear that he had ; that the employment of sea-terms cost 
 him much toil and labour. Recollections, p. 106. 
 
 2 Don Juan, v. 3.
 
 1810.] BYEON'S SECOND VISIT TO ATHENS. 107 
 
 Gait, 1 there were so few slaves that it would be an 'error 
 to call it a market in the proper sense, and the scene 
 was very uninteresting. In the Seraglio Byron was 
 present only in the retinue of the English Ambassador, 
 Mr. Adair, when the latter had an audience with the 
 Sultan to take leave. On this occasion he asserted his 
 rank in a boyish, not to say in a childish, spirit, claiming 
 not only the place of precedence, but even a separate 
 presentation to the Sultan, which the Ambassador accord- 
 ing to subsisting usages could not grant. Byron regarded 
 this a personal injury, so that Mr. Adair was compelled to 
 refer him to the Austrian Internuncio, whose decision was 
 given against Byron. 2 
 
 The ' Salsette,' which had been appointed to bring back 
 the Ambassador to England, set sail July 24. Byron and 
 Hobhouse again embarked in her, the latter, in com- 
 pliance with the wishes of his friends, to return home, the 
 former to his beloved Greece. After a voyage of only 
 four days Byron caused himself to be landed on the- island 
 of Zea, and immediately set out for Athens, while the 
 frigate continued her voyage without interruption. At 
 Athens Byron found an old University friend, the Marquis 
 of Sligo, in company with whom some days later he 
 travelled to Corinth, whence the Marquis proceeded to 
 Tripolitza, Byron himself to Patras, in order to settle 
 some business there with the English Consul- General, 
 Mr. Strane, who appears to have managed his affairs 
 during his travels. During the next month he made 
 frequent expeditions from Athens through the Morea (to 
 Argos, Napoli, &c.), and paid a visit to Vely Pacha, a son 
 of Ali, at Tripolitza. Here he was received with not less 
 distinction than at Tepeleni, and the Pacha, when he 
 
 1 Life of Byron, p. 149. 3 Moore's Life, i. 336.
 
 108 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 22. 
 
 took leave, presented him with a beautiful stallion. In 
 September we find him again in Patras, where for the 
 first time he was attacked with the marsh-fever, which 
 fourteen years later, almost within sight of this town, was 
 the cause of his death. His native servants, whom he 
 always praises greatly, nursed him, in their way, to the 
 utmost of their power, and threatened to cut the throat 
 of his physician, if he did not restore their master within 
 a certain time. In consequence of this threat, the phy- 
 sician, to Byron's joy, did not show himself again, and to 
 this circumstance, as well as to his refusal to take any 
 medicine, Byron ascribed his recovery. 
 
 At Athens where during this second visit Byron did 
 not reside at the house of the Vice-consul's widow and of 
 her fair daughters, but in a Franciscan monastery l he 
 devoted his time to the study of modern Greek 2 and to 
 the composition of his two poems ' Hints from Horace,' 
 and ' The Curse of Minerva,' without however intending 
 to publish the latter. On the contrary, he expressly says, 
 that he had done with authorship, and that he had cured 
 himself of the disease of scribbling. 3 He passed some 
 pleasant days also in the society of the Marquis of Sligo, 
 Bruce, the English Consul, and Lady Hester Stanhope. 
 The two latter just arrived from England, had from their 
 ship seen Byron at Cape Colonna swimming alone in the 
 sea, and were afterwards introduced to him by the 
 Marquis of Sligo. His acquaintance with ' the Maid of 
 Athens ' appears to have been completely broken off. 
 His heart, which ever craved for some object to love, he 
 
 1 Sometimes lie calls it a Franciscan, at other times a Capuchin 
 monastery. 
 
 2 See Remarks on the Romaic or Modern Greek Language, with Specimens 
 and Translations, vii. 341, et seq. 
 
 3 Letter to his Mother, Moore's Life, i. 352.
 
 1810.] ROMANTIC LOVE AFFAIR. 109 
 
 seems to have given to a poor youth of the name of 
 Nicole Giraud, the son of a widow, in whom, as in Eddie- 
 stone at Cambridge, he took an almost brotherly interest, 
 and to whom he intended to leave a considerable legacy. 1 
 An adventure similar to that on which ' The Giaour ' is 
 founded here occurred, the foundation of a rumour which 
 connected him with a romantic love affair. Returning 
 one day from bathing in the Pirseus he met a body of 
 Turkish soldiers dragging to the shore a girl sewn up in 
 a sack, in order to drown her, according to the sentence 
 of the Waywode, for an amour with a Frank. Dis- 
 covering their purpose, Byron, with pistol in hand, com- 
 pelled the barbarians to return with him to the Aga, 
 from whom, partly by threats, partly by bribes, he suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining the pardon of the girl, under the 
 condition that she should leave Athens. Byron sent her 
 the same night to Thebes, where she found a safe place 
 of refuge. Gait insinuates 2 that Byron himself was the 
 Giaour with whom she had committed the offence ; Lord 
 Sligo, 3 however, who at Byron's request committed to 
 paper all he had heard in Athens of the event, is silent on 
 this point, while Hobhouse asserts that Byron's Turkish 
 servant was the lover of this girl; and Byron himself 
 remarks on another occasion, that in the matter of in- 
 trigue he had frequently to complain of his people. In 
 other respects he was as satisfied with his native servants 
 as he was dissatisfied with his valet Fletcher. ' His per- 
 petual lamentations after beef and beer, the stupid, bigoted 
 contempt for everything foreign, and insurmountable in- 
 capacity of acquiring even a few words of any language, 
 rendered him, like all other English servants, an incum- 
 brance. I do assure you, the plague of speaking for him, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 349 ; ii. 43, et seq. 3 Life of Byron, p. 158. 
 
 3 Compare the letter of the Marquis in Moore's Life, ii. 189.
 
 110 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 23. 
 
 the comforts lie required (more than myself by far), the 
 pillaws (a Turkish dish of rice and meat) which he could 
 not eat, the wines he could not drink, the beds where he 
 could not sleep, and the long list of calamities, such as 
 stumbling horses, want of tea ! &c., which assailed him, 
 would have made a lasting source of laughter to a spec- 
 tator and inconvenience to a master.' l Byron, on the 
 other hand, knew well how to accommodate himself to 
 the discomforts and privations of travelling, and to all 
 foreign usages and modes of life. He was especially de- 
 lighted with Athens, and the prolongation and continu- 
 ance of his travels constantly occupied his thoughts. 
 Under the date February 28, 1811, he communicates to 
 his mother, that he has received a firman for a journey 
 to Egypt, and that he proposes to set out thither in the 
 spring. His next letter to his mother, however, instead 
 of being dated, as might have been expected, from 
 Alexandria, is written on board the ' Volage ' frigate 
 (June 25), and in this he announces his impending return. 
 The cause of this sudden change in his purpose must 
 be sought in the embarrassed state of his fortune, which 
 was so reduced partly, indeed, through his own fault 
 that in his absence there had been an execution on New- 
 stead for a debt of 1,500L 2 During his travels it would 
 seem as if he had received v.ery irregular and scanty 
 remittances. He frequently complains of his London man 
 of business, Mr. Hanson, from whom, in spite of repeated 
 entreaties to write to him, he had received not one letter for 
 a whole year. The postal communications of those days 
 were insufficient, indeed, when compared with those of the 
 present day ; Malta was the last real post-office, and from 
 thence everything was left to casual and uncertain oppor- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 351. 3 Ibid. ii. 11.
 
 1811.] BYRON RETURNS SUDDENLY TO ENGLAND. Ill 
 
 trinities. Hanson urged him to the sale of Newstead ; 
 Byron rebelled against the proposal, adding that, if it 
 must be alienated, he would end his days in a foreign 
 country, for Newstead was the only tie he had to England. 
 Enough Byron saw himself compelled to return home, 
 because he wanted the means for the further prosecution 
 of his travels, and because his involved circumstances 
 demanded his presence in London. With what feelings 
 he began the homeward journey under these circum- 
 stances may easily be conceived. Disgust, vexation, and 
 profound dissatisfaction seem to have mastered him. { In- 
 deed ' (so he writes to his friend Hodgson during the 
 voyage) ' my prospects are not very pleasant. Embar- 
 rassed in my private affairs, indifferent to public, solitary 
 without the wish to be social, with a body a little enfeebled 
 by a succession of fevers, but a spirit, I trust, yet un- 
 broken, I am returning home without a hope, and almost 
 without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter 
 will be a lawyer, the next a creditor, then colliers, 
 farmers, surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to 
 estates out of repair and contested coalpits. In short, I 
 am sick and sorry, and when I have a little repaired my 
 irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign 
 in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can at least 
 have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence.' v 
 He begs his mother to get his apartments at Newstead 
 ready, where he means to live in complete retirement ; his 
 books only he bids her take care of, and reminds her to 
 leave him a few bottles of champagne. 2 
 
 How Byron reached Malta is nowhere mentioned ; we 
 learn only that the above-named Giraud accompanied him 
 thither. After another attack of tertian fever at Malta, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 354. 
 
 8 Dallas' Correspondence, ii. 12, 27.
 
 112 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JK-r. 23. 
 
 he embarked in the ' Volage ' frigate, which sailed for 
 England on June 3, and came to anchor in the Thames 
 in the beginning of July, his pilgrimage having lasted 
 two years and some days. On his arrival in London he 
 found it impossible to tear himself from it so quickly as he 
 had contemplated. What, beside matters of business, de- 
 tained him there will be related in the next chapter. On 
 the 23rd he wrote to his mother, that he was kept very 
 much against his will in London, but promised to come 
 to her as soon as possible. A few days later he suddenly 
 received accounts of her dangerous illness ; he hastened 
 as quickly as possible in his carriage with four horses to 
 Newstead, but received on the road the news of her death. 
 Mrs. Byron, inclined always to superstition, had for some 
 time cherished the fancy, that possibly she would not live 
 till the return of her son : ' If I should be dead,' she 
 remarked to her maid when she received the account of 
 his safe arrival at London, ' before Byron comes down, 
 what a strange thing it would be!' 1 She had felt for 
 some time unwell, and her excessive corpulence always in 
 itself excited apprehension. Her death is said to have 
 been bi-ought on by a fit of anger, into which she had 
 been thrown by an upholsterer's account. She died 
 August 1, and the next day her son reached Newstead. 
 Although his grief was manifested in a peculiar manner, 
 it was greater than might have been expected from his 
 relations to such a mother. Death asserted its reconciling 
 power, and Byron now saw ' that we can only have one 
 mother.' 2 On the evening after his arrival, his mother's 
 waiting-woman, passing by the room where the corpse lay, 
 heard sounds as if some one were sighing heavily within. 
 On entering, she found, to her astonishment, Byron sitting 
 in the dark beside the bed. On her representing to him 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 31. * Ibid. ii. 32.
 
 1811.] DEATH OF BYRON'S MOTHER. 113 
 
 that lie should uot yield so far to grief, he burst into tears 
 and said : ' Oh I had but one friend in the world, and 
 she is gone ! ' l This was the natural Byron ; but as soon 
 as he again appeared in public, he reassumed his arti- 
 ficial demeanour. He could not bring himself to follow 
 his mother to the grave, dreading, perhaps, to be over- 
 come with grief before others, and to appear unmanly; 
 he remained standing at the Abbey gate, and watched 
 the procession until it disappeared. He then called 
 young Rushton, and made him fetch the boxing-gloves ; 
 and with a violent effort proceeded to his usual sparring 
 exercise. But the strain was too great ; he was obliged 
 to fling away the gloves and retire to his own room. 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 34.
 
 114 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [lE-i. 23. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LONDON. 
 1811-1815. 
 
 BTEON was now entirely without family ties, his half- 
 sister, at this period of his life, for him hardly existing. 
 We do not hear that she manifested any feeling at the 
 death of her step-mother, or sympathised with the grief 
 of her brother. She does not seem to have regarded 
 herself as a member of the Byron family, but to have 
 identified herself with that of her mother, in which she 
 was educated and brought up. She was married in 1807 
 to her cousin, afterwards Colonel Leigh, 1 but it was only 
 at a later period that she entered into more intimate and 
 sisterly relations with her brother. The desolation of 
 his condition Byron felt the more deeply, as the day after 
 the death of his mother he was shocked by the news, that 
 his friend Matthews had been drowned in the Cam. His 
 Harrow friend Wingfield had died in May at Coimbra, as 
 lie learned shortly before setting out for Newstead, and 
 poor Eddlestone succumbed a few weeks later to con- 
 sumption. It was Byron's misfortune, that all the persons 
 to whom at this period his affectionate nature clung, 
 either shunned him, or were snatched from him by an 
 early death. He spent those days at Newstead in great 
 depression, although Scrope Davies at his invitation came 
 to visit him there. ' We have nothing new to say on any 
 
 3 His mother was a daughter of Admiral Byron.
 
 1811.] BYKON*S LONELINESS. 115 
 
 subject ' lie writes to Dallas ! ' and yawn at each other 
 in a sort of quiet inquietude.' In a letter to Hodgson 2 he 
 says : ' My days are listless and my nights restless ; I 
 have very seldom any society, and when I have I run out 
 of it.' When in October he lost by death another person 
 dear to him, of whom nothing further is known, he poured 
 forth his grief at all these losses in the poem ' To 
 Thyrza.' 3 The desolation of his feelings is expressed 
 most bitterly and with an intensity bordering on mental 
 aberration in the will which he now caused to be drawn 
 up, some provisions of a former one having become void 
 by the death of his mother. He repeats emphatically the 
 provision * that my body may be buried in the vault of 
 the garden of Newstead, without any ceremony or religious 
 service whatever ; and that no inscription, save my name 
 and age, be written on the tomb or tablet : and it is my 
 will that my faithful dog may not be removed from the 
 said vault.' 4 In answer to the objections of his man of 
 business, Mr. Bolton of Nottingham, he alleges that the 
 garden was already consecrated ground, and that by this, 
 as he hopes, the conscience of his sorrowing relations 
 should be set at rest. 5 In such a state of feeling it was 
 anything but a relief to his mind, rather a new source of 
 torment to him, that, in the last days of September, he 
 had to repair, in company with Hanson, to his coal mines 
 in Lancashire; and great was his joy when, towards the 
 end of October, he could esca.pe from his desolate New- 
 stead, to return by way of Cambridge to London, to 
 which he was fortunately summoned by business relating 
 not to his property, but to his poetry. 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 66. 2 Ibid. ii. 77. 
 
 3 See the note on this poem, ix. 13. * Moore's Life, ii. 45. 
 
 5 In a letter to the above-named man of business, he speaks even of 
 his carcase, Ibid. 47. 
 
 i 2
 
 116 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi. 23. 
 
 The first to welcome Byron after his landing had been 
 Dallas, to whom he had announced his approaching 
 arrival by a letter written on board the frigate ' Volage.' l 
 In the course of their conversation, Dallas made enquiries 
 as to the poetical fruits of his travels, and Byron, whose 
 resolution never again to publish had already been blown 
 to the winds, and indeed had taken quite an opposite 
 direction, gave him the ' Hints from Horace,' a free 
 imitation of the * Ars Poetica,' which he regarded as a 
 continuation of the 'English Bards and Scotch Eeviewers,' 
 and from which he expected a considerable increase of his 
 fame. After the success which he had achieved, he was 
 of opinion that satire was his forte. 2 With the perusal of 
 the ' Hints from Horace ' Dallas was, however, much dis- 
 appointed, and could not refrain from repeating next day 
 the question whether this were, indeed, the only product 
 of his muse. ' Upon this Byron told me that he had 
 occasionally written short poems, besides a great number 
 of stanzas in Spenser's measure, relative to the countries 
 he had visited. " They are not worth troubling you with, 
 but you shall have them all if you like." . . . He said 
 they had been read but by one person, 3 who had found 
 very little to commend, and much to condemn ; that he 
 himself was of that opinion, and he was sure I should 
 be so too. Such as it was, however, it was at my service.' 4 
 These were the two first cantos of ' Childe Harold.' 
 Dallas on reading them was again disappointed, but dis- 
 appointed in the most pleasing manner, and wrote the 
 same evening to Byron. ' You have written one of the 
 most delightful poems I ever read ... I would pledge 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, ii. 12. 2 Ibid. ii. 14. 
 
 3 The person is unknown. Hobhouse, on whom naturally suspicion 
 rested, protests against the imputation. Perhaps it was the Marquis of 
 Sligo. * Ibid. ii. 16.
 
 1811.] THE PUBLICATION OF ' CHILDE HAROLD.' 117 
 
 my life on its advancing the reputation of your poetical 
 powers, and on its gaining you great honour and re- 
 gard, if you will do me the credit and favour of attend- 
 ing to my suggestions, &c.' l There are, indeed, many 
 examples of false estimates of poetical compositions, which 
 have been formed, not only by their authors but by their 
 contemporaries ; but the instance of Byron is the most 
 remarkable and in many respects the most inexplicable. 
 To the praise of his kinsman Byron gave but little credence 
 and wished rather to see the ' Hints ' published, and the 
 sooner the better ; an agreement at his urgent request 
 was even made with Cawthorn for their publication. 
 Dallas, on the other hand, exerted all his powers of 
 eloquence to obtain Byron's consent to the proposal that 
 the * Hints ' should not appear till ' Childe Harold ' had 
 seen the light. 1 Hobhouse, indeed, asserts that this state- 
 ment by no means agrees with what Byron himself had 
 expressed to him as to his readiness to publish ' Childe 
 Harold ; ' yet it would seem as if the merit of having 
 directed the poet in this matter by his counsel must not 
 be denied to Dallas. It is idle to conjecture as to the 
 form Byron's poetical career might have assumed had the 
 * Hints from Horace ' appeared before ' Childe Harold.' 
 Moore thinks that, in this case, he would have been lost, 
 as a great poet, to the world ; that the failure of this 
 paraphrase would have been certain, that the victims of 
 his * English Bards ' would have fallen upon him, and 
 that in the bitterness of his heart he would have committed 
 the immortal ' Childe Harold ' to the flames. 3 Professor 
 Wilson, on the other hand, remarks that the ' Hints ' 
 might, perhaps, have fallen dead-born from the press ; but 
 still Byron's enemies would have gained no advantage over 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 15. 8 Ibid. ii. 16. * Ibid. ii. 27.
 
 118 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^ET. 23. 
 
 him ; f for men who have been flayed alive, do not like to 
 wrestle/ and that, had they attacked him, Byron would, 
 according to the rule facit indignatio versum, have utterly 
 crushed them in a second satire. Dallas, who at first was 
 proud of having, to a certain extent, discovered ' Childe 
 Harold,' lamented on his death-bed l that he had been 
 instrumental in the publication of it, since thereby the 
 foundation of Byron's moral overthrow had been laid. 
 Though his intentions were good, the intellect of Dallas 
 was of the narrowest character, and his chief concern, in 
 his editorial functions, was the obliteration of all offences 
 against religion and politics contained in the poem, and 
 in bringing down Byron in these respects to the common 
 beaten path. He protested, for example, long and stoutly, 
 against the opinion expressed in the third stanza of the 
 second canto 
 
 Religions take their turn : 
 'Twas Jove's 'tis Mahomet's and other creeds 
 Will rise with other years, till man shall learn 
 Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds ; 
 Poor child of doubt and death, whose life is built on reeds. 
 
 because there is one true Religion. 2 No adjustment was 
 possible between the height of Byron's and the pettiness 
 of Dallas's point of view, so that Byron at last begged 
 his kinsman, who wished to play the part of Mentor, 
 without any circumlocution, henceforth to drop meta- 
 physics in his letters. 3 Dallas, desirous of freeing himself 
 from all complicity with his views, at last contented him- 
 self by making a formal protest against the impiety of 
 the young poet. 4 To suggestions in the matter of style 
 and to other advice, Byron showed himself more accessible. 
 He approved, for example, that his name should be 
 
 1 See the last chapter, by his son, of the Recollections, p. 341. 
 8 See Recollections, p. 124. Moore's Life, ii. 70. 
 
 4 See the Formal Protest, Recollections, p. 124.
 
 1811.] BYKON'S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MOORE. 119 
 
 placed on the title-page, and altered ' Childe Burun ' into 
 ' Childe Harold,' because, according to his own words, 
 he did not wish that Harold's character should be identi- 
 fied with his own ; though such, originally, had certainly 
 been his design. Through Dallas's mediation, Mr. Murray, 
 at that time comparatively unknown as a publisher, under- 
 took the publication of ' Childe Harold,' while that of the 
 ' Hints ' was from time to time postponed, and at last 
 withdrawn. At a later period at Ravenna, Byron reverted 
 to the publication of this paraphrase, but was again in- 
 duced to desist, so that, in fact, it first saw the light after 
 his death. From publishing the * Curse of Minerva ' he 
 also for the present desisted after much urgent persuasion. 
 In the negotiations with the publisher and printer Byron 
 did not concern himself this doubtless would have con- 
 flicted with the consciousness of his rank but handed 
 over this partie honteuse to the commoner Dallas ; to 
 whom, in gratitude for his services, he presented the 
 honorarium (600L), having made the resolution which 
 however he. afterwards altered to receive no pay for his 
 works. He was very indignant however, with Mr. Murray, 
 for having shown the manuscript to Giiford ; even Gilford's 
 unbounded commendation could not appease his wrath 
 at this. Having praised Giiford in his ' English Bards,' 
 whom he ever regarded as his Magnus Apollo, he saw in 
 this reference an unworthy captatio benevolentice, about 
 which he was very sensitive. 
 
 While Childe Harold was going slowly through the 
 press, Byron became acquainted with Thomas Moore. By 
 an allusion in the ' English Bards ' to his much ridiculed 
 bloodless duel 1 with Jeffrey, Moore had felt himself 
 
 1 ' In going out to Chalk Farm, the place of meeting, the belli is said to 
 have fallen out of one of the pistols and to have been lost ; the seconds 
 having no other ainniuirition at hand, there was nothing to be done but
 
 ] 20 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 23. 
 
 aggrieved, inasmuch as he considered that the lie had 
 been given to an explanation published by him regarding 
 that affair. When, therefore, the author published his 
 name in the second edition, Moore sent him a challenge 
 from Dublin, on January 1, 1810. Byron had, mean- 
 while, begun his pilgrimage, and the letter was sent to 
 Mr. Hodgson to be despatched after him, which was inten- 
 tionally never done. Thus a year and a half elapsed, 
 during which Moore had somewhat cooled down, and 
 besides had become a family man a step which had con- 
 siderably modified his views on duelling. After Byron's 
 return, he felt the necessity of bringing the matter to a 
 peaceful termination, and all the more as he was then 
 residing in London, and foresaw the possibility of meeting 
 Byron in society. 1 Utterly in the dark as to the fate of 
 his first letter, Moore wrote again to Byron, restating the 
 grounds of his offence. He received in reply an explana- 
 tion which he regarded as satisfactory and kind, and 
 Moore's original fire-eating purposes were converted into 
 tenderness. ' We Irishmen,' he wrote to him, 8 ' in busi- 
 nesses of this kind seldom know any medium between 
 
 to draw the ball from the other pistol. The principals, who knew noth- 
 ing of this, fired without bullets.' Medium's Conversations, p. 217, 2nd 
 edition, London, 1824. 
 
 'Health to great Jeffrey ! Heaven preserve his life, 
 
 To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, 
 
 And guard it sacred in its future wars, 
 
 Since authors sometimes seek the field of Mars ! 
 
 Can none remember that eventful day, 
 
 That ever-glorious, almost fatal fray, 
 
 When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, 
 
 And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by P ' 
 
 The presence of the police is not explained by the version given above. 
 
 1 Moore's real place of residence at this time was at Ashbourne in 
 Derbyshire, not far from Newstead, which, to Byron's regret, Moore had 
 never visited. 
 
 3 See Moore's Life, ii. 86.
 
 1811.] PREPARATIONS FOR HIS MAIDEN SPEECH. 121 
 
 decided hostility and decided friendship.' This was music 
 to Byron's ears, especially as he professed himself an 
 enthusiastic admirer of his poems. Moore already enjoyed 
 a recognised reputation as a poet, moved in the best 
 aristocratic circles, was no didactic preacher like Dallas, 
 but an easy-going man of the world, and a thorough 
 gentleman. Byron declared his readiness to meet him 
 personally, and at Moore's own suggestion, Rogers invited 
 them both to dinner, Thomas Campbell being the only 
 other person present. From that moment the sympathies 
 between Byron and Moore grew rapidly to intimacy and 
 ripened, as is well known, into a lifelong friendship. 
 
 Through Rogers also Byron became acquainted with 
 Lord Holland. He was now preparing the speech his 
 maiden speech which he delivered in the House of Lords 
 (on the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill), and Rogers, 
 to whom he had communicated his design of taking 
 part in the debate, sought for him the advice of Lord 
 Holland. In spite of the bitter verses on himself and Lady 
 Holland in the ' English Bards,' Lord Holland hastened to 
 comply with this request. Byron returned thanks by letter, 
 and after a short correspondence, their personal acquaint- 
 ance, which was introduced by a visit of Lord Holland to 
 Byron, took place. The very kindness and leniency with 
 which not only Lord Holland, bilt Moore, Scott, and others 
 forgave his attacks, thus heaping coals of fire on his head, 
 made him repent of his satire, and when the fifth edition 
 was about to appear, he caused the whole impression to 
 be burnt. 1 Dallas, who was so ready to assume a property 
 
 1 Byron at a later period (March 31, 1815), sent an apology to 
 Coleridge and endeavoured to atone for his attack. (See Moore's Life, 
 iii. 159.) Only he would not for a long time hear anything of a reconcilia- 
 tion with Lord Carlisle. With one of those who were attacked, Colonel 
 Greville, he was at this time nearly involved in a duel, although Byron 
 in his case had been moderate, and had the right moreover on hia side.
 
 122 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 24. 
 
 in Byron, resented this act of suppression, originating, as 
 he considered, in love to his ' new friends,' ' and felt 
 altogether ill at ease with his relations to Holland House. 
 Byron's suppression of the ' Hints,' which were actually in 
 print, Dallas ascribed also to the influence of the Hollands, 
 which, to his vexation, was thus seen to be more potent 
 than his own. Henceforward Byron became a frequent 
 and welcome guest at Holland House, that famous ren- 
 dezvous of all the talents and magnates in politics, litera- 
 ture, and art. ' Here,' says Macaulay while he pays his 
 tribute to the grace and the kindness with which the 
 princely hospitality of that mansion was dispensed, 
 ' here in one corner the last debate was discussed, and 
 the last comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed 
 with modest admiration on Reynolds's Baretti, Mackin- 
 tosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation, 
 and Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at 
 the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of 
 Austerlitz.' 2 This description refers, indeed, to a some- 
 what later period ; in Byron's time, besides himself, the 
 stars who specially shone there were Moore, Thomas 
 Campbell, Sheridan, and Rogers. 
 
 To return to Byron's maiden speech : it was a decided 
 success. Dallas, who had accompanied Byron when he 
 first took his seat in the Upper House, was again present. 
 But on this occasion Byron would not have felt himself 
 abandoned even had he been absent. All the members of 
 the House of Lords who were acquainted with him con- 
 gratulated him, others sought to be introduced to him. 
 Sir Francis Burdett said of his speech ' that it was the 
 
 Moore, however, adjusted the matter (ii. 139-141). An impression, how- 
 ever, o: the satire appeared in Ireland. Dallas, iii. 36. 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 243. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Review, vol. Ixxiii. p. 5G8.
 
 1812.] HIS SECOND AND THIRD SPEECHES. 123 
 
 best speech by a lord since the Lord knows when.' Lord 
 Granville thought that the structure of the periods re- 
 called Burke, and Lord Holland prophesied that he would 
 surpass all of them, if he only persevered. Sheridan, 
 also, was of the same opinion. The speech had been 
 carefully prepared beforehand, and committed to memory ; 
 the delivery, as Byron himself says and others corroborate, 
 was loud and fluent enough, but somewhat theatrical. 1 
 The subject the destruction of the improved frames by 
 the Nottingham weavers, who by the introduction of these 
 had lost employment and bread was one in which Byron 
 felt peculiarly interested, and as a good Whig he boldly 
 took up 'the starving and despairing masses,' although, 
 as might have been expected from his youth, in a very 
 rhetorical manner ; so that he fears lest Lord Holland 
 should think him half a frame-breaker himself. 2 ' I spoke,' 
 so he writes to Hodgson, ' very violent sentences with a 
 sort of modest impudence, abused everything and every- 
 body, and put the Lord Chancellor very much out of 
 humour.' 3 It may here be added that Byron appeared as 
 a speaker in the Upper House only on two other occa- 
 sions : in the debate on Lord Donoughmore's motion for a 
 committee on the Eoman Catholic Claims, April 12, 1812 
 (he spoke and voted for it), and in the debate on Major 
 Cartwright's petition, on June 1, 1813. 4 On. both these 
 occasions he had little or no success ; his delivery was 
 still more declamatory and theatrical than when he first 
 spoke, with the same singing tone, which was the defect 
 also of his poetical recitation, and which had been the 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, ii. 130. 2 Ibid. ii. 124. 3 Ibid. ii. 130. 
 
 4 The three speeches were edited and published by Dallas with the title : 
 ' The Parliamentary Speeches of Lord Byron, printed from the copies 
 prepared by his Lordship for publication. London, 1824.' They are also 
 to be found in the sixth volume of the edition of the Life and Works, 
 p. 341 et seq., referred to in this translation.
 
 124 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [.Ex. 24. 
 
 fashion at Harrow. In the third speech he so mouthed, 
 that it did not escape his own observation, and he after- 
 wards spoke jestingly of it to Moore. 1 His speaking was 
 not considered sufficiently dignified for the Upper House, 
 but more suited to the House of Commons. In order to 
 become a parliamentary orator, he must have spared 
 neither labour nor self-discipline to attain perfection ; but 
 such a course was unsuited to his character. In this 
 sphere he would never have attained excellence ; so he 
 thought after these first attempts, and thus left the hopes 
 and wishes of teachers and friends unfulfilled. Poetry, 
 moreover, soon so exclusively occupied him, that he felt 
 but little inclination for parliamentary life and the career 
 of a statesman. 
 
 Two days after the delivery of his maiden speech, which, 
 like the blast of a trumpet, served to announce his poem, 
 'Childe Harold' was at length published. Though in a 
 life, like Byron's, so full of turning-points, it would be 
 difficult to specify any one in particular, as more decisive 
 than the other, yet, surely, the appearance of ' Childe 
 Harold ' must be regarded as the most momentous. If he 
 had any one master-passion which determined his whole 
 life, it was the love of fame; and now, almost to his own 
 surprise, he suddenly discovered the field on which he 
 could gratify this passion to the fullest extent, and with 
 the least expenditure of toil. The latter point is by no 
 means to be left out of consideration ; the nearly two 
 hundred Spenserian stanzas of which the poem when it 
 was first published was composed, he had, so to speak, 
 extemporised, while on his very first appearance in 
 Parliament he had discovered, that he had not only to 
 master a copious body of facts, but to consider the most 
 appropriate form of turning them to account, and that 
 1 Life of Lord Syr on, ii. 207.
 
 1812.] THE PUBLICATION OF ' CHILDE HAROLD.' 125 
 
 even a nobleman could not succeed in playing a political 
 part without the faculty of labour, which was utterly 
 foreign to his nature. The success of f Childe Harold ' 
 was so decisive, that Byron summed it up in the words, ' I 
 awoke one morning and found myself famous.' Lord 
 Byron and * Childe Harold ' were the idols of the day, the 
 theme of every conversation, yea, almost an historical event. 
 The first edition was sold off in a few days. The fearless 
 and frank individuality of character, which expressed itself 
 in that poem with a freedom reckless of consequences, on 
 all political, religious, and social questions, was pre- 
 eminently in harmony with the state of men's minds at 
 that period. ' Childe Harold,' even in its complete form, 
 is no finished whole, no work of art in the higher sense ; 
 the requisite repose and depth were wanting alike for the 
 creation and for the enjoyment of such a work. It is a 
 string of pearls of opinions and thoughts on questions 
 of philosophy and politics in a brilliant and highly poetical 
 setting, and what many scarcely ventured to think, they 
 found there set forth in bold and lofty expression. The 
 dissatisfaction, so energetically uttered by the poet, on 
 the part which England played in the affairs of the world, 
 was felt and recognised with especial earnestness by a 
 great part of the nation. With this was blended the 
 fascination of a mysterious personality, which Byron had 
 interwoven with his poetry ; from the beginning he aimed 
 at shrouding himself in a veil of mysterious interest, and 
 at making the public the confidant of his sorrows. Much 
 both of truth and falsehood on his domestic affairs, on the 
 excesses of his life at Cambridge and Newstead, as well as 
 about his travelling adventures in Albania and Greece, 
 had already reached the ears of the world$ and excited 
 general curiosity. The ' respublica litteraria ' was, more- 
 over, deeply interested at seeing the young peer, who in
 
 126 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [En. 24. 
 
 his bold satire had hurled the glove of defiance at the 
 foot of the whole English Parnassus, himself descend into 
 the literary arena, and contend for the laurel, for his first 
 appearance in the ' Hours of Idleness ' had been compara- 
 tively insignificant. His high rank in society naturally 
 also contributed to increase the interest which was felt ; 
 even Byron could not conceal it from himself that a great 
 portion of the unexampled applause he received was to 
 be accounted for by this circumstance. His youth also, 
 and his renowned personal beauty, contributed, especially 
 among women, to heighten this result. 
 
 Not only was Byron's literary position for ever decided 
 by ' Childe Harold,' but from that hour he became the 
 cherished and petted darling of aristocratic society, of 
 what in England is called ' high life.' He was, to use his 
 own words, the lion of the year 1812. London lay, as 
 Disraeli says, at the feet of a youth of three and twenty. 1 
 He lived in the very whirlpool of society, and on every 
 side his vanity was fed and surfeited. He was introduced 
 at a ball to the Prince Regent, at his royal Highness's 
 request, who, as might have been expected, plied him with 
 flattery, and expressed the desire to see him soon at Carlton 
 House. With whatever indifference Byron might in his 
 letters affect to view the honour thus conferred upon him, 
 shortly after this introduction he was surprised by Dallas 
 in the very act of going to a levee in full court dress 
 and with powdered hair, and its accidental postpone- 
 ment alone prevented him from carrying out a purpose, 
 which was in glaring contradiction with his avowed political 
 and literary tendencies. Consistency and fidelity of con- 
 viction never, however, constituted his strength ; and he 
 was far too much entangled by the fascinations of the 
 great world and gratified by the homage which it paid to 
 
 1 Venetia,
 
 1812.] HIS INTRODUCTION TO 'HIGH LIFE.' 127 
 
 him. Those were the palmy days of dandyism, under 
 the auspices of 'the first gentleman in Europe,' which 
 Byron himself has delineated so vigorously and pungently 
 in the pages of his Journal. The follies of fashion were 
 associated with a corruption of morals unparalleled since 
 the days of Charles II. The pleasures of the table, balls, 
 nights spent in dissipation, visits to the theatre, play and 
 debts, affairs of gallantry, histories of seduction of the 
 most licentious character, and duels arising from them, 
 formed the life-business of this society and consequently 
 of Byron, who became its victim. He says in one of his 
 journals, 1 that he liked the Dandies, and that he stood 
 high in the favour as he mentions with evident satis- 
 faction of the famous Beau Brummel, the master of the 
 guild of fools ; he led, in short, the very life of a young 
 nobleman, which he has drawn in few but masterly strokes 
 in ' Don Juan ' (xi. 73-75). Besides, however, this ques- 
 tionable side of ' high life,' Byron was brought into more 
 or less intimate relations with many intellectual magnates 
 and celebrities. In addition to the already mentioned 
 visitors of Holland House, he frequented the society of 
 Sir James Mackintosh, the statesman and historian ; of 
 Sir Humphry Davy, the inventor of the safety lamp ; of 
 the Edgeworth family, which had come on a visit to 
 London, and formed a social central point of the year 
 1813 ; of Madame de Stael ; of the distinguished Irishmen 
 Curran and Grattan ; of the dramatic author Colman and 
 Kean the actor ; of Southey, with whom at first he was 
 much pleased ; of Monk Lewis. Bliicher also and Sir 
 Hudson Lowe he met in society. Byron's judgments and 
 remarks in his Journal on these different characters bear 
 witness to his fine powers of observation and his know- 
 ledge of men ; they are almost universally pertinent, and 
 
 1 Moore' 6 Life, iii. 232.
 
 128 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. [JEi. 24. 
 
 more indulgent and kindly than might have been ex- 
 pected. He was enchanted with Curran. * Such imagina- 
 tion ! ' he exclaimed : ( there never was anything like it 
 that ever I saw or heard of.' 1 'I have heard that man 
 speak more poetry than I have ever seen written, though 
 I saw him seldom and but occasionally. I saw him 
 presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's; it was 
 the grand confluence between the Rhone and the Saone, 
 
 and they were both so d- d ugly, that I could not help 
 
 wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland 
 could have taken up respectively such residences.' 2 One 
 of the best intellects of England had, as he never forgot, 
 in contrast with these sought out for ' itself a home 
 the reverse of ugly ! Byron's judgment on Sheridan is 
 well known. ' Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to 
 do has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. 
 He has written the best comedy (" School for Scandal "), 
 the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's 
 lampoon the " Beggar's Opera "), the best farce (" The 
 Critic," it is only too good for a farce), and the best 
 address (" Monologue on Garrick "), and to crown all, de- 
 livered the very best oration (the famous Begum Speech) 
 ever conceived or heard of in this country.' 3 When this 
 praise was told by some one next day to Sheridan, it 
 caused him to shed tears. 
 
 Byron's relation with Sir Walter Scott may be men- 
 tioned in this place, although their personal acquaintance 
 was not formed till the spring of the year 1813. Scott, one 
 of the many who had been attacked in his youthful satire, 
 was notwithstanding filled with admiration for 'Childe 
 Harold ' and the Poetical Tales, and commenced a corre- 
 
 1 Moose's Life, iii. 234. 3 Byron'a Memoranda apud Moore, iii. 234. 
 3 Moore's Life, ii. 303.
 
 1812.J BYEON'S RESPECT FOE SIE WALTEE SCOTT. 129 
 
 spondence with him. The two poets met at the house 
 of Mr. Murray, which had long formed a rendezvous for 
 many of the magnates of literature ; and during this visit 
 of Scott they saw each other almost daily, and were mu- 
 tually attracted. Byron had a very high opinion of Scott's 
 poetry, and read the Waverley romances with ever new 
 delight. That he should respect Scott as a man, was a 
 matter of course ; this respect he afterwards expressed in 
 words which can never be forgotten, in his celebrated 
 letter to Beyle (Stendhal). 1 But Scott also, with a quick 
 eye, recognised the nobler traits in Byron's character. 
 His weaknesses, indeed, he had few opportunities of 
 knowing by experience ; but his perception of these never 
 perverted his judgment in the estimate of his good quali- 
 ties. This, indeed, he often showed, but especially in the 
 tribute he paid to Byron after his death. 2 Scott presented 
 his youthful rival with a valuable dagger inlaid with gold, 
 which had belonged to Elfi Bey. Byron's present in 
 return was a silver urn, filled with bones from graves at 
 Athens, with inscriptions on two sides of the base. One 
 ran thus ; ' The bones contained in this urn were found 
 in certain ancient sepulchres within the laud walls of 
 
 1 [' I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations 
 which call forth the real character and I can assure you, that his 
 character is worthy of admiration that of all men he is the most open, 
 the most honourable, the most amiable. With his politics I have nothing 
 to do : they differ from mine, which renders it difficult for me to speak 
 of them. But he is perfectly sincere in them; and sincerity may be 
 humble, but she cannot be servile. I pray you, therefore, to correct or 
 soften that passage. You may, perhaps, attribute this officiousness of 
 mine to a false affectation of candour, as I happen to be a writer also. 
 Attribute it to what motives you please, but believe the truth. I say, 
 that Walter Scott is as nearly a thorough good man as man can be, 
 because I know it by experience to be the case.' Byron's Letter to Beyle 
 in the Appendix to Medium's Conversations, p. 459.] 
 
 2 [First published in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, 1824, and included 
 in Scott's Misc. Prose Works, iv. 343-50.] 
 
 K
 
 130 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mr. 25. 
 
 Athens, in the month of February 1811.' The other face 
 bears the lines of Juvenal : l 
 
 Expende quot libras in duce summo 
 Invenies .... 
 
 Mors sola fatetur 
 Quantula sint hominum corpuscula. 
 
 The thought of wha.t the world would say to the gloomy 
 and ominous nature of their mutual gifts, afforded the 
 two poets much merriment and laughter. 
 
 We now return to the period previous to Byron's 
 marriage. In spite of his intercourse with these leading 
 minds, Byron still felt the life he then led was not the soil on 
 which the poetical aspirations of his youthful genius could 
 be developed. His manner in society betrayed that, how- 
 ever richly his vanity was fed, its attractions were insuf- 
 ficient for his happiness. Although he formed the centre of 
 a circle of admirers ready to do him homage, yet, as Moore 
 his constant companion says, his better thoughts appeared 
 to be elsewhere, and he looked with melancholy distraction 
 on the crowds surrounding him, while in smaller and 
 more intimate circles he was wont to yield himself to un- 
 restrained cheerfulness. To ladies he showed always 
 great gallantry, while to men his manner was haughty. 
 His longings constantly turned towards Greece. Even 
 before the actual publication of ' Childe Harold ' Dallas 
 and other friends pressed him to continue it; this, he 
 replied, was impossible in England, he could only do 
 it under the blue skies of Greece. The purpose of 
 returning to the Morea or Asia constantly, therefore, 
 presented itself to him. He dreamed of settling at Naxos 
 or some one of the Greek islands; he even appears. to 
 have thought of a journey to Abyssinia. In the summer 
 of 1813 he actually began preparations for a. renewal of 
 his travels. His library was advertised to be sold by 
 1 Sat. x. 147.
 
 1812.] HIS PEOLOGUE FOE DEUEY LANE THEATEE, 131 
 
 auction, 1 and a passage to Greece on board a man-of- 
 war (the 'Boyne'), was granted to him. He changed 
 his mind, however, and put off the execution of his plan 
 for two years. Instead of this, he proposed to make, in 
 company with a friend, a tour in Holland ; but this too 
 came to nothing. Neither before nor even after his 
 marriage, had he relinquished his plans for travelling. 
 What really kept him at home was not so much the 
 plague, then raging in the East more violently than 
 usual, but the still embarrassed state of his fortune. His 
 debts were not yet liquidated, nor his lawsuits settled; 
 the latter even more urgently required his presence at 
 home, as he had cause, he thought, to be dissatisfied 
 with Hanson, his man of business. Yet the vacillation of 
 his character, and the ensnaring spells with which society 
 fettered him, contributed their part, spite of all his plans, 
 to bind him to London, which during these years he left 
 only for short excursions to Cambridge and Cheltenham, 
 and the country-seats of some of his friends. 
 
 Though unable to travel in reality, he did so at least 
 in spirit, and in the few hours of inspiration which 
 society with the great world left him for intercourse 
 with the Muses, his fancy transported him to the Morea 
 and Turkey, and to these hours we owe the brilliant 
 series of his Poetical Tales. His first poetical creations, 
 however, subsequent to ' Childe Harold,' cannot be ranged 
 under this description : namely, his Prologue on the 
 re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, and his Satire on the 
 
 1 The following was the title of the catalogue : ' A Catalogue of Books 
 the property of a Nobleman about to leave England on a tour to the 
 Morea, &c., which will be sold by auction by R. II. Evans at his house, 
 No. 20, Pall Mall, on Thursday, July 8.' Possibly the announced tour 
 was (partially at least) only a pretext, to conceal the true motive which 
 rendered the sale of the books necessary namely, his pecuniary difficul- 
 ties.
 
 132 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [JET. 25. 
 
 ' Waltz.' Unimportant as the former may now appear, it 
 was in its day almost a literary and social event. Drury 
 Lane Theatre, opened in the year 1747 under Garrick's 
 management with a celebrated prologue by Dr. Johnson, 
 having been destroyed by fire in the year 1811, the 
 Directors adopted the course, till then unknown, of 
 announcing, that the composition of an address for the 
 inauguration of the rebuilt theatre was open to public 
 competition. In answer to this advertisement, forty-three 
 poems, exhibiting much variety in their treatment, were 
 sent in ; not one of which, however, was considered worthy 
 of adoption; so that the Committee, rejecting them one 
 and all, applied through Lord Holland to Byron, who with 
 considerable reluctance accepted the task, and, as his 
 letters to that nobleman show, untiringly persevered in 
 it; seeking his advice in every alteration. This address, 
 although it at once received its due meed of praise, is at 
 the present day quite forgotten, while the parodies of the 
 two brothers James and Horace Smith, published under 
 the title of ' Rejected Addresses,' in which they imitated 
 with surpassing ability the style of the celebrated poets of 
 the time, Scott, Byron, Crabbe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
 Southey, &C., 1 have maintained their place to this hour 
 as masterpieces in their kind. 
 
 1 The 'Rejected Addresses ' 'were offered to Mr. Murray for 207., who 
 declined to purchase, and it was with some difficulty that a publisher 
 was found. Seven years afterwards, when the little volume had gone 
 through seventeen editions, Mr. Murray bought the copyright for 1317. 
 The twenty-fifth edition appeared in 1855. The addresses which were 
 actually rejected were published November 11, 1812, with the title: ' The 
 Genuine Rejected Addresses, presented to the Committee of Management 
 for Drury Lane Theatre; preceded by that written by Lord Byron and 
 adopted by the Committee. London. B. Macmillan.' A good joke is told 
 of Sheridan in connection with this competition : ' At a dinner party at 
 Rogers's, describing the poem which Mr. Whitbread had written, and sent 
 in, among the other addresses for the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, and
 
 1813.] WRITES THE ' GIAOUR ' AND ' BRIDE OF ABYDOS.' 133 
 
 The Satire called ' the Waltz,' in which he poured out 
 his bitterness on the immorality of society, found, as 
 compared with the Prologue, so little sympathy, that he 
 considered it advisable to deny the authorship in a letter 
 addressed to Murray, but intended for publication. He 
 wrote it in the autumn of 1812 at Cheltenham, and 
 published it in the following spring, under the pseudonym 
 * Horace Hornem.' Byron in this Satire stands forth as 
 the * laudator temporis acti ; ' he praises the graceful old 
 English national dances, and beholds in the waltz, intro- 
 duced from Germany, the culmination of the corruption 
 of modern fashion. It may have been very true, that 
 society in London, Cheltenham, or elsewhere, excelling 
 neither in morality nor in dancing, waltzed ungracefully, 
 and perverted that special dance by making it a manifesta- 
 tion of its own innate dissoluteness ; but the question will 
 arise, whether Byron would have felt this fine moral indig- 
 nation had he not been excluded, by his unhappy lameness 
 which throughout his life was the main source of his 
 bitterness from taking part in the amusement. 
 
 The ( Giaour,' which Byron himself entitles as a ( Frag- 
 ment of a Turkish tale,' opened the series of Poetic Tales 
 in May 1813. 'It is no wonder,' he remarks in his 
 journal, * that I wrote a fragment ; my mind is a frag- 
 ment.' 1 The fragmentary character of this poem had 
 also been suggested by the ' Columbus ' of Rogers, which 
 at that time enjoyed high favour ; whence he took occasion 
 to dedicate the poem to this poet, who was so highly 
 esteemed by him. All his minor tales, however, with 
 
 which, like the rest, turned chiefly on allusions to the Phoenix, Sheridan 
 said "but Whitbread made more of the bird than any of them: he 
 entered into particulars, and described its wings, beak, tail, &c.; in short, it 
 was a poulterer's description of a phoenix." ' Moore's Life, ii. 190 (note). 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 299.
 
 134 LIFE OF LOED BYBON. [TEx. 26. 
 
 the exception of ' Mazeppa ' and the ' Island,' are almost 
 as fragmentary, and as compositions cannot be compared 
 'to those of Scott. The metrical form Byron borrowed 
 from Scott's ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' who again was 
 indebted for it to the * Christabel ' of Coleridge, which 
 was at that time known only in manuscript, and was 
 first published in the year 1816. Of the personal ex- 
 periences of the poet, 011 which the ' Giaour ' is based, we 
 have already spoken. The approbation with which it 
 was received was so extraordinary, that in the 'autumn 
 of 1818 a fifth edition was demanded; but the charms 
 of the poem depend chiefly on its ' poetic pearls ' which 
 Byron introduced during the printing of the different 
 successive editions, so that the 400 lines of which it 
 originally consisted gradually grew to about 1,500. Even 
 the celebrated passage beginning with 
 
 He who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
 Ere the first day of death has fled, 
 
 is one of those insertions. This process plainly reveals 
 not only the lyrical character of these narratives, but of 
 the genius of Byron himself, as contrasted with the more 
 epic character of that of Scott. 
 
 The habit of adding beauties we meet with, although 
 not to the same extent, in the next tale, which appeared 
 December 2 of the same year the 'Bride of Abydos,'" 
 dedicated to Lord Holland. The opening lines of this 
 poem, suggested by the ' Kennst du das Land ' of Goethe, 
 was an addition made as the volume was going through 
 the press. This poem (the original title of which was 
 ' Zuleika'), was written in four nights ; and Byron more 
 than once says, that by this occupation of his mind he 
 wished to divert his thoughts from a passion, of which we 
 have no further account, thus illustrating his own saying :
 
 1814.] PUBLICATION OF THE ' COKSAIE.' 135 
 
 ' all convulsions end with me in rhyme.' l Notwithstand- 
 ing the rapidity of composition, the poem is more finished 
 than the * Giaour.' Byron was quite uncertain whether the 
 ' Bride ' would please, and was prepared for little or indeed 
 for no success. 2 Murray's offer of 1,000 guineas for the 
 two tales, the ' Giaour ' and the * Bride of Abydos,' he de- 
 clined, therefore, provisionally until their success should 
 be tested. 3 The result exceeded all expectation ; within a 
 month 6,000 copies of the * Bride' were sold, and from 
 this period also Byron's poems began to attain celebrity 
 abroad, especially in Germany. The applause he received 
 doubtless contributed not a little to Byron's writing a 
 third tale, the ' Corsair/ which he finished in ten days 
 and sent to Dallas on New Year's Day 1814. To the 
 original cast of the dedication to Moore, Murray, on the 
 ground of its political allusions, raised some objections , 
 so that Byron composed a second to be chosen if approved : 
 according to Moore's wish, however, the first was retained. 
 On the very day of publication 13,000 copies were sold. 
 Public opinion very soon began to assume, that ' Byron 
 delineated in this poem his own experiences ; that the 
 ' Corsair ' was himself; that the likeness was unmistak- 
 able ; that during his pilgrimage, after Hobhouse left 
 him, he had incognito done Heaven knows what, why 
 might he not have been a corsair? Appended to the 
 ' Corsair ' were two stanzas, addressed to the Princess of 
 Wales (' Lines to a Lady Weeping ') which in spite of their 
 insignificance made a great sensation, on account of their 
 attack on the Prince Regent whose levee he had wished 
 not very long before to attend and which brought down 
 on him unbounded censure from the Tory press. Among 
 
 1 Compare Byron's Diary, December 5, 1813 ; Moore's Life, ii. 290, 
 
 2 See Byron's Diary, December 5, 1813 j Moore's Life, ii. '290. 
 
 3 Moore's Life, iii. 314.
 
 136 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mr. 27. 
 
 the accusations which were heaped on him, he was charged 
 with receiving enormous sums for his writings. Through 
 Murray, and by a letter which Dallas of his own accord 
 addressed to the ' Morning Post,' this accusation was 
 speedily reduced to its proper measure. Dallas, indeed 
 best knew with whom the honorarium arising from Byron's 
 works remained. The labour of correction which he had 
 performed on ' Childe Harold,' was transferred, with 
 reference to the Poetical Tales, to William GifFord, whom 
 in so many words Byron described as his editor. He gave 
 this critic even carte blanche to correct the style of the 
 4 Siege of Corinth ' according to his mind. In spite of 
 his antagonistic political principles, and his occasional 
 bitterness, Byron always spoke of Gifford with respect ; 
 personally they appear never to have met. 
 
 In the dedication of the 'Corsair' Byron again announced 
 that with this poem his poetical career was to terminate ; 
 that, for some years at least, he would not trespass on the 
 patience of the public. But next day this resolution was 
 broken; the unexpected news of Napoleon's abdication 
 at Fontainebleau furnished the occasion for a bitter ode 
 on his * Pagod,' which he published anonymously. He 
 defended his inconsistency against Moore's raillery by 
 pleading, that in this case it was impossible for him to be 
 silent, and that by a mental reservation he had excluded 
 anonymous authorship from the pact. 1 To Murray he 
 wrote : ' No matter ; they can but throw the old story of 
 inconsistency in my teeth let them I mean, as to not 
 publishing. However, now I will keep my word. Nothing 
 but the occasion, which was physically irresistible, made 
 me swerve.' 2 As if this protestation were not enough, he 
 went a step further, he came to the unheard-of determina- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 05. 2 Ibid. 67.
 
 1815.] ' THE SIEGE OF CORINTH,' AND ' PARISINA.' 137 
 
 tion of suppressing all his writings. He actually forwarded, 
 April 29, 1814, to Murray the requisite draft to repurchase 
 all rights of publication and all copies in stock ; the sale 
 of his poems was to cease, and every copy of them, except 
 two for Murray's ' own private possession,' was to be 
 destroyed. 1 The smallest consideration might have con- 
 vinced Byron, that even by such an unexampled proceed- 
 ing his writings could never be destroyed. The many 
 thousand copies which had been sold rendered destruc- 
 tion impossible, and further demands, as Byron must 
 have well known, would be supplied by impressions pub- 
 lished on the Continent, in America or elsewhere. When 
 Mr. Murray, however, represented the extraordinary em- 
 barrassment and injury to which such a design, if carried 
 out, would expose him, he readily consented to withdraw 
 it. Even the silence which, as he had publicly announced, 
 he meant to keep, his vacillating character could not 
 maintain. On the contrary he began 'Lara' in May which 
 may be regarded as the continuation of the ' Corsair ' 
 and finished it June 24, 1814. This poem, written, like 
 the ' Corsair,' in the heroic couplet, appeared without a 
 dedication a departure from his usual custom and in 
 same volume with Rogers's graceful tale of ' Jacque- 
 Byron had proposed, that Moore should form a 
 third in the brotherhood, but this 'dangerous honour* 
 he declined. The somewhat unnatural marriage between 
 'Larry and Jacquy,' as Byron jestingly called the two 
 tales, was divorced in the same year. Here also in the 
 delineation of Lara the poet partially portrayed him- 
 self. 2 In answer to the charge of Jeffrey and other 
 critics, that the character of Lara was too elaborately 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 73. 
 
 2 Compare the descriptions. Cant. 2, 17, 18.
 
 1 38 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JEr. 27. 
 
 drawn, Byron asks, * What do the reviewers mean by 
 " elaborate " ? Lara I wrote while undressing, after 
 coining home from balls and masquerades, in the year of 
 revelry 1814.' ' 
 
 The two following tales, ' The Siege of Corinth ' and 
 ( Parisina,' were written in the year 1815, and published 
 in the beginning of 1816. The former is distinguished by 
 the loose and irregular, the latter, on the contrary, by the 
 careful and musical, structure of its verse. With * Parisina ' 
 Byron took his leave of the soil of Greece. For the copy- 
 right of the two poems Murray offered, unasked, the sum 
 of 1,000 guineas ; 2 the draft for this sum Byron, however, 
 although in considerable straits, sent back torn through ; 
 the sum, he said, was far too much, and he wished that 
 Murray would not throw temptation in his way. But 
 when it was suggested to Byron, 3 how with this large 
 honorarium he might aid some meritorious but needy 
 literary men (Godwin, Maturin, Coleridge), he most readily 
 adopted the suggestion, and professed his readiness to 
 accept payment from Mr. Murray. The latter, however, 
 knowing the poet's straitened circumstances, now de- 
 murred, and retained the money for Byron's own use. 4 
 
 In order to complete our connected review of the 
 Poetical Tales, we anticipate the order of time, ar:d men- 
 tion here the two last, which conclude the series, 'Mazeppa,' 
 written in the autumn of 1818 at Eavenna, and 'The 
 Island,' at Genoa at the beginning of 1823. In * Mazeppa ' 
 we have the reflex of Byron's relation to the Countess 
 Guiccioli ; like her the object of Mazeppa's love is called 
 Theresa, and the old Polish Count is evidently the old 
 Count Guiccioli. In ' The Island,' the poet's predilection 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 339, 341. * Ibid. iii. 221. 
 
 Ibid. 223. < Ibid. 224.
 
 1815.] HIMSELF THE HERO OF HIS TALES. 139 
 
 for nautical adventures is again manifest, and the poem 
 is remarkable, as showing how enthusiasm for the state 
 of nature, after the fashion of Rousseau, seizes and 
 engages his fancy ; it also recalls, in many respects, the 
 gorgeous colouring of Wilson's 'Isle of Palms' (1812). 
 Of all the Tales of Byron, ' The Island ' is the only one 
 which can claim artistic repose and harmonious finish. 
 It is not like the others an outburst of passion, neither 
 is it a dark picture of nocturnal horrors, nor a musical 
 dissonance reduced to harmony. * Mazeppa ' also is more 
 calm and composed than its predecessors, but it resembles 
 a moon- lit landscape, while ' The Island' is like a scene 
 illumined with the bright rays of the sun. Although these 
 did not excite nearly the same interest as the earlier Tales, 
 they are a brilliant refutation of a notion which Byron 
 expressed to Moore : ' I know not,' he says, in a letter 
 written in 1816 to Moore, 1 ' why I have dwelt so much on 
 the same scenes, except that I find them fading, or con- 
 fusing, (if such a word may be) in my memory, in the 
 midst of present turbulence and pressure, and I felt anxious 
 to stamp before the die was worn out. I now break it. 
 With those countries, and events connected with them, 
 all my really poetical feelings begin and end. Were I to 
 try, I could make nothing of any other subject ; and that 
 I have apparently exhausted.' The groundlessness of his 
 apprehension that he had written himself out is suf- 
 ficiently transparent, though it is certainly true, that 
 Greece had the same relation to Byron's romantic tales 
 that Scotland had to those of Scott and to the Waverley 
 romances : Greece was the soil that gave them birth. 
 The wild and lawless war of passions on the sacred soil of 
 classical beauty, her ardent longing after this departed 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 206.
 
 140 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [<Er. 27. 
 
 beauty, lier conscious impotence to call it into life again, 
 the self-reproaches which this consciousness engendered, 
 these were the features in modern Greece, which most 
 corresponded to the state of the poet's own mind, and 
 references to himself are everywhere to be read between 
 the lines ; he would identify himself not only with the 
 heroes of modern Greece, but with Greece itself. 
 
 The hero of the tales is himself; the portrait he draws 
 is his own, painted in the darkest possible colours it is 
 evermore Childe Harold, or, to speak more correctly, 
 Childe Burun ; his hero is constantly tortured by secret 
 guilt and by the recollection of deeds of darkness, driven 
 and goaded by untamable passions ; he despises the world 
 and men, and is at enmity with them and with himself. 
 The continued treatment of the same, so little varied, 
 theme, the constant production of the same scenery, 
 would, in any hand less powerful and impassioned than 
 Byron's, have degenerated into monotony. But next to 
 the novelty and originality of these tales, it was their 
 matchless force and vigour which magnetically attracted 
 the reading world. Society demanded strong excite- 
 ment and highly seasoned food. None of his later works 
 therefore met with such undivided applause as 'Childe 
 Harold' and the Greek Tales. So far he stood, during 
 this period, at the summit of his glory, and left all his 
 competitors far behind him.
 
 1815.J BYKON'S MENTAL CONDITION. 141 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 1815-1816. 
 
 BEFORE we follow Byron to the marriage ceremony, it 
 will be needful to form some notion of the state of his 
 feelings at that period, as well as of his previous relations 
 to women. Some insight into his mental condition we 
 obtain from the journal, which he kept from November 
 14, 1813, to April 10, 1814, and sent to Moore on July 14 
 of the latter year. 1 From this diary, as from compositions 
 of this class generally, no conclusions should be drawn 
 pretending to exclude contradiction: the diary rather 
 reflects the impressions and feelings of the moment, as 
 fleeting as they are often contradictory : and of this Byron 
 is himself quite conscious. * This journal,' he says, ' is 
 a relief. When I am tired, as I generally am, out comes 
 this and down goes everything. But I can't read it 
 over ; and God knows what contradictions it may contain. 
 If I am sincere with myself (but I fear one lies more 
 to one's self than to anyone else), every page should 
 confute, refute, and utterly abjure its predecessor.' 2 
 There are, however, views and feelings which perpetually 
 recur from the first to the last page, and which run 
 through it, not so much like a red as rather like a 
 grey thread. Hamlet's reflections 
 
 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
 
 1 It is given in Moore's Life, ii. 252-311 ; iii. 1-24. 
 3 Moore's Life, ii. 294.
 
 142 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 Fye on't ! fye ! 'tis an unweeded garden 
 
 That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
 
 Possess it merely * 
 
 form its principal text. Throughout it we meet with 
 expressions (called forth mainly by the corruptions of 
 society) of indifference and callousness, of vacuity and 
 satiety, of loathing and contempt for men. Never do 
 we hear a fresh or joyous tone, never does a youthful 
 hope beam forth. The journal opens with these words : 
 ' At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is 
 over (!) one should be something ; and what am I ? Nothing 
 but five-and-twenty and the odd months. What have I 
 seen ? The same man all over the world ay, and woman 
 too.' 2 It concludes thus : "I will keep no further 
 journal of that same hesternal torch-light : and to 
 prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of 
 memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume 
 and write, in Ipecacuanha, " that the Bourbons are re- 
 stored ! ! ! " " Hang up Philosophy." To be sure I have long 
 despised myself and man, but I have never spat in the face 
 of my species before. fool, I shall go mad ! ' 3 This for 
 a man of five-and-twenty is a tone as unusual as it >is 
 unnatural. The only prospect which consoles him amid 
 this misery is the prospect of a dreamless sleep : * I see no 
 such horror,' he says, ' in a " dreamless sleep," and I have 
 no conception of any existence which duration would not 
 render tiresome. Time must decide ; and eternity won't 
 be the less agreeable or more horrible because one did not 
 expect it. In the meantime, I am grateful for some good, 
 and tolerably patient under certain evils grace a Dieu et 
 in on bon temperament.' 4 He goes so far as to declare, 
 that he is too lazy to shoot himself especially as it would 
 annoy Augusta. 5 Such were the feelings of Byron, in the 
 
 1 Act i. sc. 2. 2 Moore's Life, ii. 253. 
 
 3 Ibid, iii. 24. 4 Ibid. ii. 282. 5 Ibid. 298.
 
 1815.J HIS SELF-DESCEIPTIOX IN HIS JOURNALS. 143 
 
 heyday of his youth, and while he enjoyed a position in 
 life of pre-eminent advantages and the fame of a poet 
 recognised by the world ! Various causes, which from his 
 birth co-operated in bringing him to this unhappy frame 
 of mind, have been brought to light in the course of our 
 narrative; one only remains to be more minutely con- 
 sidered his relation to women. 
 
 That Byron inherited a nature endued with strong 
 sensual passion is undeniable : ' My blood,' he said once, 
 ' is all meridian ; ' ' and the precocious gratification of this 
 tendency had never been restrained, either by himself or 
 by others. If we may believe a poem of the year 1807 
 (first published after his death), he had even then a son ; 2 
 though, notwithstanding the semblance of truth and reality 
 in these verses, and a supposed allusion in ' Don Juan,' 3 
 no mention is ever made of the existence of such re- 
 lationship. We have already spoken of the mistress 
 who, disguised as a page, accompanied him when a 
 student. At Newstead, according to what his enemies 
 said, and he himself gives us to understand in ' Childe 
 Harold,' he kept a regular harem ; though, in truth, it 
 appears that this harem consisted only of a single Oda- 
 lisque, one of the house-maids. 4 During his pilgrimage, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 157. * ' To my Son.' Works, vii. 209. 
 
 3 Canto xvi.61. 
 
 4 [Let Moore's remarks on these irregularities be read in connection with 
 the above. ' the notion caught up by many, from his own allusions 
 in " Childe Harold," to irregularities and orgies of which Newstead had 
 been the scene, is, like most other imputations against him founded on 
 his own testimony, greatly exaggerated. He describes, it is well known, 
 the home of his poetical representative as " a monastic dome, condemned 
 to uses vile," and then adds, 
 
 " Where Superstition once had made her den, 
 Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile." 
 
 ' Mr. Dallas, too, giving in to the same strain of exaggeration, says, in 
 speaking of the poet's preparation for his departure, " already satiated
 
 144 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [JET.-27. 
 
 too, his love affairs scarcely exceeded the usual measure. 
 After his return, however, when his travels and adven- 
 tures, partly true, partly fabulous, and his sudden fame 
 as a poet made him. doubly charming, ' dear Childe 
 Harold ' was positively besieged by women. One mother 
 wrote to offer him her daughter for a hundred pounds ; 
 and when the girl herself sent a written refusal, Byron 
 settled the matter by a present of money. Another lady 
 disguised as a page handed him her own love-letter : a 
 third he answered by a refusal, and so on. There is 
 another anecdote, of his meeting shortly after his mar- 
 riage, in his wife's drawing room, three married ladies, 
 with whom he had been too intimate. 'There are,' 
 as he remarked to Medwin, 1 'few Josephs in the world, 
 but many Potiphar's wives.' He was, in fact, properly the 
 seduced, and could say at a later period of his life with 
 good conscience and not without pride, that, although by 
 no means a Joseph, he had yet never seduced a woman. 2 
 He had been, as he another time asserts, all his life a 
 martyr to women. 3 Women have in truth no right to 
 complain of Byron ; he described them, as they showed 
 themselves to him, and from his childhood he at least 
 had seen them on their least favourable, not to say their 
 worst side. At the same time it is not to be denied, 
 
 with pleasure and disgusted with those companions who have no 
 other resource, he had resolved on mastering his appetites ; he broke 
 up his harems." The truth, however, is, that the narrowness of Lord 
 Byron'a means would alone have prevented such oriental luxuries. 
 The mode of his life at Newstead was simple and unexpensive . . . 
 and with respect to the alleged " harems," it appears certain, that one 
 or two suspected " subintroductae " (as the ancient monks of the Abbey 
 would have styled them), and those, too, among the ordinary menials of 
 the establishment, were all that even scandal itself could ever fix upon 
 to warrant such an assumption.' Moore's Life, i. 261, 262.] 
 
 1 Medwin's Conversations, p. 92 ; Dallas, iii. 23, 40. 
 
 2 Medwin, p. 92 ; Dallas, iii. p. 91. 3 Ibid. pp. 99, 101.
 
 1815.J LADY CAEOLINE LAMB. 145 
 
 that lie on liis part tried and plagued them, to the utmost 
 of his power. 
 
 Frequent mention has been made of Byron's intimacy 
 with Lady Caroline Lamb ; which, since it exercised a 
 considerable influence on his life, and gives at the same 
 time a vivid picture of the state of society, requires to be 
 mentioned at greater length. Lady Caroline Lamb (1785 
 1828) was the only daughter of the third Lord Besborough 
 and of Lady Henrietta Frances Spencer, daughter of the 
 first Earl Spencer. She is described by a biographer 
 as 'wild, impatient of restraint, rapid in her impulses, 
 generous and kind of heart,' l therefore in every respect 
 of a kindred spirit with Byron, who was three years her 
 junior. In person she was ' small, slight, and in earlier 
 life perfectly formed ; but her countenance had no other 
 beauty than expression that charm it possessed to a 
 singular degree ; her eyes were dark, but her hair and 
 complexion fair ; her manners, though somewhat eccentric 
 and apparently, not really, affected, had a fascination 
 which it is difficult to conceive.' 2 Lady Morgan 3 describes 
 her voice as ' soft, low, and caressing.' Her conduct was 
 'one perpetual kaleidoscope of changes.' 4 In 1805 she 
 was married to William Lamb, afterwards the celebrated 
 statesman, Lord Melbourne, to whom she bore three 
 children. Her burning desire to become acquainted with 
 the author of ' Childe Harold ' was first gratified at a 
 party (March 1812), 5 and her impressions were thus re- 
 
 1 Annual Biography for the year 1829 ; xiii. 51. 
 
 y Ut supra, p. 55. 3 Memoirs, 2nd edit. ii. 254. London, 1863. 
 
 4 Annual Biography, p. 56. 
 
 5 According to Gait (p. 187), it was she who introduced herself as a 
 page to Byron. Lady Morgan's Memoirs, ii. 198-214, 2nd edit. London, 
 1863, are the principal sources of information on Byron's connection with 
 Lady Caroline Lamb. Compare also Annual Biography, 1829, xiii. 51-57. 
 
 L
 
 146 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 corded in her journal: 'mad bad and dangerous to 
 know.' l Byron shortly afterwards paid her a visit ; what 
 then took place she has herself described. ' Rogers and 
 Moore were standing by me : I was on the sofa. I had 
 just come in from riding. I was filthy and heated. When 
 Lord Byron was announced, I flew out of the room to 
 wash myself. When I returned Rogers said, " Lord 
 Byron, you are a happy man. Lady Caroline has been 
 sitting here in all her dirt with us, but when you were 
 announced, she flew to beautify herself ! " ' 2 a significant 
 beginning. For the next nine months Byron almost lived 
 in Melbourne House, 'then the centre of all gaiety, at 
 least in appearance.' Byron was a recognised worshipper : 
 Mr. William Lamb, though aware of the intimacy, con- 
 cerned himself little about the morals of his wife : he 
 laughed at it, she says, 3 'and his indolence made him 
 insensible to everything.' The scandal, however, was too 
 great, and Lady Caroline's mother did not rest until 
 she had removed her daughter, for some time at least, to 
 her own father's house in Ireland. Mr. Lamb forgave 
 his wife all and implored her to remain but in vain. To 
 ' his dearest Caroline,' who had left him ' from a feeling 
 of duty 4 to her husband and her mother,' Byron wrote 
 a glowing farewell letter, of which it will be enough to quote 
 the end of the postscript. ' Is there anything in earth or 
 heaven that would have made me so happy as to have made 
 you mine long ago ? and not less now than then, but more 
 than ever at this time. You know I would with pleasure 
 give up all here and beyond the grave for you, and in re- 
 fraining from this, must my motives be misunderstood ? I 
 
 1 Lady Morgan's Memoirs, ii. 200. 2 Ibid. ii. 201. 
 
 3 Ut supra, p. 199. 
 
 4 'When men begin to speak of duty 'it is said in Gknarvon 'they 
 Lave censed to love.' Memoirs, i. 103,
 
 1815.] LADY CAROLINE LAMB. 147 
 
 care not who knows this, or what use is made of it.' l 
 After Lady Caroline's return, the fiery glow and ardour 
 of the intimacy, at least on Byron's side, had somewhat 
 cooled down, and it gradually took a turn which neces- 
 sarily led to mutual hatred. Lady Caroline, neglected and 
 wronged, as she thought, by Byron, who appears to have 
 taken leave of her in an offensive letter, feigned an attempt 
 at suicide at a ball at Lady Heathcoate's, slightly wound- 
 ing herself with a knife. 2 The utter alienation of her 
 lover, who had already become cold, was the only and the 
 natural result : such immoderate passion had already 
 estranged him from his mother. When all else was vain, 
 Lady Caroline gave vent to her mortification and revenge 
 by her pen : she wrote a romance called ' Glenarvon ' 
 which made a noise at the time, in which she portrayed 
 Byron in the darkest colours. She describes him as a 
 demon full of deceit and wickedness; as a rattlesnake, 
 and herself as the bird under the spell of his fascination. 
 The narrative of the way in which he is said to have 
 conquered and tortured her heart is full of the wildest 
 confusion. On the title-page she placed as a motto the 
 concluding verses of the ( Corsair ' 
 
 He left a name to all succeeding times 
 
 Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes. 3 
 
 1 Lord Byron's parting letter to Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Morgan's 
 Memoirs, ii. 204. 
 
 2 Guiccioli's Byron, i. 101, English translation; Glenarvon (3rd edit.) 
 iii. 82 et seq. The letter, if genuine, is given in Glenarvon, iii. 79-80. 
 
 3 The fourth edition has not these lines, but the motto from Tacitus : 
 ' contemptu famae contemni virtutem.' The title-pages of the three 
 volumes, of which the novel consists, are characteristic. On the 
 vignette of the first volume, a disconsolate Cupid is looking at a winged 
 heart which has flown from a nest, with the subscription : ' L'on t'a trop 
 che'ri.' On that of the second volume, Cupid points to a butterfly, 
 which is flying into a flame rising from an altar ; underneath is written : 
 ' Mon plaisir me coute la vie.' On the third, three weeping Cupids sur- 
 
 i 2
 
 148 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. [^/r. 27. 
 
 e Glenarvon ' appeared anonymously at a time very painful 
 and prejudicial to Byron, immediately after his wife had 
 separated from him. When the book was lent to him, 
 while he was in Switzerland, by Madame de Stael, he 
 wrote to Moore : l ( By the way, I suppose you have seen 
 " Glenarvon." Madame de Stael lent it me to read from 
 Coppet last autumn. It seems to me that if the authoress 
 had written the truth, and nothing but the truth the 
 whole truth the romance would not only have been more 
 romantic, but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the 
 picture can't be good. I did not sit long enough.' 2 He 
 told Medwin, that there was nothing of his in the book 
 but a portion of a letter, 3 probably the letter in which he 
 renounced her. In her literary pursuits 4 Lady Caroline 
 did not find the repose she needed ; on the contrary she 
 afterwards became subject to fits of such severity and long 
 continuance, that her physicians imputed them to partial 
 insanity, and a separation, in consequence, took place 
 between her and her husband. 5 
 
 Thus had Byron gradually lost all reverence for women 
 or confidence in them : he was satiated by excesses, and 
 the moral basis was utterly wanting in all his relations 
 
 round an urn, on which is inscribed the name Calantha : and underneath 
 is : 'II n'est plus temps.' 
 
 1 Moore's Life and Letters, iii. 314. 
 
 2 During Byron's residence at Venice, an Italian translation of Glenarvon 
 was announced for publication, and being asked by the Censor, whether 
 he had any objection to its appearance, he answered No, and even gave 
 the translator a contribution to defray the expenses of publication. lie 
 thus took the sting from the book, whilst active opposition on his part 
 would have operated against him. Besides, he loved celebrity at any 
 price. He at the same time mortified the authoress, to whose knowledge 
 he caused the share he had in its publication to be made known. Moore's 
 Life, iii. 51. See also Marquis de Salvo, p. 74 et seq. 
 
 3 Medwin's Conversations, p. 344. 
 
 4 Besides Glenarvon she wrote the romances of Graham Hamilton and 
 Ada Reis. 
 
 6 Annual Biography, xiii. 54.
 
 1815.] BYKOX'S ESTIMATE OF WOMEN. 149 
 
 with them. What beneficial influence the society, which 
 he never enjoyed, of truly noble women might have had, 
 may be inferred from some expressions which interrupt his 
 habitual strain of contempt for women. ' There is some- 
 thing to me,' he says, ' very softening in the presence of a 
 woman I always feel in better humour with myself and 
 everything else, if there is a woman within ken.' ' True 
 goodness of heart in women never failed to produce its 
 effect upon him : even to an old, ugly, ill-tempered woman, 
 who by his friends was dreaded as a spectre and a scare- 
 crow, he showed the greatest patience and forbearance 
 * because the poor old devil was kind ' to him. 2 These were, 
 however, the exceptions ; the conviction of his unfortunate 
 peculiarity, that he could be happy neither with women nor 
 without them, grew stronger within him. He had, in 
 fact, far too many feminine elements in his own character 
 to admit of his living happily with the sex. He at last 
 approximated to his friends, the Turks, in his views of the 
 character and position of women. ' I regard them,' he 
 says, ' as very pretty but inferior creatures, who are as little 
 in their place at our tables (he disliked, it is well known, 
 to see women eat) as they would be in our council cham- 
 bers. The whole of the present system with regard to the 
 female sex is a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalry 
 of our forefathers. I look on them as grown-up children, 
 but, like a foolish mamma, I am constantly the slave of one 
 of them. In spite of my contempt for the sex I am ever 
 against my will devoted to some one individual woman. 
 The Turks shut up their women and are much happier ; 
 give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she 
 will be content.' 3 
 
 And yet in spite of all this he had serious thoughts of 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 7. 2 Ibid. iii. 8 (note), 
 
 8 Dallas, iii. 192; compare his Journal, Moore's Life, v. 60.
 
 150 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 marrying. A wife, he thinks, would be his salvation, 1 and 
 he should like to have some one with whom he might yawn. 
 He regards marriage as an inevitable destiny, but it is 
 evident that a marriage of affection was with him out 
 of the question. Worldly motives determined him 
 the imperative necessity of improving his affairs and 
 attaining a position in harmony with his rank. These 
 ends promised to be compassed by a marriage with 
 Miss Milbanke. Anna Isabella (Annabella, contracted 
 Bella) Milbanke (born May 17, 1792, died May 16, 1860) 
 was the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke a wealthy 
 baronet of the county of Durham 2 and of his wife Judith 
 Noel, eldest daughter of Viscount Wentworth. Byron 
 saw her for the first time at a party, when she was on a 
 visit to her aunt, Lady Melbourne, in London. She was 
 sitting alone on the sofa, and attracted his attention by 
 the simplicity of her dress, so that he took her for a 
 ' humble companion ' of the family, and asked Moore if 
 he were right in his conjecture, who whispered in his ear 
 that she was quite the reverse a rich heiress, and that 
 he would do well to marry her and restore again his old 
 place, Newstead. 3 Miss Milbanke's appearance, accord- 
 ing to Byron's own statement, contrasted favourably 
 with the artificial stiffness of fashion ; she was simple and 
 modest, had a good figure and was pretty. Her features, 
 though not regular, were delicate and feminine, and her 
 complexion of the purest blonde. 4 Byron was interested 
 and attracted, and an acquaintance with her began, 
 which was encouraged by his friends Lady Melbourne 
 and Lady Jersey. After her return to her home in the 
 
 1 Journal, Moore's Life, ii. 310. 
 
 2 Besides his seat at Seaham near Stockton-on-Tees, Sir Ralph pos- 
 sessed Halnaby near Darlington. 
 
 3 Medwin's Conversations, p. 44. 4 Ibid. pp. 44, 45.
 
 1815.] BYKON PKOPOSES TO MISS MILBANKE. 151 
 
 North, lie corresponded with her for a considerable time, 
 and at length, following the advice of Lady Melbourne, 
 proposed for her (1812), but was refused. The refusal 
 was, however, softened by the most sincere assurances of 
 respect and friendship, and even the wish was expressed, 
 that he would continue his correspondence with her, which 
 accordingly was done. * What an odd situation and friend- 
 ship is ours ! ' he writes in his Diary Nov. 30, 1813, 
 * without one spark of love on either side, and produced by 
 circumstances which, in general, lead to coldness on one 
 side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior 
 woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress 
 a girl of twenty a peeress that is to be in her own right, 
 an only child, and a savante, who has always had her own 
 way. She is a poetess ' a mathematician 2 a metaphysi- 
 cian, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with 
 very little pretension. Any other head would be turned 
 with half her acquisitions and a tenth of her advantages.' 3 
 Judgments equally favourable of Miss Milbanke Byron 
 often expressed, although in them he contradicted himself, 
 as when on another occasion he declares, 'I hate "esprit " in 
 petticoats.' Under the date March 14, 1814, there is an 
 entry in his Journal : 'A letter from Bella, which I answered. 
 I shall be in love with her again, if I don't take care : ' and 
 this caution he did not observe. After paying his addresses, 
 t 
 
 1 She patronised a poor versemaker, Joseph Blackett (1786-1810), who 
 lived and died at Seaham. Blackett was the son of an artisan, and, like 
 Hans Sachs, a shoemaker and a poet. Byron lashed him in the English 
 Bards, $c. and repeatedly laughed at his patroness, before he was ac- 
 quainted with her. Dallas also was a patron of Blackett. Compare 
 Epitaph for Joseph Blackett, Life and Works, ix. 1. Blackett's Remains, 
 with a Life, edited by Pratt, appeared in two volumes, 1811. 
 
 2 Byron at a later period expressed himself with special vehemence 
 against the mathematical studies of ladies. See Beppo, 78. Miss Mil- 
 banke had received instruction in Greek from Dr. Parr. 
 
 3 Journal, Moore's Life, ii. 285.
 
 152 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 not without serious thoughts of marriage, to two or three 
 other ladies, he renewed (September 1814) his suit, and 
 was accepted. He was then living at Newstead ; and 
 a friend perhaps his sister? speaking to him of his 
 cheerless and unsettled state both of mind and body, 
 earnestly advised him to marry. After much discussion 
 he consented, and named Miss Milbanke as his choice. 
 To this, however, it was strongly objected by his adviser, 
 that Miss Milbanke had at present no fortune, and that 
 without fortune he could not marry ; that she was, moreover, 
 a learned lady, and that learning in a woman would not 
 at all suit him. A counter-proposal was made by this 
 friend, and after some deliberation a proposal of marriage, 
 written at Byron's request by this person, was actually 
 despatched to the lady proposed. After some days an 
 answer, containing a refusal, arrived as they were one morn- 
 ing sitting together. ' " You see," said Lord Byron, " that, 
 after all, Miss Milbanke is to be the person ; I will write 
 to her." He accordingly wrote on the moment, and, as soon 
 as he had finished, his friend, still remonstrating strongly 
 against his choice, took up and read the letter, but on 
 perusing it observed, " Well ; really this is a very pretty 
 letter ; it is a pity it should not go. I never read a 
 prettier one." " Then it shall go," said Lord, Byron : and 
 in so saying sealed and sent off, on the instant, this fiat of 
 his fate.' l 
 
 The favourable answer which he received was perhaps the 
 more flattering to Byron's pride and vanity from the very 
 fact, that his final acceptance had been preceded by a re- 
 fusal. 2 He had come forth to a certain extent as a victor 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 113, 114. 
 
 2 To a person so inclined to superstition as Byron it might appear 
 significant, that, at the very moment when Miss Milbanke's letter accept- 
 ing him arrived, his gardener brought to him the marriage-ring of his 
 mother, which she had lost many years before in the garden. ' If Miss
 
 1815.] THE MARRIAGE TAKES PLACE AT SEAHAM. 153 
 
 from the conflict, and his triumph appeared the greater as 
 he had learnt, that Miss Milbanke had in the interval 
 rejected half-a-dozen suitors. He, whose reputation was so 
 questionable, and who loved to paint himself in such dark 
 colours, had gained the hand of a very pattern of virtue. 
 He was now in comparatively high spirits, and his future 
 prospects appeared to him in the most rose-coloured light. 
 He calls her ' the paragon of only children ' invested with 
 ' golden opinions of all sorts of men,' l and perfection itself. 2 
 His mocking humour and cynicism were not, indeed, alto- 
 gether to be suppressed : ' I am very much in love ' he 
 writes to a lady with whom he was intimate ' and as 
 silly as all single gentlemen must be in that sentimental 
 condition.' 3 The congratulations of relatives bored him. 
 He was told that it was not the fashion to be married in 
 a black, but in a blue coat, and he hates a blue one. 4 He 
 wished nothing more ardently than that the fatal day 
 were well over, and in his letters to his friends he speaks 
 of his approaching marriage in a tone of mockery and 
 levity. A long betrothal being contrary to English custom, 
 preparations for marriage were forthwith made. His own 
 affairs, indeed, were at this time so embarrassed, that 
 Byron was almost induced to postpone the marriage. An 
 effort to arrange them brought him from Newstead to 
 London, whence he proceeded towards the end of 
 December, accompanied by Hobhouse, to Seaham, and was 
 there married, January 2, 1815. 5 
 
 Milbanke accepts me,' he cried, opening her letter, ' this ring shall also be 
 my marriage-ring.' He afterwards saw that he might have chosen a ring 
 promising more happiness. l Moore's Life, iii. 116. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 120. ' My wife elect is perfection.' 
 
 3 Ibid. iii. 117. 4 Ibid. iii. 118. 
 
 5 [Subjoined is a certified copy 'of the entry No. 7 in the Register of 
 Marriages for the year 1815 kept in the parish of Seaham ' in the County 
 of Durham. 
 
 'George Gordon Byron Lord Byron of Rochdale and Anne Isabella
 
 154 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. [JET. 27. 
 
 According to Leigh Hunt's account, Byron before going 
 to the church, 1 and while waiting for his bride, occupied 
 himself in reading some portions of Sandys' translation of 
 ' Ovid.' His feelings during the marriage ceremony he 
 has himself described in ' the Dream,' although it is 
 difficult to decide how much is to be attributed to the 
 subsequent workings of his fancy. ' Lady Byron ' so he 
 told Medwin * was of all present the only unconcerned 
 person. Lady Noel, her mother, wept, and I trembled like 
 a leaf and made the wrong responses.' 2 After the marriage 
 ceremony he is said to have been guilty of strange offences 
 against propriety. Thus when they drove up to Halnaby, 
 where the honeymoon was to be spent, he sprang out 
 of the carriage and went away without concerning him- 
 self about his bride, who was handed out by the butler. 3 
 
 Milbanke of this Parish were man-led in Seaham House by Special 
 Licence with consent of Parents, this Second Day of January in the year 
 one thousand eight hundred and fifteen. 
 
 <By meThos. Noel 
 
 Hector of Kirkby Mallory Leicestershire. 
 
 ' This marriage was solemnized f Byron 
 
 between us |_ Anne Isabella Milbanke. 
 
 / T , f \ John Cam. Hobhouse of Chantry House, Wilts 
 
 In the P resenceof JRichd. Wallis, Vicar of Seahamf'] 
 
 1 [Mr. Leigh Hunt may or may not be correct in his account of Lord 
 Byron's studies, while waiting for his bride, but Lord Byron did not go 
 to church to be married. See the above note.] 
 
 2 Medwin's Conversations, p. 46. 
 
 3 Harriet Martineau's Biographical Sketches, London, 1869, p. 318. 
 Miss Martineau and Mrs. Stowe agree in representing the conduct of 
 Byron to his young wife immediately after the wedding as revolting, and 
 in asserting that he used the most unworthy expressions to her ; that he 
 had married her, he said, merely from revenge. Compare Miss Martineau's 
 Sketch, pp. 316-325. According to Mrs. Stowe he said to her, ' You might 
 have saved me from this, madam ! you had all in your own power when 
 I offered myself to you first ; then you might have made me what you 
 pleased ; but now you will find that you have married a devil.' Directly 
 opposed to this is the testimony of Mrs. Minns, for many years the trusted 
 maid-servant of Lady Byron, who declares that she was present at the 
 marriage ceremony; that she does not believe that .Mrs. Beecher Stowe
 
 1815.] THE HONEYMOON. 155 
 
 When starting for that place he addressed his young wife 
 as ' Miss Milbanke,' a mistake which the lady's confiden- 
 tial attendant pronounced to be a bad omen. 1 Byron, on 
 his side, repeatedly complained, that this abigail had been 
 packed in between himself and his wife, instead of their 
 being left to themselves. 2 We have the utmost difficulty 
 in conceiving Byron acting the part of bridegroom. His 
 old shyness would again display itself, and to the house- 
 hold arrangements of his wife's parents he must have 
 accommodated himself as fire would with water. Sir 
 Ralph was a formal, good-natured, probably narrow-minded 
 country gentleman surrounded by a corresponding circle 
 of persons and things, in which the satirical Byron moved, 
 as the German proverb has it, like a pike in a tank of 
 gold fish. From different hints it may be gathered, that 
 Sir Ralph himself and the whole family lived under the. 
 severe rule of Lady Milbanke. Thus though the honey- 
 moon of the young couple Byron called it in mockery 
 the treacle-moon 3 was not altogether free from clouds, 
 
 had her story from Lady Byron ; that she saw the bride alight from the 
 carriage 'buoyant and happy, as a bride should be;' and that she knows 
 nothing of the charge brought against Byron and his sister. According 
 to Mrs. Minns, the marriage did not take place in the church, but in the 
 drawing-room of the house at Seaham a statement which is verified 
 by the above copy of the marriage-certificate. See Quarterly Review, 
 October, 1869, p. 411 (note). 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 141. 
 
 2 [This is flatly denied by Hobhouse in the article on Medwin's 
 Conversations published in the Westminster Review, No. V., January 
 1825, p. 24. ' There was nobody in the carriage that conveyed 
 Lord and Lady Byron from Seaham to Halnaby on the day of their 
 marriage, besides his Lordship and his wife.' In the extract from Lord 
 Broughton's (Hobhouse's) Private Memoirs, printed but not published, 
 which appeared in the April number for 1871 of the Edinburgh Revieio, p. 
 298, Lord Broughton says : ' I was present at the marriage of this lady 
 with my friend, and handed her into the carriage, which took the bride 
 and bridegroom away. Shaking hands with Lady Byron, I wished her all 
 happiness. Her answer was, *' If I am not happy it will be my own fault. " '] 
 
 3 Moore's Life, iii. 145.
 
 156 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JET. 27. 
 
 the barometer of love, according to his own assertion, 
 never fell to zero. 1 * I am in a state of sameness 
 and stagnation,' he writes to Moore ' and totally 
 occupied in consuming the fruits and sauntering and 
 playing dull games at cards and yawning and trying to 
 read old Annual Eegisters and the daily papers and 
 gathering shells on the shore and watching the growth 
 of stunted gooseberry-bushes in the garden.' 2 A few days 
 later he completes the picture in the following words : 
 ' I have been very comfortable here, listening to that d d 
 monologue, which elderly gentlemen call conversation, 
 and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every 
 evening save one, when he played upon the fiddle. How- 
 ever, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like 
 them and the place vastly, and I hope they will live many 
 happy months. Bell is in health, and unvaried good- 
 humour and behaviour. But we are all in the agonies of 
 packing and parting; and I suppose by this time to-morrow 
 I shall be stuck in the chariot with my chin upon a band- 
 box. I have prepared, however, another carriage for the 
 abigail, and all the trumpery which our wives drag along 
 with them.' 3 Thus the young couple, about the middle of 
 March, began their journey to London, visiting 011 the 
 way Colonel and Mrs. Leigh at their house near New- 
 market. In town they occupied the house of the Duchess 
 of Devonshire, during her absence in France. They set 
 up a brilliant establishment, kept separate equipages, gave 
 parties 4 in a word, threw themselves into the vortex of 
 
 1 Medwin's Conversations, p. 49. 2 Moore's Life, iii. 152. 
 
 3 Moore's Life, iii. 154. 
 
 4 [This account, resting, no doubt, on the authority of Medwin, is dis- 
 tinctly and positively denied by Hobhouse in the article of the West- 
 minster Reciew already quoted, p. 25 : ' Lord and Lady Byron did not 
 give dinner parties ; they had not separate carriages; they did not launch 
 out into any extravagance.']
 
 1815.] BYRON'S PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. 157 
 
 fashionable life. As Lady Byron was reported to be a 
 great heiress, the creditors of Byron besieged him, de- 
 manding their money with compound interest if pos- 
 sible : the 10,GOOL which she had received as a marriage 
 dowry soon melted away. 1 In a few months after the mar- 
 riage, Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth, died, whose 
 income was estimated at seven or eight thoiisand a-year, 
 but his decease brought about no improvement in Byron's 
 affairs. Lord Wentworth had, as was expected, entailed 
 the bulk of his property on Lady Milbanke and her 
 daughter, with the condition, that they should assume the 
 family name of Noel. The only immediate advantage which 
 accrued to Byron from this Will took a form little accept- 
 able to his taste. When his father-in-law went to Kirkby 
 Mallory, the estate inherited from the deceased Lord, Sir 
 Ralph offered to his son-in-law his house at Seaham as a 
 residence ; an offer which, if accepted, would have consider- 
 ably diminished the expenses of housekeeping. It was 
 even settled, that they should move thither in August, 
 and that Lady Byron should be confined there. This plan, 
 however, from causes unknown to us, was never carried out ; 
 happily, we must think, for Byron, in spite of the advan- 
 tages he thus forfeited. The condition of Byron, as a 
 married country gentleman at Seaham, would have been 
 worse than that of Pegasus in the yoke : it would have 
 been the grave of his poetry, and intellectual death for 
 himself. At Newstead he had at least the romantic back- 
 ground of his own historical family estate ; at Seaham this 
 poetical charm would have been wanting. But the state of 
 his affairs became more and more unsupportable. He was 
 again obliged to try the expedient of selling his library. 
 Mr. Murray, on learning this, immediately forwarded to 
 
 1 [Denied by Hobhouse, Ibid. ' The whole of Lady Byron's fortune was 
 put into settlement, and could not be melted away.']
 
 158 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. [En. 27. 
 
 him the sum of 1,500L, assuring him that another sum of 
 like amount would be at his service in a few.weeks. 1 This 
 liberal offer, however, was declined. Eight or nine 
 executions had taken place in his house during the year, 
 and even the beds on which they slept were in the posses- 
 sion of bailiffs. His privilege as a peer alone exempted 
 him from imprisonment for debt. Amid these miserable 
 circumstances Lady Byron gave birth 2 (December 10, 
 1815) to a daughter, Augusta Ada. 3 In compliance with 
 the wish of her husband, communicated (January 6) to her 
 by letter, a wish arising, according to his own account, 
 from the embarrassed state of his affairs, Lady Byron 
 left London a few weeks afterwards (January 15) on a visit 
 to her father in Leicestershire, whither Byron, according 
 to agreement, was to follow her. Husband and wife parted 
 from each other in the utmost kindness, and on the road, 
 Lady Byron wrote to her husband a letter full of affection 
 and playfulness. 4 
 
 She had scarcely arrived at Kirkby Mallory when her 
 father communicated to Byron, utterly unprepared for 
 any such resolution, that his wife would return to him 
 no more ! To this he replied, that he did not recog- 
 nise his paternal authority in this matter, and that such 
 a communication could be received only from his wife. 
 The next post brought the confirmation written in her 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 192. 
 
 2 [In the Morning Chronicle of Dec. 12, 1815, the birth was thus 
 announced : ' Sunday last Lady Byron was safely delivered of a daughter 
 at his Lordship's house, Piccadilly Terrace.'] 
 
 3 Byron remarked to Moore, that Ada was a very ancient name in his 
 family, which, however, had not been used from the reign of King John. 
 The name Augusta the child received from Byron's sister, who was also 
 godmother. 
 
 4 The letter began 'Dear Duck,' and was signed 'Your Pippin.' Com- 
 pare Leigh Hunt's Autobiography (i'nd edit. London, 1860), p. 247 and 
 254, and the note to Don Juan, i. 32. Lockhart's Ed.
 
 181-5.] ALLEGED GROUNDS OF THE SEPARATION. 159 
 
 own hand. So Moore l and Byron himself 2 describe the 
 event. Lady Byron, after the publication of ' Moore's 
 Life and Letters ' in the year 1830, gave a somewhat 
 different statement, and on so important a point it is 
 but just that we should hear her own account. * Pre- 
 viously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed 
 on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of 
 insanity. This opinion was derived in a great measure 
 from the communications made to me by his nearest 
 relatives 3 and personal attendant, who had more oppor- 
 tunities than myself of observing him during the latter 
 part of my stay in town. It was even represented to me 
 that he was in danger of destroying himself. With the con- 
 currence of his family (Lady Byron underlines these words, 
 without, however, removing our doubts) I had consulted 
 Dr. Baillie, 4 as a friend, (January 8) respecting this sup- 
 posed malady. On acquainting him with the state of the 
 case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave 
 London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be 
 advisable as an experiment, assuming the fact of mental 
 derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to 
 Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive opinion on 
 that point. He enjoined that in correspondence with Lord 
 Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. 
 
 1 Life, iii. 199. 
 
 a Byron's account is given not only in Medwin, but also to the same 
 effect in the fragment of a novel which he wrote 1817. See the note to 
 Don Juan, i. 32. Lockhart's Ed. 
 
 3 Who could these nearest relatives have been ? Only his sister, who 
 about this time was staying in his house on a visit. It is nowhere said 
 that she ever regarded her brother as insane, and Lady Byron must 
 have, undesignedly or designedly ? misapprehended her communica- 
 tions. Dallas at this period had no intercourse with Byron. There 
 remains therefore only the 'personal attendant,' i.e. Fletcher a very 
 distinguished authority. 
 
 4 Dr. Baillie had already treated Byron when a boy on account of his 
 foot.
 
 160 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [J&r. '27. 
 
 Under these impressions, I left London, determined to 
 follow the advice given by Dr. Baillie. Whatever might 
 have been the nature of Lord Byron's conduct towards 
 nae from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to 
 be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for me, nor 
 for any person of common humanity, to manifest at that 
 moment a sense of injury. On the day of my departure, 
 and again on my arrival at Kirkby, January^lG, I wrote 
 to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone, according to 
 these medical directions. The last letter was circulated 
 and employed as a pretext for the charge of my having 
 been subsequently influenced to "desert" my husband. 1 
 When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory' continues Lady 
 Byron ' my parents were unacquainted with the existence 
 of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of happiness, 
 and when I communicated to them the opinion which had 
 been formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they 
 were most anxious to promote his restoration by every means 
 in their power. They assured those relations who were with 
 him in London that " they would devote their whole care 
 and attention to the alleviation of his malady," and hoped 
 to make the best arrangements for his comfort, if he could 
 be induced to visit them. With these intentions, my 
 mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron, inviting him to 
 Kirkby Mallory. She had always treated him with an 
 affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended 
 to every little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an 
 irritating word escape her lips in her whole intercourse 
 with him. The accounts given me after I left Lord Byron 
 by the persons in constant intercourse with him, added to 
 those doubts which had before transiently occurred to rny 
 mind as to the reality of the alleged disease, and the 
 
 1 At any rate she played the part committed to her very naturally.
 
 1815.] ALLEGED GROUNDS OF THE SEPARATION. 161 
 
 reports of his medical attendant were far from establishing 
 the existence of anything like lunacy. Under this un- 
 certainty I deemed it right to communicate to my parents 
 that if I were to consider Lord Byron's past conduct as 
 that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce me 
 to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient both to 
 them and myself to consult the ablest advisers. For that 
 object, and also to obtain still further information res- 
 pecting the appearances which seemed to indicate mental 
 derangement, my mother determined to go to London. 1 
 She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a 
 written statement of mine, though I had then reasons for 
 reserving a part of the case from the knowledge even of 
 my father and mother.' 
 
 So far Lady Byron. Lady Noel accordingly applied to 
 Dr. Lushington, a lawyer on intimate terms of friendship 
 with the family (Sir Samuel Eomilly also was consulted), 
 who considered a ' reconciliation as by no means impos- 
 sible, and felt most sincerely a wish to aid in effecting it.' a 
 Some days afterwards Lady Byron herself came to London 
 (without seeing her husband), and communicated to Dr. 
 Lushington those facts of the case which she had concealed 
 from her parents. From that moment Dr. Lushington 3 
 changed his opinion, declared a reconciliation impossible, 
 and added, that he could neither professionally nor in any 
 other way take any part towards effecting it. 4 Sir Ralph 
 
 1 It is very suggestive of the family relations, that the mother, not the 
 father, undertook this business. 
 
 2 Dr. Lushington is still alive, but he has hitherto thought it advisable 
 not to break silence, although, for the interests of all concerned, it were 
 much to be wished that before his death he would publish the whole 
 truth and nothing but the truth. The other adviser, Sir Samuel Romilly, 
 after the death of his wife, committed suicide, in the year 1818; which 
 Byron regarded as a judgment. See note on Don Juan, i. 15. 
 
 3 Dr. Lushington in a letter to Lady Byron, Moore's Life, vi. (A]> 
 pendix), 279. 4 Ilid. 
 
 H
 
 162 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 now proposed, February 2, to Lord Byron an amicable 
 separation ; a proposal which at first Byron rejected ; 
 and only when threatened with legal measures did he 
 agree to sign a deed of separation. 1 
 
 So, then, Lady Byron resolved to separate from her 
 husband, because she was convinced, that he had been 
 guilty of a dark and mysterious crime, which she, a young 
 woman, though she could not impart it even to her mother, 
 was yet able to communicate to her legal adviser, he too 
 being a young man ; and which filled him with such horror 
 that he forgot the old golden legal maxim : 
 
 Em's Mannes Rede ist keine Rede, 
 Man soil sie billig hb'ren beede. 
 
 The word of one man is no word : 
 Justice says, let both be heard. 
 
 Lady Caroline Lamb too thought she had discovered 
 the key to Byron's eccentric and enigmatical character in 
 a dark deed which lay on his conscience : her notion 
 was murder ! 2 In later years, however, Lady Byron 
 was by no means assured on this point; at least, in 
 exonerating her parents, she employs, in the above-men- 
 tioned remarks on ' Moore's Life and Letters,' the follow- 
 ing words : ' If the statement on which my legal advisers 
 (the late Sir Samuel Eornilly and Dr. Lushington) 
 formed their opinions were false, the responsibility and 
 the odium should rest with me only.' 3 This scarcely 
 admits of any other interpretation, than that she knew 
 the facts she had stated, not from her own personal 
 observation, but only as communicated to her through a 
 
 1 Lady Byron's Statement, Moore's Life, vi. 279. [Let this be com- 
 pared with Lord Broughton's representation of this special point : ' I shall 
 content myself .... with asserting, that it was not fear on the part of 
 Lord Byron that persuaded him to separate from his wife. On the con- 
 trary, he was quite ready to " go into court," as they call it.' Edinburgh 
 Review, April, 1871, p. 299.] 
 
 3 See Glenarvon, ii. 258. 3 Moore's Life, vi. 280.
 
 1815.] THE BELCHER STOWE SCANDAL. 163 
 
 third person ; so that, ultimately, the warp of this woof 
 may turn out to be mere feminine gossip. The friends, 
 however, of Lady Byron, of both sexes, all favour the 
 former view of the matter they believe in a dark crime. 
 She had, say they, to speak but one word to solve the 
 mystery and to bring the dread secret to the clear light 
 of day; but one single word, to establish her perfect 
 innocence, to unmask her husband, and prove him to be a 
 miscreant. They vaunted the moral courage and magna- 
 nimity of the noble and much-enduring victim, in refusing 
 to speak this word ; with what right, is now to appear. 
 
 This one word has at last been actually spoken, and 
 spoken, it is pretended, according to the last solemn 
 commission of Lady Byron. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, the 
 authoress of some well-known romances, has published a 
 paper entitled ' The True History of Lady Byron's Life/ l 
 in which she declares that the cause of separation was, 
 that Byron committed incest with his sister, and that 
 lady Byron discovered it. In the first place the charge 
 is not new, but was an open secret long before the publica- 
 tion of the too notorious * Macmillan ' article : years ago, 
 it was whispered to ourselves in London, ' she found out 
 that he had an improper connection with Mrs. Leigh.' 
 Had it not become an inevitable necessity, we protest 
 that we should never have soiled our page with this tale 
 of vice. The war among the journals, kindled by this 
 so-called revelation, still rages ; but, without awaiting its 
 final issue, it may even now be said, that the mystery has 
 at last in the main been solved, but solved in a way, very 
 different indeed, from what Mrs. Beecher Stowe thought 
 and intended. Mrs. Beecher Stowe has tarnished not only 
 her own reputation but the reputation of Lady Byron, while 
 
 1 Macmillan's Magazine, September, 1869, pp. 377-396. The editor has 
 moreover guaranteed Mrs. Stowe's account, and vouches for its being really 
 Lady Byron's own account. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JE-r. 27. 
 
 in a manner altogether unlocked for she vindicates Lord 
 Byron. It seems a strange fatality, that women, not 
 merely in his lifetime but even after his death, should 
 constantly have been betrayed into conduct with respect 
 to him, so utterly unfeminine, notwithstanding an osten- 
 tatious pretension on their part to piety and virtue. 
 
 In the year 1856, so she relates, Lady Byron, with 
 whom she had formed an intimate friendship, and who 
 then thought that her end was near, invited Mrs. Stowe to 
 visit her, as she anxiously desired to make a confidential 
 communication ; that Lady Byron then, in the solemn hour, 
 of what she thought her approaching death, revealed to 
 her the terrible secret, and not only by word of mouth, 
 but entrusted also to her care a brief memorandum 
 relating to it. This document she took home, kept for 
 two days and then returned. It was Lady Byron's wish, in 
 making this communication, to ascertain from Mrs. Stowe, 
 as a perfectly disinterested person and unconnected with 
 English society, her opinion, whether it were not her (Lady 
 Byron's) duty, even at the expense of her feelings, to reveal 
 the long-suppressed truth, in order that the ruinous influ- 
 ence of Byron's writings on the world, especially on the 
 young, might be counteracted: that several friends had 
 proposed the question to her, whether she had not a responsi- 
 bility to society for the truth. 1 Mrs. Stowe replied to this 
 interrogation, that although such an act of justice might 
 be demanded, Lady Byron would be warranted in causing 
 the truth, so painful to her feelings, to be disclosed only 
 after her death, and, finally, recommended her to entrust 
 all the necessary facts to some trustworthy persons to be 
 published on the occurrence of that event. 2 What Mrs. 
 Stowe relates of the heavenly radiance which illumined 
 the pale ethereal face of Lady Byron during this scene ; 
 
 1 Macmillan's Magazine, September, 18G9, p. 394. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 396.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEE STOWE SCANDAL. 105 
 
 of the sublime love, with which she recognised the god- 
 like genius of her husband, in spite of all the defilements 
 which had overgrown it ; of her conviction, which nothing 
 could shake, that he was now a redeemed spirit, who with 
 shame and repentance looked back on the sins of his 
 earthly life this and similar twaddle, with which the good 
 lady has embellished her history, we simply and silently 
 pass over. 
 
 We do not, however, mean to rank this narrative exactly 
 in the same category with the romances of the celebrated 
 authoress of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' although its truth has 
 been more than questioned by competent judges. The 
 solicitors at least of Lady Byron's surviving relatives have 
 declared, 1 that Mrs. Stowe's account is by no means com- 
 plete and authentic, and that it must not be regarded as 
 Lady Byron's statement. They further allege, that * Lady 
 Byron, by her last will and testament, executed a few days 
 only before her decease, bequeathed to three persons as 
 trustees all her manuscripts, to be by them first sealed 
 up, afterwards deposited in a bank in the names of such 
 trustees, and she directed that no one else, however 
 nearly connected with her, should upon any plea whatever, 
 be allowed to inspect such documents, which the trustees 
 were alone to make use of as they might judge to be best 
 for the interests of her grandchildren.' 2 The directions 
 that these manuscripts should be kept secret even from 
 her grandchildren appear now, however, to have been 
 set aside, and should have also, under present circum- 
 stances, no longer any force. Lord Wentworth, too, Lady 
 Byron's grandson, has declared in a letter 3 written to 
 
 1 Letter of Messrs. Wharton and Fords to the Editor of the Times, Sept. 
 1, 1869. 3 Ibid. 
 
 3 [His lordship's letter was written in answer to the subjoined para- 
 graph in the Pall Matt Ga&tte : l The tone of the letter addressed to
 
 166 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 the editor of the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' that he is intimately 
 acquainted with the history of his grandmother, and 
 
 the newspapers by Messrs. Wharton and Fords, the solicitors of the 
 " descendants and representatives of Lady Noel Byron," is not easily 
 reconcilable with a prevalent belief among persons likely to be well 
 informed, that the said de&cendants and representatives had some time 
 since made up their minds to publish the correspondence in their 
 keeping relating to Lord and Lady Byron's conjugal differences. What- 
 ever may have been the reason which ultimately determined Lord 
 Wentworth and his sister to postpone the publication of their grand- 
 mother's papers, Mrs. Stowe cannot be such a flagrant offender against 
 propriety in publishing what Lady Byron told her without injunction of 
 secrecy, if her own grandchildren have already seriously thought of 
 printing her correspondence ' . . . (Occasional notes of the Pall 
 Mall Gazette, September 3, 1869.) We give Lord Wentworth's reply in 
 full. 
 
 ' Sir, In your number of September 3, you say that Mrs. Stowe is 
 not a flagrant offender against proprieties, because my sister and I are 
 supposed to have intended to publish correspondence relating to Lord 
 and Lady Byron's conjugal differences. 
 
 ' Now, supposing Mrs. Stowe's narrative to have been really a " true 
 story," and that we had meant to reveal the whole of our grandmother's 
 history. I do not see what defence that is to Mrs. Stowe against the 
 charge of repeating what was told her in a " private, confidential conver- 
 sation." 
 
 'But it is not true that Lady Anne Blunt and I ever intended to 
 publish correspondence of the nature mentioned. About three years ago 
 a manuscript in Lady Noel Byron's handwriting was found among her 
 papers, giving an account of some circumstances connected with her 
 marriage, and apparently intended for publication after her death ; but as 
 this seemed not quite certain, no decision as to its publication was come 
 to. In the event of a memoir being written, this manuscript might, 
 perhaps, be included, but hitherto it has not been proposed to publish 
 any other matter about her separation. 
 
 ' This statement in Lady Byron's own handwriting does not contain 
 any accusation of so grave a nature as that which Mrs. Stowe asserts was 
 told her, and Mrs. Stowe's story of the separation is inconsistent with 
 what I have seen in various letters, Sec., of Lady Byron's. 
 
 ' Lady Byron says in her own statement, that before being published it 
 ought to be submitted to some person, who had read through the con- 
 sumed Byron memoirs, so as to secure the correction of any mis-state- 
 ments. I cannot see that Messrs. Wharton and Fords make no charge of 
 material inaccuracy against Mrs. Stowe ; I believe they meant to assert 
 the inaccuracy of the whole article. I, for one, cannot allow that Mrs.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEK STOWE SCANDAL. 167 
 
 especially with the period of her married life and of 
 the separation, and on the authority of notes in her 
 own hand-writing, he asserts that the narrative of Mrs. 
 Stowe is untrue. Whether this denial is to be un- 
 conditionally received admits of question : denials, at 
 the present day, notoriously do not stand in very high 
 estimation, even when they are made in terms less 
 guarded than those used by Lord Wentworth. Mrs. 
 Stowe has at any rate richly deserved such a rebuke : for 
 although she appears by no means to have promised 
 silence to Lady Byron, and has not perhaps in her 
 ' Revelations ' acted contrary to her Ladyship's meaning, 
 she has acted in opposition to the spirit of the advice she 
 herself gave to Lady Byron. What grounds had she to 
 publish to the world such a tale of impurity, from which 
 even as a woman she was doubly bound to hold aloof? 
 She desired, she says, to meet the accusations against 
 Lady Byron contained in the book of the Countess 
 Guiccioli, which she characterises as ' the mistress versus 
 the wife.' But surely this was the business of the family 
 or of their solicitors, it was clearly not her affair ; not to 
 mention that the imputations of the Countess Guiccioli do 
 not go beyond what had been said again and again before 
 her, and said with justice against Lady Byron. It causes 
 no pain to the pious soul of Mrs. Stowe to heap accusations 
 on the dead, who cannot defend themselves ; she appears to 
 think that the end justifies the means, and that the godly 
 are exempt from the application of the ordinary standards 
 of morality. She might, no doubt, have considered herself 
 
 Stowe's statement is substantially correct (according to your inference, 
 and that of one or two other newspapers). 
 
 ' Requesting the favour of the insertion of my explanation in your 
 valuable journal, I remain, your obedient servant, 
 
 WENT WORTH.']
 
 168 .LIFE OF LORD BYBON. [^f. 27. 
 
 absolved from any feelings of respect to the memory of 
 Byron ; for he of course, before and after his death, was 
 considered by the pious world as proscribed and outlawed. 
 But her feeling's as a woman should have restrained her 
 from branding with such infamy the memory of Mrs. 
 Leigh, especially as some of Mrs. Leigh's children are 
 still living. That from her religious point of view she 
 should be ready to impute to Byron every possible deed of 
 infamy, is conceivable ; but what could entitle her to hold 
 Mrs. Leigh capable of such an enormity? Where in 
 Mrs. Leigh's life and character could she find any ground 
 for such an accusation? Here, too, Mrs. Stowe betrays 
 an utter want of the discrimination requisite for the 
 sifting and weighing of evidence. Mrs. Leigh was at 
 least five, if not eight years older than her brother ; her. 
 marriage was, as far as we know, a happy one ; she had 
 several children, and generally lived at a distance from 
 her brother. She was, as he himself points out, more a 
 mother than a sister to him. Yet according to Mrs. 
 Stowe, this criminal intercourse subsisted when Byron 
 married nay, he married, she would have us believe, only 
 to conceal it ! What this may mean it is very hard, indeed, 
 to understand. How could incest be concealed by marriage ? 
 On the contrary, marriage surely would have been the 
 iost certain way of bringing the dark secret to light. 
 But yet more, Byron, appealing to the loose morality of 
 continental marriages so Mrs. Stowe avers demanded 
 of his wife the toleration of this incestuous relation, and 
 on his side promised a corresponding indulgence ! Apart 
 from every other consideration, this statement is absolute 
 nonsense. Had such a criminal intercourse actually sub- 
 sisted, Byron would assuredly have concealed it under an 
 impenetrable veil. In a word, the point of view, credo 
 yuici absurdum est, is the only one which allows belief in
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 169 
 
 such, monsti'ous assertions. Finally, in support of the 
 veracity of her revelations Mrs. Stowe appeals to 'Man- 
 fred,' in which Byron, as she infers, clearly confessed his 
 guilt; with what justice this is said will be shown in 
 another place. 
 
 But we are not yet at the end of the 'Revelations.' 
 Mrs. Stowe had spoken of a child of sin, the offspring of 
 the incestuous intercourse between brother and sister, 
 which the angelic Lady Byron adopted and brought up, 
 until, by the death of this child, she was freed from the 
 responsibility she had incurred. Shortly after the publica- 
 tion of the ' Macmillan article,' there appeared, under the 
 editorship of Mr. Charles Mackay, a book which claims to 
 be the autobiography of this child. 1 Did not the name of 
 an author of respectability stand on the title-page, we 
 should have been induced to believe it a fraud, especially 
 as the name of the gentleman to whom the MS. of the 
 autobiography and of the other documents relating to it 
 belongs, is indicated only by his initial letters. It is a 
 tale of guilt and shame almost without parallel. The 
 eldest daughter of Mrs. Leigh, Georgiana, married in 
 the year 1826 a distant relation, Mr. Henry Trevanion, 
 a gentleman without fortune and of a not very compatible 
 temper. Three years after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. 
 Trevanion retired to a country house near Canterbury, 
 belonging to Lady Byron, which she had placed at their 
 disposal, where Georgiana was to await her impending 
 confinement. She took with her her fourth sister, Eliza- 
 beth. Medora, then only fourteen years old, to be helpful 
 to her and afford her some society. While living here 
 incredible as it may sound Medora was ere long seduced 
 
 1 Medora Leigh, a history and an autobiography, edited by Charles 
 Mackay. London, 18G9.
 
 170 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. [Mi. 27. 
 
 by her own brother-in-law, eventually revealed her con- 
 dition to her sister, and along with her and her husband 
 went to Calais, where she was secretly confined. Keturning 
 to England she continued her criminal intimacy with her 
 brother-in-law, and was again obliged to confess her state, 
 not only to her sister, but also to her mother. Colonel 
 Leigh, whose favourite daughter she had hitherto been, 
 believing her insane, confined her in a private lunatic 
 asylum, from which, however, she escaped, through the 
 assistance of Trevanion, and followed him to Normandy, 
 where they lived under the assumed names of Monsieur 
 and Madame Aubin. Georgiana now the narrative goes 
 on to say professed an intention of obtaining a divorce 
 at least she feigned this desire in order, perhaps, to pacify 
 her sister, who was then to be married to Trevanion ! 
 Since, however, according to the law of England, a man 
 cannot marry the sister of his deceased or divorced wife, 
 the worthy pair, not to rob the wretched Medora of all hope, 
 told her, that Colonel Leigh was not her father, although 
 it does not appear that they specified to whom she owed 
 her existence. 1 This she was induced to believe as she 
 says the more readily, because neither she nor her sisters 
 had ever been brought up to reverence and love their 
 father. As, however, no divorce could be effected, she 
 had resolution enough, after again giving birth to a 
 daughter, to free herself from her shocking relation to 
 her brother-in-law. Left by her mother without the 
 requisite means of support, she applied in her distress 
 to her aunt, Lady Byron, who in the most affectionate 
 manner promised to assist her, appointed to meet her at 
 Tours, and then took her and her child to Paris. From 
 thence they went to Fontainebleau, where Lady Byron 
 
 1 Medora Leigh, p. ] 27.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 17] 
 
 fell ill and revealed (1840) to her niece, that she was the 
 daughter of her uncle Lord Byron ; l adding at the same 
 time, that on this ground, she felt, and would ever feel, 
 the deepest sympathy and love for her. In the following 
 year Medora returned with her aunt to England, but soon, 
 as she says, was convinced that Lady Byron, in spite of all 
 her professions of love, did not really intend to provide for 
 her ; and that she gradually found it quite impossible to 
 accommodate herself to her temper and to her peculiar 
 humours and arrangements. The health of Medora, now 
 completely undermined, made it, moreover, requisite that 
 she should return to the south of France in compliance 
 with the advice of her physicians. Here she lived for 
 some time in great poverty, Lady Byron refusing to allow 
 her a fixed income, though she subjected her to the sur- 
 veillance of a servant and his wife. In the hands of 
 these persons, to whom even the remittances of money 
 were sent by Lady Byron, Medora remained in a state of 
 semi-captivity. She went finally to Paris, where she 
 applied to Berryer for advice and help, and came in the 
 summer of 1843 with her child to London. Her relatives, 
 however, turned a deaf ear to her cries of distress ; her 
 mother refused to receive her, and would not even see 
 her. The letter, which, in these circumstances, she ad- 
 dressed to her mother, Dr. Mackay has not ventured to 
 print. The only one who took any interest in her was 
 
 the Mr. S , to whom she gave her papers, and who, 
 
 through Dr. Mackay, has made them public. At the end 
 of 1843, Medora again disappeared from London, and 
 soon afterwards found rest in the grave. 
 
 Such is a summary of this latest sad ' revelation.' As 
 the editor has clearly and convincingly shown, it proves 
 
 1 Medora Leigh, p. 135.
 
 172 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi. 27. 
 
 nothing as to Byron's guilt. In this respect it is per- 
 fectly indifferent whether this story be true or false ; but 
 this is one reason among many why this revolting story 
 should never have seen the light. Whence could the 
 Trevanions, who in the year 1831 first called in question 
 the paternity of Colonel Leigh with respect to the fourth 
 daughter, 1 have gained the knowledge of this pretended 
 fact ? If they did not invent the charge for the purpose 
 of obtaining the wished for-divorce, which is by no means 
 inconceivable, they may, perhaps, have received it through 
 their intimacy with Mrs. Clerrnont, who had been the 
 servant and governess of Lady Byron, and who lived in 
 her family. 2 For the success of their scheme, it concerned 
 the Trevanions only to assert, that Colonel Leigh was not 
 the father of their sister : who the father might be, was 
 to them a matter of indifference. Who added the positive 
 half of the charge, and how this was communicated to 
 Lady Byron, remains still unexplained. Was it by Mrs. 
 Trevanion or by Mrs. Clermont ? 
 
 Perhaps by neither of them. According to our con- 
 viction, the mysterious communication made by Lady 
 Byron to Dr. Lushington referred to this point, and 
 Byron and his sister learnt soon after the separation the 
 accusation which had been brought against them. We 
 greatly regret, that it has not been in our power to 
 examine the English journals of the year 1816; but from 
 Byron's letters it is very clear, that the press even then 
 pointed not obscurely to the crime laid to his charge, and 
 it is by no means incredible, that the Trevanions derived 
 their knowledge from this source. The fact that this 
 
 1 It may here be remarked, in passing, that Mr. and Mrs. Leigh had 
 altogether seven children. 
 
 2 Such is the suggestion of Dr. Charles Mackay. See Medora Leiyh, 
 p. 215, 216.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEK STOWE SCANDAL. 173 
 
 accusation was made must have been revealed by some 
 friend to Byron during his residence in Switzerland, 
 for only under this supposition are his expressions and 
 conduct to be understood in their true connection. Let 
 us first hear what he himself says : ' I shall return (to 
 England) with the same feelings with which I left it, in 
 respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, 
 as I have been more or less informed of their conduct 
 since my departure ; for it was only a considerable time 
 after it, that I was made acquainted with the real 
 facts and full extent of some of their proceedings 
 and language. My friends, like other friends, from 
 conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they 
 could, and some things which they should have unfolded : 
 however, that which is deferred is not lost but it has 
 been no fault of mine that it has been deferred at all.' l 
 ' I was accused,' he says in the same place, * of every 
 monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour ; 
 my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one, 
 since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for Wil- 
 liam the Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was 
 whispered, and muttered, and murmured was true, I was 
 unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.' 2 
 In a letter written at a later period, 3 when he regarded 
 the matter somewhat more quietly, he enumerates the 
 offensive epithets which had been applied to him by the 
 press after his separation ; he mentions only some : Nero, 
 Apicius, Epicurus, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Henry VIIL, 
 
 and finally the .' With the names of Nero, Apicius, 
 
 Caligula, Heliogabalus, he was manifestly only honoured 
 
 1 Some observations upon an article in Blackwood's Magazine. Life 
 and Works, xv. 72. 2 Ibid. p. 66. 
 
 3 [The translator is unable to find the letter referred to. The author 
 has probably iu his mind a conversation reported on the authority of 
 Medwin, p. 61.]
 
 174 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEx. 27. 
 
 because their bearers, one and all, had been accused of 
 unnatural vices. The comparison otherwise would have 
 had no meaning, for the cruelty of Nero or the gluttony 
 of Apicius could never be laid to Byron's charge. 
 
 Hence, too, the explanation of the poems addressed 
 to his sister which were written in Switzerland. From the 
 first to their last line they afford an unmistakable proof, 
 that his relation to her was the tenderest and the purest 
 of his whole life ; and it is simply impossible, that he 
 could have written them with a conscience laden with 
 guilt. With the affectionate cravings of his nature, 
 he had, when his marriage began to take an unhappy 
 turn, attached himself more closely and tenderly to his 
 sister, in whom he found that sympathy, indulgence, and 
 confidence, which he found in no other person. Never, 
 therefore, does he display a more sincere respect or a more 
 tender regard than for her. All the harder, then, was his 
 fate, that the darkest calumnies should be directed against 
 him just where he knew himself to be most pure and stain- 
 less. But the poems to Augusta prove farther, that she too 
 was cognisant of the calumnious accusations; for under 
 no other supposition is it possible to understand their 
 allusions. How otherwise are these passages to be inter- 
 preted? For instance, the stanza in ' Childe Harold,' 
 written in Switzerland 
 
 And there was one soft breast, as hath been said, 
 Which unto his was bound by stronger ties 
 Than the church links withal ; and, though unwed, 
 That love was pure, and, far above disguise, 
 Had stood the test of mortal enmities 
 Still undivided, and cemented more 
 By peril, dreaded most in female eyes ; 
 But this was firm, and from a foreign shore 
 Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour ! l ^ 
 
 1 Cant. iii. st. 55.
 
 1815.J THE BEECHEK STOWE SCANDAL. 175 
 
 Or the ' Stanzas to Augusta ' 
 
 And when the cloud upon us came 
 
 Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray 
 
 Then purer spread its gentle flame 
 And dash'd the darkness all away. 1 
 
 Or, again, in the second poem addressed to her, dated 
 July 24, 1816 : 
 
 Though slandered, thou never couldst shake. 2 
 
 Hence also the explanation of the change which took 
 place in Switzerland in Byron's manner of speaking of his 
 wife. At first, just after the separation, he dwells on the 
 favourable aspects of her character, and not only speaks of 
 her with respect, but expressly declares her blameless, and 
 imputes all blame to himself. ' I do not believe,' he writes 
 to Moore, March 8, 1816, ' and I must say it, in the verj- 
 dregs of this bitter business, that there ever was a better, 
 or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agree- 
 able being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor can have, 
 any reproach to make her while with me ; where there is 
 blame, it belongs to myself, and if I cannot redeem, I must 
 bear it.' 3 Some days later than this (March 25) he asks 
 Eogers, whom he on this occasion describes as one of his 
 few intimate friends, to have the goodness to say ' whether 
 you ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with Tin- 
 kindness, or defending myself at her expense by any 
 serious imputation of any description against her ? The 
 reason I put these questions to you or others of my friends 
 is, because I am said by her and hers to have resorted to 
 such means of exculpation.' 4 In this, so to speak, first stage 
 of his life after the separation, it was Mrs. Clermont and 
 his mother-in-law (the father-in-law plays in the whole 
 
 1 Moore's Life and Works, x. 194. 2 Ibid. p. 198. 
 
 8 Moore's Life, iii. 205. * Hid. iii. 217.
 
 176 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 affair the part of a mere cipher), whom he accused of 
 prejudicing and exciting his wife against him, and of 
 causing her to leave him. 'This is Mrs. Clermont's 
 work,' he said when he put his name and seal to the deed 
 of separation. 1 In the poem entitled 'A Sketch,' he says 
 of his wife : 
 
 Serenely purest of her sex that live, 
 
 But wanting one sweet weakness to forgive. 2 
 
 But when he was informed in Switzerland of the last 
 horrible accusation, his feelings towards her passed into 
 another stage. Henceforward her character appeared 
 to him in another light : now he saw only its darker sides, 
 and his exasperation was increased by her rejection of all 
 his attempts at reconciliation. Hence the explanation of 
 the bitter tone of the lines he wrote (September LSI 6), on 
 hearing that Lady Byron was ill : 
 
 Of thy virtues didst thou make a vice ; 
 in which also he calls her 
 
 The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord. 3 
 
 Hence, lastly, the explanation of the sketch which he 
 drew in the first canto of ' Don Juan,' where he describes 
 their marriage and separation ; the characteristics of his 
 wife being unmistakably attributed to Donna Inez. 
 
 Quite in harmony with our view is the following declara- 
 tion published for the first time in the ' Academy,' 4 
 which Byron drew up at La Mira, August 9, 1817, in all 
 probability at the instigation of his friend Hobhouse, who 
 at that time was residing at Venice. ' It has been inti- 
 mated to me ' so he says in this document, ' that the 
 persons understood to be the legal advisers of Lady Byron, 
 
 1 Quarterly Revieiv, October 169, p. 418. * Works, x. 190. 
 
 3 Works, x. 208. * October 9, 1669.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 177 
 
 have declared " tlieir lips to be sealed up " on tlie cause 
 of the separation between her and myself. If their lips 
 are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the 
 greatest favour they can confer upon me -will be to open 
 them. From the first hour in which I was apprised of 
 the intentions of the Noel family to the last communica- 
 tion between Lady Byron and myself in the character of 
 wife and husband (a period of some months), I called 
 repeatedly and in vain for a statement of their or her 
 charges, and it was chiefly in consequence of Lady Byron's 
 claiming (in a letter still existing) a promise on my part 
 to consent to a separation if such was really her wish, that 
 I consented at all ; this claim and the exasperating and 
 inexplicable manner in which their object was pursued, 
 which rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons 
 so divided could ever be re-united, induced me reluctantly 
 then, and repentantly still, to sign the deed, which I shall 
 be happy most happy to cancel, and go before any 
 tribunal which may discuss the business in the most public 
 manner. 
 
 ' Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz., 
 to abrogate all prior intentions and go into Court the 
 very day before the separation was signed, and it was 
 declined by the other party, as also the publication of the 
 correspondence during the previous discussion. Those 
 propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call upon her and 
 hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their 
 allegations whatever they may be and only too happy 
 to be informed at last of their real nature. 
 
 (Signed) ' BTEON. 
 
 ' August 9, 1817. 
 
 *P.S. I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of 
 what description her allegations, charges, or whatever 
 name they may have assumed, are ; and am as little aware 
 
 N
 
 178 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 for what purpose they have been kept back unless it 
 was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by silence. 
 
 (Signed) ' BYRON. 
 
 ' La Mira, near Venice.' 
 
 Undeniably this unfeigned candour of Byron, and his 
 readiness to come before the world, speak loudly in his 
 favour and show that his conscience was clear ; whereas 
 the persistent reticence of his antagonists makes the worst 
 impression and at once excites a prejudice against them. 
 
 One additional circumstance deserves to be considered. 
 Was it not to be expected, that Byron in his Memoirs 
 would have explained the suspicions under which he lay 
 and the origin of them, and have proved or at least 
 averred his innocence? Yet Moore 1 asserts that these 
 Memoirs afforded no light whatever on the mysterious 
 cause of the separation ; but as in the same breath he is 
 obliged to admit, that he has suppressed very much re- 
 lating to it, which he found among the letters and 
 journals of Byron, it seems justifiable to receive his 
 assertion with some doubt. How would Moore have been 
 regarded by the world if, after consenting to the destruc- 
 tion of these Memoirs, he had admitted, that the solution 
 of the mystery was contained in them ? Our hesitation to 
 accept Moore's statement implicitly is strengthened by 
 an expression of Sir Walter Scott, who while lamenting 
 that Byron's executors were only to be satisfied by their 
 entire destruction, adds, * there was a ground Premat nox 
 alta ! ' 2 Is it possible now to misunderstand this ? 
 
 Thus everything forces us to the supposition, that the 
 charge of incest was the secret charge made by Lady 
 Byron and submitted to Dr. Lushington ; that this charge 
 
 1 Life, vi. 264. 
 
 * Diary, Nov. 21, 1825. Lockliart's Life, viii. 116. Edin. 1857.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEE STOWE SCANDAL. 179 
 
 was known to Byron and his sister soon after the separa- 
 tion ; that it was even at that period pointed at in the 
 public press, and was already an open secret. Two 
 difficulties, however, stand in the way of the admission of 
 these inferences ; first, Lady Byron's friendly relations with 
 her sister-in-law even after the separation ; and, secondly, 
 Byron's re- iterated assertions that it was utterly unknown 
 to him why his wife separated from. him. 
 
 With regard to Lady Byron's continued intimacy with 
 Mrs. Leigh, this is established beyond doubt by the letters 
 and notes overflowing with tenderness and ardent pro- 
 fessions of love, which Lady Byron after the catastrophe 
 addressed to Mrs. Leigh from Kirkby Mallory, and which 
 were published for the first time in the ' Quarterly Review.' l 
 These are of such importance that we give them at length. 
 ( You will think me very foolish, but I have tried two or 
 three times and cannot talk to you of your departure with 
 a decent visage so let me say one word in this way, to 
 spare my philosophy. With the expectations which I 
 have, I never will nor can ask you to stay one moment 
 longer than you are inclined to do. It would [be] the 
 worst return for all I ever received from you. But, in 
 this at least, I am " truth itself " when I say that what- 
 ever the situation may be, there is no one whose society 
 is dearer to me, or can contribute more to my happiness. 
 These feelings will not change under any circumstances, 
 and I should be grieved if you did not understand them. 
 Should you hereafter condemn me, I shall not love you 
 less. I will say no more. Judge for yourself about 
 going or staying. I wish you to consider yourself., if you 
 could be wise enough to do that for the first time in your 
 
 life. 
 
 < Thine, A. I. B.' 
 
 1 Number for October 1869, pp. 414, 415. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 Addressed on the cover ' To the Hon. Mrs. Leigh/ l 
 
 'Kirkby Mallory, Jan. 16, 1816 
 (the day after she left London). 
 
 ' MY DEAREST A., It is my great comfort that you 
 are in Piccadilly.' 
 
 ' Kirkby Mallory, Jan. 23, 1816. 
 
 ' DEAREST A., I know you feel for me as I do for you, 
 and perhaps I am better understood than I think. You 
 have been, ever since I knew you, my best comforter, and 
 will so remain, unless you grow tired of the office, which 
 may well be.' 
 
 'Jan. 25, 1816. 
 
 ' MY DEAREST AUGUSTA, Shall I still be your sister ? 
 J must resign my rights to be so considered ; but I don't 
 think that will make any difference in the kindness I have 
 so uniformly experienced from you.' 
 
 ' Kirkby Mallory, Feb. 3, 1816. 
 
 ' MY DEAREST AUGUSTA, You are desired by your 
 brother to ask, if my father has acted with my con- 
 currence in proposing a separation. He has. It cannot 
 be supposed that, in my present distressing situation, I 
 am capable of stating in a detailed manner the reasons 
 which will not only justify this measure, but compel me 
 to take it ; and it never can be my wish to remember 
 unnecessarily [sic] those injuries for which, however deep, 
 I feel no resentment. I will now only recall to Lord 
 Byron's mind his avowed and insurmountable aversion to 
 the married state, and the desire and determination he has 
 expressed ever since its commencement to free himself 
 from that bondage, as finding it quite insupportable, 
 though candidly acknowledging that no effort of duty or 
 
 1 The date of this letter is not given.
 
 181 5. J THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 181 
 
 affection has been wanting on my part. He has too pain- 
 fully convinced me that all these attempts to contribute 
 towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most un- 
 welcome to him. I enclose this letter to my father, 
 wishing it to receive his sanction. 
 
 ' Ever yours most affectionately, 
 
 'A. I. BYRON.' 
 
 'Feb. 4, 1816. 
 
 ' I hope, my dear A., that you would on no account 
 withhold from your brother the letter which I sent yester- 
 day, in answer to yours written by his desire ; particularly 
 as one which I have received from himself to-day renders 
 it still more important that he should know the contents 
 of that addressed to you. I am, in haste and not very 
 
 well, yours most affectionately, 
 
 A. I. BYRON.' 
 
 'Kirkby Mallory, Feb. 14, 1816. 
 
 ' The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in 
 blessings. Do not despair absolutely, dearest ; and leave 
 me but enough of your interest to afford you any consola- 
 tion, by partaking of that sorrow which I am most un- 
 happy to cause thus unintentionally. You will be of my 
 opinion hereafter, and at present your bitterest reproach 
 would be forgiven ; though Heaven knows you have con- 
 sidered me more than a thousand would have done more 
 than anything but my affection for B., one most dear to 
 you, could deserve. I must not remember these feelings. 
 Farewell ! God bless you, from the bottom of my heart. 
 
 <A. I. B.' 
 
 Her feelings to her sister-in law ' will not change under 
 any circumstances ' so she protests in the first of these 
 letters ; but change they did ; for there is indisputable 
 testimony to prove, that Lady Byron, after the death of 
 Mrs. Leigh (1851), retailed the story of incest not only
 
 182 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [jE T . 27. 
 
 to Mrs. Stowe, but to many other persons with various 
 extravagant additions. Knowing, as we do, how Lady 
 Byron, merely in compliance with the advice of a phy- 
 sician, wrote to her husband the most affectionate and 
 unaffectedly cheerful letter while on the road to Kirkby 
 Mallory, we candidly confess, that we can lay no weight 
 on her assurances. If we admit that they were writ- 
 ten in good faith, and that they prove, that Lady Byron 
 had at that time entertained no suspicion of incest, 
 what becomes of the communication which at that very 
 time she made to Dr. Lushington? For if the secret 
 imparted referred to something else, surely Dr. Lushing- 
 ton could not pretend to see any breach of confidence, were 
 he to declare publicly, that the disclosure made to him 
 had nothing in common with the revelation of Mrs. Stowe. 
 The friendly understanding between Lady Byron and Mrs. 
 Leigh continued moreover to exist till Byron's death, 
 if not longer : Mrs. Leigh was the person through whom 
 all communications between the husband and the wife 
 were made, and Byron's last unfinished letter to her begins 
 with these words : ' My dearest Augusta, a few days ago 
 I received your and Lady Byron's account of Ada's health.' 
 It is difficult to see how facts apparently so contra- 
 dictory are to be reconciled. While we feel that obscurity 
 rests still, and perhaps ever will, on a history so full of 
 conflicting elements, one point at least seems placed 
 beyond all doubt that Byron did not commit the mons- 
 trous crime laid to his charge. 
 
 It is comparatively easier to solve the second difficulty, 
 viz., that Byron to the last maintained, that he was 
 ignorant why Lady Byron had separated from him, and 
 that to people in general he was in the habit of attri- 
 buting the separation to trivial causes. When some 
 one in Cephalonia was enumerating the various grounds
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEK STOWE SCANDAL. 183 
 
 which were alleged for it (incest, of course, excepted), he 
 answered : ' The causes, my dear Sir, were too simple to be 
 easily found out.' l However unreserved he was in other 
 things, it is easy to understand, that, from regard to his 
 sister, he could not allude to that charge, at least to 
 strangers. He was so far in ignorance of the motives of 
 his wife in leaving him that she never openly preferred. her 
 accusation against him, and what he knew he owed only 
 to the confidential communications of his friends. 
 
 But how this is the next question could so horrible 
 a suspicion arise in Lady Byron's mind ? But how do 
 idiosyncrasies and hallucinations arise at all? For that 
 this suspicion, at least at a later date, took the form 
 of a mental delusion, is undeniable; this is the mildest 
 interpretation which can be given to the conduct of Lady 
 Byron. It has been excellently remarked by the writer 
 in the ( Quarterly Eeview : ' ' Lady Byron could at first 
 account for her gifted husband's conduct on no hypothesis 
 but insanity ; and now by a sort of Nemesis there is no 
 other hypothesis on which the moralist can charitably 
 account for hers. But there is this marked difference in 
 their maladies ; his monomania lay in being an impossible 
 sinner, and hers in being an impossible saint. He was 
 the faulty and she the faultless monster the world ne'er 
 knew. He in his mad moods did his best to blacken his 
 own reputation, whilst her self-delusions invariably tended 
 to damage the character of all that were nearest and 
 should have been dearest to her. Which was the more 
 dangerous or less amiable delusion of the two?' 2 
 
 We are not, however, altogether without an Ariadne- 
 thread in this labyrinth. Lady Byron was only too dis- 
 posed always to believe the worst of her husband. She was 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 212. 
 
 2 Quarterly Review, October 1869, pp. 441, 442.
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [-3ST. 27. 
 
 one of those persons who could not understand a joke, and 
 least of all the jokes which Byron loved to make at his own 
 expense. His self-accusations, which were probably nothing 
 but bad jests and mystifications, she took literally. She 
 was, moreover, of a jealous nature, and, as she had neither 
 brother nor sister, she hardly possessed the quality of 
 heart which makes tender sisterly love possible. In such 
 a character a spark was enough to kindle the least sus- 
 picion into a flame, and this spark, doubtless, Mrs. Cler- 
 mont supplied. Unhappily this person was much in Lady 
 Byron's confidence, and had acquired an ascendency over 
 her and her family. Byron, on the other hand, had 
 conceived an aversion to her, which he took no trouble to 
 conceal, and which she repaid * with a vengeance.' He 
 scarcely overshot the mark when he called her a ' she- 
 lago.' She had only to contrast Byron's regard and 
 tenderness for his sister with his cold, abrupt manner to 
 his wife ; she had only to let fall the remark, that she 
 was really only his half-sister, and that they had not 
 grown up together; she had only to represent such a 
 love .between brother and sister as excessive and un- 
 becoming ; and hints such as these, thrown out by her, 
 would bear fruit a thousand-fold. Possibly Byron himself 
 may, in moments of irritation, have uttered inconsiderate 
 expressions hurtful to his wife's feelings, which appeared 
 to corroborate the germinating suspicion. Perhaps he 
 may even have hinted, after his usual manner, at a guilty, 
 overmastering passion for his sister. He had so long 
 played in poetical fancy with crime and the consciousness 
 of guilt, that at last the ineffaceable suspicion of guilt 
 fell in bitterest reality on his head. It was just one of 
 those cases in which persons who have surrendered them- 
 selves to preconceived opinions, prefer the most unnatural 
 mode of explanation to every other, and refuse to be pe r
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 185 
 
 suaded by the most natural and simple. If the facts were 
 really in accordance with these conjectures, then, we are 
 convinced, the suspicion must have ripened in Lady 
 Byron's mind either immediately before or immediately 
 after the separation. For, had Lady Byron cherished it 
 at an earlier period, she would scarcely have consented 
 that Mrs. Leigh should be godmother to her child, and 
 that the child should be named after her. If, contrary to 
 all expectation, it should turn out, that Lady Byron's 
 disclosures to Dr. Lushington had no reference to the 
 charge of incest, her monomania must have been of a 
 later growth, and her character would then at least be 
 cleared from the charge of duplicity to her sister- 
 in-law, to whom she feigned love, while in her heart 
 she entertained the foulest suspicion against her. One 
 word of explanation from Dr. Lushington but this alone 
 would terminate all conjectures and all doubts. The 
 whole matter has come to a point, where the letter should 
 yield to the spirit, and when, in defiance of testamentary 
 dispositions of every kind, not only the papers left behind 
 by Lady Byron, but those of Hobhouse, should be published. 
 Were the latter still living, we feel persuaded he would 
 come forward to defend his friend, and, the publication 
 of the memoir he has left of all the questions connected 
 with the marriage and separation would at any rate be an 
 act in accordance with his own directions. Thus only can 
 the just claim of the world to the knowledge of the full 
 truth be satisfied ; thus only can justice be done to the 
 memory of all persons concerned. Whatever the secret 
 may be, the character neither of Byron nor of his wife can 
 be further injured by its publication. The latter, indeed, 
 is self-condemned, inasmuch as she first prevented her 
 husband from even being heard in his own defence by the 
 destruction of the ' Memoirs,' which was promoted chiefly
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JE-r. 27. 
 
 by her, and then formally bequeathed Memoranda of her 
 own case, besides communicating to others her own version 
 of her woes. She even awaited the dea/fch of her sister- 
 in-law before she ventured to come forward, unabashed, 
 with her accusations. She has thereby forfeited the 
 respect of all unprejudiced and right-minded persons, 
 unless a state of irresponsibility be accepted as a ground 
 of extenuation. Well, assuredly, may she from her grave 
 apply to Mrs. Stowe the saying, 'Heaven save me from 
 my friends ! ' for the arrow discharged by the ' revelation ' 
 of the latter has recoiled on Lady Byron herself, while 
 her husband has come forth only purer from the intended 
 defilement. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these arguments, it may still appear 
 improbable to many readers, that Lady Byron should have 
 got into such a state of delusion. But doubt disap- 
 pears, when we recall the case, so much talked of at 
 the time, of Mrs. Mardyn the actress, which in many 
 respects was a prelude to the terrible charge against the 
 brother and sister. This case clearly shows, how a per- 
 fectly groundless suspicion not only could arise in Lady 
 Byron's mind, but could so master her that a catastrophe 
 must be the result. From the time that he wrote his suc- 
 cessful prologue for the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 
 Byron became not only a constant frequenter of the 
 theatre, but one of the shareholders and a member also 
 of the committee of management. In this capacity he 
 had to examine the pieces sent in for performance (in 
 one year they amounted to upwards of 500) to nego- 
 tiate with their authors, and frequently also to mix with 
 the actors and actresses, to compose their grievances and 
 disputes, to decide on engagements and the filling up of 
 the parts. Life behind the scenes has at no time been 
 conspicuous for its morality, and Lady Byron might be
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEE STOWE SCANDAL. 187 
 
 excused, if she considered it a dangerous and critical 
 ordeal for her too susceptible husband, and even if she 
 felt some pangs of jealousy. But it is said that she 
 proceeded so far as to break open and search Byron's 
 writing desk. 1 The only questionable things found in it 
 were the letters of a married lady, with whom Byron, 
 before his marriage, had been too intimately acquainted. 
 It sounds almost incredible, but rumour added that she 
 sent these to the husband of the lady, who, however, took 
 no notice of the affair. 2 The beautiful actress, Mrs. 
 Mardyn, was soon pointed at as the mistress of Byron, and 
 calumny pretended to know, that he had introduced her 
 into his house and paid her attentions which were most 
 offensive to his wife's feelings. 3 The talk of the town 
 penetrating into every quarter called forth such indigna- 
 tion in the virtuous public, that Mrs. Mardyn was hissed 
 off the stage and overwhelmed with insults and abuse. 
 Yet, as it was afterwards discovered, Mrs. Mardyn not 
 only had never been in Byron's house, but had scarcely ever 
 exchanged a single word with him. 
 
 Although Lady Byron thus appears filled with jealousy 
 both of Mrs. Mardyn and of Mrs. Leigh, we must guard 
 against a too possible misunderstanding. Lady Byron's 
 jealousy sprang from no common or coarse motives, 
 but rather from a moral source. She considered it her 
 vocation to take her husband under her moral protec- 
 tion and to bring him back, if possible, to the paths of 
 virtue ; she felt herself to a certain extent his conscience, 
 and she had married him, as Lady Caroline Lamb said, 
 
 1 [This story rests solely on the very questionable authority of Captain 
 Medwin (Conversations, pp. 53, 54). Nor has Dr. Elze strictly followed 
 Med win's report of the alleged conversation : in the original, the breaking 
 open of Lord Byron's writing desk is not attributed to Lady Byron, but 
 
 Mrs. Clermont.] 
 
 2 Medwin's Conversations, pp. 53, 5. 3 Ibid.
 
 188 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [&t. 27. 
 
 only to save and reclaim him. 1 This was the natural 
 and necessary result of her moral and religious views of 
 life and the world, which differed widely from those of her 
 husband. Difference of religious views has often been 
 regarded as one of the causes of the unhappiness of their 
 married life, and Parry 2 did not hesitate to say as much 
 at Missolonghi to Byron himself; who, however, denied 
 the imputation, and replied, that his wife was liberal in 
 her religious ideas, an assertion which, in a certain sense, 
 was true. Not long, however, before this, Byron had ex- 
 pressed himself somewhat differently to Kennedy : ' Lady 
 Byron,' so Kennedy reports him as saying, * is a great 
 Socinian and is highly esteemed by them. She and I had 
 very many discussions on Religion, and some of our 
 quarrels rose from this source ; but when I put all things 
 together, I find that her religion was very like mine.' 3 
 That religious differences subsisted between the husband 
 and wife is certain ; only their dissension must not be 
 viewed as if it were between Socinianism and Calvinism, 
 for this would reach only the formal, external difference, 
 and would not describe its essence. The antagonism lay 
 rather between dogmatism and belief in authority on Lady 
 
 1 Glenarvon, iii. 100. [' Miss Monmouth (i.e. Miss Milbanke) was the 
 idol of her family. She was pure herself and therefore unsuspicious. 
 Talents and judgment had been given her with no sparing hand; but to 
 these she added the warmest, the most generous heart, the strongest 
 feeling, and a high and noble character. To save, to reclaim one, whose 
 genius she admired, whose beauty attracted, was a task too delightful to 
 be rejected. Thousands daily sacrifice their hearts to mercenary and 
 ambitious views ; thousands coldly, without one feeling of enthusiasm or 
 love, sell themselves for a splendid name ; and can there be a mind so 
 cold, so corrupted, as to censure the girl, who .... gave her hand and 
 heart, and all that she possessed, to save, to bless, and to reclaim a 
 Glenarvon ? '] 
 
 2 Last Days of Lord Byron. London, 1825, p. 219. 
 
 3 Kennedy, Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron and others, 
 p. 135.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEE STOWE SCANDAL. 189 
 
 Byron's side, and scepticism and free thought on his, to 
 whatever religious communion or sect they might ex- 
 ternally have belonged. 'Lady Byron,' says Parry, 'is 
 manifestly more influenced by the dogmas than by the love 
 and charity of religion.' l As in everything else, she was 
 guided even in her religious views by the precisely defined 
 notions in which she had been educated, while, on the 
 contrary, Byron's notions were rather of a negative than 
 a positive character. From dogmatic authority, indeed, 
 he could never altogether liberate himself, but from his 
 doubts would again return to dogma. To his wife, belief 
 resting on authority was in itself a virtue, negation of it 
 sin and madness. This mode of belief, so character- 
 istic of English society, extends itself notoriously to things 
 secular, to the pettiest details of daily life, and even 
 in these tolerates no deviation from the sacredness of 
 traditional custom. On these matters Byron, who had 
 risen by the experience gained through travel to a freer 
 point of view, was often accused of self-willed rebellion 
 and apostasy. Who can say whether the theatre, for which 
 he had always a predilection, was not to his wife an 
 offence and an abomination? By a great part of English 
 society at the present moment the theatre is regarded 
 with disfavour and almost as sinful, quite irrespective 
 of practices behind the scenes. Lady Byron, in a recently 
 published letter, 2 attributes the misery of her married life 
 to Byron's gloomy and profoundly Calvinistic tendencies 
 he saw, she there says, in God only the avenger not the 
 Father, and believed that his transgressions exceeded all 
 forgiveness ; that her own views, which were just the 
 reverse, had no influence upon him ; that he persisted in 
 
 1 The Last Days of Lord Byron, p. 162. 
 
 2 See Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspon- 
 dence, Hi. 435 et seq.
 
 190 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [^E T . 27. 
 
 the conviction, that to him every blessing transformed itself 
 into a curse, and that he regarded his bodily deformity as 
 the confirmation and stamp of this fixed idea. ' " The 
 worst of it is, I do believe," he said. I, says Lady Byron, 
 like all connected with him, was broken against the rock 
 of Predestination. I may be pardoned for referring to his 
 frequent expression of the sentiment, that I was only sent 
 to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy. 
 You will now better understand why "The Deformed 
 Transformed" is too painful to me for discussion.' ' 
 
 Not merely morally and religiously had Lady Byron no 
 real knowledge of her husband, but she never displayed an 
 earnest will to understand the character of his intellect or 
 the bent of his disposition. Gervinus, 2 indeed, represents 
 her as a woman of a self-sacrificing and affectionate 
 nature ; but this is a great mistake. In the first place, it 
 was hardly true love which led her to marry Byron ; like 
 him, she was guided mainly by worldly and selfish motives, 
 so that in this respect she was not blameless. Why, other- 
 wise, should she have rejected his first offer of marriage? 
 When, after rejecting other suitors, she at last accepted 
 him, she was actuated by the vanity of becoming the wife 
 of a man so celebrated, and of being introduced by him 
 into the highest circles of the great world. Byron's circum- 
 stances, his past history, his character, were undoubtedly 
 known to her when she gave him her hand; she knew, 
 at any rate, his self-portraiture in 'Childe Harold,' and 
 was acquainted with his intimacy with Lady Caroline 
 Lamb, who was, indeed, nearly related to her. If she had 
 not been conscious of possessing the will and the strength 
 to fulfil with forbearance and patience the difficult duties 
 she had undertaken, she ought not to have married him. 
 
 1 See II. C. Robinson's Diary, Reminiscences, fyc., iii. 436, 
 
 2 Geschichtc des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, \iii. 148.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHEK STOWE SCANDAL. 191 
 
 But like her husband, she was impulsive by nature and a 
 spoilt child, who set her own self-will against his. Scott, 1 
 with much regret, alludes from his own acquaintance with 
 her to the capriciousness of her temper, and William 
 Howitt, 2 from his own personal knowledge, also corrobo- 
 rates a like impression by two striking anecdotes ; one of 
 which may be here introduced. ' She was in great 
 difficulty as to the selection of a master for her working 
 school at Kirkby Mallory. It was necessary for him to 
 unite the very rarely united qualities of a thoroughly 
 practical knowledge of the operations of agriculture and 
 gardening with the education and information of an accom- 
 plished schoolmaster. She asked me to try and discover 
 this rara avis for her. I knew exactly such a man in 
 Nottinghamshire, who was at the same time thoroughly 
 honourable, trustworthy, and fond of teaching. At her 
 earnest request I prevailed upon him to give up his 
 then comfortable position and accept her offer. For a 
 time he was everything in her eyes that a man and a 
 schoolmaster could be. She was continually speaking of 
 him when we met in the most cordial terms. But in the 
 course, as I remember, of two or three years, the poor 
 fellow wrote to me in the utmost distress, saying that 
 Lady Byron, without the slightest intimation of being in 
 any way dissatisfied with him, or with his management 
 of the school, had given him notice to quit. He had en- 
 treated her to let him know what was the cause of this 
 sudden dismissal. She refused to give any, and he en- 
 treated me to write to her and endeavour to remove her 
 displeasure, or to ascertain its cause. I felt, from what T 
 had seen of Lady Byron before, that it was useless. I 
 
 1 Lockhart's Memoirs. [The translator confesses his inability to verify 
 this reference.] 
 
 2 Letter to the Daily Neivs, September 4, 1869.
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 27. 
 
 wrote to him, " Remember Lord Byron ! If Lady Byron 
 lias taken into her head that you shall go, nothing will 
 turn her. Go you must, and you had better prepare for 
 it." And the poor fellow, with a family of a,bout five 
 children, and his old situation filled up, turned out into 
 the world to comparative ruin. 1 1 am sure ' he says 
 in the same place 'that Lady Byron was a woman of 
 the most honourable and conscientious intentions, but 
 she was subject to a constitutional idiosyncrasy of a 
 most peculiar kind, which rendered her, when under 
 its influence, absolutely and persistently unjust. I am 
 quite sure from my own observation of her that, when 
 seized by this peculiar condition of the nerves, she was 
 helplessly under its control. Through this the changes in 
 her mood were sudden, and most painful to all about her. 
 I have seen her of an evening in the most amiable, cordial, 
 and sunny humour, full of interest and sympathy ; and I 
 have seen her the next morning come down as if she had 
 lain all night not on a feather bed, but on a glacier 
 frozen as it were to the very soul, and no efforts on the 
 part of those around her could restore her for the day to 
 a genial social warmth. In such moments she seemed to 
 take sudden and deep impressions against persons and 
 things, which, though the worst might pass away, left a 
 permanent effect.' 
 
 This anecdote throws a clear side light on Lady Byron's 
 conduct to her husband. Her behaviour also to Medora 
 Leigh is in perfect accordance with it, and Dr. Mackay 1 
 judges very rightly in saying, that though the first 
 impulses of Lady Byron were good and noble, her 
 second thoughts were generally cold and unjust; that 
 no dependence was to be placed on her love ; that if 
 
 1 Medora Leigh, p. 225.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 193 
 
 she had sufficient reason for her love in any case, she 
 never appears to have had sufficient reason for her hatred, 
 which was stern, unyielding, and unforgiving. Byron, as 
 reported by Medwin, sketched the following portrait of 
 his wife: 'She was easily made the dupe of the design- 
 ing, for she thought her knowledge of mankind infallible ; 
 she had got some foolish idea of Madame de StaeTs 
 into her head, that a person may be better known in 
 the first hour than in ten years. She had the habit of 
 drawing people's characters after she had seen them once 
 or twice. She wrote pages on pages about my character, 
 but it was as unlike as possible. Lady Byron had good 
 ideas, but could never express them, wrote poetry too, but 
 it was only good by accident. Her letters were always 
 enigmatical, often unintelligible. She was governed by 
 what she called fixed rules and principles, squared mathe- 
 matically. ... It must be confessed, however, that she 
 gave no proof of her boasted consistency. First she refused 
 me, then she accepted me, then she separated herself from, 
 me : so much for consistency.' l 
 
 If, instead of her ' fixed rules and principles,' into which 
 she attempted to force her husband, Lady Byron had 
 possessed deeper affections, a gentler and more natural 
 womanhood, she would have been better able to accommo- 
 date herself to Byron and to manage him, and would have 
 given no occasion for the remark, so often quoted, of his 
 valet Fletcher, ' that it was strange that all women were 
 able to manage my Lord but my Lady.' 2 How little she 
 understood Byron's genius, is proved by the question, 
 which three weeks after marriage she ventured to ask 
 him, when he intended to lay aside his bad habit of 
 
 1 Byron as reported by Medwin, Conversations, Sfc., pp. 59-01. 
 
 2 Lady Blessington was of the same opinion. See the anecdote in her 
 Conversations, pp. 2G5 ; 2G6. 
 
 O
 
 194 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mr. 27. 
 
 making verses ? l Slie is said, indeed, to have herself 
 made verses, but no doubt for the privacy of her home, or 
 at most the edification of her coterie. 2 Yet to make 
 the measure of contradiction full, Lady Byron, in a letter 
 written in the year 1818, to her friend Lady Anne Barn- 
 ard, and first published by Lord Lindsay in the ' Times,' 
 criticises, severely indeed, but with great truth, the poetry 
 of her husband in the following manner. ( In regard to 
 his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his imagina- 
 tion, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject 
 with which his own character and interests are not 
 identified ; but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, 
 by change of scene or time, he has enveloped his poetical 
 disclosures in a system impenetrable except to a very few, 
 and his constant desire of creating a sensation makes Him 
 not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even 
 though accompanied by some dark and vague suspicions.' 3 
 The essence of Byron's character and poetry could not be 
 more strikingly expressed than in these words of Lady 
 Byron, however mistaken she may otherwise have been. 
 That the genius of Byron was an obstacle to happi- 
 ness in marriage, Moore has very exhaustively shown. 4 
 Genius, living only in its own ideal world, is not inclined 
 to adapt itself to every-day life, or to tolerate its defects 
 and annoyances ; and the poet, to whom Jove's heaven 
 
 1 Countess Guiccioli's Recollections, i. 57, Engl. Trans. 
 
 2 According to Gervinus (Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, viii. 
 148), some of the 'Hebrew Melodies ' are said to have come from her hand. 
 The English biographies, however, say not a word of this. Byron, how- 
 ever, incidentally mentions that she prepared the manuscript for the 
 press of the ' Siege of Corinth,' and probably also of ' Paiisina.' (Moore's 
 Life, iii. 222.) He is said to have often told her, ' Bell, you could be a 
 poet, if you liked.' 
 
 Lord Lindsay's Letter to the Editor of the Times, Sept. 3, 1869. 
 4 Life and Letters, iii. 125 et seq. Compare Byron s own words as 
 given by Lady Blessington in her Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 122 
 et seq., p. 218.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 195 
 
 ever stands open, discovers the incompatibility of the 
 fetters and clogs of prosaic common life with his divine 
 aspirations. Genius in accordance with its nature with- 
 draws into its own inner life ; it tends to become self- 
 sufficing and self-absorbed. What other mind, compared 
 with his own, could have value to Byron, or excite interest 
 in him? These defects, to use the tine expression of 
 Moore, 1 are the shadow which genius casts. The fancy 
 too of the poet or artist is a foundation far too loose for 
 so solid a building as marriage, and Pegasus fastened to 
 the yoke never becomes a useful plough-horse. In fact 
 almost all great poets, artists, and scholars have led a 
 more or less unhappy domestic life ; and it is an ascer- 
 tained result of experience, that no woman has been happy 
 with a man of genius, nor, conversely, any woman unhappy 
 because of the narrowness of her husband's intellect. 
 Moore mentions the cases of Dante, Petrarch, and Pope : 
 he might have added Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Burns, 
 Mozart, Burger, Goethe, and a hundred others. 
 
 In Byron's case a defective education was superadded 
 to what the character of genius entails. He had never 
 learnt to accommodate himself to others, nor had he ever 
 restrained his capricious and self-willed ways and humours, 
 but on the contrary fostered them ; he was, in the highest 
 sense of the word, a spoilt child. The consciousness of 
 duty had never been awakened or cultivated in him ; for 
 him the very notion of duty indeed could hardly be said 
 to exist. 
 
 If Byron possessed very little of the self-command 
 absolutely requisite for a happy marriage, he must naturally 
 have lost the last remnant of it t>y the antagonistic character 
 of his wife, and the irritation produced by the shattered 
 state of his fortune. The more fiercely he vented his 
 
 1 Life, Hi. 208. 
 o 2
 
 196 LIFE OF LOUD BYRON. [Jvr. 27. 
 
 exasperation under the miseries of his embarrassments, the 
 colder she remained. She never forgot herself, while he 
 always did. His bursts of passion rose to such a height, 
 that they almost equalled those of his mother, and appre- 
 hensions of insanity were by no means unjustified. He 
 often spoke as if he dreaded the possibility of madness, 
 and he afterwards admitted that he was not surprised 
 that he was considered to be insane. 1 Among the sixteen 
 points submitted by his wife to the judgment of the medical 
 men in the investigation which she promoted, this was 
 understood to be one that be had been thrown into con- 
 vulsions by Kean's performance of the part of Sir Giles 
 Overreach, just as his mother had once been by the acting 
 of Mrs. Siddons. On another occasion he was said to 
 have thrown his watch, which he had worn from his 
 earliest boyhood and throughout his pilgrimage, into the 
 fire-place and dashed it to pieces with the poker. It is 
 evident that his constant custom of having loaded fire- 
 arms near him must, in such a state of mind, justly have 
 caused alarm. He actually once discharged a pistol in 
 his wife's bedroom and in her presence a fact which 
 is admitted even by the Countess Guiccioli. 2 If this 
 rested merely on the statement of Lady Byron, we should 
 assign no more weight to it than to the account she 
 gave of the outrageous language which he used to her. 
 Thus on returning home at night, he told her so she 
 informed Lady Anne Barnard that he came from the 
 haunts of vice ; and to the same lady she averred, that he 
 frightened her during her confinement by a false report 
 that her mother was dead ; and that he exclaimed, when 
 
 1 Compare the Stanzas to Augusta 
 
 'When all around grew dark and drear 
 And reason half withheld her ray.' 
 3 ii. 692.
 
 . 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 197 
 
 he first saw his infant in the cradle, ( Oh what an instru- 
 ment of torture have I received in thee ! ' On these and 
 similar points Lady Byron poured out her heart, in the year 
 1818, both in conversation and by letters, to her old friend 
 Lady Anne Barnard, from whose private family memoirs 
 Lord Lindsay l has published the above and other passages. 
 It is, however, only too probable that misunderstanding, 
 exaggeration, and perhaps mortified feelings on Lady 
 Byron's part, colour all these statements, as well as the 
 story of Byron's throwing off the mask on the day of his 
 marriage, to which allusion has already been made ; we do 
 not, however, mean to deny that such like acts of bitter- 
 ness, or bad jokes practised against his wife, may with 
 too much justice be laid to his charge. 
 
 We come, lastly, to one of the most important elements 
 in all these proceedings the interference of the public. If 
 any relation in life should be excluded from publicity, un- 
 doubtedly marriage is that relation ; certainly the public 
 has neither the right to drag its concerns before its 
 tribunal, nor does it possess the means to pass a fitting 
 judgment upon them. Byron indeed, loving as he did to 
 lay bare the secrets of his home and heart to the inspection 
 of the world, had no right to be surprised, when his love 
 affairs and his marriage became at first, indeed, contrary 
 to his intention the subject of public discussion. Society 
 treated him here as capriciously as his mother formerly 
 had done ; after first irrationally pampering and caressing 
 him, with equal want of reason it overwhelmed him with 
 insults and revilings ; from the throne of glory upon which 
 society had placed him, it dragged him down to place him 
 in the pillory, and to brand him as a criminal. Byron had 
 forfeited the good graces of orthodoxy, both religious and 
 political; he had already inwardly broken with it, and 
 1 The Times, September 3, 1869,
 
 198 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [.E-r. 27. 
 
 it cculdnot be long ere the rupture should be manifested. 
 He who maintained views so heretical, both in politics 
 and religion, as Byron had professed in ' Childe Harold ' 
 and elsewhere, was readily credited with every offence. It 
 must have been some great crime which drove his pious, 
 patient, virtuous wife from him. The frenzy of public 
 opinion against him seems alone explicable by the widely 
 disseminated belief in the commission of incest. Orthodox 
 society found a certain satisfaction in working itself up 
 into a holy indignation ; a battle pro aris etfocis had to be 
 fought against an outlaw. The world at the same time 
 ceased to think and examine ; whatever was asserted was 
 taken up and repeated, and those who most loudly vo- 
 ciferated their accusations knew so little of the facts of 
 the case, that they could not possibly form a true judgment 
 of the guilt or innocence of the persons concerned. Above 
 all, it would have been well, if Society had not forgotten, 
 that they who dwell in glass houses should not be the first 
 to throw stones. The upper classes were not a whit more 
 pure than Byron ; they were so far worse, that to their 
 immorality they added hypocrisy. In the descending 
 scale from those classes, moral corruption might perhaps 
 decrease, but in the same ratio blind fanaticism increased 
 and flourished. All classes, however, were on a par in 
 this respect, that they all were seized with a burning fever 
 of indignation against Byron ; Byron became, in a word, 
 the scape- goat which English society drives forth from 
 time to time into the wilderness laden with the crimes 
 and curses of the multitude. 1 His friend Shelley was 
 another scape-goat of the same kind. When Byron 
 appeared in the Upper House, no one greeted him but 
 Lord Holland; even his acquaintances shunned him, so 
 that after a few minutes he left the House, never to enter 
 
 1 Compare D'sraeli in J'enit'a; Macaulay in his famous article.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 199 
 
 it again. He did not venture to appear at parties or in 
 the theatre : even in the streets he was insulted and hissed 
 by the mob. 1 
 
 Byron, though touched and wounded as he had never 
 been before, did not, however, lose the elasticity of his 
 spirit. But his position in society was completely under- 
 mined and destroyed, his pride profoundly mortified, and 
 his heart assailed with the most conflicting feelings. Had 
 the separation been his own work, he would doubtless have 
 more easily accommodated himself to it ; but that it should 
 have been initiated by his wife, and that he should have 
 been forced to accede to it, was a heavy blow to his self-love, 
 which had grown accustomed to success. Yet there were 
 hours when he felt drawn towards his wife, and when for 
 her sake he would readily have sacrificed his pride. The 
 two celebrated poems 2 ' Fare thee well,' and ' A Sketch,' 
 enable us to look into the very depths of his shattered 
 feelings. The latter, a more than bitter satire on the 
 mischief-maker Mrs. Clermont, could not fail to add in- 
 tensity to the general indignation against him ; it was, 
 in truth, an unworthy abuse of poetry, which here was 
 perverted to the purposes of private revenge. On the 
 famous * Farewell ' opinions were divided. Some pro- 
 nounced it an outpouring of the deepest love, which no 
 woman with a heart could resist ; Madame de Stael, when 
 she read it, is said to have uttered the saying which has 
 become notorious : ( How gladly would I have been un- 
 happy in Lady Byron's place.' Others, again, doubted 
 the genuineness of the feelings expressed in it, and Moore 3 
 himself confesses that, at first, he could not altogether 
 
 1 [This is positively denied by Hobhouse : ' Lord Byron was never 
 hissed as he went to the House of Lords; nor insulted in the streets.' 
 West. Review, January, 1825, p. 25.] 
 
 a They were written in March 1816. 
 
 3 Life of Byron, iii. 230.
 
 200 LIFE OF LOED Bl'KON. \_2En. 27- 
 
 stifle his doubts ; but when he afterwards read in Byron's 
 ' Memoirs ' the account of the origin of this poem, he 
 changed his opinion, and was convinced of its truthful- 
 ness. * He there described, and in a manner whose sin- 
 cerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollec- 
 tions under the influence of which, as he sat one night 
 musing in his study, these stanzas were produced the 
 tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote 
 them.' l The poem is evidently the product of impulse ; 
 Byron really felt at the time what he wrote, but what he 
 then felt in the silent hours of that night, he did not 
 continue to feel throughout life : his frame of mind, if 
 real, was evanescent. But the transient feelings of 
 that moment have been enshrined by the poet in a 
 form which the world will not willingly let die : and 
 the force of his genius is seen in giving such touching ex- 
 pression to the perennial sentiments of the human heart. 
 .Moore, who could not but disapprove of the publication of 
 these two poems, exonerates Byron, so far, by explaining 
 that their publication was a breach of confidence in a 
 friend, to whom Byron had shown them. But then he 
 should have pubjicly protested against their being given 
 to the world ; whereas, the manner in which the ' Poems 
 on his Domestic Circumstances,' accompanied by a sketch 
 of his life, were suppressed, is far from being satisfactory. 
 The only apology that can be made for him, is, that at 
 this crisis, he was stung to the quick. At a later period, 
 however, it must be admitted, that he frequently made 
 his domestic misery the topic of conversation, in an utterly 
 unworthy manner and in violation of all good taste, for 
 which he was once taken to task by Lady Blessington in 
 some very telling verses. 2 Thus, too, he deliberately dated 
 
 1 Life of Byron, iii. 20. 
 
 2 Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 40.
 
 1815.] THE BEECHER STOWE SCANDAL. 201 
 
 the dedication of the Fourth Canto of ' Childe Harold ' 
 to Hobhouse on * the anniversary of the most unfortunate 
 day of my past existence.' 
 
 It was natural that Byron's long-cherished plans of 
 travel should rapidly come to maturity after the separa- 
 tion. The ground was burning under his feet, and for the 
 moment he cared less for the direction of his travels, than 
 that they should commence at once. Yet the pre-eminent 
 fascinations of Italy, which, perhaps, he regarded only as 
 a station on the way to Greece, soon decided his choice. 
 The last days spent in London were soothed by the 
 presence of his sister. Of his friends, Hobhouse, Lord 
 Holland, Scrope Davies, and Rogers remained true to 
 him. Leigh Hunt also showed his sympathy, and was 
 the only man of the press who took his part in the 
 'Examiner.' l Lady Jersey ventured, in defiance of public 
 feeling, to make a party for him expressly, and another 
 lady, Miss Mercer, afterwards Countess Flahaut, showed 
 much cordial kindness to him at the same party, and 
 defended him afterwards in a large company a fact which 
 Byron gratefully mentions. 2 Notwithstanding the satisfac- 
 tion which these acts aiforded, it cost him little pain to bid 
 adieu to his native land, and deep bitterness was doubt- 
 less the feeling which accompanied him, as on April 25th 
 he embarked for Ostend, and the coasts of England, 
 which he was destined never to see again, disappeared 
 from his gaze. 
 
 1 [Distinctly denied by Hobhouse : ' The Examiner was not the only 
 paper that defended Lord Byron. The Morning Chronicle was a zealous 
 advocate of his lordship ; and Mr. Perry, the editor, had a personal 
 altercation with Sir R. Noel on the subject.' West. Review, January, 
 1825, p. 26.] 
 
 2 Moore's Life, iii. 232.
 
 202 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \Mi. 28. 
 
 CHAPTER YIT. 
 
 SWITZERLAND AND VENICE. 
 18161819. 
 
 OUT of defiance, perhaps, to society which, had outlawed 
 him, and in spite of the pecuniary difficulties under the 
 pressure of which he had so long groaned, Byron set out 
 on his travels with a somewhat ostentatious display. He 
 surrounded himself with a numerous retinue of servants 
 besides Fletcher and the page Rushton, he took into his 
 service a Swiss of the name of Berger, and a young 
 Italian physician called Dr. Polidori. His travelling 
 arrangements were almost sybaritic : he had a large 
 carriage built after the pattern of that used by Napoleon 
 and captured at Genappe; in addition to a bed it con- 
 tained a library, a plate-chest, and every apparatus for 
 dining, 1 and was equally adapted for sleeping, studying, 
 or dining. It was, however, not sufficiently capacious 
 for his baggage and suite, and at Brussels he bought 
 a caleche for his servants a purchase which involved 
 him in an unpleasant transaction with the person from 
 whom he bought it. 2 Whence he derived the means to 
 defray this expenditure, since but a short time pre- 
 viously he had been vis-a-vis de rien, is not so clearly to 
 be ascertained ; probably from his wife's fortune, if not 
 
 1 See description of it in Moore's Life, iii. 243. 
 Ibid.
 
 1816.] BYRON'S TRAVELLING ARRANGEMENTS. 203 
 
 from his wife's parents. Byron, indeed, said, according 
 to Medwin, 1 tha.t he not only repaid the dowry of 10,OOOZ. 
 she had brought him at their marriage, but that he added 
 the like sum from his own fortune. If, however, this is 
 to be received as true, this reimbursement could not pos- 
 sibly have taken place before the year 1818, when Newstead 
 was sold to Colonel Wildman. Byron had, according to 
 Moore, formed, and repeatedly expressed the resolution 
 which, however, he did not keep never to touch a farthing 
 of his wife's fortune. Miss Martineau, lastly, alleges that 
 the fortune of his wife furnished him with the means of 
 pursuing his life abroad ; that he spent every shilling of 
 her fortune over which he could legally exercise any 
 control, while he left to her nothing which he could 
 legally withhold. It is much to be feared, that the last 
 statement comes pretty near the truth. Byron's conduct 
 in this as in other matters was a compound of the 
 strangest contradictions. Although himself in distress 
 and pursued by legal executions, we see him always ready 
 generously to help others ; he rejects the honoraria for his 
 literary works, which he had gained in the most honour- 
 able way, and yet does not hesitate to apply to his own 
 purposes a portion of the fortune of the wife who had 
 separated from him. It is true that, according to English 
 law and usage, the husband has absolute command over 
 the property of his wife ; yet surely now, if ever, pride, in 
 the best sense, and the true feeling of. honour, should have 
 constrained him to restrict himself to his own resources. 
 A legal arrangement with respect to his wife's property 
 was at a later period, after the death of his mother-in-law, 
 effected through confidential friends of both parties. 
 
 Like Scott and Southey, Byron first of all visited the 
 field of Waterloo, and, like them, collected there many 
 
 1 Conversation* with Lord Byron, p. 64.
 
 204 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JEr. 28. 
 
 weapons, which he consigned to the care of Mr. Murray, 
 and afterwards presented to him. Considered in its geo- 
 graphical features, the plain of Waterloo appeared to his 
 mind, as if it had been marked out for the scene of a great 
 action. ' I have viewed with attention ' he goes on to say 
 'those of Platsea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chseronea, 
 and Marathon ; and the field around Mont St. Jean and 
 Hugomont appears to want but a better cause, and that 
 undefmable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages 
 throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with 
 any or all of these, except perhaps the last mentioned. 1 
 The stanzas relating to the battle in the third canto of 
 ' Childe Harold ' he wrote at Brussels ; in directness of 
 effect, in force, in elevation, they far surpass Scott's and 
 Southey's descriptions of the same event, and are to this 
 hour universally admired. Scott himself doubts whether 
 they are surpassed in vigour and in feeling by any verses in 
 the English language. Following, afterwards, the course 
 of the Rhine, he entered into the heart of the loveliest 
 scenery of Europe, and, as he pursued his journey, found 
 his expectations exceeded. Passing through Basle, 
 Berne, and Lausanne, he came to Geneva, where he took 
 up his abode in the Hotel Secheron, situated outside the 
 town, on the western shore of the lake. Here he be- 
 came acquainted with Shelley, who along with his wife, 
 then in her eighteenth year, and a lady, a relative of the 
 latter, of the same age, 9 were residing there. Shelley 
 
 1 Note on Childe Harold, iii. 30. 
 
 2 This relative of Mrs. Shelley forced herself, according to the Countess 
 Guiccioli, on Byron, who wished to have nothing to do with her. But 
 the Countess here, as in many other respects, is only half informed ; she 
 does not appear to know that this relative (Miss Jane Clermont) was the 
 mother of Byron's natural daughter Allegra. See AtJienepum, May 22, 
 18.69, p. 702. Miss Clermont afterwards accompanied the Shelleys to 
 Italy.
 
 1816.] BYEON'S MODE OF LIFE AT GENEVA. 205 
 
 had, indeed, some years previously sent his ' Queen 
 Mab ' to B} T ron ; but the letter which Shelley wrote to 
 accompany the volume having been lost, the two poets 
 had up to this time never come in contact with each 
 other. Notwithstanding this, spirits like theirs, so 
 closely allied in many respects, quickly attracted each 
 other, and an intimate friendship was soon formed be- 
 tween them, which was promoted by the love of sailing 
 common to both. . They forthwith procured a boat the 
 first with a keel on the Lake of Geneva and every 
 evening, accompanied by the ladies, sailed on the lake. 
 What their feelings were, and how the incomparable 
 scene sank into Byron's soul, cannot be more beautifully 
 expressed than in the poet's own words : 
 
 Clear placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing 
 Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
 Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 
 This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 
 To waft me from distraction : once I loved 
 Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring 
 Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, 
 That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. 1 
 
 When the Shelley s took a small villa on the eastern shore 
 of the lake, Byron sailed every evening from Secheron 
 across to them, and when with the approach of night he 
 returned alone, he used to give vent to his feelings by 
 singing. Byron afterwards left the Hotel Secheron, and 
 went to reside at Villa Diodati, 2 also on the eastern 
 shore of the lake, about ten minutes' walk distant from 
 the villa of his friends. Their intercourse then became, 
 
 1 Childe Harold, iii. 85. Compare the 'Sonnet to Lake Leman.' Life 
 and Works, x. 293. 
 
 * This villa, now situated in the suburb Coligny, was built by the 
 learned Genevese theologian, Jean Diodati (1576-1649), who here received 
 a visit from Milton.
 
 206 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 28. 
 
 if possible, still warmer and more intimate ; they pro- 
 longed their meetings often till the morning. During 
 a week of rain, while they read together German ghost- 
 stories in a French translation, 1 the thought occurred to 
 them to attempt something in imitation of them. ' You 
 and I,' said Byron to Mrs. Shelley, 'will publish ours 
 together.' 2 Thus arose Mrs. Shelley's celebrated romance 
 of ' Frankenstein.' Byron, in fulfilment of his part of the 
 engagement, told the story of the ' Vampyre,' a mere sketch, 
 which Dr. Polidori wrote down from memory, and after- 
 wards completed and published as Byron's, and as his 
 supposed work it excited, at the time, a very general 
 interest, especially on the Continent. 3 
 
 The only disturbing element in this circle was this same 
 Polidori, 4 who, holding the position he did, could not 
 very well be excluded from it. He was also the cause of 
 unnecessary expense to Byron, and entailed on him con- 
 tinual annoyances by the utter want of tact in his con- 
 duct. In his ludicrous vanity and overweening pride, he 
 wished to make himself the equal in all respects of Byron 
 and Shelley. During their tour in the Ehineland he once 
 said to Byron, t After all, what is there you can do that I 
 cannot do ? ' ' Why, since you force me to say,' answered 
 the other, * I think there are three things I can do which 
 you cannot.' Polidori defied him to name them. * I can,' 
 
 1 Fantasmayoriana, ou Rccueil tfhistoires d" apparitions, de spectres, 
 revenans, etc. Traduit de 1'Allemand par un Amateur. Paris, 1811 (?), 
 Lenormant et Schoell, 2 tomes 12mo. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, iii. 281. 
 
 s The Vampyre, a tale by the Eight Hon. Lord Byron. Lond. 1819. 
 The fragment written down by Byron himself is in the Appendix to 
 Moore's Life, vi. 339. Compare Shelley's Essays, Letters from Abroad, 
 fyc., ii. 96 et seqq. 
 
 4 The father of Polidori had been secretary to Alfieri, came after- 
 wards to London, and translated some pieces from Milton. Hunt's Lord 
 Byron, i. 188.
 
 1816.] BYKON'S MODE OF LIFE AT GENEVA. 207 
 
 said Lord Byron, ' swim across that river ; I can snuflNout 
 that candle with a pistol-shot at the distance of twenty 
 paces ; and I have written a poem, of which 14,000 copies 
 were sold in one day.' l At Diodati, when he would fain 
 have read aloud a tragedy which he had composed, to 
 soften the infliction, Byron took upon himself the office of 
 reader, and performed it with malicious irony, praising 
 chiefly the most ludicrous passages, and assuring him, that, 
 when he was on the Drury-Lane Committee, far inferior 
 plays had been offered to them. 2 These unpleasant 
 scenes increased in frequency as Polidori became jealous 
 of Shelley's intimacy with Byron ; until at last, in a fit of 
 mortified vanity he challenged Shelley, at which Shelley 
 only laughed. Byron, however, checked Polidori with 
 these words : ' Recollect that though Shelley has some 
 scruples about duelling, I have none, and shall be at all 
 times ready to take his place.' 3 At last, when Polidori 
 was excluded from the excursion shortly to be mentioned, 
 which Byron made with Shelley, this state of discord 
 became so intolerable, that Byron was obliged to dismiss 
 him from his service. He admitted, however, that Polidori 
 was not without talents and knowledge, that he was an 
 honourable man, and gave him letters of recommendation. 
 On leaving Byron he went to Milan, where, on a certain 
 occasion, he caused a very unpleasant scene in the theatre, 
 and was consequently arrested. Byron, fortunately hap- 
 pening to be present, became responsible for his appear- 
 ance, and obtained his release ; next day he was sent out 
 of the country by the Austrian police. Some years 
 afterwards, unable to obtain a suitable position, he com- 
 mitted suicide by poison. 
 
 The excursion (June 23 to July 1) to which allusion 
 has just been made, Byron and Shelley made together in 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ill 280. 2 Ibid. 275. 3 Ibid. 280.
 
 208 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \_JEr. 28. 
 
 their boat. Their enjoyment of the incomparable beauties 
 of Nature was intense, and they fondly lingered over the 
 recollections of the great social and intellectual struggles 
 which hardly any other region presents in equal fulness 
 with the Lake of Geneva. 1 They experienced the last 
 throes of the Rousseau fever which Germany and France 
 had already shaken off. Rousseau, accompanied by his 
 Theresa, Monsieur de Luc and his two sons, had formerly 
 made the same voyage on that lake ; one of these 
 two sons went afterwards to England, and there read, in 
 his ninetieth year, Byron's description of the lake in 
 < Childe Harold ' and the ' Prisoner of Chillon.' 2 Like 
 St. Preux and Madame Wolmar, the two friends were 
 caught by a squall near Meillerie, and were for some 
 time in considerable danger, till they were safely landed 
 at St. Giugolph. Byron, throwing off his coat, had pre- 
 pared to save himself by swimming, while Shelley, who 
 could not swim, stoically sat still and awaited the worst. 
 With * Heloise ' in their hands, which till then was un- 
 known to Shelley, they visited Meillerie and Clarens, 
 Vevey and Chillon. Clarens especially profoundly moved 
 them, Shelley, according to his own account, with difficulty 
 refrained from tears ; in the Bosquet-de-Julie, where St. 
 Preux and Julia exchanged their first kiss, they walked 
 through the vineyards in silence which Byron broke only 
 once with the exclamation : ' Thank God ! Polidori is not 
 here.' 3 They plucked roses from the bushes they found 
 
 1 Shelley's account of this sail round the lake is given in a letter 
 appended to his History of a Six Weeks Tour through a part of France, 
 Switzerland, fyc. London, 1817. Reprinted in Shelley's Essays, Letters 
 from Abroad, 8fc., ii. 61-77. 
 
 8 [This was Jean Andre de Luc, the celebrated geologist, born at 
 Geneva, Feb. 8, 1727, and who died at Windsor, Nov. 8, 1817. Compare 
 Byron's Journal, Moore's Life, iv. 3.] 
 * 3 Moore's Life, iii. 284.
 
 1816.] BYEOX SAILS WITH SHELLEY HOUND THE LAKE. 209 
 
 there, imagining them planted by Julia's own hand, and 
 let the leaves float away on the breeze as greetings to 
 their absent loved ones. With his love of associating 
 everything as much as possible with himself, Byron could 
 scarcely have forgotten, amid the contemplation of these 
 scenes, that his mother had once compared him to Rousseau. 
 Shelley's pantheism of love is distinctly to be traced in the 
 following lines: 'The feeling with which all around Clarens 
 and the opposite rocks of Meillerie, is invested, is of a still 
 higher and more comprehensive order than the mere 
 sympathy with individual passion; it is a sense of the 
 existence of love in its most extended and sublime capa- 
 city, and of our own participation of its good and of its 
 glory ; it is the great principle of the universe, which is 
 there more condensed, but not less manifested ; and of 
 which, though knowing ourselves apart, we lose our in- 
 dividuality and mingle in the beauty of the whole.' 1 At 
 a small inn, in the village of Ouchy, where they were 
 detained for two days (June 26-27) by rain, he wrote the 
 ' Prisoner of Chillon,' and also announced to Murray 2 the 
 completion of the third canto of ' Childe Harold : ' in a 
 subsequent letter to the same correspondent he says that 
 ' the feelings with which most of it was written need not 
 be envied me.' 3 At Lausanne he visited with poetic 
 devotion the place where Gibbon, one of his favourite 
 writers, completed the work of his life, the 'History of 
 the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' In the 
 deserted grounds of his house he broke off a sprig of 
 Gibbon's acacia, and plucked some rose-leaves from his 
 garden, which he sent to Murray. 4 When a young man 
 Gibbon had once offered his heart and hand to the 
 beautiful Mademoiselle Curchod, who afterwards became 
 
 1 Note to Childe Harold, iii. 100. 2 Moore's Life, iii. 247, 
 
 8 Ibid. iii. 252. 4 Ibid. iii. 246. 
 
 P
 
 210 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEx. 28. 
 
 the wife of Necker and mother of Madame de Stael, who 
 now was holding her court in Coppet, where once (1670- 
 1672) the philosopher Bayle had lived as a private tutor. 
 Thus were the intellectual labours and glory of the past 
 linked with the present, and Byron paid his visits to 
 Madame de Stael at Coppet with far different feelings from 
 those with which he had met her in London society. He 
 found that ( in her own house she was amiable ; in any 
 other person's you wished her gone and in her own 
 again;' 1 and confesses that 'she had made Coppet as 
 pleasant as society and talent can make any place on 
 earth.' 2 At her house he became acquainted with Schlegel 
 and Bonstetten. 3 Whatever judgment may be formed of 
 Madame de Stael's life and character, it must at any rate 
 be admitted, that she is one of the few women of truly 
 great genius in the world of letters, and she and Byron 
 are by no means the least important leaves in the laurel 
 wreath of literary glory which encircles the Lake of 
 Geneva. 4 
 
 Madame de Stael sought an opportunity to speak to 
 Byron on his matrimonial affairs, and with such effect 
 that she induced him to attempt, through a friend, a 
 reconciliation with Lady Byron, and thereby, if possible, 
 with public opinion. ' It does not do to war with the 
 world,' she said : ' the world is too strong for the in- 
 dividual.' 5 Probably in this she anticipated the secret 
 wish of Byron. Gait at least maintains 6 that Byron pro- 
 longed his residence at Geneva, in order that, through the 
 friends who visited him, a re-union with his wife might 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 286 (note). * Ibid, iif 255. 
 
 3 ' Schickel is in high force, and Madame as brilliant as ever.' Ibid. 
 251. 
 
 4 It is remarkable that Byron seems never to have visited Ferney, or 
 at least never mentions it. 
 
 5 Moore's Life, iii. 288. 6 Life of Byron, p. 219.
 
 1816.] BYRON MAKES A TOUR WITH HOBHOUSE. 211 
 
 be effected. Madame de Stael, according to Medwin, l even 
 made attempts with Lady Byron herself all, however, 
 to no purpose. Immediately on learning the ill success 
 of his endeavours, Byron wrote the ' Lines when he heard 
 that Lady Byron was ill,' in which he passed upon her 
 a correct, though somewhat severe judgment. He re- 
 peatedly addressed letters of a business nature to' her from 
 Italy, and sent through her presents and souvenirs for 
 Ada ; through Mrs. Leigh, she in return sent him accounts 
 of Ada's health, and on one occasion a lock of Ada's hair. 
 A note also which she wrote to him in the year 1820, in 
 reference to his Memoirs, declining the perusal of them 
 which had been offered to her, is preserved. 2 The other 
 letters which he wrote, she appears, to his great vexation, 
 never to have answered. 
 
 The season for travelling brought the usual locust- 
 swarm of English tourists, whom Byron in his embittered 
 mood evaded more systematically than ever ; whenever, 
 notwithstanding his precautions, he fell in with them, 
 they became the objects of his sarcasm. At Clarens, 'the 
 most anti-narcotic place in the world,' he saw a lady 
 sleeping in her carriage, and at Chamouni, to which he 
 had previously made an excursion, he heard another 
 exclaim, ' Did you ever see anything more rural ? ' 3 The 
 same season, however, brought some dear friends to him, 
 among others, M. G. Lewis, Scrope Davies, and Hobhouse, 
 with the latter of whom he made a tour, from the 1 7th to 
 the 29th September, in the Bernese Oberland. Their 
 route lay through Lausanne, Vevey, 4 Clarens, Chillon, 
 
 1 Conversations, Sfc., p. 274. 
 
 3 See Quarterly Revieiv, Oct. .1869, p. 407 (note). 
 s Byron's ' Journal ' in Moore's Life, iii. 257. 
 
 4 In the church of St. Martin they visited the graves of their country- 
 men, the regicides Ludlow and Broughton, who died here in exile. 
 Brotighton as his tombstone says ' dignatus fuit, sententiara regis 
 
 p 2
 
 212 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. OYT. 28. 
 
 and Byron again found the whole country ' beautiful as a 
 dream.' They then passed over the Dent de Jaman, 
 and through the Simmenthal to Thun; by the Lake 
 of Thun to the Jnngfrau, Staubbach, the Wengern Alp, 
 Grindelwald, Scheideck, Kosenlani, &c., and then by 
 Bern, Friburg, Yverdun, and Aubonne back to Diodati. 
 Albania and Greece, so much admired by Byron, were 
 thrown into the shade by the sublimity, grandeur, and 
 beauty of the aspects of nature in Switzerland, and 
 compared with the Albanian robber-hordes the people 
 appeared not less superior in his eyes. Every object 
 that met his gaze was diametrically opposite to his 
 recent life in London ; to the suffocating air and flaming 
 lustres of the London ball-rooms, succeeded the pure 
 atmosphere and glow of the Alps ; instead of boating 
 on the muddy Thames, he sailed on the blue lakes of 
 Switzerland. Every reader of ' Manfred ' knows the 
 magnificent, though often gloomy descriptions with which 
 the Alpine world inspired him. The impressions, however, 
 he received were not all of the sterner and more over- 
 whelming aspects of Nature ; he had an eye also for the 
 more peaceful, cheerful side of life among the mountains, 
 and yielded himself to it with a simplicity scarcely to 
 be expected from him. The tinkling of the cowbell, the 
 pipes of the herdsmen, gave him the most perfect and 
 charming image of pastoral life ; the dances of the 
 peasants in the inn at Brienz delighted him ' the danc- 
 ing much better than in England : the English can't 
 waltz, never could, never will' 1 and formed a strange 
 contrast with the war dances of the Klepths on the shore 
 of Utraikey. In the Simmenthal he met so he himself 
 
 regum probari, quam ob causam expulsus patria sua.' Ludlow's house 
 bore the inscription : 'Omne solura forti patria.' One of his descendants, 
 however, bought this stone (1821) and conveyed it to England. 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 261.
 
 1816.J BYRON SETS OUT FOR ITALY. 213 
 
 relates ' a boy and a kid following him like a dog; the 
 kid could not get over the fence and bleated so piteously 
 that Byron had to help it, but nearly overset both himself 
 and the kid into the river. 2 On the Wengern Alp he 
 snow-balled Hobhouse. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the beauties of Nature, Switzerland 
 was not a soil suited to Byron's nature ; least of all 
 Geneva in its social and religious aspects. He saw there 
 the traces of that spirit of intolerance, which had once 
 given Servetus to the scaffold, and punished a husband 
 because he had kissed his wife on Sunday ; he felt how 
 much the formal, methodistical character of Geneva re- 
 sembled the moral aspects of England. The most in- 
 credible stories as he told Medwin were circulated 
 regarding him; he was watched with a telescope from 
 the other side of the Lake, and in Madame de Stael's 
 house, Mrs. Hervey, an old lady of sixty-five years of 
 age, the authoress of several romances, swooned away at 
 his entrance into the room, as if ' his Satanic Majesty ' 
 had arrived. 3 Allowing for some exaggeration here, we 
 yet discover a residuum of truth. The dark suspicion, 
 undoubtedly, of the alleged crime for which his wife had 
 separated from him, was here already an open secret ; it 
 was the consciousness of this which mainly induced Byron 
 to seek a refuge elsewhere. He avoided therefore the 
 Genevese as much as he did his own travelling country- 
 men, which naturally increased their vexation and aversion. 
 Besides this, he was but imperfectly acquainted with the 
 French language, and never throughout his life learned 
 to speak it with facility. Enough : Byron struck his tent, 
 and after a farewell dinner at Coppet (October 1), set out 
 for Italy accompanied by Hobhouse. They passed over 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 201. 2 Ibid. iii. 261. s Ibid iv. 150.
 
 214 LIFE OF LOKD BYBON. [JET. 28. 
 
 the Simplon, on which, to use Byron's words, ' God arid 
 man had done wonders,' 1 and by the Lago Maggiore to 
 Milan. The Borromean Islands he thought too artificial. 2 
 Milan, where they resided fourteen days, reminded him of 
 Seville, although he regarded Seville as the finer. 3 He 
 of course admired the cathedral and the triumphal arch of 
 Napoleon ; visited the Brera, and made the acquaintance 
 of the Italian poet Monti. 4 But above all, the social state 
 of the people here and everywhere interested him. The 
 correspondence of Lucretia Borgia with Cardinal Bembo, 
 preserved in the Ambrosian Library, had especial charms 
 for him ; of these letters he earnestly desired to take 
 copies, but permission was refused him. The most interest- 
 ing of them he impressed, therefore, as far as he could, 
 on his memory; and from the beautiful lock of Lucretia's 
 golden hair, preserved in the Ambrosian Library, he 
 abstracted one single hair as a relic. 5 He was evidently 
 amused with the discovery, that a cardinal, so learned and 
 pious too as Bembo, corresponded, ' in the prettiest love- 
 letters in the world,' with the depraved Lucretia, the 
 daughter of a Pope, and who was said to have lived in 
 incest with her own brother ! From Milan he passed on 
 to Yerona, where ' he found the amphitheatre wonderful 
 beating even Greece ; ' 6 he brought away some pieces 
 of the granite tomb of Juliet and sent them to England 
 for Ada and his nieces. 7 In the middle of November the 
 travellers arrived in Venice. 
 
 No city could have harmonised better with Byron's 
 peculiar character than Venice. It was the city of the 
 ssa, at all times his darling element; the canal, imme- 
 diately before his house, conducted him at once into the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 299. 
 
 8 Ibid. iii. Ibid. * Ibid. iii. 300. 
 
 6 Ibid, iii, 30-5. Ibid. iii. 308. 7 Ibid.
 
 1816.] BYRON'S MODE OF LIFE AT VENICE. 2L5 
 
 Adriatic. Though till lately a Republic, it was a thoroughly 
 aristocratic city, and amid all the freedom and ease of their 
 social intercourse, the Venetians reverenced the old aristo- 
 cratic names and the ruling caste. To Byron, who, spite 
 of all his radicalism on paper, was a thorough aristocrat, 
 and who valued his pedigree above every other considera- 
 tion, no popular characteristic could be more welcome or 
 agreeable. The associations of great historical events 
 added their charm to all this, and magnificent palaces, 
 witnesses of a time when the Republic ruled over three 
 kingdoms, looked down on him. Venice, lastly, was the 
 city where life, changing day into night, revelled without 
 restraint in the pleasures of the senses ; and the poet, with 
 his hot blood, could not but feel himself at home in a city 
 as hot-blooded as himself. Venice, he says, had always 
 been the greenest isle of his imagination ; l Shakespeare 
 and Otway had made it a classical city to every English- 
 man. 2 To these two English poets, who had by their 
 poems conferred celebrity on Venice, Byron must hence- 
 forth be added. In the fourth canto of ' Childe Harold,' 
 in ' Marino Faliero,' in the * Two Foscari,' in the 'Ode on 
 Venice,' and in 'Beppo,' Venice is the grand theme 
 of his poetry. Of the Venetian women he says in the 
 last-named powerful description of Venice and its plea- 
 sures 
 
 They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, 
 
 Black eyes, arch'd brows and sweet expressions still ; 
 
 Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, 
 In ancient arts, by moderns mimick'd ill ; 
 
 And like so many Venuses of Titian's 
 
 (The best 's at Florence see it, if ye will) 
 
 They look when leaning over the balcony, 
 
 Or stepp'd from out a picture by Giorgione. 5 
 
 When at last, disgusted with excesses, he came at 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. Oil. 2 Ibid* 314. 3 Btppo, stanza xi.
 
 216 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi. 29. 
 
 Ravenna to reflection, he declares that there were not ten 
 righteous in Venice, calls it a ' scorpion-nesb of vice,' and 
 exclaims : 
 
 Gehenna of the waters ! thou sea-Sodom. 1 
 
 But for the present he thought of nothing but of rushing 
 headlong into the riot of its sensuality. He took forthwith 
 a gondola, hired a box in the Phosnix theatre, and lived with 
 a mistress. The latter was Marianna Segati, the young 
 wife of ' a merchant of Venice,' in whose house, in the very 
 narrow street called Merceria, he had hired lodgings. He 
 describes her as an antelope with large dark oriental eyes ; 2 
 and so great were her fascinations that, when Hobhouse 
 after a short stay continued his journey to Rome, Byron 
 declined to accompany him as had been intended : 3 'I 
 should have gone too,' he writes, ' but I fell in love and 
 must stay that over.' * Love,' he says in another place, 4 
 ' in this part of the world is no sinecure ; ' and the 
 claims which it made upon him were all the stronger 
 as he was about to take part in the Carnival. In the 
 depth of his soul, however, he brooded over unformed 
 plans and great thoughts : ' If I live ten years longer,' so 
 he writes to Moore February 1817, 'you will see that it is 
 not over with me I don't mean in literature, for that is 
 nothing : and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not 
 think it my vocation. But you will see that I shall do some- 
 thing or other the times and fortune permitting that, 
 like the cosmogony or creation of the world, will puzzle 
 the philosophers of all ages. But I doubt whether my 
 constitution will hold out.' 5 
 
 But so great was the elasticity of his mind, that in 
 spite of dissipations which would have been enough to de- 
 
 1 Marino Faliero, act v. sc. i. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, iii. 311. s Ibid. iii. 326. 
 4 Ibid, iii, 330. B jbid. iii. 350.
 
 1817.] BYKON'S MODE OF LIFE AT VENICE. 217 
 
 stroy any ordinary man, he finished, during this winter, the 
 tragedy of ' Manfred/ which he had begun in Switzerland. 
 Thus side by side we find in him the depth of gloomy 
 melancholy and the excess of levity. As if this were not 
 sufficient, his mind demanded still further occupation ; 
 this he found in the society of the monks of St. Lazarus 
 and in the study of the Armenian language, to which 
 he devoted several hours daily. ' I found,' he writes to 
 Moore, ' that my mind wanted something craggy to break 
 upon; and this (the Armenian language), as the most 
 difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement, 
 I have chosen to torture me into attention.' l The monas- 
 tery numbered within it nineteen monks, of whose life, 
 piety, and learning Byron always spoke respectfully : 
 ' their Bishop was a fine old fellow with the beard of 
 a meteor.' 5 They zealously endeavoured to contribute 
 to the education and culture of their countrymen, and in 
 furtherance of this purpose had set up a printing press in 
 the monastery. They were then busily engaged with the 
 composition of an English- Armenian grammar, in which 
 undertaking 3 Bjron assisted them to the utmost of his 
 power : he contributed 1,000 francs to defray the expenses 
 of its publication. He also translated from the Ar- 
 
 1 Moore's Life, in. 312. 3 Ibid. 330. 
 
 3 Father Pasquale had earlier in his life spent two years in England ; 
 he died in 1854. In the Atheneeum of May 16, 1868, p. 698, we are 
 informed that some Italian journals have announced, that Byron's corre- 
 spondence with the monks had recently been discovered in the monastery ; 
 but as the monks themselves told us, they possess nothing from Byron's 
 hands but a few marginal notes in Aucher's Grammar of the English and 
 Armenian languages, and his own signature in Armenian and English in 
 the visitors' book. The fourth canto of Childe Harold has been trans- 
 lated into the Armenian language by one of the brethren : Venice, in 
 the island of St. Lazarus, 1860. The English is on the left, the trans- 
 lation on the right page: some strong political expressions have been 
 expunged.
 
 218 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [^T. 2. 
 
 menian an epistle of the Corinthians to the Apostle Paul, 
 and the answer to it neither of them genuine. 
 
 If the morning hours were devoted to the study of the 
 Armenian language, the evening was given to exercise, 
 an indispensable requisite to Byron. There being, in 
 Venice, no professors of the noble art of boxing, he had 
 liis riding horses brought thither, possibly also to excite 
 a sensation by the novelty of the sight. ' In Venice,' 
 says Matthews, ' there are only eight horses : four are or 
 brass and stand above the entrance to the Cathedral : 
 the other four are alive and stand in Lord Byron's stable.' l 
 This stable he had hired from the commandant of the 
 Castello St. Andrea, on the Lido; thither he used to 
 row in his gondola with the consul Hoppner, Hobhouse, 
 Shelley or another companion, and then rode up and 
 down between the two small forts that stand 011 the 
 shore of the Lido. The only unpleasantness from which 
 he suffered in these excursions, was that on landing from 
 his gondola Byron used to be stared at lay his travelling 
 countrymen, who assembled for this purpose on the Lido, 
 made enquiries about him from the gondoliers, and under 
 the pretext of wishing to see the treasures of art, which 
 did not exist, even forced their way with a wonderful 
 pertinacity into his house. One of his companions de- 
 scribes these rides and the conversations which took place 
 during them, as among his most precious recollections. 2 
 As for Byron, he was so delighted with the Lido, that he 
 expressed to this companion the wish to be buried there, 
 if he should die at Venice ; but in no case would he admit 
 that his body should be taken to England, or that his 
 family should concern themselves about his burial. 3 
 
 1 Matthew's Diary of an Invalid, p. 623. 
 
 2 See the account in Moore's Life, iv. 82-83. 
 
 3 The Jewish burial ground was on the Lido : this the French in 
 former days for military reasons had levelled with the ground, and also by
 
 1817-] BYRON'S VISIT TO ROME. 219 
 
 The unhealthy exhalations from the stagnant waters, 
 partly too his dissipations his nights spent mostly at the 
 theatre and at masked balls proved so prejudicial to 
 Byron's health, already shattered by his perverse diet, that 
 at the beginning of February 1817 he was attacked by 
 a low fever, which for nearly two months he could not 
 shake off, especially as he rejected all medical aid. When 
 his own health returned, the fever had become epidemic 
 and carried off so many persons, that his servants urged 
 him to leave Venice ; Marianna Segati also was a sufferer 
 from the same disease. Under these circumstances Byron 
 at last summoned up courage to tear himself from her for 
 some time, and to take a tour to Rome. Marianna, 
 though a mother, desired to accompany him ; to this, how- 
 ever, Byron would not consent. In the journey, which 
 lasted from the middle of April to the end of May, 
 he passed through Ferrara, Florence, and Foligno. In 
 Ferrara he saw the court in which, according to Gibbon's 
 narrative, Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, and the 
 prison of Tasso, which suggested the idea of his poem 
 ' The Lament of Tasso,' which he despatched, ready for 
 the press, from Florence to his publisher Murray. In 
 Florence, although he spent only one day there, he was 
 ' drunk with beauty.' The Venus, the bust of Antinous, 
 Santa Croce, the Westminster Abbey of Italy, were the 
 especial objects of his admiration. In Rome itself he 
 found to his satisfaction feAv of his countrymen, though 
 he was charmed to meet there again Hobhouse and Lord 
 Lansdowne. The former soon afterwards continued his 
 
 way of distinction the graves of two or three Protestants (!). The Pro- 
 testant and Catholic burying places are close to each other on the island 
 S. Michele. Byron, however, desired to be buried outside the churchyard ; 
 and for an epitaph as he said in one of his later letters nothing but 
 his name and the words : ' Implora pace/ which he had seen on a tomb- 
 stone at FerraiM, and which profoundly impressed him.
 
 220 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JET. 30. 
 
 travels to Naples, and Byron, could lie have severed him- 
 self for a longer period from Marianna, would gladly have 
 accompanied him, although he justified on other grounds 
 also his declining to go to Naples : it was, he said, 1 only 
 second among the beautiful sea views of Europe ; Con- 
 stantinople and Lisbon, the first and third, he had al- 
 ready seen. So it was that he never visited Naples, which 
 with its environs Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Pompeii, the 
 Bay of Baiee, &c. would surely have furnished him with 
 materials for a noble episode of f Childe Harold.' That 
 he saw all the wonders and sights of Rome, from the 
 Pope and the funeral of a cardinal down to the execution 
 of three robbers, from St. Peter's and the Colosseum down 
 to the Teutonic artists, who wore their hair a la Raphael, 
 need not be mentioned at greater length. Having 
 brought his horses from Venice, he made all his excur- 
 sions to places of interest, both without and within the 
 city 011 horseback; his lameness made this the plea- 
 santest mode of progression, and it was preferable to 
 driving as affording him more bodily exercise. How Rome 
 moved and fascinated him is seen in the fourth canto of 
 ' Childe Harold,' written on the very spot. Here his 
 poetry winged its highest flight; his spirit hovered like an 
 eagle over the ruins, and bore aloft to the throne of the 
 Eternal not his griefs alone but those of the world. ' The 
 voice of Marius,' says Scott, ' could not sound more deep 
 and solemn among the ruined arches of Carthage, than the 
 strains of the pilgrim amid the broken shrines and fallen 
 statues of her subduer.' 
 
 At Rome Byron sat to Thorwaldsen for his bust. The 
 commonly received story is, that without any previous 
 announcement, he surprised the great sculptor in his 
 
 1 Letter to Moore, Life, iv. 5.
 
 i8i8.] BYRON'S VISIT TO THORWALDSEN. 221 
 
 studio and requested him forthwith to take his likeness. 
 The fact, however, is, that Hobhouse, commissioned by 
 Byron, had written to Thorwaldseii, asking him whether 
 and when Byron could sit to him. Thorwaldsen, who was a 
 very bad and very indolent letter- writer, probably delayed 
 his answer, and Byron, without waiting for it, went to him. 
 ' Byron placed himself opposite me ' so Thorwaldsen told 
 the story to Andersen ' but at once began to put on a 
 quite different expression from that usual to him. " Will 
 you not sit still?" said I "you need not assume that 
 look." " That is my expression," said Byron. " Indeed ?" 
 said I, and I then represented him as I wished. When the 
 bust was finished, it was universally admitted to be an 
 excellent likeness. Byron when he saw the bust, said : " It 
 is not at all like me ; my expression is more unhappy." 
 He intensely desired to be so exceedingly miserable,' added 
 Thorwaldsen with a humorous expression. 1 The bust, the 
 first copy of which was sent, according to agreement, to 
 Hobhouse, was repeatedly executed in marble, and a great 
 number of plaster casts were sent to England. A replica 
 in marble was ordered from America in these terms : 
 ' Place the names of Byron and Thorwaldsen on it, and it 
 will become an immortal monument.' When the sculptor 
 at a later period heard of the part which Byron was 
 taking in the liberation of Greece, impelled by his own 
 feelings he executed the bust again in a very fine block 
 of Greek marble. 2 
 
 It had been Byron's intention not to leave Rome 
 
 1 This agrees also with the remarks of the American painter West, 
 who at a later period painted Byron's portrait at Leghorn. ' When he 
 was silent, he was a better sitter than before ; for he assumed a 
 countenance that did not belong to him, as though he were thinking 
 of a frontispiece for " Childe Harold." ' Moore'" Life, v. 344. 
 
 2 See Thorwaldsen's Life, by Just Mathias Thiele, translated into 
 German, with the author's co-operation, by Henrik Helms, i. 290 et seq.
 
 222 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [J3-T. 30. 
 
 until June but his eagerness to return was so great, 
 that he arrived in Venice at the end of May. According 
 to his expressed wish, Marianna travelled a part of the 
 way to meet him. He established himself with her in a 
 country-house, at La Mira on the Brenta, close to the city, 
 to which he made repeated visits as business or pleasure 
 summoned him, especially when Lewis from Switzerland, 
 and Hobhouse from Naples, came there. Shelley also 
 arrived in August at Venice to transact some matters of 
 business with Byron, probably with reference to his 
 daughter Allegra. 
 
 As might have been foreseen, the more passionate the 
 liaison with Marianna at the first, the sooner did he 
 become weary of it. He conceived, as it appears, a dis- 
 trust, that she was actuated more by self-interest than by 
 love. 1 Besides, he began to find his lodging inconvenient 
 and unsuited to his rank and position ; he accordingly 
 negotiated for a more aristocratic abode, and the Countess 
 Mocenigo let to him one of her three Palazzi on the Grand 
 Canal for the rent of 200 louis d'or. There in the course 
 of the summer he established himself, with his domestic 
 menagerie for he had by no means lost this fancy still 
 however retaining possession of the house at La Mira ; and 
 thus began the second stage, so to speak, of his residence 
 in Venice. 
 
 During this period he secluded himself entirely from 
 good society, and his lordly palace with his plebeian asso- 
 ciates formed one of those strange contrasts with which 
 his life abounds. In his first winter at Venice he lived 
 in the circle of the Countess Albrizzi, who then stood at 
 the head of the most fashionable as well as of the most 
 cultivated society. Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (1770-1836), 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, iv. 107.
 
 IBIS.] BYRON'S SECOND RESIDENCE AT VENICE. 223 
 
 daughter of Count Teotochi, and born at Corfu, was re- 
 garded by her admirers with some exaggeration as the De 
 Stael of Venice, even of Italy : l she not only took the 
 liveliest interest in all the productions of literature and 
 art, but gained some literary reputation by her own. 
 writings. In her ' Portraits of Celebrated Men ' she 
 introduced one of Byron, written in no unfriendly spirit 
 and displaying a refined faculty of observation. The 
 original draft, however, he declined to revise, telling her 
 rather abruptly that, considering the shortness of their 
 acquaintance, she was incapable of truly characterising 
 him, and that he would be much obliged to her to throw 
 the manuscript into the fire. This harshness was the 
 more unjustifiable, as Byron had every reason to be satisfied 
 with the estimation in which he was held as a poet in 
 Venice. On his arrival he had found a beautifully printed 
 edition of his ' Prisoner of Chillon,' which astonished him 
 by its freedom from errata. At a later period the 
 Venetian journals published translations of the reviews of 
 ' Glenarvon ' and * Childe Harold,' which appeared in the 
 ' Jena Literary Gazette.' That the learning of the Albrizzi 
 salon was not of the profoundest character cannot surprise 
 us. A characteristic anecdote illustrative of this superfi- 
 ciality is related in Moore's 'Life.' While engaged in 
 writing the letterpress descriptions of Canova's works, the 
 Countess, making diligent enquiries about the character 
 of Washington, of whom Canova had made the celebrated 
 statue which stands before the Capitol at Washington, was 
 one evening informed by a gentleman present author of 
 a book on geography and statistics among sundry other 
 details, that Washington was shot in a duel by Burke ! 
 Byron, who had been impatiently biting his lips during the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 213.
 
 224 LIFE OF LORD BYBON. [JE-r. 30. 
 
 conversation, exclaimed, ' What, in the name of folly, are 
 you thinking of? ' and corrected the learned signior, who 
 had confounded Washington with Hamilton and Biirke 
 with Colonel Burr. Such superficial learning could not 
 be agreeable to Byron, although afterwards in the circle 
 of the Countess Guiccioli he learned to tolerate it not 
 ungraciously. He found, however, in this a pretext to 
 withdraw from the Albrizzi salon and to join for some 
 time the less learned circle of the Countess Benzoni, who 
 divided with the former the empire of the fashionable world. 
 But as Byron gave himself up to dissipation and to inter- 
 course with the lower orders he withdrew at last even 
 from this coterie. A charming Fornarina in the national 
 * fazziolo,' especially if she knew how to handle a stiletto, 
 had, for a time at least, greater attractions for him, than 
 the most refined lady of the aristocratic families. The only 
 advantage he derived from this intercourse with the lower 
 orders was the knowledge he gained thereby of the life of 
 the people, of the Italian language generally, and of the 
 Yenetian dialect specially, in his intimate acquaintance 
 with which he always took pride. According to his own 
 confession, indeed, he spoke Italian more fluently than 
 correctly. Margarita Cogni now took the place of 
 Marianna Segati as the queen of his harem, for his 
 intimacy with both by no means excluded other intrigues. 
 Numerous passages of his letters relating to these excesses 
 Moore has omitted and was obliged to omit, and yet too 
 much still remains. Enough : Byron was aporcus de grege 
 Domini Joannis, and Fletcher, though he had a wife at 
 home who had not separated from him, worthily followed 
 him as his -Leporello. Margarita, like Marianna, was 
 married; but she left her husband (a baker), and soon, not 
 without force, quartered herself in Byron's house. She pre- 
 sided over his household as ' donna di governo,' and indeed
 
 1818.J BYRON'S LIAISON WITH THE FOKNARINA. 225 
 
 with such economy that the expenses were reduced almost 
 one-half. That she could neither read nor write was so 
 far not displeasing to Byron, as she thus could not torment 
 him with letters, nor ransack his correspondence. She 
 was twenty-two years old, tall and handsome, and possessed 
 the humour peculiar to the Venetian people ; she was at 
 the same time extremely capricious, jealous, and over- 
 bearing, and yet combined all these qualities with great 
 devoutness. Byron himself describes her as a tigress, a 
 Medea. She caused frequent scenes in his house, and 
 sometimes when it became too much for Byron he left 
 the house and spent the greater part of the night in his 
 gondola on the water. One day when he was angry 
 with her and applied to her the epithet ' Vacca ' a sad 
 affront with great presence of mind, and not without 
 a touch of Italian grace, she courtesied and replied, 
 1 Vacca tua, Eccelenza.' In return she used sometimes to 
 rail at him as ' Gran cane della Madonna.' Byron was 
 at last obliged to pa'rt with her : she refused to quit the 
 house, threatened knives and revenge, and at last when 
 Byron ordered his gondolier to take her home she threw 
 herself into the canal, from which, however, she was 
 dragged out in safety. 1 Byron had to exert all his energy 
 to get rid of her. 
 
 To aggravate the miseries of his domestic condition, 
 his natural daughter Allegra, born in Switzerland in Feb- 
 ruary 18^7, was sent to Byron in the course of this summer. 
 A young, utterly inexperienced, Swiss nurse had charge of 
 her, but with the exception of this person there was no 
 one in his house Byron's household consisting of men- 
 servants only, one half English, the other half Italian to 
 nurse and watch over the little girl, then only eighteen 
 
 1 See Byron's account of the scene. Moore's Life, iv. 119. 
 Q
 
 226 LIFE OF LORD BYROtf. [ JEr. 30. 
 
 months old. Byron rejoiced, that she resembled him both 
 in appearance and character, and was extremely anxious 
 for her welfare. Notwithstanding his care, she must, amid 
 such surroundings, have been ruined in mind, and even 
 in body, had not the wife of the excellent Consul Hoppner 
 interested herself in her, who entrusted her to the care 
 of a worthy woman and watched over her education. A 
 rich English widow without children, who saw Allegra in 
 Hoppner's house, proposed to adopt her, provided Byron 
 "would entirely renounce her ; to this proposal, however, he 
 would not assent. On the contrary he afterwards took her 
 with him to Ravenna, where the Countess Guiccioli to a 
 certain extent took her under her own care. She was left, 
 however, far too much to the servants and to herself. In 
 a letter to Hoppner, 1 Byron thus describes her : * Allegra 
 is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as 
 ravenous as a vulture ; health good, to judge of the com- 
 plexion temper tolerable, but for vanity and pertinacity. 
 She thinks herself handsome and will do as she pleases.' 
 She was, then, the ravenousness excepted, the very image 
 of her father. At four years of age, Allegra had grown 
 to be, under these circumstances, completely mistress of 
 the servants, and Byron saw that such a state of things 
 must not continue, and especially that her instruction 
 should be duly attended to. He sent her, therefore, to the 
 convent of Bagna Cavallo, a short distance from Ravenna, 
 where, as he insisted, care should be taken specially of 
 her moral and religious education. He would not have 
 her innoculated with any free-thinking views, and objected 
 therefore to her being a member of Shelley's house- 
 hold ; he intended, on the contrary, to have her brought 
 up in the Catholic faithj which he declared to be the best 
 religion; at any rate, certainly the oldest among the 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 209.
 
 1818.] BYRON DIRECTS THE EDUCATION OF ALLEGRA. 227 
 
 different branches of Christianity. 1 He was not, however, 
 altogether uninfluenced in his plans for her by worldly 
 motives. ' I by no means intended, nor intend ' he writes 
 to Hoppner, 2 ' to give a natural child an English education, 
 because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after 
 settlement would be doubly difficult. "Abroad, with a fair 
 foreign education and a portion of five or six thousand 
 pounds, she might and may marry very respectably.' The 
 placing her in the convent, however, was only provisional, 
 and at Hoppner's suggestion he thought of sending her back 
 to a good institution in Switzerland. 3 In accordance 
 with these views the codicil is drawn up, which he added 
 to his will immediately after the child was sent to him. He 
 bequeathed to ' Allegra Biron, an infant, of about twenty 
 months old, by him brought up, and now residing in 
 Venice,' the sum 'of 5,OOOL, which was to be paid to her 
 either on her marriage, or on her attaining the age of 
 twenty -one years (according as the one or the other should 
 happen first) ; adding, however, the clause, provided she 
 should not marry with a native of Great Britain. 
 
 All these dispositions were however fruitless, for Allegra 
 died of fever April 20, 1822, at Bagna Cavallo it may 
 be almost said for her happiness; Byron was at the 
 time in Pisa. The news of her death, conveyed to him 
 by the Countess Guiccioli, affected him so deeply that she 
 feared for his reason. He sank into a seat, and sat motion- 
 less, not shedding a single tear : even the Countess was 
 obliged to leave him alone. Next day he was more com- 
 posed : * She is more fortunate than we are ' he said : 
 'besides, her position in the world would scarcely have 
 allowed her to be happy. It is God's will let us mention 
 it no more.' 4 The body was embalmed and sent the heart 
 
 1 Letter to Mr, Hoppner. Moore's Life, v. 142. 
 
 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, v. 1?4. Ibid. v. 363. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. |_^T. 30. 
 
 and intestines separate from Leghorn to England, in the 
 same manner as the body of Lord Guilford had been 
 brought to England by Polidori, a process which at the 
 time excited Byron's ridicule. The same course was 
 observed in the case of the corpse of the poet himself. He 
 tells Murray, 1 as the reason for his desire that Allegra 
 should be buried in England, that Protestants were not 
 buried in consecrated ground in Catholic countries. He saw, 
 however, no offensive obstruction in this with respect to 
 himself, either when he wished to be buried on the Lido, or 
 in former days by the side of his dog in the garden of New- 
 stead. Or are we to regard this act as a mark of tenderness 
 to Allegra's mother, that she might be enabled to visit the 
 grave of her child? Certainly not; to the mother he felt 
 perfectly indifferent, nor is mention 2 ever made of her 
 except once, when Byron says that he had received [1820] 
 a letter from her. 3 Enough : Allegra was to be buried at 
 Harrow, where Byron as a boy had sat under an elm, and 
 where he himself once wished to find his last resting place. 
 He fixed on the exact spot where the coffin should be 
 deposited in all privacy (his old friend Drury was to read 
 the service), and he directed a marble tablet to be placed 
 on the wall with the following inscription : 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALLEGRA, 
 
 DATTGHTER OF G. G. LORD BYRON, 
 WHO DIED AT BAGNA CAVALLO, IN ITALY, 
 
 APRIL 20, 1822, 
 AGED FIVE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS. 
 
 'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.' 2 Samuel xii. 23. 4 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 328. 
 
 * [It does not seem to have occurred to our author that Byron's 
 reticence with regard to Allegra's mother may have proceeded not from 
 indifference but from respect to that- lady and" because she was a lady.] 
 
 s In a letter to Mr. Murray. Moore's Life, iv. 312. 4 Ibid, v. 335.
 
 1819.] FIEST MEETING WITH COUNTESS GUICCIOLI. 229 
 
 After this digression, which has anticipated the course 
 of events, we return to the Palazzo Mocenigo. It is easy 
 to be understood why Byron's friends disapproved and 
 lamented a life so unworthy of him, and whence arose their 
 desire to induce him to return to England. In Byron's 
 own words : ' Hobhouse's wish is, if possible, to force me 
 back to England ; ' and Moore cannot suppress a sigh, 
 that his friendly endeavours were unsuccessful. 1 The 
 troublesome business connected with the conveyance of 
 Newstead, which, as has been already mentioned, was 
 sold in November 1817, for 94,500., and which would 
 have made Byron's presence desirable, furnished the chief 
 pretext for these efforts. When, however, he was not 
 to be moved to do this, it was proposed that a clerk of 
 Hanson's should bring the documents to be executed by 
 him to Geneva, where Byron was to meet him. Even this 
 he refused as a kind of affront, although he was in con- 
 siderable embarrassment for money, and the conclusion of 
 the business was a matter of moment to him. He requested 
 that the papers might be brought to Venice. 2 How the 
 matter was ultimately arranged we are ignorant. 
 
 While Byron was confirmed rather by this abortive 
 attempt, in his obstinate refusal to return home, a de- 
 liverance from his unhappy position at Venice came to 
 him unexpectedly from, a very different quarter from 
 his acquaintance with the Countess Guiccioli. This lady 
 was the daughter of Count Gamba, a Ravennese nobleman 
 with a large family and a small fortune. Educated in 
 a convent, she was married before she was sixteen 
 years old 3 to Count Guiccioli, a widower of sixty years 
 of age, for whom she had no affection, who had been 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 123. 2 Ibid. iv. 123 et seq. 
 
 8 ['She was in" her twentieth year.' Hobhouse in the Westminster 
 Revieiv, Jan. 1825, p. 22.]
 
 230 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 31 
 
 already twice married and was one of the richest pro- 
 prietors of the Romagna. Soon after her marriage, in the 
 autumn of 1818, she met Byron for the first time at the 
 house of the Countess Albrizzi, though no formal intro- 
 duction then took place. No acquaintance ensued between 
 them till the beginning of April of the following year, when 
 they were introduced to each other at an evening party of 
 the Countess Benzoni's, and not according to any wish 
 expressed by either of the two, but merely through an act 
 of courtesy on the part of the noble hostess. Each made 
 so deep an impression on the other, that from that evening 
 till the departure of the Countess Guiccioli from Venice 
 they saw each other daily. She herself relates that ' his 
 noble and wonderfully beautiful countenance, the tone of 
 his voice, his manner, the thousand enchantments that sur- 
 rounded him, rendered him so different and so superior a 
 being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impos- 
 sible he should not have left the most profound impression 
 upon me.' l The charm of her youth and her girlish 
 freshness exceedingly attracted Byron; she was rather 
 short than tall, and inclined to fulness, her bust was ex- 
 ceedingly beautiful, and her long golden locks and blue 
 eyes imparted to her an especial charm very unusual in an 
 Italian. It was to her also the glow and devotion of first 
 love, for Byron was her first love, and we may add, not- 
 withstanding her second marriage, her only love. To 
 return this feeling fully and purely was no longer in 
 Byron's power, although his affection for her was deeper 
 and nobler than any of his previous attachments. 
 
 In the middle of April Theresa was obliged to return 
 with her husband to Ravenna. The leave-taking affected 
 her so powerfully, that during the first day's journey 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 146.
 
 1819.] EFFECTS OF SEPARATION ON THE LOVERS. 231 
 
 she was thrice seized with fainting fits, and became so 
 dangerously ill, that she was brought home half-dead. 
 Her distressing agitation was further increased by the 
 death of her mother in giving birth to her fourteenth 
 child. In the course of her home-journey she wrote 
 letters to Byron full of the most ardent affection, nor 
 could she now be calmed and restored to health until 
 Byron promised, that he would soon visit her in Ravenna. 
 So ardent was her affection, and so deep a change did it 
 produce on her character, that she, who a few months before 
 had surrendered herself to all the enjoyments of society 
 and the world so novel to her, now wrote to her lover, 
 protesting that, according to his wish, she would avoid 
 all general society, and devote herself to reading, music, 
 domestic occupations, riding on horseback to everything, 
 in short, she knew would be most pleasing to him. Dante's 
 grave and the famous pine-forest furnished a sufficient 
 pretext for an invitation to visit the secluded Ravenna. 
 Theresa's relatives having been sufficiently prepared for 
 his arrival, Byron started on the 2nd of June from La 
 Mira on his journey to Romagna, visiting on the road the 
 noted spots of Ferrara and Bologna. At the latter place 
 he remained till the 8th, undecided whether he should go 
 on to Ravenna or return to Venice, having received no 
 news from Theresa, who had again fallen ill. At length, 
 continuing his journey, he found her, on his arrival at Ra- 
 venna, in a deplorable condition ; confined to her room by 
 intermittent fever, and what seemed a consumptive cough, 
 accompanied with spitting of blood, and her physicians 
 almost despairing of her recovery. To tend, therefore, 
 on the fair invalid became Byron's first concern ; at his 
 representation a distinguished Venetian physician, Pro- 
 fessor Aglietti, was consulted, whose treatment combined 
 with Byron's presence acted so beneficially on the patient,
 
 232 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 31. 
 
 that she gradually recovered. Count Guiccioli, of whose 
 jealousy Byron's friends were somewhat apprehensive, 
 appeared quite agreeable to this intimacy with his wife, 
 and displayed every possible honour and attention to his 
 guest. Almost daily he took him to drive in his carriage 
 drawn by six horses. Byron meantime caused his riding- 
 horses to be brought from Venice, and indulged in ro- 
 mantic rides in the Pineta. Here he passed daily by 
 Dante's tomb ; here it was that Boccaccio in the * De- 
 cameron ' makes the spectral knight pursue his mistress to 
 death; here was the scene of Dryden's tale of 'Honoria.' 
 Like these heroes of Parnassus, Byron has linked his 
 name for ever with the Pineta. The stanzas referring 
 to this famous forest in ' Don Juan ' l are among the most 
 charming passages of the whole poem. 
 
 Sweet hour of twilight ! in the solitude 
 
 Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
 Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, 
 
 Rooted where once the Adriatic wave flowed o'er, 
 To where the last Caesarian fortress stood, 
 
 Evergreen forest ! which Boccaccio's lore 
 And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, 
 
 How have I loved the twilight hour and thee ? 
 
 The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, 
 
 Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, 
 Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, 
 
 And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along ; 
 The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, 
 
 His helldogs, and their chase, and the fair throng 
 Which learned from this example not to fly 
 
 From a true lover, shadowed my mind's eye. 
 
 But an existence so still and monotonous became in- 
 tolerable to the passionate poet, and his life was in 
 striking contrast with the tender devotion to nature which 
 breathes in these lines. As once before to Lady Caroline 
 
 ' iii. 105.
 
 1819.] BYRON'S GRIEF AT THE COUNTESS'S ABSENCE. 233 
 
 Lamb, so now he proposed to the fair object of his love, 
 scarcely recovered from her illness, to fly with him. 1 
 According to the Italian code of morals, Theresa would 
 by an elopement have utterly ruined herself in the eyes 
 of society, while the cicisbeat, as a sanctioned custom, ex- 
 cited no offence. She, therefore, refused her assent to 
 this plan, but outbid it by another yet more extravagant ! 
 she would, like Juliet, feign herself dead, in order to effect 
 a perfect union with her lover. Happily for both, this 
 scheme, the offspring of a high-flown fancy, was not at- 
 tempted. Returning to the world of prose and reality, 
 she accompanied her husband to Bologna, whither Byron 
 in a few days after was to follow them. From thence, ac- 
 companied by his wife, the Count visited his estates in 
 the neighbourhood, while Byron remained alone behind. 
 During these days he gave himself up to a gloomy, 
 almost despairing, frame of mind. Daily he repaired at 
 the wonted hour to the house of the Guicciolis, and 
 causing the deserted apartments of his mistress to be 
 opened, he read and wrote in her books. He visited the 
 Campo Santo, and carried on with 'his old friend, the 
 Sexton,' a conversation about skulls, 2 which almost rivals 
 the famous scene in Hamlet. His nervous excitability 
 was raised to such a degree, that at the performance of 
 Alfieri's ' Myrrha, 5 just as in earlier days at Massinger's 
 ' New Way to Pay Old Debts,' he was so violently affected, 
 that he was forced to leave the theatre in tears. 3 Even 
 Allegra, for whom he sent to amuse and occupy him, 
 failed to cheer him ; in short, he was a burden to him- 
 self and to others, till his mistress came back. In the 
 beginning of September Count Guiccioli, obliged to return 
 to Kavenna, left his wife behind at Bologna, in Byron's 
 society ; he even tolerated their intimacy so far as to 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 175. 2 Ibid. iv. 197. s Ibid. iv. 180.
 
 234 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 31. 
 
 allow the Contessa to follow her lover to La Mira, where 
 they spent the autumn under the same roof, which gave 
 a shock even to Italian morality. Her uncertain health, 
 which required country air, and the proximity to a 
 Venetian physician, served as the pretext. 
 
 Those autumn days were made still brighter to Byron 
 by the arrival (Oct. 8) of Moore at La Mira, who was 
 forthwith accompanied by his friend to Venice, and be- 
 came the occupant of Byron's own rooms in the Palazzo 
 Mocenigo. Byron's delight at this meeting was intense 
 and sincere. Although obliged to return every evening 
 to La Mira, every morning he came in to Venice, and 
 joined Moore in visiting its wonders, and afterwards 
 they dined together. The day before Moore's depar- 
 ture Byron received from his fair friend ' leave to make 
 a night of it.' l During the whole visit Byron was extra- 
 ordinarily cheerful and in the highest spirits. Their talk 
 turned chiefly on London life. Their jokes and laughter 
 were incessant, and once when Moore began to speak of 
 the rosy hue of the twilight, Byron, clapping his hand on 
 his mouth, said with a laugh : ' Come, d n it, Tom, 
 don't be poetical.' 2 Another time, when they were stand- 
 ing together on the balcony, two Englishmen passed by in 
 their gondola: ' Ah, if you John Bulls,' said Byron, putting 
 his arms akimbo with a sort of comic swagger, 'knew 
 who the two fellows are now standing up here, I think 
 you would stare ! ' 3 On his return Moore stopped at La 
 Mira, where he took a farewell dinner with Byron and 
 the Countess ; and the two friends parted never to see 
 each other again. Byron's proposal that they should make 
 a tour together to Arqua to see Petrarch's grave, Moore 
 reluctantly declined, feeling himself bound to his travel- 
 
 1 Moore's Life t iv. 236. 2 Ibid. iv. 209. 3 Ibid.
 
 1819.J BYRON GIVES MOORE HIS MEMOIRS. 235 
 
 ling companion, Lord John Russell, from whom he had 
 parted for a few days only. 
 
 . It was at La Mira, shortly before taking leave, that 
 Byron gave the MS. of his Memoirs to Moore, by whom 
 the mode and manner of the gift has been thus graphically 
 described. ' Look here/ he said holding up the white 
 leather bag in which the manuscript was contained, *' this 
 would be worth something to Murray, though you, I dare 
 say, would not give sixpence for it.' * What is it ? ' I 
 asked. ' My life and adventures,' he answered. . . . * It is 
 not a thing,' he continued, * that can be published during 
 my lifetime, but you may have it if you like there, do 
 whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag and 
 thanking him most warmly, I added, ' This will make a 
 nice legacy for my little Tom, who shall astonish the latter 
 days of the nineteenth century with it.' He then added, 
 ' You may show it to any of our friends you think worthy 
 of it.' l From Ravenna Byron sent to him (Dec. 1820) an 
 addition of ' eighteen more sheets of Memoranda.' 2 When 
 Moore fell into pecuniary difficulties, an arrangement was 
 made at Byron's suggestion, according to which Murray 
 bought (Nov. 1821) from Moore these Memoirs for the 
 sum of 2,OOOZ., binding himself, however, not to publish 
 them until Byron's death, the right of repurchase up to 
 that contingency being reserved by Moore. The con- 
 dition imposed by Byron that the Memoranda should not 
 be published during his life was not made altogether out 
 of regard to the living, but was grounded also on personal 
 considerations ; Byron felt and said, that a writer is as 
 good as dead after the publication of his Memoirs, and 
 should not therefore in this way put an end to his literary 
 life. He was not, however, regardless of Lady Byron's 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 242. 2 Ibid. v. 35, 36.
 
 236 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. f_^T. 31. 
 
 position. In a letter to Moore dated Jan. 2, 1820, he 
 says : ' My this present writing is to direct you, that, if 
 she chooses, she may see the MS. Memoir in your possession, 
 I wish her to have fair play, in all cases, even though it 
 will not be published till after my decease. For this pur- 
 pose, it were but just that Lady Byron should know what 
 there is said of her and hers, that she may have full power 
 to remark on or respond to any part or parts, as may seem 
 fitting to herself. This is fair dealing, I presume, in all 
 events.' l The offer, when made, she wrote to decline. 2 
 
 Moore's conduct, therefore, in consenting to their de- 
 struction 3 after Byron's death is the more indefensible. 
 He could not, indeed, have prevented it, for the MS. had 
 then become the absolute property of Mr. Murray. The 
 honorarium, which had been advanced, Moore repaid, but 
 was compensated for the sacrifice by the commission to 
 edit the 'Life and Correspondence of Byron.' In this 
 affair the character of Lady Byron appears in the most 
 unfavourable and unworthy light ; for if she did not insti- 
 gate, she certainly encouraged, the destruction of the 
 Memoirs, thus cutting off from her husband in the grave 
 his chosen means of defence against the many calumnies 
 heaped on his name on account of the separation, notwith- 
 standing that the last word had by him been generously 
 secured to herself. 
 
 The immorality, which, as a matter of course, was pre- 
 supposed to exist in the Memoirs, served as one pretext 
 for their destruction. But this pretext rests on no firm 
 basis. Byron himself says (as reported by Medwin) 4 
 that there were few parts that may not, and none that 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 272. 
 
 2 [ The original letter was published iu the Quarterly Review, Oct. 
 1869, p. 407 (note).] 
 
 3 See Appendix (E). * Conversations, p. 42.
 
 1819.] DESTRUCTION OF BYRON'S MEMOIRS. 237 
 
 will not, be read by women. The manuscript was, more- 
 over, with Byron's permission, lent to different persons, 
 even to some ladies, for their perusal ; and no one 
 has ever confirmed the reproach of immorality which 
 has been raised against them. On the contrary, Lady 
 Burghersh, the wife of the English ambassador at Flo- 
 rence, assured the Countess Guiccioli 1 that she found the 
 Memoirs, which Moore had lent to her at Florence, so un- 
 objectionable that she would have allowed her daughter 
 of fifteen years of age to read them. 
 
 Hunt dpubts 2 the complete destruction of the Memoirs, 
 and believes that they will one day see the light. This, 
 however, does not seem probable, though some journals 
 affect to know that a copy will be found among the papers 
 left by Hobhouse, 3 which are not to appear till the end of 
 the century. Then, too, Byron's letters to Hobhouse, 
 which are wanting in Moore's * Life,' will come to light ; 
 for the correspondence published therein consists almost 
 entirely of letters addressed to himself and Murray. 
 Byron's literary fame will, perhaps, be scarcely enhanced 
 by their publication, but, as materials for the judgment 
 of his character and for the history of his marriage, they 
 must be most important documents. He repeatedly avers 
 that he had aimed only at the truth : ' I only know ' he 
 writes to Moore ' that I wrote it (the Memoir) with the 
 fullest intention to be " faithful and true " in my narra- 
 tive, but not impartial no, by the Lord ! I can't pretend 
 to be that while I feel.' 4 To Murray he says : ' The Life 
 is Memoranda, and not Confessions. I have left out all 
 my loves (except in a general way) and many other of 
 
 1 Recollections of Lord Byron, ii. 255, English translation. 
 
 2 Life of Byron, i. 176. 
 
 3 [ I do not believe that Hobhouse ever saw the Memoirs, much less 
 read them. J. M. ~] 4 Moore's Life, iv. 251.
 
 238 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [.Er.31. 
 
 the most important things (because I must not com- 
 promise other people), so that 'tis like the play of Hamlet 
 " the part of Hamlet being omitted by "particular desire." 
 But you will find many opinions and some fun, with a 
 detailed account of my marriage and its consequences, as 
 true as a party concerned can make such accounts, for I 
 suppose we are all prejudiced.' l 
 
 Soon after Moore's departure, Byron, having been wet 
 through during a ride in a storm, had an attack of fever. 
 He passed the night in a high state of feverish delirium, 
 the Countess and Fletcher sitting on each side of his 
 bed : to the latter he dictated, in his delirium, a number 
 of verses, which, to the astonishment of the Countess, were 
 quite correct and rational. 2 As usual, he would have 
 nothing to do with physicians or physic, and cured him- 
 self, as he reports triumphantly to England, with cold 
 water, and Allegra, who also was suffering from fever, 
 with bark. 3 His relations with the Guiccioli family caused 
 him, however, still greater distress than this illness. 
 Count Guiccioli, through his wife, proposed to borrow 
 from Lord Byron a thousand pounds, for which security 
 should be given and the usual rate of interest paid. 4 
 Although Moore, who was then present, and other friends, 
 advised him to accede to this proposal, he gave a decided 
 refusal; and the Countess, who utterly disapproved of 
 her husband's request, was strengthened in her disincli- 
 nation to return to him. The Count, however, came in 
 person just when Byron was struck down with the fever 
 to take her away. Byron refrained from any interference, 
 so that the decision was left solely with the Contessa. 
 In the event of the husband and wife refusing to be recon- 
 ciled, Byron would have felt himself bound in honour not 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 251. 2 Ibid. 257. 3 Ibid. 261. 4 Ibid. 232.
 
 1819.] THE COUNTESS DANGEKOUSLY ILL. 
 
 to leave her in her distress, especially as she was his equal 
 in birth and rank : he would then, along with her, leave 
 the country. He dreamt of a retired life in a province of 
 France under an assumed name, but more still of emi- 
 grating to South America, and began to depict to himself 
 the planter's life in the liveliest colours. In his dreams, 
 the life of the American planter seemed but another 
 variety of the condition of a Turkish Pacha. Contrary to 
 all expectation, however, the union between the Count and 
 Countess was brought about under the condition, that all 
 connection between the lovers should cease, and Theresa, 
 accordingly, about the middle of November followed her 
 husband to Ravenna; while Byron, very much out of 
 humour with everybody and everything, returned to 
 Venice. His vanity was, perhaps, still more wounded 
 than his love. Italy now became distasteful to him, and 
 he wished to remove as far as possible from Theresa, in 
 order to make another meeting impossible. He made, 
 therefore, serious preparations for a return to England, 
 his own ill-health and that of Allegra alone retarding 
 his departure ; but while engaged in packing up, letters 
 between the lovers were again interchanged the promise 
 that all connection should cease entirely, as might easily 
 have been foreseen, could not be observed. A prey to 
 contradictory feelings and vehement excitement, the poor 
 lady, immediately after her arrival at Ravenna, had again 
 become dangerously ill. Her relatives, even her father, 
 who had hitherto disapproved of her connection with 
 Byron, could not deceive themselves as to the cause and 
 only remedy of her distressing state, and, with the express 
 approval of Count Guiccioli, Count Gamba, her own 
 father, invited Byron to return as soon as possible to 
 Ravenna. Of the letters exchanged between the two
 
 240 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [J5r. 31. 
 
 lovers, Moore communicates only two extracts ; 1 the only 
 portions, as yet published, of their correspondence. 
 Though full of expressions of love and tenderness, his 
 letters written in Italian, did not conceal the serious 
 difficulties which were connected with their meeting again ; 
 more serious far, for her, than for himself. Like Hercules, 
 but without a particle of the strength of Hercules, Byron 
 stood at the cross-road, * balancing between duty and 
 inclination.' He had already announced to his friends 
 in England, and especially to his sister, the intention 
 of returning immediately, and had even begged Murray 
 to address his next letter to Calais. The very day and 
 hour of departure were fixed on. A lady, a friend of 
 Theresa, gives, as an eye-witness, the following description 
 of his state of irresolution : ' He was ready, dressed for 
 the journey, his gloves and cap on and even his little 
 cane in his hand. Nothing was now waited for but 
 his coming down stairs his boxes being already on 
 board the gondola. At this moment my Lord, by way 
 of pretext, declared that if it should strike one o'clock 
 before everything was in order (his arms being "the 
 only things not quite ready), he would not go that day. 
 The hour strikes, and he remains!' 2 His decision, so 
 far as it may be called such, was the result not so 
 much of will as, on the contrary, of the absence of 
 will and strength : he could not tear himself from 
 her, though he did not conceal from himself, that 
 prudence and reason enjoined his return to England. 
 * You have decided,' he writes to her, ' that I am to 
 return to Eavenna. I shall accordingly return and I 
 shall do and be all that you wish. I cannot say more.' 3 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, iv. 263, 264. 
 
 2 Ibid. iv. 265. 3 Ibid. iv. 267.
 
 1819.] THE EFFECTS OF VENICE ON BYRON. 241 
 
 Thus, about the middle of December, without taking 
 leave of anyone, he departed from Venice and hastened 
 by the well-known road to Ravenna, where he was received 
 with open arms. 
 
 Before we leave this, the Venetian, period cf Byron's life, 
 we must glance at the productions and development of 
 his genius during it. It is evident that a change both in 
 himself and in his poetry took place at Venice. Here he 
 found himself translated from the procrustean bed of 
 English respectability to a society whose motto was, ' Live 
 and let live.' However heavy the political pressure 
 under which Venice lay, the freedom of private life was 
 in no way invaded. On the contrary, Austria, while she 
 promoted the material prosperity of the nations under 
 her rule, winked at their excesses, in order to restrain them 
 from politics. Here men lived, openly in the light of day, 
 as they willed ; no puritanism intervened to disturb them. 
 The Catholic Church looked on calmly even when priests 
 openly evaded celibacy, no one throwing a stone at them 
 or thinking less of them because of the offence. All this 
 must have been grateful to Byron ; he who fought for the 
 absolute right of individuality found here its freest play 
 and scope. English society, as seen in the mirror of its 
 opposite, appeared to him the more distasteful ; and his 
 bitterness against its prudery, its assumption of religion, 
 and its bigotry grew more intense. But at the same time 
 he came to regard life more and more in its naked realism 
 and nothingness, and gradually turned from ideal views of 
 life and the world. Here at Venice nothing was sacred 
 or great; here the moral and spiritual significance of 
 life shrank to the meanest proportions : sensual enjoyment 
 appeared to be the only object of its people. Yet withal, 
 in the Fourth Canto of * Childe Harold,' written chiefly 
 at Venice, the idealism of Byron's Muse reached its cul- 
 
 B
 
 242 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [2Er. 31. 
 
 mination. An advance beyond this point was not possible ; 
 and, according to a law of nature, either a rapid change 
 must take place or the state of tension must be relaxed. 
 So was it with Byron. The Fourth Canto of ' Childe 
 Harold ' was followed by works of a very different character. 
 The satirical and cynical tendencies of his genius found 
 their vent in the poetry which Berni had called into life, 
 and which had been transplanted a short time before to 
 England by John Hookham Frere (Whistlecraft) . In Italy, 
 on the soil where it was born, Byron awoke to the full 
 understanding of this kind of poetry, and instinctively felt 
 its attractions. Taking Whistlecraft as his model, he 
 made an attempt in ' Beppo,' which was eminently suc- 
 cessful ; and the style he had thus adopted soon attained 
 maturity and strength in ' Don Juan,' which may be 
 described as the Epic of epicurean nihilism : the first 
 four cantos he wrote in Venice. His nature was, however, 
 fundamentally ideal, and almost involuntarily Idealism 
 breaks forth again and again in ' Don Juan ' itself; and 
 in his dramas flows along, like a double stream, side by 
 side with the satire of that poem. Venice, also, from its 
 mighty past, furnished him with the matter of those 
 dramas, which he elaborated afterwards at Ravenna, where, 
 after the paroxysm of his excesses, rest comparatively 
 returned to him. Thus his residence in Venice was, both as 
 respects his life and his poetry, a turning point with him 
 as will be more distinctly seen hereafter, when we come 
 to the consideration of his works.
 
 1820.] BYRON AT KAVENNA. 243 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BAFENNA, PISA, GENOA. 
 1820-1823. 
 
 RAVENNA was in the midst of preparations for the Carnival, 
 and Byron, immediately after his arrival, was introduced 
 at a brilliant party at the house of the Marchese Cavalli, 
 an uncle of Theresa, to all her relations, and was received 
 by them as a member of the family. He appeared openly 
 as her regular and acknowledged cicisbeo, and makes merry 
 at his being obliged to give his arm to his dama, to carry 
 and fold her shawl, and perform such like offices of the 
 cavaliero servente. 1 Although without any plan for the 
 future, and quite undecided whether he would remain in 
 Ravenna ' a day, a week, a year, or all my life,' 8 he forth- 
 with set up an establishment. Allegra, the servants, and 
 his ever-growing menagerie he had brought with him, the 
 furniture he directed to be sent by sea. From Count 
 Guiccioli he hired a suite of rooms in the Count's palace, 
 so that the lovers again, with the husband's consent, lived 
 under the same roof. Compared with his life in ' the Sea 
 Sodom,' this relation was upon the whole a moral im- 
 provement for Byron, and he accordingly describes Ravenna 
 in a letter to Hoppner * as a dreadfully moral place, 
 where you must not look at anybody's wife except your 
 neighbour's if you go to the next door but one, you are 
 scolded, and presumed to be perfidious. And then a 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 271. 2 Ibid. iv. 271. 
 
 E 2
 
 244 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON, [JET. 32. 
 
 relazione or an amicizia seems to be a regular affair of from 
 five to fifteen years, at which period, if there occur a 
 widowhood, it finishes by a sposalizio ; and in the mean- 
 time it has so many rules of its own, that it is not much 
 better. A man actually becomes a piece of female property 
 they won't let their serventi marry until there is a 
 vacancy for themselves.' ! In this as in other respects, 
 Byron accommodated himself to Italian manners with a 
 flexibility not very usual in Englishmen, and returned to 
 social life. He even paid his respects to the Cardinal 
 Legate, frequented his parties, where, as he says, ' all the 
 beauty, all the nobility, all the sanctity of Ravenna were 
 gathered together.' 2 At the anniversary of the Pope's 
 tiara-tion he failed not to appear. The general tone of 
 society was unconstrained; they talked, drank coffee, 
 played hazard for small stakes, and the ladies as every- 
 where were resplendent in silk and diamonds. Neither 
 the aristocratic dissipations of London nor the coarser 
 excesses of Venice were found at Ravenna : here there was 
 no cosmopolitan intercourse, but life wore rather a narrow 
 and provincial character. Byron, however, does not deny 
 that he found among the higher classes culture and in- 
 telligence, for Ravenna was not only the see of a Papal 
 Legate, but the central point of the Roinagnese nobility. 
 Shelley, on the other hand, thought it a wretched place, 
 that the people were barbarians, and the language the 
 most horrible patois conceivable. The seclusion of 
 Ravenna rendered the appearance of a stranger, specially 
 of a foreigner, a rare sight. Great, then, was the joy 
 of Byron to receive here the visit of two countrymen, 
 friends of his own, Bankes, the traveller whom we 
 have already mentioned as one of Byron's university 
 friends, and Sir Humphry Davy, on his return from 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 277. 2 Ilid. iv. 300.
 
 1820.] BYRON AT RAVENNA. 245 
 
 his fourteenth ascent of Vesuvius. Byron relates a charm- 
 ing anecdote of the notions formed by Italian ladies of 
 the science of the latter. Telling a lady (doubtless the 
 Contessa) of Sir Humphry's preparation of gases, of the 
 discovery of the safety lamp, and his mode of ungluing 
 the Pompeiau MSS., she said. ' But what do you call 
 him ? ' " A great chemist," quoth I. " What can he do ? " 
 repeated the lady. "Almost anything," said I. " Oh then, 
 mio Caro, do pray beg him to give me something to 
 dye my eyebrows black. I have tried a thousand things 
 and the colours all come off; and besides they don't 
 grow ; can't he invent something to make them grow ? " ' l 
 And yet the Contessa was neither badly educated nor of 
 a mean understanding. To its retired situation Ravenna 
 owed also the specifically Italian character of its life, a 
 point on which Byron laid great stress. 2 With unmistak- 
 able satisfaction he recurs again and again to his knowledge 
 of Italy and the Italians ; 3 averring that he had lived in it 
 and with them as few foreigners had, and that the common 
 run of travellers could not judge of Italy. But while 
 thus interesting himself in the social, and, as we shall see, 
 in the political life of the Italy of his own day, he remained 
 almost entirely unaffected by the great historical recollec- 
 tions of Ravenna. Ravenna, with its well-deserved sur- 
 name ' 1'Antica,' displays at the present moment, in its 
 magnificent and well-preserved monuments, the traces of 
 the momentous historical events of which it has been the 
 scene. Here under Honorius was the centre of the Roman 
 Empire of the West, here the residence of Theodoric, 
 here the seat of the Greek Exarchate. But these mighty 
 vicissitudes in human affairs empires rising and falling 
 like the ebb and flow of the tide on the strand of 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 310. 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 See Moore's Life, iv. 283, 336, 341-2.
 
 246 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [JEi. 32. 
 
 Eavenna, elicited from Byron's harp scarcely a single note, 
 although in 'Childe Harold' he delighted to surrender 
 himself to the sway of such thoughts. In his letters and 
 journals also, which, indeed, only express the feelings 
 and humours of the day, there is not a remark in allu- 
 sion to these historical recollections. His residence in 
 Eavenna was, however, the period of his dramatic 
 composition, and within two years he wrote there the 
 dramas, ' Marino Faliero,' * Sardanapalus,' the ' Two 
 Foscari,' ' Cain,' 'Heaven and Earth,' began 'Werner' and 
 the 'Deformed Transformed.' In addition to these he 
 composed at Eavenna the fifth canto of ' Don Juan,' the 
 ' Prophecy of Dante,' the 'Vision of Judgment,' and trans- 
 lated the episode of Francesca of Eimini in Dante's Inferno, 
 and the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, an astonishing 
 fertility ! 
 
 The calm life in the palace of the Guiccioli, with its 
 apparent peace and arrangements in accordance with the 
 notions of Italian society, was of short duration. The 
 Count, who, though treated with consideration as far 
 as form went, felt himself in reality degraded to a 
 mere cipher, withdrew, after a year's toleration of the 
 liaison, his assent, and resolved that all intercourse between 
 the two lovers should be broken off as no longer en- 
 durable. But this step, taken at such a time, exasperated 
 not only his wife, but even her relations and public opinion, 
 and especially the women, against him. The Contessa 
 thought it harsh and unreasonable that she should be the 
 only lady in Eomagna to whom no amico should be 
 allowed ; if this privilege should be denied to her, she 
 protested she would no longer remain with her husband. 1 
 Byron advised peace, but could not decide to cut the 
 Gordian knot by his own departure. He palliated his 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 315.
 
 1820.] BYRON AT RAVENNA. 247 
 
 weakness to himself by thinking that honour dictated the 
 duty of remaining with his mistress. Theresa's family and 
 the public considered that Count Guiccioli, if he would 
 allow no cicisbeo, should have acted differently from the 
 very first ; that his interference now was the action of a 
 fool, or of a rogue, whose purpose was vexation, or scandal, 
 or extortion. Byron's friends were apprehensive for 
 his safety, and gave him many warnings, the Count having 
 the reputation of having got rid of two persons who were 
 distasteful to him. Byron, however, was not to be 
 hindered from taking his daily rides in the Pineta, but he 
 rode constantly armed, and generally accompanied by a 
 servant. He consoled himself too with the thought, that, 
 Count Guiccioli had not the heart to spend twenty scudi 
 the average price for a clean-handed bravo ; ' l that death 
 by assassination was not worse than death in any other 
 way, but makes rather a very good melodramatic finish ; 
 that it might then be said of him as of Polonius, ( he made 
 a good end.' Count Guiccioli's declaration of his readiness 
 to take steps to prove the infidelity of his wife served only 
 to injure his cause in the eyes of the public. Separation 
 was at last insisted on by the Countess, contrary to the 
 wishes of her family, and was decreed in the beginning of 
 July 1820 by the Pope. 2 She sacrificed by this measure her 
 whole social position, riches, her splendid home, all her 
 prospects for the enjoyment of life. She received from 
 her husband a pittance of 200 L a year, and was obliged, 
 by the conditions of the decree of separation, to retire to 
 a villa belonging to her father fifteen miles distant from 
 Ravenna, where Byron could only occasionally visit her. 
 After some time she returned, however, to Ravenna and, in 
 accordance with the provisions of that deed, to her father's 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 320. 
 
 2 See Byron's letter to Moore, Life, iv. 328 et seq.
 
 248 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 32. 
 
 house. Here Byron was wont to spend his evenings with 
 her, listening with delight while she played on the piano 
 or sang the melodies of Mozart and Eossini : l and when 
 her father or brother were present, the conversation turned 
 chiefly on politics. Byron's life, in truth, at this period 
 was not only regular but monotonous, and in the Journal 
 which he kept during the months of January and February 
 1821, its routine is constantly described in the words 
 * Eode fired with pistols dined went out heard music 
 came home redde.' His only excitement was the 
 interest he took in the attempted deliverance of Italy 
 by the Carbonari. 
 
 Italy was then in a state of sullen fermentation. After 
 the abolition of the rule of Napoleon, the old legitimacy, 
 which had learnt nothing and forgot nothing, reappeared 
 in the States of the Church and in Naples with inconceiv- 
 able fatuity and arrogance. As if intoxicated by success 
 it hastened to obliterate even the beneficial traces of ISTa- 
 poleonism, and instead of reforms re-introduced the old 
 system of misgovernment. The intolerable oppression of 
 the reactionary measures issuing from the Holy Alliance 
 drove the Italians to the miserable resource of conspiracy, 
 which has always failed, and the secret league of the 
 Carbonari extended over the whole country. To this 
 body the Gamba family belonged, and Theresa's brother 
 Pietro, an enthusiastic youth of twenty-two, became one of 
 their most zealous leaders, and was deeply initiated in all 
 their plans. Pietro had conceived an ardent friendship for 
 Byron, and by his instrumentality Byron was won over to 
 join the league. Various motives, indeed, actuated him 
 in taking this step. Byron had schooled himself into an 
 
 1 He wrote at Genoa, shortly before his departure for Greece, the 
 words to a Hindoo air which she used to sing to him. Life and JForks, 
 xiv. 357.
 
 1820.] BYKON A CARBON ARO. 249 
 
 exceeding admiration of Napoleon and hated legitimacy 
 and the reaction. His imagination was charmed by the 
 secret organisation, the degrees, and signs of the league ; 
 his ambitious desire for influence and active life seemed 
 to find here a suitable field ; and his undoubted sympathy 
 with Italy, and especially with the Guiccioli family, led 
 him to regard participation in its plans as a high and noble 
 purpose. The end sought to be attained by Carbonarism 
 the liberation of Italy he calls the very poetry of politics. 1 
 His sympathy for Italy, as well as his sorrow and anger 
 at the rule of the foreigner, under which she sighed, he 
 gave utterance to in the ' Prophecy of Dante,' one of 
 his most ambitious and loftiest poems, written in the 
 Terza rima of Dante, and breathing the very spirit of 
 that poet, who seems in his eyes the poet of freedom, 
 and in whose person he there expresses his political hopes 
 for Italy. In this we doubtless trace the influence of the 
 fair Contessa, who is said to have known Dante by 
 heart. 2 He himself describes it as the best thing he 
 had ever done. 3 Byron received at the same time a 
 high degree in the league without passing through the 
 intermediate ranks, being placed at the head of his own 
 division, which was called the Americani. He distributed 
 arms among the conspirators, and offered to the constitu- 
 tional government of Naples a thousand louis d'ors as a 
 contribution in aid of the struggle against the reaction of 
 the Holy Alliance ; his letters relative to this offer appear, 
 however, to have fallen, through a spy, into the hands of 
 the Papal Government. Against the Austrians he shows 
 a perfect fury ; he has no other name for them than 
 
 1 Journal, Moore's Life, v. 104. 
 
 2 It was written in the summer of 1819 and published in May 1821, 
 with a dedication to the Countess (jiuiccioli, though without mention of 
 her name. 
 
 3 MuoiVs Life, iv. 294.
 
 250 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 32. 
 
 Barbarians or Huns. It annoyed although it amused him, 
 that he was a thorn in the side of the Austrian police. 
 In all probability his letters were opened by them ; he at 
 least was convinced of this, and wrote in them, on this 
 very account, the bitterest things against the Austrian 
 Government. The publication of an Italian translation of 
 his ' Childe Harold ' was prohibited in Austrian Italy ; and 
 in Ravenna he thought himself surrounded by their spies, 
 who, according to his account, went so far as even to 
 instigate his assassination. Though the Carbonari might 
 be of one mind in the desire to abolish Austrian rule and 
 to effect the unity of Italy, their views with regard to the 
 form of government to be introduced widely differed. One 
 section was content with constitutional government, while 
 another aspired after a republic. The congresses at 
 Troppau and Laibach, where princes in their blindness 
 decided on the weal and woe of millions, whose will was 
 never consulted, and who undertook to stem the course 
 of the development of events, were, indeed, doing their 
 utmost to lead men's minds to adopt the republican form, 
 of government. The hopes even of Byron of all men 
 the least republican in character were for some time fixed 
 on a general republic. The first manifestations of the 
 movement in Ravenna Byron mentions in a letter to 
 Murray : l ' Last night they have over-written all the city 
 walls with "Up with the Republic!" and "Death to 
 the Pope ! " The police have been, all noon and after, 
 searching for the inscribers, but have caught none as yet. 
 They must have been all night about it, for the " Live 
 Republics " " Death to Popes and Priests," are innu- 
 merable. There is " Down with the Nobility " too ; they 
 are down enough already for that matter.' The latter cry 
 against the nobility clearly showed the split among the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 306-7.
 
 1820.] BYROX A CARBOXARO. 251 
 
 Carbonari ; for a considerable number of the nobility itself 
 were among the most active members and promoters of 
 the league. The conspirators were not, however, con- 
 tent with such threatenings ; they enlisted political murder 
 in their service. Of the assassinations which were per- 
 petrated one occurred immediately before Byron's palace. 
 One evening about eight o'clock (Dec. 9, 1820), just as 
 Byron was about to pay his usual visit to the Contessa, 
 he heard a shot ; his servants rushing to the balcony 
 cried oat that some one had been murdered. 1 Followed 
 by his powerful Venetian gondolier, Tita, Byron ran out 
 into the street, where he found the commandant of the 
 Papal troops, Del Pinto, a brave but most unpopular 
 man, lying on the pavement pierced with five wounds. 
 Soldiers, crowds of people, surrounded him, and an ad- 
 jutant stood weeping and helpless by the side of the 
 dying man, whom no one ventured to assist. Byron 
 caused the wounded man to be lifted by a couple of men 
 and carried into his house, where he soon after expired 
 on Fletcher's bed. According to Medwin, 2 Byron repre- 
 sented the assassination as instigated by the police ; that 
 Del Pinto, though suspected of being a zealous Carbonaro, 
 but too powerful a man to be arrested, was assassin- 
 ated opposite his palace ; that the spot was intentionally 
 chosen for the deed, and that the police protected rather 
 than prosecuted the murderers. The population of Ravenna 
 were not, however, to be disturbed by these precursory 
 symptoms, in their free and easy enjoyment of life in 
 true southern fashion, but gave itself up, as usual to the 
 joys of the Carnival. Even Byron himself was in those 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 37, 38. 
 
 2 Conversations, pp. 38-40. [' The whole of what is put (by Medwin) 
 into Lord Byron's mouth is a romance.' Hobhouse, in the article of the 
 Westmuister Review, Jan. 182o, p. 23.]
 
 252 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. \_JET. 32. 
 
 days chosen to be one of a carnival-party. Earnestness, 
 resolution, and energy, strict discipline and fixed unity of 
 plan, were wanting- to the Carbonari each was ready to 
 shift responsibility on the other. Although Byron offered 
 his palace as a rendezvous and a kind of fortress, they 
 put off the rising from day to day, and preferred to await 
 rather than commence the attack. The Government and 
 their supporters the Sanfedists were, on their side, not less 
 afraid of a decisive step. Reconnaissances were made of 
 the movements of the Austrians, but nothing could ever 
 be positively ascertained. Messages passed to and fro 
 between the different committees, specially those at 
 Bologna and Forli ; plans were concerted ; directions were 
 received from the chiefs, and watchwords were changed 
 for safety's sake but notwithstanding, nothing came of 
 all this. At last, Feb. 4, 1821, the news was brought to 
 Ravenna that ' the Barbarians ' had received the order to 
 march ; but instead of crossing on the 15th, as was generally 
 expected, they crossed the Po on the 7th. Nevertheless 
 the Italian cause was not considered desperate at Ravenna, 
 provided the Neapolitans remained united and firm; 
 although Byron admits, with a shrug of his shoulders, 
 that it was not easy to guess what the Italians would do. 
 When the Government took courage to decree that everyone 
 found with arms in his possession should be punished, fear 
 and despair seized the Ravennese ; they brought back to 
 his house the weapons and ammunition which Byron had 
 given them, without even asking his permission. The 
 miserable issue of the whole movement is known. The 
 Neapolitans were routed by the Austrian army ; the con- 
 stitution which had just been introduced was abolished; 
 and absolute government under the protection of Austrian 
 bayonets was again restored. All Italy accused the 
 Neapolitans of disunion, cowardice, and treason; the ill
 
 1820.] CAKBONAKISM SUPPRESSED. 253 
 
 success of the insurrection, so long prepared, was laid at 
 their door ; they were overwhelmed with all manner of 
 insults. ' Here in Romagna,' writes Byron, in his 
 ' detached thoughts,' ' the efforts were necessarily limited 
 to preparations and good intentions whether " hell will 
 be paved " with those " good " intentions, I know not, 
 but there will probably be good store of Neapolitans 
 to walk upon the pavement, whatever may be its com- 
 position. Slabs of lava from their own mountain, with 
 the bodies of their own d d souls for cement, would be 
 the fittest causeway for Satan's corso.' 1 He is, however, 
 reasonable enough to admit, that a whole nation should not 
 be condemned on account of one province, though he fears 
 that Italy will be thrown back for 500 years into slavery 
 and barbarism; and he tells Moore that 'a fair patriot' 
 (doubtless the Contessa) lamented to him with tears in her 
 eyes, that the Italians must now again return to making 
 operas. 2 
 
 This turn in political affairs was accompanied with results 
 which powerfully reacted on Byron. Against his person, 
 indeed, nothing could be done : he was an Englishman, 
 and moreover a peer; two facts which he never forgot. 
 His participation in Carbonarism had, therefore, demanded 
 little courage, since he knew that he risked nothing. 
 Still he was too much a thorn in the side both of the 
 Austrian and the Papal police and also of the priesthood, 
 that they should not make efforts to get rid of him. The 
 means of effecting their purpose was easily found. Count 
 Garnba and his sons, whose active share in Carbonarism 
 was no secret, were banished, along with many associates 
 in suffering, from the States of the Church, and their 
 possessions so at least Medwin 3 maintains confiscated. 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 152. 2 Ibid. v. 148. 
 
 3 Conversations icith Lord Byron, p. 37. [' heir possessions were pot
 
 254 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 33. 
 
 As, in the deed of separation, the condition had been im- 
 posed on the Countess Guiccioli, that she must either live 
 in her father's house or retire into a cloister, it was 
 foreseen that she, and with her Byron, would follow her 
 banished friends. 
 
 When, therefore, Theresa's father and brother Pietro 
 were ordered, about the middle of July, to leave Ravenna 
 within four and twenty hours Pietro was, indeed, 
 the same night seized by soldiers and carried over the 
 frontiers her condition became desperate, and her letter 
 to Byron entreating his aid is most affecting. 1 To add to 
 her troubles her husband thought the moment exceedingly 
 favourable to force her to return to him or to put her in a 
 convent. Nothing, therefore, was left to her but to fly 
 secretly, and repair, after a short stay in Bologna, to 
 Florence, whither her father and brother had preceded 
 her. Byron invoiced the mediation of the Duchess of 
 Devonshire, then residing in Spaa, to procure at Rome, if 
 possible, the revocation of the order of banishment of the 
 Gambas. The request, though acceded to readily by her 
 Grace, was unsuccessful. Byron still remained in Ravenna, 
 mainly out of defiance, that it might not seem as if he were 
 included in the sentence of banishment, and to make the 
 authorities feel his unassailable position. He had, more- 
 ' over, become so accustomed to Ravenna, that he found it 
 hard to leave the spot ; next to Greece, as he told Medwin, 
 he loved no place so much. 2 With this preference were 
 blended some superstitious presentiments, under the influ- 
 ence of which his removing from Ravenna seemed to him 
 the prelude of much evil both to himself and to the Contessa. 
 The poor of the city presented a petition to the Cardinal 
 
 confiscated.' Hobhouse, in the article of Westminster Review, Jan. 1826, 
 p. 23.] 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, v, 205. 3 Ibid. 32.
 
 1821.] BYRON PREPARES TO LEAVE RAVEXXA. 255 
 
 Legate, entreating him to induce Byron to remain, for he 
 had gained the undivided sympathy of the poorer part 
 of the population ; out of his income, then amounting to 
 4,000?., he had devoted the fourth part to benevolent 
 purposes. 1 He had even contributed frequently to ecclesi- 
 astical, i.e. Catholic objects ; as for instance, to the resto- 
 ration of churches and monasteries, to the improvement 
 of organs, and such like objects. But the very sympathies 
 thus enlisted in his favour necessarily increased the aversion 
 and fear of the spiritual authorities for him, and the well- 
 intentioned petition only threw oil on the flame. Byron's 
 complicity in the aims of Carbonarism was only too well 
 known. Under these circumstances, he at once saw that 
 life in Ravenna could no longer be safe to him ; his friends, 
 specially the Contessa, were truly apprehensive for him. 
 He, nevertheless, still postponed his departure. The choice 
 of another place of abode was difficult. The Garabas 
 had turned their thoughts to Switzerland, and Byron 
 caused enquiries to be made about a country-house near 
 Geneva for them and for himself. But, contrary to the 
 wishes of the Contessa, for whom on this occasion he showed 
 little loving consideration, he changed his opinion, when 
 he came to reflect on the intolerant Calvinism of the 
 Genevese, the swarms of English tourists, the expense of 
 living, his inability to speak French, and other drawbacks 
 to Swiss life. He preferred therefore to remain in Italy, 
 and fixed his eye on Pisa or Lucca as suitable places 
 of residence. In the letters of these days the thought 
 of Greece, and of taking part in the Greek war of liberation, 
 already engaged his attention. Thus the month of July 
 passed away without his coming to a decision. Oppressed 
 and dejected, Byron applied to Shelley, who had settled at 
 
 1 According to Shelley Letters from Abroad, $c., ii. 310 his alms- 
 giving amounted annually to about 100/.
 
 256 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 33. 
 
 Pisa, urgently begging him to come to Ravenna to see 
 him. To this request Shelley unhesitatingly and without 
 loss of time acceded. In compliance with Byron's wish, 
 Shelley wrote fully to the Contessa explaining all the 
 grounds and arguments against Switzerland as a place of 
 residence. Shelley's representations had the desired effect; 
 the Gambas were induced to go to Pisa, and there hired the 
 Lanfranchi Palace, the most beautiful in Pisa, for them- 
 selves and Byron. Though Theresa had bound Shelley 
 not to return from Ravenna without Byron, Shelley was 
 obliged to content himself with Byron's promise that he 
 would follow as soon as possible. He now in reality 
 began to break up his establishment, a work which 
 demanded a considerable time, during which his spirits, 
 depressed from other causes, were made still worse by an 
 attack of fever. At last, October 29, he began his journey, 
 and, according to Medwin's account, with seven servants, 
 five carriages, nine horses, a monkey, a bull-dog and a 
 mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls, and some hens. 1 It 
 was on the road between Imola and Bologna where 
 the accidental meeting took place of which mention has 
 before been made with the friend of his youth, Lord 
 Clare, whom he had not seen for seven or eight years. 
 ' This meeting,' says Byron, ' annihilated for a moment 
 all the years between the present time and the days of 
 Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like 
 rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agi- 
 tated more in appearance than was myself; for I could 
 feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, 
 it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. . . 
 We were but five minutes together, and on the public 
 road ; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence 
 
 1 Conversations with Lord Iiyronj p. 2.
 
 1821.] BYRON AT PISA. 257 
 
 which could be weighed against them.' 1 In Bologna 
 Byron by appointment met Rogers, who was returning 
 from Venice. After enjoying a day's rest they crossed 
 the Apennines together and proceeded to Florence, 2 from 
 whence Rogers continued his journey to the south. 3 
 
 The Countess Guiccioli had meantime made the Casa 
 Lanfranchi as comfortable as possible for her friend, with 
 whom she was now again to live under the same roof. 
 The separation from her husband having been formally 
 completed, she could now consider herself absolved from 
 scruples which had previously bound her. The condition, 
 which still subsisted, that she should live in her father's 
 house, does not appear to have been observed ; he seems, 
 rather, to have lived in another house. The Palazzo 
 Lanfranchi, built, it was supposed, by Michael Angelo, 
 with its fayade of unhewn marble, lay with its charming 
 garden on the Lung Arno, and had this peculiar source of 
 delight to Byron, that almost all the rooms were thought 
 to be haunted, so that the servants, especially Fletcher, 
 with difficulty mastered their fears. Lanfranchi had been 
 one of the persecutors of Ugolino, 4 and in punishment for 
 this his spirit was supposed to walk about at night. A 
 picture of Ugolino and his sons hung in Byron's room. 5 As 
 at Ravenna so now at Pisa, Byron loved the poetical back- 
 ground of his place of residence, while its historical monu- 
 ments and recollections left him cold and untouched : thus 
 he mentions neither the Campo Santo, nor the Baptistery, 
 
 1 ' Detached Thoughts.' Moore's Life, v. 278. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, v. 278. 
 
 3 This meeting with Byron, Rogers beautifully describes in his poem 
 ' Italy.' Some persons, however, have been malicious enough to say, that 
 Byron so managed matters, that he and his friend passed through the 
 most beautiful scenery in the dark. See Athetuzum, May 16, 18G8, p. 687. 
 
 4 The story of Ugolino is told not only in Dante but in Chaucer's 
 Canterbury Tales. 
 
 5 Medwin's Conversation', p. 3. 
 
 S
 
 258 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi: 33. 
 
 nor the leaning tower, nor does he say a word about 
 Galileo; and yet the desolate majesty and grandeur of 
 Pisa must have made a far deeper impression on him than 
 on Leigh Hunt, who in 'The Liberal' 1 has given a very 
 commonplace description of it. 
 
 Byron's mode of life in Pisa maintained the same 
 character of perverse irregularity as before. He used to 
 breakfast about two o'clock; between three and four the 
 friends arrived, who were wont to accompany him in his 
 rides ; after first playing a game at billiards, they drove 
 to the gates of the city, where they mounted their horses. 
 Their ride usually extended to the Cascine and the pine 
 forest, which, as at Ravenna, extended to the sea. On 
 the east side of the town Byron afterwards found a Podere 
 or farm, 2 which had great charms for him, partly on 
 account of a beautiful girl who lived there, partly because 
 he could indulge his favourite pastime of pistol- shooting. 
 In spite of the violent trembling of his hand he was the 
 most unerring shot of them all next to him came Shelley 
 and felt as much childish joy when he made a good shot 
 as vexation when he made a bad one. Even in this diver- 
 sion he could endure no rival. Towards sunset they re- 
 turned to the city ; and half an hour after sunset, followed 
 the so-called dinner; he then devoted two hours to the 
 Contessa, and he read and wrote during the greater part 
 of the night. 
 
 I sing by night sometimes an owl, 
 And now and then a nightingale ; 
 
 so he says in 'Don Juan.' 3 In these hours of the night 
 he finished at Pisa 'Werner' and the 'Deformed Trans- 
 
 1 Letters from Abroad. Liberal, i. 97-120. John Hunt, London, 
 1822. 
 * Moore's Life, v. 357. s Canto xv. 97.
 
 1821.] BYRON'S MODE OF LIFE AT PISA. 259 
 
 formed,' and wrote from, the fourth to the eleventh canto 
 of ' Don Juan.' 
 
 In one respect only his life at Pisa differed from his 
 life at Ravenna ; at Pisa he became the centre of a circle 
 of English friends, which led him to greater sociability 
 and hospitality. He returned even to the idea of 
 getting up an amateur theatre, and particularly wished 
 
 * Othello ' to be performed, proposing to take the part 
 of lago himself. The plan, however, came to nothing, 
 owing to the opposition of the Contessa. Social inter- 
 course in his house differed in nothing from the usual 
 intercourse of society; least of all had it a literary 
 character. One result of these parties at Pisa was, 
 that on them Captain Medwin grounded his notorious 
 
 * Conversations with Lord Byron.' It has been already 
 mentioned that Shelley had been for some time a resi- 
 dent at Pisa ; at a later period, besides Medwin, Captain 
 Williams, Trelawny, Taaffe, and Leigh Hunt with his 
 family, arrived for a longer residence. Hobhouse also 
 paid him a visit at Pisa ; his sudden arrival affected Byron 
 almost as much as his unexpected meeting with Lord 
 Clare. 1 Too many of the acquaintances formed at this 
 period contributed only to produce complications and 
 embarrassments of the gravest kind to Byron, and it 
 seemed as if the presentiments which he felt on leaving 
 Ravenna were only too soon to be verified. To begin with 
 the least important member of the group, with the Irish- 
 man Taaffe : he was dull and tiresome, a butt for the 
 raillery of his countrymen, and was devoured with the 
 vanity of appearing as an author. Byron, the Countess 
 Guiccioli tells us, 2 was the only one who did not turn him 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 360. 
 
 3 Recollections of Lord Byron, English translation, ii. 287. 
 s 2
 
 260 LIFE OF LOED BYBON. [vEr. 31. 
 
 into ridicule, because he respected him for his sincerity 
 and earnestness in his work. He had composed a heavy 
 and mediocre commentary on the ' Divina Commedia,' 
 for which Byron endeavoured to procure him a publisher. 
 ' He will die,' he writes to Murray, ' if he is not published ; 
 he will be damned if he is ; but that he don't mind.' ! 
 Writing to Moore, he says, ' do tell Murray, that one of 
 the conditions of peace is, that he publisheth or obtameth 
 a publisher for Taaf'e's Commentary on Dante. It will 
 make the man so exuberantly happy.' 2 With the others 
 Taaffe joined the riding parties of Byron ; but he 
 was a bad rider and fell sometimes from his horse. 
 One day (March 24, 1822), when the whole party were 
 about to ride through the gate of the city on their return 
 home, a corporal of dragoons overtook them, and dashed 
 through the midst of them. 3 He came in collision with 
 Taafe, whose horse shied, and almost threw the great 
 Dante commentator. In order to escape from their jokes 
 at his awkwardness, and to throw the whole blame on 
 the corporal, he turned to Byron with the question, 
 * Are we to endure the insolence of this man ? ' * No, we 
 will call him to account,' replied Byron, and, followed by 
 his companions, galloped after him. They overtook 
 him just before the gate, and Byron asked him what 
 he meant by the insult ? The dragoon replied with the 
 coarsest abuse, and probably also drew his sabre. The 
 guard at the gate, believing the man in danger, rushed 
 out with muskets and bayonets, and although unable to 
 stop Byron, the soldiers seized the bridles of the horses of 
 
 1 Mtore's Life, v. 323. 
 
 2 A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante, by * * *. Italy, with 
 Bodoni types. London, 1822. Murray. The first volume only was 
 published. 
 
 3 According to Shelley, Essays, Letters from Abroad, #c., ii. 342, the 
 tnan was drunk.
 
 1822.] DISTURBANCE AT PISA. 2G1 
 
 his friends, and began to assault them furiously. Shelley 
 received a sabre-cut on his head, which threw him from his 
 horse. The corporal had meantime galloped up the Lung 
 Arno. Byron, who because of his wearing a medal took 
 him for an officer, rode after him, demanded his name, 
 throwing him his glove as a challenge ; he then rode 
 back to the gate to the aid of his friends. Meantime a 
 great crowd had gathered together ; Byron's servants (the 
 Lanfranchi Palace was at no great distance from the gate) 
 rushed out to the scene, and one of them wounded the 
 corporal rather dangerously in the side. ' I have some 
 rough-handed folks about,' adds Byron in a letter to Scott, 1 
 not without a touch of svvagger. The police were of course 
 soon at the spot, and began a very searching examination ; 
 two of Byron's servants were put in prison, but notwith- 
 standing all their enquiries, and although the circumstance 
 took place in the light of day, in the most populous street 
 of the city, it could never be ascertained by whom and with 
 what weapon the dragoon had been wounded. Byron, in 
 opposition to his friends, attributed far too much import- 
 ance to the affair. Mrs. Shelley, indeed, though she says 
 that Mr. Dawkins, the English consul at Florence, approved 
 of Byron's procedure, does not hesitate to express her own 
 opinion, that not much credit was to be got from such a 
 brawl. Copies of all the depositions taken in the course 
 of the investigation of the affair were sent to Leigh Hunt 
 in London, for publication in the ' Examiner,' in order to 
 obviate any misrepresentations. Although to all appear- 
 ance adjusted, this affair laid the foundation of the banish- 
 ment of the Gamba family out of Tuscany. 2 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 331. 
 
 2 See the deposition in the Appendix to Medwin's Conversatiotis, 
 p. 443 et scq. Relics of Shelley, ed. by R. Garnett. London, 1862, p. 109 j 
 E. J. Trelawny's Recollections, $c. London, 1838, p. 113 et seq.
 
 262 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^ET. 34. 
 
 Lord Byron's acquaintance with Leigh Hunt led to 
 complications yet more unpleasant, though of a different 
 kind. In the year 1813, Leigh Hunt in his capacity of 
 editor of the ' Examiner,' a weekly periodical, had been 
 sentenced to two years' imprisonment for a libel on the 
 Prince Kegent, and thus came to be regarded as the 
 standard-bearer and martyr of liberalism. Byron, accom- 
 panied by Moore, paid him a visit (in the month of May 
 of that year) in Horsemonger-lane Gaol, where he was im- 
 prisoned. Hunt had furnished his cell with every comfort 
 and elegance ; his friends and the members of his party 
 vying with each other in contributing to its decoration. 
 Byron accepted an invitation to dine with Hunt, and was 
 delighted with his new acquaintance. ' He reminds me/ 
 he says, 'of the Pym and Hampden times;' he admired 
 his talent and independence of character. ' If he goes on 
 qualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more 
 praise or obtain it. He is the bigot of virtue (not reli- 
 gion) and enamoured of the beauty of that " empty name." 
 He is perhaps a little opinionated, as all men who are 
 the centre of circles, wide or narrow, must be but withal a 
 valuable man, and less vain than success and even the 
 consciousness of preferring " the right to the expedient " 
 might excuse.' ! Time, however, produced considerable 
 modifications in this enthusiastic estimate; in a letter 
 written from Venice (June 1, 1818) to Moore, 2 Hunt is 
 described as ' a great coxcomb, with some poetical elements 
 in his chaos, but spoilt by the Christ Church Hospital and 
 a Sunday newspaper to say nothing of the Surrey Gaol 
 which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good 
 man.' In his second letter against Bowles, written in 
 1821 at Ravenna, Byron, while calling Leigh Hunt his 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 28fi. 2 Works, iv. 103.
 
 1822.] BYRON'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH LEIGH HUNT. 263 
 
 friend, and admitting him to be a gentleman, described 
 him as the ' head of the shabby-genteel vulgar cockney 
 school.' l In the year 1816 Hunt dedicated to Byron his 
 story of ' Rimini,' but the unbecoming, familiar tone of 
 the dedication elicited general disapprobation. When the 
 separation took place Hunt was one of the few journalists 
 who had the courage to take Byron's part, a service 
 which the latter highly esteemed : and when Byron left 
 England he bid him adieu in a poem. At the instigation 
 of Shelley, who was a zealous patron and friend of Hunt, 
 Byron now invited him to come to Pisa, because he 
 hoped to find in Hunt the fitting instrument for carrying 
 out a plan which he had very much at heart. 2 
 
 For some time Byron had cherished the thought of 
 editing a journal, or at least of taking an active part in 
 such a work. This idea he first communicated, and at 
 considerable length, to Moore (December 25, 1820), who 
 was then living at Paris, and endeavoured to gain him 
 over to the scheme. They were both to return to London 
 such was the plan for in London only could such an 
 undertaking be carried out. If the thing were taken up 
 in earnest and otherwise it would not succeed their 
 journal would soon throw the productions of mediocrity 
 into the shade, and bring in such profitable returns, 
 that Moore would not only be able to pay off his debts, 
 but live with his family in ease and comfort ; that they 
 
 1 Life and Works, vi. 411. 
 
 3 On Byron's connection with Hunt the most various and perplexing 
 statements have been put forth. Byron himself represents it falsely, 
 when he asserts, that he had been pressed by Hunt and his brother, and 
 had, in an unlucky moment, yielded to them. Shelley's letter to Hunt, 
 written immediately after his return from Ravenna and which contains 
 Byron's invitation, is given in the second volume of Shelley's Essays and 
 Letters from Abroad, p. 325 et seq. ; and also in Hunt's Byron and his 
 Contemporaries.
 
 264 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [^Ex. 34. 
 
 would have the pleasantest occupation and much fun 
 and amusement. Their names, though they might he sus- 
 pected, were of course to be kept secret. He even thought 
 of a title for the still unborn journal, proposing to call it 
 ' La Tenda Eossa ' or ' I Carbonari : ' l the former name 
 being an allusion to the red tent, by which Tamerlane 
 is said to have warned his enemies before he offered 
 them battle. Moore was, however, by no means inclined 
 to join in the project : he knew Byron too well to engage 
 in such a connection, and the motives which impelled 
 Byron to such a venture were wanting to Moore. In 
 his notorious work on ' Byron and his Contemporaries,' 
 Hunt avers, that Byron promised himself mountains of 
 gold from the projected journal, this being his chief induce- 
 ment in seeking to establish it. But gain, if it were an 
 inducement at all, was at any rate a very subordinate one. 
 Byron's motives in the matter were of a very different 
 character ; nor are they difficult to be discovered, although 
 he afterwards deceived himself and others about them. 
 One thought above all others tortured him ; he imagined 
 that his fame was waning, that he was beginning to be for- 
 gotten in England. He frequently expressed this to Moore, 
 who always endeavoured to talk him out of such an appre- 
 hension. The hominum volitare per era had become with 
 Byron a necessity and a passion ; his vanity allowed him 
 no rest, if he were not, from some cause or another, the 
 subject of daily conversation. This end was evidently best 
 to be attained by the editing of a journal highly seasoned 
 with wit and sarcasm, and of the powers requisite for the 
 task Byron possessed superabundant command. He had 
 for some time been perplexed how to publish those of his 
 works which were so offensive to English tastes, 'Don 
 Juan,' ( Cain,' the ' Vision of Judgment,' the * Mystery of 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 41, 42.
 
 1822.] ORIGIN OF 'THE LIBERAL.' 265 
 
 Heaven and Hell.' Murray, his usual publisher, had be- 
 come timid, and many of his literary advisers appear to 
 have strengthened his apprehensions. Though he did not 
 venture positively to refuse to publish them, he repeatedly, 
 to Byron's great vexation, allowed his manuscripts to lie 
 in hand for an unusual time, and hence arose differences 
 and misunderstandings between poet and publisher. In 
 one or two cases Byron actually had recourse to another 
 publisher or Murray availed himself of the services of 
 another firm. These vexations and difficulties would be 
 surmounted at a stroke, as soon as Byron had the control 
 of a journal the editor and publisher of which would not 
 presume to entertain such scruples, but would natur- 
 ally welcome his thoughts and opinions whatever direc- 
 tion they might take. The labours of editor, properly 
 speaking, Byron neither could nor would undertake ; for 
 this office he desired to select Moore, and when Moore 
 declined it, he offered it to Leigh Hunt. Byron's friends, 
 Moore and Hobhouse particularly, warned him against 
 such a connection, considering it unbecoming his position 
 both in society and literature ; Murray, also, and Gifford 
 shook their beads in disapprobation. They all evidently 
 knew the characters both of Byron and Leigh Hunt too 
 well not to see, that such an alliance must very soon 
 become a source of dissatisfaction and strife on both sides. 
 Byron, however, was obstinate, and was the less to be 
 moved from his plan as Shelley had proposed it to him. 
 Shelley was far too childlike in character to understand 
 rightly men like Hunt and Byron, and was far too liberal 
 a.nd ready with sacrifices in assisting the former in his 
 depressed circumstances, not merely according to, but 
 beyond his ability. From the manner in which he acted, 
 as well as from the judgments he expressed, it is evi- 
 dent that he over-estimated Hunt both as a man and as
 
 266 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [^T. 34. 
 
 a poet. 1 Hunt's connection with Byron commenced with a 
 falsehood. Byron acted in the belief that Hunt continued 
 to be editor of the * Examiner,' and his brother John the 
 proprietor of it; this connection of the two brothers 
 was a circumstance undoubtedly of very considerable 
 weight in his plan. He would thus have secured a 
 dominant influence over a weekly journal of great re- 
 spectability and of wide circulation, which had loyally 
 stood by him in literary and other feuds. Shelley, too, 
 acted on the same supposition. 2 In a letter of January 
 22, 1822, he enquires as to Hunt's regular income from 
 the ' Examiner,' and adds, that he (Hunt) ought not to 
 leave England without having the certainty of an inde- 
 pendent position in this point. Hunt, on the other hand, 
 entirely gave up, and, as it appears, of his own accord and 
 without any sufficient ground, all connection with the 
 * Examiner,' and the income which he might have 
 derived from it. With unparalleled levity he staked 
 his own and his family's subsistence on the doubtful 
 success of an undertaking, which had not even been 
 ushered into the world. How great must have been 
 the surprise and vexation of Byron and Shelley, when, 
 on Hunt's arrival at Pisa, they learned the true state 
 of the case, and saw that he had deprived himself of all 
 and every means of support ! They would have been 
 very ready to assist him ; now they had to maintain 
 him. Shelley had sent him 150Z. to defray the expenses 
 of his voyage as he himself says, almost everything he 
 
 1 Compare Relics of Shelley, edited by R. Garnett, p. 51 et seq. Shelley 
 dedicated his tragedy of the Cenci to Hunt. 
 
 3 In a letter of June 29, 1822, Shelley had a presentiment, that the 
 connection between Byron and Hunt would not turn out well, and re- 
 fused to concern himself further in the matter. Essays, Letters, $c., ii. 
 355.
 
 1822.J LEIGH HUNT IN ITALY. 267 
 
 could scrape together. Byron, too, had sent, on Shelley's 
 security, 200Z. This sum reached London only after 
 Hunt's departure, and was employed, it would appear, by 
 his friends to clear the debts he had left behind him. 
 Byron, who occupied only the upper floor of his palace, 
 gave Hunt the use of the lower, which was unoccupied, 
 furnishing it also for him at his own expense. Shelley 
 and his wife managed his housekeeping. How far these 
 friendly acts were meant as presents or as advances, cannot 
 well be ascertained. Altogether, the pecuniary relations 
 between Hunt on the one hand, and Byron and Shelley 
 on the other, are of so complicated a nature, that it 
 appears almost impossible to understand clearly how 
 matters stood, and Shelley's sudden death still further 
 increased the confusion. But it is labour misspent to 
 continue the investigations of this matter ; it is sufficient 
 to say, that it was the source of bitterness and vexation 
 to all concerned, and the occasion of mutual recrimina- 
 tion. What were Hunt's thoughts on these pecuniary 
 relations, he has very frankly expressed ; he thought it a 
 great proof of friendship on his part, that he permitted 
 himself to accept the rich gifts of his friends : in fact, 
 he almost lived at the expense of his friends, and received 
 presents as services which were due to him. He had. 
 moreover, no knowledge of business; he was frivolous 
 and inconstant, weak and vain, and without the love of 
 labour. Dickens has, it is generally admitted, portrayed 
 him as Harold Skimpole in * Bleak House.' 
 
 Hunt, with his family, landed (at the end of June, or 
 the beginning of July, 1822) at Leghorn, and was received 
 there by Trelawny, who commanded the ' Bolivar,' J a 
 yacht which had been built for Byron at Genoa. Byron 
 
 1 Williams (Shelley's Essays, #<?., /row* Abroad, ii. 351) praises the 
 ' Bolivar' as the prettiest craft he had ever seen.
 
 268 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JK-r. 34. 
 
 himself, along with the Contessa, and her brother Pietro, 
 had been residing for five or six weeks at the Villa Kossa 
 on the Montenero, 1 a hill three or four miles from Leghorn, 
 to enjoy the breezes of summer. Shelley also was enjoy- 
 ing the fresh sea breezes at Lerici. Shortly after his 
 arrival, Hunt paid his first visit to Byron a day doubly 
 eventful as it proved to the poet for it was the com- 
 mencement of his entanglement with Leigh Hunt, and 
 that on which one of those servants, who often involved 
 him in difficulties, made a murderous attack on Count 
 Pietro Gamba, wounding him, though not seriously, on 
 the face. Hunt found the whole house in fear, dread, and 
 confusion ; Byron himself alone attempting to calm the 
 others and to take matters easy. The man, indeed, soon, 
 repented, began to sob and moan, and offered at last to 
 kiss Byron as a sign of forgiveness, which the latter 
 naturally refused; but by this accident the position of 
 Byron and the Gambas already very much compromised 
 to the Tuscan Government became quite untenable. On 
 the news of Hunt's arrival, Shelley came to Leghorn and 
 accompanied his friend and family to Pisa, and introduced 
 them to the apartments which had been prepared for them 
 in the Lanfranchi Palace. Meantime Byron also returned to 
 Pisa. The way in which he received Mrs. Hunt is said to 
 have been shameful : 2 he scarcely bowed, did not speak 
 to her, and hardly deigned to notice her. Mrs. Hunt 
 felt this the more acutely as she was exhausted by the 
 voyage and in a suffering condition, and was soon obliged 
 
 1 At this villa on the Montenero Byron and the Contessa sat for their 
 portraits to the American painter West. The likeness of Byron, the 
 Contessa thinks, and Byron shared in her opinion, a miserable caricature. 
 Byron could give the artist only two or three sitting , and West after- 
 wards finished the picture from memory. It may here be added, that 
 Byron sat for his bust to the Florentine sculptor Bertolini, which Medwin 
 commends as being exceedingly like and prefers it to Thorwaldsen's. 
 
 2 Trelawny's Ri-cullections, p. Ill et seq.
 
 18-2-2.} PREMONITIONS OF DIFFICULTIES WITH THE HUNTS. 269 
 
 to seek medical advice. 1 She was introduced to the Countess 
 Guiccioli, but only casually, nor was the approach to 
 further intimacy made easy to her. The two ladies could 
 not understand each other, Mrs. Hunt knowing nothing 
 of Italian and taking no pains to learn it, and, per- 
 haps, they had not the best opinion of each other. Their 
 six children were a constant annoyance to Byron, while 
 Hunt on his side thought (or aifected to think) that Byron 
 instilled mischievous principles into them. Thus the in- 
 compatibility of this connection was displayed from its 
 very commencement. Hunt believed that, because he lived 
 in Byron's house and was to be engaged with him in a 
 common literary undertaking, he might put himself on 
 terms of intimacy and equality with him ; and Byron, 
 probably not in the tenderest manner, repelled this assump- 
 tion. Like some men of rank, Byron permitted himself to 
 be familiar with others, though he did not approve the 
 like freedom in them. Following the advice of Shelley, 
 who always punctiliously observed the forms and pro- 
 prieties of society, Hunt in addressing Byron, addressed 
 him with his title, which previously he had failed to do, 
 even in dedicating his poem to Byron. Probably he now 
 went to the other extreme, so that Byron teazed him 
 about it, but could not make him desist. Byron 
 often used the nickname given him by Shelley, Leontius 
 (Leigh Huntius). Hunt was one of those men who 
 brooked no superior either socially or intellectually ; 
 while Byron would recognise no one, with the single 
 exception of Moore, as his equal who was not of equal 
 birth. Hunt afterwards admitted in his 'Autobiography,' 
 
 1 The Italian physician, who was called in, pronounced Mrs. Hunt's 
 case hopeless, and communicated his opinion to her husband. We may 
 easily imagine, that so gloomy a prospect must have greatly depressed 
 Hunt's feelings. Compare SMky's Essays, $c., ii. 358.
 
 270 LIFE OF LORD BYRON, [JE T . 34. 
 
 that he had been jealously sensitive of his position, and 
 that Byron was justified in taking offence ; and that alto- 
 gether he was wanting in compliance with and respect for 
 Byron. Hunt often presumed to say to him things inten- 
 tionally disagreeable, imagining rudeness to be frankness. 
 With natures so different there could not fail to be diffe- 
 rences of opinion ; but Byron hated disputation, and 
 Hunt would not suppress or even modify the divergence 
 of his views ; and worst of all, the weaker sides of Byron's 
 character were those alone on which Hunt meanly and 
 basely allowed himself to dwell. It may be true that 
 Byron exposed himself to the reproach of Ophelia's words : 
 
 Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind; 1 
 
 but his readiness to help Hunt was speedily checked by 
 the discovery that presents were only like a drop in the 
 ocean to Hunt, who had neither the will nor the power 
 to do anything for himself. Thus the blame must be 
 shared by both : a relation between two individuals, in 
 which the one considered himself socially and intellectually 
 on an equality with the other, although absolutely de- 
 pendent on him for support, and who was meant to serve 
 only as a tool with respect to his literary labours, was 
 without a sound or stable foundation, nor could it lead 
 to a happy termination. 
 
 Such were the circumstances under which the journal, so 
 long projected, was published, with a title ' The Liberal,' 
 somewhat tame, in comparison with those originally 
 proposed by Byron. Hunt's brother, John, whom he 
 termed * a stiff, sturdy, conscientious man,' 2 was the 
 publisher. William Hazlitt, who after Shelley's death 
 was secured as a contributor in his place, superintended 
 the editorial department in London, a position which 
 
 1 JIamlet, act iii. sc. 1. 2 Moore's Life, v. 374.
 
 1822.] THE PUBLICATION OF 'THE LIBERAL.' 271 
 
 accounts perhaps for his taking Hunt's part against Byron, 
 when the journal ceased to appear. Byron made over to 
 Hunt without any honorarium all the pieces which Murray 
 hesitated to publish. The first number opened with 
 Byron's ' Vision of Judgment ; ' and thus at its commence- 
 ment, the fate of the new journal with the English public 
 was sealed. Even Hunt considered it objectionable. He 
 had not seen it till it was printed, the manuscript having 
 been sent by Murray, without passing through his hands, 
 to the publisher, John Hunt. He afterwards, in his 
 'Autobiography,' praises this poem as the finest satire 
 since Pope. Shelley contributed a translation of the 
 Brocken scene from * Faust.' The remaining articles 
 were chiefly furnished by Hunt and Hazlitt: there was 
 scarcely another contributor. Moore's co-operation, 
 though earnestly desired, could not be secured. Hunt 
 says, that he himself wrote nearly the half of the whole, 
 but pleads his feeble health as an excuse for the 
 weakness of these contributions. The principles of ' The 
 Liberal ' were enunciated in the preface : it professed to 
 pay homage to genius alone, and to respect neither rank 
 nor legitimacy, nor tradition ; but this utter disregard of 
 all political, social, and religious relations could not but 
 excite general displeasure. To add to this, as Shelley 
 was removed by death from the undertaking, even before 
 the first part appeared, and Byron soon ceased to take 
 any interest in it, 'The Liberal' had but a miserable 
 existence, and ended its short career with the fourth 
 number. The four parts collected together were not 
 published till Byron and Hunt had settled at Genoa. 
 
 The sea, which Shelley loved if possible more passionately 
 than Byron, was destined to be the scene of his death. 
 After seeing Hunt settled at Pisa, he returned to his villa 
 at Lerici, from whence he sailed in the boat which was
 
 272 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Jvr. 34. 
 
 built for him at Genoa on the 1st of July, accompanied 
 by Captain Edward Elliker Williams and a seaman of the 
 name of Vivian, to Leghorn, with the intention, Hunt 
 states, of making his will there. At noon of the 8th of 
 this month they left Leghorn to return to Lerici, steering 
 with a favourable wind straight for Spezzia. Trelawny 
 in the 'Bolivar' intended to accompany them for a part of 
 the voyage, but as he had to submit his papers to the 
 police of the harbour, he preferred to anchor again, and 
 watched his friend's boat until it disappeared in the clouds 
 on the horizon. 1 A fearful storm arose from the south-west, 
 tearing up the previously placid sea to its depths, but soon 
 fell again, so that in the evening there was a profound 
 calm. Trelawny expected that, under these circumstances, 
 Shelley would have returned to Leghorn ; when, however, 
 he failed to appear, he became apprehensive and insti- 
 tuted enquiries at Lerici, whether he had arrived there. 
 Nothing having been heard of him his fears increased ; 
 renewed search was made along the coast, but still without 
 any success ; at length it was ascertained that the small 
 boat, two water-casks, and some other articles belonging 
 to the yacht, had been washed up at Via Reggio. Eight 
 days of anxiety elapsed before the bodies of Shelley and 
 Captain Williams were cast ashore at the same place. 
 The corpse of the seaman Vivian was found about three 
 weeks afterwards in the neighbourhood of Massa. The last 
 published volume of Keats' poems was found open in the 
 
 1 Leigh Hunt's son, in a remark added to the second edition of his 
 father's autobiography, mentions the following story as current at Leghorn. 
 An Italian vessel is said to have followed Shelley and to have attacked 
 him with the intention of plunder, as it was known that a considerable 
 sum of money was on board his boat ; that in the collision of the two 
 vessels, Shelley's sank, and that the Italian left it to its fate, in order 
 not to be accused of the crime. It was also said that Shelley's boat had 
 a large hole in the stern, which could only be explained by a collision.
 
 1822.] THE BURNING OF SHELLEY'S BODY. 273 
 
 pocket of Shelley's coat, who appears to have met death 
 with that stoical composure, which he had before dis- 
 played in the face of danger on the Lake of Geneva. As 
 the bodies were in a state of decomposition, and it was 
 difficult to convey them to a Protestant place of burial 
 the Quarantine laws also, which required the burning of 
 every thing washed up by the sea, presented obstacles to 
 this it was determined to burn the remains, after the 
 manner of the ancients, on the shore a resolution which 
 would, as his friends thought, be in complete accordance 
 with Shelley's peculiar VICAVS. The consent of the autho- 
 rities having been obtained, and the requisite materials 
 procured, Trelawny, who w r as the principal manager and 
 conductor of the business, began his operations on August 
 15 under a burning summer sun. On this day Williams' 
 body was burned (it does not appear that Byron and 
 Hunt were present at the ceremony) ; and the ashes 
 having been collected were afterwards conveyed to Eng- 
 land. On the following day, in the presence of Byron, 
 Hunt, and Medwin, the burning of Shelley's remains took 
 place. In spite of the frankincense and wine, which were 
 poured on the funeral pile, and notwithstanding the 
 poetical descriptions which these friends have attempted 
 to give of the scene, the impressions excited must have 
 been horrible, and Trelawny's vivid description is well 
 suited to cure every reader of the thought, that cremation 
 should ever be substituted for burial in the earth. Hunt 
 admits it was a horrible spectacle, worthy of a German 
 ballad, and desires never again to have such a waking 
 dream. The reckless and adventurous Trelawny was the 
 only one whose nerves could bear the dreadful scene ; 
 Byron and Hunt, far from taking any active part, re- 
 mained seated in the carriage, and were forced to avert 
 their faces. As soon as the process of burning was over, 
 
 T
 
 274 LIFE OF LORI) BYRON. [JET. 34. 
 
 Byron, notwithstanding 1 the heat of the mid-day sun, swam 
 to his yacht, which was anchored at some distance off; an 
 imprudence which brought on an attack of fever on the 
 following day. When he drove back with Hunt through 
 the pine wood to Pisa, they broke out into forced and 
 spasmodic merriment ; they laughed, they sang, they 
 shouted, merely to banish the sense of the horrible just 
 as Hamlet seeks to overcome the fear of his father's ghost 
 by irreverent jests. Such revulsion of feeling was not 
 unknown to Byron ; who in the ' Corsair ' says : 
 
 Strange though it seem yet with extremes! grief 
 Is link'd a mirth it doth not bring relief 
 That playfulness of sorrow ne'er beguiles, 
 And smiles in bitterness but still it smiles ; 
 And sometimes with the wisest and the beat, 
 Till even the scaffold echoes with their jest ! 
 Yet not the joy to which it seems akin 
 It may deceive all hearts save that within. 1 
 
 The whole proceeding was very differently judged and 
 excited an unpleasant sensation : to the Tuscan Govern- 
 ment it was a new embarrassment. The urn with Shelley's 
 ashes was deposited in the Protestant burial ground at 
 Rome near the pyramid of Cestins, by the side of Keats and 
 of a child of his own who died before him ; in that ceme- 
 tery, of which Shelley in the preface to his * Adonais ' said, 
 'that it might make one in love with death, to think that 
 one should be buried in so sweet a place.' 
 
 In consequence of the affair with the corporal of dragoons 
 at Pisa and the murderous attack on Pietro Gamba at 
 Montenero, the Gambas, father and son, had been banished 
 from Tuscany, 2 and Byron, accompanied by the Contessa, 
 had now again to prepare to follow them. While residing 
 
 1 Canto ii. 13. 
 
 3 According to Williams (Shelley's Essays, $c. from Abroad, ii. 356), 
 the Gamba family received the order to leave Tuscany at Leghorn, 
 July 2.
 
 1822.] FYRON REMOVES TO GENOA. 275 
 
 at Montenero, he had turned his thoughts to America 
 and made particular enquiries about South America ' the 
 land of Bolivar.' During a visit to the American squadron 
 at anchor in the harbour of Leghorn, he was received with 
 so much honour and respect, that he was greatly taken 
 with the Americans, and professed, that he would rather 
 get a bow from an American than a snuff-box from an 
 Emperor. But the answer to his enquiries was so dis- 
 suasive, that he entirely renounced the thought, especially 
 when he came to consider his mistress and friend, whom he 
 intended to take with him. Once more he began to think 
 of Greece ; but the state of that country was so unpromis- 
 ing, that he dared not expose the Contessa to its priva- 
 tions and dangers. Switzerland, too, was again considered, 
 and even the wild scheme of having the ' Bolivar ' brought 
 by Trelawny by land (over the Alps !) to the lake of Geneva 
 was talked of. 1 So at last he decided for Genoa, whither 
 the father and brother of Theresa had already repaired. 
 In the suburb of Albaro, Mrs. Shelley hired for Byron 
 and the Gambas a spacious house, the Villa Saluzzo, lying 
 amid vineyards and olive woods ; while another residence, 
 Casa Negroto, was taken by the same lady for herself and 
 the Hunts. 2 The removal to Genoa was effected towards 
 the end of September, but in a manner exceedingly 
 characteristic of Byron. Though he paid the travelling 
 expenses of Hunt and his family, he refused to travel 
 in their company. They met, however, at Lerici, where 
 Byron was detained for four days by illness 'in the 
 worst inn's worst room.' Accompanied by Trelawny, 
 who acted as the agent, and manager for Byron, Hunt 
 
 1 Shelley's Essays, #c., ii. 359. 
 
 2 Walter Savage Landor, the celebrated author of The Imaginary 
 Conversations, occupied a third villa in Albaro, Casa Pallavicini; he does 
 not seem, however, to have formed any intimacy with Byron, on the 
 contrary he was filled with aversion both to him and his poetry.
 
 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JEt. 35. 
 
 visited the lonely and romantically situated Villa Magni, 
 which Shelley had once occupied. From Lerici Byron and 
 the Contessa went in his own boat to Sestri; Trelawny 
 with the baggage followed in the ' Bolivar,' and Hunt with 
 his family in a felucca. From Sestri to Genoa, the latter 
 portion of the journey, the whole party travelled by land, 
 but again separately. These travelling arrangements show 
 how much the intimacy between Byron and Hunt had 
 cooled. At Genoa they met, according to Byron's account, 
 only when matters of business required it; Hunt, how- 
 ever, represents their intercourse somewhat more favour- 
 ably. With ' The Liberal ' Byron had ceased to have any 
 connection ; he had at least so far attained his end he 
 had published the poems about which Murray hesitated, 
 and had excited great sensation by them. Instead of 
 working for ' The Liberal ' he now worked at ' Don Juan,' 
 and during the months of January and February 1823, he 
 wrote also the 'Age of Bronze' and 'the Island.' 
 
 With the Blessington family, then residing at Genoa, 
 which was on intimate terms with Moore, and had been 
 introduced to him by Moore, Byron formed an agreeable 
 and pleasant intimacy. The Earl of Blessington was a 
 somewhat insignificant but good-natured old gentleman, 
 much tormented with the gout ; the Countess, his second 
 wife, a beautiful, most agreeable, and intellectual lady, and 
 also an authoress ; their travelling companion, afterwards 
 their son-in-law, was Count Alfred D'Orsay, the pattern of 
 a French dandy and a Cupidon dechame if we may be- 
 lieve Byron. A sister of the Countess, Miss Power, com- 
 pleted the family circle. Byron induced them to make 
 a longer stay at Genoa, and was exceeding helpful to 
 them in hiring the Villa Paradise, which was close to 
 his own. He accompanied them on their daily rides, 
 particularly to Nervi, a small town romantically situated
 
 18-23.] ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BLESSINGTONS. 277 
 
 on the coast, sent notes and occasional verses to the 
 Countess, and read Count D'Orsay's unpublished London 
 Journal with great interest, as he had himself known 
 most of the persons who were mentioned in it. But this 
 intercourse with the Blessington family was but the lulling 
 of the thoughts which were passing within him. His 
 determination to leave Italy, and go to Greece to assist 
 in the war of Liberation and to take an active part in 
 politics, ripened at last into action, and his short resi- 
 dence in Genoa is important in the record of his life only 
 as being the termination of his residence in Italy and 
 the starting point for his last expedition to Greece,
 
 278 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [/Ivr. 35. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GREECE. 
 1823-24. 
 
 HOWEVER painful such, a truth may be, it is undeniable, that 
 Byron's taking part in the work of the liberation of Greece 
 did not so much arise from enthusiasm, or from a lofty 
 impulse for liberty, or from a deeply- rooted sympathy with 
 the sufferings of the Greek people, still less from self- 
 sacrificing courage, as rather from personal and by no 
 means ideal motives. 1 He had become restless and was a 
 burden to himself. His literary career he regarded as 
 ended and exhausted, and he began to hold the opinion 
 which was shared by Scott, that we can and must do 
 something better for mankind than make verses, which 
 after all he affected to think was not his vocation. He was 
 groundlessly apprehensive of the waning of his fame, and 
 after the ignominious failure of the plan to place himself 
 by journalism at the summit of popularity, he longed to 
 attempt something new to attract all eyes to himself and 
 excite the astonishment of the world. Time, he imagined, 
 was already laying its heavy hand upon him ; he was con- 
 vinced, that he should not live long ; he saw his hair becom- 
 ing prematurely grey, and altogether he felt himself old. 
 Italy had become distasteful to him through the miserable 
 
 1 Lady Blessington's Conversations, p. 137, et seq.
 
 1823.] BYRON JOINS THE GREEK COMMITTEE. 279 
 
 results of Carbonarisni, as well as from his own vexatious 
 differences with its governments ; he yearned for an un- 
 fettered condition, where he would not be cramped by 
 laws and police. Perhaps, too, he had grown rather 
 weary of his relation to the Countess Guiccioli, 1 although 
 he had displayed a constancy of affection to her, which 
 he had never exhibited in any previous liaison. Passion, 
 however, had fled from this, and calm well-regulated 
 affection was never Byron's strength. Besides all this, 
 the recollections of his wanderings in Greece, of those 
 years during which he had enjoyed the most unalloyed 
 happiness he ever knew, and felt most at ease with 
 himself and in harmony with the world, returned in full 
 power to his mind. The spirit of his youth, even more 
 than the spirit of classical associations with all their 
 poetry, breathed on him from Greece, and he wtmld not 
 have been the poet he was if the forms and images, decked 
 in colours ever fresh and fair, of the days he spent there, 
 and of the perennial beauty of the land, had not from time 
 to time profoundly moved his heart. Greece was his destiny 
 for life and for death, and he could not divest himself 
 ^^.^Mtiment. Under the influence of such feelings 
 he was unable to withstand the offers made to him by the 
 Greek Committee in London, flattering in a high degree 
 as they were to his vanity ; for feeling alone did not 
 actuate his final resolve, circumstances had much to do 
 in determining a character, never, as he once said, con- 
 spicuous for decision. The Greek Committee which had 
 been formed in London, and of which Douglas Kinnaird 
 
 1 Such an issue of this connection Shelley had for some time foreseen. 
 'La Guiccioli ' he says in a letter of October 1821 ' is a very pretty, 
 sentimental, innocent Italian, who has sacrificed an immense fortune for 
 the sake of Lord Byron, and who, if I know anything of my friend, of 
 her, and of human nature, will hereafter have plenty of leisure and oppor- 
 tunity to repent her rashness.' Essays, Letters from Abroad, $c., ii. 333.
 
 280 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [jET. 35. 
 
 (one of Byron's intimate friends) and Captain Blaquiere ' 
 were the most energetic members, needed a brilliant name 
 to be placed at its head, the importance of which would 
 have weight enough to procure funds so indispensably 
 requisite for the cause. What could be more natural, 
 then, than that the Committee should turn its eyes to 
 Byron, whose fame was already so intimately connected 
 with Greece, especially as Trelawny who had already, 
 with his love of adventure, offered his services to it, had 
 spoken of Byron's interest in its efforts ? In the spring 
 of 1823 Blaquiere, en route for the Ionian Islands, 
 handed to Byron the notification of his having been unani- 
 mously elected a member of the Committee, and managed 
 to win him over by dexterous representations and flattery. 
 Byron had no kind of settled plan as to the mode in 
 which he should bring his sympathies into play, but 
 indulged his fancy in dreamy and rather selfish projects. 
 As he had before often dallied with the thought of getting 
 possession of a province in Peru, Chili or Mexico, he now 
 amused himself with the idea of purchasing either from 
 the Turks or the Greeks one of the Greek islands, and of 
 there setting up, according to his own fancies, a kind of 
 eastern Pashalik. The example which Lady Esther Stan- 
 hope had given in Syria suggested the thought, and the 
 feasibility of the project appeared little open to question, 
 as according to his opinion the market was overstocked 
 with such islands. Byron was still undecided in May, 
 whether he should go to England or to Greece, and had 
 only made up his mind to one thing that he would go 
 somewhere. The London Committee, to make matters 
 worse, had no more settled plan than himself. At last it 
 
 * Blaquiere wrote a book on the Greek revolution, its origin and 
 progress, and also a narrative of a second visit to Greece, including facts 
 ponneeted with the last days of Lord Byron. London, 1825.
 
 1823.] BYRON SAILS FOE GEEECE. 281 
 
 was arranged that Byron should meet Blaquiere, who had 
 meanwhile been in the Morea, at Zante, to consult with 
 him there on the further steps which were to be taken. 
 Byron now sold his yacht to the Earl of Blessington, and 
 hired the English brig * Hercules ' of 120 tons, a vessel 
 with which Trelawny, so very learned in all matters con- 
 nected with ships, was extremely dissatisfied. It was, 
 he thought, heavy and slow, and a more handy and 
 quick-sailing clipper would have been better adapted for 
 the narrow waters of the Archipelago, and for action 
 against the numerous pirates infesting those seas. 1 
 
 The day of departure drew on. Byron, ever inclined 
 to superstition, could not banish evil presentiments, but 
 questioned whether he should ever see his friends again ; 
 by and bye he would sanguinely hope that he would 
 return in a few months. He was so affected on taking 
 leave of the Earl and Countess of Blessington, that he 
 was obliged to throw himself on a sofa and burst into 
 incontrollable tears; to all of the party he gave some 
 little farewell gift. In the early dawn of July 15, 1823, 
 he at last embarked on board the * Hercules,' which 
 was towed out of the harbour of Genoa by the boats of 
 some American ships then lying there. Strange to say, 
 it was a Friday on which they set sail, a day on which 
 he usually avoided beginning any undertaking. Besides 
 Byron, the company on board the ship consisted of 
 Count Pietro Gamba, Trelawny, who had been invited 
 by Byron to join the expedition, 2 Dr. Bruno, a young 
 Italian physician fresh from the university, whom Byron 
 had taken into his service, 3 Captain Scott, the commander 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 202. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, vi. 54. 
 
 3 ' To give some idea of the silly stories that were told to the prejudice 
 of Lord Byron, and which some of his biographers have shown every
 
 282 LIFE OF LORD BYROX. [,T. 35. 
 
 of the ship, a genuine English seaman ; eight servants, 
 and the requisite crew. Byron had caused two small guns 
 to be transferred from the ' Bolivar ' to the * Hercules,' and 
 took on board some arms and ammunition, and a supply 
 of medicine enough for a thousand men for a whole year, 
 and lastly 10,000 Spanish dollars in specie, and 40,000 in 
 bills of exchange. 1 He remained on deck seated alone, 
 without taking any notice of the others. About midnight 
 the weather became boisterous, and the horses, which had 
 been badly secured, were in great danger of breaking 
 loose, so that, by Trelawny's advice, the captain steered 
 the vessel back to port, which they reached on the 
 following morning, and in spite of the stormy weather, 
 Byron remained all night on deck laughing at the miser- 
 able seamanship of the Italian sailors. On the evening 
 of the same day they again set sail, and after a voyage of 
 five days the ' Hercules ' reached Leghorn, where they 
 remained two days, to take in gunpowder and additional 
 stores. Byron landed only once on business ; the rest of 
 the time in harbour, and indeed during the whole voyage, 
 he sat at the stern and read ' Scott's Life of Swift,' 
 ' Hippesley's Expedition to Venezuela,' ' Grimm's Corre- 
 spondence,' ' La Rochefoucault's Maxims,' and the 
 ' Memoirs of Las Casas,' which seemed to occupy much 
 of his attention. At Leghorn on July 24, he received the 
 
 inclination to adopt for facts, I will mention, that our young physician 
 confessed, that for the first fifteen days of our voyage he had lived in 
 perpetual terror, having been informed that if he committed the slightest 
 fault Lord Byron would have him torn to pieces by his dogs, which he 
 kept for that purpose, or would order his Tartar to dash his brains out. 
 This Tartar was Baptista Falsieri the Venetian. Count Gamba, in a 
 note to his Narrative, p. 288. 
 
 1 For himself, Gamba, and Trelawny, Byron had ordered three splendid 
 helmets to be made with his crest ' Crede Byron ' engraved on them 
 one of the most vain and childish acts of his life. Compare Moore's 
 Life, vi. 55,
 
 1823.J INCIDENTS OF THE VOYAGE. 283 
 
 poem addressed to him by Goethe, 1 and replied by letter 
 the same day to the great poet. 2 He received also from 
 the venerable Ignatio, Archbishop of Arta, letters of 
 introduction to Mavrocordato and Marco Bozzaris. Here 
 he was joined by Mr. Hamilton Browne, 3 a Scotch gentle- 
 man, who possessed a very extensive knowledge both of 
 men and things connected with Greece, and who induced 
 the party to change their course from Zaute to Cepha- 
 lonia, where Colonel Napier 4 was the English Resident, 
 a known Philhellenist, from whom much help in further- 
 ance of the expedition might fairly be expected. Coasting 
 slowly along, they observed the island of Elba, Piombino 
 in. the Maremma, the muddy mouth of the Tiber, the 
 classical Soracte and other prominent land- marks. Con- 
 tinuing their voyage, they passed by Stromboli, sending 
 forth clouds of dark vapour : ' You will see this scene,' 
 said he to Trelawny, 'in a fifth canto of " Childe 
 Harold," ' 5 sailed between Scylla and Charybdis, saw 
 Messina in all its magnificence, and jEtna, ' covered with a 
 thick cloud of smoke.' Byron's health and spirits were 
 excellent. ' Never,' says Trelawny, 6 ' was I 011 shipboard 
 with a better companion than Byron ; he was generally 
 cheerful, gave no trouble, assumed no authority, uttered no 
 complaints, and did not interfere with the working of the 
 ship ; when appealed to, he always answered, " Do as you 
 like." Byron's nature rose, not so much in harmony with 
 his greater aims and purposes though to a certain extent 
 this may be said of him, as soon as he appeared in the 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, vi. p. 66 et seq. 2 Ibid. p. 70. 
 
 3 Mr. Hamilton Browne wrote an interesting description of the voyage 
 for Blacku'oocTs Magazine, January 1834. 
 
 4 Afterwards Sir Charles James Napier; he was born 1782, and died 
 1853. 
 
 5 Recollections, p. 187. e Ibid. p. 191.
 
 284 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [JET. 35. 
 
 affairs of Greece as with the mighty objects that 
 surrounded and impressed him, a trait which accords with 
 his impulsive and feminine character. Every day at noon 
 Byron and Trelawny sprang overboard into the sea 
 Byron's only exercise during the voyage, his lameness 
 interfering with his walking oil deck. Pistol- shooting 
 was not omitted on board the vessel, a fowl or an empty 
 bottle serving as target ; two shots were seldom requisite 
 to dispatch the former. 
 
 At length, August 2, Cephalonia and Zante were 
 sighted, and next morning, 1 the 'Hercules' came to anchor 
 in the harbour of Argostoli. Byron, as he recognised the 
 outlines of the Morea, pointed them out to Trelawny, 
 and said : 2 ' I don't know why it is, but I feel as if the 
 eleven long years of bitterness I have passed through since 
 I was here, were taken off my shoulders, and I was scud- 
 ding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in 
 his frigate.' The secretary of the English Eesident came 
 on board to welcome Byron, and assure him in the name of 
 Colonel Napier, who was then absent, that every assistance 
 would most readily be afforded to the expedition, so far as 
 was compatible with the duty of strict neutrality ; though 
 strict neutrality might be made to admit of a considerable 
 measure of active help. He told him at the same time, 
 that Captain Blaquiere had already set out for Corfu, 
 whence he intended to return immediately to England 
 a piece of information which naturally threw Byron 
 in a very bad humour. The difficulty of obtaining 
 authentic and impartial accounts as to the complicated 
 condition of the affairs of Greece, and the most effective 
 
 1 Dr. Kennedy says that Lord Byron arrived on August 6. Conversa- 
 tions on Religion with Lard Byron. 
 
 2 Recollections, p. 20]
 
 1823.] BYRON AT ARGOSTOLI. 285 
 
 manner of furnishing assistance, was greatly increased by 
 this mischance ; little heed could be given to the state- 
 ments of the different chiefs, each of whom strenuously 
 endeavoured, whether by truth or by falsehood, to gain 
 Byron to his side. A messenger was immediately dis- 
 patched by Byron to find Blaquiere at Corfu, and another to 
 Marco Bozzaris at Missolonghi. The former could no- 
 where fall in with Blaquiere, who had gone without leaving 
 a single memorandum for Byron. The second brought 
 back, indeed, a letter in reply from Bozzaris, 1 but almost 
 immediately after the receipt of it there arrived the account 
 of the death of that renowned chief. The state of affairs 
 now became more confused than ever, and Byron, who 
 had meanwhile been appointed its principal agent by 
 the London Committee, found it advisable to prolong his 
 stay at Cephalonia. Hamilton Browne and Trelawny were 
 forthwith sent off with letters to the Greek Government, if 
 a Greek Government were to be found. Together they 
 visited Tripolitza, Argos, Napoli di Romania, Corinth, 
 Salamis and Hydra. There Browne entered into negotia- 
 tions with the Greek authorities about the intended loan, 
 and accompanied by their emissaries returned to London 
 provided also with letters of introduction from Byron. 
 Trelawny, on the other hand, attached himself to the chief 
 Odysseus 2 at Athens, whose youngest sister he not long 
 afterwards married; he saw Byron again only in his coffin. 
 Byron himself, who at first remained for four weeks on 
 board the ' Hercules ' in the harbour, and who landed 
 only to take an airing every evening on horseback, now 
 found it convenient to pay off the vessel, to land his stores, 
 and to take a residence for himself, Count Gamba, and his 
 
 1 See the letter in Moore's Life, vi. 75, 
 
 3 Odysseus, an exceedingly ambitious and energetic leader, bad in 
 earlier life been in the service of Ali Pacha. Gamba's Xamittcc, p. 11)9
 
 286 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JE T . 35. 
 
 retinue at Metaxata, a pleasant and healthy village about 
 four miles and a half from Argostoli, where he remained 
 till December 27, when he embarked for Missolonghi. 1 
 
 For this lengthened residence Dr. Kennedy 2 assigns a 
 reason which clearly enough indicates his own narrow 
 point of view. Byron, so he relates, had made up 
 his mind to proceed to the Morea on a certain Sunday, 
 and had requested his baggage and his horses to be sent 
 on board ; that, however, Captain Scott opposed this, 
 and would not tolerate such ' heathenish and outlandish 
 doings on board his ship ; ' and that, in consequence, Byron 
 had altered his resolution, and, whether from vexation or 
 indecision and indifference, had postponed his departure. 
 This incident may be very true, but there were far 
 weightier and deeper grounds for Byron's delay. The 
 delay originated for the most part in deliberate calcula- 
 tion. Byron would not go to Greece as a volunteer, but 
 as one whose aid was courted and whose presence was 
 invited ; he had not come to help a party, but a nation, 
 though indeed the nation could hardly be said to exist. 
 He awaited therefore its summons. Trelawny pretends to 
 show us the thoughts which were rising in his innermost 
 man or were excited in him by others. It was admitted 
 that the Greeks almost universally were in favour of a 
 monarchical form of government. In this case they 
 evidently needed a foreign king, in order to hold in 
 check the rapacious, quarrelsome, and jealous chiefs. Why, 
 
 1 Kennedy, p. 2. 
 
 2 [This is hardly a fair representation of Dr. Kennedy's remark. lie 
 states, indeed, the blunt refusal of Scott, the captain of the ' Hercules,' 
 to embark Lord Byron's horses on a Sunday, and then adds : ' This re- 
 fusal of the Captain paved the way, it is probable, to circumstances which 
 induced his lordship to change his mind, and, with other causes, led him, 
 instead of hastening his departure, to remain four months in Cephalonia.' 
 Kennedy's Conversations, d-c., p. 11.]
 
 1823.] REASONS FOE BYRON'S STAY AT CEPHALONIA. 287 
 
 then, might not the Greeks choose Byron for their sove- 
 reign ? ' If they make me the offer,' Byron once replied 
 to such a hint thrown out, ' I will perhaps not reject it.' 
 He recurred to this many times in a half-sportive tone, 
 and Trelawny is convinced that if Byron * had lived to 
 reach the congress of Saloiia as commissioner of the loan, 
 the dispenser of a million silver crowns would have been 
 offered a gold one.' ' The mind which loved to dwell on 
 the plan of buying an American province or a Greek 
 island might well cherish such a conception. Had not 
 his old friend and host Ali Pacha raised himself from 
 the lowest position to princely power ? This would have 
 gratified his ever-restless ambition ; thereby he would 
 mount the highest step of the ladder of fame, and achieve 
 the most brilliant revenge for the wrong and disgrace 
 which his country had heaped upon him. In every way, 
 then, it was ' a consummation devoutly to be wished.' 
 We see, perhaps, the reflection of his secret wishes and 
 hopes in his formation of a body-guard of forty Suliots, 
 who, however, proved so troublesome, that he was 
 obliged to pay them off and send them to Missolonghi ; 
 but even while doing this, he displayed his usual kindness 
 and liberality ; for he gave them two months' pay, got 
 their arms from Government, and paid the passage-money 
 to their destination. 
 
 In his intercourse with the English Resident 2 at Cepha- 
 lonia, Byron showed himself in his most amiable side, 
 so that on personal acquaintance both parties were agree- 
 ably surprised with each other ; he accepted even an 
 invitation to a dinner given in his honour by the officers 
 of the garrison. His manner was unusually gentle, 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 284. 
 
 3 [Described in Kennedy's Conversations as the Honourable Colonel 
 D , who commanded in the absence of the Governor, Colonel Napier.]
 
 288 LIFE OF LORD I3YRON. (yEr. 35. 
 
 undisturbed by caprice or passion, and uniformly affable ; 
 and his countrymen vied with each other in showing 
 him acts of attention and hospitality. He even had 
 patience enough to enter into theological discussions ' 
 with the garrison physician, Dr. Kennedy, and to listen 
 to his tedious methodistical lectures, which sometimes 
 lasted from five to six hours. Not only in argumentative 
 readiness and in the critical faculty, but even in know- 
 ledge of the Bible and extent of reading, Byron was far 
 superior to the Scottish doctor, so that the efforts of the 
 latter to convert him were futile. Byron told Parry that 
 these discussions were by no means agreeable to him ; that 
 his thoughts were occupied with very different matters ; 
 and that the doctor, whom, however, he esteemed for 
 the sincerity and consistency of his character, was not 
 equal to the task he had undertaken. That he himself 
 had a theological vein, and to the last loved to converse 
 on religious subjects, and that he was not a little grati- 
 fied with his superiority in argument to the doctor of 
 this Byron says nothing. Even at Missolonghi, where 
 his thoughts and attention were sufficiently demanded for 
 affairs of more immediate interest, he delighted to con- 
 verse on religion. 
 
 An excursion, which occupied eight days, to Ithaca, 
 undertaken not long after his arrival at Argostoli, was the 
 only event which happened during his stay at Cephalonia. 
 It does not appear, as if the unfading nimbus with 
 which the poetry of Homer had encircled the island, 
 charmed Byron in any special manner. He rejected at 
 least in a surly manner the offer of the guides to conduct 
 him to the Castle of Ulysses and to the other legendary 
 ocalities of Ithaca. ' I detest antiquarian twaddle,' he 
 
 1 These discussions formed the ground work of Conversations on ReHyion 
 with Lord Byron. London, 1820.
 
 1823.J BYKON VISITS AN ANCIENT MONASTERY. 289 
 
 said to Trelawny. 1 'Do people think I have no lucid 
 intervals, that I came to Greece to scribble more nonsense ? 
 I will show them that I can do something better : I wish 
 I had never written a line to have it cast in my teeth at 
 every turn.' In earlier life h3 had shown more antiquarian 
 interest in the plain of Troy. At Vathi, the chief place 
 of the island, the poet was received with the greatest 
 attention and hospitality by the English Resident, Captain 
 Knox. A great number of Greeks, for the most part in 
 the most pitiable condition, who had been banished from. 
 Scio, Patras, and other districts, had here sought refuge ; 
 for the relief of their distress Byron handed to the Resi- 
 dent the sum of 4,000 piastres. The party visited too an 
 ancient monastery, which stood on the highest peak of the 
 island. The ascent in the heat of the day was exceedingly 
 fatiguing, and Byron, though he did not dismount from 
 his mule, was jaded and irritable, having lost his mid-day 
 siesta. It was evening before they reached the monastery. 
 The Abbot, apprised by Captain Knox of the distin- 
 guished visitor, put on his sacerdotal vestments, and 
 lining the approaches with his monks holding torches in 
 their hands, welcomed Byron with hymns. The great 
 hall was illuminated for the occasion, boys swung censers 
 filled with frankincense, and the Abbot, after various cere- 
 monies, began in the full consciousness of the dignity of 
 his office a long address to the e Lordo Inglese,' in which he 
 greeted him as the liberator of his country ; speaking as 
 if he beheld in him not only the deliverer, but the future 
 sovereign, of Greece. Byron, however, overcome by his 
 extreme irritability, interrupted the solemnity, to the 
 horror of the Abbot and his monks, by a torrent of Italian 
 execrations, and seizing a torch rushed out of the hall. 
 The Abbot meanwhile stood speechless with the draft of 
 1 Recollections, p. 2JtO. 
 U
 
 290 LIFE OF LORD EYRON. [^T. 35. 
 
 his oration in his hand, until at last, thinking he had 
 discovered the solution of the mystery, he pointed to his 
 forehead with his finger and exclaimed : ' Eccolo, e matto 
 poveretto ! ' Next morning, the Abbot and his guests pru- 
 dently abstained from any allusion to the incident of the 
 previous evening ; and Byron on taking leave deposited 
 a very handsome donation in the alms-box, the Abbot 
 letting the strangers depart with his blessing. Byron was 
 charmed with the exceeding beauty of the landscape of the 
 island, which, with its green and flowery ravines, its vines, 
 its groves of olive and fig, and its springs of purest water 
 gushing from the rocks, contrasted favourably with the 
 parched and barren Cephalonia. ' You will find nothing 
 in Greece or its islands,' he said to Trelawny as they 
 returned, ' so pleasant as this. If this isle were mine, 
 1 would break my staff and bury my book.' l 
 
 Trelawny, when he started for Greece with Hamilton 
 Browne, foresaw that Byron would once more fall into 
 his irresolute and inactive habits : his apprehensions 
 proved to be well founded. What could he do better, 
 thought Byron, than there await the favourable moment 
 and meanwhile aid the Greeks with his advice and 
 money ? To the urgent invitations of Bozzaris, of the 
 Greek Government, and of Count Metara the commandant 
 of Missolonghi, he paid no attention ; even the invest- 
 ment of Missolonghi, the centre and basis of operations 
 for Western Greece, both by sea and land by the Turks, 
 failed to move him from his policy of delay. That 
 the Greeks should become united and establish order, he 
 made the condition of his assistance ; whereas he ought to 
 have regarded it as the essential part of the work he had 
 undertaken, actively to co-operate in bringing about this 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 209.
 
 1823.] BYRON'S PROLONGED STAY AT CEPHALONIA. 291 
 
 union and order. At any rate he would await the relief 
 of Missolonghi by the Greek fleet, and advanced the sum 
 of 4,000?. towards the payment of the armament. He 
 offered also a subsidy of one thousand dollars a month for 
 Missolonghi ; the Greek Government, however, would not 
 agree to his terms and proposed to apply the money to 
 other purposes. At last about the middle of November 
 Byron prepared to depart ; in two days he would set sail. 
 It is probable that he was urged to this decision by the 
 arrival from England of Colonel Leicester Stanhope l 
 (afterwards the Earl of Harrington), a man of much 
 decision of character and who displayed extraordinary 
 interest and activity in the Greek cause ; but again the 
 day of departure was put off. 
 
 At length the long-expected Greek fleet, with Mavro- 
 cordato on board, arrived to relieve Missolonghi. Between 
 Cephalouia and Ithaca it captured a Turkish corvette, 
 with a considerable sum of money for the payment of 
 the Turkish troops; the Greeks, too eager for action, 
 violated on this occasion the neutrality of the Ionian 
 Islands, by driving the corvette on shore on the coast of 
 Ithaca. In consequence of this loss the Turkish fleet 
 retired to the Gulf of Lepanto, while Mavrocordato was 
 enthusiastically received by the inhabitants of Missolonghi, 
 who had not forgotten his distinguished services there in 
 the preceding year. He at once placed the brig ' Leonidas ' 
 at Byron's service, and, at the same time, the Greek 
 Government besought him to act in concert with Mavro- 
 cordato in the organisation of the forces of Western Greece. 
 Byron, on his part, informed the prince, that he was pre- 
 pared to pay the sum of 4,OOOZ. the private loan which he 
 had promised to advance, and that he would himself 
 
 1 He published a book entitled Greece in 1823 and 1824; being a Series of 
 Letters and other Documents on the Greek Revolution, fyc. London, 1825. 
 
 u 2
 
 292 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. [JET. 35. 
 
 forthwith repair to Missolonghi, to confer with, him on 
 the measures necessary to be taken. Of all the Greek 
 chiefs and leaders, Mavrocordato was the one with whom, 
 on account of his princely rank, Byron preferred to act. 
 He was also one of those who saw the importance of 
 Missolonghi, which not only commanded the entrance 
 to the Gulf of Lepanto, but lay nearest the Ionian Islands, 
 and therefore afforded the easiest and safest means of 
 communication with England and the rest of Europe ; for 
 the possession of Missolonghi by the Turks would have 
 opened to them the whole of the Morea. That Mavro- 
 cordato was inclined for a monarchy under a foreign king, 
 contributed, perhaps, not a little to this preference. The 
 vessel which he offered, Byron however declined, and 
 preferred to hire one of his own, considering it much 
 safer to sail under the neutral Ionian, than under the 
 Greek flag. Colonel Stanhope, who was then at Zante, 
 now hastened to Missolonghi. 
 
 About mid-day on December 28, 1823, Byron set 
 sail, he himself in a fast-sailing vessel, called in those 
 waters a mistico, while Count Gamba, with the servants, 
 horses, and baggage, embarked on board a larger. They 
 had provided themselves with regular ships' papers for 
 Calamo, one of the Ionian Islands close to the mainland. 
 ' We were all,' says Count Gamba, * but Lord Byron 
 particularly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the 
 fastest. When the waves divided us, and our voices could 
 no longer reach each other, we made signals by firing pistols 
 and carabines.' l During the night they lost sight of each 
 other, and Count Gamba's heavier vessel laid to for some 
 hours afraid to sail in the dark on account of the shallows. 
 Towards morning, when the bombard, the vessel of Count 
 
 1 Gamba's Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to Greece, p. 69. 
 London, 1824.
 
 1823.] BYilON SAILS FOR MISSOLONGHI. 293 
 
 Gamba, was close to Missolonghi, they saw a ship of war 
 making towards them under full sail, which to their dismay 
 carried the Ottoman colours. Notwithstanding- their neutral 
 Ionian flag, Count Gamba considered it advisable to sink in 
 the sea as quickly as possible the copies of correspondence 
 which Byron had carried on with the Greek chiefs. The 
 Turks approached and summoned the captain on board ; 
 and the vessel was compelled to accompany the frigate to 
 Patras, where a Turkish fleet of fourteen sail lay at anchor. 
 Brought before Jussuf Pacha, Count Gamba declared that 
 he was a traveller, who had made an appointment to meet 
 an English friend at Calarno, but that the darkness and 
 the wind had driven him past it. The singular circum- 
 stance that the captain of his vessel suddenly recognised 
 in the commander of the Turkish frigate the former 
 master of a merchant vessel, whose life he had once 
 saved in the Black Sea, contributed, however, more to 
 his safety than this transparent evasion, and even than the 
 presents which he made to the Pacha. In return for the 
 gratitude of the Turkish captain to his old deliverer, 
 Count Gamba promised to commend his courage to Jussuf 
 Pacha in having ventured with his ship beyond the 
 line of blockade, a commendation which he said would 
 be worth much to him at Constantinople. Thus Count 
 Gamba and his vessel were released, and on January 4, 
 the bombard again got under weigh and made, not for 
 Calanio but for Missolonghi, where on the same day it 
 came to anchor in the roadstead. 
 
 Meanwhile Count Gamba, unable to ascertain anything 
 of the fate of the mistico, had been far more disturbed 
 about Byron's safety than about his own, and his appre- 
 hensions rose to the highest pitch, when on landing at 
 Missolonghi he found that Byron had not yet arrived. 
 His anxieties, however, were soon calmed, for on the fol-
 
 294 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. [JE-r. 36. 
 
 lowing morning Byron arrived safe and sound. The 
 inistico also had fallen in with a Turkish frigate, which 
 held off for some time, taking the mistico to be a fire- 
 ship. When the bombard was carried off, Byron's vessel 
 took shelter under the rocks of the Scrofes, 1 whither the 
 frigate could not follow, and thence escaped to the small 
 harbour of Dragomestri on the Acharnanian coast. From 
 Dragomestri he wished to proceed to Missolonghi by land, 
 but the mountain roads were impassable. Mavrocordato, 
 to whom he had announced his situation, sent five gun-boats 
 to his assistance, and the little flotilla steered, January 4, 
 for Missolonghi. On their passage thither, however, they 
 encountered a heavy storm, in which the Greek sailors 
 showed their want alike of skill and of courage, while 
 Byron displayed the greatest self-possession. Partly in 
 order to harden himself, partly to lead the way by good 
 example, he chose to expose himself to all the fatigues and 
 toils of the voyage. 
 
 In the morning of January 5, Byron, dressed in a scarlet 
 uniform, landed at Missolonghi, and was received with 
 almost princely honours. Salvoes of artillery and the 
 sounds of wild music welcomed him ; the whole population 
 flocked in tumultuous enthusiasm to the shore ; Mavrocor- 
 dato, accompanied by a brilliant staff of Greek and foreign 
 officers, awaited him in front of the house which had 
 been prepared for him and Colonel Stanhope. Next 
 morning the primates and the chiefs with their retinues 
 made their appearance, to welcome the long-expected 
 deliverer of their native land, and offer him their homage, 
 
 1 In the Appendix to Stanhope's Greece in 1823 and 1824, p. 290, 
 there is a most amusing letter from Byron to Stanhope dated thus : 
 ' Scrofes, or some such name, on board a Cephaloniote mistico, December 
 31, 1823.' In a letter from Stanhope to Bo wring he tells him : ' the 
 sailors say his lordship conducted himself with admirable coolness/ p. 71.
 
 1824.J BYEON AT MISSOLONGHI. 295 
 
 and Byron, well pleased with a display so calculated to 
 gratify his vanity, endured the oppressive oriental custom 
 with an unusual amount of patience. All the chieftains 
 of western Greece, from Arta to Salona, now assembled 
 at Missolonghi, in order to complete the military orga- 
 nisation of the province. Mavrocordato was elected go- 
 vernor-general, and placed at the head of 5,000 armed 
 men, who had there gathered together. To maintain and 
 discipline these troops was the most immediate business, 
 and here Byron, through the loan which he had advanced, 
 could most effectively exert his influence. The fleet also 
 had to be paid, nine Hydriot ships having already returned 
 home, because their pay was not forthcoming. Following 
 the example of the Greek chiefs, Byron formed also a 
 brigade of his own : five hundred of the Suliotes, who 
 after the death of Bozzaris were without a leader, he took 
 into his own pay ; the rest were paid by the Government, 
 but placed under Byron's command. Prom the days of 
 his pilgrimage the Suliotes had of all the Greek tribes 
 been his favourites. Their wives also, with his approval, 
 formed themselves into a corps under the command of 
 the wife of the tailor of the regiment which was to 
 accompany the brigade and attend to the nursing of 
 the sick and wounded. These women an exception in 
 this to the general avidity refused to take pay, requiring 
 only free quarters and rations. 
 
 The state of affairs at this moment was by no means 
 unfavourable to the Greeks. After the retirement of the 
 Capudan Pacha from the east coast, and the Pacha of 
 Scutari from Missolonghi, the whole Peloponnesus with 
 the exception of certain strongholds of the Morea, Patras, 
 Modon, and Coron, was in the hands of the Greeks, and 
 another attack from the Turks was not to be expected 
 during the winter. Boeotia, Attica, the Isthmus of Corinth,
 
 296 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JE T . 36. 
 
 and the northern coasts of the Gulf of Lepanto, were almost 
 entirely cleared of Turkish garrisons. But the Greeks 
 threatened to forfeit all these advantages by their dis- 
 sensions, amounting almost to civil war ; even the Phil- 
 hellenes who had come to their aid did not set before 
 them the example of perfect union. Intrigues and quarrels 
 were endless, and the want of a strong government en- 
 joying universal recognition made itself everywhere felt. 
 Under these circumstances it appeared advisable to animate 
 and unite the Greeks by one common military undertaking. 
 Byron, therefore, fixed his eye on Lepanto, which was em- 
 ployed by the Turks as a basis of their operations. It was 
 ascertained through spies, that the garrison there was weak 
 and little to be relied on, and that the Albanians especially 
 were much disposed to pass over to the Greeks, as soon 
 as the latter should show themselves before the castle ; 
 they even pledged themselves to deliver up to Byron 
 the fortresses of the Morea and Patras. In order, how- 
 ever, to make such an attack with success, artillery was 
 the first requisite : but there was not even a sufficient 
 supply of powder, and the armament of the Greeks was 
 in every way utterly defective. To supply these wants 
 they reckoned principally on Parry, 1 who was expected 
 
 1 William Parry had been originally a ship's carpenter perhaps a 
 common sailor and had been as such in America j he afterwards became 
 'fire-master' in the Arsenal at Woolwich. He was a man without 
 culture and without breeding, as Byron calls him 'a fine rough subject.' 
 The German officers at Missolonghi, men of education, against whom he 
 so railed, were not therefore to be blamed if they refused to serve under 
 him. Immediately after his arrival he was raised to the rank of Captain 
 by Mavrocordato, and not content with this, he appears to have promoted 
 himself to that of Major; for he thought himself a master in the art of 
 fortification and claimed to have discovered bombs, which were to destroy 
 the whole Turkish fleet. He was not however without common sense 
 and contributed much to Byron's amusement by his talents as a mimic. 
 He drank hard and so believed in brandy and its curative effects, that he 
 greatly desired to administer it to Byron in his last illness. According to
 
 1823.] BYRON ADV T ISS THE SIEGE OF LEPAXTO. 297 
 
 daily at Missolonghi with, a supply of the munitions of 
 war, and who appeared to be the proper man to be placed 
 at the head of the artillery force which was to be formed ; 
 and in order to improve the exercises and discipline of the 
 troops, Byron and Stanhope invited the co-operation of 
 the German Philhellenes scattered about in Greece, the 
 remains, for the most part, of the free corps of General 
 Norniann. Byron, to whom the romantic side of the con- 
 flict had the greatest fascination, longed to select the most 
 dangerous posts for himself, and filled those who sur- 
 rounded him with the impression that he sought death. 
 He insisted on undertaking the chief command of an 
 expedition against Lepanto ; his want of military know- 
 ledge and experience would, he hoped, be compensated 
 by courage and energy; and in all matters demanding 
 strategical direction, he proposed that he should be aided 
 by the appointment of a staff. He reverted again and again 
 to the powerful effect, which the example of personal cou- 
 rage and daring would exercise on the Greeks as on all 
 semi-barbarous nations; his dexterity as a marksman 
 had made a great impression on them, for the Greeks 
 with their inferior weapons were bad marksmen. As 
 artillerists the Turks were, however, worse than the 
 Greeks, as Byron saw at Anatolico, to which, February 
 1, he made an excursion; a large house was there shown 
 to him at which the Turks while besieging it were said 
 to have fired 200 cannon-shots without once hitting it. 
 
 On February 5, after a long delay, Parry appeared 
 with the military stores sent by the London Committee. 
 Among these were two mountain howitzers and sixty-one 
 casks of gunpowder, each containing 100 Ibs : even horns 
 
 Trelawny, he brought himself by his habits of drinking to a lunatic 
 a.svlum. Though he professes himself to be the author of The Last Days 
 of Lord Byron, it is very evident that he contributed only the materials 
 for the book.
 
 298 LIFE OF LORD BYHON. [J2 T . 30. 
 
 and trumpets had not been forgotten. The Congreve 
 rockets, however, which were needed for the siege of 
 Lepanto, and from which the extravagant fancy of 
 the Greeks expected wonders, were sadly missed. An 
 artillery laboratory was immediately established under 
 Parry's direction in the so-called Old Seraglio ; but, alas ! 
 the best English artificers whom he brought with him, 
 after a few days demanded leave to return home. They 
 had received an assurance, they said, that they should be 
 brought to a place of safety ; but a place of safety 
 Missolonghi could by no means be considered. The 
 wild and undisciplined Suliotes a personal quarrel 
 having arisen between them and the foreign artillerymen 
 made an attack on the laboratory, during which the 
 officer on guard, a German of the name of Sass or 
 Sasse, was mortally wounded. 1 It was this event which 
 brought the dissatisfaction of the English artificers 
 to a head. As there were no Greeks who could be 
 entrusted with their special craft, the place of these 
 Englishmen could not be filled up, and the prospect of 
 procuring the necessary military materials for the siege 
 became consequently more remote. The Suliotes, whose 
 chiefs refused to obey each other and yielded obedience 
 only to his English Excellency, and whose greed no offer- 
 ings could satisfy, had at last to be removed from the 
 town : they had begun to quarrel also with the citizens, 
 and incessantly threatened the public peace and safety. 
 When, finally, the flotilla which had assembled at Misso- 
 longhi, was again dispersed, partly from want of money, 
 
 1 Lieutenant Rass, a native of the Baltic provinces, after a life of 
 adventure, came with Parry from London, and is well spoken of both 
 by Parry and in all narratives. He left a widow behind him, for whom 
 Byron endeavoured to obtain a pension from the London Committee. 
 Sass was buried in the church at Missolonghi between Marco Bozzaris and 
 General Normann.
 
 1821.] SIEGE OF LEPANTO POSTPONED. 299 
 
 partly from dissatisfaction arising from other causes, the 
 projected undertaking against Lepanto became, for the 
 present at least, impossible. 
 
 Disappointments and incessant vexations had hitherto 
 been unable either to shake the purpose of Byron or crush 
 his hopes. He endured them all with greater composure 
 than might have been expected from him ; from the first, 
 he knew that he would find Greece no bed of roses. There 
 were in fact irritations without end for him. At one time 
 the town, after the departure of the Greek flotilla, was 
 blockaded by Turkish vessels ; at another it was seized 
 with fear about the plague ; afterwards it was thrown 
 into panic fears by an earthquake ; then, again, it was 
 possessed with the dread of espionage and treason ; and 
 lastly, it was threatened with the brawling and lawless- 
 ness of the rival chiefs (specially of Cariascachi). With 
 a temperament so irritable as Byron's this continued ex- 
 citement and tension of mind necessarily exercised a most 
 prejudicial influence. The damp unhealthy climate of the 
 place, and his own irrational mode of living, acted still 
 more injuriously on his health. His house stood close by 
 the edge of a shallow muddy creek, from which arose 
 the most unhealthy exhalations ; and Missolonghi itself was 
 surrounded by stagnant marshy waters. The town was 
 exceedingly dirty, and the mud lay so deep in the gatewa} r , 
 that Count Gamba thought, 1 ' that even were it left un- 
 guarded, the enemy would have had some difficulty in 
 forcing a passage.' Missolonghi was, in one word, a perfect 
 hot-bed of fever, to which, moreover, Byron was predis- 
 posed. In addition to this, the rainy weather confined 
 him to the house, and made exercise in the open air, so 
 indispensable for him, impossible. Under these circum- 
 
 1 Narrative, p. 143.
 
 800 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 36. 
 
 stances it is not to be wondered at, that his health should 
 give way; on February 15 he was seized with violent 
 convulsions. Speech and consciousness returned after a 
 few minutes, although the patient protested that the pain 
 had been so dreadful, that he must have died had the 
 attack lasted a minute longer. Next day he was con- 
 siderably better ; but as he complained of oppression in 
 the head, the physicians applied leeches to his temples ; l 
 but if Byron, as is scarcely to be doubted, had increased 
 his innate tendency to poverty of blood by abstinence from 
 animal food, no more prejudicial remedy could have been 
 applied than blood-lefcting. He himself considered the 
 attack to be of an epileptic nature, and, under this belief, 
 charged his sisteAin his last (unfinished) letter to her, 
 to take care that due attention should be paid to Ada in 
 this respect. 
 
 The possibility of his death had thus been brought 
 painfully near both to himself and his friends, so that the 
 latter, knowing how invaluable Byron's name and influ- 
 ence was to the cause of Greece, urged him to leave the 
 unhealthy neighbourhood of Missolonghi. Count Gamba 
 implored him to go to the more salubrious situation of 
 Athens, if only for a visit, but Byron himself thought of 
 returning to Cephalonia, to which his friends in that island, 
 as soon as they became aware of his illness, invited him. 
 The irresolution of his character, however, would not suffer 
 him to come to a decision. Moreover, danger itself had 
 its fascination for him ; he regarded it as a matter of 
 honour to remain ; his departure would have been inter- 
 preted as the cowardlike abandonment of his post. Colonel 
 Stanhope also, who had gone to Salona, entreated him 
 
 1 The bleeding was with great difficulty stopped ; ' they had gone,' as 
 Byron humorously said, ' too near the temporal artery for my temporal 
 safety.' Moore's Life, vi. 166.
 
 1824.] BYRON'S RECOVERY. 301 
 
 in a letter written 1 from thence, April 1 7, to leave Misso- 
 longhi, as the state of his health could not bear its 
 pestilential atmosphere and its incessant cares. 'Once 
 more,' he concluded, ' I implore you to quit Misso- 
 longhi, and not to sacrifice your health and perhaps 
 your life in that bog.' It was, however, too late; 
 when this letter, which had been sent through Trelawny, 
 reached its destination, the worst he feared had already 
 happened. 
 
 Although Byron felt by no means well, but com- 
 plained of frequent dizziness, headache, and nervous ex- 
 citability, he again resumed his usual activity. It now 
 seemed as if things would take a more favourable turn 
 for Greece. Enthusiastic friends of the Greek cause 
 from all parts of Europe almost daily arrived to offer 
 their services. The prospects of the successful negotia- 
 tion of the English loan became brighter ; the news indeed 
 of its conclusion was the last which Byron received before 
 his death. Accounts from the Morea, and especially from 
 the Greek Government itself, represented the intestine 
 dissensions as becoming extinct, and Odysseus, a chief of 
 great influence, at the head of three or four thousand 
 men, and whose right hand was Trelawny, invited Mavro- 
 cordato and Byron to a conference Salona, to accom- 
 panying his invitation with a petition for powder, artillery, 
 and Congreve rockets. Though neither artillery nor 
 rockets could be promised, but only a small supply of 
 powder, the proposed meeting was heartily agreed to, and 
 Mavrocordato and Byron fixed on the middle of March for 
 their departure to Salona. 
 
 Meanwhile Byron's house continued to be the head- 
 quarters and the central point of all the efforts to 
 
 1 Trelawny 's Recollections, p/230.
 
 302 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [JET. 36. 
 
 achieve the liberation and unification of Greece. On 
 all sides his advice and mediation were sought; and 
 everyone was ready to follow his counsels and subor- 
 dinate himself to him. It must be admitted, that 
 Byron fulfilled this part of adviser and mediator in a 
 becoming and dignified manner, so that the Govern- 
 ment not only repeatedly invited him to repair to the 
 seat of government (Kranidi), but also interrogated him, 
 whether he were disposed to assume the post of governor- 
 general over all the enfranchised part of the continent, with 
 the exception of the Morea and the islands. 1 In reply 
 to these invitations Byron declared himself ready to 
 place himself at their disposal, but intimated at the same 
 time, that he considered that the result of the contem- 
 plated congress at Salona should be awaited. 2 This was 
 tantamount to a courteous refusal. Such a position, 
 which would in fact have placed him under the control 
 of the Greek Government, was little in harmony with 
 his secret ambition. In this, however, he acted in concert 
 with his friends Mavrocordato, Stanhope, Gamba and 
 others, who met daily for the discussion of such questions 
 in his room. The transaction of business was occasionally 
 succeeded by lighter occupations. Sometimes the German 
 officers, in whose popular and national songs he took great 
 delight, sang or played ; sometimes Byron and his friends 
 practised pistol-shooting, fencing, or the broadsword. 
 The latter exercise, in which, notwithstanding his lameness, 
 he showed activity and dexterity, took the place of his 
 riding expeditions, when these were interrupted on account 
 of the continued rain. He exercised, also, his Suliotes, 
 and when quite alone played with his favourite dog 
 ' Lion.' The great cause in which he took so profound 
 
 1 Moore's Life, vi. 184. 2 Ibid. (note).
 
 1824.] BYRON'S LOVE OF PKACTICAL JOKES. 303 
 
 an interest, and even the gravity of the state of affairs, 
 could not restrain him from playing practical jokes at the 
 expense of others. His special butt was Parry, whom he 
 had made paymaster, and whom he generally addressed 
 as ' old boy.' Thus, for example, Parry having an 
 immoderate dread of earthquakes, Byron caused a barrel 
 with some cannon-balls inside to be rolled in the room 
 above, and ordered a number of Suliotes, at a given signal, 
 to catch hold of the rafters and jump on the floor with 
 all their might, so as to shake the building. 1 Again, 
 opposite his quarters there stood a house, occupied 
 chiefly by women, with little turrets, on the top of 
 which were a number of small ornaments. These orna- 
 ments he shot down one after the other with his pistols, 
 and great was his amusement when the terrified women 
 rushed to the windows and ' scolded him vehemently 
 in the Greek language, proving, as he said, that it had 
 not lost any of its Billingsgate since the time of Homer's 
 heroes.' 2 He had now among his servants a negro, whom 
 he had persuaded Trelawny to give up to him during 
 the voyage from Italy, knowing that a black servant is 
 regarded, in Greece as in the East, as a mark of dignity. 3 
 This negro, according to Byron's express command, always 
 addressed him as ' Massa,' and he and Tita accompanied 
 him as ' chasseurs ' in all his rides. 4 Amid these occupa- 
 tions and amusements he appears to have found neither 
 time for, nor pleasure in, literature or poetry ; in his 
 travelling baggage, great in bulk and various in its contents, 
 books had always formed a very subordinate item. 5 The 
 Countess Guiccioli, 6 however, would have us believe, that 
 
 1 Gamba's Narrative, p. 205. Parry's Last Days of Lord Byron, p. 
 153. 2 Ibid. p. 155. 
 
 3 Trelawny 's Recollections, p. 212. 4 Parry, p. 157. 
 
 5 [Yet he read incessantly and remembered all he read !] 
 
 6 English edition, vol. i. Introd. pp. 29, 40.
 
 304 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mr. 36. 
 
 lie had actually composed, at Cephalonia and Missolonghi, 
 five new cantos of ' Don Juan,' the scenes of which were 
 laid in England and Greece ; and that he had also, from 
 his departure from Genoa up to his fatal illness, kept a 
 journal. The continuation of ' Don Juan,' the Countess 
 says, was destroyed, because some distinguished perso- 
 nages, and society generally in England, were not repre- 
 sented in the most flattering light. 1 The journal, she says, 
 was found after Byron's death among his papers by Mavro- 
 cordato and burnt by him, because he himself was repre- 
 sented in it in his true light. 2 Whatever may be thought 
 of these statements, this much is certain, that we possess 
 nothing of Byron's belonging to this period of his life, 
 except the beautiful poem which he wrote on his thirty-, 
 sixth birthday. 3 His correspondence also was probably 
 confined to communications relative to business ; of the 
 letters which he may have written at this time to the 
 Countess Guiccioli, or to other friends, except the few 
 published in Moore's Life, none hitherto have come to 
 light. 
 
 In all his efforts it was Byron's great aim to make 
 the Greeks capable of fighting, and to supply them with 
 the requisite means to carry on the war and to organise 
 themselves as a united body. The philanthropic and 
 civilising endeavours of other Philhellenes he regarded 
 not only with distrust, believing them premature, but 
 considered them in many respects as defeating their own 
 object, and therefore positively prejudicial. This was the 
 point on which he utterly differed from. Stanhope. Stan- 
 hope was a philanthropic idealist, but withal a fanatic, 
 who, if the case demanded it, was prepared to carry out his 
 programme with military despotism. He had no knowledge 
 
 1 English edition, vol. i. Introd. pp. 29, 40. 2 Ibid. p. 41. 
 
 3 Compare Moore's Life, vi. 136-138.
 
 1824.] DISSENSIONS AMONGST THE LEADERS. 305 
 
 of the Greeks, and having served in India in early life, he 
 wished to treat them after the principles he had learnt there. 
 He bluntly recommended the Committee to take counsel 
 from Anglo-Indians as to the way in which things should 
 be managed in Greece. At the same time he was an 
 enthusiastic admirer of Jeremy Bentham, and with Ben- 
 tham upheld the principle of ( the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number ' as the aim and end which the State 
 and Society should pursue. To carry out his principle in 
 Greece he desired above all things to employ the agency 
 of a free press, and to institute schools, hospitals, post- 
 offices, &c., institutions all of them in themselves of the 
 highest utility, but undeniably rather unsuitable for the 
 soil of Greece as it was then. To hospitals, medical dis- 
 pensaries, and post-offices no objection could be raised ; 
 but what would the Press be to a people who could not 
 read ? What advantage would even schools be, as long 
 as old and young were bearing arms, and not a single 
 quiet well-ordered household was to be found throughout 
 the whole country? Still more out of place was the 
 agency of religious missions, which both Colonel Stanhope 
 and Dr. Kennedy favoured. With Parry there had arrived 
 a converted blacksmith, bringing with him a cargo of 
 tracts and Bibles in modern Greek, who received from an 
 English Missionary Association the magnificent salary of 
 201. per annum, to propagate Christianity, i.e. Wesley- 
 anism, among Greeks and Turks indifferently. Such a pro- 
 ceeding served of course only to irritate the Greek clergy, 
 who exercised a considerable influence over the people, 
 and to a political to add a religious contest. Of these plans 
 and ideas Mavrocordato and Byron were the decided oppo- 
 nents, although they were obliged in some respects to 
 countenance the attempts which were made to carry them 
 out; all their efforts were vain to induce Stanhope to 
 
 x
 
 306 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^E T . 36. 
 
 desist from them. Free the country from the enemy, said 
 Byron teach the people to read and to write, and the 
 rest will follow. But to pay any regard to the existing 
 order and relation of things, to treat with tenderness 
 customs and prejudices, was in Stanhope's eyes nothing 
 but cowardice and treason to the good cause. Parry had 
 brought with him a couple of printing presses and a small 
 supply of paper ; the paper Byron proposed to convert into 
 cartridges. Stanhope, however, persisted in establishing 
 a journal written in the Greek language, which Byron 
 was obliged to subsidise from the limited means at his 
 command ; but as this newspaper, from the language in 
 which it was written, was necessarily confined to a small 
 circle and was not adapted to be a medium of communi- 
 cation with the world, a second was soon commenced, 
 called the ' Telegrafo Greco,' which was to appear once 
 a week, written in different languages, and to which 
 BjTon himself is said to have promised some contri- 
 butions. 1 Both these papers were edited by Dr. Meyer, 
 a Swiss, who, as Byron in his disdain for the whole 
 venture asserted, understood neither Greek nor English. 
 The ' Telegrafo ' attacked the proposal of electing a king, 
 which only added to Byron's vexation ; and Mavrocordato 
 complained of its calling on the Hungarians to rise against 
 Austria. Hence arose frequent dissensions between Byron 
 and Stanhope. In a country like Greece, where private 
 feuds and assassination were still the substitutes for laws 
 and tribunals, Byron dreaded lest the worst consequences 
 should result from personal attacks and controversies in the 
 press, and lest also the allied powers should be alienated 
 from the Greek cause and made hostile to it by the censures 
 directed against them in the pages of the newspaper. 
 
 1 Salvo, p. 356, et scqq.
 
 1824.] DISSENSIONS BETWEEN BYRON AND STANHOPE. 307 
 
 The journal would, moreover, represent not so much, the 
 views of the Greeks as the views of their foreign friends, 
 and having the field all to itself there being no room for 
 another would propagate its own views without the 
 correction of those of an opposite tendency. ' It is odd,' 
 said Byron to Gamba, 1 ' that Stanhope, the soldier, is all 
 for writing down the Turks ; and I, the writer, am all for 
 fighting them down.' The brigade of the author would 
 be ready so he said 2 on another occasion before the 
 printing press of the soldier. They mutually reproached 
 each other with radicalism and with despotism ; but not- 
 withstanding their disagreements, Byron always enter- 
 tained for Stanhope a high personal respect. * When 
 parting from him one evening, after a discussion of this 
 kind, Lord Byron went up to him and exclaimed, " Give me 
 that honest right hand;" and on another occasion he said 
 to Stanhope, " Judge me by my actions, not by my words." ' 3 
 Both Byron and Mavrocordato were glad at last when 
 Stanhope went to Athens, where he joined the republican 
 party. Odysseus, by establishing two schools, and by 
 setting up his presses, at which two journals were printed, 
 the ' Athens Free Press ' and the * Ami des Lois,' won the 
 Colonel over to this step. 
 
 From what has been said, it follows that a great change 
 had come over Byron's political opinions, for which his 
 friends and political associates could not have been pre- 
 pared. From a Carbonaro he had become a practical 
 politician. He saw that the conflict of Carbonarism 
 against existing governments could not be transplanted 
 into Greece, if its independence were to be achieved by 
 its people and recognised among the great powers. He 
 who had lived to see the miserable wreck of that asso- 
 
 1 Gamba's Narrative, p. 138. 2 Moore's Life, vi. 158. 
 
 8 Garaba's Narrative, p. 140. 
 
 x 2
 
 308 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEt. 36. 
 
 elation, could he entertain greater hopes of the Greek 
 Hetairia ? He rushed, therefore, to the opposite extreme, 
 and endeavoured above all things to obtain the active 
 sympathy of the governments of Europe. If a monarchy 
 and "especially a foreign king were the desired issue of 
 the struggle, this was undoubtedly the surest road ; the 
 final result at least was Byron's justification. According 
 to his opinion the Greeks must not incur the displeasure 
 of England, for England had not yet recognised Greece as 
 a belligerent power, but merely regarded it as a country 
 in a state of revolt. Moreover, the Ionian Isles were in- 
 dispensable to the Greeks for the export of their cattle 
 and for the importation of all their other necessaries ; hence 
 Byron utterly disapproved of the violent declamations, 
 which Stanhope continually poured out against the 
 government of these islands, though he knew it to be 
 worthless and demanding a thorough reform. He re- 
 garded the Greek revolt, not as a struggle of radicalism 
 and democracy against absolutism and the Holy Alliance, 
 but as the struggle of Christian civilisation against 
 Turkish oppression, and as the effort to attain a position 
 in the political world, worthy of their ancestors, for the 
 descendants of the most remarkable of the civilised nations 
 of antiquity. This was, indeed, a change of opinion so 
 great and marked, as scarcely to permit us to doubt, that 
 constituted as Byron was, he must have been guided by 
 motives which he never explicitly expressed. It is more 
 than probable, that conferences of a confidential character 
 were held at Missolonghi on this most secret point. ' I 
 have had offers that would surprise you ' he said to 
 Parry ' ( were I to tell you of them, and which would turn 
 the head of any man less satiated than I am, and more 
 
 1 The Last Days of Lord Byron, p. 179.
 
 182-i.J PEACTICAL CHAEACTER OF BYRON'S VIEWS. 309 
 
 desirous of possessing power than of contributing to 
 freedom and happiness.' Parry thought himself obliged 
 to defend his patron against such plans of vulgar ambition 
 which were even then openly discussed in the English 
 press : all the offers made to Byron had been, he says, 
 rejected. 
 
 Byron's views on the political regeneration of the 
 country according to the account which Parry gives l 
 were of an extremely practical character. They bear 
 witness to his clear perceptions and sound judgment on 
 all its external and internal relations, and only when he 
 comes to speak of the ultimate results are his notions at all 
 coloured by idealism. At the same time it may remain a 
 question, how far the statements of Parry are authentic 
 and trustworthy, and how far, also, Byron was in earnest 
 in the statement and explanation of his views to him. 
 Byron never committed the mistake of imagining, either 
 that there was a Greece with a strongly defined boundary, 
 or a distinct Greek nationality. The sole common bond 
 existing among the different tribes was, he saw, their 
 hatred of the Turks, in which hatred he by no means 
 shared; rather he held the Turks to be as good as the 
 Greeks, and objected to hear them called barbarians. 2 
 
 1 Parry's Last Days of Lord Byron, p. 170, et seqq. 
 
 2 In order to introduce a more civilised mode of warfare, he twice 
 obtained from the Greek authorities the release of some Turkish 
 prisoners, whom he afterwards sent at his own expense to the Turkish 
 commander of Patras and Prevesa with letters earnestly recommending 
 to them a return of the same humanity towards their Greek captives. 
 Among the Turkish prisoners there was a little girl of nine years old, 
 Ilato or Hatage"e, belonging to a family of good worldly circumstances 
 previous to the revolution, who with her mother had lived for three 
 years at Missolonghi dependent on the kind treatment of the people 
 there. Her father was serving with Jussuf Pacha, her brothers had all 
 gone to the war, and as she and her mother showed little inclination to 
 be sent back to Prevesa, Byron, charmed with the oriental beauty of the 
 little girl, determined to have her educated at his own charge. He had
 
 310 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [J*r. 36. 
 
 He distinguished between the wily, money-making Greek 
 of the islands, the debased population of the towns 
 on the continent, and the hardy and vigorous Greek 
 peasantry. In the latter should according to his view 
 the political centre of gravity be placed. He considered a 
 federation the most suitable form of government, a fede- 
 ration having been once in ancient times the constitution 
 of Greece. At the head of it he would place a President, 
 who should be chosen by the Morea, the Islands, and 
 Western Greece. The English form of government he 
 thought utterly unsuited to Greece ; he preferred for 
 her the constitution of the United States. He had great 
 expectations from America ; his exertions for the libera- 
 tion of Greece would be crowned, he thought, if he were 
 sent as an ambassador of the Greeks to America, and 
 should succeed in obtaining the recognition of Greece as 
 an independent country. This would, as a matter of course, 
 be followed by recognition on the part of England, and 
 the safety of Greece then would in every way be secured. 
 But first and foremost, the enemy must be driven from 
 the soil of Greece, and a united government be established. 
 It was settled, that the advances which Byron had made 
 should be re-imbursed from the loan which was to be 
 raised in England. He would thus have a sufficient sum 
 in hand to undertake, with his well-armed and well- 
 disciplined brigade, the long projected attack against 
 Lepanto, and he had no doubt, that not only Lepanto 
 but Patras also would fall into his hands : thus would the 
 Morea be gained, and with it the possibility of offensive 
 operations. Byron's further hopes for the new State, 
 if, indeed, we may trust the account of Parry, resolve 
 themselves into mere dreams. Thus, Crete, he imagined, 
 
 even some romantic thoughts of sending her to England as a companion 
 to Ada.
 
 1824.] BYRON'S DELICATE HEALTH. 311 
 
 in order to achieve her independence of Turkish rule, would 
 become an integral part of it. Regenerated Greece would 
 then expand in the same measure as Turkey decayed ; the 
 numerous tribes in Asia allied to Greece by language 
 and religion would gradually join the new State, would 
 spread civilisation over the ancient empire of Cyrus and 
 Xerxes, and at last reach out its hand on the borders of 
 Hindostan to that nation, which had been the first to 
 assist it in the work of its liberation. 
 
 The state of Byron's health was far from being equal to 
 the execution of his plans ; on the contrary it excited great 
 apprehension. He complained of weakness and dizziness 
 and of frequent spasms in the chest. His departure for 
 Salona, which had been fixed for March 27, was postponed 
 partly on this account, partly from the state of the roads, 
 which had been rendered impassable by the incessant fall of 
 rain. On March 30, the freedom of the city of Missolonghi 
 was conferred upon him, in grateful recognition of his 
 distinguished services. He received April 9, a letter 
 from his sister with favourable accounts of her own and 
 of Ada's health. Pleased and excited with this news, he 
 rode out with Gamba and his body-guard of Suliotes ; he 
 had been prevented for some days from taking exercise 
 by unfavourable weather. They were overtaken by a 
 heavy shower of rain, and returned to the walls thoroughly 
 wet and in a state of violent perspiration. At the gate 
 of the city, Byron dismounted as usual and insisted on 
 getting into his boat, in order to avoid the ride through 
 the dirty streets, in spite of Gamba's entreaties to take 
 care, and his warnings against catching cold. * I should 
 make a pretty soldier, indeed, if I were to care for such a 
 trifle.' l Two hours after his return home, Byron was 
 
 1 Moore's Life, vi. 200.
 
 312 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEt. 36. 
 
 seized with shivering and rheumatic pains, and at eight 
 o'clock of that same evening he said to Gamba, as he 
 entered his room : ' I suffer a great deal of pain ; I don't 
 care for death, but these agonies I cannot bear.' l ' On 
 the following day he rose at his accustomed hour trans- 
 acted business and was even able to take his ride in the 
 olive woods, accompanied, as usual, by his long train of 
 Suliotes. He complained, however, of perpetual shudder- 
 ings, and had no appetite .... This was the last time 
 he ever crossed the threshold alive.' a ' On the evening 
 of the llth, his fever, which was pronounced to be rheu- 
 matic, increased; on the 12th he never left his bed, and 
 on the two following days, though the fever appeared 
 diminished, he became still more weak, and suffered much 
 from pains in the head. Far from having any presenti- 
 ment of his death, he spoke rather as if satisfied with the 
 turn in his malady, since the fever, according to his belief, 
 would- cure him of his tendency to the dreaded epilepsy. 
 The physicians also did not at first perceive the whole 
 gravity of the attack, and the faithful Fletcher appears to 
 have been the first who foreboded danger, and implored, 
 therefore, his master to allow Dr. Thomas to be sent for 
 from Zante. No vessel, however, could venture from 
 the harbour on account of a dreadful hurricane. Dr. 
 Bruno had, on the 14th, declared bleeding to be absolutely 
 necessary, an opinion in which Millingen a Swiss, 
 Byron's staff-physician who was now called in, con- 
 curred. This Byron most pertinaciously refused : the 
 doctors might do with him what they liked, only they 
 should not bleed him : he had promised his mother 
 never to allow himself to be bled ; ' besides, is it not,' he 
 asked, 'asserted by Dr. Eeid in his essays, that less 
 slaughter is effected by the lance than by the lancet, that 
 1 Moore's Life, vi. 201, a Ibid. p. 202.
 
 1824.] BYRON'S MORTAL ILLNESS AT MISSOLONGfll. 313 
 
 minute instrument of mighty mischief?' 'Do with me,' 
 he said to Millingen, ' whatever else you like, but bleed me 
 you shall not.' 1 Notwithstanding this, Millingen in whom 
 Byron seems to have placed greater confidence than in 
 the inexperienced Bruno so persevered in his representa- 
 tions of the necessity of bleeding, that Byron at length 
 yielded, and casting at both the medical men the fiercest 
 glance of vexation, he threw out his arm and said in the 
 
 angriest tone : ' There you are, I see, a d d set of 
 
 butchers take away as much blood as you like, but have 
 done with it.' 8 Twenty ounces were immediately drawn : 
 this was on April 16. The result did not correspond with 
 the hopes which had been formed ; the restlessness of the 
 sufferer increased, and he began to wander in his mind. 
 Next day he was again bled twice, the signs of inflamma- 
 tion of the brain increasing hourly : on both occasions 
 Byron fainted. In addition to the bleeding it was deemed 
 expedient to apply blisters to the soles of his feet : the 
 sick man asked whether it would answer the purpose to 
 apply both on the same leg; Millingen, immediately 
 understanding the meaning of the question, calmed him 
 by telling him that he would place them above his knees.' 3 
 The following day was Easter-day, which the Greeks 
 were wont to celebrate by salvoes of artillery and volleys 
 of musketry in the streets. Not to disturb the sick man 
 by this noise, Parry marched with Byron's brigade and a 
 crowd of the curious out of the city, and there made them 
 discharge their arms, while the town- guards patrolled the 
 streets and prayed the people to make as little noise as 
 possible out of regard to the dangerous condition of their 
 benefactor. About three o'clock in the afternoon Byron 
 was able to rise from bed and was led into the next room, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, \i. 203. 8 Ibid. p. 206. 3 Ibid. p. 207.
 
 314 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [Mi. 36. 
 
 where lie sat down and even attempted to read ; but after 
 a few minutes, he had to be conducted back to his bed 
 again. The physicians, now thoroughly alarmed, expressed 
 .a wish to call in two other medical men Dr. Freiber, the 
 physician of the artillery-corps, and Luca Yaya, the 
 physician of Mavrocordato to a consultation. Byron 
 only consented when it was told him, that it was the 
 wish of Mavrocordato, but with the express condition, 
 * Let them look at me but say nothing.' When one 
 of them having felt his pulse was about to ask a question 
 or make a remark, Byron cut him short with the expres- 
 sion : f Recollect your promise and go away.' l 
 
 The feeling of his approaching end now came over 
 the sick man. Count Gamba, young and inexperienced, 
 and the tender-hearted Fletcher, burst into tears and were 
 obliged to leave the room. Tita also, who had been in 
 Greece Byron's most useful and favourite servant, wept 
 and averted his face, but could not retire as Byron kept 
 hold of his hand. He looked at him steadily, and said, 
 half smiling, in Italian, ' Oh, questa e una bella scena ! ' He 
 then exclaimed, * Call Parry,' who was the coolest and 
 most self-possessed in the household. He then became 
 delirious, and called out, half in English half in Italian, 
 ' Forwards forwards courage ! follow my example 
 don't be afraid.' 2 Becoming a little calmer he endea- 
 voured to make Fletcher understand his last wishes. 
 Fletcher begged to be allowed to bring writing materials 
 to take down his words. * No,' interrupted Byron, 
 ' there is no time ; mind you execute my orders. Go to 
 my sister tell her go to Lady Byron you will see 
 her and say -' Here his voice faltered and became 
 indistinct, and only a few names, Augusta Ada 
 
 1 Gamba's Nan-ative, p. 260. 2 Ibid. p. 261.
 
 1824.] BYRON'S LAST MOMENTS. 315 
 
 Hobhouse Kinnaird could be distinguished. * Now I 
 have told you all,' he said. ' My Lord,' replied Fletcher, 
 ' I have not understood a word your Lordship has been 
 saying.' 'Not understand me?' said Byron with a look 
 of deep distress. ' What a pity then ! it is too late all is 
 over.' * 1 hope not,' murmured Fletcher, 'but the Lord's 
 will be done.' ' Yes,' continued Byron, ' yes, not mine.' 
 He then tried to utter a few words, of which none were 
 intelligible except ' My sister my child.' 
 
 The opinions of the physicians were as usual divided. 
 Contrary to the view of Dr. Bruno, who saw safety only 
 in bleeding, a strong decoction of bark with opium was 
 prescribed. Parry, who by his resolute and sturdy 
 character had gained great influence over Byron, had to 
 administer to him some spoonfuls of it. Sleep, the long- 
 desired sleep, was now produced, but death also perhaps 
 was accelerated. After the sleep of half an hour the 
 sick man awoke. Count Gamba, who could no longer be 
 present at the sad scene, relates that Byron could be under- 
 stood to say, ' Poor Greece ! poor town ! my poor servants ! 
 why was I not aware of this sooner ? My hour is come. 
 I do not care for death, but why did I not go home before 
 I came here ? lo lascio qualche cosa di caro nel mondo. 
 For the rest, I am content to die.' He spoke of Greece 
 also, saying, ' I have given her my time, my means, my 
 health, and now I give her my life. What could I do 
 more ? ' 2 These expressions, however, rest on very imper- 
 fect authority, and it could not be otherwise, if the 
 terrible confusion be considered which reigned in the 
 chamber of the now dying man, and through the whole 
 house. Many conveniences were utterly wanting ; while 
 there was no lack of will to help, the absence of plan or 
 
 1 Moore's Life, vi. 210. 2 Ibid. p. 211-12.
 
 310 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \_Ato. 36. 
 
 method was the more felt. No one knew rightly what was 
 to be done, and no one had the capacity to undertake the 
 management. Above all, the nursing care of woman was 
 wanting ; for as man at the beginning of life cannot dis- 
 pense with woman's care, neither can he dispense with it 
 when life draws to its close. To add to all this there 
 was a true Babel of tongues. Dr. Bruno in his agitation 
 and anxiety spoke English still more unintelligibly than 
 before. Fletcher's Italian was not better. Parry under- 
 stood nothing but English, Tita nothing but Italian, and 
 the Romaic of the Greek servants was understood by 
 none, as they on the other hand understood nobody. 
 Towards evening Byron said : ' Now I will go to sleep,' 
 and disposed himself to that slumber from which he never 
 woke. He lay for four and twenty hours without motion ; 
 occasional symptoms of suffocation were seen, accompanied 
 by rattling in the throat, which induced those that watched 
 by the bed now and then to raise his head ; and so he 
 continued till six o'clock in the evening of April 19, when, 
 during a terrible thunderstorm, he opened his eyes and 
 then again immediately closed them. The physicians felt 
 his pulse Byron was no more. 
 
 Not only Byron's friends and servants, but all Misso- 
 longhi, were stunned by the sudden blow which had fallen 
 upon them. Mavrocordato wept, and even the inhabi- 
 tants with difficulty restrained their tears. On the very 
 day of his death, Mavrocordato in the name of the Pro- 
 visional Government, proclaiming to the country its loss, 
 decreed that ' the seven and thirty funeral shots,' which 
 Wilhelm Miiller 1 in his Lays of Greece has so beautifully 
 
 1 [Father of Professor Max Miiller, who in the third volume of his 
 Chips from a German Workshop, republishes in a translation the Beautiful 
 sketch of his father's life, which he prefixed to the German edition of 
 his father's poems.]
 
 1824.] GENERAL GKIEF AT THE DEATH OF BYRON. 317 
 
 commemorated, should be fired from the grand battery ; l 
 that all the public offices, even the courts of justice, all 
 the shops except those in which provisions and medicines 
 are sold, should remain closed for three days; that every 
 species of public amusement and all demonstrations of 
 festivity at Easter should be suspended; that a general 
 mourning for one and twenty days should be observed ; 
 and that in all churches prayers and a funeral service 
 should be offered up. These were honours such as are 
 observed towards princes, and display even an excess of 
 gratitude. The funeral shots, which ' thundered to the 
 world ' from the walls of Missolonghi, were heard even at 
 Patras, where the Turkish garrison, quickly learning their 
 intent, announced their joy at the great liberator's death 
 by volleys of musketry. The cannon having ceased to 
 fire, a silence like the grave lay over the whole city, as if 
 it had the presentiment that the death of Byron were the 
 precursor of its own fall. Meanwhile in Byron's house, 
 his friends Gamba, Parry, and two representatives of 
 Mavrocordato were engaged in taking an inventory of his 
 effects, and sealing his papers. The body was opened by 
 the medical men, and afterwards embalmed. 2 As lead 
 
 1 The decree of the Provisional Government is given in the original in 
 the Appendix to Medwin's Conversations, p. 524. 
 
 2 The report of the post mortem examination, signed by Bruno and the 
 other medical men, is given in Count Gamba's Narrative, p. 271 (note), 
 and also in the Appendix to Medwin's Conversations. Nothing can be 
 more unsatisfactory than this report, from which only one particular 
 merits special notice namely, that the brain was in a high state of in- 
 flammation. Fletcher's 'Account of Lord Byron's last Moments,' which 
 appeared originally in the Westminster Bei'ieio together with Dr. Bruno's 
 remarks upon it, is to be found in the Appendix to Medwin. Fletcher's 
 account can make no claim to perfect accuracy, for he was not always 
 present in the chamber of death, and was besides far too much affected 
 and confused to be a true observer or relater. Altogether the accounts 
 of the particulars of Byron's illness and death-scene are very contradic- 
 tory.
 
 318 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 36. 
 
 sufficient for the coffin could not be procured, the corpse 
 was placed in a rude ill-constructed chest of wood lined 
 with tin. The funeral ceremony took place on the 22nd ; 
 in solemn procession the coffin was borne to the church 
 of St. Nicholas, in which reposed the remains of Bozzaris 
 and Normann. Twelve hundred soldiers of the garrison 
 with arms reversed lined the streets from the house of 
 death to the church. The Bishop and the clergy bearing 
 the cross and singing psalms walked at the head of the 
 procession ; then followed a company of Byron's brigade, 
 next Gamba and Mavrocordato, and behind them the bier 
 carried by officers. The coffin was covered with a black 
 mantle instead of a pall, and on it was placed his helmet l 
 and sword and a crown of laurel. Immediately behind 
 the bier was led the horse of the deceased draped in black ; 
 then came his servants, the physicians and officials, and 
 a company of Suliotes, closed the procession. Cannon 
 posted on the open place round the church were from 
 time to time discharged ; and at the door of the church, 
 the Archbishop of Arta met the funeral procession. The 
 Liturgy being sung, Spiridion Tricoupi delivered an elo- 
 quent funeral oration in Greek. 2 The bier was left 
 exposed till the evening of the following day in the church, 
 guarded by a detachment of his own brigade, and visited 
 
 1 [This helmet is now preserved at Newstead as a precious relic.] 
 
 2 This oration in the original is printed among ' Selections from 
 Modern Greek Writers in Prose and Poetry,' with Notes by C. C. Felton, 
 Eliot Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University, Cambridge, 
 U.S., 1856, pp. 99-108. There is an English translation of it in the 
 Appendix to Medwin's Conversations. Tricoupi was the son of a primate 
 at Missolonghi, and had received an excellent education at the expense 
 of Lord Guilford. He understood English, French, and Italian. After 
 the termination of the War of Liberation, he was sent as Greek Ambas- 
 sador to London ; he has written a history of the Greek Rebellion, 
 'l-rropiu -nje ' E\\iii'ucij<; 'RiravavTaviiac. In the Appendix to Medwin, 
 p. 540-1, there is an ode, from a Greek Journal, to the Memory of Lord 
 Byron, together with a translation of it.
 
 1824.] HIS REMAINS SENT TO ENGLAND. 319 
 
 by crowds, who came to take their farewell look of the 
 friend and deliverer of their country. In the evening of 
 the 23rd, the bier was privately carried back to his own 
 house by his own officers ; and on the 29th the coffin was 
 closed. When the news of his death arrived at Zante, 
 the first physicians of the island, Dr. Thomas at their 
 head, were in the act of embarking for Missolonghi. The 
 English Resident forthwith despatched a vessel to bring 
 away the remains, his household, and effects. On the 
 morning of the 2nd of May the embarkation took place 
 amid the minute guns of the fortress ; and on the evening 
 of the 4th, the vessel cast anchor in the harbour of Zante. 
 Two days after Byron's death the brig * Florida ' had 
 arrived in the same harbour with the first instalment of 
 the loan under the charge of Captain Blaquiere. She 
 was now chartered to convey his mortal remains to his 
 native land. Colonel Stanhope, on his arrival from the 
 Morea, took charge of the ship and its precious charge, 
 and on May the 25th the ' Florida ' weighed anchor and 
 sailed for England. 
 
 The news of Byron's death arrived in London on May 
 the 14th, and soon spread over the civilised world. That 
 Byron had been snatched away in the very flower of his 
 manhood excited universal grief and lamentation. He 
 had just attained his thirty-seventh year, a period in 
 man's life which seems an ominous one for men of great 
 genius. Alexander the Great did not attain even that 
 age ; Raphael and Mozart died at the same age as Byron 
 which was fatal to other remarkable, if less conspicuous 
 men of genius to Burns, Platen, Weber, Mendelssohn. 
 It is very natural that contemporaries should feel most 
 acutely a death so sudden and premature ; but posterity 
 judges more coldly and therefore more truly. Byron had 
 attained his culminating point and a longer life would
 
 320 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JErr. 36. 
 
 probably have added little to his fame, either in the field 
 of poetry or politics ; on the contrary prolonged life might 
 have detracted from it in both. As a poet, Byron had done 
 the utmost he was capable of ; he had entered on that period 
 of life in which the lyrical faculty naturally tends to -decay ; 
 as a dramatist he would never have carried off the palm ; 
 and if he had continued ' Don Juan ' or ' Childe Harold,' he 
 would have found it impossible to give the finish and com- 
 pleteness, which art demands, to poems, so utterly wanting, 
 as these are, in consistency of idea and plan, or to make 
 them more perfect, than they already were. He might 
 have added to the quantity, hardly to the quality of these 
 works. With regard to Greece, Byron's early death was 
 undoubtedly at first a severe loss : his name and influence 
 had helped the Greeks to procure that pecuniary aid 
 which they so urgently needed, and at his death several 
 of the richer Philhellenes withdrew the sums which they 
 were about to dedicate to the Greek cause. 1 But if we 
 survey the course of the war of liberation, it appears 
 very questionable, whether Byron would have been able 
 to bring to a triumphant close the work he had taken 
 on himself, surrounded, as it was, with ever-increasing 
 difficulties. He was neither a soldier nor a politician; 
 he was wanting in those qualities of mind and character, 
 which were required in the sphere in which he was 
 placed in patience, in perseverance, in rapid yet cautious 
 and consistent action, in equanimity, not to say cool- 
 ness, in political calculation, and lastly, in unconsciousness 
 of self. Although the plan which floated before him was 
 not wanting in practical feasibility, yet rivals, apparently 
 more energetic than himself, had different views from his 
 on the schemes which he wished to carry out, and it is 
 
 1 Gamba's Narrative, p. 282 (note).
 
 1821.] AERIVAL OF HIS REMAINS IN ENGLAND. 321 
 
 doubtful \vlio, in this conflict of proposals, would have 
 proved the victor. 1 The union and harmony he passion- 
 ately longed for were not to be so quickly achieved, 
 and military successes were, as events showed, by no 
 means so certain as Byron imagined. Even if his life 
 had been prolonged, it is far from certain, that he would 
 have added political renown to his name, or achieved 
 favourable issues for Greece. It has already been hinted, 
 that Byron appeared to wish to die ; and for him, without 
 question, the noblest fate would have been that he should 
 have found death, not on a sick bed, but in storming Le- 
 panto, with the banner of Greece in his hand. Burial on 
 the soil of Greece, in the Temple of Theseus, as the Greek 
 chiefs desired, or by the side of Marco Bozzaris in the 
 church of Missolonghi, or on the field of Marathon, would 
 then have been justified. As matters, however, were, we 
 cannot but think, that he fell a victim to his insensate 
 fashion of living rather than to Greece, and that his in- 
 terment in the land of his birth appears the more fitting 
 termination, especially as it was his last, although not hi? 
 earliest, wish, that he should be buried in England. 
 
 On the arrival of the ' Florida ' on July 1, in the Downs, 
 Hobhouse and Hanson, the executors of Byron's will, 
 received the corpse and conveyed it to the house of Sir 
 Edward Knatchbull in Great George Street, Westmin- 
 ster, where, on the 9th and 10th of the month, it lay 
 in state. To restrain the passionate eagerness of the 
 public, admission to see the body was granted only by 
 cards. Friends who knew him well* found, it is said, no 
 great alteration of the countenance in death, except in 
 
 1 Trelawny, who regarded Byron as a tool in the hands of the crafty 
 Mavrocordato, sought to free him from this, according to his (Tre- 
 lawny's) mind, unworthy position, and to bring him over to the side and 
 party of Odysseus, and install him at the Acropolis. 
 
 T
 
 322 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi. 36. 
 
 an expression of care and distress which they thought 
 they discovered. The beautiful saying that death re- 
 conciles, was not, alas ! verified in Byron's case ; his 
 own family and society allowed the breach with him to 
 last beyond the grave. We do not hear that Lady Byron 
 took any interest or concern in the funeral of her husband. 
 Ought she not to have hastened to meet the coffin, and 
 suffered Ada, now in her ninth year, to be present at the 
 funeral of her father? But her stern feelings were in- 
 capable of change, and in this she harmonised only too 
 well with society. Byron's friends had suggested that he 
 should be buried in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's, but 
 the authorities, unable to rise to a human and national 
 point of view, refused permission. To this day, in the 
 famous ' Poets' Corner ' of the Abbey, which has been 
 opened to so much questionable and spurious greatness, not 
 even a bust of Byron is to be found. Except the statue 
 of Thorwaldsen, which at last, after much difficulty, found 
 a home in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 no monument has anywhere been erected to the memory 
 of Byron in England : a fate which he shares in common 
 with Milton and Cromwell 'the immortal rebel,' while 
 statues of Georges and Williams often conspicuous for 
 their bad taste are legion. It was ascertained, under 
 these circumstances, to be the wish of Mrs. Leigh, that 
 the interment should take place in the family vault in the 
 Church of Hucknall-Torkard, from the churchyard of 
 which the hills and woods of Annesley Park are visible. 
 At eleven o'clock on the morning of July 12, the funeral 
 procession began to move from the house of Sir Edward 
 Knatchbull, and a string of carriages and persons on foot 
 accompanied the mortal remains of the poet to Pancras 
 turnpike, where the procession terminated, while the 
 hearse proceeded by slow stages to Nottingham. ' As the
 
 1824.] THE FUXERAL OF BYRON. 323 
 
 procession proceeded through the streets of London, a 
 fine-looking honest tar was observed to walk near the 
 hearse uncovered throughout the morning ; and on being 
 asked by a stranger whether he formed part of the funeral 
 cortege, he replied that he came there to pay his respects 
 to the deceased, with whom he had served in the Levant, 
 when he made the tour of the Grecian islands. This 
 poor fellow was kindly offered a place by some of the 
 servants who were behind the carriage, but he said he 
 was strong and had rather walk near the hearse.' l In the 
 suburb of Kentish Town, the procession passed by a 
 modest house, at the windows of which stood the widows 
 of Shelley and Captain Williams, who lived there. l What 
 should I have said to a Cassandra, who, three years ago, 
 should have prophesied that Jane and I Williams and 
 Shelley gone should watch the funeral procession of 
 Lord Byron up Highgate Hill ? All changes of romance 
 or drama lag far behind this ! ' 2 As the hearse pro- 
 ceeded to Nottingham, it passed by a certain park, 
 and a gentleman and lady riding therein on horseback, 
 enquired whose funeral it was ? The answer was followed 
 by sad consequences. The lady immediately fainted and 
 was carried home insensible, where she became seriously 
 ill. The lady was Lady Caroline Lamb, and the gentle- 
 man, riding with her, her husband. This incident exceeds 
 even modern sensational fiction, but is nevertheless true. 3 
 In the afternoon of July 16 it was a Friday, a day 
 which Byron all his life regarded as an unlucky one the 
 body was deposited in the family vault in the small 
 village church of Hucknall-Torkard ; and there it rests 
 near the body of the mother who preceded him and of 
 
 1 Parry's Narrative, p. 149. 
 
 2 Garnett's Relics of Shelley. London, 1862, p. 134. 
 
 3 Annual Biography for the Year 1829, p, 57. 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 LIFE OF LORD BYROtf. [JEr. 36. 
 
 the daughter who followed him. Lady Byron, separated 
 from her husband in life, is separated even in her 
 grave ; her body found a resting place elsewhere. Over 
 the vault, on the wall of the church, Mrs. Leigh 
 not Lady Byron caused a marble tablet to be erected 
 with the following inscription : In the vault beneath, 
 where many of his ancestors and his mother are buried, 
 lie the remains of George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord 
 Byron of Rochdale in the county of Lancaster, the author 
 of ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.' He was born in London 
 on ike 22nd of January, 1 788. He died at Missolonghi in 
 Western Greece, on the 19th of April, 1824, engaged in the 
 glorious attempt to restore that country to her ancient freedom, 
 and renown. His sister, the Honourable Augusta Maria, 
 Leigh, placed this Tablet to his memory. 
 
 One of the first pilgrims to the grave was the faithful 
 Count Gamba, who is said * to have been much struck with 
 the resemblance of Hucknall-Torkard to Missolonghi. 
 The Countess Guiccioli also, at a later period, made a 
 pilgrimage to the grave of her lover. This lady to add a 
 few words concerning her life subsequent to Byron's death 
 left Genoa to join her father, a few days after Byron's 
 departure for Greece. Her family, a short time before 
 Byron's expedition, had been banished from the kingdom of 
 Sardinia, and she could not now leave her father, as, after 
 the confiscation of his estates, 2 he depended for his support 
 chiefly on the annuity she received from her husband, 
 Count Guiccioli. This probably was one of the reasons 
 why she could not follow Byron to Greece. It has been 
 made a reproach to him, and been cited as a proof of 
 
 1 See Moore's Life, vi. 223. 
 
 * [Hobhouse, in the article of the Westminster Review, already several 
 times quoted, denies this : ' their possessions (i.e. of the Counts Garni a) 
 were not confiscated,' p. 23.]
 
 1824.] COUNTESS GUICCIOLI AFTER BYRON'S DEATH. 325 
 
 his want of generosity, that he made no provision for her 
 during his life or after his death by will, although she 
 had sacrificed for him her whole worldly prosperity. He 
 had, indeed, offered to leave her a legacy of 10,000?., an 
 offer which she declined, as she had declined all presents 
 from him. In her, such conduct was noble and shows the 
 finest feeling : in him it was otherwise. He should have 
 made the necessary provision without consulting her; 
 for to his proposal what could she give but a refusal ? 
 Whither she and her family repaired, when they left 
 Genoa, we know not. After Byron's death, the Countess 
 is said to have been re-united to her husband. The 
 winter of 1832-33 she spent with her brother Pietro in 
 England, where society shrugged its shoulders at her, and 
 neglected her ; it is said that even the door of Newstead 
 was closed to her. In 1851 she was married to the 
 Marquis de Boissy (1798-1866), peer of France under 
 Louis Philippe, and senator under the second Empire. 
 This alliance seems to us inexplicable, as her recently 
 published work on Byron shows, how with every fibre of 
 her heart she is still devoted to the lover of her youth. 
 Nothing would have so well become her as a life of 
 dignified retirement. Had the Marquis been an intimate 
 friend or admirer of Byron, she might have pleaded this 
 as some extenuation for marriage with him. But he 
 never knew Byron, and though. he imitated the English 
 in his domestic arrangements, he displayed in his public 
 life an unseemly and often ludicrous hatred of the English 
 nation. Rumour affects to know, that he often intro- 
 duced his wife with these words : ' Madame la Marquise 
 de Boissy, ma femme, ci-devant maitresse de Lord Byron.' ' 
 Her work on Byron, however good her intentions may be, 
 
 1 Athen&um, Oct. 9, 1869, p. 465.
 
 326 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 36. 
 
 possesses no value. The best service she can render to 
 her lover and to the world, if she would not incur the 
 same reproach which attaches to Moore, would be to take 
 steps for the publication of Byron's correspondence with 
 herself, and of the letters of her brother Pietro written 
 while he was in Greece. 
 
 Byron, as early as 1815, had directed by his will, 
 that his property of Rochdale in Lancashire should be 
 sold, and that the proceeds, together with the sum 
 realised from the sale of Newstead, after deduction of 
 the money secured to his wife by the marriage settle- 
 ments, should devolve on his sister Mrs. Leigh and her 
 children, as a property to be held independently of her 
 husband. He at the same time expressly declared, that 
 he made this provision for his sister and her children, 
 because his wife and any children he might have Ada 
 was not yet born were otherwise amply provided for. 
 His care and consideration for Mrs. Leigh were rendered 
 the more necessary by her husband's unfortunate or 
 prodigal mismanagement of his affairs, and consequent 
 loss of the greater portion of his property. It does not 
 appear, however, as if Byron's purpose had been attained 
 by this legacy, for Mrs. Leigh seems to have needed, as 
 she advanced in life, a royal pension. 
 
 Lady Byron, after the death of her husband, gave 
 herself up more and more to her pietistic tendencies : 
 she occupied herself continually with theological questions, 
 sought especially the society of the clergy, and patronised 
 the efforts of the Home Mission. Iu the year 1854 she 
 established at Bristol a Reformatory for young girls. 1 
 
 1 A memorial tablet placed on this house commemorates her virtues 
 thus : ( Sacred to the Memory of Anne Isabella Noel, Dowager Lady 
 Byron, who, ever devoting the many talents entrusted to her to the 
 service of her Master, purchased these premises in September 1854, for
 
 1824.] LADY BYEOX AFTER HEE HUSBAND'S DEATH. 327 
 
 But with all this, her heart remained cold and stern, 
 lacking the softness and gentleness of true womanhood. 
 Artificial and dogmatic piety had altogether supplanted 
 the natural devoutness of her character. This was seen 
 pre-eminently in the education of Ada, ' sole daughter of 
 my house and heart.' In accordance with the heart- 
 less and tyrannical directions of her grandmother, Ada 
 was kept in entire ignorance of her father. By the 
 directions of Lady Noel's will, Ada was not to see the 
 portrait of her father, till she had attained her twenty- 
 first year ; ' her executors were strictly directed to keep 
 it, till then, carefully concealed ; and in the event of her 
 attaining that age while Lady Byron was still living, even 
 so Ada was not to receive the portrait. The handwriting 
 of her father, Lady Lovelace learnt to know only in later 
 years through Mr. Murray, 2 and till within a short period 
 before her death she knew nothing of his works. That 
 such conduct on the part of the mother should fail to 
 produce those feelings so becoming in a daughter, is very 
 conceivable, and various indications seem to attest, that 
 the relations between mother and daughter were not 
 always the most tender and undisturbed. Of the way 
 in which Ada became acquainted with the poetry of 
 her father, the Countess Guiccioli 3 gives the following 
 
 the purpose of rescuing young girls from sin and misery, and bringing 
 them back to the paths of holiness. She was born May 17, 1722, and 
 departed this life May 16, 1860, faithful unto death.' 
 
 1 [' It is singular, that in the same year that Lady Noel leaves by will 
 an interdiction for my daughter to see her father's portrait for many 
 years, the individuals of a nation (Americans of the United States) not 
 remarkable for their liking to the English in particular, nor for flattering 
 men in general, request me to sit for my " pourtraicture," as Baron 
 Bradwardine calls it.' Byron in a letter to Mr. Murray, May 26, 1822. 
 Moore's Life, v. 336.] 
 
 2 [Not the father, but the son, who delighted Lady Lovelace by giving 
 her the MS. of < Beppo.'] 
 
 3 Recollections of Lord Byron, i. 306. English Trans.
 
 328 LIFE LORD BYRON. [JET. 36. 
 
 account, tinged, it must be admitted, with the hues of 
 romance. Colonel Wildman, who had become acquainted 
 with Lady Lovelace in London, invited her to Newstead, 
 an invitation which she accepted about a year and a 
 quarter before her death. One day in the library of 
 Newstead, the Colonel read to her some verses, with the 
 beauty of which she was enchanted : when she asked him 
 who was the author, the Colonel answered by pointing to 
 the portrait of her father by Phillips hanging on the 
 wall. She was stunned by the discovery, and from that 
 moment a revolution took place in her feelings towards 
 her father. Shutting herself up in the rooms her father 
 had occupied, she devoted herself to the study of his 
 works, and learnt from them that love for herself, which 
 had hitherto been so carefully concealed from her. On 
 her return to London, she became seriousty ill, and feeling 
 her end drawing near, she prayed the Colonel to allow 
 her to be buried by her father's side in the church of 
 Hucknall-Torkard, a request which was of course at 
 once granted. She died November 27, 1852. Thus 
 were fulfilled the words of the third canto of ' Childe 
 Harold,' in which the poet, while lamenting the small 
 measure of love he had known in life, spoke thus of his 
 daughter : 
 
 Though the grave closed between us 'twere the same, 
 I know that thou -wilt love me. 
 
 On July 8, 1835, Ada was married to Earl Lovelace, 
 who on the death of his mother-in-law in 1860 took the 
 family name of Noel for himself and his descendants ; of 
 this marriage three children were born. The eldest, 
 Byron Noel, Viscount Ockham (born May 12, 1836, died 
 September 1, 1862), appears to have inherited all the 
 eccentricity of the Byrons. A thorough radical in his
 
 1824.] SOME ACCOUNT OF LADY LOVELACE. 329 
 
 opinions, he mixed little with those of his own rank in 
 life, but served as a common seaman, and then worked 
 for some time as a ship-carpenter at Millwall. The 
 second child was Anna Isabella Noel, who was married 
 in August 1869 to Mr. Bluut. The youngest of the 
 children, Ralph Gordon Noel Milbanke, is the present 
 Lord Weutworth.
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [J3r. 19-36. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CHAR A CTERISTICS. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the fourth decade of this century 
 there appeared a work on Byron's life and adventures, 
 with the melodramatic title borrowed from Lamartine ' 
 * Lord Byron, Man, Angel, or Devil ? ' A title such as 
 this, conceived in the worst taste, and expressed in lan- 
 guage so strained and artificial, can only be explained by 
 the load of exaggeration and fable, under which, whether 
 for good or evil, Byron has lain beyond any other poet. 2 
 
 1 Lamartine's celebrated Meditation : LHomme. A Lord Byron, 
 begins with these verses : 
 
 f Toi, dont le inonde encore ignore le vrai nom, 
 Esprit myste'rieux, mortel, ange ou de"mon.' 
 
 a At the head of these fables stands the story of the murder, which 
 the poet was said to have committed at Florence, and to which even 
 Goethe himself lent an ear, explaining from it the conception of 
 'Manfred.' Byron, so this story runs, had an amour with a married lady 
 at Florence ; that her husband discovered it and killed the faithless one, 
 while he himself was found the same night in the street murdered, 
 whereupon Byron fled from Florence. (Goethe's Werke, xxvi. 429. 
 Stuttgart, 1858.) Other fabulous adventures are mentioned by Hunt 
 (Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, i. 234-240, 8vo. ed.). The descrip- 
 tions of his adventures and travels, which he is said to have passed 
 through, are mystifications of another kind ; such for instance as : ' Narra- 
 tive of Lord Byron's Voyage to Corsica and Sardinia, during the summer 
 and autumn of 1821. Compiled from minutes made during the voyage 
 by the passengers, with Extracts from the Journal of his Lordship's 
 yacht, the Mazeppa, kept by Captain Benson, R.N., Commander. Paris, 
 1825.' Also : ' An Event in the Life of Lord Byron,' in Colborn's New 
 Monthly Magazine, 1853 ; and some others. The spurious poems, as for 
 instance : ' Lord Byron's Farewell to England/ with three other poems
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 331 
 
 But quite apart from the manner in which it has been 
 misrepresented by falsehood and sensational descriptions, 
 his character has been judged in the most various and 
 contradictory ways. What a divergence of views between 
 the bitterness of Leigh Hunt on the one hand, and 
 the idolatry of the Countess Guiccioli on the other, 
 even in her old age, towards the lover of her youth? 
 What a difference between the judgment of Moore, 
 whose biography is a masterpiece of extenuation, and the 
 harshness of Trelawny or of Gait ? The reason of this 
 may be found in the fact, that Byron presented a variety 
 of sides to the minds of observers, and that his 
 nature, as many coloured as the spectrum of the sun, 
 showed a different hue, according to the medium and 
 relations in which it was placed for the time, and the 
 feelings and humours thereby educed. ' Nil fuit unquam 
 sic impar sibi,' was Medwin's l opinion. ' He is never 
 two days the same,' says the Countess of Blessington. 2 
 Byron was conscious of this, and even prided himself 
 somewhat on it. ' I am,' he said to the lady just named, 
 ' such a strange melange of good and evil, that it would 
 be difficult to describe me ; one will represent me a sort 
 of sublime misanthrope, with moments of kind feeling. 
 This, par exemple, is my favourite role. Another will 
 portray me as a modern Don Juan ; and a third will, it is 
 to be hoped, if only for opposition's sake, represent me as 
 an amiable ill-used gentleman, more sinned against than 
 sinning. Now if 1 know myself, I should say that I have 
 
 ' Ode to St. Helena,' ' To my Daughter on her Birth-day,' and ' To the 
 Lily of France.' London, 1816, and some other poems, form a third class 
 of forgeries. 
 
 1 Conversations of Lord Byron, by Thomas Medwin, ii. 136. 
 
 3 Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington. London, 
 1834.
 
 332 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEv. 19-36. 
 
 no character at all.' l ' With me ' so he says on another 
 occasion ' there is but one step between the sublime 
 and the ridiculous.' 2 These expressions betray, indeed, 
 some self-knowledge ; but he would have deceived himself, 
 had he imagined there was anything sublime in his life 
 or character ; sublimity is found only in his poetry. If, 
 therefore, the source whence traits so variable and con- 
 tradictory proceeded if the enduring element amid so 
 much instability is to be discovered we must, even at 
 the risk of some repetition, pass in rapid survey the 
 growth and formation of Byron's character. 
 
 Byron had received from nature various dangerous 
 gifts ; in the first place that we may commence with 
 those that are external beauty. Not only women joined 
 in the exclamation, * O mon dieu qu'il est beau ! ' but 
 even men could scarcely escape its influence. ' If you 
 had seen Byron,' writes Coleridge in a letter to a friend, 3 
 'you could scarcely disbelieve him so beautiful a coun- 
 tenance I scarcely ever saw his teeth so many stationary 
 smiles his eyes the open portals of the sun things of 
 light and for light and his forehead so ample and yet so 
 flexible, passing from marble smoothness into a hundred 
 wreaths and lines and dimples, correspondent to the feel- 
 ings and sentiments he is uttering.' Quite in harmony 
 with this is the description of the Countess Albrizzi. 4 
 She also dwells on the mobility of his countenance, over 
 which all the movements of his inner man coursed, like 
 the breath over a mirror. Even the calm and sober 
 Scott 5 thought him beautiful as the vision of a dream ; 
 'The prints,' he said, 'give one no impression of him. 
 
 1 Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessinyton, p. 389. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 319. 
 
 s Life of S. T. Coleridge, by James Oilman, vol. i. 1838. 
 4 See Moore's Life, iv. 214-220. 
 
 3 Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 319-20. Edin. 1856.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 333 
 
 A certain fair lady, whose name has been too often men- 
 tioned in connection with his, told a friend of mine, that 
 when she saw Byron first, it was in a crowded room, and 
 she did not know who it was, but her eyes were instantly 
 nailed, and she said to herself, " that pale face is my 
 fate." ' Byron was slenderly and finely formed, five feet 
 eight inches and a half in height, and very well propor- 
 tioned. His small head, of perfect symmetry, rested on 
 a long most shapely though muscular neck and broad 
 shoulders. A feminine character betrayed itself unmis- 
 takably in his outer man. His head resembled the 
 beardless Apollo ; he had, in fact, little beard, and in 
 Italy for the first time wore a thin moustache. His short 
 curly locks, very unlike the straight hair characteristic of 
 Englishmen, his large eyes, his long eyelashes, the trans- 
 parent paleness of his cheeks, his full lips, are all rather 
 feminine than masculine features. 1 The Sultan, when he 
 saw him in the suite of the English ambassador, is said to 
 have taken him for a woman in disguise, and Byron was 
 possibly thinking of himself, when he makes his Don Juan 
 appear in the harem disguised as a woman. That Ali 
 Pacha admired his aristocratic small hands, has been 
 already mentioned. His voice was soft and melodious 
 ' d'une beaute phenomenale,' as the Countess Guiccioli 
 says in her idolatry; the little son of Lord Holland, who 
 did not know his name, described him ' as the gentleman 
 with the beautiful voice.' ' He was in all these respects 
 so prodigally endowed by nature, that it might be said 
 that she had almost left nothing to be done but for that 
 unhappy lameness, which involuntarily recalls the verse : 
 
 Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne. 
 From what cause this lameness proceeded, it is difficult 
 
 1 Note, vol. i. p. 298. Engl. Trans.
 
 334 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 to discover ; and it is remarkable, how very much the 
 accounts respecting a fact so simple and easy to be 
 ascertained differ from each other ; doubt even prevails 
 as to which was the lame foot, or whether both were 
 deformed. Byron, during his whole life, took the utmost 
 pains to conceal both the lameness and its cause. Ac- 
 cording to the Countess Guiccioli, the widow of Colonel 
 Wildman presented to the ' Naturalist Society of Not- 
 tingham,' among other relics of Byron, ' the lasts ' on 
 which his boots were made in Southwell ; l and if we are 
 to believe the accompanying testimony of the bootmaker, 
 William Swift, Byron had not a club foot, as was so 
 often asserted by his enemies with a tender allusion to 
 the devil, but both feet were normally formed, only the 
 left was an inch and a half shorter than the other ; and 
 the ankle joint was at the same time so weak, that the 
 foot turned outwards. Byron when a boy wore therefore 
 ' a piece of iron with a joint at the ankle,' at a later 
 period ' a very light and thin boot, tightly laced just 
 under the sole.' The calf of the leg was also weak. The 
 Countess Guiccioli corroborates the statement, that the 
 whole defect lay in the weakness of the ankle-bone, but 
 is silent as to the shortness of the foot. 2 Trelawny's 
 account 3 is very different. He saw Byron lying in his 
 coffin ; impelled by curiosity, he sent Fletcher, who was 
 in the room, for a glass of water, and then uncovered the 
 feet of the dead man. Then, he says, the mystery was 
 solved ; both feet were clubbed, and his legs withered to 
 the knee. The right foot was the most distorted, and 
 had been still further injured by the remedies applied in 
 
 1 [The Countess is more correct here, than in many of her stories. 
 ' The lasts ' spoken of are preserved by this Society.] 
 
 2 Countess Guiccioli. Recollections of Lord JByron, i. 72, 73 (English 
 Edition, London, 1869). 
 
 3 Recollections of the Last Days of Byron, 8fc,, pp. 224-228.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 335 
 
 his childhood, especially by the steel splints. The right 
 leg was also shorter, and the foot so twisted, that only 
 the outer side touched the ground. Hence, he says, 
 Byron's shoes were provided with high heels and the 
 soles were on the inside very thick and on the outside 
 very thin; the toes were stuffed with cotton wool. To 
 conceal his feet he wore unusually long and wide trowsers. 
 According to the same authority, he could not walk more 
 than a few hundred yards, and never sat on the ground, 
 as it would have been difficult for him to get up again. 1 
 He explains also Byron's life-long habit of fasting from 
 these defects ; his withered limbs would have been unable 
 to bear a heavy body. Two things, however, are strange 
 in this account ; first, that Byron could walk at all with- 
 out the help of a stick and it is never mentioned that 
 he used one : and, secondly, that Trelawny made this 
 discovery only after Byron's death, though both had very 
 often bathed together. Thus at Argostoli, Byron, on one 
 occasion, stretching out his right leg towards Trelawny, 
 said : ' I hope this accursed limb will be knocked off in 
 the war.' To which Trelawny replied: 'that he would 
 exchange legs, if he would give him a portion of his 
 brains.' a How is it that with his seaman's eagle eye, he 
 did not then see the club foot and the withered leg ? One 
 thing, however, seems certain : Byron all his life avoided 
 walking, partly because, according to the express testi- 
 mony of the Countess Guiccioli 3 and Consul Hoppner, it 
 occasioned him suffering, partly because he feared to 
 
 1 Parry, on the other hand, says, that Byron very often walked back- 
 wards and forwards in his apartment for hours together, and had the 
 habit, while doing this, of turning round suddenly on his heel. The 
 Last Days of Lord Byron, pp. 259, 164. 
 
 a Recollections, p. 203. To the Marquis of Sligo, also, Byron once 
 showed his deformed foot, while they were bathing (Moore's Life, i. 347). 
 
 3 Recollections, i. 74.
 
 336 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [jEi. 19-36. 
 
 attract people's attention. His awkward and constrained 
 demeanour in society is also partially to be explained by his 
 efforts to conceal his lameness. ' He entered a room,' says 
 Trelawny, 1 'with a sort of run, as if he could not stop, 
 then planted his best leg well forward, throwing back his 
 body to keep his balance ; ' or when he was sitting he put 
 it uppermost and stroked it with his hand. These accounts 
 are, however, contradicted or modified not only by the 
 Countess Guiccioli, 2 but also by Gait 3 and Lady Bles- 
 sington ; 4 all of whom assert that the lameness was so 
 little perceptible, that it could not clearly be distin- 
 guished which was the deformed foot. 
 
 Thus was Byron placed by nature between beauty and 
 deformity, as between two poles, a position which was the 
 determining cause of many of the inconsistencies of his 
 character. Beauty was the source of his vanity, deformity 
 of his bitterness. If the former led him into society, 
 where it ensured him homage and success, the latter 
 drove him to court solitude, in order to hide his defect 
 from men's gaze. It would have required an education 
 of pre-eminent excellence and a character of rare strength 
 to harmonise these contrasts and reconcile the inward 
 conflict engendered by them. But excellence of education 
 and strength of character were denied to Byron ; he be- 
 came, therefore, the prey of vanity on the one hand, and 
 of embittered feelings on the other, and these two main 
 features of his character remained constant and un- 
 changeable amid all the alternations of his feelings, and 
 all the play of his capricious humours. Thus beauty and 
 deformity laid the germs of egotism in his soul. Finding, 
 that from these two causes, he became an object, partly of 
 
 1 Trelawny, p. 226. 3 Recollections, i. 73. 
 
 8 Life of Lord Byron, p. 23. 
 
 * Cotversations ivith Lord Byron, p. 3.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 337 
 
 admiring, partly of sympathetic interest to the world, he 
 acquired too much the habit of claiming its sympathy and 
 its services as his due without any corresponding return 
 on his part, and of constantly placing his own person with 
 its perfections ard its faults in the foreground. Thus his 
 egotism grew up side by side with his vanity and bitter- 
 ness, and whatever in the course of his life contributed to 
 feed these, strengthened also the former. 
 
 In spite of the assertions of the Countess Guiccioli to 
 the contrary, it is undeniable that his lameness was, all 
 his life long, a thorn in the flesh to Byron, the more so 
 as his mother, who, according to his own conviction, was 
 its main cause, used to taunt him with it. * His de- 
 formity,' says Trelawny, 1 'was always uppermost in his 
 thoughts and influenced every act of his life, spurred 
 him on to poetry, as that was one of the few paths to 
 fame open to him, and ultimately goaded him on to his 
 last Quixotic crusade in Greece.' His bitterness was 
 aggravated, too, by the belief, that a deformity like his 
 reacted on the beauty of the countenance, by the ex- 
 pressions which soured and discontented thoughts impress 
 on it. 2 To these Byron gave utterance, with all the force 
 of his genius, in the 'Deformed Transformed,' a piece 
 with which his mind, contrary to his wont, was occupied 
 for several years. ' No action of Lord Byron's life,' says 
 Mrs. Shelley, 3 with some exaggeration ' scarce a line he 
 has written, but was influenced by his personal defect.' 
 
 Byron had early discovered how the beauty of his face 
 and form fascinated all, women especially. His mother 
 trained him from childhood to the consciousness of it. 
 He knew that he was irresistible from his mere personal 
 
 1 Recollections, fyc., p. 224. 
 
 a Countess of Blessingtoii's Conversations, p. 129. 
 
 * Note to the ' Deformed Transformed.' Byron 1 * Works, xiii. 302, 
 
 Z
 
 338 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 appearance, even before his fame and his fortunes had 
 superadded their charms the prestige of rank also was 
 not without its eifect. These were the sustenance and 
 food of an unmanly vanity, which displayed itself not 
 only in his person, in his dress, and in his manners, 
 but leavened at last his whole character. It was vanity 
 which, combined with bitter defiance of his lameness, 
 instigated him to the remarkable dexterity he acquired in 
 all athletic exercises. We have seen that he was a good 
 boxer, an excellent pistol-shot, a not unskilful rider, and 
 a remarkable swimmer. All this subserved only one end, 
 to excite attention, and obtain distinction. He was 
 annoyed if he made a bad shot, and he had the air of an 
 injured man if anyone surpassed him or presumed to 
 doubt his superiority. In his dress, in his domestic 
 arrangements, in his carriages, the harness of his horses, 
 in the liveries of his servants, he showed little taste: 
 everything was calculated for effect, glaring, extravagant, 
 overladen. His every-day costume in Italy was, however, 
 careless and not conspicuous for taste. His clothes hung 
 about him, and looked as if they had not been made for 
 him but had been bought ready-made. ' His dress ' as 
 Lady Blessington describes it 'consisted of a nankeen 
 jacket and trowsers (changed sometimes for one of green 
 tartan plaid), which appeared to have shrunk from wash- 
 ing ; the jacket embroidered in the same colour, and with 
 three rows of buttons; the waist very short, the back 
 very narrow, and the sleeves set in as they used to be 
 ten or fifteen years before ; a black stock, very narrow ; 
 a dark blue velvet cap with a shade and a very rich 
 gold band and large gold tassel at the crown; nankeen 
 gaiters, and a pair of blue spectacles. His horse was 
 literally covered with various trappings ; the saddle was 
 a la hussarde, with holsters, in which he always carried
 
 1807-24.] CHAKACTERISTICS OF BYEON. 339 
 
 pistols.' l It must be admitted, that the picture is not 
 very flattering, either to the nobleman or to the poet. 
 During his pilgrimage he wore the Greek national cos- 
 tume, in which also he was once painted. This reminds 
 us of his portraits and busts, none of which, as we have 
 seen, satisfied him ; he thought that all of them failed to 
 do justice to the original. Even the likeness by the 
 excellent portrait-painter, Thomas Phillips, engraved by 
 Agar, 1814, which is generally regarded as the best, 
 utterly displeased him, 2 although it showed that affected 
 knitting of the brow to which he had accustomed himself, 
 doubtless thinking of the line in Shakespeare's 'Julius 
 Csesar ' (act i. sc. 2) : 
 
 The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow. 
 
 Hunt 3 sneers at his wearing rings on his fingers ; the 
 Countess Guiccioli asserts, that he wore one only which 
 was a memorial of affection. Hunt 4 again maintains 
 that he often played with his pocket-handkerchief, merely 
 to display his delicate bejewelled hand. According to 
 Kennedy, 5 he wore a cameo with the head of Napoleon, 
 and with some self-complacency remarked to Hunt, 6 that 
 Napoleon and he were the only public persons whose 
 initials were the same. 7 Ifc is melancholy to have to 
 
 1 Lady Blessington's Conversations, p. 55. 
 
 2 [The objections to Agar's print after Phillips' portrait were not made 
 by Byron himself, but by Mrs. Leigh and other friends ; and it was at 
 her special request not Byron's that the plate was destroyed. Dr. Elze 
 can hardly have seen the print of which he speaks, which is singularly 
 free from any such expression as he specifies.] 
 
 3 Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, p. 75, 4to. 1828. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 01. 
 
 5 Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron, p. 316. London, 1830. 
 
 6 Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, p. 73. 
 
 7 After the death of his mother-in-law, he added the name Noel to his 
 own. 
 
 T. 2
 
 340 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [JET. 19 36. 
 
 mention such littlenesses in the biography of a great poet. 
 How manly and noble, on the other hand, does Walter 
 Scott appear, for example, who could not possibly have 
 condescended to such pettiness. Yet one more trait must 
 be added. When Byron once in Athens was standing 
 before a glass, he expressed to Lord Sligo the wish to 
 die of consumption, because then women would think him 
 interesting. 1 
 
 Byron's entrance into society took place under the 
 reign of that dandyism, which was mainly characterised 
 by the hollowest and vainest pretensions to external 
 personal perfections, and by the affectation of the posses- 
 sion of culture, art, and taste. With this went hand in 
 hand a sovereign contempt of true worth, as soon as 
 worth refused to wear the tinsel and uniform of the last 
 fashion. Byron was never able to free himself from the 
 influences of this artificial and corrupt section of society, 
 or to return to a more natural state, although he often 
 discharged the arrows of his satire against it. That 
 all are not free, who mock at their fetters, was true also 
 of him. Even under the blue sky of Italy and amid the 
 turmoil of the Greek war of liberation, his thoughts fondly 
 recurred to the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of 
 London ; the gossip of its upper circles excited to the last 
 his liveliest curiosity, and formed, only too frequently, the 
 subject of his conversation. Byron's successes only ex- 
 hibited his affectation in the worst light, whereas it might 
 have been thought that his very triumphs would have 
 rendered his love of fame deeper in its character and 
 nobler in its aim. But his passion for glory was not of 
 the genuine stamp ; he thirsted not so much for fame as 
 for celebrity celebrity at any price. This was the true 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 346.
 
 1S07-24.J CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 341 
 
 end and purpose of his life, though, he here and there 
 denies it. He knew, especially in Italy and Greece, only 
 too well, that the eyes of the world were fixed upon him, 
 and he did his utmost to maintain the fascination. He 
 stood before the world as before a mirror, and the pose 
 became at last a second nature ; he lived, as it were, on 
 the stage, and coquetted with the world. Although he 
 pretended to despise it, he could not live without its 
 admiration, which he claimed even for his faults. With 
 all this, finally, was associated his rank, which he asserted 
 and paraded with all the pretension, inflation, and bad 
 taste of a parvenu. In fact, when we remember how he 
 came to the peerage only through a concatenation of acci- 
 dents, when we think of the poor and decayed condition 
 from which he was elevated suddenly to an equal dignity 
 with the noblest families of the realm, it might almost be 
 said that his position, in this respect, bore some resem- 
 blance to that of a parvenu. All who were not of aristo- 
 cratic birth, with the single exception of his friend Moore, 
 he regarded as beneath him, and the few cases of friend- 
 ship with persons of the middle class, which we meet with 
 in his youth, were exceptions, springing from youthful 
 exuberance of feeling. How often, in reference to the 
 Countess Guiccioli, does he dwell on the fact that she 
 was his equal in birth and rank ; but for this, his conduct 
 to her, would, in all probability, have been very different. 
 In the literary world, he naturally was conscious of the 
 wide gulf between himself and the majority of the votaries 
 of the Muses ; but it would have been far worthier in him 
 to have made this less perceptible to them. Hunt, at 
 least, complains bitterly of this. ' An immeasurable vanity 
 kept even his adorers at a distance ; like Xerxes enthroned 
 with his millions a mile off. 1 Lady Blessington expresses 
 
 1 p. 73, 4to. ed. 1828.
 
 842 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 herself to the same effect. 1 And Hazlitt 2 calls Byron 'a 
 sublime coxcomb.' 
 
 Byron's strange and perverse diet we are inclined to 
 regard as arising from the same source namely vanity. 
 The reason for this mode of life, alleged by Trelawny, that 
 his legs could not sustain a greater weight of body, appears 
 to have little probability, as it was seen in boxing, riding, 
 and swimming that his legs were by no means destitute of 
 strength ; and even when he was most reduced in weight 
 he was unable to traverse greater distances on foot. It 
 is, however, possible, that Byron entertained this notion, 
 and that his lameness afforded a pretext for the indulgence 
 of his vanity. The most undeniable affectation is shown 
 in the readiness with which he incessantly returns to 
 this subject ; and in no poet, Dr. Johnson himself not 
 excepted, was there ever so much said on the matter of 
 diet. Shelley also abstained from animal food and the 
 use of wine, and lived like an anchoret; but with him 
 it was a matter of conviction and had no root in vanity; 
 he never entertained the world with his bill of fare, like 
 Byron. As a young man, Byron feared nothing so much as 
 the impairing of the slenderness of his figure by corpulence, 
 to which he had, or thought he had, a hereditary ten- 
 dency. He fancied that everything which he enjoyed 
 was transformed through his lymphatic constitution of 
 body at once into fat. The curse of the ridiculous was, 
 moreover, always connected in his mind with obesity, for 
 he never forgot how the corpulence of his mother con- 
 trasted ridiculously with her nervous excitability and still 
 more with her explosions of passion. Doubtless there 
 constantly floated before his mind's eye the scenes, where 
 the portly lady pursued him about the room to beat him 
 
 1 Conversations, fyc., p. 395. 
 
 2 The Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits. Lond. 1858, p. 276.
 
 1807-21.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 343 
 
 with the poker. He resolved, therefore, that his weight 
 should never exceed eleven stone, and to compass this 
 he abandoned the ordinary mode of living. For many 
 years he abstained from animal food, and at times also, 
 even from fish, living chiefly on biscuits, mashed potatoes, 
 and soda-water ; he paraded this abstemious diet even 
 at dinner-parties, though the suspicion clung to him 
 of making amends in the evening in his solitary chamber 
 for his acts of self-denial before the eye of the world. 1 
 If this diet proved insufficient to produce the desired 
 measure of leanness, he had recourse to boxing, hot baths, 
 and medicine. He fancied, too, that indulgence in animal 
 food generated savage desires and coarse feelings, and he 
 once asked Moore, whether he did not perceive this in 
 himself. Since then, not only has this error been banished 
 by science, but the fact has also been established, that a 
 diet of animal food by no means tends to the formation of 
 fat, and a countryman of Byron has, in his own person, 
 confirmed the doctrines of chemistry by, as it were, an 
 experimentum in corpora vili. Byron, then, did not apply 
 even the right means to combat his tendency to corpulence. 
 But frequently he refrained from eating enough to satisfy 
 nature, and even pbserved no regularity in the times of his 
 meals. If he ever indulged himself in a fuller meal, evil 
 results necessarily followed with one whose stomach had 
 lost its healthful tone. Under such circumstances, he was 
 naturally always hungry, according to Trelawny's testi- 
 mony, 2 and had recourse to smoking and chewing to- 
 bacco to appease the demands of his stomach. Nothing 
 gave him more annoyance than if anyone thought he 
 had grown stouter, for to be thin and pale he held to be 
 interesting and befitting a poet. Even at Missolonghi 
 
 1 Thomas Watts, Athenteum, May 16, 1868, p. 689. 
 
 2 Recollections, pp. 47, 48.
 
 344 LIFE OE LORD BYRON. JEt. 19-36. 
 
 lie was so apprehensive about his figure, that he almost 
 daily measured his girth. With respect to his use of 
 wine and spirits, we have seen that, during his college 
 and London life, he boasted somewhat of his powers of 
 drinking ; then came times when he refrained even from 
 wine, at least in the presence of strangers, until he again, 
 at a later period, partook of it freely, and disdained not 
 even gin, of which he is said to have drunk a considerable 
 quantity daily. According to Hunt, he was particularly 
 agreeable after drinking. 
 
 That a mode of living so thoroughly perverse must 
 have acted most prejudiciously on his health, is but too 
 evident. Abstinence from animal food, the pre-eminently 
 blood-forming nourishment, appears to have added to 
 that tendency to poverty of blood, which was, perhaps, 
 born with him. Hence too may be explained, not only his 
 attacks of giddiness, fainting, and convulsions, but his not 
 altogether unfounded dread of mental derangement. At 
 any rate his convulsions were anything but epileptic, 
 since as a boy and a youth he had never suffered from 
 this form of disease. His excesses and indulgence in 
 spirits were therefore doubly injurious. His tendency to 
 fever was probably connected with the same weakness, 
 though his residence for many years in damp regions, 
 specially in Venice and Missolonghi, must also be taken 
 into account. If this view be correct, the medical treat- 
 ment pursued during his last illness was utterly erroneous, 
 and the repeated blood-lettings could only have added to 
 his malady and hastened his end. We may then without 
 exaggeration affirm, that the germ of his premature death 
 may be discovered in his personal beauty ; for it was the 
 parent of vanity, and vanity the motive of that destructive 
 diet to which he fell a victim. 
 
 Beauty, deformity, and rank the influences of which
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYROX. 345 
 
 we have above exhibited were the external endowments 
 of Byron. With these he inherited a will and feelings 
 sensitively alive to impressions from without and a pas- 
 sionate temper peculiar to both parents, and in an especial 
 degree to his mother. This natural disposition was 
 further developed and strengthened by an unhappy edu- 
 cation, so that, like his mother, Byron became a creature 
 of impulse. His capriciousness and sensitiveness, his 
 wilfulness and pride, rose to a higher pitch, when he 
 found himself raised, while yet a boy, by the inheritance 
 of rank, above the persons around him, who ever obedient 
 to his beck and call ministered to his caprices and were 
 indulgent to the explosions of his passion, or at least 
 extenuated or excused them. A firm and experienced 
 masculine hand was needed to save him from becoming a 
 spoiled child ; and he himself, at a later period of life, 
 saw that a son cannot be educated by a mother, especially 
 not such a mother as his, for whom he early lost beyond 
 recovery all respect. The influence of his teachers edu- 
 cators they cannot be called on the formation of his 
 character was limited in the extreme ; and on himself he 
 never bestowed any pains. When, moreover, he saw that 
 his petted, capricious, and impulsive nature made him 
 appear charming, specially in the eyes of women, he 
 began to acquiesce in it. Why should he acquire firm 
 principles ? why should he regulate his mode of action 
 according to the dictates of reason and prudence, if he 
 could gain the applause, even the homage of society, in a 
 far more convenient way by giving the rein to his 
 impulses and humours ? The events connected with the 
 separation from his wife could not fail still more to call 
 forth and strengthen his caprice, wilfulness, and pride. 
 He confessed, indeed, that his capriciousness and want of 
 self-control had essentially contributed to the miserable
 
 346 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Mi. 19-36. 
 
 issue of his marriage ; but this discovery came too late, 
 even if he were really serious when he made this admis- 
 sion. Is it, under such circumstances, to be wondered 
 at, that Byron never acquired the earnestness, firmness, 
 and dignity of true manhood ? He was as far removed 
 from Shakespeare's kindly and cheerful gentleness, as from 
 Goethe's Olympic repose, and a longer life would have 
 brought neither of these to him. To the end of his days 
 he could never free himself from outbursts of passion; 
 and Parry relates, that in such moments he stamped with 
 his foot on the ground, and on one or two occasions even 
 threatened to have recourse to his pistols. 1 This aspect 
 of his character is, therefore, more in harmony with the 
 excitable disposition of the impressionable inhabitants of 
 the South, than with the calmer and more reflective 
 character of the people of the North. Hence, perhaps, 
 the reason why he felt more at home and happier in Italy 
 and Greece. 
 
 It has been often debated, whether cheerfulness or 
 melancholy predominated in his character ; but the truth 
 is, that he fluctuated constantly between the two. He 
 passed suddenly from immoderately high spirits and all 
 the wantonness of satire into profound melancholy ; in this 
 he saw not weakness, but strength : permitting himself, 
 in this as in all things, to go to extremes. 2 The Coun- 
 tess Guiccioli relates, that the effusions of his gaiety 
 generally ended in a sigh, which had become a habit with 
 him, and discovers a peculiar beauty in this singulier et 
 touchant soupir. When his life in Italy became calmer 
 in its course, cheerfulness gained the predominance, and 
 melancholy appears only as an artificial tint. He coquetted 
 with melancholy and misanthropy ; as an example of 
 
 1 Last Days of Lord Syr on, p. 220. 
 
 3 Hunt's Lord Byron, p. 131, 4to. ed. 1828.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 347 
 
 which we need only recall the scene in Thorwaldsen's 
 studio, when he was sitting to that sculptor for his bust. 
 Macaulay, in his admirable essay on Byron, compares him 
 with those young French gentlemen of whom Prince 
 Arthur 1 says, ' they would be as sad as night only for 
 wantonness.' 
 
 Intimately connected with Byron's vacillation and 
 changeableness is the reproach of insincerity, which has 
 often been made against him, as well with respect to 
 his character as to his poetry. Byron had inscribed on 
 his banner war against the falsehood and hypocrisy both 
 of society and literature. He hated England because 
 cant flourished there, and loved Italy because it was free 
 from it. ' The truth is ' he writes in the letter to Murray 
 against Bowles ( that in these days the grand primum 
 mobile of England is cant ; cant political, cant poetical, 
 cant religious, cant moral; but always cant, multiplied 
 through all the varieties of life.' 2 He denounced hypo- 
 crisy as the worst of all crimes, and indeed he did his 
 utmost to unmask falsehood in politics, poetry, religion, 
 and morals. In this as in other respects he was a kindred 
 spirit with Rousseau. Before he was twenty years of age 
 his mother used to compare him to Rousseau; and the 
 comparison was taken up and repeated by Madame de 
 Stael, the critics of the * Edinburgh Review,' and others. 
 He himself objected to the alleged similarity, and on the 
 contrary endeavoured to point out the differences between 
 Rousseau and himself, although, indeed, those he specifies 
 consist merely in things external. * I can't see any point 
 of resemblance ; he wrote prose, I verse ; he was of the 
 people, I of the aristocracy ; he was a philosopher, I am 
 none; he published his first work at forty, I mine at 
 
 1 Shakespeare's King John, act iv. sc. i. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, vi. 353.
 
 348 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [^r. 19-36. 
 
 eighteen ; his first essay brought him universal applause, 
 mine the contrary,' l &c. Byron continues this string of 
 antitheses, until he comes at last to Rousseau's short- 
 sightedness, with which he contrasts the acuteness of his 
 own vision. 2 All this may be very true, but, withal, the 
 germ of the matter is not affected. Byron had far more 
 affinity with Rousseau than he himself cared to allow ; 
 and it was by no accident that he felt drawn to him or 
 followed his steps on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, 
 and in ' Child e Harold ' 3 sketched a character of him 
 which admits of the most unmistakable application to 
 himself. Rousseau and Byron had both fallen on times, 
 when, in France and in England, the conventional hollow- 
 ness and falsehood of society had attained their culmina- 
 ting point, and when, according to natural and historical 
 laws, a change and reaction must take place. Destiny 
 had imposed on both of them the task of being the 
 precursors of this revolution, and, like thunderstorms, of 
 purifying society, from poisonous malignant vapours. It 
 might then have been expected, that, in order to fulfil 
 this mission, they would have been men of stainless 
 veracity and morality, who, not only by their writings, 
 but also by the shining example of their lives, held up 
 a mirror to the world. But they were themselves the 
 products of this corrupt society, and tainted by its in- 
 fluence, so that both laboured under the same contradic- 
 tion between precepts and practice, intention and action. 
 As Rousseau would have been the last to feel himself 
 happy in his belauded state of nature, so Byron would 
 have been one of the least useful and happy citizens 
 of the free state which was the object of his aspirations. 
 Rousseau was a reformer of education, and yet sent his 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 218. 2 Ibid. i. 219. 
 
 3 Canto iii. st. 76-81 .
 
 1807-24.] CHAEACTEKISTICS OF BYRON. 349 
 
 children to the foundling hospital. Byron condemned 
 war, while he could not exist "without arms and was 
 always ready for a duel. That neither of them could free 
 himself either externally or internally from the society 
 which they rose up to battle against and to reform was 
 the source of the sad conflict of their lives. Incon- 
 sistencies and weaknesses appear therefore in both of 
 them. Each had received from nature a mental organi- 
 sation impressionable and excitable to an extraordinary 
 degree. What Byron says of Rousseau is true of himself 
 ' he was all fire.' l He possessed the same stormy 
 passions which Eousseau ascribes to himself; ' feeling,' 
 writes Eousseau, * masters my soul more rapidly than 
 lightning, but instead of illuminating, it consumes and 
 blinds me.' So also was it with Byron. The bent of the 
 genius of both was towards the Ideal ; but the Ideal was 
 refracted in their minds as light is in an imperfect and 
 impure medium. In the first book of his Confessions, 
 Eousseau sums up his own character in the following 
 words: 'Ce cceur a la fois si fier et si tendre, ce 
 caractere efiemine, mais pourtant indomptable, qui, flot- 
 tant toujours entre la faiblesse et le courage, entre la 
 mollesse et la vertu, m'a jusqu'au bout mis en contradic- 
 tion avec moi-meme, et a fait que 1'abstinence et la jouis- 
 sance, le plaisir et la sagesse, m'ont egalement echappe.' 
 This applies to Byron as if it had been intended for him. 
 Eousseau, like Byron, adored freedom and hated con- 
 straint. Like Byron, he passionately longed for fame at 
 any cost. Even the circumstances of their lives, amid 
 much diversity, point to a series of similarities far more 
 important than the antitheses dwelt on by Byron. Both 
 received a defective and irregular education, and were 
 
 1 ChiJde Harold, n\. 86.
 
 350 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 early left to themselves; Rousseau's relations to the 
 puritanism of Geneva were like those of Byron to the 
 religious opinion of England ; both were made miserable 
 by their relations to women, and neither ever reached a 
 true position with regard to them ; of both Heine's verse 
 holds true : ' Yerfehlte Liebe, verfehltes Leben.' Crossed 
 in love, crossed in life. Rousseau sought rest in Catho- 
 licism, 1 and the same destiny would probably have be- 
 fallen Byron had he lived long enough, at any rate he 
 was not indisposed to the Catholic Church. Both perse- 
 cuted and exiled by society, on account of their writings, 
 found in foreign lands a kindly reception, and passed 
 wandering and unsettled lives. Neither found rest, but 
 full of suspicion and distrust, thought themselves sur- 
 rounded by enemies. Nor were they were free from grave 
 offences; their sincerity, their morality, was not of the 
 genuine kind. With regard to the former, they both 
 overshot the mark. Every man has within himself an 
 abyss, which he strives to conceal. Rousseau and Byron 
 revealed theirs to the crowd, not as speaking of them- 
 selves only, but, to a certain extent, in the name and as 
 the representatives of society. Their moral defects they 
 held up, like a Medusa's head, to the gaze of the world, 
 with an unmistakably malignant pleasure, and they had 
 no right to affect surprise if society, offended by the sight, 
 averted its eyes from them. Nor were they free from 
 self-complacency in this, for their faults and consequent 
 sufferings were assuredly the product of society, upon 
 which, not unjustly, they threw back the responsibility of 
 them. It is, as if confession of sin being the primary 
 condition of the conversion of society, Rousseau and 
 
 1 [Dr. Elze can hardly mean, that Rousseau ever rested in Catholicism. 
 He became, indeed, a neophyte in his seventeenth year, in the Hospice 
 at Turin, but after a few days abjured and was expelled.]
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 351 
 
 Byron had in its name made this confession. Byron had, 
 indeed, less to confess than Rousseau in his Confessions ; 
 but as if he felt the indispensable need of moral infirmity 
 in the presence of society, he loved to speak continually 
 of his faults, to exaggerate some, to charge himself falsely 
 with others, and to hint at some secret crime which he 
 feigned to have committed. He was, as some one has 
 excellently said, ( le fanfaron de ses vices.' Like Rous- 
 seau, he was a victim of society, which was not entitled 
 to complain of him, for he was society's own creation ; 
 least of all does it become women to throw a stone at 
 him. Byron's propensity of making the world the con- 
 fidant of all his faults and sorrows accompanied him 
 through life. All that Moore says, when he expatiates on 
 the perfect candour of Byron, and which Parry re-iterates, 
 must be understood in this sense. Every thing that came 
 into his head he uttered, nor could he keep to himself 
 either his own affairs or the communications made to him 
 by others. This, however, was not that true and genuine 
 sincerity which he should have made, in his writings and 
 his life, the ground and purpose of action. But with 
 regard to the principle of their morality also, Byron and 
 Rousseau were guilty of a grave error, when, for the un- 
 veracious and insincere conventional words and phrases, 
 which they so justly denounced, they substituted the heart 
 and genius of the poet, as the only moral law binding 
 upon him. They demand not merely space for *den 
 Fliigelschlag einer freien Seele,' but proclaim the heart as 
 the sovereign moral power, and place their own individual 
 likings and fancies above the moral order of the world. 
 In none of Byron's poems is this to be read more dis- 
 tinctly between the lines than in ' The Lament of Tasso.' 
 Both, therefore, are fundamentally immoral, not because 
 of the sensuality which may be expressed in their works
 
 352 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. [^T. 19-36. 
 
 this reproach. Byron justly repels but because they 
 apply a false moral standard and seek to inoculate their 
 readers with its principles. Their paths, indeed, are 
 different, though starting from the same point, but that 
 which Rousseau followed is the more dangerous. Rous- 
 seau is the votary of a false ideality, and bedecks un- 
 truth itself, and especially sensuality, with its tinsel ; he 
 elevates infirmities and faults to the rank of moral per- 
 fections, and with his pinchbeck finery decorates the 
 animal in man to wear the semblance of an angel, with 
 which, perhaps, his sensual Romanic nature may have 
 something to do. Women, therefore, are for Rousseau 
 and against Byron. For Byron could not here, at least, 
 deny the more reflective and critical Teutonic nature 
 which was in him. From idealism he plunged into 
 nihilism ; he strips from things their illusive lustre and 
 loves to represent them in their least ideal aspect, although 
 the ideal involuntarily ever and anon regains its sove- 
 reignty ; he sees everywhere only infirmities, defects, and 
 folly, and seeks to degrade the angel in man to the 
 animal. Ultimately he opposed everything, from no 
 principle whatever, merely for the sake of opposition a 
 natural consequence of his wilfulness. Nothing stands 
 before the sweeping judgments of 'Don Juan; ' Plato is 
 a tedious bore, a charlatan, a coxcomb, no better than a 
 go-between ; l Shakespeare is a barbarian ; Wellington the 
 prop of an imbecile legitimacy; 2 Blucher a drunken cor- 
 poral, &c. He is not content with destroying illusion, but 
 often goes so far as to declare reality to be illusion. 
 
 We must not forget, however, to make allowance for 
 Byron's chameleon-like alternations of feeling. He felt 
 with extraordinary intensity and passion, more passion- 
 
 Eoti Juan, canto i. 116. 2 Ibid. ix. 1-11.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 353 
 
 ately, perhaps, than any other poet, either ancient or 
 modern; an admission which even his enemies make. 
 Relaxation, according to known laws, is necessarily 
 consequent on intensity of passion ; and extremes in 
 one direction must be followed by those in another. 
 Our mind, like our body, admits of only a certain 
 measure of tension, and he only can be constant and 
 true to himself who maintains this measure. Byron's 
 poetry is the effusion of the moment, the expression of 
 the inspired present : he knows himself to be an * improvi- 
 satore.' l Hence he could scarcely write except under the 
 influence of external impressions ; while Scott, on the 
 contrary, needed no incitement from without. Byron's 
 poetry is accordingly, both in its matter and in its rela- 
 tion to his life, strangely inconsistent, but it is not 
 therefore untrue. He himself sees in his dependence on 
 external impressions the proof of truth and sincerity. 
 Thus in ' Don Juan ' he says : 
 
 surely they're sincerest 
 Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest. 2 
 
 As has been already shown in the case of the well- 
 known poem ' Fare thee well,' he was at the moment 
 really possessed by what he wrote. The danger of insin- 
 cerity is one which lies nea,r the poet, who is able to 
 invoke and command the moment of inspiration and 
 throw himself into a certain state of feeling. Goethe, as 
 we know, says : 
 
 Gebt ihr euch einmal fur Poeten, 
 So comtnandirt die Poesie. 
 
 If for poets ye yourselves proclaim, 
 Poetry your mistress then becomes. 
 
 Byron understood this thoroughly. Nathan, who set the 
 
 1 Don Jwm, xv. 20. 2 Ibid. xvi. 97. 
 
 A A
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 f Hebrew Melodies ' to music, relates an incident that ex- 
 emplifies this. Irritated by the current reports, that he 
 was suffering from mental aberration, Byron said to this 
 composer he would try for once to write like a madman. 
 Hastily seizing the pen, he stared for a moment wildly 
 into vacancy, and then wrote down as if by a flash of 
 inspiration, and without erasing a single word, the verses 
 
 beginning : l 
 
 My soul is dark oh ! quickly string 
 The harp I yet can brook to hear ; 
 And let thy gentle fingers fling 
 
 Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. 
 
 Byron's conversation also bore the same character of 
 improvisation and versatility. He improvised, as Beyle 
 (Stendhal) relates, for a whole hour, and, indeed, better 
 than Madame de Stael ever did, but then soon he fell 
 from the height of his inspiration. ' When Byron was 
 elevated,' he says, f and talked with enthusiasm, his sen- 
 timents were noble, great, and generous. It was the 
 finest conversation I ever met with in my life ; a volume 
 of new ideas and generous sentiments came pouring out 
 in such novel form, that one fancied oneself enjoying 
 them for the first time ; but ' he continues * during 
 the remainder of the evening, he was thoroughly the 
 Englishman and the noble lord.' 2 This opinion of Beyle 
 is, however, among the most favourable ever expressed 
 on Byron's conversation ; almost all accounts agree in ad- 
 mitting, that he by no means shone in it, and he himself 
 also appears not to have deceived himself on this point. 
 He was averse to talk on literary matters, perhaps, because 
 he felt himself very little equal to such topics ; when 
 however, Shelley was present, the subject of literature 
 
 1 Hebrew Melodies, Works, x. 83. 
 
 * Quoted in the Countess Guiccioli's Recollections, ii. 297, English 
 edition.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 355 
 
 could not be avoided. Byron agreed with Scott in 
 hating to be treated in society as an author ; he wished 
 to be regarded only as a nobleman and man of the world. 
 He never, as Trelawny says, 1 appeared in society with 
 the book and mantle of Prospero, while Shelley never 
 laid aside either ; his conversation was, on the contrary, 
 characterised for the most part by flippancy. He had no 
 love for serious discussion, and contradiction was in- 
 tolerable to him. 
 
 We again resume our thread, returning to the doubts 
 which have been expressed with regard to Byron's sincerity 
 and truth. Parry, who praises his sincerity, relates that 
 insincerity and dissimulation in others were intolerable to 
 him, and that it gave him great pleasure to expose these 
 defects. He did this, indeed, in a peculiar fashion, inas- 
 much as he generally, like women, repeated the remarks 
 and opinions expressed by others regarding a third person, 
 to that person himself. He probably meant by this, so 
 Parry imagines, to inculcate on others the frankness and 
 sincerity which he so highly esteemed ; but it cannot be 
 denied, that he enjoyed at the same time the embarrass- 
 ment of the persons thus exposed. 2 He was, in a word, 
 thoroughly indiscreet. But he was more than this. Lady 
 Blessington says without reserve, that he was never de 
 bonne foi, that he placed himself in sad antithesis to his 
 motto ' Crede Byron ; ' that he loved to mystify people, 
 to palm off tales upon them, to practise silly jokes, and 
 produce mischief among them. 3 Dallas 4 lamented the 
 insincerity even of his dedications, for Byron cherished 
 neither esteem nor affection for the persons to whom he 
 dedicated his poems ; and asserted, that no one could be 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 26. 
 
 2 Parry's Last Days of Lord Byron, p. 1 58, 159. 
 
 3 Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 260. 4 Ibid. iii. 125. 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 sure of him. Even of his friends he did not always speak 
 well, and frequently dwelt rather on their defects than 
 their merits ; when the satirical humour was on him, they 
 were not spared in the epigrams he wrote at their ex- 
 pense, and freely handed about. It is said, as some 
 apology for the practice, that this malevolence never 
 came from his heart, and that it was neither deliberate 
 nor lasting. He wrote against Rogers, for example, whom 
 he reckoned among his few. intimate friends, a bitter 
 satire (never indeed published), which he is said to have 
 placed under a cushion on which he obliged Rogers to 
 sit down. 1 In his controversy with Bowles, Moore also 
 received an occasional side-blow ; and neither Byron nor 
 Moore could, in the bottom of their hearts, suppress a 
 feeling of distrust towards each other. ' When with 
 you 'writes Moore to Byron ' I feel sure of you ; but 
 at a distance one is often a little afraid of being made 
 the victim, all of a sudden, of some of those fanciful 
 suspicions, which, like meteoric stones, generate them- 
 selves (God knows how) in the upper regions of your 
 imagination, and come clattering down upon our heads, 
 some fine sunny day when we are least expecting such an 
 invasion.' 2 That Byron was distrustful is confirmed 
 on all sides ; it is also in perfect harmony with his 
 character. After all he had experienced in life, this 
 weakness might have been forgiven, had it not been inti- 
 mately connected with his other faults. His pride rested 
 far too much on external advantages to permit him to 
 waive his dignity in friendly intercourse, though it lay in 
 his power to resume it at pleasure. He was constantly 
 possessed with anxious fears, lest the raillery and mockery, 
 which he dealt out so freely without respect of persons, 
 
 1 Compare II. C. Robinson's Diary, ii. 484 ; iii. 17. 
 3 Moore's Life, iv. 923.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 857 
 
 might be paid back in kind, conscious as he was of the 
 many joints in his own armour ; but he, as the saying 
 runs, would always give, but never take. He was not one 
 of those cheerful spirits, whom Goethe best loved to see 
 among his guests ;' to him rather these verses apply : 
 
 Wer sicli nicht selbst zum Besten haben kann, 
 Der 1st gewi> nicht von den Besten. 
 
 This is possible only, where there is absolute genuineness 
 and sincerity. In this, as in other things, he was want- 
 ing in right feeling to others, and showed himself a 
 thorough egotist. Yet it must be said in his favour, that 
 lie was capable of the highest esteem for men of excellence 
 and worth, and instinctively drew towards them as 
 witness his friendship for Hobhouse, Rogers, Scott, and 
 Shelley. Even Moore, though inferior to these in strength 
 of character, was yet a sterling man ; he had also that 
 mobility of temperament so peculiar to the Irish race, 
 which was, perhaps, the ground of their harmony in 
 friendship. 
 
 In politics and religion Byron's conduct partook of 
 the same unstable and contradictory character ; it was 
 stained by vanity and insincerity. He boasts, that he 
 had been stable and consistent in politics, if in anything ; 
 which is so far true, that he never descended from his in- 
 dependent position to pay homage to the powers that be - 
 
 1 [The allusion is to the epigram of Goethe's, entitled 'Meine Wahl.' 
 If 'erke, ii. 303. Stuttgart, 1857 : 
 
 Ich liebe mir den heitern Mann 
 Aua meisten unter meinen Gasten : 
 Wer sicli nicht selbst zum Besten haben 
 Der ist gewiss nicht von den Besten. 
 
 At table glad I welcome as my guest 
 
 The man of cheerful mien and heart : 
 Who there is loth to be and give his best, 
 
 Not of the best is he, and may depart.
 
 358 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. [JEr. 19-36. 
 
 as the ' Lake School ' had done, whose apostasy he could 
 as little forgive as he could that of Monti the Italian. He 
 never, indeed, was exposed to temptation in political life, till 
 at the close of his life in Greece. ' My politics,' he writes 
 to Murray, 1 "' are to me like a young mistress to an old 
 man the worse they grow the fonder I become of them. 
 I care nothing for consequences on this point.' A loyal 
 fidelity to his convictions must not however be inferred 
 from this, for on closer examination we soon discover, 
 that his political views by no means rested on the firm 
 basis of well-formed convictions and principles ; they were 
 oftener prejudices than opinions, and not the results of 
 thought, but of mere feeling. In politics, as in religion, 
 he in reality never got beyond negation ; hence the source 
 of his weakness, but also his strength, as will be shown 
 when we come to consider, in our next chapter, the kind 
 of influence exercised by him. Everywhere he declaims 
 most vehemently against despots and despotism, although 
 in his heart he was not only an aristocrat, but was even 
 not without leanings to absolutism. This, also, he him- 
 self acknowledged ; ' born an aristocrat,' he said to 
 Medwin, 2 ' I am naturally one by temper.' His sense of 
 independence, which formed one of his most prominent 
 characteristics, and of which he Was so proud, reached 
 no further than his own person ; he could not raise 
 himself to the justice and unselfishness of granting the 
 same measure of independence to all men. No true love 
 of liberty such as Shelley, faithful ever to his convictions, 
 possessed, can, therefore, be ascribed to him. We saw 
 how indulgent he was to the darker sides of Ali Pacha's 
 history and character simply because of that vigorous rule, 
 which seemed so imposing to him. He chose, with evident 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 34. 
 
 2 Conversations ivith Lord Byron, p. 423,
 
 1807-24.J CHARACTERISTICS OF BYROX. 359 
 
 predilection, despotic characters for the heroes of his poetic 
 tales, and in his fancy identified himself more or less with 
 them. At a later period of his life, the dream of setting 
 up such a pacha-like government, either in some Grecian 
 island or in South America, long occupied his mind. 
 There was such a contradiction of principles in him, that 
 he at the same time reverenced Napoleon and Washington. 
 The latter he upheld as the solitary pure and great name 
 in history ; so that he must be allowed the merit of re- 
 cognising true greatness, however unlike his own. For 
 Bolivar, also, after whom his yacht was named, he was 
 loud in his admiration. Of Napoleon he had two modes 
 of judging a prosaic in which he admired, and a poetic 
 in which he inveighed against him. Thus his indignation 
 was excited especially by Napoleon's abdication and un- 
 worthy exit. Had the emperor known how to die with 
 dignity at the right moment, Byron's poetical judgment 
 would probably have been different. But he called him 
 repeatedly his * Pagod ; ' 1 he spoke much and always 
 admiringly of him ; he even compared himself with him, 
 thus representing himself as a Napoleon in the realm of 
 poetry. 
 
 Even I albeit I'm sure I did not know it 
 
 Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king 
 Was reckoned a considerable time 
 The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme. . 
 
 But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero 
 My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain ; 
 
 ' La belle Alliance ' of dunces down at zero, 
 Now that the Lion's fallen, may rise again ; 
 
 But I will fall at least as fell my hero ; 
 Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign ; 
 
 Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go, 
 
 With turncoat Sottthey for my turnkey Lowe. 2 
 
 Again he always took the side of Napoleon against the 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 21. 2 Don Juan, canto xi. 55.
 
 360 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JErt. 19-36. 
 
 Allies. With one and the same stroke of the pen he showed 
 himself prepared to combine the most glaring contradic- 
 tions. He wished from his heart, that Napoleon may 
 manure the fields of France with the invading hosts of 
 the Allies ; for he continues ' I hate invaders of every 
 country, and have no patience with the cowardly cry of 
 exultation over him, at whose name you all turned whiter 
 than the snow to which you are indebted for your 
 triumph. '' This he wrote with express reference to the 
 Russian campaign, as if he ought not to have known, that 
 of all invaders and conquerors Napoleon was the worst, 
 and that the Allies rose against him simply in self- 
 defence. The misery wrought through Napoleon, the 
 oppression and suffering of the nations enslaved by him, 
 affect him little ; on this point his hatred against des- 
 potism is blind and dumb. Here he judged as an English- 
 man who had no direct or active interest in the matter. 
 National feeling, that conscience of nations, he reckoned 
 as nothing. The Allies, on the other hand, he over- 
 whelms both collectively and individually, whether he 
 speaks of their leaders or of their followers, with vehement 
 invectives, without distinguishing governments from the 
 nations governed. And yet new contradiction it was 
 he who, during the Greek war of Liberation, preached 
 incessantly the duty of respecting those very powers 
 against which he had inveighed, and even quarrelled with 
 other Philhellenes who did not judge as he did. He ex- 
 pected from the Allies salvation for the Greeks, and for 
 himself perhaps the crown. All these contradictions 
 admit of one explanation, that, with the solitary exception 
 of his interference in the affairs of Greece, he had never 
 approached politics as a thinker or statesman, but as a 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 34.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 361 
 
 lyrical poet. ' Politics ' as he himself says in a letter to 
 Murray l ' is with me a feeling,' and in Carbonarism he 
 found, as we have seen, ' the true poetry of politics.' In 
 Greece alone he descended from the poetry to the prose 
 of politics ; and even from this point of view he would have 
 been more consistent and logical, if his poetry had not been 
 the poetry of the moment. He demanded from politics 
 only poetic suggestion, and Napoleon furnished this in far 
 higher measure than all the allied monarchs put together. 
 Hence Napoleon exercised on him, and on many other 
 poets, a poetical charm, almost a magical fascination ; 
 but however conceivable or excusable this may be, we 
 cannot behold in such poets the true and genuine cham- 
 pions of freedom. Byron, as a political poet, nevertheless 
 contributed powerfully to the movement and development 
 of events in the time immediately subsequent to his own. 
 He became a fermenting element in politics and in poetry, 
 the standard-bearer of radicalism, far more for the con- 
 tinent than for his own country. This historical position 
 scarcely, however, belongs to a chapter which treats of 
 Byron's personal characteristics ; in the next chapter we 
 will recur to it. 
 
 This peculiar relation of Byron to politics explains also, 
 why he never interested himself in English politics, and 
 how he was unsuited to the career of a statesman. 
 When, on a certain occasion, the conversation turned on 
 Harrow, as having been the nursery of all the statesmen 
 of the time, and Medwin expressed surprise that the poet 
 never had the ambition to shine as a statesman, Byron 
 replied, that the petty intrigues of cabinets, or the still 
 pettier factions and contests for power among the members 
 of parliament, could never have engaged his sympathy. 2 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iii. 35. 
 
 3 Medwin's Conversations, p. 351-2.
 
 362 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEt. 19-36, 
 
 This was, however, a pretext as superficial as it was 
 delusive. It would have flattered his ambition to direct 
 as a minister the destinies of England and influence those 
 of Europe, provided the path leading to such distinction 
 had been shorter and easier. But he was in nowise fitted 
 for regular, deliberate, continuous action, systematically 
 directed to one end. . In such a career he could not awake 
 one morning and find himself famous. Moreover, the 
 party life inseparable from English politics, demands dis- 
 
 y 
 
 ciplined action in one fixed groove ; there no place is 
 found for vacillation according to the impulses of poetry. 
 Byron's nature was far too unstable, inconsistent, and 
 egotistical to accommodate itself to the spirit of parlia- 
 mentary party. From the possible leadership of the oppo- 
 sition too, his position in the Upper House excluded him. 
 Thus there remained to him nothing but participation in 
 the revolutionary politics of the continent, from which he 
 gathered, at least in Italy, neither roses nor laurels. 
 
 The vacillating and inconsistent character of Byron ap- 
 pears in religion not less than in politics ; hence among 
 his countrymen there always exists a question as to his 
 true relations to religion. He was educated in the strict- 
 est Calvinism. His mother dragged him, while yet a child 
 in Aberdeen, regularly to church, for which he revenged 
 himself by pricking her with pins whenever the sermon 
 became tiresome to him. He himself says, that he was 
 early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where 
 he was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of his 
 life. 1 A German comprehends at once the impossibility 
 of a mind like Byron's surrendering itself to dogmatism, 
 especially Protestant dogmatism. In Germany such an 
 education would have led him to perfect indifference if 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 216.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 363 
 
 not worse ; in England this was impossible. Byron saw 
 well the disadvantage of his position, for, said he, in 
 matters of religion the advantage lies on the side of him 
 who believes. Nevertheless he nobly felt 
 
 'tis a base 
 
 Abandonment of reason to resign 
 Our right of thought l 
 
 * It was useless ' he says * in one of his memoranda ' to 
 tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well 
 tell a man, not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully 
 with torments and all that ! ' He expresses also the prin- 
 ciple of liberty of belief very rightly, when he says, 
 
 I speak not of men's creeds they rest between 
 Man and his Maker. 2 
 
 But his countrymen and countrywomen would hear 
 nothing of this ; to them his position in regard to religion 
 was the greatest stone of offence, and Byron continually 
 irritated them, because he never failed to return to the 
 discussion and treatment of religious questions. They 
 would have forgiven him everything, if he had only pro- 
 fessed the creed of the Church. Once only did con- 
 cern for his religious belief assume in the well-known 
 case of Mrs. Shephard a tender form. On the death of 
 this lady, after a short but happy marriage, her husband 
 found among her papers a touching prayer for the con- 
 version of Byron, which she had written in the year 1814 
 at Hastings, where she had seen the poet several times 
 at public places. A copy of this Mr. Shephard sent to 
 Byron, then living at Pisa, with the wish that the prayer 
 might not be fruitless. Byron in his letter of thanks 
 did not conceal his opinion, that a man's creed does not 
 depend on himself, although he again admitted, that 
 
 1 CJtilde Harold, canto iv. st. 127. a Moore's Life, vi. 268. 
 3 Childe Harold, canto iv. st. 96.
 
 364 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 believers had a decided advantage ' for this simple 
 reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter ; 
 and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the 
 infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of 
 an exalted hope through life without subsequent disap- 
 pointment, since (at the worst for them), out of nothing 
 nothing can arise, not even sorrow.' 1 For the consolation 
 of Mr. Shephard he also added, that many sceptics had 
 ended as believers. 2 With this one exception, the conflict 
 between the orthodoxy of the Church and the scepticism 
 of Byron always displayed itself in the harshest form. 
 
 When ' Cain ' appeared, pulpits thundered against the 
 author, and when the work was pirated, the Lord Chan- 
 cellor refused to protect Murray in his rights of property, 
 on the ground of its being immoral and irreligious. 3 But 
 it cannot be said with truth, that Byron was an enemy to 
 positive religion least of all an atheist. In spite of his 
 scepticism he was too much of an Englishman to be quite 
 free from the influence of the dogmas of Christian belief. 
 He revolted indeed against their tyranny, but he would 
 fain have returned to them, at least he could never decide 
 for pure Deism. He reverenced the Bible, and not merely 
 for the poetical character of its contents ; his reverence 
 was rather the result of a feeling with which he had been 
 inoculated from childhood : he read it diligently, and at 
 Missolonghi he had it constantly lying on his table. He 
 did not expressly deny immortality 011 this point he is 
 unusually full of contradiction yet his hope of it was 
 far from being assured. Nay, death might probably be 
 succeeded by eternal sleep the Nirwana of Buddhism. 
 In ' Don Juan ' he says : 4 
 
 1 Byron's letter to Mr. Shephard Life, \. 289. * Ibid. v. 289. 
 
 3 Life, v. 309. * Canto *iv. 4.
 
 807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 365 
 
 A sleep without dreams, after a rough day 
 Of toil, is what we covet most ; and yet 
 How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay. 
 
 Yet lie did not fear death, but regarded it always with, 
 composure, thus verifying in himself his own verses l 
 
 And strange to say, the sons of pleasure 
 They who have revelled beyond measure 
 In beauty, wassail, wine and treasure 
 Die calm, or calmer oft than he 
 Whose heritage was misery ; 
 For he who hath in turn run through 
 All that was beautiful and new 
 Hath nought to hope and nought to leave, 
 And save the future (which is viewed 
 Not quite as men are base or good, 
 But as their nerves may be endued,) 
 With nought perhaps to grieve. 
 
 That nerves and constitution, not religion, are the main 
 things on a death-bed, Byron elsewhere asserted. 2 Against 
 one dogma only he never varied in his denunciations the 
 eternity of hell torments. 3 Had he really been convinced of 
 ' eternal sleep,' this doctrine would necessarily have been 
 indifferent to him ; it was, on the contrary, dreaded by 
 him, and he found something consolatory and seductive in 
 the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory; indeed, he was not 
 without leanings towards the Church of Eome. 4 We have 
 seen that he caused Allegra to be educated as a Catholic, 
 and in ' Don Juan ' he makes Aurora Raby of that faith. 5 
 The Catholic Church on the one hand grants to those who 
 profess it, greater freedom in some respects than Angli- 
 canism, and on the other, it is often seen in life that 
 the greatest sceptics finally seek refuge in its bosom. 
 Had he lived longer, this might have been it has been 
 
 Muzeppa, xvii. Works, xi. 174. 
 
 Moore's Life, iv. 321. 3 Vision of Judgment, stanza xiii. 
 
 Moore's Life, \. 142. 5 Don Juan, xv. 4fi.
 
 366 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 said Byron's end. The doctrine of hell torments formed 
 the principal point of controversy between himself and 
 Dr. Kennedy, who condemned their finality as a Socinian 
 heresy. In other respects, no great value can be assigned 
 to the religious conversations which Kennedy recorded in 
 his book. On its first appearance, various journals ex- 
 pressed a suspicion, which was by no means unwarranted 
 by what we know of his character, that the poet had been 
 playing upon the doctor, who was so earnest for his con- 
 version ; for playfulness and gravity were often strangely 
 interchanged in him, and he doubtless foresaw, that the 
 doctor would one day parade these conversations before 
 the world. What induced him to enter into these dispu- 
 tations, has been already explained. 1 
 
 If Byron found it impossible to arrive at a solution of 
 the great mysteries of the world and of life through 
 positive religion, it might be thought that his restless 
 spirit would have attempted to attain it by philosophy. 
 But he possessed still less talent and inclination for meta- 
 physics than for dogmatic theology. Even Shelley was 
 not able to gain him over to metaphysics, which he 
 thought were good only for Germans ; metaphysics were 
 always to him unintelligible and repulsive jargon. He 
 bewailed Shelley's affection for metaphysical Utopias, and 
 thought that he would have obtained far wider recog- 
 nition as a poet, if he had only consented to abandon 
 this study. Hunt 2 expressly assures us that Byron was 
 not a good logician, or a systematic thinker. 
 
 A third possibility remained to Byron, to disturb his 
 mind neither with dogmatic theology nor with metaphysics, 
 but to accept the ' grand peut-etre,' as Rabelais calls it, 
 and following the example of Pyrrho, to leave the un- 
 
 1 See Chapter IX. 2 i. 71. 8vo. ed.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYROX. 367 
 
 fathomable unfathomed. He made, in fact, an attempt 
 in this direction if this, again, were not a mere passing 
 mood of his mind. Who can say, whether or not in the 
 passage of ' Don Juan ' l he expresses his true and final 
 conviction : 
 
 For me, I know nought ; nothing I deny, 
 Admit, reject, contemn ; and what know you 
 
 Except, perhaps, that you were born to die ? 
 And both may after all turn out untrue. 
 
 As is often the case with minds so unstable and un- 
 settled, Byron also, in spite of his scepticism, had a weak 
 point, at which the need of faith asserted itself at the 
 wrong time and in the wrong place this was his lean- 
 ing to superstition. His friends and biographers agree 
 in testifying that he was not free from this failing. 2 
 From his childhood his mother also was superstitious 
 he believed in presentiments, in lucky and unlucky 
 days, even in the appearance of ghosts ; on a Friday he 
 would never begin any undertaking and it is said that 
 he really never commenced any with the exception of 
 his voyage from Genoa to Missolonghi where he died. 
 He had even a certain enjoyment in these superstitious 
 emotions ; and possibly in the depth of his heart he 
 might have designed to appear interesting through 
 them. It is, however, remarkable how this superstition 
 harmonised with his peculiar mode of viewing Nature. 
 That loving, absorbing devotion to Nature in all her 
 forms, such as Shakespeare or Wordsworth possessed, 
 was never his. Shakespeare with equal intelligence and 
 equal love embraced creation in its greatest as in its 
 least manifestations, from the sea to the flower or the 
 
 1 Canto xiv. st. 3. 
 
 2 Compare Moore's Life, vi. 57-63. Medwin, p. 72. Lady Blessington, 
 p. 42. Hunt, p. 84. Parry, p. 214.
 
 368 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [/Ex. 19-36 
 
 insect, and showed in this his incomparable universality. 
 Wordsworth's narrower genius knows and loves Nature, 
 indeed, more in her humbler and more familiar aspects ; 
 although, it cannot be denied, that he wins from her 
 the knowledge of many a secret, and has often pro- 
 foundly understood her charms. Byron was, on the 
 other hand, indifferent to the wonders of organic nature, 
 to the processes and phenomena of animal and vegetable 
 life ; in his yonth he had received no instruction in the 
 contemplation and knowledge of Nature, for physical 
 science formed no part of the instruction of the youth 
 of England. In nature as in man, the wild had pre- 
 eminent attractions for him. 1 He loved only the grand 
 and sublime forms of inorganic nature, the seas and the 
 mountains. These were the objects which drew forth 
 his most ambitious and sublime descriptions, connect- 
 ing with them as he did his own elegiac views on the 
 destiny of the world and of man. With genuine lyrical 
 sympathy he felt himself a part of Nature, and blended 
 himself with her. Lofty mountains are ' a feeling to 
 him ; ' the sky, the sea, the mountains, are a portion of 
 himself, as he of them. 2 It was one of his most loved and 
 lofty pleasures to sit on a lonely crag and look out on the 
 sea. The desert, had he known it, would have acted not 
 less powerfully on his imagination, and doubtless wrapped 
 his spirit in its mysterious charms. But desert, sea, and 
 mountain are just those domains on which the mysteries 
 of the elemental powers of Nature in all their fulness are 
 encountered by man most directly and powerfully; and 
 hence the seaman, the mountaineer, and the wanderer of 
 the desert are always inclined to superstition. In Byron's 
 mind, therefore, superstition was completely in accordance 
 with his views of Nature. 
 
 1 Childe Harold, canto ii. st. 37. 5 Ibid canto iii. .st. 72, 75.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 369 
 
 Byron's relations to art also resembled his relations to 
 nature ; he possessed only a lyrical sensibility for it. Like 
 his countrymen generally, he was deficient in natural 
 taste and intelligence for the beautiful in art ; and when, 
 at a later period of his life, art presented itself especially 
 to his notice in Italy, the time for culture was past ; his 
 character was formed, and he thought of everything but 
 the study of art. Thus architecture, sculpture, and 
 painting were subjects barred to him ; and he often said 
 that he knew nothing about and had no interest in them, 
 a confession, to the truth of which even his friends could 
 not but subscribe. His judgment, here as everywhere, 
 was guided by the poetical impression, or feeling, or 
 impulse. In the description of Haidee he reproaches 
 sculptors as being without distinction ' a race of mere 
 impostors.' 
 
 I have seen much finer women, ripe and real, 
 Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal. 1 
 
 He detested the pictures of saints. Rubens was to 
 him a dauber ; he felt shocked by his colossal women and 
 ' infernal glare of colour ; ' nor did he think much of 
 Murillo or Velasquez. ' Depend upon it,' he writes to 
 Murray, ' that of all the arts, painting is the most arti- 
 ficial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of 
 mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the 
 picture or the statue which came a league within my 
 conception or expectation ; but I have seen many moun- 
 tains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three 
 women, who went as far beyond it besides some horses, 
 and a lion (at Veli Pacha's) in the Morea, and a tiger at 
 supper in Exeter Change.' 2 He has, nevertheless, in the 
 fourth canto of ' Childe Harold,' devoted some inspired 
 
 1 Don Juan, canto ii. 118. * Moore's Life, iv. 9. 
 
 B B
 
 370 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^x. 19-36. 
 
 stanzas to the world-renowned masterpieces of art; to 
 the Medicean Venus, for example, to the Dying Gladiator, 
 to the Apollo Belvidere, to the Colosseum, to the Pantheon, 
 and to St. Peter's. He was especially charmed with 
 Titian's portrait of Ariosto in the Manfrini Palace at 
 Venice, which he describes as * the poetry of portrait 
 and the portrait of poetry.' l 
 
 The only art for which Byron possessed a certain 
 amount of feeling was music, though it cannot be said, 
 that he truly understood it. Like all poets, like Shake- 
 speare, Scott, Burns, and Moore, he loved national music, 
 the touching melodies of which spring at once from the 
 heart of the people, those simple airs which weave round 
 the words of the poet a soft garland of rhythm, and, like 
 the sound of- bells from the village home, awaken in us 
 the delights and the longings of youth. The Swiss 
 national airs made a deep impression on him. The higher 
 music on the other hand, especially instrumental, left him 
 cold and untouched ; but he delighted to hear the Coun- 
 tess Guiccioli sing some of the airs of the melodious 
 Rossini, and even sang them himself. That he loved and 
 gang Moore's Melodies has been already mentioned. 
 Music in the highest sense, the music of the spheres and 
 its echo in the earthly world, he often indeed praised ; 
 thus, in ' Don Juan ' : 
 
 There's music in the sighing of a reed; 
 There's music in the gushing of a rill ; 
 There's music in all things if men had ears; 
 Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. 2 
 
 But for this music he himself had not always an open 
 ear ; and, especially in c Don Juan,' he heard much 
 oftener the discord than the harmony of the world. In 
 opposition to true musicians, he aims as often at resolving 
 
 1 Moore's Life, iv. 8. 2 Canto xv. 5.
 
 1807-24.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 371 
 
 harmony into discord as conversely discord into harmony. 
 In so far, then, Byron, both in the real and the meta- 
 phorical sense, belongs to those who, as Shakespeare says, 
 have music in themselves ; and of the good qualities 
 which are spoken in the praise of such, he possessed one 
 of the best and fairest a good and tender heart. Even 
 Dallas l admits, that though his pen was sometimes malig- 
 nant and godless, yet his heart was good and gentle. In 
 his youth he was obliging, capable of attachment, craving 
 to love and to be loved, and grateful for every act of 
 kindness shown to him. To his servants he was always 
 a kind master, and without exception they loved and 
 revered him. His goodness of heart bordered on feminine 
 tenderness, and he often assumed a tone of irony and 
 bitterness to shield him from a weakness, which might 
 have exposed him to mockery. Having once wounded an 
 eaglet at the Gulf of Lepanto, whose life he in vain 
 endeavoured to save, he vowed from that moment never 
 again to kill an animal ; and in fact we do not hear that 
 he ever indulged in field sports ; he preferred to exercise 
 his skill in shooting at inanimate objects. Angling, also, 
 he condemned as cruel : 
 
 And angling too, that solitary vice, 
 Whatever Isaac Walton sings or says ; 
 The quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet 
 Should have a hook and a small trout to pull it. s 
 
 He who felt thus towards the animal world, could not, 
 in spite of all his selfishness and his misanthropy, be 
 hard and cruel to his fellow-men. Warm and helpful 
 sympathy with the distress of others accompanied him 
 through life. ' Misfortune was sacred in his eyes,' says 
 Lady Blessington, 3 ' and seemed to be the last link of the 
 
 1 iii. 84. 2 Don Juan, canto xiii. 166. 
 
 3 Conversations, $c., p. 23o, cf. p. 299. 
 
 n B 2
 
 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 chain which connected him with his fellow-men.' His 
 sympathies did not even grow cold, where misfortune was 
 the consequence of misconduct. ' Those who have lost,' 
 he said, ' the right to pity, in losing reputation and self- 
 respect, are the persons who stand most in need of com- 
 miseration for they have the reproaches of conscience to 
 embitter their draught this it is that makes me pity the 
 guilty and respect the unfortunate.' ' His actions in this 
 respect corresponded with his words. As early as the year 
 1813, he relieved, by a not insignificant sum (150/.), an 
 applicant whose unworthiness^ he himself did not deny. 2 
 On the occasion of the separation, he Was vehemently 
 attacked in the press by Mr. John Scott, a former school 
 companion at Aberdeen. After the sudden death of this 
 gentleman, Byron not only spoke respectfully of him, but 
 contributed also, without giving his name, to the support 
 of his widow. How Byron, when he was himself in 
 straitened circumstances, never closed his hand : how 
 he exercised an almost princely munificence in Italy, has 
 already been fully related. He had an especial sympathy 
 for the maimed and deformed; his favourite beggar at 
 Ravenna was a cripple. But the inconsistencies and con- 
 tradictions of his nature failed not to manifest themselves 
 even in money matters for inconsistency was a destiny 
 from which he could not escape. In Italy he learned to 
 know the value of money, and an undeniable niggardliness 
 acted as the counterpoise to his munificence. That Hunt 
 should complain of this does not prove much ; for precisely 
 in money matters Hunt was not a trustworthy judge. But 
 the fact is corroborated on all sides, and Byron often 
 accused himself of avarice ; he even expressed his joy that 
 lie had arrived at this ' good old-gentlemanly vice,' 3 while 
 
 1 Conversations, fyc., p. 237. 3 Moore's Life, ii. 336. 
 
 3 Don Juan, canto i. 216.
 
 1807-21.J CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 373 
 
 he hoped that now his other vices would take their leave. 1 
 His youthful resolve to receive no honorarium for his 
 literary works he had long renounced, and learnf to 
 drive a hard bargain with Murray. An estimate from 
 Mr. Murray's account shows that he had received from 
 him not less than 19,340Z. 2 It forms a strange contrast 
 with this, that in Italy when Byron dined alone, the cost 
 of his dinner should have amounted to only a few pauls. 
 This can of course form no subject of blame, where his 
 own person merely was concerned ; but he extended this 
 niggardliness to others, and as it appears, there was asso- 
 ciated with it a fear and distrust of being defrauded by 
 his people which, indeed, might not seldom have been 
 the case. This meanness went so far, that at the sale of 
 his yacht, before his voyage to Greece, he did not allow 
 the sailors serving in it to keep the jackets which he 
 had provided. 3 Still more injurious to his memory is the 
 omission, discussed in a previous chapter, with which he 
 may be charged in respect to a provision for the Countess 
 Guiccioli. To Shelley's widow he also behaved shabbily 
 as Trelawny asserts, 4 inasmuch as instead of assisting 
 her, he did not even repay the many advances which had 
 been made by Shelley. 
 
 Such are the traits of the man Byron, which inevitably 
 blend with those of the poet, although in a higher degree 
 than other poets he had, as it were, two states of exist- 
 ence, of which he was quite conscious. * One state of 
 existence,' he says to Lady Blessington, * is purely con- 
 
 1 Don Juan, v. 143. 
 
 2 Compare note to the ' English Bards, &c.,' vii. 235. 
 
 3 Med win's Conversations, p. 421. 
 
 4 Recollections, #c., p. 152. [Let those who choose, believe this on 
 the authority of Mr. Trelawny : the translator cannot]
 
 374 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 templative, during which the crimes, faults, and follies of 
 mankind are laid open to my view ; and the other active, 
 when I play my part in the drama of life, as if impelled 
 by some power over which I have no control, though the 
 consciousness of doing wrong remains.' l Still more 
 clearly and vigorously he writes to Moore : ' A man's 
 poetry is a distinct faculty or soul, and has no more to do 
 with the every day individual than the inspiration with 
 the Pythoness when removed from her tripod.' 2 Certainly 
 this is more applicable to him than to most other poets. 
 In virtue of his characteristic faculty of improvisation 
 his life and poetry went side by side, each unaffected by 
 the other. His poetry bears the same relation to his life 
 as his own Apollo-like head to his Satyr-like feet. We 
 know, alas ! far too much of his life, and indeed through 
 his own fault ; of Shakespeare's we know far too little ; 
 but it would be to Byron's advantage, if the story of his 
 life overladen with petty details could be exchanged for 
 the almost blank page on which all we know of Shake- 
 speare is written. If we possessed of him nothing but his 
 works, even without his introductory remarks, posterity 
 would doubtless form a far brighter and nobler idea of 
 his life and character than truth would warrant. He is a 
 giant so long as he floats in the sether of his poetry, but 
 he becomes a dwarf- the very converse of Antseus as 
 soon as he touches the earth. The more attentively we 
 trace the development of his character, which, spite of its 
 undeniably finer qualities, has been shown to be so incon- 
 sistent, vain, embittered, petty, unmanly, egotistical, often 
 insincere and distrustful, the more shall we be convinced 
 of the truth of the expression of Walter Scott : ' After 
 all, c'est du genie mat loge, and that's all that can be said 
 
 1 Conversations, fyc., p. 119. 2 Moore's Life, v. 285.
 
 1807-21.] CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON. 375 
 
 about it ; ' ' yet Walter Scott is among the sincerest of 
 Byron's friends, and always unreservedly and joyously 
 recognised the nobler elements of his character. Goethe, 2 
 also a kind and partial judge, admits, that Byron's mode 
 of life and the character of his poetry scarcely admit of 
 a judgment in accordance with strict right and reason. 
 This opinion requires to be modified, for it must not be 
 overlooked, in how unusual a measure the development of 
 Byron's character from youth upwards was subjected to 
 the influence of social and domestic relations the most 
 unpromising and adverse, and how undeniably he was a 
 victim of them. His main offence ultimately amounts to 
 this, that he did not fight his way to victory through the 
 faults with which he was born, and in which he had been 
 trained ; he was too weak for the evil circumstances in 
 which destiny had placed him. We cannot btit think that 
 the portraiture of his youth makes a purer and happier 
 impression than that of his latter years. We possess, 
 indeed, for the first part of his life scarcely any other 
 source than that which Moore, with his flatteries and 
 embellishments, is pleased to give, and it may be ques- 
 tioned whether our judgment of his youthful character 
 would not undergo a change, if our command of materials 
 concerning it were as copious as those concerning his 
 manhood. Much also of essential importance to the true 
 delineation of his life and character is still withheld. 
 However this may be, his unhappy marriage, and the 
 shameful charge brought against him at the separation 
 from his wife, produced a lasting and baneful effect on 
 him, and this fact must never be left out of considera- 
 tion when we form our estimate of him. The embittered 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Morrit (May, 1816), Lockhart's Life, v. 140. Edin. 
 1856. 
 
 2 On ' Manfred,' Sdmmt. Werke, xxvi 428.
 
 376 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEr. 19-36. 
 
 and defiant feelings which were thus engendered, form 
 a ground of extenuation not to be overlooked for the 
 excesses into which Byron in his despair plunged at 
 Venice. If, where he knew himself purest and most free 
 from stain he there was most unworthily calumniated and 
 at last outlawed by his countrymen, what motive remained 
 for moral effort, moral elevation, and the ennobling of 
 his character? Must he not from that moment have 
 looked down with profound contempt on public opinion 
 and public estimation ? Must it not have appeared to 
 him quite indifferent whether he deserved its approval or 
 not ? Lady Byron must bear the greater share of that 
 censure, which cannot be withheld from the errors of his 
 later days or from his cynical and sarcastic philosophy of 
 life. 
 
 Du genie mat loge! But genius it is, and genius of the 
 highest order ; and we now turn, not without a feeling of 
 relief, from the consideration of his character to the con- 
 sideration of his genius and poetry.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 377 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 
 
 IN the four principal orders of poetry the literature of 
 England has produced four poets of unsurpassed genius : 
 Shakespeare in dramatic, Milton in reflective poetry, so 
 far as this may be regarded as a special class ; Scott in 
 epic, and Byron in lyrical poetry the latter being 
 understood in its most comprehensive sense as subjective 
 poetry. That Scott wrote his chief works in prose and 
 not in metrical form is a mere external distinction which 
 may be disregarded in our estimate. Of these four great 
 writers, Byron has the least organic connection with the 
 literature of his country antecedent to his own time. In 
 Shakespeare, the dramatic poetry of the nation in its 
 gradual rise and progress attained its culmination; 
 Milton, both politically and religiously, was the noblest 
 expression of Puritanism ; and in Scott the epic charac- 
 teristics of Scottish national life and character found their 
 last and best representative. In Byron we look in vain 
 for a corresponding basis of his poetry; in his sudden 
 rise, in his career, in his splendour and disappearance he 
 resembled a meteor, as far at least as English literature 
 is concerned. The chief material and food of his poetry, 
 the point to which his nature gravitated, lay beyond the 
 shores of England ; hence he was deprived of nourishment 
 from that mother-soil, in which the heart and works of
 
 378 LIFE OF LOED BYROK \_JEr. 19-36. 
 
 the poet most surely find the truest sustenance and the 
 most stable peace. He had almost severed himself from 
 his country, and his country in return all but renounced 
 him ; and it was, in fact, less his fault than his misfortune 
 that he had to learn, how exile gnaws at the roots of 
 existence. It was neither the lovely landscapes, nor the 
 grand historical memories of his country, that fed his 
 thoughts or sustained his aspirations. Neither the misty 
 highlands and lochs of Scotland nor the green meadows 
 of England, neither the civil wars of the Roses nor the 
 adventures of England's navigators, filled his mind ; but 
 the Greek Archipelago, or the Lake of Geneva in its 
 perennial cheerfulness and pomp of colour, or the political 
 anomalies of Venice, which rose, despite of all these, to 
 the rank of a great power influencing the destinies of 
 nations. A citizen of the world among English poets, 
 he winged his flight beyond the limits of his country, and 
 in him, accordingly, Goethe hailed the herald of an uni- 
 versal literature. Hence his poetry has exercised a far 
 deeper influence upon the literature of the Continent 
 than upon that of his own country. He was himself not 
 unconscious of this more continental than national posi- 
 tion ; his idea, at least, of writing a great poem in the 
 Italian language, as soon as he felt himself master of its 
 beauties, would seem to indicate this. Nine years, he 
 thought, would be spent in acquiring this command of 
 the language, he would then see what he could do, and 
 this should be his best work. Although this may have 
 been no more than a passing thought, it is yet charac- 
 teristic of his position, on the one hand to England and 
 on the other to the Continent. 
 
 It cannot be said, that Byron loved to devote himself to 
 English literature or to connect himself with it. Even 
 with regard to books and their authors he had his caprices.
 
 1807-21.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 379 
 
 If we are to believe Leigh Hunt, 1 he did not even possess 
 a Shakespeare or a Milton, because he had been accused 
 of borrowing from them, and he would afford no pretext 
 for such a charge. With Milton, of whom he speaks in 
 no very respectful manner in 'Don Juan,' 2 he ventured 
 to contend for the palm, in 'Heaven and Earth,' and 
 ' Cain,' ' mysteries,' in which he entered on the domain of 
 biblical poetry. With regard to Shakespeare, he was 
 the only one who, as he could not fail to see, stood above 
 himself; all other English poets he would have placed 
 either beneath, or at the most on a level with himself. 
 Shakespeare's greatness oppressed him. Goethe, we know, 
 with noble candour confessed repeatedly, how much he 
 owed to Shakespeare, and how he felt his own inferiority 
 to him. Byron was incapable of such an admission ; the 
 greatness of Shakespeare excited in him only mortification 
 and jealousy, and he gave vent to these feelings in censures 
 as bitter as they were unjust. Even when he mentions 
 him with praise, as in ' Don Juan,' 3 where he speaks of him 
 as ' his British godship,' we find an undertone of secret 
 spite, mockery, and jealousy. Thus he admits him, in- 
 deed, to be the most extraordinary of writers, but the worst 
 of models ; 4 he doubts whether he were really so great 
 a genius as he is generally considered to be ; fashion, he 
 thought, had led to his over- estimation ; he calls him a 
 barbarian, and even ventures to assert, that the English 
 have no Drama. Shakespeare and Milton have had, he 
 says, 5 their rise, and they will have their decline. He 
 told Lady Blessington, that Shakespeare owed one half of 
 his popularity to his low origin, which with the great 
 crowd covers a multitude of sins, and the other half to 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 45. 2 Canto iii. stanza 91. 3 Canto xiv. stanza 75. 
 
 4 Byron to Murray. Moore's Life, v. 202. 
 
 5 Letter to Mr. Murray on Borders Strictures on Pope, vi. 368 (note).
 
 380 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 the distance of time from which, he is separated from 
 us. Lady Blessington is, however, convinced, that he 
 attacked and depreciated Shakespeare which he did con- 
 stantly in conversation only to excite astonishment and 
 irritate his countrymen, but that in his heart he sincerely 
 and deeply admired him. Certainly there could scarcely 
 be two natures more utterly opposed to each other than 
 Shakespeare and Byron, as well with regard to their poetry 
 as to their character. 
 
 Among the classic poets of England there was one only 
 with whom he had any sympathy and for whom he enter- 
 tained any respect this was Pope. On this point he 
 remained constant throughout his life, partly, perhaps, 
 because he thus found himself in opposition to all his con- 
 temporaries. As a boy he had been fascinated with Pope's 
 translation of Homer, and in his mature years he declared 
 it to be unsurpassable. It is probable also that Pope was 
 highly esteemed at Harrow, and was there recommended 
 to be studied and imitated. When Byron was writing the 
 ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' he devoted himself 
 to the study of Pope, knowing well, that he was giving 
 to the world in that poem a companion piece to the 
 * Dunciad ; ' just as, at a later period, he placed his ' Hints 
 from Horace ' by the side of the ' Essay on Criticism.' 
 From that time he allowed no opportunity to pass of 
 praising Pope, of setting him up as a pattern, and even, 
 in his waywardness, of ranking him above Shakespeare. 1 
 He lost all patience with those who detracted from Pope, 
 and hoped that there would be two men, at least, of taste 
 to support him in his defence .of him ; if not, he would 
 tight it out alone, for that it was truly the best cause in the 
 
 1 In another passage, however, he says, 'I shall presume to say, that 
 Pope is as high a poet as Shakespeare or Milton.' Letters on BowleJs 
 Strictures on Pope. Moore's Life, vi. 376.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 381 
 
 world. ' I have always regarded him,' he says in a letter 
 to Moore, 1 'as the greatest name in our poetry. Depend 
 upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek temple, 
 with a Gothic cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish 
 mosque, and all sort of fantastic pagodas and conventicles 
 about him. You may call Shakespeare and Milton pyra- 
 mids, if you please, but I prefer the temple on the Parthe- 
 non to a mountain of burnt brick- work.' In his first letter 
 on Bowles 2 he pronounces him the most consummate, and 
 the most moral of English poets, as the only one whose 
 faultlessnes"s has been made his reproach ; the moral poet, 
 indeed, of all civilisation, and as such he hopes that he will 
 one day be the national poet of mankind. His poetry he 
 says again is the book of life ; that a thousand years will 
 roll away before such a poet can be again hoped for in 
 our literature. * But it can want them he himself is a 
 literature.' 3 Byron thought even of raising a monument 
 at his own expense ' to the national poet of mankind,' 
 in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, from which 
 he had been excluded because of his religion. 4 
 
 It might seem, at the first glance, as if this excessive 
 reverence must be a freak of fancy, to which he had 
 accustomed himself from caprice or waywardness or the 
 spirit of contradiction. But on closer consideration, we 
 perceive that in many respects Byron was kindred in 
 mind and character with Pope ; and we have only to read 
 Schlosser's critical estimate of the latter 5 to be convinced 
 that Byron must have been, as if by an inner necessity, 
 attracted to Pope. Pope was, in the first place, deformed 
 and a Catholic two circumstances which were at once 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 150. 2 Ibid. vi. 377. s Ibid. 413. 
 
 4 [Pope was buried, according to the directions of his Will, in 
 Twickenham Church.] 
 
 5 History of the Eighteenth Century (Geschichte des Achlzehnteu 
 Jahrhunderts). Heidelberg, 1836, i. 442-448.
 
 382 LIFE OF LORD 13YEON. [JEn. 19-26. 
 
 calculated to gain the sympathy of Byron. Pope, though 
 he had a humpback, had a face of great beauty : Byron, 
 however noble his countenance, had a deformed foot ; 
 and thus deformity combined with great beauty was in 
 Pope and Byron the source of their great irritability, 
 vanity, insincerity, and satirical temper. Pope, like Byron, 
 suffered severely from the feuds and strifes of the literary 
 world. Both poets also closely resembled each other in 
 ambition and love of fame. Pope, in his generation, 
 stood on the summit of Parnassus, like Byron in a later, 
 and each, with the weapons of his satire, hurled down all 
 aspirants from that height. Further, Pope was the poet 
 of aristocratic society, in which he had gained a posi- 
 tion, and was the acknowledged representative of the 
 philosophy and morality recognised by this society; he 
 preached self-love as the basis of practical wisdom, and 
 versified the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke. 
 ' As a satirist ' to use the words of Schlosser ' he brands 
 all his enemies with his bitter and malicious wit, and turns 
 into ridicule what he does not understand or approve. It 
 is true, he scatters or annihilates herds of those miserable 
 dunces who had accquired some importance, because the 
 great world was unable to distinguish between what was 
 good and what was bad. The grave and the learned, the 
 severe and the simple, are equally the butts of his ridicule, 
 and contemporaries, not individually but in whole troops, 
 are held up to scorn.' Pope also was not free from the impu- 
 tation of scepticism and deism, and hence gave great offence 
 to his contemporaries, as Byron did from the same cause 
 to his. The distinctive character of mankind, 1 as drawn 
 by Pope, is peculiarly applicable to Byron, who must have 
 
 1 This has been noticed also by the ' Rejected Addresses ' (1855), p. 14 
 (note).
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 383 
 
 seen liimself reflected in this as in a mirror ; for instance 
 in the following couplets : 
 
 Chaos of thought and passion all confused, 
 Still by himself abused or disabused ; 
 Created part to rise and part to fall, 
 Great lord of all things, yet a slave to all ; 
 Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world. 1 
 
 But the two poets were closely allied, not in their weak- 
 nesses only, but also in their excellences. With the 
 effusions of his satire and his sceptical reflections Pope, 
 like Byron, interspersed sublime thoughts and noble feel- 
 ings; he is distinguished not only for his pungent wit, 
 but also for his fancy, the soaring elevation of his con- 
 ceptions, the supreme excellence of his diction, and his 
 unsurpassed elegance. And yet Byron must have been 
 conscious, that he himself surpassed Pope and this, as- 
 suredly, was not the least agreeable side of his idolatry 
 of Pope. 2 
 
 It was with Pope that Byron connected his critical 
 and sesthetical thoughts on the nature of poetry ; it was 
 Pope also, who was the occasion of his quarrel with 
 Bowles, who, in his edition of Pope, published in the 
 year 1807, 3 expressed, with unnecessary prominence, those 
 
 1 Essay on Man, epist. ii. 13-18. 
 
 2 'Byron,' said Goethe, 'places old Pope so high, merely that he might 
 have in him an impregnable wall, behind which he might take refuge. 
 Compared to Pope, Byron was a giant, but to Shakespeare he was but a 
 dwarf.'- Goethe's Conversations with Chancellor Mutter (IJnterJiaUungen 
 mil dem Kander Miiller), i. 94. 
 
 3 The Rev. William Lisle Bowles, who was born 1762 at King's 
 Sutton (Northamptonshire), and died 1850 as Hector of Bremhill (Wilt- 
 shire), was a prolific writer in many walks of literature, and a poet 
 highly esteemed by the Lake School, on whose rise and progress he 
 exercised a considerable influence. It was his sonnets which, though 
 few in number, contributed in a marked manner to bring back English 
 poetry from French artificiality to the truth of nature.
 
 384 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JSi. 19-36. 
 
 critical principles which placed him in antagonism with 
 the author whose works he edited. He was attacked at 
 first, by Campbell, in his ' Specimens of British Poets ; ' 
 and to Campbell he replied at length, in a letter which 
 appeared as a pamphlet. 1 Already in the 'English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers,' Byron had fallen on the unhappy 
 editor of Pope, deriding him as ' the maudlin prince of 
 mournful sonneteers.' Some years after the publication 
 of the satire Byron met (1812) him. at a dinner-party 
 at Rogers's, when Bowles directed the attention of his 
 assailant to the injustice he had done him by his 
 misquotation ; yet the meeting was, as Byron 2 himself 
 confirms, on both sides most pleasant and agreeable. 
 Notwithstanding this, Byron wrote in 1821 (after there 
 had been abundance of time for his feelings to cool down) 
 a letter to Mr. Murray (intended for publication) on Mr. 
 Bowles's ' Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope,' in 
 which, on occasion of the Pope controversy, he makes an 
 attack on the character of Pope's editor. Before this he 
 had written to Moore : 3 ' I mean to plunge thick into the 
 contest upon Pope, and to lay about me like a dragon, till 
 I make manure of Bowles for the top of Parnassus.' That 
 Southey agreed with Bowles was an additional spur to 
 Byron. In the controversy which had arisen, one of the 
 chief points of dispute was the assertion made by Bowles 
 and defended by the Lake School, that all images taken 
 from nature are more beautiful and sublime than those 
 which are derived from art, and are therefore, per se, more 
 poetical. In reply to this, Campbell referred to the case 
 
 1 * The unvariable Principles of Poetry, in a Letter addressed to Thomas 
 Campbell, occasioned by some critical Observations on his Specimens of 
 British Poets, particularly relating to the poetical Character of Pope.' 
 
 2 See Letter to John Murray, Esq., Moore's Life and Works, vi. 347 
 <et seq. 
 
 3 Hid. v. 37.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 385 
 
 of a ship, which, although an object of art, is an extremely 
 poetical figure, and adapted, in an extraordinary degree, to 
 the purposes of the poet. Bowles having in his rejoinder 
 endeavoured to reduce the poetical character of the ship 
 to natural causes, Byron takes up the argument and 
 says : ' Mr. Bowles makes the chief part of a ship's 
 poesy depend upon the " wind ; " then why is a ship under 
 sail more poetical than a hog in a high wind ? The hog 
 is all nature, the ship is all art, " coarse canvass," " blue 
 bunting," and " tall poles ;" both are violently acted upon 
 by the wind, tossed here and there, to and fro, and yet 
 nothing but excess of hunger could make me look upon 
 the pig as the more poetical of the two, and then only in 
 the shape of a griskin.' 1 From arguments such as these, 
 which have not even the merit of being witty or humorous, 
 no result can follow discussion simply ceases. In the 
 whole disputation Byron dwells on mere isolated and 
 external points, and never approaches the subject in 
 a philosophical spirit, so that the investigation of the 
 question is throughout rambling and inconclusive. To a 
 German, who is accustomed to see even sesthetical ques- 
 tions treated in a scientific manner, and who calls to mind, 
 for example, Schiller's celebrated treatise on 'Natural and 
 Sentimental Poetry,' 2 the controversy as conducted by 
 Byron is tantamount to the winnowing of chaff. Byron 
 will have nothing to do with ' orders of poetry,' and still 
 less with an * ordering of poets.' 3 Everything, he insists, 
 depends on the execution ; the best poet is he who best 
 executes his work, whether he be a writer of tragedies 
 or of sonnets. The subject which he chooses is quite 
 indifferent and may be taken from nature or from arti- 
 
 1 Byron's letter to Mr. Murray, vi. 366. 
 
 2 Sammtliche Werke (1844), x. 281^368. 
 
 3 Byron's letter to Mr. Murray, vi. 367. 
 
 C C
 
 386 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. \_Mi. 19-36. 
 
 ficial objects ; the poet, who shall succeed in making a 
 good poem on a game of cards, is a greater artist than 
 he who takes the forest for his subject. According to his 
 view, the highest of all poetry is the ethical or didactic, 
 because moral truth is the highest of all earthly objects ; 
 nothing can be more sublime, than to express in verse 
 what the good and wise, what founders of religion, had 
 taught in prose, and thereby make men happier and 
 wiser. Imagination and invention, on which it is the 
 fashion of the day to lay so much stress, are, he proceeds 
 to say, the commonest of all attributes ; an Irish peasant 
 with some whiskey in his head imagines more, and invents 
 more, than is requisite to furnish forth a modern poem, and 
 yet such invention is nothing but a lie. ' If the essence 
 of poetry must be a lie, throw it to the dogs, or banish it 
 from your republic, as Plato would have done.' l 
 
 This, truly, is not an investigation of the nature of 
 poetry such as becomes a great poet ; nor can anything 
 worthy result from an enquiry conducted in this fashion. 
 Byron wrote a second letter against Bowles, which hap- 
 pily contains no discussions on the subject in question; 
 it is simply polemical, and may be passed over without 
 further notice especially as Byron himself, to avoid hurting 
 Bowles's feelings, authorised its suppression. He permitted 
 only the publication, as occasion might offer, of those 
 passages in which his opponent and especially his poem 
 * The Missionary ' is commended. 2 Byron never after- 
 wards expressed himself on theoretical questions, and in 
 all probability had never reflected connectedly upon them ; 
 some occasional remarks from his letters and journals we 
 have already mentioned, and shall again return to them in 
 the sequel. 
 
 1 Letter to Murray, vi. 376. 
 
 8 Compare letter to Murray, Life, v. 133.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 387 
 
 It is quite in harmony with Byron's enthusiasm for 
 Pope that he should have no respect for modern English 
 poetry, and that he spoke of it as in a degraded con- 
 dition, which he ascribed chiefly to its neglect of his idol, 
 the ' nightingale of Twickenham.' He expressly includes 
 his own poetry in this condemnation, and confesses, that 
 though he had ever loved and honoured Pope's poetry, he 
 had shamefully deviated in practice. 1 'With regard to 
 poetry in general ' he writes in a letter to Mr. Murray a 
 I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he (Moore) 
 and all of us, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Campbell, 
 I, are all in the wrong, one as much as another ; that 
 we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system or 
 
 systems, not worth a d n in itself, and from which 
 
 none but Eogers and Crabbe are free; and that the 
 present and next generation will finally be of this opinion. 3 
 I took Moore's poems and my own and some others, and 
 went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really 
 astonished (I ought not to have been so) and mortified 
 at the ineffable distance in point of sense, learning, effect, 
 and even imagination, passion, and invention, between the 
 little Queen Anne's man and us of the lower empire. 
 Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, 
 among us ; and if I had to begin again I would mould 
 myself accordingly. Crabbe's the man, but he has got a 
 
 1 Observations upon an article in Blackicood, xv. 81. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, iv. 63, 64. 
 
 3 This was written at Ravenna, and sent to Murray April 21, 1821, but 
 was not published, till a considerable time after Byron's death, in the 
 edition of the Life and Works, 17 vols., 1832. With regard to the 
 controversy itself, the right of it remained, it was generally thought, 
 with Bowles, who showed himself a vigorous and able disputant. 
 [' Bowles and Hazlitt,' says Mr. Elwin in his edition of Pope, ' were the 
 only persons among the disputants, eminent or obscure, who showed any 
 real comprehension of the subject.] Bowles wrote after Byron's death 
 a very touching elegy entitled Childe Harold's Last Pilgrimage. Moore's 
 Life, vi. 225, 226. 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [jEr. 19-36. 
 
 coarse and impracticable subject, and Eogers has retired 
 on half-pay and has done enough.' However much 
 Gifford ' may commend this passage as containing ' more 
 good sense, feeling and judgment ' than any Byron ever 
 wrote, it is impossible to admit it to be an intelligent con- 
 ception of the growth and development of English poetry. 
 In the first place, the poetry of Scott, of Moore, of Words- 
 worth, and his own, though widely differing from each 
 other, are thrown together in the most confused manner 
 in this comparative estimate. That, relatively to the so- 
 called classical age of Queen Anne when French taste 
 culminated in English literature they were all revolu- 
 tionary, is undoubtedl} 7 " true ; but only through such a 
 revolutionary movement, going hand in hand with social 
 and political changes, could the literature of England be 
 brought back to the truth of nature, to originality, and to 
 a distinctively national character. It must be admitted, 
 that the so-called Lake School was a necessary link in 
 this development, however little we may be disposed to sym- 
 pathise with it, or assign to it a high rank. It need hardly 
 be said, that Byron could have no sympathies in common 
 with the 'pond-poets,' although he personally esteemed 
 one or two among them; but their mutual antagonism 
 had its foundation in the radical difference of character on 
 both sides. The Lake School, secluding itself from so- 
 ciety, stripped all social elements from poetry, reduced it 
 not merely to the love and imitation of nature, but, over- 
 shooting its mark, in many cases to the trivialities of every- 
 day life. This did not, however, prevent the Lake poets 
 from imagining themselves the lessees of Poesy in her 
 
 1 In the MS. copy of this letter Gifford appended the following note 
 to this paragraph : ' There is more good sense, feeling, and judgment in 
 this passage than in any other I ever read, or Lord Byron wrote.' Moore's 
 Life, iv. 64 (note).
 
 1807-2I.J BYEON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 389 
 
 prophetic functions. Without passion or true pathos, with 
 their confined horizon and somewhat petty sphere of life, 
 by their lapse too from radicalism, they were in every 
 respect the very opposites of Byron ; and though he pre- 
 tended ' highly to esteem moral, or didactic poetry, yet 
 this species of poetry, so far as it was represented by the 
 Lake School, called forth only his mockery and derision. 2 
 His hatred and scorn of this school, however, were most 
 fiercely concentrated against Southey, who, he thought, 
 had given him special personal grounds for his indignation. 
 Soon after Byron had taken up his abode at the Lake of 
 Geneva, Southey also made a tour through Switzerland, and 
 on his return circulated, as Byron believed, the calumnious 
 report, that Byron and Shelley were living in promiscuous 
 intercourse with two sisters, one of whom was Shelley's 
 
 1 ' In my mind the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the 
 highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth.' Letter on Bowles's 
 Strictures on Pope, vi. 369. 
 
 2 He had a sincere esteem for Wordsworth ; the third and fourth 
 Cantos of Childe Harold show, as H. C. Robinson thinks (Diary, iii. 488), 
 the influence, with regard to style, of Wordsworth, although nothing 
 could be more opposite with regard to matter. The following interest- 
 ing anecdote regarding Wordsworth is also given on the authority of 
 Robinson : ' I was sitting with Charles Lamb when Wordsworth came 
 in, with fume on his countenance, and the Edinburgh Heview in his 
 hand. " I have no patience with these Reviewers," he said ; " he is a 
 young man, a lord and a minor, it appears, who has published a little 
 volume of poems; and these fellows must attack him as if no one may 
 write poetry who does not live in a garret. The young man will do 
 something if he goes on." When I became acquainted with Lady Byron, 
 I told her this story, and she said, " Ah ! if Byron had known that, be 
 would never have attacked Wordsworth. He once went out to dinner 
 wheie Wordsworth was to be ; when he came home, I said, ' Well, how 
 did the young poet get on with the old one ? ' 'To tell you the truth,' 
 said he, ' I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the 
 end reverence ! ' " 
 
 In ' Sardanapalus,' particularly in the speech of Myrrha, act v. sc. i.. 
 some persons think they can discover the influence of the 'Excursion.' 
 Compare Leigh Hunt's Byron, 77, 4to. 1828.
 
 890 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. \_JEr. 19-36. 
 
 wife. 1 This wounded Byron on his tenderest side, and 
 he never forgave it. But even apart from this, the me- 
 diocrity of Southey's talents, 2 his * literary suicide,' and 
 his political apostasy precluded the possibility of his ever 
 gaining Byron's respect. He lashed the Laureate there- 
 fore in the bitterest and most unsparing manner, especi- 
 ally in the dedication to 'Don Juan,' and in the 'Vision 
 of Judgment,' which is the bitter and witty parody of 
 Southey's poem of the same name. Southey turned on 
 Byron, as a reptile trod on spits out its poison ; in true 
 pharisaic spirit he attacked Byron not on the ground of 
 his literary or political but of his moral transgressions. 
 He denounced Byron as the founder of the ' Satanic 
 School ' in English literature ; his poetry as a monstrous 
 combination of lewdness and impiety, and Byron as a 
 panderer for the youth of England. To this fresh indignity 
 Byron replied by a challenge, which he intrusted (Feb. 
 1822) to his friend Douglas Kinnaird, who however never 
 delivered it. 
 
 His friendly feelings towards Sir Walter Scott may be 
 regarded as the very counterpart to his hostile relations 
 with Southey. Scott was not a disciple of Pope, any more 
 than the poets of the Lake School, but contributed, perhaps, 
 even in a greater measure than they did, to give the coup- 
 de-grace to French taste in English literature. He fell 
 back on Scottish national life, and threw himself into 
 spheres, for which Byron, living as he did abroad, could 
 
 1 See some Observations upon an article in Blackivood 1 s Magazine, 
 Life and Works, xv. 73 et seq. 
 
 2 [Dr. Elze, who knows so much of English literature, has something 
 to learn regarding Southey. A fuller acquaintance with his life and 
 writings would, we feel sure, convince our author, that Southey 
 upheld the calling of a man of letters with rare dignity and independence ; 
 that his poems abound in great and manifold beauties j and that he is a 
 master, never surpassed, of English prose.]
 
 1807-21.J BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 391 
 
 scarcely have acquired any taste ; in spite of his Toryism 
 Scott sympathised really with the people, which Byron, 
 the Radical, never could do. The antiquarian flavour of 
 his poetry was just as little to Byron's taste. Yet for 
 Scott the poet, as well as for the man Scott, Byron always 
 cherished the highest esteem and affection ; their friend- 
 ship, however, it must be admitted, was never exposed to 
 the severe trial of very long personal intercourse. He 
 knew that Scott always continued to be one of his most 
 generous critics, and his review of the third canto of 
 ' Childe Harold ' in the ' Quarterly Review ' l gave him 
 profound satisfaction. As Scott had taken up his cause, 
 so he in return took up Scott's, and exhibited his cha- 
 racter in the brightest light in the already-quoted letter to 
 Beyle, which he wrote from Genoa in the latter years of 
 his life. In this he does not, indeed, conceal that he has no 
 sympathy with Scott's political opinions, but he acknow- 
 ledges that Scott's Toryism was sincere, and in no wise 
 servile ; he says he is as nearly a thoroughly good man 
 as man can be, because he knows it by experience to be 
 the case; and he therefore prays Beyle to correct or 
 soften in a later edition of his book, ' Rome, Naples, and 
 Florence in 1817,' the passage relating to Scott, which had 
 offended Byron and led to his writing this letter. The 
 Countess of Blessington also states, that Byron frequently, 
 and always with warmth and admiration, spoke of the 
 works and character of Scott ; and that tears came into 
 his eyes while he spoke of him. Of all his friends Scott 
 was, perhaps, the only one against whom he never uttered 
 a flippant sneer, or aimed the darts of his sarcasm. He 
 never rose up, he said, from reading the Waverley Novels, 
 which always transported him to the land of his childhood, 
 
 1 The October number of 1816, vol. XT!.
 
 392 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. {2En. 19-36. 
 
 without feeling himself a better man. * How applicable to 
 Scott's works,' he said to Lady Blessington, 1 'is the observa- 
 tion on Richardson's novels made by Madame du Deffand, 
 in one of her letters to Voltaire : " La morale y est en 
 action, et n'a jamais ete traitee d'une maniere plus in- 
 teressaute. On meurt d'envie d'etre parfait apres cette 
 lecture, et 1'on croit que rien n'est si aise." 
 
 Next to Scott, Shelley was, perhaps, the poet for whom 
 Byron entertained the sincerest respect. With the ex- 
 ception of applying to him the nickname of the ' Snake,' 
 he never presumed to take any condescending familiarities 
 with him or to banter him maliciously. 2 The sincerity 
 of Shelley's convictions, his purity, his unselfishness, his 
 high poetical aspirations, were not without their influence 
 upon him. That Shelley, like himself, battled against the 
 narrow-mindedness and insincerity of English Society, 
 and hence had been ostracised by it, could only heighten 
 his respect arid kindle his sympathy. The attempt to 
 extend the freedom, which England politically enjoyed, to 
 religion and private life, was the rock on which Shelley 
 split ; he had not discovered, that in England the nation 
 only is free, not the individual. In his struggle for the 
 freedom of individuality he was entirely at one with Byron, 
 but the ways through which these two poets strove to 
 attain this end and consummation were very different. 
 Byron could sympathise neither with Shelley's metaphysics 
 nor with his predilection for classic mythology. Byron's 
 foot never stepped beyond the arena, whereas Shelley 
 winged his way to the ethereal region of dreams and visions, 
 
 1 Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 232. 
 
 2 Shelley himself, however, notices one exception in his preface to 
 Julian and Maddalo : ' Maddalo (i.e. Byron) takes a wicked pleasure in 
 drawing out Julian's (i.e. Shelley's) taunts against religion. What 
 Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known.'
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 393 
 
 and thus imparted to his poetry its unreal and shadowy 
 character. While, therefore, we always find in Byron 
 practical views of men and things, in Shelley we have 
 abstractions only, and discover that the faculty of embody- 
 ing them was utterly wanting to him ; even his hatred 
 against despotism and tyranny is thoroughly abstract. 
 Scepticism had in Shelley passed into the positive form of 
 pantheistic unbelief; that he actually boasted of atheism, 
 which has been alleged, rests on no authentic evidence. 
 Undoubtedly he confirmed Byron in his sceptical tenden- 
 cies. He declared his entire agreement with * Cain,' and 
 considered it worthy of Milton. To Shelley also Byron 
 owed some acquaintance with Goethe's ( Faust,' through 
 which his poetry was led into the realm of spirits. Shelley 
 possessed in the highest degree, what Wordsworth calls 
 ' the vision and the faculty divine,' while he was utterly 
 wanting in practical ability with regard to the things of 
 this world and in the knowledge of man and life. It has 
 been already intimated, that pure and unsuspicious as he 
 was, he judged too favourably of the character of Byron ; 
 he saw him only in his nobler sides, the defects did not 
 venture to show themselves in Shelley's presence. In 
 spite of this, Shelley's friends were apprehensive lest 
 Byron's influence should act detrimentally both on his 
 character and his genius. 1 In his poem of ' Julian and 
 Maddalo ' Shelley portrayed himself and Byron ; and in 
 the ' Lines written among the Euganean Hills ' he even 
 went so far as to make Byron's life in Venice assume a 
 highly poetical, almost a sublime form. 2 
 
 1 Shelley's Poetical Works, in one vol. 1840, p. 96. Note by Mrs. 
 Shelley. 
 
 2 In the preface to the poem of Julian and Maddalo, Shelley thus 
 characterises Maddalo (Bjron) : 'He is a person of the most -consummate 
 genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of 
 becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness
 
 394 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 Keats in his poetry lived, still more than Shelley, on what. 
 Hamlet calls the chameleon's dish the air. He was a 
 stranger also to those Faust-like emotions, and that hatred 
 of tyranny which bound Shelley and Byron together, and 
 he made a yet richer use of mythology. In mythology 
 he sought beauty and the joy in beauty which he regarded 
 as the end of poetry. While Keats lived, Byron was 
 positively unjust towards him, and spoke contemptu- 
 ously of his poetry. The news of his sad fate, and his 
 premature death, first touched the tenderer feelings of 
 his heart and softened his judgment. The notorieus cir- 
 cumstance, that Keats was killed by a critique, 1 could not 
 fail to excite Byron's sympathy, reminding him, as it did, 
 of the review of his own ' Hours of Idleness.' 
 
 With regard to Rogers and Campbell, Byron, in accord- 
 ance with his views of the excellence of the classic school, 
 of course praised their poetry. Their merit, however, 
 consisted principally in a noble and finished form ; while 
 in invention, in passion, in the creative faculty of giving 
 embodiment to their conceptions, they are far inferior to 
 Byron. In the true sense of the word they were scarcely 
 poets ; and he himself, on one occasion, while speaking of 
 them, dwells on the broad distinction between poetical in- 
 to be proud ; he derives from a comparison of his own extraordinary 
 mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense appre- 
 hension of the nothingness of human life. His passion and his powers 
 are incomparably greater than those of other men, and, instead of the 
 latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually 
 lent each other strength. His ambition prey's upon itself for want of 
 objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo 
 is proud because I can find no other word to express the concentered 
 feeling which consumes him ; but it is on his own hopes and affections 
 only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be 
 more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, 
 frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxica- 
 tion ; men are held by it as by a spell.' 
 1 Don Junn, xi. 60.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 305 
 
 spiration and the making of verses. ' Rogers,' he once said 
 to Lady Blessington, ' if he has not fixed himself in the 
 higher fields of Parnassus, has, at least, cultivated a very- 
 pretty flower-garden at its base.' l If Eogers and Camp- 
 bell exercised little influence on the direction and style of 
 Byron's poetry, the same must also be said of Moore. It 
 is, indeed, to us Germans a strange phenomenon, that two 
 poets, like Byron and Moore, should be so long and inti- 
 mately connected, without the genius of the one acting on 
 that of the other : nay, rather that they should as poets 
 pursue paths which never met or blended. Moore, indeed, 
 in his ' Loves of the Angels,' dealt with one of the same 
 subjects as Byron in his mystery of * Heaven and Earth,' 
 but there the similarity between these poems ceases. ' I 
 remember reading somewhere,' said Byron, 2 ' a concetto of 
 designating different living poets by the cups Apollo gives 
 them to drink out of. Wordsworth is made to drink from 
 a wooden bowl, and my melancholy self from a skull 
 chased with gold. Now, I would add the following cups : 
 to Moore I would give a cup formed like the lotus 
 flower and set in brilliants ; to Crabbe a scooped pump- 
 kin ; to Eogers an antique vase formed of agate ; and to 
 Colman a champagne glass.' Campbell he passed over ; 
 but to him he might have given a polished crystal 
 goblet. 
 
 This comparison briefly expresses, what we have at- 
 tempted to show in our preceding remarks, that Byron 
 not only belonged to no school, but that he was influenced, 
 neither in the direction nor in the spirit of his poetry, 
 by any of those contemporary poets with whom he was 
 most closely and intimately connected. His relations to 
 them were of a thoroughly independent and peculiar cha- 
 
 1 Conversations with Lady Blessington, p. 352. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 355.
 
 396 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [J*r. 19-36. 
 
 racter, and, in fact, lie occupied an isolated position towards 
 them all ; the influences which may be discovered in his 
 poetry come from foreign sources, from the poetry of Berni, 
 the poetry of Goethe, through the help of Shelley and 
 M. G. Lewis, and, as will be shown in the sequel, from the 
 dramas of Alfieri. But notwithstanding this, plagiarism is 
 the literary sin with which many English writers reproach 
 him. Hunt even asserts, that the noblest and most 
 beautiful images and descriptions of Byron are imita- 
 tions. Dallas says, that Wright's * Horae lonicse ' sug- 
 gested ' Childe Harold,' while Gait complains that the idea 
 was borrowed from him. He tells us, that on leaving 
 England he began to write a poem, called * The Un- 
 known,' in the Spenserian stanza, descriptive of the scenes 
 he visited, and that he showed the plan of it to Lord 
 Byron during the voyage between Gibraltar and Malta. 
 The ' Curse of Minerva ' also owed its origin (so he says 
 again) to a poem of his called ' The Atheniad,' which 
 treated of the same subject, and which he sent in manu- 
 script to Byron in Asia Minor, and received back through 
 Mr. Hobhouse. Mr. Gait finally points out a passage in the 
 'Giaour,' which displays, he thinks, a remarkable simi- 
 larity, both in thought and in execution, with a passage in 
 one of his own dramatic sketches. 1 With regard to the 
 plagiarism, so frequently charged against him, from Goethe 
 in the opening lines of the ' Bride of Abydos,' he assured 
 Lady Blessington 2 that he knew nothing of Mignon's 
 song, as he was quite ignorant of German. The famous 
 description of the shipwreck in the second Canto of ' Don 
 Juan ' is taken to the minutest particulars from accounts 
 of actual shipwrecks, and the tragedy of ' Werner ' 3 is pro- 
 
 1 Life of Byron, p. 1 84. 
 
 2 Conversations, p. 320. 
 
 * Compare Byron's preface to ' Werner.'
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 897 
 
 fessedly derived from a story in Miss Lee's ' Canterbury 
 Tales ; ' in the latter cases Byron himself openly states 
 the sources from which he had borrowed. Shakespeare 
 also, as everyone knows, very frequently founded his plays 
 on already existing dramatic pieces, or on some favourite 
 novel of his time ; yet it never occurred to anyone, except 
 to his jealous contemporary Robert Greene, to accuse him, 
 therefore, of being a plagiarist. With respect to the un- 
 conscious use and employment of the thoughts and images 
 of others, Byron very rightly replied, that there is nothing 
 new under the sun, 1 and that, as to this point, he was in 
 the same position as every other poet. In order to be 
 entirely original, he says, we must think as much as 
 possible, and read as little as possible ; but then we cannot 
 learn to think without first reading much, and thus it 
 becomes unavoidable, that the thoughts of others should 
 be blended inseparably with our own, and should after- 
 wards be expressed as our own. There is, to a certain 
 extent, a spiritual atmosphere, in which all poets breathe, 
 and in which a severance of what belongs to each is as 
 unfeasible, as in the natural atmosphere. Or as the 
 Catholic Church teaches the existence of a treasury of good 
 works of supererogation, so we might speak of a treasury 
 of supererogatory good thoughts, from which poets may 
 borrow according to their need. With respect to Byron, 
 the question as to the more or less of originality is of 
 small moment. It was his practice to stimulate himself 
 by the study of poems kindred in character with his own 
 thoughts, and excite in himself the poetic vein. Thus the 
 imitative impulse was stirred within him, and a note 
 struck by another called forth in him the full chord, which 
 was transformed by the action of his own soul into original 
 
 1 Compare Journal (1813). Moore's Life, ii. 300.
 
 398 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [Jir. 19-36. 
 
 music ; and the ores which were thrown into the crucible 
 of his mind, were there fused into a new metal. 1 
 
 Byron's poetry has, indeed, one character so distinctive 
 and original, that no doubt is admissible regarding it. 
 In the second part of ' Faust ' Goethe justly extols him 
 for ' a song his very own.' 2 It was Byron who intro- 
 duced world-sorrow (Weltschmerz) into modern literature, 
 though for this distinctive characteristic T)f his poetical 
 genius, the English, it may be remarked, have 110 ex- 
 pression, because they know not the thing. On the other 
 hand, in the literature of Germany world-sorrow plays a 
 far more important part. This world-sorrow rests pri- 
 marily on the ever-present grief of the human race at the 
 transitoriness of all things earthly, the gloomy destiny 
 and uncertain lot of man : its basis is, as another poet 3 
 has recently expressed it, 
 
 Dieses Lebens hochster Schmerz ; 
 Der Schmerz um dieses Leben. 
 
 This universal sorrow of humanity, however, assumes in 
 Byron a subjective and, it cannot be denied, a morbid 
 tone, inasmuch as he transports into it his own innate 
 and acquired vacillation between extremes, his undefined 
 
 1 Compare Moore's Life and Letters, pp. 521, 525 ; Poetical Works, 
 p. 341 ; Lady Blessington's Conversations,^. 130, 326,363 ; Hazlitt's Spirit 
 of the Age (3rd ed. 3858), p. 272. Goethe defended Byron against 
 the charge of plagiarism. ' All nature,' says he in reference to Byron, 
 ' belongs to the poet ; and every creation of art which genius originates 
 becomes also a part of nature, and consequently every later poet may as 
 freely use such works, as he may any other phenomenon of nature. Does 
 not everything which men in former or in present time have done, belong 
 of right to the poet ? Why should he fear to pluck flowers where he finds 
 them ? Only by the appropriation of the treasures of others does any- 
 thing great arise.' Conversations with Chancellor Mutter, pp. 94-98. 
 
 2 Compare the Dirge for Euphorion, at the end of the third Act of 
 the Second Part of ' Faust. Werke, xi. 376 : also Bayard Taylor's Tran- 
 slation, ii. 275-6. 
 
 3 Theodor Fontaine, concluding verses of his ' Fair Rosamund.'
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 399 
 
 craving to signalise himself by great deeds, his unsatisfied 
 longings, his oppressive isolation, his satiety produced by 
 premature and excessive indulgence, his misanthropy and 
 bitterness. It is true he is possessed with a feeling of the 
 utter wretchedness of mankind, but too often this con- 
 sciousness serves merely as a foil to his own. The sooth- 
 ing influence, which he finds in the great revelations of 
 Nature, in the contemplation of the mountains, the seas, 
 and the stars, is only momentary ; even into their presence 
 he carries his own misery and the universal misery ; from 
 their bosom in which he affects to rest, he is ever again 
 scared, by his own unhappiness, like a wild animal pur- 
 sued by hunters. The poetry in which he pours out his 
 sorrows, is to him not a blessing but a curse, and he has 
 as little joy in the creations of his own or of kindred 
 art, as in the creations of Nature. He attains his greatest 
 elevation, when he succeeds in merging his own in the 
 universal misery, when surrendering himself to Nature, he 
 finds therein the occasion for historical recollections and 
 reflections. Hence it is, that the two last cantos of 
 ' Childe Harold' are among his greatest and most 
 matured creations. 
 
 It is intimately connected with the character of impro- 
 visation, which belongs to the poetry of Byron, that he 
 could write only on the very spot, or at least that he mast 
 receive on the spot inspiration for his poetry, and then, 
 almost immediately, fervente calamo, commit it to paper ; 
 he could not dispense with the immediate stimulus which 
 he received from the external world. Thus we have seen, 
 that the two first cantos of ' Childe Harold ' were written 
 during the pilgrimage itself, and the Greek Tales shortly 
 afterwards, while his recollections were still fresh. The 
 third canto of * Childe Harold ' was begun in Belgium 
 and Switzerland, the fourth in Italy while the very scenes
 
 400 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-86. 
 
 were before him. He composed the poem of the ' Prisoner 
 of Chillon ' at Ouchy, just after returning from. Chillon ; 
 the ' Lament of Tasso ' at Florence, after he had visited 
 Tasso's dungeon at Ferrara. The ' Prophecy of Dante ' 
 was composed at Ravenna, where he daily rode past Dante's 
 tomb. 'Manfred' he began in Switzerland; 'Beppo,' the 
 ' Two Foscari,' and ' Marino Faliero ' he wrote at Venice. 
 He often said, he could describe only what he had seen or 
 experienced. He told Medwin, that there were plenty of 
 descriptions of the plague from Boccaccio to De Foe, but 
 that he had himself beheld it, and that actual vision 
 transcended all descriptions. He once remarked of Leigh 
 Hunt, that, until his residence in Italy, he had never 
 travelled ten miles' distance from St. Paul's Church ; and 
 what could be expected for poetry from such a life ? The 
 striking examples in disproof of his argument Byron, 
 indeed, either knew not, or would not know. To pass over 
 the cases of Shakespeare and Scott, we need only think 
 of Schiller's ' Tell ' or Jean Paul's ' Titan ' to be convinced 
 that actual perception is by no means an indispensable 
 prerequisite for the poet. Byron, it is true, has hence 
 imparted to his poetry a powerfully realistic, not to 
 say naturalistic element, the more so as he applied his 
 principle not only to the world of nature, but also to 
 the world of mind. According to his view, the poet, 
 before he could describe them, should have experi- 
 enced all feelings and passions ; the poet should live his 
 own poetry. The poet needs therefore either * high life ' 
 or solitude ; for only so can the life of action or con- 
 templation be known. Mere invention is, he says, the 
 talent of a liar, and all fictions were hateful to him 
 which were mere fictions ; even the most airy edifice 
 demanded some foundation in fact. Outward and inward 
 experience form, in truth, the basis of Byron's poetry, and
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 401 
 
 his followers have both, theoretically and practically fol- 
 lowed the same path. Experience then wrought so power- 
 fully on his mental organisation, that lightning-like it 
 must discharge itself in verse. We know already his say- 
 ing, that all convulsions end with him in rhyme. 1 What 
 Japhet says of himself in the second scene of ' Heaven and 
 Earth,' evidently describes Byron's own state of mind. 
 
 Peace ! what peace ? the calm 
 Of desolation, and the stillness of 
 The untrodden forest, only broken by 
 The sweeping tempest through its groaning boughs ; 
 Such is the sullen or the fitful state 
 Of my mind overworn. 2 
 
 Byron has in this point formed a true judgment of 
 himself; but it is surprising, that in his well-known defini- 
 tion of poetry 3 * the feeling of a Former world and Future ' 
 he left no place for his own poetry, as the feeling of 
 the world of the present moment. All his poems were 
 written, when the fit of inspiration was upon him, with 
 the utmost rapidity and, as it were, at one cast ; even the 
 cantos of ' Childe Harold ' and of ' Don Juan,' which 
 came forth separately, not excepted. If the first attempt 
 failed, he would never proceed to a second ; and the recast- 
 ing of the third act of 'Manfred,' which occasioned him 
 extraordinary trouble, is the only example of a departure 
 from this practice. He often says, ' I must either make a 
 spoon, or spoil a horn.' 4 Yet more forcibly he compares 
 himself to a tiger : ' If I miss the first spring, I go grumb- 
 ling back to my jungle again.' 5 For the same reason he 
 never retained the recollection of what he had written ; 
 it came and went with the moment. Medwin, 6 on the 
 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 247. 2 Life and Works, xiii. 14. 
 
 3 Diary, 1821. Moore's Life, v. 89. 4 Letter to Murray, iv. 305. 
 
 Compare letter to the same, v. 281. 
 6 Conversations ivith Lord Byron, p. 229. 
 
 D D
 
 402 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JE-r. 19-36. 
 
 other hand, asserts that Byron could have quoted every 
 line he ever wrote ; this, however, is scarcely right. It is 
 evident that Byron delighted in such tiger-like springs, 
 and carried to an extreme the character of extempo- 
 raneity in his poetry. This manner had become with him 
 a second nature, and he said of himself on a certain occa- 
 sion that he was the ' very devil of a mannerist.' l Too 
 often he strained after dazzling effects, and, as is usually 
 the case, sacrificed to effect the calmer beauty of the com- 
 position. 
 
 With the exception of his more or less unsuccessful 
 dramas, and, perhaps, of his two last tales, ' Mazeppa ' 
 and * The Island,' Byron left no organic work of art ; 
 world-sorrow (Weltschmerz), as Auerbach 2 says, is in- 
 capable of creating a finished and harmonious work of 
 art. Byron will be remembered longer by the lyrical 
 pearls, which are scattered so copiously through his poems, 
 gems which are familiar to every reader of his works, 
 and can never be forgotten. It is in these that his muse 
 takes her noblest flight ; these are the portions of his 
 poetry which are instinct with the most exquisite beauty, 
 and exercise on us the most powerful spell ; and we cannot 
 imagine, that they will ever fail to fill their readers with 
 rapture. We have already spoken of the fragmentary 
 character of the Greek Tales, in which the most strikingly 
 beautiful passages were strewn like grains of gold while 
 the poems were passing through the press. Eegarded 
 merely as tales, they were as faulty as the dramas were 
 considered from the dramatic point of view. Byron did 
 not possess the faculty of weaving a story or of con- 
 structing a plot; he therefore always treated this as a 
 
 1 Letter to Murray, iii. 357. 
 
 8 See his treatise on Weltschmerz in his book : Dentxche Alcndc, 
 Neue Folgc, p. 300. 1807.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 403 
 
 matter of subordinate interest. He knew well that his 
 strength lay in picturesque description. ' Childe Harold ' 
 and ' Don Juan ' also, form no connected and complete 
 whole, no work of art in the sesthetical sense. They 
 were conceived without plan, they arose fragmentarily, 
 and might have gone on in infinitum : they end only 
 through the exhaustion of the poet or the reader. With 
 regard to the Dramas, their style is strongly contrasted 
 with the entire absence of form in the above compositions ; 
 it is in his Dramas that Byron designedly returned to a 
 severity of composition, already vanquished in literature 
 or to speak more correctly, to a cramped and fettered 
 method of composition. We exclude, in the first instance, 
 from our review those dramas, in which the agency of 
 spirits is introduced, for these are not so much dramas as 
 dramatic poems. In his historical dramas he has not 
 only retained the classical fetters, especially the three 
 unities, but he came forward as one of their most zealous 
 defenders. It is clear, that in this he was influenced by 
 the dramatic poetry of Italy, and particularly of Alfieri, 
 with whom he was fond of comparing himself, especially 
 in their aristocratic birth and position, in their passion 
 for freedom, and in their numerous love affairs. We have 
 already learnt, in one striking example, how greatly the 
 dramas of Alfieri attracted and interested him ; it cannot 
 therefore surprise us that he selected Alfieri as his model. 
 He was painfully conscious that in the free, or, to describe 
 it in one word, the Teutonic drama, he could not venture 
 to contend with Shakespeare. If he therefore desired to 
 assume, as a dramatist, an independent position, worthy 
 of his pride and his fame, he felt he must keep out of 
 Shakespeare's way. But, notwithstanding this or per- 
 haps because of it it is as a dramatic poet that he 
 achieved the least success : the most one-sided of his 
 
 B D 2
 
 404 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. \_2Enc. 19-36. 
 
 admirers cannot but admit, that his dramas are little 
 removed from positive failures. He who could not act 
 independently, but was determined almost always by ex- 
 ternal circumstances and such was Byron was utterly 
 unfitted to describe an action springing from the distinctive 
 character of the dramatis personce. It has been repeatedly 
 pointed out, that Shakespeare and Scott, though they have 
 delineated a multiplicity of characters, have never drawn 
 their own ; whereas Byron, as a true lyric poet, had not 
 the po ?rer of drawing a single character, save and except 
 the caricature of his own. Even in his dramas it is ever 
 his own image which, reflected in different lights, comes 
 before us. In 'Sardanapalus ' alone is there an instance 
 of the development of character. Not less defective are 
 the moving springs of the action. The different pieces 
 are altogether destitute of dramatic life. That wondrous 
 organic structure, in which the action, the interest, the 
 catastrophe proceed by inner necessity from the inter- 
 action of all the different characters and only of these 
 on each other, remained to Byron a mystery barred and 
 closed. He could have learnt this from no poet better 
 than from Shakespeare. The persons of his dramas act 
 far too little on each other. Marina, for instance, the 
 wife of the younger Foscari, overflows during the whole 
 piece with revengeful feelings and frenzied hatred against 
 the persecutors of her husband arid the authorities and 
 political institutions of Yenice (she surpasses in her rage 
 Queen Margaret in Richard III.) ; but no one is in the 
 least degree concerned about her invectives ; she might 
 as well have been quite silent or altogether absented 
 herself from the scene, without the development of the 
 action or the conduct of the other persons being in the 
 slightest degree affected thereby. Even Barbarigo, the 
 friend and constant companion of Loredano, is a super 1 -
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 405 
 
 fluous figure ; lie is a feeble confidant in the style of the 
 Classic French Drama. The subjects which Byron chose, 
 especially the two he selected from Venetian story, are 
 destitute of tragical incident, and are incapable of exciting 
 either fear or pity : the last named are rather historical 
 anecdotes may we not say, curiosities of history ? which 
 leave us cold and uninterested. For these defects, neither 
 the language, in which we miss the elevation of true 
 poetry, nor the structure of the verse, afford us any com- 
 pensation. Byron, who had shown himself so great a 
 master of the Spenserian stanza, could not with like per- 
 fection manage the metre of the drama, or make it flow 
 harmoniously throughout ; sometimes he is wanting even 
 in force. He once said to Medwin, that blank verse was 
 of all metres the most difficult, because every line must 
 be good 1 an opinion in which almost all English poets 
 agree. 
 
 Thus in Byron's historical plays we find, in a word, all 
 those well-known defects and weaknesses of the Romanic 
 Drama, which have been exposed and crushed by German 
 criticism ; and yet he persisted in regarding them as a 
 reform in dramatic literature. *I want,' he says in a 
 letter to Mr. Murray, 2 ' to make a regular English drama, 
 no matter whether for the stage or not, which is not my 
 object but a mental theatre; ' in the same letter he says 3 
 also : ' my dramatic simplicity is studiously Greek, and 
 must continue so ; no reform ever succeeded at first.' In 
 another letter to the same correspondent he professes : 4 
 ' My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks, striking 
 passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. 
 It has been my object to be as simple and 
 
 1 Conversations with Lord Byron, p. 365. 
 
 2 Moore's Life, v. 227. 
 
 3 Ibid. v. 227. 4 Ibid. v. 202.
 
 406 LIFE OF LORD BYRON [^Ei. 19-36. 
 
 severe as Alfieri, and I have broken down the poetry as 
 nearly as I could to common language. The hardship 
 is, that in these times one can neither speak of kings or 
 queens without suspicion of politics or personalities. I 
 intended neither.' And again to the same correspon- 
 dent 1 he says : ' What I seek to show in the " Foscari" 
 is the suppressed passions, rather than the rant of the 
 present day.' It was partly from the spirit of opposition 
 that Byron rated his dramas so highly, partly also from a 
 motive which Shelley suggests, 2 namely, that ' authors, 
 like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most 
 trouble. Milton preferred his " Paradise Eegained," 
 Petrarch his "Africa," and Byron his "Doge of Venice." 3 
 At an earlier period of his life Byron made an attempt at 
 a comedy, but threw it into the fire, when he discovered 
 that he had no talent for this style. 3 It was then his 
 declared opinion, that comedy is the most difficult of all 
 forms of composition, more difficult even than tragedy. 4 
 Byron himself felt, that his pieces could not possibly 
 succeed on the English stage, and vehemently opposed 
 therefore their performance, mocking and reviling both 
 the stage and the public, after the manner of the fox 
 with the sour grapes. When in spite of his efforts to 
 prevent it, ' Marino Faliero ' was brought on the stage 
 (May 1821), and proved unsuccessful, he proposed to take 
 legal steps to prevent its repetition. His purpose, how- 
 ever, was never carried out; nor did he send the letter 
 to the Lord Chamberlain which he had drawn up to the 
 same intent. 5 He naturally ascribed the failure to various 
 causes, but never to the right ones : the piece, he thought, 
 
 1 Moore's Life, v. 248. 2 Compare Trelawny's Recollections, p. 77. 
 8 Moore's Life, ii. 271, 254. 4 Ibid. ii. 300. 
 
 5 Letter to Mr. Murray, v. 121.
 
 1807-24.J BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 407 
 
 was too long and did not admit of condensation; there 
 was no love in it ; had he wished to gain the applause of 
 the public, he would have written a pantomime l and 
 more to the same effect. On the other hand, he prides 
 himself in having adhered to history, and in having 
 observed to the best of his ability the costume of the 
 times. But he does not see, that the piece is nothing 
 but a succession of long-winded declamatory dialogues 
 between two or three persons, without a trace of the 
 development of character, and almost without the conflict 
 of tragedy. We fail to comprehend, how a motive so 
 external and so insignificant could instigate the old Doge 
 to a conspiracy against the state against everything, 
 which hitherto had been dear, or great, or sacred to 
 him. Fidelity to history is insufficient to elevate such an 
 event to the domain of tragic poetry, and stilted high- 
 flown language is here of little avail. 
 
 This inflation of style is still more observable in the ' Two 
 Foscari,' which, though it does not come next to ' Marino 
 Faliero ' in point of time, is yet most closely connected 
 with it as to its subject-matter. The defects of this 
 tragedy were seen and exposed by English critics, and 
 by none more than by Jeffrey : and with their opinions 
 our own accords. Jeffrey, especially, points out how 
 strikingly the absurdities of the unities appear in this 
 play. The whole interest of the piece centres in the 
 return, in defiance of law, of the younger Foscari from 
 banishment, an irresistible longing for home having made 
 life in a foreign land insupportable to him. In order to 
 obtain permission to return, he applied again contrary 
 to law to the good offices of a foreign prince. The only 
 means through which the poet could have made this 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Perry. Moore's Life, v. 137.
 
 408 LIFE OF LOED BYROX. [JE-r. 19-36- 
 
 diseased and exaggerated home-sickness intelligible, and 
 have enlisted our sympathy, would have been to present 
 his hero to us in banishment, and to make us witnesses 
 of the agonies of his longing desires, and the pining of 
 his heart in exile. Instead of this, we find Jacopo 
 Foscari returned and in Venice, and the torture awaiting 
 him. The details of this torture are not only minutely 
 described, but we even hear the tortured man groaning 
 under the hands of the executioners. From a poet, who 
 represents Shakespeare as a barbarian and as the worst 
 of models, this was scarcely to be expected. The younger 
 Foscari is again condemned to banishment for life, not 
 to an inhospitable and uncivilised country, but to a 
 charming island of the Mediterranean, whither his wife 
 is permitted to accompany him. In spite of these ame- 
 liorations of his sentence his destiny appears to him so 
 exceedingly dreadful, that in the moment of his departure 
 he faints and dies ! His father, the Doge, is deposed 
 from his office, and when he has to leave the Palace of St. 
 Mark, dies also of a broken heart. The author of all 
 this misery is the Senator Loredano, who, without any 
 sufficient ground, and in spite of the most positive denials 
 of Foscari, has taken it into his head, that his own father 
 and uncle have been removed by poison by the elder 
 Foscari, and therefore rests not until he has destroyed 
 the Foscari family. With motives so forced and insuffi- 
 cient, and with characters so strained and unnatural, it is 
 impossible that readers should be affected and interested. 
 Higher in many respects than these two Venetian dramas 
 stands * Sardanapalus,' the lyrical matter of which is more 
 in harmony with the poet's own nature, and permitted him 
 to throw his own individuality, which he had to repress 
 in the above-mentioned plays, fully and warmly into the
 
 1807-24.] EYKON'S PLACE IN LITEKATURE. 409 
 
 piece. The Countess Guiccioli 1 thinks ' Sardanapalus ' a 
 ' conception plus noble encore que Hamlet ; ' she was pro- 
 bably won to this judgment bj the lyrical beauties of the 
 piece, and still more by the likeness of the portraits for 
 the hero is unmistakably Byron, and Myrrha is evidently 
 the Countess, and the relation of Sardanapalus to his 
 queen Zarina bears some resemblance to that of Byron to 
 his wife. Sardanapalus is a weakling, who stimulated by 
 rebellion rouses himself from his life of luxury to deeds of 
 heroism and dies with honour. His effeminacy, disguised 
 under a garb of nobleness and amiability, his selfishness, 
 his contempt for mankind, allied at the same time with 
 generosity, his vanity, and even the final rousing of 
 his slumbering energies these traits are all thoroughly 
 Byronic. The vanity of Sardanapalus impels him to send 
 for a mirror, that he may contemplate himself arrayed in 
 his armour. Byron, indeed, remarks, that this was a 
 historical trait of the Emperor Otho: buc withal he does 
 not deceive us as to the original. In the fourth act of 
 the play, Sardanapalus-Byron describes himself in the 
 following lines : 
 
 I am the very slave of circumstance 
 And impulse borne away with every breath ! 
 Misplaced upon the throne misplaced in life. 
 I know not what I could have been, but feel 
 I am not what I should be let it end. 2 
 
 Myrrha's farewell to her native Ionia comes also from 
 the poet's own heart. 
 
 Then farewell, thou Earth ! 
 And loveliest spot of earth ! farewell, Ionia ! 
 Be thou still free and beautiful, and far 
 Aloof from desolation ! My last prayer 
 Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of thee. s 
 
 1 i. 29. French edition. 2 Sardanapaliis, act iv. sc. i., xiii. 160. 
 3 Ibid, act v. sc. i., xiii. 194.
 
 410 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. [J&r. 19-36. 
 
 Throughout the play there runs side by side with these 
 lyrical effusions, the scepticism of Byron and his hatred 
 against the priesthood. Arbaces the warrior, and Beleses 
 the priest, are not so much characters as types. 1 
 
 The only drama of Byron's which had any enduring 
 success on the stage is ' Werner,' ' dedicated to the 
 illustrious Goethe by one of his humblest admirers ' a 
 sensational piece after the manner of the German Bitter 
 und Bauber romances. In this play, scarcely anything 
 belongs to Byron but its dramatic form ; it is an avowed 
 appropriation ; 2 and according to the opinion of English 
 critics, Byron's delineation of the characters is inferior in 
 power and fulness to the original. 
 
 'The Deformed Transformed' is also professedly 
 borrowed though not to the same extent as the tragedy 
 of ' Werner ' from the romance of ' The Three Brothers,' 
 by Joshua Pickersgill (1803). In this drama the influ- 
 ence of Goethe is very discernible, and Byron 3 himself 
 described it as ' Faustish.' ' How do you like it ? ' said 
 Byron to Shelley. 'Least,' he replied, 'of anything I 
 ever saw of yours.' It is not a regular drama in the 
 proper sense but is made up, in a considerable measure, 
 of lyrical pieces, more or less arbitrarily introduced. It 
 could the less reckon on success as the two elements, the 
 lyrical and the Taustish,' had already reached their 
 
 1 When the discoveries of Layard were directing the attention of the 
 world to Nineveh and had filled the British Museum with Assyrian 
 monuments, Charles Kean in the year 1853 brought ' Sardanapalus ' on 
 the stage. Decorations, costumes, music everything was Assyrian. 
 The success answered every expectation, and the drama continued for a 
 long time to be an attraction on the stage. Taglioni transformed it into 
 a ballet, and the Baroness de Maistre into an opera. See Athenamn, 
 Dec. 22, 1866, p. 847. This drama has also been translated into Greek. 
 
 2 See the original preface to the play. 
 
 3 Medwin's Conversations, p. 227.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 411 
 
 culminating point in ' Manfred,' the earliest in point of 
 time of Byron's dramas. Byron was so little acquainted 
 with German, that he could not read ' Faust ; ' even Mar- 
 lowe's play of the same name, he assures us, he had not 
 read. Shelley and M. G. Lewis had, however, in Switzer- 
 land, given him an analysis of Goethe's work ; the frag- 
 ments of translation by the former were inserted only 
 at a later period among his works. 1 Both Shelley and 
 Byron were profoundly impressed by Goethe's master- 
 piece ; they had already learnt from their own experience, 
 that the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life, and 
 Goethe's ' Faust ' led them into the world of spirits, 2 
 where they hoped to find the inward tumult of their own 
 minds either expressed or soothed. The mysterious spell 
 of the Alpine world, the powerful impression which 
 it made on him, Byron now amalgamated with the 
 Faust legend. He added a third element the secret 
 consciousness of guilt, which he attributed to Manfred, 
 as he had already attributed the same dread feeling to 
 the heroes of his Tales. This third element, which we 
 find in ( Manfred,' Mrs. Beecher Stowe uses as a corrobo- 
 ration of the terrible charges, to which allusion has so 
 frequently and so painfully been made. But the revolting 
 charge is not even novel, as the following passage from 
 Gait shows : * The whole poem has been misunderstood, 
 and the odious supposition that ascribes the fearful 
 
 1 [Shelley translated two scenes of ' Faust ; ' the Prologue on ' Heaven,' 
 and ' Walpurgis-Mght ; ' the translation of the former was first published 
 in the volume of Posthumous Poems (1824), that of the latter in the 
 < Liberal,' No. I. p. 121-137.] 
 
 9 Some other German influences may also have contributed to the 
 same result. Schiller's ' Geisterseher ' had been brought before bis 
 mind at Venice in a very forcible manner, and through the works of 
 M. G. Lewis, as well as by personal intercourse with him, and also by 
 the above-mentioned Fantasmagoriana, he had become acquainted with 
 the spirit of German sensational romances.
 
 412 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. [jEr. 10-36. 
 
 mystery and remorse of the hero to a foul passion for his 
 sister, is probably one of those coarse imaginations, 
 which have grown out of the calumnies and accusations 
 heaped upon the author.' ! ( How can it have happened,' 
 asks Gait, ' that none of the critics have noticed that the 
 story is derived from the human sacrifices supposed to 
 have been in use among the students of the black art? ' 2 
 The shedding of blood is, indeed, alluded to in the drama, 
 and Goethe found in this a confirmation of the story of 
 murder at Florence, which had been circulated against 
 Byron. But Goethe and Mrs. Stowe are both in error. 
 The allusions, which are so mysteriously expressed, are 
 far too vague and indefinite to justify any inference 
 derivable from the circumstances of his own life. It 
 pleased his fancy to excite a belief in guilt which he had 
 not committed. 'The hero,' he writes to Murray, 3 'is 
 a kind of magician who is tormented by a species of 
 remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained.' 
 If, as cannot be any longer doubted, Byron was aware of 
 the atrocious crime with which he was charged, it well 
 accorded with his habit of imagining the consequences of 
 guilt, that he should place himself in the position of a 
 person in whom such guilty love existed. 4 Besides, his 
 scepticism led him to the conclusion, that if the human 
 race were descended, according to the Bible, from one 
 pair, it could only have been propagated by marriage 
 between brothers and sisters. Accordingly, in * Cain ' he 
 represents the two brothers Cain and Abel as married to 
 
 1 Life of Byron, p. 213. 2 Ibid. p. 214 3 Moore's Life, iii. 345. 
 
 4 How far this tendency of Byron's went is proved by the following 
 fact. During the voyage from Constantinople to Athens, on board the 
 frigate ' Salsette,' he observed on the deck a small yataghan, which he 
 drew from its sheath, and looking on the blade said, 'I should like 
 to know how a person feels after committing a murder.' Moore's Life, 
 i. 337 ; Gait's Life, p. 155.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 413 
 
 their twin sisters Adah and Zillah. Lucifer declares to 
 Adah, that though her wedded love to her brother Cain 
 was no sin, yet 
 
 It one day -will be in your children. 1 
 
 Adah, justly astonished at this, and unable to compre- 
 hend it, replies 
 
 What is the sin which is not 
 Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin 
 Or virtue ? 
 
 The question, doubtless, had been debated also between 
 Byron and Shelley. The latter at any rate, it is well 
 known, could not be convinced that marriage between 
 brother and sister was absolutely sinful, and appealed to 
 antiquity, to the Ptolemies, and to other examples. Yet 
 no one was further from the intention of transferring 
 a theoretical question to the domain of practice than 
 Shelley, especially as it involved in Byron's case a twofold 
 adultery. Thus, what in ' Manfred ' might appear obscure 
 and questionable admits of a natural explanation. The 
 relation of ' Manfred ' to ( Faust ' Goethe himself charac- 
 terises in the following words : ' This poet, so eccentric 
 and full of genius, has adopted my " Faust," and in a 
 somewhat hypochondriacal manner has extracted from it 
 the strangest food. He has employed the motives which 
 suit his own ends in an original manner, so that nothing 
 in his composition is any longer the same, and on this 
 very account I cannot sufficiently admire his genius. It 
 is such a remoulding, not of parts, but of the whole, that 
 many interesting lectures might be delivered on this and 
 on the resemblance to the original ; but with all this, 
 I do not deny that the dark and gloomy passion of bound- 
 less despair in " Manfred " becomes at last oppressive. 
 
 1 Cain, act i. sc. i. ; xiv. 37.
 
 414 LIFE OF LOKD BYEON. [^Ex. 19-36. 
 
 Yet the dissatisfaction that is felt is ever associated with 
 admiration and reverence.' 1 One important difference 
 between 'Manfred' and 'Faust' Gottschall very rightly 
 points out : Manfred does not yield to the devil ; he 
 vanquishes him and all the powers of hell by the con- 
 scious might of the human spirit. 2 
 
 My past power 
 
 Was purchased by no compact with thy crew, 
 But by superior science penance daring, 
 And length of watching strength of mind and skill 
 In knowledge of our fathers when the earth 
 Saw men and spirits walking side by side, 
 And gave ye no supremacy; I stand 
 Upon my strength I do defy deny, 
 Spurn back and scorn ye. 
 
 Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel ; 
 Thou never shalt possess me, that I know. 3 
 
 Thus triumphantly does Byron vindicate the spiritual 
 might of man in the face of the powers of hell. No 
 wonder, then, that ' Manfred,' with its vigorous and soar- 
 ing thoughts, and with the copiousness of its sublime 
 images, made an extraordinary impression, and especially 
 in Germany ; and that, amid these excellences, its want 
 of the clearness and plastic force of Goethe was over- 
 looked. 4 But again, with 'Manfred,' as with 'Childe 
 Harold' and some other of his poems, it was Byron 
 himself who seemed incapable of judging his own work 
 truly : he knew not whether it would succeed or not, and 
 had no measure which could be applied to what was a 
 result of his rhapsodical creation. He did not, like 
 Goethe, stand above his poetical creations, but in them, 
 
 1 Goethe's Werke, xxvi. 428. Stuttgart, 1858. 
 
 2 Byron und die Gegenwart. Unsere Zeit, Oct. 1866, p. 497. 
 
 3 Manfred, act iii. sc. iv., xi. 69-70. 
 
 4 ' Manfred ' has been repeatedly performed in the theatres of Germany, 
 for instance, at the beginning of 1868, at Munich, with the music for it 
 written by Robert Schumann.
 
 1807-24.] BYKON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 415 
 
 and in them the whole of his sympathetic and lyrical 
 nature was merged. We have already spoken of the re- 
 casting of the third act of this play. 1 
 
 We now come to the so-called mysteries * Cain,' and 
 ' Heaven and Earth.' If ' Manfred ' be tinged with scepti- 
 cism, scepticism showed an unabashed front in 'Cain,' 
 while, on the other hand, the consciousness of mysterious 
 guilt disappears. Like a lion impatiently beating against 
 the iron bars of his cage, so Byron precipitates himself in 
 this poem on the mysteries of revealed faith. He never, 
 indeed, succeeds in bursting his cage ; rather he remains 
 in a state of indecision, and never comes to a positive 
 conclusion in either direction. To Englishmen this 
 scepticism was, with few exceptions, an insurmountable 
 stone of offence. In England freedom of action is cramped 
 by the want of freedom in thought ; the converse is the 
 case with us Germans, freedom of thought is restricted 
 by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism 
 presents nothing in the least degree fearful ; we, like 
 Faust, are afraid neither of the devil nor of hell. 'If,' 
 says Goethe, 2 ' Byron would write a Cain, he must treat 
 him as Cain, or not at all.' By the critics in England 
 the whole play was blamed as savouring of Manichseism ; 
 to their remarks Scott 3 replied very rightly, that it is 
 extremely natural that Lucifer should speak as a Mani- 
 chsean ; but at any rate, he could not, as Byron says in 
 his preface, speak like a clergyman. He also does not 
 speak like the devil, but is endowed with a fulness of 
 spiritual and attractive power, which has been made a 
 
 1 The publication of an Italian translation of ' Manfred ' by an incapable 
 hand Byron prevented, by purchasing the MS. for 200 francs ; at the 
 same time he got from him a written promise to prepare no other trans- 
 lation of any of his works. 
 
 3 Werke, xxvi. 433. Stuttgart, 1858. 
 
 8 Letter to Mr. Murray.
 
 416 LIFE OF LOKD BYEON. [jEr. 19-36. 
 
 reproach to the Satan of Milton. Lucifer is the arch- 
 priest of the scepticism, which in Cain attains its acme. 
 Cain is by no means wicked, either before or after the 
 murder ; he is not envious, nor unfeeling, nor hateful, nor 
 revengeful. He is a loving husband and a tender father ; 
 his behaviour towards his brother and his pai*ents is 
 indeed, less tender, but it is so, only because they, full of 
 faith and humility, accommodate themselves to their 
 destiny and refuse to listen to his scepticism. He cen- 
 sures Abel's sacrifice, because Abel kills the firstlings of 
 his flock, and thus occasions sundering to them and to 
 their mothers of such tenderness is his heart, just as the 
 heart of the poet himself. Cain's own offerings consist 
 of fruits. His only fault is, as has been said, scepticism, 
 and it is this which leads to the murder of his brother. 
 So far it is inconceivable how the poem could be regarded 
 in England as irreligious or immoral. By their fruits ye 
 shall know them ; if, then, murder is the fruit of scepti- 
 cism, it is clear that Byron did not represent it as a thing 
 moral and worthy of imitation. That Byron has not 
 treated the subject with the objectivity of Milton, but 
 with the mouth of Cain utters his own scepticism, is 
 undoubtedly not to be denied. Scepticism also almost 
 exclusively leads and fills the dialogue; dogmatism is 
 feebly represented only in the person of Adah. English- 
 men felt this instinctively, and Byron's repeated cautions 
 and asseverations, that the religious views of the persons 
 of his dramas were not his, were quite unavailing. Even 
 Hobhouse, according to Med win, 1 protested against 'Cain,' 
 and would not have it printed for any consideration. 
 Byron appealed to the mysteries and moralities of the 
 Middle Ages, in which, indeed, many questionable things 
 
 1 Conversations, p. 187;
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IX LITERATURE. 417 
 
 were exhibited; but these were the products of uncon- 
 scious simplicity, whereas Byron's poetry is in every line 
 the very reverse. While in the Middle Ages, and still 
 more in Milton, the story and its poetic composition were 
 the main points, the dramatic form is with Byron only a 
 vehicle. ' Cain,' in fact, is anything but a drama, and is 
 not intended to be one, although it is not wanting in 
 dramatic beauties, among which the scene in which Cain 
 strikes the death-blow is supreme. It is Cain himself 
 who brings death into the world, which before appeared 
 to him as a mighty yet unknown object of dread, and 
 which furnished such ample food for his scepticism. 1 
 
 In ' Cain ' the storm of his scepticism to a certain 
 extent spent itself; in the fragment 'Heaven and Earth,' 
 written a few months afterwards, it mutters only faintly in 
 the person of Aholibamah, the descendant of Cain. Here 
 poetry again asserts its rights as opposed to metaphysical 
 reflection. The fermenting chaos of the elements and the 
 passions of men scarcely permit scepticism to speak, and 
 gleams of devout resignation are unmistakably to be 
 traced in the scenes of the poem. It is as if doubt and 
 revolt must become dumb before the might and sublimity 
 of the Deluge. The intended continuation and conclusion 
 of this mystery-play the poet sketched in one of his con- 
 versations with Medwin, 2 and it is to be deplored that he 
 did not carry out the plan. Goethe thought ' Heaven 
 
 1 ' If I am not mistaken,' says Moore (Life, v. 318), ' it (Cain) will sink 
 deep into the world's heart ; and while many will shudder at its blas- 
 phemy, all must fall prostrate before its grandeur.' 
 
 ' A Frenchman writes Goethe Fabre d'OIivet, has translated " Cain " 
 into blank verse, and thinks he has refuted it in a series of philosophico- 
 critical remarks. The Moniteur of Oct. 23, 1823, on the other hand, 
 defends the poet.' Goethe's Wcrke, xxvi. 431. Recently, 'Cain,' with 
 a revised text, has become an oratorio, under the hands of Max Zenger, 
 and has been repeatedly performed at Frankfort on the Maine (1869-7Q), 
 
 2 P. 234 et seqq. 
 
 E E
 
 418 LIFE OF LORD 13YEON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 and Earth ' ' more intelligible, clearer than " Cain," which 
 was too profound in its thoughts, too bitter, although 
 fascinating, bold, and sublime.' l According to H. C. 
 Robinson, Goethe preferred this fragment to all the other 
 poems of Byron ; he thought that a bishop might have 
 written it, and deplored that Byron had not lived long 
 enough to dramatise the whole of the Old Testament. 2 
 
 We have still to glance at ' Don Juan,' Byron's last and, 
 in many respects, greatest poem. That he began the 
 work without a definite plan, and at last did not know 
 what he should do with his hero, would be apparent from 
 every canto, even if Byron had not admitted it in so many 
 words to Murray. ' You ask me,' he writes, ' for the plan of 
 Donny Johnny. I have no plan ; I had no plan.' 3 It is, 
 therefore, foolish to say that the poem, according to the 
 original plan, was to consist of twenty-four cantos ; it 
 was not, in fact, constructed on a plan. According to 
 some, ' Don Juan ' was to end as a Methodist ; according 
 to others, he was to die under the guillotine during the 
 French revolution. 4 Byron himself says in joke, ( I had 
 not quite fixed whether to make him end in hell, or in an 
 unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the 
 severest.' 5 ' Don Juan ' is no epic ; all the changing 
 hues of every form of poetry are reflected in it; it strikes 
 every chord and runs through every key ; if any element 
 be wanting in it, that element is the epic. In ' Don Juan,' 
 
 1 Conversations with Chancellor Miiller, p. G9. 
 
 2 Diary, ii. 434 et scqq. 'Cain,' 'The Vision of Judgment/ 'Heaven 
 and Earth,' and ' The Deformed Transformed/ were all written in the 
 year 1821, arid, so to speak, from one inspiration. ' Heaven and Earth ' 
 was written in fourteen days, 
 
 3 Moore's Life, iv. 282. 
 
 4 Med win's Conversations, p. 2&Qetseqq. Lady Blessington's Conversa- 
 tions, p. 206. 
 
 5 Letter to Mr. Murray, Moore's Life, v. 127.
 
 1807-24.] BYEON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 419 
 
 Byron expresses with all his force and fulness the unrest 
 and tumult of his own passions, the instability of his 
 opinions, his bitterness and misanthropy, his remorse and 
 despair in one word, his world-sorrow. He tells no 
 story into which he does not introduce himself and his 
 own thoughts ; he never utters a reflection which he has 
 not drawn from his own experience. Hence for this, if 
 for no other reason, Byron is quite wrong when he com- 
 pares ' Don Juan ' with the ' Iliad.' ' If you must have 
 an epic,' he said, ' there is " Don Juan " for you. I call that 
 an epic ; it is an epic as much in the spirit of our day as 
 the " Iliad " was in Homer's.' But Homer was in his epics 
 the representative of the Greek national mind ; he only 
 expressed what the whole Greek people thought, believed, 
 and felt ; whereas Byron in his * Don Juan' is ojaly his own 
 representative, and expresses nothing but what he himself 
 thought and felt on the world. He professes, indeed, to 
 describe the world, and that this is the special object of 
 ' Don Juan ; ' he makes an assertion, however, when he 
 made this profession that he is indifferent whether the 
 world will read it or not which admits of considerable 
 doubt. No poet, it must be confessed, exercised such a 
 sovereign command over matter, form, and language, as 
 Byron in this poem ; it is, with respect to language and 
 metre, such a triumph as the world can hardly furnish a 
 second like it. The judgments of criticism are unanimous 
 in recognising these excellences of the poem ; here there 
 is no difference of opinion. But the immorality ! from 
 this charge, alas ! he cannot be cleared. Women have 
 always been instinctively repelled by 'Don Juan.' The 
 Countess Guiccioli, who had read the first two cantos in a 
 French translation, was so offended, that after the com- 
 
 1 Medwin's Conversation^ p. 247. 
 
 B B 2
 
 420 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^2r. 19-36. 
 
 pletion of the fifth canto, she extorted from Byron a 
 promise that he would not continue it. And in fact he 
 remained silent, till she permitted him to go on, 'provided 
 always that it was to be more guarded and decorous and 
 sentimental in the continuation than in the commence- 
 ment.' 1 When Byron expressed his conviction to the 
 same lady that ' Don Juan ' would outlive ' Childe Harold,' 
 she replied : ' Ah ! but I would rather have the fame of 
 " Childe Harold " for three years, than an immortality of 
 " Don Juan." ' 2 Byron's sister also wrote to tell him, 3 that 
 she had heard that ' Don Juan ' was execrable, and that 
 she would never read it. The outcry in England was, in 
 fact, universal, although, foreseeing this, he had published 
 the first two cantos anonymously. He was not without 
 apprehension that the Court of Chancery might deny to 
 him, as it had denied to his friend Shelley, his paternal 
 rights over his daughter Ada ; and his daughter, he said, 
 was more precious to him than any poem could be. 
 These fears, however, happily proved unfounded. The 
 sale of the first two cantos was comparatively small, 
 and Murray complained the more, as a piratical edition 
 was immediately published in Paris, and he feared, lest 
 the legal authorities would refuse to protect his rights as 
 publisher as they had in the case of ' Cain.' Byron there- 
 fore offered to refund the honorarium.' 4 The descriptions 
 of sensual love, which assuredly go very far, formed the 
 principal ground of complaint. Byron, 5 in reply to this, 
 appeals to t Tom Jones,' ' Roderick Random,' ' Peregrine 
 Pickle ; ' to Dryden, Prior, Congreve, Pope, and many 
 others ; and exclaims to Murray, ' why, man, the soul of 
 such writing is its license.' 6 Although it is evident that 
 Byron delights in the description of sensual pleasures, 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Murray, Moore's Life, v. 348. z Ibid. iv. 354. 
 
 8 Ibid, v. 118. 4 Ibid. iv. 261. * Ibid. G Ibid. iv. 182.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 421 
 
 and exhibits to us, in this poem, hardly any other female 
 characters but those of a voluptuous cast, we cannot in 
 these descriptions in themselves discover immorality. The 
 immorality lies rather in the cynical nihilism that per- 
 vades the whole poem, which destroys the difference be- 
 tween good and evil, between right and wrong, between 
 the beautiful and the repulsive, and degrades all things 
 alike to the meanest level everything, in short, but sensual 
 pleasure. This is the only thing which escapes the lash 
 of his ridicule. Martial fame, the renown of great deeds, 
 is nothing ; history calls these sometimes ' murder,' some- 
 times ' glory.' l Poetic fame is nothing ; * a name, a 
 wretched picture, and worse bust.' 2 Enthusiasm is nothing; 
 even his own is mocked at, just as, after him, Heine 
 laughed at his own. Love is nothing : 
 
 Love is vanity, 
 
 Selfish in its beginning, as its end, 
 Except where 'tis a mere insanity. 3 
 
 Science is nothing : Socrates and Montaigne are right 
 when they teach, that 
 
 our only knowledge was 
 To know that nothing could be known. 4 
 
 and, as it is said in ' Manfred,' 5 
 
 they who know the most 
 Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, 
 The tree of knowledge is not that of Life. 
 
 Thus his satire storms against every form of life, political, 
 religious, social, and literary. Where now the place for 
 ' well-recorded worth ' such as Childe Harold sung? 6 What 
 consolation now in the ' eternal beauty of Nature ? ' 7 
 
 1 Don Juan, canto vii. 26. 2 Ibid, canto i. 218. 
 
 3 Ibid, canto ix. 73. 4 Ibid, canto vii. 5. 5 Act i. 
 
 6 Don Juan, canto ii. 85. 7 Ibid, canto ii. 87.
 
 422 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [^Ex. 19-36. 
 
 The ultimate conclusion is, that ' this life is not worth 
 a potato,' as so many from Solomon and Plato, to 
 Machiavelli and Rousseau, have seen. 
 
 We live and die, 
 But which is best, you know no more than I. 1 
 
 But there is this difference that, what these expressed in 
 elegiac lamentations, appears in Byron as fierce, defiant, 
 mocking, wrathful satire. Herein lies the originality and 
 creative power of his genius. The theme of Solomon, 
 ' all is vanity,' is pushed to such an extreme, that the 
 contrary effect is produced, and nihilism is self-destroyed. 
 May we not say, that henceforth this tendency in poetry 
 becomes through { Don Juan ' an impossibility ? for never 
 in this direction can ' Don Juan ' be exceeded. If ' Don 
 Juan ' still be called an epic, it must, then, be described 
 as the epic of Epicurean Nihilism Epicurean, in so far 
 as sensual pleasures and joys are alone exempted from 
 the general nothingness of the world. This is the issue 
 which the critical, not the general, reader discovers, least 
 of all the youthful reader, to whom, therefore, ' Don 
 Juan ' must undeniably be dangerous ; as long, at least, as 
 he does not rise above its principles and until he refuses 
 to accept the point of view of that poem. Goethe de- 
 clares ' Don Juan ' to be the most immoral work which 
 poetic art ever produced ; without alleging, however, the 
 grounds on which he expresses so severe a judgment. 
 He recommends all translators, for improvement in their 
 art, to exercise their ability upon it, although, for the 
 sake of morality, he would object to the publication of 
 their translations. * Don Juan,' is, he admits, a work of 
 boundless creative power ; and, * once we know and estimate 
 the poet rightly and take him for what he is, we enjoy 
 
 1 Don Juan, canto vii. 4.
 
 1807-24.J BYRON'S PLACE IN LITEEATUKE. 423 
 
 thankfully what he ventures with such amazing freedom, 
 nay audacity, to set before us. The technical treatment 
 of the verse is thoroughly in accordance with the strange, 
 wild, reckless matter of the poem ; the poet spares lan- 
 guage as little as he spares man.' l 
 
 We have said, that Byron advanced beyond negation, 
 neither in politics nor in religion, and that in this lay his 
 weakness, but also his strength ; for upon this spirit of 
 negation depended the whole of his almost overpowering 
 influence on the intellectual and political development of 
 the time in which he lived. 2 After the overthrow of the 
 tyrannical power of Napoleon by the allied nations for 
 to the allied nations more than to the allied sovereigns 
 that power had yielded Europe, with the exception of 
 England, was in a state of fermentation and internal dis- 
 solution. Mighty commotions and changes had taken 
 place not only in the political state of Europe, but also 
 in all its social, ecclesiastical, and literary relations, and 
 everywhere men's minds sought to discover new forms for 
 new views, and thus satisfy the new wants of the times. 
 It was requisite that the new wine should be poured into 
 new bottles. To this necessity, which historical events 
 imposed, the governments of Europe arrayed themselves 
 in opposition : they sought to arrest the wheels of time 
 and progress ; they cleaved blindly and convulsively to 
 the worn-out institutions of the past, which were to be 
 restored and maintained at all hazards. Instead of the 
 domination of the foreigner came absolutism from within 
 by the grace of God the Bourbons, who had learnt 
 nothing and forgotten nothing, and the German Electors 
 (Kurfiirsten] , with their professions of seven years' sleep. 3 
 
 1 Werke, xx^i. 426, 427. Stuttgart, 1858. 
 
 2 Compare Treitschke's treatise : ' Lord Byron and .Radicalism/ in his 
 Historical and Political Essays (1865), pp. 313-355. 
 
 3 When the Elector of Hesse returned to Cassel after the expulsion
 
 424 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36 
 
 The Holy Alliance considered it not unholy to leave un- 
 fulfilled the promises given to nations in the hour of trial, 
 to beat down by force of arms their right to self-govern- 
 ment which had been bought at the price of much 
 precious blood, and to treat nations at their congresses 
 like herds of cattle. What, then, was left to them but to 
 turn against their governments the same spirit of oppo- 
 sition with which they had met the Csesarism of Napoleon? 
 What could be expected but the increasing passion for a 
 radical revolution in all the institutions of their political 
 systems, even if such a revolution had to be purchased at 
 the expense and risk of violent convulsions ? Thus revo- 
 lutionary opposition to the subsisting order of things 
 became a necessity a period of transition in the develop- 
 ment of Europe. To this opposition and this passion for 
 radical change Byron lent the aid of the most powerful 
 and impetuous expression. The state of the world was 
 one great dissonance, and Byron, who possessed the 
 special organ of its expression, became the poet of this 
 crisis. ' When the policy of the Holy Alliance,' says 
 Gervinus, 'believed that it had arrested for ever the 
 aberrations of the spirit of revolution by the subjugation 
 of France, then this English poet knit again the thread, 
 which a million of soldiers had been called forth to sever 
 for ever. American republicanism, German free-thinking, 
 French love of revolution, Anglo-Saxon radicalism seemed 
 to live again in the genius of this one man.' A connected 
 system of thought was not what was wanted : this was 
 supplied from other sources. Men were content to find 
 their own feelings expressed in Byron, and his high rank 
 and independent social position imparted to his radicalism 
 
 of King Jerome, he said he had only slept seven years ; meaning by 
 this that he intended to re-establish everything exactly as it had been 
 before.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 425 
 
 a greater weight and a more seductive and contagious 
 brilliancy. That he had sacrificed his life for Greece and 
 freedom surrounded his name with a halo of glory : this 
 martyr-death became an inspiring theme for poetry and 
 passion. Philhellenism, of which Byron had been the chief 
 hero and support, extended its influence in ever-widening 
 circles, and the minds of men, becoming enthusiastic for 
 the liberty of others, learnt an enthusiasm to struggle for 
 their own. Dissatisfaction with the general condition of 
 things, amid the conscious impotence to ameliorate it, 
 the recollection of the noble spirit of sacrifice which had 
 been called forth, the flagrant contradiction between the 
 lofty enthusiasm of the War of Liberation and the poverty 
 of its results in effectuating the desired reforms, the 
 want of an appropriate field for the passion of distinction 
 which had been evoked, all this generated that profound 
 spirit of discontent, that revolutionary bitterness, which 
 harmonised with Byron's world- sorrow, and which was 
 most eloquently expressed in the literature of almost all 
 the countries of the Continent. These were the chords 
 of which Byron struck the key-note; here his passion, 
 political and poetic, fanned into flame the mouldering 
 embers ; for literature became almost the only arena of 
 action to the nations of Europe which were excluded from 
 political life; politics were thus forced into poetry, and 
 Byron became the standard-bearer of political poetry, 
 which exercised the most important influence on the for- 
 mation and strengthening of public opinion. To this 
 political poetry belongs in no small degree the merit of 
 having gradually led men, from their original negative 
 opposition to the attainment of positive results ; it was, 
 at least, one among the co-operating elements which led 
 to this. As public opinion began to regulate political 
 events and attained the rank -to repeat a much-used
 
 426 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JEi. 19-36. 
 
 expression of being the sixth great power, one post after 
 another was gained for the participation, ordained by law, 
 of the people in the affairs of the state, and in the ad- 
 ministration of national resources. This is not the place 
 to exhibit the formative elements, or trace out the tangled 
 threads of the history of our own times, but two great 
 facts, intimately connected with Lord Byron, must be 
 referred to facts which were to him only fond wishes 
 and aspirations, but which have since become realities. 
 Greece has been liberated from Turkish rule and entered, 
 as an independent kingdom, into the family of European 
 states, though she has not attained the elevation of which 
 Byron dreamt ; and Italy too, which after the suppression 
 of Carbonarism he thought had been thrown back for 
 centuries into barbarism, has been regenerated, and her 
 unity achieved. The Countess of Guiccioli, who then 
 saw no resource left to her oppressed countrymen but to 
 go back to the composition of operas, has lived to see the 
 fulfilment of the youthful hopes for which she and her 
 relatives sacrificed so much. It is not too much to 
 say, that Byron essentially contributed to these two 
 great ends, not, indeed, by the action of his immediate 
 interference, but by his indirect influence 011 public 
 opinion. 
 
 It might have been imagined at the first view, that the 
 poetry of Byron must needs have found a more decided echo 
 among the Romanic nations, with whom in more than one 
 respect he had close affinities ; but this was the case only 
 with the French. To the nations of the south of Europe, 
 who take life so easily, his world-sorrow was scarcely in- 
 telligible, nay, even repulsive; the Don Juan of the Romanic 
 nations never reflects but enjoys all things with perfect 
 naivete. Yet the political side in Byron's poetry was not
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 427 
 
 without its effect in the revolutionary movements of Spain 
 and Italy. The secret society of the Numautinos in 
 Spain betrays the magnetic attraction of his influence, 
 and Don Jose de Espronceda (1810-1842), perhaps the 
 most important Spanish poet of recent times, who is 
 called the Byron of Spain, shows, not only in his poetry 
 but also in his life, a remarkable affinity with the poet, 
 whose works he diligently and thoroughly studied. In 
 Italy, the celebrated Giovanni Berchet (1790-1851) was 
 conspicuous among the revolutionary Byronic school. We 
 have already had occasion to remark, that at Venice 
 Byron's works were much studied and often translated. 
 
 In France the influences of Byron were far more pro- 
 found and widely ramified. Among all the poets of 
 England no one was so congenial to the French as Byron. 
 In the development of the so-called Eomantic School his 
 influence and that of Shakespeare were coincident ; here 
 they lent strength to each other, and were blended to- 
 gether in this movement. Victor Hugo, like Byron, full 
 of genius and passion, but also like Byron unstable, vain, 
 and greedy of fame, took up and continued in his spirit 
 both the political and literary conflict ; he declared Ro- 
 manticism to be synonymous with liberalism in poetry 
 he might have said, with more truth, with radicalism in 
 poetry ; he even accepted the name of the Satanic School 
 as an epithet of honour. Lamartine was the represen- 
 tative of the sentimental side of world-sorrow called forth 
 by ' Childe Harold,' Musset, of its cynical side generated 
 by ' Don Juan,' while Delavigne, in his ' Messeniennes,' 
 became the inspired singer of freedom. The mere names 
 of these poets show how the impulses received through 
 Byron spread themselves in ever-widening circles, and 
 how a widely-diffused and permanent colouring was thereby
 
 428 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. [JET. 19-36. 
 
 given to French literature and poetry. 1 It is while speak- 
 ing of Alfred de Musset, that Heine deplores that ' this 
 author, by the study in his youth of a French translation 
 of Byron's works, was seduced into affecting, in the 
 costume of that splenetic lord, the satiety and weariness 
 of life which at that period was the fashion among the 
 youths of Paris. The rosiest boys, the healthiest young 
 rogues, used then to profess that their capacity for enjoy- 
 ment was exhausted ; they feigned that their hearts had 
 acquired the chill of old age, and they assumed a dis- 
 traught and listless look.' 2 
 
 In Germany, Byron, like almost all English poets, found 
 a second fatherland. His influence on our literature was 
 confined indeed to one period only, nor has his poetry 
 been interwoven, like Shakespeare's, for ever with our own ; 
 but if limited in duration, it was widely propagated and 
 intense during its reign. Goethe frequently alluded to 
 this : 'Lord Byron's poems,' he writes in 1817, *the more 
 the peculiarities of this extraordinary genius were dis- 
 covered, enlisted an ever-growing sympathy, so that men 
 and women, youths and maidens, appeared almost to 
 forget their German feeling and nationality. With the 
 increased facility of getting and possessing his works, it 
 
 1 Lamartine translated the last canto of 'Childe Harold,' and wrote 
 also a biography of Byron. Musset was the imitator of ' Lara,' ' The Cor- 
 sair,' ' Parisina/ and ' Don Juan.' Delavigne wrote a play called ' Marino 
 Faliero.' The Philhellenic cause was promoted in France by Fauriel's 
 Chants populaires de la Grece moderne (1824-25). Of the numerous 
 French translations of Byron, may be mentioned : (Euvres completes de 
 Lord Byron. Trad, sur la derniere Edition anglaise par B. Laroche. Paris, 
 1841, 5th ed. (Euvres completes de Lord Byron. Traduction nouvelle 
 de L. Barre, illustree par Mettais, Boncourt, Dore. Paris, 1853. 
 Childe Harold. Trad, en vers francais par Luc. Davesies de Pontes. 
 Paris, 1862. 
 
 2 Shakespeare's Mddchen und Frauen. Heine's Werke. Dritter Band, 
 p. 380. Hamburg, 1867.
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 429 
 
 grew a habit with me to interest myself in him. He was 
 a contemporary who became dear to me, and I delighted 
 to follow him in thought through all the aberrations of 
 his life.' Goethe in his sympathy and admiration for 
 Byron, was the representative of his countrymen. He 
 summed up, in one of his conversations with Chancellor 
 Miiller, his recognition of Byron's genius in these words : 
 ' Byron alone I place by my side ! Walter Scott is 
 nothing compared with him.' l By the character of 
 Euphorion in the second part of ' Faust,' Goethe, it is 
 thought, meant to represent Byron, at any rate he in- 
 tended for him the funeral dirge. 
 
 EUPHORION (from the Depths'). 
 
 Leave me here, in the gloomy void, 
 
 Mother, not thus alone ! [Pause. 
 
 CHORUS (Dirge). 
 Not alone ! where'er thou bidest ; 
 
 For we know thee what thou art. 
 Ah ! if from the day thou hidest, ' 
 
 Still to thee will cling each heart. 
 Scarce we venture to lament thee, 
 
 Singing, envious of thy fate ; 
 For in storm and sun were lent thee 
 
 Song and courage, fair and great. 
 
 Ah ! for earthly fortune fashioned, 
 
 Strength was thine and proud descent j 
 Early erring, o'er-impassioned, 
 
 Youth, alas ! from thee was rent. 
 For the world thine eye was rarest ; 
 
 All the heart to thee was known ; 
 Thine were loves of women fairest, 
 
 And a song thy very own. 
 
 Yet thou rannest uncontrolledly 
 
 In the net the fancies draw, 
 Thus thyself divorcing boldly 
 
 As from custom so from law ; 
 
 . ' Miiller's Unterhaltungen, p. 65.
 
 430 LIFE OF LOED BYEOX. [l&e. 19-36. 
 
 Till the highest thought expended 
 
 Set at last thy courage free ; 
 Thou wouldst win achievement splendid, 
 
 But it was not given to thee. 
 
 Unto whom, then ? Question dreary, 
 
 Destiny will never heed ; 
 When in evil days and weary, 
 
 Silently the people bleed. 
 But new songs shall still elate them ; 
 
 Bow no longer and deplore ! 
 For the soil shall generate them 
 
 As it hath done heretofore. 1 
 
 Byronism attained its culminating point with us in 
 Young Germany, whose relations to Byron were similar to 
 those of the l Sturm und Drang ' writers to Shakespeare. 
 This was the period when radicalism, free-thinking, and 
 world-sorrow flourished in our literature. Like Byron, the 
 poets of Young Germany considered strongly marked lives, 
 ardent passions, the soarings of genius above the common 
 social order as the indispensable requisites for the poet, 
 who was right in their eyes only when in open antagonism 
 with the world. Byron's life they regarded inseparable 
 from Byron's poetry, and looked on it therefore as much 
 as possible as a pattern. In these respects Heinrich 
 Heine may with some truth be called the Byron of Ger- 
 many. His political and religious instability, his philo- 
 sophy thence resulting, always inharmonious and tending 
 to extremes, his cynical tones, his emancipation of the 
 flesh, his mockery of religion far transcending the measure 
 Byron allowed to himself, his want of veracity, his vanity, 
 his inordinate love of fame all these are thoroughly 
 Byronic. In him world-sorrow appears in its coarsest 
 
 1 [From Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust, ii. 275-6. On this dirge 
 the translator has this annotation : ' Here all allegory is thrown aside ; 
 the four stanzas are a lament, not for Euphorion, but for Byron. They 
 express Goethe's feeling for the poet, while the profound impression 
 created throughout Europe by the news of his death was still fresh ' 
 (ii. 483).]
 
 1807-21.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 431 
 
 form, and betrays the pinched and wasted Hippocratic 
 face which betokens death, and has been, with him it is 
 to be hoped, buried for ever. Let it not, however, be 
 forgotten, that the poetry of Shelley at that period in- 
 terested and inflamed the youth of Germany in a hardly 
 less degree than Byron's. 
 
 The powerful effect of the writings of Byron on the 
 Slavonic East, is a phenomenon pregnant with results. 
 Hitherto it had been the literature of France only which 
 enlisted the sympathies of these nations ; no other Eng- 
 lish poet before Byron had been studied or understood. 
 Gerviiius has explained very clearly how Poland and 
 Russia presented a fruitful soil, in which the seed scat- 
 tered by Byron necessarily yielded an abundant crop. 
 The state of contradiction between Asiatic barbarism 
 and the desire for the civilisation of Western Europe ; 
 the despotic repression of all political aspirations, which 
 drove the youth of these countries into secret leagues, 
 like that of the Carbonari in Italy ; the circumstance, 
 that the aristocracy, who from its social position, felt the 
 attraction of Byron, was the focus not only of intelligence, 
 but of all the movements for liberty all this excited the 
 deepest interest in the poet, whose works they had in the 
 first instance learnt to know from French translations. 
 His excellences of style, his mastery over the powers of 
 his own language, weighed mightily with a people which 
 was striving to render its own language capable of poetical 
 composition. The glow of Byron's passion was also sym- 
 pathetically answered in the Slaves, who are themselves 
 so given to feeling and passion. It was his Tales, es- 
 pecially, which found imitators, who ventured at first to 
 give vent in them to political thought only in feeble 
 hints and indications. First in Pnschkin's ' Ode to 
 Liberty ' did political thought strike in a fuller tone ; and 
 henceforward the name of this Russian Byron has become
 
 432 LIFE OF LOUD BYRON. \_JEa. 19-36. 
 
 the watchword of the ardent youth of Russia. The most 
 celebrated of his works, the metrical romance of ' Onegin,' 
 is constructed after the type of ' Don Juan.' ' Don Juan ' 
 has recently been translated into Russian by Markewicz, 
 while Nekrassow and Nicolaus Gerbel have published a 
 translation of his entire works. 
 
 Having thus surveyed the literary and political in- 
 fluences which sprang from Byron, from the southern ex- 
 tremity of Europe to its boundary on the north-east, we 
 return to the country of the poet, where his influence 
 hitherto has been the least, and where moral and religious 
 bigotry even to the present moment have stood in the way 
 of an impartial estimate of his merits. The publication, 
 the investigation, the refutation of the calumnious charge 
 which so long was cherished silently against him, may, 
 perhaps, form a turning point. Further .can bigoted 
 blindness not go ; it has become its own instrument of 
 punishment, effecting the very opposite of that which it 
 intended. The whole truth concerning the circumstances 
 of the marriage and separation will doubtless one day 
 see the light; and according to our firm conviction its 
 publication will tend greatly to a more favourable view of 
 Byron's character. Doubtless he had his share of faults 
 and defects ; but it is high time that he should be cleansed 
 from the foul stains which malevolence, fanaticism, and 
 misapprehension have falsely attributed to him. All in 
 all he was, we repeat, as far as his life and character 
 were concerned, the victim of circumstances. Perhaps 
 now the day begins to dawn, when Goethe's enthusiastic 
 and for the present moment so significant saying may 
 partly at least find its fulfilment : ' Now,' says Goethe, 
 ' the conviction uplifts us, that his nation will suddenly 
 awake from the frenzied fits of censure and invective, 
 which burst forth on him, to sobriety of judgment, and
 
 1807-24.] BYRON'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 433 
 
 will understand, that all the husks and dross of the indi- 
 vidual and his time, through which and out of which the 
 best has to work his way, were only momentary, fleeting, 
 and perishable, whereas the astonishing fame, to which 
 he has now and for ever raised his country, remains 
 boundless in its glory and incalculable in its effects. 
 Assuredly this nation, which has to boast of so many 
 great names, will place him in triumph beside those in 
 whom she may evermore take pride.' } 
 
 Si minus errasset, fecerat ille minus. 
 1 Goethe's Werlse, xxvi. 436-7. Stuttgart, 1867. 
 
 P F
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE (A). 
 SOME REMARKS ON THE BYRON LINEAGE. 
 
 DR. ELZE very justly remarks, that pride of birth was a pro- 
 minent trait in the character of Lord Byron : from this no one 
 will dissent. Oar author, however, depending mainly on the 
 authority of Mr. Gait, who, in his Life of the poet, first impugned 
 the purity of the Byron lineage, ventures on an unjust inference, 
 charging Byron, in fact, with the conscious suppression of the 
 knowledge of a blot in his escutcheon, even while he unhesitatingly 
 and proudly proclaimed his unbroken Norman descent. Of 
 the existence of such a blot no reasonable doubt, as we shall see, 
 can be entertained ; but it is very far from being certain, that 
 Byron himself was cognisant of it. 
 
 Until the publication, in 1857, of the second edition of Sir 
 Harris Nicolas' ' Historic Peerage of England,' the antiquity and 
 purity of the Byron family had been asserted, in the most un- 
 qualified manner, by the chief genealogical authorities. Thus, 
 for instance, Collins, in the fourth edition of his Peerage, vol. viii. 
 p. 22 (1768), states most explicitly, that Ralph de Buron was 
 ' the direct ancestor of the present Lord Byron,' i.e. of William 
 the fifth lord, who enjoyed such an unenviable celebrity. Pre- 
 cisely the same words are repeated in Sir Egerton Brydges 1 
 edition (1812) of this book, vol. vii. p. 90 ; ' the present lord ' 
 of that edition being the poet, ' who by a volume of juvenile 
 poems has shown a mind, not only highly cultivated but adorned 
 with fancy and feeling.' In both editions, then, of this authori- 
 tative book, the uninterrupted descent of the Byrons from their 
 Norman ancestor Ralph de Buron is positively asserted, and traced 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 with every apparent justification. It was not till the publication of 
 Gait's ' Life of Byron ' (1830), that anything affecting this proud 
 claim was advanced. In his preface to this feeble and spiteful 
 ' Life,' Mr. Gait offers his best acknowledgments to the learned 
 and ingenious Mr. Nicolas for the curious genealogical fact of a 
 ' baton sinistre ' being in the escutcheon of the Byrons of 
 New stead ; at the same time, while thanking his authority, he 
 acquits the poet of being aware of it. The nature and extent of 
 the stain was not specified by Mr. Gait, nor had it been publicly 
 stated by Mr. Nicolas himself (better known as Sir Harris 
 Nicolas) at that date. The first precise statement of it seems to 
 have been made in the second edition (1857) of Sir Harris' book, 
 published after his death under the editorship of Mr. Courthope, 
 in which, p. 87, after a short notice of the original founders of the 
 family, Barons by Tenure, the first baron is introduced thus : 
 
 BAKONS 
 
 1. 1643. 1. Sir John Byron, K. B., descended from an illegiti- 
 mate son of Sir John Byron, the male descendant 
 of the above family, created Baron Byron of 
 Rochdale, co. Pal. Lane., &c. 
 
 In the first edition, however, of this work which appeared 
 1825 the year after Byron's death under the title of a ' Synopsis 
 of the Peerage of England,' the creation stands thus : 
 
 BAKONS 
 
 1. 1643. 1. Sir John Byron, K. B., descended from the above 
 family, created Baron Byron of Rochdale, co. Pal. 
 Lane., &c. 
 
 Sir Harris therefore, writing in 1825 of the Peerage of England 
 either had no knowledge, or, which is most improbable, sup- 
 pressed his knowledge, of the taint of illegitimacy in a member of 
 the family antecedent to the creation of the Barony. His dis- 
 covery of it, therefore, was subsequent to the publication of 
 his Synopsis. In whom did the descent become tainted ? To 
 the kindness of Sir Albert Woods, Garter, we are indebted for 
 the following extract from the Byron Pedigree, as entered in 
 the Herald's Visitation of the County of Lancaster, made in 
 1567, w) ich determines the question :
 
 APPENDIX. 437 
 
 ' S r . Nicholas Byron of Clayton in Com Lane Knight maried 
 Alyce daughter to S r . John Butler of Bewsye in Com Lane 
 Knight and by her hathe yssue S r . John Byron, Knight, his 
 eldest Sonne died sans yssue, S r . Nycholas Byron Knight, second 
 Sonne. 
 
 S r . Nycholas Byron of Clayton aforesayd Knight, second Sonne 
 and heire to S r . Nycholas and Brother and heire to S r . Johu 
 Byron, maried .... daughter of S r . John Busshe of Hougham 
 in Com Lincolne, Knight and by her had yssue S r . John Byron, 
 Knight his eldest Sonne and fowre doughters wherof thre died 
 sans yssue, Marie fowrthe doughter, maried to .... Wymbyshe 
 of Norton in Com Lane ar 
 
 ' S r . John Byron of Clayton aforesayd Knight, Sonne and heire 
 to S r . Nycholas, maried to his firste Wiefe Isabell daughter to 
 Peter Shelton of Lynne in Norfolke and by her had 110 yssue. 
 After the said S r . John maried to his second Wiefe Elizabethe 
 daur to W m . Costerden of Blakesley in Cora Lane and Wydowe 
 to George Halghe of Halghe Com Lane Gent and by her hathe 
 yssue John Byron his eldest Sonne and heire films natviralis. 
 
 ' John Byron of Clayton in Com Lane ar, sonne and heire by 
 deade of gifte to S r . John Byron, Knight maried Alyce daughter to 
 S r . Nycholas Strelleye of Strelley in Com Nottingham Knight 
 and by her hathe yssue Nycholas Byron his eldeste Sonne and 
 heire apparent. Anthony second Sonne> and John third Sonne, 
 Isabell Elizabethe and Marye.' 
 
 So then, Sir John Byron, K. B., called ' little Sir John with the 
 great beard,' to whom the priory of Newstead, as well as other 
 possessions, was granted May 26, 1540, by Henry VIII., mar- 
 ried, as his second wife, the relict of George Halgh of Halgh 
 in co. Pal. Lane. ' on whom/ as old Thoroton in his ' History of 
 Nottinghamshire ' quaintly says, ' he begot (soon enough) Sir 
 John Byron,' who was the filius naturalis, inheriting by deed of 
 gift, and grandfather of the first Lord Byron (1643). 
 
 The candid Gait, who is so profuse in his acknowledgments 
 to his friend Mr. Nicholas for this interesting discovery, is not 
 altogether correct when he speaks of the ' baton sinistre ' in the 
 arms of the Byrons of Newstead. No such sign of illegitimacy 
 ever existed in the escutcheon of the Byrons. In the visitation 
 above alluded to, the arms of the family are placed, according to
 
 438 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. 
 
 Sir Albert Woods, within ' a bordure ; ' but the same unimpeach- 
 able authority informs us, that in a collection of Arms of the 
 Nobility by Sir Edward Walker, Garter, in the reign of Charles II., 
 * the bordure ' is omitted. 
 
 Oar interest in this question is simply to show, that Byron 
 was not wiser than the genealogical authorities of England of 
 his own time ; that he believed what they recorded ; and that 
 no one is warranted in asserting, that he was conscious of any 
 flaw, when he vaunted his Norman descent. 
 
 NOTE (B). 
 
 PLACE AND DATE OF BYRON'S SIRTff. 
 
 LOED BYRON is said to have been born (1) at his mother's 
 estate within thirty miles of Aberdeen, (2) at Dover, and (3) in 
 London. 
 
 1. The first statement seems to rest solely on the authority of 
 Sir Cosmo Gordon, who in his ' Life and Genius of Lord Byron,' 
 London, 1824, p. 22, says, that ' George Gordon was born on his 
 mother's estate in Aberdeenshire on the 22nd day of January, 1788.' 
 He is followed in this by Mr. George Clinton in his ' Memoirs of 
 the Life and Writings of Lord Byron/ London, 1825, p. 36. 
 Regarding these gentlemen, nothing seems to be known ; 
 nor do their respective ' Lives ' merit anything but oblivion. 
 To the former book ' some private notices of Lord Byron by a 
 schoolfellow ' are appended, who is not slow to accept the 
 authority of Sir Cosmo ; for, says he, ' it is a proud distinction to 
 Scotland to have produced the three greatest poets of the age, 
 Byron, Campbell, and Scott ' (p. 62). The clannishness of a 
 Gordon, and the nationality of this school companion, sufficiently 
 explain, therefore, this first erroneous account. 
 
 2. Mr. Dallas seems to be the origin of the second statement, 
 that Lord Byron was born at Dover. He had no doubt ex- 
 cellent means of information ; for he was brother-in-law of 
 Captain George Anson Byron, the uncle of the poet ; and in 
 consequence of this connection he was well acquainted he says 
 with Lord Byron's father and mother. In the note prefixed 
 to his ' Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron,' London, 1824,
 
 APPENDIX. 439 
 
 he thus represents the circumstances of Byron's birth : ' I find 
 in the newspapers r ,at . -d Byron is stated on the Urn to have 
 been born in London. The year previous to the January when 
 he was born, I was on a visit to Captain Byron and my sister 
 at Chantilly. Lord Byron's father and mother, with Mrs. Leigh, 
 then Augusta Byron, a child then about four years old, were in 
 France. I returned to Boulogne, where I then had a house, 
 when I was visited by Mrs. Byron on her way to England ; she 
 was pregnant, and stopped at Dover on crossing the Channel. 
 That Lord Byron was born there I recollect being mentioned 
 both by his uncle and my sister ; and I am so fully persuaded 
 of it (Captain Byron and my sister soon followed and staid 
 some time at Folkestone), that I cannot even now give full 
 credit to the contrary, and half suspect that his mother 
 might have had him christened in London and thus given 
 grounds for a mistake.' The same account is given we cannot 
 say corroborated by the Countess Guiccioli, who, speaking of 
 Byron's mother, says, that ' when obliged to return to England 
 to be confined, she was so far advanced in pregnancy that she 
 could not reach London, but gave birth to Lord Byron at Dover.' 1 
 The statement, which has also been adopted by the ' Nouvelle 
 Biographic Universelle, ' Paris, 1853, art. Byron, p. 938, is not 
 in itself, in the least degree improbable ; and, considering the 
 circumstantiality of the account and the relationship of its 
 author, ought, perhaps, to be regarded as decisive. But the 
 ' Recollections,' alas ! of the excellent Dallas betray symptoms, in 
 several places, of a state of mind bordering we say it with all 
 tenderness on positive imbecility, and justifying hesitation in 
 accepting the above as the truth of fact. Thus, at the end 
 of the volume, which must have been written about the same 
 time as the above note, we find these strange incoherences : ' In 
 the dedications of his (Byron's) poems there is no sincerity ; 
 he had neither respect nor regard for the persons to whom they 
 were addressed ; and Lord Holland, Rogers, Davies, and Hob- 
 house, if earthly knowledge becomes intuitive on retrospection, 
 will see on what grounds I say this, and nod the recognition, 
 and I trust the forgiveness, of heavenly spirits, if heavenly theirs 
 become, to the wondering poet, with whose works their names 
 
 1 Vol. i. chap. iii. p. 8-i. English translation.
 
 440 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 are swimming down the stream of time. He and they shall 
 have my nod, too, on the occasion, if, let me humbly add, my 
 prayers shall have availed me beyond the grave.' Precision and 
 accuracy are scarcely to be expected from a mind in this con- 
 dition. 
 
 3. The moat generally received account is, that Byron was 
 born in London, January 22, 1788 (in furnished lodgings, 
 24 Holies Street, 1 Cavendish Square). So the tablet, placed on 
 that house by the generous care of the Society of Arts ; so the 
 inscription on the mural tablet in the Chancel of Hucknall- 
 Torkard Church, placed there by his sister Mrs. Leigh, who had 
 of course the information which was accepted by the family. 
 
 But beyond all doubt, Byron was baptised in the parish of 
 Marylebone. Here is the certified extract made February 6, 1871, 
 from the Register of Baptisms in the parish of Marylebone : 
 
 BAPTISMS IK THE YEAH 1788. 
 
 f George Gordon, son of John T 
 
 March 1st { -D ^ A n *i ^ B. 22 inst. 
 
 |_ Byron Esq. and Catherine J 
 
 A moment's glance at this entry discovers a glaring clerical 
 blunder. The poet, according to this, was baptised on March 1, 
 and born on the 22nd of the same month ! The 22 inst. is no doubt 
 meant for 22 ult. But even with this emendation, the register 
 contradicts the universal statement, that he was born January 22. 
 There is, however, most probably, a second, though not quite so 
 apparent, clerical error. The year 1788 was leap year, when 
 February claims twenty-nine days. It is probable, therefore, 
 that the person who made the above entry, forgetting the fact, 
 committed the mistake of writing March 1, instead of February 29. 
 This second emendation being admitted, the entry would stand 
 thus : 
 
 February J" George Gordon, son of John 1 
 
 29 i Byron Esq. and Catherine. ) B> 22 ult ' 
 
 It may then be asserted, that the poet was born January 22, 1788, 
 and baptised February 29, in the parish of Marylebone. 
 
 1 Since the above was written we have been referred to Murray's 
 Handbook of London, in which it is alleged, on the authority of a bill in 
 Mr. Murray's possession, that the house in which Byron was born was 
 16, not 24 unless, indeed, the numbers of the houses in that street have 
 been altered since 1788.
 
 APPENDIX. 441 
 
 NOTE (C). 
 .!/. J. /. COULMANN IN HIS RELATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 Stern death forbade rny orphan youth to share 
 The tender guidance of a father's care. 
 
 To these lines of the poem called ' Childish Recollections ' 
 included in the ' Hours of Idleness,' the editor of the complete 
 edition of Byron's poetical works, 12mo. 1832, added a note, in 
 which he ventured on the defence of the father, the want of 
 whose care was thus lamented. He then strengthens his own 
 observations by a long extract from a letter of Byron's to a 
 gentleman whose name is not there given, in which the poet, 
 with much warmth of feeling, vindicates the memory of his 
 father and also of his grand-uncle, which had, as he conceived, 
 been unjustly assailed. The editor, however, omitted to men- 
 tion the name of the person to whom the letter was addressed, 
 and to state with sufficient distinctness either the occasion on 
 which it was written, or even the place where the original, from 
 which the extract was taken, might be found. These points 
 were cleared up for the first time, as far as we are aware, in that 
 most useful publication ' Notes and Queries,' 4th series, June 5, 
 1869, p. 524 et seqq. Attention was there directed to an article 
 in the April number of a forgotten and worthless magazine 
 called ' Paul Pry,' of the year 1826, p. 105-7, which contained 
 not only the letter in extenso, from which Lockhart had taken 
 the extract alluded to, but another shorter letter or noto of 
 Byron's addressed to the same person, both translated by the 
 author of that article from the French copies of them in the 
 ' Mercure du Dix-neuvieme Siecle, tome douzieme, annee 1826.' 
 By referring to this journal we are enabled to show how these 
 letters came to be written, and to give some particulars, which 
 are not without interest, regarding the person to whom they were 
 addressed. 
 
 In the year 1823 a young Frenchman, M. J. J. Coulmann, 
 filled with an enthusiastic admiration of Lord Byron, sought 
 and obtained an interview with the poet at Genoa, in the 
 month of January of that year, which was followed by some
 
 412 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 correspondence. He related his experience to the world in the 
 journal called the ' Mercure du Dix-neuvieme Siede,' in what he 
 entitles ' Fragment d'un Voyage en Italie. Une Visite a Byron a 
 Genes.' Regarding the author we can only discover, that at the 
 time of his visit to Byron he was a very young man, who ap- 
 pears to have been the author of some literary productions, which 
 after his visit he sent to the poet. Penetrated, as he tells us 
 in this ' Fragment,' with an ardent desire to see the first poet of 
 England and of the age, he undertook for this purpose a journey 
 to Italy at the beginning of 1823. At Turin he learnt that. 
 Byron, who he imagined was living at Venice, had retired to 
 Genoa. Thither he repaired with a curiosity still further 
 heightened to see ' the extraordinary man ' who sought retirement 
 amid the solitudes of that splendid city. ' I wrote,' he then 
 continues, ' simplement ' ' to Lord Byron, that a young Frenchman, 
 who had no other pretension to be admitted to his presence than 
 admiration for his genius, would esteem it a great happiness 
 if his Lordship would deign to receive him.' Full of hopes and 
 fears he waited for the return of his messenger ; dreaming, as he 
 says, of ' quelque may en nouveau, piquant^ dramatique, analogue a 
 sa capricieuse sauvagerie ' to attain his end ; when his trepida- 
 tions were pleasingly dispelled by the arrival of a letter ' avec un 
 grand cachet revetu de ses armes et cette devise : Crede Biron,' 
 written in Italian, which however M. Coulmann does not give 
 in that language, but a translation of it in French, which again 
 we render into English : 
 
 ' SIR, I shall be very happy to make your acquaintance, but I 
 am very sorry to tell you, that being unaccustomed either to 
 speak or to write French, I shall be unable to derive all the 
 benefit I could wish from your conversation. If, however, what 
 I have said does not deter you, I shall be delighted to see you 
 to-morrow at 2 o'clock. 
 
 ' With profound respect, I have the honour to be your most 
 obedient, humble servant, 
 
 ' NOEL BYRON, Peer of England.' 
 
 Full of varied emotions, M. Coulmann drove next morning 
 January 7 to the Casa Saluzzo, situated in the charming 
 suburb of Albaro, commanding beautiful views of Genoa, the 
 sea, and the Apennines. Its courtyard was surrounded by
 
 APPENDIX. 443 
 
 cypress-trees, cut like yews into artificial forms, which indicated 
 that the villa, was not altogether deserted, though the grass and 
 weeds which grew luxuriantly in the grounds and its dilapidated 
 condition impressed him with a feeling of desolation. Conducted 
 by ' a young Albanian in an Oriental costume, with a handsome 
 countenance and'a fine beard' probably Tita, Byron's Venetian 
 Gondolier -he was introduced into the presence of the poet, 
 who, advancing to meet him with an expression of great kind- 
 liness and with manners of winning grace and refined simplicity, 
 quickly dispelled the preconceptions he had formed. Prepared 
 to behold in the author of ' Childe Harold ' and the ' Corsair ' a 
 figure of heroic proportions, the young Frenchman was at first 
 surprised at what seemed to him his diminutive stature, and the 
 extreme plainness of the dress of a poet ' whose publishers paid 
 him a guinea a line.' Notwithstanding this check to his imagina- 
 tion, he quickly discerned the rare beauty of that face and head, 
 which has become so familiar to the world. The conversation, 
 carried on chiefly in Italian, which Coulmann says Byron spoke 
 with the fluency and accent of an Italian, turned on a great variety 
 of subjects. The merits of Scott and Moore, and the celebrated 
 men of letters in France of that day, were discussed, but nothing 
 as recorded in these reminiscences seems worthy of reproduction. 
 Subsequent to this visit M. Coulmann appears to have sent to 
 Byroii the works of some eminent Frenchmen, together with the 
 expression of their homage and regard, and an Essay on Byron's 
 own genius, probably that by M. Amedee Pichot, in which occurred 
 the expressions to which Lord Byron took exception in the letter 
 with which M. Coulmann concludes his ' Fragment? Like the 
 former note, the letter was most probably written in Italian, though 
 it is given in French ; from which the author of the article in the 
 ' Paul Pry ' Magazine published the translation, which with a few 
 alterations we subjoin. 
 
 'Genoa, July 12, [?] 1823. 
 
 ' MY DEAR SIB, Your letter, and what accompanied it, have 
 given me the greatest pleasure. The fame and works of the 
 writers who have deigned to give me these volumes, bearing their 
 names, were not unknown to me, but to receive them from the 
 authors themselves is more flattering to my feelings. I beg you 
 ^Q present my thanks to each of them in particular ; and to add,
 
 444 LIFE OF LORD BYKON. 
 
 how proud I am of their good opinion, and how charmed I shall be 
 to cultivate their acquaintance, if ever the occasion should occur. 
 The productions of M. Jouy have long been familiar to me. Who 
 has not read and applauded "The Hermit" and "Sylla"? 
 But I cannot accept what it has pleased your friends to call their 
 homage, because there is no sovereign in the republic of letters ; and 
 even if there were, I have never had the pretension or the power 
 to become a usurper. I have to return you thanks for honouring 
 me with your own compositions ; I thought you too young, and 
 probably too amiable, to be an author. As to the Essay, &c., I 
 am obliged to you for the present, though I had already seen it, 
 prefixed to the last edition of the translation l I have nothing to 
 object to it, with regard to what concerns myself personally, 
 though naturally there are some of the facts in it discoloured, 
 and several errors into which the author has been led by the ac- 
 counts of others. I allude to facts, and not criticisms. But tho 
 same author has cruelly calumniated my father and my grand- 
 uncle, but more especially the former. So far from being 
 " brutal," he was, according to the testimony of all those who 
 knew him, of an extremely amiable and (enjoue) joyous character, 
 but careless (insouciant) and dissipated. He had, consequently, 
 the reputation of a good officer, and showed himself such in the 
 Guards, in America. The facts themselves refute the assertion. 
 It is not by " brutality " that a young officer in the Guards seduces 
 and carries off a Marchioness, and marries two heiresses. It is 
 true that he was a very handsome man, which goes a great way. 
 His first wife (Lady Conyers and Marchioness of Carmarthen) 
 did not die of grief, but of a malady which she caught by having 
 imprudently insisted upon accompanying my father to a hunt, 
 before she was completely recovered from the accouchement which 
 gave birth to my sister Augusta. His second wife, my respected 
 mother, had, I assure you, too proud a spirit to bear the ill usage 
 of any man, no matter who he might be ; and this she would have 
 soon proved. I should add, that he lived a long time in Paris, and 
 was in habits of intimacy with the old Marshal Biron, Command- 
 ant of the French Guards ; who, from the similitude of names, 
 and Norman origin of our family, supposed that there was some 
 distant relationship between us. He died some years before the 
 age of forty, and whatever may have been his faults, they were 
 
 1 That is, of his own works.
 
 APPENDIX. 445 
 
 certainly not those of harshness and grossness (durete et grossierete). 
 If the notice should reach England, I am certain that the passage 
 relative to my father will give much more pain to my sister (the 
 wife of Colonel Leigh, attached to the Court of the late Queen, 
 iiot Caroline, but Charlotte, wife of George III.)i even than to 
 me ; and this she does not deserve, for there is not a more angelic 
 being upon earth. Augusta and I have always loved the memory 
 of our father as much as we loved each other, and this at least 
 forms a presumption that the stain of harshness was not applic- 
 able to it. If he dissipated his fortune, that concerns us alone, for 
 we are his heirs ; and till we reproach him with it, I know no one 
 else who has a right to do so. As to Lord Byron, who killed 
 Mr. Chaworth in a duel, so far from retiring from the world, he 
 made the tour of Europe, and was appointed Master of the Stag- 
 hounds after that event, and did not give up society until his son 
 had offended him by marrying in a manner contrary to his duty. 
 So far from feeling any remorse for having killed Mr. Chaworth, 
 who was a fire-eater (spadassin), and celebrated for his quarrel- 
 some disposition, he always kept the sword which he used upon 
 that occasion in his bed-chamber, where it still was when lie 
 died. It is singular enough, that when very young, I formed a 
 strong attachment for the grand-niece and heiress of Mr. Chaworth, 
 who stood in the same degree of relationship as myself to Lord 
 Byron ; and at one time it was thought that the two families 
 would have been united in us. She was two years older than I 
 was, and we were very much together in our youth. She married 
 a man of an old and honourable family ; but her marriage was 
 not a happier one than my own. Her conduct, however, was irre- 
 proachable, but there was no sympathy between their characters, 
 and a separation took place. I had not seen her for many years. 
 When an occasion offered, I was upon the point, with her con- 
 sent, of paying her a visit, when my sister, who has always had 
 more influence over me than anyone else, persuaded me not to 
 do it. " For," said she, " if you go, you will fall in love again, 
 and then there will be a scene ; one step will lead to another, et 
 cela fera un eclat," &c. I was guided by these reasons, and 
 shortly after I married ; with what result it is useless to say. 
 Mrs. C., some time after, being separated from her husband, 
 became insane ; but she has since recovered her reason, and is, 
 I believe, reconciled to her husband. This is a long letter, and
 
 440 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. 
 
 principally about my family, but it is the fault of M. Pichot, 
 my benevolent biographer. He may say of me what he likes, 
 whether good or evil, but I desire that he should speak of my 
 relations only as they deserve. If you could find an occasion of 
 making him, as well as M. Nodier, rectify the facts relative to 
 my father, and publish them, you would do me a great service, 
 for I cannot bear to have him unjustly spoken of, I must con- 
 clude abruptly, for I have occupied you too long. Believe me to 
 be very much honoured by your esteem, and always your obliged 
 and obedient servant, 
 
 ' NOEL BYRON. 
 
 <P.S. The tenth or twelfth of this month I shall embark for 
 Greece. Should I return, I shall pass through Paris, and shall 
 be much nattered in meeting you and your friends. Should I 
 not return, give me as affectionate a place in your memory as 
 possible.' 
 
 NOTE (D). 
 
 ON THE EAELY POEMS OF BYRON. 
 
 BY the early poems are here meant the four small volumes which 
 Byron printed between the autumn of 1806 and the spring of 
 1808 ; two of these being intended for private circulation, the 
 third and fourth being the first and second editions of the ' Hours 
 of Idleness,' published by S. and J. Ridge of Newark in 1807 
 and 1808 respectively. Various changes were introduced into 
 each of these volumes ; there are some poems common to all of 
 them ; one or two which appeared in the first were withdrawn 
 in the second impression ; many contained in this are not given 
 in the first edition of the ' Hours of Idleness,' and some which 
 were published therein were suppressed in the second edition, to 
 which again were added several pieces, the most interesting and 
 full of promise of any of the poems of this youthful period. An 
 account, then, of these several collections and of the various 
 changes they underwent while passing through his hands will 
 not be without interest. 
 
 'My first dash into poetry was made,' Byron himself tells us l 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 52.
 
 APPENDIX. 447 
 
 ' as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my 
 first cousin Margaret Parker. I was then about twelve.' The 
 verses, then, on the death of this young object of his affections 
 were the earliest of his poems. From his habit of dating his 
 compositions at this period of his life, we discover by the inspec- 
 tion of the dates that he had written several poems between this 
 his first essay and the year 1806, when the passion to print 
 became strong in his mind. ' I presume,' he writes in a letter 
 to Miss Pigot, 1 August 10, 1806, ' the printer has brought you 
 the offspring of my poetic mania. Remember in the first line 
 to read "loud the winds whistle," instead of "round," which 
 that blockhead Ridge has inserted by mistake, and makes non- 
 sense of the whole stanza.' The first line he here speaks of is 
 the first of the verses ' On leaving Newstead,' which in the 
 earliest of all the volumes runs thus : 
 
 Through the cracks in these battlements loud the winds whistle. 
 
 What Miss Pigot, then, received was probably a printed copy 
 of this poem merely. The same day he writes 2 also to Mr. 
 Pigot : ' This astonishing packet will doubtless amaze you ; but 
 having an idle hour this evening, I wrote the enclosed stanzas, 
 which I request you to deliver to Ridge to be printed separate 
 from, my other compositions, as you will perceive them to be 
 improper for the perusal of ladies : of course none of the females 
 of your family must see them.' These stanzas were no doubt 
 the poem addressed to Mary, of which we shall learn more in 
 the sequel. A few days afterwards August 16, 1806 he again 
 writes to Mr. Pigot : 3 ' By the enclosure of a second yingle of 
 rhyme, you will probably conceive my muse to be really prolific ; 
 her inserted production was brought forth a few years ago, and 
 found by accident on Thursday among some old papers. I have 
 recopied it, and adding the proper date request it may be printed 
 with the rest of the family ; ' and in the same letter : ' Will you 
 desire Ridge to suspend the printing of my poems till he hears 
 further from me, as I have determined to give them a new form 
 entirely ? This prohibition does not extend to the two last pieces 
 I have sent with my letters to you.' After a quarrel of a more 
 lasting and formidable character than usual with his mother, 
 
 i Moore's Life, i. 106. 2 Ibid. p. 107. s Ibid. p. 108.
 
 448 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 which drove him from Southwell first to London and then to 
 Worthing, to escape from her, he wrote to Mr. Pigot l from the 
 latter place : ' My poetics you will pack up for the same place, 
 and not even reserve a copy for yourself or sister, as I am about 
 to give them an entire neiv form. When they are complete you 
 shall have the first fruits. Mrs. B. is on no account to see or 
 touch them.' Eight days afterwards he returns to the same 
 subject, and with some urgency says to the same correspondent : 2 
 ' I wish you to send my poems to my lodgings in London 
 immediately, as I have several alterations and some additions to 
 make ; every copy must be sent, as I am about to amend them, 
 and you shall soon behold them in all their glory.' His ardent 
 friend and admirer Miss Pigot received a note from him about 
 the same time, to tell her what he feels will please her : 3 ' You 
 regretted in a former letter that my poems were not more exten- 
 sive : I now for your satisfaction announce that I have nearly 
 doubled them, partly by the discovery of some I conceived to be 
 lost and partly by some new productions.' No young budding 
 author ever watched over the printing of his effusions with more 
 anxious care than Byron, according to these extracts, did, while 
 he altered, amended, and arranged again and again the small 
 collection of his poems, which in the month of November 1806 
 was ready at last for distribution among his friends and neigh- 
 bours. It formed a small 4to. consisting of 66 pages, printed by 
 S. and J. Ridge of Newark, with the simple title ' Fugitive 
 Pieces,' and a dedication 
 
 TO 
 THOSE FRIENDS 
 
 AT 
 WHOSE REQUEST THEY AVERE PRINTED, 
 
 FOR WHOSE 
 AMUSEMENT AND APPROBATION 
 
 THEY ARE 
 SOLELY INTENDED, 
 
 THESE TRIFLES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 There is also a short preface or notice : ' As these poems are 
 never intended to meet the public eye, no apology is necessary 
 for the form in which they now appear. They are printed 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 109. 2 Ibid. p. 110. 3 Ibid. p. 113.
 
 APPENDIX. 449 
 
 merely for the perusal of a few friends to whom they are dedi- 
 cated ; and as most of them were composed between the age of 
 fifteen and seventeen, their defects will be pardoned or forgotten 
 in the youth and inexperience of the author.' There is no table 
 of contents, nor are the various pieces even numbered : the 
 dates appended to the poems and all, we think, are dated 
 range from 1802 to October 9, 1806. 
 
 The first copy of the limited impression was sent to the Rev. 
 John Thomas Becher, Prebendary of Southwell Minster, between 
 whom and Byron, notwithstanding the difference of nearly twenty 
 years in their age, there subsisted the warmest friendship, and 
 from whom the younger man always received most prudent 
 counsel offered in the most genial manner. Among these fugitive 
 pieces there were two, the taste and tendency of which were 
 most displeasing to Mr. Becher both addressed apparently to 
 the same person, though doubts may very legitimately be enter- 
 tained, whether the Mary of these poems were flesh and blood or 
 a mere creature of the boy-poet's fancy; the one entitled 'To 
 Mary on receiving her picture,' and the other and longer simply 
 ' To Mary.' The former, consisting of seven verses, is included 
 in each of the four early volumes ; the fourth verse, however, 
 which in the earliest copy stood thus 
 
 Here, I behold its beauteous hue, 
 
 But where's the beam of soft desire ? 
 Which gave a lustre to its blue, 
 
 Love, only love, could e'er inspire 
 
 was altered, we cannot say improved, at Mr. Becher' s suggestion, 
 
 into, 
 
 Here, I behold its beauteous hue, 
 
 But where's the beam so sweetly straying ? 
 Which gave a lustre to its blue, 
 
 Like Luna o'er the ocean straying. 
 
 It was the second poem, however, which so profoundly and so 
 justly offended Mr. Becher, who, immediately on receiving the 
 volume, wrote and sent to Byron an expostulation in verse, the 
 tenor of which, as the original does not exist, can be inferred only 
 from the answer it drew forth from Byron. 1 But Mr. Becher's 
 friendly remonstrance had more positive results ; it led to a fine 
 
 1 Hours of Idleness. First edition, p. 118. 
 G
 
 450 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 act of sacrifice on the poet's part. He determined to consume 
 4he whole impression, and forthwith every copy was burnt in 
 Mr. Becher's presence. Two copies only were saved from the 
 conflagration ; of these one had been sent to Mr. Pigot, at that 
 time residing in Edinburgh, and the second remained in Mr, 
 Becher's possession. They still survive ; the former copy, with 
 ' J. M. Pigot ' inscribed in Byron's hand, came into the possession 
 of his sister Miss Pigot, who bequeathed it, with other relics of 
 the poet, to Mrs. Webb, of Newstead Abbey, where it is preserved 
 with watchful care. The second copy has ever since remained in 
 the Becher family ; and the present possessor, Mrs. Becher, 
 widow of the son of Byron's wise monitor, keeps it among her 
 choicest treasures. The N~ewstead copy is, we regret to say, 
 imperfect, wanting pp. 17-20 inclusive, and eight pages at the 
 end. The Southwell copy is perfect, and may truly be regarded 
 as a unique volume. The two leaves (pp. 17-20) wanting in the 
 former copy contain the offending poem ' To Mary,' consisting of 
 sixteen stanzas doubtless those alluded to in the letter to Mr. 
 Pigot quoted above ' to that naughty Mary,' as Miss Pigot adds 
 in a note attached to the Newstead copy, 'to whom those lines were 
 written which excited such a commotion in the state and were the 
 reason of this edition being put into the fire.' There is nothing 
 in them to compensate for their silly viciousness not a single 
 felicity of thought or expression ; they are weaker than the feeblest 
 of all the early poems ; a poor imitation, in short, of the ' Poems 
 by Thomas Little,' ' which,' as Byron himself wrote to Moore, 1 
 ' I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth summer. 
 Heigho ! I believe all the mischief I have ever done or sung has 
 been owing to that confounded book of yours ! ' A perusal of 
 them would convince any man of the least taste or judgment 
 of the appropriateness of Mr. Becher's remonstrance ; and, on 
 the other hand, the destruction of the impression of a volume 
 on which, as we have seen, the youthful poet had bestowed so 
 much care, and of which he was not a little proud, must surely 
 be regarded as a proof of a generous pliability of character ia 
 Byron. 
 
 Bat no sooner was the sacrifice made, than he began the 
 preparation of another and a more worthy volume to replace 
 
 1 Letter to Moore, Life, iv. 320.
 
 APPENDIX. 451 
 
 that which he had called in and destroyed. In about six weeks 
 it was printed and ready for distribution. It formed a 12mo. of 
 144 pages ; and the more modest title of ' Fugitive Pieces ' of the 
 earlier volume is transformed into ' Poems on Various Occasions,' 
 with a motto from Horace: ' Virginibus puerisque canto,' printed 
 at Newark by the Ridges, and bearing the date 1807. The dedi- 
 cation of the first remains unaltered in the second impression ; 
 bat the short notice slightly differs from the earlier, and is as 
 follows : ' The only apology necessary to be adduced in extenua- 
 tion of any errors in the following collection is, that the author 
 has not yet completed his nineteenth year. December 23, 1806.' 
 A copy was forthwith sent to his friend Mr. Pigot at Edinburgh, 
 and with it a letter, dated January 13, 1807 : ' With this 
 epistle you will receive a volume of all my " Juvenilia " published 
 since your departure ; it is of a considerably greater size than the 
 copy in your possession, which I beg you will destroy, as the 
 present is much more complete. That unlucky poem to my poor 
 Mary has been the cause of some animadversion from ladies in 
 years. I have not printed it in this collection, in consequence of 
 my being pronounced a most profligate sinner, in short a younq 
 
 Moore This volume is vastly correct and miraculously 
 
 chaste.' l The volume thus described contained some alterations 
 and improvements on the preceding, and several additions. The 
 order of the pieces is changed ; the allusions to the persona 
 addressed are more disguised ; and the new poems are of a more 
 ambitious character. The Southwell and Newstead copies of 
 these two impressions, with their manuscript insertions, enable 
 us to lift, with no rude or unhallowed hand, the veil thrown OVPT 
 the ' fair deities,' who inspired these boyish effusions. The 
 daughters of the cheerful and genial Southwell circle of those 
 days are the fair objects addressed in these poems. Tradition, 
 which still lingers there, speaks of ' one formed so heavenly fair,' 
 whose beauty inspired the verses addressed to M. 
 
 Oh, did these eyes instead of fire 
 
 the heroine of the poem on the stray pistol shot that hissed 
 too near ' her lovely head,' to whom also two of the occasional 
 poems, published for the first time in Lockhart's edition of 
 Byron's Poetical Works, were addressed, of whom the pilgrim to 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 123. 
 o o 2
 
 452 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. 
 
 Hucknall-Torkard Church, the resting place of what was 
 mortal of the poet the most forlorn looking of Churches, 
 dreary, dismal, dark, and damp will find on one of the pillars 
 of the nave another touching record of her whose eyes were 
 once so bright a tablet ' Sacred to the memory of Ann, the 
 wife of the Rev. Luke Jackson, daughter of the Rev. Henry 
 Houson of Southwell, who died December 25, 1821, aged 30 
 years.' The additions to the new volume are considerable, and 
 among them are two pieces of greater length and more preten- 
 sion than any in the preceding ' Childish Recollections,' a poem 
 of two hundred and fifty-two lines ; and the Elegy on Newstead, 
 of thirty- nine stanzas. Through Mr. Pigot, then studying at 
 Edinburgh, presentation copies were sent to Lord Woodhouselee 
 and Mr. Henry Mackenzie, whose fame as the o,uthor of ' The 
 Man of Feeling ' was inferior to no writer of fiction of that 
 period ; and through the same hand the favourable opinions of 
 these eminent men were transmitted to Byron. Miss Pigot, 
 writing to her brother, says : l ' Lord Byron was so much pleased ' 
 with Mackenzie's commendations. He announces to his friend 
 Mr. William Bankes, 2 that the same day he received his critical 
 remarks on his poetical productions, he had been honoured with 
 the encomiums of Mackenzie, the celebrated author of ' The Man 
 of Feeling ; ' and again in another to the same friend 3 he writes : 
 ' Since my last I have received two critical opinions from Edin- 
 burgh too flattering for me to detail. One is from Lord Wood- 
 houselee, at the head of the Scotch literati the other from 
 Mackenzie, who sent his decision a second time more at lensrth ' 
 
 ' o 
 
 It is not a little singular that encomiums from the critics of 
 the North should have stimulated Byron to his next venture 
 the publication of these poems, amended and enlarged, as ' The 
 Hours of Idleness,' while the contemptuous sarcasm on that 
 volume proceeding from the same region should have stung and 
 braced him to the composition of the ' English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers.' 
 
 The vigour of his mind, now awakening slowly to the con- 
 sciousness of its own powers, even if it had not received the 
 encouragement, so flattering to a young author, of men of such 
 eminence as Tytler and Mackenzie, would soon have led him to pas q 
 
 1 Moore's Life, I 157 (note). 2 Ibid. p. 126. 3 Ibid p. 127.
 
 APPENDIX. 453 
 
 beyond the limits of a private circle, and to seek the sympathy 
 and praise of a wider world. 
 
 The volume we have been describing was printed for distri- 
 bution eariy in 1807. Scarcely were the copies sent forth when 
 he wrote to his friend Bankes : l ' Contrary to my former intention, 
 I am now preparing a volume for the public at large ; my ama- 
 tory pieces will be exchanged, and others substituted in their 
 place. The whole will be considerably enlarged, and will appear 
 at the latter end of May 1807.' This was the ' Hours of Idleness : 
 a Series of Poems, original and translated. By George Gordon, 
 Lord Byron, a Minor. Newark : S. & J. Ridge, 2 1807.' 
 
 The young poet-philosopher, who had bade adieu to the world 
 and all its attractions who, in the earlier form of the ' Childish 
 Recollections,' had sighed 
 
 Weary of love, of life, devoured with spleen, 
 I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen : 
 World ! I renounce tbee ! All my hopes o'ercast, 
 One sigh I give thee, but that sigh's the last 
 
 how eagerly does he watch for the opinions of this very miserable 
 world ! ' Does my publication go off well ? ' he asks of Miss 
 Pigot. 3 ' Has Ridge sold well ? or do the ancients demur ? What 
 ladies have bought ? ' When success seems assured by the news 
 of a considerable sale of the volume, with what complacency does 
 he rebuke the fond impatience of Mr. Ridge ! ' What the devil,' 
 he asks of the aame fair friend, 4 ' would Ridge have ? is not fifty 
 in a fortnight, before the advertisements, a sufficient sale ? Are 
 they liked or not in Southwell ? ' Again to the same person : 5 
 ' I heard from Ridge this morning : the seventy- five sent to town 
 are circulated, and a demand for fifty more complied with, though 
 the advertisements are not yet half published.' He announces 
 to her that a presentation copy had been despatched to Lord 
 Carlisle ; but the growl of distant thunder mutters in the next 
 words : ' I have not heard from him since. His opinions I 
 neither know nor care about : if he is the least insolent, I shall 
 
 1 Moore's Life, i. 127. 
 
 2 The grandson of Mr. J. Ridge, occupying the same premises in the 
 Market- Place of Newark, preserves the printing press used for these 
 early poems, which, with much civility, he shows to the curious. 
 
 3 Moore's Life, i. 165. Ibid. p. 166. 6 Ibid. p. 167.
 
 454 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. 
 
 enrol him with Butler l and other worthies. Perhaps the Earl 
 " bears no brother near the throne : " if so, I will make his sceptre 
 totter in his hands.' 2 The same correspondent soon again hears 
 from him in a tone of high exultation :' ' Ridge does not proceed 
 rapidly in Notts very possible. In town things wear a more 
 promising aspect ; and a man whose works are praised by re- 
 viewers, admired by duchesses, find sold by every bookseller in the 
 metropolis, does not dedicate much consideration to rustic readers.' 
 He tells her a few days later, ' I have been praised to the skies in 
 the " Critical Review," and abused greatly in another publication 
 (" The Satirist " a worthless paper). The first men of all ages 
 have had their share, nor do the humblest escaps ; so I bear it 
 like a philosopher.' 4 
 
 ' The Hours of Idleness ' differs considerably from the second 
 impression of the early poems. Instead of the short notice pre- 
 fixed to these, we have a preface of nearly six pages, in which he 
 does not fail to bring again to the front the extenuation of youth 
 for the faults that readers may discover : ' These productions are 
 the fruits of the lighter hours of a young man who has lately com- 
 pleted his nineteenth year.' Even on the title-page also his 
 minority is proclaimed. Several poems of the second early 
 volume are excluded from the ' Hours of Idleness ' especially 
 those addressed to the fair deities we have heard of. The addi- 
 tions are considerable. In 'Oscar of Alva,' a poem consisting of 
 seventy-nine stanzas, we have the first of his poetical tales. The 
 ' Childish Recollections ' of the second impression are expanded 
 from 252 to 422 lines. An advance in poetical expression is very 
 discernible in lines on Loch-na-Gar, and the stanzas addressed 
 to M. (Mary Ann Chaworth) exceed in interest, if not in promise, 
 any previous production. The translations also in the ' Hours 
 of Idleness ' were augmented by a paraphrase of the Episode of 
 Nisus and Euryalus in the ninth book of the ^Eneid. One poem, 
 however, underwent in the ' Hours of Idleness ' a curious and 
 significant alteration, to which attention should be directed. 
 In both impressions of the privately printed volumes there is 
 a poem entitled ' Epitaph on a beloved Friend,' Harrow, 1803, 
 which appears also in the ' Hours of Idleness ' as an ' Epitaph 
 on a Friend,' p. 7, with the same date, but with the omission of 
 
 1 Then Master of Harrow. 
 
 8 Moore's Life, i. 168. 3 Ibid. p. 168. Ibid. p. 176.
 
 APPENDIX. 455 
 
 the place. In the former volumes, the friend on whom the epitaph 
 is composed, is a boy ' cottage born : ' in the latter, the friend is a 
 youth in whose death the hopes of high lineage were threatened 
 with extinction. The first ten lines of both epitaphs are precisely 
 the same, except that the ' Oh friend ' replaced the ' Oh boy I% 
 of the first line of the first copy, which after the tenth line 
 proceeds as follows : 
 
 Though low thy lot, since in a cottage born 
 
 No titles did thy humble name adorn, 
 
 To me far dearer was thy artless lov 
 
 Than all the joys wealth, fame, and friends could prove ; 
 
 For thee, alone, I lived or wished to live : 
 
 Oh God, if impious, this rash word forgive. 
 
 Heart broken now, I wait an equal doom, 
 
 Content to join thee in thy turf-clad tomb ; 
 
 Where this frail form composed in endless rest, 
 
 I'll make my last, cold pillow on thy breast ; 
 
 This life resigned without one parting sigh, 
 
 Together in one bed of earth we'll lie ! 
 
 Together share the fate to mortals given, 
 
 Together mix our dust and hope for Heaven. 
 
 Personal feelings and allusions seem equally strong in each ; 
 yet no inference can be drawn as to the reality of the person 
 whose death is lamented in either. 
 
 The sale of the volume was, as we have seen, considerable : and 
 the reception it met with was evidently most gratifying to the 
 young author. But while preparing a second edition for the 
 press, a formidable report, like the bodeful note breaking in on 
 the pastoral tranquillity of Rossini's overture to ' Tell,' reaches his 
 ears. Writing to his friend Air. Becher, who was carrying the 
 new edition through the press, he says : l ' I am of so much im- 
 portance, that a most violent attack is preparing for me in the 
 next number of the " Edinburgh Review." This I had on the 
 authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript of 
 the critique.' Though the second edition had been called for 
 before that famous article appeared, when it actually was pub- 
 lished in March 1808 it bore significant traces of the punishment 
 he had there received. The title is altered into : ' Poems, original 
 and translated, by George Gordon, Lord Byron.' The 'Minor*, 
 of the first disappears in the second edition. The long preface 
 
 > Moore's Life, i. 204.
 
 450 LIFE OP LORD BYRON, 
 
 too, some of the expressions of which had pointed the sarcasm of 
 that article, is omitted ; and for the first time these early poems 
 made their appearance without any intimation from the author 
 of his juvenility. These are the only apparent effects of that 
 attack in the second edition, which contains, however, some 
 changes made quite irrespectively of the attack in the ' Edin- 
 burgh Review.' Again several poems are excluded, though there 
 Beems to be no special reason for their exclusion, as far as their 
 excellence, compared with those retained, is concerned. The long 
 poem termed ' Childish Recollections ' is for instance left out. 
 But there are additions of much interest. Two of the poems, 
 more full of promise than any previously written, the song 
 * When I roved a young Highlander,' the stanzas ' I would 
 I were a careless child,' first appear in the second edition. 
 Among these also are what may be called the Epistles to the 
 Dttke of Dorset and the Earl of Clare two of his Harrow 
 friends and the ' Lines written beneath an Elm in the Church- 
 yard of Harrow on the Hill,' with which the volume concludes. 
 When, on receiving a copy of the second edition from Ridge, 
 he returns thanks to Mr. Becher for the trouble he had under- 
 taken in the superintendence of it, he says to his adviser: l 'You 
 have seen the " Edinburgh Review " of course.' Between March 
 1808, when this second edition saw the light, and March 1809, 
 Byron was bending the whole force of his mind to the composi- 
 tion of the 'English Bards.' The nonage of Byron's intellectual 
 life ended, then, with these early poems, and his next publication 
 was to proclaim his manhood and usher in that prodigious 
 fertility of genius which was to astonish the world. 
 
 NOTE (E). 
 
 ON THE DESTRUCTION OF LORD BYRON'S MEMOIRS OF 
 HIMSELF. 
 
 THE following authoritative statement was made in a 
 letter addressed to the ' Editor of the Academy,' by Mr. 
 Murray, and published in the first number of that 
 Journal (p. 8), 
 
 1 Moore's Life, I 209,
 
 APPENDIX. 457 
 
 To the Editor of the Academy. 
 
 Oct. 6. Albemarle Street. 
 
 SIR, There are a few points connected with the destruction of 
 Byron's Autobiography upon which a great deal of misconception 
 exists, and upon which I should therefore be glad to say a few 
 words. 
 
 1. To those who doubt the entire destruction of the MS., I may 
 state that I was eye-witness to the burning of it and of the only 
 copy existing of it, in the drawing-room of 50, Albemarle Street. 
 
 2. The proposal to destroy it originated, I believe, with my 
 Father, the late Mr. John Murray ; and his reason for making it 
 (as he has stated in a letter to Mr. B. W. Horton, printed in No. 
 185 of the ' Quarterly Review ') was his ' regard for Lord Byron's 
 memory, and respect for his surviving family ' . . . ' since it was 
 surmised that the publication might be injurious to the former 
 and painful to the latter.' The friends of Lord and Lady Byron 
 ' united in wishing for its destruction.' The following persons 
 were previously consulted, as a matter of courtesy, and were 
 present at the burning Mr. Hobhouse, as executor and friend 
 of Lord Byron ; Colonel Doyle, as a friend of Lady Byron (who 
 had actually offered 2,OOOZ. for the MSS., which she did not pay) ; 
 Mr. Wilmot Horton, as friend of the Hon. Mrs. Leigh ; my 
 Father, and Mr. Moore, who alone for some time opposed the 
 destruction. [To these names must be added that of Mr. 
 Luttrell.] 
 
 3. The MS. was, at the time of its destruction, the absolute 
 property of my Father, having been purchased by him in Novem- 
 ber, 1821, from Mr. Moore (to whom Lord Byron had given it) 
 for 2,OOOZ., v 'in consideration of which sum Moore covenanted to 
 edit the papers, and to supply an account of the subsequent 
 events of Lord Byron's life. On May the 6th, 1822, however, a 
 second deed was executed, at Mr. Moore's request, giving to him 
 the power of redeeming the MS., ' during the life of the said 
 Lord Byron,' on the repayment by either of them of the 2,OOOZ. 
 This condition Moore did not fulfil : consequently his interest in 
 the MS. entirely ceased on Byron's death ; by which event the 
 value of the MS. was greatly enhanced, probably doubled. This 
 fact, no doubt, rendered Mr. Moore more than ever anxious to
 
 4'58 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. 
 
 recover the Autobiography, and he had secured the advance of 
 2,OOOZ. on loan from friends in the City to enable him to do this. 
 The MS., however, by general consent, was destroyed, Mr. 
 Moore, though reluctantly, concurring. Moore then paid to Mr. 
 Murray the 2,OOOZ., for which payment Byron's friends offered to 
 reimburse him ; but he refused. So matters rested until 1828, 
 when the appearance of Leigh Hunt's ' Byron and his Contem- 
 poraries ' convinced my Father that an authentic Life of Byron 
 was demanded, for which only Moore and he were possessed of 
 the necessary materials. He therefore arranged with Moore to 
 prepare the ' Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron,' pub- 
 lished in 1830; For this Moore received the sum of 1,600L 
 But (and this is the point which, in justice to my Father's 
 memory, I am anxious to state) ' over and above the sum so paid, 1 
 Mr. Murray discharged Moore's bond with his creditors, upon 
 which he had raised the 2jOOOZ. paid by him immediately after 
 Byron's death ; together with the interest thereon and other 
 charges, amounting to 1,020Z. more. Thus making a total sum 
 of 4j620Z. (Signed) JOHN MURRAY. 
 
 The letter of the late Mr. Murray, alluded to in the 
 second paragraph of the above$ and published in the 
 * Quarterly Review/ June 1853, is also added as a ' piece 
 justificative ' of much interest 
 
 Letter from the late John Murray to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert 
 Wilmot Norton. 
 
 Albemarle Street, May 19, 1824. 
 
 DEAR SIR, On my return home last night I found your letter, 
 dated the 27th, calling on me for a specific answer whether I 
 acknowledged the accuracy of the statement of Mr. Moore, 
 communicated in it. However unpleasant it is to me, your 
 requisition of a specific answer obliges me to say that I cannot, 
 by any means, admit the accuracy of that statement ; and in order 
 to explain to you how Mr. Moore's misapprehension may have 
 arisen, and the ground upon which my assertion rests, I feel it 
 necessary to trouble you with a statement of all the circumstances 
 of the case, which will enable you to judge for yourself. 
 
 Lord Byron having made Mr. Moore a present of his Memoirs, 
 Mr. Moore offered them for sale to Messrs. Longman and Co.,
 
 APPENDIX. 459 
 
 who however declined to purchase them ; Mr. Moore then made 
 me a similar offer, which I accepted ; and in November, 1821, a 
 joint assignment of the Memoirs was made to me by Lord Byron 
 and Mr. Moore, with all legal technicalities, in consideration of a 
 sum of 2,000 guineas, which, on the execution of the agreement 
 by Mr. Moore, I paid to him. Mr. Moore also covenanted, in 
 consideration of the said sum, to act as Editor of the Memoirs, 
 and to supply ah account of the subsequent events of Lord Byron's 
 life, &c. 
 
 Some months after the execution of this assignment, Mr. 
 Moore requested ine, as a great personal favour to himself and to 
 Lord Byron, to enter into a second agreement, by which I should 
 resign the absolute property which I had in the Memoirs, and 
 give Mr. Moore and Lord Byron, or any of their friends, a power 
 of redemption during the life of Lord Byron. As the reason 
 pressed upon me for this change was that their friends thought 
 there were some things in the Memoirs that might be injurious 
 to both, I did not hesitate to make this alteration at Mr. Moore's 
 request ; and, accordingly on the 6th day of May, 1822; a second 
 deed was executed, stating that) ' Whereas Lord Byron and Mr. 
 Moore are now inclined to wish the said work not to be pub* 
 lished, it is agreed that, if either of them shall, during the life of 
 the said Lord Byron, repay the 2,000 guineas to Mr. Murray, the 
 latter shall redeliver the Memoirs ; but thatj if the sum be not 
 repaid during the lifetime of Lord Byron, Mr. Mnrfay shall be at 
 full liberty to print and publish the said Memoirs within Three 
 Months 1 after the death of the said Lord Byron.' I need hardly 
 call your particular attention to the words, carefully inserted 
 twice over in this agreement, which limited its existence to the 
 lifetime of Lord Byron ; the reason of such limitation was obvious 
 and natural namely, that, although I consented to restore the 
 work, while Lord Byron should be alive to direct the ulterior dis- 
 posal of it, I would by no means consent to place it after his death, 
 at the disposal of any other person. 
 
 I must now observe that I had never been able to obtain 
 possession of the original assignment, which was my sole lien on 
 
 1 The words 'within Three Months ' were substituted for 'immedi- 
 ately,' at Mr. Moore's request and they appear in pencil, in his own 
 handwriting, upon the original draft of the deed, which is still in 
 existence.
 
 460 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 this property, although I had made repeated applications to Mr. 
 Moore to put me into possession of the deed, which was stated to 
 be in the hands of Lord Byron's banker. Feeling, I confess, in 
 some degree alarmed at the withholding the deed, and dissatisfied 
 at Mr. Moore's inattention to my interests in this particular, I 
 wrote urgently to him in March, 1823, to procure me the deed, 
 and at the same time expressed my wish that the second agree- 
 ment should either be cancelled or at once executed. 
 
 Finding this application unavailing, and becoming, by the 
 greater lapse of time, still more doubtful as to what the intentions 
 of the parties might be, I, in March, 1824, repeated my demand 
 to Mr. Moore in a more peremptory manner, and was in conse- 
 quence at length put into possession of the original deed. But, 
 not being at all satisfied with the course that had been pursued 
 towards me, I repeated to Mr. Moore my uneasiness at the terms 
 on which 1 stood under the second agreement, and renewed my 
 request to him that he would either cancel it, or execute its 
 provisions by the immediate redemption of the work, in order 
 that I might exactly know what my rights in the property were. 
 He requested time to consider of this proposition. In a day or 
 two he called, and told me that he would adopt the latter alter- 
 native namely, the redemption of the Memoirs as he had found 
 persons who were ready to advance the money on his insuring his 
 life ; and he promised to conclude the business on the first day of 
 his return to town, by paying the money and giving up the 
 agreement. Mr. Moore did return to town, but did not, that I 
 have heard of, take any proceedings for insuring his life ; he 
 positively neither wrote nor called upon me as he had promised 
 to do (though he was generally accustomed to make mine one of 
 his first houses of call) ; nor did he take -any other step, that I 
 am aware of, to show that he had any recollection of the conver- 
 sation which had passed between us previous to his leaving town, 
 until the death of Lord Byron had, ipso facto, cancelled the agree- 
 ment in question, and completely restored my absolute rights 
 over the property of the Memoirs. 
 
 You will therefore perceive that there was no verbal agreement 
 in existence between Mr. Moore and me, at the time I made a 
 verbal agreement with you to deliver the Memoirs to be destroyed. 
 Mr. Moore might undoubtedly, during Lord Byron's life, have 
 obtained possession of the Memoirs, if he had pleased to do so ;
 
 APPENDIX. 461 
 
 he however neglected or delayed to give effect to our verbal 
 agreement, which, as well as the written instrument to which it 
 related, being cancelled by the death of Lord Byron, there was 
 no reason whatsoever why I was not at that instant perfectly at 
 liberty to dispose of the MS. as I thought proper. Had I con- 
 sidered only my own interest as a tradesman, I would have 
 announced the work for immediate publication, and I cannot 
 doubt that, under all the circumstances, the public curiosity 
 about these Memoirs would have given me a very considerable 
 profit beyond the large sum I originally paid for them ; but you. 
 yourself are, I think, able to do me the justice of bearing witness 
 that I looked at the case with no such feelings, and that my 
 regard for Lord Byron's memory, and my respect for his sur- 
 viving family, made me more anxious that the Memoirs should 
 be immediately destroyed, since it was surmised that the 
 publication might be injurious to the former and painful to the 
 latter. 
 
 As I myself scrupulously refrained from looking into the 
 Memoirs, I cannot, from my own knowledge, say whether such 
 an opinion of the contents was correct or not ; it was enough for 
 me that the friends of Lord and Lady Byron united in wishing 
 for their destruction. Why Mr. Moore should have wished to 
 preserve them I did not nor will inquire ; but, having satisfied 
 myself that he had no right whatever in them, I was happy in 
 having an opportunity of making, by a pecuniary sacrifice on my 
 part, some return for the honour, and I must add the profit, 
 which I had derived from Lord Byron's patronage and friendship. 
 You will also be able to bear witness that although I could not 
 presume to impose an obligation on the friends of Lord Byron or 
 Mr. Moore, by refusing to receive the repayment of the 2,000 
 guineas advanced by me yet I had determined on the destruc- 
 tion of the Memoirs without any previous agreement for such 
 repayment : and you know the Memoirs were actually destroyed 
 without any stipulation on my part, but even with a declaration 
 that I had destroyed my own private property, and I therefore 
 had no claim upon any party for remuneration. 
 
 I remain, dear Sir, 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 (Signed) JOHN MURRAY. 
 
 To R'. "Wilmot Horton, Esq.
 
 462 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. 
 
 NOTE (F). 
 CONCERNING THE ARRIVAL OF LORD BYRON'S REMAINS IN 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 THE following account, which appeared for the first time 
 in the * Edinburgh Review,' April 1871 (pp. 294-298), is 
 itself an extract from Lord Broughton's ' Recollections of 
 a Long Life,' printed, but not published, in 1865. The 
 readers of this Biography of Byron will not regret to have 
 this touching narrative reproduced here. 
 
 At a little after eight o'clock on the morning of Friday, May 
 14, I was awakened by a loud rapping at my bedroom door, and 
 getting up, had a packet of letters put into my hand, signed 
 ' Sidney Osborne,' and headed ' By express.' There was also 
 a note from Douglas Kinnaird ; and, on opening it, I found that 
 BYRON WAS DEAD. The despatch was from Corfu. These letters 
 were from Lord Sidney Osborne to me, from Count Gamba to 
 me, from Count Gamba to Lord Sidney Osborne, and from the 
 Count to the English Consul at Zante. Besides these, there 
 were letters from Fletcher, Byron's valet, to Fletcher's wife, to 
 Mrs. Leigh, and to Captain George Byron ; also there were 
 four copies of a Greek proclamation by the Greek Government 
 at Missolonghi, with a translation annexed. The proclamation 
 contained the details which have been often published the ten 
 xlays' illness of my dear friend, the public anxiety during those 
 days of hope and fear his death the universal dejection and 
 almost despair of the Greeks around him. The proclamation 
 next decreed that the Easter festival should be suspended ; that 
 the shops should be closed for three days ; that a general mourn- 
 ing for twenty days should be observed ; and that at sunrise 
 the next morning, the 20th of April, thirty-seven minute-guns 
 should be fired from the batteries to indicate the age of the 
 deceased. 
 
 How much soever the Greeks of that day may have differed 
 on other topics, there was no difference of opinion in regard to 
 the loss they had sustained by the death of Byron. Those who 
 have read Colonel Leicester Stanhope's interesting volume,
 
 APPENDIX. 463 
 
 ' Greece in 1823 and 1824,' and more particularly Colonel 
 Stanhope's ' Sketch,' and Mr. Finlay's ' Reminiscences ' of 
 Byron 1 will have seen him just as he appeared to me during our 
 long intimacy. I liked him a great deal too well to be an impar- 
 tial judge of his character ; but I can confidently appeal to the 
 impressions he made upon the two above-rnentioned witnesses of 
 his conduct, under very trying circumstances, for a justification, 
 of my strong affection for him an affection not weakened by the 
 forty years of a busy and chequered life that have passed over 
 me since I saw him laid in his grave. 
 
 The influence he had acquired in Greece was unbounded, and 
 
 he had exerted it in a manner most useful to her cause. Jjord 
 
 Sidney Osborne, writing to Mrs. Leigh, said, that if Byron had 
 
 never written a line in his life, he had done enough, during the 
 
 last six months, in Greece, to immortalise his name. He added, 
 
 that no one unacquainted with the circumstances of the case 
 
 could have any idea of the difficulties he had overcome : he had 
 
 reconciled the contending parties, and had given a character of 
 
 humanity and civilisation to the warfare in which they were 
 
 engaged, besides contriving to prevent them from offending their 
 
 powerful neighbours in the Ionian Islands. I heard that Sir F. 
 
 Adam, in a despatch to Lord Bathurst, bore testimony to his 
 
 great qualities, and lamented his death as depriving the Ionian. 
 
 Government of the only man with whom they could act with 
 
 safety. Mavrocordato, in his letter to Dr. Bowring, called him 
 
 ' a great man,' and confessed that he was almost ignorant how 
 
 to act when deprived of such a coadjutor. . . . 
 
 On Thursday, July 1, I heard that the ' Florida,' with the 
 remains of Byron, had arrived in the Downs, and I went, the 
 same evening, to Rochester. The next morning I went to 
 Standgate Creek, and, taking a boat, went on board the vessel. 
 There I fqund Colonel Leicester Stanhope, Dr. Bruno, Fletcher, 
 Byron's valet, with three others of his servants. Three dogs 
 that had belonged to my friend were playing about the deck. I 
 could hardly bring myself to look at them. The vessel had got 
 under weigh, and we beat up the river to Gravesend. I cannot 
 describe what I felt during the five or six hours of our passage. 
 I was the last person who shook hands with Byron when he left 
 
 1 Reprinted below.
 
 464 LIFE OF LOKD BYRON. 
 
 England in 1816. I recollected his waving his cap to me as the 
 packet bounded off on a curling wave from the pier-head at Dover, 
 and here I was now coming back to England with his corpse. 
 
 Poor Fletcher burst into tears when he first saw me, and wept 
 bitterly when he told me the particulars of my friend's last 
 illness. These have been frequently made public, and need not 
 be repeated here. I heard, however, on undoubted authority, 
 that, until he became delirious, he was perfectly calm ; and I 
 called to mind how often I had heard him say, that he was not 
 apprehensive as to death itself, but as to how, from physical 
 infirmity, he might behave at that inevitable hour. On one 
 occasion he said to me, * Let no one come near me when I am 
 dying, if you can help it, and we happen to be together at the 
 time.' 
 
 The 'Florida' anchored at Gravesend, and I returned to 
 London ; Colonel Stanhope accompanied me. This was on 
 Friday, July 2. On the following Monday I went to Doctors' 
 Commons and proved Byron's will. Mr. Hanson did so likewise. 
 Thence I went to London Bridge, got into a boat, and went to 
 London Docks Buoy, where the ' Florida ' was anchored. I 
 found Mr. Woodeson, the undertaker, on board, employed in 
 emptying the spirit from the large barrel containing the box 
 that held the corpse. This box was removed and placed on 
 deck by the side of a leaden coffin. I stayed whilst the iron 
 hoops were knocked off the box, but I could not bear to see the 
 remainder of the operation, and went into the cabin. Whilst 
 there I looked over the sealed packet of papers belonging to 
 Byron, which he had deposited at Cefalonia, and which had not 
 been opened since he left them there. Captain Hodgson of the 
 'Florida,' the captain's father, and Fletcher, were with me: we 
 examined every paper, and did not find any will. Those present 
 signed a document to that effect. 
 
 After the removal of the corpse into the coffin, and the arrival 
 of the order from the Custom-house, I accompanied the under- 
 taker in the barge with the coffin. There were many boats 
 round the ship at the time, and the shore was crowded with, 
 spectators. We passed quietly up the river, and landed at 
 Palace Yard stairs. Thence the coffin and the small chest 
 containing the heart were carried to the house in George Street, 
 and deposited in the room prepared for their reception. The
 
 APPENDIX. 465 
 
 room was decently hung with black, but there was no other 
 decoration than an escutcheon of the Byron arms, roughly daubed 
 on a deal board. 
 
 On reaching my rooms in the Albany, I found a note from Mr. 
 Murray, telling me that he had received a letter from Dr. Ireland, 
 politely declining to allow the burial of Byron in Westminster 
 Abbey ; but it was not until the next day that, to my great 
 surprise, I learnt, on reading the Doctor's note, that Mr. Murray 
 had made the request to the Dean in my name ; I thought that 
 it had been settled that Mr. Gifford should sound the Dean of 
 Westminster previously to any formal request being made. I 
 wrote to Mr. Murray, asking him to inform the Dean that I had 
 not made the request. Whether he did so, I never inquired. 
 
 I ascertained from Mrs. Leigh that it was wished the interment 
 should take place at the family vault at Hucknall in Nottingham- 
 shire. The utmost eagerness was shown, both publicly and 
 privately, to get a sight of anything connected with Byron. 
 Lafayette was at that time on his way to America, and a young 
 Frenchman came over from the General at Havre, and wrote me 
 a note requesting a sight of the deceased poet. The coffin had 
 been closed, and his wishes could not be complied with. A 
 young man came on board the 'Florida,' and in very moving 
 terms besought me to allow him to take one look at him. I was 
 sorry to be obliged to refuse, as I did not know the young man, 
 and there were many round the vessel who would have made the 
 same request. He was bitterly disappointed ; and when I gave 
 him a piece of the cotton in which the corpse had been wrapped, 
 he took it with much devotion, and placed it in his pocketbook. 
 Mr. Phillips, the Academician, applied for permission to take a 
 likeness, but I heard from Mrs. Leigh that the features of her 
 brother bad been so disfigured by the means used to preserve his 
 remains, that she scarcely recognised them. This was the fact ; 
 for I had summoned courage enough to look at my dead friend ; 
 so completely was he altered, that the sight did not affect me so 
 much as looking at his handwriting, or anything that I knew 
 had belonged to bim. 
 
 The funeral started from Nottingham on July 16. 
 Hodgson the translator of Juvenal, and Colonel Wildman 
 of Newstead, attended as mourners. 
 
 H H
 
 466 LIFE OF LOUD BYKON. 
 
 The Mayor and Corporation of Nottingham joined the funeral 
 procession. It extended about a quarter of a mile, and, moving 
 very slowly, was five hours on the road to Hucknall. The view 
 of it as it wound through the villages of Papplewick and Lindley 
 excited sensations in me which will never be forgotten. As we 
 passed under the hill of Annesley, ' crowned with the peculiar 
 diadem of trees ' immortalised by Byron, I called to mind a 
 thousand particulars of my first visit to Newstead. It was 
 dining at Annesley Park that I saw the first interview of Byron, 
 after a long interval, with his early love, Mary Anne Chaworth. 
 
 The churchyard and the little church of Hucknall were so 
 crowded that it was with difficulty we could follow the coffin up 
 the aisle. The contrast between the gorgeous decorations of the 
 coffin and the urn, and the humble village church, was very 
 striking. I was told afterwards that the place was crowded 
 until a late hour in the evening, and that the vault was not 
 closed until the next morning. 
 
 I returned to Bunny Park. The Corporation of Nottingham 
 offered me the freedom of the town, but I had no inclination for 
 the ceremonies with which the acceptance of the honour would 
 have been accompanied ; I therefore declined it. 
 
 I should have mentioned that I thought Lady Byron ought to 
 be consulted respecting the funeral of her husband ; and I 
 advised Mrs. Leigh to write to her, and ask what her wishes 
 might be. Her answer was, if the deceased had left no directions 
 she thought the matter might be left to the judgment of Mr. 
 Hobhouse. There was a postscript, saying, ' If you like you may 
 show this.' 
 
 I was present at the marriage of this lady with my friend, and 
 handed her into the carriage which took the bride and bride- 
 groom away. Shaking hands with Lady Byron, I wished her 
 all happiness. Her answer was, ' If I am not happy it will be 
 my own fault.'
 
 ATPENDIX. 4C7 
 
 NOTE (G). 
 
 CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON AS DRAWN BY THE REV. 
 WILLIAM HARNESS; LORD BROUGHTON; MR. GEORGE 
 FINLAY; AND COLONEL THE HON. LEICESTER STANHOPE 
 (AFTERWARDS EARL OF HARRINGTON). 
 
 I. 
 
 AMONG the friendships which Byron formed at Harrow 
 and Cambridge none was more ardent than that which 
 subsisted between himself and William Harness. When 
 he invites Moore (December 11, 1811) to Newstead, he 
 tells him ' that he will meet there * a young friend named 
 Harness, the earliest and dearest I ever had, from the 
 third form at Harrow to this hour.' Nor has any one of 
 the friends of the poet, with perhaps the exception of 
 Lord Broughton, given to the world reminiscences more 
 interesting or trustworthy than those which have been 
 recently published by the Rev. A. G. L'Estrange in his 
 * Literary Life ' of his late accomplished friend. By the 
 courteous permission of his Biographer we are allowed to 
 transfer to our pages Harness's recollections of his early 
 and great friend. 
 
 ' My acquaintance with Lord Byron began very early in life, 
 on my first going to school at Harrow. I was then just twelve 
 years old. I was lame from an early accident, and pale and thin 
 in consequence of a severe fever, from which, though perfectly 
 recovered in other respects, I still continued weak. This dilapi- 
 dated condition of mine perhaps my lameness more than any- 
 thing else^ seems to have touched Byron's sympathies. He saw 
 me a stranger in a crowd ; the very person likely to tempt the 
 oppression of a bully, as I was utterly incapable of resisting it, 
 and, in all the kindness of his generous nature, he took me under 
 his charge. The first words he ever spoke to me, as far as I can 
 recollect them, were, " If any fellow bullies you, tell me ; and 
 I'll thrash him if I can." His protection was not long needed ; I 
 was soon strong again, and able to maintain my own ; but, as 
 1 Moore's Life, ii. 107. 
 H H 2
 
 468 LIFE OF LORD BYROW. 
 
 long as his help was wanted, he never failed to render it. In 
 this manner our friendship began when we were both boys, he 
 the elder of the two ; and it continued, without the slightest 
 interruption, till he left Harrow for Cambridge. 
 
 'After this there was a temporary cessation of intercourse. 
 We wrote to each other on his first leaving school ; but the 
 letters, as is wont to be the case, became gradually less and less 
 communicative and frequent, till they eventually ceased alto- 
 gether. The correspondence seemed to have come to a conclusion 
 by common consent, till an unexpected occasion of its renewal 
 occurred on the appearance of his first collection of poems, the 
 " Hours of Idleness." l This volume contained an early essay of 
 his satirical powers against the head-master of his late school ; 
 and very soon after its publication I received a letter from Byron 
 short, cold, and cutting reproaching me with a breach of 
 friendship, because I had, as he was informed, traduced his 
 poetry in an English exercise, for the sake of conciliating the 
 favour of Dr. Butler. The only answer I returned to the letter 
 was to send him the rough copy of my theme. It was on the 
 Evils of Idleness. After a world of puerilities and common- 
 places, it concluded by warning mankind in general, and the 
 boys of Harrow in particular, if they would avoid the vice and 
 its evils, to cultivate some accomplishment, that each might have 
 an occupation of interest to engage his leisure, and be able to 
 spend his " Hours of Idleness " as profitably as our late popular 
 schoolfellow. The return of post brought me a letter from 
 Byron, begging pardon for the unworthiness he had attributed 
 
 1 The critiques on which called forth. ' English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers.' Byron seems always to have had an unfortunate and 
 irresistible love of satire. Mr. Dyce (in Rogers's Table Talk) makes the 
 following reference : ' At the house of the Rev. "W. Harness I remember 
 hearing Moore remark that he thought the natural bent of Byron's 
 genius was to satirical and burlesque poetry. On this Mr. Harness ob- 
 served : " When Byron was at Harrow, he one day, seeing a young 
 acquaintance at a short distance who was a violent admirer of Bona paite, 
 roared out 
 
 ' " Bold Robert Speer was Sony's bad precursor : 
 Bob was a bloody dog, but Bonaparte a worser." 
 
 Moore immediately wrote the lines down with the intention of inserting 
 them in his " Life of Byron," which he was then preparing j but they do 
 not appear in it.'
 
 APPENDIX. 460 
 
 to me, and acknowledging that he had been misinformed. Thus 
 our correspondence was renewed ; and it was never again inter- 
 rupted till after his separation from Lady Byron and final depar- 
 ture from his country,' 
 
 ' Whatever faults Lord Byron might have had towards others, 
 to myself he was always uniformly affectionate. I have many 
 slights and neglects towards him to reproach myself with ; but, 
 on his part, I cannot call to mind, during the whole course of 
 our intimacy, a single instance of caprice or unkindness.' 
 
 Lord Byron, after his return from Greece, invited Moore, 
 as we have seen above, to Newstead, telling him that he 
 would meet his friend Harness. Moore, however, does 
 not seem to have been of the party, but Harness describes 
 it thus : 
 
 'When Byron returned, with the MS. of the first two cantos 
 of "Childe Harold" in his portmanteau, I paid him a visit at 
 Newstead. It was winter dark, dreary weather the snow 
 upon the ground ; and a straggling, gloomy, depressing, partially- 
 inhabited place the Abbey was. Those rooms, however, which 
 had been fitted up for residence were so comfortably appointed, 
 glowing with crimson hangings, and cheerful with capacious 
 fires, that one soon lost the melancholy feeling of being domiciled 
 in the wing of an extensive ruin. Many tales are related or 
 fabled of the orgies which, in the poet's early youth, had made 
 clamorous these ancient halls of the Byrons. I can only say 
 that nothing in the shape of riot or excess occurred when I was 
 there. The only other visitor was Dr. Hodgson, the translator of 
 Juvenal, 1 and nothing could be more quiet and regular than the 
 course of our days. Byron was retouching, as the sheets passed 
 through the press, the -tanzas of " Childe Harold." Hodgson 
 was at work in getting out the ensuing number of the " Monthly 
 Review," of which he was principal editor. I was reading for 
 my degree. When we met, our general talk was of poets and 
 poetry of who could or who could not write ; but it occasionally 
 rose into very serious discussions on religion. Byron, from his 
 early education in Scotland, had been taught to identify the 
 principles of Christianity with the extreme dogmas of Calvinism. 
 
 1 Afterwards Provost, of Eton.
 
 470 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 His mind had thus imbibed a most miserable prejudice, which 
 appeared to be the only obstacle to his hearty acceptance of the 
 Gospel. Of this error we were most anxious to disabuse him 
 The chief weight of the argument rested with Hodgson, who was 
 older, a good deal, than myself. I cannot even now at a 
 distance of more than fifty years recall those conversations 
 without a deep feeling of admiration for the judicious zeal and 
 affectionate earnestness (often speaking with tears in his eyes) 
 which Dr. Hodgson evinced in his advocacy of the truth. The 
 only difference, except perhaps in the subjects talked about, be- 
 tween our life at Newstead Abbey and that of the quiet country 
 families around us, was the hours we kept. It was, as I have 
 said, winter, and the days were cold ; and, as nothing tempted 
 us to rise early, we got up late. This flung the routine of the 
 day rather backward, and we did not go early to bed. My visit 
 to Xewstead lasted about three weeks, when I returned to Cam- 
 bridge to take my degree.' 
 
 Shortly after this Harness took orders and went to 
 reside at a remote country curacy in Hampshire. It was 
 Byron's intention to dedicate to the country curate the 
 first cantos of * Childe Harold/ then on the eve of publi- 
 cation, but he was restrained by the ' fear lest it should 
 injure him in his profession. 5 
 
 'From this time,' writes Mr. Harness, 'our paths lay much 
 asunder. Byron returned to London. His poem was published. 
 The success was instantaneous; and he "awoke one morning 
 and found himself famous." I was in orders, and living an 
 almost solitary life in a country curacy ; but we kept up a rather 
 rapid interchange of letters. He sent me his poems as they 
 now appeared in rather quick succession ; and during my few 
 weeks' holidays in London we saw one another very often of a 
 morning at each other's rooms, and not unfrequently again in 
 society of an evening. So far, and for these few years, all that 
 I saw or heard of his career was bright and prosperous : kind- 
 ness and poetry at home, smiles and adulation abroad. But then 
 came his marriage ; and then the rupture with his wife ; and 
 then his final departure from England. He became a victim of 
 that revolution of popular feeling which is ever incident to the
 
 APPENDIX. 471 
 
 spoilt children of society, when envy and malice obtain a tem- 
 porary ascendancy, and succeed in knocking down and trampling 
 any idol of the day beneath their feet, who may be wanting in 
 the moral courage required to face and out-brave them. 
 
 ' Such was not the spirit that animated Byron. He could not 
 bear to look on the altered countenances of his acquaintances. 
 To his susceptible temperament and generous feelings, the re- 
 proach of having ill-used a woman must have been poignant in 
 the extreme. It was repulsive to his chivalrous character as a 
 gentleman ; it belied all he had written of the devoted fervour 
 of his attachments ; and rather than meet the frowns and sneers 
 which awaited him in the world, as many a less sensitive man 
 might have done, he turned his back on them and fled. He 
 would have drawn himself up, and crossed his arms and curled 
 his lip, and looked disdainfully on any amount of clamorous 
 hostility ; but he stole away from, the ignominy of being silently 
 cut. His whole course of conduct, at this crisis of his life, was 
 an inconsiderate mistake. He should have remained to learn 
 what the accusations against him really were ; to expose the 
 exaggerations, if not the falsehoods, of the grounds they rested 
 on ; or, at all events, to have quietly abided the time when the 
 London world should have become wearied of repeating its vapid 
 scandals, and returned to its senses respecting him. That change 
 of feeling did come and not long after his departure from 
 England but he was at a distance, and could not be persuaded 
 to return to take advantage of it. 
 
 ' Of the matrimonial quarrel I personally know nothing ; nor, 
 with the exception of Dr. Lushington, do I believe that there is 
 anybody living who has any certain knowledge about the matter. 
 The marriage was never one of reasonable promise. The bride- 
 groom a^d the bride were ill-assorted. They were two only 
 children, and two spoilt children. I was acquainted with Lady 
 Byron as Miss Milbanke. The parties of Lady Milbanke, her 
 mother, were frequent and agreeable, and composed of that 
 mixture of fashion, literature, science, and art, than which there 
 is no better society. The daughter was not without a certain 
 amount of prettiness or cleverness ; but her manner was stiff 
 and formal, and gave one the idea of her being self-willed and 
 self-opinionated. She was almost the only young, pretty, well- 
 dressed girl we ever saw who carried no cheerfulness along with
 
 472 LIFE OF LJ3KL) BYROff. 
 
 her. I seem to see her now, moving slowly along her mother's 
 drawing-rooms, talking to scientific men and literary women, 
 without a tone of emotion in her voice or the faintest glimpse of 
 a smile upon her countenance. A lady who had been on intimate 
 terms with her from their mutual childhood once said to me, " If 
 Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at 
 than anybody else's heart whom I have ever known." And 
 though several of my friends whose regard it was no slight 
 honour to have gained as Mrs. Siddons, Joanna Baillie, Maria 
 Edgeworth, and others of less account, were never heard to 
 speak of Lady Byron except in terms of admiration and attach- 
 ment, it is certain that the impression which she produced on 
 the majority of her acquaintance was unfavourable : they looked 
 upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would 
 rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation 
 with unnecessarily. Such a person, whatever quality might have 
 at first attracted him (could it have been her coldness ?) was 
 not likely to acquire or retain any very powerful hold upon 
 Byron. At the beginning of their married life, when first they 
 returned to London society together, one seldom saw two young 
 persons who appeared to be more devoted to one another than 
 they were. At parties, he would be seen hanging over the back 
 of her chair, scarcely talking to anybody else, eagerly introducing 
 his friends to her, and, if they did not go away together, himself 
 handing her to her carriage. This outward show of tenderness, 
 so far as my memory serves me, was observed and admired as 
 exemplary, till after the birth of their daughter. From that 
 time the world began to drop its voice into a tone of compassion 
 when speaking of Lady Byron, and to whisper tales of the 
 misery she was suffering poor thing on account of the unkind- 
 ness of her husband. 
 
 ' The first instances of his ill-usage which were heard, were so 
 insignificant as to be beneath recording. " The poor lady had never 
 had a comfortable meal since their marriage." " Her husband had 
 no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner." 
 " At his express desire, she had invited two elderly ladies l to 
 meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous 
 than his manner to them, while they remained ; but no sooner 
 
 1 Mrs. Joanna Baillie and her sister.
 
 APPENDIX. 473 
 
 n 
 
 had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his 
 ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and 
 manners of her friends." There were some relations of Lady 
 Byron whom, after repeated refusals, he had reluctantly con- 
 sented to dine with. When the day arrived he insisted on her 
 going alone, alleging his being unwell as an excuse for his 
 absence. It was summer time. Forty years ago people not only 
 dined earlier than they do now, but by daylight ; and after the as- 
 sembled party were seated at table, he amused himself by driving 
 backwards and forwards opposite the dining-room windows. 
 
 ' There was a multitude of such nonsensical stories as these, 
 which one began to hear soon after Ada's birth ; and I believe 
 I have told the worst of them. No doubt, as the things occurred, 
 they must have been vexatious enough, but they do not amount 
 to grievous wrongs. They were faults of temper, not moral 
 delinquencies ; a thousand of them would not constitute an injury. 
 Nor does one know to what extent they may have been provoked. 
 They would, in all probability, have ceased, had they been gently 
 borne with and perhaps were only repeated because the culprit 
 was amused by witnessing their effects. At all events they were 
 no more than a sensible woman, who had either a proper feeling 
 for her husband's reputation, or a due consideration of her own 
 position, would have readily endured ; and a really good wife 
 would never have allowed herself to talk about them. And yet 
 it was by Lady Byron's friends, and as coming immediately from 
 her, that I used to hear them. The complaints, at first so 
 trifling, gradually acquired a more serious character. " Poor 
 Lady Byron was afraid of her life." "Her husband slept with 
 loaded pistols by his bedside, and a dagger under his pillow." 
 Then there came rumours of cruelty no one knew of what 
 kind, or how severe. Nothing was definitely stated. But it was 
 on all hands allowed to be "very bad very bad indeed." And 
 as there was nothing to be known, everybody imagined what 
 they pleased. 
 
 ' But whatever Lord Byron's treatment of his wife may have 
 been, it could not have been all evil. Any injuries she suffered 
 must have occurred during moody and angry fits of temper. 
 They could not have been habitual or frequent. His conduct 
 was not of such a description as to have utterly extinguished 
 whatever love she might have felt at her marriage, or to have
 
 474 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. 
 
 left any sense of terror or aversion behind it. This is evident 
 from facts. Years after they had met for the last time, Lady- 
 Byron went with Mrs. Jameson, from whom I repeat the circum- 
 stance, to see Thorwaldsen's statue of her husband, which was 
 at Sir Richard Westmacott's studio. After looking at it in 
 silence for a few moments, the tears came into her eyes, and she 
 said to her companion, "It is very beautiful, but not so beautiful 
 as my dear Byron." However interrupted by changes of caprice 
 or irritability, the general course of her husband's conduct must 
 have been gentle and tender, or it never would, after so long a 
 cessation of intercourse, have left such kindly impressions behind 
 it. I have, indeed, reason to believe that these feelings of 
 affectionate remembrance lingered in the heart of Lady Byron 
 to the last. Not a fortnight before her death, I dined in com- 
 pany with an old lady who was at the time on a visit to her. 
 On this lady's returning home, and mentioning whom she had 
 met, Lady Byron evinced great curiosity to learn what subjects 
 we had talked about, and what I had heard of them, " because I 
 had been such a friend of her husband's." This instance of 
 fond remembrance, after an interval of more than forty years, in 
 a woman of no very sensitive nature a woman of more intellect 
 than feeling conveys to my mind no slight argument in defence 
 of Byron's conduct as a husband. His wife, though unrelenting, 
 manifestly regretted his loss. May not some touch of remorse 
 for the exile to which she had dismissed him for the fame over 
 which she had cast a cloud for the energies which she had 
 diverted from their course of useful action in the Senate, 1 to be 
 wasted in no honourable idleness abroad and for the so early 
 death to which her unwife-like conduct doomed him, have 
 mingled its bitterness with the pain of that regret ? 
 
 ' But what do I know of Byron ? The ill I will speak of 
 presently. Personally, I know nothing but good of him. Of 
 what he became in his foreign banishment, when removed from 
 all his natural ties and hereditary duties, I, personally, am 
 ignorant. In all probability he deteriorated ; he would have 
 been more than human if he had not. But when I was in the 
 habit of familiarly seeing him, he was kindness itself. At a 
 time when Coleridge was in great embarrassment, -Rogers, when 
 calling on Byron, chanced to meution it. He immediately went 
 
 1 He had made some good speeches in the House.
 
 APPENDIX. 475 
 
 to his writing-desk, and brought back a cheque for a hundred 
 pounds, and insisted on its being forwarded to Coleridge. " I 
 did not like taking it," said Rogers, who told me the story, "for 
 I knew that he was in want of it himself." His servants he 
 treated with a gentle consideration for their feelings which I 
 have seldom witnessed in any other, and they were devoted to 
 him. At Newstead there was an old man who had been butler 
 to his mother, and I have seen Byron, as the old man waited 
 behind his chair at dinner, pour out a glass of wine and pass it 
 to him when he thought we were too much engaged in conversa- 
 tion to observe what he was doing. The transaction was a thing 
 of custom ; and both parties seemed to flatter themselves that it 
 was clandestinely effected. A hideous old woman, who had 
 been brought in to nurse him when he was unwell at one of his 
 lodgings, and whom few would have cared to retain about them 
 longer than her services were required, was carried with him, in 
 improved attire, to his chambers in the Albany, and was seen, 
 after his marriage, gorgeous in black silk at his house in Picca- 
 dilly. She had done him a service, and he could not forget it. 
 Of his attachment to his friends, no one can read Moore's Life 
 and entertain a doubt. He required a great deal from them 
 not more, perhaps, than he, from the abundance of his love, 
 freely and fully gave but more than they had to return. The 
 ardour of his nature must have been in a normal state of disap- 
 pointment. He imagined higher qualities in them than they 
 possessed, and must very often have found his expectations sadly 
 balked by the dulness of talk, the perversity of taste, or the want 
 of enthusiasm, which he encountered on a better or rather longer 
 acquaintance. But, notwithstanding, I have never yet heard 
 anybody complain that Byron had once appeared to entertain a 
 regard for him, and had afterwards capriciously cast him off.' 
 
 But Harness is not blind to Byron's infirmities. 
 
 ' Byron had one pre-eminent fault a fault which must be 
 considered as deeply criminal by every one who does not, as I do, 
 believe it to have resulted from monomania. He had a morbid 
 love of a bad reputation. There was hardly an offence of which 
 he would not, with perfect indifference, accuse himself. An old 
 schoolfellow, who met him on the Continent, told me that he 
 would continually write paragraphs against himself in the 
 foreign journals, and delight in their republication by the English
 
 476 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 newspapers as in the success of a practical joke. When any- 
 body has related anything discreditable of Byron, assuring me 
 that it must be true, for he had heard it from himself, I have 
 always felt that he could not have spoken with authority, and 
 that, in all probability, the tale was a pure invention. If I could 
 remember, and were willing to repeat, the various misdoings 
 which I have from time to time heard him attribute to himself, I 
 could fill a volume. But I never believed them. I very soon 
 became aware of this strange idiosyncrasy. It puzzled me to 
 account for it ; but there it was a sort of diseased and distorted 
 vanity. The same eccentric spirit would induce him to report 
 things which were false with regard to his family, which anybody 
 else would have concealed though true. He told me more than 
 once that his father was insane and killed himself.' 
 
 ' What Byron's reasons could have been for thus calumniating, 
 not only himself, but the blood that was flowing in his veins, 
 who can divine ? But, for some reason or other, it seemed to be 
 his determined purpose to keep himself unknown to the great 
 body of his fellow-creatures to present himself to their view 
 in moral masquerade, and to identify himself in their imagina- 
 tions with Cbilde Harold and the Corsair, between which 
 characters and his own as God and education had made it the 
 most microscopic inspection would fail to discern a single point 
 of resemblance. 
 
 ' Except this love of an ill name this tendency to malign him- 
 self this hypocrisy reversed, I have no personal knowledge 
 whatever of any evil act or evil disposition of Lord Byron's. I 
 once said this to a gentleman 1 who was well acquainted with 
 Lord Byron's London life. He expressed himself astonished at 
 what I said. "Well," I replied, " do you know any harm of him 
 but what he told you himself? ' " Oh, yes, a hundred things ! " 
 " I don't want you to tell me a hundred things, I shall be content 
 with one." Here the conversation was interrupted. We were 
 at dinner there was a large party, and the subject was again 
 renewed at table. But afterwards in the drawing-room, Mr. 
 Drury came up to me and said, " I have been thinking of what 
 you were saying at dinner. I do not know any harm of Byron 
 but what he has told me of himself." 
 
 1 The Rev. Henry Drury.
 
 APPENDIX. 477 
 
 II. 
 
 No Life of Lord Byron can be complete without the 
 following beautiful tribute by Lord Broughton. It is 
 extracted from the pamphlet originally printed for private 
 distribution in 1844, but published in the Appendix to his 
 ' Travels in Albania/ 2 vols. 8vo., London, 1855, in which 
 Lord Broughton defended his friend from the charge of 
 irreligion brought against him in the House of Lords by 
 Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London. 
 
 ' Lord Byron had hard measure dealt to him in his lifetime, but 
 he did not die without leaving behind him friends, deeply and 
 affectionately attached friends, whom the Bishop himself would 
 despise if they suffered this attack to pass unnoticed. Those 
 friends, however, do not prefer their late much-loved associate to 
 truth they would not sacrifice the best interests of society at the 
 shrine even of his surpassing fame. They were not blind to the 
 defects of his character, nor of his writings, but they know that 
 some of the gravest accusations levelled against him had no 
 foundation in fact ; and perhaps the time may come, when justice 
 may be done to the dead without injury to the feelings of the 
 living. Even now it may be permitted to say something of him, 
 and it will be said by one who, perhaps, knew him as well as he 
 was known by any human being. 
 
 ' Lord Byron had failings many failings certainly, but he was 
 untainted with any of the baser vices ; and his virtues, his good 
 qualities, were all of the higher order. He was honourable and 
 open in all his dealings he was generous, and he was kind. He 
 was affected by the distress, and rarer still he was pleased with 
 the prosperity of others. Tender-hearted he was to a degree not 
 usual with our sex and he shrunk, with feminine sensibility, 
 from the sight of cruelty. He was true- spoken he was affec- 
 tionate he was very brave, if that be any praise ; but his courage 
 was not the result of physical coolness or indifference to danger ; 
 on the contrary, he entertained apprehensions and adopted pre- 
 cautions, of which he made no secret, and was by no means 
 ashamed. His calmness and presence of mind in the hour of 
 peril, were the offspring of reflection and of a fixed resolution to 
 act becomingly and well. He was alive to every indication of
 
 478 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 good feeling in others a generous or noble sentiment, a trait of 
 tenderness or devotion, not only in real, but in imaginary cha- 
 racters, affected him deeply even to tears. He was, both by 
 his habits and his nature, incapable of any mean compliance, any 
 undue submission towards those who command reverence and 
 exact flattery from men of the highest genius ; and it will be the 
 eternal praise of his writings, as it was one of the merits of his 
 conversation, that he threw no lustre on any exploit, however 
 brilliant, any character, however exalted, which had not con- 
 tributed to the happiness or welfare of mankind. 
 
 ' Lord Byron was totally free from envy and from jealousy ; and 
 both in public and in private, spoke of the literary merits of his 
 contemporaries in terms which did justice to them and honour to 
 himself. 1 He was well aware of his own great reputation ; but 
 he was neither vain-glorious, nor over-bearing ; nor attached to 
 his productions even that value which was universally granted to 
 them, and which they will, probably, for ever maintain. 
 
 ' Of his lesser qualities very little need be said, because his most 
 inveterate detractors have done justice to his powers of pleasing, 
 and to the irresistible charms of his general deportment. There 
 was, indeed, something about him, not to be definitely described, 
 but almost universally felt, which captivated those around him, 
 and impressed them, in spite of occasional distrusts, with an 
 attachment not only friendly but fixed. Part of this fascination 
 may, doubtless, be ascribed to the entire self-abandonment, the 
 incautious, it may be said the dangerous, sincerity of his private 
 conversation ; but his very weaknesses were amiable ; and, as has 
 been said of a portion of his virtues, were of a feminine character 
 so that the affection felt for him was as that for a favourite and 
 sometimes froward sister. 
 
 ' In mixed society Lord Byron was not talkative, neither did he 
 attempt to surprise by pointed or by humorous remarks ; but in 
 all companies he held his own, and that too without unbecoming 
 rivalry with his seniors in age and reputation, and without any 
 offensive condescension towards his inferior associates. In more 
 familiar intercourse he was a gay companion and a free, but he 
 never transgressed the bounds of good breeding, even for a 
 
 1 An exception must, of course, be made as regards Southey, who 
 assailed him personally with unsparing bitterness, and whose merit he 
 would never acknowledge*
 
 APPENDIX. 4 79 
 
 moment. Indeed he was, in the best sense of the word, a 
 gentleman.' 
 
 III. 
 
 The reminiscences of Mr. Finlaj and Colonel Stanhope 
 commend themselves not only by their intrinsic interest ; 
 but having received the * imprimatur ' of Lord Broughton, 
 as we have seen in the extract given above from the 
 ' Recollections of a Long Life,' they are here subjoined, 
 with some unimportant omissions, as valuable aids towards 
 the understanding of Byron's character. 
 
 (1) 
 
 Extracts of Letters from Mr. George Finlay to Colonel Stanhope. 
 ' I met Lord B. for the first time at Metaxata, in Cephalonia, in 
 the month of October, 1823. On calling, I found his Lordship 
 had ridden out with Count Gamba ; I resolved to wait for his 
 return, and was shown his only public room, which was small 
 and scantily furnished in the plainest manner. One table was 
 covered for dinner, another and a chair were strewed with books, 
 and many were ranged in order on the floor. I found the greater 
 part of Walter Scott's novels, Mitford's " History of Greece," 
 Sismondi's " Italian Republics," and an English translation of 
 " Pausanias." After some time, his Lordship returned, and on 
 entering the room, regarded me with a fixed, and it appeared to 
 me, an anxious stare. I presented a letter of introduction, and 
 he sat down upon the sofa, still examining me ; I felt the reception 
 more poetical than agreeable : but he immediately commenced 
 his fascinating conversation. I dined with him, and we naturally 
 conversed almost entirely about Greece ; yet chiefly on the 
 manners of the people, their character, the difficulties of travelling, 
 and the antiquities. I thought he seemed to regard my visit too 
 much in the light of a tour, and asked for information on the 
 state of parties in the Morea. He gave me it instantly ; and in 
 the course of conversation remarked, that I was far too enthu- 
 siastic, and too fresh from Germany : he exclaimed, laughing 
 "You have too much Schwarmerey." I replied, that I expected 
 to find the Greeks the same canaille that existed in the days of 
 Themistocles. Lord B. smiled, and said, " My opinion of the 
 Greeks remains unchanged I did not, indeed, think that with
 
 480 LIFE OF LOKD BYKON. 
 
 their character they would have achieved what they have done so 
 soon ; yet I always thought they deserved liberty, and they have 
 proved it. The Turks, however, are far better fellows, far more 
 gentlemanly, and I used to like them better when amongst them." 
 Lord Byron uttered this in an unemphatical, and rather affectedly 
 monotonous tone. I afterwards observed, that he adopted this 
 tone not unfrequently, whenever he uttered any thing which 
 diverged from the commonest style of conversation. Whenever 
 he commenced a sentence which showed that the subject had 
 engaged his mind, and that his thoughts were sublime, he checked 
 himself, and finished a broken sentence, either with an indifferent 
 smile, or with this annoying tone. I thought he had adopted it 
 to conceal his feelings, when he feared to trust his tongue with 
 the sentiments of his heart. Often, it was evident, he did it to 
 avoid betraying the author, or rather the poet. In mere satire 
 and wit his genius ran wild, even in conversation. I left him 
 quite delighted, charmed to find so great a man so agreeable, 
 yet astonished that the author of " Childe Harold," the " Corsair," 
 and " Manfred," should have said so little worth remembering. 
 
 ' The next time we met was out riding. Lord Byron told me 
 he had been struck at first by my resemblance to Shelley. " I 
 thought you were Shelley's ghost," were his words. The re- 
 semblance, though it soon wore off, had likewise struck one of 
 his Italian servants, who had called me the gentleman who is so 
 like Mr. Shelley. I said I knew little of Shelley's works, but 
 had been delighted with his translation of " Walpurgisnacht." 
 Lord Byron " Shelley was really a most extraordinary genius ; 
 but those who know him only from his works, know but half his 
 merits : it was from his thoughts and his conversation poor 
 Shelley ought to be judged. He was romance itself in his 
 manners and his style of thinking. He was, however, quite mad 
 with his metaphysics, and a bigot in the least pardonable way." 
 
 ' We then conversed about Germany and its literature, and I 
 found, to my astonishment, Lord Byron knew nothing of the 
 language, though he was perfectly acquainted with its literature ; 
 with Goethe in particular, and with every passage of "Faust." 
 He said nothing could be more sublime than the words of the 
 Spirit of the Earth to Faust, 1 " Thou resemblest the spirit of thy 
 
 1 [ 'Du prleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst, 
 
 Nicht mir ! ' 
 Faust, erster Theil. (Goethe, Sammt. Werke, vol. xi. p. 24.)]
 
 APPENDIX. 481 
 
 imagination, not me." I involuntarily repeated it in German, 
 and he said, "Yes, those are the words." The scene of the 
 monkeys had made a considerable impression on him, and I 
 remember, on my saying I snppose Goethe meant to represent 
 men transformed into monkeys, he exclaimed, " Suppose no- such 
 thing suppose them veritable monkeys, and the satire is finer 
 and deeper." After a few words on " Wilhelm Meister," I asked 
 if he had read the " Wahlverwandtschaften." He said, he did 
 not recollect the hard word, but inquired the signification of it. 
 I gave some stupid translation, as the " Choice Relationships." 
 Lord Byron said, "Yes, yes, the Affinities of Choice I recollect 
 reading a translation, which I should think was not a very good 
 one, for some parts seemed to border on the unintelligible." I 
 replied, that I thought some parts of the original bordered on it 
 likewise, though, perhaps, they were not within its limits. 
 
 ' The review of Goethe's " Aus Meinem Leben " in the Edin- 
 burgh, he said, " was harsh and unfeeling. The literature of 
 Europe is under obligations to Goethe, which entitled him to 
 more respect ; but often less ability is required to misrepresent 
 and ridicule than to understand genius." 
 
 ' I told Lord Byron I had seen the dedication of " Sardana- 
 palus " on its way to Goethe before it had been printed, and the 
 letter Goethe had written to the gentleman who had forwarded 
 it, in which he mentioned that he had once commenced a trans- 
 lation of the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Lord 
 Byron pulled up his horse, and exclaimed, with eagerness, " He 
 had, had he ? and what did the old gentleman mean by that ? " 
 I said I supposed he was struck by such an extraordinary 
 specimen of early genius ; but that he had abandoned his design, 
 finding he could not understand some passages without assistance 
 Lord Byron : '-No, that is not the reason : you don't understand 
 the tricks of authorship, but I can let you into the secret ; there 
 was more of the devil in me than in Goethe, and he was content 
 to borrow my weapons against the Review, though I had wished 
 to suppress the work. I remember another anecdote of Goethe. 
 On the publication of ' Manfred,' Goethe gave translations of 
 those passages which he considered bore the greatest resemblance 
 to 'Faust,' to show my plagiarisms." 1 said, "I am sure, my 
 Lord, you have no fear of being thought a plagiarist." He replied, 
 
 I I
 
 482 LIFE OF LOED BYEON. 
 
 " No, not much, though they seem to be trying hard to prove me 
 one, in England." ' 
 
 ' One day, at Cephalonia, after dinner, as I was going to ride 
 back to Argostoli, Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Scott called ; Lord 
 Byron always took a siesta, and I thought he would not like the 
 interruption, but I was wrong. The subject they called about 
 was interesting some people who had been wounded in making 
 the road, whom Lord Byron's physician attended, under their 
 direction ; and Dr. Kennedy had likewise much religious conver- 
 sation with his Lordship. I own I felt astonished to hear Lord 
 Byron submit to lectures on his life, and his vanity, and the use- 
 lessness of his talents, which made me stare. The conversation 
 was excessively amusing. Dr. Kennedy had given Lord Byron 
 some silly tracts which, to my utter astonishment, I found Byron 
 had read. He flew to his room to show a passage of Sherlock, 
 quoted in one, which was in opposition to something urged by 
 the Doctor, and forced Kennedy to own he had not read them 
 himself, though he had given them to Lord Byron for his conver- 
 sion. There was no argument, for though Byron was extremely 
 fond of conversing on religious subjects, he seldom argued ; single 
 objections he would start, and strive to raise perplexities, and 
 lead his adversary into contradictions, but I never heard him on 
 any occasion enter the field as a professed deist. I remember he 
 asked the Doctor if he believed in ghosts, read the account of the 
 appearance of Samuel's spirit to Saul, and said it was one of the 
 most sublime passages in Scripture ; indeed, as has been often 
 remarked, few people were better acquainted with the Scriptures ; 
 and I have heard him say, that very few days ever passed without 
 his reading a chapter in a little pocket-bible, given him by Mrs. 
 Leigh immediately before he left England, and which he always 
 kept in his bed-room. 
 
 ' Before the end of the conversation with Kennedy, however, 
 he grew very warm talked a little too violently, but calmed 
 again asked Kennedy if he could not be a good Christian 
 without believing in eternal perdition ; and said he knew few he 
 could abandon to such a fate. Kennedy referred to Scripture 
 Byron: "Well, I cannot believe that." We parted, and he 
 politely insisted on another visit, as he said, to complete his con- 
 version.'
 
 APPENDIX. 483 
 
 ' My dear Stanhope, I arrived at Missolonghi at the latter 
 end of February, a few days after your departure. Lord Byron 
 almost immediately informed me of the violent fit of illness which 
 had attacked him in your room a few days before ; he declared 
 ho believed it to be epilepsy, and seemed seriously alarmed. I 
 conversed with him very often on the subject, and, for a month 
 or more, he continually expressed his fears of a return of the fit. 
 His own physician seemed, for a few days, to entertain the same 
 opinion as his Lordship ; but Millingen constantly asserted that 
 the fit was not epilepsy. I once remarked that epilepsy was by no 
 means a very dangerous disease, and that a man might live very 
 long under it without suffering any very serious inconvenience, 
 giving the instance of Ca3sar. Lord Byron replied, very solemnly, 
 " If it really prove epilepsy, I shall never have more than one fit, 
 for I feel I could starve mysulf." He soon promised to send 
 Odysseus what he could spare of the Committee's stores, and 
 appeared anxious to attend the Congress at Salona, for the pur- 
 pose of inviting him. and Mavrocordato to which, I had visited 
 Missolonghi.' 
 
 ' In the evenings, Lord Byron was generally extremely com- 
 municative, and talked much of his youthful scenes at Cambridge, 
 Brighton, and London ; spoke very often of his friends, Mr. 
 Hobhouse and Mr. Scrope B. Davies told many anecdotes of 
 himself which are well known, and many which were amusing 
 from his narration, but which would lose their interest from 
 another ; but what astonished me the most was the ease with 
 which he spoke of all those reports which were spread by his 
 enemies he gave his denials and explanations with the frankness 
 of an unconcerned person. 
 
 ' I often spoke to him about Newstead Abbey, which I had 
 visited in 1821, a few months before leaving England. On 
 informing him of the repairs and improvements which were 
 then going on, he said, if he had been rich enough he should 
 have liked to have kept it as the old abbey ; but he enjoyed the 
 excellent bargain he had made at the sale. A solicitor sent him 
 a very long bill, and, on his grumbling at the amount, he said he 
 was silenced by a letter, reminding him that he had received 
 20,0001. forfeit-money from the first purchaser. I mentioned 
 the picture of his bear in the cottage near the lodge the 
 
 n2*
 
 484 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Newfoundland dog and the verses on its tomb. He said, New- 
 foundland dogs had twice saved his life, and that he could not 
 live without one. 
 
 ' He spoke frequently of the time he lived at Aberdeen. Their 
 house was near the college. He described the place, but I have 
 forgotten it. He said his mother's " lassack " used to put him 
 to bed at a very early hour, and then go to converse with her 
 lover ; he had heard the house was haunted, and sometimes used 
 to get out of bed and run along the lobby in his shirt, till he saw 
 a light, and there remain standing till he was so cold he was 
 forced to go to bed again. One night the servant returning, he 
 grew frightened and ran towards his room ; the maid saw him 
 and fled more frightened than he ; she declared she had seen a 
 ghost. Lord Byron said, he was so frightened at the maid, he 
 kept the secret till she was turned away ; and, he added, he never 
 since kept a secret half so long. 
 
 ' The first passion he ever felt was for a young lady who was 
 on a visit to his mother while they lived in Scotland ; he was, at 
 the time, about six years old, and the young lady about nine, yet 
 he was almost ill on her leaving his mother's house to return 
 home. He told me if I should ever meet the lady (giving me 
 her address), to ask her if she remembers him. 
 
 ' On some conversation about the " English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers," he gave, as a reason for his attacking many of the 
 persons included, that he was informed, some time before the 
 publication of the review, that the next number was to contain 
 an article on his poems which had been read at Holland House. 
 " Judge of my fever ; was it not a pleasant situation for a young 
 author ? " 
 
 ' In conversation he used to deliver very different opinions on 
 many authors from those contained in his works ; in the one case 
 he might be guided more by his judgment, and, in the other, 
 submit entirely to his own particular taste. I have quoted his 
 writings in opposition to his words, and he replied, " Never mind 
 what I print ; that is not what I think." He certainly did not 
 consider much of the poetry of the present day as " possessing 
 buoyancy enough to float down the stream of time." I remarked 
 he ought really to alter the passage in the preface of " Marino 
 Faliero," on living dramatic talent he exclaimed, laughing, " Do 
 you mean me to erase the name of moral me ? " In this manner
 
 APPENDIX. 485 
 
 he constantly distinguished Milman, alluding to some nonsense 
 in the " Quarterly Review." 
 
 ' He was extremely amused with Blackwood's Magazine, and 
 read it whenever he could get a number ; he has frequently 
 repeated to me passages of Ensign O'Doherty's poetry, which I 
 had not read, and expressed great astonishment at the ability 
 displayed by the author. 
 
 ' On a gentleman present once asking his opinion of the works 
 of a female author of some note, he said, " A bad imitation of me 
 all pause and start." 
 
 ' On my borrowing Mitford's " History of Greece " from him, 
 and saying I bad read it once, and intended commencing it again 
 in Greece ; he said, " I hate the book ; it makes you too well 
 acquainted with the ancient Greeks, and robs antiquity of all its 
 charms. History, in his hands, has no poetry." 
 
 * I was in the habit of praising Sir William Gell's " Itineraries " 
 to Lord B., and he, on the-other hand, took every opportunity of 
 attacking his " Argolis," though his attacks were chiefly directed 
 against the drawings, and particularly the view of the bay. He 
 told me he was the author of the article on Sir W. Gell's 
 " Argolis " in the " Monthly Review ; " and said he had written 
 two other articles in this work, but I have forgotten them. 
 
 ' Whenever the drama was mentioned, he defended the unities 
 most eagerly, and usually attacked Shakspeare. A gentleman pre- 
 sent, on hearing his anti-Shakspeareian opinions, rushed out of the 
 room, and afterwards entered his protest most anxiously against 
 such doctrines. Lord B. was quite delighted with this, and 
 redoubled the severity of his criticism. I had heard that Shelley 
 once said to Lord B. in his extraordinary way, " B., you are a 
 most wonderful man." " How ? " " You are envious of Shak- 
 speare." I, therefore, never expressed the smallest astonishment 
 at hearing -Shakspeare abused ; but remarked, it was curious 
 that Lord B. was so strangely conversant in an author of such 
 inferior merit, and that he should so continually have the most 
 melodious lines of Shakspeare in his mouth, as examples of blank 
 verse. He said once, when we were alone, " I like to astonish 
 Englishmen : they come abroad full of Shakspeare, and contempt 
 for the dramatic literature of other nations; they think it 
 blasphemy to find a fault in his writings, which are full of them. 
 People talk of the tendency of my writings, and yet read the
 
 486 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 sonnets to Master Hughes." Lord B. certainly did not admire 
 the French tragedians enthusiastically. 
 
 ' I said to him, there is a subject for the drama which I believe 
 has never been touched, and which, I think, affords the greatest 
 possible scope for the representation of all that is sublime in 
 human character but then it would require an abandonment of 
 the unities the attack of Maurice of Saxony on Charles V. 
 which saved the Protestant religion ; it is a subject of more than 
 national interest. He said it was certainly a fine subject ; but he 
 held that the drama could not exist without a strict adherence to 
 the unities ; and besides, he knew well he had failed in his 
 dramatic attempts, and that he intended to make no more. He 
 said he thought " Sardanapalus " his best tragedy. 
 
 4 The memory of Lord B. was very extraordinary ; it was not 
 the mere mechanical memory which can repeat the advertisements 
 of a newspaper and such nonsense ; but of all the innumerable 
 novels which he had read, he seeme*d to recollect perfectly the 
 story and every scene of merit. 
 
 ' Once I had a bet with Mr. Fowke that Maurice of Orange 
 was not the grandson of Maurice of Saxony, as it ran in my head 
 that Maurice was a son of Count Horn's sister. On applying for 
 a decision of our bet to Lord B. he immediately told me I was 
 wrong, that William of Orange was thrice married, and that he 
 had Maurice by a daughter of Maurice of Saxony : he repeated 
 the names of all the children. I said, " This is the most extra- 
 ordinary instance of your memory I ever heard. " He replied, " It's 
 not very extraordinary I read it all a few days ago in Watson's 
 Philip II., and you will find it in a note at the bottom of the last 
 page but one (I think he said) of the second volume." He went 
 to his bed-room, and brought the book; in which we found the 
 note he had repeated. It seemed to me wonderful enough that 
 such a man could recollect the names of William of Orange's 
 children and their families even for ten minutes.' 
 
 ' But I must finish, for I am sure I have fatigued you. I shall 
 feel very anxious to see every thing that is published in England 
 concerning Lord Byron though I believe that, for some time, he 
 will not be dealt more fairly with than during his life. Time, 
 however, will soon put an end to all undue admiration and 
 malicious cant, and the world will ultimately form their estimate 
 of Lord Byron's character from his writings and his public
 
 APPENDIX. 487 
 
 conduct ; they can then justly enough estimate the greatness of 
 his genius and his mind, and the real extent of his faults. The 
 ridiculous calumnies which have found a moment's credit will 
 very soon be utterly forgotten. Nor will it be from the cursory 
 memoirs or anecdotes of his contemporaries that his character can 
 be drawn. Those only who were personally acquainted with him 
 can be aware of the influence which every passing event had over 
 his mind, or know the innumerable modifications under which his 
 character was daily presenting itself: even his writings took a 
 shade of colouring from those around him. His passions and 
 feelings were so lively that each occurrence made a strong 
 impression, and his conduct became so entirely governed by 
 impulse that he immediately and vehemently declared his senti- 
 ments. It is not wonderful, therefore, that instances of his incon- 
 sistency should be found ; though in the most important actions 
 of his life he has acted with no common consistency, and his 
 death attests his sincerity. To attempt by scattered facts to 
 illustrate his character is really useless. A hundred could be 
 immediately told to prove him a miser ; as many to prove him 
 the most generous of men ; an equal number, perhaps, to show 
 he was nervously alive to the distresses of others, or heartlessly 
 unfeeling ; at times, that he indulged in every desire ; at others, 
 that he pursued the most determined system of self-denial ; that 
 he ridiculed his friends, or defended them with the greatest 
 anxiety. At one time, he was all enthusiasm ; at another, perfect 
 indifference on the very same subject. All this would be true, 
 and yet our inference most probably incorrect. Such hearts as 
 Lord B.'s must become old at an early age, from the continual 
 excitement to which they are exposed, and those only can judge 
 fairly of him, even from his personal acquaintance, who knew 
 him from his youth, when his feelings were warmer than they 
 could TJe latterly. From some of those who have seen the whole 
 course of his wonderful existence, we may, indeed, expect infor- 
 mation ; and it is information, not scandal, that will be sought 
 
 for. 
 
 ' I am, &c., yours, most sincerely, 
 
 ' GEORGE FINLAY. 
 
 ' Tripolitza, June, 1824.'
 
 488 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 (2.) 
 
 Sketch of Lord Byron by Colonel Leicester Stanhope. 
 
 ' IN much of what certain authors have lately said in praise of 
 Lord Byron, I concur. The public are indebted to them for 
 useful information concerning that extraordinary man's biography, 
 I do not, however, think that any of them have given of him a 
 full and masterly description. It would require a person of his 
 own wonderful capacity to draw his character, and even he could 
 not perform this task otherwise than by continuing the history 
 of what passed in his mind ; for his character was as versatile as 
 his genius. From his writings, therefore, he must be judged, and 
 from them can he alone be understood. His character was, 
 indeed, poetic, like his works, and he partook of the virtues and 
 vices of the heroes of his imagination. Lord Byron was original 
 and eccentric in all things, and his conduct and his writings were 
 unlike those of other men. He might have said with Rousseau, 
 " Mai seuL Je sens mon cceur et je connois les hommes. Je ne suis 
 fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent. Si je ne vaux pas mieux, 
 au moins, je suis autre. Si la Nature a bien ou mal fait de 
 briser le moule dans leguel ellc m'a jette, c'est dont on ne peut 
 juger qu'apres tn'avoir lit" All that can be hoped is, that, 
 after a number of the ephemeral sketches of Lord Byron have 
 been published, and ample information concerning him obtained, 
 some master hand will undertake the task of drawing his portrait. 
 If anything like justice be done to Lord Byron, his character 
 will appear far more extraordinary than any his imagination 
 has produced, and not less wonderful than those sublime and 
 inimitable sketches created and painted by the fanciful pen of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 ' There were two circumstances which appear to me to have 
 had a powerful influence on Lord Byron's conduct. I allude to 
 his lameness and his marriage. The deformity of his foot con- 
 stantly preyed on his" spirits and soured his temper. It is 
 extraordinary, however, and contrary, I believe, to the conduct of 
 the generality of lame persons, that he pitied, sympathised, and 
 befriended those who laboured under similar defects. 
 
 ' With respect to Lady Byron, her image appeared to be rooted
 
 APPENDIX. 489 
 
 in his mind. She had wounded Lord Byron's pride by having 
 refused his first offer of marriage ; by having separated herself 
 from him whom others assiduously courted ; and by having 
 resisted all the efforts of his genius to compel her again to yield 
 to his dominion. Had Lady Byron been submissive, could she 
 have stooped to become a caressing slave, like other ingenious 
 slaves she might have governed her lord and master. But no; 
 she had a mind too great, and was too much of an Englishwoman 
 to bow so low. These contrarieties set Lord Byron's heart on 
 fire, roused all his passions, gave birth, no doubt, to many of his 
 sublimest thoughts, and impelled him impetuously forward in his 
 zig-zag career. When angry or humorous, she became the 
 subject of his wild sport ; at other times, she seemed, though he 
 loved her not, to be the mistress of his feelings, and one whom 
 he in vain attempted to cast from his thoughts. Thus, in a 
 frolicsome tone, I have heard him sketch characters ; and, 
 speaking of a certain acquaintance, say, " With the exception of 
 Southey and Lady Byron, there is no one I hate so much ! " 
 This was a noisy shot a sort of a feu de joie, that inflicted no 
 wound, and left no scar behind. Lord Byron was in reality a 
 good-natured man, and it was a violence to his nature, which he 
 seldom practised, either to conceal what he thought, or to 
 harbour revenge. In one conversation which I had with Lord 
 Byron, he dwelt much upon the acquirements and virtues of 
 Lady Byron, and even said she had committed no fault but that 
 of having married him. The truth is, that he was not formed 
 for marriage. His riotous genius could not bear restraint. N"o 
 woman could have lived with him but one devoid of, or of 
 subdued, feelings an Asiatic slave. Lord Byron, it is well 
 known, was passionately fond of his child ; of this he .gave me 
 the following proof. He showed me a miniature of Ada, as also 
 a clevel* description of her character, drawn by her mother, and 
 forwarded to him by the person he most esteemed, his amiable 
 sister. After I had examined the letter, while reflecting on its 
 contents, I gazed intently on the picture ; Lord Byron, observing 
 me in deep meditation, impatiently said, " Well, well, what do 
 you think of Ada ? " I replied, " If these are true representa- 
 tions of Ada, and are not drawn to flatter your vanity, you have 
 engrafted on her your virtues and your failings. She is in mind 
 and feature the very image of her father." Never did I see man
 
 490 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. 
 
 feel more pleasure than Lord Byron felt at this remark ; his eyes 
 lightened with ecstasy. 
 
 ' Lord Byron's mental and personal courage was unlike that of 
 other men. To the superficial observer, his conduct seemed to 
 be quite unsettled : this was really the case to a certain extent. 
 His genius was boundless and excursive, and in conversation his 
 tongue went rioting on 
 
 From grave to gay, from lively to severe. 
 
 Still, upon the whole, no man was more constant, and, I may 
 almost say, more obstinate in the pursuit of some great objects. 
 For example, in religion and politics, he seemed firm as a rock, 
 though like a rock he was subjected to occasional rude shocks, 
 the convulsions of agitated nature.' 
 
 ' Lord Byron was no party politician. Lord Clare was the person 
 whom he liked best, because he was his old school acquaint- 
 ance. Mr. John Cam Hobhouse was his long-tried, his esteemed, 
 and valued literary and personal friend. Death, has severed 
 these ; but there is a soul in friendship that can never die. No 
 man ever chose a nobler friend. Mr. Hobhouse has given many 
 proofs of this, and among others, I saw him, from motives of 
 high honour, destroy a beautiful poem of Lord Byron's, and, 
 perhaps, the last he ever composed. The same reason that 
 induced Mr. H. to tear this fine manuscript will, of course, 
 prevent him or me from ever divulging its contents. Mr. 
 Douglas Kinnaird was another for whom Lord Byron entertained 
 the sincerest esteem : no less on account of his high social 
 qualities than as a clear-sighted man of business, on whose dis- 
 cretion lie could implicitly rely. Sir Francis Burdett was the 
 politician whom he most admired. He used to say, " Burdett is 
 an Englishman of the old school." He compared the Baronet to 
 the statesmen of Charles the First's time, whom he considered 
 the sternest and loftiest spirits that Britain had produced. Lord 
 Byron entertained high aristocratic notions, and had much 
 family pride. He admired, notwithstanding, the American 
 institutions, but did not consider them of so democratic a nature 
 as is generally imagined. He found, he said, many Englishmen 
 and English writers more embued with liberal notions than 
 those Americans and American authors with whom he was ac- 
 quainted,'
 
 APPENDIX. 491 
 
 ' Lord Byron was chivalrous even to Quixotism. This might 
 have lowered him in the estimation of the wise, had he not given 
 some extraordinary proofs of the noblest courage. For example, 
 the moment he recovered from that alarming fit which took place 
 in my room, he inquired again and again, with the utmost com- 
 posure, whether he was in danger. If in danger, he desired the 
 physician honestly to apprise him of it, for he feared not death. 
 Soon after this dreadful paroxysm, when Lord Byron, faint with 
 over-bleeding, was lying on his sick bed, with his whole nervous 
 system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliots, covered with 
 dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing 
 their costly arms, and loudly demanding their wild rights. 
 Lord Byron, electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover 
 from his sickness ; and the more the Suliots raged, the more his 
 calm courage triumphed. The scene was truly sublime. 
 
 ' At times, Lord Byron would become disgusted with the 
 Greeks, on account of their horrid cruelties, their delays, their 
 importuning him for money, and their not fulfilling their 
 promises. That he should feel thus was very natural, although 
 all this is just what might be anticipated from a people breaking 
 loose from ages of bondage. We are too apt to expect the same 
 conduct from men educated as slaves (and here be it remembered 
 that the Greeks were the Helots of slaves) that we find in those 
 who have, from their infancy, breathed the wholesome atmosphere 
 of liberty. 
 
 ' Most persons assume a virtuous character. Lord Byron's- 
 ambition, on the contrary, was to make the world imagine that 
 he was a sort of " Satan," though occasionally influenced by lofty 
 sentiments to the performance of great actions. Fortunately for 
 his fame, he possessed another quality, by which he stood com- 
 pletely unmasked. He was the most ingenuous of men, and his 
 nature, in the main good, always triumphed over his acting. 
 
 ' There was nothing that he detested more than to be thought 
 merely a great poet, though he did not wish to be esteemed 
 inferior as a dramatist to Shakspeare. Like Voltaire, he was 
 unconsciously jealous of, and for that reason abused, our im- 
 mortal bard. His mind was absorbed in detecting Shakspeare's 
 glaring defects, instead of being overpowered by his wonderful 
 creative and redeeming genius. He assured me, that he was so far 
 from being a "heaven-born poet," that he was not conscious of
 
 492 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 possessing any talent in that way when a boy. This gift had 
 burst upon his mind unexpectedly, as if by inspiration, and had 
 excited his wonder. He also declared, that he had no love or 
 enthusiasm for poetry. I shook my head, doubtingly, and said 
 to him, that although he had displayed a piercing sagacity in. 
 reading and developing the characters of others, he knew but 
 little of his own. He replied, " Often have I told you that I am 
 a perfect sceptic. I have no fixed opinions ; that is my character. 
 Like others I am not in love with what I possess, but with that 
 which I do not possess, and which is difficult to obtain." Lord 
 Byron was for shining as a hero of the first order. He wished 
 to take an active part in the civil and military government of 
 Greece. On this subject he consulted me ; I condemned the 
 direct assumption of command by a foreigner, fearing that it 
 would expose him to envy and danger without promoting the 
 cause. I wished him, by a career of perfect disinterestedness, to 
 preserve a commanding influence over the Greeks, and to act as 
 their great mediator. Lord Byron listened to me with unusual 
 and courteous politeness, for he suspected my motives he 
 thought me envious jealous of his in creasing power; and though 
 he did not disregard, did not altogether follow my advice. I was 
 not, however, to be disarmed by politeness or suspicions ; they 
 touched me not, for my mind was occupied with loftier thoughts. 
 The attack was renewed the next day in a mild tone. The 
 collision, however, of Lord Byron's arguments, sparkling with 
 jests, and mine, regardless of his brilliancy and satire, all 
 earnestness, ended as usual in a storm. Though most anxious 
 to assume high power, Lord Byron was still modest. He said to 
 me, laughing, that if Napier came, he would supersede himself, as 
 governor and commander of Western Greece, in favour of that 
 distinguished officer. I laughed at this whimsical expression till 
 I made Lord Byron laugh too, and repeat over again that he 
 would " supersede himself." 
 
 ' The mind of Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and 
 wealth, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful, but ever 
 threatening. It ran swift as the lightning from one subject to 
 another, and occasionally burst forth in passionate throes of 
 intellect, nearly allied to madness. A striking instance of this 
 sort of eruption I shall mention. Lord Byron's apartments were 
 immediately over mine at Missolonghi. In the dead of the night,
 
 APPENDIX. 493 
 
 I was frequently startled from my sleep by the thunders of his 
 Lordship's voice, either raging with anger or roaring with 
 laughter, and rousing friends, servants, and, indeed, all the 
 inmates of the dwelling from their repose. Even when in the 
 utmost danger, Lord Byron contemplated death with calm 
 philosophy. He was, however, superstitious, and dreadfully 
 alarmed at the idea of going MAD, which he predicted would be his 
 sad destiny. 
 
 ' As a companion, no one could be more amusing ; he had 
 neither pedantry nor affectation about him, but was natural and 
 playful as a boy. His conversation resembled a stream, some- 
 times smooth, sometimes rapid, and sometimes rushing down in 
 cataracts ; it was a mixture of philosophy and slang of every 
 thing like his " Don Juan." He was a patient, and, in general, 
 a very attentive listener. When, however, he did engage with 
 earnestness in conversation, his ideas succeeded each other with 
 such uncommon rapidity, that he could not control them. They 
 burst from him impetuously ; and although he both attended to, 
 and noticed the remarks of others, yet he did not allow these to 
 check his discourse for an instant. 
 
 ' Lord Byron professed a deep-rooted antipathy to the English, 
 though he was always surrounded by Englishmen, and, in reality, 
 preferred them (as he did Italian women) to all others. I one day 
 accused him of ingratitude to his countrymen. For many years, 
 I observed, he had been, in spite of his faults, and although he 
 had shocked all her prejudices, the pride, and I might almost say, 
 the idol of Britain. He said, they must be a stupid race to 
 worship such an idol, but he had at last cured their superstition, 
 as far as his divinity was concerned, by the publication of his 
 " Cain." It was true, I replied, that he had now lost their 
 favour. This remark stung him to the soul, for he wished not 
 only to occupy the public mind, but to command, by his genius, 
 public esteem.' 
 
 ' This extraordinary person, whom everybody was as anxious to 
 see, and to know, as if he had been a Napoleon the conqueror 
 of the world, had a notion that he was hated, and avoided like 
 one who had broken quarantine. He used often to mention to me 
 the kindness of this or that insignificant individual, for having 
 given him a good and friendly reception. In this particular, 
 Lord Byron was capricious ; for at Genoa he would scarcely see
 
 494 LIFE OF LOED BYKON. 
 
 anyone but those who lived in his own family ; whereas, at 
 Cephalonia, he was to everyone and at all times accessible. At 
 Genoa he acted the misanthropist. At Cephalonia he appeared 
 in. his genuine character, doing good, and rather courting than 
 shunning society. 
 
 ' Lord Byron conceived that he possessed a profound knowledge 
 of mankind, and of the working of their passions. In this he 
 judged right. He could fathom every mind and heart but his 
 own, the extreme depths of which none ever reached. On my 
 arrival from England, at Cephalonia, his Lordship asked me what 
 new publications I had brought out. Among others I mentioned 
 " The Springs of Action." " Springs of Action !" said Lord Byron, 
 stamping with rage with his lame foot, and then turning sharply 
 on his heel, " I don't require to be taught on this head. I know 
 well what are the Springs of Action." Some time afterwards, 
 while speaking, on another subject, he desired me to lend him 
 " The Springs of Action." He then suddenly changed the conver- 
 sation to some humorous remarks, for the purpose of diverting 
 my attention. I could not, however, forbear reminding him of 
 his former observations, and his furious stamp. 
 
 ' Avarice and great generosity were among Lord Byron's 
 qualities ; these contrarieties are said not unfrequently to be 
 united in the same person. As an instance of Lord Byron's 
 parsimony, he was constantly attacking Count Gamba, some- 
 times, indeed, playfully, but more often with the bitterest satire, 
 for having purchased for the use of his family, while in Greece, 
 500 dollars' worth of cloth. This he used to mention as an 
 instance of the Count's imprudence and extravagance. Lord 
 Byron told me one day, with a tone of great gravity, that this 
 500 dollars would have been most serviceable in promoting the 
 siege of Lepanto ; and, that he never would, to the last moment 
 of his existence, forgive Gamba, for having squandered away his 
 money in the purchase of cloth. No one will suppose that Lord 
 Byron could be serious in such a denunciation ; he entertained, 
 in reality, the highest opinion of Count Gamba, who, both on 
 account of his talents and devotedness to his friend, merited his 
 Lordship's esteem.' 
 
 ' Lord Byron's reading was desultory, but extensive ; his 
 memory was retentive to an extraordinary extent. He was 
 partial to the Italian poets, and is said to have borrowed from
 
 APPENDIX. 495 
 
 them. Their fine thoughts he certainly associated with his own, 
 but with such skill, that he could not be accused of plagiarism. 
 Lord Byron possessed, indeed, a genius absolutely boundless, and 
 could create with such facility that it would have been irksome 
 to him to have become a servile imitator. He was original in all 
 things, but especially as a poet. 
 
 ' The study of voyages and travels was that in which he most 
 delighted ; their details he seemed actually to devour. He 
 would sit up all night reading them. His whole soul was ab- 
 sorbed in these adventures, and he appeared to personify the 
 traveller. Lord Byron had a particular aversion to business; his 
 familiar letters were scrawled out at a great rate, and resembled 
 his conversations. Rapid as were his tongue and his pen, neither 
 could keep pace with the quick succession of ideas that flashed 
 across his mind. He hated nothing more than writing formal 
 official letters ; this drudgery he would generally put off from 
 day to day, and finish by desiring Count Gamba, or some other 
 friend, to perform the task. No wonder that Lord Byron should 
 dislike this dry anti-poetic work, and which he, in reality, per- 
 formed with so much difficulty. Lord Byron's arduous, yet 
 unsuccessful, labours in this barren field, put me in mind of the 
 difficulty which one of the biographers of Addison describes this 
 politician to have experienced when attempting to compose 
 an official paragraph for the Gazette, announcing the death of the 
 Queen. This duty, after a long and ineffectual attempt, the 
 minister, in despair, handed over to a clerk, who (not being a 
 genius, but a man of business) performed it in an instant. 
 
 * Not less was Lord Byron's aversion to reading than to writing 
 official documents ; these he used to hand over to me, pretending, 
 spite of all my protestations to the contrary, that I had a passion 
 for documents. When once Lord Byron had taken any whim 
 into his head, he listened not to contradiction, but went on 
 laughing and satirizing, till his joke had triumphed over argu- 
 ment and fact. Thus I, for the sake of peace, was sometimes 
 silent, and suffered him to good-naturedly bully me into reading 
 over, or, rather, yawning over, a mass of documents dull and 
 uninteresting. 
 
 ' Lord Byron once told me, in a humorous tone, but apparently 
 quite in earnest, that he never could acquire a competent know- 
 ledge of arithmetic. Addition and subtraction he said he could,
 
 496 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 though with some difficulty, accomplish. The mechanism of the 
 rule of three pleased him, but then division was a puzzle he could 
 not muster up sufficient courage to unravel. I mention this, to 
 show of how low a cast Lord Byron's capacity was in some com- 
 monplace matters, where he could not command attention. The 
 reverse was the case on subjects of a higher order, and in those 
 trifling ones, too, that pleased his fancy. Moved by such themes, 
 the impulses of his genius shot forth, by day and night, from his 
 troubled brain, electric sparks or streams of light, like blazing 
 meteors. Critics may disapprove of my narrating facts like 
 these, as illustrative of his character of my showing his strong 
 and feeble side his virtues and his failings. I crave your mercy, 
 critics ; I know no law of composition, but that paramount one 
 of truth. My crime is that of having gone beyond my depth 
 of having presumptuously attempted to give a sketch of one of the 
 most eccentric and original geniuses that ever existed.' 
 
 ' Once established at Missolonghi, it required some great 
 impetus to move Lord Byron from that unhealthy swamp. On 
 one occasion, when irritated by the Suliots, and the constant 
 applications for money, he intimated his intention to depart. 
 The citizens of Missolonghi and the soldiers grumbled, and 
 communicated to me, through Dr. Meyer, their discontent. I 
 repeated what I had heard to Lord Byron. He replied, calmly, 
 that he would rather be cut to pieces than imprisoned, for he 
 came to aid the Greeks in their struggle for liberty, and not to 
 be their slave. No wonder that the " Hellenists " endeavoured to 
 impede Lord Byron's departure, for even I, a mere soldier, could 
 not escape from Missolonghi, Athens, Corinth, or Salona, without 
 considerable difficulty. Some time previous to Lord Byron's 
 death, he began to feel a restlessness and a wish to remove to 
 Athens or to Zante.' 
 
 NOTE (H). 
 
 Allusion has been made by our author in the text (p. 
 316) to Wilhelm Miiller's < Lay on the Seven and Thirty 
 Cannon Shots Fired by the Order of Mavrocordato on the 
 Evening of Byron's Death (April 19).' As this poem well
 
 APPENDIX. 497 
 
 illustrates the profound impression made on the heart of 
 cultivated Europe when the sad news spread over it. the 
 Editor considers it advisable to print the original from 
 Wilhelm Miiller's ' Gedichte,' edited by his son, Professor 
 Max Miiller, Leipzig, 1868 ; and ventures also to subjoin 
 an attempt to render it into English in the metre adopted 
 by the German poet. 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 My task is done, my song has ceased, my theme 
 Has died into an echo. Childe Harold. 
 
 Siebenunddreissig Trauerschiisse ! Und wen haben sie gemeint ? 
 Sind es siebeminddreissig Siege, die er abgekampft dem Feind ? 
 Sind es siebenurfddreissig Wuiiden, die der Held triigt auf der 
 
 Brust ? 
 
 Sagt, wer 1st der edle Todte, der des Lebens bunte Lust 
 Auf den Markten und den Gassen iiberhiillt mit schwarzem Flor? 
 Sagt, wer ist der edle Todte, den mein Vaterland verlor ? 
 
 Keine Siege, keine Wunden meint des Donners dumpfer Hall, 
 Der von Missolunghis Mauern briillend wogt durch Berg und Thai 
 Und als grause Weekerstimme riittelt auf das starre Herz, 
 Das der Schlag der Trauerkunde hat betaubt mit Schreck und 
 
 Schmerz ; 
 
 Siebenunddreissig Jahre sind es, so die Zahl der Donner meint, 
 Byron, Byron, deine Jahre, welche Hellas heut beweint ! 
 Sind's die Jahre, die du lebtest ? Nein, um diese wein' ichnicht: 
 Ewig leben diese Jahre in des Buhmes Sonnenlicht, 
 Auf des Liedes Adlerschwingen, die mit nimmer miidem Schlag 
 Dureh die BaKh der Zeiten rauschen, rauschend grosse Seeleu 
 
 wach. 
 
 Nein, ich wein' um andre Jahre, Jahre, die du nicht gelebt, 
 Um die Jahre, die fur Hellas du zu leben hast gestrebt, 
 Solche Jahre, Monde, Tage kiindet mir des Donners Hall : 
 Welche Lieder, welche Kampfe, welche Wunden, welchen Fall ! 
 Einen Fall im Siegestaumel auf den Mauern von Byzanz, 
 
 Eine Krone dir zu Fiissen, auf dem Haupt der Freiheit Kranz ! 
 Edler Kiirnpfer, hast gekiimpfet eines jeden Kranzes werth : 
 Hastgekiimpfet mit des Geistes doppclschneidig scharfem Schwert, 
 
 K K
 
 498 LIFE OF LOUD BTEON. 
 
 Mit des Liedes ehrner Zange, dass von Pol za Pol es klang, 
 Mit der Sonne von dem Aufgang kreisend bis zum Niedergaag 
 Hast gekiimpfet mit dem grimmen Tiger der Tyrannenwuth, 
 Hast gekampfet in Lernas Sumpfe mit der ganzen Schlangenbrut, 
 Die in scliwarzem Moder nistet und dem Licht ist also feind, 
 Dass sie Gift und Galle spmdelt, wenn ein Strahl sie je be- 
 
 scheint ; 
 
 Hast gekiimpfet fur die Freiheit, fur die Freiheit einer Welt 
 Und fur Hellas' junge Freiheit wie ein todesfroher Held, 
 Sahst in ahnenden Gesichten sie auf unsern Bergen stehn, 
 Als im Thai noch ihre Kinder mussten an dem Joche gehn, 
 Hortest schon den Lorber rauschen von der nahen Siegeslust, 
 Fiihlltest schon in Kampfeswonne schwellen deine grosse Brust ! 
 Und als nun die Zeit erschienen, die prophetisch du geschaut, 
 Bist du nicht vor ihr erschrocken ; wie der Brairtigam zur Braut 
 Flogest du in Hellas' Arme, und sie offnete sie weit : 
 ' Ist Tyrt'ios auferstanden ? Ist verwunden nun mein Leid ? 
 Ob die Konige der Erde grollend auf mich niedersehn, 
 Hire Schranzen meiner spotten, ihre Priester mich verschmahn 
 Eines Sangers Kriegesflagge seh' ich fliegen durch das Meer, 
 Tanzende Delphine kreisen um des Schiffes Seiten her, 
 Stolz erheben sich der Wogen weisse Haupter vor dem Kiel, 
 Und an seinen Mast gelehnet greift er in sein Saitenspiel ; 
 Freiheit ! singt er mir entgegen ; Freiheit ! tout es ihm zuriick ; 
 Freiheit brennt in seinen Wangen, Freiheit blitzt aus seinem 
 
 Blick. 
 
 Sei willkommen, Held der Leier ! Sei willkommen, Lanzenhcld ! 
 Auf, Tyrtaos, auf, und fuhre meine Sohne mir ins Feld ! ' 
 
 Also stieg er aus dem Schifie, warf sich nieder auf das Land, 
 Und die Lippen driickt' er schweigend in des Ufers weichen 
 
 Sand ; 
 Schweigend ging er durch die Scharen gleich als ging er ganz 
 
 allein 
 
 Wolche jauchzcnd ihm entgegenwogten bis ins Mcer hineiu. 
 Ach, es hatt' ihn wol umschauert, als er kiisste diesen Strand, 
 Eines Todesengels Fliigel, der auf unsern Wallen stand ! 
 Und der Held hat nicht gezittert, als er diesen Boten sah ; 
 Schilrfer fasst' er ihn ins Auge : ' Meinst du mich, so bin ich da 
 Eine Schlacht nur lass mich kampfen, eine siegesfrohe Schlacht 
 Fur die Freiheit der Hellenen, und in deine langc Nacht
 
 APPENDIX. 499 
 
 Folg' ich deinen ersten Winke ohne Strauben, bleicher Freund 
 Habe langst der Erde Schauspiel durchgelaeht und durchgeweint.' 
 
 Arger Tod, du feiger Wiirger, hast die Bitt' ihm nicht gewahrt, 
 Hast ihn hinterriicks beschliclien, als er wetzt' an seinem 
 
 Schwert, 
 Hast mit seuchenschwangerm Odem urn das Haupt ihn ange- 
 
 haucht 
 
 Und des Busens Lebensflammen aus dem Nacken ihm gesaugt. 
 Und so ist er hingesunken ohne Sturz und ohne Schlag. 
 Hingewelkt wie eine Eiche, die des Winters Stiirme brach, 
 Doch die eine schwiile Stnnde mit Gewiirmen uberstreut, 
 Sie, des Waldes stolze Heldin, einem Blumentode weiht. 
 Also ist er hingesunken in des Lebens vollem Flor, 
 Aufgeschurzt zu neuem Laufe harrend an der Schranken Thor, 
 Mit dem Blick die Bahn durchmessend, mit dem Blick am Ziele 
 
 schon, 
 Das ihm heiss entgegenwinkte mit dem griinen Siegeslohn. 
 
 Ach, er hat ihn nicht errungen ! Legt ihn auf sein bleiches 
 
 Haupt ! 
 Tod, was ist dir nun gelungen ? Hast den Kranz ihm nicht 
 
 geraubt, 
 
 Hast ihn friiher ihm gegeben, als er selbst ihn hatt' erfasst ; 
 Und der Lorber glanzet griiner, weil sein Antlitz ist erblasst. 
 
 Siebenunddreissig Trauerschiisse, donnert, donnert durch die 
 
 Welt; 
 
 Und ihr hohen Meereswogen, tragt durch euer odes Feld 
 Unsrer Donner Widerhalle fort nach seinem Vaterland, 
 Dass den Todten die beweinen, die den Lebenden verbannt ; 
 Was Britannia verschuldet hat an uns mit Rath und That, 
 Dieser ist's, der uns die Schulden seines Volks bezahlet hat ; 
 Ueber seiner Bahre reichen wir dem Briten unsre Hand : 
 Freies Volk, schlag ein, und werde Freund und Hort von uns 
 
 genannt ! 
 
 K K 2
 
 500 LIFE OF LORD BYEON. 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 Seven and thirty minute guns ! what mean those sounds of woe ? 
 Is it seven and thirty victories gained o'er a fallen foe ? 
 Is it seven and thirty glorious wounds found on a hero's breast? 
 Who is the noble dead, whose loss hath ta'en from life its zest, 
 And the market and the busy street with deepest gloom o'erveils ? 
 Say, who is the noble dead, whom our Fatherland bewails ? 
 
 No victories, no glorious wounds, proclaim that thunder deep 
 Which booms from Missolonghi's walls by vales and mountains 
 
 steep, 
 
 With a dreadful voice arousing the stilled heart to beat again, 
 Which the shock of saddest tidings had stunned with fear and 
 
 pain. 
 
 Seven and thirty years it is those thundering cannon say, 
 Thy years, O Byron ! thine ! whom Hellas mourns this day. 
 The years which thou hast lived ? nay ! for these I cannot weep, 
 For these years shall glory ever in noblest sunlight steep ; 
 On the eagle wings of Poesy a soaring flight these take 
 Through the orbit of the ages rousing lofty souls to wake. 
 No I I weep for other years ! the years that might have been ! 
 The years that, for the sake of Greece, willing thou wouldst have 
 
 seen. 
 
 Such years ! such months ! such days ! that thunder tells me all ! 
 What songs, what conflicts terrible, what wounds, and what a fall ! 
 On proud Byzantium's ramparts in the hour of victory dead, 
 A crown laid at thy feet Freedom's garland on thy head ! 
 
 O noble warrior ! thine the crown, in many victories dearly 
 
 bought, 
 With the two-edged sword of Genius right boldly thou hast 
 
 fought, 
 
 With the iron tongue of Poesy clashing from Pole to Pole 
 Tones immortal, which from East to West with the Sun shall 
 
 ever roll 
 
 'Gainst the fury of the tyrants fierce as tigers hast thou fought, 
 And in the marsh of Lerna the whole serpent brood hast sought, 
 There nestling in black mud and slime, the enemies of light, 
 Spitting gall and poison all around when brought by thee to sight.
 
 APPENDIX. 501 
 
 Thou hast nobly fought for freedom, for the freedom of a world, 
 And as a death-defying Hero, Grecia's flag thou hast unfurled, 
 Thou, gazing on our mountains, there saw'st Freedom's vision fair, 
 Though in the valley hard the yoke her children yet must bear ; 
 Already moved by victory's breath thou heard'st the laurels rustle, 
 Already pride of battle swelled thy great heart's every muscle. 
 
 When now the destined time drew nigh which afar thou hadst 
 
 descried, 
 
 For thee it had no terrors, but as bridegroom to his bride 
 To Hellas' open arms thou hastened joyous as she spoke 
 ' Is my grief o'er ? Tyrta3us risen ? Has he again awoke ? 
 Then the kings of earth may pour contempt, muttering with 
 
 secret scorn, 
 
 Their priests may now deride courtiers mock at me forlorn, 
 For I see the poet's banner flutt'ring gaily o'er the sea, 
 And dolphins dance around the ship that bringeth him to me ; 
 The waves' white crests they proudly rear around the vessel's bows, 
 Leaning against the mast he stands, and tunes his lyre to rouse, 
 Freedom ! sings he to me loudly, Freedom ! all my shores reply ; 
 Freedom reddens in his cheek, Freedom glances from his eye ; 
 Welcome, hero of the lyre ! Welcome, champion of the right ! 
 O come, Tyrtasus, come ! lead my sons into the fight ! ' 
 
 Then he stepped from out the ship, threw himself upon the land, 
 And silently he pressed his lips upon the yellow sand ; 
 Silent as if he moved alone he hurried through the crowd, 
 Who rushed to meet him on the shore, and low before him bowed. 
 But as he kissed the shore so loved, on him a shadow falls ; 
 Death's Angel there with outspread wing, stands threatening on 
 
 our walls ; 
 
 Yet the hero trembled not before that messenger of woe ; 
 Stern he gazed into his eye : ' Call'st thou me ? then be it so ! 
 Let me only gain one victory, let me only fight one fight, 
 For the freedom of the Hellenes ; then into thy long night 
 I'll fearless follow thee, pale friend ! at thy first whisper low, 
 For life's drama I have laughed through and wept through long 
 
 ago.' 
 
 Cruel Death ! Assassin mean ! thou didst not grant him hig 
 
 request, 
 But, creeping up behind him when his sword was in its rest,
 
 \ 
 
 502 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Thou didst breathe upon him foully, with miasma's deadly air, 
 Extinguishing the spark of life within his bosom fair. 
 Without a stroke, without a blow, sank down that noble form, 
 Like an oak tree which has stood unbent through many a winter's 
 
 storm, 
 
 But overspread by cankers vile in one hour of sultry heat, 
 The hero of the forest dies, the death for frail flowers meet. 
 Thus sank the hero smitten in the fullest bloom of life, 
 Waiting eager at the barrier, girt for another strife, 
 Scanning eagerly the race course, the goal already seen, 
 Which beckoned him to victory with wreath of laurel green. 
 
 Ah ! the conflict is denied him ! lay the crown on his pale head ! 
 Now, Death, where is thy victory ? thou hast not robbed the 
 
 dead ! 
 Thou hast given to him the crown which thou would'st not let 
 
 him win, 
 And the laurel shines more brightly from the pale face within. 
 
 Seven and thirty minute guns thunder thunder thro' the spheres, 
 And ye high waves roll onward the sad echoes till She hears 
 She, his native country, hears from far our booming thunders 
 
 borne, 
 And the son whom living she outlawed, she dead may weeping 
 
 mourn. 
 
 What Britannia owed to Hellas of counsel and of aid, 
 That debt now with his life blood her son hath nobly paid. 
 Now, Oh England, grasp the hand that o'er his bier we reacb 
 
 from hence, 
 Let us call thee, land of Freedom ! our Deliverer, our Defence. 
 
 E. N.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A BERDEEN, grammar school of, 
 XJL Byi-on's first school described, 18 
 Abrantes, Duchesse d', her description 
 
 of Mrs. Spencer Smith, 94 
 ' Abydos, Bride of,' the introductory 
 
 lines of, suggested by Mignon's 
 
 song, 134 
 
 great success of, 135 
 
 Accent, the Scottish, Byron's hatred 
 
 of, 26 
 Albania, Byron's visit to, 95 
 
 his description of the country and 
 people, 96 
 
 Albrizzi, Countess of, 222 
 
 her portraits of celebrated men, 222 
 
 her salon at Venice, 223-4 
 Alfieri, interprets precocity of love as 
 
 indicative of genius, 27 
 AH Pasha, his reception of Byron, 98 
 
 impression of his character on 
 Byron, 99 
 
 manner of his death, 100 
 Allegra, Byron's natural daughter, 
 
 born 1817, 225 
 
 described by Byron, 226 
 
 sent to a'con vent to be educated, 226 
 
 dies of fever (1822), 227 
 
 buried at Harrow, 228 
 
 Alma Mater, a poetical epistle from, 
 
 to Lord Byron, 65 
 Americans, his respect for, 275 
 Americani, a division of the Carbonari, 
 
 249 
 Ariosto, portrait of, described by 
 
 Byron, 370 
 
 Armenian monastery, 217 
 Athens, Byron's first visit to, 104; 
 
 second visit, 107 
 Athens, the Maid of, 104 
 Avarice, ' that good old- gentlemanly 
 
 vice,' 372 
 
 *KK 
 
 BTHOK 
 
 BAELLIE, Dr., consulted regarding 
 Byron's lameness in his boyhood, 
 33 
 
 consulted by Lady Byron as to the 
 state of Lord Byron's mind, 159 
 
 Balgounie, Brig of, anecdote of Byron's 
 
 boyhood connected with, 23 
 Ball, Sir Alexander, kindly receives 
 
 Byron and Hobhouse at Malta, 93 
 Bankes, William, an early friend of 
 
 Byron's, 54 
 Becner, Rev. J. T., a warm and wise 
 
 friend of Byron's, 58, 449 
 
 writes the epilogue for the private 
 theatricals at Southwell, 60 
 
 objects to one of the poems in the 
 first private volume, 61, 449 
 
 carries through the press the second 
 edition of the ' Hours of Idleness,' 
 455 
 
 Beyle (Stendhal), Byron's letter to, in 
 
 defence of Scott, 129 
 Bible, the, Byron's early acquaintance 
 
 with, 16, 482 
 Blaquiere, Captain, urges Byron to 
 
 enlist in the cause of Greece, 280 
 Boatswain, Byron's favourite dog, 59 ; 
 
 death of, 75; tomb of, at Newstead, 
 
 76 
 
 Bowers, Mr., Byron's first school- 
 master, 18 
 Bowles, Rev. "William Lisle, sonnets 
 
 of, 383 
 
 ' the mournful prince of maudlin 
 sonneteers,' 384 
 
 Byron's controversy with, 383-5 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, his edition of 
 
 Collins quoted, 435 
 Butler, Dr., head master of Harrow 
 
 disliked by Byron, 41 
 Byron, family, characteristics of, 1 ; 
 4
 
 504 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 great antiquity of, 2 ; ancient name 
 of, 1 ; blot on their escutcheon, 
 2, 435-8 
 
 Byron, John, knighted by Queen Eliz- 
 abeth, 1559, 3 
 
 John, raised to the Peerage, 1643, 
 ibid., 436 
 
 Eichard, second Lord Byron, 
 epitaph of, in Hucknall-Torkard 
 church, 4 
 
 William, third Lord Byron, a poet, 4 
 
 William, fifth Lord Byron, kills 
 Mr. Chaworthin aduel, 5; his trial 
 in Westminster Hall, ibid, ; popular 
 legend concerning, 6 ; eccentricities 
 of, ibid. ; his character defended by 
 the poet, 445 
 
 Isabella, sister of fifth Lord Byron, 
 married to the Earl of Carlisle, 30 ; 
 eccentric character of, 31 
 
 Admiral, grandfather of the poet, 
 6 ; his life and adventures, 7 
 
 Byron, John, father of the poet, 
 character of, 8 ; marries Lady 
 Carmarthen, ibid. ; marries as his 
 second wife Miss Gordon of Gight, 
 9; dissipates her fortune, 11 ; goes 
 to France, 1 1 ; dies at Valenciennes, 
 ibid. ; character of, defended by the 
 poet, 14, 444 
 
 George Anson, second son of 
 Admiral Byron, 8 
 
 Mrs., mother of the poet, takes 
 her son to Aberdeen, 1790, 12; 
 separates from her husband, 13 ; 
 faults of the character of, 15; be- 
 lieves her son destined to be great, 
 27; takes her son to Newstead, 
 autumn, 1798, 28 ; retires to Not- 
 tingham, 30 ; consults Dr. Baillie 
 regarding the lameness of her son, 
 33 ; receives a pension of 3001. per 
 annum on the Civil List, ibid. ; 
 described by Dr. Glennie, 34 ; re- 
 moves to Southwell (1804), 57; 
 sudden illness and death of, 112 
 
 George Gordon, sixth Lord, 
 the poet, born at 24 Holies Street, 
 Cavendish Square, January22, 1788, 
 11, 440 
 
 his pride of birth, 2, 435 
 
 deformity of his foot, supposed 
 cause of, 11 
 
 embitters his whole life, 12 
 
 baptised February 29, 440 
 
 taken to Aberdeen (1790) by his 
 mother, 12 
 
 Byron, defends his father's character, 
 14, 443 
 
 laments his want of a father's 
 guidance, 14 
 
 his remark concerning only children, 
 15 
 
 his earliest impressions, 15 
 
 anecdotes of his passionate charac- 
 ter in childhood, 16 
 
 suffers torments from the treat- 
 ment of his lameness, 16 
 
 early acquaintance with the Bible, 
 17 
 
 sent to school at Aberdeen when 
 five years old, 1 7 
 
 his account of his learning to read, 
 18 
 
 his early masters described, 18 
 
 sent to the grammar school at 
 Aberdeen, 1794, 18 
 
 learns French at De Loyaute's 
 academy, 18 
 
 not remarkable for proficiency at 
 school, 19 
 
 early studies history, 19 
 
 early passion for the East and East- 
 ern history, ibid. 
 
 character of his boyhood, 20 
 
 meant Childe Harcld to be a 'po- 
 etical Zeluco,' 20 
 
 distinguished in the play-ground, 
 22 
 
 anecdotes of his boyhood, 22 
 
 learns early to love lonely walks, 
 23 
 
 anecdotes of his ride across the 
 Brig of Balgounie, 23 
 
 taken after the scarlet fever to the 
 farm-house of Ballatrech, 24 
 
 early influence of the scenery of the 
 Highlands on, 25 
 
 limited extent of the influence of 
 Scotland on, 26 
 
 anecdote illustrative of his hatred 
 of the Scottish accent, 26 
 
 early love for Mary Duff, 27 
 
 effects on, of the news of the death 
 of the old Lord Byron, 28 
 
 goes with his mother to Newstead 
 in the autumn of 1798, 30 
 
 made a ward of Chancery, 30 
 
 dedicated the second edition of 
 ' Hours of Idleness ' to the Earl of 
 Carlisle, 31 
 
 harshness of, to the Earl of Car- 
 lisle in the 'English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers,' 31
 
 INDEX, 
 
 505 
 
 Byron, learns Latin with Mr. Eogers, 32 
 
 miniature of, as a boy, presented to 
 his nurse, May Gray, 32 ; goes to 
 Dr. Glennie's school, Dulwich, 34; 
 scandalised at his mother's in- 
 firmities, 34 ; called the ' old En- 
 glish Baron ' at Dr. Glennie's, 35 ; 
 sent (1801) to Harrow, 36; his 
 first attempt at verse, 36 ; in his 
 thirteenth year attempts a play, 
 ' Ulrich and Ilvina,' 37 ; falls in love 
 with Margaret Parker, 37 ; his 
 early lines (1802) on Margaret 
 Parker, ibid., 446-7 ; struck with 
 the beauty of the sunset on the 
 Malvern Hills, 37 ; prediction of a 
 fortune-teller regarding, 37 ; his 
 character at Harrow, 39 ; hates 
 Harrow at first, 39 ; his high 
 opinion of Dr. Drury, 40 ; dis- 
 likes Dr. Butler, the successor of 
 Dr. Drury, 41 ; learns little Latin 
 and less Greek at Harrow, 42 ; 
 never acquires a facility of speaking 
 French, 43 ; ignorant of German, 
 ibid . ; his desultory reading at Har- 
 row, 43 ; knew Little's poems by 
 heart at 15, 43 (note), 450; his 
 favourite seat at Harrow, 43 ; hopes 
 to be buried in Harrow church- 
 yard, 44; his enthusiastic friend- 
 ships at Harrow, 44-6, 467 ; de- 
 scription of Peel as his school com- 
 panion, 45 
 
 falls in love with Mary Chaworth, 
 46 
 
 his dream of love dissolved, 48 ; 
 describes his parting with Mary 
 Chaworth in ' The Dream,' 48 ; his 
 feelings when he hears of Mary 
 Chaworth's marriage, 49 
 
 meets her after her marriage (1808), 
 49 
 
 enters Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 October 1805, 51 ; dislikes the 
 studies of the University, ibid. ; 
 licentiousness at College, exagger- 
 ated, 55 ; devotion to athletic exer- 
 cises, 56 ; spends the summer 
 holidays (1804) at Southwell, 57 ; 
 life at, 57 ; intimacy with the Pigot 
 family, 58 ; quarrels with his 
 mother at Southwell, 59 ; takes 
 a prominent part in private 
 theatricals at Southwell, 60 ; 
 writes the prologue for the play, 60 ; 
 
 speaks the epilogue written by the 
 Eev. J. T. Becher, 60 
 Byron, prints his first volume of fugi- 
 tive pieces for private circulation, 
 November 1806, 61, 448; burns the 
 whole impression, with the excep- 
 tion of two copies, ibid., 450 ; prints, 
 January 1807, the second private 
 collection of poems, 61, 451 
 
 publishes the ' Hours of Idleness,' 
 March 1807, 62, 453; returns to 
 Cambridge, June 1807, 62 
 
 begins to reduce his weight, 63 ; 
 enters into London life, 63 
 
 gratified with the reception of the 
 ' Hours of Idleness,' 64 ; writes a 
 Review of Wordsworth's poems in 
 the 'Monthly Literary Recreations,' 
 ibid.; spends the winter of 1807-8 
 at Cambridge, ibid. 
 
 statue of, placed in Trinity College 
 Library, 66 
 
 occupies Newstead Abbey, Septem- 
 ber, 1808, 72 
 
 invites a party of his Cambridge 
 friends to Newstead, 73, 469 
 
 reads much during his stay at 
 Newstead, 75 
 
 Byron's oak at Newstead, 75, 469 
 
 attains his majority, January 22, 
 1809, 76 
 
 profoundly mortified by an article 
 in 'Edinburgh Review,' 77, 452 
 
 thought poetry was not his voca- 
 tion, 78 
 
 elaborates at Newstead his 'En- 
 glish Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' 
 79 
 
 protests he would never sell New- 
 stead, 80 
 
 writes his own and his sister's 
 name on a tree at Newstead, 81, 
 (note) 
 
 takes his seat in the House of 
 Lords, March 13, 1809, 85 
 
 Dallas' description of the event, 86 
 
 publishes anonymously the 'English 
 Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' 87 
 
 publishes the second edition with 
 his name, 88 
 
 prepares to travel, 88 
 
 starts on his pilgrimage with Hob- 
 , house, 89 
 
 his ardour of friendship chilled, 
 89-90 
 
 arrives at Lisbon, 90
 
 506 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Byron, admires the beauty of the 
 women of Seville, 91 
 
 sees at Seville the famous Maid 
 of Saragossa, 9 1 
 
 thinks the women of Cadiz the 
 finest women in Spain, 92 
 
 sails in an English frigate from 
 Cadiz to Gibraltar, ibid. 
 
 meets Gait, 92 
 
 meets Mr. Spencer Smith at Malta, 
 93 
 
 visits Albania, 94 
 
 description of Tepeleni, 97 
 
 presented to Ali Pasha, 98; much 
 impressed with Ali's character, 89 
 
 his coolness in a storm on the 
 voyage to Prevesa, 101 
 
 his description of the night scene 
 at Utraikey, 102 
 
 sees Athens on Christmas-Eve, 
 1809, from the ruins of Phyle, 103 
 
 visits the plain of Marathon, 103 
 
 lodges with the mother of the 
 'Maid of Athens,' 104 
 
 visits Smyrna, where he finishes 
 the second canto of ' Childe Harold,' 
 105 
 
 swims across the Dardanelles, 105 
 
 lands at Constantinople, 106 
 
 presented to the Sultan, 107 
 
 returns to Athens, 107 
 
 studies modern Greek at Athens, 
 108 
 
 romantic incident to at Athens, 109 
 
 probable cause of his sudden deter- 
 mination to return to England, 110 
 
 arrives in England, July 1811, 112 
 
 hastens to Newstead to find his 
 mother dead, ibid. 
 
 anecdote of, on the death of his 
 mother, 112 
 
 strange conduct of, on the day of 
 the funeral of his mother, 113 
 
 desolation of, after his mother's 
 death, 114 
 
 shocked by the drowning of Mat- 
 thews in the Cam, 114 
 
 makes an extraordinary will after 
 his mother's death, 115 
 
 interrogated by Dallas as to the 
 poetical fruits of his travels, 116 
 
 thinks meanly of the first and 
 second cantos of' Childe Harold,' 116 
 
 urges the publication of the 'Hints 
 from Horace ' and the ' Curse of 
 Minerva ' in preference to ' Childe 
 Harold,' 119 
 
 Byron, his reconciliation with Moore, 
 120 
 
 becomes acquainted with Lord 
 Holland, 121 
 
 Byron's maiden speech, 122 
 
 speaks on two other occasions, 123 
 
 publishes 'Childe Harold,' 124 
 
 becomes famous in a morning, 125 
 
 his high opinion of Curran, 128 ; 
 of Sheridan, 128 
 
 meets Scott at Mr. Murray's, 129 
 
 letter of, to Beyle in defence of 
 Scott, 129 
 
 and Scott exchange presents, 129 
 
 longs to return to Greece, 130 
 
 advertises the sale of his library, 
 131 
 
 writes the Prologue for the re- 
 opening of Drury Lane, 131 
 
 publishes anonymously a satire on 
 the Waltz, 133 
 
 publishes the ' Giaour,' 133 
 
 publishes the ' Bride of Abydos,' 
 134; the 'Corsair,' 135 
 
 announces his intention to write 
 no more poetry, 136 
 
 breaks this determination next 
 day, ibid. 
 
 wishes to suppress all his writings, 
 137 
 
 publishes ' Lara ' with Rogers's 
 ' Jacqueline,' 137 
 
 refuses the offer of 1,0001. for 
 'Siege of Corinth'and'Parisina,' 138 
 
 groundlessness of his apprehen- 
 sion that he had written himself 
 out, 139 
 
 depicts himself in his heroes, 140 
 
 general picture of his feelings be- 
 fore his marriage, 141 
 
 quotations from his Journal, 142 
 
 inherited strong sensual passions, 
 143 
 
 the doubts as to the reality of the 
 relationship indicated by the poem 
 to his son, 143 
 
 exaggeration of his intrigues, 143 
 
 intimacy with Lady Caroline 
 Lamb, 145 
 
 letter of, to Lady Caroline Lamb 
 quoted, 146 
 
 depicted in 'Glenarvon,' 147 
 
 relations with women, 149 
 
 thinks of marrying, 150 
 
 sees Miss Milbanke, 150 
 
 first cffer of marriage to Miss 
 Milbanke, 151
 
 INDEX. 
 
 507 
 
 . Byron, describes the character of Miss 
 Milbanke in his Diary, 151 
 
 second offer to Miss Milbanke, 
 accepted, 152 
 
 state of mind before his marriage, 
 153 
 
 is married at Seaham, 153 
 
 reports of his strange behaviour 
 after the marriage ceremony, 154 
 
 these reports distinctly denied, 155 
 
 amusing account of his visit to 
 Seaham after his marriage, 156 
 
 takes his wife to London, 156 
 
 visits Colonel and Mrs. Leigh near 
 Newmarket, 156 
 
 occupies the house of the Duchess 
 . of Devonshire, 156 
 
 besieged by his creditors, 156 
 
 obliged to think of selling his 
 library, 157 
 
 declines Mr. Murray's generous 
 offt-r of assistance, 158 
 
 under the most distressing pecu- 
 niary difficulties, 158 
 
 daughter of, born, 158 
 
 his wife leaves him for a visit, 158 
 
 is informed that hia wife will not 
 return to him, 158 
 
 signs the deed of separation, 162 
 
 alludes to the various charges 
 brought against him, 173 
 
 his sincere respect and tender re- 
 gard for his sister, 17-i 
 
 blames himself for the separation, 
 175 
 
 appeals to Rogers whether he has 
 not invariably spoken of his wife 
 with the greatest respect, 175 
 
 hears in Switzerland the horrible 
 accusation, 173 
 
 changes his tone with regard to 
 Lady Byron, 176 
 
 makes a declaration protesting 
 against the silence of Lady Byron 
 as to the ground of the separation, 
 177 
 
 professes ignorance of the charges 
 against him, 177 
 
 evil habit of self -accusation, 184, 
 413 
 
 is falsely accused with regard to 
 Mrs. Mardyn, 186-7 
 
 little accustomed to accommodate 
 himself to others, 195 
 
 is made the scape-goat of Englis h 
 society, 198 
 
 Byron, writes ' Fare thee well ' and 
 ' A Sketch,' 199 
 
 describes his emotion when writing 
 the former, 200 
 
 leaves England for ever, April 26, 
 1816, 201 
 
 visits the field of Waterloo, 203 
 
 arrives at Geneva, 204 
 
 becomes acquainted with Shelley, 
 204 
 
 resides at Villa Diodati, 205 
 
 makes an excursion with Shelley 
 on the lake, 208 
 
 writes the ' Prisoner of Chillon,' 
 209 
 
 makes a tour with Hobhouse in 
 the Bernese Oberland, 211 
 
 leaves Switzerland for Italy with 
 Hobhouse, 213 
 
 arrives at Venice November 1816, 
 214 
 
 plunges into dissipation, 216 
 
 finishes 'Manfred,' 217 
 
 studies the Armenian language, 217 
 
 his kindness to the monks, 217 
 
 translates a spurious epistle of St. 
 Paul, 218 
 
 delighted with the Lido, and wishes 
 to be buried there, 218 
 
 attacked by fever, 219 
 
 spends a day at Florence, 219 
 
 sends to Murray ' the Lament of 
 Tasso,' 219 
 
 his love for Mariana Segati, 216-19 
 
 writes the fourth canto of ' Childe 
 Harold,' 220 
 
 visits Rome, 219-20 
 
 sits to Thorwaldsen for his bust, 
 220 
 
 returns to Venice, 223 
 
 takes into his Own care his natural 
 daughter Allegra, 225 
 
 sends her to a convent to be edu- 
 cated, 226 
 
 hears of her death, 227 
 
 meets the Countess Guiccioli, 229 
 
 is visited by Moore at Venice, 234 
 
 gives to Moore the famous ' Me- 
 moirs,' 235 
 
 unworthy proposal of Count Guic- 
 cioli, 238 
 
 goes to Ravenna, 241 
 
 writes ' Beppo ' and some cantos of 
 ' Don Juan,' 242 
 
 life at Ravenna, 243, et scqq. 
 
 joins the Carbonari, 249
 
 608 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Byron, affection for Ravenna, 254 
 
 kindness to the poor of Ravenna, 
 : 255 
 
 follows the Guicciolis to Pisa, 256 
 meets Lord Clare, 256 
 
 resides at the Palazzo Lanfranchi, 
 267 
 
 becomes the centre of a circle of 
 < English friends at Pisa, 259 
 
 thinks of establishing a journal, 
 263-4 
 
 - disagreeable relations with, the 
 Hunts, 266, et seqq. 
 
 present at the burning of Shelley's 
 body, 274 
 
 removes to Genoa, 275 
 
 makes the acquaintance of the 
 Earl and Countess of Blessington, 
 276 
 
 turns his thoxights to Greece, 278 
 joins the Greek Committee, 279 
 departs for Greece, 281 
 
 receives at Leghorn a letter from 
 Goethe, 283 
 
 arrives at Cephalonia, 284 
 embarks for Missolonghi, 286 
 
 reasons for delay, 286 
 
 > forms a body-guard of Suliotes, 
 287 
 
 theological discussions with Ken- 
 nedy, 288 
 
 ' advances 4,OOOZ. for the Greek 
 
 fleet, 291 
 received "with princely honours at 
 
 Missolonghi, 294 
 
 plans the attack of Lepanto, 296 
 
 his health affected by the unhealthy 
 climate, 299 
 
 seized with convulsions, 300 
 
 life at Missolonghi, 302-3 
 
 aims and hopes for Greece, 304-5 
 his differences with Stanhope, 305 
 
 " practical views, 309 
 
 considers a federation the most 
 suitable form of government for 
 Greece, 310 
 
 health begins to fail, 311 
 
 is bled, contrary to his wishes, 313 
 
 last words of, 314 
 
 " death-scene, 314-5 
 
 consternation and sorrow in conse- 
 quence of his death, 316-7, 462 
 
 funeral ceremony of, 318, 465-6 
 
 viniversal lamentation at his death, 
 319 
 
 buried at Hucknall-Torkard, 323 
 
 last will, 326 
 
 Byron, extraordinary fables regarding, 
 330 (uote) 
 
 dress of, described by Lady Bles- 
 sington, 338 
 
 his perverse diet, 342-4 
 
 his superstitions, 367 
 
 his habit of self-accusation, 475 
 
 had no love of the arts, 369 
 
 loved national music, 370 
 
 goodness of heart, 371, 469, 474, 477 
 
 despised and condemned field 
 sports, 371 
 
 sympathised with misfortune, 371 
 
 his princely munificence in Italy, 
 372 
 
 hailed by Goethe as the herald of 
 a universal literature, 378 
 
 thought of writing a great po^m 
 in the Italian language, 378 
 
 jealous of Shakespeare's greatness, 
 379 
 
 idolatry of Pope, 380-3 
 
 causes of Byron's sympathy with 
 Pope, 382 
 
 quarrel with Bowles, 384-5 
 
 admiration for Crabbe and Rogers, 
 387 
 
 hatred of Southey, 389-90 
 
 admiration of Sir Walter Scott, 
 390, 391 
 
 respect for Shelley, 392 
 
 charged with being a plagiarist, 396 
 
 defended by Goethe against the 
 charge of plagiarism, 398 (note) 
 
 his world-sorrow, 398 
 
 description of his person, 345 
 
 compared by his mother to Rous- 
 seau, 347 
 
 similarity of character in Byron 
 and Rousseau, 347-52 
 
 poetry of, the effusion of the mo- 
 ment, 353 
 
 ' Fare thee well,' a genuine effu- 
 sion, 353 
 
 anecdote of the composition of one 
 of his 'Hebrew Melodies,' 354 
 
 his powers of conversation, 354 
 
 his political principles, 357-62 
 
 his opinion of Napoleon, 359 
 
 his reply to Mr. Shephard, 363-4 
 
 his reverence for the Bible, 364 
 
 regarded death without fear, 365 
 
 leanings towards the Church of 
 Rome, 365 
 
 his religious principles, 362-66 
 
 experience the basis of his poetry, 
 400
 
 INDEX. 
 
 509 
 
 Byron, his definition of poetry, 401 
 
 could not alter or recast his poems, 
 401 
 
 his power of picturesque descrip- 
 tion, 403 
 
 unsuccessful in his Dramas, 403 
 
 thought highly of his own Dramas, 
 403 
 
 the cynicism of, 421 
 
 expressed the passion of his age 
 for radical change, 424 
 
 contributed to the liberation of 
 Greece and the unification of Italy, 
 426 
 
 action of his poetry on the revolu- 
 tionary movements of Spain, 427 
 
 his great influence in France, 427 
 
 in Germany, 428 
 
 in the Slavonic East, 431 
 
 delineation of, by the Eev. William 
 Harness, 467-76 
 
 character of, by Lord Broughton, 
 477, 478 
 
 Reminiscences of, by Mr. George 
 Finlay, 479-87 ; by Colonel Leices- 
 ter Stanhope, 487-96 
 
 poem on his death by Wilhelm 
 Miiller, 496-99; translation of, 
 499-502 
 
 Byron, Lady, fortune settled on her- 
 self, 157 
 
 gives birth to a daughter, 158 
 
 leaves London on a visit to her 
 father, 158 
 
 writes, on the road, a playful letter 
 to her husband, 158 
 
 names her child after her sister-in- 
 law, Augusta Leigh, 158 
 
 announces to Lord Byron that she 
 will return to him no more, 158 
 
 consults Dr. Baillie on the supposed 
 insanity of Lord Byron, 159 
 
 - her account of the separation, 160-1 
 
 goes to London to consult Dr. 
 Lushington on the separation, 161 
 
 takes on herself the entire respon- 
 sibility of the communications to 
 the lawyers, 162 
 
 l ier alleged communication to Mrs. 
 Stowe, 163 
 
 her reputation tarnished by Mrs. 
 Stowe, 163 
 
 bequeaths her manuscripts to trus- 
 tees, 165 
 
 is on the most intimate terms with 
 Mrs. Leigh, 179 
 
 Byron,Lady, writes to Mrs. Leigh after 
 the separation in most affectionate 
 terms, 179-81 
 
 protests that her feelings towards 
 her sister-in-law can never change, 
 181 
 
 after Mrs. Leigh's death, makes 
 the most horrible charge against 
 her, 181 
 
 mental delusion of, 182 
 
 considered it her vocation to re- 
 form her husband, 187 
 
 religious views, 188-9 
 
 anecdote of, related by Howitt, 
 191 
 
 - character of, drawn by Lord Byron 
 according to Medwin, 193 
 
 letter of, to Lady Anne Barnard, 
 194-96 
 
 her irritating calmness, 196 
 
 refuses to be reconciled with her 
 husband, 211 
 
 refuses to read the ' Memoirs,' 211 
 
 takes no part in the arrangements 
 for her husband's funeral, 322, 466 | 
 
 establishes a Reformatory for girls, 
 326 
 
 her answer to Hobhouse on her 
 wedding-day, 466 
 
 character of, 471-2, 474 
 
 /"1ADIZ the women of, renowned for 
 
 \J their beauty, 92 
 
 ' Cain,' remarks on, 415-18 
 
 publication of, protested against by 
 Hobhouse, 416 
 
 Moore's opinion of, 417 (note) 
 
 translated into French, 417 (note) 
 
 performed as an oratorio, 417 
 (note) 
 
 Goethe's opinion of, 418 
 Canova, in love at five years of age, 27 
 Carbonari, secret league of, 248 
 
 joined by Byron, 249 
 Carbonarism, called by Byron the 
 
 very poetry of politics, 249 
 Carlisle, Earl of, guardian to Bvron, 
 30 
 
 his literary wvrks, 31 
 
 second edition of ' Hours of Idle- 
 ness' dedicated to, 31 
 
 indifferent to the education of his- 
 ward, 32 
 
 coldness to Byron on taking hia 
 seat in the House of Lords, 85
 
 510 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 CAEMAHTHEN 
 
 Carmarthen, Marchioness, after di- 
 vorce, married to John Byron, 
 father of the poet, 8 
 
 Cawthorn, the original publisher of 
 the ' English bards,' 87 
 
 Chaworth, Mary, Byron's love for, 46 
 
 married to Mr. John Musters, 49 
 her life after marriage, 50 
 
 dies at Wiverton Hall, 50 
 Chaworth, Viscount, daughter of, 
 
 married to the third Lord Byron, 3 
 Chaworth, Mr., killed in a duel by 
 
 the fifth Lord Byron, .5 
 Children, only, curious remark of 
 
 Byron's concerning, 15 
 ' Childe Harold, 'cantos first and second 
 
 shown to Dallas, 116 
 published two days after his maiden 
 
 speech, 124 
 
 prodigious success of, 126 
 
 Clare, Lord, Byron's early and ten- 
 der friendship for, 45 
 
 Clermont, Mrs., accused by Byron of 
 prejudicing and exciting his wife 
 against him, 176 
 
 ' a she lago,' 184 
 
 Cockburn, Mr. Robert, married Mary 
 
 Duff, Byron's first love, 27 
 Collins' Peerage, quoted, 435 
 Constantinople, impression of, on 
 
 Byron, 106 
 
 ' Corinth, Siege of,' published, 135 
 ' Corsair,' the, written in ten days, and 
 dedicated to Moore, 135 
 
 13.000 copies of, sold on the day 
 of publication, 1 35 
 
 Coulmann, Monsieur J. J., letter of 
 Byron to, mentioned, 14 (note), 17 
 (note) 
 
 his interview with Lord Byron, 
 441, 442 
 
 letters of Byron to, 442, 443 
 Curran, Byron's enthusiastic descrip- 
 tion of, 128 
 
 Crabbe, the poet, praised by Byron, 
 387 
 
 DALLAS' Eecollections, quoted, 18 
 calls Charles Skinner Matthews 
 an atheist, 53 
 
 accompanies Byron to the House of 
 Lords, when he takes his seat, 86 
 
 negotiates the publication of the 
 ' English Bards,' 87 
 
 suggests the title ' Parish Poor of 
 
 Parnassus ' for the ' English Bards,' 
 87 
 
 receives from Byron the MS. of 
 the two first cantos of ' Childe 
 Harold,' 116 
 
 urges their publication, 117 
 
 scruples as to the religious senti- 
 ments of ' Childe Harold,' 118 
 
 quoted, 439 
 
 Dandyism, the palmy days of, 127 
 Dante, cited as an example of love in 
 
 early life, 27 
 Dardanelles, Byron swims across the, 
 
 105 
 Davies, Scrope Berdmore, an intimate 
 
 friend of Byron's, 53 
 
 'Parisina,' dedicated to him, 54 
 Death, Byron's feelings on the sub- 
 ject of, 365 
 
 ' Deformed Transformed, the,' remarks 
 
 on, 410 
 Drama, the, Byron did not succeed 
 
 in, 403 
 Drury, Dr., head master of Harrow, 
 
 character of, 38 
 
 early discovers the intellect of 
 Byron, 39 
 
 Byron's noble tribute to his worth, 
 40 
 
 predicts that Byron will become an 
 orator, 42 
 
 Duff, Mary, Byron's early love for, 27 
 
 EAGLE, brazen, found atNewstead, 
 69 
 
 Eddlestone, the chorister of Trinity 
 Chapel, Byron's enthusiastic friend- 
 ship for, 53 
 
 ' Edinburgh Review,' article of, in the 
 January No. of 1808, deeply wounds 
 Byron, 77 
 
 ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' 
 published March 16, 1809, by Caw- 
 thorn, 87 
 
 second edition of, with addition of 
 400 lines, and with Byron's name, 
 
 T7ALKLAND, LORD, generosity of 
 
 JD Byron to the widow and children 
 of, 87 (note) 
 
 Fame, Martial, 'history calls some- 
 times murder, sometimes glory,' 421 
 
 Poetic, ' a name, a wretched pic- 
 ture, and worse bust,' 421
 
 INDEX. 
 
 511 
 
 ' Faust,' partly translated to Byron by 
 Shelley and M. G. Lewis, 411 
 
 Byron's knowledge of, 480 
 Fletcher, Byron's servant, his dis- 
 comfort derided by Byron, 109 
 
 his saying that 'all women could 
 'manage my Lord but my Lady,' 193 
 
 the first to discover his master's 
 danger, 312 
 
 at his master's death-bed, 314-5 
 Florida, the, with Byron's remains, 
 
 arrives in England, 321, 463 
 Fuscuri, the Two, remarks on, 407 
 
 GALT, meets Byron on board the 
 packet from Gibraltar to Malta, 92 
 
 impudent remark of, regarding 
 Byron, 93 
 
 acknowledges that Byron's love for 
 Mrs. Spencer Smith was platonic, 
 94 
 
 first impugned the Byron lineage, 
 43. J 
 
 Geneva, Byron arrives at, 204 
 
 Lake of, described by Byron, 205 
 
 classic associations of, 208 
 Gervinus, remarks of ; on Byron, 424 
 
 ' Giaour, the,' the first of the poetical 
 tales, 133 
 
 its immense success, 134 
 
 fragmentary character of, 183 
 Gifford, Byron submits his poems to, 
 
 136 
 Giraud, Nicolo, romantic attachment 
 
 of Byron for, 109 
 Gight, the estate of, sold to Lord 
 
 Haddo, 11 , 
 
 legendary prophecy concerning, 11 
 (note) 
 
 ' Glenarvon,' publication of, 147 
 Glennie, Dr., Bvron sent to his school 
 at Dulwich, 33 
 
 his description of Mrs. Byron, 34 
 
 his character of Byron, 35 
 Gordon, Miss, of Gight, marries Cap- 
 tain John Byron, 10 
 
 mother of the poet, 1 
 
 excitability of her temper at the 
 theatre at Edinburgh, 1 
 
 Gordons of Gight, antiquity of the 
 
 family of, 9 
 Gray, May, Lord Byron's nurse, 16 
 
 acts as earliest teacher to him, 16 
 
 returns to Scotland, 32 
 
 Byron's parting gifts to, 33 
 
 Gray, May, Byron's letter to her 
 
 about his lameness, 33 
 Goethe, saying of, concerning poets 
 
 and poetry, 353 
 
 his epigram on the welcome guest, 
 357 
 
 his opinion of Byron, 375 
 
 hails Byron as the head of universal 
 literature, 378 
 
 paying of, regarding Byron and 
 Pope, 383 (note) 
 
 defends Byron from the charge of 
 plagiarism, 398 (note) 
 
 says that ' Don Juan ' is the most 
 immoral poem ever written, 422 
 
 advises all translators to attempt 
 ' Don Juan,' 422 
 
 his sympathy with and admiration 
 for Byron, 428-9 
 
 his dirge for Byron in ' Faust,' 429 
 
 his confident hope that England 
 will reverse her judgment regarding 
 Byron, 432-3 
 
 Byron's knowledge of the works of, 
 480 
 
 Greece, profound impression of, on 
 
 Byron, 103 
 
 Greek Tales characterised, 402 
 Guiccioli, Countess, description of, 230 
 
 attachment to Lord Byron, 230, et 
 seq. 
 
 becomes seriously ill on parting 
 with him, 231 
 
 visits Byron's grave, 324 
 
 marries a second time, 325 
 
 HAILSTONE, Professor, respected 
 I I by Byron, 52-60 
 Harness, Rev. Wm., Byron's early 
 friendship for, 45. 467 
 
 joins Byron at Trinity College, 53 
 
 described by Crabb Robinson, 46 
 (note) 
 
 his 'Recollections of Byron,' 467-76 
 Harrow, description of, 38 
 
 its studies not favourable to Byron's 
 development, 42 
 
 Byron's favourite seat at, 43 
 
 beauty of the views from Harrow 
 Hill, 43 
 
 'Heaven and Earth,' preferred by 
 Goethe to all Byron's poems, 418 
 
 written in fourteen days, 418 (note) 
 ' Hebrew Melodies,' anecdote of Byron's 
 
 composition of, 351
 
 512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, the Byron of Ger- 
 many, 430 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, his autobio- 
 graphy early read by Byron, 43 
 
 Highlands, the, of Scotland, power- 
 fully affect Byron in his boyhood, 
 25 
 
 allusion to this in the ' Island,' 25 
 Hobhouse, John Cam, Byron's life- 
 long friend, 54, 55 
 
 the fourth canto of ' Childe Harold' 
 dedicated to, 54 
 
 the companion of Byron in his 
 pilgrimage, 89 
 
 accompanies Byron to Seaham for 
 his marriage, 153 
 
 his denial of certain reports as to 
 occurrences at the wedding, 155 
 
 denies that Byron's life in London 
 was extravagant, 156 
 
 account of Lord Byron's attitude 
 in the matter of the separation, 162 
 
 makes a tour with Byron in the 
 Bernese Oberland, 211 
 
 his (Lord Broughton's) ' Recollec- 
 tions of a Long Life,' extract from, 
 462-6 
 
 his beautiful tribute to Lord Byron's 
 memory, 476-8 
 
 appeals to the impressions made by 
 Lord Byron on Colonel Stanhope 
 and Mr. Finlay, 463 
 
 Hodgson, Francis, Provost of Eton, 
 an early friend of Byron's, 54 
 
 Holland, Lord, though assailed in the 
 ' English Bards,' becomes a fast 
 friend of Byron, 121 
 
 the ' Bride of Abydos' dedicated to, 
 134 
 
 Holland House, parties at, 122 
 
 ' Hours of Idleness,' the poems so 
 
 called unworthy of Byron's genius, 
 
 77, 453, et seq. 
 Houson, Miss Ann, Byron's early 
 
 poems addressed to, 451-2 
 
 buried at Huckuall-Torkard, 451 
 Howitt, William, relates an anecdote 
 
 of Lady Byron, 191 
 
 describes Lady Byron's peculiar 
 character, 192 
 
 Hucknall-Torkard, epitaph of Eichard, 
 second Lord Byron, in church of, 4 
 (note) 
 
 Hugo, Victor, influence of Byron on, 
 427 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, his account of Byron's 
 
 LAVENDKB 
 
 studies while waiting for his bride, 
 
 154 
 his acquaintance with and relations 
 
 to Byron described, 262, et seqq. 
 lands at Leghorn, 267 
 Hyatt, Sophia, ' The little white lady,' 
 
 described by Washington Irving, 83 
 
 TKVING, WASHINGTON, his des- 
 JL cription of Newstead under Colonel 
 Wildman, 82 
 
 his account of ' The little white 
 lady,' ibid. 
 
 ' Island, the,' characteristics of, 139 
 
 allusion in, to the scenery of the 
 Highlands, 25 
 
 JANINA, Byron's visit to, 96 
 begins ' Childe Harold ' at, 105 
 Jeffrey, his duel with Moore, 119-20 
 Johnson, Dr., commends Lord Car- 
 lisle's tragedy ' The Father's Re- 
 venge,' 31 
 'Juan, Don,' remarks on, 418-23 
 
 written without a plan, 418 
 
 wrongly called by Byron an epic, 419 
 
 immorality of, 420 
 
 cynical nihilism of, 421 
 
 declared by Goethe to be the most 
 immoral poem ever written, 422 
 
 TTENNEDY, Dr., his theological dis- 
 J\. cussions with Lord Byron, 288 
 Knolles' ' History of the Turks,' one 
 
 of the first books that interested 
 
 Byron, 19 
 
 T AMARTINE, influence of Byron 
 JU on, 427 
 
 Lamb, Lady Caroline, her intimacy 
 with Byron, 1 45 
 
 described, ibid. 
 
 introduced to Lord Byron, 146 
 
 Byron's farewell letter to, 146 
 
 writes ' Glenarvon,' ibid. 
 
 sees Lord Byron's funeral proces- 
 sion, 323 
 
 ' Lara ' published in the same volume 
 with Eogers's 'Jacqueline,' 137 
 
 a delineation of Byron himself, 137 
 Lavender, a quack, prescribes for the 
 
 boy Byron, 32
 
 INDEX. 
 
 513 
 
 LAVENDER 
 
 Lavender, quizzed by Byron, 32 
 Leacroft, the family at Southwell, 60 
 Leigh, Mrs., born Augusta Byron, 9 
 
 taken to her mother's relations, 12 
 
 married to Colonel Leigh, 114 
 
 godmother to Augusta Ada Byron, 
 158 
 
 her unselfish character dra\vn by 
 Lady Byron, 179 
 
 remains with Lord Byron at the 
 time of the separation at Lady 
 Byron's request, 180 
 
 was the person through whom all 
 communications between Lord and 
 Lady Byron were made, 182 
 
 Leigh, Medora, account of, 169 
 
 her miserable career, 170-1 
 
 taken up by Lady Byron, 170 
 ' Liberal, the,' origin of, 265 
 
 published, 271 
 
 professed principles of, 271 
 Little's poems, known by heart to 
 
 Byron in his fifteenth year, 43 (note), 
 
 450 
 
 'Lockin-y-gar/ poem of, 24 
 Long, Edward Noel, a friend of Byron 
 
 at Cambridge, 53 
 
 rivals Byron in swimming, 56 
 Lushington, Dr., consulted by Lady 
 
 Bvron's' family as to the separation, 
 161 
 
 declares a reconciliation impossible, 
 161 
 
 MACKENZIE, , HENRY, com- 
 mends, by letter to Byron, his 
 early poems, 62 
 Mafra, Byron's visit to the monastery 
 
 at, 90 
 'Manfred,' remarks on, 4114 
 
 made an extraordinary impression 
 in Germany, 414 
 
 performed in German theatres with 
 music by Schumann, 414 (note) 
 
 Mansell, Dr. William Lort, Master 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 during Byron's college life, 52 
 
 Marathon, the plain of, offered to 
 Byron for sale, 103 
 
 Mariana Segati, 216-22 
 
 Margarita Cogni, 224-5 
 
 Marriage, Lord Byron's, 153 
 
 certificate of Byron's, 153 
 Martinoaii, Miss, her charges against 
 
 Byron, 154 
 
 Matthews, Charles Skinner, an inti- 
 mate friend of Byron, 53 
 
 drowned in the Cam, ibid. 
 
 his description of Newstead, "1 
 
 describes the mode of life at New- 
 stead, 73-4 
 
 Mavrocordato, confers with Byron, 292 
 ' Mazeppa,' written in 1818, reflects 
 
 Byron's relations with the Countess 
 
 Guiccioli, 138 
 Medwin's ' Conversations," quoted, 
 
 144-48, 193 
 Memoirs, Lord Byron's, 178; given by 
 
 him to Moore, 235 
 
 destruction of, 236, 456-61 
 
 charge of immorality of, cannot be 
 sustained, 237 
 
 said by Byron to be faithful and 
 true, but not impartial, 237 
 
 ' not confessions,' 237 
 Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, quoted on 
 
 the character of the Albanians, 96 
 Metaphysics, ' only good for Germans, 
 
 366 
 Milbanke, Sir Ealph, 150 
 
 character of, 155 
 
 Milbanke, Lady, invites Byron to 
 Kirkby Mallory at the time of the 
 separation, 160 
 
 Milbanke, Miss, introduced to Byron, 
 150 
 
 appearance of, 150 
 
 character and accomplishments of, 
 151 
 
 described in ' Glenarvon,' 1 88 (note) 
 Milton, the noblest expression of Puri- 
 tanism, 377 
 
 Minns, Mrs., Lady Byron's maid, con- 
 tradicts the charges against Lord 
 Byron, 154-5 (note) 
 
 Mira, La, Lord Byron's residence at, 
 near Venice, 222, 231, 234 
 
 Missolonghi, investment of, 290 
 
 Byron arrives at, 294 
 
 exceedingly unhealthy, 299 
 Monastery, Armenian, at Venice, 217 
 Moore, Thomas, character of, 357 
 Moore, Dr. John, author of ' Zeluco,' 
 
 20 (note) 
 
 Murray, Mr., letter of Byron to, cited, 
 16 
 
 becomes Byron's publisher through 
 ' Childe Harold,' 119 
 
 offers one thousand guineas for the 
 copyright of the ' Giaour ' and the 
 ' Bride of Abydos,' 135 
 
 liberal offer to Lord Byron, 157 
 
 L L
 
 514 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Murray, dissuades Byron from under- 
 taking the ' Liberal,' 265 
 
 paid to Byron, for his various 
 poems, 19,340^., 373 
 
 his letter to Mr. Wilmot Horton 
 on his property in the ' Memoirs of 
 Lord Byron by himself,' 455-61 
 
 Music, praised by Byron, 370 
 Musset, Alfred de, influenced by 
 Byron, 428 
 
 YTAPIER, COLONEL, English 
 ll Eesident at Cephalonia, 283 
 Napoleon, Byron's 'Pagod,' 359 
 
 his influence on Byron, 361 
 Newstead, extent of the estate of, 69 
 
 and its park, beautiful description 
 of, in 'Don Juan,' 70, 71 
 
 described by Charles Skinner 
 Matthews, 71 
 
 described by Harness, 469 
 Newstead Abbey, ceded to Sir John 
 
 Byron ' the little with the red beard,' 
 3, 68 
 
 condition of, when Byron comes to 
 the title, 30 
 
 account of its foundation, 68 
 
 the ancient lectern of, found in one 
 of the lakes at Newstead, now in 
 Southwell Minster, 70 
 
 hired and occupied by Lord Grey 
 de Ruthven till Byron's majority, 
 72 
 
 partially restored by Byron, 73 
 
 haunted, 74 
 
 the influence of, on Byron's heart, 
 79 
 
 revenues of, to Byron, 80 
 
 sold to Colonel Wildman, 81 
 
 sold again, after Colonel Wildman's 
 death, to Mr. Webb, 84 
 
 Nicolas, Sir Harris, directs attention 
 to a flaw in the Byron lineage, 436 
 
 Noel, Lady, applies to Dr. Lushington 
 on behalf of Lady Byron, 161 
 
 in her will forbids Ada to see her 
 father's portrait, 327 
 
 PARISINA,' published, 138 
 Parker, Margaret, Byron's early 
 love for, 37 
 
 Byron's description of, 37 
 
 the occasion of Byron's first dash 
 into poetry, 37 
 
 Parry, William, account of, 296 
 
 arrives at Missolonghi, 297 
 Paterson, Byron's early master, 18 
 Peel, Sir Robert, at Harrow with 
 
 Byron, 44 
 
 comparison of Byron and Peel as 
 school boys, 45 
 
 Pepys, his character of the second wife 
 
 of the first Lord Byron, 3 
 Pigot, Miss Elizabeth Bridget, an 
 
 attached friend of Byron, 58 
 
 John, an early friend of Byron, 58 
 
 his excursion with Byron to 
 Harrogate, 59 
 
 Henry Edward, a younger brother, 
 Byron's godson, 62 
 
 anecdote regarding his copy of the 
 second impression of Byron's early 
 poems, 62 (note) 
 
 Pineta, the, at Ravenna, described in 
 
 ' Don Juan,' 232 
 Poems, Early, of Byron, 446-56 
 Poetry, Goethe's saying of, 353 
 
 Byron on, 374 
 
 modern English, described by 
 Byron, 387 
 
 the Lake School of, 388, 389 
 
 Byron's definition of, 401 
 Polidori, Dr., a young Italian phy- 
 sician, 202 
 
 writes down from memory Byron's 
 tale of the ' Vampyre,' 206 
 
 troublesome to Byron, ibid. 
 
 challenges Shelley, 207 
 
 commits suicide, ibid. 
 
 Pope, Byron's great admiration of, 
 
 380, 381 
 
 Person, disliked by Byron, 52 
 Puschkin, the Russian Byron, 431 
 
 "DAVENNA, Byron's life at, 243 
 XX; et seqq. 
 
 called by Byron ' a dreadfully moral 
 place,' 243 
 
 Ridge, the bookseller of Newark, the 
 printer of Byron's early poems, 61 
 
 publishes the 'Hours of Idleness,' 
 36 
 
 Rogers, Byron's first Latin master, 32 
 
 shows great tenderness for his 
 charge, 32 
 
 Rogers, the poet, and Byron, 387 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, consulted by 
 
 Lady Byron and her family about 
 
 the separation, 161 
 Ross, Byron's early master, 1 8
 
 INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 OARDANAPALUS,' remarks on, 
 O 401-9 
 
 brought on the stage with great 
 success l>y Charles Kean, 410 
 
 Scott, Walter, like Byron, not dis- 
 tinguished at school, *1 9 
 
 suffered little iu the development 
 of Ing strength from his lameness,21 
 
 meets Byron at Mr. Murray's, 129 
 
 and Byron exchange presents, 129 
 Scotland, limited extent of the in- 
 fluence of, on Byron, 26 
 
 Schiller, quotation from, 1 
 Seaham, Byron's marriage takes place 
 at, 1-33 
 
 offered to Lord Byron as a residence 
 after his marriage, 157 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, becomes ac- 
 quainted -with Byron at Geneva, 
 204, 205 
 
 intimate friendship with Byron at 
 Pi.-a, 259, et segq. 
 
 publishes die Brocken scone from 
 ' Faust* in the ' Liberal,' 271 
 
 drowned, 272 
 
 his body burned, 273 
 
 his ashes buried at Rome. 274 
 
 Byron's respect for, 392 
 
 character of, 393 
 
 sketches his own and Byron's 
 character, 393 (note) 
 
 Shephanl, Mrs., prayer of, for the 
 
 conversion of Byron, 363 
 Sherwood Forest, the romance of, un- 
 heeded by Byron, 69 
 Sheridan, Byron's high praise of, 128 
 Shipman's ' Carolina,' 1683, contains a 
 
 poem by AVilliam thirdLord Byron, 4 
 Siddons, Mrs., powerful effects of her 
 
 acting on Miss Gordon (mother of 
 
 Lord Byron), 10 
 Skull-cup, history of, 74 
 Sligo, Marquis of, Byron meets at 
 
 Athens, 108 
 
 Smith, Mrs. Spencer, account of, 93 
 Smyrna, Byron finishes at, the s-.-cond 
 
 canto of*' Childe Harold,' 105 
 Southwell, description of, 57 
 Southey, satirised by Byron, 390 
 
 denounces Byron as the founder of 
 the Satanic School, 390 
 
 Stael. Madame de.her exclamation on 
 reading ' Fare thee well,' 199 
 
 at Copper, 210 
 
 attempts to bring about a recon- 
 ciliation between Lord and Lady 
 Byron, 210 
 
 WEBB 
 
 Stael, Madame de, lends '' Glenarvon ' 
 
 to Byron, 148 
 Stanhope, Lady Hester, Byron meets, 
 
 at Athens, 108 
 Stanhope, Colonel Leicester, character 
 
 of, 291 
 
 differs jrom Byron, 305 
 
 establishes a journal in Greek, 306 
 
 Byron's respect for, 307 
 
 his ' Reminiscences of Byron,' 487- 
 96 
 
 Stove, Mrs. Beecher, her scandalous 
 charge against Lord Byron, 163 
 
 publishes the 'True History of 
 Lady Byron's Life,' in Macmiflau's 
 Magazine, 163 
 
 her story shown to be utterly 
 absurd and impossible, 168 
 
 rpAVELL, REV. GEORGE, Byron's 
 JL tutor at Trinity College, 52 
 Tepeleni, described by Byron, 97 
 - tiie birthplace of Ali Pasha, ibid. 
 Thorotou, his History of Notts quoted, 
 
 437 
 
 Thorwaldsen's statue of Byron de- 
 scribed, 66 
 
 Translations of Byron's poems into 
 French, 428 
 
 into Russian, 432 
 
 Trelawney is admitted to Byron's 
 
 circle at Pisa, 529 
 commands Byron's yacht, 267 
 
 accompanies Byron to Greece, 2S1 
 
 TTTRAIKEY, night scene at, de- 
 U scribed in second canto of 
 ' Childe Harold,' 102 
 
 T/-AMPYRE,' the, sketch of a talc 
 V relatedby Byron, and written by 
 
 Dr. Polidori from memory, 206 
 Venice, Byron arrives at, 214 
 -- W'.men of, described, 215 
 \Y t -'., blank, said by Byron to be 
 
 the most difficult of all metres, 405 
 
 -ll^ALES, CHARLOTTE, Princess 
 T \ of, Stanzas addressed to, excite 
 
 a great sensation, 1 35 
 Walker, Sir Edward (Garter) quoted, 
 
 4}8 
 Webb, W. F., Esq., purchases New-
 
 516 
 
 IXDKX. 
 
 WUNTWOUTW. :. . 
 
 stead at Colonel Wildmau's dentil, 
 
 and continue its restoration, 81 
 Weufrworth, Lord, Lady Byron's 
 
 uncle, dies, 157 
 Wentworth, Lord, grandson of Lady 
 
 Byron, writes to the ' Pall Mull 
 
 Gazette,' 165 
 
 denies the truth of Mrs. Stowe's 
 narrative, 16.7 
 
 4 Werner,' remarks on, 410 
 
 dedicated to Goethe, 410 
 Wildman, Colonel, a school-fellow of 
 
 Byron's at Harrow, 45 
 
 becomes the proprietor of New- 
 stead, 81 
 
 restores Newstead, S'2 
 
 Women, as they sliowl themselves 
 to Byron, 144 
 
 Byron's professed opinion of, 14!) 
 Woodhouslee, Lord, commends to 
 
 Byron, by letter, his early poems, 62 
 Woods, Sir Albert (Garter), on the 
 
 Byron pedigree, 436 
 Wordsworth and Byron, anecdote 
 
 regarding, by Crabb .Robinson, 389 
 
 (note) 
 
 anecdote of, told by Lady Byron, 
 389 (note) 
 
 'fTELUCO,' the romance of, 20, 21 
 
 Erratum. 
 
 P. 225, line 27. For 1S07 read 1817. 
 
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