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My Recollections of Lord Byron
by Teresa Guiccioli
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"During the whole of the time that I visited him, I never heard him utter a single word of contempt for the Christian religion. On the contrary, he used often to say, that nothing could be more reprehensible than to turn into ridicule those who believed in it, since in this strange world it is equally difficult to arrive at knowing what one is or is not to believe; and since many freethinkers teach doctrines which are as much beyond the reach of human comprehension as the mysteries of the revelation itself."

When, by habit of looking at serious things from their absurd and ridiculous side, he feared he had done the same with regard to some religious ceremony, he at once hastened to explain himself. Thus he writes to Moore from Pisa:—

"I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you believe me in this, I do not know."

But much as he respected sincere religious feelings, equally did he detest that hypocrisy which despises in secret the idol it adores in public. Even at the transition period of what has been called his skepticism, it was extremely distasteful to him to speak against religion, to despise and mock even the hollow worship practiced outwardly from human motives and personal interest. In Livadia at this time he met with a Greek bishop, whose actions were quite at variance with his language. How great the antipathy Lord Byron conceived for him, may be seen by the notes appended to the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." For the Pharisees of our days he felt all the anger due to whited sepulchres. No, certainly, it was not true virtue in general, nor any one virtue in particular, that he laughed at sometimes; nor was it friendship, or love, or religion, or any truly respectable sentiment that ever excited his mirth. He only ridiculed semblances, vain appearances, when those who paraded them did so from personal interest. Lord Byron knew too well, by experience, that many virtues admired and set forth as such do but wear a mask in reality; and he thought it useful for society to divest them of it, and show the hidden visage. Why should he have shown any consideration for the virtue that patronizes charity-balls, in order to acquire the right of violating, with impunity, the duties of a Christian wife? or that other female virtue which weighs itself in the balance with the privilege of directing Almacks? or that, wishing to unite the advantages of modesty with the gratification of passion? In short, why should he have shown consideration for persons whose merit consists in never allowing themselves to be seen as they are? He was very disrespectful, likewise, toward certain friendships that he knew by experience to be full of wordy counsel, but finding nothing to say in the way of consolation or defense. This peculiar variety of friendship had made him suffer greatly. In his serious poems he calls it "the loss of his illusions;" and expresses himself with misanthropical indignation, or with a bleeding heart. But, returning to a milder philosophy, he ended by smiling and jesting at it, in words like these:—

"Look'd grave and pale to see her friend's fragility, For which most friends reserve their sensibility."

Seriously; was he bound to any great tenderness toward such friendship as that? And does it not suffice to set Lord Byron right with true friendship to hear him say, after having laughed about false friends:—

"But this is not my maxim: had it been, Some heart-aches had been spared me: yet I care not— I would not be a tortoise in his screen Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not. 'Tis better, on the whole, to have felt and seen That which humanity may bear, or bear not: Twill teach discernment to the sensitive, And not to pour their ocean in a sieve."[155]

Friendship was so necessary to him that he wrote to Moore, on the eve of his marriage, 15th of October, 1814:

"An' there were any thing in marriage that would make a difference between my friends and me, particularly in your case, I would none on't."

People should read all he said of Lord Clare and Moore, and see with what almost jealous susceptibility he guarded the title of friend,[156] before they can understand the value he attached to true friendship. But among many of the privileges he conceded to friendship, duties also held their place.

And if we pass from friendship to love, could he really bestow such respect on the loves of a Lady Adeline, or of those who, he said, "embrace you to-day, thinking of the novel they will write to-morrow." His ideal of true love has been noticed; and he became impatient when he saw it confounded with any thing else. At twenty-two years of age he wrote to his young friend, the Rev. Mr. Harness:—

"I told you the fate of B—— and H—— in my last. So much for these sentimentalists, who console themselves in their stews for the loss—the never-to-be-recovered loss—the despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs! You censure my life, Harness: when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence—a walking statue—without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love—romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!"

Yes, Lord Byron never did respect the love that can be bartered for dollars. And afterward, when irritation had given way to a milder and more tolerant philosophy, he took the liberty of laughing at it, both in prose and verse. It may however, be urged against him, that he sometimes turned into ridicule even his deepest sentiments; and Moore remarks this as a defeat, apropos of the jesting tone he assumed once at Bologna, when writing to Hoppner. But Moore forgets to say, that while his heart called him to Ravenna, he was speaking against the counsels given by Hoppner, who, in order to deter him from this visit, for reasons previously cited,[157] had made the darkest prognostications regarding its consequence; and though he could not shake Lord Byron's determination, it is very probable that he may have upset his imagination. Thus he was trying to show himself ready for every thing. Such pleasantries are like the song of one who is alarmed in the dark. Moreover, from his manner of judging human nature, and his lively sense of the ridiculous, Lord Byron was well aware that a light tone is alone admissible for speaking to others of a love they do not share, and more especially when they disapprove of it. He felt that the gayety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are better suited to indifferent people than Petrarch's high-flown phrases and sentimentalities, or Werther's despair. It was through this same nice perception of the sentiments entertained by indifferent individuals that he sometimes adopted a light, playful tone in conversation, or in his correspondence, when speaking of friendship, devoted feelings of any kind, and a host of sentiments very serious and deep within his own heart, but which he believed less calculated to interest others. And if sometimes his singular penetration of the human heart called forth mockery, it sprang more frequently from seeing fine sentiments put forth in flagrant contradiction with conduct, or morality looked upon as a mere thing of outward decorum, speedily to be set aside, if once the actors were removed from the eyes of the world. He would not grant his esteem to fine sentiments expressed by writers who could be bribed; to the promises of heroes who noisily enroll combatants, while themselves remaining safe by their fireside; or to the generosity that displays itself from a balcony. And, assuredly, he had a right to be particular in his estimate of this latter virtue, which he himself always practiced secretly, and in the shade. He would not consent to its being bartered, nor that people should have the honor of it without any sacrifice on their part. Thus he replied to Moore, who was in an ecstasy about the generosity of Lord some one:—"I shall believe all that when you prove to me that there is no advantage in openly helping a man like you." With wonderful, and, I might almost say, supernatural perspicacity, Lord Byron penetrated into the arcana of souls, and did not come out thence with a very good opinion of what he had seen. But, kind as he was, he did not like to probe too deeply the motives of others, especially as a rule of action for himself. As he says in his admirable satire of "Don Juan,"—

"'Tis sad to burrow deep to roots of things, So much are they besmeared with earth."

Lastly, his mockeries were all directed against the vice he most abhorred—hypocrisy; for he looked upon that as a gangrene to the soul, the cause of most of the evils that afflict society, and certainly of all his own misfortunes. As long as he was obliged to bear it, under the depressing influence of England's misty atmosphere, he felt by turns saddened and indignant. But when he reached Italy, his soul caught the bright rays that emanate from a southern sky, and he preferred to combat hypocrisy with the lighter weapons of pleasantry. But whichsoever arm he wielded, he always pursued the enemy remorselessly, following into every fastness, of which none knew better than himself each winding and each resource. For hypocrisy had been the bane of his life; it had rendered useless for happiness that combination he possessed of Heaven's choicest gifts; the plenitude of affections, numberless qualities most charming in domestic life, for he had been exiled from the family circle. Hypocrisy had forced him to despise a country also that could act toward him like an unnatural parent, rather than a true mother, wounding him with calumnies, and obstinately depreciating him, solely because she allowed hypocrisy to reign on her soil. Such, then, were the virtues which he permitted himself to mock at.

"We must not make out a ridicule where none exists," says La Bruyere; but it is well to see that which has a being, and to draw it forth gracefully, in a manner that may both please and instruct.

As to true, holy, pure, undeniable virtues, no one more than he admired and respected them. "Any trait of virtue or courage," says one of his biographers, "caused him deep emotion, and would draw tears from his eyes, provided always he were convinced that it had not been actuated by a desire of shining or producing effect."

"A generous action," says another, "the remembrance of patriotism, personal sacrifice, disinterestedness, would cause in him the most sublime emotions, the most brilliant thoughts." The more his opinion as to the rarity of virtue appeared to him well-founded, the more did he render homage when he met with it. The more he felt the difficulty of overcoming passions, the more did a victory gained over them excite his admiration.

"Pray make my respects to Mrs. Hoppner, and assure her of my unalterable reverence for the singular goodness of her disposition, which is not without its reward even in this world. For those who are no great believers in human virtues would discover enough in her to give them a better opinion of their fellow-creatures, and—what is still more difficult—of themselves, as being of the same species, however inferior in approaching its nobler models."

At Coppet he was more touched by the conjugal affection of the young Duchesse de Broglie for her husband, than he was attracted by the genius even of her mother, Madame de Stael. "Nothing," says he in his memoranda, "was more agreeable than to see the manifestation of domestic tenderness in this young woman." When he received at Pisa the posthumous message sent by a beautiful, angelic young creature, who had caught a glimpse of him but once, and who, nevertheless, in the solemn hours of her agony, thought of him, and prayed to God for him, it made a deep impression on his mind.

"In the evening," says Madame G——, "he spoke to me at great length of this piety and touching virtue."

Mr. Stendhall, who knew him during his stay at Milan in 1816, says:—"I passed almost all my evenings with Lord B. Whenever this singular man was excited and spoke with enthusiasm, his sentiments were noble, great, and generous; in short, worthy of his genius."

And then when Mr. Stendhall speaks of walking alone with him in the large green-room at La Scala, he adds:—

"Lord Byron made his appearance for half an hour every evening, holding the most delightful conversation it was ever my good-fortune to hear. A volume of new ideas and generous sentiments came pouring out in such novel form, that one fancied one's self enjoying them for the first time. The rest of the evening the great man lapsed into the English noble."

Even biographers most hostile to Lord Byron render justice to his sensibility and respect for real virtue, for all that is true and estimable. And if we seek proofs of the same in his poems and correspondence, we shall find it at every page, not excepting "Don Juan,"—the satire that most exposed him to the anger and calumny of cant. This is why I shall confine myself to borrowing quotations from this poem. For instance, in speaking of military glory, he says:—

"The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

"And why?—because it brings self-approbation; Whereas the other, after all its glare, Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a nation, * * * * * * * Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles."[158]

And then again:—

"One life saved ... ... is a thing to recollect Far sweeter than the greenest laurels sprung From the manure of human clay, though deck'd With all the praises ever said or sung; Though hymn'd by every harp, unless within Your heart join chorus, Fame is but a din."[159]

When he speaks of Souvaroff, who, with a hand still reeking from the massacre of 40,000 combatants, began his dispatch to the Autocrat in these words:—

"Glory to God and to the Empress [Catharine]! Ismail's ours!"

Lord Byron exclaims:—

"Powers Eternal! such names mingled!

"Methinks these are the most tremendous words Since 'Mene, Mene, Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,' Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords. Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson: What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's, Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on The fate of nations;—but this Russ so witty Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a burning city.

"He wrote this Polar melody, and set it, Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans, Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it— For I will teach, if possible, the stones To rise against earth's tyrant's."[160]

And then when he speaks of truly virtuous men—the Washingtons and Franklins—those who preferred a quiet, retired life; so as better to walk in the paths of justice and goodness, like the ancient heroes of Sparta, one feels that his words come really from the heart. But if I wished to make extracts of all the proofs contained in his works, of respect and enthusiasm for true virtue, a volume of quotations would be requisite. Thus I have only chosen some at hazard, selecting them principally from that admirable satire of "Don Juan," which combines more deep philosophy and true morality than is to be found in the works of many moralists; and I may likewise say more wit, and knowledge of the human heart, more kindness and indulgence, than ever before were united in a volume of verse or prose, and more, perhaps, than ever will be. Yet, despite of all this, the independence, boldness, and above all, the true state of things revealed in "Don Juan," excited great anger throughout the political, religious, and moral world of England; indeed, passion went so far in distorting, that the tendency and moral bearing of the poem were quite misunderstood. With regard to France, where this satire is only known through a prose translation, which mars half its cleverness, "Don Juan" serves, however, the purpose of an inexhaustible reservoir, whence writers unwittingly draw much they deem their own. Besides, from analogy of race, he is, perhaps, better appreciated in France than in his own country; for few English do understand what true justice he rendered himself when he said,—that, in point of fact, his character was far too lenient, the greatest proof of his muse's discontent being a smile.

But if, despite all this evidence, people should still persist, as is very possible, in asserting that Lord Byron ridiculed, satirized, and denied the existence of real virtues, at least we would ask to have these virtues named, so as to be able to answer. What are the virtues so insulted? Is it truth, piety, generosity, firmness, abnegation, devotedness, independence, patriotism, humanity, heroism? But if he denied not one of these, if he only ridiculed and satirized their semblances, their hypocritical shadows, then let critics and envious minds—the ignorant, or the would-be ignorant—let them cease, in the name of justice, thus to offer lying insult to a great spirit no longer able to defend himself.

Perhaps he did not render sufficient homage to that great and respectable virtue of his country—conjugal fidelity; but he has told us why. It appeared to him that this virtue, supposed to stamp society, was, in truth, more a pretense than a reality among the higher classes in England; and, if he examined his own heart, this virtue wore a name for him that had been the martyrdom of his whole life.

I may say, farther, that when he saw a truth shining at the expense of some hypocrisy, he did not shut it up in his casket of precious things, to carry them with him to the grave, nor did he only name them in a low voice to his secretaries, because by speaking aloud he might have done some harm to himself (as, however, the great Goethe did and acknowledged). Lord Byron, without thinking of the consequences that might ensue to himself, deemed, on the contrary, that truth ought to be courageously unveiled: and to the heroism of deeds he added the heroism of words.

It must not be forgotten, either, that there existed a certain kind of timidity among the other elements of his character, and that jesting often helps to season a tiresome conversation, rendering it less difficult, besides enabling us to hide our real sentiments.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 149: Galt, p. 218.]

[Footnote 150: Kennedy, p. 301.]

[Footnote 151: See Galt, with regard to Hunt.]

[Footnote 152: Moore, Letter 468.]

[Footnote 153: See chapter on "Religion."]

[Footnote 154: Ibid.]

[Footnote 155: "Don Juan," canto xiv.]

[Footnote 156: See Lord Byron's letter to Mrs. Shelley.]

[Footnote 157: See his "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 158: "Don Juan," canto viii.]

[Footnote 159: "Don Juan," canto ix.]

[Footnote 160: Ibid. canto viii.]



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MELANCHOLY OF LORD BYRON.

"To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what we are worth."—PARADOL, Study on Moralists.

From all that we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the contrary, that Lord Byron was often melancholy; but that, in order to judge well the nature and shades of his melancholy, it is necessary to analyze and observe it, not only in his writings, but also in his conduct through life. Whence arose his melancholy? Was it one of those moral infirmities, incurable and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like that of Rene, whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful; who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mysteries; who knowing not how to be young, will no more know how to be old; who in all things wanted order, proportion, harmony, truth; who had nothing to produce equilibrium between the power of genius and the indolence of will? This kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue, and seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it a melancholy like Werther's, whose senses, stimulated by passion, of which society opposed the development, carried perturbation also into the moral regions? Was it the deep mysterious ailment of Hamlet, at once both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius, "that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity? No; the striking characteristics that exist in all these sorts of melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron's. His was not a melancholy that had become chronic, like Rene's, ere arriving at life's maturity. For, whereas, the child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection, and circumstances. Nor was it Werther's kind of melancholy; for, even at intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord Byron's energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied passion.

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimulation would have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university, where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the darker heroes he has described in "Lara" and "Manfred," for he never knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all these identifications between himself and his heroes.[161]

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary, melancholy always originated from some moral external cause, which would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid glance at his whole life.

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England, that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in "Tasso's Lament:"—

"From my very birth my soul was drunk with love," etc.

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so affirms:—

"Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney, "while sheep are ever to be found in flocks."

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great intellects, have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and games of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferior to him in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of that fatal kind of melancholy—that which is hereditary and causeless. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse. Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems, but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart, the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held, that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself, and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young cousin, who beneath an angel's guise on earth, first awakened the fire of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another affection, was deceived, met with no return,[162] but, on the contrary, was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no longer feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821:—

"It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to feel that I was no longer a child."

He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, arising from palpable avowed causes, having their origin in the heart, might equally find their cure in the heart. Already did imagination transport him toward his beloved Ida, and he consoled himself by saying, that if love has wings, friendship ought to have none. If this were an illusion, he completed it by writing that charming poem of his youth, "Friendship is Love without Wings."[163]

At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long as these dear friends remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge. But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them. Long, with whom he had passed such happy days,[164] left the first to go into the guards. Eddlestone remained, but Lord Byron himself was already about to quit Cambridge. During the vacation, we see him modestly preparing his first poems intended as an offering to Friendship; then going to a watering-place with some respectable friends; devoting himself with ardor to dramatic representations at the amateur theatre at Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; and thus he remained a whole year away from Cambridge, often seeing his dear Long again in London, and visiting Harrow with him. When he returned, in 1807, to Cambridge, Long had already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to go; thus, he no longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the flute of his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him. Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. Besides, he was already nineteen years of age, had made some progress in the journey of life, probably leaving some illusions behind him on the bushes that lined the roadside, and perhaps his soul had already lost somewhat of its early purity. He had certainly seen that many things in the moral world were far removed from the ideal forms with which he had invested them; that love, even friendship, virtue, patriotism, generosity, and goodness, by no means attained the height of his first convictions. A year before, he had said: "I have tasted the joy and the bitterness of love." Willingly again would he have given way to the emotions of the heart; but he too soon perceived that to do so were a useless, dangerous luxury,—a language scarcely understood in the world in which he moved; that the idols he had believed of precious metal, were, in reality, made of vile clay. Then he also resolved on taking his degrees in vice; but, unlike others, he did so with disgust, and he called satiety, not the quantity, but the quality of the aliment. A year before he had also said: "I have found that a friend may promise and yet deceive."

Magnanimous as he was, he made advances to the guilty friend, and took half the blame on himself; but in vain was he generous, saying, with tears that flowed from his heart to his pen:—

"You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, If danger demanded, were wholly your own; You knew me unalter'd by years or by distance, Devoted to love and to friendship alone."

And then:—

"Repentance will cancel the vow you have made."

And again:

"With me no corroding resentment shall live: My bosom is calm'd by the simple reflection, That both may be wrong, and that both should forgive."

The friend did not return, and Lord Byron's generous, pure, delicate nature—fearful lest he might be in the wrong—could only find peace in trying to offer reparation. He wrote to Lord Clare:—

"I have, therefore, made all the reparation in my power, by apologizing for my mistake, though with very faint hopes of success. His answer has not arrived, and, most probably, never will. However, I have eased my own conscience by the atonement, which is humiliating enough to one of my disposition; yet I could not have slept satisfied with the reflection of having, even unintentionally, injured any individual. I have done all that could be done to repair the injury, and there the affair must rest. Whether we renew our intimacy or not is of very trivial consequence."

But although he could no longer rely entirely upon his heart for defending his loved illusions so cruelly attacked by reality, yet it was not possible for him to put out of sight his ideal of all the beauties of soul whose presence was a condition of his being. And it was this presence that made material dissipated life, and also the intellectual routine existence at Granta, both appear so unattractive to him. He wrote a satire on them, and the blame inflicted shows his fine nature. When evil was thus judged, thus condemned, alike by pen and heart, there could be no real danger; not even had it power to sadden him. A more formidable peril menaced him from another side. Sadness might now reach his heart through his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze, meditate, generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of life. It has been seen that he began to worry even his nurses with childish questions, and afterward much more to embarrass his tutors, masters etc., and especially the excellent Dr. Glenny at Dulwich. A natural tendency fortified by early religious education evidently drew his heart to God; but, on the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating every thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his grounds of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to him on great questions could not satisfy him; he required to discuss their basis. Already the increasing play of his faculties had been revealed in that beautiful Prayer to the Divinity which constitutes his profession of faith and worship, "every line of which," says Moore, "is instinct with fervent sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions."

On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a circle of intellectual companions which Moore calls "a brilliant pleiad," a young man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a mind that had, perhaps, some affinity to his own, but which, devoid of his sensibility and logic, surpassed him in hardihood; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the inscrutable, and, not content with analysis, desirous to arrive at conclusions. Through the natural influence of example, and more especially the irresistible fascination exercised by a great intelligence, uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron because so like his own; from all these causes, Matthews exercised an immense influence over him. This young man loved to plunge his head into depths from whence he emerged all dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too reasonable a mind to arrive at such results. He refused to follow where deformity and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking upward. Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic glass, where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined with a host of doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathetic to his soul, but perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the doubts. And, being no longer alarmed at sounding such depths, he imbibed seeds of doctrine capable of producing incredulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these seeds required a dry soil to fructify, and his, being so rich, they perished, after a short period of wretched existence. All these influences, and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a sort of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing serious consequences; for in the main his belief was not deeply shaken. It had no other effect than to throw him, for a time, into uncertainty on points necessary to him, "and to teach him," says Moore, "to feel less embarrassed in a sort of skepticism."

This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations becoming deeper and wider, his mind ceased always to follow his heart. But the latter following rather the former, though with sadness and fatigue, and all the problems of life becoming more and more enveloped in darkness, it is possible that he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal expressions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he was not equally fortunate with regard to ennui.

"Ennui," says the clever Viscomte D'Yzarn de Freissinet, in his deep and delightful book, "Les Pensees grises," "ennui is felt by ordinary minds because they can not understand earth, and by superior ones because they can not understand heaven."

Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees at the university, and when about to enter into possession of his estates. On seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all trace of melancholy.

But it was not so; the responsibilities of life began too soon for him, and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year was already dotted with black marks indicative of the approaching tempest. In the first place, the cassock of a real priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive, endowed with feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind. Moreover, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in his heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early poems had already inflicted a deep wound. Lord Byron, it is true, thought to heal this by writing a satire; still, despite the vein of pleasantry indulged, he continued to discipline his mind by serious study of the great masters of literature and of the deepest thinkers.

It must be acknowledged that the balm he sought in satire, was a dangerous caustic which, while closing one wound, might well cause others to open. At the same time, the money embarrassments inherited from his predecessor in the estate went on accumulating, and the period was approaching when the cassock, donned in boyish fun, was to be exchanged for the grave ermine of a peer of the realm. Who should present him, then, to the noble assembly, if not his guardian, and near relative, the Earl of Carlisle? The young lord had always met his coldness with deference and respect, even dedicating his early poems to him. But the noble earl now still further aggravated his unkind conduct toward his ward by abandoning him at this solemn moment. Not only did he refuse to lend countenance himself, but he even hurt and wounded Lord Byron by interposing delays so as to prevent or put off his reception in the House of Peers, and that solely because he did not like the young man's mother! It would be impossible for the most loving heart, the one most susceptible of family affections, not to have felt cruelly, under such circumstances, the absence of near ties, and Lord Byron did not then know his sister. Suffer he did, of course; and, had it not been for a distant relative, despite his high birth and wondrous gifts, he must have entered the august assembly accompanied only by his title. However frivolous the young man might have appeared, he was not so in reality; and he hesitated at this time between a project of travelling for information, and the desire to take part immediately in the labors of the Senate. Some months before, attaining his majority, when the wish of travelling predominated, after having informed his mother of a thousand arrangements, all equally affectionate, wise, and generous, that he was about to take for her during his absence, he wrote that he proposed visiting Persia, India, and other countries.

"If I do not travel now," said he, "I never shall, and all men should, one day or other. I have, at present, no connections to keep me at home; no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, etc. I shall take care of you, and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years' knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a fair chance: it is from experience, not books, we ought to judge of them. There is nothing like inspection and trusting to our senses."

But while cherishing these ideas, his mind at the same time wavered between the two projects,—Parliament attracted him greatly. Despite his light words, the love of true and merited glory, of the beautiful and the good, ever inflamed his heart. What he wrote a year or two before, to his counsellor and friend, the Rev. Mr. Beecher, had not ceased to be his programme.[165] He said to his mother, a short time before his majority, that he thought it indispensable, "as a preparation for the future, to make a speech in the House, as soon as he was admitted." He wrote the same thing still more explicitly to Harness; for he then thought seriously of entering upon politics without delay, and his rights as a hereditary legislator paved the way for it. Nevertheless, being hurt, disappointed, and indignant at his guardian's conduct, and feeling himself isolated, he not only renounced taking any active part in the debates of his colleagues, but, according to Moore, appeared to consider the obligation of being among them painful and mortifying. Thus, a few days after entering Parliament, he returned disgusted to the solitude of his abbey, there to meditate on the bitterness of precocious experience, or upon scenes that appeared more vast to his independent spirit, than those which his country presented.

The final decision soon came. He resolved on leaving England and taking a long journey with his friend Hobhouse, on seeking sunshine, experience, and forgetfulness for his wounded soul. It seemed really at that moment as if, through an accumulation of disappointment, injustice and grief, the result of lost illusions (he had already written the epitaph on "Boatswain"), as if, I say, some germs of misanthropy were beginning to appear. But his bitterness did not reach, or rather, did not change his heart: every thing proves this. One of his friends, Lord Faulkland, was killed in a duel about this time; and our misanthrope not only was inconsolable, but, despite the embarrassment of his own affairs, generously assisted the family of the deceased, who had been left in distress. Dallas, who, through his prejudices, personal susceptibilities, and exaggerated opinions, shows so little indulgence to Lord Byron, thus describes however the impression made on him, and his conduct under the circumstances:—

"Nature had gifted Lord Byron with most benevolent sentiments, which I had frequent opportunities of perceiving; and I sometimes saw them give to his beautiful countenance an expression truly sublime. I paid him a visit the day after Lord Faulkland's death; he had just seen the lifeless body of one in whose society he had lately passed a pleasant day. He was saying to himself aloud, from time to time—'Poor Faulkland!' His look was more expressive than his words. 'But,' he added, 'his wife! 'tis she that is to be pitied!' I read his soul full of the kindest intentions, nor were they sterile. If ever there were a pure action, it was the one he meditated then; and the man who conceived and accomplished it was at that moment advancing through thorns and briers toward the free but narrow path that leads to heaven."[166]

He was setting out then on a long journey. And at that period long journeys were serious things. His first desire was to have a farewell meeting at Newstead, of all his old school-fellows. And that not sufficing, he even wished to carry their image away with him, so as to enjoy a sensible means of recalling tender remembrances of the past. But his heart found an aliment for misanthropy in the selfish answer given by one of his comrades, who was alarmed at the expense of getting a portrait taken. We see the impression made by this ungenerous reply, in the letter he addressed to his friend Harness:—

"I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before I depart I am collecting the pictures of my most intimate school-fellows. I want yours; I have commissioned one of the first miniature painters of the day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow any to incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused to sit, under the idea that he was to disburse on the occasion, you will see that it is necessary to state these preliminaries, to prevent the recurrence of any similar mistake. It will be a tax on your patience for a week, but pray excuse it, as it is possible the resemblance may be the sole trace I shall be able to preserve of our past friendship. Just now it seems foolish enough, but in a few years, when some of us are dead, and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will be a kind of satisfaction to retain, in these images of the living, the idea of our former selves, and to contemplate, in the resemblances of the dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, and a host of passions."

If misanthropy had not been an element heterogeneous to his character, it might well have assumed larger proportions at this moment; for, on the very eve of his departure from England, his heart had yet to suffer one of those chilling shocks to which sensitive natures, removed far above the usual temperature of the world, says Moore, are only too much exposed. And this proof of coldness, which he complains of with indignation in a note to the second canto of "Childe Harold," was given precisely by one of the friends he most loved. Mr. Dallas, who witnessed the immediate effect produced by this mark of coldness, thus describes it:

"I found him bursting with indignation. 'Will you believe it?' said he, 'I have just met —— and asked him to come and sit an hour with me; he excused himself; and what do you think was his excuse? He was engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping! 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!'"[167]

The conduct of this friend gave him so much pain, that a year after he wrote again about it, from Constantinople, to Dallas:—

"The only person I counted would feel grieved at my departure took leave of me with such coldness, that if I had not known the heart of man I should have been surprised. I should have attributed it to some offenses on my part, had I ever been guilty of aught save too much affection for him."

Dallas thought that some lady, from a spirit of vengeance, had excited this young man to slight Lord Byron.

I will not here seek to discover whether he was right or wrong. It suffices that he could believe it, for me to say, that this singular misanthropy, born of heart-deceptions, was in reality nothing else but grief, the causes of which might each be enumerated, but the intensity of which we do not really know, since that deep capacity is the sad privilege of beings highly endowed.

In any case, it is certain that when he left England the measure of disappointments capable of producing real melancholy in such a sensitive heart was quite filled up. Is it, then, surprising that he, like his hero, "Childe Harold," should see with indifference the shores of his native land recede? But if, unhappily, the gloomy ideas he welcomed for a moment brought about a regrettable habit, no more to be lost, of adopting, in his language spoken and written, expressions and mystifications that too often concealed his real feelings, only letting them be seen through the medium of his mind (a sure way of making him misunderstood), he could not long stand against the proofs of real attachment shown him by his fellow-traveller, and, indeed, by all who came near him. Even before setting sail, the influence of this sentiment, combined with his natural disposition to gayety, became visible; all annoyances seemed forgotten in the agreeable sensation of a first voyage that was to bear him away from the country where he had suffered so much, and which would probably show him, in other lands, more favorable specimens of the human race. Indeed, this is quite evident in the letters and gay verses sent off from Falmouth to his friends Drury and Hodgson, as well as in the more serious strain, though still gay and affectionate, in which he, at the same time, addressed his mother.[168]

Hardly had he landed at Lisbon, when his heart, yearning after the beautiful, expanded into admiration at sight of the Tagus and the beauties of Cintra; displaying alike his high moral sense of things, whether he expressed admiration or inflicted blame.[169]

We see his whole nature revolt at baseness, ingratitude, cowardice, ferocity, all kinds of moral deformity; just as much as it was attracted and delighted by patriotism, courage, devotion, sacrifice, love carried to heroism, grace, and beauty. We perceive, in the poet's soul, a freshness and a moral vigor, that shine all the more brightly, contrasted with the misanthropical melancholy of the hero of his legend. But this personage had been imprudently chosen to typify a state of mind into which youth often falls, and which, perhaps, Lord Byron himself went through during a few short hours of disenchantment. The impressions thus gathered, were treasured in his memory until they came to maturity some months later; then they issued from his pen in flowing numbers, whose magic power he then ignored: but assuredly the fine sentiments expressed came from the soul of the minstrel, not from the satiated feelingless hero, who was incapable of experiencing them. Let people only make the distinction between the two personages whom malice has taken pleasure in confounding, an error willingly adopted by a certain set and imposed on credulous minds.[170]

The relation between the two is not one of family or race, but a purely accidental external resemblance; the result of some strange fancy and intellectual want in the poet, whose powerful imagination, while having recourse only to his own spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings and types, yet required to rest always on reality, for painting the material world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions.

Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the same vessel, to make the same voyage, and meet with the same adventures. Both have the same family relations,—a mother, a sister; yes, but their souls are not in the same state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good faith; since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," there are 112 wherein the poet forgets his hero, speaks in his own name, and shows his real soul—a soul full of energy and beauty, becoming enthusiastic at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of grandeur, virtue, and love.

Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was corrupted, satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such enthusiasm. In reality, these emotions betokened the future poet, then unknown to the world and to himself. Let us return to the man,—the best justification for the poet. From Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend Hodgson. Already he found all well; better than in England. Already he declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrimage: the sight of the Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent, fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every thing; "and we find him," says Moore, "in this charming, gay, sportive, schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that 'Childe Harold' is about to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, and insensibility. Lord Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, going seventy miles a day on horseback in the heat of a Spanish July, always delighted, complaining of nothing (in a country where all was wanting), and he arrived in perfect health. There, in that beautiful city of serenades and love-making courtships, his handsome face and person immediately attracted the attention of the fair sex. He was not insensible to the lively demonstrations of two sisters, and especially of the beauteous Dona Josefa, who declared, with naive Spanish frankness, how much she liked him. This young girl and her sister, who was equally charming, made him all kinds of offers, saying, when he left:—'Adieu, handsome creature, I like thee much; and Josefa asked to have at least a lock of his beautiful hair. On arriving at Cadiz, the lovely daughter of an admiral of high birth, with whom he was thrown in contact, could not hide from her parents or himself her partiality for him. She wished to teach him Spanish, never thought he could be near enough to her at the theatre, called him to her side in crowds, made him accompany her home, invited him to return to Cadiz, and, in short," Moore says:—

"Knowing the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled by the attraction of several, was on the point of being held captive by one."

He escaped this danger from being obliged to set out for Gibraltar, where he also met with many attentions from persons of rank among his countrymen; but he encountered another peril at the island of Calypso (Malta). For he met there a real Calypso,—a young woman of extraordinary beauty (the daughter and the wife of an ambassador), and no less remarkable for her qualities of mind than for her singular position. All his time at Malta was passed between studying a language and the society of this goddess. And the true account of the attraction with which he inspired this beautiful heroine, and which he amply returned, is not certainly to be found in the stanzas of "Childe Harold," but in the verses addressed from the monastery of Zitza to the beautiful Florence, who had carried off at the same time (says he) both the ring he had refused to the Seville beauty and likewise his heart. On arriving in Albania (ancient Epirus), he went to visit Ali Pasha at Tepeleni, his country-seat; and the sight of this beautiful, amiable young man so softened the heart of the ferocious old Moslem, that he wished to be considered as Lord Byron's father, treated him like a son, caused his palaces to be opened to him, surrounding him with the most delicate attentions, sending him fresh drinks and all the delicacies of an Oriental table; he also ordered the Albanian selected to accompany Lord Byron to defend him if requisite at the peril of his life. This Albanian, named Basilius, would not leave Lord Byron afterward. Wherever any English residents, consuls, or ambassadors could be found, Lord Byron was the object of a thousand attentions and kindnesses. At Constantinople, the English ambassador, Adair, wished him to lodge at his palace; Mr. S—— proposed the same thing at Patras. When he fell ill, he was taken care of, most affectionately even, by the Albanese. All the sympathies enlisted during his travels (and those who knew him thought them most natural) must certainly have acted on his loving, grateful heart, banishing misanthropy if he had experienced it. But did it really exist? Must not even his peace of conscience have counterbalanced bitter remembrances?

His conscience was unburdened, for the griefs he had had were not merited by him. If a young girl had deceived him, he on his side had deceived no one; if a guardian had neglected and failed in duties toward him, he had always behaved respectfully toward this bad guardian. If hard-hearted critics had insulted, and tried to stifle his budding genius, modest and timid withal, he had already taken his revenge, sure to repent some day of the harshness and injustice which passion had, perhaps, led him into; if his affairs were embarrassed, they had come to him thus by inheritance. If he had taken a share in some youthful dissipation, disgust had quickly followed; not a tear or a seduction had he wherewith to reproach himself. All these testimonies furnished by his conscience, and so consoling in every case, must have been doubly so to a heart like his, which, by his own avowal, could not go to rest with the weight of any remorse upon it. And, truly, all his correspondence certifies this.

Already at Gibraltar, Lord Byron began writing letters full of clever pleasantry, either to his mother or his friends, and his correspondence always continued in the same tone, with nothing that betrayed melancholy, far less misanthropy like Childe Harold's, although he was composing that poem at this time.

At Malta, it was impossible to find shelter.[171] His companions grew impatient, but Lord Byron retained his good-humor, laughing and joking. On the mountains of Epirus, which were infested by brigands, the Albanian escort, given him by Ali Pasha, lost their way in the middle of the night, and were surprised by a terrific storm. For nine hours he advanced on horseback under torrents of rain; and when at last he reached his companions his gayety was still the same. Assailed by a frightful tempest while going by sea from Constantinople to Athens, shipwreck seemed impending. Every one was crying out in despair; Lord Byron alone consoled and encouraged the rest, then he wrapped himself up in his Albanian capote, and went to sleep quietly, until his fate should be decided. On visiting a cavern with his friend Hobhouse, they lost their way, their torch went out, and they had no prospect but to remain there, and perish with hunger. Hobhouse was in despair; but Lord Byron kept up his courage with jests, and presence of mind fit to save them, and which did so in effect. Privations, rigor of seasons, sufferings that drew complaints from the least delicate, and from his own servants, had no effect on his good-humor.[172]

All this does not simply show his courage and good natural dispositions, it likewise proves that there was not the making of a misanthrope in him. And besides, his fellow-traveller Hobhouse says so positively, in his account of their journey, when relating why Lord Byron could not accompany him in an excursion to Negropont; for he energetically expresses his regret at being obliged to separate, even for so short a time, from a companion, who, according to him, united to perspicacity of wit and originality of observation, that gay and lively temper which keeps attention awake under the pressure of fatigue, softening every difficulty and every danger.

Truly it might be said that Lord Byron was superior to the weaknesses of humanity. He was evidently patient and amiable in the highest degree. Greece appeared to him delightful,—an enchanting country with a cloudless sky. He liked Athens so much that, on quitting it for the first time, he was obliged to set off at a gallop to have courage enough to go. And when he returned there, though from the cloister of the Franciscan monastery, where he had fixed his abode, he could no longer even perceive the pretty heads of the three Graces entre les plantes embaumees de la cour; he felt himself just as happy, because he devoted his time to study, and mixed with persons of note—such as the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope, Lord Sligo, and Bruce: souvenirs which he has consecrated in his memoirs, saying Lady Hester's (?) was the most delightful acquaintance he had made in Greece.[173]

He saw Greeks, Turks, Italians, French, and Germans, and was delighted. Now could he observe the character of persons of all nations, and he became more than ever persuaded that travelling is necessary to complete a man's education; he was happy at being able to verify the superiority of his own country, and to increase his knowledge by finding the contrary. He was never either disappointed or disgusted. He lived with both great and small; passing days in the palaces of pashas, and nights in cow-stables with shepherds; always temperate, he never enjoyed better health. "Truly," said he, "I have no cause to complain of my destiny." At Constantinople he found the inhabitants good and peaceable; the Turks appeared superior to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Spaniards, and the Spaniards to the Portuguese. It was the man wearied of all, the misanthrope, who wrote all this to his mother, concluding thus:—"I have gone through a great deal of fatigue, but have not felt wearied for one instant!"

All the letters addressed to his friends Drury and Hodgson, from Greece or Turkey, were equally devoid of misanthropy, and, indeed, generally full of jokes. It was only when too long a silence on their part awakened painful remembrances, causing a sort of nostalgia of friendship, that a cry of pain once escaped him in these words:—"Truly, I have no friends in the world!" But one feels that he did not believe it, and only spoke as coquettish women do, knowing they are beloved, and willing to hear the old tale repeated.

Again, it was this same man of worn-out feeling, who, despite the embarrassed state of his affairs, showed such unexampled generosity to his mother, and to friends requiring aid both in England and Greece; who likewise displayed touching solicitude toward servants left behind him at home, or even sent away so as not to over-fatigue their youth or their old age: and, finally, who, on learning that one of his dependents was about to commit a bad action, abandoning a young girl whom he had seduced, wrote to his mother:—

"My opinion is that B—— ought to marry Miss N——; our first duty is not to do evil, our second to repair it. I will have no seducers on my estates, and will not grant my dependents a privilege I would not take myself: namely, of leading astray our neighbors' daughters.

"I hope this Lothario will follow my example, and begin by restoring the girl to society, or by my father's beard he shall hear of me."

And then he also recommends a young servant to her:—

"I pray you to show kindness to Robert, who must miss his master; poor boy! he would scarcely go back."

This letter alone shows a freshness of feeling quite consolatory; certainly "Childe Harold" was not capable of it.

But despite all these proofs of his good-humor, gayety, and antimisanthropical dispositions, we could cite persons who, even at this period, thought him melancholy. Mr. Galt, for instance, whom chance had brought in contact with him, having met on the same vessel going from Gibraltar to Greece; and then the British ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Adair, and even Mr. Bruce, at Athens. How then shall we reconcile these opposite testimonies? It may be done by analyzing his fits of melancholy, observing the time and places of their manifestation.

I have said that Lord Byron's melancholy had always real or probable causes (only capable of aggravation from his extremely sensitive temperament), and it has been seen that superabundant causes existed when he left England. That during the whole period of his absence, they may, from time to time, have cast some shade over him, notwithstanding his natural gayety and his strength of mind, is at least very probable. But did Mr. Galt, Mr. Adair, and Mr. Bruce, really witness the return of these impressions? or would it not be more natural to believe, since that better agrees with the observations made by those living constantly with him, that, through some resemblance of symptoms, they may have taken for melancholy another psychological phenomenon generally remarked—namely, the necessity of solitude, experienced by a high meditative and poetic nature like his? Indeed, what does Galt say?—

"When night arrived and there were lights in the vessel, he held himself aloof, took his station on the rail, between the pegs on which the sheets are belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence, enamored, as people say, of the moon. He was often strangely absent—it may have been from his genius; and, had its sombre grandeur been then known, this conduct might have been explained; but, at the time, it threw as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed in his mind, he seemed almost an apparition, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet crowned with a halo.

"The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him. That he sometimes descended from the clouds, and was familiar and earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and the home of his spirit in the abyss of the storm and the hiding-places of guilt. He was at the time of which I am speaking scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a clever satire; and yet it was impossible, even then, to reflect on the bias of his mind, as it was revealed by the casualties of conversation, without experiencing a presentiment, that he was destined to execute extraordinary things. The description he has given of "Manfred" in his youth, was of himself:—

'My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers, Made me a stranger.'"

All that is very well, but the only astonishing part is Mr. Galt's astonishment. The incomprehensible phantom of melancholy and caprice then hanging over Lord Byron, was especially his genius seeking an outlet; it was the melancholy that lays hold of so many great minds, because, having a vision of beauty and fame before their eyes, they fear not attaining to it. That it was which one day led Petrarch, all tearful, to his consoler John of Florence. If almost all great geniuses, ere carving out their path, have experienced this fever of the soul, falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that put on all sorts of forms,—sometimes noisy, sometimes capricious, sometimes misanthropical, was there not greater reason for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis—at a period when energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by confidence in his own genius? For he had not met with a John of Florence; he had been so much hurt at the cruel reception given to his first attempts, that it appeared to him he ought to seek another direction for the employment of his energetic faculties, and turn to active life, as many of his tastes invited. But his genius, unknown to the world as to himself, was, however, fermenting within his brain, feeding on dreams; now pacing a deck, now beneath a starry sky, anon by moonlight, and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogeneous to his nature; and thus "Childe Harold" came to light. When Lord Byron took his pen, the mechanical part of the work alone remained to be done. The elaboration and meditation of it had taken place almost unknown to himself, so that his conceptions remained latent, and took their shape by degrees in his brain, before being fixed in his writings. He penned "Childe Harold" at Janina and Athens; but it was on the vessel's deck, in that dreamy attitude just seen by Mr. Galt, that he had moulded the clay of his first statue, and given it an immortal form. Could he have done so, if he had always remained in society on deck, laughing, joking, giving way to all his charming, witty bursts of gayety, as he did while coasting the shores of Sicily, when, from time to time, his playful nature enabled him not only to forget the wounds of his heart, and the disagreeable remembrances left behind, but also to impose silence on the severe requirements of his genius?

The same causes must have produced the same opinions from the British ambassador at Constantinople. Without even speaking of the irksomeness of etiquette, always so distasteful to Lord Byron, that Moore looks upon it as one of the causes of the apparent sadness remarked by Adair, we ought to remember that he left Constantinople on board the same frigate as the ambassador, making a sea-voyage of four days with him. During these four days, it is likely that Lord Byron did not deny himself solitude, and that he also courted the secret influences exercised by starry nights on the Bosphorus as he had done under similar circumstances on the AEgean Sea. But he had yet another motive for sadness during this passage, since he was then about to separate from his friend and fellow-traveller, Hobhouse, who was obliged to go back to England. Thus, for the first time, Lord Byron would soon find himself alone in a foreign land. The effect produced by this situation must have shown itself in his countenance; for he was experiencing beforehand quite a new sensation, wherein any satisfaction at perfect independence and solitude must have been more than counterbalanced in his feeling, grateful, and in reality most sociable nature, by real grief at such a separation. And I doubt not that when setting foot on the barren isle of Chios, with its jutting rocks and tall rugged-looking mountains, just after having bade Hobhouse adieu, I doubt not that his heart experienced one of those burning suffocating feelings that belong equally to intense sorrow and joy. When, then, a few days later, he wrote to his mother for the evident purpose of calming the uneasiness she must have felt at knowing him to be alone, and when he mentioned with indifference the departure of his friend, he was exaggerating, except in what he said of loving solitude. That he did not even sufficiently express, for he might have boldly declared that it was positively requisite to him; and, indeed, his resignation at loss of a friend so thoroughly appreciated is the best proof we could have of it.

In the workings of Lord Byron's intellect, observation, reflection, and solitary meditation were brought into play much more than imagination.[174] Every thing with him took its source from facts; and the vital flame that circulates in every phase of his writings is the very essence of this reality, first elaborated in his brain and then stamped on his verse. As long as this first kind of work of observation was going on, as long as he was only occupied in imbibing truths of the visible world that were sure to strike him, and storing them in his memory, society, and especially intellectual society, suited him. But when he began to shape his observations into form, by dint of reflection and meditation, generalizing and making deductions, then constant society forced upon him fatigued him, and solitude became indispensable. Now it was more particularly at the period of which we are speaking that his mind was in the situation described. He had just visited Albania, whose inhabitants were a violent, turbulent race, animated with a passionate love of independence, who were ever rising in rebellion against authority, and whose every sentiment, passion, and principle, formed a perfect contrast with all existing in his own country. He had become familiar with their usages, and recognized in them the possession of virtues which he loved, though mixed up with vices which he abhorred. He had gone through strange emotions and adventures among them; his life had often been in danger from the elements, from pirates and brigands; on the throne sat a prince who united monstrous vices to a few virtues, who, wearing gentleness on his countenance, was yet so ferocious in soul, that Byron, despite the favors lavished on himself, felt constrained to paint the tyrant in his real colors. He found in these contrasts, in this moral phenomenon, that which made him shudder, and precisely because it did cause shuddering, the source of soul-stirring, most original poetry, the type of his Eastern verses—of "Conrad," "The Giaour," and "Lara"—which, having been admitted into the fertile soil of his brain, were one day to come forth in all their terrible truth, though softened down by some of his own personal qualities; and having gone through, unknown to him, a long process of warm fertilization, while nursed in solitary reflection. Thus solitude was necessary to him; and this want, I again repeat, was an intellectual one, and had nothing to do with melancholy. From Chios Lord Byron went to Athens, a residence so sad and monotonous at this period, that it was well calculated to give rather than cure the spleen. But as he had no malady of this kind, after an excursion into the Morea with Lord Sligo,—a college friend and companion to whom nothing could be refused,—he returned to Athens; and here, in order to enjoy his cherished independence, would not even give himself the distraction of seeing those lovely young faces he used to admire behind the geraniums at their windows, and which had charmed him some months before he took up his abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the silence of the cloister, he could commune freely with his own mind, allow it full expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary contemplation to the most varied studies, especially to that he always so much appreciated—the study of mankind in general.

"Here," he wrote to his mother, "I see and have conversed with French, Italians, Germans, Danes, Greeks, Turks, Americans, etc.; and, without losing sight of my own, I can judge of the countries and manners of others. When I see the superiority of England (which, by-the-by, we are a great deal mistaken about in many things) I am pleased, and where I find her inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might have staid, smoked in your towns, or fogged in your country a century without being sure of this, and without acquiring any thing more useful or amusing at home."

And then he adds:—

"I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life; but God knows and does best for us all; at least so they say, and I have nothing to object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to complain of my lot. I trust this will find you well, and as happy as one can be; you will, at least, be pleased to hear I am so."

It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went from Athens to Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, washed by the blue waves of the AEgean Sea, immortalized by Plato, who here taught his half-Christian philosophy, Lord Byron took his seat at the celestial banquet spread by the great master, and entered into full possession of his genius. For, although he ignored its great power and extent, it is impossible that he should not have had in hours like these, some vision of the future, some presentiment of coming glory, which, piercing through the veils that yet shrouded his genius, gave moments of ineffable delight. When he bathed in some solitary spot, he tells us in his memoranda that one of his greatest delights was to sit on a rock overlooking the waves, and to remain there whole hours lost in admiration of sky and sea, "absorbed," says Moore, "in that sort of vague reverie, which, however formless and indistinct at the moment, settled afterward on his pages into those clear, bright pictures which will endure forever."

One day, while he was swimming under the rocks of Cape Colonna, a vessel from the coast of Attica drew near. On board, going from London to Athens, were two celebrated personages—Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr. Bruce. The first object that greeted their eyes, on nearing Sanium, was Lord Byron, playing all alone with his favorite element. Some days after, his friend Lord Sligo wished him to make their acquaintance, and he saw a great deal of them at Athens. In his memoranda the following words are applied to them:—"It was the commencement (their meeting at Cape Colonna) of the most delightful acquaintance I have made in Greece." And he wished to assure Mr. Bruce, in case these lines should ever fall under his notice, of the pleasure he experienced in recalling the time they had passed together at Athens. Now I do not see any symptom of melancholy in all this, nor in all preceding, and yet Bruce thought there was. Did he, then, also consider the joy Lord Byron felt in solitude, and his indifference for the false conventional enthusiasm his countrymen affected to display at sight of the ruins of Greece, as so many other tokens of melancholy? In reality Lord Byron was averse to all kinds of affectation, made no exception in favor of the artistic pretensions which constitute the hypocrisy of taste, and only gave the sincere, ardent homage of his soul to those things of antiquity that recall great names or great actions, and to sublime scenes in nature. Notwithstanding his fine intelligence, it is not impossible that Mr. Bruce also may have shared the errors of superficial minds; and it is likewise possible that Lord Byron may really, during the last period of his sojourn at Athens, have sometimes been melancholy, for causes of grief were certainly not wanting. His man of business wished Lord Byron at this time to sell Newstead, so as to get his affairs into some definite order. Perhaps it would have been wise, but such a determination was extremely repugnant to him, for he was very fond of Newstead, and had even written to his mother, before leaving, that she might be quite easy on this head, as he would never part with it. However, his agent, wishing to get him back to England, then affected negligence, would not write, and made him wait for money. Lord Byron grew uneasy and alarmed, was out of humor, and often seemed capricious, because these circumstances obliged him to change his travelling plans, and finally left him no other alternative but to return to England, where, as he wrote to a friend, his first interview would be with a lawyer, the second with a creditor; and then would come discussions with miners, farmers, stewards and all the disagreeables consequent on a ruined property and disputed mines.

After having resisted all these fears for some time, he was obliged to decide on returning. Behold him, then, on the road to England.

At Malta he had attacks of fever to which his state of mind was certainly not wholly foreign. "We have seen," says Moore, "from the letters written by him on his passage homeward (on board the 'Volage' frigate) how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was quite enough in the discomfort that now awaited him in England to sadden its hopes and check its buoyancy."

And yet in these letters, melancholy at bottom, which he addressed to his mother and friends during this tiresome voyage of more than six weeks, we still perceive, overriding all, his kind, sensitive, playful nature. He told them that if one can not be happy, one must at least try to be a little gay; that if England had ceased to smile on him, there were other skies more serene; that he was coming back shaken by fever morally and physically, but with a firm, intrepid spirit. And, in short, pleasantry never failed him.

Always admirable toward his mother, he spoke of his apathy, but re-assured her directly, adding:—

"Dear mother" (he wrote to her on the 'Volage' frigate), "within that apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I will prove by every means in my power.

"P.S.—You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine, and me only as a visitor."[175]

He had hardly arrived in London when Mr. Dallas hastened to greet him, and instead of finding him changed, thought he was in excellent health, with a countenance that betrayed neither melancholy nor any trace of discontent at his return. The truth is, that those sorrows which did not reach his heart were never very deep with Lord Byron. But already a most formidable tempest was gathering on the horizon of his fate, for it was one that would cruelly wound his heart. Perhaps it was some vague, inexplicable presentiment of what was threatening him that saddened his return to his native country. The storm burst as soon as he set foot in London; for he was summoned in haste to Newstead, his mother's life being declared in danger. He set out instantaneously, but on arriving found only a corpse! This spectacle was still before his eyes; he had hardly quitted the chamber of death, where, in the obscurity of night and alone, believing himself free from all observation, he had given way in silence and darkness to the real sentiments of his heart, weeping bitterly the loss of a mother who had idolized him, when in rapid succession news arrived of the deaths of his dearest friends. Matthews, his mind's idol, had just been drowned in the river Cam, at Cambridge; Wingfield, one of his heart-idols, was dying of fever at Coimbra; his dear Eddlestone was in the last stage of consumption; and, finally, he learned the death of another loved, mysterious being. Six deaths within a few short weeks!

"If to be able," says Moore, "to depict powerfully the painful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery."

This was certainly a most painful crisis in his existence. What he felt then can not be called melancholy; it was truly desolation, agony of heart. Seeing himself alone in his venerable but gloomy abode, beside the dead body of his mother, solitude was for the first time intolerable to him, and, despite his strength of mind, he experienced moments of weakness. In his agony he wrote a letter to his friend Scroope Davies that is truly painful to read, so much does it bear the impress of intense suffering.

"Some curse hangs over me and mine," says he. "My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do?

"My dear Davies, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a friend. Come to me, Scroope, I am almost desolate, left almost alone in the world. I must enjoy the survivors while I can. Write or come, but come if you can, or one or both."

Hardly had he allowed himself this heartrending expression of grief, most touching for those who knew his repugnance to showing any sensibility of heart, when a new calamity overtook him. His dear friend, Wingfield, died at Coimbra at the age of twenty-one. Thoughts of death even took possession of Lord Byron's soul, influencing and directing all his actions. Neither self-love, nor the hope of great success with "Childe Harold," which had been announced to him as he passed through London, any longer could charm; tears dimmed the lustre of fame; he could only occupy himself with the fate of the surviving, and resolved on making his will in case of his own death. We find him then at this time solely engaged in making out this new deed. He destroyed the old will, rendered useless by the death of his mother, and took care to forget no one in the new one; all his servants were mentioned with admirable solicitude; and, in short, his last testament fully displayed the beautiful, generous soul that had dictated it.

Some weeks after, he wrote to Dallas:—

"At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at seventy? It is true that I am young to begin again, but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of life?"

"Indeed," writes he at the same time to Hodgson, "the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.

"Davies has been here; his gayety (death can not mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter! You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before."

His moral sufferings had never been so great; and what he said and experienced under these circumstances, amply prove that solitude was good for him, when not unhappy. "I can do nothing," writes he to Dallas, "and my days pass, except for a few bodily exercises, in uniform indolence and idle insipidity."

The task of publishing "Childe Harold" was left to Dallas, and the certainty of its success found him pretty nearly indifferent. When his heart was in pain, Lord Byron's self-love always lay dormant. But destiny was still far from granting him any respite. Eddlestone, that dear friend, on whose true affection he most relied, as well as another beloved one, whose name ever remained locked within his breast, both died about this time; so that, as he says in his preface, during the short space of two months, he lost six persons most dear. In announcing this new misfortune to Dallas, he expresses himself in the following words:—

"I have almost forgot the taste of grief; and supped full of horrors, till I have become callous; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems to me as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall round me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered.

"Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am, indeed, very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility."

But if tears no longer flowed from his eyes, they did from his pen; for it was then he wrote his elegies to "Thyrza," whose pathetic sublimity is so well characterized by Moore; and that he added those melancholy stanzas in "Childe Harold" on the death of friends, which we find at the end of the second canto.

"Indeed," he wrote again to Hodgson, "I am growing nervous, ridiculously nervous, I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any society, and when I have, I run out of it. At this present writing, there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to write this grumbling letter. I don't know that I sha'n't end with insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness, as Scroope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner. I must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament would suit me well, any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed verb ennuyer."

Distractions did come to him, but of a kind to make him conjugate verbs equally disagreeable; for they came caused by grief and irritation. In an infamous, ignoble publication, called "The Scourge," an anonymous author, probably making himself the organ of those who wished to avenge Lord Byron's satires, attacked his birth, and the reputation of his mother, who, despite her faults, was a very respectable, excellent woman.

"During the first winters after Lord Byron had returned to England," says Mr. Galt, "I was frequently with him. At that time, the strongest feeling by which he appeared to be actuated was indignation against a writer in a scurrilous publication, called 'The Scourge,' in which he was not only treated with unjustifiable malignity, but charged with being, as he told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer. I had not read the work; but the writer who could make such an absurd accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the very circumstances from which he derived the materials of his own libel. When Lord Byron mentioned the subject to me, and that he was consulting Sir Vicary Gibbs with the intention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I advised him, as well as I could, to desist simply because the allegations referred to well-known occurrences. His grand-uncle's duel with Mr. Chaworth, and the order of the House of Peers to produce evidence of his grandfather's marriage with Miss Trevannion, the facts of which being matter of history and public record, superseded the necessity of any proceeding.

"Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that time, I was not surprised at the sequestration in which he held himself, and which made those who were not acquainted with his shy and mystical nature apply to him the description of his own 'Lara.'"[176]

Lord Byron's conduct at this period, led those who did not know his timid mystery-loving nature, to fancy that they recognized him in the portrait drawn of "Lara." Probably they were unaware how his hard fate was now not sparing him one single grief or mortification; how he was struggling between the necessity of putting up Newstead for sale and the extreme repugnance he felt to such a step.

"Before his resolve was taken on this head," says Mr. Galt, "he was often so troubled in mind, as to be unable to hide his sadness; and he often spoke of leaving England forever."

Already, long absence had made him lose sight of several early comrades; his mother was dead, and he scarcely saw his sister, who lived in quite another circle; through his antecedents, his youth, and his travels abroad, he was still a stranger among his fellow-peers; the only persons he saw much of were five or six college friends, whom death had spared, and to whom he was extremely attached; but they were his sole affections. His ideal standard of perfection which, being brought in contact with reality, had always a little spoilt women for him, had ended by making them almost disagreeable.

"I have one request to make," wrote he at this time to H——, "never again speak to me in your letters of a woman; do not even allude to the existence of the sex. I will not so much as read a word about them; it must be propria que maribus."

It was in this state of relative isolation that he came to London, about the end of the year, and found Dallas preparing to have "Childe Harold" published; a task in which Lord Byron half unwillingly joined.

"He seemed more inclined," says Dallas, "at that time to seek more solid fame, by endeavoring to become an active, eloquent statesman."

But, notwithstanding this perspective, despite his genius and his youth, Lord Byron often fell into a sort of mental prostration, which was, says Dallas again, "rather the result of his particular situation, feeling himself out of his sphere, than that of a gloomy disposition received from nature."

We have seen, in effect, that there were circumstances then existing well calculated to darken his noble brow, and give him those nervous movements that may have seemed like caprice to those who were ignorant of their cause; and I wished to enter into these details so as to characterize well the epoch when his melancholy was greatest, and to show that it had its chief source in the anguish of his heart. It was to this time he alluded, when, in other days of suffering (at the period of his separation from Lady Byron), wherein his heart had smaller share, he wrote to Moore:—"If my heart could have broken, it would have done so years ago, through events more afflicting than this."

I also wished to enter into these details, because, desiring to prove that Lord Byron's melancholy almost always arose from palpable causes, it was necessary to make these causes known; and thus those who have declared his griefs to be rather imaginary than real, may find in this chapter abundant reason for rectifying their ideas. Among the number of such persons we may rank Mr. Macaulay, the eloquent historian, whose opinion, however, has no weight, as regards Lord Byron's character. For it is evident that he made use of this great name by way of choosing a good theme for his eloquence, a sort of mould for fine phrases. Besides, Macaulay did not know Lord Byron personally, nor did he study him impartially; facts which are his fault and his excuse.

After having paid this great tribute to grief during six months, the storm appeared to subside, and a ray of sunshine penetrated into Lord Byron's mind. It was then that he made Moore's acquaintance, and that of other clever men, among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore especially, introduced under circumstances that brought out strongly the most amiable and estimable qualities of heart and mind, was to Lord Byron as a beacon-light amid the clouds external and internal harassing him then; and their sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord Byron wrote directly to Harness:—

"Moore is the epitome of every thing exquisite in poetic and personal perfections."

On his side, Moore, after having praised the manly, generous, pleasing refinement of his new friend, sums up by saying:—"Frank and manly as I found his nature then, so did I ever find it to his latest hour." And in describing the effect produced on him by his first meeting with Lord Byron, he says:—

"Among the impressions which this meeting left upon me, what I chiefly remember to have remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manners. Being in mourning for his mother, the color, as well of his dress as of his glossy, curling, and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual character when in repose."

But this melancholy, having become habitual to him through accident, began then to disperse, as snow melts beneath the soft and warm breath of spring. The first symptom was that he judged better of himself; for, writing to his friend Harness, to express his general opinion on human selfishness, he said, "But I do not think we are born of this disposition."

"From the time of our first meeting," says Moore, "there seldom elapsed a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each other, and our acquaintance ripened into intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have seldom known an example."[177]

Moore's company was a great consolation to him then, and Providence willed that the first balsam applied to his wounds, after that of time, should come from the hand of one whom he had lashed in his satire. He passed in this way the last months of 1811, and the first two of the following year. Meanwhile his star was about to rise, soon to transform, without any transition, his misty sky into brightest light, too dazzling, alas! to endure. For the sun, when it shines so radiantly in early morning, absorbs too many bad vapors. But we will not anticipate events which I am not relating here.

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