_From Lady Blessington's Conversations._
Of love he had strange notions: he said that most people had _le
besoin d'aimer_, and that with this _besoin_ the first person who fell
in one's way contented one. He maintained that those who possessed the
most imagination, poets for example, were most likely to be constant
in their attachments, as with the _beau ideal_ in their heads, with
which they identified the object of their attachment, they had nothing
to desire, and viewed their mistresses through the brilliant medium of
fancy, instead of the common one of the eyes. "A poet, therefore (said
Byron), endows the person he loves with all the charms with which his
mind is stored, and has no need of actual beauty to fill up the
picture. Hence he should select a woman, who is rather good-looking
than beautiful, leaving the latter for those who, having no
imagination, require actual beauty to satisfy their tastes. And after
all (said he), where is the actual beauty that can come up to the
bright 'imaginings' of the poet? where can one see women that equal
the visions, half mortal, half angelic, that people his fancy? Love,
who is painted blind (an allegory that proves the uselessness of
beauty), can supply all deficiencies with his aid; we can invest her
whom we admire with all the attributes of loveliness, and though time
may steal the roses from her cheek, and the lustre from her eye, still
the original _beau ideal_ remains, filling the mind and intoxicating
the soul with the overpowering presence of loveliness. I flatter
myself that my Leila, Zuleika, Gulnare, Medora, and Haidee will always
vouch for my taste in beauty: these are the bright creations of my
fancy, with rounded forms, and delicacy of limbs, nearly so
incompatible as to be rarely if ever united; for where, with some rare
exceptions, do we see roundness of contour accompanied by lightness,
and those fairy hands and feet that are at once the type of beauty and
refinement. I like to shut myself up, close my eyes, and fancy one of
the creatures of my imagination, with taper and rose-tipped fingers,
playing with my hair, touching my cheek, or resting its little
snowy-dimpled hand on mine. I like to fancy the fairy foot, round and
pulpy, but small to diminutiveness, peeping from beneath the drapery
that half conceals it, or moving in the mazes of the dance. I detest
thin women; and unfortunately all, or nearly all plump women, have
clumsy hands and feet, so that I am obliged to have recourse to
imagination for my beauties, and there I always find them. I can so
well understand the lover leaving his mistress that he might write to
her, I should leave mine, not to write to, but to think of her, to
dress her up in the habiliments of my ideal beauty, investing her with
all the charms of the latter, and then adoring the idol I had formed.
You must have observed that I give my heroines extreme refinement,
joined to great simplicity and want of education. Now, refinement and
want of education are incompatible, at least I have ever found them
so: so here again, you see, I am forced to have recourse to
imagination, and certainly it furnishes me with creatures as unlike
the sophisticated beings of civilized existence, as they are to the
still less tempting, coarse realities of vulgar life. In short, I am
of opinion that poets do not require great beauty in the objects of
their affection; all that is necessary for them is a strong and
devoted attachment from the object, and where this exists, joined to
health and good temper, little more is required, at least in early
youth, though with advancing years, men become more _exigeants_."
Talking of the difference between love in early youth and in maturity,
Byron said, "that, like the measles, love was most dangerous when it
came late in life."
_New Monthly Magazine._
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