1821-1823.
PISA--GENOA--DON JUAN.
Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs,
fowls, servants, and a monkey, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo
Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in
the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed
in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received
visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his
pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the
most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good
shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his hand often shook, he made
allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he
set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The
early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La
Guiccioli--now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations,
established under the same roof--and then sat late over his verses. He was
disposed to be more sociable than at Venice or Ravenna, and occasionally
entertained strangers; but his intimate acquaintanceship was confined to
Captain Williams and his wife, and Shelley's cousin, Captain Medwin. The
latter used frequently to dine and sit with his host till the morning,
collecting materials for the _Conversations_ which he afterwards gave to
the world. The value of these reminiscences is impaired by the fact of
their recording, as serious revelations, the absurd confidences in which
the poet's humour for mystification was wont to indulge. Another of the
group, an Irishman, called Taafe, is made, in his Lordship's
correspondence of the period, to cut a somewhat comical figure. The
master-passion of this worthy and genial fellow was to get a publisher for
a fair commentary on Dante, to which he had firmly linked a very bad
translation, and for about six months Byron pesters Murray with constant
appeals to satisfy him; e.g. November l6, "He must be gratified, though
the reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his
original." March 6, "He will die if he is not published; he will be damned
if he is; but that he don't mind." March 8, "I make it a point that he
shall be in print; it will make the man so exuberantly happy. He is such a
good-natured Christian that we must give him a shove through the press.
Besides, he has had another fall from his horse into a ditch." Taafe,
whose horsemanship was on a par with his poetry, can hardly have been
consulted as to the form assumed by these apparently fruitless
recommendations, so characteristic of the writer's frequent kindliness and
constant love of mischief. About this time Byron received a letter from
Mr. Shepherd, a gentleman in Somersetshire, referring to the death of his
wife, among whose papers he had found the record of a touching, because
evidently heart-felt, prayer for the poet's reformation, conversion, and
restored peace of mind. To this letter he at once returned an answer.
marked by much of the fine feeling of his best moods. Pisa, December 8:
"Sir, I have received your letter. I need not say that the extract which
it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling
to have read it with indifference.... Your brief and simple picture of the
excellent person, whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated
without the admiration due to her virtues and her pure and unpretending
piety. I do not know that I ever met with anything so unostentatiously
beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great
advantage over all others--for this simple reason, that if true they will
have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be
with the infidel in his eternal sleep.... But a man's creed does not
depend upon _himself_: who can say, I _will_ believe this, that, or the
other? and least of all that which he least can comprehend.... I can
assure you that not all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher
notions of its own importance, would ever weigh in my mind against the
pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in
my behalf. In this point of view I would not exchange the prayer of the
deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and
Napoleon."
The letter to Lady Byron, which he afterwards showed to Lady Blessington,
must have borne about the same date; and we have a further indication of
his thoughts reverting homeward in an urgent request to Murray--written on
December 10th, Ada's sixth birthday--to send his daughter's miniature.
After its arrival nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be told of its
strong likeness to himself. In the course of the same month an event
occurred which strangely illustrates the manners of the place, and the
character of the two poets. An unfortunate fanatic having taken it into
his head to steal the wafer-box out of a church at Lucca, and being
detected, was, in accordance with the ecclesiastical law till lately
maintained against sacrilege, condemned to be burnt alive. Shelley, who
believed that the sentence would really be carried into effect, proposed
to Byron that they should gallop off together, and by aid of their
servants rescue by force the intended victim. Byron, however, preferred in
the first place, to rely on diplomacy; some vigorous letters passed;
ultimately a representation, convoyed by Taafe to the English Ambassador,
led to a commutation of the sentence, and the man was sent to the galleys.
The January of 1822 was marked by the addition to the small circle of
Captain E.J. Trelawny, the famous rover and bold free-lance (long sole
survivor of the remarkable group), who accompanied Lord Byron to Greece,
and has recorded a variety of incidents of the last months of his life.
Trelawny, who appreciated Shelley with an intensity that is often apt to
be exclusive, saw, or has reported, for the most part the weaker side of
Byron. We are constrained to accept as correct the conjecture that his
judgment was biassed by their rivalry in physical prowess, and the
political differences which afterwards developed between them. Letters to
his old correspondents--to Scott about the _Waverleys_, to Murray about
the Dramas, and the _Vision of Judgment_, and _Cain_--make up almost the
sole record of the poet's pursuits during the five following months. In
February 6th he sent, through Mr. Kinnaird, the challenge to Southey, of
the suppression of which he was not aware till May 17. The same letter
contains a sheaf of the random cynicisms, as--"Cash is virtue," "Money is
power; and when Socrates said he knew nothing, he meant he had not a
drachma"--by which he sharpened the shafts of his assailants. A little
later, on occasion of the death of Lady Noel, he expresses himself with
natural bitterness on hearing that she had in her will recorded a wish
against his daughter Ada seeing his portrait. In March he sat, along with
La Guiccioli, to the sculptor Bartolini. On the 24th, when the company
were on one of their riding excursions outside the town, a half-drunken
dragoon on horseback broke through them, and by accident or design knocked
Shelley from his seat. Byron, pursuing him along the Lung' Arno, called
for his name, and, taking him for an officer, flung his glove. The sound
of the fray brought the servants of the Lanfranchi to the door; and one of
them, it was presumed--though in the scuffle everything remained
uncertain--seriously wounded the dragoon in the side. An investigation
ensued, as the result of which the Gambas were ultimately exiled from
Tuscany, and the party of friends was practically broken up. Shelley and
his wife, with the Williamses and Trelawny, soon after settled at the
Villa Magni at Lerici in the Gulf of Spezia. Byron, with the Countess and
her brother, established themselves in the Villa Rossa at Monte Nero, a
suburb of Leghorn, from which port at this date the remains of Allegra
were conveyed to England.
Among the incidents of this residence were, the homage paid to the poet by
a party of Americans; the painting of his portrait (and that of La
Guiccioli) by the artist West, who has left a pleasing account of his
visits; Byron's letter making inquiry about the country of Bolivar (where
it was his fancy to settle); and another of those disturbances by which he
seemed destined to be harassed. One of his servants--among whom were
unruly spirits, apparently selected with a kind of _Corsair_ bravado,--had
made an assault on Count Pietro, wounding him in the face. This outburst,
though followed by tears and penitence, confirmed the impression of the
Tuscan police that the whole company were dangerous, and made the
Government press for their departure. In the midst of the uproar, there
suddenly appeared at the villa Mr. Leigh Hunt, with his wife and six
children. They had taken passage to Genoa, where they were received by
Trelawny, in command of the "Bolivar"--a yacht constructed in that port
for Lord Byron, simultaneously with the "Don Juan" for Shelley. The
latter, on hearing of the arrival of his friends, came to meet them at
Leghorn, and went with them to Pisa. Early in July they were all
established on the Lung' Arno, having assigned to them the ground floor of
the palazzo.
We have now to deal briefly--amid conflicting asseverations it is hard to
deal fairly--with the last of the vexatiously controverted episodes which
need perplex our narrative. Byron, in wishing Moore from Ravenna a merry
Christmas for 1820, proposes that they shall embark together in a
newspaper, "with some improvement on the plan of the present scoundrels,"
"to give the age some new lights on policy, poesy, biography, criticism,
morality, theology," &c. Moore absolutely refusing to entertain the idea,
Hunt's name was brought forward in connexion with it, during tho visit of
Shelley. Shortly after the return of the latter to Pisa, he writes (August
26) to Hunt, stating that Byron was anxious to start a periodical work, to
be conducted in Italy, and had proposed that they should both go shares in
the concern, on which follow some suggestions of difficulties about money.
Nevertheless, in August, 1821, he presses Hunt to come. Moore, on the
other hand, strongly remonstrates against the project. "I heard some days
ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to you with all his family; and the
idea seems to be that you and he and Shelley are to conspire together in
the _Examiner_. I deprecate such a plan with all my might. Partnerships in
fame, like those in trade, make the strongest party answer for the rest. I
tremble even for you with such a bankrupt Co.! You must stand alone."
Shelley--who had, in the meantime, given his bond to Byron for an advance
of 200_l_. towards the expenses of his friends, besides assisting them
himself to the utmost of his power--began, shortly before their arrival,
to express grave doubts as to the success of the alliance. His last
published letter--written July 5th, 1822--after they had settled at Pisa,
is full of forebodings. On the 8th he set sail in the "Don Juan"--
That fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
and was overtaken by the storm in which he perished. Three days after,
Trelawny rode to Pisa, and told Byron of his fears, when the poet's lips
quivered, and his voice faltered. On the 22nd of July the bodies of
Shelley, Williams, and Vivian, were cast ashore. On the 16th August, Hunt,
Byron, and Trelawny were present at the terribly weird cremation, which
they have all described. At a later date, the two former were seized with
a fit of delirium which is one of the phases of the tension of grief.
Byron's references to the event are expressions less of the loss which he
indubitably felt, than of his indignation at the "world's wrong." "Thus,"
he writes, "there is another man gone, about whom the world was
ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do
him justice now, when he can be no better for it." Towards the end of the
same letter the spirit of his dead friend seems to inspire the sentence
--"With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present
clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is
against fearful odds, but the battle must be fought."
Meanwhile, shortly after the new settlement at the Lanfranchi, the
preparations for issuing the _Liberal_, edited by Leigh Hunt in Italy, and
published by John Hunt in London, progressed. The first number, which
appeared in September, was introduced, after a few words of preface, by
the _Vision of Judgment_, with the signature Quevedo Redivivus, and
adorned by Shelley's translation of the "May-Day Night," in _Faust_. It
contained besides, the _Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review_,
an indifferent Florentine story, a German apologue, and a gossiping
account of Pisa, presumably by Hunt. Three others followed, containing
Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, his translation of the _Morgante Maggiore_,
and _The Blues_--a very slight, if not silly, satire on literary ladies;
some of Shelley's posthumous minor poems, among them "I arise from dreams
of thee," and a few of Hazlitt's essays, including, however, none of his
best. Leigh Hunt himself wrote most of the rest, one of his contributions
being a palpable imitation of _Don Juan_, entitled the _Book of
Beginnings_, but he confesses that owing to his weak health and low
spirits at the time, none of these did justice to his ability; and the
general manner of the magazine being insufficiently vigorous to carry off
the frequent eccentricity of its matter, the prejudices against it
prevailed, and the enterprise came to an end. Partners in failing concerns
are apt to dispute; in this instance the unpleasantness which arose at the
time rankled in the mind of the survivor, and gave rise to his singularly
tasteless and injudicious book--a performance which can be only in part
condoned by the fact of Hunt's afterwards expressing regret, and
practically withdrawing it. He represents himself throughout as a
much-injured man, lured to Italy by misrepresentations, that he might give
the aid of his journalistic experience and undeniable talents to the
advancement of a mercenary enterprise, and that when it failed he was
despised, insulted, and rejected. Byron, on the other hand, declares, "The
Hunts pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented;"
and his subsequent action in the matter, if not always gentle never
unjust, goes to verify his statements in the letters of the period. "I am
afraid," he writes from Genoa, Oct. 9, 1822, "the journal is a bad
business. I have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it
is almost useless. His wife is ill, his six children not very tractable,
and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child." Later he says to
Murray, "You and your friends, by your injudicious rudeness, cement a
connexion which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered,
would not in all probability have continued. As it is ... I can't leave
them among the breakers." On February 20th we have, his last word on the
subject, to the same effect.
In the following sentences, Moore seems to give a fair statement of the
motives which led to the establishment of the unfortunate journal--"The
chief inducements on the part of Lord Byron to this unworthy alliance
were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of his friend
Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to Italy; and in the next, a desire to avail
himself of the aid of one so experienced as an editor in the favourite
object he has so long contemplated of a periodical work in which all the
offspring of his genius might be received as they sprung to light." For
the accomplishment of this purpose Mr. Leigh Hunt was a singularly
ill-chosen associate. A man of Radical opinions on all matters, not only
of religion but of society--opinions which he acquired and held easily but
firmly--could never recognize the propriety of the claim to deference
which "the noble poet" was always too eager to assert, and was inclined to
take liberties which his patron perhaps superciliously repelled. Mrs. Hunt
does not seem to have been a very judicious person. "Trelawny here," said
Byron jocularly, "has been speaking against my morals." "It is the first
time I ever heard of them," she replied. Mr. Hunt, by his own admission,
had "peculiar notions on the subject of money." Byron, on his part, was
determined not to be "put upon," and doled out through his steward stated
allowances to Hunt, who says that only "stern necessity and a large
family" induced him to accept them. Hunt's expression that the 200_l_.
was, _in the first instance_, a debt to Shelley, points to the conclusion
that it was remitted on that poet's death. Besides this, Byron maintained
the family till they left Genoa for Florence in 1823, and defrayed up to
that date all their expenses. He gave his contributions to the _Liberal_
gratis; and, again by Hunt's own confession, left to him and his brother
the profits of the proprietorship. According to Mr. Galt "The whole extent
of the pecuniary obligation appears not to have exceeded 500 _l_.; but,
little or great, the manner in which it was recollected reflects no credit
either on the head or heart of the debtor."
Of the weaknesses on which the writer--bent on verifying Pope's lines on
Atossa--from his vantage in the ground-floor, was enabled to dilate, many
are but slightly magnified. We are told for instance, in very many words,
that Byron clung to the privileges of his rank while wishing to seem above
them; that he had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle
and Gibbon supplied him with the learning he had left at school; that,
being a good rider with a graceful seat, he liked to be told of it; that
he showed letters he ought not to have shown; that he pretended to think
worse of Wordsworth than he did; that he knew little of art or music,
adored Rossini, and called Rubens a dauber; that, though he wrote _Don
Juan_ under gin and water, he had not a strong head, &c., &c. It is true,
but not new. But when Hunt proceeds to say that Byron had no sentiment;
that La Guiccioli did not really care much about him; that he admired
Gifford because he was a sycophant, and Scott because he loved a lord;
that he had no heart for anything except a feverish notoriety; that he was
a miser from his birth, and had "as little regard for liberty as
Allieri,"--it is new enough, but it is manifestly not true. Hunt's book,
which begins with a caricature on the frontispiece, and is inspired in the
main by uncharitableness, yet contains here and there gleams of a deeper
insight than we find in all the volumes of Moore--an insight, which, in
spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of
a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to
avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much
admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in
his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory
a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him
for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as they supposed
themselves, and that they might take as well as give lessons of humanity,
by a candid comparison of notes with civilization at large."
In July, when at Leghorn, the Gambas received orders to leave Tuscany; and
on his return to Pisa, Byron, being persecuted by the police, began to
prepare for another change. After entertaining projects about Greece,
America, and Switzerland--Trelawny undertaking to have the "Bolivar"
conveyed over the Alps to the Lake of Geneva--he decided on following his
friends to Genoa. He left in September with La Guiccioli, passed by Lerici
and Sestri, and then for the ten remaining mouths of his Italian life took
up his quarters at Albaro, about a mile to the east of the city, in the
Villa Saluzzo, which Mrs. Shelley had procured for him and his party. She
herself settled with the Hunts--who travelled about the same time, at
Byron's expense, but in their own company--in the neighbouring Casa
Negroto. Not far off, Mr. Savage Landor was in possession of the Casa
Pallavicini, but there was little intercourse between the three. Landor
and Byron, in many respects more akin than any other two Englishmen of
their age, were always separated by an unhappy bar or intervening mist.
The only family with whom the poet maintained any degree of intimacy was
that of the Earl of Blessington, consisting of the Earl himself--a gouty
old gentleman, with stories about him of the past--the Countess, and her
sister, Miss Power, and the "cupidon déchaîné," the Anglo-French Count
Alfred d'Orsay--who were to take part in stories of the future. In the
spring of 1823, Byron persuaded them to occupy the Villa Paradiso, and was
accustomed to accompany them frequently on horseback excursions along the
coast to their favourite Nervi. It has been said that Lady Blessington's
_Conversations with Lord Byron_ are, as regards trustworthiness, on a par
with Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_. Let this be so, they are still of
interest on points of fact which it must have been easier to record than
to imagine. However adorned, or the reverse, by the fancies of a habitual
novelist, they convey the impressions of a goodhumoured, lively, and
fascinating woman, derived from a more or less intimate association with
the most brilliant man of the age. Of his personal appearance--a matter of
which she was a good judge--we have the following: "One of Byron's eyes
was larger than the other; his nose was rather thick, so he was best seen
in profile; his mouth was splendid, and his scornful expression was real,
not affected; but a sweet smile often broke through his melancholy. He was
at this time very pale and thin (which indicates the success of his
regimen of reduction since leaving Venice). His hair was dark brown, here
and there turning grey. His voice was harmonious, clear and low. There is
some gaucherie in his walk, from his attempts to conceal his lameness.
Ada's portrait is like him, and he is pleased at the likeness, but hoped
she would not turn out to be clever--at any events not poetical. He is
fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but
is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of
self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers,
by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of
the period ingenuously observes--"Certain persons will be chagrined to
hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for
calumny." Another says, "I never saw a countenance more composed and
still--I might even add, more sweet and prepossessing. But his temper was
easily ruffled and for a whole day; he could not endure the ringing of
bells, bribed his neighbours to repress their noises, and failing,
retaliated by surpassing them; he never forgave Colonel Carr for breaking
one of his dog's ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without
forgetting them. He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for
whatever he himself did he did with a will--'toto se corpore miscuit,' and
was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone--as if 'I have said it, and
it must be so' were enough."
From these waifs and strays of gossip we return to a subject of deeper
interest. The Countess of Blessington, with natural curiosity, was anxious
to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs,
and renewed the attempt previously made by Madame de Staël, to induce him
to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife. His reply to this
overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from
Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the following extracts
must be a sufficient indication:--"I have to acknowledge the receipt of
Ada's hair.... I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name;
and I will tell you why. I believe they are the only two or three words of
your hand-writing in my possession, for your letters I returned, and
except the two words--or rather the one word 'household' written twice--in
an old account book, I have no other. Every day which keeps us asunder
should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which
must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists. We both
made a bitter mistake, but now it is over, I considered our re-union as
not impossible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave
up the hope. I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations
can awaken my resentment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught,
this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is
something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most
offending are the least forgiving." "It is a strange business," says the
Countess, about Lady Byron. "When he was praising her mental and personal
qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain
sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook
his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was
wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters;
that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations
recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s
first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of
what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect
which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation,
into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed
to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased
my _mauvaise humeur_." To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always
spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and
respect.
"My first impressions were melancholy--my poor mother gave them: but to my
sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I
owe the little good of which I can boast: and had I earlier known her it
might have influenced my destiny. Augusta was to me in the hour of need a
tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now
the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view. She
has given me such good advice--and yet finding me incapable of following
it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring." Similarly, in
the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt--"I believe there did exist
one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased: perhaps
was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always
spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh. He
told me she used to call him 'Baby Byron.' It was easy to see that of the
two persons she had by far the greater judgment."
Byron having laid aside _Don Juan_ for more than a year, in deference to
La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a
promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa.
Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were
published by John Hunt. His other works of the period are of minor
consequence. The _Age of Bronze_ is a declamation, rather than a satire,
directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona,
especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from
its advice to the Greeks, to dread--
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe;
i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the
great Bear--
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate.
In the _Island_--a tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"--he reverts to the
manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific
for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical
adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from
Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in
any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to
plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the
sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading
it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if
not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on
the Conquest, and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was
executed.
In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to
criticise the critics--to bring to a focus the most salient things that
have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the
discriminating from the commonplace. _Don Juan_, more than any of its
precursors, _is_ Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early
cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and
execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle-class respectability,
were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their
judgments. The _British Magazine_ said that "his lordship had degraded his
personal character by the composition;" the _London_, that the poem was "a
satire on decency;" the _Edinburgh Monthly_, that it was "a melancholy
spectacle;" the _Eclectic_, that it was "an outrage worthy of
detestation." _Blackwood_ declared that the author was "brutally outraging
all the best feelings of humanity." Moore characterizes it as "the most
painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for
succeeding ages to wonder at or deplore." Jeffrey found in the whole
composition "a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue;"
and Dr. John Watkins classically named it "the Odyssey of Immorality."
"_Don Juan_ will be read," wrote one critic, "as long as satire, wit,
mirth, and supreme excellence shall be esteemed among men." "Stick to _Don
Juan_," exhorted another; "it is the only sincere thing you have written,
and it will live after all your _Harolds_ have ceased to be 'a
schoolgirl's tale, the wonder of an hour.' It is the best of all your
works--the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting,
the most poetical." "It is a work," said Goethe, "full of soul, bitterly
savage in its misanthropy, exquisitely delicate in its tenderness."
Shelley confessed, "It fulfils in a certain degree what I have long
preached, the task of producing something wholly new and relative to the
age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst
of a hearty panegyric: "It has the variety of Shakespeare himself. Neither
_Childe Harold_, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain
more exquisite poetry than is to be found scattered through the cantos of
_Don Juan_, amidst verses which the author seems to have thrown from him
with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves."
One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity: reviewing,
however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register
of adverse or friendly cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict,
Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is,
the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt
to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in
pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the
most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of
the readers of _Don Juan_ have, it must be confessed, been found among
those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable--who have been
attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste,
and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their
patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by
a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the
charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the
work in other quarters is as indubitably duo to higher qualities. In
writing _Don Juan_, Byron attempted something that had never been done
before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be
done again. "Down," cries M. Chasles, "with the imitators who did their
host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an
Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava
rima--the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet
a "breakdown"--for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may
have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in
Pulci, and the _Novelle Galanti_ of Casti, to whom he is indebted for
other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed
its characteristic jauntiness, by his almost constant use of the double
rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic
poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's _Pot of Basil_.
Many writers, from Tennant and Frere to Moultrie, have employed it in
burlesque or more society verse; but Byron alone has employed it
triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as
gay, of "black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling
fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of
his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality
that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready
to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a
ladder like other acrobats; but alone, like the Japanese master of the
art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of
_Don Juan_ is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his earlier work; it
has every mark of being written in hot haste. In the midst of the most
serious passages (e.g. the "Ave Maria") we are checked in our course by
bathos or commonplace and thrown where the writer did not mean to throw
us: but the mocking spirit is so prevailingly present that we are often
left in doubt as to his design, and what is in _Harold_ an outrage is in
this case only a flaw. His command over the verse itself is almost
miraculous: he glides from extreme to extreme, from punning to pathos,
from melancholy to mad merriment, sighing or laughing by the way at his
readers or at himself or at the stanzas. Into them he can fling anything
under the sun, from a doctor's prescription to a metaphysical theory.
When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,
And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said,
is as cogent a refutation of idealism as the cumbrous wit of Scotch
logicians.
The popularity of the work is due not mainly to the verbal skill which
makes it rank as the _cleverest_ of English verse compositions, to its
shoals of witticisms, its winged words, telling phrases, and incomparable
transitions; but to the fact that it continues to address a large class
who are not in the ordinary sense of the word lovers of poetry. _Don Juan_
is emphatically the poem of intelligent men of middle age, who have grown
weary of mere sentiment, and yet retain enough of sympathetic feeling to
desire at times to recall it. Such minds, crusted like Plato's Glaucus
with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives
beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can
they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and
they are apt to turn with some impatience even from _Romeo and Juliet_ to
_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of
_Hudibras_ is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend
is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the
contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in
laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does
not blend together the two phases, as they are blended in single sentences
or whole chapters of Sterne, in the April-sunshine of Richter, or in
_Sartor Resartus_; but he comes near to produce the same effect by his
unequalled power of alternating them. His wit is seldom hard, never dry,
for it is moistened by the constant juxtaposition of sentiment. His
tenderness is none the less genuine that he is perpetually jerking it
away--an equally favourite fashion with Carlyle,--as if he could not trust
himself to be serious for fear of becoming sentimental; and, in
recollection of his frequent exhibitions of unaffected hysteria, we accept
his own confession--
If I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep,
as a perfectly sincere comment on the most sincere, and therefore in many
respects the most effective, of his works. He has, after his way,
endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its
assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled
character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose
accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural
effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member
of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an
unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting
the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often
require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive,"
is, however, more to the point:
But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd,
Unless it were to be a moment merry--
A novel word in my vocabulary.
_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every
large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the
author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in
which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is
reflected without distortion. After the audacious though brilliant
opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic
affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his
prevailing manner. Home-sickness, sea-sickness, the terror of the tempest,
"wailing, blasphemy, devotion," the crash of the wreck, the wild farewell,
"the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony," the horrors of
famine, the tale of the two fathers, the beautiful apparitions of the
rainbow and the bird, the feast on Juan's spaniel, his reluctance to dine
on "his pastor and his master," the consequences of eating Pedrillo,--all
follow each other like visions in the phantasmagoria of a nightmare, till
at last the remnant of the crew are drowned by a ridiculous rhyme--
Finding no place for their landing better,
They ran the boat ashore,--and overset her.
Then comes the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient
days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold
running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page;
e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we have the
stanza:--
Thus sang, or would, or could, or should, have sung,
The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;
If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,
Yet in those days he might have done much worse--
with which the author dashes away the romance of the song, and then
launches into a tirade against Bob Southey's epic and Wordsworth's pedlar
poems. This vein exhausted, we come to the "Ave Maria," one of the most
musical, and seemingly heartfelt, hymns in the language. The close of the
ocean pastoral (in c. iv.) is the last of pathetic narrative in the book;
but the same feeling that "mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades," often
re-emerges in shorter passages. The fifth and sixth cantos, in spite of
the glittering sketch of Gulbeyaz, and tho fawn-like image of Dudù, are
open to the charge of diffuseness, and the character of Johnson is a
failure. From the seventh to the tenth, the poem decidedly dips, partly
because the writer had never been in Russia; then it again rises, and
shows no sign of falling off to the end.
No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some
of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the
fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last
esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his
works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of
female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline. Conjectures as to
the originals of imaginary portraits, are generally futile; but Miss
Millpond--not Donna Inez--is obviously Lady Byron; in Adeline we may
suspect that at Genoa he was drawing from the life in the Villa Paradiso;
while Aurora Raby seems to be an idealization of La Guiccioli:--
Early in years, and yet more infantine
In figure, she had something of sublime
In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine:
All youth--but with an aspect beyond time;
Radiant and grave--us pitying man's decline;
Mournful--but mournful of another's crime,
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more.
She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere,
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd,
And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear,
Perhaps, because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud
Of deeds and days, when they had fill'd the ear
Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd
To novel power; and, as she was the last,
She held her old faith and old feelings fast.
She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
And kept her heart serene within its zone.
Constantly, towards the close of the work, there is an echo of home and
country, a half involuntary cry after--
The love of higher things and better days;
Th'unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is call'd the world and the world's ways.
In the concluding stanza of the last completed canto, beginning--
Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
'Twixt night and morn, on the horizon's verge--
we have a condensation of the refrain of the poet's philosophy; but the
main drift of the later books is a satire on London society. There are
elements in a great city which may be wrought into something nobler than
satire, for all the energies of the age are concentrated where passion is
fiercest and thought intensest, amid the myriad sights and sounds of its
glare and gloom. But those scenes, and the actors in them, are apt also to
induce the frame of mind in which a prose satirist describes himself as
reclining under an arcade of the Pantheon: "Not the Pantheon by the Piazza
Navona, where the immortal gods were worshipped--the immortal gods now
dead; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Have not Selwyn, and Walpole, and
March, and Carlisle figured there? Has not Prince Florizel flounced
through the hall in his rustling domino, and danced there in powdered
splendour? O my companions, I have drunk many a bout with you, and always
found 'Vanitas Vanitatum' written on the bottom of the pot." This is the
mind in which _Don Juan_ interprets the universe, and paints the still
living court of Florizel and his buffoons. A "nondescript and ever varying
rhyme"--"a versified aurora borealis," half cynical, half Epicurean, it
takes a partial though a subtle view of that microcosm on stilts called
the great world. It complains that in the days of old "men made the
manners--manners now make men." It concludes--
Good company's a chess-board, there are kings,
Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world's a game.
It passes from a reflection on "the dreary _fuimus_ of all things here" to
the advice--
But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!"
To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy.
"Life's a poor player,"--then play out the play.
It was the natural conclusion of the foregone stage of Byron's career.
Years had given him power, but they were years in which his energies were
largely wasted. Self-indulgence had not petrified his feeling, but it had
thrown wormwood into its springs. He had learnt to look on existence as a
walking shadow, and was strong only with the strength of a sincere
despair.
Through life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three and thirty.
What have those years left to me?
Nothing, except thirty-three.
These lines are the summary of one who had drained the draught of pleasure
to the dregs of bitterness.