"Many are poets, but without the name,
For what is poesy but to create
From overfeeling good or ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new men,
Bestowing fire from heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavish'd his high gift in vain,
Lies chain'd to his lone rock by the sea-shore."
And he makes the great poet, who was, like himself, unjustly exiled,
exclaim;
'Tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone."
Of Tasso Byron had already written. Even a superficial comparison of
Goethe's _Tasso_ with Byron's _Lament of Tasso_ is sufficient to show
us what a resistless attraction hopeless suffering had for Byron's
imagination. Goethe takes Tasso the youth, the lover, the poet, and
places him in the society of the beautiful women of the court of
Ferrara, where, happy and unhappy, he is admired and humiliated. Byron
takes Tasso alone, ruined, shut out from society, shut into the cell of
a madhouse though he is quite sane, a prey to the cruelty of his former
protectors:--
"I loved all solitude--but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant;--had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him--_mine_ is _here_,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though _he_ perish, he may lift his eye,
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky;
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof."
Of the court of Ferrara, a court where Lucrezia Borgia has her
residence, a court where the passions and the cruelty of the
Renaissance period flourish, Goethe makes a little German Weimar,
where everything is ruled by the most refined humanitarianism of
the eighteenth century; Byron is magnetically attracted by what he
considers the revolting barbarity of the Duke of Ferrara, and his poem
turns into a declamation against the injustice and tyranny of princes.
We have another description of tragic suffering, along with still more
violent accusation--both, however, decidedly overdone--in _The Two
Foscari_, a tragedy in which a father is compelled to sentence the
son he loves to the agonies of the torture-chamber, and in which the
son, who is the hero of the tragedy, is stretched on the rack during
almost the whole duration of the play, and only rises from it to die
of grief because he is banished. In _The Two Foscari_, as in his other
tragedies, Byron, as if in defiance, follows the French fashion of
strict adherence to the Aristotelian rules. In his conviction that this
is the one right style, he risks the comical paradox, that England has
hitherto possessed no drama.
It has created much surprise that Byron, who, like all the other
English poets of the day, was a pronounced Naturalist--which means
that he preferred the forest to the garden, the unsophisticated to
the civilised human being, the original to the acquired language of
passion--that this same Byron should have been such an enthusiastic
admirer of Pope and of the small group of poets (including Samuel
Rogers and Crabbe) who still paid homage to classical tradition, even
to the extent of imitating the antique dramatic style.
The first reason for the admiration of Pope is to be sought in Byron's
spirit of contradiction. The fact that the poets of that Lake School
which he despised were continually reviling Pope, was in itself a
sufficient reason for his exalting him to the skies, calling him the
greatest of all English poets, and declaring that he would willingly
himself defray the expense of erecting a monument to him in the
Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, from which, as a Catholic, he was
excluded. Secondly, we have to remember that the traditions of Harrow
never lost their influence over Byron; and at Harrow Pope had always
been held up as the model poet. A third thing to be remembered is
Byron's own great deficiency in critical acumen, as an instance of
which we may take his remark to Lady Blessington that Shakespeare owed
half his fame to his low birth. There still remain the predisposing
circumstances--that Pope was deformed, and in spite of his deformity
had a beautiful head; that he did not belong to the Established Church;
that he was the poet of good society; and that his deformity begot in
him a certain satirical gloom--all things in which Byron sympathised
with him. And, lastly, we have Byron's personal bias (possibly
attributable to his Norman descent) towards rhetoric of the style
peculiar to the Latin races.
The circumstance that Byron championed the art theories of a past
age, whilst he in everything else belonged to the party of progress,
produces a certain likeness between him and Armand Carrel, who also
remained faithful to antiquated classicism in literature, though
he held the most emancipated views in politics and religion. As
both of them adopted the standpoint of eighteenth century France in
most matters intellectual and spiritual, it was not unnatural that
they should also conform to it in the only domain in which it was a
conventional standpoint, namely, that of _belles-lettres_. Certain it
is that his theoretical caprices had a baneful influence on Byron's
Italian dramas. These consist of monologues and declamation. Byron's
genius and Countess Guiccioli's patriotism combined did not suffice
to communicate to them more than a very meagre quantum of poetic
inspiration.
But during the production of _Cain_ and _Sardanapalus_ the young
Countess was what it was her desire to be, Byron's Muse.
The best thing in _Cain_ is the character of Adah. It has been often
remarked that Byron's male characters all resemble one another; what
his critics have been less apt to observe is, how dissimilar his women
are. Adah is not a female Cain, though she is the one imaginable wife
for him. Cain's female counterpart is the proud, defiant Aholibamah
of _Heaven and Earth_. Cain sees annihilation everywhere; Adah sees
growth, love, germinating power, happiness. To Cain, the cypress which
spreads its branches above little Enoch's head is a tree of mourning;
all Adah sees is that it gives shade to the child. After Cain has
despairingly made it plain to himself and Adah that all the world's
evils and misfortunes are to be transmitted through Enoch, Adah says:
"Oh, Cain, look on him; see how full of life,
Of strength, of bloom, of beauty, and of joy,
How like to me--how like to thee, when gentle!"
Out of so little is Adah made, that all her speeches put together would
not occupy one octavo page. When Cain has to make his choice between
love and knowledge, she says: "Oh, Cain! choose love." When Cain,
having killed Abel, stands alone, cursed and avoided as a murderer, she
answers his ejaculation of: "Leave me!," with the words: "Why, all have
left thee." And this character Byron created almost without departing
from the letter of the Bible, simply by sometimes putting what is
really said by one into the mouth of another. In Genesis, Cain, when he
has been cursed by the Lord, says: "My punishment is greater than I can
bear," &c. In Byron's play, Cain, when the terrible curse of the angel
has fallen, stands mute; but Adah lifts up her voice and says:
"This punishment is more than he can bear.
Behold, thou driest him from the face of earth,
And from the face of God shall he be hid.
A fugitive and vagabond on earth,
'Twill come to pass that whoso findeth him
Shall slay him"--
the exact words which the Bible puts into the mouth of Cain. Byron,
with the eye of genius, saw in this one utterance, this Old Testament
lump of clay, the outlines of a whole human figure; and with nothing
but the pressure of his hand moulded it into a statuette of the first
loving woman.
The other character in which we feel, and feel still more strongly,
the influence of the young Countess, is Myrrha, the Greek female slave
in _Sardanapalus_. _Sardanapalus_ is the best of Byron's historical
tragedies.--With careless contempt for his fellow-men and the world
in general, the proud Sardanapalus has given himself up to voluptuous
pleasures. Martial fame he despises; he cares not to win a great name
by shedding the blood of thousands of unoffending human beings; and as
little does he desire to be worshipped, like his fathers, as a god. His
careless magnanimity amounts to imprudence. He returns to the rebel
priest the sword which has been snatched from him, with the words:
"Receive your sword, and know
That I prefer your service militant
Unto your ministry--not loving either."
His manly vigour appears to be ebbing away in a life of voluptuous
enjoyment, when Myrrha, the Ionian, his favourite slave, determines to
rescue him. She implores him to rouse himself, and prepare to defend
himself against his enemies. It is almost as great a grief to her that
she loves him as that she is a slave.
"Why do I love this man? My country's daughters
Love none but heroes. But I have no country!
The slave has lost all save her bonds. I love him;
And that's the heaviest link of the long chain--
To love whom we esteem not . . . . . . . .
And yet methinks I love him more, perceiving
That he is hated of his own barbarians."
But when the enemies attack the palace, and Sardanapalus, after
rejecting the clumsy sword as hurting his hand, and the heavy helmet as
"a mountain on his temples," plunges bareheaded and lightly armed into
the midst of the fray and fights like a hero, Myrrha triumphs as if a
burden of shame were lifted from her heart:--
"Tis no dishonour--no--
'Tis no dishonour to have loved this man.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . If Alcides
Were shamed in wearing Lydian Omphale's
She-garb, and wielding her vile distaff, surely
He, who springs up a Hercules at once,
Nursed in effeminate arts from youth to manhood,
And rushes from the banquet to the battle,
As though it were a bed of love, deserves
That a Greek girl should be his paramour,
And a Greek bard his minstrel, a Greek tomb
His monument."
It is as if Byron were prophesying his own fate. And was it not true of
the poet, as of his hero, that he had known a thousand women, but never
a true woman's heart till now?
"MYRRHA. Then thou wouldst know what thou canst never know.
SARDANAPALUS. And that is----
MYRRHA. The true value of a heart;
At least, a woman's.
SARDANAPALUS. I have proved a thousand--
A thousand, and a thousand.
MYRRHA. Hearts?
SARDANAPALUS. I think so.
MYRRHA. Not one! The time may come thou may'st."
Like Myrrha, the young Italian Countess set before her lover more manly
aims than voluptuous enjoyment; like Myrrha, she rescued him from a
life which was unworthy of his great and noble mind.
We left the lovers at the country house of La Mira, near Venice, where
Byron wrote, amongst other things, the Memoirs which he presented
to Thomas Moore, to be left as a legacy to the latter's little son,
but which were burned at the instigation of Byron's family, and for
reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained. The peaceful
life at La Mira was not of long duration. Count Guiccioli suddenly
determined that he would put an end to the existing state of matters.
The Countess would not give up Byron, and a separation from her husband
was the result. With the consent of her family, she relinquished
fortune and position in society; a small yearly allowance was to be
paid her; but the conditions of the separation only held good as long
as she continued to reside in her father's house. Here Byron regularly
spent his evenings with her; he loved to hear her play, or sing airs
by Mozart or Rossini. His diary of January and February 1821 chiefly
consists of the following regularly repeated entries: "Rode--fired
pistols--dined--wrote--visited--heard music--talked nonsense--went
home--read."
As long as Count Guiccioli was still playing the rôle of possible
avenger, the situation had contained the element of danger and
excitement which to Byron was the spice of life. He believed that he
owed his safety from assassination in the course of his rides to the
fact of his being known to carry pistols and to have an unerring aim,
and from assassination at home to the avaricious Count's disinclination
to pay the twenty scudi which were the hire of a first-class bravo.
This excitement was now at an end, but there was substituted for it a
new and nobler one.
The whole Italian peninsula was in a state of silent but violent
ferment. After the overthrow of Napoleon's rule, the old rulers "by the
grace of God" had at once begun to conduct themselves with overweening
arrogance. Every trace of French influence in the shape of beneficent
reform was to be effaced, and the old abuses were to be re-introduced.
The unbearable oppression during the general European reaction which
followed the formation of the Holy Alliance, drove the Italians to
form a wide-spread conspiracy; great secret leagues of the Carbonari,
imitated from those of the Freemasons, were soon in existence in all
parts of the country.
The Countess introduced Byron into the circle of the conspirators.
The whole Gamba family belonged to the secret society. The Countess's
brother, Pietro, a warmhearted youth of twenty, who was an enthusiastic
admirer of Byron and eventually accompanied him to Greece, was one
of its most ardent and best-informed leaders. Carbonarism seemed to
Byron the poetry of politics. The wooden Parliamentary politics of
his native country had repelled him, but this appealed strongly to
his imagination. He was advanced to a high rank in the society, and
was made chief of a division called the Americani. He provided the
conspirators with supplies of weapons, and offered the "constitutional"
government at Naples one thousand Louis-d'ors as his contribution to
the expenses of carrying on the war against the Holy Alliance. His
letters display positive fury with the Austrian tyrants. Wherever he
resided, he was an eyesore to the Austrian authorities; his letters
were opened; the Italian translation of _Childe Harold_ was prohibited
in the Austrian provinces of Italy; and the police, as he well knew,
were incited to assassinate him. Nevertheless, he calmly took his
usual ride every day. On this, as on other occasions, his conduct and
language were distinguished by a mixture of stoic heroism and boyish
bravado. There is something attractively boyish in his writing to
Murray: "I wonder if they can read my letters when they have opened
them; if so, they may see, in my MOST LEGIBLE HAND, THAT I THINK THEM
DAMNED SCOUNDRELS AND BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR A FOOL." When
proclamation was made that extremely severe penalties would be incurred
by all in whose houses weapons were found, he stored the weapons of all
the conspirators of the Romagna in his villa, which became a regular
arsenal. The cupboards and drawers were crammed with the revolutionary
proclamations and oath-formulas. He thought, and thought rightly, that
the authorities would hardly dare to search the house of a member of
the English House of Peers.
It was easier for them to drive him away than to imprison him; it was
done simply by ordering the Counts Gamba to leave the country within
twenty-four hours. It being one of the agreements of the separation
that the young Countess was to be obliged, if she left her father's
house, to enter a convent, the authorities felt sure that the step
they were taking was a sure means of getting rid of Byron. Teresa's
letter to her lover on hearing of this order ends thus: "Byron! I am
in despair!--If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall see
you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am
resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die--but--but
then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they
tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me; and why? Not because I fear my
present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I
must leave you."[2]
The fortune into possession of which Byron came through his marriage,
and which, strange to say, he had no scruples in keeping; another
fortune, produced by the sale of Newstead; and the £20,000 which he
had in course of time received from Murray in payment of his poems,
had placed him in a position to exercise benevolence on a grand scale.
When it was reported that he intended to leave Ravenna, the poor of the
neighbourhood sent a petition to the Cardinal Legate that he might be
allowed to remain. But it was this very devotion of the people to him
that made him dangerous to the Government. He removed from Ravenna to
Pisa. The Tuscan Government being quite as much afraid of Byron and
the Gambas as was the Government of the Papal States, there was soon
another expulsion, and the party proceeded to Genoa, Byron's last place
of residence in Italy.
[1] Must be a mistranslation. In the last Danish edition (printed
1924) and in Brandes' collected writings (printed 1900) the text goes
"and left it to the lady to consider her words." The translation in
the English edition should probably read something like "leaving
Madame--and a numerous audience to ponder at their leisure on the
dialogue between them."--Transcriber's note.
[2] The long work, _Lord Byron Jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie_, which
Countess Guiccioli published in 1868, though it does not really help
us to understand either Byron's character or his art, bears touching
evidence to the strength and depth of the Countess's love. The solution
of the problem which the world calls Byron, is, for her, contained
in one word: He was an _angel_--beautiful as an angel; good as an
angel; an angel in everything. The 1100 pages of the book are divided
into chapters bearing the titles of his different virtues; one is
consecrated to his philanthropy, another to his modesty, &c, &e. The
chapter upon his faults proves in the most satisfactory manner that
he had none. The description given of his person corresponds to that
of his character. We have separate disquisitions on the beauty of his
voice, of his nose, of his lips. It is incomprehensible how such a
shameful aspersion can have been spread abroad as that Lord Byron was
lame or had a clubfoot. His limp was so slight that it was impossible
to detect which foot caused it; and his lordship's shoemaker, who still
owns the last on which his boots were made when he lived at Newstead,
bears witness (his attestation being appended) to the slightness of
the defect. It is equally incomprehensible how the foolish report can
have found credence, that Lord Byron's hair had begun in his later
years to recede from his forehead; certainly that part of his head
was rather bare, but simply for the reason that he chose to have it
shaved. Another unaccountable and foolish falsehood is the assertion
that his legs grew very thin. Certainly they were thinner in the last
years of his life than they had been when he was younger; but was that
at all remarkable in a man who spent most of his leisure hours on
horseback?--When we remember that this book was published forty-four
years after Byron's death we cannot but acknowledge that the love which
inspired it was strong and lasting.