"January, 1814.
"My dear Merivale,
"I have redde Roncesvaux with very great pleasure, and (if I were
so disposed) see very little room for criticism. There is a choice
of two lines in one of the last Cantos,--I think 'Live and protect'
better, because 'Oh who?' implies a doubt of Roland's power or
inclination. I would allow the--but that point you yourself must
determine on--I mean the doubt as to where to place a part of the
Poem, whether between the actions or no. Only if you wish to have
all the success you deserve, _never listen to friends_, and--as I
am not the least troublesome of the number, least of all to me.
"I hope you will be out soon. _March_, sir, _March_ is the month
for the _trade_, and they must be considered. You have written a
very noble Poem, and nothing but the detestable taste of the day
can do you harm,--but I think you will beat it. Your measure is
uncommonly well chosen and wielded."[116]
[Footnote 115: When these monthly disbursements had amounted to 70_l._,
Ashe wrote to beg that the whole remaining sum of 80_l_. might be
advanced to him at one payment, in order to enable him, as he said, to
avail himself of a passage to New South Wales, which had been again
offered to him. The sum was accordingly, by Lord Byron's orders, paid
into his hands.]
[Footnote 116: This letter is but a fragment,--the remainder being
lost.]
* * * * *
In the extracts from his Journal, just given, there is a passage that
cannot fail to have been remarked, where, in speaking of his admiration
of some lady, whose name he has himself left blank, the noble writer
says--"a wife would be the salvation of me." It was under this
conviction, which not only himself but some of his friends entertained,
of the prudence of his taking timely refuge in matrimony from those
perplexities which form the sequel of all less regular ties, that he had
been induced, about a year before, to turn his thoughts seriously to
marriage,--at least, as seriously as his thoughts were ever capable of
being so turned,--and chiefly, I believe, by the advice and intervention
of his friend Lady Melbourne, to become a suitor for the hand of a
relative of that lady, Miss Milbanke. Though his proposal was not then
accepted, every assurance of friendship and regard accompanied the
refusal; a wish was even expressed that they should continue to write to
each other, and a correspondence, in consequence,--somewhat singular
between two young persons of different sexes, inasmuch as love was not
the subject of it,--ensued between them. We have seen how highly Lord
Byron estimated as well the virtues as the accomplishments of the young
lady; but it is evident that on neither side, at this period, was love
either felt or professed.[117]
In the mean time, new entanglements, in which his heart was the willing
dupe of his fancy and vanity, came to engross the young poet: and still,
as the usual penalties of such pursuits followed, he again found himself
sighing for the sober yoke of wedlock, as some security against their
recurrence. There were, indeed, in the interval between Miss Milbanke's
refusal and acceptance of him, two or three other young women of rank
who, at different times, formed the subject of his matrimonial dreams.
In the society of one of these, whose family had long honoured me with
their friendship, he and I passed much of our time, during this and the
preceding spring; and it will be found that, in a subsequent part of his
correspondence, he represents me as having entertained an anxious wish
that he should so far cultivate my fair friend's favour as to give a
chance, at least, of matrimony being the result.
That I, more than once, expressed some such feeling is undoubtedly true.
Fully concurring with the opinion, not only of himself, but of others of
his friends, that in marriage lay his only chance of salvation from the
sort of perplexing attachments into which he was now constantly tempted,
I saw in none of those whom he admired with more legitimate views so
many requisites for the difficult task of winning him into fidelity and
happiness as in the lady in question. Combining beauty of the highest
order with a mind intelligent and ingenuous,--having just learning
enough to give refinement to her taste, and far too much taste to make
pretensions to learning,--with a patrician spirit proud as his own, but
showing it only in a delicate generosity of spirit, a feminine
high-mindedness, which would have led her to tolerate his defects in
consideration of his noble qualities and his glory, and even to
sacrifice silently some of her own happiness rather than violate the
responsibility in which she stood pledged to the world for his;--such
was, from long experience, my impression of the character of this lady;
and perceiving Lord Byron to be attracted by her more obvious claims to
admiration, I felt a pleasure no less in rendering justice to the still
rarer qualities which she possessed, than in endeavouring to raise my
noble friend's mind to the contemplation of a higher model of female
character than he had, unluckily for himself, been much in the habit of
studying.
To this extent do I confess myself to have been influenced by the sort
of feeling which he attributes to me. But in taking for granted (as it
will appear he did from one of his letters) that I entertained any very
decided or definite wishes on the subject, he gave me more credit for
seriousness in my suggestions than I deserved. If even the lady herself,
the unconscious object of these speculations, by whom he was regarded in
no other light than that of a distinguished acquaintance, could have
consented to undertake the perilous,--but still possible and
glorious,--achievement of attaching Byron to virtue, I own that,
sanguinely as, in theory, I might have looked to the result, I should
have seen, not without trembling, the happiness of one whom I had known
and valued from her childhood risked in the experiment.
I shall now proceed to resume the thread of the Journal, which I had
broken off, and of which, it will be perceived, the noble author himself
had, for some weeks, at this time, interrupted the progress.
[Footnote 117: The reader has already seen what Lord Byron himself says,
in his Journal, on this subject:--"What an odd situation and friendship
is ours!--without one spark of love on either side," &c. &c.]