LORD BYRON'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
"When the triumph of a cause of such importance to humanity is in
question, there never can be too many advocates.... But it is not
enough to count up the votes; their value must, above all, be
weighed."--SHERER.
The struggles between heart and reason, in religious matters, began
almost with Lord Byron's infancy. His desire of reconciling them was
such, that, if unsuccessful, his mind was perplexed and restless. He was
not, as it were, out of the cradle, when, in the midst of his childish
play, the great problems of life already filled his youthful thoughts;
and his good nurse May, who was wont to sing psalms to him when rocking
him to sleep, had also to answer questions which showed the dangerous
curiosity of his mind.
"Among the traits," says Moore, "which should be recorded of his earlier
years, I should mention, that, according to the character given of him
by his first nurse's husband, he was, when a mere child, 'particularly
inquisitive and puzzling about religion.'"
At ten years of age, he was sent to school, at Dulwich, under the care
of the Rev. Dr. Glennie, who, in the account given by him to Moore, and
after speaking of the amiable qualities of Byron, adds: that "At that
age he already possessed an intimate acquaintance with the historical
facts in the Scriptures, and was particularly delighted when he could
speak of them to him, especially on Sunday evenings after worship." He
was wont then to reason upon all the facts contained in the Bible, with
every appearance of faith in the doctrine which it teaches.
But while his heart was thus drawn toward its Creator, the power of his
reason began imperiously to assert its rights. As long as he remained
sheltered under his father's roof, under the eyes of his mother, and of
young ecclesiastics who were his first teachers, and whose practice
agreed with their teaching,--as long as his reason had not reached a
certain degree of development,--he remained orthodox and pious. But when
he went to college, and particularly when he was received at Cambridge,
a vast field of contradictions opened before his observing and thinking
mind. His reflections, together with the study of the great
psychological questions, soon clouded his mind, and threw a shade over
his orthodoxy. If Lord Byron, therefore, had really the misfortune to
lose at an earlier age than ordinary children, the simple faith of his
childhood, the fact is not to be wondered at. By the universality of his
genius he added to the faculties which form the poet, those of an
eminently logical and practical mind; and being precocious in all
things, he was likewise so in his powers of reflection and reasoning.
"Never," says Moore, "did Lord Byron lose sight of reality and of common
practical sense; his genius, however high it soared, ever preserved upon
earth a support of some kind."
His intellectual inquisitiveness was likewise, with him, a precocious
passion, and circumstances stood so well in the way to serve this
craving, that when fifteen years of age (incredible as it seems), he had
already perused two thousand volumes, among which his powerful and vivid
intellect had been able to weigh the contradictions of all the principal
modern and ancient systems of philosophy. This thirst for knowledge
(anomalous according to the rules of both school and college) was the
more extraordinary that it existed in him together with a passionate
love for boyish play, and the indulgence in all the bodily exercises, in
which he excelled, and on which he prided himself. But as he stored his
mind after the usual college hours, and apart from the influences of
that routine discipline, which, with Milton, Pope, and almost all the
great minds, he so cordially hated, the real progress of his intellect
remained unobserved by his masters, and even by his fellow-students.
This mistake, on the part of men little gifted with quickness of
perception, was not shared by Disraeli, who could so justly appreciate
genius; and of Byron he spoke as of a studious boy, who loved to hide
this quality from his comrades, thinking it more amiable on his part to
appear idle in their eyes.
While the young man thus strengthened his intellect by hard though
irregular study, his meditative and impassioned nature, feeling in the
highest degree the necessity of confirming its impressions, experienced
more imperatively than a youth of fifteen generally does, the want of
examining the traditional teachings which had been transmitted to him.
Byron felt the necessity of inquiring on what irrevocable proofs the
dogmas which he was called upon to believe were based. Holy writ, aided
by the infallibility of the teachings of the Church, etc., were adduced
as the proofs he required.
He was wont, therefore, to read with avidity a number of books treating
on religious matters; and he perused them, both with artless ingenuity
and in the hope of their strengthening his faith. But, could he truly
find faith in their pages? Are not such books rather dangerous than
otherwise for some minds?
"The truth is," says the author of the "Essays," "that a mind which has
never entertained a doubt in revelation, may conceive some doubts by
reading books written in its defense." And he adds elsewhere, in
speaking of the writers of such controversial works, that "impatient of
the least hesitation, they deny with anger the value of their
adversary's arguments, and betray, in their way of getting over
difficulties, a humor which injures the effects of their reasoning, and
of the proofs they make use of to help their arguments." After reading
several of these books, he must have found, as did the great Pitt, "that
such readings provoke many more doubts than they dispel;" and, in fact,
they rather disquieted and shook, than strengthened his faith. At the
same time, he was alive to another striking contradiction. He noticed
that the men who taught the doctrines, too often forgot to make these
and their practice agree; and in losing his respect for his masters, he
still further doubted the sincerity of their teaching. Thus, while
remaining religiously inclined, he must have felt his faith becoming
more and more shaken, and in the memorandum of his early days, after
enumerating the books treating upon religious subjects which he had
read, he says: "All very tedious. I hate books treating of religious
subjects; although I adore and love God, freed from all absurd and
blasphemous notions."
In this state of mind, of which one especially finds a proof in his
earlier poems, the philosophy of Locke, which is that professed at
Cambridge, and which he had already skimmed, as it were, together with
other philosophical systems, became his study. It only added an enormous
weight in the way of contradictions to the already heavy weight of
doubt.
Could it be otherwise? Does not Locke teach that all ideas being the
creation of the senses, the notion of God, unless aided by tradition,
has no other basis but our senses and the sight of the external world?
If this be not the doctrine professed by Locke, it is the reading which
a logical mind may give to it.
He believes in God; yet the notion of God, as it appears from his
philosophical teaching, is not that which is taught by Christian
doctrine. According to him, God is not even proclaimed to be the Creator
of the Universe. But even were He proclaimed such, what would be the
result of this philosophical condescension, unless it be that God is
distinct from the world? Would God possess then all those attributes
which reason, independently of all philosophy, points to in the
Divinity? Would power, goodness, infinite perfection be God's? Certainly
not: as we are unable to know Him except through a world of
imperfections, where good and evil, order and confusion, are mixed
together, and not by the conception of the infinite, which alone can
give us a true and perfect idea of God, it follows that God would be
much superior to the world, but would not be absolute perfection.
After this depreciation of the Omnipotent, what says this philosophy of
our soul? It does away altogether with one of the essential proofs of
its spiritual nature, and thereby compromises the soul itself, declaring
as it does, that "it is not unlikely that matter is capable of thought."
But then of what necessity would the soul be, if the body can think? How
hope for immortality, if that which thinks is subject to dissolution and
to death?
As for our liberty, it would be annihilated as a consequence of such
doctrines; for it is not supposed to derive its essence from the
interior activity of the soul, but would seem to be limited to our power
of moving. Yet we are hourly experiencing what our weakness is in
comparison with the power of the laws of nature, which rule us in every
sense and way. In making, therefore, all things derivable from
sensations, Locke fell from one error into another, and nearly arrived
at that point when duty and all principles of justice and morality might
be altogether denied. Being himself, however, both good, honest,
liberal, and Christian-minded, he could only save himself from the
social wreck to which he exposed others, by stopping on the brink of the
abyss which he had himself created, and by becoming in practice
inconsistent with his speculative notions. His successors, such as
Condillac and Cabanis, fell by following his system and by carrying it
too far.
A doctrine which denies the right of discovering, or of explaining the
religious truths which are the grounds of all moral teaching, and which
allows tradition the privilege only of bestowing faith; a system of
metaphysics, which can not avoid the dangers in which morality must
perish, owing to its contradictions and its inconsistencies, must be
perilous for all but those happily constituted minds for whom simple
faith and submission are a part of their essence, who believe on hearsay
and seek not to understand, but merely glance at the surface of the
difficult and venturesome questions which are discussed before them,
either because they feel their weakness, or because the light of
revelation shines upon them so strongly as to make that of reason pale.
For more logical minds, however, for such who are inquisitive, whose
reason is both anxious and exacting, who want to understand before they
believe, for whom the ties which linked them to tradition have been
loosened, owing to their having reflected on a number of contradictions
(the least of which, in the case of Lord Byron, was decidedly not that
of seeing such a philosophy professed and adopted in a clerical
university); for minds like these such doctrines must necessarily lead
to atheism. Though Lord Byron's mind was one of these, he escaped the
fearful results by a still greater effort of his reason, which made him
reject the precepts of the sensualists, and comprehend their
inconsistencies.
His protest against the doctrines of the sensualists is entered in his
memorandum, where, after naming all the authors of the philosophical
systems which he had read, and, coming to the head of that school, he
exclaims from the bottom of his heart:
"Hobbes! I detest him!"
And notwithstanding the respect with which the good and great Locke must
individually have inspired him, he evidently must have repudiated his
precepts, inasmuch as they were not strong enough to uproot from his
mind the religious truths which reason proclaims, nor prevent either his
coming out of his philosophical struggle a firm believer in all the
dogmas which are imperiously upheld to the human reason, or his
proclaiming his belief in one God and Creator, in our free will, and in
the immortality of the soul.
This glorious and noble victory of his mind and true religious
tendencies at that time, is evinced in his "Prayer to Nature," written
when he had not yet reached his eighteenth year. In this beautiful
prayer, which his so-called orthodox friends succeeded in having cut out
of the volume containing his earliest poems, we find both great power of
contemplation and humility and confidence in prayer--a soul too near the
Creator to doubt of His Omnipotence, but also too far from Him for his
faith and confidence in the divine mercy not to be mixed up with a
little fear; in fact, all the essential elements of a noble prayer which
is not orthodox. Though written on the threshold of life, he might, with
few modifications, have signed it on the eve of his death; when, still
young, fate had spared him nothing, from the sweetest to the bitterest
feelings, from every deserved pleasure to every undeserved pain.
THE PRAYER OF NATURE.
Father of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?
Father of Light, on thee I call!
Thou seest my soul is dark within;
Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall,
Avert from me the death of sin.
No shrine I seek, to sects unknown;
Oh, point to me the path of truth!
Thy dread omnipotence I own;
Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.
Let bigots rear a gloomy fane,
Let superstition hail the pile,
Let priests, to spread their sable reign,
With tales of mystic rites beguile.
Shall man confine his Maker's sway
To Gothic domes of mouldering stone?
Thy temple is the face of day;
Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne.
Shall man condemn his race to hell,
Unless they bend in pompous form?
Tell us that all, for one who fell,
Must perish in the mingling storm?
Shall each pretend to reach the skies,
Yet doom his brother to expire,
Whose soul a different hope supplies,
Or doctrines less severe inspire?
Shall these, by creeds they can't expound,
Prepare a fancied bliss or woe?
Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground,
Their great Creator's purpose know?
Shall those who live for self alone,
Whose years float on in daily crime--
Shall they by faith for guilt atone,
And live beyond the bounds of Time?
Father! no prophet's laws I seek,--
_Thy_ laws in Nature's works appear;--
I own myself corrupt and weak,
Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!
Thou, who canst guide the wandering star
Through trackless realms of aether's space;
Who calm'st the elemental war,
Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:
Thou, who in wisdom placed me here,
Who, when thou wilt, canst take me hence,
Ah! while I tread this earthly sphere,
Extend to me thy wide defence.
To Thee, my God, to thee I call!
Whatever weal or woe betide,
By thy command I rise or fall,
In thy protection I confide.
If, when this dust to dust's restored,
My soul shall float on airy wing,
How shall thy glorious name adored
Inspire her feeble voice to sing!
But, if this fleeting spirit share
With clay the grave's eternal bed,
While life yet throbs I raise my prayer,
Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.
To Thee I breathe my humble strain,
Grateful for all thy mercies past,
And hope, my God, to thee again
This erring life may fly at last.
_December 29, 1806._ [First published, 1830.]
As much may be said of another poem which he likewise wrote in his
youth; when, very dangerously ill, and believing his last end to be
near, he turned all his thoughts to the other world, and conceived the
touching poem which ended in the lines:--
"Forget this world, my restless sprite;
Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven;
There must thou soon direct thy flight
If errors are forgiven."
But if Lord Byron did not adopt Locke's philosophy he at least paid the
greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by following ever more
closely his best precept, which is to the effect that to love truth for
the sake of truth is an essential part of human perfection in this
world, and the fertile soil on which is sown the seed of every virtue.
While his mind thus wavered between a thousand contradictory opinions,
and, finding part of the truth only in every philosophical system which
he examined, but not the whole truth--which was what his soul thirsted
for; calling himself at times skeptic, because he hesitated in adhering
to one school, in consequence of the numerous errors and inconsistencies
common to all (the great school which has, to the honor of France,
harmonized them all, was not yet open); but not losing sight of the
great eternal truths of which he felt inwardly the proofs, he made the
acquaintance of a young man who had just completed his university
education with great success. This young man, who exercised a great
influence over all his fellow-students, owing to his superior intellect,
influenced Byron in a similar manner. Bold, logical, inflexible, he was
not swayed by the dangers which the sensualistic teaching presented to
all logical minds; dangers which had frightened the chief of that school
himself, and who, in wishing to oppose them, had not been able to do so
except by contradictions. This young man, by a noble inconsistency, drew
back in presence of the moral conclusions of that metaphysical doctrine,
but not without culling from the master's thoughts conclusions, such
that they leave all that is spiritual and immortal without defense,
together with all the legitimate inferences to be derived from the
principles he taught, however impious or absurd.
Among the Germans he had likewise met with several bold doctrines; but,
merely to speak here of the conclusions to which the school he belonged
necessarily brought him, he arrived at those conclusions by a series of
deductions from the study of those great questions, which experience
always ends by referring either to reason or to revelation. Compelled by
the tenets of that school, to solve all these problems by means of the
sensations only, he was naturally led to the conclusion that no such
thing existed as the spirituality of the soul, and hence, that it had
neither the gift of immortality nor that of liberty, nor any principles
of morality. Finally, obliged to seek in tradition the conviction that a
God existed, and that He can only be perceived through a maze of
imperfections, and not as reason conceives Him clearly and simply with
all His necessary attributes of perfection, he was even led to the
necessity of losing sight of a Creator altogether.
The fatal precipice, which this young student himself avoided by the
practical conclusions by which he abided, Byron likewise escaped both by
his conclusions and his theoretical notions. He even hated the name of
atheist to that degree, that at Harrow he wished to fight his companion
Lord Althorpe, because he had written the word atheist under Byron's
name. This is so true that Sir Robert Dallas, of whose judgment no
interpretation can ever be given without making allowances for the
intolerant spirit and the exaggeration required by his notions of
orthodoxy and by his party prejudices, after regretting that Lord Byron
should not have had a shield during his minority to protect him against
his comrades, "proud, free-thinking, and acute sophists," as he calls
them, adds that, if surprise must be expressed, it is not that Byron
should have erred, but that he should have pierced the clouds which
surrounded him, and have dispersed them by the sole rays of his genius.
So many struggles, however, so many contradictions, so many strains upon
the mind, while leaving his heart untouched, could not but multiply the
doubts which he conceived, and more or less modify his mind, and even
give to it a tinge of skepticism.
When he left England for the first time, his mind was in this
transitory, suffering state. The various countries which he visited, the
various creeds with which he became acquainted the intolerance of the
one, the laxity in others in direct opposition to their superstitious
and irrational practices; the truly touching piety which he found in the
Greek monasteries (at Zytza and at Athens), in the midst of which and in
the silence of whose cloisters, he loved to share the peace and even the
austerities of a monkish life; his transition from the Western
countries, where reason is placed above imagination, to the East, where
the opposite is aimed at--all contributed to prevent what was
vacillating in his mind from becoming settled. Meanwhile endless
disappointments, bitter sorrows, and broken illusions contributed their
share to the pain which his mind experienced at every stage of its
philosophical inquiry, and contributed to give him, in the loneliness of
his life, a tinge of misanthropy opposed to his natural character, which
suggested the rather philosophical and generous than prudent conception
of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," where he depicts his hero as
intellectually imbued with philosophical doctrines which lead practical
minds to skepticism and materialism! These doctrines resulted in causing
"Childe Harold" to lose that traditional faith which gives peace to the
soul by insuring conviction to the mind. The poet shows the
impossibility of withdrawing himself from their disastrous results when
arrived at the age when passions assert their rule, and when in a
certain social position, they must be carried into practice. Nature not
having gifted him with a sufficiently generous heart to check the
disease of his mind, Childe Harold, _disgusted with the sins of his
youth_, no longer seeks the road to virtue, but begins to experience
with Solomon the vanity of human things, becomes a prey to satiety,
ennui, and to insensibility to both physical and moral worth.
Byron, who made the intellectual education of his day responsible for
Childe Harold's faults, had conceived this character in his earliest
days at Harrow. It was in any case, he said, a characteristic of the
youth of those days, although idealized and drawn from his own
imagination. His enemies and his rivals have endeavored to prove that
he wished to describe in this poem the state of his own mind. They made
capital out of a few historical and local circumstances, to give to
their falsehood some appearance of truth. But only those who did not
know him personally could be ignorant how improbable it was that any
resemblance between the poet and his hero could be maintained.
Let us confine ourselves to the remark that Lord Byron, instead of
personifying his hero, personifies no one but simply the poet. Let us
add, besides, that in no case could Lord Byron be made responsible for
the consequences of the doctrines of the materialists, as held by his
hero. Not only because of his nature, which was totally opposed to them,
but also and especially because of his tendencies, which were eminently
and persistently those of a spiritualist, and which clung to him
throughout his life even at the time when he was accused of skepticism.
This was at the time when he wrote the second canto of "Childe Harold."
Thoughts, little in unison with, if not entirely opposed to his intimate
convictions, sprang from his sick heart to his head: his soul became
dejected, and his copious tears so obscured his eyes as to veil from
them for a time the existence of the Almighty, which he seemed to
question; and he appeared to think that if the Cambridge philosophy was
right in doubting the soul's spirituality, its immortality might be
equally questioned. These doubts having been expressed in his own, and
not in his hero's name, at the outset of the second canto of "Childe
Harold," led to his being also accused of skepticism.
But if pain actually paralyzed for a time the elasticity of his mind,
the latter very soon recovered its natural vigor and showed itself in
all its glowing energy in the eighth and ninth stanzas, which are most
delicate emanations from a beautiful soul. The first stanzas alone,
however, continued to occupy the attention of some orthodox and
over-scrupulous minds: poetry not necessarily being a mode of teaching
philosophy. We must besides remark that the meaning of the lines is
purely hypothetical. In _saying_ that the soul might _not be immortal_,
is it not saying much the same as was said by Locke in the words _the
soul is perhaps spiritual_? Is not that perishable which is capable of
dissolution according to the laws of the world? Lord Byron, though a
stanch spiritualist at heart, derived his doubts from other much less
exalted authorities. Believing implicitly in the omnipotence of the
Creator, could he not modestly fear that God, who had made his soul out
of nothing, might cause it to return to nothing? Might he not imagine
that the contrary belief was rather the result of our wishes, of our
pride, and of the importance which we love to attach to ourselves? Can
the conviction of the existence of immortality, unless founded upon
revelation, be any thing else but a hope or a sentiment? Pantheists
alone find immortality to be the fatal consequence of their presumptuous
doctrine. But what an immortality! One to be laughed at, as a
philosopher of our days so well expresses it.
Accused of skepticism, Byron replied by explaining the meaning of his
lines in a note which, at the instance of Mr. Dallas, he also consented
to suppress with his habitual good-nature, and in which he endeavored to
show that the spirit which pervaded the whole of the poem was rather one
of discouragement and despair, than raillery at religion, and that,
after all, the effect of religion upon the world had been less to make
men love their equals than to excite the various sects to a hatred
against one another, and thus give rise to those fanatical wars which
have caused so much bloodshed and injured so deeply the cause which they
were intended to defend.
In reading this note again, one can with difficulty make out what
Dallas's objections were, and why he tried so hard to have it
suppressed; for it savors much more of a spirit of toleration and
charity than of skepticism. Lord Byron nevertheless withdrew it.
But this was not enough to satisfy the British straight-lacedness. As
the accusations against his skepticism were on the increase daily, Mr.
Gifford, for whose enlightened opinion Byron ever had great respect,
advised him to be more prudent, whereupon Byron replied:--
"I will do as you advise in regard to religious matters. The best would
perhaps be to avoid them altogether. Certainly the passages already
published are rather too rigorously interpreted. I am no bigot of
incredulity, and I did not expect that I should be accused of denying
the existence of God, because I had expressed some doubts as to the
immortality of the soul.... After all, I believe my doubts to be but
the effects of some mental illness."
It is clear from this letter, the tone of which is so honest and
sincere, that if in the stanzas which his rivals blamed there was really
more skepticism than can be gathered from the consideration of man's
littleness and God's greatness, yet it was not his real conviction.
Perhaps it was only a kind of cloud overhanging the mind, produced by
the great grief which weighed on his heart. These sentiments, however,
must have been really his own for some time longer. In his journal of
1813 he expresses himself thus:--
"My restlessness tells me I have something within that 'passeth show.'
It is for him who made it to prolong that spark of celestial fire which
illuminates yet burns this frail tenement.... In the mean time I am
grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils,
_grace a Dieu et a mon bon temperament_."
But all this, as we have said, amounted to the opinion that an
omnipotent God is the author of our soul, which is of a totally
different nature to that of our body, and that the soul being spiritual
and not subjected to the laws which rule the body, the soul must be
immortal. That he who made it out of nothing can cause it to return to
nothing. The orthodox doctrine does not teach, as pantheism does, that
our soul can not perish. It gives it only an individual immortality.
Notwithstanding this, and indeed on account of it, he was accused of
being an atheist, in a poem entitled "Anti-Byron." This poem was the
work of a clever rival, who made himself the echo of a party. Murray
hesitated to publish it, but Byron, who was always just, praised the
poem, and advised its publication.
"If the author thinks that I have written poetry with such tendencies,
he is quite right to contradict it."
But having done so much for others, this time, at least, he fulfilled a
duty toward himself by adding:--
"The author is however wrong on one point; I am not in the least an
atheist;" and ends by saying, "It is very odd; eight lines may have
produced eight thousand, if we calculate what has been and may still be
said on the subject."
He speaks of the same work to Moore, in the same tone of pleasantry:--
"Oh, by-the-by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem--an
'Anti-Byron'--coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to
overthrow by rhyme all religion and government, and have already made
great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I
never felt myself important till I saw and heard of my being such a
little Voltaire as to induce such a production."
He therefore laughed at these accusations as too absurd. As for
skepticism, he did not defend himself from a touch of it; for not only
did he feel that the suspicious stanza could partly justify the belief,
but also because there did exist in him a kind of religious skepticism
which proceeded far more from meditation and observation than from a
passion for it. Such a skepticism is in truth a sigh for conviction. A
painful vision which appears to most reflective minds in a more or less
indistinct and vague manner, but which appeared more forcibly to him,
inasmuch as it sought to be expressed in words.
"He," says Montaigne, "who analyzes all the circumstances which have
brought about matters, and all the consequences which have been derived
from them, debars himself from having any choice, and remains
skeptical."
This skepticism of Lord Byron, however, did not overstep the boundaries
of permissible doubt, as prescribed by an intelligence desirous of
improvement. This privilege he exercised; and one might say that he
remained, as it were, suspended between heaven and earth, ever looking
up toward heaven, from whence he felt that light must come in the
end,--a light ever on the increase, which would daily steady him in the
great principles which form the fundamental basis of truth,--one God the
creator, the real immortality of our soul, our liberty and our
responsibility before God.
Tired, however, of ever being the butt of the invectives of his enemies,
and of the clergy, whom he had roughly handled in his writings, Lord
Byron preferred remaining silent; and until his arrival in Switzerland
he ceased making any allusions in his writings to any philosophical
doubts which he may have entertained. The heroes which he selected for
his Oriental poems were, moreover, too passionate to allow the
mysterious voices from heaven to silence the cries from their heart.
These celestial warnings, however, Byron never ceased to hear, although
absorbed himself by various passions of a different kind; he was at that
time almost surrounded by an idolizing public, and rocked in the cradle
of success and popularity. This is but too visible whenever he ceases to
talk the language of his heroes, and expresses merely his own ideas and
his own personal feelings. It was at this time that he wrote those
delicious "Hebrew Melodies," in which a belief in spirituality and
immortality is everywhere manifest, and in which is to be found the
moral indication, if not the metaphysical proof, of the working of his
mind in a religious point of view, as he matured in years. Two of these
Melodies especially, the third and the fifteenth, contain so positive a
profession of faith in the spiritualist doctrines, and carry with them
the mark of so elevated a Christian sentiment, that I can not forbear
quoting them _in extenso_.
IF THAT HIGH WORLD.
I.
If that high world, which lies beyond
Our own, surviving Love endears;
If there the cherish'd heart be fond,
The eye the same, except in tears--
How welcome those untrodden spheres!
How sweet this very hour to die!
To soar from earth and find all fears
Lost in thy light--Eternity!
II.
It must be so: 'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink;
And striving to o'erleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severing link.
Oh! in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!
* * * * *
WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.
I.
When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?
It can not die, it can not stay,
But leaves its darken'd dust behind.
Then, unembodied, doth it trace
By steps each planet's heavenly way?
Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey?
II.
Eternal, boundless, undecay'd,
A thought unseen, but seeing all,
All, all in earth or skies display'd,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,
In one broad glance the soul beholds,
And all, that was, at once appears
III.
Before Creation peopled earth,
Its eyes shall roll through chaos back;
And where the furthest heaven had birth,
The spirit trace its rising track.
And where the future mars or makes,
Its glance dilate o'er all to be,
While sun is quench'd or system breaks,
Fix'd in his own eternity.
IV.
Above our Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,
O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly,
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.
There is no passage in Plato, or in St. Augustin, or in Pascal, which
can equal the sublimity of these stanzas.
It was in this painful state of mind that he spent the unfortunate year
of his marriage. Having separated from his wife, he came to Geneva.
Here, at the same hotel--Hotel de Secheron--Shelley had also arrived,
who some years previously had offered Byron a copy of his poem entitled
"Queen Mab." Here they became acquainted. Although only twenty-three
years of age, Shelley had already experienced much sorrow during his
short existence. Born of rich and aristocratic parents, and who
professed very religious and Tory principles, Shelley had been sent to
Eton at thirteen. His character was most peculiar. He had none of the
tastes of the young, could not stand scholastic discipline, despised
every rule and regulation, and spent his time in writing novels. He
published two when fifteen years old only, which appeared to be far
above what could be expected from a boy of his age, but which deserved
censure from their immoral tone. Owing to the nature of his mind, and
especially at a time when reading has much influence, Shelley had
conceived a great taste for the books which were disapproved of at
college. Consequently the doctrines of the materialist school, which
were the most in fashion then both in France and in England, so poisoned
his mind as to cause him to become an atheist, and to argue as such
against several theologians. He even published a pamphlet, so
exaggerated in tone that he entitled it, "On the Necessity of Atheism."
To crown this folly, Shelley sent round to all the bishops a copy of
this work, and signed it with his own name.
Brought before the authorities to answer the charge of this audacious
act, he persisted in his doctrines, and was actually preparing an answer
to the judges in the same sense, when he was expelled from the
university.
For people who know England a little, it is easy to conceive what an
impression such conduct must have produced on the part of the eldest son
of a family like his, of Tory principles, belonging to the aristocracy,
intimate with the prince regent, and stanch, orthodox and severe in
their religious tenets. Expelled from college, he was likewise sent away
from home; and when his indignant father consented to see him again,
Shelley was treated with such coldness that he was enraged at being
received as a stranger in the bosom of a family of which he was the
eldest son. This was not all: even the young lady for whom Shelley had
already conceived an affection, deemed it right to cast him off.
Overwhelmed by all these but too well merited misfortunes, he took
refuge in an inn, where he tried to poison himself.
As he was struggling between life and death, a young girl of fifteen,
Miss Westbrook, took care of him. Believing himself to be past recovery,
and having no other means of rewarding her attention except by marrying
her, he did so, in the hope that after his death his family would
provide for her. But it is not always so easy to die, and he did not
die. His health, however, was completely broken, and all that remained
to him besides was an ill-assorted marriage. After the Gretna Green
ceremony, Shelley went to reside in Edinburgh. His marriage so
exasperated his father, that from that time he ceased to have any
intercourse with him.
From Scotland Shelley went to Ireland, which was then in a very
disturbed state. His metaphysics led him to conceive the most dangerous
social theories. Conquered by a very real love of humanity, which he
hoped to serve by the realization of his chimerical views, he even
believed it to be his duty to make proselytes. While recommending the
observance of peace, and of a spirit of moderation on the one hand, he,
on the other, published pamphlets and spoke at meetings with a degree of
talent which earned for him a certain amount of reputation, if not of
fame. Then he was seized with a violent admiration for the English
school called "Lockists," and devoted himself to poetry by way of giving
a literary expression to his metaphysical reveries, and to his social
theories. Thus he wrote "Queen Mab," a poem full of talent and
imagination, but which is only the frame which encircles his most
deplorable fancies. He sent a copy of it to all the noted literary men
of England, and among them to Lord Byron, whose star had risen since the
publication of "Childe Harold." Lord Byron declared, as may be seen in a
note to the "Due Foscari," that the metaphysical portion of the poem was
quite in opposition with his own opinions; but, with his usual
impartiality and justice, he admired the poetry which is noticeable in
this work, agreeing in this "with all those who are not blinded by
bigotry and baseness of mind."
Shelley's marriage, contracted as it was under such strange auspices,
was, of course, very unfortunate. By his acquaintance with Godwin, one
of the greatest literary characters of his day, Shelley came to know
Mary, his daughter, by his marriage with the celebrated Mrs.
Woolstonecraft. Each fell in love with the other, but Shelley was not
yet free to marry Miss Godwin. He separated from the wife he had chosen
only from grateful motives, although he had two children by her, and he
left England for the first time, where he had become the object of
persecutions of all kinds, and of a hatred which at a later period
culminated in taking away his right to the guardianship of his children.
Such was his position when Lord Byron arrived in Switzerland, and
alighted at the Hotel Secheron. To make acquaintance, therefore, with
the author of "Queen Mab," and with the daughter of Godwin, for whom he
entertained great regard, was a natural consequence on the part of the
author of "Childe Harold."
Notwithstanding their difference of character, their diversity of taste,
and their different habits, owing to the very opposite mode of living
which they had followed, the two poets felt drawn to one another by that
irresistible sympathy which springs up in the souls of two persecuted
beings, however just that persecution may have been, as regards Shelley,
but which was wholly unjust as regards Byron. Here we must allow Moore
to speak:--
"The conversation of Shelley, from the extent of his poetic reading, and
the strange, mystic speculations into which his systems of philosophy
led him, was of a nature strongly to interest the attention of Lord
Byron, and to turn him away from worldly associations and topics into
more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast indeed
is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult
to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by
discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their
opinions agree: and that this difference had its root deep in the
conformation of their respective minds, needs but a glance through the
rich, glittering labyrinth of Shelley's pages to assure us.
"In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However
Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a
man of this world than a ruler of hers: and, accordingly, through the
airiest and most subtle creations of his brain, still the life-blood of
truth and reality circulates. With Shelley it was far otherwise: his
fancy was the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well
as his theories; and not only the greater part of his poetry, but the
political and philosophical speculations in which he indulged, were all
distilled through the same over-refining and unrealizing alembic. Having
started as a teacher and reformer of the world, at an age when he could
know nothing of the world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on
the threshold of this boyish enterprise only confirmed him in his first
paradoxical views of human ills, and their remedies. Instead of waiting
to take lessons from those of greater experience, he with a courage,
admirable, had it been but wisely directed, made war upon both.... With
a mind, by nature, fervidly pious, he yet refused to acknowledge a
Supreme Providence, and substituted some airy abstraction of 'Universal
Love' in its place. An aristocrat by birth, and, as I understand, also
in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in politics, and to
such an utopian extent as to be the serious advocate of a community of
goods. Though benevolent and generous to an extent that seemed to
exclude all idea of selfishness, he yet scrupled not, in the pride of
system, to disturb wantonly the faith of his fellow-men, and, without
substituting any equivalent good in its place, to rob the wretched of a
hope, which, even if false, would be better than all this world's best
truths.
"Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two friends more
observable than in their notions on philosophical subjects: Lord Byron
being, with the great bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence of
matter and evil, while Shelley so far refined upon the theory of
Berkeley, as not only to resolve the whole of creation into spirit, but
to add also to this immaterial system, some pervading principle, some
abstract nonentity of love and beauty--of which, as a substitute at
least for Deity--the philosophic bishop had never dreamed."
The difference existing between their philosophical doctrines was that
which existed between the two most opposed systems of spiritualism and
pantheism.
I said that Shelley, notwithstanding his originality of mind, was
destined, through the mobility of his impressions, to be easily
influenced by what he read. The study of Plato and of Spinoza had
already given to his metaphysical views a different bent. But before his
transition from atheism to a mystical pantheism, before finding God in
all things, after having sought him in vain everywhere, before
considering himself to be a fragment of a chosen existence, and before
shutting himself up in a kind of mysticism which did actually absorb him
at a later period, he confined himself to a positive worship of nature,
which appeared to him then in the glorious shape of the mountains and
lakes of Helvetia. Wordsworth was his oracle, and thus cultivating a
poetry which deified nature, Shelley, in reality, remained at heart an
atheist, and doubtless tried to imbue Byron with his enthusiasm and with
his opinions.
Himself greatly delighted with the beauties of the scenery in the midst
of which they lived, and, as he was wont to say in laughter, having
received many large doses of Wordsworth from Shelley, Lord Byron wrote
several stanzas in which the same enthusiasm may be met with, recorded
in terms almost of adoration.
It was only a poetical form, however, a poetical illusion, which was
succeeded by stanzas in which God himself as our creator, was loudly
proclaimed. If in the seventy-second and following stanzas of the third
canto, opinions were expressed which savored of pantheistic tendencies,
they were at once followed by some such as these:--
"All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thought too deep:--
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars to the lull'd lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all _Creator_ and _Defense_."
And again, on viewing the Alps, he writes the poem of "Manfred," in
which his belief in a One God, and Creator, is expressed in sublime
lines. His repugnance to atheism and to materialism is testified not
only in his poetry, but also by his own actions.
On reaching Montauvert with his friend Hobhouse, and on the point of
ascending Mont Blanc with him, he found Shelley's name in the register
of the travellers, and under it the qualification of "atheist" written
in Shelley's own hand. Lord Byron at once scratched it out. But on
reading, a little below, a remark by another traveller, who had justly
rebuked Shelley's folly, Byron added the words, "The appellation is well
deserved."
He soon after left the Alps, and came to Italy, without his views,
either philosophical or religious, being in the least altered by the
seductions of "that serpent," as he jokingly denominated Shelley.
We shall now follow him, step by step, until the end of his life, and we
shall see whether he will not show himself stanch in his adherence to
great principles. Lord Byron had enough of systems, and was disgusted
with their absurdity, their proud dogmatical views, and their intolerant
spirit. Whenever the great questions of life and the dictates of the
soul occupy his thoughts, either in the silence of the night or in the
absence of passion, we shall see him set himself resolutely to the
examination of his own conscience, for the purpose of arriving at truth
and justice. The answers which his powerful reasoning suggested to him
served to determine and confirm his faith in God.
On leaving Geneva, Lord Byron proceeded to Milan. "One day," says Mr.
Stendhall, who knew Lord Byron at Milan, in 1817, and saw a great deal
of him there, "some people alluded to a couplet from the 'Aminta' of
Tasso, in which the poet appears to take credit to himself for being an
unbeliever, and expresses it in the lines which may thus be
translated:--
'Listen, oh my son, to the thunder as it rolls.
But what is it to us what Jupiter does up there?
Let us rejoice down here if betroubled above;
Let the common herd of mortals dread his blows:
And let the world go to ruin, I will only think
Of what pleases me; and if I become dust again,
I shall only be what I have already been.'
Lord Byron says that these lines were written under the influence of
spleen. A belief in the existence of a superior Being was a necessity
for the fiery and tender nature of Tasso. He was, besides, far too
Platonic to try to reconcile such contrary opinions. When he wrote those
lines, he probably was in want of a piece of bread and a mistress."
Lord Byron reached Venice, and there his most agreeable hours and days
were spent with Padre Pasquale, in the convent of the Armenian priests.
He also wrote, at this time, the sublimely moral poem entitled
"Manfred," in which he renders justice to the existence of God, to the
free will of man, the abuse of which has resulted in the loss of
"Manfred," and retraces, in splendid lines, all the duties incumbent
upon man, together with the limits which he is not allowed to pass. The
apparition of his lovely and young victim, the uncertainty of her
happiness, which causes Manfred's greatest grief, and finally his
supplication to her that he may know whether she is enjoying eternal
bliss,
... "That I do bear
This punishment for both--that thou wilt be
One of the blessed--...."
the whole bears the impress of a truly religious spirit.
He shortly afterward visited Rome, and finding himself in presence of
St. Peter's, he again gave expression to his religious sentiments, in
the admirable fourth canto of "Childe Harold," which Englishmen do not
hesitate to acknowledge as the finest poem which ever came from mortal
hands.
TO ST. PETER.
_Stanza_ 153.
* * * * * * *
"Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!"
_Stanza_ 154.
"But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.
* * * * * * *
Power, glory, strength, and beauty all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled."
From Venice he went on to Ravenna. The persecution to which he was
subjected, on the ground of religion and morality, on account of the
publication of the two first cantos of "Don Juan," was then at its
height, and he was tormented in every possible way. It was useless for
him to protest, in verse, in prose, by letter, or by words, against the
accusation of his being an atheist and a skeptic. It was asserted that
"Manfred" was the expression of his doubts upon the dispensation of
Providence, and that his other poems, all more or less imbued with
passion, had tendencies of an irreverent nature in respect to the
Divinity. His two famous stanzas in "Childe Harold" were always held up
to him by the innumerable army of hypocrites and wicked people who
assailed him.
All were not hypocrites, however; some were his enemies in good faith,
but were blinded by sectarian prejudices. Among these was an Irishman of
the name of Mulock, author of a work entitled "Atheism Answered." Lord
Byron one day at Ravenna received a paper from the editor of the
"Bologna Telegraph," with extracts from this work, in which "there is a
long eulogium of" his "poetry, and a great _compatimento_ for" his
"misery" on account of his being a skeptic and an unbeliever in Christ;
"although," says Mr. Mulock, "his bold skepticism is far preferable to
the pharisaical parodists of the religion of the Gospel, who preach and
persecute with an equally intolerant spirit."
Lord Byron, writing that day to Murray, says:--
"I never could understand what they mean by accusing me of irreligion.
They may, however, have it their own way. This gentleman seems to be my
great admirer, so I take what he says in good part, as he evidently
intends kindness, to which I can't accuse myself of being insensible."
In the evening he talked to and laughed a good deal with the Countess
Guiccioli about this great _compatimento_,[17] treating it as a great
oddity. A few months later, Moore having written to him about this same
Mr. Mulock, and told him that that gentleman was giving lectures upon
religion, Lord Byron, while riding with the young Count G---- in the
forest of Ravenna, made his profession of faith, and finding his
youthful companion not quite orthodox, said to him: "The nature of
classical and philosophical studies generally paralyzes all logical
minds, and that is why many young heads leave college unbelievers: you
are even still more so, because you mix up your religious views with
your political antipathies. As for me, in my early youth, when I left
college, where I had to bow to very superior and stronger minds who
themselves were under various evil influences of college and of youth, I
was more than heterodox. Time and reflection have changed my mind upon
these subjects, and I consider Atheism as a folly. As for Catholicism,
so little is it objectionable to me, that I wish my daughter to be
brought up in that religion, and some day to marry a Catholic. If
Catholicism, after all, suggests difficulties of a nature which it is
difficult for reason to get over, are these less great than those which
Protestantism creates? Are not all the mysteries common to both creeds?
Catholicism at least offers the consolation of Purgatory, of the
Sacraments, of absolution and forgiveness; whereas Protestantism is
barren of consolation for the soul."
This open profession of faith, expressed by such a man as Lord Byron, in
a calm and dispassionate tone, produced a great impression upon the
young count. It had been so much the fashion to consider him as
irreligious, that one would say that even his friends were of the same
opinion. Some time had elapsed since Byron had sent a translation from
the Armenian of one of the Epistles of St. Paul, which Murray delayed in
publishing. Rather annoyed by this delay, Byron wrote to him on the 9th
of October, 1821, from Ravenna:--
"The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what
reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave
rise to the 'Vampire?' Is it because you are afraid to print any thing
in opposition to the cant of the 'Quarterly' about Manicheism? Let me
have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than
those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so."
If Byron hated fanatical and persecuting clergymen, he, on the other
hand, entertained great regard for priests of every denomination, when
he knew that they exercised their functions without fanaticism and in a
tolerant spirit. Among his dearest and earliest friends he placed two
young clergymen,[18] both distinguished in their profession by their
piety and their attainments. At Ravenna, his alms in favor of churches
and monasteries were very liberal. If the organ were not in order, if
the steeple wanted repairs, Lord Byron's pecuniary assistance was asked
for, and he ever gave liberally though it was for the benefit of the
Catholic community. He was always indignant at his writings, especially
if connected with religion, being sent back to him by Murray with
alterations to which he was no party. On one occasion he reproached him
in the following terms:--
"In referring to the mistake in stanza 132, I take the opportunity to
desire that in future, in all parts of my writings referring to
religion, you will be more careful, and not forget that it is possible
that in addressing the Deity a blunder may become a blasphemy: and I do
not choose to suffer such infamous perversions of my words or of my
intentions. I saw the canto by accident."
His dearest paternal care was the religious education to be given to his
natural daughter, Allegra, who was with him at Ravenna. In writing to
Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, to give them tidings of his dear Allegra, whom he
had sent to a convent in Romagna to be educated there, he declares that
in presence of the political disquietude which reigned in the Romagna,
he thought he could not do better than send his child to that convent.
Here "she would receive a little instruction, and some notions of
morality and the principles of religion."
Moore adds to this letter a note, which runs thus:--
"With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of his daughter's
education, that notwithstanding the many advantages she was sure to
derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs. Shelley, his
apprehensions lest her feelings upon religious subjects might be
disturbed by the conversation of Shelley himself prevented him from
allowing her to remain under his friend's roof."
The Bible, as is well known, constituted his favorite reading. Often did
he find in the magnificent poetry of the Bible matter for inspiration.
His "Hebrew Melodies" prove it, and as for the Book of Job, he used to
say that it was far too sublime for him even to attempt to translate it,
as he would have wished. Toward the end of his stay at Ravenna, when his
genius was most fertile and almost superhuman--(he wrote five dramas and
many other admirable poems in fifteen months, that is to say, in less
time than it requires to copy them)--two biblical subjects inspired his
muse: "Cain," and "Heaven and Earth." Both were admirably suited to his
pen. He naturally treated them as a philosopher, but without any
preconceived notion of making any religious converts. His enemies
nevertheless seized hold of these pieces, to incriminate him and impugn
his religious belief. I have spoken elsewhere[19] of that truly
scandalous persecution. I will only add here that Moore, timid as he
usually was when he had to face an unpopularity which came from high
quarters, and alarmed by all the cries proceeding from party spirit,
wrote to approve the beauty of the poem in enthusiastic terms, but
disapproved of the harm which some doubts expressed therein might
produce. Byron replied:--
"There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 'Cain,' that I
recollect. I hold no such opinions; but in a drama the first rebel and
the first murderer must be made to talk according to his character."
And in another letter he says, with regard to the same subject:--
"With respect to religion, can I never convince you that I have no such
opinions as the characters in that drama, which seem to have frightened
every body? Yet they are nothing to the expressions in Goethe's 'Faust'
(which are ten times hardier), and not a whit more bold than those of
Milton's 'Satan.' My ideas of character may run away with me: like all
imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I
draw it, but not a moment after the pen is from off the paper.
"I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am educating
my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of Romagna, for I
think people can never have enough of religion, if they are to have any.
I incline myself very much to the Catholic doctrines; but if I am to
write a drama, I must make my characters speak as I conceive them likely
to argue."
The sympathy of persons sincerely religious was extremely agreeable to
him. A short time after he had left Ravenna for Pisa, a Mr. John
Sheppard sent him a prayer he had found among the papers belonging to
his young wife, whom he had lost some two years before. Lord Byron
thanked him in a beautiful letter, in which he consoled the distressed
husband by assuring him of his belief in immortality, and of his
confidence that he would again see the worthy person whom himself he
could not but admire, for her virtues and her pure and simple piety.
"I am obliged to you," he added, "for your good wishes, and more than
obliged by the extract from the papers of the beloved object whose
qualities you have so well described in a few words. I can assure you
that all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its
own importance, would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious
interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my welfare. In
this point of view I would not exchange the prayers of the deceased in
my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and Napoleon, could such
be accumulated upon a living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose
that
'Video meliora proboque,'
however the _deteriora sequor_ may have been applied to my conduct.
BYRON."
Not only did Lord Byron prevent his reason being influenced by the
arguments of others, but even by the dictates of his own heart. Both his
mind and his heart were perfectly independent of one another, nay, often
took different directions. It was to him unquestionably painful to see
such a division, but it was the fatal result of the excessive
development of the powers of each. In the same letter to Mr. Sheppard
which we have quoted, and which is full of gratitude for the prayers
which the young wife had addressed to heaven to obtain his conversion,
Byron adds:--
"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."
Walter Scott once told him in London that he was convinced he would
daily become more and more religious.
"What!" vehemently replied Lord Byron, "do you believe that I could
become bigoted?"
"No," said Walter Scott, "I only think that the influence of some great
mind might modify your religious views."
Galt says the same thing:--
"A mind like Byron's," says he, "was little susceptible of being
impressed by the reasonings of ordinary men. Truth, in visiting him,
must come accompanied by every kind of solemnity, and preceded by
respect and reverence. A marked superiority, a recognized celebrity,
were indispensable to command his sincere attention."
Without taking implicitly for granted the rather exaggerated opinion of
Galt with respect to Lord Byron, we must allow that the great poet's
attention could not be captivated by reasonings of a superficial kind,
but could be influenced only by great learning, and powerful arguments
which had conviction for their basis.
But he might have found at Pisa the great intellectual influence spoken
of, for he found Shelley there. Seeing him every day, in the quiet
intimacy which the delightful sojourn in Tuscany procured for them, it
was easy for both to forget all the troubles of an agitated and
political existence, and only to think about the world of spirits.
Shelley had every opportunity for inculcating his doctrines, having, or
rather being able to exercise, the most exclusive influence upon Byron's
mind. Did he exercise that influence, and if he did not, for what
reason?
We have said that Shelley, notwithstanding his original views, his
extreme readiness to be impressed by every thing he heard and saw, was
often the victim of his reading. He had read a great deal, and though
since he had written the "Apology for Atheism" he had not changed his
mind as to his metaphysical tenets, nevertheless the study of the German
philosophy, and especially of Spinoza's, had produced on him a
revolution of ideas. From a materialistic atheism, which denies the
existence of God in every thing, he had gone over to a kind of mystic
pantheism, which supposes God to be everywhere and in every thing. This
species of pantheism is in reality but a disguised atheism, but which,
in such a man as Shelley, appeared more in the actions of his life as a
pervading devotion than an impious belief. Shelley ever adored all that
is beautiful, true, and holy. From this it followed that his doctrines,
far from appearing to be the result of pride, seemed, on the contrary,
to be founded upon humility, sacrifice, and devotion to humanity. If the
mystic pantheism of Spinoza could have found a living justification of
its silly principles, and an excuse for its want of power, Shelley would
have supplied both. The individuality, always more or less egotistical,
which is prominent in the word _ego_, seemed positively to have ceased
to exist with him: one would have said that he almost already felt
himself absorbed in that universal and divine substance, which is the
God of Spinoza. If in a century like ours such a philosophy as
Eclecticism could return and become again a doctrinal institution,
Shelley might have personified it. He had so sacrificed his
individuality to chimeras of all kinds, that he appeared to consider
himself a mere phenomenon, and to look upon the external world as mere
fiction, in order that the impossible and never-to-be-found divinity of
his dreams might occupy all the space.
He was perhaps the meekest, most generous, and the most modest of the
creatures of the true God, whom he yet persistently refused to recognize
as his Creator.
If, however, there was no impiety in his irreligion, no real pride, in
his pride, there existed that weakness, if I may use the word, peculiar
to a brain which can not grasp at reality, but adheres to a chimera as a
basis for its arguments.
"His works," says Galt, "are soiled by the false judgments proceeding
from a mind which made him look at every thing in a false light, and it
must be allowed that that mind was either troubled or defective by
nature."
If this opinion is too severe, it is, however, certain that Shelley had
so exalted an imagination that his judgment suffered by it. As he is in
his works, so was he in all the commonest actions of his life. A few
anecdotes will serve to make him still better known.
Once, at Pisa, he went to see Count Gamba, who expected him, for some
charitable purpose which they were to agree upon together. A violent
storm burst forth suddenly, and the wind tore a tile from a roof, and
caused it to fall on Shelley's head. The blow was very great, and his
forehead was covered with blood. This, however, did not in the least
prevent his proceeding on his way. When Count Gamba saw him in this
state he was much alarmed, and asked him how it had occurred. Shelley
replied quite calmly, passing his hand over his head, just as if he had
forgotten all about it, that it was true that the wind had blown down a
tile which had fallen on his head, but that he would be taken care of
later upon his return home. Shelley was not rich, but whenever he went
to his banker's it was necessary that no one should require his
assistance, in order that the money which he had gone to fetch should
come home untouched. As, on one occasion, he was returning from a visit
to his banker's, some one at the door of his house asked for assistance.
Shelley hastily got up the stairs, and throwing down his gold and notes
on the floor, rushed suddenly away, crying out to Mrs. Shelley, "There,
pick it all up." This the lady did as well as she could, for she was a
woman of order, and as much attached to the reality of things as her
husband was wanting in that particular.
I shall not multiply these characteristic instances of the man, but will
only add that such incidents were by no means uncommon, nay, that they
were matters of daily occurrence.
There was almost a kind of analogy in his life between him and Spinoza.
Notwithstanding their great qualities and merits, both were hated and
persecuted for sufficiently just motives,--society having the right of
repudiating doctrines which tend to its destruction; but both were
persecuted in undue and unfair proportions. Both had weak and sickly
constitutions. Both had great and generous souls. Both endeavored to
understand the laws which govern the destiny of the world, without ever
being subject to their moral consequences, and both devoted themselves
to be practically useful to their fellow-creatures--a contradiction
which was the effect of their too generous minds.
In Shelley's heart the dominant wish was to see society entirely
reorganized. The sight of human miseries and infirmities distressed him
to the greatest degree; but, too modest himself to believe that he was
called upon to take the initiative, and inaugurate a new era of good
government and fresh laws for the benefit of humanity, he would have
been pleased to see such a genius as Byron take the initiative in this
undertaking. "He can be the regenerator of his country," wrote Shelley,
speaking of Byron, in 1818, at Venice.
Shelley therefore did his best to influence Lord Byron. But the latter
hated discussions: he could not bear entering into philosophical
speculation at times when his soul craved the consolations of friendship
and his mind a little rest. He was quite insensible to reasonings, which
often appear sublime because they are clothed in words incomprehensible
to those who have not sought to understand their meaning. But he made an
exception in favor of Shelley. He knew that he could not shake his faith
in a doctrine founded upon illusions, by his incredulity: but he
listened to him with pleasure, not only on account of Shelley's good
faith and sincerity of meaning, but also because he argued upon false
data with such talent and originality that he was both interested and
amused. But with all his great and noble qualities was it to be
expected that Lord Byron would fall into the doctrines proffered by
pantheists? Doctrines rejected by reason, which wound the heart, are
opposed to the most imperative necessities of our nature, and only bring
desolation to our minds.
Lord Byron had examined every kind and species of philosophy by the
light of common sense, and by the instinct of his genius: the result had
been to make him compassionate toward the vain weaknesses of the human
understanding, and to convince him that all systems which have
hypothesis as groundwork are illusions, and consequently likely to
perish with their authors.
Pantheism in particular was odious to him, and he esteemed it to be the
greatest of absurdities. He made no difference between the Pantheism
"absolute," which mixes up that which is infinite with that which is
finite, and that which struggles in vain to keep clear of Atheism.
In an age like ours, when the common tendency is of a materialistic
character, such as almost to defy the power of man, mysticism has little
or no _locus standi_. Shelley's opinions, on account of their appearance
of spiritualism, were most likely of any to interest Byron; but, founded
as they are upon fancy, could they please him? Could he possibly consent
to lose his individuality, deny his own freedom of will, all
responsibility of action, and hence all his privileges, his future
existence, and all principles of morality? Could he possibly admit that
the doctrine which prescribed these sacrifices was better than any
other? Even with the best intentions, could any of the essential, moral,
and holy principles of nature be introduced into such a system? Byron
could not but condemn it, and he attributed all Shelley's views to the
aberrations of a mind which is happier when it dreams than when it
denies.
Here, then, was the cause of his being inaccessible to Shelley's
arguments. He used sometimes to exclaim, "Why Shelley appears to me to
be mad with his metaphysics." This he one day repeated to Count Gamba at
Pisa, as Shelley walked out and he came in. "We have been discussing
metaphysics," said he: "what trash in all these systems! Say what they
will, mystery for mystery, I still find that of the Creation the most
reasonable of any."
He made no disguise of the difficulties which he found in admitting the
doctrine of a God, Creator of the world, and entirely distinct from it;
but he added, "I prefer even that mystery to the contradictions by which
other systems endeavor to replace it." He certainly found that in the
mystery of Creation there existed the proof of the weakness of our
minds, but he declared that pantheism had to explain absurdities far too
evident for a logical mind to adopt its tenets. "They find," said he,
"that reason is more easily satisfied with a system of unity like
theirs, in which all is derived from one principle only: may be, but
what do we ask of truth? why all our never-ceasing efforts in its
pursuit? Is it merely that we may exercise the mind, and make truth the
toy of our imagination? Impossible. At any rate it would be a secret to
which, as yet, God has not given us any clue. But in doing this, in
constantly placing the phenomena of creation before us without their
causes or without ever explaining them, and at the same time instilling
into our souls an insatiable thirst for truth, the Almighty has placed
within us a voice which at times reminds us that He is preparing some
surprise for us; and we trust that that surprise may be a happy one."
Poor Shelley lost his time with Byron. But, however much Byron objected
to his doctrines, he had no similar objection to Shelley himself, for
whom he professed a great respect and admiration. He grieved to find so
noble an intellect the victim of hallucination which entirely blinded
him to the perception of truth. Shelley, however, did not despair of
succeeding in making Byron some day give up what he termed his
philosophical errors, and his persistency earned for him the appellation
of "serpent" which Byron gave him in jest. This persistency, which at
the same time indicates the merit of Byron's resistance, has often been
mentioned by Shelley himself. Writing from Pisa to a friend in England,
a very few days before his death, and alluding to a letter from Moore
which Byron had shown him, and wherein "Cain" was attributed to the
influence which he (Shelley) had evidently exercised over Byron, he
said, "Pray assure Moore that in a philosophical point of view I have
not the slightest influence over Byron; if I had, be sure I should use
it for the purpose of uprooting his delusions and his errors. He had
conceived 'Cain' many years ago, and he had already commenced writing it
when I saw him last year at Ravenna. How happy I should be could I
attribute to myself, even indirectly, a part in that immortal work!"