THE FRIENDSHIPS OF LORD BYRON.
The extraordinary part which friendship played in Lord Byron's life is
another proof of his goodness. His friendships may be divided into two
categories: the friendships of his heart, and those of his mind. To the
first class belong those which he made at Harrow and in his early
Cambridge days, while his later acquaintances at the University matured
into friends of the second category. These had great influence over his
mind. The names of those of the first category who were dearest to him,
and who were alive when he left Harrow for Cambridge (for he had lost
some very intimate friends while still at Harrow, and among these
Curzon), were--
WINGFIELD.
DELAWARE.
TATTERSALL.
CLARE.
LONG.
EDDLESTON.
HARNESS.
I will say a word of each, so as to show that Byron in the selection of
his friends was guided instinctively by the qualities of those he loved.
WINGFIELD.
The Hon. John Wingfield, of the Coldstream Guards, was a brother of
Richard, fourth Viscount Powerscourt, and died of fever at Coimbra, on
the 14th of May, 1811, in his 20th year.
"Of all beings on earth," says Byron, "I was perhaps at one time more
attached to poor Wingfield than to any. I knew him during the best part
of his life and the happiest portion of mine."
When he heard of the death of this beloved companion of his youth, he
added the two following stanzas to the first canto of "Childe Harold:"
XCI.
"And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe
Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain--
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain:
But thus unlaurell'd to descend in vain,
By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest?
XCII.
"Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most!
Dear to a heart where naught was left so dear!
Though to my hopeless days forever lost,
In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier,
Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,
And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose."
Writing to Dallas on the 7th of August, 1812, he says, "Wingfield was
among my best and dearest friends; one of the very few I can never
regret to have loved." And on the 7th of September, speaking of the
death of Matthews, in whom he said he had lost a friend and a guide, he
wrote to Dallas to say: "In Wingfield I have lost a friend only; but one
I could have wished to precede in his long journey."
TATTERSALL (DAVUS).
The Rev. John Cecil Tattersall, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford, died on
the 8th of October, 1812, aged 24.
"His knowledge," says a writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," "was
extensive and deep; his affections were sincere and great. By his
extreme aversion to hypocrisy, he was so far from assuming the
appearance of virtue, that most of his good qualities remained hidden,
while he was most anxious to reveal the slightest fault into which he
had fallen. He was a stanch friend, and a stranger to all enmity; he
behaved loyally to men when alive, and died full of confidence and trust
in God."
DELAWARE (EURYALUS).
George John, fifth Earl of Delaware, born in October, 1791, succeeded to
his father in July, 1795.
Lord Byron wrote from Harrow on the 25th of October, 1804:--
"I am very comfortable here; my friends are not numerous, but choice.
Among the first of these I place Delaware, who is very amiable, and my
great friend. He is younger than I am, but is gifted with the finest
character. He is the most intelligent creature on earth, and is besides
particularly good-looking, which is a charm in women's eyes."
In consequence of a misunderstanding, or rather of a false
accusation,--of which I shall speak elsewhere, in order to show the
generosity of Lord Byron's character,--a coolness took place in their
friendship. A charming piece in the "Hours of Idleness" alludes to it,
and shows well the nature of his mind. I will only quote the seventh
stanza:--
"You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence,
If danger demanded, were wholly your own;
You knew me unalter'd by years or by distance,
Devoted to love and to friendship alone."
CLARE (LYCUS).
John Fitzgibbon, second Earl of Clare, succeeded to his father in 1802;
was twelve years Chancellor of Ireland, and, later, Governor of Bombay.
Lord Byron wrote of him at Ravenna:--
"I never hear the name of Clare without my heart beating even now, and I
am writing in 1821, with all the feelings of 1803, 4, 5, and _ad
infinitum_."
He had kept all the letters of his early friends, and among these is one
of Lord Clare's, in which the energy of his mind appears even through
the language of the child. At the bottom of this letter and in Byron's
hand, is a note written years after, showing his tender and amiable
feelings:--
"This letter was written at Harrow by Lord Clare, then, and I trust
ever, my beloved friend. When we were both students, he sent it to me in
my study, in consequence of a brief childish misunderstanding, the only
one we ever had. I keep this note only to show him, and laugh with him
at the remembrance of the insignificance of our first and last quarrel.
BYRON."
Besides mentioning Lord Clare in "Childish Recollections," his "Hours of
Idleness" contain another poem addressed to him, which begins thus:--
TO THE EARL OF CLARE.
"Tu semper amoris
Sis memor, et cari comitis ne abscedat imago."--VAL. FLAC.
Friend of my youth! when young we roved,
Like striplings, mutually beloved,
With friendship's purest glow,
The bliss which winged those rosy hours
Was such as pleasure seldom showers
On mortals here below.
The recollection seems alone
Dearer than all the joys I've known,
When distant far from you:
Though pain, 'tis still a pleasing pain,
To trace those days and hours again,
And sigh again, adieu!
* * * * *
Our souls, my friend! which once supplied
One wish, nor breathed a thought beside,
Now flow in different channels:
Disdaining humbler rural sports,
'Tis yours to mix in polish'd courts,
And shine in fashion's annals:
* * * * *
I think I said 'twould be your fate
To add one star to royal state:--
May regal smiles attend you!
And should a noble monarch reign,
You will not seek his smiles in vain,
If worth can recommend you.
Yet since in danger courts abound,
Where specious rivals glitter round,
From snares may saints preserve you;
And grant your love or friendship ne'er
From any claim a kindred care,
But those who best deserve you!
Not for a moment may you stray
From truth's secure, unerring way!
May no delights decoy!
O'er roses may your footsteps move,
Your smiles be ever smiles of love,
Your tears be tears of joy!
Oh! if you wish that happiness
Your coming days and years may bless,
And virtues crown your brow;
Be still, as you were wont to be,
Spotless as you've been known to me,--
Be still as you are now.
And though some trifling share of praise,
To cheer my last declining days,
To me were doubly dear,
While blessing your beloved name,
I'd waive at once a _poet's_ fame,
To prove a _prophet_ here.
In 1821, as he was going to Pisa, Byron met his old and dear friend
Clare on the route to Bologna, and speaks of their meeting in the
following terms:--
"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
world, Sancho,' says Sterne, in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
have often found it. At page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had
alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested.
About a week or two afterward I met him on the road between Imola and
Bologna, after an interval of seven or eight years. He was abroad in
1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.
"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present
time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like
rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated--more in
appearance than I was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his
fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me
think so. He told me, that I should find a note from him left at
Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys--he
for Rome, I for Pisa--but with the promise to meet again in the spring.
We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly
recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against those
few minutes.... Of all I have ever known he has always been the least
altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections
which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have
thought it possible for society to leave a being with so little of the
leaven of bad passions.
"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
heard of him from others during absence and distance."
"My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to Moore from
Pisa, in March, 1822: "we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
sentimental--really pathetic on both sides. I have always loved him
better than any male thing in the world."
In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th of that month
Byron wrote to Moore:--
"A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over
from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I
have always loved him, since I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any
male thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it
was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey
immediately."
On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleasure in
existence like that of meeting an early friend.
"Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G----, "gave Byron the greatest joy.
The last day they spent together at Leghorn was most melancholy. Byron
had a kind of presentiment that he should never see his friend again,
and in speaking of him, for a long time after, his eyes always filled
with tears."
LONG (CLEON).
Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at Cambridge. He entered
the Guards, and distinguished himself in the expedition to Copenhagen.
As he was on his way to join the army in the Peninsula, in 1809, the
ship in which he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was
drowned with several others.
Long's friendship contributed to render Byron's stay at Cambridge
bearable after his beloved Harrow days.
"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and amiable creatures
who live but a short time. He had talents and qualities far too rare not
to make him very much regretted." He depicts him as a lively companion,
with an occasional strange touch of melancholy. One would have said he
anticipated, as it were, the fate which awaited him.
The letter which he wrote to Byron, on leaving the University to enter
the Guards, was so full of sadness that it contrasted strangely with his
habitual humor.
"His manners," says Lord Byron, "were amiable and gentle, and he had a
great disposition to look at the comical side of things. He was a
musician, and played on several instruments, especially the flute and
the violincello. We spent our evenings with music, but I was only a
listener. Our principal beverage consisted in soda-water. During the day
we rode, swam, walked, and read together; but we only spent one summer
with each other."
On his leaving Cambridge, Byron addressed to him the following lines:--
TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.
"Nil ego contulerim jocundo sanus amico."--HORACE.
Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus if amid the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,
I think those days may come again;
Or if, in melancholy mood,
Some lurking envious fear intrude,
To check my bosom's fondest thought,
And interrupt the golden dream,
I crush the fiend with malice fraught,
And still indulge my wonted theme.
Although we ne'er again can trace
In Granta's vale the pedant's lore;
Nor through the groves of Ida chase
Our raptured visions as before,
Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion,
And Manhood claims his stern dominion,
Age will not every hope destroy,
But yield some hours of sober joy.
Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing
Will shed around some dews of spring:
But if his scythe must sweep the flowers
Which bloom among the fairy bowers,
Where smiling youth delights to dwell,
And hearts with early rapture swell;
If frowning age, with cold control,
Confines the current of the soul,
Congeals the tear of Pity's eye,
Or checks the sympathetic sigh,
Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan,
And bids me feel for self alone;
Oh, may my bosom never learn
To soothe its wonted heedless flow,
Still, still despise the censor stern,
But ne'er forget another's woe.
Yes, as you knew me in the days
O'er which Remembrance yet delays,
Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild,
And even in age at heart a child.
Though now on airy visions borne,
To you my soul is still the same.
Oft has it been my fate to mourn,
And all my former joys are tame.
But hence! ye hours of sable hue!
Your frowns are gone, my sorrows o'er:
By every bliss my childhood knew,
I'll think upon your shade no more.
Thus, when the whirlwind's rage is past,
And caves their sullen roar inclose,
We heed no more the wintry blast,
When lull'd by zephyr to repose.
Long's death was the cause of great grief to Lord Byron.
"Long's father," said he, "has written to ask me to write his son's
epitaph. I promised to do it, but I never had the strength to finish
it."
I will add that Mr. Wathen having gone to visit Lord Byron at Ravenna,
and having told him that he knew Long, Byron henceforth treated him with
the utmost cordiality. He spoke of Long and of his amiable qualities,
until he could no longer hide his tears.
In the month of October, 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Trinity
College, Cambridge, and in 1821 he thus described himself, and his own
feelings on leaving his beloved Ida for a new scene of life:--
"When I went to college it was for me a most painful event. I left
Harrow against my wish, and so took it to heart, that before I left I
never slept for counting the days which I had still to spend there. In
the second place, I wished to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge; and, in
the third place, I found myself so isolated in this new world, that my
mind was perfectly depressed by it.
"Not that my companions were not sociable: quite the contrary; they were
particularly lively, hospitable, rich, noble, and much more gay than
myself. I mixed, dined, and supped with them; but, I don't know why, the
most painful and galling sensation of life was that of feeling I was no
longer a child."
His grief was such that he fell ill, and it was during that illness that
he wrote and partly dictated the poem "Recollections of Childhood," in
which he mentions and describes all his dear comrades of Harrow, with
that particular charm of expression and thought which the heart alone
can inspire.
It was again under the same impression that he wrote the most melancholy
lines in the "Hours of Idleness," where the regret of the past
delightful days of his childhood, spent at his dear Ida, ever comes
prominently forward.
"I would I were a careless child,"
he exclaims in one poem, and finishes the same by the lines,--
"Oh that to me the wings were given
Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven
To flee away, and be at rest."
Life at Harrow appears to have been for him then the ideal of happiness.
At times the distant view of the village and college of Harrow, inspires
his muse, at others a visit to the college itself, and an hour spent
under the shade of an elm in the church-yard. His whole soul is so
revealed in these two poems, that I can not forbear quoting them _in
extenso_:--
ON A DISTANT VIEW OF THE VILLAGE AND SCHOOL OF HARROW-ON-THE-HILL.
"Oh! mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos."--VIRGIL.
Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection
Embitters the present, compared with the past;
Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection,
And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last;
Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance
Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied,
How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance,
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!
Again I revisit the hills where we sported,
The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought;
The school where, loud warn'd by the bell, we resorted,
To pore o'er the precepts by pedagogues taught.
Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;
Or round the steep brow of the church-yard I wander'd,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.
I once more view the room, with spectators surrounded,
Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alonzo o'erthrown;
While, to swell my young pride, such applauses resounded,
I fancied that Mossop himself was outshown.[24]
Or, as Lear, I pour'd forth the deep imprecation,
By my daughters of kingdom and reason deprived;
Till, fired by loud plaudits and self-adulation,
I regarded myself as a Garrick revived.
Ye dreams of my boyhood, how much I regret you!
Unfaded your memory dwells in my breast;
Though sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget you.
Your pleasures may still be in fancy possest.
To Ida full oft may remembrance restore me,
While fate shall the shades of the future unroll!
Since darkness o'ershadows the prospect before me,
More dear is the beam of the past to my soul!
But if, through the course of the years which await me,
Some new scene of pleasure should open to view,
I will say, while with rapture the thought shall elate me,
"Oh! such were the days which my infancy knew!"
* * * * *
LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCH-YARD OF HARROW.
Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"
When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast,
And calm its cares and passions into rest,
Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe my dying hour--
If aught may soothe when life resigns her power--
To know some humble grave, some narrow cell,
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell.
With this fond dream, methinks, 'twere sweet to die--
And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose;
Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
Forever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade,
Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd;
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved;
Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear,
Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here;
Deplored by those in early days allied,
And unremember'd by the world beside.
"But although he may for a time," says Moore, "have experienced this
kind of moral atomy, it was not in his nature to be long without
attaching himself to somebody, and the friendship which he conceived for
Eddleston--a man younger than himself, and not at all of his rank in
society--even surpassed in ardor all the other attachments of his
youth."
EDDLESTON
was one of the choristers at Cambridge. His talent for music attracted
Byron's attention. When he lost the society of Long, who had been his
sole comfort at Cambridge, he took very much to the company of young
Eddleston. One feels how much he was attached to him, on reading those
lines in which he thanks Eddleston for a cornelian heart he had sent
him:--
THE CORNELIAN.
No specious splendor of this stone
Endears it to my memory ever;
With lustre only once it shone,
And blushes modest as the giver.
Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties,
Have for my weakness oft reproved me;
Yet still the simple gift I prize,
For I am sure the giver loved me.
He offer'd it with downcast look,
As fearful that I might refuse it;
I told him, when the gift I took,
My only fear should be to lose it.
When Eddleston left college, Lord Byron wrote to Miss Pigott a letter
full of regret at having lost his youthful friend, and thanking her for
having taken an interest in him.
"During the whole time we were at Cambridge together," says Byron, "we
saw each other every day, summer and winter, and never once found a
moment of _ennui_, but parted each day with greater regret. I trust," he
added, at the end of his letter, "that you will some day see us
together; that is the being I esteem most, though I love several
others."
But in the year 1811 Eddleston died of consumption; and Lord Byron wrote
to Miss Pigott's mother, to beg of her to return the cornelian heart
which he had intrusted to her care, because it had "now acquired a value
which he wished it had never had;" the original donor having died at the
age of twenty-one, a few months before, and being "the sixth in the
space of four months of a series of friends and relations whom he had
lost since May."
The cornelian heart was restored, and Byron was informed that he had
only intrusted it, but not given it to Miss Pigott. It was on learning
of Eddleston's death that Byron added the touching ninth stanza to the
second canto of "Childe Harold."
After speaking of the hope of meeting again in a celestial abode, those
whom he loved on earth, and all those who taught the truth, he
exclaims,--
"There, thou!--whose love and life together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain--
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead
When busy Memory flashes on my brain?
Well--I will dream that we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
Be as it may Futurity's behest,
For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!"
Among the children younger than himself of whom he established himself
the protector, one of those he loved best was his fag William Harness.
HARNESS.
The Rev. William Harness is the author of the work entitled the
"Relations between Christianity and Happiness, by one of the oldest and
most esteemed friends of Lord Byron."
Harness was four years younger than Byron, and one of the earliest
friends he made at Harrow. Lord Byron had not been long at the school,
and had not yet formed any friendship with other boys, when he saw a
boy, "still lame from an accident of his childhood, and but just
recovered from a severe illness, bullied by a boy much older and
stronger than himself." Byron interfered and took his part.
"We both seem perfectly to recollect," says he, "with a mixture of
pleasure and regret, the hours we once passed together; and I assure
you, most sincerely, they are numbered among the happiest of my brief
chronicle of enjoyment. I am now getting into years, that is to say, I
was twenty a month ago, and another year will send me into the world, to
run my career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen--you were
almost the first of my Harrow friends, certainly the first in my esteem,
if not in date; but an absence from Harrow for some time shortly after,
and new connections on your side, and the difference in our conduct,
from that turbulent and riotous disposition of mine which impelled me
into every species of mischief, all these circumstances combined to
destroy our intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and Memory
compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that
period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my
mind at this moment.
"There is another circumstance you do not know:--the first lines I ever
attempted at Harrow were addressed to you; but as on our return from the
holidays we were strangers, the lines were destroyed.
"I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now
conclude with what I ought to have begun. Will you sometimes write to
me? I do not ask it often, and, if we meet, let us be what we should be,
and what we were."
Young Harness, gifted with a calm and mild temperament, was being
educated for the Church. Besides being always at Harrow, and four years
younger than Byron, the life which the latter led at Newstead and at
Cambridge did not suit one destined to a career which requires greater
severity of demeanor. But the two friends corresponded, and Lord Byron
sent him one of his early copies of "Hours of Idleness." In the letter
which the Rev. W. Harness wrote to Moore, after Byron's death, to tell
him the nature of the quarrel which he and Byron had had together, and
their subsequent reconciliation, he ends by saying:--
"Our conversation was renewed and continued from that time till his
going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron may have exhibited toward
others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate.... I can not
call to mind a single instance of caprice or unkindness in the whole
course of our intimacy to allege against him."
The fault to which Harness alludes, and which he acknowledges, was one
of the kind to which Byron was most sensitive, namely, coldness. Having
lost some of his early and best friends, Edward Long, and all the others
being spread far and near, abroad and in England, following out their
respective careers and destiny, Harness was about the only early friend
he had near him.
The time was approaching when he was going to leave England, to travel
and to learn by study the great book of Nature. His heart was wounded by
the injustice which had been done him, by the many disenchantments which
he had experienced, by the brutal criticism of his "Hours of Idleness"
from the pen of his relation Lord Carlisle, and by his money
difficulties. Unable as yet to foretell the effects of his satire, which
had not yet appeared, and the success of which might have consoled him a
little for past mortifications, he found in friendship his sole relief,
and particularly in the friendship of Harness. At this very critical
time, Harness--(be it either through the influence of his family and
relations, or through a notion that his principles were rather unsuited
to the heterodox opinions of Lord Byron)--behaved coldly toward Byron.
Dallas, however, who from puritanism and family pride, and even from
jealousy, was rather an enemy of Lord Byron's intellectual
friends--(contending that it was they who had instilled into Byron all
the anti-orthodox views which the poet had adopted)--makes an exception
in favor of Harness.
Byron spoke of Harness with an affection which he hoped was repaid to
him. I often met him at Newstead, and both he and Byron had had their
portraits taken, which they were to make a present of to one another. It
was not until some unknown cause sprung up to establish a coldness
between the two friends that their intimacy ceased, and at the same time
Harness's visits to Newstead. Byron felt it very keenly.
In what degree the conduct of Harness hurt Lord Byron and contributed to
those explosions of misanthropy which, slight and passing as they were,
have nevertheless been urged as a reproach against his first and second
cantos of "Childe Harold," I shall examine later.
Here it is only necessary to say that in a soul such as his, where
rancor could never live, such a coldness wounded him without altering
his sentiments in any way. After two years' absence he returned to
England, and so heartily forgave Harness that he actually wished to
dedicate to him the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and only gave
up this idea from a generous fear that its dedication might injure him
in his clerical profession, on account of certain stanzas in the poem
which were not quite orthodox.
"The letter," says Moore, "in which he expresses these delicate
sentiments is, unfortunately, lost."
Some months after his return to England he resumed his correspondence
with Harness, and both the friends assembled at Newstead. Harness,
however, as a clergyman, was severe in his judgments. Byron wrote to
him:--
"You are censorious, child: when you are a little older, you will learn
to dislike every body, but abuse nobody.... I thank you most truly for
the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much
accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and I am not the less pleased
to meet with it again from one to whom I had known it earliest. I have
not changed in all my ramblings; Harrow, and of course yourself, never
left me, and the
'Dulces reminiscitur Argos.'
attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the mind
of the fallen Argive. Our intimacy began before we began to date at all,
and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it
and me with the things that were."
Two days afterward, he writes to him again a letter full of endearing
expressions, couched in a friendly tone of interest, of which the
following extracts are instances:--
"And now, child, what art thou doing? Reading, I trust. I want to see
you take a degree. Remember, this is the most important period of your
life; and don't disappoint your papa and your aunt and all your kin,
besides myself.
"You see, _mio carissimo_, what a pestilent correspondent I am likely to
become; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead as you please, and I
won't disturb your studies as I do now."
On the 11th of December, of the same year, he invites Moore to Newstead
and says, "H---- will be here, and a young friend named Harness, the
earliest and dearest I ever had from the third form at Harrow to this
hour."
And, finally, he wrote to Harness that he had no greater pleasure than
to hear from him; indeed, that it was more than a pleasure.
HIS LATER FRIENDS.
When he had reached his nineteenth year, which was the second of his
stay at Cambridge, Byron (having lost sight of most of his Harrow
friends to whom he dedicated his verses, and having lost both Long and
Eddleston) suddenly found himself launched into the vortex of a
university life, for which he had no liking. Happily, however, he was
thrown among young men of great distinction, whom fate had then gathered
at Cambridge.
"It was so brilliant a constellation," says Moore, "that perhaps such a
one will never be seen again." Among these he selected his friends from
their literary merit. Those he most distinguished were Hobhouse,
Matthews, Banks, and Scroope Davies. They formed a coterie at Cambridge,
and spent most of their holidays at Newstead.
HOBHOUSE.
Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Bart., since created a peer, under the name of
Lord Broughton, is one of the statesmen and writers the memory of whom
England most reveres. It is he whom Byron addresses as Moschus in the
"Hints from Horace." After being Byron's friend at college, he became
his faithful companion likewise in his travels, and throughout his
short-lived but brilliant career. It was he who accompanied Byron in the
fatal journey to Seaham, where Byron wedded Miss Milbank. It was he who
stood best man on that occasion, and it was he whom Byron selected as
his executor.
As soon as Byron became of age in 1809, the two friends left England
together to visit Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. The results of
these travels were, Byron's first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and
Hobhouse's "Journey across Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in
Europe and in Asia."
On their return to England, their intimacy did not cease. "Hobhouse,"
Byron was wont to say, "ever gets me out of difficulty;" and in his
journal of 1814 he says, "Hobhouse has returned. He is my best friend,
the most animated and most amusing, and one whose knowledge is very deep
and extensive. Hobhouse told me ten thousand anecdotes of Napoleon,
which must be true. Hobhouse is the most interesting of travelling
companions, and really excellent."
Lord Byron wished him to be his best man when he married Miss Milbank at
Seaham, and after his separation from her Hobhouse joined him in
Switzerland. They travelled together through the Oberland, and visited
all the scenes which inspired that magnificent poem entitled "Manfred."
Thence they left for Italy, and visited it from North to South; from the
Alps to Rome. The result of this journey was the fourth canto of "Childe
Harold" from Byron, and from Hobhouse a volume of notes, which
constitutes a work of very great merit. If such a companion was
agreeable to Byron, Byron was not less so to Hobhouse, who deplores a
journey he had made without the company of that friend, whose
perspicacity of observation and ingenious remarks united in producing
that liveliness and good-humor, which take away half the sting of
fatigue, and soften the aspect of danger and of difficulties.
During his absence from England Byron always insisted that all matters
relating to the settlement of his affairs should pass through the hands
of Hobhouse, his "alter ego" when near or when absent. His highest
testimony of regard and friendship for Hobhouse, however, is to be found
in the dedication of the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," which was
written in Italy in 1815, and which is as follows:--
CANTO THE FOURTH.
_To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.M., F.R.S., etc._
Venice, January 2, 1818.
MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,--After an interval of eight years between the
composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the
conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In
parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should
recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the
birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted
for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship,
than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to Childe Harold,
for any public favor reflected through the poem on the poet,--to
one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found
wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in
peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to
yourself.
In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to
you, in its complete or at least concluded state, a poetical work
which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my
compositions, I wish to do honor to myself by the record of many
years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness,
and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive
flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to
the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for
others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately,
been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to
withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your
good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from
their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the
anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence,[25]
but which can not poison my future while I retain the resource of
your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a
more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us
of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such
as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without
thinking better of his species and of himself.
It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods,
the countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia
Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a
few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem
also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to
last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to
reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree
connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it
would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those
magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our
distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of
respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious,
it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I
part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that
events could have left me for imaginary objects.
With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found
less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little
slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own
person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line
which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese
in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to
be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I
had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and
the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at
finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the
composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have
done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that
subject, are _now_ a matter of indifference: the work is to depend
on itself and not on the writer; and the author, who has no
resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or
permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves
the fate of authors.
In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in
the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of
Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within
the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the
labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and
for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am
indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the
elucidation of the text.
It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon
the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires
an attention and impartiality which would induce us--though perhaps
no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs
of the people among whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at
least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our
information. The state of literary as well as political party
appears to run, or to _have_ run, so high, that for a stranger to
steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be
enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own
beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che
vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte
le vie diverse si possouo tentare, e che sinche la patria di
Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa
dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still: Canova,
Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara,
Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will
secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the
departments of art, sciences, and belles-lettres; and in some the
very highest. Europe--the World--has but one Canova.
It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce
piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli
stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova."
Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition--a
dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better
grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious
than their neighbors--that man must be willfully blind, or
ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary
capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their
_capabilities_, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of
their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty,
and amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still
unquenched "longing after immortality"--the immortality of
independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of
Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma!
Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to
contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs
of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the
carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of
France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have
exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For
me,--
"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."
What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were
useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that
England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a
suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For
what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily
they _will have_ their reward," and at no very distant period.
Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself,
I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once
more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,
BYRON.
MATTHEWS.
"Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews," says Moore, "I
have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held
in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler
tribute to his memory.
"There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of
high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which
Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Among all these young men of
learning and talent, the superiority in almost every department of
intellect seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to
Matthews.... Young Matthews appears--in spite of some little asperities
of temper and manner, which he was already beginning to soften down when
snatched away--to have been one of those rare individuals who, while
they command deference, can at the same time win regard, and who, as it
were, relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by
blending it with love."
Matthews died while bathing in the Cam.
On the 7th of September, 1811, Byron wrote to Dallas as
follows:--"Matthews, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of
our own at Cambridge and elsewhere.... Davies, who is not a scribbler,
has always beaten us all in the war of words. H---- and myself always
had the worst of it with the other two, and even M---- yielded to the
dashing vivacity of S. D----."
And in another letter:--"You did not know M----: he was a man of the
most astonishing powers."
And again, speaking of his death to Mr. Hodgson, he writes:--
"You will feel for poor Hobhouse; Matthews was the god of his idolatry:
and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one would
refuse him pre-eminence."
Matthews died at the time when he was offering himself to compete for a
lucrative and honorable position in the University. As soon as his death
was known, it was said that if the highest talents could be sure of
success, if the strictest principles of honor, and the devotion to him
of a multitude of friends could have assured it, his dream would have
been realized.
Besides a great superiority of intellect, Matthews was gifted with a
very amusing originality of thought, which, joined to a very keen sense
of the ridiculous, exercised a kind of irresistible fascination. Lord
Byron, who loved a joke better than any one, took great pleasure in all
the amusing eccentricities of him who was styled the Dean of Newstead;
while Byron had been christened by him the Abbot of that place.
Shortly before his death, in 1821, Byron wrote a very amusing letter
from Ravenna to Murray, recalling a host of anecdotes relating to
Matthews, and which well set forth the clever eccentricity of the man
for whom Byron professed so much esteem and admiration.
SCROOPE DAVIES.
We have already seen what Byron thought of Davies. His cleverness, his
great vivacity, and his gayety, were great resources to Byron in his
moments of affliction. When, in 1811, Byron experienced the bitterest
loss of his life--that of his mother--he wrote from Newstead to beg that
Davies would come and console him.
Shortly after, he wrote to Hodgson to say, "Davies has been here. His
gayety, which death itself can not change, has been of great service to
me: but it must be allowed that our laughter was very false."
We must not forget to mention, among the friends of Byron, William
Banks, Mr. Pigott, of Southwell, and Mr. Hodgson, a writer of great
merit, who was one of his companions at Newstead, and with whom he
corresponded even during his voyage in the East. For all these he
maintained throughout life the kindest remembrance, as also for Mr.
Beecher, for whom he entertained a regard equal to his affection. Mr.
Beecher having disapproved of the moral tendency of his early poems,
Lord Byron destroyed in one night the whole of the first edition of
those poems, in order to prove his sense of esteem for Mr. Beecher's
opinion. In the same category we should place Lord Byron's friendship
for Dr. Drury, his tutor at Harrow; but this latter friendship is so
marked with feelings of respect, veneration, and gratitude, that I had
rather speak of it later, when I shall treat of the last-named quality,
as one of the most noticeable in Lord Byron's character.
GRIEF WHICH HE EXPERIENCED AT THE LOSS OF HIS FRIENDS.
The grief which the loss of his friends occasioned to him was
proportioned to the degree of affection which he entertained for them.
By a curious fatality he had the misfortune to lose at an early age,
almost all those he loved. This grief reached its climax on his return
from his first travels.
"If," says Moore, "to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions
it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if,
for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be
owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. In the short space of one
month," he says in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost her who gave me
being, and most of those who made that being tolerable." Of these young
Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favorites,
died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at
Cambridge, was drowned while bathing in the Cam. The following letter,
written shortly after, shows so powerful a feeling of regret, and
displays such real grief, that it is almost painful to peruse it:
"MY DEAREST DAVIES,--Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a
corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What
can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment,
do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written
on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews?
Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had
but you and H---- and M----, and let me enjoy the survivors while I
can."
Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says:--
"Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that
being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, has perished
miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam; my poor school-fellow
Wingfield, at Coimbra, within a month: and while I had heard from all
three, but not seen one. But let this pass; we shall all one day pass
along with the rest; the world is too full of such things, and our very
sorrow is selfish."
To Hodgson he writes:--
"Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid
from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh
at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not
every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.
"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome
before."
Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Eddleston, of
which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms:
"I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to
me in happier times. But 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and
'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear
left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head
to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the
greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a
lonely tree before I am withered."
On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a prey to such
grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advising him to banish all
cares and to find in pleasure the distraction he needed. Lord Byron
replied by some lines which Moore has reproduced; but the last of which
he omitted to give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent
Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every one in a bright
light, and whom Byron wished to frighten.
Here are the first lines:--
"Oh! banish care, such ever be
The motto of _thy_ revelry!
Perchance of _mine_ when wassail nights
Renew those riotous delights,
Wherewith the children of Despair
Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care,'
But not in morn's reflecting hour."
Two days after replying in verse, he answered him in prose.
"I am growing nervous--it is really true--really, wretchedly,
ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor
amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights
restless."
The same day, 11th October, 1811, one of the darkest in his life, he
wrote also his first stanza, addressed to Thyrza, of which the pathetic
charm seems to rise to the highest pitch.
"To no other but an imaginary being," says Moore, "could he have
addressed such tender and melancholy poetical lines."
BYRON'S FRIENDSHIP FOR MOORE.
At this time of his life, whether from the numerous injuries inflicted
on him by men and by fate, or from some other circumstance, Byron seemed
to be less given to friendships than formerly. He felt the force of
friendship as deeply as before, but he became less expansive. Death, in
taking so many of his friends away from him, had endeared those who
remained still more to his heart, and caused him to seek among these the
consolation he wanted. It is not true to say that Lord Byron was left
alone entirely, at any time of his life: quite the contrary, he at all
times lived in the midst of friends more or less devoted to him. Dallas
and Moore pretend that there was a time in his early youth when he had
no friends at all; but this time can not be stated, unless one forgets
the names of Hobhouse, Hodgson, Harness, Clare, and many others who
never lost sight of him, and unless one forgets the life of devotion
which he led at Southwell and at Newstead both before and after his
travels in the East.
Dallas and Moore, in speaking of this momentary isolation, in all
probability adopted a common prejudice which causes them to believe that
a lord must ever be lonely unless he is surrounded by a circle of rich
and fashionable companions. The truth is that Byron, having left England
immediately on quitting college, only had college connections, with all
of whom he renewed his friendship on his return to the mother-country.
But it is equally true, and this is to his credit, that he long
hesitated to replace departed friends by new ones.
To conquer this repugnance he required a very high degree of esteem for
the friend he was about to make, a similarity of tastes, and above all
a sympathy based upon real goodness. This was the time of his greatest
mental depression. It preceded that splendid epoch in his life, when his
star shone with such brilliancy in the literary sphere, thanks to
"Childe Harold," and in the world of politics through his parliamentary
successes, which had earned for him the praises of the whole nation.
Then did friends present themselves in scores, but out of these few were
chosen.
Among the great men of the day who surrounded him, he took to several,
and in particular to Lord Holland, a Whig like himself, and a man
equally distinguished for the excellence of his heart as for his rare
intellect. Lord Holland's hospitality was the pride of England. Byron
also conceived a liking for Lord Lansdowne,--the model of every virtue,
social and domestic; for Lord Dudley, whose wit so charmed him; for Mr.
Douglas Kinnaird, brother to Lord Kinnaird, whom Byron called his most
devoted friend in politics and in literature; for all those first
notabilities of the day, Rogers, Sheridan, Curran, Mackintosh, for all
of whom he may be said to have entertained a feeling akin to friendship.
But all these were friends of the moment; friends whom the relations of
every-day life in the world of fashion had brought together, and whose
talents exacted admiration, and hence he formed ties which may be styled
friendship, provided the strict sense of that word is not understood.
Byron felt this more than any one.
One man, however, contrived to get such a hold on his mind and heart,
that he became truly his friend, and exercised a salutary influence over
him. This man, who contributed to dispel the dark clouds which hung over
Byron's mind, and was the first to charm him in his new life of fashion,
was no other than Thomas Moore.
This new intimacy had not, it is true, the freshness of his early
friendships, formed, as these were, in the freshness of a young heart,
and therefore without any worldly calculations. Moore was even ten years
his senior. But his affection for Moore, founded as it was upon a
similarity of tastes, upon mutual reminiscences, esteem and admiration,
soon developed itself into a friendship which never changed. The
circumstances under which Byron and Moore became friends speak too
highly for the credit of both not to be mentioned here, and we must
therefore say a few words on the subject.
Byron, as the reader knows, had in his famous satire of "English Bards,"
etc., attacked the poems of Moore as having an immoral tendency. Instead
of interpreting the beautiful Irish melodies in their figurative sense,
Byron had taken the direct sense conveyed in their love-inspiring words,
and considered them as likely to produce effeminate and unhealthy
impressions.
"Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd,
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd?
'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!
* * * * * * *
Yet kind to youth,...
She bids thee 'mend thy line and sin no more.'"
Lord Byron was always of opinion that literature, when it tends to exalt
the more tender sentiments of our nature, pure as these may be, is ever
injurious to the preservation of those manly and energetic qualities
which are so essential for the accomplishment of a noble mission here
below. This opinion is illustrated by the occasional extreme energy of
his heroes, and by his repugnance to introduce love into his dramas. If
this reproach offended Moore a little, Lord Byron's allusion to his duel
with Jeffrey at Chalk Farm in 1806, where it was said that the pistols
of each were not loaded, must have wounded him still more, and he wrote
a letter to Lord Byron which must, it would seem, have brought on a
duel.
Lord Byron was then travelling in the Levant, and the letter remained
with his agent in London. It was only two years after, on his return
from his travels, that he received it. An exchange of letters with Moore
took place, and such was the "good sense, self-possession and frankness"
of Byron's conduct in the matter, that Moore was quite pacified, and all
chances of a duel disappeared with the reconciliation of both, at the
request of each.
The reconciliation took place under the auspices of Rogers, and at a
dinner given by the latter for that purpose. After speaking of his
extraordinary beauty, and of the delicacy and prudence of his conduct,
Moore, in referring to this dinner, ends by saying, "Such did I find
Lord Byron on my first experience of him, and such, so open and
manly-minded did I find him to the last."
Byron, too, was influenced by the charm of Moore's acquaintance, and so
dear to him became the latter's society through that kind of electric
current which appears to run through some people and forms between them
an unbounded sympathy, that it actually succeeded in dispelling the
sombre ideas which then possessed his soul.
Their similarity of tastes, and at the same time those differences of
character which are so essential to the development of the intellect of
two sympathetic minds, were admirably adapted to form the charm which
existed in their relations with one another.
This sympathy, however, would never have found a place in the mind of
Lord Byron had it not sprung from his heart. Amiability was essential in
his friends before he could love them; and though Moore had not that
quality in its highest degree, still he had it sufficiently for Lord
Byron to say in one of his notes, "I have received the most amiable
letter possible from Moore. I really think him the most kind-hearted man
I ever met. Besides which, his talents are equal to his sentiments."
His sympathy for Moore was such that the mention of his name was enough
to awaken his spirits and give him joy. This is palpable in his letters
to Moore, which are masterpieces of talent.
His cordial friendship for Moore was never once affected by the series
of triumphs which followed its formation, and which made the whole world
bow before his genius. "The new scenes which opened before him with his
successes," says Moore, "far from detaching us from one another,
multiplied, on the contrary, the opportunities of meeting each other,
and thereby strengthening our intimacy."
This excessive liking for Moore was kept up by all the force which
constancy lends to affection. One of Byron's most remarkable qualities
was great constancy in his likes, tastes, and a particular attachment to
the recollections of his childhood. At the age of fifteen, Moore's
"Melodies" already delighted him. "I have just been looking over Little
Moore's Melodies, which I knew by heart at fifteen." In 1803 he wrote
from Ravenna: "Hum! I really believe that all the bad things I ever
wrote or did are attributable to that rascally book."
We have seen that at Southwell he used even to ask Miss Chaworth and
Miss Pigott to sing him songs of Moore. At Cambridge, what reconciled
him to leaving Harrow were the hours which he spent with his beloved
Edward Long, with whom he used to read Moore's poetry after having
listened to Long's music.
He already then had a sympathy for Moore, and a wish to know him. The
latter's place was therefore already marked out in Byron's heart, even
before he was fortunate enough to know him.
Moore's straitened means often obliged him to leave London. Then Byron
was seized with a fit of melancholy.
"I might be sentimental to-day, but I won't," he said. "The truth is
that I have done all I can since I am in this world to harden my heart,
and have not yet succeeded, though there is a good chance of my doing
so.
"I wish your line and mine were a little less parallel, they might
occasionally meet, which they do not now.
"I am sometimes inclined to write that I am ill, so as to see you arrive
in London, where no one was ever so happy to see you as I am, and where
there is no one I would sooner seek consolation from, were I ill."
Then, according to his habitual custom of ever depreciating himself
morally, he writes to Moore, in answer to the latter's compliments about
his goodness: "But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I
must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or
stung in your company."
His sympathy for Moore went so far as to induce him to believe that he
was capable of every thing that is good.
"Moore," says he, in his memoranda of 1813, "has a reunion of
exceptional talents--poetry, music, voice, he has all--and an expression
of countenance such as no one will ever have.
"What humor in his poet's bag! There is nothing that Moore can not do if
he wishes.
"He has but one fault, which I mourn every day--he is not here."
He even liked to attribute to Moore successes which the latter only owed
to himself. Byron had, as the reader knows, the most musical of voices.
Once heard, it could not be forgotten.[26] He had never learned music,
but his ear was so just, that when he hummed a tune his voice was so
touching as to move one to tears.
"Not a day passes," he wrote to Moore, "that I don't think and speak of
you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, waiving personal
friendship for the present. I have you by rote and by heart, of which
_ecce signum_."
He then goes on to tell him his adventure when at Lady O----'s:--
"I have a habit of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh, breathe
not,' and others; they are my matins and vespers. I did not intend them
to be overheard, but one morning in comes not la Donna, but il Marita,
with a very grave face, and said, 'Byron, I must request you not to sing
any more, at least of those songs.'--'Why?'--'They make my wife cry, and
so melancholy that I wish her to hear no more of them.'
"Now, my dear Moore, the effect must have been from your words, and
certainly not my music."
To give Moore the benefit of effecting a great success with an Oriental
poem, Byron gave up his own idea of writing one, and sent him some
Turkish books.
"I have been thinking of a story," says he, "grafted on the amours of a
Peri and a mortal, something like Cayotte's 'Diable Amoureux.'
Tenderness is not my _forte_; for that reason I have given up the idea,
but I think it a subject you might make much of."
Moore actually wished to write a poem on an Oriental subject, but
dreaded such a rival as Byron, and expressed his fears in writing to
him. Byron replied:--
"Your Peri, my dear Moore, is sacred and inviolable. I have no idea of
touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to
encounter me is so flattering that I begin to think myself a very fine
fellow. But it really puts me out of humor to hear you talk thus."
Not only did Byron encourage Moore in his task, but effaced himself
completely in order to make room for him.
When he published the "Bride of Abydos," Moore remarked that there
existed some connection in that poem with an incident he had to
introduce in his own poem of "Lalla Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron
to say that he would stop his own work, because to aspire after him to
describe the energy of passion would be the work of a Caesar.
Byron replied:--
"I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of
your own powers, which I can not account for, and which must be
unaccountable when a Cossack like me can appall a cuirassier.
"Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with you.
The success of mine is yet problematical ... Come out, screw your
courage to the sticking-place--no man stands higher, whatever you may
think on a rainy day in your provincial retreat."
To Moore he dedicated his "Corsair," and to read the preface is to see
how sincerely attached Byron was to his friend.
When at Venice he heard of some domestic affliction which had befallen
Moore; he wrote to him with that admirable simplicity of style which can
not be imitated, because the true accents of the heart defy imitation.
"Your domestic afflictions distress me sincerely; and, as far as you are
concerned, my feelings will always reach the furthest limits to which I
may still venture. Throughout life your losses shall be mine, your gains
mine also, and, however much I may lose in sensibility, there will
always remain a drop of it for you."
When Moore obtained his greatest success, and arrived at the summit of
popularity, by the publication of "Lalla Rookh," Byron's pleasure was
equal to the encouragements he had given him. But of his noble soul, in
which no feeling of jealousy could enter, we shall speak elsewhere.
Here, in conclusion, I must add that his friendship for Moore remained
stanch through time and circumstances, and even notwithstanding Moore's
wrongs toward him, of which I shall speak in another chapter.
In treating of Byron's friendships, I have endeavored to in set forth
the wrongs which some of his friends, and Moore particular, have
committed against him both before and after his death.
If, as Moore observes, it be true that Byron never lost a friend, was
their friendship a like friendship with his own? Has it ever gone so far
as to make sacrifices for his sake, and has not Lord Byron ever given
more as a friend than he ever received in return? Had he found in his
friendship among men that reciprocity of feeling which he ever found
among women, would so many injuries and calumnies have been heaped upon
his head? Would not his friends, had they shown a little more warmth of
affection, have been able to silence those numerous rivals who rendered
his life a burden to him? Had they been conscientious in their opinions,
they would certainly not have drawn upon them the rather bitter lines in
"Childe Harold:"--
"I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve,
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
And later, in "Don Juan," Byron would not have said with a smile, but
also with a pain which sprang from the heart:--
"O Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease;
They are but bad pilots when the weather's rough,
Doctors less famous for their cures than fees.
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze;
When your affairs come round, one way or t'other,
Go to the coffee-house and take another."
It is, however, also true that he would not have had the opportunity of
showing us so perfectly the beauty of his mind, and his admirable
constancy, notwithstanding the conduct of those on whom he had bestowed
his friendship. This constancy is shown even by his own words, for
immediately after the lines quoted above, he adds:--
"But this is not my maxim; had it been,
Some heart-aches had been spared me."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: Mossop, a contemporary of Garrick, famous for his
performance of Zanga.]
[Footnote 25: His marriage.]
[Footnote 26: Lord Holland's youngest son, in speaking of Byron, styled
him "the gentleman with the beautiful voice."]