FAULTS OF LORD BYRON.
After having shown the virtues Lord Byron possessed, it might seem
useless to inquire whether he had not the faults whose absence they
prove. Still, however, it is well to look at the subject from another
point of view, and to offer, so to say, counter-proof. For, in judging
him, all rules have been disregarded, not only those of justice and
equity, but likewise those of logic. And, as it has been variously
asserted of him, that he was constant and inconstant, firm and fickle,
guided by principle, yet giving way to every impulse; that he was both
chaste and profligate, a sensual man and an anchorite; calumny alone can
not be accused of all these contradictions. We must then seek out
conscientiously whether there were not other causes for this
_inconsistency_, so as to return back within due bounds, and bring
contradiction in accord with truth. It is, of course, beyond dispute
that the first cause of the unjust verdicts passed upon him lay in the
bad passions stirred up by his success, by the independent language he
used, and his contempt for a thousand national prejudices. Nevertheless,
as the degree of injustice dealt out toward him was quite extraordinary,
it may be asked whether some real defects did not lend specious reason
to his enemies, and thus we are forced to confess that he had one great
fault, which did powerfully aid their wickedness; it consisted in a
species of _cruelty_ toward himself, _a positive necessity of
calumniating himself_.
Although the origin of this fault or defect must have been principally
in the greatness of his soul, it certainly had other secondary and
lesser causes, and, in common with many other qualities, it was fatal to
his happiness; for men accustomed to exaggerate their own virtues only
too readily believed him. This mode of doing harm to and _persecuting_
himself, of casting shadows over his brilliant destiny, was so strange
and so real, that it is necessary to show to what extent he did it, by
collecting some of the numerous testimonies given among those who knew
him, before we bring out the real cause of his fault, as well as the
effect it had on his happiness and his reputation.
In no hands could his character have been less safe than his own, nor
any greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he
affected to be, for what he was.
While yet a student at Cambridge, he wrote a letter to Miss Pigott, full
of gayety and fun, giving as an excuse for his silence the dissipated
life he was leading, and which he calls _a wretched chaos of noise and
drunkenness, doing nothing but hunt, drink Burgundy, play, intrigue,
libertinize_. Then he exclaims:--
"What misery to have nothing else to do but make love and verses, and
create enemies for one's self."
But while avowing this misery, he adds that he has _just written 214
pages of prose and 1200 verses_.
And Moore remarks, in a note annexed to this curious letter:--
"We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters, that sort of
display and boast of _rakishness_ which is but too common a folly at
this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood persuades
himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily, this boyish
desire to be thought worse than he really was remained with Lord Byron,
as did some other failings and foibles, long after the period when, with
others, they are past and forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but
beginning to outgrow them when he was snatched away."
When Moore speaks of the letter in which Lord Byron, replying to the
praise given by Mr. Dallas, says he did not merit it, and depreciates
himself morally in every possible way, Moore adds:--
"Here again, however, we should recollect there must be a considerable
share of allowance for the _usual tendency to make the most and the
worst of his own obliquities_. There occurs, indeed, in his first letter
to Mr. Dallas, an account of this strange ambition, the _very reverse_,
it must be allowed, of hypocrisy--which led him to court rather than
avoid the reputation of profligacy, and to put, at all times, the worst
face on his own character and conduct."
Mr. Dallas, writing for the first time to Lord Byron after having read
his early poems, paid him some compliments on the moral beauties and
charitable sentiments contained in his verses, remarking that they
recalled another noble author, who was not only a poet, an orator, and a
distinguished historian, but one of the most vigorous reasoners in
England on the truths of that religion of which forgiveness forms the
ruling principle, viz., the good and great Lord Lyttelton. Lord Byron
answered, depreciating himself in a literary sense, and calumniating
himself morally, by the assertion that he resembled Lord Lyttelton's
son--a bad, though talented man--rather than the great author.
Dallas had the good sense to take this appreciation for what it was
worth, and asked permission to pay the young nobleman a visit. Lord
Byron answered politely that he should be happy to make his
acquaintance, but continued to paint himself, especially as regarded his
opinions, in the most unfavorable colors. Moore gives the whole of this
letter, and then adds:--
"It must be recollected, before we attach any particular importance to
the details of his creed, that in addition to the temptation--never
easily resisted by him--of displaying his wit, at the expense of his
character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well
meaning, was evidently one of those _officious self-satisfied advisers_
whom it was the delight of Lord Byron, at all times, to _astonish_ and
_mystify_.
"The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack,
Lavander, were but the first of a long series, with which, through life,
he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous quacks whom his
celebrity and sociability drew around him."
In the first satire he gave to the world, and which attracted sympathy
for his talent as well as for the justice of his cause, the horror he
entertained of hypocrisy already made him speak against himself:--
"E'en I--least thinking of a thoughtless throng,
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong."
After having quoted an early poem of Lord Byron, written in an hour of
great depression, and which would seem, inspired by momentary madness,
Moore makes the following declaration:--
"These concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, to awaken
more of horror than of interest, were we not prepared, by so many
instances of his exaggeration in this respect, not to be startled at any
lengths to which the spirit of _self-libelling_ would carry him. It
seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages,
he had also the ambition to be himself the dark 'sublime he drew,' and
that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavored
to fancy, where he could not find in his own character, fit subjects for
his pencil."
Moore, mentioning another article in his memoranda, where Lord Byron
accuses himself of irritability of temperament in his early youth,
follows up with this reflection:--
"In all his portraits of himself, the pencil he uses is so dark that the
picture of his temperament and his self-attempts, covering as they do
with _a dark shadow the shade itself_, must be taken with large
allowance for exaggeration."
In another passage of his work, Moore further says:--
"To the perverse fancy he had for falsifying his own character, and even
imputing to himself faults the most alien to his nature, I have already
frequently adverted. I had another striking instance of it one day at La
Mira."
Moore then relates that, on leaving Venice, he went to La Mira to bid
Lord Byron farewell. Passing through the hall, he saw the little
Allegra, who had just returned from a walk. Moore made some remark on
the beauty of the child, and Byron answered, "Have you any notion--but I
suppose you have--of what they call the parental feeling? For myself, I
have not the least." And yet, when that child died, in a year or two
afterward, he who had uttered this artificial speech was so overwhelmed
by the event, that those who were about him at the time actually
trembled for his reason.[98]
Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who knew Lord Byron in
Greece, shortly before his death, says:--
"Most men affect a virtuous character; Lord Byron's ambition, on the
contrary, seemed to be to make the world believe that he was a sort of
_Satan_, though impelled by high sentiments to accomplish great actions.
_Happily for his reputation, he possessed another quality that unmasked
him completely: he was the most open and most sincere of men, and his
nature, inclined to good, ever swayed all his actions._"[99]
Mr. Finlay, who knew Lord Byron about the same time, says _that not only
he calumniated himself, but that he hid his best sentiments_.
Speaking of the simplicity of his manners, and his repugnance for all
_emphasis_:--
"I have always observed," continues Mr. Finlay, "that he adopted a very
simple and even monotonous tone, when he had to say any thing not quite
in the ordinary style of conversation. Whenever he had begun a sentence
which showed that the subject interested him, and which contained
sublime thought, he would check himself suddenly, and come to an end
without concluding, either with a smile of indifference or in a careless
tone. I thought he had adopted this mode _to hide his real sentiments
when he feared lest his tongue should be carried away by his heart_; and
often he did so evidently to hide the author or rather the poet. But in
satire or clever conversation his genius took full flight."[100]
And Stanhope further adds:--
"I also have observed that Lord Byron acted in this way. He often liked
to hide the noble sentiments that filled his soul, and even tried to
turn them into ridicule."[101]
This was only too true. The spirit of repartee and fun often made him
display his intellectual faculties at the expense of his moral nature
and his truest sentiments.
Moore says that when Lord Byron went to Ravenna to see Countess G----
again, he wrote to Hoppner, who looked after his affairs, in such a
light vein of pleasantry, that it would have been difficult for any one
not knowing him thoroughly to conceive the possibility of his expressing
himself thus, while under the influence of a passion so sincere:--
"But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, from which
nothing--not even love--remains sacred; and which at last, for want of
other food, turns upon self. The same horror, too, of hypocrisy that
led Lord Byron to exaggerate his own errors led him also to disguise,
under a seemingly heartless ridicule, all those natural and kindly
qualities by which they were redeemed."
And by way of contrast with the strange lightness of his letter to
Hoppner, as well as to do justice to the reality of his passion, Moore
then quotes the whole of those beautiful stanzas, called "The Po," which
Lord Byron wrote while crossing that river on his way from Venice to
Ravenna.[102]
We might multiply quotations, in order to prove that all those who knew
him have more or less remarked this phenomenon. But no one has well
determined its principal cause; or else it has been too much confounded
with the strange caprices he showed, especially in early youth; for
subsequently, says Moore, "_when he saw that the world gravely believed
the opinion he had given of himself, he refused any longer to echo it_."
There is certainly truth in the judgment passed by Moore and others. It
can not be denied that, when as a boy, he boasted of his dissipated life
at the University, the chief reason of it lay in the folly common to
that period of life, which impels human beings while yet children to
seek to appear like men by aping the vices of riper years. It can not be
denied, either, that the pleasure of mystifying suggested his answer to
Dallas; that an exaggerated horror of hypocrisy taught his pen a
thousand censures of himself beginning with his first satire; that a
sort of over-excitement and reaction of imagination gave him, at times,
the strange ambition of appearing to be one of those dark, proud heroes
he loved to paint for the sake of effect. Moreover, we must not forget
that witty turn of mind which his extraordinary perception of the
ridiculous, and his facility for seeing the two sides of things, often
made him to display at the expense of his better nature, by seeming to
mock his truest sentiments, as when he wrote to Hoppner: a psychological
phenomenon, of which the cause has been more particularly sought
elsewhere. Finally, we may also add that he might have believed he was
disarming envy and malice by speaking against himself; and that he was
to a certain extent escaping from the effects of those evil passions by
throwing them something whereon to feed. Who knows whether he also did
not--a little through goodness of heart, and greatly through the tactics
that make good politicians complain of the unpleasantnesses attached to
their greatness--ascribe to himself imaginary defects, so as to let some
compassion, under the form of blame, mix with the malice that hemmed him
in on all sides; and whether he did not think it well to make use of
this means, as of a shield, to ward off their blows? This sort of
generous artifice, which I more than once suspected in him, may serve as
long as public favor lasts; but when persecution gets the upper
hand,--which is the case sooner or later with all greatness and all
virtues--when Envy triumphs by means of calumny, she converts into
poison, benefits, virtues, gratitude. Thus, if our hypothesis be
correct, Lord Byron would have been cruelly punished for his weakness in
allowing that to be believed of him which was not true. Still, all we
have observed can only furnish, at best, the secondary and evanescent
causes of the moral phenomenon described, and those who would fain
penetrate the recesses of Lord Byron's soul must search deeper for
explanation. Our idea is, the first cause will be found to lie in some
sentiment that reigned all powerful in his breast. I mean that he placed
_his ideal standard too high_, and the influence it exercised over him
was manifest _even to his last moments_.
In the severe judgments which he has pronounced upon himself in the
first place, on mankind in general, and on some particular individuals,
the ideal model of all the intellectual, moral, and physical beauty
which he found in the depth of his own mind, shone with divine lustre
before his imagination, by the union of faculties imbued with
extraordinary energy.
We see, by a thousand traits, that his ideal was formed much earlier
than is common with ordinary children. In his first youthful poems it
already displayed itself much developed. Ever attracted toward truth,
his first desire was to seek after that; and the better to do so, he
searched into himself, analyzed what was passing within and without, and
finally proclaimed it without any consideration for himself or others.
At Harrow we see him leaving off play to go and sit down alone and
meditate on the stone now called _Byron's tomb_.
At Cambridge afterward, despite the dissipation he shared equally with
his comrades, amid games and exercises in which he greatly excelled, we
still find him courting meditation under shady trees. On returning to
his home, the Abbey, when surrounded with the noise and frolic of
boisterous companions, we see him devote himself to study and solitary
reflection; finally, during his travels, and after his return, when all
England was at his feet, we behold him still and ever experiencing that
imperious _want_ of scanning himself, of descending into the depths of
his own heart, interrogating his conscience, and very often of writing
down in his memorandum-books the severe sentences pronounced by that
inflexible judge. And, as he could not put away from sight his divine
model, he came out from these examinations _humbled, dissatisfied,
reproaching and punishing himself for having strayed from it_. For he
discovered too many terrestrial elements in all human virtues. For
instance, in friendships, though so generous on his side, he found the
satisfaction of a personal want, consequently, an egotistical element;
the same, and much more strongly, with regard to love. He found
something personal in the best instincts, in the passion for glory, in
patriotism, even in the sentiment of veneration, since that is an echo
of our tastes and personal sympathies. That the high standard of his
ideal was the first cause of injustice toward himself, a thousand proofs
might be offered. I will choose some only. We read in his memoranda:--
"It has lately been in my power to make two men happy. I am delighted at
it, especially as regards the last, for he is excellent. _But I wish
there had been a little more sacrifice on my part, and less satisfaction
for my self-love in doing that, because then there would have been more
merit._"
Such was this great culprit. He actually felt pleasure in doing good!
Another time he was asked to present a petition to Parliament. "I am not
in a humor for this business," writes he in the evening journal, where
he examined his conscience. He was suffering then from grief, caused by
the absence of a person he loved, and he apostrophizes himself in these
terms:--"Had ---- been here she would have _made_ me do it. _There_ is a
woman who, amid all her fascination, always urged a man to usefulness or
glory. Had she remained, she had been my tutelar genius.
"Baldwin is very unfortunate; but, poor fellow, 'I can't get out; I
can't get out,' said the starling. _Ah! I am as bad as that dog Sterne,
who preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.
Villain! hypocrite! slave! sycophant! But I am no better. Here I can not
stimulate myself to a speech for the sake of these unfortunates, and
three words and half a smile of----, had she been here to urge it (and
urge it she infallibly would; at least, she always pressed me on in
senatorial duties, and particularly in the cause of weakness), would
have made me an advocate, if not an orator. Curse on Rochefoucault for
being always right!_"
Another time _he also accused himself of selfishness, because he wrote
only for amusement_! He was then but twenty-three years of age:--
"To withdraw myself from myself (_oh, that cursed selfishness!_) has
ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all;
and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action
it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself."
This hard opinion of man's virtue, formed by many moralists, and
especially by those who see virtue only in pure disinterested
benevolence, was an impulse with Lord Byron rather than the result of
reason; and I much doubt whether this craving for equity and truth were
ever practically combined and harmonized with the faculty of benevolence
in any one else as it was with Lord Byron, for this combination
evidently formed the most striking part of his character. Montaigne
himself,--who, if he did not possess as much innate benevolence, had
nevertheless the faculty, and even felt the want of entering into his
conscience, and examining it, so as to draw forth general
notions,--says, "When I examine myself conscientiously, I find that my
best sort of goodness has a _vicious tint_."
And he fears that even Plato, in his _brightest virtue_, had he analyzed
it well, would have found _some human admixture_. And then he sums up by
saying, "Man is made up of bits and oddities."[103]
But these sincere philosophers are few in number, and their maxims can
never be popular. For men in general experience rather the want of
magnifying than of depreciating themselves, and, instead of taking their
best models from an ideal, they choose them from reality, judge
characters, compare themselves to other men, and, living like other
people, see no guilt in themselves; while Lord Byron, living as they
did, discovered in himself weaknesses, reasons for modesty, regret,
repentance. If he could have done as they did, he would have been
satisfied, and he would either have escaped or vanquished calumny. But
he could not and would not, though conscious of the harm thence
resulting to himself.
"You censure my life, Harness. When I compare myself with these men, my
elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of
prudence,--a walking statue, without feeling or failing; and yet the
world in general has given me a proud pre-eminence over them in
profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn
their aberrations; but I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this
by the name of love. Romantic attachments for things marketable for a
dollar!"
One of his biographers pretends that he rendered himself justice another
time, and represents him as saying, speaking of M----:
"See how well he has got on in the world! He is just as little inclined
to commit a bad action as incapable of doing a good one; fear keeps him
from the former, and wickedness from the latter. The difference between
him and me is that I attack a great many people, and truly, with one or
two exceptions (and note that they are persons of my own sex), I do not
hate one; while he says no harm of any one, but hates a great many, if
not every body. Fancy, then, how amusing it would be to see him in the
palace of Truth, when he would be thinking he was making the sweetest
compliments, while all the time he would be giving vent to the
accumulated spite and rancor of years, and then to see the person he had
flattered so long listen to his real sentiments for the first time. Oh!
that would truly be a comic sight. As to me, I should appear to great
advantage in the palace of Truth, for while I should be thinking to vex
friends and enemies with harsh speeches, I should be saying pretty
things on the contrary; for at bottom, _I have no malice or
ill-nature,--at least, not of that kind which lasts more than a
moment_."
"Never," adds the biographer, "was a truer observation made. Lord
Byron's nature is _very fine_, despite all the bad weeds that might have
attempted to spring up in it; and I am convinced that it is the
excellence of the poet, or rather the effect of such excellence, which
has caused the faults of the man.
"The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased in proportion
to the admiration excited by the poet, and often with the greatest
injustice. The world offered up incense to the poet, while heaping ashes
on the head of the man. He was indignant at such usage, and wounded
pride avenged itself by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to
give a deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forcing
them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was their
disapprobation of his supposed character."[104]
Is this conversation real or imaginary? Doubt is allowable; but, however
it may be, the reflections of the biographer in this case are too
sensible and too true for us not to quote them with pleasure.
In concluding these remarks, which prove how high was the ideal type
that impelled Lord Byron to be unjust to himself, I will further
observe, that it was the exaggeration of his great characteristic
faculties which made him fail in some little virtue (such as prudence,
when it has its source _solely in our personal interest_). For it was
only to this degree, and from this point of view, that Lord Byron lacked
it. And it appears singular that his great mind should not have made him
see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his
inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of
conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he
_felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain
enough sacrifice_; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of
equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties that
can have no alloy of egotism, and which were very evidently the most
_striking qualities of his character_. But he was, with regard to
himself, like the torch which, lighting up distant objects, leaves
those near it in obscurity. Lord Byron did not know himself; he had by
no means overcome that difficulty which the oracles of Greece pronounced
_the greatest_. Only he was sometimes conscious of it. In his memoranda,
written at Ravenna, in 1821, after having said that he does not think
the world judges him well, he adds:--
"I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English,
French, German as (interpreted to me), Italian and Portuguese, within
these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretin, Timon of Athens,
Dante, Petrarch, an Alabaster Vase lighted up within, Satan, Shakspeare,
Bonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin the
clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the Phantasmagoria, to Henry the
Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to Young, R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to
Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a _petit maitre_, to Diogenes, to Childe
Harold, to Lara, to the Count in 'Beppo,' to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden,
to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to 'oft have I heard of thee, my
Lord Byron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to
Alfieri, etc., etc. The object of so many contradictory comparisons must
probably be like something different from them all; but what _that_ is
is more than I know, or any body else."
But had he known himself, he would have found that he realized one of
the finest types of character that humanity can offer; for his two
characteristic faculties were, his attraction toward truth and
benevolence. And in ceasing to calumniate himself, he would have
snatched from the hands of the envious and the enemies of truth, the
principal weapon they made use of to defame him.
When one reflects on all this, one questions with astonishment how it is
that all his biographers should have remained outside of truth. But it
is useless insisting thereupon, for we have given sufficient
answer.[105]
I will, then, confine myself to remarking here that one characteristic
peculiar to the biographers of great men in general, is the extreme
repugnance they feel toward praising their own subjects. What is the
cause? Do they fear being told they have made a panegyric, passing for
flatterers, appearing to get through a task? Do they believe that, in
order to show cleverness, perspicacity, and deep knowledge of the human
heart, it is necessary to put in place of simple truth a sort of malice,
not very intelligible, and often contradictory? All that may well be,
but I believe that what they especially feel is, that if their books
were only written for noble minds, possessing such qualities as only
belong to the minority of the human race, they might run the risk of
being less sought after and less bought. Thus they search for faults
with ardor, just as miners do for diamonds; and when they think they
have discovered a vice in their hero, they look upon it as the "Mogul"
of their book. They make it shine, polish it up, show it in a thousand
lights, bring it out as the striking part of their work,--the chief
quality of their hero, who, unable to defend himself, is handed down,
disfigured, to posterity. Such are the strange perils incurred, as
regards truth and justice, and the wrong done toward the great departed;
and this is why their surviving friends are called on to protest against
the false assertions of biographers. Those who have written on Lord
Byron, unable to find this great "Mogul" (for Lord Byron had no vices),
have all, more or less, sought at least to draw the attention of their
readers to a thousand little weaknesses, mostly devoid of reality. Upon
what basis, indeed, do they rest?--Almost always on Lord Byron's words.
Now we know what account should be made of his testimony when he speaks
against himself. For instance, he has called himself irritable and prone
to anger, and biographers have found it very convenient to paint him
with his own brush. Men never fail to treat those who depreciate
themselves with equal injustice. Nor is this surprising. If it be true
that we are always judged on our faulty side, even though we endeavor to
show the best, what must be the case if our efforts tend only to display
our worst? And besides, why should others give themselves the trouble of
exonerating a man from blame who depreciated himself? As it requires
great discernment, great generosity, and very rare qualities, not to go
beyond truth in self-esteem, biographers have not hesitated to declare
Lord Byron, on his own testimony, _very irritable_, and even very
passionate; but was he really so? This is a question to be examined.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 98: Moore's "Life," vol. iv. p. 241.]
[Footnote 99: Parry, 273.]
[Footnote 100: Letter from Finlay to Stanhope, Parry, 210.]
[Footnote 101: Parry, 210.]
[Footnote 102: Moore, 214, vol. ii. in 4to.]
[Footnote 103: Montaigne, vol. iii. p. 87.]
[Footnote 104: "Journal of Conversation," p. 195.]
[Footnote 105: See chapter on Lord Byron's biographers.]