LORD BYRON'S MOBILITY.
So much has been said of Lord Byron's mobility that it is necessary to
analyze it well, and examine it under different aspects, so as to define
and bring it within due limits. In the first place, we may ask on what
grounds his biographers rested their opinion of this extraordinary
mobility, which, according to them, went beyond the scope of
intellectual qualities rather into the category of faults of temper?
Evidently it was again through accepting a testimony the small value of
which we have already shown; namely, Lord Byron's own words at
twenty-three years of age--that period when passion is hardly ever a
regular wind, simply swelling sails, but rather a gusty tempest,
tearing them to pieces; and then again they grounded their opinion
on verses in "Don Juan," where he explains the meaning of these
expressions,--versatility and mobility. Moore, from motives we shall
examine hereafter, found it expedient to take Lord Byron at his word,
and to make a great fuss about this quality. In summing up his
character, he reasons very cleverly on the unexampled extent, as he
calls it, of this faculty, and the consequences to which it led in Lord
Byron. Following in Moore's wake, other biographers have proclaimed Lord
Byron versatile. Moore exaggerates so far as to pretend that this
faculty made it almost impossible to find a dominant characteristic in
Lord Byron. As if mobility were not, in reality, a universal quality or
defect,--as if men could so govern themselves throughout life as to
resemble the hero of a drama, where the action is confined within
classical rules.
"A man possessing the highest order of mind is, nevertheless, unequal,"
says La Bruyere. "He suffers from increase and diminution; he gets into
a good train of thought, and falls out of it likewise.
"It is different with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,--a
spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the
same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes.
Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At
best, he is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird whistling; he is fixed
and stamped by nature, and I may say by species. What shows least in him
is his soul; that never acts,--is never brought into play,--perpetually
reposes. Such a man will be a gainer by death."
La Bruyere also says, "There is a certain mediocrity that helps to make
a man appear wise."
And what says Montaigne, that great connoisseur of the human heart?--
"Our usual custom is to go right or left, over mountains or valleys,
just as we are drifted by the wind of opportunity. We change like that
animal which assumes the color of the spots where it is placed. All is
vacillation and inconstancy. We do not walk of ourselves; we are carried
away like unto things that float now gently and now impetuously,
according to the uncertain mood of the waters. Every day some new fancy
arises, and our tempers vary with the weather. This fluctuation and
contradiction ever succeeding in us, has caused it to be imagined by
some that we possess two souls; by others, that two faculties are
perpetually at work within us, one inclining us toward good, and the
other toward evil."
Montaigne also says:--"I give my soul sometimes one appearance, and
sometimes another, according to the side on which I look at it; if I
speak variously of myself, it is because I look at myself variously: all
contrarieties, in one degree or other, are found in me, according to the
number of turns given. Thus I am shamefaced, insolent, chaste, sensual,
talkative, taciturn, laborious, delicate, ingenious, stupid, sad,
good-natured, deceitful, true, learned, ignorant, liberal, avaricious,
and prodigal, just according to the way in which I look at myself; and
whoever studies himself attentively, will find this _variety and
discordancy_ even in his judgment.
"We are all _parts of a whole_, and formed of such shapeless, mixed
materials, that every part and every moment does its own work."
If, then, we all experience the varied influences of our passions a
hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twenty-four hours; if
we are sensible of a thousand physical and moral causes, perpetually
modifying our dispositions, and our words, making us differ to-day from
what we were yesterday; if even the coldest and most stoical
temperaments do not wholly escape from these influences, how could Moore
be surprised that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of passion,
so hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove
invulnerable? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is true; he
only made-believe to be so, and that because Lord Byron was wanting in
some of those virtues called peculiarly English. Lord Byron had no
superstitious patriotism; he did not love his country through sentiment
or passion, but on duty and principle. He loved her, but justice also!
and he loved justice best. And in order to do homage to truth, he had
committed the fault of saying a host of irreverential truths concerning
that country, and also many individuals belonging to it; consequently he
had made many enemies for himself. Indeed, his enemies might be found in
every camp: among the orthodox, in the literary world, and the world of
fashion, among the fair sex, and in the political world. Moore, for his
part, wished to live in peace with all these potentates,--the warm,
comfortable, and brilliant atmosphere of their society had become a
necessity for him; and wishing also, perhaps, to obtain pardon for his
friend's boldness, he probably thought to conciliate all things by
sparing the susceptibility of the great. Instead, then, of attributing
Lord Byron's severe appreciations to observation, experience, and
serious reflection, he preferred declaring them the result of capricious
and inconsistent mobility. But more just in the depths of his soul than
he was in words, Moore, it is easy to see, felt painfully conscious of
the wrong done to his illustrious friend, and ardently wished to make
his own weakness tally with truth. What was the result? The brilliant
edifice he had raised was so unstable of basis, that it could not stand
the logic of facts and conclusions. While appearing to consider the
excess of this quality as a defect, and calling it dangerous, he was all
the time showing that Lord Byron had strength to overcome any real
danger it contained; he was giving it to be understood that this
versatility of intellect might exist without the least mobility of
principle; he made out that mobility was the ornament of his
intelligence, just as he had shown constancy to be the ornament of his
soul. Then, after having reasoned cleverly on this quality, yclept
versatility when applied to the intelligence, and mobility when applied
to conduct; after having shown how predominant it must have been in Lord
Byron through his great impressionability; Moore says that Lord Byron
did yield to his versatile humor, without scruple or resistance, in all
things attracting his mind, in all the excursions of reason or fancy
assuming all the forms in which his genius could manifest its power,
transporting himself into all the regions of thought where there were
any new conquests to make; and that thereby he gave to the world a grand
spectacle, displayed a variety of unlimited and almost contradictory
powers, and finally achieved a succession of unexampled triumphs in
every intellectual field. Then, in order to characterize completely this
quality of Lord Byron, Moore further adds:--
"It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and particularly
by those who, being gifted with but a small portion of such ductility
themselves, are unable to keep pace with his changes, that the
suddenness with which he passes from one strain of sentiment to another,
from the gay to the sad, from the cynical to the tender,--begets a
distrust in the sincerity of one or both moods of mind which interferes
with, if not chills, the sympathy that a more natural transition would
inspire. In general, such a suspicion would do him injustice; as among
the singular combinations which his mind presented, that of uniting at
once versatility and depth of feeling was not the least remarkable."
But, throughout this analysis by Moore, do we see aught save an
intellectual quality? Does it not stand out in relief, a pure, high
attribute of genius? For this to be a defect, it would be necessary
that, leaving the domain of intelligence, it should become mobility, by
entering into the course of his daily life in _extraordinary_
proportions. And how does it, in reality, enter there? Were his
principles in politics, in religion, in all that constitutes the man of
honor in the highest acceptation of the term, at all affected by it? Did
his true affections, or even his simple tastes, suffer from the varied
impresses of his versatile genius? In short, was Lord Byron inconstant?
Moore has sufficiently answered, since all he remarked and said oblige
us to rank _constancy_ among Lord Byron's most shining virtues.[117] And
as a human heart can not at the same time be governed by a virtue and
its opposite vice, what must we say to those who should persist (for
there are some, doubtless, who will), despite all axioms, in considering
Lord Byron as a changeable, capricious, fickle man? I reply, that Lord
Byron proved, once more, the truth of the observation made by that
moralist, who said: "The most beautiful souls are those possessing the
greatest variety and pliancy," and that he realized in himself, after a
splendid fashion, the moral phenomenon remarked in _Cato the Elder_,
who, according to Livy, possessed a mind at once so versatile and so
comprehensive, that whatever he did it might be thought he was born
solely for that.
I will acknowledge, then, the intellectual versatility and the mobility
of Lord Byron, but on condition of their being reduced to their real
proportions; of their being shown as they ever existed in him, that is
to say, under subjection to duty, honor, and feeling. Through his
extreme impressionability, and his power of combining, in the liveliest
manner, the greatest contrasts, through the pleasure he took in
exercising such extraordinary faculties, and in manifesting them to
others, Lord Byron sometimes assumed such an appearance of skeptical
indifference and caprice, that he might almost be said to show a certain
intermission of faculties, and even of ideas. But if his words and
writings are examined, it will be seen that this mobility was only
skin-deep. It might affect his nerves and muscles, but did not penetrate
into his system. It animated his writings occasionally, and oftener his
words, _but never his actions!_ for, if in some rare moments of life, he
abandoned his will to the sway of light breezes, that was only for very
evanescent fancies of youth, in which neither heart nor honor were at
stake. And even then it was rather by word than by deed, as occurred at
Newstead, when he was twenty years of age, and at Venice when he was
twenty-eight. His energetic soul did not, like feebler natures, require
inconstancy to awaken it. As to ideas, they were only changeable in
him, when they were by nature open to discussion or _accessory_; and
they remained floating, until having been elaborated by his great
reason, he could admit them into the small number of such as he
considered chosen and indisputable. Then they found a sort of sanctuary
in his mind, remaining there sacred and unmoved, just like his true
sentiments of heart.
His mobility, thus limited and circumscribed within due bounds by
unswerving principles and the dictates of an excellent heart, _was thus
shorn of all danger_, and had for its first result to contribute toward
producing that amiability and that wonderful fascination which he
exercised over all those who came near him. Moore quotes, on this head,
the words of Cooper, who, speaking of persons with a changeful
intellectual temperament, says, that their society "_ought to be
preferred in this world, for, all scenes in life having two sides, one
dark and the other brilliant, the mind possessing an equal admixture of
melancholy and vivacity, is the one best organised for contemplating
both._" Moore adds:--"It would not be difficult to show that to this
readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or the lights
of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of
his influence as a poet, but those powers of _fascination_ which he
possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of immediate
impressions, which in him were so active, lent a charm, of all others
the most attractive, to his social intercourse, and brought whatever was
most agreeable in his nature into play."
All those who knew him have said the same thing. This charm was the
immediate consequence of his qualities; but they produced another
result, that justice requires to be mentioned. Mobility being united in
him with constancy and the most heroic firmness, added lustre to his
soul through that great difficulty overcome which amounts to virtue.
Moralists of all ages have generally found the virtue of constancy so
rare, that they have said,--
"Wait for death to judge a man."
"In all antiquity," says Montaigne, "it would be difficult to find a
dozen men who shaped their lives in a certain steady course which is the
chief end of wisdom."
This is true as regards the generality of minds; but to overcome this
difficulty, when one has a mind eager for emotion, variable, with width
and depth capable of discerning simultaneously the for and against of
every thing, and thus being necessarily exposed to perplexity of choice,
it is surely marvellous if a mind so constituted be also constant. Now,
Lord Byron personified this marvel. In him was seen the realization of
that rare thing in nature, intellectual versatility combined with
unswerving principle; mobility of mind united to a constant heart. In
short, to sum up:--He possessed the amount of versatility requisite to
manifest his genius under all its aspects; a degree of mobility most
charming in social intercourse; and such constancy as is always
estimable, always a virtue, and which, united to a temperament like
his,[118] becomes positively wonderful.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 117: See the chapter on "Constancy."]
[Footnote 118: See the chapter on "Constancy."]