CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MELANCHOLY OF LORD BYRON.

"To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what

we are worth."--PARADOL, _Study on Moralists_.

From all that we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of

his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable

side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and

never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear

too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would

together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the contrary,

that Lord Byron was often melancholy; but that, in order to judge well

the nature and shades of his melancholy, it is necessary to analyze and

observe it, not only in his writings, but also in his conduct through

life. Whence arose his melancholy? Was it one of those moral

infirmities, incurable and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like

that of Rene, whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful;

who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mysteries; who

knowing not how to be young, will no more know how to be old; who in all

things wanted order, proportion, harmony, truth; who had nothing to

produce equilibrium between the power of genius and the indolence of

will? This kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue,

and seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it a

melancholy like Werther's, whose senses, stimulated by passion, of which

society opposed the development, carried perturbation also into the

moral regions? Was it the deep mysterious ailment of Hamlet, at once

both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast

with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to

become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius,

"that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels

depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an

Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want

of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated

to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity?

No; the _striking_ characteristics that exist in all these sorts of

melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron's. His was not a melancholy

that had become chronic, like Rene's, ere arriving at life's maturity.

For, whereas, the child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was

passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of

melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection,

and circumstances. Nor was it Werther's kind of melancholy; for, even at

intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord

Byron's energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal

sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied

passion.

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimulation would

have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for

his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of

Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first

poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful

exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord

Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then

only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university,

where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all

testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where

he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess

capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the

darker heroes he has described in "Lara" and "Manfred," for he never

knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all

these identifications between himself and his heroes.[161]

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they

arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary,

melancholy always originated from some moral external cause, which

would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not

have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before

arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid

glance at his whole life.

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure

indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let

us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the

testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England,

that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a

tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a

yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the

sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic

mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting

his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this

sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to

melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in "Tasso's

Lament:"--

"From my very birth my soul was drunk with love," etc.

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection

acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite

games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears

his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of

his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions

of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what

he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the

world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so

affirms:--

"Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney, "while sheep are ever to be found

in flocks."

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of

solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according

to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about

him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great

intellects, have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and

games of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out

of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up

passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferior to him

in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of

that _fatal_ kind of melancholy--that which is _hereditary_ and

_causeless_. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy

already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be

destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us

follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and

Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making

himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott

family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse.

Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems,

but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart,

the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and

heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades

of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held,

that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself,

and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in

truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from

him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young

cousin, who beneath an angel's guise on earth, first awakened the fire

of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another

affection, was deceived, met with no return,[162] but, on the contrary,

was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was

accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of

his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs

resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that

he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest

sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of

regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of

a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and

very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no longer

feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a

presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other

illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821:--

"It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to

feel that I was no longer a child."

He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, arising from

_palpable avowed_ causes, having their origin in the heart, might

equally find their cure in the heart. Already did imagination transport

him toward his beloved Ida, and he consoled himself by saying, that if

love has wings, friendship ought to have none. If this were an illusion,

he completed it by writing that charming poem of his youth, "Friendship

is Love without Wings."[163]

At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward

Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his

melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long

as these dear friends remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge.

But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them.

Long, with whom he had passed such happy days,[164] left the first to go

into the guards. Eddlestone remained, but Lord Byron himself was already

about to quit Cambridge. During the vacation, we see him modestly

preparing his first poems intended as an offering to Friendship; then

going to a watering-place with some respectable friends; devoting

himself with ardor to dramatic representations at the amateur theatre at

Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; and thus he

remained a whole year away from Cambridge, often seeing his dear Long

again in London, and visiting Harrow with him. When he returned, in

1807, to Cambridge, Long had already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to

go; thus, he no longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the

flute of his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him.

Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. Besides,

he was already nineteen years of age, had made some progress in the

journey of life, probably leaving some illusions behind him on the

bushes that lined the roadside, and perhaps his soul had already lost

somewhat of its early purity. He had certainly seen that many things in

the moral world were far removed from the ideal forms with which he had

invested them; that love, even friendship, virtue, patriotism,

generosity, and goodness, by no means attained the height of his first

convictions. A year before, he had said: "I have tasted the joy and the

bitterness of love." Willingly again would he have given way to the

emotions of the heart; but he too soon perceived that to do so were a

useless, dangerous luxury,--a language scarcely understood in the world

in which he moved; that the idols he had believed of precious metal,

were, in reality, made of vile clay. Then he also resolved on taking his

degrees in vice; but, unlike others, he did so _with disgust_, and he

called satiety, not the _quantity_, but the _quality_ of the aliment. A

year before he had also said: "_I have found that a friend may promise

and yet deceive._"

Magnanimous as he was, he made advances to the guilty friend, and took

half the blame on himself; but in vain was he generous, saying, with

tears that flowed from his heart to his pen:--

"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."

And then:--

"Repentance will cancel the vow you have made."

And again:

"With me no corroding resentment shall live:

My bosom is calm'd by the simple reflection,

That both may be wrong, and that both should forgive."

The friend did not return, and Lord Byron's generous, pure, delicate

nature--fearful lest he might be in the wrong--could only find peace in

trying to offer reparation. He wrote to Lord Clare:--

"I have, therefore, made all the reparation in my power, by apologizing

for my mistake, though with very faint hopes of success. His answer has

not arrived, and, most probably, never will. However, I have eased my

own conscience by the atonement, which is humiliating enough to one of

my disposition; yet I could not have slept satisfied with the reflection

of having, even unintentionally, injured any individual. I have done all

that could be done to repair the injury, and there the affair must rest.

Whether we renew our intimacy or not is of very trivial consequence."

But although he could no longer rely entirely upon his heart for

defending his loved illusions so cruelly attacked by reality, yet it was

not possible for him to put out of sight his ideal of all the beauties

of soul whose presence was a condition of his being. And it was this

presence that made material dissipated life, and also the intellectual

routine existence at Granta, both appear so unattractive to him. He

wrote a satire on them, and the blame inflicted shows his fine nature.

When evil was thus judged, thus condemned, alike by pen and heart, there

could be no real danger; not even had it power to sadden him. A more

formidable peril menaced him from another side. Sadness might now reach

his heart through his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze,

meditate, generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative

capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of life. It has

been seen that he began to worry even his nurses with childish

questions, and afterward much more to embarrass his tutors, masters

etc., and especially the excellent Dr. Glenny at Dulwich. A natural

tendency fortified by early religious education evidently drew his heart

to God; but, on the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating

every thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his grounds

of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to him on great

questions could not satisfy him; he required to discuss their basis.

Already the increasing play of his faculties had been revealed in that

beautiful Prayer to the Divinity which constitutes his profession of

faith and worship, "every line of which," says Moore, "is instinct with

fervent sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions."

On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a circle of

intellectual companions which Moore calls "a brilliant pleiad," a young

man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a mind that had, perhaps, some

affinity to his own, but which, devoid of his sensibility and logic,

surpassed him in hardihood; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the

inscrutable, and, not content with analysis, desirous to arrive at

_conclusions_. Through the natural influence of example, and more

especially the irresistible fascination exercised by a great

intelligence, uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron

because so like his own; from all these causes, Matthews exercised an

immense influence over him. This young man loved to plunge his head into

depths from whence he emerged all dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too

reasonable a mind to arrive at such results. He refused to follow where

deformity and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking upward.

Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic glass,

where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined with a host of

doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathetic to his soul, but

perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the doubts. And, being no

longer alarmed at sounding such depths, he imbibed seeds of doctrine

capable of producing incredulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these

seeds required a dry soil to fructify, and his, being so rich, they

_perished_, after a short period of wretched existence. All these

influences, and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a

sort of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing

serious consequences; for in the main his belief was not deeply shaken.

It had no other effect than to throw him, for a time, into uncertainty

on points necessary to him, "and to teach him," says Moore, "to feel

less embarrassed in a _sort_ of skepticism."

This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations becoming deeper

and wider, his mind ceased always to follow his heart. But the latter

following rather the former, though with sadness and fatigue, and all

the problems of life becoming more and more enveloped in darkness, it is

possible that he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal

expressions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he was

not equally fortunate with regard to ennui.

"Ennui," says the clever Viscomte D'Yzarn de Freissinet, in his deep and

delightful book, "_Les Pensees grises_," "ennui is felt by ordinary

minds because they can not understand earth, and by superior ones

because they can not understand heaven."

Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees at the

university, and when about to enter into possession of his estates. On

seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his

career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear

companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don

the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his

own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful

eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would

seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for

developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all

trace of melancholy.

But it was not so; the responsibilities of life began too soon for him,

and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year was already dotted with

black marks indicative of the approaching tempest. In the first place,

the cassock of a real priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive,

endowed with feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind.

Moreover, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in his

heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early poems had

already inflicted a deep wound. Lord Byron, it is true, thought to heal

this by writing a satire; still, despite the vein of pleasantry

indulged, he continued to discipline his mind by serious study of the

great masters of literature and of the deepest thinkers.

It must be acknowledged that the balm he sought in _satire_, was a

dangerous caustic which, while closing one wound, might well cause

others to open. At the same time, the money embarrassments inherited

from his predecessor in the estate went on accumulating, and the period

was approaching when the cassock, donned in boyish fun, was to be

exchanged for the grave ermine of a peer of the realm. Who should

present him, then, to the noble assembly, if not his guardian, and near

relative, the Earl of Carlisle? The young lord had always met his

coldness with deference and respect, even dedicating his early poems to

him. But the noble earl now still further aggravated his unkind conduct

toward his ward by abandoning him at this solemn moment. Not only did he

refuse to lend countenance himself, but he even hurt and wounded Lord

Byron by interposing delays so as to prevent or put off his reception

in the House of Peers, and that _solely because he did not like the

young man's mother_! It would be impossible for the most loving heart,

the one most susceptible of family affections, not to have felt cruelly,

under such circumstances, the absence of near ties, and Lord Byron did

not then know his sister. Suffer he did, of course; and, had it not been

for a distant relative, despite his high birth and wondrous gifts, he

must have entered the august assembly accompanied only by his title.

However frivolous the young man might have appeared, he was not so in

reality; and he hesitated at this time between a project of travelling

for information, and the desire to take part immediately in the labors

of the Senate. Some months before, attaining his majority, when the wish

of travelling predominated, after having informed his mother of a

thousand arrangements, all equally affectionate, wise, and generous,

that he was about to take for her during his absence, he wrote that he

proposed visiting Persia, India, and other countries.

"If I do not travel now," said he, "I never shall, and all men should,

one day or other. I have, at present, no connections to keep me at home;

no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, etc. I shall take care of you,

and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years'

knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for

that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a

fair chance: it is from experience, not books, we ought to judge of

them. There is nothing like inspection and trusting to our senses."

But while cherishing these ideas, his mind at the same time wavered

between the two projects,--Parliament attracted him greatly. Despite his

light words, the love of true and merited glory, of the beautiful and

the good, ever inflamed his heart. What he wrote a year or two before,

to his counsellor and friend, the Rev. Mr. Beecher, had not ceased to be

his programme.[165] He said to his mother, a short time before his

majority, that he thought it indispensable, "as a preparation for the

future, to make a speech in the House, as soon as he was admitted." He

wrote the same thing still more explicitly to Harness; for he then

thought seriously of entering upon politics without delay, and his

rights as a hereditary legislator paved the way for it. Nevertheless,

being hurt, disappointed, and indignant at his guardian's conduct, and

feeling himself isolated, he not only renounced taking any active part

in the debates of his colleagues, but, according to Moore, appeared to

consider the obligation of being among them painful and mortifying.

Thus, a few days after entering Parliament, he returned disgusted to the

solitude of his abbey, there to meditate on the bitterness of precocious

experience, or upon scenes that appeared more vast to his independent

spirit, than those which his country presented.

The final decision soon came. He resolved on leaving England and taking

a long journey with his friend Hobhouse, on seeking sunshine,

experience, and forgetfulness for his wounded soul. It seemed really at

that moment as if, through an accumulation of disappointment, injustice

and grief, the result of lost illusions (he had already written the

epitaph on "Boatswain"), as if, I say, some germs of misanthropy were

beginning to appear. But his bitterness did not reach, or rather, did

not change his heart: every thing proves this. One of his friends, Lord

Faulkland, was killed in a duel about this time; and our misanthrope not

only was inconsolable, but, despite the embarrassment of his own

affairs, generously assisted the family of the deceased, who had been

left in distress. Dallas, who, through his prejudices, personal

susceptibilities, and exaggerated opinions, shows so little indulgence

to Lord Byron, thus describes however the impression made on him, and

his conduct under the circumstances:--

"Nature had gifted Lord Byron with most benevolent sentiments, which I

had frequent opportunities of perceiving; and I sometimes saw them give

to his beautiful countenance an expression truly sublime. I paid him a

visit the day after Lord Faulkland's death; he had just seen the

lifeless body of one in whose society he had lately passed a pleasant

day. He was saying to himself aloud, from time to time--'Poor

Faulkland!' His look was more expressive than his words. 'But,' he

added, 'his wife! 'tis she that is to be pitied!' I read his soul full

of the kindest intentions, nor were they sterile. If ever there were a

pure action, it was the one he meditated then; and the man who conceived

and accomplished it was at that moment advancing through thorns and

briers toward the free but narrow path that leads to heaven."[166]

He was setting out then on a long journey. And at that period long

journeys were serious things. His first desire was to have a farewell

meeting at Newstead, of all his old school-fellows. And that not

sufficing, he even wished to carry their image away with him, so as to

enjoy a sensible means of recalling tender remembrances of the past. But

his heart found an aliment for misanthropy in the selfish answer given

by one of his comrades, who was alarmed at the expense of getting a

portrait taken. We see the impression made by this ungenerous reply, in

the letter he addressed to his friend Harness:--

"I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before I depart I am

collecting the pictures of my most intimate school-fellows. I want

yours; I have commissioned one of the first miniature painters of the

day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow any to

incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this

may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused

to sit, under the idea that he was to _disburse_ on the occasion, you

will see that it is _necessary_ to state these preliminaries, to prevent

the recurrence of any similar mistake. It will be a tax on your patience

for a week, but pray excuse it, as it is possible the resemblance may be

the sole trace I shall be able to preserve of our past friendship. Just

now it seems foolish enough, but in a few years, when some of us are

dead, and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will be a

kind of satisfaction to retain, in these images of the living, the idea

of our former selves, and to contemplate, in the resemblances of the

dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, and a host of passions."

If misanthropy had not been an element heterogeneous to his character,

it might well have assumed larger proportions at this moment; for, on

the very eve of his departure from England, his heart had yet to suffer

one of those chilling shocks to which sensitive natures, removed far

above the usual temperature of the world, says Moore, are only too much

exposed. And this proof of coldness, which he complains of with

indignation in a note to the second canto of "Childe Harold," was given

precisely by one of the friends he most loved. Mr. Dallas, who witnessed

the immediate effect produced by this mark of coldness, thus describes

it:

"I found him bursting with indignation. '_Will you believe it?_' said

he, 'I _have just_ met ---- and asked him to come and sit an hour with

me; he excused himself; and what do you think was his excuse? He was

engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping! And he knows I

set out to-morrow to be absent for years, perhaps never to return?

Friendship! I do not believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and

family excepted, and perhaps my mother, a single being who will care

what becomes of me!'"[167]

The conduct of this friend gave him so much pain, that a year after he

wrote again about it, from Constantinople, to Dallas:--

"The only person I counted would feel grieved at my departure took leave

of me with such coldness, that if I had not known the heart of man I

should have been surprised. I should have attributed it to some offenses

on my part, had I ever been guilty of aught save _too much affection_

for him."

Dallas thought that some lady, from a spirit of vengeance, had excited

this young man to slight Lord Byron.

I will not here seek to discover whether he was right or wrong. It

suffices that he could believe it, for me to say, that this singular

misanthropy, born of heart-deceptions, was in reality nothing else but

grief, the causes of which might each be enumerated, but the intensity

of which we do not really know, since that deep capacity is the sad

privilege of beings highly endowed.

In any case, it is certain that when he left England the measure of

disappointments capable of producing real melancholy in such a sensitive

heart was quite filled up. Is it, then, surprising that he, like his

hero, "Childe Harold," should see with indifference the shores of his

native land recede? But if, unhappily, the gloomy ideas he welcomed for

a moment brought about a regrettable habit, no more to be lost, of

adopting, in his language spoken and written, expressions and

mystifications that too often concealed his real feelings, only letting

them be seen through the medium of his mind (a sure way of making him

misunderstood), he could not long stand against the proofs of real

attachment shown him by his fellow-traveller, and, indeed, by all who

came near him. Even before setting sail, the influence of this

sentiment, combined with his natural disposition to gayety, became

visible; all annoyances seemed forgotten in the agreeable sensation of a

first voyage that was to bear him away from the country where he had

suffered so much, and which would probably show him, in other lands,

more favorable specimens of the human race. Indeed, this is quite

evident in the letters and gay verses sent off from Falmouth to his

friends Drury and Hodgson, as well as in the more serious strain, though

still gay and affectionate, in which he, at the same time, addressed his

mother.[168]

Hardly had he landed at Lisbon, when his heart, yearning after the

beautiful, expanded into admiration at sight of the Tagus and the

beauties of Cintra; displaying alike his high moral sense of things,

whether he expressed admiration or inflicted blame.[169]

We see his whole nature revolt at baseness, ingratitude, cowardice,

ferocity, all kinds of moral deformity; just as much as it was attracted

and delighted by patriotism, courage, devotion, sacrifice, love carried

to heroism, grace, and beauty. We perceive, in the poet's soul, a

freshness and a moral vigor, that shine all the more brightly,

contrasted with the misanthropical melancholy of the hero of his legend.

But this personage had been imprudently chosen to typify a state of mind

into which youth often falls, and which, perhaps, Lord Byron himself

went through during a few short hours of disenchantment. The impressions

thus gathered, were treasured in his memory until they came to maturity

some months later; then they issued from his pen in flowing numbers,

whose magic power he then ignored: but assuredly the fine sentiments

expressed came from the soul of the minstrel, not from the satiated

feelingless hero, who was incapable of experiencing them. Let people

only make the distinction between the two personages whom malice has

taken pleasure in confounding, an error willingly adopted by a certain

set and imposed on credulous minds.[170]

The relation between the two is not one of family or race, but a purely

accidental external resemblance; the result of some strange fancy and

intellectual want in the poet, whose powerful imagination, while having

recourse only to his own spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings

and types, yet required to rest always on reality, for painting the

material world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions.

Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the same vessel, to

make the same voyage, and meet with the same adventures. Both have the

same family relations,--a mother, a sister; yes, but their souls are not

in the same state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly

from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good faith;

since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two cantos of "Childe

Harold," there are 112 wherein the poet forgets his hero, speaks in his

own name, and shows his real soul--a soul full of energy and beauty,

becoming enthusiastic at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of

grandeur, virtue, and love.

Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was corrupted,

satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such enthusiasm. In reality,

these emotions betokened the future poet, then unknown to the world and

to himself. Let us return to the man,--the best justification for the

poet. From Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend

Hodgson. Already he found all well; better than in England. Already he

declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrimage: the sight of the

Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent,

fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every

thing; "and we find him," says Moore, "in this charming, gay, sportive,

schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that 'Childe Harold' is about

to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, and insensibility. Lord

Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, going seventy miles a day on

horseback in the heat of a Spanish July, always delighted, complaining

of nothing (in a country where all was wanting), and he arrived in

perfect health. There, in that beautiful city of serenades and

love-making courtships, his handsome face and person immediately

attracted the attention of the fair sex. He was not insensible to the

lively demonstrations of two sisters, and especially of the beauteous

Dona Josefa, who declared, with naive Spanish frankness, how much she

liked him. This young girl and her sister, who was equally charming,

made him all kinds of offers, saying, when he left:--'Adieu, handsome

creature, I like thee much; and Josefa asked to have at least a lock of

his beautiful hair. On arriving at Cadiz, the lovely daughter of an

admiral of high birth, with whom he was thrown in contact, could not

hide from her parents or himself her partiality for him. She wished to

teach him Spanish, never thought he could be near enough to her at the

theatre, called him to her side in crowds, made him accompany her home,

invited him to return to Cadiz, and, in short," Moore says:--

"Knowing the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled by the

attraction of several, was on the point of being held captive by one."

He escaped this danger from being obliged to set out for Gibraltar,

where he also met with many attentions from persons of rank among his

countrymen; but he encountered another peril at the island of Calypso

(Malta). For he met there a real Calypso,--a young woman of

extraordinary beauty (the daughter and the wife of an ambassador), and

no less remarkable for her qualities of mind than for her singular

position. All his time at Malta was passed between studying a language

and the society of this goddess. And the true account of the attraction

with which he inspired this beautiful heroine, and which he amply

returned, is not certainly to be found in the stanzas of "Childe

Harold," but in the verses addressed from the monastery of Zitza to the

beautiful Florence, who had carried off at the same time (says he) both

the ring he had refused to the Seville beauty and likewise his heart. On

arriving in Albania (ancient Epirus), he went to visit Ali Pasha at

Tepeleni, his country-seat; and the sight of this beautiful, amiable

young man so softened the heart of the ferocious old Moslem, that he

wished to be considered as Lord Byron's father, treated him like a son,

caused his palaces to be opened to him, surrounding him with the most

delicate attentions, sending him fresh drinks and all the delicacies of

an Oriental table; he also ordered the Albanian selected to accompany

Lord Byron to defend him if requisite at the peril of his life. This

Albanian, named Basilius, would not leave Lord Byron afterward. Wherever

any English residents, consuls, or ambassadors could be found, Lord

Byron was the object of a thousand attentions and kindnesses. At

Constantinople, the English ambassador, Adair, wished him to lodge at

his palace; Mr. S---- proposed the same thing at Patras. When he fell

ill, he was taken care of, most affectionately even, by the Albanese.

All the sympathies enlisted during his travels (and those who knew him

thought them most natural) must certainly have acted on his loving,

grateful heart, banishing misanthropy if he had experienced it. But did

it really exist? Must not even his peace of conscience have

counterbalanced bitter remembrances?

His conscience was unburdened, for the griefs he had had were not

merited by him. If a young girl had deceived him, he on his side had

deceived no one; if a guardian had neglected and failed in duties toward

him, he had always behaved respectfully toward this bad guardian. If

hard-hearted critics had insulted, and tried to stifle his budding

genius, modest and timid withal, he had already taken his revenge, sure

to repent some day of the harshness and injustice which passion had,

perhaps, led him into; if his affairs were embarrassed, they had come to

him thus by inheritance. If he had taken a share in some youthful

dissipation, disgust had quickly followed; not a tear or a seduction had

he wherewith to reproach himself. All these testimonies furnished by his

conscience, and so consoling in every case, must have been doubly so to

a heart like his, which, by his own avowal, could not _go to rest_ with

the weight of _any remorse_ upon it. And, truly, all his correspondence

certifies this.

Already at Gibraltar, Lord Byron began writing letters full of clever

pleasantry, either to his mother or his friends, and his correspondence

always continued in the same tone, with nothing that betrayed

melancholy, far less misanthropy like Childe Harold's, although he was

composing that poem at this time.

At Malta, it was impossible to find shelter.[171] His companions grew

impatient, but Lord Byron retained his good-humor, laughing and joking.

On the mountains of Epirus, which were infested by brigands, the

Albanian escort, given him by Ali Pasha, lost their way in the middle of

the night, and were surprised by a terrific storm. For nine hours he

advanced on horseback under torrents of rain; and when at last he

reached his companions his gayety was still the same. Assailed by a

frightful tempest while going by sea from Constantinople to Athens,

shipwreck seemed impending. Every one was crying out in despair; Lord

Byron alone consoled and encouraged the rest, then he wrapped himself up

in his Albanian capote, and went to sleep quietly, until his fate should

be decided. On visiting a cavern with his friend Hobhouse, they lost

their way, their torch went out, and they had no prospect but to remain

there, and perish with hunger. Hobhouse was in despair; but Lord Byron

kept up his courage with jests, and presence of mind fit to save them,

and which did so in effect. Privations, rigor of seasons, sufferings

that drew complaints from the least delicate, and from his own servants,

had no effect on his good-humor.[172]

All this does not simply show his courage and good natural dispositions,

it likewise proves that there was not the making of a misanthrope in

him. And besides, his fellow-traveller Hobhouse says so positively, in

his account of their journey, when relating why Lord Byron could not

accompany him in an excursion to Negropont; for he energetically

expresses his regret at being obliged to separate, even for so short a

time, from a companion, who, according to him, _united to perspicacity

of wit and originality of observation, that gay and lively temper which

keeps attention awake under the pressure of fatigue, softening every

difficulty and every danger_.

Truly it might be said that Lord Byron was superior to the weaknesses of

humanity. He was evidently patient and amiable in the highest degree.

Greece appeared to him delightful,--an enchanting country with a

cloudless sky. He liked Athens so much that, on quitting it for the

first time, he was obliged to set off at a gallop to have courage enough

to go. And when he returned there, though from the cloister of the

Franciscan monastery, where he had fixed his abode, he could no longer

even perceive the pretty heads of the three Graces _entre les plantes

embaumees de la cour_; he felt himself just as happy, because he devoted

his time to study, and mixed with persons of note--such as the

celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope, Lord Sligo, and Bruce: souvenirs which

he has consecrated in his memoirs, saying Lady Hester's (?) was the most

delightful acquaintance he had made in Greece.[173]

He saw Greeks, Turks, Italians, French, and Germans, and was delighted.

Now could he observe the character of persons of all nations, and he

became more than ever persuaded that travelling is necessary to complete

a man's education; he was happy at being able to verify the superiority

of his own country, and to increase his knowledge by finding the

contrary. He was never either disappointed or disgusted. He lived with

both great and small; passing days in the palaces of pashas, and nights

in cow-stables with shepherds; always temperate, he never enjoyed better

health. "Truly," said he, "I have no cause to complain of my destiny."

At Constantinople he found the inhabitants good and peaceable; the Turks

appeared superior to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Spaniards, and the

Spaniards to the Portuguese. It was the man wearied of all, the

misanthrope, who wrote all this to his mother, concluding thus:--"I have

gone through a great deal of fatigue, but have _not felt wearied for one

instant_!"

All the letters addressed to his friends Drury and Hodgson, from Greece

or Turkey, were equally devoid of misanthropy, and, indeed, generally

full of jokes. It was only when too long a silence on their part

awakened painful remembrances, causing a sort of nostalgia of

friendship, that a cry of pain once escaped him in these words:--"Truly,

I have no friends in the world!" But one feels that he did not believe

it, and only spoke as coquettish women do, knowing they are beloved, and

willing to hear the old tale repeated.

Again, it was this same man of worn-out feeling, who, despite the

embarrassed state of his affairs, showed such unexampled generosity to

his mother, and to friends requiring aid both in England and Greece; who

likewise displayed touching solicitude toward servants left behind him

at home, or even sent away so as not to over-fatigue their youth or

their old age: and, finally, who, on learning that one of his dependents

was about to commit a bad action, abandoning a young girl whom he had

seduced, wrote to his mother:--

"My opinion is that B---- ought to marry Miss N----; our first duty is

not to do evil, our second to repair it. I will have no seducers on my

estates, and will not grant my dependents a privilege I would not take

myself: namely, of leading astray our neighbors' daughters.

"I hope this Lothario will follow my example, and begin by restoring the

girl to society, or by my father's beard he shall hear of me."

And then he also recommends a young servant to her:--

"I pray you to show kindness to Robert, who must miss his master; poor

boy! he would scarcely go back."

This letter alone shows a freshness of feeling quite consolatory;

certainly "Childe Harold" was not capable of it.

But despite all these proofs of his good-humor, gayety, and

antimisanthropical dispositions, we could cite persons who, even at this

period, thought him melancholy. Mr. Galt, for instance, whom chance had

brought in contact with him, having met on the same vessel going from

Gibraltar to Greece; and then the British ambassador at Constantinople,

Mr. Adair, and even Mr. Bruce, at Athens. How then shall we reconcile

these opposite testimonies? It may be done by analyzing his fits of

melancholy, observing the time and places of their manifestation.

I have said that Lord Byron's melancholy had always real or probable

causes (only capable of aggravation from his extremely sensitive

temperament), and it has been seen that superabundant causes existed

when he left England. That during the whole period of his absence, they

may, from time to time, have cast some shade over him, notwithstanding

his natural gayety and his strength of mind, is at least very probable.

But did Mr. Galt, Mr. Adair, and Mr. Bruce, really witness the return

of these impressions? or would it not be more natural to believe, since

that better agrees with the observations made by those living constantly

with him, that, through some resemblance of symptoms, they may have

taken for melancholy another psychological phenomenon generally

remarked--namely, _the necessity of solitude_, experienced by a high

meditative and poetic nature like his? Indeed, what does Galt say?--

"When night arrived and there were lights in the vessel, he held himself

aloof, took his station on the rail, between the pegs on which the

sheets are belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in

silence, enamored, as people say, of the moon. He was often strangely

absent--it may have been from his genius; and, had its sombre grandeur

been then known, this conduct might have been explained; but, at the

time, it threw as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence.

Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the

moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed in his mind, he seemed

almost an apparition, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the

albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet crowned with a halo.

"The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about

Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him.

That he sometimes descended from the clouds, and was familiar and

earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and

the home of his spirit in the abyss of the storm and the hiding-places

of guilt. He was at the time of which I am speaking scarcely

two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a

clever satire; and yet it was impossible, even then, to reflect on the

bias of his mind, as it was revealed by the casualties of conversation,

without experiencing a presentiment, that he was destined to execute

extraordinary things. The description he has given of "Manfred" in his

youth, was of himself:--

'My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,

Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;

The thirst of their ambition was not mine,

The aim of their existence was not mine;

My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,

Made me a stranger.'"

All that is very well, but the only astonishing part is Mr. Galt's

astonishment. The incomprehensible phantom of melancholy and caprice

then hanging over Lord Byron, was especially his genius seeking an

outlet; it was the melancholy that lays hold of so many great minds,

because, having a vision of beauty and fame before their eyes, they fear

not attaining to it. That it was which one day led Petrarch, all

tearful, to his consoler John of Florence. If almost all great geniuses,

ere carving out their path, have experienced this fever of the soul,

falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that put on all sorts of

forms,--sometimes noisy, sometimes capricious, sometimes misanthropical,

was there not greater reason for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis--at

a period when energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by

confidence in his own genius? For he had not met with a John of

Florence; he had been so much hurt at the cruel reception given to his

first attempts, that it appeared to him he ought to seek another

direction for the employment of his energetic faculties, and turn to

active life, as many of his tastes invited. But his genius, unknown to

the world as to himself, was, however, fermenting within his brain,

feeding on dreams; now pacing a deck, now beneath a starry sky, anon by

moonlight, and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogeneous to

his nature; and thus "Childe Harold" came to light. When Lord Byron took

his pen, the mechanical part of the work alone remained to be done. The

elaboration and meditation of it had taken place almost unknown to

himself, so that his conceptions remained latent, and took their shape

by degrees in his brain, before being fixed in his writings. He penned

"Childe Harold" at Janina and Athens; but it was on the vessel's deck,

in that dreamy attitude just seen by Mr. Galt, that he had moulded the

clay of his first statue, and given it an immortal form. Could he have

done so, if he had always remained in society on deck, laughing, joking,

giving way to all his charming, witty bursts of gayety, as he did while

coasting the shores of Sicily, when, from time to time, his playful

nature enabled him not only to forget the wounds of his heart, and the

disagreeable remembrances left behind, but also to impose silence on the

severe requirements of his genius?

The same causes must have produced the same opinions from the British

ambassador at Constantinople. Without even speaking of the irksomeness

of etiquette, always so distasteful to Lord Byron, that Moore looks upon

it as one of the causes of the apparent sadness remarked by Adair, we

ought to remember that he left Constantinople on board the same frigate

as the ambassador, making a sea-voyage of four days with him. During

these four days, it is likely that Lord Byron did not deny himself

solitude, and that he also courted the secret influences exercised by

starry nights on the Bosphorus as he had done under similar

circumstances on the AEgean Sea. But he had yet another motive for

sadness during this passage, since he was then about to separate from

his friend and fellow-traveller, Hobhouse, who was obliged to go back to

England. Thus, for the first time, Lord Byron would soon find himself

alone in a foreign land. The effect produced by this situation must have

shown itself in his countenance; for he was experiencing beforehand

quite a new sensation, wherein any satisfaction at perfect independence

and solitude must have been more than counterbalanced in his feeling,

grateful, and in reality most sociable nature, by real grief at such a

separation. And I doubt not that when setting foot on the barren isle of

Chios, with its jutting rocks and tall rugged-looking mountains, just

after having bade Hobhouse adieu, I doubt not that his heart experienced

one of those burning suffocating feelings that belong equally to intense

sorrow and joy. When, then, a few days later, he wrote to his mother for

the evident purpose of calming the uneasiness she must have felt at

knowing him to be alone, and when he mentioned with indifference the

departure of his friend, he was exaggerating, except in what he said of

loving solitude. That he did not even sufficiently express, for he might

have boldly declared that it was positively requisite to him; and,

indeed, his resignation at loss of a friend so thoroughly appreciated is

the best proof we could have of it.

In the workings of Lord Byron's intellect, observation, reflection, and

solitary meditation were brought into play much more than

imagination.[174] Every thing with him took its source from facts; and

the vital flame that circulates in every phase of his writings is the

very essence of this reality, first elaborated in his brain and then

stamped on his verse. As long as this first kind of work of observation

was going on, as long as he was only occupied in imbibing truths of the

visible world that were sure to strike him, and storing them in his

memory, society, and especially intellectual society, suited him. But

when he began to shape his observations into form, by dint of reflection

and meditation, generalizing and making deductions, then constant

society forced upon him fatigued him, and solitude became indispensable.

Now it was more particularly at the period of which we are speaking that

his mind was in the situation described. He had just visited Albania,

whose inhabitants were a violent, turbulent race, animated with a

passionate love of independence, who were ever rising in rebellion

against authority, and whose every sentiment, passion, and principle,

formed a perfect contrast with all existing in his own country. He had

become familiar with their usages, and recognized in them the possession

of virtues which he loved, though mixed up with vices which he abhorred.

He had gone through strange emotions and adventures among them; his life

had often been in danger from the elements, from pirates and brigands;

on the throne sat a prince who united monstrous vices to a few virtues,

who, wearing gentleness on his countenance, was yet so ferocious in

soul, that Byron, despite the favors lavished on himself, felt

constrained to paint the tyrant in his real colors. He found in these

contrasts, in this moral phenomenon, that which made him shudder, and

precisely because it did cause shuddering, the source of soul-stirring,

most original poetry, the type of his Eastern verses--of "Conrad," "The

Giaour," and "Lara"--which, having been admitted into the fertile soil

of his brain, were one day to come forth in all their terrible truth,

though softened down by some of his own personal qualities; and having

gone through, unknown to him, a long process of warm fertilization,

while nursed in _solitary_ reflection. Thus solitude was necessary to

him; and this want, I again repeat, was an intellectual one, and had

nothing to do with melancholy. From Chios Lord Byron went to Athens, a

residence so sad and monotonous at this period, that it was well

calculated to give rather than cure the spleen. But as he had no malady

of this kind, after an excursion into the Morea with Lord Sligo,--a

college friend and companion to whom nothing could be refused,--he

returned to Athens; and here, in order to enjoy his cherished

independence, would not even give himself the distraction of seeing

those lovely young faces he used to admire behind the geraniums at their

windows, and which had charmed him some months before he took up his

abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the silence of the

cloister, he could commune freely with his own mind, allow it full

expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary contemplation to the most

varied studies, especially to that he always so much appreciated--the

study of mankind in general.

"Here," he wrote to his mother, "I see and have conversed with French,

Italians, Germans, Danes, Greeks, Turks, Americans, etc.; and, without

losing sight of my own, I can judge of the countries and manners of

others. When I see the superiority of England (which, by-the-by, we are

a great deal mistaken about in many things) I am pleased, and where I

find her inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might have staid,

smoked in your towns, or fogged in your country a century without being

sure of this, and without acquiring any thing more useful or amusing at

home."

And then he adds:--

"I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life; but God knows and

does best for us all; at least so they say, and I have nothing to

object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to complain of my lot. I

trust this will find you well, and as happy as one can be; you will, at

least, be pleased to hear I am so."

It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went from Athens to

Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, washed by the blue waves of the

AEgean Sea, immortalized by Plato, who here taught his half-Christian

philosophy, Lord Byron took his seat at the celestial banquet spread by

the great master, and entered into full possession of his genius. For,

although he ignored its great power and extent, it is impossible that he

should not have had in hours like these, some vision of the future, some

presentiment of coming glory, which, piercing through the veils that

yet shrouded his genius, gave moments of ineffable delight. When he

bathed in some solitary spot, he tells us in his memoranda that one of

his greatest delights was to sit on a rock overlooking the waves, and to

remain there whole hours lost in admiration of sky and sea, "absorbed,"

says Moore, "in that sort of vague reverie, which, however formless and

indistinct at the moment, settled afterward on his pages into those

clear, bright pictures which will endure forever."

One day, while he was swimming under the rocks of Cape Colonna, a vessel

from the coast of Attica drew near. On board, going from London to

Athens, were two celebrated personages--Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr.

Bruce. The first object that greeted their eyes, on nearing Sanium, was

Lord Byron, playing all alone with his favorite element. Some days

after, his friend Lord Sligo wished him to make their acquaintance, and

he saw a great deal of them at Athens. In his memoranda the following

words are applied to them:--"It was the commencement (their meeting at

Cape Colonna) of the most delightful acquaintance I have made in

Greece." And he wished to assure Mr. Bruce, in case these lines should

ever fall under his notice, of the pleasure he experienced in recalling

the time they had passed together at Athens. Now I do not see any

symptom of melancholy in all this, nor in all preceding, and yet Bruce

thought there was. Did he, then, also consider the joy Lord Byron felt

in solitude, and his indifference for the false conventional enthusiasm

his countrymen affected to display at sight of the ruins of Greece, as

so many other tokens of melancholy? In reality Lord Byron was averse to

all kinds of affectation, made no exception in favor of the artistic

pretensions which constitute the hypocrisy of taste, and only gave the

sincere, ardent homage of his soul to those things of antiquity that

recall great names or great actions, and to sublime scenes in nature.

Notwithstanding his fine intelligence, it is not impossible that Mr.

Bruce also may have shared the errors of superficial minds; and it is

likewise possible that Lord Byron may really, during the last period of

his sojourn at Athens, have sometimes been melancholy, for causes of

grief were certainly not wanting. His man of business wished Lord Byron

at this time to sell Newstead, so as to get his affairs into some

definite order. Perhaps it would have been wise, but such a

determination was extremely repugnant to him, for he was very fond of

Newstead, and had even written to his mother, before leaving, that she

might be quite easy on this head, as he would never part with it.

However, his agent, wishing to get him back to England, then affected

negligence, would not write, and made him wait for money. Lord Byron

grew uneasy and alarmed, was out of humor, and often seemed capricious,

because these circumstances obliged him to change his travelling plans,

and finally left him no other alternative but to return to England,

where, as he wrote to a friend, his first interview would be with a

lawyer, the second with a creditor; and then would come discussions with

miners, farmers, stewards and all the disagreeables consequent on a

ruined property and disputed mines.

After having resisted all these fears for some time, he was obliged to

decide on returning. Behold him, then, on the road to England.

At Malta he had attacks of fever to which his state of mind was

certainly not wholly foreign. "We have seen," says Moore, "from the

letters written by him on his passage homeward (on board the 'Volage'

frigate) how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which

he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast,

there was quite enough in the discomfort that now awaited him in England

to sadden its hopes and check its buoyancy."

And yet in these letters, melancholy at bottom, which he addressed to

his mother and friends during this tiresome voyage of more than six

weeks, we still perceive, overriding all, his kind, sensitive, playful

nature. He told them that if one can not be happy, one must at least try

to be a little gay; that if England had ceased to smile on him, there

were other skies more serene; that he was coming back shaken by fever

morally and physically, but with a firm, intrepid spirit. And, in short,

pleasantry never failed him.

Always admirable toward his mother, he spoke of his apathy, but

re-assured her directly, adding:--

"Dear mother" (he wrote to her on the 'Volage' frigate), "within that

apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I will prove by every

means in my power.

"P.S.--You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine, and me only

as a visitor."[175]

He had hardly arrived in London when Mr. Dallas hastened to greet him,

and instead of finding him changed, thought he was in excellent health,

with a countenance that betrayed neither melancholy nor any trace of

discontent at his return. The truth is, that those sorrows which did not

reach his heart were never very deep with Lord Byron. But already a most

formidable tempest was gathering on the horizon of his fate, for it was

one that would cruelly wound his heart. Perhaps it was some vague,

inexplicable presentiment of what was threatening him that saddened his

return to his native country. The storm burst as soon as he set foot in

London; for he was summoned in haste to Newstead, his mother's life

being declared in danger. He set out instantaneously, but on arriving

found only a corpse! This spectacle was still before his eyes; he had

hardly quitted the chamber of death, where, in the obscurity of night

and alone, believing himself free from all observation, he had given way

in silence and darkness to the real sentiments of his heart, weeping

bitterly the loss of a mother who had idolized him, when in rapid

succession news arrived of the deaths of his dearest friends. Matthews,

his mind's idol, had just been drowned in the river Cam, at Cambridge;

Wingfield, one of his heart-idols, was dying of fever at Coimbra; his

dear Eddlestone was in the last stage of consumption; and, finally, he

learned the death of another loved, mysterious being. Six deaths within

a few short weeks!

"If to be able," says Moore, "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."

This was certainly a most painful crisis in his existence. What he felt

then can not be called melancholy; it was truly _desolation, agony of

heart_. Seeing himself alone in his venerable but gloomy abode, beside

the dead body of his mother, solitude was for the first time intolerable

to him, and, despite his strength of mind, he experienced moments of

weakness. In his agony he wrote a letter to his friend Scroope Davies

that is truly painful to read, so much does it bear the impress of

intense suffering.

"Some curse hangs over me and mine," says he. "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 Davies, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a

friend. Come to me, Scroope, I am almost desolate, left almost alone in

the world. I must enjoy the survivors while I can. Write or come, but

come if you can, or one or both."

Hardly had he allowed himself this heartrending expression of grief,

most touching for those who knew his repugnance to showing any

sensibility of heart, when a new calamity overtook him. His dear friend,

Wingfield, died at Coimbra at the age of twenty-one. Thoughts of death

even took possession of Lord Byron's soul, influencing and directing all

his actions. Neither self-love, nor the hope of great success with

"Childe Harold," which had been announced to him as he passed through

London, any longer could charm; tears dimmed the lustre of fame; he

could only occupy himself with the fate of the surviving, and resolved

on making his will in case of his own death. We find him then at this

time solely engaged in making out this new deed. He destroyed the old

will, rendered useless by the death of his mother, and took care to

forget no one in the new one; all his servants were mentioned with

admirable solicitude; and, in short, his last testament fully displayed

the beautiful, generous soul that had dictated it.

Some weeks after, he wrote to Dallas:--

"At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at

seventy? It is true that I am young to begin again, but with whom can I

retrace the laughing part of life?"

"Indeed," writes he at the same time to Hodgson, "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.

"Davies has been here; his gayety (death can not mar it) has done me

service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter! You will write to

me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before."

His moral sufferings had never been so great; and what he said and

experienced under these circumstances, amply prove that solitude was

good for him, when not unhappy. "I can do nothing," writes he to Dallas,

"and my days pass, except for a few bodily exercises, in uniform

indolence and idle insipidity."

The task of publishing "Childe Harold" was left to Dallas, and the

certainty of its success found him pretty nearly indifferent. When his

heart was in pain, Lord Byron's self-love always lay dormant. But

destiny was still far from granting him any respite. Eddlestone, that

dear friend, on whose true affection he most relied, as well as another

beloved one, whose name ever remained locked within his breast, both

died about this time; so that, as he says in his preface, during the

short space of two months, he lost six persons most dear. In announcing

this new misfortune to Dallas, he expresses himself in the following

words:--

"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 to

me as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of

age. My friends fall round me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before

I am withered.

"Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource

but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter,

except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am, indeed,

very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not

apt to cant of sensibility."

But if tears no longer flowed from his eyes, they did from his pen; for

it was then he wrote his elegies to "Thyrza," whose pathetic sublimity

is so well characterized by Moore; and that he added those melancholy

stanzas in "Childe Harold" on the death of friends, which we find at the

end of the second canto.

"Indeed," he wrote again to Hodgson, "I am growing nervous, ridiculously

nervous, I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else.

My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any

society, and when I have, I run out of it. At this present writing,

there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to

write this grumbling letter. I don't know that I sha'n't end with

insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that

perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness,

as Scroope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner. I

must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament

would suit me well, any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed

verb _ennuyer_."

Distractions did come to him, but of a kind to make him conjugate verbs

equally disagreeable; for they came caused by grief and irritation. In

an infamous, ignoble publication, called "The Scourge," an anonymous

author, probably making himself the organ of those who wished to avenge

Lord Byron's satires, attacked his birth, and the reputation of his

mother, who, despite her faults, was a very respectable, excellent

woman.

"During the first winters after Lord Byron had returned to England,"

says Mr. Galt, "I was frequently with him. At that time, the strongest

feeling by which he appeared to be actuated was indignation against a

writer in a scurrilous publication, called 'The Scourge,' in which he

was not only treated with unjustifiable malignity, but charged with

being, as he told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer. I had

not read the work; but the writer who could make such an absurd

accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the very circumstances

from which he derived the materials of his own libel. When Lord Byron

mentioned the subject to me, and that he was consulting Sir Vicary Gibbs

with the intention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I

advised him, as well as I could, to desist simply because the

allegations referred to well-known occurrences. His grand-uncle's duel

with Mr. Chaworth, and the order of the House of Peers to produce

evidence of his grandfather's marriage with Miss Trevannion, the facts

of which being matter of history and public record, superseded the

necessity of any proceeding.

"Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that time, I was not

surprised at the sequestration in which he held himself, and which made

those who were not acquainted with his shy and mystical nature apply to

him the description of his own 'Lara.'"[176]

Lord Byron's conduct at this period, led those who did not know his

timid mystery-loving nature, to fancy that they recognized him in the

portrait drawn of "Lara." Probably they were unaware how his hard fate

was now not sparing him one single grief or mortification; how he was

struggling between the necessity of putting up Newstead for sale and the

extreme repugnance he felt to such a step.

"Before his resolve was taken on this head," says Mr. Galt, "he was

often so troubled in mind, as to be unable to hide his sadness; and he

often spoke of leaving England forever."

Already, long absence had made him lose sight of several early comrades;

his mother was dead, and he scarcely saw his sister, who lived in quite

another circle; through his antecedents, his youth, and his travels

abroad, he was still a stranger among his fellow-peers; the only persons

he saw much of were five or six college friends, whom death had spared,

and to whom he was extremely attached; but they were his sole

affections. His ideal standard of perfection which, being brought in

contact with reality, had always a little spoilt women for him, had

ended by making them almost disagreeable.

"I have one request to make," wrote he at this time to H----, "never

again speak to me in your letters of a woman; do not even allude to the

existence of the sex. I will not so much as read a word about them; it

must be _propria que maribus_."

It was in this state of relative isolation that he came to London, about

the end of the year, and found Dallas preparing to have "Childe Harold"

published; a task in which Lord Byron half unwillingly joined.

"He seemed more inclined," says Dallas, "at that time to seek more solid

fame, by endeavoring to become an active, eloquent statesman."

But, notwithstanding this perspective, despite his genius and his youth,

Lord Byron often fell into a sort of mental prostration, which was, says

Dallas again, "rather the _result of his particular situation, feeling

himself out of his sphere, than that of a gloomy disposition_ received

from nature."

We have seen, in effect, that there were circumstances then existing

well calculated to darken his noble brow, and give him those nervous

movements that may have seemed like caprice to those who were ignorant

of their cause; and I wished to enter into these details so as to

characterize well the epoch when his melancholy was greatest, and to

show that it had its chief source in the anguish of his heart. It was to

this time he alluded, when, in other days of suffering (at the period of

his separation from Lady Byron), wherein his heart had smaller share, he

wrote to Moore:--"If my heart could have broken, it would have done so

years ago, through events more afflicting than this."

I also wished to enter into these details, because, desiring to prove

that Lord Byron's melancholy almost always arose from palpable causes,

it was necessary to make these causes known; and thus those who have

declared his griefs to be rather _imaginary_ than _real_, may find in

this chapter abundant reason for rectifying their ideas. Among the

number of such persons we may rank Mr. Macaulay, the eloquent historian,

whose opinion, however, has _no weight_, as regards Lord Byron's

character. For it is evident that he made use of this great name by way

of choosing a good theme for his eloquence, a sort of mould for fine

phrases. Besides, Macaulay did not know Lord Byron personally, nor did

he study him impartially; facts which are his _fault_ and his _excuse_.

After having paid this great tribute to grief during six months, the

storm appeared to subside, and a ray of sunshine penetrated into Lord

Byron's mind. It was then that he made Moore's acquaintance, and that of

other clever men, among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore

especially, introduced under circumstances that brought out strongly the

most amiable and estimable qualities of heart and mind, was to Lord

Byron as a beacon-light amid the clouds external and internal harassing

him then; and their sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord Byron

wrote directly to Harness:--

"Moore is the epitome of every thing exquisite in poetic and personal

perfections."

On his side, Moore, after having praised the _manly, generous, pleasing

refinement of his new friend_, sums up by saying:--"_Frank and manly as

I found his nature then, so did I ever find it to his latest hour._" And

in describing the effect produced on him by his first meeting with Lord

Byron, he says:--

"_Among the impressions which this meeting left upon me, what I chiefly

remember to have remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the

gentleness of his voice and manners._ Being in mourning for his mother,

the color, as well of his dress as of his glossy, curling, and

picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual paleness of

his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke, there was a

perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual

character when in repose."

But this melancholy, having become habitual to him through accident,

began then to disperse, as snow melts beneath the soft and warm breath

of spring. The first symptom was that he judged better of himself; for,

writing to his friend Harness, to express his general opinion on human

selfishness, he said, "But I do not think we are born of this

disposition."

"From the time of our first meeting," says Moore, "there seldom elapsed

a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each other, and our acquaintance

ripened into intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have

seldom known an example."[177]

Moore's company was a great consolation to him then, and Providence

willed that the first balsam applied to his wounds, after that of time,

should come from the hand of one whom he had lashed in his satire. He

passed in this way the last months of 1811, and the first two of the

following year. Meanwhile his star was about to rise, soon to transform,

without any transition, his misty sky into brightest light, too

dazzling, alas! to endure. For the sun, when it shines so radiantly in

early morning, absorbs too many bad vapors. But we will not anticipate

events which I am not relating here.

The parliamentary session being opened, Lord Byron resumed his seat in

the upper House. But he was only known there by the satire that had

raised him up such a host of enemies; otherwise, the handsome young man

who had come among them three years before, but who had since appeared

to disdain their labors, preferring foreign travel in Spain and the

East, was scarcely remembered. When they saw him return, still so young

and handsome, but with a grave melancholy brow, and that he immediately

distinguished himself as an orator, general admiration was excited.

Even those he had offended generously forgot their anger in sympathy for

a fellow-countryman, and pride in such a colleague; pride and enthusiasm

were so general that both parties, Tories and Whigs, shared it equally.

Lord Holland told him that _as an orator he would beat them all, if he

persevered_. Lord Grenville remarked that for the construction of his

phrases _he already resembled Burke_. Sir Francis Burdett declared that

his discourse was the _best_ pronounced by a lord in parliamentary

memory. Several other noblemen asked to be presented, and even those he

had offended came round to shake hands. Generous natures showed

themselves on this occasion. The success of the orator heralded that of

the poet, for "Childe Harold" appeared a few days after.

"The effect was," said Moore, "accordingly electric; his fame had not to

wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but seemed to spring up like

the palace of a fairy tale, in a night. As he himself briefly described

it in his memoranda:--'I awoke one morning, and found myself famous.'

"The first edition of his work was disposed of instantly; and, as the

echoes of its reputation multiplied on all sides, 'Childe Harold' and

'Lord Byron' became the theme of every tongue. At his door most of the

leading names of the day presented themselves. From morning till night

the most flattering testimonies of his success crowded his table from

the grave tributes of the statesman and the philosopher down to (what

flattered him still more) the romantic billet of some _incognita_, or

the pressing note of invitation from some fair leader of fashion; and,

in place of the desert which London had been to him but a few weeks

before, he now not only saw the whole splendid interior of high life

thrown open to receive him, but found himself among its illustrious

crowds the most distinguished object."

I may also mention Dallas, who in speaking of this unexampled success,

says:--

"Lord Byron had become the subject of every conversation in town.

"He was surrounded with honors. From the regent and his admirable

daughter, down to the editor and his clerk; from Walter Scott and

Jeffrey down to the anonymous authors of the 'Satirist' and the

'Scourge,' all and each extolled his merits. He was the admiration of

the old, and the marvel of the fashionable circles of which he had

become the idol."

This adoration of a whole nation did not turn his head, but it touched

and rejoiced his heart. When he knew himself forgiven and loved by those

even whom he had most offended in his satire, toward whom he felt most

guilty, as, for instance, the excellent Lord Holland, who asked for his

friendship, predicting his future fame as an orator, and already placing

him beside Walter Scott as a poet; then by Lord Fitzgerald, who declared

himself incapable of feeling angry with "Childe Harold," and many, many

others; when all this occurred, Lord Byron's heart expanded to the

better feelings he had long kept under control and hidden. He gave way

to his innate kindness, to generous forgiveness; his own good qualities

were stimulated by the kindness and generosity of others; this, rather

than any satisfaction of self-love, dispelled the clouds from his soul,

changed the sky and atmosphere, and his melancholy of that period, which

owed its source to the heart, became neutralized by the heartfelt

satisfaction he experienced. His letters, and particularly those to

Moore, are full of life and animation at this time; and such as he

appeared in his letters, such did Moore describe him in his habitual

frame of mind. Dallas, who before had so often seen him melancholy,

says:--