"Yours obediently, &c.
"P.S. Great anxiety is expressed for a printing press and types, &c.
I have not the time to provide them, but recommend this to the notice
of the Committee. I presume the types must, partly at least, be
_Greek_: they wish to publish papers, and perhaps a Journal, probably
in Romaic, with Italian translations."
All was now ready; and on the 13th of July himself and his whole
party slept on board the Hercules. About sunrise the next morning
they succeeded in clearing the port; but there was little wind, and
they remained in sight of Genoa the whole day. The night was a bright
moonlight, but the wind had become stormy and adverse, and they were,
for a short time, in serious danger. Lord Byron, who remained on deck
during the storm, was employed anxiously, with the aid of such of his
suite as were not disabled by sea-sickness from helping him in
preventing further mischief to the horses, which, having been badly
secured, had broken loose and injured each other. After making head
against the wind for three or four hours, the captain was at last
obliged to steer back to Genoa, and re-entered the port at six in the
morning. On landing again, after this unpromising commencement of his
voyage, Lord Byron (says Count Gamba) "appeared thoughtful, and
remarked that he considered a bad beginning a favourable omen."
It has been already, I believe, mentioned that, among the
superstitions in which he chose to indulge, the supposed unluckiness
of Friday, as a day for the commencement of any work, was one by
which he, almost always, allowed himself to be influenced. Soon after
his arrival at Pisa, a lady of his acquaintance happening to meet him
on the road from her house as she was herself returning thither, and
supposing that he had been to make her a visit, requested that he
would go back with her. "I have not been to your house," he answered;
"for, just before I got to the door, I remembered that it was Friday;
and, not liking to make my first visit on a Friday, I turned back."
It is even related of him that he once sent away a Genoese tailor who
brought him home a new coat on the same ominous day.
With all this, strange to say, he set sail for Greece on a
Friday:--and though, by those who have any leaning to this
superstitious fancy, the result maybe thought but too sadly
confirmatory of the omen, it is plain that either the influence of
the superstition over his own mind was slight, or, in the excitement
of self-devotion under which he now acted, was forgotten, In truth,
notwithstanding his encouraging speech to Count Gamba, the
forewarning he now felt of his approaching doom seems to have been
far too deep and serious to need the aid of any such accessory.
Having expressed a wish, on relanding, to visit his own palace, which
he had left to the care of Mr. Barry during his absence, and from
which Madame Guiccioli had early that morning departed, he now
proceeded thither, accompanied by Count Gamba alone. "His
conversation," says this gentleman, "was somewhat melancholy on our
way to Albaro: he spoke much of his past life, and of the uncertainty
of the future. 'Where,' said he, 'shall we be in a year?'--It looked
(adds his friend) like a melancholy foreboding; for, on the same day,
of the same month, in the next year, he was carried to the tomb of
his ancestors."
It took nearly the whole of the day to repair the damages of their
vessel; and the greater part of this interval was passed by Lord
Byron, in company with Mr. Barry, at some gardens near the city. Here
his conversation, as this gentleman informs me, took the same gloomy
turn. That he had not fixed to go to England, in preference, seemed
one of his deep regrets; and so hopeless were the views he expressed
of the whole enterprise before him, that, as it appeared to Mr.
Barry, nothing but a devoted sense of duty and honour could have
determined him to persist in it.
In the evening of that day they set sail;--and now, fairly launched
in the cause, and disengaged, as it were, from his former state of
existence, the natural power of his spirit to shake off pressure,
whether from within or without, began instantly to display itself.
According to the report of one of his fellow-voyagers, though so
clouded while on shore, no sooner did he find himself, once more,
bounding over the waters, than all the light and life of his better
nature shone forth. In the breeze that now bore him towards his
beloved Greece, the voice of his youth seemed again to speak. Before
the titles of hero, of benefactor, to which he now aspired, that of
poet, however pre-eminent, faded into nothing. His love of freedom,
his generosity, his thirst for the new and adventurous,--all were
re-awakened; and even the bodings that still lingered at the bottom
of his heart but made the course before him more precious from his
consciousness of its brevity, and from the high and self-ennobling
resolution he had now taken to turn what yet remained of it
gloriously to account.
"Parte, e porta un desio d'eterna ed alma
Gloria che a nobil cuor e sferza e sprone;
A magnanime imprese intenta ha l'alma,
Ed _insolite cose oprar_ dispone.
Gir fra i nemici--_ivi o cipresso o palma_
Acquistar."
After a passage of five days, they reached Leghorn, at which place it
was thought necessary to touch, for the purpose of taking on board a
supply of gunpowder, and other English goods, not to be had
elsewhere.
It would have been the wish of Lord Byron, in the new path he had now
marked out for himself, to disconnect from his name, if possible, all
those poetical associations, which, by throwing a character of
romance over the step he was now taking, might have a tendency, as he
feared, to impair its practical utility; and it is, perhaps, hardly
saying too much for his sincere zeal in the cause to assert, that he
would willingly at this moment have sacrificed his whole fame, as
poet, for even the prospect of an equivalent renown, as
philanthropist and liberator. How vain, however, was the thought that
he could thus supersede his own glory, or cause the fame of the lyre
to be forgotten in that of the sword, was made manifest to him by a
mark of homage which reached him, while at Leghorn, from the hands of
one of the only two men of the age who could contend with him in the
universality of his literary fame.
Already, as has been seen, an exchange of courtesies, founded upon
mutual admiration, had taken place between Lord Byron and the great
poet of Germany, Goethe. Of this intercourse between two such
men,--the former as brief a light in the world's eyes, as the latter
has been long and steadily luminous,--an account has been by the
venerable survivor put on record, which, as a fit preliminary to the
letter I am about to give, I shall here insert in as faithful a
translation as it has been in my power to procure.
"GOETHE AND BYRON.
"The German poet, who, down to the latest period of his long life,
had been always anxious to acknowledge the merits of his literary
predecessors and contemporaries, because he has always considered
this to be the surest means of cultivating his own powers, could not
but have his attention attracted to the great talent of the noble
Lord almost from his earliest appearance, and uninterruptedly watched
the progress of his mind throughout the great works which he
unceasingly produced. It was immediately perceived by him that the
public appreciation of his poetical merits kept pace with the rapid
succession of his writings. The joyful sympathy of others would have
been perfect, had not the poet, by a life marked by
self-dissatisfaction, and the indulgence of strong passions,
disturbed the enjoyment which his infinite genius produced. But his
German admirer was not led astray by this, or prevented from
following with close attention both his works and his life in all
their eccentricity. These astonished him the more, as he found in the
experience of past ages no element for the calculation of so
eccentric an orbit.
"These endeavours of the German did not remain unknown to the
Englishman, of which his poems contain unambiguous proofs; and he
also availed himself of the means afforded by various travellers, to
forward some friendly salutation to his unknown admirer. At length a
manuscript Dedication of _Sardanapaius_, in the most complimentary
terms, was forwarded to him, with an obliging enquiry whether it
might be prefixed to the tragedy. The German, who, at his advanced
age, was conscious of his own powers and of their effects, could only
gratefully and modestly consider this Dedication as the expression of
an inexhaustible intellect, deeply feeling and creating its own
object. He was by no means dissatisfied when, after a long delay,
Sardanapaius appeared without the Dedication; and was made happy by
the possession of a fac-simile of it, engraved on stone, which he
considered a precious memorial.
The noble Lord, however, did not abandon his purpose of proclaiming
to the world his valued kindness towards his German contemporary and
brother poet, a precious evidence of which was placed in front of the
tragedy of Werner. It will be readily believed, when so unhoped for
an honour was conferred upon the German poet,--one seldom experienced
in life, and that too from one himself so highly distinguished,--he
was by no means reluctant to express the high esteem and sympathising
sentiment with which his unsurpassed contemporary had inspired him.
The task was difficult, and was found the more so, the more it was
contemplated;--for what can be said of one whose unfathomable
qualities are not to be reached by words? But when a young gentleman,
Mr. Sterling, of pleasing person and excellent character, in the
spring of 1823, on a journey from Genoa to Weimar, delivered a few
lines under the hand of the great man as an introduction, and when
the report was soon after spread that the noble Peer was about to
direct his great mind and various power to deeds of sublime daring
beyond the ocean, there appeared to be no time left for further
delay, and the following lines were hastily written[1]:--
[Footnote 1: I insert the verses in the original language, as an
English version gives but a very imperfect notion of their meaning.]
"Ein freundlich Wort kommt eines nach dem andern
Von Süden her und bringt uns frohe Stunden;
Es ruft uns auf zum Edelsten zu wandern,
Nich ist der Geist, doch ist der Fuss gebunden.
"Wie soil ich dem, den ich so lang begleitet,
Nun etwas Traulich's in die Ferne sagen?
Ihm der sich selbst im Innersten bestreitet,
Stark angewohnt das tiefste Weh zu tragen.
"Wohl sey ihm doch, wenn er sich selbst empfindet!
Er wage selbst sich hoch beglückt zu nennen,
Wenn Musenkraft die Schmerzen überwindet,
Und wie ich ihn erkannt mög' er sich kennen.
"The verses reached Genoa, but the excellent friend to whom they were
addressed was already gone, and to a distance, as it appeared,
inaccessible. Driven back, however, by storms, he landed at Leghorn,
where these cordial lines reached him just as he was about to embark,
on the 24th of July, 1823. He had barely time to answer by a
well-filled page, which the possessor has preserved among his most
precious papers, as the worthiest evidence of the connection that had
been formed. Affecting and delightful as was such a document, and
justifying the most lively hopes, it has acquired now the greatest,
though most painful value, from the untimely death of the lofty
writer, which adds a peculiar edge to the grief felt generally
throughout the whole moral and poetical world at his loss: for we
were warranted in hoping, that when his great deeds should have been
achieved, we might personally have greeted in him the pre-eminent
intellect, the happily acquired friend, and the most humane of
conquerors. At present we can only console ourselves with the
conviction that his country will at last recover from that violence
of invective and reproach which has been so long raised against him,
and will learn to understand that the dross and lees of the age and
the individual, out of which even the best have to elevate
themselves, are but perishable and transient, while the wonderful
glory to which he in the present and through all future ages has
elevated his country, will be as boundless in its splendour as it is
incalculable in its consequences. Nor can there be any doubt that the
nation, which can boast of so many great names, will class him among
the first of those through whom she has acquired such glory."
The following is Lord Byron's answer to the communication above
mentioned from Goethe:--