"CHILDE HAROLD'S LAST PILGRIMAGE.
"BY THE REV. W.L. BOWLES.
"SO ENDS CHILDE HAROLD HIS LAST PILGRIMAGE!--
Upon the shores of Greece he stood, and cried
'LIBERTY!' and those shores, from age to age
Renown'd, and Sparta's woods and rocks replied
'Liberty!' But a Spectre, at his side,
Stood mocking;--and its dart, uplifting high,
Smote him;--he sank to earth in life's fair pride:
SPARTA! thy rocks then heard another cry,
And old Ilissus sigh'd--'Die, generous exile, die!'
"I will not ask sad Pity to deplore
His wayward errors, who thus early died;
Still less, CHILDE HAROLD, now thou art no more,
Will I say aught of genius misapplied;
Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride:--
But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave,
Pluck the green laurel from Peneus' side,
And pray thy spirit may such quiet have,
That not one thought unkind be murmur'd o'er thy grave.
"SO HAROLD ENDS, IN GREECE, HIS PILGRIMAGE!--
There fitly ending,--in that land renown'd,
Whose mighty genius lives in Glory's page,--
He, on the Muses' consecrated ground,
Sinking to rest, while his young brows are bound
With their unfading wreath!--To bands of mirth,
No more in TEMPE let the pipe resound!
HAROLD, I follow to thy place of birth
The slow hearse--and thy LAST sad PILGRIMAGE on earth.
"Slow moves the plumed hearse, the mourning train,--
I mark the sad procession with a sigh,
Silently passing to that village fane,
Where, HAROLD, thy forefathers mouldering lie;--
There sleeps THAT MOTHER, who with tearful eye,
Pondering the fortunes of thy early road,
Hung o'er the slumbers of thine infancy;
Her son, released from mortal labour's load,
Now comes to rest, with her, in the same still abode.
"Bursting Death's silence--could that mother speak--
(Speak when the earth was heap'd upon his head)--
In thrilling, but with hollow accent weak,
She thus might give the welcome of the dead:--
'Here rest, my son, with me;--the dream is fled;--
The motley mask and the great stir is o'er:
Welcome to me, and to this silent bed,
Where deep forgetfulness succeeds the roar
Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more.'"
By his Lordship's Will, a copy of which will be found in the
Appendix, he bequeathed to his executors in trust for the benefit of
his sister, Mrs. Leigh, the monies arising from the sale of all his
real estates at Rochdale and elsewhere, together with such part of
his other property as was not settled upon Lady Byron and his
daughter Ada, to be by Mrs. Leigh enjoyed, free from her husband's
control, during her life, and, after her decease, to be inherited by
her children.
We have now followed to its close a life which, brief as was its
span, may be said, perhaps, to have comprised within itself a greater
variety of those excitements and interest which spring out of the
deep workings of passion and of intellect than any that the pen of
biography has ever before commemorated. As there still remain among
the papers of my friend some curious gleanings which, though in the
abundance of our materials I have not hitherto found a place for
them, are too valuable towards the illustration of his character to
be lost, I shall here, in selecting them for the reader, avail myself
of the opportunity of trespassing, for the last time, on his patience
with a few general remarks.
It must have been observed, throughout these pages, and by some,
perhaps, with disappointment, that into the character of Lord Byron,
as a poet, there has been little, if any, critical examination; but
that, content with expressing generally the delight which, in common
with all, I derive from his poetry, I have left the task of analysing
the sources from which this delight springs to others.[1] In thus
evading, if it must be so considered, one of my duties as a
biographer, I have been influenced no less by a sense of my own
inaptitude for the office of critic than by recollecting with what
assiduity, throughout the whole of the poet's career, every new
rising of his genius was watched from the great observatories of
Criticism, and the ever changing varieties of its course and
splendour tracked out and recorded with a degree of skill and
minuteness which has left but little for succeeding observers to
discover. It is, moreover, into the character and conduct of Lord
Byron, as a man, not distinct from, but forming, on the contrary, the
best illustration of his character, as a writer, that it has been the
more immediate purpose of these volumes to enquire; and if, in the
course of them, any satisfactory clue has been afforded to those
anomalies, moral and intellectual, which his life exhibited,--still
more, should it have been the effect of my humble labours to clear
away some of those mists that hung round my friend, and show him, in
most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in all, of admiration,
then will the chief and sole aim of this work have been accomplished.
[Footnote 1: It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray
that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best
observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few
tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of
following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious
genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo),
and either labouring to point out to us _why_ it has triumphed, or
still more unprofitably contending that it _ought_ to have failed.
The well-known passage of La Bruyère, which even Voltaire's adulatory
application of it to some work of the King of Prussia has not spoiled
for use, puts, perhaps, in its true point of view the very
subordinate rank which Criticism must be content to occupy in the
train of successful Genius:--"Quand une lecture vous élève l'esprit
et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherehez pas une
autre règle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de
l'ouvrier: La Critique, après ça, peut s'exercer sur les petites
choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, parler de
syntaxe," &c. &c.]
Having devoted to this object so large a portion of my own share of
these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a
judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and
without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but
an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and,
out of the features, already separately described, combining one
complete portrait. The task, however, is by no means so easy as it
may appear. There are few characters in which a near acquaintance
does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion
consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into
account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found.
Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its
other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one
governing influence, from which chiefly,--though, of course, biassed
on some occasions by others,--all its various impulses and tendencies
will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot
of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at
different moments by totally different passions, and impelled
sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by
springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this
simple mode of tracing character to its sources must be often wholly
at fault; and if, as is not impossible, in trying to solve the
strange variances of his mind, I should myself be found to have
fallen into contradictions and inconsistencies, the extreme
difficulty of analysing, without dazzle or bewilderment, such an
unexampled complication of qualities must be admitted as my excuse.
So various, indeed, and contradictory, were his attributes, both
moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not
one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to
say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single
mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might
have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him
that led the world, during his short wondrous career, to compare him
with that medley host of personages, almost all differing from each
other, which he thus playfully enumerates in one of his Journals:--
"I have been thinking over, the other day, on the various
comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in
different journals, English and foreign. This was suggested to me by
accidentally turning over a foreign one lately,--for I have made it a
rule latterly never to _search_ for any thing of the kind, but not to
avoid the perusal, if presented by chance.
"To begin, then: I have seen myself compared, personally or
poetically, in English, French, _German_ (_as_ interpreted to me),
Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau,
Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an
alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte,
Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown,
Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to
Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael
Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maître, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold,
to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to
Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to 'oft have I heard of thee, my
Lord Biron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor,
to Alfieri, &c. &c. &c.
"The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an Italian
who had known him in his younger days. It of course related merely to
our apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert it to _me_ (for
we were not then good friends), but in society.
"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be
like something different from them all; but what _that_ is, is more
than _I_ know, or any body else."
It would not be uninteresting, were there either space or time for
such a task, to take a review of the names of note in the preceding
list, and show in how many points, though differing so materially
among themselves, it might be found that each presented a striking
resemblance to Lord Byron. We have seen, for instance, that wrongs
and sufferings were, through life, the main sources of Byron's
inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was
first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but
forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to
misfortune, the same debt to the "oppressor's wrong," for having
wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was
due no less deeply by Dante!--"quum illam sub amarâ cogitatione
excitatam, occulti divinique ingenii vim exacuerit et
inflammarit."[1]
[Footnote 1: Paulus Jovius.--Bayle, too, says of him, "Il fit entrer
plus de feu et plus de force dans ses livres qu'il n'y en eût mis
s'il avoit joui d'une condition plus tranquille."]
In that contempt for the world's opinion, which led Dante to exclaim,
"Lascia dir le genti," Lord Byron also bore a strong resemblance to
that poet,--though far more, it must be confessed, in profession than
reality. For, while scorn for the public voice was on his lips, the
keenest sensitiveness to its every breath was in his heart; and, as
if every feeling of his nature was to have some painful mixture in
it, together with the pride of Dante which led him to disdain public
opinion, he combined the susceptibility of Petrarch which placed him
shrinkingly at its mercy.
His agreement, in some other features of character, with Petrarch, I
have already had occasion to remark[1]; and if it be true, as is
often surmised, that Byron's want of a due reverence for Shakspeare
arose from some latent and hardly conscious jealousy of that poet's
fame, a similar feeling is known to have existed in Petrarch towards
Dante; and the same reason assigned for it,--that from the living he
had nothing to fear, while before the shade of Dante he might have
reason to feel humbled,--is also not a little applicable[2] in the
case of Lord Byron.
[Footnote 1: Some passages in Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch may be
applied, with equal truth, to Lord Byron.--For instance, "It was
hardly possible with Petrarch to write a sentence without portraying
himself"--"Petrarch, allured by the idea that his celebrity would
magnify into importance all the ordinary occurrences of his life,
satisfied the curiosity of the world," &c. &c.--and again, with still
more striking applicability,--"In Petrarch's letters, as well as in
his Poems and Treatises, we always identify the author with the man,
who felt himself irresistibly impelled to develope his own intense
feelings. Being endowed with almost all the noble, and with some of
the paltry passions of our nature, and having never attempted to
conceal them, he awakens us to reflection upon ourselves while we
contemplate in him a being of our own species, yet different from any
other, and whose originality excites even more sympathy than
admiration."]
[Footnote 2: "II Petrarca poteva credere candidamente ch'ei non
pativa d'invidia solamente, perché fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi
non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non
poteva sentirsi umiliato, fuorchè dall' ombra di Dante."]
Between the dispositions and habits of Alfieri and those of the noble
poet of England, no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and
the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own
character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the
versatile author of Don Juan,--
"Or stimandome Achille ed or Tersite."
By the extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived
that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted
of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than
wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection,
that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix,
"ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character, is, in itself,
the true clue through all that fabric's mazes,--is in itself the
solution of whatever was most dazzling in his might or startling in
his levity, of all that most attracted and repelled, whether in his
life or his genius. A variety of powers almost boundless, and a pride
no less vast in displaying them,--a susceptibility of new impressions
and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius, and an
uncontrolled impetuosity, as well from habit as temperament, in
yielding to them,--such were the two great and leading sources of all
that varied spectacle which his life exhibited; of that succession of
victories achieved by his genius, in almost every field of mind that
genius ever trod, and of all those sallies of character in every
shape and direction that unchecked feeling and dominant self-will
could dictate.
It must be perceived by all endowed with quick powers of association
how constantly, when any particular thought or sentiment presents
itself to their minds, its very opposite, at the same moment, springs
up there also:--if any thing sublime occurs, its neighbour, the
ridiculous, is by its side;--across a bright view of the present or
the future, a dark one throws its shadow;--and, even in questions
respecting morals and conduct, all the reasonings and consequences
that may suggest themselves on the side of one of two opposite
courses will, in such minds, be instantly confronted by an array just
as cogent on the other. A mind of this structure,--and such, more or
less, are all those in which the reasoning is made subservient to the
imaginative faculty,--though enabled, by such rapid powers of
association, to multiply its resources without end, has need of the
constant exercise of a controlling judgment to keep its perceptions
pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously
calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are
concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxtapositions--as
that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime--should at last
vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and
that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in
finding reasons for every side of a question may end, if not in the
choice of the worst, at least in a sceptical indifference to all.
In picturing to oneself so awful an event as a shipwreck, its many
horrors and perils are what alone offer themselves to ordinary
fancies. But the keen, versatile imagination of Byron could detect in
it far other details, and, at the same moment with all that is
fearful and appalling in such a scene, could bring together all that
is most ludicrous and low. That in this painful mixture he was but
too true to human nature, the testimony of De Retz (himself an
eye-witness of such an event) attests:--"Vous ne pouvez vous imaginer
(says the Cardinal) l'horreur d'une grande tempête;--vous en pouvez
imaginer aussi pen le ridicule." But, assuredly, a poet less
wantoning in the variety of his power, and less proud of displaying
it, would have paused ere he mixed up, thus mockingly, the
degradation of humanity with its sufferings, and, content to probe us
to the core with the miseries of our fellow-men, would have forborne
to wring from us, the next moment, a bitter smile at their baseness.
To the moral sense so dangerous are the effects of this quality, that
it would hardly, perhaps, be generalising too widely to assert that
wheresoever great versatility of power exists, there will also be
found a tendency to versatility of principle. The poet Chatterton, in
whose soul the seeds of all that is good and bad in genius so
prematurely ripened, said, in the consciousness of this multiple
faculty, that he "held that man in contempt who could not write on
both sides of a question;" and it was by acting in accordance with
this principle himself that he brought one of the few stains upon his
name which a life so short afforded time to incur. Mirabeau, too,
when, in the legal warfare between his father and mother, he helped
to draw up for each the pleadings against the other, was influenced
less, no doubt, by the pleasure of mischief than by this pride of
talent, and lost sight of the unnatural perfidy of the task in the
adroitness with which he executed it.
The quality which I have here denominated versatility, as applied to
_power_, Lord Byron has himself designated by the French word
"mobility," as applied to _feeling_ and _conduct_; and, in one of the
Cantos of Don Juan, has described happily some of its lighter
features. After telling us that his hero had begun to doubt, from the
great predominance of this quality in her, "how much of Adeline was
_real_," he says,--
"So well she acted, all and every part,
By turns,--with that vivacious versatility,
Which many people take for want of heart.
They err--'tis merely what is called mobility,
A thing of temperament and not of art,
Though seeming so, from its supposed facility;
And false--though true; for surely they're sincerest,
Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest."
That he was fully aware not only of the abundance of this quality in
his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and
singleness of character, did not require the note on this passage,
where he calls it "an unhappy attribute," to assure us. The
consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to
every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was
not only for ever present in his mind, but,--aware as he was of the
suspicion of weakness attached by the world to any retractation or
abandonment of long professed opinions,--had the effect of keeping
him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects,
which, notwithstanding occasional fluctuations and contradictions as
to the details of these very subjects, he continued to preserve
throughout life. A passage from one of his manuscripts will show how
sagaciously he saw the necessity of guarding himself against his own
instability in this respect. "The world visits change of politics or
change of religion with a more severe censure than a mere difference
of opinion would appear to me to deserve. But there must be some
reason for this feeling;--and I think it is that these departures
from the earliest instilled ideas of our childhood, and from the line
of conduct chosen by us when we first enter into public life, have
been seen to have more mischievous results for society, and to prove
more weakness of mind than other actions, in themselves, more
immoral."
The same distrust in his own steadiness, thus keeping alive in him a
conscientious self-watchfulness, concurred not a little, I have no
doubt, with the innate kindness of his nature, to preserve so
constant and unbroken the greater number of his attachments through
life;--some of them, as in the instance of his mother, owing
evidently more to a sense of duty than to real affection, the
consistency with which, so creditably to the strength of his
character, they were maintained.
But while in these respects, as well as in the sort of task-like
perseverance with which the habits and amusements of his youth were
held fast by him, he succeeded in conquering the variableness and
love of novelty so natural to him, in all else that could engage his
mind, in all the excursions, whether of his reason or his fancy, he
gave way to this versatile humour without scruple or check,--taking
every shape in which genius could manifest its power, and
transferring himself to every region of thought where new conquests
were to be achieved.
It was impossible but that such a range of will and power should be
abused. It was impossible that, among the spirits he invoked from all
quarters, those of darkness should not appear, at his bidding, with
those of light. And here the dangers of an energy so multifold, and
thus luxuriating in its own transformations, show themselves. To this
one great object of displaying power,--various, splendid, and
all-adorning power,--every other consideration and duty were but too
likely to be sacrificed. Let the advocate but display his eloquence
and art, no matter what the cause;--let the stamp of energy be but
left behind, no matter with what seal. _Could_ it have been expected
that from such a career no mischief would ensue, or that among these
cross-lights of imagination the moral vision could remain
undisturbed? _Is_ it to be at all wondered at that in the works of
one thus gifted and carried away, we should find,--wholly, too,
without any prepense design of corrupting on his side,--a false
splendour given to Vice to make it look like Virtue, and Evil too
often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to
Good?
Among the less serious ills flowing from this abuse of his great
versatile powers,--more especially as exhibited in his most
characteristic work, Don Juan,--it will be found that even the
strength and impressiveness of his poetry is sometimes not a little
injured by the capricious and desultory flights into which this
pliancy of wing allures him. It must be felt, indeed, by all readers
of that work, and particularly by those who, being gifted with but a
small portion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace
with his changes, that the suddenness with which he passes from one
strain of sentiment to another,--from the frolic to the sad, from the
cynical to the tender,--begets a distrust in the sincerity of one or
both moods of mind which interferes with, if not chills, the sympathy
that a more natural transition would inspire. In general such a
suspicion would do him injustice; as, among the singular combinations
which his mind presented, that of uniting at once versatility and
depth of feeling was not the least remarkable. But, on the whole,
favourable as was all this quickness and variety of association to
the extension of the range and resources of his poetry, it may be
questioned whether a more select concentration of his powers would
not have afforded a still more grand and precious result. Had the
minds of Milton and Tasso been thus thrown open to the incursions of
light, ludicrous fancies, who can doubt that those solemn sanctuaries
of genius would have been as much injured as profaned by the
intrusion?--and it is at least a question whether, if Lord Byron had
not been so actively versatile, so totally under the dominion of
"A fancy, like the air, most free,
And full of mutability,"
he would not have been less wonderful, perhaps, but more great.
Nor was it only in his poetical creations that this love and power of
variety showed itself:--one of the most pervading weaknesses of his
life may be traced to the same fertile source. The pride of
personating every description of character, evil as well as good,
influenced but too much, as we have seen, his ambition, and, not a
little, his conduct; and as, in poetry, his own experience of the ill
effects of passion was made to minister materials to the workings of
his imagination, so, in return, his imagination supplied that dark
colouring under which he so often disguised his true aspect from the
world. To such a perverse length, indeed, did he carry this fancy for
self-defamation, that if (as sometimes, in his moments of gloom, he
persuaded himself,) there was any tendency to derangement in his
mental conformation[1], on this point alone could it be pronounced to
have manifested itself.[2] In the early part of my acquaintance with
him, when he most gave way to this humour,--for it was observable
afterwards, when the world joined in his own opinion of himself, he
rather shrunk from the echo,--I have known him more than once, as we
have sat together after dinner, and he was, at the time, perhaps, a
little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously into this sort
of dark and self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past life
with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken
curiosity and interest. He was, however, too promptly alive to the
least approaches of ridicule not to perceive, on these occasions,
that the gravity of his hearer was only prevented from being
disturbed by an effort of politeness, and he accordingly never again
tried this romantic mystification upon me. From what I have known,
however, of his experiments upon more impressible listeners, I have
little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly
any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus
acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that
he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the
occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself
and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have
been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some
dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended
by the relater but to mystify and surprise, the hearer so little
understood him as to take in sober seriousness.
[Footnote 1: We have seen how often, in his Journals and Letters,
this suspicion of his own mental soundness is intimated. A similar
notion, with respect to himself, seems to have taken hold also of the
strong mind of Johnson, who, like Byron, too, was disposed to
attribute to an hereditary tinge that melancholy which, as he said,
"made him mad all his life, at least not sober." This peculiar
feature of Johnson's mind has, in the late new edition of Boswell's
Life of him, given rise to some remarks, pregnant with all the
editor's well known acuteness, which, as bearing on a point so
important in the history of the human intellect, will be found worthy
of all attention.
In one of the many letters of Lord Byron to myself, which I have
thought right to omit, I find him tracing this supposed disturbance
of his own faculties to the marriage of Miss Chaworth;--"a marriage,"
he says, "for which she sacrificed the prospects of two very ancient
families, and a heart which was hers from ten years old, and a head
which has never been quite right since."]
[Footnote 2: In his Diary of 1814 there is a passage (vol. ii. page
270.) which I had preserved solely for the purpose of illustrating
this obliquity of his mind, intending, at the same time, to accompany
it with an explanatory note. From some inadvertence, however, the
note was omitted; and, thus left to itself, this piece of
mystification has, with the French readers of the work, I see,
succeeded most perfectly; there being no imaginable variety of murder
which the votaries of the new romantic school have not been busily
extracting out of the mystery of that passage.]
This strange propensity with which the man was, as it were,
inoculated by the poet, re-acted back again upon his poetry, so as to
produce, in some of his delineations of character, that inconsistency
which has not unfrequently been noticed by his critics,--namely, the
junction of one or two lofty and shining virtues with "a thousand
crimes" altogether incompatible with them; this anomaly being, in
fact, accounted for by the two different sorts of ambition that
actuated him,--the natural one, of infusing into his personages those
high and kindly qualities he felt conscious of within himself, and
the artificial one, of investing them with those crimes which he so
boyishly wished imputed to him by the world.
Independently, however, of any such efforts towards blackening his
own name, and even after he had learned from bitter experience the
rash folly of such a system, there was still, in the openness and
over-frankness of his nature, and that indulgence of impulse with
which he gave utterance to, if not acted upon, every chance
impression of the moment, more than sufficient to bring his
character, in all its least favourable lights, before the world. Who
is there, indeed, that could bear to be judged by even the best of
those unnumbered thoughts that course each other, like waves of the
sea, through our minds, passing away unuttered, and, for the most
part, even unowned by ourselves?--Yet to such a test was Byron's
character throughout his whole life exposed. As well from the
precipitance with which he gave way to every impulse as from the
passion he had for recording his own impressions, all those
heterogeneous thoughts, fantasies, and desires that, in other men's
minds, "come like shadows, so depart," were by him fixed and embodied
as they presented themselves, and, at once, taking a shape cognizable
by public opinion, either in his actions or his words, either in the
hasty letter of the moment, or the poem for all time, laid open such
a range of vulnerable points before his judges, as no one individual
perhaps ever before, of himself, presented.
With such abundance and variety of materials for portraiture, it may
easily be conceived how two professed delineators of his character,
the one over partial and the other malicious, might,--the former, by
selecting only the fairer, and the latter only the darker,
features,--produce two portraits of Lord Byron, as much differing
from each other as they would both be, on the whole, unlike the
original.
Of the utter powerlessness of retention with which he promulgated his
every thought and feeling,--more especially if at all connected with
the subject of self,--without allowing even a pause for the almost
instinctive consideration whether by such disclosures he might not be
conveying a calumnious impression of himself, a stronger instance
could hardly be given than is to be found in a conversation held by
him with Mr. Trelawney, as reported by this latter gentleman, when
they were on their way together to Greece. After some remarks on the
state of his own health[1], mental and bodily, he said, "I don't know
how it is, but I am so cowardly at times, that if, this morning, you
had come down and horsewhipped me, I should have submitted without
opposition. Why is this? If one of these fits come over me when we
are in Greece, what shall I do?"--"I told him (continues Mr.
Trelawney) that it was the excessive debility of his nerves. He said,
'Yes, and of my head, too. I was very heroic when I left Genoa, but,
like Acres, I feel my courage oozing out at my palms.'"
[Footnote 1: "He often mentioned," says Mr. Trelawney, "that he
thought he should not live many years, and said that he would die in
Greece." This he told me at Cephalonia. He always seemed unmoved on
these occasions, perfectly indifferent as to when he died, only
saying that he could not bear pain. On our voyage we had been reading
with great attention the life and letters of Swift, edited by Scott,
and we almost daily, or rather nightly, talked them over; and he more
than once expressed his horror of existing in that state, and
expressed some fears that it would be his fate.]
It will hardly, by those who know any thing of human nature, be
denied that such misgivings and heart-sinkings as are here described
may, under a similar depression of spirits, have found their way into
the thoughts of some of the gallantest hearts that ever
breathed;--but then, untold and unremembered, even by the sufferer
himself, they passed off with the passing infirmity that produced
them, leaving neither to truth to record them as proofs of want of
health, nor to calumny to fasten upon them a suspicion of want of
bravery. The assertion of some one that all men are by nature
cowardly would seem to be countenanced by the readiness with which
most men believe others so. "I have lived," says the Prince de Ligne,
"to hear Voltaire called a fool, and the great Frederick a coward."
The Duke of Marlborough in his own times, and Napoleon in ours, have
found persons not only to assert but believe the same charge against
them. After such glaring instances of the tendency of some minds to
view greatness only through an inverting medium, it need little
surprise us that Lord Byron's conduct in Greece should, on the same
principle, have engendered a similar insinuation against him; nor
should I have at all noticed the weak slander, but for the
opportunity which it affords me of endeavouring to point out what
appears to me the peculiar nature of the courage by which, on all
occasions that called for it, he so strikingly distinguished himself.
Whatever virtue may be allowed to belong to personal courage, it is,
most assuredly, they who are endowed by nature with the liveliest
imaginations, and who have therefore most vividly and simultaneously
before their eyes all the remote and possible consequences of danger,
that are most deserving of whatever praise attends the exercise of
that virtue. A bravery of this kind, which springs more out of mind
than temperament,--or rather, perhaps, out of the conquest of the
former over the latter,--will naturally proportion its exertion to
the importance of the occasion; and the same person who is seen to
shrink with an almost feminine fear from ignoble and every-day
perils, may be found foremost in the very jaws of danger where honour
is to be either maintained or won. Nor does this remark apply only to
the imaginative class, of whom I am chiefly treating. By the same
calculating principle, it will be found that most men whose bravery
is the result not of temperament but reflection, are regulated in
their daring. The wise De Wit, though negligent of his life on great
occasions, was not ashamed, we are told, of dreading and avoiding
whatever endangered it on others.
Of the apprehensiveness that attends quick imaginations, Lord Byron
had, of course, a considerable share, and in all situations of
ordinary peril gave way to it without reserve. I have seldom seen any
person, male or female, more timid in a carriage; and, in riding, his
preparation against accidents showed the same nervous and imaginative
fearfulness. "His bridle," says the late Lord B----, who rode
frequently with him at Genoa, "had, besides cavesson and martingale,
various reins; and whenever he came near a place where his horse was
likely to shy, he gathered up these said reins and fixed himself as
if he was going at a five-barred gate." None surely but the most
superficial or most prejudiced observers could ever seriously found
upon such indications of nervousness any conclusion against the real
courage of him who was subject to them. The poet Ariosto, who was, it
seems, a victim to the same fair-weather alarms,--who, when on
horseback, would alight at the least appearance of danger, and on the
water was particularly timorous,--could yet, in the action between
the Pope's vessels and the Duke of Ferrara's, fight like a lion; and
in the same manner the courage of Lord Byron, as all his companions
in peril testify, was of that noblest kind which rises with the
greatness of the occasion, and becomes but the more self-collected
and resisting, the more imminent the danger.
In proposing to show that the distinctive properties of Lord Byron's
character, as well moral as literary, arose mainly from those two
great sources, the unexampled versatility of his powers and feelings,
and the facility with which he gave way to the impulses of both, it
had been my intention to pursue the subject still further in detail,
and to endeavour to trace throughout the various excellences and
defects, both of his poetry and his life, the operation of these two
dominant attributes of his nature. "No men," says Cowper, in speaking
of persons of a versatile turn of mind, "are better qualified for
companions in such a world as this than men of such temperament.
Every scene of life has two sides, a dark and a bright one; and the
mind that has an equal mixture of melancholy and vivacity is best of
all qualified for the contemplation of either." It would not be
difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues,
whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence,
Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet,
but those powers of fascination which he possessed as a man. This
susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him was so
active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his
social intercourse, by giving to those who were, at the moment,
present, such ascendant influence, that they alone for the time
occupied all his thoughts and feelings, and brought whatever was most
agreeable in his nature into play.[1]
[Footnote 1: In reference to his power of adapting himself to all
sorts of society, and taking upon himself all varieties of character,
I find a passage in one of my early letters to him (from Ireland)
which, though it might be expressed, perhaps, in better taste, is
worth citing for its truth:--"Though I have not written, I have
seldom ceased to think of you; for you are that sort of being whom
every thing, high or low, brings into one's mind. Whether I am with
the wise or the waggish, among poets or among pugilists, over the
book or over the bottle, you are sure to connect yourself
transcendently with all, and come 'armed for _every_ field' into my
memory."]
So much did this extreme mobility,--this readiness to be "strongly
acted on by what was nearest,"--abound in his disposition, that, even
with the casual acquaintances of the hour, his heart was upon his
lips[1], and it depended wholly upon themselves whether they might
not become at once the depositories of every secret, if it might be
so called, of his whole life. That in this convergence of all the
powers of pleasing towards present objects, those absent should be
sometimes forgotten, or, what is worse, sacrificed to the reigning
desire of the moment, is unluckily one of the alloys attendant upon
persons of this temperament, which renders their fidelity, either as
lovers or confidants, not a little precarious. But of the charm which
such a disposition diffuses through the manner there can be but
little doubt,--and least of all among those who have ever felt its
influence in Lord Byron. Neither are the instances in which he has
been known to make imprudent disclosures of what had been said or
written by others of the persons with whom he was conversing to be
all set down to this rash overflow of the social hour. In his own
frankness of spirit, and hatred of all disguise, this practice,
pregnant as it was with inconvenience, and sometimes danger, in a
great degree originated. To confront the accused with the accuser
was, in such cases, his delight,--not only as a revenge for having
been made the medium of what men durst not say openly to each other,
but as a gratification of that love of small mischief which he had
retained from boyhood, and which the confusion that followed such
exposures was always sure to amuse. This habit, too, being, as I have
before remarked, well known to his friends, their sense of prudence,
if not their fairness, was put fully on its guard, and he himself was
spared the pain of hearing what he could not, without inflicting
still worse, repeat.
[Footnote 1: It is curious to observe how, in all times, and all
countries, what is called the poetical temperament has, in the great
possessors, and victims, of that gift, produced similar effects. In
the following passage, the biographer of Tasso has, in painting that
poet, described Byron also:--"There are some persons of a sensibility
so powerful, that whoever happens to be with them is, at that moment,
to them the world: their hearts involuntarily open; they are prompted
by a strong desire to please; and they thus make confidants of their
sentiments people whom they in reality regard with indifference."]
A most apt illustration of this point of his character is to be found
in an anecdote told of him by Parry, who, though himself the victim,
had the sense and good temper to perceive the source to which Byron's
conduct was to be traced. While the Turkish fleet was blockading
Missolonghi, his Lordship, one day, attended by Parry, proceeded in a
small punt, rowed by a boy, to the mouth of the harbour, while in a
large boat accompanying them were Prince Mavrocordato and his
attendants. In this situation, an indignant feeling of contempt and
impatience at the supineness of their Greek friends seized the
engineer, and he proceeded to vent this feeling to Lord Byron in no
very measured terms, pronouncing Prince Mavrocordato to be "an old
gentlewoman," and concluding, according to his own statement, with
the following words:--"If I were in their place, I should be in a
fever at the thought of my own incapacity and ignorance, and should
burn with impatience to attempt the destruction of those rascal
Turks. But the Greeks and the Turks are opponents worthy, by their
imbecility, of each other."
"I had scarcely explained myself fully," adds Mr. Parry, "when his
Lordship ordered our boat to be placed alongside the other, and
actually related our whole conversation to the Prince. In doing it,
however, he took on himself the task of pacifying both the Prince and
me, and though I was at first very angry, and the Prince, I believe,
very much annoyed, he succeeded. Mavrocordato afterwards showed no
dissatisfaction with me, and I prized Lord Byron's regard too much,
to remain long displeased with a proceeding which was only an
unpleasant manner of reproving us both."
Into these and other such branches from the main course of his
character, it might have been a task of some interest to
investigate,--certain as we should be that, even in the remotest and
narrowest of these windings, some of the brightness and strength of
the original current would be perceptible. Enough however has been,
perhaps, said to set other minds upon supplying what remains:--if the
track of analysis here opened be the true one, to follow it in its
further bearings will not be difficult. Already, indeed, I may be
thought by some readers to have occupied too large a portion of these
pages, not only in tracing out such "nice dependencies" and
gradations of my friend's character, but still more uselessly, as may
be conceived, in recording all the various habitudes and whims by
which the course of his every-day life was distinguished from that of
other people. That the critics of the day should think it due to
their own importance to object to trifles is naturally to be
expected; but that, in other times, such minute records of a Byron
will be read with interest, even such critics cannot doubt. To know
that Catiline walked with an agitated and uncertain gait is, by no
mean judge of human nature, deemed important as an indication of
character. But far less significant details will satisfy the
idolaters of genius. To be told that Tasso loved malmsey and thought
it favourable to poetic inspiration is a piece of intelligence, even
at the end of three centuries, not unwelcome; while a still more
amusing proof of the disposition of the world to remember little
things of the great is, that the poet Petrarch's excessive fondness
for turnips is one of the few traditions still preserved of him at
Arqua.
The personal appearance of Lord Byron has been so frequently
described, both by pen and pencil, that were it not the bounden duty
of the biographer to attempt some such sketch, the task would seem
superfluous. Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been
of the highest order, as combining at once regularity of features
with the most varied and interesting expression. The same facility,
indeed, of change observable in the movements of his mind was seen
also in the free play of his features, as the passing thoughts within
darkened or shone through them.
His eyes, though of a light grey, were capable of all extremes of
expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness,
from the very sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated scorn
or rage. Of this latter passion, I had once an opportunity of seeing
what fiery interpreters they could be, on my telling him,
thoughtlessly enough, that a friend of mine had said to me--"Beware
of Lord Byron; he will some day or other do something very
wicked."--"Was it man or woman said so?" he exclaimed, suddenly
turning round upon me with a look of such intense anger as, though it
lasted not an instant, could not easily be forgot, and of which no
better idea can be given than in the words of one who, speaking of
Chatterton's eyes, says that "fire rolled at the bottom of them."
But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay. "Many pictures have been
painted of him," says a fair critic of his features, "with various
success; but the excessive beauty of his lips escaped every painter
and sculptor. In their ceaseless play they represented every emotion,
whether pale with anger, curled in disdain, smiling in triumph, or
dimpled with archness and love." It would be injustice to the reader
not to borrow from the same pencil a few more touches of portraiture.
"This extreme facility of expression was sometimes painful, for I
have seen him look absolutely ugly--I have seen him look so hard and
cold, that you must hate him, and then, in a moment, brighter than
the sun, with such playful softness in his look, such affectionate
eagerness kindling in his eyes, and dimpling his lips into something
more sweet than a smile, that you forgot the man, the Lord Byron, in
the picture of beauty presented to you, and gazed with intense
curiosity--I had almost said--as if to satisfy yourself, that thus
looked the god of poetry, the god of the Vatican, when he conversed
with the sons and daughters of man."
His head was remarkably small[1],--so much so as to be rather out of
proportion with his face. The forehead, though a little too narrow,
was high, and appeared more so from his having his hair (to preserve
it, as he said,) shaved over the temples; while the glossy,
dark-brown curls, clustering over his head, gave the finish to its
beauty. When to this is added, that his nose, though handsomely, was
rather thickly shaped, that his teeth were white and regular, and his
complexion colourless, as good an idea perhaps as it is in the power
of mere words to convey may be conceived of his features.
[Footnote 1: "Several of us, one day," says Colonel Napier, "tried on
his hat, and in a party of twelve or fourteen, who were at dinner,
_not one_ could put it on, so exceedingly small was his head. My
servant, Thomas Wells, who had the smallest head in the 90th regiment
(so small that he could hardly get a cap to fit him), was the only
person who could put on Lord Byron's hat, and him it fitted
exactly."]
In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet eight
inches and a half, and to the length of his limbs he attributed his
being such a good swimmer. His hands were very white, and--according
to his own notion of the size of hands as indicating
birth--aristocratically small. The lameness of his right foot[1],
though an obstacle to grace, but little impeded the activity of his
movements; and from this circumstance, as well as from the skill with
which the foot was disguised by means of long trowsers, it would be
difficult to conceive a defect of this kind less obtruding itself as
a deformity; while the diffidence which a constant consciousness of
the infirmity gave to his first approach and address made, in him,
even lameness a source of interest.
[Footnote 1: In speaking of this lameness at the commencement of my
work, I forbore, both from my own doubts on the subject and the great
variance I found in the recollections of others, from stating in
_which_ of his feet this lameness existed. It will, indeed, with
difficulty be believed what uncertainty I found upon this point, even
among those most intimate with him. Mr. Hunt, in his book, states it
to have been the left foot that was deformed, and this, though
contrary to my own impression, and, as it appears also, to the fact,
was the opinion I found also of others who had been much in the habit
of living with him. On applying to his early friends at Southwell and
to the shoemaker of that town who worked for him, so little prepared
were they to answer with any certainty on the subject, that it was
only by recollecting that the lame foot "was the off one in going up
the street" they at last came to the conclusion that his right limb
was the one affected; and Mr. Jackson, his preceptor in pugilism,
was, in like manner, obliged to call to mind whether his noble pupil
was a right or left hand hitter before he could arrive at the same
decision.]
In looking again into the Journal from which it was my intention to
give extracts, the following unconnected opinions, or rather
reveries, most of them on points connected with his religious
opinions, are all that I feel tempted to select. To an assertion in
the early part of this work, that "at no time of his life was Lord
Byron a confirmed unbeliever," it has been objected, that many
passages of his writings prove the direct contrary. This assumption,
however, as well as the interpretation of most of the passages
referred to in its support, proceed, as it appears to me, upon the
mistake, not uncommon in conversation, of confounding together the
meanings of the words unbeliever and sceptic,--the former implying
decision of opinion, and the latter only doubt. I have myself, I
find, not always kept the significations of the two words distinct,
and in one instance have so far fallen into the notion of these
objectors as to speak of Byron in his youth as "an unbelieving
school-boy," when the word "doubting" would have more truly expressed
my meaning. With this necessary explanation, I shall here repeat my
assertion; or rather--to clothe its substance in a different
form--shall say that Lord Byron was, to the last, a sceptic, which,
in itself, implies that he was, at no time, a confirmed unbeliever.
* * * * *
"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in
my life, unless it were _for--not to have lived at all_.[1] All
history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and
evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is
most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us
but years? and those have little of good but their ending.
[Footnote 1: Swift "early adopted," says Sir Walter Scott, "the
custom of observing his birth-day, as a term, not of joy, but of
sorrow, and of reading, when it annually recurred, the striking
passage of Scripture, in which Job laments and execrates the day upon
which it was said in his father's house 'that a man-child was
born.'"--_Life of Swift._]
* * * * *
"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be
little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind: it is
in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has
taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body--in
dreams, for instance;--incoherently and _madly_, I grant you, but
still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that
this should not act _separately_, as well as jointly, who can
pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the
present state 'a soul which drags a carcass,'--a heavy chain, to be
sure, but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our
future life will be _individual_, or, rather, how far it will at all
resemble _our present_ existence, is another question; but that the
mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of
course I here venture upon the question without recurring to
revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it
as any other. A _material_ resurrection seems strange and even
absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which
is to _revenge_ rather than _correct_ must be _morally wrong_; and
_when the world is at an end_, what moral or warning purpose _can_
eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably disfigured the
divine doctrines here;--but the whole thing is inscrutable.
* * * * *
"It is useless to tell me _not_ to _reason_, but to _believe._ You
might as well tell a man not to wake, but _sleep._ And then to
_bully_ with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the
_menace_ of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of
inhuman humanity make villains.
* * * * *
"Man is born _passionate_ of body, but with an innate though secret
tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God
help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms.
* * * * *
"Matter is eternal, always changing, but reproduced, and, as far as
we can comprehend eternity, eternal; and why not _mind_? Why should
not the mind act with and upon the universe, as portions of it act
upon, and with, the congregated dust called mankind? See how one man
acts upon himself and others, or upon multitudes! The same agency, in
a higher and purer degree, may act upon the stars, &c. ad infinitum.
* * * * *
"I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could
never bear its introduction into _Christianity_, which appears to me
essentially founded upon the _soul_. For this reason Priestley's
Christian Materialism always struck me as deadly. Believe the
resurrection of the _body_, if you will, but _not without_ a _soul_.
The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul, (as surely the
_mind_, or whatever you call it, _is,_) in this world, we must part
with it in the _next_, even for an immortal materiality! I own my
partiality for _spirit_.
* * * * *
"I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day, as if there was some
association between an internal approach to greater light and purity
and the kindler of this dark lantern of our external existence.
* * * * *
"The night is also a religious concern, and even more so when I
viewed the moon and stars through Herschell's telescope, and saw that
they were worlds.
* * * * *
"If, according to some speculations, you could prove the world many
thousand years older than the Mosaic chronology, or if you could get
rid of Adam and Eve, and the apple, and serpent, still, what is to be
put up in their stead? or how is the difficulty removed? Things must
have had a beginning, and what matters it _when_ or _how_?
* * * * *
"I sometimes think that _man_ may be the relic of some higher
material being wrecked in a former world, and degenerated in the
hardship and struggle through chaos into conformity, or something
like it,--as we see Laplanders, Esquimaux, &c. inferior in the
present state, as the elements become more inexorable. But even then
this higher pre-Adamite supposititious creation must have had an
origin and a _Creator_--for a _creation_ is a more natural
imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms: all things remount
to a fountain, though they may flow to an ocean.
* * * * *
"Plutarch says, in his Life of Lysander, that Aristotle observes
'that in general great geniuses are of a melancholy turn, and
instances Socrates, Plato, and Hercules (or Heraclitus), as examples,
and Lysander, though not while young, yet as inclined to it when
approaching towards age.' Whether I am a genius or not, I have been
called such by my friends as well as enemies, and in more countries
and languages than one, and also within a no very long period of
existence. Of my genius, I can say nothing, but of my melancholy,
that it is 'increasing, and ought to be diminished.' But how?
"I take it that most men are so at bottom, but that it is only
remarked in the remarkable. The Duchesse de Broglio, in reply to a
remark of mine on the errors of clever people, said that 'they were
not worse than others, only, being more in view, more noted,
especially in all that could reduce them to the rest, or raise the
rest to them.' In 1816, this was.
"In fact (I suppose that) if the follies of fools were all set down
like those of the wise, the wise (who seem at present only a better
sort of fools) would appear almost intelligent.
* * * * *
"It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be
_constantly_ before us: a year impairs; a lustre obliterates. There
is little distinct left without an effort of memory. _Then_, indeed,
the lights are rekindled for a moment; but who can be sure that
imagination is not the torch-bearer? Let any man try at the end of
_ten_ years to bring before him the features, or the mind, or the
sayings, or the habits of his best friend, or his _greatest_ man, (I
mean his favourite, his Buonaparte, his this, that, or t'other,) and
he will be surprised at the extreme confusion of his ideas. I speak
confidently on this point, having always passed for one who had a
good, ay, an excellent memory. I except, indeed, our recollection of
womankind; there is no forgetting _them_ (and be d--d to them) any
more than any other remarkable era, such as 'the revolution,' or 'the
plague,' or 'the invasion,' or 'the comet,' or 'the war' of such and
such an epoch,--being the favourite dates of mankind who have so many
_blessings_ in their lot that they never make their calendars from
them, being too common. For instance, you see 'the great drought,'
'the Thames frozen over,' 'the seven years' war broke out,' 'the
English, or French, or Spanish revolution commenced,' 'the Lisbon
earthquake,' 'the Lima earthquake,' 'the earthquake of Calabria,'
'the plague of London,' ditto 'of Constantinople,' 'the sweating
sickness,' 'the yellow fever of Philadelphia,' &c. &c. &c.; but you
don't see 'the abundant harvest,' 'the fine summer,' 'the long
peace,' 'the wealthy speculation,' 'the wreckless voyage,' recorded
so emphatically! By the way, there has been a _thirty years' war_ and
a _seventy years' war_; was there ever a _seventy_ or a _thirty
years' peace_? or was there even a DAY'S _universal_ peace? except
perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness
of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because
nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let philosophers
decide. I am none.
* * * * *
"In general, I do not draw well with literary men; not that I dislike
them, but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their
last publication. There are several exceptions, to be sure, but then
they have either been men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, &c.
or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, &c.: but your literary
every-day man and I never went well in company, especially your
foreigner, whom I never could abide; except Giordani,
and--and--and--(I really can't name any other)--I don't remember a
man amongst them whom I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps
Mezzophanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of
speech, a walking Polyglott and more, who ought to have existed at
the time of the Tower of Babel as universal interpreter. He is indeed
a marvel--unassuming, also. I tried him in all the tongues of which I
knew a single oath, (or adjuration to the gods against post-boys,
savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers,
camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-horses, post-houses,
post every thing,) and egad! he astounded me--even to my English.
* * * * *
"'No man would live his life over again,' is an old and true saying
which all can resolve for themselves. At the same time, there are
probably _moments_ in most men's lives which they would live over the
rest of life to _regain_. Else why do we live at all? because Hope
recurs to Memory, both false--but--but--but--but--and this _but_
drags on till--what? I do not know; and who does? 'He that died o'
Wednesday.'"
* * * * *
In laying before the reader these last extracts from the papers in my
possession, it may be expected, perhaps, that I should say
something,--in addition to what has been already stated on this
subject,--respecting those Memoranda, or Memoirs, which, in the
exercise of the discretionary power given to me by my noble friend, I
placed, shortly after his death, at the disposal of his sister and
executor, and which they, from a sense of what they thought due to
his memory, consigned to the flames. As the circumstances, however,
connected with the surrender of that manuscript, besides requiring
much more detail than my present limits allow, do not, in any
respect, concern the character of Lord Byron, but affect solely my
own, it is not here, at least, that I feel myself called upon to
enter into an explanation of them. The world will, of course,
continue to think of that step as it pleases; but it is, after all,
on a man's _own_ opinion of his actions that his happiness chiefly
depends, and I can only say that, were I again placed in the same
circumstances, I would--even at ten times the pecuniary sacrifice
which my conduct then cost me--again act precisely in the same
manner.
For the satisfaction of those whose regret at the loss of that
manuscript arises from some better motive than the mere
disappointment of a prurient curiosity, I shall here add, that on the
mysterious cause of the separation, it afforded no light
whatever;--that, while some of its details could never have been
published at all[1], and little, if any, of what it contained
personal towards others could have appeared till long after the
individuals concerned had left the scene, all that materially related
to Lord Byron himself was (as I well knew when I made that sacrifice)
to be found repeated in the various Journals and Memorandum-books,
which, though not all to be made use of, were, as the reader has seen
from the preceding pages, all preserved.
[Footnote 1: This description applies only to the Second Part of the
Memoranda; there having been but little unfit for publication in the
First Part, which was, indeed, read, as is well known, by many of the
noble author's friends.]
As far as suppression, indeed, is blamable, I have had, in the course
of this task, abundantly to answer for it; having, as the reader must
have perceived, withheld a large portion of my materials, to which
Lord Byron, no doubt, in his fearlessness of consequences, would have
wished to give publicity, but which, it is now more than probable,
will never meet the light.
There remains little more to add. It has been remarked by Lord
Orford[1], as "strange, that the writing a man's life should in
general make the biographer become enamoured of his subject, whereas
one should think that the nicer disquisition one makes into the life
of any man, the less reason one should find to love or admire him."
On the contrary, may we not rather say that, as knowledge is ever the
parent of tolerance, the more insight we gain into the springs and
motives of a man's actions, the peculiar circumstances in which he
was placed, and the influences and temptations under which he acted,
the more allowance we may be inclined to make for his errors, and the
more approbation his virtues may extort from us?
[Footnote 1: In speaking of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life of Henry
VIII.]
The arduous task of being the biographer of Byron is one, at least,
on which I have not obtruded myself: the wish of my friend that I
should undertake that office having been more than once expressed, at
a time when none but a boding imagination like his could have
foreseen much chance of the sad honour devolving to me. If in some
instances I have consulted rather the spirit than the exact letter of
his injunctions, it was with the view solely of doing him more
justice than he would have done himself, there being no hands in
which his character could have been less safe than his own, nor any
greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he
affected to be for what he was. Of any partiality, however, beyond
what our mutual friendship accounts for and justifies, I am by no
means conscious; nor would it be in the power, indeed, of even the
most partial friend to allege any thing more convincingly favourable
of his character than is contained in the few simple facts with which
I shall here conclude,--that, through life, with all his faults, he
never lost a friend;--that those about him in his youth, whether as
companions, teachers, or servants, remained attached to him to the
last;--that the woman, to whom he gave the love of his maturer years,
idolises his name; and that, with a single unhappy exception, scarce
an instance is to be found of any one, once brought, however briefly,
into relations of amity with him, that did not feel towards him a
kind regard in life, and retain a fondness for his memory.
I have now done with the subject, nor shall be easily tempted to
recur to it. Any mistakes or misstatements I may be proved to have
made shall be corrected;--any new facts which it is in the power of
others to produce will speak for themselves. To mere opinions I am
not called upon to pay attention--and still less to insinuations or
mysteries. I have here told what I myself know and think concerning
my friend; and now leave his character, moral as well as literary, to
the judgment of the world.