"Hours of Idleness," were so severely attacked by the Edinburgh Review.
They might have escaped the searching eyes of the critics had the author
not been a lord. At that time the great Reviews had just been started;
and it was the especial object of the Edinburgh Review to handle authors
roughly,--to condemn and not to praise. Criticism was not then a
science, as it became fifty years later, in the hands of Sainte-Beuve,
who endeavored to review every production fairly and justly. There was
nothing like justice entering into the head of Jeffrey or Sydney Smith
or Brougham, or later on of Macaulay, whose articles were often written
for political party effect. Critics, from the time of Swift down to the
middle of the century, aimed to demolish enemies, and to make party
capital; hence, as a general thing, their articles were not criticisms
at all, but attacks. And as even an Achilles was vulnerable in his heel,
so most intellectual giants have some weak point for the shafts of
malice to penetrate. Yet it is the weaknesses of great men that people
like to quote.
If Byron was humiliated, enraged, and embittered by the severity of the
Edinburgh Review, he was not crushed. He rallied, collected his
unsuspected strength, and shattered his opponents by one of the
wittiest, most brilliant, and most unscrupulous satires in our
literature, which he called "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." At the
height of his fame he regretted and suppressed this youthful production
of malice and bitterness. Yet it was the beginning of his great career,
both as to a consciousness of his own powers and in attracting the
public attention. It was doubtless unwise, since he attacked many who
were afterwards his friends, and since he sowed the seeds of hatred
among those who might otherwise have been his admirers or apologists. He
had to learn the truth that "with what measure ye mete it shall be
measured to you again." The creators of public opinion in reference to
Byron have not been women of fashion, or men of the world, but literary
lions themselves,--like Thackeray, who detested him, and the whole
school of pharisaic ecclesiastical dignitaries, who abhorred in him
sentiments which they condoned in Fielding, in Burns, in Rousseau, and
in Voltaire.
Before his bitter satire was published, however, Byron took his seat in
the House of Lords, not knowing any peer sufficiently to be introduced
by him. His guardian, Lord Carlisle, treated him very shabbily, refusing
to furnish to the Lord Chancellor some important information, of a
technical kind, which refusal delayed the ceremony for several weeks,
until the necessary papers could be procured from Cornwall relating to
the marriage of one of his ancestors. Unfriended and alone, Byron sat on
the scarlet benches of the House of Lords until he was formally admitted
as a peer. But when the Lord Chancellor left the woolsack to
congratulate him, and with a smiling face extended his hand, the
embittered young peer bowed coldly and stiffly, and simply held out two
or three of his fingers,--an act of impudence for which there was
no excuse.
It is difficult to understand why Lord Byron should have had so few
friends or even acquaintances at that time among people of his rank. At
twenty-one, he was a lonely and solitary man, mortified by the attack of
the Edinburgh Review, exasperated by injustice, morose even to
misanthropy, and decidedly sceptical in his religious opinions. Newstead
Abbey was a burden to him, since he could not keep it up. He owed
£10,000. He had no domestic ties, except to a mother with whom he could
not live. His poetry had not brought him fame, for which of all things
he most ardently thirsted. His love affairs were unfortunate, and tinged
his soul with sadness and melancholy. Nor had fashion as yet marked him
for her own. He craved excitement, and society to him was dull and
conventional.
It is not surprising that under these circumstances Byron made up his
mind to travel: he did not much care whither, provided he had new
experiences. "The grand tour" which educated young men of leisure and
fortune took in that day had no charm for him, since he wished to avoid
rather than to seek society in those cities which the English
frequented. He did not care to see the literary lions of France or
Germany or Italy, for though a nobleman, he was too young and
unimportant to be much noticed, and he was too shy and too proud to make
advances which might be rebuffed, wounding his _amour propre._
He set out on his pilgrimage the latter part of June, 1809, in a ship
bound for Lisbon, with a small suite of servants. Going to a land where
Nature was most enchanting, he was sufficiently enthusiastic over the
hills and vales and villages of Portugal. As for comfort, he expected
little, and found less; but to this he was indifferent so long as he
could swim in the Tagus, and ride on a mule, and procure eggs and wine.
He was delighted with Cadiz, to him a Cythera, with its beautiful but
uneducated women, where the wives of peasants were on a par with the
wives of dukes in cultivation, and where the minds of both had but one
idea,--that of intrigue. He hastily travelled through Spain on
horseback, in August, reaching Gibraltar, from which he embarked for
Malta and the East.
It was Greece and Turkey that Byron most wished to see and know; and,
favored by introductions, he was cordially received by governors and
pashas. At Athens, and other classical spots, he lingered enchanted, yet
suppressing his enthusiasm in the contempt he had for the affected
raptures of ordinary travellers. It was not the country alone, with its
classical associations, which interested him, but also its maidens, with
their dark hair and eyes, whom he idealized almost into goddesses.
Everything he saw was picturesque, unique, and fascinating. The days and
weeks flew rapidly away in dreamy enchantment.
After nearly three months at Athens, Byron embarked for Smyrna, and
explored the ruins of the old Ionian cities, thence proceeding to
Constantinople, with a view of visiting Persia and the farther East. In
a letter to Mr. Henry Drury, he says:--
"I have left my home, and seen part of Africa and Asia, and a tolerable
portion of Europe. I have been with generals and admirals, princes and
pashas, governors and ungovernables. Albania, indeed, I have seen more
than any Englishman, except Mr. Leake,--a country rarely visited, from
the savage character of the natives, but abounding more in natural
beauties than the classical regions of Greece."
A glimpse of Byron's inner life at this time is caught in the following
extract from a letter to another friend:
"I have now been nearly a year abroad, and hope you will find me an
altered personage,--I do not mean in body, but in manners; for I begin
to find out that nothing but virtue will do in this d--d world. I am
tolerably sick of vice, which I have tried in its agreeable varieties,
and mean on my return to cut all my dissolute acquaintance, leave off
wine and carnal company, and betake myself to politics and decorum."
One thing we notice in most of the familiar letters of Byron,--that he
makes frequent use of a vulgar expletive. But when I remember that the
Prince of Wales, the Lord Chancellor, the judges, the lawyers, the
ministers of the Crown, and many other distinguished people were
accustomed to use the same expression, I would fain hope that it was not
meant for profanity, but was a sort of fashionable slang intended only
to be emphatic. Fifty years have seen a great improvement in the use of
language, and the vulgarism which then appeared to be of slight
importance is now regarded, almost universally with gentlemen, to be at
least in very bad taste. How far Byron transgressed beyond the frequent
use of this expletive, does not appear either in his letters or in his
biography; yet from his irreverent nature, and the society with which he
was associated, it is more than probable that in him profanity was
added to the other vices of his times.
Especially did he indulge in drinking to excess in all convivial
gatherings. It was seldom that gentlemen sat down to a banquet without
each despatching two or three bottles of wine in the course of an
evening. No wonder that gout was the pervading disease among county
squires, and even among authors and statesman. Morality was not one of
the features of English society one hundred years ago, except as it
consisted in a scrupulous regard for domesticity, truth, and honor, and
abhorrence of meanness and hypocrisy.
It would be difficult to point out any defects and excesses of which
Byron was guilty at this period beyond what were common to other
fashionable young men of rank and leisure, except a spirit of religious
scepticism and impiety, and a wanton and inexcusable recklessness in
regard to women, which made him a slave to his passions. The first
alienated him, so far as he was known, from the higher respectable
classes, who generally were punctilious in the outward observances of
religion; and the second made him abhorred by the virtuous middle class,
who never condoned his transgressions in this respect. But at this time
his character was not generally known. It was not until he was seated on
the pinnacle of fame that public curiosity penetrated the scandals of
his private life. He was known only as a young nobleman in quest of the
excitements of foreign travel, and his letters of introduction procured
him all the society he craved. Not yet had he expressed bitterness and
wrath against the country which gave him birth; he simply found England
dull, and craved adventures in foreign lands as unlike England as he
could find. The East stimulated his imagination, and revived his
classical associations. He saw the Orient only as an enthusiastic poet
would see it, and as Lamartine saw Jerusalem. But Byron was more curious
about the pagan cities of antiquity than concerning the places
consecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. He cared more to swim across
the Hellespont with Leander than to wander over the sacred hills of
Judaea; to idealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins of Greece,
than converse with the monks of Palestine in their gloomy retreats.
The result of Byron's travels was seen in the first two cantos of
"Childe Harold," showing alike the fertility of his mind and the
aspirations of a lofty genius. These were published in 1812, soon after
his return to England, at the age of twenty-four. They took England by
storm, creating both surprise and admiration. Public curiosity and
enthusiasm for the young poet, who had mounted to the front ranks of
literature at a single leap, was unbounded and universal. As he himself
wrote: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."
Young Byron was now sought, courted, and adored, especially by ladies of
the highest rank. Everybody was desirous to catch even a glimpse of the
greatest poet that had appeared since Pope and Dryden; any palace or
drawing-room he desired to enter was open to him. He was surfeited with
roses and praises and incense. He alone took precedence over Scott and
Coleridge and Moore and Campbell. For a time his pre-eminence in
literature was generally conceded. He was the foremost man of letters of
his day, and the greatest popular idol. His rank added to his _éclat_,
since not many noblemen were distinguished for genius or literary
excellence. His singular beauty of face and person, despite his slight
lameness, attracted the admiring gaze of women. What Abélard was in the
schools of philosophy, Byron was in the drawing-rooms of London. People
forgot his antecedents, so far as they were known, in the intoxication
of universal admiration and unbounded worship of genius. No poet in
English history was ever seated on a prouder throne, and no heathen
deity was ever more indifferent than he to the incense of idolaters.
Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of the merits of the poem with
which the fame of Byron will be forever identified. Its great merits
are universally conceded; and while it has defects,--great inequalities
in both style and matter; some stanzas supernal in beauty, and others
only mediocre,--on the whole, the poem is extraordinary. Byron adopted
the Spenserian measure,--perhaps the most difficult of all measures,
hard even to read aloud,--in which blank verse seems to blend with
rhyme. It might be either to the ear, though to the eye it is elaborate
rhyme,--such as would severely task a made poet, but which this born
poet seems to have thrown off without labor. The leading peculiarity of
the poem is description,--of men and places; of the sea, the mountain,
and the river; of Nature in her loveliness and mysteries; of cities and
battle-fields consecrated by the heroism of brave and gifted men, in
Greece, in Rome, in mediaeval Europe,--with swift passing glances at
salient points in history, showing extensive reading and deep
meditation.
As to the spirit of "Childe Harold," it is not satirical; it is more
pensive than bitter, and reveals the loneliness and sorrows of an
unsatisfied soul,--the unrest of a pilgrim in search for something new.
It seeks to penetrate the secrets of struggling humanity, at war often
with those certitudes which are the consolation of our inner life. It
everywhere recognizes the soul as that which gives greatest dignity to
man. It invokes love as the noblest joy of life. The poem is one of the
most ideal of human productions, soaring beyond what is material and
transient. It is not religious, not reverential, not Christian, like the
"Divine Comedy" and the "Paradise Lost;" and yet it is lofty, aspiring,
exulting in what is greatest in deed or song, destined to immortality of
fame and admiration. It is a confession, indirectly, of the follies and
shortcomings of the author, and of their retribution, but complains
not of the Nemesis that avenges everything. It is sensitive of
wrongs and injustices and misrepresentations, but does not hurl
anathemas,--speaking in sorrow rather than in anger, except in regard to
hypocrisies and shams and lies, when its scorn is intense and terrible.
The whole poem is brilliant and original, but does not flash like fire
in a dark night. It was written with the heart's blood, and is as
earnest as it is penetrating. It does not ascend to the higher mysteries
forever veiled from mortal eye, nor descend to the deepest depths of
hatred and despair, but confines itself to those passions which have
marked gifted mortals, and those questionings in which all thoughtful
minds have ever delighted. It does not make revelations like "Hamlet" or
"Macbeth;" it does not explore secrets hidden forever from ordinary
minds, like "Faust;" but it muses and meditates on what Fate and Time
have brought to pass,--such events as have been revealed in history. It
invokes the neglected but impressive monuments of antiquity to tell the
tales of glory and of shame. In moral wisdom it is vastly inferior to
Shakspeare, and it is not rich in those wise and striking lines which
pass into the proverbs of the world; but it has the glow of a poetic
soul, longing for fame, craving love, and not unmindful of immortality.
Its most beautiful stanzas are full of tenderness and sadness for lost
or unrequited affections; of reproachless sorrow for broken friendships,
in which the soul would fain have lived but for inconsistencies and
contradictions which made true and permanent love impossible. The poem
paints a paradise lost, rather than a paradise regained. I wonder at its
popularity, for it seems to me too deep and learned for popular
appreciation, except in those stanzas where pathos or enthusiasm,
expressed in matchless language, appeal to the heart and soul.
Of all modern poets, Byron is the most human and outspoken, daring to
say what many would fear or blush to meditate upon. He fearlessly
reveals the infirmities and audacities of a double and mysterious
nature, made up of dust and deity, now grovelling in the mire, then
borne aloft to the skies,--the football of the eternal powers of good
and evil, enslaved and yet to be emancipated, as we may hope, in the
last and final struggle, when the soul is rescued by Omnipotence.
I have alluded to the triumphs of Byron on the publication of "Childe
Harold,"--but his joys were more than balanced by his sorrows. His
mother died suddenly without seeing him. His dearest friend Mathews was
drowned. He was hampered by creditors. He made no mark in the House of
Lords, and was sick of what he called "parliamentary mummeries." His
habits became more and more dissipated among the boon companions who
courted his society. His reputation after a while began to wane, for
people became ashamed of their enthusiasm. Some critics disparaged his
poetry, and conventional circles were shocked by his morals. Three years
of London life told on his constitution, and he was completely
disenchanted. He sought retirement and solitude, for not even the most
brilliant society satisfied him. He wearied of such a woman and admirer
as Madame de Staël. He went to Holland House--that resort of all the
eminent ones of the time--as seldom as he could. He buried himself with
a few intimate friends, chiefly poets, among whom were Moore and Rogers.
He saw and liked Sir Walter Scott, but did not push his acquaintance to
intimacy. The larger part of his letters were written to Murray, the
publisher, who treated him generously; but Byron gave away his literary
gains to personal friends in need. He seemed to scorn copyrights for
support. He would write only for fame.
At the age of twenty-seven, in January, 1815, Byron married Miss
Milbanke,--a lady whom he did not love, but to whom he was attracted by
her supposed wealth, which would patch up his own fortunes. He had great
respect for this lady and some friendship; but with all her virtues and
attainments she was cold, conventional, and exacting. A mystery shrouds
this unfortunate affair, which has never been fully revealed. The upshot
was that, to Byron's inexpressible humiliation, in less than a year she
left him, never to return. No reasons were given. It was enough that
both parties were unhappy, and had cause to be; and both kept silence.
But the voice of rumor and scandal was not silent. All the failings of
Byron were now exaggerated and dwelt upon by those who envied him, and
by those who hated him,--for his enemies were more numerous than his
friends. Those whom he had snubbed or ridiculed or insulted now openly
turned against him. The conventional public had a rare subject for their
abuse or indignation. Proper people, religious people, and commonplace
people, joined in the cry against a man with whom a virtuous woman could
not live. Indeed, no woman could have lived happily with Byron; and
very few were the women with whom he could have lived happily, by reason
of that irritability and unrest which is so common with genius. The
habits of abstraction and contemplation which absorbed much of his time
at home were not easily understood by an ordinary woman, to whom social
life is necessary.
Byron lived much in his library, which was his solitary luxury. In the
revelry of the imagination his heart became cold. "To follow poetry,"
says Pope, "one must leave father and mother, and cleave to it
alone,"--as Dante and Petrarch and Milton did. Not even Byron's intense
craving for affection could be satisfied when he was dwelling on the
ideals which his imagination created, and which scarcely friendship
could satisfy. Even so good a man as Carlyle lived among his books
rather than in the society of his wife, whom he really loved, and whose
virtues and attainments he appreciated and admired. An affectionate
woman runs a great risk in marrying an absorbed and preoccupied man of
genius, even if his character be reproachless. Unfortunately, the
character of Byron was anything but reproachless, and no one knew this
better than his wife, which knowledge doubtless alienated what little
affection she had for him. He seems to have sought low company even
after his marriage, and Lady Byron has intimated that she did not think
him altogether sane. Living with him as his wife was insupportable; but
though she separated from him, she did not seek a divorce.
Byron would not have married at all if he had consulted his happiness,
and still more his fame. "In reviewing the great names of philosophy and
science, we shall find that those who have most distinguished themselves
have virtually admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by
remaining in celibacy,--Newton, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle,
Locke, Leibnitz, Boyle, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, and a host of others."
The scandal which Byron's separation from his wife created, and his
known and open profligacy, at last shut him out from the society of
which he had been so bright an ornament. It is a peculiarity of the
English people, which redounds to their honor, to exclude from public
approbation any man, however gifted or famous, who has outraged the
moral sense by open and ill-disguised violation of the laws of morality.
The cases of Dilke and Parnell in our own day are illustrations known to
all. What in France or Italy is condoned, is never pardoned or forgotten
in England. Not even a Voltaire, a Rousseau, or a Mirabeau, had they
lived in England, could have been accepted by English society,--much
less a man who scorned and ridiculed it. Even Byron--for a few years
the pet, the idol, and the glory of the country--was not too high to
fall. To quote one of his own stanzas,--
"He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head."
Embarrassed in his circumstances; filled with disgust, mortification,
and shame; excluded from the proudest circles,--Byron now resolved to
leave England forever, and bury himself in such foreign lands as were
most congenial to his tastes and habits. But for his immorality he might
still have shined at an exalted height; for he had not yet written
anything which shocked the practical English mind. The worst he had
written was bitter satire, yet not more bitter than that of Swift or
Pope. No defiance, no blasphemous sentiments, or what seemed to many to
be such, had yet escaped him. His "Corsair" and his "Bride of Abydos"
appeared soon after the "Childe Harold," and added to his fame by their
exquisite melody of rhyme and sentimental admiration for Oriental
life,--though even these were tinged with that _abandon_ which
afterwards made his latter poems a scandal and reproach. "The
disappointment of youthful passion, the lassitude and remorse of
premature excess, the lone friendlessness of his life," and, I may add,
the reproaches of society, induced him to fly from the scene of his
brilliant successes, filled with blended sentiments of scorn, hatred,
defiance, and despair.
In the Spring of 1816, at the age of twenty-eight, Byron left England
forever,--a voluntary exile on the face of the earth, saddened,
embittered, and disappointed. It was to Italy that he turned his steps,
passing through Brussels and Flanders, lingering on the Rhine, enamored
with its ruined castles, still more with Nature, and making a long stay
in Switzerland. Here he visited the Castle of Chillon, all the spots
made memorable by the abodes of Rousseau, Gibbon, and Madame de Staël,
and all the most interesting scenery of the Bernese Alps,--Lake Leman,
Interlaken, Thun, the Jungfrau, the glaciers, Brientz, Chamouni, Berne,
and on to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Shelley and his
wife. The Shelleys he found most congenial, and stayed with them some
time. While in the neighborhood of Geneva he produced the third canto of
"Childe Harold," "The Prisoner of Chillon," "A Dream," and other things.
In October, he passed on to Milan, Verona, and Venice; and in this
latter city he took up his residence.