"Born universal heir to all humanity,"
it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in a striking
degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion with his kind;
but stands alone, without mate or fellow--
"As if a man were author of himself,
And owned no other kin."
He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by
elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, "cloud-capt,"
or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods
reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on
their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands
with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples
on it; he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by
sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature
must come to him to sit for her picture--he does not go to her. She must
consult his time, his convenience, and his humour; and wear a _sombre_ or
a fantastic garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her. There is no
ease, no unaffected simplicity of manner, no "golden mean." All is
strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are sphered and
crystalline; his style "prouder than when blue Iris bends;" his spirit
fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigable. Instead of taking his
impressions from without, in entire and almost unimpaired masses, he
moulds them according to his own temperament, and heats the materials of
his imagination in the furnace of his passions.--Lord Byron's verse glows
like a flame, consuming everything in its way; Sir Walter Scott's glides
like a river, clear, gentle, harmless. The poetry of the first scorches,
that of the last scarcely warms. The light of the one proceeds from an
internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed; the other reflects the hues
of Heaven, or the face of nature, glancing vivid and various. The
productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the freshness of
antiquity about them; those of the Noble Poet cease to startle from their
extreme ambition of novelty, both in style and matter. Sir Walter's rhymes
are "silly sooth "--
"And dally with the innocence of thought,
Like the old age"--
his Lordship's Muse spurns _the olden time_, and affects all the
supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the
one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks
how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the
reader either by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, or by
expressing old ones in a more striking and emphatic manner than they have
been expressed before. He cares little what it is he says, so that he can
say it differently from others. This may account for the charges of
plagiarism which have been repeatedly brought against the Noble Poet--if
he can borrow an image or sentiment from another, and heighten it by an
epithet or an allusion of greater force and beauty than is to be found in
the original passage, he thinks he shows his superiority of execution in
this in a more marked manner than if the first suggestion had been his
own. It is not the value of the observation itself he is solicitous about;
but he wishes to shine by contrast--even nature only serves as a foil to
set off his style. He therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether
contemporaries or not) out of their mouths, and is content to make them
his own, to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more
meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a
characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments
of modern style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in
terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies
competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he
must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else--he lounges
with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will,
passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others (with
a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of procuring
admiration) are the proper categories of his mind: he is a lordly writer,
is above his own reputation, and condescends to the Muses with a scornful
grace!
Lord Byron, who in his politics is a _liberal_, in his genius is haughty
and aristocratic: Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is
popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally _servile_ to nature
and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or
"denotes a foregone conclusion:" that of Lord Byron is self-dependent; or
at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the impulses of its
own will. We confess, however much we may admire independence of feeling
and erectness of spirit in general or practical questions, yet in works of
genius we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature, who appeals to
actual objects, to mouldering superstitions, to history, observation, and
tradition, before him who only consults the pragmatical and restless
workings of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles to the world. We
like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes in (or is willing
to take in) the range of half the universe in feeling, character,
description, much better than we do one who obstinately and invariably
shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions. In short, we
had rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author of Waverley)
than Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And for the reason just given,
namely, that he casts his descriptions in the mould of nature,
ever-varying, never tiresome, always interesting and always instructive,
instead of casting them constantly in the mould of his own individual
impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in almost every
variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron makes man after his
own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the
other a yielding slave; he gives us the misanthrope and the voluptuary by
turns; and with these two characters, burning or melting in their own
fires, he makes out everlasting centos of himself. He hangs the cloud, the
film of his existence over all outward things--sits in the centre of his
thoughts, and enjoys dark night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom "in
cell monastic"--we see the mournful pall, the crucifix, the death's-heads,
the faded chaplet of flowers, the gleaming tapers, the agonized brow of
genius, the wasted form of beauty--but we are still imprisoned in a
dungeon, a curtain intercepts our view, we do not breathe freely the air
of nature or of our own thoughts--the other admired author draws aside the
curtain, and the veil of egotism is rent, and he shows us the crowd of
living men and women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the
cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one
passion by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away
that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to
think that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!--In this
point of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of
morality that ever lived, by emancipating the mind from petty, narrow, and
bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those
prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging
but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-conceit.
In reading the _Scotch Novels_, we never think about the author, except
from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown benefactor: in reading
Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent from our minds. The
colouring of Lord Byron's style, however rich and dipped in Tyrian dyes,
is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object of delight and wonder: Sir
Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In studying the one, you seem to
gaze at the figures cut in stained glass, which exclude the view beyond,
and where the pure light of Heaven is only a means of setting off the
gorgeousness of art: in reading the other, you look through a noble window
at the clear and varied landscape without. Or to sum up the distinction
in one word, Sir Walter Scott is the most _dramatic_ writer now living;
and Lord Byron is the least so.--It would be difficult to imagine that the
Author of Waverley is in the smallest degree a pedant; as it would be hard
to persuade ourselves that the Author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not
a coxcomb, though a provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference
given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the
prose-works of the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any
means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though
pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous
productions that he has shown himself for what he is!--
_Intensity_ is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's
writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced any
regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan beforehand,
nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His
only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers for the
moment--to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, to substitute a feverish
and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or even calm
enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at random without
much thought or delicacy--he is only impatient to begin--and takes care to
adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with "thoughts that breathe and words
that burn." He composes (as he himself has said) whether he is in the
bath, in his study, or on horseback--he writes as habitually as others
talk or think--and whether we have the inspiration of the Muse or not, we
always find the spirit of the man of genius breathing from his verse. He
grapples with his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it by the
electric force of his own feelings. He is often monotonous, extravagant,
offensive; but he is never dull, or tedious, but when he writes prose.
Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant
objects into importance by the romantic associations with which he
surrounds them; but generally (at least) takes common-place thoughts and
events and endeavours to express them in stronger and statelier language
than others. His poetry stands like a Martello tower by the side of his
subject. He does not, like Mr. Wordsworth, lift poetry from the ground, or
create a sentiment out of nothing. He does not describe a daisy or a
periwinkle, but the cedar or the cypress; not "poor men's cottages, but
princes' palaces." His Childe Harold contains a lofty and impassioned
review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as
wrecks of time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of
every schoolboy; has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought; and
has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the
sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery.
Lord Byron's earlier productions, _Lara_, the _Corsair_, etc. were wild
and gloomy romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They discover the
madness of poetry, together with the inspiration; sullen, moody,
capricious, fierce, inexorable, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge,
hurrying from the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing
permanent, nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decorations and the
morbid sentiments remind one of flowers strewed over the face of death! In
his _Childe Harold_ (as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and
philosophic tone, and "reasons high of providence, fore-knowledge, will,
and fate." He takes the highest points in the history of the world, and
comments on them from a more commanding eminence: he shows us the
crumbling monuments of time, he invokes the great names, the mighty spirit
of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately mausoleum:--in
solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron has strength and
elevation enough to fill up the moulds of our classical and time-hallowed
recollections, and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after
greatness and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of Tasso, of
Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Caesar, of Scipio, lose nothing of
their pomp or their lustre in his hands, and when he begins and continues
a strain of panegyric on such subjects, we indeed sit down with him to a
banquet of rich praise, brooding over imperishable glories,
"Till Contemplation has her fill."
Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal of
time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation, into
the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread
plume. Even this in him is spleen--his contempt of his contemporaries
makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project himself forward to
the dim future!--Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero,[140] Sardanapalus, etc.
are not equal to his other works. They want the essence of the drama. They
abound in speeches and descriptions, such as he himself might make either
to himself or others, lolling on his couch of a morning, but do not carry
the reader out of the poet's mind to the scenes and events recorded. They
have neither action, character, nor interest, but are a sort of _gossamer_
tragedies, spun out, and glittering, and spreading a flimsy veil over the
face of nature. Yet he spins them on. Of all that he has done in this way,
the _Heaven and Earth_ (the same subject as Mr. Moore's _Loves of the
Angels_) is the best. We prefer it even to _Manfred_. _Manfred_ is merely
himself with a fancy-drapery on: but in the dramatic fragment published in
the _Liberal_, the space between Heaven and Earth, the stage on which his
characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's
imagination; and the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be said
to have drowned all his own idle humours.
We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His "English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is dogmatical and insolent, but without
refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to transfix a
character with an epithet, which does not stick, because it has no other
foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he endeavours to degrade
by alluding to some circumstance of external situation. He says of Mr.
Wordsworth's poetry, that "it is his aversion." That may be: but whose
fault is it? This is the satire of a lord, who is accustomed to have all
his whims or dislikes taken for gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to
do more than signify his contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets
with a rebuff which he does not like, he turns on his heel, and this
passes for a repartee. The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and
critic, that he was "born in a garret sixteen stories high." The
insinuation is not true; or if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades
the person who makes it, not him to whom it is applied. This is also the
satire of a person of birth and quality, who measures all merit by
external rank, that is, by his own standard. So his Lordship, in a "Letter
to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review," addresses him fifty times as
"_my dear Robarts_;" nor is there any other wit in the article. This is
surely a mere assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is
the sort of _quizzing_ he might use to a person who came to hire himself
as a valet to him at _Long's_--the waiters might laugh, the public will
not. In like manner, in the controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on
the back with a coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain
whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a
benefice. The reverend divine might submit to the obligation, but he has
no occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles
should be a parson, and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this before;
there was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it.
The _Don Juan_ indeed has great power; but its power is owing to the force
of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between that and
the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the
ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are surprised that any one
should turn round and _travestie_ himself: the drollery is in the utter
discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes virtue serve as a foil to
vice; _dandyism_ is (for want of any other) a variety of genius. A
classical intoxication is followed by the splashing of soda-water, by
frothy effusions of ordinary bile. After the lightning and the hurricane,
we are introduced to the interior of the cabin and the contents of the
wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays _Scrub_ in the farce.
This is "very tolerable and not to be endured." The Noble Lord is almost
the only writer who has prostituted his talents in this way. He hallows in
order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his
hands have wrought; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to
Heaven only to dash them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the
more effectually from the very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for
genius or virtue is thus turned into a jest by the very person who has
kindled it, and who thus fatally quenches the spark of both. It is not
that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes
profligate, and sometimes moral--but when he is most serious and most
moral, he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting
a pitiful _hoax_ upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as
if the eagle were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were
seen soaring to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but
one would not wish or expect it to occur more than once![141]
In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune. He
has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight, unless
he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite of decency
and common-sense--he would have them read what they would read in no one
but himself, or he would not give a rush for their applause. He is to be
"a chartered libertine," from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is
to be a new incentive to admiration. His Lordship is hard to please: he is
equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning
praise. He tries the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when
they show signs of weariness or disgust, threatens to _discard_ them. He
says he will write on, whether he is read or not. He would never write
another page, if it were not to court popular applause, or to affect a
superiority over it. In this respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking
contrast to Sir Walter Scott. The latter takes what part of the public
favour falls to his share, without grumbling (to be sure, he has no reason
to complain); the former is always quarrelling with the world about his
_modicum_ of applause, the _spolia opima_ of vanity, and ungraciously
throwing the offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces
of his admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of
Waverley, all is fair and natural and _above-board_: he never outrages
the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character: broaches no
staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions as
a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling
paradoxes--
"Like proud seas under him;"
if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other panders
to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious
speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and levity are the
playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance that he should have
dedicated his _Cain_ to the worthy Baronet! Did the latter ever
acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very nice; but we do not
particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly from their
rottenness: nor do we wish to see the Muses dressed out in the flounces of
a false or questionable philosophy, like _Portia_ and _Nerissa_ in the
garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as Lord Byron; but not
to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a measure in the fetters
of verse. We have as good as hinted, that his Lordship's poetry consists
mostly of a tissue of superb common-places; even his paradoxes are
_common-place_. They are familiar in the schools: they are only new and
striking in his dramas and stanzas, by being out of place. In a word, we
think that poetry moves best within the circle of nature and received
opinion: speculative theory and subtle casuistry are forbidden ground to
it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this ground wantonly, wilfully, and
unwarrantably. The only apology we can conceive for the spirit of some of
Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit of some of those opposed to him. They
would provoke a man to write anything. "Farthest from them is best." The
extravagance and license of the one seems a proper antidote to the
bigotry and narrowness of the other. The first _Vision of Judgment_ was a
set-off to the second, though
"None but itself could be its parallel."
Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that he is that
anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a double privilege,
almost too much for humanity. He has all the pride of birth and genius.
The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in fantastic
opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance, he becomes a
pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a niche in the
Temple of Fame. Everyday mortals, opinions, things, are not good enough
for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, but
"the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of genius is no
better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality. The people are not
polite enough for him: the Court is not sufficiently intellectual. He
hates the one and despises the other. By hating and despising others, he
does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A fastidious man soon grows
querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody but ourselves to come up to
our idea of fancied perfection, we easily get tired of our idol. When a
man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he
is not. If he is a poet, he pretends to be a metaphysician: if he is a
patrician in rank and feeling, he would fain be one of the people. His
ruling motive is not the love of the people, but of distinction;--not of
truth, but of singularity. He patronises men of letters out of vanity, and
deserts them from caprice, or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an
obnoxious publication to provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for
itself for fear of scandal. We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous
servility: we like Lord Byron's preposterous _liberalism_ little better.
He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of
peerage, upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to
the Greeks--money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the
event!
* * * * *
We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put
an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was
intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we
were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling.
As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had
written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them
into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an
affected show of candour. We were not silent during the author's
life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such as we could give,
and _he_ did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn undertakers' men
to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall into the procession
of popular woe.--Death cancels every thing but truth; and strips a man of
every thing but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
It makes the meanest of us sacred--it installs the poet in his
immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the great assayer of the
sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the
irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust--the finer
and more ethereal part mounts with the winged spirit to watch over our
latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least
worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable
nature with double pride and fondness. Nothing could show the real
superiority of genius in a more striking point of view than the idle
contests and the public indifference about the place of Lord Byron's
interment, whether in Westminster Abbey or his own family-vault. A king
must have a coronation--a nobleman a funeral-procession.--The man is
nothing without the pageant. The poet's cemetery is the human mind, in
which he sows the seeds of never-ending thought--his monument is to be
found in his works:
"Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven;
No pyramids set off his memory,
But the eternal substance of his greatness."
Lord Byron is dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of
freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse and his
epitaph!