Reflections on his domestic Verses--Consideration of his Works--"The
Corsair"--Probabilities of the Character and Incidents of the Story--
On the Difference between poetical Invention and moral Experience:
illustrated by the Difference between the Genius of Shakespeare and
that of Byron
The task just concluded may disappoint the expectations of some of my
readers, but I would rather have said less than so much, could so
little have been allowed; for I have never been able to reconcile to
my notions of propriety, the exposure of domestic concerns which the
world has no right claim to know, and can only urge the plea of
curiosity for desiring to see explained. The scope of my undertaking
comprehends only the public and intellectual character of Lord Byron;
every word that I have found it necessary to say respecting his
private affairs has been set down with reluctance; nor should I have
touched so freely on his failings, but that the consequences have
deeply influenced his poetical conceptions.
There is, however, one point connected with his conjugal differences
which cannot be overlooked, nor noticed without animadversion. He
was too active himself in bespeaking the public sympathy against his
lady. It is true that but for that error the world might never have
seen the verses written by him on the occasion; and perhaps it was
the friends who were about him at the time who ought chiefly to be
blamed for having given them circulation: but in saying this, I am
departing from the rule I had prescribed to myself, while I ought
only to have remarked that the compositions alluded to, both the
Fare-thee-well and the Anathema on Mrs Charlemont, are splendid
corroborations of the metaphysical fact which it is the main object
of this work to illustrate, namely, that Byron was only original and
truly great when he wrote from the dictates of his own breast, and
described from the suggestions of things he had seen. When his
imagination found not in his subject uses for the materials of his
experience, and opportunities to embody them, it seemed to be no
longer the same high and mysterious faculty that so ruled the tides
of the feelings of others. He then appeared a more ordinary poet----
a skilful verse-maker. The necromancy which held the reader
spellbound became ineffectual; and the charm and the glory which
interested so intensely, and shone so radiantly on his configurations
from realities, all failed and faded; for his genius dealt not with
airy fancies, but had its power and dominion amid the living and the
local of the actual world.
I shall now return to the consideration of his works, and the first
in order is The Corsair, published in 1814. He seems to have been
perfectly sensible that this beautiful composition was in his best
peculiar manner. It is indeed a pirate's isle, peopled with his own
creatures.
It has been alleged that Lord Byron was indebted to Sir Walter
Scott's poem of Rokeby for the leading incidents of The Corsair, but
the resemblance is not to me very obvious: besides, the whole style
of the poem is so strikingly in his own manner, that even had he
borrowed the plan, it was only as a thread to string his own original
conceptions upon; the beauty and brilliancy of them could not be
borrowed, and are not imitations.
There were two islands in the Archipelago, when Lord Byron was in
Greece, considered as the chief haunts of the pirates, Stampalia, and
a long narrow island between Cape Colonna and Zea. Jura also was a
little tainted in its reputation. I think, however, from the
description, that the pirate's isle of The Corsair is the island off
Cape Colonna. It is a rude, rocky mass. I know not to what
particular Coron, if there be more than one, the poet alludes; for
the Coron of the Morea is neighbour to, if not in, the Mainote
territory, a tract of country which never submitted to the Turks, and
was exempted from the jurisdiction of Mussulman officers by the
payment of an annual tribute. The Mainotes themselves are all
pirates and robbers. If it be in that Coron that Byron has placed
Seyd the pasha, it must be attributed to inadvertency. His Lordship
was never there, nor in any part of Maina; nor does he describe the
place, a circumstance which of itself goes far to prove the
inadvertency. It is, however, only in making it the seat of a
Turkish pasha that any error has been committed. In working out the
incidents of the poem where descriptions of scenery are given, they
relate chiefly to Athens and its neighbourhood. In themselves these
descriptions are executed with an exquisite felicity; but they are
brought in without any obvious reason wherefore. In fact, they
appear to have been written independently of the poem, and are
patched on "shreds of purple" which could have been spared.
The character of Conrad the Corsair may be described as a combination
of the warrior of Albania and a naval officer--Childe Harold mingled
with the hero of The Giaour.
A man of loneliness and mystery,
Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh;
Robust, but not Herculean, to the sight,
No giant frame sets forth his common height;
Yet in the whole, who paused to look again
Saw more than marks the crowd of vulgar men:
They gaze and marvel how, and still confess
That thus it is, but why they cannot guess.
Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale,
The sable curls in wild profusion veil.
And oft perforce his rising lip reveals
The haughtier thought it curbs, but scarce conceals:
Though smooth his voice, and calm his general mien,
Still seems there something he would not have seen.
His features' deepening lines and varying hue
At times attracted, yet perplex'd the view,
As if within that murkiness of mind
Work'd feelings fearful, and yet undefined:
Such might he be that none could truly tell,
Too close inquiry his stern glance could quell.
There breathed but few whose aspect could defy
The full encounter of his searching eye;
He had the skill, when cunning gaze to seek
To probe his heart and watch his changing cheek,
At once the observer's purpose to espy,
And on himself roll back his scrutiny,
Lest he to Conrad rather should betray
Some secret thought, than drag that chief's to day.
There was a laughing devil in his sneer
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell
Hope withering fled, and mercy sigh'd, farewell.
It will be allowed that, in this portrait, some of the darker
features and harsher lineaments of Byron himself are very evident,
but with a more fixed sternness than belonged to him; for it was only
by fits that he could put on such severity. Conrad is, however, a
higher creation than any which he had previously described. Instead
of the listlessness of Childe Harold, he is active and enterprising;
such as the noble pilgrim would have been, but for the satiety which
had relaxed his energies. There is also about him a solemnity
different from the animation of the Giaour--a penitential despair
arising from a cause undisclosed. The Giaour, though wounded and
fettered, and laid in a dungeon, would not have felt as Conrad is
supposed to feel in that situation. The following bold and terrific
verses, descriptive of the maelstrom agitations of remorse, could not
have been appropriately applied to the despair of grief, the
predominant source of emotion in The Giaour.
There is a war, a chaos of the mind
When all its elements convulsed combined,
Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force,
And gnashing with impenitent remorse.
That juggling fiend who never spake before,
But cries, "I warn'd thee," when the deed is o'er;
Vain voice, the spirit burning, but unbent,
May writhe, rebel--the weak alone repent.
The character of Conrad is undoubtedly finely imagined; as the
painters would say, it is in the highest style of art, and brought
out with sublime effect; but still it is only another phase of the
same portentous meteor, that was nebulous in Childe Harold, and fiery
in The Giaour. To the safe and shop-resorting inhabitants of
Christendom, The Corsair seems to present many improbabilities;
nevertheless, it is true to nature, and in every part of the Levant
the traveller meets with individuals whose air and physiognomy remind
him of Conrad. The incidents of the story, also, so wild and
extravagant to the snug and legal notions of England, are not more in
keeping with the character, than they are in accordance with fact and
reality. The poet suffers immeasurable injustice, when it is
attempted to determine the probability of the wild scenes and wilder
adventurers of his tales, by the circumstances and characters of the
law-regulated system of our diurnal affairs. Probability is a
standard formed by experience, and it is not surprising that the
anchorets of libraries should object to the improbability of The
Corsair, and yet acknowledge the poetical power displayed in the
composition; for it is a work which could only have been written by
one who had himself seen or heard on the spot of transactions similar
to those he has described. No course of reading could have supplied
materials for a narration so faithfully descriptive of the accidents
to which an AEgean pirate is exposed as The Corsair. Had Lord Byron
never been out of England, the production of a work so appropriate in
reflection, so wild in spirit, and so bold in invention, as in that
case it would have been, would have entitled him to the highest
honours of original conception, or been rejected as extravagant;
considered as the result of things seen, and of probabilities
suggested, by transactions not uncommon in the region where his
genius gathered the ingredients of its sorceries, more than the half
of its merits disappear, while the other half brighten with the
lustre of truth.
The manners, the actions, and the incidents were new to the English
mind; but to the inhabitant of the Levant they have long been
familiar, and the traveller who visits that region will hesitate to
admit that Lord Byron possessed those creative powers, and that
discernment of dark bosoms for which he is so much celebrated;
because he will see there how little of invention was necessary to
form such heroes as Conrad, and how much the actual traffic of life
and trade is constantly stimulating enterprise and bravery. But let
it not, therefore, be supposed, that I would undervalue either the
genius of the poet, or the merits of the poem, in saying so, for I do
think a higher faculty has been exerted in The Corsair than in Childe
Harold. In the latter, only actual things are described, freshly and
vigorously as they were seen, and feelings expressed eloquently as
they were felt; but in the former, the talent of combination has been
splendidly employed. The one is a view from nature, the other is a
composition both from nature and from history.
Lara, which appeared soon after The Corsair, is an evident supplement
to it; the description of the hero corresponds in person and
character with Conrad; so that the remarks made on The Corsair apply,
in all respects, to Lara. The poem itself is perhaps, in elegance,
superior; but the descriptions are not so vivid, simply because they
are more indebted to imagination. There is one of them, however, in
which the lake and abbey of Newstead are dimly shadowed, equal in
sweetness and solemnity to anything the poet has ever written.
It was the night, and Lara's glassy stream
The stars are studding each with imaged beam:
So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide, like happiness, away;
Reflecting far and fairy-like from high
The immortal lights that live along the sky;
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee:
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,
And innocence would offer to her love;
These deck the shore, the waves their channel make
In windings bright and mazy, like the snake.
All was so still, so soft in earth and air,
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there,
Secure that naught of evil could delight
To walk in such a scene, in such a night!
It was a moment only for the good:
So Lara deemed: nor longer there he stood;
But turn'd in silence to his castle-gate:
Such scene his soul no more could contemplate:
Such scene reminded him of other days,
Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze;
Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now--
No, no! the storm may beat upon his brow
Unfelt, unsparing; but a night like this,
A night of beauty, mock'd such breast as his.
He turn'd within his solitary hall,
And his high shadow shot along the wall:
There were the painted forms of other times--
'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes,
Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults
That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults,
And half a column of the pompous page,
That speeds the spacious tale from age to age;
Where history's pen its praise or blame supplies
And lies like truth, and still most truly lies;
He wand'ring mused, and as the moonbeam shone
Through the dim lattice o'er the floor of stone,
And the high-fretted roof and saints that there
O'er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer;
Reflected in fantastic figures grew
Like life, but not like mortal life to view;
His bristling locks of sable, brow of gloom,
And the wide waving of his shaken plume
Glanced like a spectre's attributes, and gave
His aspect all that terror gives the grave.
That Byron wrote best when he wrote of himself and of his own, has
probably been already made sufficiently apparent. In this respect he
stands alone and apart from all other poets, and there will be
occasion to show, that this peculiarity extended much farther over
all his works, than merely to those which may be said to have
required him to be thus personal. The great distinction, indeed, of
his merit consists in that singularity. Shakspeare, in drawing the
materials of his dramas from tales and history has, with wonderful
art, given from his own invention and imagination the fittest and
most appropriate sentiments and language; and admiration at the
perfection with which he has accomplished this, can never be
exhausted. The difference between Byron and Shakspeare consists in
the curious accident, if it may be so called, by which the former was
placed in circumstances which taught him to feel in himself the very
sentiments that he has ascribed to his characters. Shakspeare
created the feelings of his, and with such excellence, that they are
not only probable to the situations, but give to the personifications
the individuality of living persons. Byron's are scarcely less so;
but with him there was no invention, only experience, and when he
attempts to express more than he has himself known, he is always
comparatively feeble.