State of Byron in Switzerland--He goes to Venice--The fourth Canto of
"Childe Harold"--Rumination on his own Condition--Beppo--Lament of
Tasso--Curious Example of Byron's metaphysical Love
The situation of Lord Byron in Switzerland was comfortless. He found
that "the montain palaces of Nature" afforded no asylum to a haunted
heart; he was ill at ease with himself, even dissatisfied that the
world had not done him enough of wrong to justify his misanthropy.
Some expectation that his lady would repent of her part in the
separation probably induced him to linger in the vicinity of Geneva,
the thoroughfare of the travelling English, whom he affected to shun.
If it were so, he was disappointed, and, his hopes being frustrated,
he broke up the establishment he had formed there and crossed the
Alps. After visiting some of the celebrated scenes and places in the
north of Italy he passed on to Venice, where he domiciled himself for
a time.
During his residence at Venice Lord Byron avoided as much as possible
any intercourse with his countrymen. This was perhaps in some degree
necessary, and it was natural in the state of his mind. He had
become an object of great public interest by his talents; the stories
connected with his domestic troubles had also increased his
notoriety, and in such circumstances he could not but shrink from the
inquisition of mere curiosity. But there was an insolence in the
tone with which he declares his "utter abhorrence of any contact with
the travelling English," that can neither be commended for its
spirit, nor palliated by any treatment he had suffered. Like
Coriolanus he may have banished his country, but he had not, like the
Roman, received provocation: on the contrary, he had been the
aggressor in the feuds with his literary adversaries; and there was a
serious accusation against his morals, or at least his manners, in
the circumstances under which Lady Byron withdrew from his house. It
was, however, his misfortune throughout life to form a wrong estimate
of himself in everything save in his poetical powers.
A life in Venice is more monotonous than in any other great city; but
a man of genius carries with him everywhere a charm, which secures to
him both variety and enjoyment. Lord Byron had scarcely taken up his
abode in Venice, when he began the fourth canto of Childe Harold,
which he published early in the following year, and dedicated to his
indefatigable friend Mr Hobhouse by an epistle dated on the
anniversary of his marriage, "the most unfortunate day," as he says,
"of his past existence."
In this canto he has indulged his excursive moralizing beyond even
the wide licence he took in the three preceding parts; but it bears
the impression of more reading and observation. Though not superior
in poetical energy, it is yet a higher work than any of them, and
something of a more resolved and masculine spirit pervades the
reflections, and endows, as it were, with thought and enthusiasm the
aspect of the things described. Of the merits of the descriptions,
as of real things, I am not qualified to judge: the transcripts from
the tablets of the author's bosom he has himself assured us are
faithful.
"With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found
less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little
slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own
person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line,
which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese,
in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be
a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted and imagined that I had
drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very
anxiety to preserve this difference, and the disappointment at
finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition,
that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so."
This confession, though it may not have been wanted, gives a pathetic
emphasis to those passages in which the poet speaks of his own
feelings. That his mind was jarred, and out of joint, there is too
much reason to believe; but he had in some measure overcome the
misery that clung to him during the dismal time of his sojourn in
Switzerland, and the following passage, though breathing the sweet
and melancholy spirit of dejection, possesses a more generous vein of
nationality than is often met with in his works, even when the same
proud sentiment might have been more fitly expressed:
I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise,
Nor is it harsh to make or hard to find
A country with--aye, or without mankind.
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
Th' inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea?
Perhaps I lov'd it well, and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it--if we may,
Unbodied, choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remember'd in my line,
With my land's language; if too fond and far
These aspirations in their hope incline--
If my fame should be as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honour'd by the nations--let it be,
And light the laurels on a loftier head,
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me:
"Sparta had many a worthier son than he";
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted--they have torn me--and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
It will strike the reader as remarkable, that although the poet, in
the course of this canto, takes occasion to allude to Dante and
Tasso, in whose destinies there was a shadowy likeness of his own,
the rumination is mingled with less of himself than might have been
expected, especially when it is considered how much it was a habit
with him, to make his own feelings the basis and substratum of the
sentiments he ascribed to others. It has also more than once
surprised me that he has so seldom alluded to Alfieri, whom of all
poets, both in character and conduct, he most resembled; with this
difference, however, that Alfieri was possessed of affections equally
intense and durable, whereas the caprice of Byron made him uncertain
in his partialities, or what was the same in effect, made his friends
set less value on them than perhaps they were entitled to.
Before Childe Harold was finished, an incident occurred which
suggested to Byron a poem of a very different kind to any he had yet
attempted:--without vouching for the exact truth of the anecdote, I
have been told, that he one day received by the mail a copy of
Whistlecraft's prospectus and specimen of an intended national work;
and, moved by its playfulness, immediately after reading it, began
Beppo, which he finished at a sitting. The facility with which he
composed renders the story not improbable; but, singular as it may
seem, the poem itself has the facetious flavour in it of his gaiety,
stronger than even his grave works have of his frowardness, commonly
believed to have been--I think, unjustly--the predominant mood of his
character.
The Ode to Venice is also to be numbered among his compositions in
that city; a spirited and indignant effusion, full of his peculiar
lurid fire, and rich in a variety of impressive and original images.
But there is a still finer poem which belongs to this period of his
history, though written, I believe, before he reached Venice--The
Lament of Tasso: and I am led to notice it the more particularly, as
one of its noblest passages affords an illustration of the opinion
which I have early maintained--that Lord Byron's extraordinary
pretensions to the influence of love was but a metaphysical
conception of the passion.
It is no marvel--from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lovely flowers,
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours.
It has been remarked by an anonymous author of Memoirs of Lord Byron,
a work written with considerable talent and acumen, that "this is so
far from being in character, that it is the very reverse; for whether
Tasso was in his senses or not, if his love was sincere, he would
have made the object of his affection the sole theme of his
meditation, instead of generalising his passion, and talking about
the original sympathies of his nature." In truth, no poet has better
described love than Byron has his own peculiar passion.
His love was passion's essence--as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus enamour'd were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became
In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.
In tracing the course of Lord Byron's career, I have not deemed it at
all necessary to advert to the instances of his generosity, or to
conduct less pleasant to record. Enough has appeared to show that he
was neither deficient in warmth of heart nor in less amiable
feelings; but, upon the whole, it is not probable that either in his
charities or his pleasures he was greatly different from other young
men, though he undoubtedly had a wayward delight in magnifying his
excesses, not in what was to his credit, like most men, but in what
was calculated to do him no honour. More notoriety has been given to
an instance of lavish liberality at Venice, than the case deserved,
though it was unquestionably prompted by a charitable impulse. The
house of a shoemaker, near his Lordship's residence, in St Samuel,
was burned to the ground, with all it contained, by which the
proprietor was reduced to indigence. Byron not only caused a new but
a superior house to be erected, and also presented the sufferer with
a sum of money equal in value to the whole of his stock in trade and
furniture. I should endanger my reputation for impartiality if I did
not, as a fair set-off to this, also mention that it is said he
bought for five hundred crowns a baker's wife. There might be
charity in this, too.