The Character of Lord Byron
My endeavour, in the foregoing pages, has been to give a general view
of the intellectual character of Lord Byron. It did not accord with
the plan to enter minutely into the details of his private life,
which I suspect was not greatly different from that of any other
person of his rank, not distinguished for particular severity of
manners. In some respects his Lordship was, no doubt, peculiar. He
possessed a vivacity of sensibility not common, and talents of a very
extraordinary kind. He was also distinguished for superior personal
elegance, particularly in his bust. The style and character of his
head were universally admired; but perhaps the beauty of his
physiognomy has been more highly spoken of than it really merited.
Its chief grace consisted, when he was in a gay humour, of a
liveliness which gave a joyous meaning to every articulation of the
muscles and features: when he was less agreeably disposed, the
expression was morose to a very repulsive degree. It is, however,
unnecessary to describe his personal character here. I have already
said enough incidentally, to explain my full opinion of it. In the
mass, I do not think it was calculated to attract much permanent
affection or esteem. In the detail it was the reverse: few men
possessed more companionable qualities than Lord Byron did
occasionally; and seen at intervals in those felicitous moments, I
imagine it would have been difficult to have said, that a more
interesting companion had been previously met with. But he was not
always in that fascinating state of pleasantry: he was as often
otherwise; and no two individuals could be more distinct from each
other than Byron in his gaiety and in his misanthropy. This
antithesis was the great cause of that diversity of opinion
concerning him, which has so much divided his friends and
adversaries. Of his character as a poet there can be no difference
of opinion, but only a difference in the degree of admiration.
Excellence in talent, as in every other thing, is comparative; but
the universal republic of letters will acknowledge, that in energy of
expression and liveliness of imagery Byron had no equal in his own
time. Doubts, indeed, may be entertained, if in these high qualities
even Shakspeare himself was his superior.
I am not disposed to think with many of those who rank the genius of
Byron almost as supreme, that he has shown less skill in the
construction of his plots, and the development of his tales, than
might have been expected from one so splendidly endowed; for it has
ever appeared to me that he has accomplished in them everything he
proposed to attain, and that in this consists one of his great
merits. His mind, fervid and impassioned, was in all his
compositions, except Don Juan, eagerly fixed on the catastrophe. He
ever held the goal full in view, and drove to it in the most
immediate manner. By this straightforward simplicity all the
interest which intricacy excites was of necessity disregarded. He is
therefore not treated justly when it is supposed that he might have
done better had he shown more art: the wonder is, that he should
have produced such magnificent effects with so little. He could not
have made the satiated and meditative Harold so darkling and
excursive, so lone, "aweary," and misanthropical, had he treated him
as the hero of a scholastic epic. The might of the poet in such
creations lay in the riches of his diction and in the felicity with
which he described feelings in relation to the aspect of scenes amid
the reminiscences with which the scenes themselves were associated.
If in language and plan he be so excellent, it may be asked why
should he not be honoured with that pre-eminent niche in the temple
which so many in the world have by suffrage assigned to him? Simply
because, with all the life and beauty of his style, the vigour and
truth of his descriptions, the boldness of his conceptions, and the
reach of his vision in the dark abysses of passion, Lord Byron was
but imperfectly acquainted with human nature. He looked but on the
outside of man. No characteristic action distinguishes one of his
heroes from another, nor is there much dissimilarity in their
sentiments; they have no individuality; they stalk and pass in mist
and gloom, grim, ghastly, and portentous, mysterious shadows,
entities of the twilight, weird things like the sceptred effigies of
the unborn issue of Banquo.
Combined with vast power, Lord Byron possessed, beyond all question,
the greatest degree of originality of any poet of this age. In this
rare quality he has no parallel in any age. All other poets and
inventive authors are measured in their excellence by the accuracy
with which they fit sentiments appropriate not only to the characters
they create, but to the situations in which they place them: the
works of Lord Byron display the opposite to this, and with the most
extraordinary splendour. He endows his creations with his own
qualities; he finds in the situations in which he places them only
opportunities to express what he has himself felt or suffered; and
yet he mixes so much probability in the circumstances, that they are
always eloquently proper. He does everything, as it were, the
reverse of other poets; in the air and sea, which have been in all
times the emblems of change and the similitudes of inconstancy, he
has discovered the very principles of permanency. The ocean in his
view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless
extent, becomes an image of deity, by its unchangeable character!
The variety of his productions present a prodigious display of power.
In his short career he has entitled himself to be ranked in the first
class of the British poets for quantity alone. By Childe Harold, and
his other poems of the same mood, he has extended the scope of
feeling, made us acquainted with new trains of association, awakened
sympathies which few suspected themselves of possessing; and he has
laid open darker recesses in the bosom than were previously supposed
to exist. The deep and dreadful caverns of remorse had long been
explored but he was the first to visit the bottomless pit of satiety.
The delineation of that Promethean fortitude which defied conscience,
as he has shown it in Manfred, is his greatest achievement. The
terrific fables of Marlowe and of Goethe, in their respective
versions of the legend of Faustus, had disclosed the utmost writhings
which remorse in the fiercest of its torments can express; but what
are those Laocoon agonies to the sublime serenity of Manfred. In the
power, the originality, and the genius combined, of that unexampled
performance, Lord Byron has placed himself on an equality with
Milton. The Satan of the Paradise Lost is animated by motives, and
dignified by an eternal enterprise. He hath purposes of infinite
prospect to perform, and an immeasurable ambition to satisfy.
Manfred hath neither purpose nor ambition, nor any desire that seeks
gratification. He hath done a deed which severs him from hope, as
everlastingly as the apostacy with the angels has done Satan. He
acknowledges no contrition to bespeak commiseration, he complains of
no wrong to justify revenge, for he feels none; he despises sympathy,
and almost glories in his perdition.
The creation of such a character is in the sublimest degree of
originality; to give it appropriate thoughts and feelings required
powers worthy of the conception; and to make it susceptible of being
contemplated as within the scope and range of human sympathy, places
Byron above all his contemporaries and antecedents. Milton has
described in Satan the greatest of human passions, supernatural
attributes, directed to immortal intents, and stung with
inextinguishable revenge; but Satan is only a dilatation of man.
Manfred is loftier, and worse than Satan; he has conquered
punishment, having within himself a greater than hell can inflict.
There is a fearful mystery in this conception; it is only by solemnly
questioning the spirits that lurk within the dark metaphors in which
Manfred expresses himself, that the hideous secrets of the character
can be conjectured.
But although in intellectual power, and in creative originality,
Byron is entitled to stand on the highest peak of the mountain, his
verse is often so harsh, and his language so obscure, that in the
power of delighting he is only a poet of the second class. He had
all the talent and the means requisite to embody his conceptions in a
manner worthy of their might and majesty; his treasury was rich in
everything rare and beautiful for illustration, but he possessed not
the instinct requisite to guide him in the selection of the things
necessary to the inspiration of delight:--he could give his statue
life and beauty, and warmth, and motion, and eloquence, but not a
tuneful voice.
Some curious metaphysicians, in their subtle criticism, have said
that Don Juan was but the bright side of Childe Harold, and that all
its most brilliant imagery was similar to that of which the dark and
the shadows were delineated in his other works. It may be so. And,
without question, a great similarity runs through everything that has
come from the poet's pen; but it is a family resemblance, the progeny
are all like one another; but where are those who are like them? I
know of no author in prose or rhyme, in the English language, with
whom Byron can be compared. Imitators of his manner there will be
often and many, but he will ever remain one of the few whom the world
acknowledges are alike supreme, and yet unlike each other--epochal
characters, who mark extraordinary periods in history.
Raphael is the only man of pre-eminence whose career can be compared
with that of Byron; at an age when the genius of most men is but in
the dawning, they had both attained their meridian of glory, and they
both died so early, that it may be said they were lent to the world
only to show the height to which the mind may ascend when time shall
be allowed to accomplish the full cultivations of such extraordinary
endowments.
Footnotes:
{156} I.e., against.
{241} The sacrifice of Antinous by the emperor Adrian is supposed to
have been a sacrifice of that kind. Dion Cassius says, that Adrian,
who had applied himself to the study of magic, being deceived by the
principles of that black Egyptian art into a belief that he would be
rendered immortal by a voluntary human sacrifice to the infernal
gods, accepted the offer which Antinous made of himself.
I have somewhere met with a commentary on this to the following
effect:
The Christian religion, in the time of Adrian, was rapidly spreading
throughout the empire, and the doctrine of gaining eternal life by
the expiatory offering was openly preached. The Egyptian priests,
who pretended to be in possession of all knowledge, affected to be
acquainted with this mystery also. The emperor was, by his taste and
his vices, attached to the old religion; but he trembled at the
truths disclosed by the revelation; and in this state of
apprehension, his thirst of knowledge and his fears led him to
consult the priests of Osiris and Isis; and they impressed him with a
notion that the infernal deities would be appeased by the sacrifice
of a human being dear to him, and who loved him so entirely as to lay
down his life for him. Antinous, moved by the anxiety of his
imperial master, when all others had refused, consented to sacrifice
himself; and it was for this devotion that Adrian caused his memory
to be hallowed with religious rites.
{255} Mr Hobhouse has assured me that this information is not
correct. "I happen," says he, "to know that Lord Byron offered to
give the Guiccioli a sum of money outright, or to leave it to her by
his will. I also happen to know that the lady would not hear of any
such present or provision; for I have a letter in which Lord Byron
extols her disinterestedness, and mentions that he has met with a
similar refusal from another female. As to the being in destitute
circumstances, I cannot believe it; for Count Gamba, her brother,
whom I knew very well after Lord Byron's death, never made any
complaint or mention of such a fact: add to which, I know a
maintenance was provided for her by her husband, in consequence of a
law process, before the death of Lord Byron."
{291a} The calenture.
{291b} The Swiss air.
{319} The doctor evidently makes a mistake in confounding Sir
William Hamilton with Sir William Drummond.
{354} Fletcher's narrative implies at six that evening, the 19th
April, 1824.