"Sir,
"The volume of little pieces which accompanies this, would have been
presented before, had I not been apprehensive that Miss Falkner's
indisposition might render such trifles unwelcome. There are some
errors of the printer which I have not had time to correct in the
collection: you have it thus, with 'all its imperfections on its
head,' a heavy weight, when joined with the faults of its author. Such
'Juvenilia,' as they can claim no great degree of approbation, I may
venture to hope, will also escape the severity of uncalled for, though
perhaps _not_ undeserved, criticism.
"They were written on many and various occasions, and are now
published merely for the perusal of a friendly circle. Believe me,
sir, if they afford the slightest amusement to yourself and the rest
of my _social_ readers, I shall have gathered all the _bays_ I ever
wish to adorn the head of yours,
very truly,
"BYRON.
"P.S.--I hope Miss F. is in a state of recovery."
Notwithstanding this unambitious declaration of the young author, he
had that within which would not suffer him to rest so easily; and the
fame he had now reaped within a limited circle made him but more eager
to try his chance on a wider field. The hundred copies of which this
edition consisted were hardly out of his hands, when with fresh
activity he went to press again,--and his first published volume, "The
Hours of Idleness," made its appearance. Some new pieces which he had
written in the interim were added, and no less than twenty of those
contained in the former volume omitted;--for what reason does not very
clearly appear, as they are, most of them, equal, if not superior, to
those retained.
In one of the pieces, reprinted in the "Hours of Idleness," there are
some alterations and additions, which, as far as they may be supposed
to spring from the known feelings of the poet respecting birth, are
curious. This poem, which is entitled "Epitaph on a Friend," appears,
from the lines I am about to give, to have been, in its original
state, intended to commemorate the death of the same lowly born youth,
to whom some affectionate verses, cited in a preceding page, were
addressed:--
"Though low thy lot, since in a cottage born,
No titles did thy humble name adorn;
To me, far dearer was thy artless love
Than all the joys wealth, fame, and friends could prove."
But, in the altered form of the epitaph, not only this passage, but
every other containing an allusion to the low rank of his young
companion, is omitted; while, in the added parts, the introduction of
such language as
"What, though thy sire lament his failing line,"
seems calculated to give an idea of the youth's station in life,
wholly different from that which the whole tenour of the original
epitaph warrants. The other poem, too, which I have mentioned,
addressed evidently to the same boy, and speaking in similar terms, of
the "lowness" of his "lot," is, in the "Hours of Idleness," altogether
omitted. That he grew more conscious of his high station, as he
approached to manhood, is not improbable; and this wish to sink his
early friendship with the young cottager may have been a result of
that feeling.
As his visits to Southwell were, after this period, but few and
transient, I shall take the present opportunity of mentioning such
miscellaneous particulars respecting his habits and mode of life,
while there, as I have been able to collect.
Though so remarkably shy, when he first went to Southwell, this
reserve, as he grew more acquainted with the young people of the
place, wore off; till, at length, he became a frequenter of their
assemblies and dinner-parties, and even felt mortified if he heard of
a rout to which he was not invited. His horror, however, at new faces
still continued; and if, while at Mrs. Pigot's, he saw strangers
approaching the house, he would instantly jump out of the window to
avoid them. This natural shyness concurred with no small degree of
pride to keep him aloof from the acquaintance of the gentlemen in the
neighbourhood, whose visits, in more than one instance, he left
unreturned;--some under the plea that their ladies had not visited his
mother; others, because they had neglected to pay him this compliment
sooner. The true reason, however, of the haughty distance, at which,
both now and afterwards, he stood apart from his more opulent
neighbours, is to be found in his mortifying consciousness of the
inadequacy of his own means to his rank, and the proud dread of being
made to feel this inferiority by persons to whom, in every other
respect, he knew himself superior. His friend, Mr. Becher, frequently
expostulated with him on this unsociableness; and to his
remonstrances, on one occasion, Lord Byron returned a poetical answer,
so remarkably prefiguring the splendid burst, with which his own
volcanic genius opened upon the world, that as the volume containing
the verses is in very few hands, I cannot resist the temptation of
giving a few extracts here:--
"Dear Becher, you tell me to mix with mankind,--
I cannot deny such a precept is wise;
But retirement accords with the tone of my mind,
And I will not descend to a world I despise.
"Did the Senate or Camp my exertions require,
Ambition might prompt me at once to go forth;
And, when infancy's years of probation expire,
Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.
_"The fire, in the cavern of Ætna concealed,
Still mantles unseen, in its secret recess;--
At length, in a volume terrific revealed,
No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.
"Oh thus, the desire in my bosom for fame
Bids me live but to hope for Posterity's praise;
Could I soar, with the Phoenix, on pinions of flame,
With him I would wish to expire in the blaze._
"For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death,
What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave?
Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath,--
Their glory illumines the gloom of the grave!"
In his hours of rising and retiring to rest he was, like his mother,
always very late; and this habit he never altered during the remainder
of his life. The night, too, was at this period, as it continued
afterwards, his favourite time for composition; and his first visit in
the morning was generally paid to the fair friend who acted as his
amanuensis, and to whom he then gave whatever new products of his
brain the preceding night might have inspired. His next visit was
usually to his friend Mr. Becher's, and from thence to one or two
other houses on the Green, after which the rest of the day was devoted
to his favourite exercises. The evenings he usually passed with the
same family, among whom he began his morning, either in conversation,
or in hearing Miss Pigot play upon the piano-forte, and singing over
with her a certain set of songs which he admired,[59]--among which
the "Maid of Lodi," (with the words, "My heart with love is beating,")
and "When Time who steals our years away," were, it seems, his
particular favourites. He appears, indeed, to have, even thus early,
shown a decided taste for that sort of regular routine of
life,--bringing round the same occupations at the stated
periods,--which formed so much the system of his existence during the
greater part of his residence abroad.
Those exercises, to which he flew for distraction in less happy days,
formed his enjoyment now; and between swimming, sparring, firing at a
mark, and riding,[60] the greater part of his time was passed. In the
last of these accomplishments he was by no means very expert. As an
instance of his little knowledge of horses, it is told, that, seeing a
pair one day pass his window, he exclaimed, "What beautiful horses! I
should like to buy them."--"Why, they are your own, my Lord," said his
servant. Those who knew him, indeed, at that period, were rather
surprised, in after-life, to hear so much of his riding;--and the
truth is, I am inclined to think, that he was at no time a very adroit
horse-man.
In swimming and diving we have already seen, by his own accounts, he
excelled; and a lady in Southwell, among other precious relics of him,
possesses a thimble which he borrowed of her one morning, when on his
way to bathe in the Greet, and which, as was testified by her brother,
who accompanied him, he brought up three times successively from the
bottom of the river. His practice of firing at a mark was the
occasion, once, of some alarm to a very beautiful young person, Miss
H.,--one of that numerous list of fair ones by whom his imagination
was dazzled while at Southwell. A poem relating to this occurrence,
which may be found in his unpublished volume, is thus introduced:--"As
the author was discharging his pistols in a garden, two ladies,
passing near the spot, were alarmed by the sound of a bullet hissing
near them, to one of whom the following stanzas were addressed the
next morning."
Such a passion, indeed, had he for arms of every description, that
there generally lay a small sword by the side of his bed, with which
he used to amuse himself, as he lay awake in the morning, by thrusting
it through his bed-hangings. The person who purchased this bed at the
sale of Mrs. Byron's furniture, on her removal to Newstead, gave
out--with the view of attaching a stronger interest to the holes in
the curtains--that they were pierced by the same sword with which the
old lord had killed Mr. Chaworth, and which his descendant always kept
as a memorial by his bedside. Such is the ready process by which
fiction is often engrafted upon fact;--the sword in question being a
most innocent and bloodless weapon, which Lord Byron, during his
visits at Southwell, used to borrow of one of his neighbours.
His fondness for dogs--another fancy which accompanied him through
life--may be judged from the anecdotes already given, in the account
of his expedition to Harrowgate. Of his favourite dog Boatswain, whom
he has immortalised in verse, and by whose side it was once his
solemn purpose to be buried, some traits are told, indicative, not
only of intelligence, but of a generosity of spirit, which might well
win for him the affections of such a master as Byron. One of these I
shall endeavour to relate as nearly as possible as it was told to me.
Mrs. Byron had a fox-terrier, called Gilpin, with whom her son's dog,
Boatswain, was perpetually at war,[61] taking every opportunity of
attacking and worrying him so violently, that it was very much
apprehended he would kill the animal. Mrs. Byron therefore sent off
her terrier to a tenant at Newstead; and on the departure of Lord
Byron for Cambridge, his "friend" Boatswain, with two other dogs, was
intrusted to the care of a servant till his return. One morning the
servant was much alarmed by the disappearance of Boatswain, and
throughout the whole of the day he could hear no tidings of him. At
last, towards evening, the stray dog arrived, accompanied by Gilpin,
whom he led immediately to the kitchen fire, licking him and lavishing
upon him every possible demonstration of joy. The fact was, he had
been all the way to Newstead to fetch him; and having now established
his former foe under the roof once more, agreed so perfectly well with
him ever after, that he even protected him against the insults of
other dogs (a task which the quarrelsomeness of the little terrier
rendered no sinecure), and, if he but heard Gilpin's voice in
distress, would fly instantly to his rescue.
In addition to the natural tendency to superstition, which is usually
found connected with the poetical temperament, Lord Byron had also the
example and influence of his mother, acting upon him from infancy, to
give his mind this tinge. Her implicit belief in the wonders of second
sight, and the strange tales she told of this mysterious faculty, used
to astonish not a little her sober English friends; and it will be
seen, that, at so late a period as the death of his friend Shelley,
the idea of fetches and forewarnings impressed upon him by his mother
had not wholly lost possession of the poet's mind. As an instance of a
more playful sort of superstition I may be allowed to mention a slight
circumstance told me of him by one of his Southwell friends. This lady
had a large agate bead with a wire through it, which had been taken
out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking one
day what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet,
and the charm was, that as long as she had this bead in her
possession, she should never be in love. "Then give it to me," he
cried, eagerly, "for that's just the thing I want." The young lady
refused;--but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She taxed
him with the theft, and he owned it; but said, she never should see
her amulet again.
Of his charity and kind-heartedness he left behind him at
Southwell--as, indeed, at every place, throughout life, where he
resided any time--the most cordial recollections. "He never," says a
person, who knew him intimately at this period, "met with objects of
distress without affording them succour." Among many little traits of
this nature, which his friends delight to tell, I select the
following,--less as a proof of his generosity, than from the interest
which the simple incident itself, as connected with the name of Byron,
presents. While yet a school-boy, he happened to be in a bookseller's
shop at Southwell, when a poor woman came in to purchase a Bible. The
price, she was told by the shopman, was eight shillings. "Ah, dear
sir," she exclaimed, "I cannot pay such a price; I did not think it
would cost half the money." The woman was then, with a look of
disappointment, going away,--when young Byron called her back, and
made her a present of the Bible.
In his attention to his person and dress, to the becoming arrangement
of his hair, and to whatever might best show off the beauty with which
nature had gifted him, he manifested, even thus early, his anxiety to
make himself pleasing to that sex who were, from first to last, the
ruling stars of his destiny. The fear of becoming, what he was
naturally inclined to be, enormously fat, had induced him, from his
first entrance at Cambridge, to adopt, for the purpose of reducing
himself, a system of violent exercise and abstinence, together with
the frequent use of warm baths. But the embittering circumstance of
his life,--that, which haunted him like a curse, amidst the buoyancy
of youth, and the anticipations of fame and pleasure, was, strange to
say, the trifling deformity of his foot. By that one slight blemish
(as in his moments of melancholy he persuaded himself) all the
blessings that nature had showered upon him were counterbalanced. His
reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected,
endeavoured to cheer and rouse him, by representing, in their
brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence
had endowed him,--and, among the greatest, that of "a mind which
placed him above the rest of mankind."--"Ah, my dear friend," said
Byron, mournfully,--"if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places
me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me
far, far below them."
It sometimes, indeed, seemed as if his sensitiveness on this point led
him to fancy that he was the only person in the world afflicted with
such an infirmity. When that accomplished scholar and traveller, Mr.
D. Baillie, who was at the same school with him at Aberdeen, met him
afterwards at Cambridge, the young peer had then grown so fat that,
though accosted by him familiarly as his school-fellow, it was not
till he mentioned his name that Mr. Baillie could recognise him. "It
is odd enough, too, that you shouldn't know me," said Byron--"I
thought nature had set such a mark upon me, that I could never be
forgot."
But, while this defect was such a source of mortification to his
spirit, it was also, and in an equal degree, perhaps, a stimulus:--and
more especially in whatever depended upon personal prowess or
attractiveness, he seemed to feel himself piqued by this stigma, which
nature, as he thought, had set upon him, to distinguish himself above
those whom she had endowed with her more "fair proportion." In
pursuits of gallantry he was, I have no doubt, a good deal actuated by
this incentive; and the hope of astonishing the world, at some future
period, as a chieftain and hero, mingled little less with his young
dreams than the prospect of a poet's glory. "I will, some day or
other," he used to say, when a boy, "raise a troop,--the men of which
shall be dressed in black, and ride on black horses. They shall be
called 'Byron's Blacks,' and you will hear of their performing
prodigies of valour."
I have already adverted to the exceeding eagerness with which, while
at Harrow, he devoured all sorts of learning,--excepting only that
which, by the regimen of the school, was prescribed for him. The same
rapid and multifarious course of study he pursued during the holidays;
and, in order to deduct as little as possible from his hours of
exercise, he had given himself the habit, while at home, of reading
all dinner-time.[62] In a mind so versatile as his, every novelty,
whether serious or light, whether lofty or ludicrous, found a welcome
and an echo; and I can easily conceive the glee--as a friend of his
once described it to me--with which he brought to her, one evening, a
copy of Mother Goose's Tales, which he had bought from a hawker that
morning, and read, for the first time, while he dined.
I shall now give, from a memorandum-book begun by him this year, the
account, as I find it hastily and promiscuously scribbled out, of all
the books in various departments of knowledge, which he had already
perused at a period of life when few of his school-fellows had yet
travelled beyond their _longs_ and _shorts_. The list is,
unquestionably, a remarkable one;--and when we recollect that the
reader of all these volumes was, at the same time, the possessor of a
most retentive memory, it may be doubted whether, among what are
called the regularly educated, the contenders for scholastic honours
and prizes, there could be found a single one who, at the same age,
has possessed any thing like the same stock of useful knowledge.
"LIST OF HISTORICAL WRITERS WHOSE WORKS I HAVE PERUSED IN
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES."
_"History of England._--Hume, Rapin, Henry, Smollet, Tindal,
Belsham, Bisset, Adolphus, Holinshed, Froissart's Chronicles
(belonging properly to France).
_"Scotland._--Buchanan, Hector Boethius, both in the Latin.
_"Ireland._--Gordon.
_"Rome._--Hooke, Decline and Fall by Gibbon, Ancient History
by Rollin (including an account of the Carthaginians, &c.),
besides Livy, Tacitus, Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Julius
Cæsar, Arrian. Sallust.
"_Greece._--Mitford's Greece, Leland's Philip, Plutarch,
Potter's Antiquities, Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus.
"_France._--Mezeray, Voltaire.
"_Spain._--I chiefly derived my knowledge of old Spanish
History from a book called the Atlas, now obsolete. The
modern history, from the intrigues of Alberoni down to the
Prince of Peace, I learned from its connection with European
politics.
"_Portugal._--From Vertot; as also his account of the Siege
of Rhodes,--though the last is his own invention, the real
facts being totally different.--So much for his Knights of
Malta.
"_Turkey._--I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut, and Prince
Cantemir, besides a more modern history, anonymous. Of the
Ottoman History I know every event, from Tangralopi, and
afterwards Othman I., to the peace of Passarowitz, in
1718,--the battle of Cutzka, in 1739, and the treaty between
Russia and Turkey in 1790.
"_Russia._--Tooke's Life of Catherine II., Voltaire's Czar
Peter.
"_Sweden._--Voltaire's Charles XII., also Norberg's Charles
XII.--in my opinion the best of the two.--A translation of
Schiller's Thirty Years' War, which contains the exploits of
Gustavus Adolphus, besides Harte's Life of the same Prince.
I have somewhere, too, read an account of Gustavus Vasa, the
deliverer of Sweden, but do not remember the author's name.
"_Prussia._--I have seen, at least, twenty Lives of
Frederick II., the only prince worth recording in Prussian
annals. Gillies, his own Works, and Thiebault,--none very
amusing. The last is paltry, but circumstantial.
"_Denmark_--I know little of. Of Norway I understand the
natural history, but not the chronological.
"_Germany._--I have read long histories of the house of
Suabia, Wenceslaus, and, at length, Rodolph of Hapsburgh and
his _thick-lipped_ Austrian descendants.
"_Switzerland._--Ah! William Tell, and the battle of
Morgarten, where Burgundy was slain.
"_Italy._--Davila, Guicciardini, the Guelphs and
Ghibellines, the battle of Pavia, Massaniello, the
revolutions of Naples, &c. &c.
"_Hindostan_--Orme and Cambridge.
"_America._--Robertson, Andrews' American War.
"_Africa_--merely from travels, as Mungo Park, Bruce.
"BIOGRAPHY.
"Robertson's Charles V.--Cæsar, Sallust (Catiline and
Jugurtha), Lives of Marlborough and Eugene, Tekeli, Bonnard,
Buonaparte, all the British Poets, both by Johnson and
Anderson, Rousseau's Confessions, Life of Cromwell, British
Plutarch, British Nepos, Campbell's Lives of the Admirals,
Charles XII., Czar Peter, Catherine II., Henry Lord Kaimes,
Marmontel, Teignmouth's Sir William Jones, Life of Newton,
Belisaire, with thousands not to be detailed.
"LAW.
"Blackstone, Montesquieu.
"PHILOSOPHY.
"Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drummond, Beattie, and
Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest.
"GEOGRAPHY.
"Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie.
"POETRY.
"All the British Classics as before detailed, with most of
the living poets, Scott, Southey, &c.--Some French, in the
original, of which the Cid is my favourite.--Little
Italian.--Greek and Latin without number;--these last I
shall give up in future.--I have translated a good deal from
both languages, verse as well as prose.
"ELOQUENCE.
"Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, Austin's
Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates from the Revolution to
the year 1742.
"DIVINITY.
"Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker,--all very tiresome. I
abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God,
without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in
their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and
Thirty-nine Articles.
"MISCELLANIES.
"Spectator, Rambler, World, &c. &c.--Novels by the thousand.
"All the books here enumerated I have taken down from
memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote passages
from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my
catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused
before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have
become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making
love to women. B.--Nov. 30. 1807.
"I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand
novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet,
Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, &c. &c. The
book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the
reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is "Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy," the most amusing and instructive medley of
quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial
reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If,
however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more
improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty
other works with which I am acquainted,--at least, in the English
language."
To this early and extensive study of English writers may be attributed
that mastery over the resources of his own language with which Lord
Byron came furnished into the field of literature, and which enabled
him, as fast as his youthful fancies sprung up, to clothe them with a
diction worthy of their strength and beauty. In general, the
difficulty of young writers, at their commencement, lies far less in
any lack of thoughts or images, than in that want of a fitting organ
to give those conceptions vent, to which their unacquaintance with the
great instrument of the man of genius, his native language, dooms
them. It will be found, indeed, that the three most remarkable
examples of early authorship, which, in their respective lines, the
history of literature affords--Pope, Congreve, and Chatterton--were
all of them persons self-educated,[63] according to their own
intellectual wants and tastes, and left, undistracted by the worse
than useless pedantries of the schools, to seek, in the pure "well of
English undefiled," those treasures of which they accordingly so very
early and intimately possessed themselves.[64] To these three
instances may now be added, virtually, that of Lord Byron, who, though
a disciple of the schools, was, intellectually speaking, _in_
them, not _of_ them, and who, while his comrades were prying
curiously into the graves of dead languages, betook himself to the
fresh, living sources of his own,[65] and from thence drew those
rich, varied stores of diction, which have placed his works, from the
age of two-and-twenty upwards, among the most precious depositories of
the strength and sweetness of the English language that our whole
literature supplies.
In the same book that contains the above record of his studies, he has
written out, also from memory, a "List of the different poets,
dramatic or otherwise, who have distinguished their respective
languages by their productions." After enumerating the various poets,
both ancient and modern, of Europe, he thus proceeds with his
catalogue through other quarters of the world:--
"_Arabia._--Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime
poetical passages, far surpassing European poetry.
"_Persia._--Ferdousi, author of the Shah Nameh, the Persian
Iliad--Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal Hafiz, the oriental
Anacreon. The last is reverenced beyond any bard of ancient
or modern times by the Persians, who resort to his tomb near
Shiraz, to celebrate his memory. A splendid copy of his
works is chained to his monument.
"_America._--An epic poet has already appeared in that
hemisphere, Barlow, author of the Columbiad,--not to be
compared with the works of more polished nations.
"_Iceland, Denmark, Norway_, were famous for their Skalds.
Among these Lodburgh was one of the most distinguished. His
Death Song breathes ferocious sentiments, but a glorious and
impassioned strain of poetry.
"_Hindostan_ is undistinguished by any great bard,--at least
the Sanscrit is so imperfectly known to Europeans, we know
not what poetical relics may exist.
"_The Birman Empire._--Here the natives are passionately
fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown.
"_China._--I never heard of any Chinese poet but the Emperor
Kien Long, and his ode to _Tea_. What a pity their
philosopher Confucius did not write poetry, with his
precepts of morality!
"_Africa._--In Africa some of the native melodies are
plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; but whether
their rude strains of nature can be classed with poetry, as
the songs of the bards, the Skalds of Europe, &c. &c., I
know not.
"This brief list of poets I have written down from memory,
without any book of reference; consequently some errors may
occur, but I think, if any, very trivial. The works of the
European, and some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in
the original or translations. In my list of English, I have
merely mentioned the greatest;--to enumerate the minor poets
would be useless, as well as tedious. Perhaps Gray,
Goldsmith, and Collins, might have been added, as worthy of
mention, in a _cosmopolite_ account. But as for the others,
from Chaucer down to Churchill, they are 'voces et præterea
nihil;'--sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with
advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on
him, I think obscene and contemptible:--he owes his
celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve
so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune. English
living poets I have avoided mentioning;--we have none who
will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us;
and another century will sweep our empire, our literature,
and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind.
"November 30. 1807.