[Footnote 101: In the fifth edition of the Satire (suppressed by him
in 1812) he again changed his mind respecting this gentleman, and
altered the line to
"I leave topography to _rapid_ Gell;"
explaining his reasons for the change in the following
note:--"'Rapid,' indeed;--he topographised and typographised King
Priam's dominions in three days. I called him 'classic' before I saw
the Troad, but since have learned better than to tack to his name what
don't belong to it."
He is not, however, the only satirist who has been thus capricious and
changeable in his judgments. The variations of this nature in Pope's
Dunciad are well known; and the Abbé Cotin, it is said, owed the
"painful pre-eminence" of his station in Boileau's Satires to the
unlucky convenience of his name as a rhyme. Of the generous change
from censure to praise, the poet Dante had already set an example;
having, in his "Convito," lauded some of those persons whom, in his
Commedia, he had most severely lashed.]
[Footnote 102: In another letter to Mr. Harness, dated February, 1809,
he says, "I do not know how you and Alma Mater agree. I was but an
untoward child myself, and I believe the good lady and her brat were
equally rejoiced when I was weaned; and if I obtained her benediction
at parting, it was, at best, equivocal."]
[Footnote 103: The poem, in the first edition, began at the line,
"Time was ere yet, in these degenerate days."
]
[Footnote 104: Lady Byron, then Miss Milbank.]
[Footnote 105: In the MS. remarks on his Satire, to which I have
already referred, he says, on this passage--"Yea, and a pretty dance
they have led me."]
[Footnote 106: "Fool then, and but little wiser now."--_MS. ibid_.]
[Footnote 107: Dated, in his original copy, Nov. 2. 1808.]
[Footnote 108: Entitled, in his original manuscript, "To Mrs. ----, on
being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." The date
subjoined is Dec. 2. 1808.]
[Footnote 109: In his first copy, "Thus, Mary."]
[Footnote 110: Thus corrected by himself in a copy of the Miscellany
now in my possession;--the two last lines being, originally, as
follows:--
"Though wheresoe'er my bark may run,
I love but thee, I love but one."
]
[Footnote 111: I give the words as Johnson has reported them;--in
Swift's own letter they are, if I recollect right, rather different.]
[Footnote 112: There is, at least, one striking point of similarity
between their characters in the disposition which Johnson has thus
attributed to Swift:--"The suspicions of Swift's irreligion," he says,
"proceeded, in a great measure, from his dread of hypocrisy; _instead
of wishing to seem better, he delighted in seeming worse than he
was_."]
[Footnote 113: Another use to which he appropriated one of the skulls
found in digging at Newstead was the having it mounted in silver, and
converted into a drinking-cup. This whim has been commemorated in some
well-known verses of his own; and the cup itself, which, apart from
any revolting ideas it may excite, forms by no means an inelegant
object to the eye, is, with many other interesting relics of Lord
Byron, in the possession of the present proprietor of Newstead Abbey,
Colonel Wildman.]
[Footnote 114: Rousseau appears to have been conscious of a similar
sort of change in his own nature:--"They have laboured without
intermission," he says, in a letter to Madame de Boufflers, "to give
to my heart, and, perhaps, at the same time to my genius, a spring and
stimulus of action, which they have not inherited from nature. I was
born weak,--ill treatment has made me strong."--Hume's _Private
Correspondence_.]
[Footnote 115: "It was bitterness that they mistook for
frolic."--Johnson's account of himself at the university, in Boswell.]
[Footnote 116: The poet Cowper, it is well known, produced that
masterpiece of humour, John Gilpin, during one of his fits of morbid
dejection; and he himself says, "Strange as it may seem, the most
ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood,
and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at
all."]
[Footnote 117: The reconciliation which took place between him and Dr.
Butler, before his departure, is one of those instances of placability
and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from
the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his
note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously
retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is
renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it had been
ever entertained.
Not content with this private atonement to Dr. Butler, it was his
intention, had he published another edition of the Hours of Idleness,
to substitute for the offensive verses against that gentleman, a frank
avowal of the wrong he had been guilty of in giving vent to them. This
fact, so creditable to the candour of his nature, I learn from a loose
sheet in his handwriting, containing the following corrections. In
place of the passage beginning "Or if my Muse a pedant's portrait
drew," he meant to insert--
"If once my Muse a harsher portrait drew,
Warm with her wrongs, and deem'd the likeness true,
By cooler judgment taught, her fault she owns,--
With noble minds a fault, confess'd, atones."
And to the passage immediately succeeding his warm praise of Dr.
Drury--"Pomposus fills his magisterial chair," it was his intention to
give the following turn:--
"Another fills his magisterial chair;
Reluctant Ida owns a stranger's care;
Oh may like honours crown his future name,--
If such his virtues, such shall be his fame."
]
[Footnote 118: Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story,
which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the
passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his
berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his
limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he
thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time
in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and
stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the
senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the
same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take
another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position.
To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he
found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet.
On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out
in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he
received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had
been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this
appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest
doubt.]
[Footnote 119: The baggage and part of the servants were sent by sea
to Gibraltar.]
[Footnote 120: "This sort of passage," says Mr. Hodgson, in a note on
his copy of this letter, "constantly occurs in his correspondence. Nor
was his interest confined to mere remembrances and enquiries after
health. Were it possible to state _all_ he has done for numerous
friends, he would appear amiable indeed. For myself, I am bound to
acknowledge, in the fullest and warmest manner, his most generous and
well-timed aid; and, were my poor friend Bland alive, he would as
gladly bear the like testimony;--though I have most reason, of all
men, to do so."]
[Footnote 121: The filthiness of Lisbon and its inhabitants.]
[Footnote 122: Colonel Napier, in a note in his able History of the
Peninsular War, notices the mistake into which Lord Byron and others
were led on this subject;--the signature of the Convention, as well as
all the other proceedings connected with it, having taken place at a
distance of thirty miles from Cintra.]
[Footnote 123: We find an allusion to this incident in Don Juan:--
"'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes--that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 124: The postscript to this letter is as follows:--
P.S. "So Lord G. is married to a rustic! Well done! If I wed, I will
bring you home a sultana, with half a dozen cities for a dowry, and
reconcile you to an Ottoman daughter-in-law with a bushel of pearls,
not larger than ostrich eggs, or smaller than walnuts."]
[Footnote 125: The following stanzas from this little poem have a
music in them, which, independently of all meaning, is enchanting:--
"And since I now remember thee
In darkness and in dread,
As in those hours of revelry,
Which mirth and music sped;
"Do thou, amidst the fair white walls,
If Cadiz yet be free,
At times, from out her latticed halls,
Look o'er the dark blue sea;
"Then think upon Calypso's isles,
Endear'd by days gone by;
To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 126: The following is Mr. Hobhouse's loss embellished
description of this scene;--"The court at Tepellene, which was
enclosed on two sides by the palace, and on the other two sides by a
high wall, presented us, at our first entrance, with a sight something
like what we might have, perhaps, beheld some hundred years ago in the
castle-yard of a great feudal lord. Soldiers, with their arms piled
against the wall near them, were assembled in different parts of the
square: some of them pacing slowly backwards and forwards, and others
sitting on the ground in groups. Several horses, completely
caparisoned, were leading about, whilst others were neighing under the
hands of the grooms. In the part farthest from the dwelling,
preparations were making for the feast of the night; and several kids
and sheep were being dressed by cooks who were themselves half armed.
Every thing wore a most martial look, though not exactly in the style
of the head-quarters of a Christian general; for many of the soldiers
were in the most common dress, without shoes, and having more wildness
in their air and manner than the Albanians we had before seen."
On comparing this description, which is itself sufficiently striking,
with those which Lord Byron has given of the same scene, both in the
letter to his mother, and in the second Canto of Childe Harold, we
gain some insight into the process by which imagination elevates,
without falsifying, reality, and facts become brightened and refined
into poetry. Ascending from the representation drawn faithfully on the
spot by the traveller, to the more fanciful arrangement of the same
materials in the letter of the poet, we at length, by one step more,
arrive at that consummate, idealised picture, the result of both
memory and invention combined, which in the following splendid stanzas
is presented to us:--
Amidst no common pomp the despot sate,
While busy preparations shook the court,
Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;
Within, a palace, and without, a fort:
Here men of every clime appear to make resort.
"Richly caparison'd, a ready row
Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
Circled the wide-extending court below;
Above, strange groups adorn'd the corridore;
And oft-times through the area's echoing door
Some high-capp'd Tartar spurr'd his steed away:
The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor,
Here mingled in their many-hued array,
While the deep war-drum's sound announced the close of day.
"The wild Albanian, kirtled to his knee,
With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
And gold-embroider'd garments, fair to see;
The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon;
The Delhi, with his cap of terror on,
And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek;
And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son;
The bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,
Master of all around--too potent to be meek,
"Are mix'd, conspicuous: some recline in groups,
Scanning the motley scene that varies round;
There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
And some that smoke, and some that play, are found;
Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground;
Half whispering there the Greek is heard to prate;
Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound,
The Muezzin's call doth shake the minaret,
There is no god but God!--to prayer--lo! God is great!'"
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto II.
]
[Footnote 127: In the shape of the hands, as a mark of high birth,
Lord Byron himself had as implicit faith as the Pacha: see his note on
the line, "Though on more _thorough-bred_ or fairer fingers," in Don
Juan.]
[Footnote 128: A few sentences are here and elsewhere omitted, as
having no reference to Lord Byron himself, but merely containing some
particulars relating to Ali and his grandsons, which may be found in
various books of travels.
Ali had not forgotten his noble guest when Dr. Holland, a few years
after, visited Albania:--"I mentioned to him, generally (says this
intelligent traveller), Lord Byron's poetical description of Albania,
the interest it had excited in England, and Mr. Hobhouse's intended
publication of his travels in the same country. He seemed pleased with
these circumstances, and stated his recollections of Lord Byron."]
[Footnote 129: I have heard the poet's fellow-traveller describe this
remarkable instance of his coolness and courage even still more
strikingly than it is here stated by himself. Finding that, from his
lameness, he was unable to be of any service in the exertions which
their very serious danger called for, after a laugh or two at the
panic of his valet, he not only wrapped himself up and lay down, in
the manner here mentioned, but, when their difficulties were
surmounted, was found fast asleep.]
[Footnote 130: In the route from Ioannina to Zitza, Mr. Hobhouse and
the secretary of Ali, accompanied by one of the servants, had rode on
before the rest of the party, and arrived at the village just as the
evening set in. After describing the sort of hovel in which they were
to take up their quarters for the night, Mr. Hobhouse thus
continues:--"Vasilly was despatched into the village to procure eggs
and fowls, that would be ready, as we thought, by the arrival of the
second party. But an hour passed away and no one appeared. It was
seven o'clock, and the storm had increased to a fury I had never
before, and, indeed, have never since, seen equalled. The roof of our
hovel shook under the clattering torrents and gusts of wind. The
thunder roared, as it seemed, without any intermission; for the echoes
of one peal had not ceased to roll in the mountains, before another
tremendous crash burst over our heads; whilst the plains and the
distant hills (visible through the cracks of the cabin) appeared in a
perpetual blaze. The tempest was altogether terrific, and worthy of
the Grecian Jove; and the peasants, no less religious than their
ancestors, confessed their alarm. The women wept, and the men, calling
on the name of God, crossed themselves at every repeated peal.
"We were very uneasy that the party did not arrive; but the secretary
assured me that the guides knew every part of the country, as did also
his own servant, who was with them, and that they had certainly taken
shelter in a village at an hour's distance. Not being satisfied with
the conjecture, I ordered fires to be lighted on the hill above the
village, and some muskets to be discharged: this was at eleven
o'clock, and the storm had not abated. I lay down in my great coat;
but all sleeping was out of the question, as any pauses in the tempest
were filled up by the barking of the dogs, and the shouting of the
shepherds in the neighbouring mountains.
"A little after midnight, a man, panting and pale, and drenched with
rain, rushed into the room, and, between crying and roaring, with a
profusion of action, communicated something to the secretary, of which
I understood only--that they had all fallen down. I learnt, however,
that no accident had happened, except the falling of the luggage
horses, and losing their way, and that they were now waiting for fresh
horses and guides. Ten were immediately sent to them, together with
several men with pine-torches; but it was not till two o'clock in the
morning that we heard they were approaching, and my friend, with the
priest and the servants, did not enter our hut before three.
"I now learnt from him that they had lost their way from the
commencement of the storm, when not above three miles from the
village; and that, after wandering up and down in total ignorance of
their position, they had, at last, stopped near some Turkish
tombstones and a torrent, which they saw by the flashes of lightning.
They had been thus exposed for nine hours; and the guides, so far from
assisting them, only augmented the confusion, by running away, after
being threatened with death by George the dragoman, who, in an agony
of rage and fear, and without giving any warning, fired off both his
pistols, and drew from the English servant an involuntary scream of
horror, for he fancied they were beset by robbers.
"I had not, as you have seen, witnessed the distressing part of this
adventure myself; but from the lively picture drawn of it by my
friend, and from the exaggerated descriptions of George, I fancied
myself a good judge of the whole situation, and should consider this
to have been one of the most considerable of the few adventures that
befell either of us during our tour in Turkey. It was long before we
ceased to talk of the thunder-storm in the plain of Zitza."]
[Footnote 131: Mr. Hobhouse. I think, makes the number of this guard
but thirty-seven, and Lord Byron, in a subsequent letter, rates them
at forty.]
[Footnote 132:
"Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!"
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto I.
]
[Footnote 133: The passage of Harris, indeed, contains the pith of the
whole stanza:--"Notwithstanding the various fortune of Athens, as a
city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey.
Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent."--_Philolog.
Inquiries_.--I recollect having once pointed out this coincidence to
Lord Byron, but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of
Harris.]
[Footnote 134: Travels in Italy, Greece, &c., by H. W. Williams, Esq.]
[Footnote 135: The Miscellany, to which I have more than once
referred.]
[Footnote 136: He has adopted this name in his description of the
Seraglio in Don Juan, Canto VI. It was, if I recollect right, in
making love to one of these girls that he had recourse to an act of
courtship often practised in that country,--namely, giving himself a
wound across the breast with his dagger. The young Athenian, by his
own account, looked on very coolly during the operation, considering
it a fit tribute to her beauty, but in no degree moved to gratitude.]
[Footnote 137: Among others, he mentions his passage of the Tagus in
1809, which is thus described by Mr. Hobhouse:--"My companion had
before made a more perilous, but less celebrated, passage; for I
recollect that, when we were in Portugal, he swam from old Lisbon to
Belem Castle, and having to contend with a tide and counter current,
the wind blowing freshly, was but little less than two hours in
crossing the river." In swimming from Sestos to Abydos, he was one
hour and ten minutes in the water.
In the year 1808, he had been nearly drowned, while swimming at
Brighton with Mr. L. Stanhope. His friend Mr. Hobhouse, and other
bystanders, sent in some boatmen, with ropes tied round them, who at
last succeeded in dragging Lord Byron and Mr. Stanhope from the surf
and thus saved their lives.]
[Footnote 138: Alluding to his having swum across the Thames with Mr.
H. Drury, after the Montem, to see how many times they could perform
the passage backwards and forwards without touching land. In this
trial (which took place at night, after supper, when both were heated
with drinking,) Lord Byron was the conqueror.]
[Footnote 139: New Monthly Magazine.]
[Footnote 140: In a note upon the Advertisement prefixed to his Siege
of Corinth, he says,--"I visited all three (Tripolitza, Napoli, and
Argos,) in 1810-11, and in the course of journeying through the
country, from my first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight
times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains, or in
the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of
Lepanto."]
[Footnote 141: Given afterwards to Sir Walter Scott.]
[Footnote 142: At present in the possession of Mr. Murray.]