My Recollections of Lord Byron
denied not one of these, if he only ridiculed and satirized their
semblances, their hypocritical shadows, then let critics and envious
minds--the ignorant, or the would-be ignorant--let them cease, in the
name of justice, thus to offer lying insult to a great spirit no longer
able to defend himself.
Perhaps he did not render sufficient homage to that great and
respectable virtue of his country--conjugal fidelity; but he has told us
why. It appeared to him that this virtue, supposed to stamp society,
was, in truth, more a pretense than a reality among the higher classes
in England; and, if he examined his own heart, this virtue wore a name
for him that had been the martyrdom of his whole life.
I may say, farther, that when he saw a truth shining at the expense of
some hypocrisy, he did not _shut it up in his casket of precious
things_, to carry them with him to the grave, nor did he only name them
in a low voice to his secretaries, because by _speaking aloud he might
have done some harm to himself_ (as, however, the great Goethe did and
_acknowledged_). Lord Byron, without thinking of the consequences that
might ensue to himself, deemed, on the contrary, that truth ought to be
courageously unveiled: and to the heroism of deeds he added the heroism
of words.
It must not be forgotten, either, that there existed a certain kind of
timidity among the other elements of his character, and that jesting
often helps to season a tiresome conversation, rendering it less
difficult, besides enabling us to hide our real sentiments.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 149: Galt, p. 218.]
[Footnote 150: Kennedy, p. 301.]
[Footnote 151: See Galt, with regard to Hunt.]
[Footnote 152: Moore, Letter 468.]
[Footnote 153: See chapter on "Religion."]
[Footnote 154: Ibid.]
[Footnote 155: "Don Juan," canto xiv.]
[Footnote 156: See Lord Byron's letter to Mrs. Shelley.]
[Footnote 157: See his "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 158: "Don Juan," canto viii.]
[Footnote 159: "Don Juan," canto ix.]
[Footnote 160: Ibid. canto viii.]
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MELANCHOLY OF LORD BYRON.
"To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what
we are worth."--PARADOL, _Study on Moralists_.
From all that we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of
his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable
side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and
never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear
too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would
together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the contrary,
that Lord Byron was often melancholy; but that, in order to judge well
the nature and shades of his melancholy, it is necessary to analyze and
observe it, not only in his writings, but also in his conduct through
life. Whence arose his melancholy? Was it one of those moral
infirmities, incurable and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like
that of Rene, whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful;
who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mysteries; who
knowing not how to be young, will no more know how to be old; who in all
things wanted order, proportion, harmony, truth; who had nothing to
produce equilibrium between the power of genius and the indolence of
will? This kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue,
and seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it a
melancholy like Werther's, whose senses, stimulated by passion, of which
society opposed the development, carried perturbation also into the
moral regions? Was it the deep mysterious ailment of Hamlet, at once
both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast
with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to
become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius,
"that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels
depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an
Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want
of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated
to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity?
No; the _striking_ characteristics that exist in all these sorts of
melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron's. His was not a melancholy
that had become chronic, like Rene's, ere arriving at life's maturity.
For, whereas, the child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was
passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of
melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection,
and circumstances. Nor was it Werther's kind of melancholy; for, even at
intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord
Byron's energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal
sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied
passion.
It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimulation would
have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for
his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of
Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.
It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first
poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful
exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord
Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then
only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university,
where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all
testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where
he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess
capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the
darker heroes he has described in "Lara" and "Manfred," for he never
knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all
these identifications between himself and his heroes.[161]
In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they
arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary,
melancholy always originated from some moral external cause, which
would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not
have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before
arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid
glance at his whole life.
It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure
indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let
us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the
testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England,
that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a
tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a
yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the
sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic
mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting
his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this
sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to
melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.
Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in "Tasso's
Lament:"--
"From my very birth my soul was drunk with love," etc.
This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection
acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite
games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears
his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of
his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions
of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what
he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the
world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so
affirms:--
"Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney, "while sheep are ever to be found
in flocks."
Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of
solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according
to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about
him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great
intellects, have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and
games of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out
of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up
passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferior to him
in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of
that _fatal_ kind of melancholy--that which is _hereditary_ and
_causeless_. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy
already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be
destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us
follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and
Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making
himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott
family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse.
Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems,
but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart,
the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and
heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades
of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held,
that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself,
and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in
truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from
him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young
cousin, who beneath an angel's guise on earth, first awakened the fire
of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another
affection, was deceived, met with no return,[162] but, on the contrary,
was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was
accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of
his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs
resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that
he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest
sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of
regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of
a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and
very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no longer
feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a
presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other
illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821:--
"It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to
feel that I was no longer a child."
He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, arising from
_palpable avowed_ causes, having their origin in the heart, might
equally find their cure in the heart. Already did imagination transport
him toward his beloved Ida, and he consoled himself by saying, that if
love has wings, friendship ought to have none. If this were an illusion,
he completed it by writing that charming poem of his youth, "Friendship
is Love without Wings."[163]
At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward
Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his
melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long