My Recollections of Lord Byron
as these dear friends remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge.
But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them.
Long, with whom he had passed such happy days,[164] left the first to go
into the guards. Eddlestone remained, but Lord Byron himself was already
about to quit Cambridge. During the vacation, we see him modestly
preparing his first poems intended as an offering to Friendship; then
going to a watering-place with some respectable friends; devoting
himself with ardor to dramatic representations at the amateur theatre at
Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; and thus he
remained a whole year away from Cambridge, often seeing his dear Long
again in London, and visiting Harrow with him. When he returned, in
1807, to Cambridge, Long had already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to
go; thus, he no longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the
flute of his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him.
Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. Besides,
he was already nineteen years of age, had made some progress in the
journey of life, probably leaving some illusions behind him on the
bushes that lined the roadside, and perhaps his soul had already lost
somewhat of its early purity. He had certainly seen that many things in
the moral world were far removed from the ideal forms with which he had
invested them; that love, even friendship, virtue, patriotism,
generosity, and goodness, by no means attained the height of his first
convictions. A year before, he had said: "I have tasted the joy and the
bitterness of love." Willingly again would he have given way to the
emotions of the heart; but he too soon perceived that to do so were a
useless, dangerous luxury,--a language scarcely understood in the world
in which he moved; that the idols he had believed of precious metal,
were, in reality, made of vile clay. Then he also resolved on taking his
degrees in vice; but, unlike others, he did so _with disgust_, and he
called satiety, not the _quantity_, but the _quality_ of the aliment. A
year before he had also said: "_I have found that a friend may promise
and yet deceive._"
Magnanimous as he was, he made advances to the guilty friend, and took
half the blame on himself; but in vain was he generous, saying, with
tears that flowed from his heart to his pen:--
"You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence,
If danger demanded, were wholly your own;
You knew me unalter'd by years or by distance,
Devoted to love and to friendship alone."
And then:--
"Repentance will cancel the vow you have made."
And again:
"With me no corroding resentment shall live:
My bosom is calm'd by the simple reflection,
That both may be wrong, and that both should forgive."
The friend did not return, and Lord Byron's generous, pure, delicate
nature--fearful lest he might be in the wrong--could only find peace in
trying to offer reparation. He wrote to Lord Clare:--
"I have, therefore, made all the reparation in my power, by apologizing
for my mistake, though with very faint hopes of success. His answer has
not arrived, and, most probably, never will. However, I have eased my
own conscience by the atonement, which is humiliating enough to one of
my disposition; yet I could not have slept satisfied with the reflection
of having, even unintentionally, injured any individual. I have done all
that could be done to repair the injury, and there the affair must rest.
Whether we renew our intimacy or not is of very trivial consequence."
But although he could no longer rely entirely upon his heart for
defending his loved illusions so cruelly attacked by reality, yet it was
not possible for him to put out of sight his ideal of all the beauties
of soul whose presence was a condition of his being. And it was this
presence that made material dissipated life, and also the intellectual
routine existence at Granta, both appear so unattractive to him. He
wrote a satire on them, and the blame inflicted shows his fine nature.
When evil was thus judged, thus condemned, alike by pen and heart, there
could be no real danger; not even had it power to sadden him. A more
formidable peril menaced him from another side. Sadness might now reach
his heart through his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze,
meditate, generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative
capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of life. It has
been seen that he began to worry even his nurses with childish
questions, and afterward much more to embarrass his tutors, masters
etc., and especially the excellent Dr. Glenny at Dulwich. A natural
tendency fortified by early religious education evidently drew his heart
to God; but, on the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating
every thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his grounds
of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to him on great
questions could not satisfy him; he required to discuss their basis.
Already the increasing play of his faculties had been revealed in that
beautiful Prayer to the Divinity which constitutes his profession of
faith and worship, "every line of which," says Moore, "is instinct with
fervent sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions."
On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a circle of
intellectual companions which Moore calls "a brilliant pleiad," a young
man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a mind that had, perhaps, some
affinity to his own, but which, devoid of his sensibility and logic,
surpassed him in hardihood; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the
inscrutable, and, not content with analysis, desirous to arrive at
_conclusions_. Through the natural influence of example, and more
especially the irresistible fascination exercised by a great
intelligence, uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron
because so like his own; from all these causes, Matthews exercised an
immense influence over him. This young man loved to plunge his head into
depths from whence he emerged all dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too
reasonable a mind to arrive at such results. He refused to follow where
deformity and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking upward.
Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic glass,
where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined with a host of
doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathetic to his soul, but
perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the doubts. And, being no
longer alarmed at sounding such depths, he imbibed seeds of doctrine
capable of producing incredulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these
seeds required a dry soil to fructify, and his, being so rich, they
_perished_, after a short period of wretched existence. All these
influences, and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a
sort of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing
serious consequences; for in the main his belief was not deeply shaken.
It had no other effect than to throw him, for a time, into uncertainty
on points necessary to him, "and to teach him," says Moore, "to feel
less embarrassed in a _sort_ of skepticism."
This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations becoming deeper
and wider, his mind ceased always to follow his heart. But the latter
following rather the former, though with sadness and fatigue, and all
the problems of life becoming more and more enveloped in darkness, it is
possible that he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal
expressions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he was
not equally fortunate with regard to ennui.
"Ennui," says the clever Viscomte D'Yzarn de Freissinet, in his deep and
delightful book, "_Les Pensees grises_," "ennui is felt by ordinary
minds because they can not understand earth, and by superior ones
because they can not understand heaven."
Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees at the
university, and when about to enter into possession of his estates. On
seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his
career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear
companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don
the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his
own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful
eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would
seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for
developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all
trace of melancholy.
But it was not so; the responsibilities of life began too soon for him,
and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year was already dotted with
black marks indicative of the approaching tempest. In the first place,
the cassock of a real priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive,
endowed with feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind.
Moreover, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in his
heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early poems had
already inflicted a deep wound. Lord Byron, it is true, thought to heal
this by writing a satire; still, despite the vein of pleasantry
indulged, he continued to discipline his mind by serious study of the
great masters of literature and of the deepest thinkers.
It must be acknowledged that the balm he sought in _satire_, was a
dangerous caustic which, while closing one wound, might well cause
others to open. At the same time, the money embarrassments inherited
from his predecessor in the estate went on accumulating, and the period
was approaching when the cassock, donned in boyish fun, was to be
exchanged for the grave ermine of a peer of the realm. Who should
present him, then, to the noble assembly, if not his guardian, and near
relative, the Earl of Carlisle? The young lord had always met his
coldness with deference and respect, even dedicating his early poems to
him. But the noble earl now still further aggravated his unkind conduct
toward his ward by abandoning him at this solemn moment. Not only did he
refuse to lend countenance himself, but he even hurt and wounded Lord
Byron by interposing delays so as to prevent or put off his reception
in the House of Peers, and that _solely because he did not like the
young man's mother_! It would be impossible for the most loving heart,
the one most susceptible of family affections, not to have felt cruelly,
under such circumstances, the absence of near ties, and Lord Byron did
not then know his sister. Suffer he did, of course; and, had it not been
for a distant relative, despite his high birth and wondrous gifts, he
must have entered the august assembly accompanied only by his title.
However frivolous the young man might have appeared, he was not so in
reality; and he hesitated at this time between a project of travelling
for information, and the desire to take part immediately in the labors
of the Senate. Some months before, attaining his majority, when the wish
of travelling predominated, after having informed his mother of a
thousand arrangements, all equally affectionate, wise, and generous,
that he was about to take for her during his absence, he wrote that he
proposed visiting Persia, India, and other countries.
"If I do not travel now," said he, "I never shall, and all men should,
one day or other. I have, at present, no connections to keep me at home;
no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, etc. I shall take care of you,
and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years'
knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for
that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a