My Recollections of Lord Byron

council, opposite the gloomy black veil surmounted by that terrible inscription--"_Hic est locus Marino Faliero decapitati pro criminibus suis_;" on the Giants' staircase, where the Doge had been crowned ere he was degraded and beheaded; he had interrogated the stones forming the monuments raised to the Doges; often was he seen in the church of St. John and St. Paul, seeking out the tomb of Faliero and his family: and still he was not satisfied, for the motives of the conspiracy did not yet present themselves so clearly to his mind as the fact of the conspiracy itself. Then he wrote to Murray, to search him out in England other _more authentic_ documents concerning this tragical end. "I want it," he said to him in February, 1817, "and can not find so good an account of that business here.... I have searched all their histories; but the policy of the old aristocracy made their writers silent on his motives, which were a private grievance against one of the patricians." And not only did he seek for truth in books and monuments, but he likewise sought it in the character and manners of all classes inhabiting the lagoons. It was only toward the close of 1820, at Ravenna, that he felt ready to write his magnificent drama. All the characters in this tragedy, except that admirable one of Angiolina, which he drew from imagination and traced with his heart, were supplied by history. In it Lord Byron has scrupulously respected places, epoch, and the time of duration for the action; points which he considered as elements of truth in art; in short, all essential circumstances were faithfully reproduced in his drama. Even the faults which critics little versed in psychological science, and obstinately forgetful that this work was _not intended for acting_, pretend to find in it, were but the necessary results of historical accuracy. These critics wished to meet with the love, jealousy, and other passions common to their age and country; but Lord Byron would only give them what he found in history. Thence, no love and no jealousy; but a proud, violent character, coming in collision with a government proud and violent as itself; one of those men that are exceptional but real, in whom extremes of good and evil meet; one of those dramatic natures that fastened strongly on his imagination, producing a shock which kindled the flame of genius:-- "It is now four years that I have meditated this work, and before I had sufficiently examined the records, I was rather disposed to have made it turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But perceiving no foundation for this in historical truth, and aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the drama, I have given it a more historical form."[199] As to the motives for the conspiracy, the clearness of certainty only came to him a year after his drama had been published. But there was such an attraction between his mind and truth that his intuition had supplied the want of material certainty. And when a year afterward, at Ravenna, he received the document so long desired, he was happy in sending Murray a copy of this document translated from an ancient chronicle by Sir Francis Palgrave, the learned author of the "History of the Anglo-Saxons," to be able to write:-- "Inclosed is the best account of the 'Doge Faliero,' which was only sent to me from an old MS. the other day. Get it translated, and append it as a note to the next edition. You will perhaps be pleased to see that my conceptions of his character were correct, though I regret not having met with this extract before. You will perceive that he himself said exactly what he is made to say about the Bishop of Treviso. You will also see that 'he spoke very little,' and these only words of rage and disdain, after his arrest, which is the case in the play, except when he breaks out at the close of Act V. But his speech to the conspirators is better in the MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it in time." The historical inaccuracies of authors, their carelessness about truth, whether the result of malice or inattention, revolted Lord Byron, and especially if such untruths tended to asperse a great character. The lies of Dr. Moore about the "Doge Faliero" almost made him angry:-- "Where did Dr. Moore find that Marino Faliero begged his life? I have searched the chroniclers, and find nothing of the kind." Lord Byron observes that this is not only historically, but also logically false:-- "His having shown a want of firmness," said Byron, "indeed, would be as contrary to his character as a soldier, to the age in which he lived, and at which he died, as it is to the truth of history. I know no justification; at any distance of time, for calumniating a historical character: surely truth belongs to the dead, and to the unfortunate; and they who have died upon a scaffold have generally had faults enough of their own, without attributing to them those which the very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their violent death render, of all others, the most improbable." We know his consideration and sympathy for Campbell, though Campbell had not always behaved well toward him. He forgave him many things, but he could not pardon the indifference this author often showed for _historical truth_! At Ravenna he wrote in his journal, on the 10th of January, 1821:-- "Read Campbell's 'Poets.' Marked errors of Tom (the author) for correction.... Corrected Tom Campbell's 'slips of the pen;' a good work, though." In his appendix to the first canto of "Don Juan," he says, "Being in the humor of criticism, I shall proceed, after having ventured upon the slips of Bacon, to wind up on one or two as trifling in the edition of the 'British Poets,' by the justly celebrated Campbell. But I do this in good-will, and trust it will be so taken. If any thing could add to my opinion of the talents and true feeling of that gentleman it would be his classical, honest, and triumphant defense of Pope against the vulgar cant of the day, as it exists in Grub Street. "The inadvertencies to which I allude are...." And after mentioning a few inadvertencies which are faults against justice and truth, he says:-- "A great poet quoting another should be correct: he should also be accurate when he accuses a Parnassian brother of that dangerous charge, 'borrowing:' a poet had better borrow any thing (excepting money) than the thoughts of another--they are always sure to be reclaimed; but it is very hard, having been the lender, to be denounced as the debtor, as is the case of Anstey _versus_ Smollett. As 'there is honor among thieves,' let there be some among poets, and give each his due--none can afford to give it more than Mr. Campbell himself, who, with a high reputation for originality, and a fame which can not be shaken, is the only poet of the times (except Rogers) who can be reproached (and in him it is indeed a reproach) with having written too little." Hereupon he writes to Murray, half joking, half serious:-- "Murray, my dear, make my respects to Thomas Campbell, and tell him from me, with faith and friendship, three things that he must right in his 'Poets.' First, he says Anstey's 'Bath Guide' characters are taken from Smollett. 'Tis impossible: the 'Guide' was published in 1766, and 'Humphry Clinker' in 1771--_dunque_, 'tis Smollett who has taken from Anstey. Secondly, he does not know to whom Cowper alludes when he says there was one 'who built a church to God, and then blasphemed His name:' it was 'Deo erexit Voltaire' to whom that mad Calvinist and coddled poet alludes. Thirdly, he misquotes and spoils a passage from Shakspeare,--'To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,' etc.; for lily he puts rose, and bedevils in more words than one the whole quotation. "Now, Tom is a fine fellow; but he should be correct: for the first is an injustice (to Anstey), the second an _ignorance_, and the third a _blunder_. Tell him all this, and let him take it in good part: for I might have chastised him in a review and punished him; instead of which, I act like a Christian. BYRON." With regard to a quotation, or any circumstance intended to prove a truth, his love of _exactness_ amounted to a _scruple_. He would have thought himself wanting in honor if he had made a false or an incomplete quotation. In one of the notes to "Don Juan," speaking of Voltaire, he had quoted those famous words:--" _Zaire, vous pleurez_;" but being accustomed at that time to make great use of the familiar pronoun _thou_, as in the case in Italy, his quotation ran: "_Zaire, tu pleures_." But he hastened to write to Murray, "_Voltaire wrote: Zaire, vous pleurez_; don't forget." In his tragedy of "Faliero," Lord Byron had said that the Doges, Faliero's predecessors, were buried in the church of St. John and St. Paul; but he afterward ascertained that it was only on the death of Andrea Dandolo, Faliero's predecessor, that the Council of Ten, by a sort of presentiment perhaps, decreed that the Doges should in future be buried with their families in their own church; previously they had all been interred in the church of St. Mark:-- " ... All that I said of his _ancestral Doges_, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is a mistake, _they being interred in_ St. Mark's. Make a note of this, by the _Editor_, to rectify the fact. "In the notes to 'Marino Faliero,' it may be as well to say that '_Benintende_' was not really of the _Ten_, but merely _Grand Chancellor_, a separate office (although important); it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. "As I make such pretentious to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and _dram. pers._,--they having been real existences."[200] "As to Sardanapalus," he writes to Murray, "I thought of nothing but Asiatic history. The Venetian play, too, is rigidly historical. My object has been to dramatize, like the Greeks (a _modest_ phrase), striking passages of history. "All I ask is a preference for accuracy as relating to Italy and other places." In books, monuments, and the fine arts, it was always _truth_ that interested him. Except Sir Walter Scott's productions, he gave no place in his library to novels; other works of imagination, especially poetry, were excluded; two-thirds of his books were French works. His reading lay chiefly in history, biography, and politics. Among the books Murray sent him were some travels: "Send me no more of them," he wrote, "I have travelled enough already; and, besides, _they lie_."[201] Books with effected sentiment of any kind, imaginary itineraries, made him very impatient. High-sounding phrases jarred on his ears; and I thoroughly believe that the _forty centuries' looking down from the Pyramids upon the grand French army_ somewhat _spoilt_ his hero for him. What he especially sought for in monuments and among ruins was their authenticity. It was on this sole condition that he took interest in them. Campbell, in his "Lives of English Poets," had averred that readers cared no more for the truth of the manners portrayed in Collins's "Eclogues" than for the authenticity of the history of Troy:-- "'Tis false," says Lord Byron in his memoranda, after having read Campbell; "we do care about 'the authenticity of the tale of Troy.' I have stood upon that plain daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true that I read 'Homer Travestied' (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse and others bored me with their learned localities, and I love quizzing. But I still venerated the grand