My Recollections of Lord Byron
blames them, it is only to show that they have not been able to discover
the logical conclusions which M. Taine at last reveals to
us,--conclusions which are to transform and change the soul as well as
the understanding. This doctrine has hitherto been but a dream, and
society has, up to the present time, walked in darkness.
This philosophical system is so beautifully set forth, that it can only
be compared to a skeleton, upon which a profusion of lovely-scented
flowers and precious jewels have been heaped, so that, notwithstanding
the horror it inspires, one is unable to leave it.
Here, then, we find that M. Taine comes forth resolutely, by the help of
a vigorous understanding and a surpassing talent, to review all that
England has produced in a literary sense,--authors as well as their
works. The type which he has conceived alone escapes his censure. This
type must be the result of three primeval causes, viz., race, centre and
time. History must prove its correctness. History and logic might in
vain claim his indulgence on behalf of other types. He has conceived his
system in his own mind, and, to establish it, facts and characters are
made subservient to it; history's duty is to prove their correctness.
Indulgence can be shown to one type only.
All he says is, however, so well said, that if he offended truth a
little less, if he only spoke for beings in another planet, and above
all, if, under these beautiful surroundings, one failed to notice the
gloom of a heaven without God, the work would enchant one.
It must be allowed that the charms of truth are still to be preferred;
we must therefore be allowed to say a few words about M. Taine's system.
It can only be in one sense; not on account of any philosophical
pretension, nor in the hope of restoring nature to its rights, however
much we may grieve at seeing it reduced to a mere animal, nay, a
vegetable, and alas! may be, a mineral system.
Many able pens will repeat the admirable words of one of the cleverest
men of the day, who, in his criticism upon M. Taine's book, has so
thoroughly examined how far a physiological method could be applied to
the comprehension of moral and intellectual phenomena, and has shown to
what fatal consequences such a method must lead. The analysis of the
moral world, the study of souls and of talent, of doctrines and of
characters, become in M. Taine's mind only a branch of zoology, and
psychology ends by being only a part of natural history.
Many other able writers will echo the noble words of M. Caro, and will
not fail to point out the numerous contradictions which exist between
the work itself and history proper, between it and natural history, and,
finally, between it and the author himself.
Thus, men who have never allowed that a thistle could produce a rose,
will question also whether those young Englishmen, whom M. Taine depicts
in such glowing colors,--"So active," says he, "just like harriers on
the beat flaring the air in the midst of the hunt," can be transformed
in a few years "into beings resembling animals good for slaughter, with
appearances equally anxious, vacant, and stupid; gentlemen six feet
high, with long and stout German bodies, issuing from their forests with
savage-looking whiskers and rolling eyes of pale earthenware-blue
color."
Such critics will question whether the "pale earthenware-blue eyes" of
these ugly sires can possibly be those of the fathers of the candid-eyed
girls, the fairest among the fair treasures of this earth, whom M. Taine
describes in such exquisite terms:--
"Delightful creatures, whose freshness and innocence can not be
conceived by those who have never seen them! full-blown flowers, of
which a morning rose, with its delicious and delicate color, with its
petals dipped in dew, can alone give an idea."
Critics will deny the possibility of the existence of such a phenomenon,
so contrary to the laws of creation does it seem to be. Such airy-like
forms can not be produced by such heavy brutes as he describes. Say what
he likes, nature can not act in the manner indicated by M. Taine. Nature
must ever follow the same track.
We, however, shall confine ourselves to oppose the real Lord Byron to
the fanciful one of M. Taine; and we say that the portrait of the poet
drawn by the latter is drawn systematically, in such a manner as to
contribute to the general harmony of his work. But truth can not be
subservient to systems. As M. Taine views Lord Byron from a false
starting point, it follows that, of course, the whole portrait of him is
equally unreal.
All the colors in his picture are too dark. What he says of the poet is
not so false as it is exaggerated. This is a method peculiar to him. He
decidedly perceives the real person, but exaggerates him, and thus fails
to realize the original.
If the facts are not always entirely false, his conclusions, and the
consequences suggested to him by them, are always eminently so.
When the facts seem ever so little to lend themselves to his reasoning,
when the proportions of his victim allow of their being placed in the
_bed of Procrustes_, the magnificent draperies of which do not hide the
atrocious torture; then, indeed, does M. Taine respect history more or
less; when this is not the case, his imagination supplies the
deficiency. On this principle he gives us his details of Lord Byron's
parents and of the poet's childhood.
He makes use of Lord Byron as an artist makes use of a machine: he
places him in the position which he has chosen himself, gives him the
gesture he pleases, and the expression he wishes. The portrait he shows
us of him may be a little like Lord Byron; but a very distant likeness,
one surrounded by a world of caprice of fancy and eccentricity which
serve to make up a powerful picture. It is the effect of a well-posed
manikin, with its very flexible articulations, all placed at the
disposal of M. Taine's system. The features may be slightly those of
Lord Byron, but the gestures and the general physiognomy are the clever
creations of the artist.
This is how he proceeds, in order to obtain the triumph of his views:--
He selects some quarter of an hour from the life of a man, probably that
during which he obeyed the impulses of nature, and judges his whole
existence and character by this short space of time.
He takes from the author's career one page, perhaps that which he may
have written in a moment of hallucination or of extreme passion; and by
this single page he judges the author of ten volumes.
Take Lord Byron, for instance. With regard to his infancy, M. Taine
takes care to set aside all that he knows to be admirable in the boy,
and only notices one instance of energy, one fit of heroic passion, into
which the unjust reprimand of a maid had driven him. The touching tears
which the little Byron sheds when, in the midst of his playmates, he is
informed that he has been raised to the dignity of a peer of the realm,
are no sign to M. Taine of a character equally timid, sensitive, and
good, but the result of pride. In this trait alone, M. Taine sees almost
sufficient ground to lay thereon the foundations of his work, and to
show us in the boy what the man was to be. A similar process is used in
the examination of Byron as an author. He analyzes "Manfred," which is
most decidedly a work of prodigious power, and all he says of it is
certainly both true and worthy of his own great talent; but is it fair
to say that the poet and the man are entirely revealed in this work, and
to dismiss all the other creations of the poet, wherein milder
qualities, such as feeling, tenderness, and goodness are revealed, and
shine forth most prominently? "Manfred" is the cry of an ulcerated
heart, still struggling, with all the energy of a most powerful soul,
against the brutal decrees of a recent persecution. Lord Byron felt
himself to be the victim of the relentless conduct of Lady Byron, and if
his mind was not deranged, at least his soul was wounded and ill at
ease, and it was this spirit that dictated "Manfred." Did he not clearly
confess it himself? When he sent "Manfred" to Murray, did he not say
that it was a drama as mad as the tragedy of "Lee Bedlam," in
twenty-five acts, and a few comic scenes--his own being only in three
acts?
Did he not write to Moore as follows?--
"I wrote a sort of mad drama for the sake of introducing the Alpine
scenery. Almost all the _dramatis personae_ are spirits, ghosts, or
magicians; and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may
suppose what a Bedlam tragedy it must be.... The third act, like the
Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savored of the palsy), has the
dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be
published in its present state.... The speech of Manfred to the sun is
the only part of this act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly
as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me."
But let Byron's ideas take a different turn, as the lovely blue Italian
sky and the refreshing breezes from the Adriatic waters contribute to
quicken his blood, and other tones will be heard, wherein no longer
shall the excesses, but the beauties only of energy be discernible.
What does M. Taine say then? This new aspect does not, evidently,
satisfy him! but what of that? He goes on to say that Byron's genius is
falling off. If the poet takes advantage of a few moments of melancholy
common to all poetical and feeling souls, M. Taine declares that the
melancholy English nature is always associated with the epicurean. What
is it to him, that England thinks differently? that in her opinion Lord
Byron's grandest and noblest conceptions are the poems which he wrote in
Italy, and even on the eve of his death? and that she finds his
liveliness "too real and too ultramontane to suit her national tastes?"
Nothing of this troubles M. Taine.
Is it quite fair to judge so powerful a mind, so great and yet so simple
a being as Lord Byron, only by his "Manfred," or by some other passages
of his works, and especially of "Don Juan?" Can his amiable, docile,
tender, and feeling nature honestly be seen in the child of three years
of age, who tears his clothes because his nurse has punished him
unfairly? No; all that we see is what M. Taine wishes us to see for the
purpose he has in view, that is, admiration of the Lord Byron he has
conceived, and who is necessary to his cause,--a Byron only to be
likened to a furious storm.
Wishing Byron to appear as the type of energy, M. Taine exhibits him to
our eyes in the light of Satan defying all powers on earth and in
heaven. The better to mould him to the form he has chosen, he begins by
disfiguring him in the arms of his mother, whom with his father and his
family he scruples not to calumniate. Storms having their origin in the
rupture of the elements, and a violent character being, according to M.
Taine, the result of several forces acting internally and mechanically;
it follows that its primary cause is to be found in the disturbed moral
condition of those who have given birth to him in the circumstances
under which the child was born, and in the influence under which he has
been brought up. Hence the necessity of supplementing from imagination
the historical and logical facts which otherwise might be at fault.
As for Lord Byron's softness of manner, and as to that tenderness of
character which was the bane of his existence,--as to his real and great
goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused
such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,--these qualities
are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled Byron
by M. Taine. These qualities would be out of place; they would be