My Recollections of Lord Byron
is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult
to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by
discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their
opinions agree: and that this difference had its root deep in the
conformation of their respective minds, needs but a glance through the
rich, glittering labyrinth of Shelley's pages to assure us.
"In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However
Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a
man of this world than a ruler of hers: and, accordingly, through the
airiest and most subtle creations of his brain, still the life-blood of
truth and reality circulates. With Shelley it was far otherwise: his
fancy was the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well
as his theories; and not only the greater part of his poetry, but the
political and philosophical speculations in which he indulged, were all
distilled through the same over-refining and unrealizing alembic. Having
started as a teacher and reformer of the world, at an age when he could
know nothing of the world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on
the threshold of this boyish enterprise only confirmed him in his first
paradoxical views of human ills, and their remedies. Instead of waiting
to take lessons from those of greater experience, he with a courage,
admirable, had it been but wisely directed, made war upon both.... With
a mind, by nature, fervidly pious, he yet refused to acknowledge a
Supreme Providence, and substituted some airy abstraction of 'Universal
Love' in its place. An aristocrat by birth, and, as I understand, also
in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in politics, and to
such an utopian extent as to be the serious advocate of a community of
goods. Though benevolent and generous to an extent that seemed to
exclude all idea of selfishness, he yet scrupled not, in the pride of
system, to disturb wantonly the faith of his fellow-men, and, without
substituting any equivalent good in its place, to rob the wretched of a
hope, which, even if false, would be better than all this world's best
truths.
"Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two friends more
observable than in their notions on philosophical subjects: Lord Byron
being, with the great bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence of
matter and evil, while Shelley so far refined upon the theory of
Berkeley, as not only to resolve the whole of creation into spirit, but
to add also to this immaterial system, some pervading principle, some
abstract nonentity of love and beauty--of which, as a substitute at
least for Deity--the philosophic bishop had never dreamed."
The difference existing between their philosophical doctrines was that
which existed between the two most opposed systems of spiritualism and
pantheism.
I said that Shelley, notwithstanding his originality of mind, was
destined, through the mobility of his impressions, to be easily
influenced by what he read. The study of Plato and of Spinoza had
already given to his metaphysical views a different bent. But before his
transition from atheism to a mystical pantheism, before finding God in
all things, after having sought him in vain everywhere, before
considering himself to be a fragment of a chosen existence, and before
shutting himself up in a kind of mysticism which did actually absorb him
at a later period, he confined himself to a positive worship of nature,
which appeared to him then in the glorious shape of the mountains and
lakes of Helvetia. Wordsworth was his oracle, and thus cultivating a
poetry which deified nature, Shelley, in reality, remained at heart an
atheist, and doubtless tried to imbue Byron with his enthusiasm and with
his opinions.
Himself greatly delighted with the beauties of the scenery in the midst
of which they lived, and, as he was wont to say in laughter, having
received many large doses of Wordsworth from Shelley, Lord Byron wrote
several stanzas in which the same enthusiasm may be met with, recorded
in terms almost of adoration.
It was only a poetical form, however, a poetical illusion, which was
succeeded by stanzas in which God himself as our creator, was loudly
proclaimed. If in the seventy-second and following stanzas of the third
canto, opinions were expressed which savored of pantheistic tendencies,
they were at once followed by some such as these:--
"All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thought too deep:--
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars to the lull'd lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all _Creator_ and _Defense_."
And again, on viewing the Alps, he writes the poem of "Manfred," in
which his belief in a One God, and Creator, is expressed in sublime
lines. His repugnance to atheism and to materialism is testified not
only in his poetry, but also by his own actions.
On reaching Montauvert with his friend Hobhouse, and on the point of
ascending Mont Blanc with him, he found Shelley's name in the register
of the travellers, and under it the qualification of "atheist" written
in Shelley's own hand. Lord Byron at once scratched it out. But on
reading, a little below, a remark by another traveller, who had justly
rebuked Shelley's folly, Byron added the words, "The appellation is well
deserved."
He soon after left the Alps, and came to Italy, without his views,
either philosophical or religious, being in the least altered by the
seductions of "that serpent," as he jokingly denominated Shelley.
We shall now follow him, step by step, until the end of his life, and we
shall see whether he will not show himself stanch in his adherence to
great principles. Lord Byron had enough of systems, and was disgusted
with their absurdity, their proud dogmatical views, and their intolerant
spirit. Whenever the great questions of life and the dictates of the
soul occupy his thoughts, either in the silence of the night or in the
absence of passion, we shall see him set himself resolutely to the
examination of his own conscience, for the purpose of arriving at truth
and justice. The answers which his powerful reasoning suggested to him
served to determine and confirm his faith in God.
On leaving Geneva, Lord Byron proceeded to Milan. "One day," says Mr.
Stendhall, who knew Lord Byron at Milan, in 1817, and saw a great deal
of him there, "some people alluded to a couplet from the 'Aminta' of
Tasso, in which the poet appears to take credit to himself for being an
unbeliever, and expresses it in the lines which may thus be
translated:--
'Listen, oh my son, to the thunder as it rolls.
But what is it to us what Jupiter does up there?
Let us rejoice down here if betroubled above;
Let the common herd of mortals dread his blows:
And let the world go to ruin, I will only think
Of what pleases me; and if I become dust again,
I shall only be what I have already been.'
Lord Byron says that these lines were written under the influence of
spleen. A belief in the existence of a superior Being was a necessity
for the fiery and tender nature of Tasso. He was, besides, far too
Platonic to try to reconcile such contrary opinions. When he wrote those
lines, he probably was in want of a piece of bread and a mistress."
Lord Byron reached Venice, and there his most agreeable hours and days
were spent with Padre Pasquale, in the convent of the Armenian priests.
He also wrote, at this time, the sublimely moral poem entitled
"Manfred," in which he renders justice to the existence of God, to the
free will of man, the abuse of which has resulted in the loss of
"Manfred," and retraces, in splendid lines, all the duties incumbent
upon man, together with the limits which he is not allowed to pass. The
apparition of his lovely and young victim, the uncertainty of her
happiness, which causes Manfred's greatest grief, and finally his
supplication to her that he may know whether she is enjoying eternal
bliss,
... "That I do bear
This punishment for both--that thou wilt be
One of the blessed--...."
the whole bears the impress of a truly religious spirit.
He shortly afterward visited Rome, and finding himself in presence of
St. Peter's, he again gave expression to his religious sentiments, in
the admirable fourth canto of "Childe Harold," which Englishmen do not
hesitate to acknowledge as the finest poem which ever came from mortal
hands.
TO ST. PETER.
_Stanza_ 153.
* * * * * * *
"Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!"
_Stanza_ 154.
"But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.
* * * * * * *
Power, glory, strength, and beauty all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled."
From Venice he went on to Ravenna. The persecution to which he was
subjected, on the ground of religion and morality, on account of the
publication of the two first cantos of "Don Juan," was then at its
height, and he was tormented in every possible way. It was useless for
him to protest, in verse, in prose, by letter, or by words, against the
accusation of his being an atheist and a skeptic. It was asserted that
"Manfred" was the expression of his doubts upon the dispensation of
Providence, and that his other poems, all more or less imbued with
passion, had tendencies of an irreverent nature in respect to the
Divinity. His two famous stanzas in "Childe Harold" were always held up
to him by the innumerable army of hypocrites and wicked people who
assailed him.
All were not hypocrites, however; some were his enemies in good faith,
but were blinded by sectarian prejudices. Among these was an Irishman of
the name of Mulock, author of a work entitled "Atheism Answered." Lord
Byron one day at Ravenna received a paper from the editor of the
"Bologna Telegraph," with extracts from this work, in which "there is a
long eulogium of" his "poetry, and a great _compatimento_ for" his
"misery" on account of his being a skeptic and an unbeliever in Christ;
"although," says Mr. Mulock, "his bold skepticism is far preferable to
the pharisaical parodists of the religion of the Gospel, who preach and
persecute with an equally intolerant spirit."
Lord Byron, writing that day to Murray, says:--
"I never could understand what they mean by accusing me of irreligion.
They may, however, have it their own way. This gentleman seems to be my
great admirer, so I take what he says in good part, as he evidently
intends kindness, to which I can't accuse myself of being insensible."
In the evening he talked to and laughed a good deal with the Countess
Guiccioli about this great _compatimento_,[17] treating it as a great
oddity. A few months later, Moore having written to him about this same
Mr. Mulock, and told him that that gentleman was giving lectures upon
religion, Lord Byron, while riding with the young Count G---- in the
forest of Ravenna, made his profession of faith, and finding his
youthful companion not quite orthodox, said to him: "The nature of
classical and philosophical studies generally paralyzes all logical
minds, and that is why many young heads leave college unbelievers: you
are even still more so, because you mix up your religious views with
your political antipathies. As for me, in my early youth, when I left
college, where I had to bow to very superior and stronger minds who
themselves were under various evil influences of college and of youth, I