My Recollections of Lord Byron
seems to have been merged into the poet, and to form with him one person
only. Childe Harold's sorrows are those of Lord Byron, but there no
longer exists any trace of misanthropy or of satiety. His heart already
beats with that of the poet for chaste and devoted affections, for all
the most amiable, the most noble, and the most sublime of sentiments. He
loves the flowers, the smiling and glorious, the charming and sublime
aspect of nature.
"Yet not insensible to all which here
Awoke the jocund birds to early song
In glens which might have made even exile dear;
Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place
Of feelings fiercer far but less severe,
Joy was not always absent from his face,
But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace."
No longer, then, is satiety depicted upon the pilgrim's brow, but "lines
austere;" and the poet seems so desirous of proving to us that Harold is
metamorphosed, that when he expresses sentiments full of sympathy,
humanity, and goodness, his horror for war and his dislike for the
beauties of the Rhine, because--
"A thousand battles have assail'd thy banks,"
he takes care to add--
"Thus Harold inly said"....
Harold, then, has ceased to be the weary _blase_ pilgrim of twenty-one,
who in the first canto remains unmoved in presence of the attractions of
Florence the beautiful, who inspired the poet with such different
sentiments that in the midst even of a storm which threatens to swallow
him up he actually finds strength enough to express his sentiments of
real love for the lovely absent one--of a love, indeed, which is
evidently returned. His heart, like the poet's, now beats with a pure
love, and causes him to chant the absence of his friend in the most
beautiful strain. Where is the old Harold? It would seem as if the poet,
tired of a companion so disagreeable and so opposed to his tastes, and
wishing to get rid of him but not knowing how, had first changed and
moulded him to his own likeness by giving him his own sentiments, his
own great heart, his own pains, his own affections, and, not finding the
change natural, had dismissed him altogether. And so it appears, for
after the fifty-fifth stanza of the third canto, Childe Harold
disappears forever. Thus at the beginning of the fourth canto, which was
published a year after, under the auspices of an Italian sky, the reader
finds himself in the presence of the poet only. He meets in him a great
and generous soul, but the victim of the most odious and unmerited
persecution, who takes his revenge in forgiving the wrongs which are
done to him, and who reserves all his energies to consecrate them to the
love of that which is lovable, to the admiration of that which calls for
it, and who at twenty-nine years of age is imbued with Christian and
philosophical qualities, which his wearied hero could never have
possessed.
Why then again have identified Byron with Childe Harold? For what
reason? It strikes us, that the simplest notions of fairness require us
at least to take into account the words of the author himself, and to
listen to the protestations of a man who despised unmerited praise more
than unjust reproof.
"A fictitious character," says Byron, "is introduced for the sake of
giving some connection to the piece....
"It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and
express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to
show that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past
pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of
nature and the stimulus of travel are lost on a soul so constituted, or
rather misdirected.
"It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high
value, that in this fictitious character, 'Childe Harold,' I may incur
the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave
once for all to disclaim--Harold is the child of imagination, for the
purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those
merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion: but in the main
points, I should hope, none whatever."
Warned by his friends of the danger which there was for him being
identified with his hero, he paused before publishing the poem. He had
written it rather by way of recreation than for any other motive; and
when Dallas expressed to him his great desire to see the works
published, Byron told him how unwilling he was that it should appear in
print, and thus wrote to him, after having given way to Dallas's wishes
in the matter:--
"I must wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's character with mine.
If in certain passages it is believed that I wished to identify my hero
with myself, believe that is only in certain parts, and even then I
shall not allow it. As for the manor of Childe Harold being an old
monastic residence, I thought I might better describe what I have seen
than what I invent. I would not for worlds be a man like my hero."
A year after, in writing to Moore on the occasion of dedicating his
"Corsair" to him, after saying that not only had his heroes been
criticised, but that he had almost been made responsible for their acts
as if they were personal to himself, he adds:
"Those who know me are undeceived, and those who do not I have little
interest in undeceiving. I have no particular desire that any but my
acquaintance should think the author better than the beings of his
imagining; but I can not help a little surprise, and perhaps amusement,
at some odd critical exceptions in the present instance, when I see
several bards in very reputable plight, and quite exempted from all
participation in the faults of their heroes, who nevertheless might be
found with little more morality than the Giaour; and perhaps--but no--I
must admit Childe Harold to be a very repulsive personage, and as to his
identity, those who like it must give him whatever _alias_ they please."
And in order to embrace the whole of his life in these quotations, we
will add what he said at Cephalonia, to Dr. Kennedy, shortly before his
death:--
"I can not conceive why people will always mix up my own character and
opinions, with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet, I have
the right and liberty to draw."
"They certainly do not spare your lordship in that respect," replied
Kennedy; "and in 'Childe Harold,' 'Lara,' the 'Giaour,' and 'Don Juan,'
they are too much disposed to think that you paint in many instances
yourself, and that these characters are only the vehicles for the
expression of your own sentiments and feelings."
"They do me great injustice," he replied, "and what was never before
done to any poet.... But even in 'Don Juan' I have been misunderstood. I
take a vicious and unprincipled character, and lead him through those
ranks of society whose high external accomplishments cover and cloak
internal and secret vices, and I paint the natural effects of such
characters, and certainly they are not so highly colored as we find them
in real life."
"This may be true," said Kennedy, "but the question is, what are your
motives and object for painting nothing but scenes of vice and folly?"
"To remove the cloak which the manners and maxims of society," said his
lordship, "throw over their secret sins, and show them to the world as
they really are. You have not," added he, "been so much in high and
noble life as I have been; but if you had fully entered into it, and
seen what was going on, you would have felt convinced that it was time
to unmask the specious hypocrisy, and show it in its native colors!"
Kennedy having then remarked that the lower and middling classes of
society never entertained the opinion that the highest classes exhibited
models of piety and virtue, and were, indeed, disposed to believe them
worse than they really were, Byron replied:--
"It is impossible you can believe the higher classes of society worse
than they are in England, France, and Italy, for no language can
sufficiently paint them."
"But still, my lord, granting this, how is your book calculated to
improve them, and by what right, and under what title do you too come
forward in this undertaking?"
"By the right," he replied, "which every one has who abhors vice united
with hypocrisy. My plan is to lead Don Juan through various ranks of
society and show that wherever you go vice is to be found."
The doctor then observed, that satire had never done any good, or
converted one man from vice to virtue, and that while his satires were
useless, they would call upon his head the disapproval both of the
virtuous and the wicked.
"But it is strange," answered Byron, "that I should be attacked on all
sides, not only from magazines and reviews, but also from the pulpit.
They preach against me as an advocate of infidelity and immorality, and
I have missed my mark sadly in having succeeded in pleasing nobody. That
those whose vices I depicted and unmasked should cry out is natural, but
that the friends of religion should do so is surprising: for you know,"
said he, smiling, "that I am assisting you in my own way as a poet, by
endeavoring to convince people of their depravity; for it is a doctrine
of yours--is it not?--that the human heart is corrupted; and therefore
if I show that it is so in those ranks which assume the external marks
of politeness and benevolence,--having had the best opportunities, and
better than most poets, of observing it,--am I not doing an essential
service to your cause, by first convincing them of their sins, and thus
enabling you to throw in your doctrine with more effect?"
"All this is true," said Kennedy; "but you have not shown them what to
do, however much you may have shown them what they are. You are like the
surgeon who tears the bandages from the numerous wounds of his ulcerated
patients, and, instead of giving fresh remedies, you expose them to the
air and disgust of every bystander, who, laughing, exclaims, 'How filthy
these fellows are!'"
"But I shall not be so bad as that," said Lord Byron; "_you shall see
what a winding up I shall give to the story._"
The end was to justify and give a moral to every thing. While reproving,
however, this system of identification, which not only leads to error
but also to calumny, can it, however, be denied that there was not some
reason, if not to justify it, at least to explain it? To deny that there
is, would, we think, be to commit another error. The nature of Lord
Byron's genius, the circumstances of his life, the innate qualities of
his heart and soul, were unquestionably aids to his detractors.
Upon the measure of the relations which existed between reality and
fiction in his poems, and especially as applied to his own history, here
are the words of Moore:--
"As the mathematician of old required but a spot to stand upon, to be
able, as he boasted, to move the world, so a certain degree of
foundation in fact seemed necessary to Byron, before that lever which he
knew how to apply to the world of the passions could be wielded by him.
So small, however, was, in many instances, the connection with reality
which satisfied him, that to aim at tracing through his stories these
links with his own fate and fortunes, which were after all, perhaps,
visible but to his own fancy, would be a task as uncertain as unsafe;
and this remark applies not only to the 'Bride of Abydos,' but to the
'Corsair,' 'Lara,' and all the other beautiful fictions that followed,
in which, though the emotions expressed by the poet may be in general
regarded as vivid recollections of what had at different times agitated
his own bosom, there are but little grounds, however he might himself