My Recollections of Lord Byron
time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like
rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated--more in
appearance than I was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his
fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me
think so. He told me, that I should find a note from him left at
Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys--he
for Rome, I for Pisa--but with the promise to meet again in the spring.
We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly
recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against those
few minutes.... Of all I have ever known he has always been the least
altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections
which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have
thought it possible for society to leave a being with so little of the
leaven of bad passions.
"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
heard of him from others during absence and distance."
"My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to Moore from
Pisa, in March, 1822: "we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
sentimental--really pathetic on both sides. I have always loved him
better than any male thing in the world."
In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th of that month
Byron wrote to Moore:--
"A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over
from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I
have always loved him, since I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any
male thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it
was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey
immediately."
On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleasure in
existence like that of meeting an early friend.
"Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G----, "gave Byron the greatest joy.
The last day they spent together at Leghorn was most melancholy. Byron
had a kind of presentiment that he should never see his friend again,
and in speaking of him, for a long time after, his eyes always filled
with tears."
LONG (CLEON).
Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at Cambridge. He entered
the Guards, and distinguished himself in the expedition to Copenhagen.
As he was on his way to join the army in the Peninsula, in 1809, the
ship in which he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was
drowned with several others.
Long's friendship contributed to render Byron's stay at Cambridge
bearable after his beloved Harrow days.
"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and amiable creatures
who live but a short time. He had talents and qualities far too rare not
to make him very much regretted." He depicts him as a lively companion,
with an occasional strange touch of melancholy. One would have said he
anticipated, as it were, the fate which awaited him.
The letter which he wrote to Byron, on leaving the University to enter
the Guards, was so full of sadness that it contrasted strangely with his
habitual humor.
"His manners," says Lord Byron, "were amiable and gentle, and he had a
great disposition to look at the comical side of things. He was a
musician, and played on several instruments, especially the flute and
the violincello. We spent our evenings with music, but I was only a
listener. Our principal beverage consisted in soda-water. During the day
we rode, swam, walked, and read together; but we only spent one summer
with each other."
On his leaving Cambridge, Byron addressed to him the following lines:--
TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.
"Nil ego contulerim jocundo sanus amico."--HORACE.
Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus if amid the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,
I think those days may come again;
Or if, in melancholy mood,
Some lurking envious fear intrude,
To check my bosom's fondest thought,
And interrupt the golden dream,
I crush the fiend with malice fraught,
And still indulge my wonted theme.
Although we ne'er again can trace
In Granta's vale the pedant's lore;
Nor through the groves of Ida chase
Our raptured visions as before,
Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion,
And Manhood claims his stern dominion,
Age will not every hope destroy,
But yield some hours of sober joy.
Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing
Will shed around some dews of spring:
But if his scythe must sweep the flowers
Which bloom among the fairy bowers,
Where smiling youth delights to dwell,
And hearts with early rapture swell;
If frowning age, with cold control,
Confines the current of the soul,
Congeals the tear of Pity's eye,
Or checks the sympathetic sigh,
Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan,
And bids me feel for self alone;
Oh, may my bosom never learn
To soothe its wonted heedless flow,
Still, still despise the censor stern,
But ne'er forget another's woe.
Yes, as you knew me in the days
O'er which Remembrance yet delays,
Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild,
And even in age at heart a child.
Though now on airy visions borne,
To you my soul is still the same.
Oft has it been my fate to mourn,
And all my former joys are tame.
But hence! ye hours of sable hue!
Your frowns are gone, my sorrows o'er:
By every bliss my childhood knew,
I'll think upon your shade no more.
Thus, when the whirlwind's rage is past,
And caves their sullen roar inclose,
We heed no more the wintry blast,
When lull'd by zephyr to repose.
Long's death was the cause of great grief to Lord Byron.
"Long's father," said he, "has written to ask me to write his son's
epitaph. I promised to do it, but I never had the strength to finish
it."
I will add that Mr. Wathen having gone to visit Lord Byron at Ravenna,
and having told him that he knew Long, Byron henceforth treated him with
the utmost cordiality. He spoke of Long and of his amiable qualities,
until he could no longer hide his tears.
In the month of October, 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Trinity
College, Cambridge, and in 1821 he thus described himself, and his own
feelings on leaving his beloved Ida for a new scene of life:--
"When I went to college it was for me a most painful event. I left
Harrow against my wish, and so took it to heart, that before I left I
never slept for counting the days which I had still to spend there. In
the second place, I wished to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge; and, in
the third place, I found myself so isolated in this new world, that my
mind was perfectly depressed by it.
"Not that my companions were not sociable: quite the contrary; they were
particularly lively, hospitable, rich, noble, and much more gay than
myself. I mixed, dined, and supped with them; but, I don't know why, the
most painful and galling sensation of life was that of feeling I was no
longer a child."
His grief was such that he fell ill, and it was during that illness that
he wrote and partly dictated the poem "Recollections of Childhood," in
which he mentions and describes all his dear comrades of Harrow, with
that particular charm of expression and thought which the heart alone
can inspire.
It was again under the same impression that he wrote the most melancholy
lines in the "Hours of Idleness," where the regret of the past
delightful days of his childhood, spent at his dear Ida, ever comes
prominently forward.
"I would I were a careless child,"
he exclaims in one poem, and finishes the same by the lines,--
"Oh that to me the wings were given
Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven
To flee away, and be at rest."
Life at Harrow appears to have been for him then the ideal of happiness.
At times the distant view of the village and college of Harrow, inspires
his muse, at others a visit to the college itself, and an hour spent
under the shade of an elm in the church-yard. His whole soul is so
revealed in these two poems, that I can not forbear quoting them _in
extenso_:--
ON A DISTANT VIEW OF THE VILLAGE AND SCHOOL OF HARROW-ON-THE-HILL.
"Oh! mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos."--VIRGIL.
Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection
Embitters the present, compared with the past;
Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection,
And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last;
Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance
Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied,
How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance,
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!
Again I revisit the hills where we sported,
The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought;
The school where, loud warn'd by the bell, we resorted,
To pore o'er the precepts by pedagogues taught.
Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;
Or round the steep brow of the church-yard I wander'd,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.
I once more view the room, with spectators surrounded,
Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alonzo o'erthrown;
While, to swell my young pride, such applauses resounded,
I fancied that Mossop himself was outshown.[24]
Or, as Lear, I pour'd forth the deep imprecation,
By my daughters of kingdom and reason deprived;
Till, fired by loud plaudits and self-adulation,
I regarded myself as a Garrick revived.
Ye dreams of my boyhood, how much I regret you!
Unfaded your memory dwells in my breast;
Though sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget you.
Your pleasures may still be in fancy possest.
To Ida full oft may remembrance restore me,
While fate shall the shades of the future unroll!
Since darkness o'ershadows the prospect before me,
More dear is the beam of the past to my soul!
But if, through the course of the years which await me,
Some new scene of pleasure should open to view,
I will say, while with rapture the thought shall elate me,
"Oh! such were the days which my infancy knew!"
* * * * *
LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCH-YARD OF HARROW.
Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"
When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast,
And calm its cares and passions into rest,
Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe my dying hour--
If aught may soothe when life resigns her power--
To know some humble grave, some narrow cell,
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell.
With this fond dream, methinks, 'twere sweet to die--
And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie;