My Recollections of Lord Byron
"It was so brilliant a constellation," says Moore, "that perhaps such a
one will never be seen again." Among these he selected his friends from
their literary merit. Those he most distinguished were Hobhouse,
Matthews, Banks, and Scroope Davies. They formed a coterie at Cambridge,
and spent most of their holidays at Newstead.
HOBHOUSE.
Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Bart., since created a peer, under the name of
Lord Broughton, is one of the statesmen and writers the memory of whom
England most reveres. It is he whom Byron addresses as Moschus in the
"Hints from Horace." After being Byron's friend at college, he became
his faithful companion likewise in his travels, and throughout his
short-lived but brilliant career. It was he who accompanied Byron in the
fatal journey to Seaham, where Byron wedded Miss Milbank. It was he who
stood best man on that occasion, and it was he whom Byron selected as
his executor.
As soon as Byron became of age in 1809, the two friends left England
together to visit Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. The results of
these travels were, Byron's first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and
Hobhouse's "Journey across Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in
Europe and in Asia."
On their return to England, their intimacy did not cease. "Hobhouse,"
Byron was wont to say, "ever gets me out of difficulty;" and in his
journal of 1814 he says, "Hobhouse has returned. He is my best friend,
the most animated and most amusing, and one whose knowledge is very deep
and extensive. Hobhouse told me ten thousand anecdotes of Napoleon,
which must be true. Hobhouse is the most interesting of travelling
companions, and really excellent."
Lord Byron wished him to be his best man when he married Miss Milbank at
Seaham, and after his separation from her Hobhouse joined him in
Switzerland. They travelled together through the Oberland, and visited
all the scenes which inspired that magnificent poem entitled "Manfred."
Thence they left for Italy, and visited it from North to South; from the
Alps to Rome. The result of this journey was the fourth canto of "Childe
Harold" from Byron, and from Hobhouse a volume of notes, which
constitutes a work of very great merit. If such a companion was
agreeable to Byron, Byron was not less so to Hobhouse, who deplores a
journey he had made without the company of that friend, whose
perspicacity of observation and ingenious remarks united in producing
that liveliness and good-humor, which take away half the sting of
fatigue, and soften the aspect of danger and of difficulties.
During his absence from England Byron always insisted that all matters
relating to the settlement of his affairs should pass through the hands
of Hobhouse, his "alter ego" when near or when absent. His highest
testimony of regard and friendship for Hobhouse, however, is to be found
in the dedication of the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," which was
written in Italy in 1815, and which is as follows:--
CANTO THE FOURTH.
_To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.M., F.R.S., etc._
Venice, January 2, 1818.
MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,--After an interval of eight years between the
composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the
conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In
parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should
recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the
birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted
for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship,
than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to Childe Harold,
for any public favor reflected through the poem on the poet,--to
one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found
wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in
peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to
yourself.
In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to
you, in its complete or at least concluded state, a poetical work
which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my
compositions, I wish to do honor to myself by the record of many
years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness,
and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive
flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to
the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for
others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately,
been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to
withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your
good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from
their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the
anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence,[25]
but which can not poison my future while I retain the resource of
your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a
more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us
of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such
as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without
thinking better of his species and of himself.
It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods,
the countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia
Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a
few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem
also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to
last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to
reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree
connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it
would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those
magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our
distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of
respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious,
it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I
part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that
events could have left me for imaginary objects.
With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found
less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little
slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own
person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line
which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese
in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to
be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I
had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and
the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at
finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the
composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have
done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that
subject, are _now_ a matter of indifference: the work is to depend
on itself and not on the writer; and the author, who has no
resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or
permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves
the fate of authors.
In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in
the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of
Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within
the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the
labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and
for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am
indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the
elucidation of the text.
It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon
the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires
an attention and impartiality which would induce us--though perhaps
no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs
of the people among whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at
least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our
information. The state of literary as well as political party
appears to run, or to _have_ run, so high, that for a stranger to
steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be
enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own
beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che
vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte
le vie diverse si possouo tentare, e che sinche la patria di
Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa
dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still: Canova,
Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara,
Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will
secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the
departments of art, sciences, and belles-lettres; and in some the
very highest. Europe--the World--has but one Canova.
It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce
piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli
stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova."
Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition--a
dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better
grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious
than their neighbors--that man must be willfully blind, or
ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary
capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their
_capabilities_, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of
their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty,
and amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still
unquenched "longing after immortality"--the immortality of
independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of
Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma!
Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to
contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs
of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the
carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of
France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have
exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For
me,--
"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."
What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were
useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that
England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a
suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For
what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily
they _will have_ their reward," and at no very distant period.
Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself,
I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once
more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,
BYRON.