My Recollections of Lord Byron
once attacked Shakspeare by defending the unities. A gentleman present,
on hearing his anti-Shakspearean opinions rushed out of the room, and
afterward entered his protest most earnestly against such doctrines.
Lord Byron was quite delighted with this, and redoubled the severity of
his criticism.
"He said once, when we were alone,--'I like to astonish Englishmen; they
come abroad full of Shakspeare, and contempt for the dramatic literature
of other nations. They think it blasphemy to find a fault in his
writings, which are full of them. People talk of my writings, and yet
read the sonnets to Master Hughes.'
"And yet," continues Finlay, "he continually had the most melodious
lines of Shakspeare in his mouth, as examples of blank verse."
The jealousy of Shakspeare attributed to Byron is, however, nothing when
compared to the ridiculous assertion, that he was jealous of Keats,
simply because he had repeated in joke what the papers and Shelley
himself, a friend of Keats, had said, namely, "that the young poet had
been killed by a criticism of the 'Quarterly.'"
But since a French critic, M. Philarete Chasles, has made the same
accusation, we must pause and consider it.
At the time when Byron was more than ever penetrated with the perfection
of Pope, and opposed to the romantic school,--at the time when he
himself wrote his dramas according to all classical rules,--he received
at Ravenna the poems of a young disciple of the Lakists, who united in
himself all their exaggerated faults. This young man had the
audacity--(which was almost unpardonable in the eyes of Byron)--to
despise Pope, and to constitute himself at nineteen a lawgiver of
poetical rules in England.
Such ridiculous pride, added to the contempt shown to his idol, incensed
Byron and prevented his showing Keats the same indulgence he had shown
Maturin and Blackett. He spoke severely of Keats in his famous reply to
"Blackwood's Magazine," and to his Cambridge friends--followers of the
good old traditions. He quoted some lines of Keats, and remarked that
"they were taken from the book of a young man who was learning how to
write in verse, but who began by teaching others the art of poetry."
Then, after a long quotation, he adds--"What precedes will show the
ideas and principles professed by the regenerators of the English lyre
in regard to the man who most of any contributed to its harmony, and the
progress visible in their innovation."
Let us not forget to add that he styled Keats "the tadpole of the
Lakists."
But the following year, when he heard that Keats had died at Rome, the
victim of his inordinate self-love, and unable to be consoled for the
criticism directed against his poetry, he wrote the following heartfelt,
and, as it were, repentant words to Shelley:--
"I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats--is it _actually_ true? I
did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you
essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all
unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest
peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow!
though, with such inordinate self-love, he would probably have not been
very happy.... Had I known that Keats was dead, or that he was 'alive,'
and so 'sensitive,' I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry,
to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation
of his own style of writing."
To Murray he wrote the same day:--
"Is it true what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome of
the 'Quarterly Review?' I am very sorry for it; though I think he took
the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and suburbing,
and versifying Tooke's 'Pantheon' and Lempriere's 'Dictionary.' I know
by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and
the one on me (which produced the 'English Bards,' etc.) knocked me
down; but I got up again. Instead of bursting a bloodvessel, I drank
three bottles of claret, and began an answer, finding that there was
nothing in the article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the
head, in an honorable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote
the homicidal article for all the honor and glory in the world, though I
by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats upon."
Some time after he wrote again to Murray, saying,--"You know very well
that I did not approve of Keats's poetry, nor of his poetical
principles, nor of his abuse of Pope. But he is dead. I beg that you
will therefore omit all I have said of him either in my manuscripts or
in my publications. His 'Hyperion' is a fine monument, and will cause
his name to last. I do not envy the man who wrote the article against
Keats."
Several months later he made complete amends. He added to his severe
article in answer to Blackwood, a note in the following terms:
"I have read the article before and since; and although it is bitter, I
do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a
young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course
of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's
depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me do justice to his own
genius, which, _malgre_ all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was
undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems actually
inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss to
our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is
said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and
was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language."
Were we wrong in saying that the accusations against Byron, with respect
to Keats, did not deserve a notice? If we have noticed them, it has been
merely to show, that the French critic should have judged matters in
this instance with greater conscientiousness and reflection.
Influenced as Byron always was by his own ideas of beauty, he required
in the authors themselves certain moral qualities which would demand for
their works the bestowal of his praise. It was not only their talent,
but their loyalty, their independence of character, their political
consistency, and their perfect honesty, which endeared Walter Scott,
Moore, and others, to him.
Byron, on the other hand, had never found these qualities in the
Lakists, and especially in the head of their school, whose whole life,
on the contrary, bore the marks of quite opposite characteristics. Since
Southey's dream of a life of intimacy with other poets of his school,
such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, in some blissful remote spot from
which they would publish their works in common, and where they would
live with their wives and children in community of interests, some
change had taken place; for Southey had so far deviated from his purpose
as to become Laureate, to write for himself, and to profess ultra-Tory
principles, the ultimate objects of which could not but be palpable.
All this called for Byron's contempt. To this contempt, however, he gave
no expression, for fear of wounding without reason, until that reason
did arise by the Laureate's unforgiving spirit. "The Laureate," says
Byron, "is not one of those who can forgive." Incapable of forgetting
that Byron's genius had obscured his own reputation, Southey hated Byron
with an intensity, such as to make him look out for opportunities of
doing him an injury. This opportunity Southey found in Byron's departure
for the Continent, subsequently to the unfortunate result of his
marriage; and not only did he join in all the calumnies which were set
forth against him in England, but actually followed him to Switzerland,
there to invent new ones, in the hope of crushing his reputation and
ruining the fame of the poet by the depreciation of the man.
Lord Byron for some time was ignorant of the Laureate's baseness, for
oftentimes friends deem it prudent to hide the truth which it would
perhaps be better to make known. But when he came to know of them, his
whole soul revolted, as naturally must be the case with a man of honor,
and in "Don Juan" he came down upon Southey with a double-edged sword,
throwing ridicule upon the author's writings, and odium upon his conduct
as a calumniator.
This revenge was well deserved. It was not only natural but just, and
even necessary, for it was requisite to show up the man, to judge of the
value to be attached to his calumnies; and later, when he called him
out, he did what honor required of him.
We have seen elsewhere how far the Laureate's conduct justified Byron's
retaliation. It is enough, therefore, that I should have shown here that
Byron's anger was rather the result of Southey's envy than his own, and
that his sarcasms were due entirely to the disgust which he felt for
such dishonorable proceedings.
From that time his language, when speaking of Wordsworth and Coleridge,
always reflected the same disgust. Both had made themselves the echoes
of Southey, and both had been inconstant from interested motives, and
had solicited favors from the party in power, which they had abused in
their writings. "They have each a price," said Byron at Pisa.
On one occasion, as Shelley and Medwin were laughing at some of
Wordsworth's last poems, which disgusted them, not only from the
subservient spirit to Toryism which pervaded them, but also excited
their laughter from their absurdity, Byron, in whose house they were,
said to them, "It is satisfactory to see that a man who becomes
mercenary, and traffics upon the independence of his character, loses at
the same time his talent as a poet."
Byron had such a notion of political consistency, that he ceased having
any regard for those who failed in this respect.
"I was at dinner," says Stendhall, "at the Marquis of Breno's at Milan,
in 1816, with Byron and the celebrated poet Monti, the author of
'Basvilliana.' The conversation fell upon poetry, and the question was
asked which were the twelve most beautiful lines written in a century,
either in English, in Italian, or in French. The Italians present agreed
in declaring that Monti's first twelve lines in the 'Mascheroniana' were
the finest Italian lines written for a century. Monti recited them. I
observed Byron. He was in raptures. That kind of haughty look which a
man often puts on when he has to get rid of an inopportune question, and
which rather took away from the beauty of his magnificent countenance,
suddenly disappeared to make way for an expression of happiness. The
whole of the first canto to the 'Mascheroniana,' which Conti was made to
recite, enchanted all hearers, and caused the liveliest pleasure to the
author of 'Childe Harold.' Never shall I forget the sublime expression
of his countenance: it was the peaceful look of power united with
genius."
He learned, later, that Monti was a man inconsistent in his politics,
and that on the sole impulse of his passions he had passed from one
party to another, and had called from the pen of another poet the remark
that he justified Dante's saying,--
"Il verso si non l' animo costante."
Byron's sympathy for Monti ceased from that time, and he even called him
the "Giuda del Parnaso," whereas his esteem and sympathy for Silvio
Pellico, for Manzoni, and for many other Italians, remained perfectly
unshaken.
His sense of justice extended to all nationalities. He was a
cosmopolite, and, provided the elements essential to claim his
admiration existed both in the man's work, and in his character, no
personal consideration ever came in the way of his bestowing
praise,--the most pleasing duty that could befall him. The great minds
of antiquity, those of the middle ages--especially the Italians,--all