My Recollections of Lord Byron

twenty, for Lewis was only that age when he wrote 'The Monk.' These pages are not natural; they distill cantharides. "I had never read this work, and have just been looking over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But really such things can not even be dangerous." About the same period Mr. Allen, a friend of Lord Holland, very learned--a perfect Magliabecchi--a devourer of books, and an observer of mankind, lent Lord Byron a quantity of unpublished letters by the poet Burns--letters that were very unfit to see the light of day, being full of oaths and obscene songs. After reading them, Lord Byron wrote in his memoranda:---- "What an antithetical intelligence! Tenderness and harshness, refinement and vulgarity, sentiment and sensuality; now soaring up into ether, and then dragging along in mud. Mire and sublimity; all that is strangely blended in this admixture of inspired dust. It may seem strange, but to me it appears that a true voluptuary should never abandon his thought to the coarseness of reality. It is only by exalting whatever terrestrial, material, physical element there is in our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, or forgetting them quite, or, at least, by never boldly naming them to ourselves, only thus can we avoid disgust." This is how Lord Byron understood voluptuousness. We might multiply such quotations without end, taking them from every period of his life; all would prove the same thing. As to his poetry written at this time, especially the lyrical pieces where he expresses his own sentiments, what can there be more chaste, more ethereal? When a boy, he begins by consigning to the flames a whole edition of his first poems, on account of a single one, which the Rev. Dr. Beecher considered as expressing sentiments too warm for a young man. In his famous satire, written at twenty, he blames Moore's poetry for its effeminate and Epicurean tendencies, and he stigmatized as evil the whole poem of "The Ausonian Nun," and all the sensualities contained in it. In his "Childe Harold," his Eastern tales, his lyric poems above all, where he displays the sentiments of his own heart, every thing is chaste and ethereal. The way in which the public appreciated these poems may be summed up in the words used by the Rev. Mr. Dallas--the living type of Puritanism in its most exaggerated form--at a date when, through many causes, Lord Byron no longer even enjoyed his good graces. "After 1816," says he (the time at which Lord Byron left England), "I had no more personal intercourse with him, but I continued to read his new poems with the greatest pleasure until he brought out 'Don Juan.' That I perused with a real sorrow that no admiration could overcome. Until then his truly English muse had despised the licentious tone belonging to poets of low degree. But, in writing 'Don Juan,' he allied his _chaste and noble genius_ with minds of that stamp." And then he adds, nevertheless, that into whatsoever error Lord Byron fell, whatsoever his sin (on account of the beginning of "Don Juan"), he did not long continue to mix his pure gold with base metal, but ceased to sully his lyre by degrees as he progressed with the poem. Whether Dallas be right or not in speaking thus of "Don Juan," we do not wish here to examine. In quoting his words, my sole desire is to declare that, until the appearance of this poem, Lord Byron's muse had been, even for a Dallas, the _chaste muse of Albion_. This avowal from such a man is worthy of note, and renders unnecessary any other quotation. We must not, however, pass over in silence Mr. Galt's very remarkable opinion on this subject:-- "Certainly," says he, "there are some very fine compositions on love in Lord Byron's works, but there is not a _single line_ among the thousand he wrote which shows a _sexual_ sentiment. With him, all breathes the _purest_ voluptuousness. All is vague as regards love, and _without material passion_, except in the delicious rhythm of his verses." And elsewhere he says:-- "It is most singular that, with all his tender, passionate apostrophes to love, Lord Byron _should not once have associated it with sensual images_. Not even in 'Don Juan,' where he has described voluptuous beauties with so much elegance." Then, quoting from "Hebrew Melodies,"---- SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! "Behold in these charming lines," continues Galt, "a perfect sample of his _ethereal admiration_, his _immaterial_ enthusiasm. "The sentiment contained in this fine poetry," says he, "beyond all doubt belongs to the highest order of intellectual beauty;" and it seemed proved to him that love, in Lord Byron, was rather a metaphysical conception than a sensual passion. He remarked that even when Lord Byron recalls the precocious feelings of his childhood toward his little cousins--feelings so strong as to make him lose sleep, appetite, peace; when he describes them, still unable to explain them--we feel that they were passions much more ethereal with him than with children in general. "It should be duly remarked," says Galt, "that there is not a single circumstance in his souvenirs which shows, despite the strength of their natural sympathy, the smallest influence of any particular attraction. He recollects well the color of her hair, the shade of her eyes, even the dress she wore, but he remembers his little Mary as if she were a Peri, a pure spirit; and it does not appear that his torments and his wakefulness haunted with the thought of his little cousin, were in any way produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fears, or any other consequence of passion." And when Galt speaks of "Tasso's Lament," he expresses the same opinion, namely, that in his writings Lord Byron treats of love as of a metaphysical conception, and that the fine verses he has put into the mouth of Tasso would still better become himself:-- "It is no marvel--from my very birth My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth: Of objects all inanimate I made Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, And rocks, whereby they grew, a Paradise, Where I did lay me down within the shade Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours." "The truth is," adds Galt, by way of conclusion, "that no poet has ever described love better than Lord Byron in that particular _ethereal_ shade:---- "'His love was passion's essence:--as a tree On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be Thus, and enamor'd, were in him the same. But his was not the love of living dame, Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, But of ideal beauty, which became In him existence, and o'erflowing teems Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.'" "_Childe Harold_," canto iii. stanza 78. And even if it should be denied that love, in Lord Byron's writings, as indeed in himself, was purely metaphysical, it must, at least, be acknowledged that it was chaste. This would be more easily recognizable if the letters dictated by his heart, if his _love-letters,_ were known. But since we can not open these intimate treasures of his heart to the public, we will speak of those given us in his writings, and we will thence draw our conclusions: firstly, in regard to the characters he gives to all his heroines; secondly, as to the pictures he makes of love in passages where he speaks seriously, and in his own name. LORD BYRON'S FEMALE CHARACTERS. What poet of energy has ever painted woman more chaste, more gentle and sweet, than Lord Byron? "One of the distinguishing excellences of Lord Byron," says one of his best critics, "is that which may be found in all his productions, whether romantic, classical, or fantastical, an intense sentiment of the loveliness of woman, and the faculty, not only of drawing individual forms, but likewise of infusing into the very atmosphere surrounding them, the essence of beauty and love. A soft roseate hue, that seems to penetrate down to the bottom of the soul, is spread over them." More than any other genius, Lord Byron had the magic power of conjuring up before our imagination the ideal image of his subject. He was not at all perplexed how to clothe his ideas. That quality, so sought after by other writers, and so necessary for hiding faults, was quite natural to him. When he describes women, a few rapid strokes suffice to engrave an indelible image on the mind of the reader. Let us take for examples:---- Leila, in the "Giaour." Zuleika, in the "Bride of Abydos." Medora, in the "Corsair." Theresa, in "Mazeppa." Haidee, in "Don Juan." Adah, in "Cain." The gentle Medora, ensconced within the solitary tower where she awaits her Conrad, is fully portrayed in the melancholy song stealing on the strings of her guitar, and in the tender, chaste words with which she greets her lover. Zuleika, the lovely, innocent, and pure bride of Selim, has her image graven in the following fine lines:-- "Fair, as the first that fell of womankind, When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling, Whose image then was stamp'd upon her mind-- But once beguiled--and evermore beguiling; Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given, When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian, And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven; Soft as the memory of buried love; Pure, as the prayer which Childhood wafts above, Was she--the daughter of that rude old Chief, Who met the maid with tears--but not of grief. "Who hath not proved how freely words essay To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess The might, the majesty of Loveliness? Such was Zuleika, such around her shone The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone-- The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul! Her graceful arms in meekness bending Across her gently-budding breast; At one kind word those arms extending To clasp the neck of him who blest His child, caressing and carest."[48] * * * * * THERESA. Theresa's form-- Methinks it glides before me now, Between me and yon chestnut's bough, The memory is so quick and warm; And yet I find no words to tell The shape of her I loved so well; She had the Asiatic eye, Such as our Turkish neighborhood Hath mingled with our Polish blood, Dark as above us is the sky; But through it stole a tender light, Like the first moonrise of midnight; Large, dark, and swimming in the stream, Which seem'd to melt to its own beam; All love, half languor, and half fire, Like saints that at the stake expire,