My Recollections of Lord Byron
contradicting himself, to assert the same as regards the love and
devotion shown by the heroic Myrrhas and virtuous Angiolinas, and other
dramatic types, all so different one from the other--has been obliged to
omit all mention of them, thus sharing an error common to vain, ignorant
critics. Yet these delightful creatures all resemble each other in the
one faculty of _loving passionately and chastely_, for that is a quality
which constitutes the very essence of woman, and Lord Byron's own
qualities must always have drawn it out in her. But there is something
far beyond beauty and passion in these noble and heroic creations of his
second manner.
"Where shall we find," says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, "a purer, higher
character than that of Angiolina, in the 'Doge of Venice?' Among all
Shakspeare's female characters there is certainly not one more true, and
not only true and natural, which would be slight merit, but true as a
type of the highest, rarest order in human nature. Let us stop here for
a moment, we are on no common ground; the character of Angiolina has not
yet been understood."
Bulwer then quotes the scene between Marian and Angiolina, and after
having pointed out its moral beauty, exclaims:--
"What a deep sentiment of the dignity of virtue! Angiolina does not even
conceive that she can be suspected, or that the insult offered her
required any other justification than the indignation of public
opinion."
And Bulwer goes on to quote the verses where Marian asks Angiolina if,
when she gave her hand to a man of age so disproportioned, and of a
character so opposite to her own, she loved this spouse, this friend of
her family; and whether, before marriage, her heart had not beat for
some noble youth more worthy to be the husband of beauty like hers; or
whether since, she had met with some one who might have aspired to her
lovely self. And after Angiolina's admirable reply, Bulwer says:--
"Is not this conception equal at least to that of Desdemona? Is not her
heart equally pure, serene, tender, and at the same time passionate, yet
with love, not material but _actual_, which, according to Plato, gives a
visible form to virtue, and then admits of no other rival. Yet this
sublime noble woman had no cold stiffness in her nature; she forgives
Steno, but not from the cold height, of her chastity.
"'If,' said she to the indignant page, 'oh! if this false and light
calumniator were to shed his blood on account of this absurd calumny,
never from that moment would my heart experience an hour's happiness,
nor enjoy a tranquil slumber.'"
"Here," says Bulwer, "the reader should remark with what delicate
artifice the tenderness of sex and charity heighten and warm the snowy
coldness of her ethereal superiority. What a union of all woman's finest
qualities! Pride that disdains calumny; gentleness that forgives it!
Nothing can be more simply grand than the whole of this character, and
the story which enhances it. An old man of eighty is the husband of a
young woman, whose heart preserves the calmness of purity; no love
episode comes to disturb her serene course, no impure, dishonorable
jealousy casts a shade on her bright name. She treads her path through
a life of difficulties, like some angelic nature, though quite human by
the form she wears."
Wishing only to call attention to the beauty of the female characters he
created, without reference to the other beauties contained in the work,
we shall continue to quote Bulwer for the second of these admirable
creations of womankind in his dramas, namely, Myrrha. After having
praised that magnificent tragedy "Sardanapalus," he adds:--
"But the principal beauty of this drama is the conception of Myrrha.
This young Greek slave, so tender and courageous, in love with her lord
and master, yet sighing after her liberty; adoring equally her natal
land and the gentle barbarian: what a new and dramatic combination of
sentiments! It is in this conflict of emotions that the master's hand
shows itself with happiest triumph.
"The heroism of this beautiful Ionian never goes beyond nature, yet
stops only at sublimest limits. The proud melancholy that blends with
her character, when she thinks of her fatherland; her ardent, generous,
_unselfish_ love, her passionate desire of elevating the soul of
Sardanapalus, so as to justify her devotion to him, the earnest yet
sweet severity that reigned over her gentlest qualities, showing her
faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch
that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both
Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest
sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal
pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character.
With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this
moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time
to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one sigh the two
contrary affections of her soul, Myrrha cries:--
"Then farewell, thou earth!
And loveliest spot of earth! farewell, Ionia!
Be thou still free and beautiful, and far
Aloof from desolation! My last prayer
Was for thee, my last thoughts, save _one_, were of thee!
_Sar._ And that?
_Myr._ Is yours."
"The principal charm," says Moore, "and the life-giving angel of this
tragedy, is Myrrha, a beautiful, heroic, devoted, ethereal creature,
enamored of the generous, infatuated monarch, yet ashamed of loving a
barbarian, and using all her influence over him to elevate as well as
gild his life, and to arm him against the terror of his end. Her
voluptuousness is that of the heart, her heroism that of the
affections."
Another admirable character, full of Christian beauty, is that of
Josephine in "Werner."
"Josephine," said the "Review," when "Werner" appeared, "is a model of
real spotless virtue. A true woman in her perfection, not only does she
preserve the character of her sex by her general integrity, but she also
possesses a wife's tender, sweet, and constant affection. She cherishes
and consoles her afflicted husband through all the adversities of his
destiny and the consequences of his faults.
"Italian by birth, the contrast between the beauties and circumstances
of her native country compared with the frontiers of Silesia, where a
pretty feudal tyranny exists, displays still more the fine sentiments
that characterize her."
We shall close this long list of admirable conceptions (which one quits
with regret, so great is their charm) by giving some extracts from the
portrait he was engaged on, when death, alas! caused the pencil to drop
from his fingers: we mean Aurora Raby in "Don Juan:"--
"Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;
A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded;
* * * * * * *
"Early in years, and yet more infantine
In figure, she had something of sublime
In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine.
All youth--but with an aspect beyond time;
Radiant and grave as pitying man's decline;
Mournful--but mournful of another's crime,
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more."
And then:--
"She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere,
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd."
And again:--
"She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
And kept her heart serene within its zone.
There was awe in the homage which she drew:
Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne
Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
In its own strength--most strange in one so young!"
* * * * * * *
"High, yet resembling not his lost Haidee;
Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere."
* * * * * * *
"The difference in them
Was such as lies between a flower and gem."
"_Don Juan_," canto xv.
Now that we have seen Lord Byron's ideal of womankind, let us mark with
what sentiments they inspired him, and in what way love always presented
itself to his heart or his imagination. Ever dealing out toward him the
same measure of justice and truth, people have gone on complacently
repeating that his love sometimes became a very frenzy, or anon
degenerated into a sensation rather than a sentiment. And his poetry has
been asserted to contain proof of this in the actions, characters, and
words of the persons there portrayed. I think, then, that the best way
of ascertaining the degree of truth belonging to these asseverations, is
to let him speak himself, on this sentiment, at all the different
periods of his life:--
"Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But Heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A Ray of Him who form'd the whole;
A Glory circling round the soul!
I grant _my_ love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, _hers_ was not guilt!
She was my life's unerring light:
That quench'd, what beam shall break my night?"
"_The Giaour._"
In 1817, at Venice, when his heart, at twenty-nine years of age, was
devoid of any real love, and had even arrived at never loving, although
suffering deeply from the void thus created, Lord Byron giving vent to
his feelings wrote thus:--
"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted--Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot."[49]
At the same period, he also unveils his soul, in guessing that of
Tasso:--
"And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought--and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorb'd in thine; the world was pass'd away;
_Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!"
"_The Lament of Tasso._"
A short time after, having described the charm of the pine forest at
Ravenna, seen by twilight, he begins to paint the happiness of two
loving hearts--of Juan and Haidee, and says:--
VIII.
"Young Juan and his lady-love were left
To their own hearts' most sweet society;
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft
With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms.
* * * * * * *
They could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing.
IX.
"Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their
Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail!
The blank gray was not made to blast their hair,
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail,
They were all summer; lightning might assail
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail
A long and snake-like life of dull decay
Was not for them--they had too little clay.
X.
"They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden; they were never