My Recollections of Lord Byron
complete satisfaction in the beautiful, and ever yearning passionately
after the sublime.
As to his fortitude, that self-control which makes one bear affliction
with external serenity, Lord Byron possessed it in as high a degree as
he did firmness with regard to material obstacles and dangers.
Endowed with exquisite sensibility, the great poet assuredly went
through cruel trials during his stormy career; but instead of
ostentatiously exhibiting his sorrows, Lord Byron on many occasions
rather exaggerated the delicacy that led him to veil them under an
appearance of stoicism. Only very rarely did his poetry echo back the
sufferings endured within.
Once, nevertheless, he wished, and rightly, to perpetuate in his verses
the memory of the indignities heaped upon him by a guilty world. He
wished that the great struggle he had been obliged to sustain against
his destiny should not be forgotten; he wished to show how much his
heart had been torn, his hopes sapped, his name blighted by the deepest
injuries, the meanest perfidy. He had seen, he said, of what beings
with a human semblance were capable, from the frightful roar of foaming
calumny to the low whisper of vile reptiles, adroitly distilling poison;
double-visaged Januses, who supply the place of words by the language of
the eyes, who lie without saying a syllable, and, by dint of a shrug or
an affected sigh, impose on fools their unspoken calumnies. Yes, he had
to undergo all that, and for once he wished it to be known.
He owed it to himself to make this complaint; his total silence would
have been wrong; it was necessary once for all to defend his _character_
and reputation, and when he ran the risk of losing the esteem of the
world his sensibility could not show itself in too lively a manner.
But if he thus raised his voice to immortalize these indignities, it was
not because he recoiled from suffering.
"Let him come forward," exclaimed he, "whoever has seen me bow the head,
or has remarked my courage wane with suffering."
Already, at the time of the unexampled persecution raised against him in
London, when the separation from his wife took place, he wrote to
Murray:--
"February 20th, 1816.
"You need not be in any apprehension or grief on my account. Were I
to be beaten down by the world and its inheritors, I should have
succumbed to many things years ago. You must not mistake my not
bullying for dejection; nor imagine that because I feel, I am to
faint."[80]
In all he wrote at this fatal period of his life, one perceives the wide
gaping wound, which is however endured with the strength of a Titan, who
at twenty-nine is to become quite a philosopher, good, gentle, almost
resigned.
"The camel labors with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence,--not bestow'd
In vain should such example be; if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day."[81]
Like all those who feel deeply the joys and griefs of their fellow-men,
Lord Byron had received from nature all that could render him capable
of moderating the external expression of his sensibility, when injustice
was personal to himself. Moreover, circumstances, alas! had only too
much favored the development of this noble faculty in him. For, very
early, he had received severe lessons from those terrible masters who
nurture great souls to self-control; from reverses, vanished illusions,
perils, wrongs. The storms however it was his destiny to encounter,
though violent, not only did not cause him to be shipwrecked, but even
helped to encircle his brow with the martyr's halo.
But, we may be asked, whether this great control which Lord Byron
exercised over himself, with regard to obstacles, dangers, and human
injustice, existed equally with regard to his own passions. To those who
should doubt it, and who, forgetting that Lord Byron only lived the age
of passions, without taking into consideration all the circumstances
that rendered difficult to him what is easier for others, should pretend
that Lord Byron gave way to his passions oftener than he warred against
them, to such we would say: "What was he doing, then, when, at barely
twenty-two years of age, he adopted an anchorite's _regime_, so as to
render his soul more _independent_ of _matter_? When he shut himself up
at home, with the self-imposed task of writing whole poems before he
came out, in order to _overcome his thoughts, and maintain them in a
line contrary to that which his passions demanded_? When, grieved,
calumniated, outraged, he _preferred exile rather than yield to just
resentment_, and in order to avoid the danger of finding himself in
situations where he _might not have preserved his self-control_?"
Have they forgotten that at Venice he subjected himself to the
ungrateful task of learning languages _more than difficult_, and of
working at other _dry studies_, in order to _fix his thoughts on them,
and divert them from resentment and anger_?
He writes to Murray: "I find the Armenian language, which is double
(_the literary and the vulgar tongue_), difficult, but not insuperably
so (at least I hope not). I shall continue. I have found it necessary to
chain my mind down to very severe studies, and as this is the most
difficult I can find here, it will be a _net for the serpent_."
And have we not seen him overcome himself, just as he was setting out
to go where his heart called him (for, notwithstanding all his efforts,
it had ceased to be independent), and thus defer a journey he sighed
for, only to _exercise acts of generosity, and liberate one of his
gondoliers from the Austrian conscription_?
If a true biography could be written of Lord Byron we should see a
constant struggle going on in this young man against his passions. And
can more be asked of men than to fight against them? Victory is the
proof and the reward of combat. If sometimes, as with every man, victory
failed him, oftener still he did achieve it; and it is certain that his
great desire always was to free himself from the tyranny of his
passions.
His last triumphs were not only great--they were sublime.
The sadness that overwhelmed him during the latter part of his stay at
Genoa is known. The struggles he had to maintain against his own heart
may be conceived.
It is also known how, being driven back into port by a storm, he
resolved on visiting the palace of Albaro; and it may well be imagined
that the hours passed in this dwelling, then silent and deserted, must
have seemed like those that count as years of anguish in the life of
great and feeling souls, among whom visions of the future float before
the over-excited mind. It can not be doubted that he would then
willingly have given up his fatal idea of leaving Italy; indeed he
declared so to Mr. Barry, who was with him; but the sentiment of his own
dignity and of his promise given triumphed over his feelings.
The night which followed this gloomy day again saw Lord Byron struggling
against stormy waves, and not only determined on pursuing his voyage,
but also on appearing calm and serene to his fellow-travellers.
Could peace, however, have dwelt within his soul? To show it outwardly
must he not have struggled?
"I often saw Lord Byron during his last voyage from Genoa to Greece,"
says Mr. H. Browne, in a letter written to Colonel Stanhope; "I often
saw him in the midst of the greatest gayety suddenly become pensive,
_and his eyes fill with tears_, doubtless from some painful remembrance.
On these occasions he generally got up and retired to the solitude of
his cabin."
And Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who only knew Lord
Byron later at Missolonghi, also says: "I have often observed Lord Byron
in the middle of some gay animated conversation, stop, meditate, and his
eyes to fill with tears."
And all that he did in that fatal Greece, was it not a perpetual triumph
over himself, his tastes, his desires, the wants of his nature and his
heart?
He saw nothing in Greece, he wrote to Mme. G----, that did not make him
wish to return to Italy, and yet he remained in Greece. He would have
preferred waiting in the Ionian Islands, and yet he set out for that
fatal Missolonghi! Liberal by principle, and aristocratic by birth,
taste, and habits, he was condemned to continual intercourse with
vulgar, turbulent, barbarous men, to come into contact with things
repugnant to his nature and his tastes, and to struggle against a
thousand difficulties--a thousand torments, moral and physical; he felt,
and knew, that even life would fail him if he did not leave Missolonghi,
yet he remained. Every thing, in short, throughout this last stage of
the noble pilgrim, proclaims his empire over self. His triumph was
always beautiful, and often sublime, but, alas! he paid for it with his
life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 77: Parry, 206.]
[Footnote 78: Essay by Colonel Stanhope.]
[Footnote 79: "Last Journey to Greece," p. 174.]
[Footnote 80: Moore, "Letters," p. 241.]
[Footnote 81: "Childe Harold."]
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MODESTY OF LORD BYRON.
Among the qualities that belong to his genius, the one which formed its
chief ornament has been too much forgotten.
Modesty constituted a beautiful quality of his soul. If it has not been
formally denied him; if, even among those whom we term his biographers,
some have conceded modesty as pertaining to Lord Byron's genius, they
have done so timidly; and have at the same time indirectly denied it by
accusing him of pride.
Was Lord Byron proud as a poet and as a man? We shall have occasion to
answer this question in another chapter. Here we shall only examine his
claims to modesty; and we say, without hesitation, that it was as great
in him as it has ever been in others. It shines in every line of his
poetry and his prose, at every age and in all the circumstances of his
life.
"There is no real modesty" (says a great moralist of the present day)
"without diffidence of self, inspired by a deep sense of the beautiful
and by the fear of not being able to reach the perfection we conceive."
As a poet, Lord Byron always undervalued or despised himself. As a man,
he did so still more; he exaggerated this quality so far as to convert
it into a fault, for he calumniated himself.
We have seen how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, and with what
facility he allowed his comrades to surpass him in intellectual
exercises, reserving for his sole ambition the wish of excelling them in
boyish games and in bodily exercises.
As a youth he did nothing but censure his own conduct, which, was not at
all different from that which his comrades thought allowable in
themselves. We have seen with what modest feelings he published his
first poems; with what docility he accepted criticisms, and yielded to
the advice of friends whom he esteemed.
When cruel criticism showed him neither mercy nor justice,
notwithstanding his youthful age, he lost, it is true, serenity and
moderation of spirit, but never once put aside his modesty.
Instigated by a passion for truth, he exclaims in his first satire,--
"Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand
To drive this pestilence from out the land."
Certainly, he does not spare censure in this passionate satire; but,
while inflicting it, he questions whether he should be the one to apply
the lash:--
"E'en I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng,
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong."
It was during the time of his first travels that Lord Byron wrote his
first _chef-d'oeuvre_,[82] but so little was he aware of possessing
great faculties that, while suffering from the exactions and torments