My Recollections of Lord Byron
Was such as rather seem'd to keep aloof,
To shield himself than put you on your guard.
XV.
"Serene, accomplish'd, cheerful, but not loud,
Insinuating without insinuation;
Observant of the foibles of the crowd,
Yet ne'er betraying this in conversation;
Proud with the proud, yet courteously proud,
So as to make them feel he knew his station
And theirs:--without a struggle for priority
He neither brook'd nor claim'd superiority.
XVI.
"That is with men: with women he was what
They pleased to make or take him for."--_Canto_ xv.
LIV.
"There was the purest Platonism at bottom
Of all his feelings."--_Canto_ x.]
[Footnote 3: Ste. Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," vol. iii. p. 28.]
[Footnote 4: When the persecution to which Lord Byron was exposed by his
separation had attained its greatest height, an influential person--not
belonging to the peerage--came to visit him, and told him that, if he
wished to see how far the folly of men went, he had only to give orders
for having it shown that nothing said against him was true, but that
then he must change politics and come over to the Tory party. Lord Byron
replied that he would prefer death and all kinds of tortures to such
meanness. Hereupon the person in question said that he must suffer the
consequences, which would be heavy, since his colleagues were determined
on his ruin, out of party spirit and political hatred. It was at this
time that, going one day to the House, he was insulted by the populace,
and even treated in it like an outlaw. No one spoke to him, nor
approached to give any explanation of such a proceeding, except Lord
Holland, who was always kind to him, and indeed to every one else.
Others--such as the Duke of Sussex, Lord Minto, Lord Lansdowne and Lord
Grey--would fain have acted in a like manner; but they suffered
themselves to be influenced by his enemies, among whom more than one was
animated by personal rancor because the young lord had laughed at them
and shown up their incapacity.
Lord Byron, finding himself received in this way by his colleagues,
pretended not to see it, and after a few moments quitted the House,
never more to set foot within it.]
[Footnote 5: Lord Byron's mind, incapable of idleness, was constantly at
work, even despite himself and amid pressing active occupations. During
his stay in the Ionian Islands, Missolonghi, he wrote five cantos of Don
Juan. The scene of the cantos that followed was laid first in England
and then in Greece. The places chosen for the action naturally rendered
these last cantos the most interesting, and, besides, they explained a
host of things quite justifying them. They were taken to England with
Lord Byron's other papers; but there they were probably considered not
sufficiently respectful toward England, on which they formed a sort of
satire too outspoken with regard to living personages, and doubtless it
was deemed an act of patriotism to destroy them. And so the world was
deprived of them.
Lord Byron had also kept a journal since the day of his departure from
Genoa up to the time when illness made the pen drop from his hand. To it
he had consigned his most intimate thoughts; and we may well imagine how
full of interest it must have been, written amid all the emotions
agitating his soul at that time. This journal was found among his papers
by a personage of high standing in Greece, who was the first to inspect
them, and who, seeing his own name and conduct mentioned in no
flattering terms, destroyed them in order to hide from England the
unvarnished truth told of himself. Count Gamba often speaks of this
journal in the letters addressed at this period to his sister.
We leave the reader to make his own comments on these too regrettable
facts.]
CHAPTER I.
LORD BYRON AND M. DE LAMARTINE.
_To Count de_ ----.
Paris, 17th June, 1860.
MY DEAR COUNT,--Confiding in your willingness to oblige, I beg to ask a
favor and your advice. I received, a short time ago, a prospectus of a
subscription to be raised for a general addition of the works of M. de
Lamartine. You are aware that when it is a question of showing my
sympathy for M. de Lamartine I would never miss the opportunity of doing
so; but on this occasion I see on the programme the promise of a Life of
Lord Byron. Such an announcement must alarm the friends of that great
man; for they remember too vividly the sixteenth number of the "Cours
Litteraire" to subscribe hastily to a work when they have not more
information than is therein given. You, who forget nothing, must
probably remember the strange judgment of Byron formed by M. de
Lamartine in that article. Identifying the man with the poet, and
associating his great name with that of Heine on account of some rather
hazardous lines in "Don Juan," and forgetting the license allowed to
such poetry--an imitation of the Italian poets Berni, Ariosto, Pulci,
Buratti--M. de Lamartine did not forget a few personal attacks upon
himself, and called Byron the founder of the school for promoting
satanic laughter, while he heaped upon him the most monstrous
accusations. M. de Lamartine ventured to say of Byron things which even
his greatest enemies never dared to utter at that time when in England
it was the custom to revile him. Although the time has not yet come when
Lord Byron's life should be written, since the true sources of
collecting information respecting him are unattainable so long as the
people live to whom his letters were addressed, still it is easy to
perceive that the time has at length arrived when in England the desire
to do him justice and fairly to examine his merits is felt by the nation
generally. Moore, Parry, Medwin, etc., have already attempted to make
known the character of the man as distinct from that of the poet. They
no longer sought to find in him a resemblance with Childe Harold, or the
Corsair, or Manfred, or Don Juan, nor to judge of him by the
conversations in which he sought to mystify those with whom he
conversed; but they judged him by his acts and by his correspondence.
If so happy a reaction, however, is visible in England the same can not
be said of France, where there being no time to read what is published
elsewhere, an error is too soon embraced and ingrafted on the mind of
the public as a consequence of a certain method which dispenses with all
research. Hence the imaginary creation which has been called Byron, and
which has been maintained in France notwithstanding its being wholly
unacceptable as a portrait of the man, and totally different from the
Byron known personally to some happy few who had the pleasure of
beholding in him the handsomest, the most amiable of men, and the
greatest genius whom God has created.
But M. de Lamartine, who wishes particularly to show the character of
the man, instead of adding to the numerous proofs of courage and
grandeur of mind which he has personally shown to the world--that of
confessing that he has erred in his judgment of Byron--endeavors to
study him only in his works. But in doing this, and even though a moral
object may be found in each of Byron's works, it strikes us that M. de
Lamartine would have done better to pursue this line in the analysis of
the intellectual part of the man, and not the moral side.
"You err" (wrote Byron to Moore on the occasion of the latter saying
that such a poem as the "Vision of Judgment" could not have been written
in a desponding mood): "a man's poetry is a distinct faculty or soul,
and has no more to do with the every-day individual than the inspiration
of the Pythoness when removed from her tripod." To which Moore observes:
"My remark has been hasty and inconsiderate, and Lord Byron's is the
view borne out by all experience. Almost all the tragic and gloomy
writers have been, in social life, mirthful persons. The author of the
'Night Thoughts' was a fellow of infinite jest; and of the pathetic
Otway, Pope says, 'He! why, he would laugh all the day long; he would do
nothing but laugh!'"
It is known that many licentious writers have led very regular and
chaste lives; that many who have sung their success with women have not
dared to declare their love to one woman; that all Sterne's sentiment
was perfectly ideal, and proceeded always from the head and never from
the heart; that Seneca's morality was no barrier to his practicing
usury; and that, according to Plutarch, Demosthenes was a very
questionable moralist in practice. Why, then, necessarily conclude that
a moralist is a moral man, or a sarcastic satirist a deceitful one, or
the man who describes scenes of blood and carnage a monster of cruelty?
Does not Montaigne say of authors that they must be judged by their
merits, and not by their morals, nor by that show of works which they
exhibit to the world? Why, then, does M. Lamartine appreciate Byron
according to his satirical works, when all those who knew him assert
that his real character was very different to his literary one? He did
not personify, but create his heroes; which are two very different
things.
Like Salvator Rosa, who, the meekest of men in private life, could only
find a vent to his talent by painting scenes of brigandage and horror,
so did Byron's genius require to go down into the darkest recesses of
the passions which generate remorse, crime, and heroism, to find that
spark which fired his genius. But it must be owned, that even his great
qualities were causes of the false judgment of the world upon him. Thus,
in describing Childe Harold, he no doubt wished to paint a side of
nature which had not yet been seen. At the scenes of despair, at the
scenes of doubt which assail him, the poet assists rather as the
historian than as the actor. And the same holds good for other poems,
where he describes those peculiar diseases of the mind which great
geniuses alone can comprehend, though they need not have experienced
them. But it was the very life which he infused into his heroes that
made it appear as if they could not personify any one but himself. And
as to their faults, because he was wont to give them his qualities, it
was argued, that since the latter were observable to be common to the
author and the creations of his fancy, the faults of these must likewise
be his. If only the faults, why not also the crimes? Thus it came that,
caring little for their want of argument, Byron's enemies erected
themselves into avengers of too much talent bestowed upon one single
man.
Byron might have taken up his own defense, but did not care to do so, or
did it carelessly in some letters written to intimate friends. To Moore
he wrote:--"Like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with
the character while I draw it; but not a moment after the pen is from
the paper." He always, however, begged that he might be judged by his
acts; and a short time before he died at Missolonghi, after recommending
Colonel Stanhope to desist from then pressing the necessity of giving
liberty to the press, and from recommending the works of Bentham to a
people who could not even read, Byron replied to the colonel's rather
hasty remarks, "Judge me by my acts." This request he had often
repeated, as his life was not one of those which fear the light of day.
All in vain. His enemies were not satisfied with this means of putting
an end to their calumnies.
Where does M. de Lamartine find the truth which he proposes to tell the
world about Byron? Not surely among the writers whose biographies of
Byron were either works of revenge or of speculation, and sometimes
both. Not in the conversations which Byron had with several people, and
on the credulity of whom he loved to speculate. It can not, therefore,
be in the biographies of men who have written erroneously, and have not