My Recollections of Lord Byron
three words and half a smile of----, had she been here to urge it (and
urge it she infallibly would; at least, she always pressed me on in
senatorial duties, and particularly in the cause of weakness), would
have made me an advocate, if not an orator. Curse on Rochefoucault for
being always right!_"
Another time _he also accused himself of selfishness, because he wrote
only for amusement_! He was then but twenty-three years of age:--
"To withdraw myself from myself (_oh, that cursed selfishness!_) has
ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all;
and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action
it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself."
This hard opinion of man's virtue, formed by many moralists, and
especially by those who see virtue only in pure disinterested
benevolence, was an impulse with Lord Byron rather than the result of
reason; and I much doubt whether this craving for equity and truth were
ever practically combined and harmonized with the faculty of benevolence
in any one else as it was with Lord Byron, for this combination
evidently formed the most striking part of his character. Montaigne
himself,--who, if he did not possess as much innate benevolence, had
nevertheless the faculty, and even felt the want of entering into his
conscience, and examining it, so as to draw forth general
notions,--says, "When I examine myself conscientiously, I find that my
best sort of goodness has a _vicious tint_."
And he fears that even Plato, in his _brightest virtue_, had he analyzed
it well, would have found _some human admixture_. And then he sums up by
saying, "Man is made up of bits and oddities."[103]
But these sincere philosophers are few in number, and their maxims can
never be popular. For men in general experience rather the want of
magnifying than of depreciating themselves, and, instead of taking their
best models from an ideal, they choose them from reality, judge
characters, compare themselves to other men, and, living like other
people, see no guilt in themselves; while Lord Byron, living as they
did, discovered in himself weaknesses, reasons for modesty, regret,
repentance. If he could have done as they did, he would have been
satisfied, and he would either have escaped or vanquished calumny. But
he could not and would not, though conscious of the harm thence
resulting to himself.
"You censure my life, Harness. When I compare myself with these men, my
elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of
prudence,--a walking statue, without feeling or failing; and yet the
world in general has given me a proud pre-eminence over them in
profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn
their aberrations; but I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this
by the name of love. Romantic attachments for things marketable for a
dollar!"
One of his biographers pretends that he rendered himself justice another
time, and represents him as saying, speaking of M----:
"See how well he has got on in the world! He is just as little inclined
to commit a bad action as incapable of doing a good one; fear keeps him
from the former, and wickedness from the latter. The difference between
him and me is that I attack a great many people, and truly, with one or
two exceptions (and note that they are persons of my own sex), I do not
hate one; while he says no harm of any one, but hates a great many, if
not every body. Fancy, then, how amusing it would be to see him in the
palace of Truth, when he would be thinking he was making the sweetest
compliments, while all the time he would be giving vent to the
accumulated spite and rancor of years, and then to see the person he had
flattered so long listen to his real sentiments for the first time. Oh!
that would truly be a comic sight. As to me, I should appear to great
advantage in the palace of Truth, for while I should be thinking to vex
friends and enemies with harsh speeches, I should be saying pretty
things on the contrary; for at bottom, _I have no malice or
ill-nature,--at least, not of that kind which lasts more than a
moment_."
"Never," adds the biographer, "was a truer observation made. Lord
Byron's nature is _very fine_, despite all the bad weeds that might have
attempted to spring up in it; and I am convinced that it is the
excellence of the poet, or rather the effect of such excellence, which
has caused the faults of the man.
"The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased in proportion
to the admiration excited by the poet, and often with the greatest
injustice. The world offered up incense to the poet, while heaping ashes
on the head of the man. He was indignant at such usage, and wounded
pride avenged itself by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to
give a deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forcing
them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was their
disapprobation of his supposed character."[104]
Is this conversation real or imaginary? Doubt is allowable; but, however
it may be, the reflections of the biographer in this case are too
sensible and too true for us not to quote them with pleasure.
In concluding these remarks, which prove how high was the ideal type
that impelled Lord Byron to be unjust to himself, I will further
observe, that it was the exaggeration of his great characteristic
faculties which made him fail in some little virtue (such as prudence,
when it has its source _solely in our personal interest_). For it was
only to this degree, and from this point of view, that Lord Byron lacked
it. And it appears singular that his great mind should not have made him
see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his
inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of
conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he
_felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain
enough sacrifice_; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of
equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties that
can have no alloy of egotism, and which were very evidently the most
_striking qualities of his character_. But he was, with regard to
himself, like the torch which, lighting up distant objects, leaves
those near it in obscurity. Lord Byron did not know himself; he had by
no means overcome that difficulty which the oracles of Greece pronounced
_the greatest_. Only he was sometimes conscious of it. In his memoranda,
written at Ravenna, in 1821, after having said that he does not think
the world judges him well, he adds:--
"I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English,
French, German as (interpreted to me), Italian and Portuguese, within
these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretin, Timon of Athens,
Dante, Petrarch, an Alabaster Vase lighted up within, Satan, Shakspeare,
Bonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin the
clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the Phantasmagoria, to Henry the
Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to Young, R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to
Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a _petit maitre_, to Diogenes, to Childe
Harold, to Lara, to the Count in 'Beppo,' to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden,
to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to 'oft have I heard of thee, my
Lord Byron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to
Alfieri, etc., etc. The object of so many contradictory comparisons must
probably be like something different from them all; but what _that_ is
is more than I know, or any body else."
But had he known himself, he would have found that he realized one of
the finest types of character that humanity can offer; for his two
characteristic faculties were, his attraction toward truth and
benevolence. And in ceasing to calumniate himself, he would have
snatched from the hands of the envious and the enemies of truth, the
principal weapon they made use of to defame him.
When one reflects on all this, one questions with astonishment how it is
that all his biographers should have remained outside of truth. But it
is useless insisting thereupon, for we have given sufficient
answer.[105]
I will, then, confine myself to remarking here that one characteristic
peculiar to the biographers of great men in general, is the extreme
repugnance they feel toward praising their own subjects. What is the
cause? Do they fear being told they have made a panegyric, passing for
flatterers, appearing to get through a task? Do they believe that, in
order to show cleverness, perspicacity, and deep knowledge of the human
heart, it is necessary to put in place of simple truth a sort of malice,
not very intelligible, and often contradictory? All that may well be,
but I believe that what they especially feel is, that if their books
were only written for noble minds, possessing such qualities as only
belong to the minority of the human race, they might run the risk of
being less sought after and less bought. Thus they search for faults
with ardor, just as miners do for diamonds; and when they think they
have discovered a vice in their hero, they look upon it as the "Mogul"
of their book. They make it shine, polish it up, show it in a thousand
lights, bring it out as the striking part of their work,--the chief
quality of their hero, who, unable to defend himself, is handed down,
disfigured, to posterity. Such are the strange perils incurred, as
regards truth and justice, and the wrong done toward the great departed;
and this is why their surviving friends are called on to protest against
the false assertions of biographers. Those who have written on Lord
Byron, unable to find this great "Mogul" (for Lord Byron had no vices),
have all, more or less, sought at least to draw the attention of their
readers to a thousand little weaknesses, mostly devoid of reality. Upon
what basis, indeed, do they rest?--Almost always on Lord Byron's words.
Now we know what account should be made of his testimony when he speaks
against himself. For instance, he has called himself irritable and prone
to anger, and biographers have found it very convenient to paint him
with his own brush. Men never fail to treat those who depreciate
themselves with equal injustice. Nor is this surprising. If it be true
that we are always judged on our faulty side, even though we endeavor to
show the best, what must be the case if our efforts tend only to display
our worst? And besides, why should others give themselves the trouble of
exonerating a man from blame who depreciated himself? As it requires
great discernment, great generosity, and very rare qualities, not to go
beyond truth in self-esteem, biographers have not hesitated to declare
Lord Byron, on his own testimony, _very irritable_, and even very
passionate; but was he really so? This is a question to be examined.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 98: Moore's "Life," vol. iv. p. 241.]
[Footnote 99: Parry, 273.]
[Footnote 100: Letter from Finlay to Stanhope, Parry, 210.]
[Footnote 101: Parry, 210.]
[Footnote 102: Moore, 214, vol. ii. in 4to.]
[Footnote 103: Montaigne, vol. iii. p. 87.]
[Footnote 104: "Journal of Conversation," p. 195.]
[Footnote 105: See chapter on Lord Byron's biographers.]
CHAPTER XVII.
IRRITABILITY OF LORD BYRON.
Was Lord Byron irritable? With his poetic temperament, his exquisite and
almost morbid sensibility, so grievously tried by circumstances, it
would be equally absurd and untrue to pretend that he was as impassible
as a stoic, or phlegmatic as some good citizen who vegetates rather than
lives. Did such qualities, or rather faults,--for they betoken a cold
nature,--ever belong to Milton, Dante, Alfieri, and those master-spirits
whose strength of passion, combined with force of intellect, have