My Recollections of Lord Byron
understood their subject; but in Moore, in Parry, in Count Gamba's
works, and, may be, in a few others. I am, however, far from saying,
that Moore has acted toward Lord Byron with all that friendly feeling
which Byron recommended to him on asking him to write the Life of
Sheridan, "without offending the living or insulting the dead." Quite
the contrary. I take it that Moore has wholly disregarded his duties as
a true friend, by publishing essentially private letters, by introducing
into his books certain anecdotes which he might, if even they were true,
have advantageously left out; and in failing, from fear of wounding
living susceptibilities, to assert with energy that which he knew to be
the real case with Byron. More than any one, Moore experienced the fatal
influence which injures independence in aristocratic England. An
Irishman by birth, and a commoner, Moore was flattered to find himself
elevated by his talents to a position in aristocratic circles which he
owed to his talents, but which he was loath to resign. The English
aristocracy then formed a kind of clique whose wish it was to govern
England on the condition that its secret of governing should not be
revealed, and was furious with Byron, who was one of them, for revealing
their weaknesses and upbraiding their pretensions. Moore wished to live
among the statesmen and noblemen whose despotic views and bad policy
Byron had openly condemned, and among those lovely islanders in whose
number there might be found more Adelinas than Auroras, and to whom
Byron had preferred foreign beauties. Moore, in short, wished to live
with the literary men whom Byron had ridiculed in his satires, and among
the high clergy, then as intolerant as they were hypocritical, and who,
as Byron said, forgot Christ alone in their Christianity. Moore, whose
necessity it had become to live among these open revilers and enemies of
Byron, after allowing the memoirs of Byron to be burnt, because in them
some of the above-named personages were unmasked, this Moore was weak
enough not to proclaim energetically that Byron's character was as great
as his genius, but to do so only timidly. By way of obtaining pardon
even for this mite of justice to the friend who was gone, Moore actually
condescended to associate himself with those who pleaded extenuating
circumstances for Byron's temper, like Walter Scott and other poets. But
truth comes out, nevertheless, in Moore; and in the perusal of Byron's
truthful and simple letters we find him there displayed in all his
admirable and unique worth as an intellectual and a moral man. We find
him adorned with all the virtues which Heaven gave him at his birth; his
real goodness, which neither injustice nor misfortune could alter; his
generosity, which not only made him disbelieve in ingratitude, but
actually incited him to render good for evil and obliged him to own that
"he could not keep his resentments;" his gratitude for the little that
is done for him; his sincerity; his openness of character; his greatness
and disinterestedness. "His very failings were those of a sincere, a
generous, and a noble mind," says a biographer who knew him well. His
contempt for base actions; his love of equity; his passion for truth,
which was carried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the
immediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of himself and
of his self-accusation of things most contrary to his nature.
So singular a trait in his character was by no means the result of
eccentricity, but the result of an exceptional assembly of rare
qualities which met for the first time in one man, and which, shining in
the midst of a most corrupt society, constituted almost more an anomaly
which became a real defect, hurtful, however, to himself only. His ideal
of the beautiful magnified weaknesses into crimes, and physical failings
into deformities. Thus it is that with the saints the slightest
transgression of the laws appears at once in the light of mortal sin.
St. Augustin calls the greediness of his youth a crime. The result of
all this was that his very virtues mystified the world and caused it to
believe that the faults which he attributed to himself were nothing in
comparison of those which he really had.
Byron, however, was indignant at being so unfairly treated. He treated
with contempt the men who calumniated him, and as if they were idiots.
He can safely, therefore, be blamed for not urging enough his own
defense. This, to my mind, constitutes his capital fault, unless one
considers defects of character those changes of humor which rapidly
passed from gayety to melancholy, or his pretended irritability, which
was merely a slight disposition to be impatient. These were all the
result of his poetical nature, added to the effects of early education
and to those of certain family circumstances. It would be too hard and
too unfair to attribute these slight weaknesses of character proper to
great genius to a bad nature or to misanthropy.
Had Lord Byron not been impatient he must have been satisfied with his
own condition and indifferent to that of others. In other words, he must
have been an egotist, which he was not. He was gay by nature, and
repeatedly showed it; but he had been sorely wounded by the injustice of
men, and his marriage with Miss Milbank had undermined his peace and
happiness. How, then, could he escape the occasional pangs of grief, and
not betray outwardly the pain which devoured him inwardly. In such
moments it was a relief to him to heave a sigh, or take up a pen to vent
his grief in rhyme. His misanthropy was quite foreign to his nature. All
those who knew him can bear testimony to the falseness of the
accusation.
Moore, who knew him so well, and who always speaks the truth when no
longer under the influences which at times overpower him, after speaking
of the charm of Byron's manner when he saw him for the first time, ends
by saying: "It may be asserted that never did there exist before, and it
is most probable never will exist again, a combination of such vast
mental power and surpassing genius, with so many others of those
advantages and attractions by which the world is in general dazzled and
captivated."
When, therefore, M. de Lamartine seeks the truth in Moore, Parry, and
some other biographers respecting Byron, he will find that this
eminently beautiful form was in harmony with the splendid intellect and
moral qualities of the man. M. de Lamartine will see that Byron was a
good and devoted son, a tender father and brother, a faithful friend,
and indulgent master, beloved by all who ever knew him, and who was
never accused, even by his enemies, of having tried to seduce an
innocent young girl, or having disturbed the peace of conjugal bliss. He
will behold his charity, which was universal and unbounded; a pride
which never stooped to be subservient of those in power; a firm
political faith; a contempt of public dignities, so far as they
reflected glory upon himself; and such a spirit of humility that he was
ever ready to blame himself and follow the advice of those whom he
deemed to be animated by no hostile spirit against himself.
When M. de Lamartine sees all this, not merely written down as in these
pages, but actually proved by facts and irrefutable testimonies, his
loyal soul must revolt and wish to do justice to himself by rejecting
his former opinions. He will understand that if he himself has been
called a drinker of blood by the party whom he styles bigoted and
composed of old men, Byron, too, may have been calumniated. Looking,
then, at the great poet in his proper light, that is, in the plenitude
of his rare qualities, and considering him under each of the
circumstances of his life, M. de Lamartine will own that he had
misunderstood that most admirable of characters, and grant that the
"satanic laughter" of which he spoke was, on the contrary, the smile
which was so beautiful that it might have lighted up by its magic soft
rays the dark regions of Satan. His doubts being cleared away, M. de
Lamartine will end by saying that Byron was an "angel, not a demon."
Byron's misfortune was to have been born in the England of those days.
Do you remember his beautiful lines in the "Due Foscari?"--
"He might have lived,
So formed for gentle privacy of life,
So loving, so beloved; the native of
Another land, and who so bless'd and blessing
As my poor Foscari? Nothing was wanting
Unto his happiness and mine save not
To be Venetian."
In writing these lines Byron must have thought of his own fate. He was
scarcely British by origin, and very little so by his turn of mind, or
by his tastes or by the nature of his genius. "My ancestors are not
Saxon, they are Norman," he said; "and my blood is all meridian."
If, instead of being born in England then, he had come before the world
when his star would have been hailed with the same love and regard that
was granted to Dante in Italy, to Chateaubriand and Lamartine in France,
or to Goethe in Germany, who would ever have blamed him for the slight
errors which fell from his pen in "Don Juan,"--a poem written hastily
and with carelessness, but of which it can be said, as Montesquieu said
of the prettiest women, "their part has more gravity and importance than
is generally thought." If the sense of the ridiculous is ever stronger
among people whose appreciation of the beautiful is keenest, who more
than Byron could have possessed it to a higher degree? Is it therefore
to be marvelled at that, in order to make the truth he revealed
accessible to all, and such whose minds had rusted in egotism and
routine, he should have given to them a new and sarcastic form?
Had he been born anywhere but in the England of those days, he never
would have been accused of mocking virtue because he claimed for it
reality of character, and not that superficial form which he saw existed
then in society. He believed it right to scorn the appearances of virtue
put on only for the purpose of reaping its advantages. No one respected
more than he did all that was really holy, virtuous, and respectable;
but who could blame him for wishing to denounce hypocrisy? As for his
supposed skepticism, and his expressions of despair, they may be classed
with the misgivings of Job, of Pascal, of Lamartine, of Chateaubriand,
and of other great minds, for whom the unknown world is a source of
constant anxiety of thought, and whose cry of despair is rather a
supplication to the Almighty that He would reveal himself more to their
eyes. It must be borne in mind that the skepticism which some lines in
his poems denounce is one of which the desponding nature calls more for
our sympathy than our denunciations, since "we discover in the midst of
these doubts," says Moore, "an innate piety which might have become
tepid but never quite cold." His own words should be remembered when he
writes, as a note to the two first cantos of "Childe Harold," that the
spirit of the stanzas reflects grief and illness, more than an obstinate
and mocking skepticism; and so they do. They do not embody any
conclusions, but are only the expression of a passionate appeal to the
Almighty to come to the rescue and proclaim the victory of faith.
Could any thing but a very ordinary event be seen in his separation from
a wife who was in no way suited to him, and whose worth can be esteemed
by the remark which she addressed to Byron some three weeks after her
marriage: "When, my lord, do you intend to give up your habit of
versifying?" And, alas! could he possibly be happy, born as he was in a
country where party prejudices ran so high? where his first satire had
created for him so many enemies? where some of his poems had roused