My Recollections of Lord Byron

that, however discordant my voice, it was not the last time they were to hear it." But when this heat had passed away, his innate passion for that justice so cruelly violated toward himself, made him quickly recover his self-possession. He repented having written this satire, which he designated as insensate, and wished to suppress it. He even judged it more severely than others. He wrote to Coleridge in 1815:-- "You mention my satire, lampoon, or whatever you like to call it. I can only say, that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been _a thorn in my side ever since_: more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends, which is heaping fire on an enemy's head, and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of its attempted attacks."[113] On examining his conscience with regard to this satire, and passing judgment on himself, he adds, in a note to his own verses, after having given great praise to Jeffrey for his magnanimity, etc.:-- "_I was really too ferocious--this is mere insanity._--B., 1816." And farther on:-- "_This is bad; because personal._--B., 1816." With regard to his verses on his guardian, Lord Carlisle, so culpable toward himself, he generously remarks: "_Wrong also_--_the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity._--B., 1816." To what he said against Wordsworth he simply adds the word, "_Unjust._" And again, with reference to Lord Carlisle:-- "_Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be._--B., 1816." And at Geneva, 14th of July, 1816, he writes:-- "_The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written_: not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such as I can not approve.--BYRON, _Villa Diodati_, 1816." Lastly, from Venice he wrote to Murray, who wished to make a superior edition of his works:-- "With regard to a future large edition, you may print all, or any thing, _except_ '_English Bards_,' to the republication of which at no time will I consent. I would not reprint them on any consideration. I don't think them good for much, even in point of poetry; and, as to other things, you are to recollect that I gave up the publication on account of the Hollands, and I do not think that any time or circumstances should cancel the suppression. Add to which, that, after being on terms with almost all the bards and critics of the day, it would be savage at any time, but worst of all _now_,[114] to revive this foolish lampoon." "Whatever may have been the faults or indiscretion of this satire," says Moore, "there are few who would now sit in judgment upon it so severely as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years after, when he had quitted England, never to return. The copy which he then perused is now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing. On the first leaf we find:-- "The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its contents. Nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames. BYRON." To this ample reparation offered on account of his early satire we must add the following paragraph, from the first letter he addressed to Sir Walter Scott, in 1812:-- "I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the '_evil works of my nonage_,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily; and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I can not sufficiently thank you for your praise." Thus scrupulously did this conscientious man judge himself. And not only do we find him repeating the same fine sentiment a hundred times, but he caused the whole edition, then still in the hands of the publisher, to be destroyed, which of course entailed a great sacrifice of money. He became intimate with the principal personages whom he had attacked; and even, in order to testify that no resentment continued to exist in his mind against his guardian, Lord Carlisle, he seized the first opportunity that presented itself of writing in "Childe Harold" those pathetic generous lines on the death of his son, Major Howard. He acted just in the same way every time he thought he had any fault to repair. But could this same love of justice, that had guided him through life, have caused him equally to disavow what he said of Lord Castlereagh and of Ireland in "Avatar?" of Southey and the Austrians at Venice? or the greater part of the satirical traits contained in "Don Juan" and the "Age of Bronze?" I do not think so. I believe, even, that if on his death-bed, he had been asked to retract some of his writings, he would have answered as Pascal did. And this because the sentiment which under all circumstances guided his pen did not arise from any personal interest, but was only, to use the beautiful language of a great contemporary philosopher, "the indignation and revolt of the generous faculties of the soul, which, hurt by injustice, rose up proudly, to protest against human dignity, offended in one's own person or in that of others." This sentiment not being capable of change, neither could its consequences bring any repentance. According to Lord Byron, Castlereagh was a scourge for mankind. Faithful to this opinion, as to all his great principles, he wrote to Moore in 1815:-- "I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh, is only a proof of the little value the gods set upon prosperity, when they permit such rogues as he and that drunken corporal, old Bl----, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington should be excepted. He _is_ a man, and the Scipio of our Hannibal." Let people read the "Avatar," the eleventh octave and following of the dedication of "Don Juan," the forty-ninth and fiftieth stanzas of the ninth canto of "Don Juan," as well as the epigrams; and they will have a fair idea of the generous sentiments that provoked his indignation against the inhuman policy of this minister. They will understand why he wished to denounce him to the execration of posterity. As to his satirical verses and anger against the poet laureate, it has already been seen on whose side lay the fault, and how this jealous poet, through a combination of bad feelings, in which envy and revenge predominated, spared no means, no occasion, of doing him harm. Thus Lord Byron saw himself and his friends enveloped in one of those darksome conspiracies, forming a labyrinth of calumny, whence the purest innocence has no escape; and he felt that justice violated in the person of his friends, by a man unworthy of respect, required him, in justice, to brand the individual. And rightly did he so with his words of fire. When Ireland, that he would fain have seen heroic under misfortune, degraded herself by her conduct toward this minister and the king, on the occasion of their visit, he, touched with noble indignation, resolved to punish and warn her; and his "Avatar" expressed these fine sentiments. When the prince regent, after having shown himself a Liberal and a Whig, denied his part, betrayed his party, and leagued with the Tories, Lord Byron's noble indignation burst forth in his verses, and, whenever occasion offered, he stigmatized such unworthy conduct. And a proof that it was the conduct of the individual, and not personal animosity, that guided his pen, may be found in the fact that a single ray of hope of seeing this moral deformity transformed into beauty, sufficed to make him change his tone immediately. When he learned the pardon that had just been granted by George the Fourth to the guilty Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he forgot all past offenses; his soul expanded to admiration and hope; and he composed that beautiful sonnet, which so well reveals the aspirations of his great heart:-- "To be the father of the fatherless, To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise _His_ offspring, who expired in other days To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,-- _This_ is to be a monarch, and repress Envy into unutterable praise. Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand except to bless? Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete: A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us." _Bologna, August 12, 1819._ And then, as if poetry did not suffice, he adds these lines in prose:-- "So the prince has annulled Lord E. Fitzgerald's condemnation. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was truly a princely act." All Lord Byron's expressions of indignation that have been attributed to anger, belong really to his disinterested, heroic, generous nature. We may convince ourselves of this by following him through life, beginning from childhood, at college, when he would plant himself in front of school tyrants, asking to share the punishments inflicted on his friend Peel, and always taking the part of his weak or oppressed companions; then, during his first youth, when an accumulation of unmerited griefs and injustice cast over him a shade of misanthropy, so contrary to his nature; and, lastly, up to the moment when that noble indignation burst forth which he experienced in Greece, and which hastened his end.[115] This is the truth. Nevertheless, if, in early youth, he did sometimes go beyond the limits of what may be fairly conceded to extreme sensibility,--to a certain hypochondriacal tendency of race, and more especially of his intellectual life; if he really was sometimes wearied, fatigued, discouraged, inclined to irritation, and to view things darkly, can it, therefore, be said that he weakly gave way to a morbid disposition? By no means. He always wished to sift his conscience thoroughly,--never ceased analyzing causes and symptoms, proclaiming his state morbid, and blaming himself beyond measure, far beyond what justice warranted, for a single word that had escaped his lips under the pressure of intense suffering. And even in the few moments of impatience occasioned by his last illness, he said, "Do not take the language of a sick man for his real sentiments." Lastly, he never gave over struggling against himself; seeking to acquire dominion over his faculties and passions intellectually by hard study, and materially by the strictest regime. What could he do more? it may be said. But if it be true that he had been irritable in his youth, that would only show how much he achieved; for he must have conquered himself immensely, since at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in Greece, he certainly displayed no traces of temper, and all those causes which usually excite irritation and anger in others had quite ceased to produce any in him. "A mild philosophy," says the Countess G----, "every day more and more took possession of his soul. Adversity and the companionship of great thoughts strengthened him so much, that he was able to cast off the yoke