My Recollections of Lord Byron
political anger against him, and where his truth, his honesty, could not
patiently bear with the hypocrisy of those who surrounded him, and
where, in fact, he had had the misfortune to marry Miss Milbank?
The great minds whom God designs to be the apostles of truth on earth,
make use for that purpose of the most efficacious means at their
disposal. The universal genius of Byron allowed of his making use of
every means to arrive at his end. He was able to be at once pathetic,
comic, tragical, satirical, vehement, scoffing, bitter, and pleasant.
This universality of talents, directed against Englishmen, was injurious
to his peace of mind.
When Byron went to Italy his heart was broken down with real and not
imaginary sorrows. These were not of that kind which create perfection,
but were the result of an unheard-of persecution on account of a family
difference in which he was much more the victim than the culprit.
He required to live in a milder climate, and a softer atmosphere to
breathe in. He found both at Venice; and under their influence his mind
took a new turn, which had remained undeveloped while in his own clouded
country.
In the study of Italian literature he met with the Bernesque poetry,
which is so lightly and elegantly sarcastic. He made the acquaintance of
Buratti, the clever and charming satirist. He began, himself, to
perceive the baseness of men, and found in an aesthetical mockery of
human failings the most copious of the poetical currents of his mind.
The more his friends and his enemies told him of the calumnies which
were uttered against him, so much the more did Byron's contempt swell
into disdain; and to this circumstance did "Beppo" and "Don Juan" _owe_
their appearance.
The social condition of his country and the prevalent cant opened to him
a field for reflection at Venice, where customs were so different and
manners so tolerant. Seeing new horizons before him, he was more than
ever disgusted at the judgments of those who calumniated him, and ended
by believing it to be best to laugh at their silly efforts to ruin him.
He then wrote "Beppo" and afterward "Don Juan."
He was mistaken, however, in believing that in England this new style of
poetry would be liked. His jests and sarcasms were not understood by the
greater portion of those against whom they were levelled. The nature of
the Bernese poetry being essentially French, England could not, with its
serious tendencies, like a production in which the moral purpose was
artistically veiled. From that day forward a severance took place
between Byron and his countrymen. What had enchanted the French
displeased them, and Byron in vain translated the "Morgante" of Pulci,
to show them what a priest could say in that style of poetry in a
Catholic country. In vain did he write to his friends that "Don Juan"
will be known by-and-by for what it is intended,--a satire on the abuses
of the present state of society, and not a eulogy of vice. It may be now
and then voluptuous: I can't help it. Ariosto is worse; Smollett ten
times worse; Fielding no better. No girl will ever be seduced by reading
"Don Juan," etc.
But he was blamed just because he jested. To his ultramontane tone they
would have preferred him to blaspheme in coarse Saxon.
One of the best of Byron's biographers asserts that he was a French mind
lost on the borders of the Thames. Lord Byron had every kind of mind,
and that is why he was equally French. But in addressing his countrymen,
as such, he heaped a mountain of abuse upon his head.
With the most moral portion of the English public a violent satire would
have had better chance of success. With the higher classes the work was
read with avidity and pleasure. It was not owned, because there were too
many reasons for condemning it; but it found its way under many a
pillow, to prove to the country how virtue and patriotism were
endangered by this production.
Murray made himself the echo of all this wrath, and Lord Byron, not able
at times to contain his, wrote to him much to the following purpose--
"I intend to write my best work in Italian, and I am working at it. As
for the opinion of the English, which you mention, let them know how
much it is worth before they come and insult me by their condescension.
"I have not written for their pleasure; if they find theirs in the
perusal of my works, it is because they wish it. I have never flattered
their opinion or their pride, nor shall I ever do so. I have no
intention either of writing books for women or to '_dilettar le femine e
la plese_.' I have written merely from impulse and from passion, and not
for their sweet voices. I know what their applause is worth; few writers
have had more. They made of me a kind of popular idol without my ever
wishing, and kicked me down from the pedestal upon which their caprice
had raised me. But the idol did not break in the fall, and now they
would raise it again, but they shall not." As soon as they saw that
Byron was perfectly happy in Italy, and that their abuse did him but
very little harm, they gave full vent to their rage.
They had shown how little they knew him when they identified him with
his heroes; they found that they knew even less of him when he appeared
to them in the reality of his character. Calumny followed upon calumny.
Unable to find him at fault, they interpreted his words themselves, and
gave them a different meaning. Every thing was figurative of some
wickedness, and to the simplest expressions some vile intention was
attributed.
They depreciated his works, in which are to be found such admirable and
varied types of women characters, that they even surpass in beauty those
of Shakspeare (Angiolina, Myrrha, Anna): they said that Faliero wanted
interest, that Sardanapalus was a voluptuary; that Satan in "Cain" did
not speak as a theologian (how could he?), that there were irreverent
tendencies in his sacred dramas--and finally that his declaration--
"My altars are the mountains and the ocean,
Earth, air, stars,--all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced, and will receive the soul,"
was hazardous, and almost that of an atheist. Atheist! he! who
considered atheists fools.
On leaving Venice for Ravenna,[6] where he had spent a few months, only
by way of distraction in the midst of his sorrows and serious
occupations, he was accused of dissolute conduct; and the serious
attachment which he had wished to avoid, but which had mastered his
whole heart, and induced him to live an isolated life with the person he
loved in a town of Romagna, far from all that could flatter his vanity
and from all intercourse with his countrymen, was brought against him to
show that he lived the life of an Epicurean, and brought misery into the
heart of families.
All this, no doubt, might have again called for his contempt, but on his
way from Ravenna to Pisa he wrote the outpourings of his mind in a poem,
the last lines of which are:--
"Oh Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover,
The thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
"_There_ chiefly I sought thee, _there_ only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory."
His heart was wounded by the persecutions to which those he loved were
subjected. His thoughts were for his daughter, who was growing up in the
midst of her father's enemies, and for his beloved sister who was
praying for him. He contemplated in the future the time when he could
show the moral and heroic power of his soul. He looked forward to the
great deeds by which he was going to astonish them, and perhaps call for
their admiration, instead of his writings, which had never reaped for
him any thing but pain.
"If I live," he wrote to Moore, "you will see that I shall do something
better than rhyming."
Truth however, when told by such men as Byron, and however ungraciously
received, must guide in the end the steps of those who walk in its wake.
This has been the case with Byron's poetry. Its influence over the minds
of Englishmen has been very salutary and great, and is one of the
principal causes which brought on a reform of the rooted prejudices and
opinions of the public in England, by the necessity under which it
placed them of looking into the defects of the law and of the
constitution, to which they had hitherto so crouchingly submitted. Since
then the feeling of good-will toward other nations has materially
increased in that great country.
Others have improved the way which Byron opened up for reform, and
thanks to him England at his death began to lose her excessive
susceptibility. She became accustomed to listen to the truth, and those
who now proclaim it are not required to be exiled, or to suffer as Byron
did up to the time of his death. His sufferings, no doubt, paved his way
to everlasting glory, but his heroic death left him at the mercy of the
enemies who survived him.
If ever a premature death was unfortunate, Byron's was; not only for
him, because he was on the point of giving to the world the proof of
those virtues which had been denied him, but also for humanity, by the
loss of various treasures which will probably never be found again.
The epoch, however, of faint words and unbecoming silence has gone by
even in England. Already one of the greatest men of England has claimed
a monument in Westminster Abbey, which had been denied to his memory by
the bigoted rancor of the man who was dean at the time of Byron's death,
denied to that poet whom another great English statesman has called "a
great writer, but a still greater man."
There remains a still more imperious duty to be fulfilled by those who
have been able to appreciate his great qualities. That duty is to
proclaim them and to prevent the further spread of falsehood and error
as to his real character.
This is a very long letter, my dear count, but you know how long all
letters must be which are intended to refute opinions and to rectify
judgments. M. de Lamartine has the excellent habit of listening to your
advice, and that is why I have had at heart to let you know the truth
about Byron. The present work will adduce the proofs of the
appreciations contained in this letter. I know that you do not require
them, but also that the public does.
Pray accept, etc.----.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: Galt says, "It was in the course of the passage to the
island of Zea, where he was put on shore, that one of the most emphatic
incidents of his life occurred; an incident which throws a remarkable
gleam into the springs and intricacies of his character, more perhaps
than any thing which has yet been mentioned. One day, as he was walking
the quarter-deck, he lifted an attaghan (it might be one of the
midshipmen's weapons), and unsheathing it, said, contemplating the
blade, '_I should like to know how a person feels after committing
murder_.' By those who have inquiringly noticed the extraordinary cast
of his metaphysical associations, this dagger scene must be regarded as
both impressive and solemn; the wish to know how a man felt after
committing murder does not imply any desire to perpetrate the crime. The
feeling might be appreciated by experiencing any actual degree of guilt;
for it is not the deed,--the sentiment which follows it makes the
horror. But it is doing injustice to suppose the expression of such a
wish dictated by desire. Lord Byron has been heard to express, in the
eccentricity of conversation, wishes for a more intense knowledge of
remorse than murder itself could give. There is, however, a wide and