My Recollections of Lord Byron
to exclude me from society. I have never courted it, nor, I may add, in
the general sense of the word, enjoyed it--and 'there is a world
elsewhere.'"
When once he had quitted England his indifference to popularity and its
results further increased. He wrote from Venice to Murray:--
"I never see a newspaper, and know nothing of England, except in a
letter now and then from my sister" (1816).
But that did not at all suit his publisher, who set about sending him
reviews, criticisms, and keeping him up to all that was going on in the
literary and political world, thinking thus to stimulate and keep alive
the passions that kindle genius. Then it was that Lord Byron,
considering this intellectual regime unwholesome for mind and heart,
signified to Murray that their correspondence could not continue unless
he consented to _six_ indispensable conditions. We regret not being able
to give the whole of this beautiful letter, circumscribed as we are by
certain necessary limits. Thus we shall only quote what more
particularly relates to our subject:[134]--
"I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to propose
to you the following articles for our future:--
"1st. That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, wealth, and
welfare of all friends; but of _me (quoad me) little or nothing_.
"2dly....
"3dly....
"4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever, no 'Edinburgh,'
'Quarterly,' 'Monthly,' or any review, magazine, or newspaper, English
or foreign, of any description.
"5thly. That you send me no opinion whatsoever, either _good_, _bad_, or
_indifferent_, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any
work of mine, past, present, or to come.
"6thly.... If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as
requires notice, Mr. Kinnaird will let me know; but of praise I desire
to hear nothing.
"You will say, 'To what tends all this?' I will answer--to keep my mind
free, and unbiased by all paltry and personal irritabilities of praise
or censure; to let my genius take its natural direction. All these
reviews, with their praise or their criticism, have bored me to death,
and taken off my attention from greater objects."
Byron wished, he said, to place himself in the position of a dead man,
knowing nothing and feeling nothing of what is done and said about
him.[135] At the same time he gave the greatest proof of the reality of
the sentiments expressed in this letter by continuing to stay at
Ravenna, where people were ignorant of his language, his genius, and his
reputation, and where consequently he could only be remarked and
appreciated for his external gifts and his deeds of benevolence. When he
went from Ravenna to Pisa, Murray, who had not been discouraged by the
six conditions, and who was really attached to Lord Byron more as a
friend even than as a publisher, became alarmed at the angry feeling
stirred up by "Cain," the "Vision of Judgment," "Don Juan," etc., and
feared seeing him lose his popularity. So he wrote begging him to
compose something in his first style, which had excited such general
enthusiasm. But Lord Byron answered:--
"As to 'a poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind nothing
further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without considering whether
women or men are or are not to be pleased."
His whole conduct in Greece was one long act of abnegation, of
disinterested and sublime self-devotion. Let people read Parry, Gamba,
even Stanhope.[136] He sacrificed for Greece all his revenue, his time,
pleasures, comforts, even life itself, if necessary, and at the age of
thirty-five; and then, after success, he refused every honor, satisfied
with having deserved them.
"My intentions with regard to Greece," said he to Parry, at Missolonghi,
"may be explained in a few words. I will remain here until Greece either
throws off the Turkish yoke, or again sinks beneath it. All my revenue
shall be spent in her service. All that can be done with my resources,
and personally, I will do with my whole heart. But as soon as Greece is
delivered from her external enemies, I will leave without taking any
part in the interior organization of the government. I will go to the
United States of America, and there, if requisite and they like it, be
the agent for Greece, and endeavor to get that free and enlightened
government to recognize the Greek federation as an independent State.
England would follow her example, and then the destiny of Greece would
be assured. She would take the place that belongs to her as a member of
Christendom in Europe."
One day, at Missolonghi, a Prussian officer came to complain to Lord
Byron, saying, that his _rank_ would not allow him to remain under
command of Mr. Parry, who was his inferior both in a civil and military
capacity, and consequently that he was going to retire. After having
done all he could to bring the German to more reasonable sentiments,
after having even joked him on his quarterings of nobility, and the
folly of wishing to introduce such prejudices into a country like
Greece, Lord Byron did not scruple adding:--
"As to me, I should be quite willing to serve as a simple soldier, in
any corps, if that were considered useful to the cause."
But if Lord Byron's absence of ambition under the two first categories,
as established by Bacon, is well proved; the same can not be said with
regard to the third. To deny it would be not only contrary to truth, but
especially would it be contrary to all justice; for the third order of
ambition ceases to be a fault; it is the love of glory, and, according
to Bacon, that is a virtue. At least it is a quality pertaining to noble
minds; and could it, then, be wanting in Lord Byron? He had always had a
presentiment that glory would not fail him. But he was not satisfied
with obtaining it, his special wish was to _deserve_ it with just and
undeniable right. While yet a child in his fourteenth year, he wrote, in
A FRAGMENT.
"When to their airy hall my fathers' voice
Shall call my spirit
* * * * * * *
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If _that_ with honor fail to crown my clay,
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
_That_, only _that_, shall single out the spot;
By that remember'd, or with that forgot."
Another time, replying in verse to a poetic composition of one of his
comrades which spoke of _the common lot of mortals as lying in Lethe's
wave_, Lord Byron, after some charming couplets, ends thus:--
"What, though the sculpture be destroy'd,
From dark oblivion meant to guard;
A bright renown shall be enjoy'd
By those whose virtues claim reward.
"Then do not say the common lot
Of all lies deep in Lethe's wave;
Some few, who ne'er will be forgot,
Shall burst the bondage of the grave."
Several other compositions belonging to the same period prove that this
child, who was so unambitious, and devoid of the usual sort of
emulation, did, however, desire to excel in great and virtuous things.
In his adieu to the seat of his ancestors, he says, that,--
"Far distant he goes, with the same emulation,
The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
That fame, and that memory still will he cherish;
He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
Like you will he live, or like you will he perish."
And when the Rev. Mr. Beecher, his friend and guide during the college
vacation passed at Southwell, reproached him with not going enough into
the world, young Byron answered, that retirement suited him better, but
that when his boyhood and years of trial should be over, if the senate
or the camp claimed his presence, he should endeavor to render himself
worthy of his birth:--
"Oh! thus, the desire in my bosom for fame
Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise;
Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame,
With him I could wish to expire in the blaze."
But the fame to which he aspired was not literary fame. Garlands weaved
on Mount Parnassus had no perfume for him, and to seek after them would
have appeared in his eyes a frivolous, unmeaning pastime. This severe
and unjust judgment, this sort of antipathy, could they have been a
presentiment of the dangers with which the glory obtained by literary
fame threatened his repose? However that may be, it is certain that he
endured rather than sought after it; and we may be equally sure that
the glory to which his soul aspired was such as could be reaped in the
senate, the camp, or amid the difficulties of an active, virtuous life.
At sixteen he wrote:--
"For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death,
What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave!
Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath;
Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave." 1806.
We find the following in his examination of conscience, written when he
was given up to fashionable London life, and in the heyday of his poetic
fame:--
"To be the first man--not the dictator, not the Sylla, but the
Washington or the Aristides--the leader in talent and _truth_--is next
to the Divinity!" (1813.)
These lines show that he did not feel himself in the position he could
have wished to occupy, and that he would fain have achieved other
success.
But the destiny that was evidently contrary to his tastes, and which
through a thousand circumstances carried him away both from a military
and a parliamentary career, to keep him almost perforce in the high
walks of literature, was this destiny in accordance at least with his
nature? Lord Byron's brilliant debut in the senate, and his whole
conduct in Greece when that country was one great military camp, prove
certainly that he might have reaped full harvest in other fields, if
fate had so allowed. But nevertheless when we see how prodigious were
his achievements, concentrated within the domain of poetry; when we see
that, despite himself, despite the resolution he occasionally took of
writing no more, that yet, tortured by the energy of his genius, there
was no remedy for him but to seize his pen; that he wrote sometimes
under the influence of fever; that sleep did not still his imagination,
nor travelling interrupt his works; that sorrow did not damp his ardor,
nor amusement and pleasure weaken his wondrous energy. When we think
that he united to this formidable vigor of genius such a luxuriant
poetic vein; that his poems, unrivalled for depth of thought,
conciseness, and magic beauty of style, were composed with all the ease
of ordinary prose; that he could write them while conversing, interrupt
his thread of ideas, and take it up again without difficulty, carry on
his theme without previous preparation, not stay his pen except to turn
the leaf, not change a single word in whole pages, generally only
correcting when the proof-sheets came. When we know that a poem like the
"Bride of Abydos" was written in four nights of a London season, the
"Corsair" in ten days, "Lara" in three weeks, his fourth Canto of
"Childe Harold" in twenty days, the "Lament of Tasso" in the space of
time requisite for going from Ferrara to Florence; the "Prisoner of
Chillon" by way of pastime during the day bad weather forced him to
spend at a hotel on the borders of the Lake of Geneva; when we know that
he wrote the "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina" amid the torments caused
by his separation, and when besieged with creditors; that at Ravenna, in
the space of one year, while torn by many sorrows, and annoyed by
conspiracies, though he generously aided the conspirators, he yet found
leisure to write "Marino Faliero," the "Foscari," "Sardanapalus,"