CHAPTER II. Lord Byron. I. The Man-Family-Impassioned character-Precocious loves-Life of excess-Combative character-Revolt against opinion-English Bards and Scotch Reviewers-Bravado and rashness-Marriage-Extravagance of adverse opinion-Departure-Political life in Italy-Sorrows and violence. II. The poet-Reasons for writing-Manner of writing-How his poetry is personal-Classical taste-How this gift served him-Childe HaroldThe hero-The scenery-The style. III. His short poems-Oratorical manner-Melodramatic effects-Truth of his descriptions of scenery-Sincerity of sentiments-Pictures of sad and extreme emotions-Dominant idea of death and despair-Mazeppa, The Prisoner of Chillon, The Siege of Corinth, The Corsair, Lara-Analogy of this conception with the Edda and Shakspeare. IV. Manfred-Comparison of Manfred and Faust-Conception of legend and life in Goethe-Symbolical and philosophical character of Faust Wherein Byron is inferior to Goethe-Wherein he is superior-Conception of character and action in Byron-Dramatic character of his poemContrast between the universal and the personal poet. V. Scandal in England-Constraint and hypocrisy of manners-How and by what law moral conceptions vary—Life and morals of the south-Beppo -Don Juan-Transformation of Byron's talent and style-Picture of sensuous beauty and happiness-Haidee-How he combats British cant -Human hypocrisy-His idea of man-Of woman-Donna Julia-The shipwreck-The capture of Ismail-Naturalness and variety of his style -Excess and wearing out of his poetic vein-His drama - Departure for Greece, and death. VI. Position of Byron in his age-Disease of the age-Divine conceptions of happiness and life-The conception of such happiness by literature-By the sciences—Future stability of reason-Modern conception of nature. I I. HAVE reserved for the last the greatest and most English of these artists; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together. His ideas were banned during his life; it has been attempted to depreciate his genius since his death. To this day English critics are unjust to him. He fought all his life against the society from which he came; and during his life, as after his death, he suffered the pain of the resentment which he provoked, and the repugnance to which he gave rise. A foreign critic may be more impartial, and freely praise the powerful hand whose blows he has not felt. If ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, but incapable of being otherwise; ever agitated, but in an enclosure without issue; predisposed to poetry by its innate fire, but limited by its natural barriers to a single kind of poetry,-it was Byron's. This promptitude to extreme emotions was with him a family legacy, and the result of education. His great-uncle, a sort of raving and misanthropical maniac, had slain in a tavern brawl, by candlelight, Mr. Chaworth, his relative, and had been tried before the House of Lords. His father, a brutal roysterer, had eloped with the wife of Lord Carmarthen, ruined and ill-treated Miss Gordon, his second wife; and, after living like a madman and dishonest fellow, had gone, with the last of the family property, to die abroad. His mother, in her moments of fury, would tear to pieces her dresses and her bonnets. When her wretched husband died she almost lost her reason, and her cries were heard in the street. What a childhood Byron passed in the care of this lioness;' in what storms of insults, interspersed with softer moods, he himself lived, just as passionate and more bitter, it would take a long story to tell. She ran after him, called him a ‘lame brat,' shouted at him, and threw fire-shovel and tongs at his head. He held his tongue, bowed, and none the less felt the outrage. One day, when he was in one of his silent rages,' they had to take out of his hand a knife which he had taken from the table, and which he was already raising to his throat. Another time the quarrel was so terrible, that son and mother, each privately, went to the apothecary's, inquiring anxiously whether the other had been to purchase poison, and cautioning the vendor of drugs not to attend to such an application, if made.'1 When he went to school, his friendships were passions.' Many years afterwards, he never heard the name of Lord Clare, one of his old schoolfellows, pronounced, without a beating of the heart.' 2 A score of times he got himself into trouble for his friends, offering them his time, his pen, his purse. One day, at Harrow, a big boy claimed the right to fag his friend, little Peel, and finding him refractory, gave him a beating on the inner fleshy side of his arm, which he had twisted round to make it more sensitive. Byron, too small to fight the rascal, came up to him, 'blushing with rage,' tears in his eyes, and asked with a trembling voice how many stripes he meant to inflict. 'Why,' returned the executioner, 'you little rascal, what is that to you?' 'Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm, I would take half.' He never met an object of distress without affording him succour. Later, in Italy, he gave away a thousand pounds out of every four thousand he spent. The sources of life in this heart were too full, 6 1 Byron's Works, ed. Moore, 17 vols. 1832; Life, i. 102. 3 Ibid. i. 69. 2 Ibid. i. 63. • Ibid. 137. Like and flooded forth good and evil impetuously, at the least shock. Dante, at the age of eight he fell in love with a child named Mary Duff. ... How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word! ... I recollect all our caresses, my restlessness, my sleeplessness. My misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. When I heard of her being married, . . . it nearly threw me into convulsions.'1 My passion had its usual effects upon me. I could not sleep-I could not eat-I could not rest; and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could meet again, being usually about twelve hours of separation. But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser now.' At twelve years he fell in love with his cousin, Margaret Parker. He never was wiser. Hard reading at school; vehement exercise, later on, at Cambridge, Newstead, and London; prolonged watches, debauches, long fasts, a destructive way of living, he rushed to the extreme of every taste and every excess. As he was a dandy, and one of the most brilliant, he nearly let himself die of hunger for fear of becoming fat, then drank and ate greedily during his nights of recklessness. Moore said: 'Lord Byron, for the last two days, had done nothing towards sustenance beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic. . . . He confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three to his own share,interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half a dozen small glasses of the latter. . . . After this we had claret, of which having despatched two bottles between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.'3 Another day we find in Byron's journal the following words: 'Yesterday, dined tête-à-tête at the "Cocoa" with Scrope Davies-sat from six till midnight-drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, neither of which wines ever affect me.' Later, at Venice: 'I have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past. I have had some curious masking adventures this carnival. . . . I will work the mine of my youth to the last vein of the ore, and then--good night. I have lived, and am content.'s At this rate the organs wear out, and intervals of temperance are not sufficient to repair them. The stomach does not continue to act, the nerves get out of order, and the soul undermines the body, and the body the soul. 'I always wake in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that which pleased me over-night. In England, five years ago, I had the same 1 Byron's Works, Life, i. 26. Ibid. ii. 20, March 28, 1814. VOL. II. * Ibid. i. 53. Ibid. iii. 83. 5 Ibid. iv. 81; Letter to Moore, Feb. 12, 1818. S kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst that I have drank as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night after going to bed, and been still thirsty, . . . striking off the necks of bottles from mere thirsty impatience.'' Much less is necessary to ruin mind and body wholly. Thus these vehement minds live, ever driven and broken by their own energy, like a cannon ball, which, when arrested, turns and seems motionless, so quickly it goes flying, but at the smallest obstacle leaps up, rebounds, raises a cloud of dust, and ends by burying itself in the earth. Beyle, a most shrewd observer, who lived with Byron for several weeks, says that on certain days he was mad; at other times, in presence of beautiful things, he became sublime. Though reserved and so proud, music made him weep. The rest of his time, petty English passions, pride of rank, for instance, a vain dandyism, unhinged him: he spoke of Brummel with a shudder of jealousy and admiration. But, small or great, the present passion swept down upon his mind like a tempest, roused him, transported him either into imprudence or genius. His journal, his familiar letters, all his unstudied prose, is, as it were, trembling with wit, anger, enthusiasm: since Saint Simon we have not seen more lifelike confidences. All styles appear dull, and all souls sluggish by the side of his. In this splendid rush of unbridled and disbanded faculties, which leaped up at random, and seemed to drive him without option to the four quarters of the globe, one took the reins, and cast him on the wall against which he was broken. 'Sir Walter Scott describes Lord Byron as being a man of real goodness of heart, and the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by his foolish contempt of public opinion. Instead of being warned or checked by public opposition, it roused him to go on in a worse strain, as if he said, "Ay, you don't like it; well, you shall have something worse for your pains. This rebellious instinct is inherent in the race; there was a whole cluster of wild passions, born of the climate, which nourished him: a gloomy humour, violent imagination, indomitable pride, a relish. of danger, a craving for strife, the inner exaltation, only satiated by destruction, and that sombre madness which urged forward the Scandinavian Bierserkers, when, in an open bark, under a sky cloven with the lightning, they launched out upon the tempest, whose fury they had breathed. This instinct is in the blood: people are born so, as they "silver spoon 1 Byron's Works, Life, v. 96, Feb. 2, 1821. 2 Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, vii. 323. 3. If I was born, as the nurses say, with a in my mouth," it has stuck in my throat, and spoiled my palate, so that nothing put into it is swallowed with much relish,-unless it be cayenne. I see no such horror in a dreamless sleep, and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not make tiresome.' are born lions or bulldogs.1 Byron was still a little boy in petticoats when his nurse scolded him rudely for having soiled or torn a new frock which he had just put on. He got into one of his silent rages, seized the garment with his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and stood erect, motionless, and gloomy before the storming nurse, so as to set more effectually her wrath at defiance. His pride overflowed. When at ten he inherited the title of lord, and his name was first called at school, preceded by the title dominus, he could not answer the customary adsum, stood silent amidst the general stare of his schoolfellows, and at last burst into tears. Another time, at Harrow, in a dispute which was dividing the school, a boy said, 'Byron won't join us, for he never likes to be second anywhere.' He was offered the command, and then only would he condescend to take part with them. Never to submit to a master; to rise with his whole soul against every semblance of encroachment or rule; to keep his person intact and inviolate at all cost, and to the end against all; to dare everything rather than give sign of submission,-such was his character. This is why he was disposed to undergo anything rather than give signs of weakness. At ten he was a stoic from pride. His foot was painfully stretched in a wooden contrivance whilst he was taking his Latin lesson, and his master pitied him, saying he must be suffering.' 'Never mind, Mr. Rogers,' he said, 'you shall not see any signs of it in me.' 2 Such as he was as a child, he continued as a man. In mind and body he strove, or prepared himself for strife. Every day, for hours at a time, he boxed, fired pistols, practised the sabre, ran and leaped, rode, overcame obstacles. These were the exploits of his hands and muscles; but he needed others. For lack of enemies he found fault with society, and made war upon it. We know to what excesses the dominant opinions then ran. England was at the height of the war with France, and thought it was fighting for morality and liberty. In their eyes, at this time, church and constitution were holy things: beware how you touch them, if you would not become a public enemy! In this fit of national passion and Protestant severity, whosoever publicly avowed liberal ideas and manners seemed an incendiary, and stirred up against himself the instincts of property, the doctrines of moralists, the interests of politicians, and the prejudices of the people. Byron chose this moment to praise Voltaire and Rousseau, to admire Napoleon, to avow himself a sceptic, to plead for nature and pleasure against cant and rule, to say that high English society, debauched and hypocritical, made phrases and killed men, to preserve their sinecures and rotten ness. 16 I like Junius: he was a good hater.-I don't understand yielding sensitive- ? Byron's Works, Life, i. 41. 3I like energy-even mental energy-of all kinds, and have need of both mental and corporeal.'—Ibid. ii. |