"My dear Drury, 66 We After two years' absence (on the 2d) and some odd days, I am approaching your The day of our arrival you will country. see by the outside date of my letter. At present, we are becalmed comfortably, close to Brest Harbour; - I have never been so near it since I left Duck Puddle. left Malta thirty-four days ago, and have had a tedious passage of it. You will either see or hear from or of me, soon after the receipt of this, as I pass through town to repair my irreparable affairs; and thence I want to go to Notts. and raise rents, and to Lancs. and sell collieries, and back to London and pay debts, — for it seems I shall neither have coals nor comfort till I go down to Rochdale in person. "I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse ; for myself, four ancient Athenian skulls', dug out of sarcophagi — a phial of Attic hemlock 2-four live tortoises -a greyhound (died on the passage)-two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, t'other a Yaniote, who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian-and myself, as Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield says, slily, and I may say it too, for I have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he had of his to the fair. 3 "I wrote to you from the Cyanean Rocks to tell you I had swam from Sestos to Abydos-have you received my letter? Hodgson, I suppose, is four deep by this time. What would he have given to have seen, like me, the real Parnassus, where I robbed the Bishop of Chrissæ of a book of geography!-but this I only call plagiarism, as it was done within an hour's ride of Delphi." 1 Given afterwards to Sir Walter Scott. 2 At present in the possession of Mr. Murray. 3 ["Welcome, welcome, Moses! well, my boy, what have you brought us from the fair?' I have brought you myself,' cried Moses, with a sly look, and resting the box on the dresser."— Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xii.] 4 ["We cannot agree with Mr. Moore in thinking that Byron's life at Harrow was 'the very reverse of poetical.' That life is the most poetical which is the fullest of impulses; and Byron's life at Harrow was full to overflowing RETURN TO ENGLAND. -EFFECT OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE ON THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON. -PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. - FALSE JUDGMENTS AUTHORS RESPECTING THEIR OWN PRODUCTIONS. PASSAGES FROM PARAPHRASE ON HORACE. OF THE PREPARA HAVING landed the young pilgrim once more in England, it may be worth while, before we accompany him into the scenes that awaited him at home, to consider how far the general character of his mind and disposition may have been affected by the course of travel and adventure in which he had been, for the last two years, engaged. A life less savouring of poetry and romance than that which he had pursued previously to his departure on his travels, it would be difficult to imagine. In his childhood, it is true, he had been a dweller and wanderer among scenes well calculated, according to the ordinary notion, to implant the first rudiments of poetic feeling. But, though the poet may afterwards feed on the recollection of such scenes, it is more than questionable, as has been already observed, whether he ever has been formed by them. If a childhood, indeed, passed among mountainous scenery were so favourable to the awakening of the imaginative power, both the Welsh, among ourselves, and the Swiss, abroad, ought to rank much higher on the scale of poetic excellence than they do at present. But, even allowing the picturesqueness of his early haunts to have had some share in giving a direction to the fancy of Byron, the actual operation of this influence, whatever it may have been, ceased with his childhood; and the life which he led afterwards during his school-days at Harrow, was, as naturally the life of so idle and daring a school-boy must be, — the very reverse of poetical.* For a of affections and passions. He did not, during play hours, sport Tityrus sub tegmine fagi,' but, though lame, preferred cricket and can there be any doubt that, out of school, a bat is better than a book, and the wickets a thousand times more poetical than the gates of Paradise Lost? The very bodies of rejoicing schoolboys at play are spiritual; and ' poetic visions swarm on every bough' of the green shady trees, rustling over their heads as they are swimming like Dracones in the milk-warm rivers of summer, or racing along the banks to dry themselves in the sunshine."-WILSON, 1830.] soldier or an adventurer, the course of training through which he then passed would have been perfect; - his athletic sports, his battles, his love of dangerous enterprise, gave every promise of a spirit fit for the most stormy career. But to the meditative pursuits of poesy, these dispositions seemed, of all others, the least friendly; and, however they might promise to render him, at some future time, a subject for bards, gave, assuredly, but little hope of his shining first among bards himself." The habits of his life at the university were even still less intellectual and literary. While a schoolboy, he had read abundantly and eagerly, though desultorily; but even this discipline of his mind, irregular and undirected as it was, he had, in a great measure, given up, after leaving Harrow; and among the pursuits that occupied his academic hours, those of playing at hazard, sparring, and keeping a bear and bulldogs, were, if not the most favourite, at least, perhaps, the most innocent. His time in London passed equally unmarked, either by mental cultivation or refined amusement. Having no resources in private society, from his total want of friends and connections, he was left to live loosely about town among the loungers in coffee-houses; and to those who remember what his two favourite haunts, Limmer's and Stevens's, were at that period, it is needless to say that, whatever else may have been the merits of these establishments, they were anything but fit schools for the formation of poetic character. But however incompatible such a life must have been with those habits of contemplation, by which, and which only, the faculties he had already displayed could be ripened, or those that were still latent could be unfolded, yet, in another point of view, the time now apparently squandered by him was, in after days, turned most invaluably to account. By thus initiating him into a knowledge of the varieties of human character, by giving him an insight into the details of society, in their least artificial form, in short, by mixing him up, thus early, with the world, its business and its pleasures, his London life but contributed its share in forming that wonderful combin ["Young poets must have their amusements at college, like young prosers. Now, what are poetical amusements? Playing on the flute or flageolet? Sketching trees and towers in chalk? Taking lessons in net-work from young ladies that superintend circulating libraries? Why, all that is vastly well to those who like it; but what if Byron preferred swimming, sparring - sometimes with a man, and sometimes with a bear? A young poet who spars frequently is always, it may be said, in training; and we all know that to be in training merely means to ation which his mind afterwards exhibited, of the imaginative and the practical-the heroic and the humorous of the keenest and most dissecting views of real life, with the grandest and most spiritualised conceptions of ideal grandeur. To the same period, perhaps, another predominant characteristic of his maturer mind and writings may be traced. In this anticipated experience of the world which his early mixture with its crowd gave him, it is but little probable that many of the more favourable specimens of human kind should have fallen under his notice. On the contrary, it is but too likely that some of the lightest and least estimable of both sexes may have been among the models, on which at an age when impressions sink deepest, his earliest judgments of human nature were formed. Hence, probably, those contemptuous and debasing views of humanity with which he was so often led to alloy his noblest tributes to the loveliness and majesty of general nature. Hence the contrast that appeared between the fruits of his imagination and of his experience, between those dreams, full of beauty and kindliness, with which the one teemed at his bidding, and the dark, desolating bitterness that overflowed when he drew from the other. Unpromising, however, as was his youth of the high destiny that awaited him, there was one unfailing characteristic of the imaginative order of minds - his love of solitude which very early gave signs of those habits of self-study and introspection by which alone the "diamond quarries" of genius are worked and brought to light. When but a boy, at Harrow, he had shown this disposition strongly, being often known, as I have already mentioned, to withdraw himself from his playmates, and, sitting alone upon a tomb in the churchyard, gave himself up, for hours, to thought. As his mind began to disclose its resources, this feeling grew upon him; and, had his foreign travel done no more than, by detaching him from the distractions of society, to enable him, solitarily and freely, to commune with his own spirit, it would have been an allimportant step gained towards the full expansion of his faculties. It was only then, be in the highest health. Now, Hygeia has even more to do with poetry than Apollo; and therefore Byron did right well to spar daily. But farther-what are all amusements and recreations to a man who is not a mere idler? Nothing; or less than nothing. One single hour's study, which has been visited by glorious insights, often constitutes the day, and a day, too, whose memory will never die."- WILSON, 1830.] 2 [The former in Conduit Street; and the latter in New Bond Street.] T. 23. EFFECT OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. 119 unfrequently found himself sighing to be alone. indeed, that he began to feel himself capable of the abstraction which self-study requires, or to enjoy that freedom from the intrusion It was not only, however, by affording of others' thoughts which alone leaves the him the concentration necessary for this contemplative mind master of its own. In silent drawing out of his feelings and powers, the solitude of his nights at sea, in his lone that travel conduced so essentially to the wanderings through Greece, he had suffi- formation of his poetical character. To the cient leisure and seclusion to look within East he had looked, with the eyes of himself, and there catch the first "glimpses romance, from his very childhood. Before of his glorious mind." One of his chief de- he was ten years of age, the perusal of lights, as he mentioned in his "Memoranda," Rycaut's History of the Turks had taken a was, when bathing in some retired spot, to strong hold of his imagination, and he read seat himself on a high rock above the sea, eagerly, in consequence, every book concernand there remain for hours, gazing upon the ing the East he could find. In visiting, sky and the waters', and lost in that sort of therefore, those countries, he was but vague reverie, which, however formless and realising the dreams of his childhood; and indistinct at the moment, settled afterwards this return of his thoughts to that innocent time, gave a freshness and purity to their current which they had long wanted. Under the spell of such recollections, the attraction of novelty was among the least that the scenes, through which he wandered, presented. Fond traces of the past-and few have ever retained them so vividly-mingled themselves with the impressions of the objects before him; and as, among the Highlands, he had often traversed, in fancy, the land of the Moslem, so memory, from the wild hills of Albania, now "carried him back to Morven." on his pages, into those clear, bright pic tures which will endure for ever. Were it not for the doubt and diffidence "that hang round the first steps of genius, this growing conciousness of his own power, these openings into a new domain of intellect, where he was to reign supreme, must have made the solitary hours of the young traveller one dream of happiness. But it will be seen that, even yet, he distrusted his own strength, nor was at all aware of the height to which the spirit he was now calling up would grow. So enamoured, nevertheless, had he become of these lonely musings, that even the society of his fellow-traveller, though with pursuits so congenial to his own, grew at last to be a chain and a burden on him; and it was not till he stood, companionless, on the shore of the little island in the Egean, that he found his spirit breathe freely. If any stronger proof were wanting of his deep passion for solitude, we shall find it, not many years after, in his own written avowal, that, even when in the company of the woman he most loved, he not 1 To this he alludes in those beautiful stanzas, "To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell," &c. Alfieri, before his dramatic genius had yet unfolded itself, used to pass hours, as he tells us, in this sort of dreaming state, gazing upon the ocean:-" Après le spectacle un de mes amusemens, à Marseille, était de me baigner presque tous les soirs dans la mer. J'avais trouvé un petit endroit fort agréable, sur une langue de terre placée à droite hors du port, où, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuyé contre un petit rocher qui empêchait qu'on ne pût me voir du côté de la terre, je n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensités qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en révant des heures délicieuses; et là, je serais devenu poëte, si j'avais su écrire dans une langue quelconque." 2 But a few months before he died, in a conversation with Maurocordato at Missolonghi, Lord Byron said. "The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had While such sources of poetic feeling were stirred at every step, there was also in his quick change of place and scene-in the diversity of men and manners surveyed by him-in the perpetual hope of adventure and thirst of enterprise, such a succession and variety of ever fresh excitement as not only brought into play, but invigorated, all the energies of his character: as he, himself, describes his mode of living, it was " To-day in a palace, to-morrow in a cow-housethis day with the Pacha, the next with a 66 much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant, and gave perhaps the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry."- Count Gamba's Narrative. In the last edition of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "the Literary Character," that gentleman has given some curious marginal notes, which he found written by Lord Byron in a copy of this work that belonged to him. Among them is the following enumeration of the writers that, besides Rycaut, had drawn his attention so early to the East: Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M. W. Montagu, Hawkins's Translation from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights, all travels, or histories, or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was ten years old. I think the Arabian Nights first. After these, I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for the Roman History. When a boy, I could never bear to read any Poetry whatever without disgust and reluctance." shepherd." Thus were his powers of observation quickened, and the impressions on his imagination multiplied. Thus schooled, too, in some of the roughnesses and privations of life, and, so far, made acquainted with the flavour of adversity, he learned to enlarge, more than is common in his high station, the circle of his sympathies, and became inured to that manly and vigorous cast of thought which is so impressed on all his writings. Nor must we forget, among these strengthening and animating effects of travel, the ennobling excitement of danger, which he more than once experienced, having been placed in situations, both on land and sea, well calculated to call forth that pleasurable sense of energy, which perils, calmly confronted, never fail to inspire. The strong interest which-in spite of his assumed philosophy on this subject in Childe Harold-he took in every thing connected with a life of warfare, found frequent opportunities of gratification, not only on board the English ships of war in which he sailed, but in his occasional intercourse with the soldiers of the country. At Salora, a solitary place on the Gulf of Arta, he once passed two or three days, lodged in a small miserable barrack. Here he lived the whole time, familiarly, among the soldiers; and a picture of the singular scene which their evenings presented-of those wild, halfbandit warriors, seated round the young poet, and examining with savage admiration his fine Manton gun and English swordmight be contrasted, but too touchingly, with another and a later picture of the same poet, dying, as a chieftain, on the same land, with Suliotes for his guards, and all Greece for his mourners. 1 It is true, amidst all this stimulating variety of objects, the melancholy which he had brought from home still lingered around his mind. To Mr. Adair and Mr. Bruce, as I have before mentioned, he gave the idea of a person labouring under deep dejection; and Colonel Leake, who was, at that time, "It rained hard the next day, and we spent another evening with our soldiers. The captain, Elmas, tried a fine Manton gun belonging to my friend, and hitting his mark every time was highly delighted."- Hobhouse's Journey, &c. 2 It must be recollected that by two of these gentlemen he was seen chiefly under the restraints of presentation and etiquette, when whatever gloom there was on his spirits would, in a shy nature like his, most show itself. The account which his fellow-traveller gives of him is altogether different. In introducing the narration of a short tour to Negroponte, in which his noble friend was unable to accompany him, Mr. Hobhouse expresses strongly the deficiency of which he is sensible, from the absence, on this occasion, of "a companion, who, to resident at Ioannina, conceived very much the same impression of the state of his mind. 2 But, assuredly, even this melancholy, habitually as it still clung to him, must, under the stirring and healthful influences of his roving life, have become a far more elevated and abstract feeling than it ever could have expanded to within reach of those annoyances, whose tendency was to keep it wholly concentrated round self. Had he remained idly at home, he would have sunk, perhaps, into a querulous satirist. But, as his views opened on a freer and wider horizon, every feeling of his nature kept pace with their enlargement; and this inborn sadness, mingling itself with the effusions of his genius, became one of the chief constituent charms not only of their pathos, but their grandeur. For, when did ever a sublime thought spring up in the soul, that melancholy was not to be found, however latent, in its neighbourhood? We have seen, from the letters written by him on his passage homeward, how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was quite enough in the discomforts that now awaited him in England to sadden íts hopes, and check its buoyancy. “To be happy at home," says Johnson, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends." But Lord Byron had no home,-at least none that deserved this endearing name. A fond family circle, to accompany him with its prayers, while away, and draw round him, with listening eagerness, on his return, was what, unluckily, he never knew, though with a heart, as we have seen, by nature formed for it. In the absence, too, of all that might cheer and sustain, he had every thing to encounter that could distress and humiliate. To the dreariness of a home without affection, was added the burden of an establishment without means; and he had thus all the embarrassments of domestic life, without its quickness of observation and ingenuity of remark, united that gay good-humour which keeps alive the attention under the pressure of fatigue, and softens the aspect of every difficulty and danger." In some lines, too, of the "Hints from Horace," addressed evidently to Mr. Hobhouse, Lord Byron not only renders the same justice to his own social cheerfulness, but gives a somewhat more distinct idea of the frame of mind out of which it rose ;"Moschus! with whom I hope once more to sit, And smile at folly, if we can't at wit; Yes, friend, for thee I'll quit my cynic cell, And bear Swift's motto," Vive la bagatelle !" Which charm'd our days in each Ægean clime, And oft at home with revelry and rhyme." [See Works, p. 443.] charms. His affairs had, during his absence, been suffered to fall into confusion, even greater than their inherent tendency to such a state warranted. There had been, the preceding year, an execution on Newstead, for a debt of 1500/. owing to the Messrs. Brothers, upholsterers; and a circumstance told of the veteran, Joe Murray, on this occasion, well deserves to be mentioned. To this faithful old servant, jealous of the ancient honour of the Byrons, the sight of the notice of sale, pasted up on the abbeydoor, could not be otherwise than an unsightly and intolerable nuisance. Having enough, however, of the fear of the law before his eyes, not to tear the writing down, he was at last forced, as his only consolatory expedient, to paste a large piece of brown paper over it. Notwithstanding the resolution, so recently expressed by Lord Byron, to abandon for ever the vocation of authorship, and leave "the whole Castalian state" to others, he was hardly landed in England when we find him busily engaged in preparations for the publication of some of the poems which he had produced abroad. So eager was he, indeed, to print, that he had already, in a letter written at sea, announced himself to Mr. Dallas, as ready for the press. Of this letter, which, from its date, ought to have preceded some of the others that have been given, I shall here lay before the reader the most material parts. LETTER 54. TO MR. DALLAS. "Volage Frigate, at sea, June 28. 1811. "After two years' absence (to a day, on the 2d of July, before which we shall not arrive at Portsmouth), I am retracing my way to England. "I am coming back with little prospect of pleasure at home, and with a body a little shaken by one or two smart fevers, but a spirit I hope yet unbroken. My affairs, it seems, are considerably involved, and much business must be done with lawyers, colliers, farmers, and creditors. Now this, to a man who hates bustle as he hates a bishop, is a serious concern. But enough of my home department. 'My Satire, it seems, is in a fourth edition, a success rather above the middling run, but not much for a production which, from its topics, must be temporary, and of course be successful at first, or not at all. At this period, when I can think and act more coolly, I regret that I have written it, though I shall probably find it forgotten by all except those whom it has offended. My friend Hob 121 house's Miscellany has not succeeded; but he himself writes so good-humouredly on the subject, I don't know whether to laugh or cry with him. He met with your son at Cadiz, of whom he speaks highly. 66 Yours and Pratt's protégé, Blackett, the cobbler, is dead, in spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons, he might now have been in very good plight, shoe- (not verse-) making; but you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this, supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters, to have been the death of him. If you are in town in or about the beginning of July, you will find me at Dorant's, in Albemarle Street, glad to see you. I have an imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry ready for Cawthorn, but don't let that deter you, for I sha'n't inflict it upon you. You know I never read my rhymes to visiters. I shall quit town in a few days for Notts., and thence to Rochdale. 66 "Yours, &c." Immediately, on Lord Byron's arrival in London, Mr. Dallas called upon him. “On the 15th of July," says this gentleman, “I had the pleasure of shaking hands with him at Reddish's Hotel in St. James's Street. I thought his looks belied the report he had given me of his bodily health, and his countenance did not betoken melancholy, or displeasure at his return. He was very animated in the account of his travels, but assured me he had never had the least idea of writing them. He said he believed satire to be his forte, and to that he had adhered, having written, during his stay at different places abroad, a Paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry, which would be a good finish to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. He seemed to promise himself additional fame from it, and I undertook to superintend its publication, as I had done that of the Satire. I had chosen the time ill for my visit, and we had hardly any time to converse uninterruptedly, he therefore engaged me to breakfast with him next morning." In the interval Mr. Dallas looked over this Paraphrase, which he had been permitted by Lord Byron to take home with him for the purpose, and his disappointment was, as he himself describes it, "grievous," on finding, that a pilgrimage of two years to the inspiring lands of the East had been attended with no richer poetical result. On their meeting again next morning, though unwilling to speak disparagingly of the work, he could not refrain, as he informs us, from ex |