My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 11

It is clear from this letter, the tone of which is so honest and sincere, that if in the stanzas which his rivals blamed there was really more skepticism than can be gathered from the consideration of man's littleness and G.o.d's greatness, yet it was not his real conviction.

Perhaps it was only a kind of cloud overhanging the mind, produced by the great grief which weighed on his heart. These sentiments, however, must have been really his own for some time longer. In his journal of 1813 he expresses himself thus:--

"My restlessness tells me I have something within that 'pa.s.seth show.'

It is for him who made it to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates yet burns this frail tenement.... In the mean time I am grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils, _grace a Dieu et a mon bon temperament_."

But all this, as we have said, amounted to the opinion that an omnipotent G.o.d is the author of our soul, which is of a totally different nature to that of our body, and that the soul being spiritual and not subjected to the laws which rule the body, the soul must be immortal. That he who made it out of nothing can cause it to return to nothing. The orthodox doctrine does not teach, as pantheism does, that our soul can not perish. It gives it only an individual immortality.

Notwithstanding this, and indeed on account of it, he was accused of being an atheist, in a poem ent.i.tled "Anti-Byron." This poem was the work of a clever rival, who made himself the echo of a party. Murray hesitated to publish it, but Byron, who was always just, praised the poem, and advised its publication.

"If the author thinks that I have written poetry with such tendencies, he is quite right to contradict it."

But having done so much for others, this time, at least, he fulfilled a duty toward himself by adding:--

"The author is however wrong on one point; I am not in the least an atheist;" and ends by saying, "It is very odd; eight lines may have produced eight thousand, if we calculate what has been and may still be said on the subject."

He speaks of the same work to Moore, in the same tone of pleasantry:--

"Oh, by-the-by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem--an 'Anti-Byron'--coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow by rhyme all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce such a production."

He therefore laughed at these accusations as too absurd. As for skepticism, he did not defend himself from a touch of it; for not only did he feel that the suspicious stanza could partly justify the belief, but also because there did exist in him a kind of religious skepticism which proceeded far more from meditation and observation than from a pa.s.sion for it. Such a skepticism is in truth a sigh for conviction. A painful vision which appears to most reflective minds in a more or less indistinct and vague manner, but which appeared more forcibly to him, inasmuch as it sought to be expressed in words.

"He," says Montaigne, "who a.n.a.lyzes all the circ.u.mstances which have brought about matters, and all the consequences which have been derived from them, debars himself from having any choice, and remains skeptical."

This skepticism of Lord Byron, however, did not overstep the boundaries of permissible doubt, as prescribed by an intelligence desirous of improvement. This privilege he exercised; and one might say that he remained, as it were, suspended between heaven and earth, ever looking up toward heaven, from whence he felt that light must come in the end,--a light ever on the increase, which would daily steady him in the great principles which form the fundamental basis of truth,--one G.o.d the creator, the real immortality of our soul, our liberty and our responsibility before G.o.d.

Tired, however, of ever being the b.u.t.t of the invectives of his enemies, and of the clergy, whom he had roughly handled in his writings, Lord Byron preferred remaining silent; and until his arrival in Switzerland he ceased making any allusions in his writings to any philosophical doubts which he may have entertained. The heroes which he selected for his Oriental poems were, moreover, too pa.s.sionate to allow the mysterious voices from heaven to silence the cries from their heart.

These celestial warnings, however, Byron never ceased to hear, although absorbed himself by various pa.s.sions of a different kind; he was at that time almost surrounded by an idolizing public, and rocked in the cradle of success and popularity. This is but too visible whenever he ceases to talk the language of his heroes, and expresses merely his own ideas and his own personal feelings. It was at this time that he wrote those delicious "Hebrew Melodies," in which a belief in spirituality and immortality is everywhere manifest, and in which is to be found the moral indication, if not the metaphysical proof, of the working of his mind in a religious point of view, as he matured in years. Two of these Melodies especially, the third and the fifteenth, contain so positive a profession of faith in the spiritualist doctrines, and carry with them the mark of so elevated a Christian sentiment, that I can not forbear quoting them _in extenso_.

IF THAT HIGH WORLD.

I.

If that high world, which lies beyond Our own, surviving Love endears; If there the cherish'd heart be fond, The eye the same, except in tears-- How welcome those untrodden spheres!

How sweet this very hour to die!

To soar from earth and find all fears Lost in thy light--Eternity!

II.

It must be so: 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink; And striving to o'erleap the gulf, Yet cling to Being's severing link.

Oh! in that future let us think To hold each heart the heart that shares; With them the immortal waters drink, And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

I.

When coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?

It can not die, it can not stay, But leaves its darken'd dust behind.

Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way?

Or fill at once the realms of s.p.a.ce, A thing of eyes, that all survey?

II.

Eternal, boundless, undecay'd, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth or skies display'd, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears

III.

Before Creation peopled earth, Its eyes shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, The spirit trace its rising track.

And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While sun is quench'd or system breaks, Fix'd in his own eternity.

IV.

Above our Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, It lives all pa.s.sionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years as moments shall endure.

Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly, A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.

There is no pa.s.sage in Plato, or in St. Augustin, or in Pascal, which can equal the sublimity of these stanzas.

It was in this painful state of mind that he spent the unfortunate year of his marriage. Having separated from his wife, he came to Geneva.

Here, at the same hotel--Hotel de Secheron--Sh.e.l.ley had also arrived, who some years previously had offered Byron a copy of his poem ent.i.tled "Queen Mab." Here they became acquainted. Although only twenty-three years of age, Sh.e.l.ley had already experienced much sorrow during his short existence. Born of rich and aristocratic parents, and who professed very religious and Tory principles, Sh.e.l.ley had been sent to Eton at thirteen. His character was most peculiar. He had none of the tastes of the young, could not stand scholastic discipline, despised every rule and regulation, and spent his time in writing novels. He published two when fifteen years old only, which appeared to be far above what could be expected from a boy of his age, but which deserved censure from their immoral tone. Owing to the nature of his mind, and especially at a time when reading has much influence, Sh.e.l.ley had conceived a great taste for the books which were disapproved of at college. Consequently the doctrines of the materialist school, which were the most in fas.h.i.+on then both in France and in England, so poisoned his mind as to cause him to become an atheist, and to argue as such against several theologians. He even published a pamphlet, so exaggerated in tone that he ent.i.tled it, "On the Necessity of Atheism."

To crown this folly, Sh.e.l.ley sent round to all the bishops a copy of this work, and signed it with his own name.

Brought before the authorities to answer the charge of this audacious act, he persisted in his doctrines, and was actually preparing an answer to the judges in the same sense, when he was expelled from the university.

For people who know England a little, it is easy to conceive what an impression such conduct must have produced on the part of the eldest son of a family like his, of Tory principles, belonging to the aristocracy, intimate with the prince regent, and stanch, orthodox and severe in their religious tenets. Expelled from college, he was likewise sent away from home; and when his indignant father consented to see him again, Sh.e.l.ley was treated with such coldness that he was enraged at being received as a stranger in the bosom of a family of which he was the eldest son. This was not all: even the young lady for whom Sh.e.l.ley had already conceived an affection, deemed it right to cast him off.

Overwhelmed by all these but too well merited misfortunes, he took refuge in an inn, where he tried to poison himself.

As he was struggling between life and death, a young girl of fifteen, Miss Westbrook, took care of him. Believing himself to be past recovery, and having no other means of rewarding her attention except by marrying her, he did so, in the hope that after his death his family would provide for her. But it is not always so easy to die, and he did not die. His health, however, was completely broken, and all that remained to him besides was an ill-a.s.sorted marriage. After the Gretna Green ceremony, Sh.e.l.ley went to reside in Edinburgh. His marriage so exasperated his father, that from that time he ceased to have any intercourse with him.

From Scotland Sh.e.l.ley went to Ireland, which was then in a very disturbed state. His metaphysics led him to conceive the most dangerous social theories. Conquered by a very real love of humanity, which he hoped to serve by the realization of his chimerical views, he even believed it to be his duty to make proselytes. While recommending the observance of peace, and of a spirit of moderation on the one hand, he, on the other, published pamphlets and spoke at meetings with a degree of talent which earned for him a certain amount of reputation, if not of fame. Then he was seized with a violent admiration for the English school called "Lockists," and devoted himself to poetry by way of giving a literary expression to his metaphysical reveries, and to his social theories. Thus he wrote "Queen Mab," a poem full of talent and imagination, but which is only the frame which encircles his most deplorable fancies. He sent a copy of it to all the noted literary men of England, and among them to Lord Byron, whose star had risen since the publication of "Childe Harold." Lord Byron declared, as may be seen in a note to the "Due Foscari," that the metaphysical portion of the poem was quite in opposition with his own opinions; but, with his usual impartiality and justice, he admired the poetry which is noticeable in this work, agreeing in this "with all those who are not blinded by bigotry and baseness of mind."

Sh.e.l.ley's marriage, contracted as it was under such strange auspices, was, of course, very unfortunate. By his acquaintance with G.o.dwin, one of the greatest literary characters of his day, Sh.e.l.ley came to know Mary, his daughter, by his marriage with the celebrated Mrs.

Woolstonecraft. Each fell in love with the other, but Sh.e.l.ley was not yet free to marry Miss G.o.dwin. He separated from the wife he had chosen only from grateful motives, although he had two children by her, and he left England for the first time, where he had become the object of persecutions of all kinds, and of a hatred which at a later period culminated in taking away his right to the guardians.h.i.+p of his children.

Such was his position when Lord Byron arrived in Switzerland, and alighted at the Hotel Secheron. To make acquaintance, therefore, with the author of "Queen Mab," and with the daughter of G.o.dwin, for whom he entertained great regard, was a natural consequence on the part of the author of "Childe Harold."

Notwithstanding their difference of character, their diversity of taste, and their different habits, owing to the very opposite mode of living which they had followed, the two poets felt drawn to one another by that irresistible sympathy which springs up in the souls of two persecuted beings, however just that persecution may have been, as regards Sh.e.l.ley, but which was wholly unjust as regards Byron. Here we must allow Moore to speak:--

"The conversation of Sh.e.l.ley, from the extent of his poetic reading, and the strange, mystic speculations into which his systems of philosophy led him, was of a nature strongly to interest the attention of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from worldly a.s.sociations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast indeed is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree: and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds, needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth of Sh.e.l.ley's pages to a.s.sure us.

"In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a man of this world than a ruler of hers: and, accordingly, through the airiest and most subtle creations of his brain, still the life-blood of truth and reality circulates. With Sh.e.l.ley it was far otherwise: his fancy was the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well as his theories; and not only the greater part of his poetry, but the political and philosophical speculations in which he indulged, were all distilled through the same over-refining and unrealizing alembic. Having started as a teacher and reformer of the world, at an age when he could know nothing of the world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on the threshold of this boyish enterprise only confirmed him in his first paradoxical views of human ills, and their remedies. Instead of waiting to take lessons from those of greater experience, he with a courage, admirable, had it been but wisely directed, made war upon both.... With a mind, by nature, fervidly pious, he yet refused to acknowledge a Supreme Providence, and subst.i.tuted some airy abstraction of 'Universal Love' in its place. An aristocrat by birth, and, as I understand, also in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in politics, and to such an utopian extent as to be the serious advocate of a community of goods. Though benevolent and generous to an extent that seemed to exclude all idea of selfishness, he yet scrupled not, in the pride of system, to disturb wantonly the faith of his fellow-men, and, without subst.i.tuting any equivalent good in its place, to rob the wretched of a hope, which, even if false, would be better than all this world's best truths.

"Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two friends more observable than in their notions on philosophical subjects: Lord Byron being, with the great bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence of matter and evil, while Sh.e.l.ley so far refined upon the theory of Berkeley, as not only to resolve the whole of creation into spirit, but to add also to this immaterial system, some pervading principle, some abstract nonent.i.ty of love and beauty--of which, as a subst.i.tute at least for Deity--the philosophic bishop had never dreamed."

The difference existing between their philosophical doctrines was that which existed between the two most opposed systems of spiritualism and pantheism.

I said that Sh.e.l.ley, notwithstanding his originality of mind, was destined, through the mobility of his impressions, to be easily influenced by what he read. The study of Plato and of Spinoza had already given to his metaphysical views a different bent. But before his transition from atheism to a mystical pantheism, before finding G.o.d in all things, after having sought him in vain everywhere, before considering himself to be a fragment of a chosen existence, and before shutting himself up in a kind of mysticism which did actually absorb him at a later period, he confined himself to a positive wors.h.i.+p of nature, which appeared to him then in the glorious shape of the mountains and lakes of Helvetia. Wordsworth was his oracle, and thus cultivating a poetry which deified nature, Sh.e.l.ley, in reality, remained at heart an atheist, and doubtless tried to imbue Byron with his enthusiasm and with his opinions.