My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 54

"If he spoke and wrote thus of Lord Castlereagh," says Kennedy himself, "the reason was that he really thought him an enemy to the true interests of his country; and this sentiment, carried perhaps to excess, made him consider it just to condemn him to the execration of humanity."[112]

What I have said with regard to his attacks on Lord Castlereagh, may equally apply to all the satire hurled against other individuals, against governments and nations. His benevolence was so great and universal, that it rendered the idea of the sufferings endured by humanity quite intolerable to him. His love of justice likewise was so great, that he became thoroughly indignant at seeing what he wors.h.i.+ped trampled under foot by individual or national selfishness, while deceit and injustice were reigning triumphant. Lord Byron conceived a sort of hatred and dislike for the wicked, and those who voluntarily prevented the well-being of men. And when thus indignant at some injustice, if he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pen, he could not help expressing himself with a certain kind of violence, in order to chastise, if he could not change, the guilty men who martyrized Ireland, crushed and degraded Italy, and condemned England to the hatred of the whole world. The sparkling, witty strain, mocking at all human things, which had served as a weapon for his reason while a.s.serting the interests of truth and injustice in Italy, and protesting against folly and evil, no longer sufficed him then. He required to brand with fire the limit where folly stops and crime begins. Thus it was not mocking, joking satire he would inflict on these great culprits; but burning words to mark the limits where this should stop, and stigmatize them by condemning moral deformity. This is what he did, and wished to do, with regard to Castlereagh, and also with regard to the Austrians in Italy. Shall it be said that his language was occasionally too violent; that the punishment went beyond the crime?

But, in the first place, condemnation was p.r.o.nounced in the language of poetry; and then, does not appreciation of the measure kept depend solely on the point of view taken by reason and conscience when they sat in judgment?

Shall it be said that the moral sense of these invectives was not always brought forward with all the clearness desirable? But let them be examined attentively, and then the fine sentiments to which they owe their origin will be understood.

Let us read "Avatar," for instance,--"Avatar," teeming with n.o.ble anger,--and say if any poetry exists emitting flame and light purer, and more intense in its moral life, more efficacious for keeping within the boundaries of that humane just policy from which Lord Byron never swerved.

If, in the war he waged against evil and its perpetrators, he did not outstep the limits of merited punishment, nevertheless he often did go beyond the limits of a quality (he possessed not) which is raised to the rank of a virtue, but which applied, despite conscience, to our personal interests, is but selfishness and cowardice. And therein was he truly sublime; for in attacking thus, not only the great men of the day, but likewise the prejudices, idolatries, and pa.s.sions belonging to such a proud nation, he well knew the harm that would result to himself. But Lord Byron was a real hero. So soon as his conscience spoke, he heard no other voice, but kept his glance fixed on the light of justice and truth beaming at the end of his career. Without looking to the right or to the left, without taking into account the obstacles and dangers which personal prudence counselled him to avoid, he held on his course; exposed his n.o.ble breast to British vengeance pursuing him across the Channel and the Alps, and then also to Genevan and Austrian shafts that flew back again across the Alps and the Channel on the wings of dark, fierce calumny.

Still I do not pretend to a.s.sert that, on some rare occasions, personal suffering did not give rise to irritation and anger. He belonged to humanity; and if, despite the harsh trials to which his sensibility was exposed, he had escaped entirely from nature's laws, he would have been not only heroic, but superhuman.

It is then very possible that, in the sad days preceding, accompanying, and following on his separation from Lady Byron, he may have been irritable. Such a host of evils overwhelmed him at once! He may have allowed to escape his lips at that time some drops of the ocean of bitterness with which his soul was overflowing. It is certain also that when the Edinburgh critics made such cruel havoc with his heart and mind, the over-excitement caused by this review had likewise for its source the wounds inflicted on his self-love. Can we be astonished at it, when we reflect that this senseless, wicked criticism succeeded to, and contrasted strangely with, the praises awarded by such judges as Mackenzie and Lord Woodhouse? They both had expressed their admiration spontaneously, and without knowing the writer: one of them was the celebrated author of the "Man of Feeling," and the other had brought out many esteemed works, and was considered to be at the head of Scottish literature. Besides, these cutting criticisms followed close on the strong admiration expressed by his friends, by all the society in which he was then moving, and by a mother who idolized him! These verses, though not yet the highest expression of his genius, were certainly full of charming tenderness, grace, and nave sensibility; moreover, they had been given to the public in such a modest way by a man so young that he might almost be called a child! If he were not conscious of his great superiority, of which he must nevertheless have felt some prophetic presentiment--restrained, doubtless, by modesty and timidity,--he must at least have been conscious that he had not, in any way, merited the brutality displayed in attacks which violated all the laws of just and allowable criticism.

Lord Byron's soul revolted at it, and in his indignation repelling a.s.sault by a.s.sault, he overstepped his aim; for he certainly went to extremes. And yet, in the very paroxysm of such irritation, was a personal sentiment his first incentive? No! it was a good, generous, affectionate feeling that actuated him: fear lest his mother should be grieved at what had occurred.

He had scarcely been told how biting the criticism was, and he had not read it, when he hastened to write to his friend Beecher:--

"Tell Mrs. Byron not to be out of humor with them, and to prepare her mind for the greatest hostility on their part. It will do no injury whatever, and I trust her mind will not be ruffled. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never praise, except the partisans of Lord Holland and Co. It is nothing to be abused when Southey and Moore share the same fate."

In a.s.suming this philosophical calm, which he really did arrive at later, but which he was very far from possessing at this time,--in forcing this language on his just resentment to console his mother, when his whole being was agitated, he certainly made one of those efforts which betoken a soul as vigorous as it was beautiful. He used his pen as soon as he had satisfied this first want of his heart; but the intensity of pa.s.sion destroyed his equilibrium.

When at Ravenna he wrote:--

"I recollect well the effect that criticism produced on me; it was rage, and resistance, and redress, but not despondency nor despair. A savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; the one on me knocked me down--but I got up again. This criticism was a master-piece of low jests, a tissue of coa.r.s.e invectives. It contained many commonplace expressions, lowlived insults; for instance, that one should be grateful for what one got; that a gift horse ought not to be looked at in the mouth, and other stable vocabulary; but that did not frighten me. I resolved on giving the lie to their predictions, and on showing them, that, however discordant my voice, it was not the last time they were to hear it."

But when this heat had pa.s.sed away, his innate pa.s.sion for that justice so cruelly violated toward himself, made him quickly recover his self-possession. He repented having written this satire, which he designated as insensate, and wished to suppress it. He even judged it more severely than others.

He wrote to Coleridge in 1815:--

"You mention my satire, lampoon, or whatever you like to call it. I can only say, that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been _a thorn in my side ever since_: more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends, which is heaping fire on an enemy's head, and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of its attempted attacks."[113]

On examining his conscience with regard to this satire, and pa.s.sing judgment on himself, he adds, in a note to his own verses, after having given great praise to Jeffrey for his magnanimity, etc.:--

"_I was really too ferocious--this is mere insanity._--B., 1816."

And farther on:--

"_This is bad; because personal._--B., 1816."

With regard to his verses on his guardian, Lord Carlisle, so culpable toward himself, he generously remarks:

"_Wrong also_--_the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity._--B., 1816."

To what he said against Wordsworth he simply adds the word, "_Unjust._"

And again, with reference to Lord Carlisle:--

"_Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be._--B., 1816."

And at Geneva, 14th of July, 1816, he writes:--

"_The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written_: not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such as I can not approve.--BYRON, _Villa Diodati_, 1816."

Lastly, from Venice he wrote to Murray, who wished to make a superior edition of his works:--

"With regard to a future large edition, you may print all, or any thing, _except_ '_English Bards_,' to the republication of which at no time will I consent. I would not reprint them on any consideration. I don't think them good for much, even in point of poetry; and, as to other things, you are to recollect that I gave up the publication on account of the Hollands, and I do not think that any time or circ.u.mstances should cancel the suppression. Add to which, that, after being on terms with almost all the bards and critics of the day, it would be savage at any time, but worst of all _now_,[114] to revive this foolish lampoon."

"Whatever may have been the faults or indiscretion of this satire," says Moore, "there are few who would now sit in judgment upon it so severely as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years after, when he had quitted England, never to return. The copy which he then perused is now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing. On the first leaf we find:--

"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its contents. Nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames.

BYRON."

To this ample reparation offered on account of his early satire we must add the following paragraph, from the first letter he addressed to Sir Walter Scott, in 1812:--

"I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the '_evil works of my nonage_,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily; and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale a.s.sertions. I can not sufficiently thank you for your praise."

Thus scrupulously did this conscientious man judge himself. And not only do we find him repeating the same fine sentiment a hundred times, but he caused the whole edition, then still in the hands of the publisher, to be destroyed, which of course entailed a great sacrifice of money. He became intimate with the princ.i.p.al personages whom he had attacked; and even, in order to testify that no resentment continued to exist in his mind against his guardian, Lord Carlisle, he seized the first opportunity that presented itself of writing in "Childe Harold" those pathetic generous lines on the death of his son, Major Howard. He acted just in the same way every time he thought he had any fault to repair.

But could this same love of justice, that had guided him through life, have caused him equally to disavow what he said of Lord Castlereagh and of Ireland in "Avatar?" of Southey and the Austrians at Venice? or the greater part of the satirical traits contained in "Don Juan" and the "Age of Bronze?" I do not think so. I believe, even, that if on his death-bed, he had been asked to retract some of his writings, he would have answered as Pascal did. And this because the sentiment which under all circ.u.mstances guided his pen did not arise from any personal interest, but was only, to use the beautiful language of a great contemporary philosopher, "the indignation and revolt of the generous faculties of the soul, which, hurt by injustice, rose up proudly, to protest against human dignity, offended in one's own person or in that of others."

This sentiment not being capable of change, neither could its consequences bring any repentance. According to Lord Byron, Castlereagh was a scourge for mankind. Faithful to this opinion, as to all his great principles, he wrote to Moore in 1815:--

"I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh, is only a proof of the little value the G.o.ds set upon prosperity, when they permit such rogues as he and that drunken corporal, old Bl----, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington should be excepted. He _is_ a man, and the Scipio of our Hannibal."

Let people read the "Avatar," the eleventh octave and following of the dedication of "Don Juan," the forty-ninth and fiftieth stanzas of the ninth canto of "Don Juan," as well as the epigrams; and they will have a fair idea of the generous sentiments that provoked his indignation against the inhuman policy of this minister. They will understand why he wished to denounce him to the execration of posterity. As to his satirical verses and anger against the poet laureate, it has already been seen on whose side lay the fault, and how this jealous poet, through a combination of bad feelings, in which envy and revenge predominated, spared no means, no occasion, of doing him harm. Thus Lord Byron saw himself and his friends enveloped in one of those darksome conspiracies, forming a labyrinth of calumny, whence the purest innocence has no escape; and he felt that justice violated in the person of his friends, by a man unworthy of respect, required him, in justice, to brand the individual. And rightly did he so with his words of fire.

When Ireland, that he would fain have seen heroic under misfortune, degraded herself by her conduct toward this minister and the king, on the occasion of their visit, he, touched with n.o.ble indignation, resolved to punish and warn her; and his "Avatar" expressed these fine sentiments. When the prince regent, after having shown himself a Liberal and a Whig, denied his part, betrayed his party, and leagued with the Tories, Lord Byron's n.o.ble indignation burst forth in his verses, and, whenever occasion offered, he stigmatized such unworthy conduct.

And a proof that it was the conduct of the individual, and not personal animosity, that guided his pen, may be found in the fact that a single ray of hope of seeing this moral deformity transformed into beauty, sufficed to make him change his tone immediately. When he learned the pardon that had just been granted by George the Fourth to the guilty Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he forgot all past offenses; his soul expanded to admiration and hope; and he composed that beautiful sonnet, which so well reveals the aspirations of his great heart:--

"To be the father of the fatherless, To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise _His_ offspring, who expired in other days To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,-- _This_ is to be a monarch, and repress Envy into unutterable praise.

Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand except to bless?

Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete: A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us."

_Bologna, August 12, 1819._

And then, as if poetry did not suffice, he adds these lines in prose:--

"So the prince has annulled Lord E. Fitzgerald's condemnation. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was truly a princely act."

All Lord Byron's expressions of indignation that have been attributed to anger, belong really to his disinterested, heroic, generous nature. We may convince ourselves of this by following him through life, beginning from childhood, at college, when he would plant himself in front of school tyrants, asking to share the punishments inflicted on his friend Peel, and always taking the part of his weak or oppressed companions; then, during his first youth, when an acc.u.mulation of unmerited griefs and injustice cast over him a shade of misanthropy, so contrary to his nature; and, lastly, up to the moment when that n.o.ble indignation burst forth which he experienced in Greece, and which hastened his end.[115]

This is the truth. Nevertheless, if, in early youth, he did sometimes go beyond the limits of what may be fairly conceded to extreme sensibility,--to a certain hypochondriacal tendency of race, and more especially of his intellectual life; if he really was sometimes wearied, fatigued, discouraged, inclined to irritation, and to view things darkly, can it, therefore, be said that he weakly gave way to a morbid disposition? By no means. He always wished to sift his conscience thoroughly,--never ceased a.n.a.lyzing causes and symptoms, proclaiming his state morbid, and blaming himself beyond measure, far beyond what justice warranted, for a single word that had escaped his lips under the pressure of intense suffering. And even in the few moments of impatience occasioned by his last illness, he said, "Do not take the language of a sick man for his real sentiments." Lastly, he never gave over struggling against himself; seeking to acquire dominion over his faculties and pa.s.sions intellectually by hard study, and materially by the strictest regime. What could he do more? it may be said. But if it be true that he had been irritable in his youth, that would only show how much he achieved; for he must have conquered himself immensely, since at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in Greece, he certainly displayed no traces of temper, and all those causes which usually excite irritation and anger in others had quite ceased to produce any in him.

"A mild philosophy," says the Countess G----, "every day more and more took possession of his soul. Adversity and the companions.h.i.+p of great thoughts strengthened him so much, that he was able to cast off the yoke of even ordinary pa.s.sions, only retaining those among the number which impel to good.[116]

"I have seen him sometimes at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, when receiving news of some stupid, savage attack, from those who, in violating justice, also did him considerable harm. No emotion of anger any longer mixed itself up with his generous indignation. He appeared rather to experience a mixture of contempt, almost of quiet austere pleasure, in the struggle his great soul sustained against fools."