The Life of Lord Byron

This is not very perspicuous portraiture, nor does it show that Mr Hunt was a very discerning observer of character. Lord Byron himself is represented to have said, that extraordinary pains were taken with her education: “Her conversation is lively without being frivolous; without being learned, she has read all the best authors of her own and the French language. She often conceals what she knows, from the fear of being thought to know too much; possibly because she knows I am not fond of blues. To use an expression of Jeffrey’s, ‘If she has blue stockings, she contrives that her petticoats shall hide them.’”

Lord Byron was at one time much attached to her; nor could it be doubted that their affection was reciprocal; but in both, their union outlived their affection, for before his departure to Greece his attachment had perished, and he left her, as it is said, notwithstanding the rank and opulence she had forsaken on his account, without any provision. He had promised, it was reported, to settle two thousand pounds on her, but he forgot the intention, or died before it was carried into effect. 3 On her part, the estrangement was of a different and curious kind – she had not come to hate him, but she told a lady, the friend of a mutual acquaintance of Lord Byron and mine, that she feared more than loved him.

CHAPTER XXXV

Residence in Ravenna—The Carbonari—Byron’s Part in their Plot—The Murder of the military Commandant—The poetical Use of the Incident—“Marino Faliero”—Reflections—“The Prophecy of Dante”

Lord Byron has said himself, that except Greece, he was never so attached to any place in his life as to Ravenna. The peasantry he thought the best people in the world, and their women the most beautiful. “Those at Tivoli and Frescati,” said he, “are mere Sabines, coarse creatures, compared to the Romagnese. You may talk of your English women; and it is true, that out of one hundred Italian and English you will find thirty of the latter handsome; but then there will be one Italian on the other side of the scale, who will more than balance the deficit in numbers – one who, like the Florence Venus, has no rival, and can have none in the North. I found also at Ravenna much education and liberality of thinking among the higher classes. The climate is delightful. I was not broken in upon by society. Ravenna lies out of the way of travellers. I was never tired of my rides in the pine forest: it breathes of the Decameron; it is poetical ground. Francesca lived and Dante was exiled and died at Ravenna. There is something inspiring in such an air.

“The people liked me as much as they hated the government. It is not a little to say, I was popular with all the leaders of the constitutional party. They knew that I came from a land of liberty, and wished well to their cause. I would have espoused it, too, and assisted them to shake off their fetters. They knew my character, for I had been living two years at Venice, where many of the Ravennese have houses. I did not, however, take part in their intrigues, nor join in their political coteries; but I had a magazine of one hundred stand of arms in the house, when everything was ripe for revolt – a curse on Carignan’s imbecility! I could have pardoned him that, too, if he had not impeached his partisans.

“The proscription was immense in Romagna, and embraced many of the first nobles: almost all my friends, among the rest the Gambas (the father and brother of the Countess Guiccioli), who took no part in the affair, were included in it. They were exiled, and their possessions confiscated. They knew that this must eventually drive me out of the country. I did not follow them immediately: I was not to be bullied – I had myself fallen under the eye of the government. If they could have got sufficient proof they would have arrested me.”

The latter part of this declaration bears, in my opinion, indubitable marks of being genuine. It has that magnifying mysticism about it which more than any other quality characterized Lord Byron’s intimations concerning himself and his own affairs; but it is a little clearer than I should have expected in the acknowledgment of the part he was preparing to take in the insurrection. He does not seem here to be sensible, that in confessing so much, he has justified the jealousy with which he was regarded.

“Shortly after the plot was discovered,” he proceeds to say, “I received several anonymous letters, advising me to discontinue my forest rides; but I entertained no apprehensions of treachery, and was more on horseback than ever. I never stir out without being well armed, nor sleep without pistols. They knew that I never missed my aim; perhaps this saved me.”

An event occurred at this time at Ravenna that made a deep impression on Lord Byron. The commandant of the place, who, though suspected of being secretly a Carbonaro, was too powerful a man to be arrested, was assassinated opposite to his residence. The measures adopted to screen the murderer proved, in the opinion of his Lordship, that the assassination had taken place by order of the police, and that the spot where it was perpetrated had been selected by choice. Byron at the moment had his foot in the stirrup, and his horse started at the report of the shot. On looking round he saw a man throw down a carbine and run away, and another stretched on the pavement near him. On hastening to the spot, he found it was the commandant; a crowd collected, but no one offered any assistance. His Lordship directed his servant to lift the bleeding body into the palace – he assisted himself in the act, though it was represented to him that he might incur the displeasure of the government – and the gentleman was already dead. His adjutant followed the body into the house. “I remember,” says his Lordship, “his lamentation over him – ‘Poor devil he would not have harmed a dog.’”

It was from the murder of this commandant that the poet sketched the scene of the assassination in the fifth canto of Don Juan.

The other evening (’twas on Friday last),This is a fact, and no poetic fable —Just as my great coat was about me cast,My hat and gloves still lying on the table,I heard a shot – ’twas eight o’clock scarce past,And running out as fast as I was able,I found the military commandantStretch’d in the street, and able scarce to pant.Poor fellow! for some reason, surely bad,They had him slain with five slugs, and left him thereTo perish on the pavement: so I hadHim borne into the house, and up the stair;The man was gone: in some Italian quarrelKill’d by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.The scars of his old wounds were near his new,Those honourable scars which bought him fame,And horrid was the contrast to the view —But let me quit the theme, as such things claimPerhaps ev’n more attention than is dueFrom me: I gazed (as oft I’ve gazed the same)To try if I could wrench aught out of deathWhich should confirm, or shake, or make a faith.

Whether Marino Faliero was written at Ravenna or completed there, I have not ascertained, but it was planned at Venice, and as far back as 1817. I believe this is considered about the most ordinary performance of all Lord Byron’s works; but if it is considered with reference to the time in which it was written, it will probably be found to contain many great and impressive passages. Has not the latter part of the second scene in the first act reference to the condition of Venice when his Lordship was there? And is not the description which Israel Bertuccio gives of the conspirators applicable to, as it was probably derived from, the Carbonari, with whom there is reason to say Byron was himself disposed to take a part?

Know, then, that there are met and sworn in secretA band of brethren, valiant hearts and true;Men who have proved all fortunes, and have longGrieved over that of Venice, and have rightTo do so; having served her in all climes,And having rescued her from foreign foes,Would do the same for those within her walls.They are not numerous, nor yet too fewFor their great purpose; they have arms, and means,And hearts, and hopes, and faith, and patient courage.

This drama, to be properly appreciated, both in its taste and feeling should be considered as addressed to the Italians of the epoch at which it was written. Had it been written in the Italian instead of the English language, and could have come out in any city of Italy, the effect would have been prodigious. It is, indeed, a work not to be estimated by the delineations of character nor the force of passion expressed in it, but altogether by the apt and searching sarcasm of the political allusions. Viewed with reference to the time and place in which it was composed, it would probably deserve to be ranked as a high and bold effort: simply as a drama, it may not be entitled to rank above tragedies of the second or third class. But I mean not to set my opinion of this work against that of the public, the English public; all I contend for is, that it possesses many passages of uncommon beauty, and that its chief tragic merit consists in its political indignation; but above all, that is another and a strong proof too, of what I have been endeavouring to show, that the power of the poet consisted in giving vent to his own feelings, and not, like his great brethren, or even his less, in the invention of situations or of appropriate sentiments. It is, perhaps, as it stands, not fit to succeed in representation; but it is so rich in matter that it would not be a difficult task to make out of little more than the third part a tragedy which would not dishonour the English stage.

I have never been able to understand why it has been so often supposed that Lord Byron was actuated in the composition of his different works by any other motive than enjoyment: perhaps no poet had ever less of an ulterior purpose in his mind during the fits of inspiration (for the epithet may be applied correctly to him and to the moods in which he was accustomed to write) than this singular and impassioned man. Those who imagine that he had any intention to impair the reverence due to religion, or to weaken the hinges of moral action, give him credit for far more design and prospective purpose than he possessed. They could have known nothing of the man, the main defect of whose character, in relation to everything, was in having too little of the element or principle of purpose. He was a thing of impulses, and to judge of what he either said or did, as the results of predetermination, was not only to do the harshest injustice, but to show a total ignorance of his character. His whole fault, the darkest course of those flights and deviations from propriety which have drawn upon him the severest animadversion, lay in the unbridled state of his impulses. He felt, but never reasoned. I am led to make these observations by noticing the ungracious, or, more justly, the illiberal spirit in which The Prophecy of Dante, which was published with the Marino Faliero, has been treated by the anonymous author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron.

Of The Prophecy of Dante I am no particular admirer. It contains, unquestionably, stanzas of resounding energy, but the general verse of the poem is as harsh and abrupt as the clink and clang of the cymbal; moreover, even for a prophecy, it is too obscure, and though it possesses abstractedly too many fine thoughts, and too much of the combustion of heroic passion to be regarded as a failure, yet it will never be popular. It is a quarry, however, of very precious poetical expression.

It was written at Ravenna, and at the suggestion of the Guiccioli, to whom it is dedicated in a sonnet, prettily but inharmoniously turned. Like all his other best performances, this rugged but masterly composition draws its highest interest from himself and his own feelings, and can only be rightly appreciated by observing how fitly many of the bitter breathings of Dante apply to his own exiled and outcast condition. For, however much he was himself the author of his own banishment, he felt when he wrote these haughty verses that he had been sometimes shunned.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The Tragedy of “Sardanapalus” considered, with Reference to Lord Byron’s own Circumstances—“Cain”

Among the mental enjoyments which endeared Ravenna to Lord Byron, the composition of Sardanapalus may be reckoned the chief. It seems to have been conceived in a happier mood than any of all his other works; for, even while it inculcates the dangers of voluptuous indulgence, it breathes the very essence of benevolence and philosophy. Pleasure takes so much of the character of virtue in it, that but for the moral taught by the consequences, enjoyment might be mistaken for duty. I have never been able to satisfy myself in what the resemblance consists, but from the first reading it has always appeared to me that there was some elegant similarity between the characters of Sardanapalus and Hamlet, and my inclination has sometimes led me to imagine that the former was the nobler conception of the two.

The Assyrian monarch, like the Prince of Denmark, is highly endowed, capable of the greatest undertakings; he is yet softened by a philosophic indolence of nature that makes him undervalue the enterprises of ambition, and all those objects in the attainment of which so much of glory is supposed to consist. They are both alike incapable of rousing themselves from the fond reveries of moral theory, even when the strongest motives are presented to them. Hamlet hesitates to act, though his father’s spirit hath come from death to incite him; and Sardanapalus derides the achievements that had raised his ancestors to an equality with the gods.

Thou wouldst have me goForth as a conqueror. – By all the starsWhich the Chaldeans read! the restless slavesDeserve that I should curse them with their wishesAnd lead them forth to glory.

Again:

The ungrateful and ungracious slaves! they murmurBecause I have not shed their blood, nor led themTo dry into the deserts’ dust by myriads,Or whiten with their bones the banks of Ganges,Nor decimated them with savage laws,Nor sweated them to build up pyramidsOr Babylonian walls.

The nothingness of kingly greatness and national pride were never before so finely contemned as by the voluptuous Assyrian, and were the scorn not mitigated by the skilful intermixture of mercifulness and philanthropy, the character would not be endurable. But when the same voice which pronounced contempt on the toils of honour says,

EnoughFor me if I can make my subjects feelThe weight of human misery less,

it is impossible to repress the liking which the humane spirit of that thought is calculated to inspire. Nor is there any want of dignity in Sardanapalus, even when lolling softest in his luxury.

Must I consume my life – this little life —In guarding against all may make it less!It is not worth so much – It were to dieBefore my hour to live in dread of death..Till now no drop of an Assyrian veinHath flow’d for me, nor hath the smallest coinOf Nineveh’s vast treasure e’er been lavish’dOn objects which could cost her sons a tear.If then they hate me ’tis because I hate not,If they rebel ’tis because I oppress not.

This is imagined in the true tone of Epicurean virtue, and it rises to magnanimity when he adds in compassionate scorn,

Oh, men! ye must be ruled with scythes, not sceptres,And mow’d down like the grass, else all we reapIs rank abundance and a rotten harvestOf discontents infecting the fair soil,Making a desert of fertility.

But the graciousness in the conception of the character of Sardanapalus, is not to be found only in these sentiments of his meditations, but in all and every situation in which the character is placed. When Salamenes bids him not sheath his sword —

’Tis the sole sceptre left you now with safety,

the king replies —

“A heavy one;” and subjoins, as if to conceal his distaste for war, by ascribing a dislike to the sword itself,

The hilt, too, hurts my hand.

It may be asked why I dwell so particularly on the character of Sardanapalus. It is admitted that he is the most heroic of voluptuaries, the most philosophical of the licentious. The first he is undoubtedly, but he is not licentious; and in omitting to make him so, the poet has prevented his readers from disliking his character upon principle. It was a skilful stroke of art to do this; had it been otherwise, and had there been no affection shown for the Ionian slave, Sardanapalus would have engaged no sympathy. It is not, however, with respect to the ability with which the character has been imagined, nor to the poetry with which it is invested, that I have so particularly made it a subject of criticism; it was to point out how much in it Lord Byron has interwoven of his own best nature.

At the time when he was occupied with this great work, he was confessedly in the enjoyment of the happiest portion of his life. The Guiccioli was to him a Myrrha, but the Carbonari were around, and in the controversy, in which Sardanapalus is engaged, between the obligations of his royalty and his inclinations for pleasure, we have a vivid insight of the cogitation of the poet, whether to take a part in the hazardous activity which they were preparing, or to remain in the seclusion and festal repose of which he was then in possession. The Assyrian is as much Lord Byron as Childe Harold was, and bears his lineaments in as clear a likeness, as a voluptuary unsated could do those of the emaciated victim of satiety. Over the whole drama, and especially in some of the speeches of Sardanapalus, a great deal of fine but irrelevant poetry and moral reflection has been profusely spread; but were the piece adapted to the stage, these portions would of course be omitted, and the character denuded of them would then more fully justify the idea which I have formed of it, than it may perhaps to many readers do at present, hidden as it is, both in shape and contour, under an excess of ornament.

That the character of Myrrha was also drawn from life, and that the Guiccioli was the model, I have no doubt. She had, when most enchanted by her passion for Byron – at the very time when the drama was written – many sources of regret; and he was too keen an observer, and of too jealous a nature, not to have marked every shade of change in her appearance, and her every moment of melancholy reminiscence; so that, even though she might never have given expression to her sentiments, still such was her situation, that it could not but furnish him with fit suggestions from which to fill up the moral being of the Ionian slave. Were the character of Myrrha scanned with this reference, while nothing could be discovered to detract from the value of the composition, a great deal would be found to lessen the merit of the poet’s invention. He had with him the very being in person whom he has depicted in the drama, of dispositions and endowments greatly similar, and in circumstances in which she could not but feel as Myrrha is supposed to have felt – and it must be admitted, that he has applied the good fortune of that incident to a beautiful purpose.

This, however, is not all that the tragedy possesses of the author. The character of Zarina is, perhaps, even still more strikingly drawn from life. There are many touches in the scene with her which he could not have imagined, without thinking of his own domestic disasters. The first sentiment she utters is truly conceived in the very frame and temper in which Byron must have wished his lady to think of himself, and he could not embody it without feeling that—

How many a year has pass’d,Though we are still so young, since we have metWhich I have borne in widowhood of heart.

The following delicate expression has reference to his having left his daughter with her mother, and unfolds more of his secret feelings on the subject than anything he has expressed more ostentatiously elsewhere:

I wish’d to thank you, that you have not dividedMy heart from all that’s left it now to love.

And what Sardanapalus says of his children is not less applicable to Byron, and is true:

Deem notI have not done you justice: rather make themResemble your own line, than their own sire;I trust them with you – to you.

And when Zarina says,

They ne’erShall know from me aught but what may honourTheir father’s memory,

he puts in her mouth only a sentiment which he knew, if his wife never expressed to him, she profoundly acknowledged in resolution to herself. The whole of this scene is full of the most penetrating pathos; and did the drama not contain, in every page, indubitable evidence to me, that he has shadowed out in it himself his wife, and his mistress, this little interview would prove a vast deal in confirmation of the opinion so often expressed, that where his genius was most in its element, it was when it dealt with his own sensibilities and circumstances. It is impossible to read the following speech, without a conviction that it was written at Lady Byron:

My gentle, wrong’d Zarina!I am the very slave of circumstanceAnd impulse – borne away with every breath!Misplaced upon the throne – misplaced in life.I know not what I could have been, but feelI am not what I should be – let it end.But take this with thee: if I was not form’dTo prize a love like thine – a mind like thine —Nor dote even on thy beauty – as I’ve dotedOn lesser charms, for no cause save that suchDevotion was a duty, and I hatedAll that look’d like a chain for me or others(This even rebellion must avouch); yet hearThese words, perhaps among my last – that noneE’er valued more thy virtues, though he knew notTo profit by them.

At Ravenna Cain was also written; a dramatic poem, in some degree, chiefly in its boldness, resembling the ancient mysteries of the monasteries before the secular stage was established. This performance, in point of conception, is of a sublime order. The object of the poem is to illustrate the energy and the art of Lucifer in accomplishing the ruin of the first-born. By an unfair misconception, the arguments of Lucifer have been represented as the sentiments of the author upon some imaginary warranty derived from the exaggerated freedom of his life; and yet the moral tendency of the reflections are framed in a mood of reverence as awful towards Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton. It would be presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety, while I have felt in many passages influences that have their being amid the shadows and twilights of “old religion”;

“Stupendous spiritsThat mock the pride of man, and people spaceWith life and mystical predominance.”

The morning hymns and worship with which the mystery opens are grave, solemn, and scriptural, and the dialogue which follows with Cain is no less so: his opinion of the tree of life is, I believe, orthodox; but it is daringly expressed: indeed, all the sentiments ascribed to Cain are but the questions of the sceptics. His description of the approach of Lucifer would have shone in the Paradise Lost.

A shape like to the angels,Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect,Of spiritual essence. Why do I quake?Why should I fear him more than other spiritsWhom I see daily wave their fiery swordsBefore the gates round which I linger oftIn twilight’s hour, to catch a glimpse of thoseGardens which are my just inheritance,Ere the night closes o’er the inhibited walls,And the immortal trees which overtopThe cherubim-defended battlements?I shrink not from these, the fire-arm’d angels;Why should I quail from him who now approaches?Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor lessBeauteous; and yet not all as beautifulAs he hath been, or might be: sorrow seemsHalf of his immortality.

There is something spiritually fine in this conception of the terror or presentiment of coming evil. The poet rises to the sublime in making Lucifer first inspire Cain with the knowledge of his immortality – a portion of truth which hath the efficacy of falsehood upon the victim; for Cain, feeling himself already unhappy, knowing that his being cannot be abridged, has the less scruple to desire to be as Lucifer, “mighty.” The whole speech of Lucifer, beginning,

Souls who dare use their immortality,

is truly satanic; a daring and dreadful description given by everlasting despair of the Deity.

But, notwithstanding its manifold immeasurable imaginations, Cain is only a polemical controversy, the doctrines of which might have been better discussed in the pulpit of a college chapel. As a poem it is greatly unequal; many passages consist of mere metaphysical disquisition, but there are others of wonderful scope and energy. It is a thing of doubts and dreams and reveries – dim and beautiful, yet withal full of terrors. The understanding finds nothing tangible; but amid dread and solemnity, sees only a shapen darkness with eloquent gestures. It is an argument invested with the language of oracles and omens, conceived in some religious trance, and addressed to spirits.