The Life of Lord Byron

Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav’ring sprite,Friend and associate of this clay,To what unknown region borneWilt thou now wing thy distant flight?No more with wonted humour gay,But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.

“However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favourities with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school-exercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation, where two words (θελο λεyειν) of the original are expanded into four lines, and the other thing in p. 81, where μεσονυκτικις ποθ’ οραις is rendered by means of six hobbling verses. As to his Ossian poesy, we are not very good judges; being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticising some bit of genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron’s rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a Song of Bards is by his Lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it; ‘What form rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; ’tis Oila, the brown chief of Otchona. He was,’ etc. After detaining this ‘brown chief’ some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice to ‘raise his fair locks’; then to ‘spread them on the arch of the rainbow’; and to ‘smile through the tears of the storm.’ Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages: and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome.

“It is some sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should ‘use it as not abusing it’; and particularly one who piques himself (though, indeed, at the ripe age of nineteen) on being an infant bard —

The artless Helicon I boast is youth —

should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem, above cited, on the family-seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages on the selfsame subject, introduced with an apology, ‘he certainly had no intention of inserting it,’ but really ‘the particular request of some friends,’ etc. etc. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, ‘the last and youngest of the noble line.’ There is also a good deal about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachion-y-Gair, a mountain, where he spent part of his youth, and might have learned that pibroach is not a bagpipe, any more than a duet means a fiddle.

“As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious effusions.

“In an ode, with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the following magnificent stanzas: —

There, in apartments small and damp,The candidate for college prizesSits poring by the midnight lamp,Goes late to bed, yet early rises:Who reads false quantities in Seale,Or puzzles o’er the deep triangle,Depriv’d of many a wholesome meal,In barbarous Latin doomed to wrangle.Renouncing every pleasing pageFrom authors of historic use;Preferring to the letter’d sageThe square of the hypotenuse.Still harmless are these occupations,That hurt none but the hapless student,Compared with other recreationsWhich bring together the imprudent.

“We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college-psalmody, as is contained in the following attic stanzas

Our choir could scarcely be excused,Even as a band of raw beginners;All mercy now must be refusedTo such a set of croaking sinners.If David, when his toils were ended,Had heard these blockheads sing before him,To us his psalms had ne’er descended —In furious mood he would have tore ’em.

“But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thoroughbred poets, and though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland, he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it succeeds or not, it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits, that he should again condescend to become an author. Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord’s station, who does not live in a garret, but has got the sway of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift-horse in the mouth.”

The criticism is ascribed to Mr Francis Jeffrey, an eloquent member of the Scottish bar, and who was at that time supposed to be the editor of the Edinburgh Review. That it was neither just nor fair is sufficiently evident, by the degree of care and artificial point with which it has been drawn up. Had the poetry been as insignificant as the critic affected to consider it, it would have argued little for the judgment of Mr Jeffrey, to take so much pains on a work which he considered worthless. But the world has no cause to repine at the severity of his strictures, for they unquestionably had the effect of kindling the indignation of Byron, and of instigating him to that retaliation which he so spiritedly inflicted in his satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

It is amusing to compare the respective literary reputation of the poet and the critic, as they are estimated by the public, now that the one is dead, and the other dormant. The voice of all the age acknowledges Byron to have been the greatest poetical genius of his time. Mr Jeffrey, though still enjoying the renown of being a shrewd and intelligent critic of the productions of others, has established no right to the honour of being an original or eminent author.

At the time when Byron published the satire alluded to, he had obtained no other distinction than the college reputation of being a clever, careless, dissipated student. But his dissipation was not intense, nor did it ever become habitual. He affected to be much more so than he was: his pretensions were moderated by constitutional incapacity. His health was not vigorous; and his delicacy defeated his endeavours to show that he inherited the recklessness of his father. He affected extravagance and eccentricity of conduct, without yielding much to the one, or practising a great deal of the other. He was seeking notoriety; and his attempts to obtain it gave more method to his pranks and follies than belonged to the results of natural impulse and passion. He evinced occasional instances of the generous spirit of youth; but there was in them more of ostentation than of that discrimination which dignifies kindness, and makes prodigality munificence. Nor were his attachments towards those with whom he preferred to associate, characterised by any nobler sentiment than self-indulgence; he was attached, more from the pleasure he himself received in their society, than from any reciprocal enjoyment they had with him. As he became a man of the world, his early friends dropped from him; although it is evident, by all the contemporary records of his feelings, that he cherished for them a kind, and even brotherly, affection. This secession, the common effect of the new cares, hopes, interests, and wishes, which young men feel on entering the world, Byron regarded as something analogous to desertion; and the notion tainted his mind, and irritated that hereditary sullenness of humour, which constituted an ingredient so remarkable in the composition of his more mature character.

An anecdote of this period, characteristic of his eccentricity, and the means which he scrupled not to employ in indulging it, deserves to be mentioned.

In repairing Newstead Abbey, a skull was found in a secret niche of the walls. It might have been that of the monk who haunted the house, or of one of his own ancestors, or of some victim of the morose race. It was converted into a goblet, and used at Odin-like orgies. Though the affair was but a whim of youth, more odious than poetical, it caused some talk, and raised around the extravagant host the haze of a mystery, suggesting fantasies of irreligion and horror. The inscription on the cup is not remarkable either for point or poetry.

Start not, nor deem my spot fled;In me behold the only skullFrom which, unlike a living head,Whatever flows is never dull.I liv’d, I lov’d, I quaff’d like thee;I died, but earth my bones resign:Fill up – thou canst not injure me,The worm hath fouler lips than thine.Better to hold the sparkling grapeThan nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood,And circle in the goblet’s shapeThe drink of gods than reptile’s food.Where once my wit perchance hath shone,In aid of others let me shine;And when, alas, our brains are gone,What nobler substitute than wine?Quaff while thou canst – another race,When thou and thine like me are sped,May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,And rhyme and revel with the dead.Why not? since through life’s little day,Our heads such sad effects produce;Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,This chance is theirs, to be use.

CHAPTER VII

Effect of the Criticism in the “Edinburgh Review” – “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” —His Satiety—Intention to Travel—Publishes his Satire—Takes his Seat in the House of Lords—Departs for Lisbon; thence to Gibraltar

The impression which the criticism of the Edinburgh Review produced upon the juvenile poet was deep and envenomed. It stung his heart, and prompted him to excess. But the paroxysms did not endure long; strong volitions of revenge succeeded, and the grasps of his mind were filled, as it were, with writhing adders. All the world knows, that this unquenchable indignation found relief in the composition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; a satire which, in many passages, equals, in fervour and force, the most vigorous in the language.

It was during the summer of 1808, while the poet was residing at Newstead, that English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was principally written. He bestowed more pains upon it than perhaps on any other of his works; and, though different from them all, it still exhibits strong indications of the misanthropy with which, after quitting Cambridge, he became more and more possessed. It is painful to reflect, in considering the splendid energy displayed in the poem, that the unprovoked malice which directed him to make the satire so general, was, perhaps, the main cause of that disposition to wither his reputation, which was afterwards so fervently roused. He could not but expect, that, in stigmatising with contempt and ridicule so many persons by name, some of them would retaliate. Nor could he complain of injustice if they did; for his attack was so wilful, that the rage of it can only be explained by supposing he was instigated to “the one fell swoop,” by a resentful conviction, that his impillory in the Edinburgh Review had amused them all.

I do not conceive, that the generality of the satire can be well extenuated; but I am not inclined to regard it as having been a very heinous offence. The ability displayed in it is a sufficient compensation. The beauty of the serpent’s skin appeases the aversion to its nature. Moreover, a toothless satire is verse without poetry – the most odious of all respectable things.

But, without regard to the merits or delinquency of the poem, to the acumen of its animadversions, or to the polish of the lines, it possesses, in the biography of the author, a value of the most interesting kind. It was the first burst of that dark, diseased ichor, which afterwards coloured his effusions; the overflowing suppuration of that satiety and loathing, which rendered Childe Harold, in particular, so original, incomprehensible, and antisocial; and bears testimony to the state of his feelings at that important epoch, while he was yet upon the threshold of the world, and was entering it with a sense of failure and humiliation, and premature disgust. For, notwithstanding his unnecessary expositions concerning his dissipation, it is beyond controversy, that at no time could it be said he was a dissipated young man. That he indulged in occasional excesses is true; but his habits were never libertine, nor did his health or stamina permit him to be distinguished in licentiousness. The declaration in which he first discloses his sobriety, contains more truth than all his pretensions to his father’s qualities. “I took my gradations in the vices,” says he, in that remarkable confession, “with great promptitude, but they were not to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in the extreme, were concentrated, and hated division or spreading abroad. I could have left or lost the whole world with or for that which I loved; but, though my temperament was naturally burning, I could not share in the common libertinism of the place and time without disgust; and yet this very disgust, and my heart thrown back upon itself, threw me into excesses perhaps more fatal than those from which I shrunk, as fixing upon one at a time the passions, which, spread among many, would have hurt only myself.” This is vague and metaphysical enough; but it bears corroborative intimations, that the impression which he early made upon me was not incorrect. He was vain of his experiments in profligacy, but they never grew to habitude.

While he was engaged in the composition of his satire, he formed a plan of travelling; but there was a great shortcoming between the intention and the performance. He first thought of Persia; he afterwards resolved to sail for India; and had so far matured this project, as to write for information to the Arabic professor at Cambridge; and to his mother, who was not then with him at Newstead, to inquire of a friend, who had resided in India, what things would be necessary for the voyage. He formed his plan of travelling upon different reasons from those which he afterward gave out, and which have been imputed to him. He then thought that all men should in some period of their lives travel; he had at that time no tie to prevent him; he conceived that when he returned home he might be induced to enter into political life, to which his having travelled would be an advantage; and he wished to know the world by sight, and to judge of men by experience.

When his satire was ready for the press, he carried it with him to London. He was then just come of age, or about to be so; and one of his objects in this visit to the metropolis was, to take his seat in the House of Lords before going abroad; but, in advancing to this proud distinction, so soothing to the self-importance of youth, he was destined to suffer a mortification which probably wounded him as deeply as the sarcasms of the Edinburgh Review. Before the meeting of Parliament, he wrote to his relation and guardian, the Earl of Carlisle, to remind him that he should be of age at the commencement of the Session, in the natural hope that his Lordship would make an offer to introduce him to the House: but he was disappointed. He only received a formal reply, acquainting him with the technical mode of proceeding, and the etiquette to be observed on such occasions. It is therefore not wonderful that he should have resented such treatment; and he avenged it by those lines in his satire, for which he afterwards expressed his regret in the third canto of Childe Harold.

Deserted by his guardian at a crisis so interesting, he was prevented for some time from taking his seat in Parliament; being obliged to procure affidavits in proof of his grandfather’s marriage with Miss Trevannion, which having taken place in a private chapel at Carhais, no regular certificate of the ceremony could be produced. At length, all the necessary evidence having been obtained, on the 13th of March, 1809, he presented himself in the House of Lords alone – a proceeding consonant to his character, for he was not so friendless nor unknown, but that he might have procured some peer to have gone with him. It, however, served to make his introduction remarkable.

On entering the House, he is described to have appeared abashed and pale: he passed the woolsack without looking round, and advanced to the table where the proper officer was attending to administer the oaths. When he had gone through them, the chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand in a friendly manner to welcome him, but he made a stiff bow, and only touched with the tip of his fingers the chancellor’s hand, who immediately returned to his seat. Such is the account given of this important incident by Mr Dallas, who went with him to the bar; but a characteristic circumstance is wanting. When Lord Eldon advanced with the cordiality described, he expressed with becoming courtesy his regret that the rules of the House had obliged him to call for the evidence of his grandfather’s marriage. – “Your Lordship has done your duty, and no more,” was the cold reply, in the words of Tom Thumb, and which probably was the cause of the marked manner of the chancellor’s cool return to his seat.

The satire was published anonymously, and immediately attracted attention; the sale was rapid, and a new edition being called for, Byron revised it. The preparations for his travels being completed, he then embarked in July of the same year, with Mr Hobhouse, for Lisbon, and thence proceeded by the southern provinces of Spain to Gibraltar.

In the account of his adventures during this journey, he seems to have felt, to an exaggerated degree, the hazards to which he was exposed. But many of his descriptions are given with a bright pen. That of Lisbon has always been admired for its justness, and the mixture of force and familiarity.

What beauties doth Lisboa’s port unfold!Her image floating on that noble tide,Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,But now whereon a thousand keels did ride,Of mighty strength since Albion was allied,And to the Lusians did her aid afford.A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,Who lick, yet loathe, the hand that waves the swordTo save them from the wrath of Gaul’s unsparing lord.But whoso entereth within this town,That sheening for celestial seems to be,Disconsolate will wander up and down,’Mid many things unsightly strange to see,For hut and palace show like filthily;The dingy denizens are reared in dirt;No personage of high or mean degreeDoth care for cleanness of surtout and shirt,Though shent with Egypt’s plague, unkempt, unwash’d, unhurt.

Considering the interest which he afterwards took in the affairs of Greece, it is remarkable that he should have passed through Spain, at the period he has described, without feeling any sympathy with the spirit which then animated that nation. Intent, however, on his travels, pressing onward to an unknown goal, he paused not to inquire as to the earnestness of the patriotic zeal of the Spaniards, nor once dreamed, even for adventure, of taking a part in their heroic cause.

CHAPTER VIII

First Acquaintance with Byron—Embark together—The Voyage

It was at Gibraltar that I first fell in with Lord Byron. I had arrived there in the packet from England, in indifferent health, on my way to Sicily. I had then no intention of travelling. I only went a trip, intending to return home after spending a few weeks in Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia; having, before my departure, entered into the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, with the design of studying the law.

At this time, my friend, the late Colonel Wright, of the artillery, was secretary to the Governor; and during the short stay of the packet at the Rock, he invited me to the hospitalities of his house, and among other civilities gave me admission to the garrison library.

The day, I well remember, was exceedingly sultry. The air was sickly; and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering levanter – oppressive to the functions of life, and to an invalid denying all exercise. Instead of rambling over the fortifications, I was, in consequence, constrained to spend the hottest part of the day in the library; and, while sitting there, a young man came in and seated himself opposite to me at the table where I was reading. Something in his appearance attracted my attention. His dress indicated a Londoner of some fashion, partly by its neatness and simplicity, with just so much of a peculiarity of style as served to show, that although he belonged to the order of metropolitan beaux, he was not altogether a common one.

I thought his face not unknown to me; I began to conjecture where I could have seen him; and, after an unobserved scrutiny, to speculate both as to his character and vocation. His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered; a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of affectation in it, probably first assumed for picturesque effect and energetic expression; but which I afterwards discovered was undoubtedly the occasional scowl of some unpleasant reminiscence: it was certainly disagreeable – forbidding – but still the general cast of his features was impressed with elegance and character.

At dinner, a large party assembled at Colonel Wright’s; among others the Countess of Westmorland, with Tom Sheridan and his beautiful wife; and it happened that Sheridan, in relating the local news of the morning, mentioned that Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse had come in from Spain, and were to proceed up the Mediterranean in the packet. He was not acquainted with either.

Hobhouse had, a short time before I left London,, published certain translations and poems rather respectable in their way, and I had seen the work, so that his name was not altogether strange to me. Byron’s was familiar – the Edinburgh Review had made it so, and still more the satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but I was not conscious of having seen the persons of either.

On the following evening I embarked early, and soon after the two travellers came on board; in one of whom I recognised the visitor to the library, and he proved to be Lord Byron. In the little bustle and process of embarking their luggage, his Lordship affected, as it seemed to me, more aristocracy than befitted his years, or the occasion; and I then thought of his singular scowl, and suspected him of pride and irascibility. The impression that evening was not agreeable, but it was interesting; and that forehead mark, the frown, was calculated to awaken curiosity, and beget conjectures.

Hobhouse, with more of the commoner, made himself one of the passengers at once; but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the rail, leaning on the mizzen shrouds, inhaling, as it were, poetical sympathy, from the gloomy Rock, then dark and stern in the twilight. There was in all about him that evening much waywardness; he spoke petulantly to Fletcher, his valet; and was evidently ill at ease with himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out an unsatisfactory shipmate; yet there was something redeeming in the tones of his voice, when, some time after he had indulged his sullen meditation, he again addressed Fletcher; so that, instead of finding him ill-natured, I was soon convinced he was only capricious.

Our passage to Sardinia was tardy, owing to calms; but, in other respects, pleasant. About the third day Byron relented from his rapt mood, as if he felt it was out of place, and became playful, and disposed to contribute his fair proportion to the general endeavour to wile away the tediousness of the dull voyage. Among other expedients for that purpose, we had recourse to shooting at bottles. Byron, I think, supplied the pistols, and was the best shot, but not very pre-eminently so. In the calms, the jolly-boat was several times lowered; and, on one of those occasions, his Lordship, with the captain, caught a turtle – I rather think two – we likewise hooked a shark, part of which was dressed for breakfast, and tasted, without relish; your shark is but a cannibal dainty.

As we approached the gulf, or bay, of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a strong north wind came from the shore, and we had a whole disagreeable day of tacking, but next morning, it was Sunday, we found ourselves at anchor near the mole, where we landed. Byron, with the captain, rode out some distance into the country, while I walked with Mr Hobhouse about the town: we left our cards for the consul, and Mr Hill, the ambassador, who invited us to dinner. In the evening we landed again, to avail ourselves of the invitation; and, on this occasion, Byron and his Pylades dressed themselves as aides-de-camp – a circumstance which, at the time, did not tend to improve my estimation of the solidity of the character of either. But such is the force of habit: it appeared a less exceptionable affectation in the young peer than in the commoner.