(Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron - Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)

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LIFE

OF

LORD BYRON:

WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. V.

NEW EDITION.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.

CONTENTS OF VOL. V.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from
October, 1820, to November, 1822.

NOTICES

OF THE

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

LETTER 394. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, October 17. 1820.

"You owe me two letters--pay them. I want to know what you are
about. The summer is over, and you will be back to Paris. Apropos
of Paris, it was not Sophia _Gail_, but Sophia _Gay_--the English
word _Gay_--who was my correspondent.[1] Can you tell who she is,
as you did of the defunct * *?

"Have you gone on with your Poem? I have received the French of
mine. Only think of being _traduced_ into a foreign language in
such an abominable travesty! It is useless to rail, but one can't
help it.

"Have you got my Memoir copied? I have begun a continuation. Shall
I send it you, as far as it is gone?

"I can't say any thing to you about Italy, for the Government here
look upon me with a suspicious eye, as I am well informed. Pretty
fellows!--as if I, a solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It
is because I am fond of rifle and pistol shooting, I believe; for
they took the alarm at the quantity of cartridges I consumed,--the
wiseacres!

"You don't deserve a long letter--nor a letter at all--for your
silence. You have got a new Bourbon, it seems, whom they have
christened 'Dieu-donne;'--perhaps the honour of the present may be
disputed. Did you write the good lines on ----, the Laker? * *

"The Queen has made a pretty theme for the journals. Was there ever
such evidence published? Why, it is worse than 'Little's Poems' or
'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
Yours," &c.

[Footnote 1: I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired after, and
reported her to him as dead. But, on the receipt of the above letter, I
discovered that his correspondent was Madame Sophie Gay, mother of the
celebrated poetess and beauty, Mademoiselle Delphine Gay.]

* * * * *

LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 25 deg., 1820.

"Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It is on business.

"In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand mistakes, Sir
John Gordon was not of Gight, but of Bogagicht, and a son of
Huntley's. He suffered _not_ for his loyalty, but in an
insurrection. He had _nothing_ to do with Loch Leven, having been
dead some time at the period of the Queen's confinement: and,
fourthly, I am not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no, for
Robertson does not allude to this, though _Walter Scott does_, in
the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
'The Abbot.'

"I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's
account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am,
being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical
Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius
O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing mischief. I remember
well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry: we were on
our way to England in 1798.

"Yours.

"You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."

* * * * *

The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
defence,--if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been
any definite charge,--will be perused with strong interest:--

"My learned brother proceeds to observe, that 'it is in vain for
Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that
affair: and now that he has so _openly_ and _audaciously_ invited
enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should
not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the
'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary
character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be
deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet
voices,' I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I
cannot 'in any way _justify_ my own behaviour in that affair,' I
acquiesce, because no man can '_justify_' himself until he knows of
what he is accused; and I have never had--and, God knows, my whole
desire has ever been to obtain it--any specific charge, in a
tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others,
unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence
of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.[2] But is not the
writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not
'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the
subject--sentence without trial, and condemnation without a
charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells
which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the
public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is,
I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to
remember either.

"The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking
that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his
cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of
debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will
retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in
differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why,
because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.
The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the
stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one
since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and
muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if
false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not
enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the
Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and
breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it
was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the
waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the
waters.

"If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political
motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised
not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty
in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the
day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards
that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who
might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not
deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters,
nor from voting according to my principles; and, with regard to the
third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in
them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time
after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of
a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt
by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect
or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably
have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others,
as has been done on similar occasions.

"I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of
general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques
Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I
had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had; but
I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally
obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact
was indisputable; the public in general would hardly have been so
much excited against a more popular character, without at least an
accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or
substantiated; for I can hardly conceive that the common and
every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in
itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual
complaints of 'being prejudged,' 'condemned unheard,' 'unfairness,'
'partiality,' and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who
have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to
find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of
accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous
charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every
possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and
taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person
very much disliked, and I knew no remedy, having already used to
their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in
society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told
that there was one--but it was not of my formation, nor did I then
know of its existence--none in literature; and in politics I had
voted with the Whigs, with precisely that importance which a Whig
vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal
acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in
which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of
anything like friendship from any one, except a few young men of my
own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in life, which
last it had been my fortune to serve in circumstances of
difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect,
some time after, Madame de Stael said to me in Switzerland, 'You
should not have warred with the world--it will not do--it is too
strong always for any individual: I myself once tried it in early
life, but it will not do.' I perfectly acquiesce in the truth of
this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war;
and, assuredly, if peace is only to be obtained by courting and
paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance.
I thought, in the words of Campbell,

"'Then wed thee to an exil'd lot,
And if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne.'

"I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so
constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I believe that the
best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out of the way of
temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am
not quite sure that I could resist it, having derived from my
mother something of the '_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_.' I have
not sought, and shall not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in
my path. I do not in this allude to the party, who might be right
or wrong; but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own
bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in her own
feelings, for whatever her reasons may have been (and she never
adduced them to me at least), she probably neither contemplated nor
conceived to what she became the means of conducting the father of
her child, and the husband of her choice.

"So much for 'the general voice of his countrymen:' I will now
speak of some in particular.

"In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appeared in the
Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
personally more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival--a proud
distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
happened to comprise within it--amidst a considerable leaven of
Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
travels--several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
return to England?' was the general exclamation--I answer _why_? It
is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of
pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence--and
I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I
have been more or less informed of their conduct since my
departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was
made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of
their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends,
from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could,
and some things which they _should_ have unfolded; however, that
which is deferred is not lost--but it has been no fault of mine
that it has been deferred at all.

"I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to
show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to
the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the
reproach cast upon what has been called my 'selfish exile,' and my
'voluntary exile.' 'Voluntary' it has been; for who would dwell
among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far
it has been 'selfish' has been already explained."

[Footnote 2: While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed
statement has been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the
reader will find inserted in the Appendix to this volume. (_First
Edition_.)]

* * * * *

The following passages from the same unpublished pamphlet will be found,
in a literary point of view, not less curious.

"And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English
poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will
be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That
there are men of genius among the present poets makes little
against the fact, because it has been well said, that 'next to him
who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who
corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marino, who
corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for
nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state
of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic
depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has
been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite
opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began
it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the
Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper
reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
of poets--he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
reproach--was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
pure and perfect style; and Crabbe, the first of living poets, has
almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
Jerningham, who were annihilated (if _Nothing_ can be said to be
annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
satirists. * * *

"These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.

"Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
contemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
popularity: he recited,--and without the strongest impression of
the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
contemporaries.[3] The very existence of a poet, previous to the
invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of
whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
Capitol, but for his death.

"It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
time, and of thousands in point of general readers.

"It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the present state of
poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others
well know--possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the
ear of the public for the time being--I have not adopted a
different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct
rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer,
that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right,
and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with
Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the
literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and
that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success
of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed
opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have
anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded,
assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived
in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which
was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I
have written has been mere passion,--passion, it is true, of
different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an
Irishism to say so) my _indifference_ was a kind of passion, the
result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing
grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have
had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are
millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on;
encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means
anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even
wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no
means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.

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