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

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The injustice and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an
equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those
imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once
loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his
fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of
actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than
painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead of being, as heretofore,
a vague and abstract feeling, without any object to light upon, and
losing therefore its acrimony in diffusion, was now, by the hostility he
came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed
into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to
himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now
brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail.

By all these influences, so fatal to enthusiasm of character, and
forming, most of them, indeed, a part of the ordinary process by which
hearts become chilled and hardened in the world, it was impossible but
that some material change must have been effected in a disposition at
once so susceptible and tenacious of impressions. By compelling him to
concentre himself in his own resources and energies, as the only stand
now left against the world's injustice, his enemies but succeeded in
giving to the principle of self-dependence within him a new force and
spring which, however it added to the vigour of his character, could not
fail, by bringing Self so much into action, to impair a little its
amiableness. Among the changes in his disposition, attributable mainly
to this source, may be mentioned that diminished deference to the
opinions and feelings of others which, after this compulsory rally of
all his powers of resistance, he exhibited. Some portion, no doubt, of
this refractoriness may be accounted for by his absence from all those
whose slightest word or look would have done more with him than whole
volumes of correspondence; but by no cause less powerful and revulsive
than the struggle in which he had been committed could a disposition
naturally diffident as his was, and diffident even through all this
excitement, have been driven into the assumption of a tone so
universally defying, and so full, if not of pride in his own pre-eminent
powers, of such a contempt for some of the ablest among his
contemporaries, as almost implied it. It was, in fact, as has been more
than once remarked in these pages, a similar stirring up of all the best
and worst elements of his nature, to that which a like rebound against
injustice had produced in his youth;--though with a difference in point
of force and grandeur, between the two explosions, almost as great as
between the outbreaks of a firework and a volcano.

Another consequence of the spirit of defiance now roused in him, and one
that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully
and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his character, was
the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth,
he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses,
the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connection with
Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be
reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted,
seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that
union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the
treasure came too late;--the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished;
and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed
less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the
saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It
was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his,
to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,--more
from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,--he had taken such
pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of
being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him,
to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the
form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now
degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating
and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader
has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident
some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all
enthusiasm and romance, the habit of ridicule, had, in proportion as he
exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire
over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier
and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don
Juan,--that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil,
that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their
ever-powerful combat.

Even this, too, this vein of mockery,--in the excess to which, at last,
he carried it,--was but another result of the shock his proud mind had
received from those events that had cast him off, branded and
heart-stricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly
says,

"And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep."

This laughter,--which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of
tears,--served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of
bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet
of melancholy, Young, declare that "he preferred laughing at the world
to being angry with it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same
conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to
take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.

That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment,
he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and
ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable
love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with
which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human
freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted[18],--only shows how rich
must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which
even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most
consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life
should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre,
which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much
faded away from the character of the man; and that while
Love,--reprehensible as it was, but still Love,--had the credit of
rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for
Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of calling the last
stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the
sympathies of the world, to his grave.

Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former
self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the
new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall
now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more
immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to
have too long detained him.

[Footnote 15: "In quest' epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e
Napoli il mio diletto fratello Pietro. Egli era stato prevenuto da dei
nemeci di Lord Byron contro il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la
mia intimita con lui, e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene
distruggere la cattiva impressione ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord
Byron. Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli pure ricevesse quella
impressione che non puo essere prodotta da dei pregi esteriori, ma
solamente dall unione di tuttocio che vi e di piu bello e di piu grande
nel cuore e nella mente dell uomo. Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione
contro di Lord Byron, e la conformita della loro idee e dei studii loro
contribui a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che
colla loro vita."]

[Footnote 16: A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found
among his papers. He is supposed to have intrusted it to a professed
agent of the Constitutional Government of Naples, who had waited upon
him secretly at Ravenna, and, under the pretence of having been waylaid
and robbed, induced his Lordship to supply him with money for his
return. This man turned out afterwards to have been a spy, and the above
paper, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands of the
Pontifical Government.]

[Footnote 17: "Un Inglese amico della liberta avendo sentito che i
Napolitani permettono anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona
causa, bramerebbe l'onore di vedere accettata la sua offerta di mille
luigi, la quale egli azzarda di fare. Gia testimonio oculare non molto
fa della tirannia dei Barbari negli stati da loro occupati nell' Italia,
egli vede con tutto l'entusiasmo di un uomo ben nato la generosa
determinazione dei Napolitani per confermare la loro bene acquistata
indipendenza. Membro della Camera dei Pari della nazione Inglese egli
sarebbe un traditore ai principii che hanno posto sul trono la famiglia
regnante d'Inghilterra se non riconoscesse la bella lezione di bel nuovo
data ai popoli ed ai Re. L'offerta che egli brama di presentare e poca
in se stessa, come bisogna che sia sempre quella di un individuo ad una
nazione, ma egli spera che non sara l'ultima dalla parte dei suoi
compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle frontiere, e il sentimento della
sua poca capacita personale di contribuire efficacimente a servire la
nazione gl' impedisce di proporsi come degno della piu piccola
commissione che domanda dell' esperienza e del talento. Ma, se come
semplice volontario la sua presenza non fosse un incomodo a quello che
l'accetasse egli riparebbe a qualunque luogo indicato dal Governo
Napolitano, per ubbidire agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo
superiore, senza avere altri motivi che quello di dividere il destino di
una brava nazione resistendo alla se dicente Santa Allianza la quale
aggiunge l'ippocrisia al despotismo."]

[Footnote 18: Among his "Detached Thoughts" I find this general passion
for liberty thus strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his
own choice of Venice as a place of residence, "I remembered General
Ludlow's domal inscription, 'Omne solum forti patria,' and sat down free
in a country which had been one of slavery for centuries," he adds, "But
there is _no_ freedom, even for _masters_, in the midst of slaves. It
makes my blood boil to see the thing. I sometimes wish that I was the
owner of Africa, to do at once what Wilberforce will do in time, viz.
sweep slavery from her deserts, and look on upon the first dance of
their freedom.

"As to political slavery, so general, it is men's own fault: if they
_will_ be slaves, let them! Yet it is but 'a word and a blow.' See how
England formerly, France, Spain, Portugal, America, Switzerland, freed
themselves! There is no one instance of a long contest in which men did
not triumph over systems. If Tyranny misses her _first_ spring, she is
cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted."]

* * * * *

EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON. 1821.

"Ravenna, January 4. 1821.

"'A sudden thought strikes me.' Let me begin a Journal once more. The
last I kept was in Switzerland, in record of a tour made in the Bernese
Alps, which I made to send to my sister in 1816, and I suppose that she
has it still, for she wrote to me that she was pleased with it. Another,
and longer, I kept in 1813-1814, which I gave to Thomas Moore in the
same year.

"This morning I gat me up late, as usual--weather bad--bad as
England--worse. The snow of last week melting to the sirocco of to-day,
so that there were two d----d things at once. Could not even get to ride
on horseback in the forest. Stayed at home all the morning--looked at
the fire--wondered when the post would come. Post came at the Ave Maria,
instead of half-past one o'clock, as it ought, Galignani's Messengers,
six in number--a letter from Faenza, but none from England. Very sulky
in consequence (for there ought to have been letters), and ate in
consequence a copious dinner; for when I am vexed, it makes me swallow
quicker--but drank very little.

"I was out of spirits--read the papers--thought what _fame_ was, on
reading, in a case of murder, that 'Mr. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold
some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some
gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a
_book_, the Life of _Pamela_, which he was _tearing_ for _waste_ paper,
&c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c. and a _leaf_ of _Pamela wrapt round
the bacon._' What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of _living_
authors (_i.e._ while alive)--he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy
and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human
nature) and of Pope (the most beautiful of poets)--what would he have
said, could he have traced his pages from their place on the French
prince's toilets (see Boswell's Johnson) to the grocer's counter and the
gipsy-murderess's bacon!!!

"What would he have said? what can any body say, save what Solomon said
long before us? After all, it is but passing from one counter to
another, from the bookseller's to the other tradesman's--grocer or
pastry-cook. For my part, I have met with most poetry upon trunks; so
that I am apt to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship.

"Wrote five letters in about half an hour, short and savage, to all my
rascally correspondents. Carriage came. Heard the news of three murders
at Faenza and Forli--a carabinier, a smuggler, and an attorney--all last
night. The two first in a quarrel, the latter by premeditation.

"Three weeks ago--almost a month--the 7th it was--I picked up the
commandant, mortally wounded, out of the street; he died in my house;
assassins unknown, but presumed political. His brethren wrote from Rome
last night to thank me for having assisted him in his last moments. Poor
fellow! it was a pity; he was a good soldier, but imprudent. It was
eight in the evening when they killed him. We heard the shot; my
servants and I ran out, and found him expiring, with five wounds, two
whereof mortal--by slugs they seemed. I examined him, but did not go to
the dissection next morning.

"Carriage at 8 or so--went to visit La Contessa G.--found her playing on
the piano-forte--talked till ten, when the Count, her father, and the no
less Count, her brother, came in from the theatre. Play, they said,
Alfieri's Filippo--well received.

"Two days ago the King of Naples passed through Bologna on his way to
congress. My servant Luigi brought the news. I had sent him to Bologna
for a lamp. How will it end? Time will show.

"Came home at eleven, or rather before. If the road and weather are
comfortable, mean to ride to-morrow. High time--almost a week at this
work--snow, sirocco, one day--frost and snow the other--sad climate for
Italy. But the two seasons, last and present, are extraordinary. Read a
Life of Leonardo da Vinci by Rossi--ruminated--wrote this much, and will
go to bed.

"January 5. 1821.

"Rose late--dull and drooping--the weather dripping and dense. Snow on
the ground, and sirocco above in the sky, like yesterday. Roads up to
the horse's belly, so that riding (at least for pleasure) is not very
feasible. Added a postscript to my letter to Murray. Read the
conclusion, for the fiftieth time (I have read all W. Scott's novels at
least fifty times), of the third series of 'Tales of my
Landlord,'--grand work--Scotch Fielding, as well as great English
poet--wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him.

"Dined versus six o' the clock. Forgot that there was a plum-pudding, (I
have added, lately, _eating_ to my 'family of vices,') and had dined
before I knew it. Drank half a bottle of some sort of spirits--probably
spirits of wine; for what they call brandy, rum, &c. &c. here is nothing
but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did _not_ eat two apples,
which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the
tame (but _not tamed_) _crow_. Read Mitford's History of
Greece--Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Up to this present
_moment writing, 6 minutes before eight o' the clock_--French hours, not
Italian.

"Hear the carriage--order pistols and great coat, as usual--necessary
articles. Weather cold--carriage open, and inhabitants somewhat
savage--rather treacherous and highly inflamed by politics. Fine
fellows, though, good materials for a nation. Out of chaos God made a
world, and out of high passions comes a people.

"Clock strikes--going out to make love. Somewhat perilous, but not
disagreeable. Memorandum--a new screen put up to-day. It is rather
antique, but will do with a little repair.

"Thaw continues--hopeful that riding may be practicable to-morrow. Sent
the papers to Alli.--grand events coming.

"11 o' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Contessa G. Nata G.G.
Found her beginning my letter of answer to the thanks of Alessio del
Pinto of Rome for assisting his brother the late Commandant in his last
moments, as I had begged her to pen my reply for the purer Italian, I
being an ultra-montane, little skilled in the set phrase of Tuscany. Cut
short the letter--finish it another day. Talked of Italy, patriotism,
Alfieri, Madame Albany, and other branches of learning. Also Sallust's
Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her
brother, Il Conte Pietro--at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.

"Talked of various modes of warfare--of the Hungarian and Highland modes
of broad-sword exercise, in both whereof I was once a moderate 'master
of fence.' Settled that the R. will break out on the 7th or 8th of
March, in which appointment I should trust, had it not been settled that
it was to have broken out in October, 1820. But those Bolognese shirked
the Romagnuoles.

"'It is all one to Ranger.' One must not be particular, but take
rebellion when it lies in the way. Come home--read the 'Ten Thousand'
again, and will go to bed.

"Mem.--Ordered Fletcher (at four o'clock this afternoon) to copy out
seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such
blunders as a school-boy might detect rather than commit. Such are the
sages! What must they be, when such as I can stumble on their mistakes
or misstatements? I will go to bed, for I find that I grow cynical.

"January 6. 1821.

"Mist--thaw--slop--rain. No stirring out on horseback. Read Spence's
Anecdotes. Pope a fine fellow--always thought him so. Corrected blunders
in _nine_ apophthegms of Bacon--all historical--and read Mitford's
Greece. Wrote an epigram. Turned to a passage in Guinguene--ditto in
Lord Holland's Lope de Vega. Wrote a note on Don Juan.

"At eight went out to visit. Heard a little music--like music. Talked
with Count Pietro G. of the Italian comedian Vestris, who is now at
Rome--have seen him often act in Venice--a good actor--very. Somewhat of
a mannerist; but excellent in broad comedy, as well as in the
sentimental pathetic. He has made me frequently laugh and cry, neither
of which is now a very easy matter--at least, for a player to produce in
me.

"Thought of the state of women under the ancient Greeks--convenient
enough. Present state a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalry and
feudal ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind home--and be
well fed and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well educated, too, in
religion--but to read neither poetry nor politics--nothing but books of
piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also a little gardening and
ploughing now and then. I have seen them mending the roads in Epirus
with good success. Why not, as well as hay-making and milking?

"Came home, and read Mitford again, and played with my mastiff--gave him
his supper. Made another reading to the epigram, but the turn the same.
To-night at the theatre, there being a prince on his throne in the last
scene of the comedy,--the audience laughed, and asked him for a
_Constitution_. This shows the state of the public mind here, as well as
the assassinations. It won't do. There must be an universal
republic,--and there ought to be.

"The crow is lame of a leg--wonder how it happened--some fool trod upon
his toe, I suppose. The falcon pretty brisk--the cats large and
noisy--the monkeys I have not looked to since the cold weather, as they
suffer by being brought up. Horses must be gay--get a ride as soon as
weather serves. Deuced muggy still--an Italian winter is a sad thing,
but all the other seasons are charming.

"What is the reason that I have been, all my lifetime, more or less
_ennuye?_ and that, if any thing, I am rather less so now than I was at
twenty, as far as my recollection serves? I do not know how to answer
this, but presume that it is constitutional,--as well as the waking in
low spirits, which I have invariably done for many years. Temperance and
exercise, which I have practised at times, and for a long time together
vigorously and violently, made little or no difference. Violent passions
did;--when under their immediate influence--it is odd, but--I was in
agitated, but _not_ in depressed, spirits.

"A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary inebriation, like light
champagne, upon me. But wine and spirits make me sullen and savage to
ferocity--silent, however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not
spoken to. Swimming also raises my spirits,--but in general they are
low, and get daily lower. That is _hopeless_; for I do not think I am so
much _ennuye_ as I was at nineteen. The proof is, that then I must game,
or drink, or be in motion of some kind, or I was miserable. At present,
I can mope in quietness; and like being alone better than any
company--except the lady's whom I serve. But I feel a something, which
makes me think that, if I ever reach near to old age, like Swift, 'I
shall die at top' first. Only I do not dread idiotism or madness so much
as he did. On the contrary, I think some quieter stages of both must be
preferable to much of what men think the possession of their senses.

"January 7. 1821, Sunday.

"Still rain--mist--snow--drizzle--and all the incalculable combinations
of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery. Head Spence, and
turned over Roscoe, to find a passage I have not found. Read the fourth
vol. of W. Scott's second series of 'Tales of my Landlord.' Dined. Read
the Lugano Gazette. Read--I forget what. At eight went to conversazione.
Found there the Countess Geltrude, Betti V. and her husband, and others.
Pretty black-eyed woman that--_only_ nineteen--same age as Teresa, who
is prettier, though.

"The Count Pietro G. took me aside to say that the Patriots have had
notice from Forli (twenty miles off) that to-night the government and
its party mean to strike a stroke--that the Cardinal here has had orders
to make several arrests immediately, and that, in consequence, the
Liberals are arming, and have posted patroles in the streets, to sound
the alarm and give notice to fight for it.

"He asked me 'what should be done?' I answered, 'Fight for it, rather
than be taken in detail;' and offered, if any of them are in immediate
apprehension of arrest, to receive them in my house (which is
defensible), and to defend them, with my servants and themselves (we
have arms and ammunition), as long as we can,--or to try to get them
away under cloud of night. On going home, I offered him the pistols
which I had about me--but he refused, but said he would come off to me
in case of accidents.

"It wants half an hour of midnight, and rains;--as Gibbet says, 'a fine
night for their enterprise--dark as hell, and blows like the devil.' If
the row don't happen _now_, it must soon. I thought that their system of
shooting people would soon produce a re-action--and now it seems coming.
I will do what I can in the way of combat, though a little out of
exercise. The cause is a good one.

"Turned over and over half a score of books for the passage in question,
and can't find it. Expect to hear the drum and the musquetry momently
(for they swear to resist, and are right,)--but I hear nothing, as yet,
save the plash of the rain and the gusts of the wind at intervals. Don't
like to go to bed, because I hate to be waked, and would rather sit up
for the row, if there is to be one.

"Mended the fire--have got the arms--and a book or two, which I shall
turn over. I know little of their numbers, but think the Carbonari
strong enough to beat the troops, even here. With twenty men this house
might be defended for twenty-four hours against any force to be brought
against it, now in this place, for the same time; and, in such a time,
the country would have notice, and would rise,--if ever they _will_
rise, of which there is some doubt. In the mean time, I may as well read
as do any thing else, being alone.

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