Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II
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Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II
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"It is in men as in soils," says Swift, "where sometimes there is a vein
of gold which the owner knows not of." But Lord Byron had made the
discovery of the vein, without, as it would seem, being aware of its
value. I have already had occasion to observe that, even while occupied
with the composition of Childe Harold, it is questionable whether he
himself was yet fully conscious of the new powers, both of thought and
feeling, that had been awakened in him; and the strange estimate we now
find him forming of his own production appears to warrant the remark. It
would seem, indeed, as if, while the imaginative powers of his mind had
received such an impulse forward, the faculty of judgment, slower in its
developement, was still immature, and that of _self_-judgment, the most
difficult of all, still unattained.
On the other hand, from the deference which, particularly at this period
of his life, he was inclined to pay to the opinions of those with whom
he associated, it would be fairer, perhaps, to conclude that this
erroneous valuation arose rather from a diffidence in his own judgment
than from any deficiency of it. To his college companions, almost all of
whom were his superiors in scholarship, and some of them even, at this
time, his competitors in poetry, he looked up with a degree of fond and
admiring deference, for which his ignorance of his own intellectual
strength alone could account; and the example, as well as tastes, of
these young writers being mostly on the side of established models,
their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain
degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original
path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps,
towards school recollections[6], may have had a share in prompting his
preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable;--at
least, that it was enough to lead him, untried as he had yet been in the
new path, to content himself, for the present, with following up his
success in the old. We have seen, indeed, that the manuscript of the two
Cantos of Childe Harold had, previously to its being placed in the hands
of Mr. Dallas, been submitted by the noble author to the perusal of some
friend--the first and only one, it appears, who at that time had seen
them. Who this fastidious critic was, Mr. Dallas has not mentioned; but
the sweeping tone of censure in which he conveyed his remarks was such
as, at any period of his career, would have disconcerted the judgment
of one, who, years after, in all the plenitude of his fame, confessed,
that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind was more painful to him
than the applause of the highest was pleasing."[7]
Though on every thing that, after his arrival at the age of manhood, he
produced, some mark or other of the master-hand may be traced; yet, to
print the whole of his Paraphrase of Horace, which extends to nearly 800
lines, would be, at the best, but a questionable compliment to his
memory. That the reader, however, may be enabled to form some opinion of
a performance, which--by an error or caprice of judgment, unexampled,
perhaps, in the annals of literature--its author, for a time, preferred
to the sublime musings of Childe Harold, I shall here select a few such
passages from the Paraphrase as may seem calculated to give an idea as
well of its merits as its defects.
The opening of the poem is, with reference to the original, ingenious:--
"Who would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace
His costly canvass with each flatter'd face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush?
Or should some limner join, for show or sale,
A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail?
Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen)
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems
The book, which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic nightmares, without head or feet."
The following is pointed, and felicitously expressed:--
"Then glide down Grub Street, fasting and forgot,
Laugh'd into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till--true."
Of the graver parts, the annexed is a favourable specimen:--
"New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase:
What Chaucer, Spenser, did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott,
Since they, by force of rhyme, and force of lungs,
Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues?
'Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present
Reforms in writing as in parliament.
"As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain;
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar--
All, all must perish. But, surviving last,
The love of letters half preserves the past:
True,--some decay, yet not a few survive,
Though those shall sink which now appear to thrive,
As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey."
I quote what follows chiefly for the sake of the note attached to it:--
"Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt?--See Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean.[8]
"Blank verse is now with one consent allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side;
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song hero rants in modern plays;--
While modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point because they wrote in verse;
But so Thalia pleases to appear,--
Poor virgin!--damn'd some twenty times a year!"
There is more of poetry in the following verses upon Milton than in any
other passage throughout the Paraphrase:--
"'Awake a louder and a loftier strain,'
And, pray, what follows from his boiling brain?
He sinks to S * *'s level in a trice,
Whose epic mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire
The tempered warblings of his master lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit'
He speaks; but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades, echo with the song."
The annexed sketch contains some lively touches:--
"Behold him, Freshman!--forced no more to groan
O'er Virgil's devilish verses[9], and--his own;
Prayers are too tedious, lectures too abstruse,
He flies from T----ll's frown to 'Fordham's Mews;'
(Unlucky T----ll, doom'd to daily cares
By pugilistic pupils and by bears!)
Fines, tutors, tasks, conventions, threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket plain:
Rough with his elders; with his equals rash;
Civil to sharpers; prodigal of cash.
Fool'd, pillaged, dunn'd, he wastes his terms away;
And, unexpell'd perhaps, retires M.A.:--
Master of Arts!--as Hells and Clubs[10] proclaim,
Where scarce a black-leg bears a brighter name.
"Launch'd into life, extinct his early fire,
He apes the selfish prudence of his sire;
Marries for money; chooses friends for rank;
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow--for himself was there;
Mute though he votes, unless when call'd to cheer,
His son's so sharp--he'll see the dog a peer!
"Manhood declines; age palsies every limb;
He quits the scene, or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves,
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
Counts cent. per cent., and smiles, or vainly frets
O'er hoards diminish'd by young Hopeful's debts;
Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
Complete in all life's lessons--but to die;
Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
Commending every time save times like these;
Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
Expires unwept, is buried--let him rot!"
In speaking of the opera, he says:--
"Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,
Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
His anguish doubled by his own 'encore!'
Squeezed in 'Fop's Alley,' jostled by the beaux,
Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes,
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease
Till the dropp'd curtain gives a glad release:
Why this and more he suffers, can ye guess?--
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!"
The concluding couplet of the following lines is amusingly
characteristic of that mixture of fun and bitterness with which their
author sometimes spoke in conversation;--so much so, that those who knew
him might almost fancy they hear him utter the words:--
"But every thing has faults, nor is't unknown
That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
And wayward voices at their owner's call,
With all his best endeavours, only squall;
Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
And double barrels (damn them) miss their mark!"[11]
One more passage, with the humorous note appended to it, will complete
the whole amount of my favourable specimens:--
"And that's enough--then write and print so fast,--
If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last?
They storm the types, they publish one and all,
They leap the counter, and they leave the stall:--
Provincial maidens, men of high command,
Yea, baronets, have ink'd the bloody hand!
Cash cannot quell them--Pollio play'd this prank:
(Then Phoebus first found credit in a bank;)
Not all the living only, but the dead
Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head!
Damn'd all their days, they posthumously thrive,
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Reviews record this epidemic crime,
Those books of martyrs to the rage for rhyme
Alas! woe worth the scribbler, often seen
In Morning Post or Monthly Magazine!
There lurk his earlier lays, but soon, hot-press'd,
Behold a quarto!--tarts must tell the rest!
Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets or madder lords,
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft,
The cobbler-laureates sing to Capel Lofft!"[12]
From these select specimens, which comprise, altogether, little more
than an eighth of the whole poem, the reader may be enabled to form some
notion of the remainder, which is, for the most part, of a very inferior
quality, and, in some parts, descending to the depths of doggerel. Who,
for instance, could trace the hand of Byron in such "prose, fringed with
rhyme," as the following?--
"Peace to Swift's faults! his wit hath made them pass
Unmatch'd by all, save matchless Hudibras,
Whose author is perhaps the first we meet
Who from our couplet lopp'd two final feet;
Nor less in merit than the longer line
This measure moves, a favourite of the Nine.
"Though at first view, eight feet may seem in vain
Form'd, save in odes, to bear a serious strain,
Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
Heroic rhyme, but most in love or war,
Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
Are curb'd too much by long recurring rhyme.
"In sooth, I do not know, or greatly care
To learn who our first English strollers were,
Or if--till roofs received the vagrant art--
Our Muse--like that of Thespis--kept a cart.
But this is certain, since our Shakspeare's days,
There's pomp enough, if little else, in plays;
Nor will Melpomene ascend her throne
Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.
"Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic fame,
If all our bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop like Pope to polish by the way?"
In tracing the fortunes of men, it is not a little curious to observe,
how often the course of a whole life has depended on one single step.
Had Lord Byron now persisted in his original purpose of giving this poem
to the press, instead of Childe Harold, it is more than probable that he
would have been lost, as a great poet, to the world.[13] Inferior as the
Paraphrase is, in every respect, to his former Satire, and, in some
places, even descending below the level of under-graduate versifiers,
its failure, there can be little doubt, would have been certain and
signal;--his former assailants would have resumed their advantage over
him, and either, in the bitterness of his mortification, he would have
flung Childe Harold into the fire; or, had he summoned up sufficient
confidence to publish that poem, its reception, even if sufficient to
retrieve him in the eyes of the public and his own, could never have, at
all, resembled that explosion of success,--that instantaneous and
universal acclaim of admiration into which, coming, as it were, fresh
from the land of song, he now surprised the world, and in the midst of
which he was borne, buoyant and self-assured, along, through a
succession of new triumphs, each more splendid than the last.
Happily, the better judgment of his friends averted such a risk; and he
at length consented to the immediate publication of Childe
Harold,--still, however, to the last, expressing his doubts of its
merits, and his alarm at the sort of reception it might meet with in the
world.
"I did all I could," says his adviser, "to raise his opinion of this
composition, and I succeeded; but he varied much in his feelings about
it, nor was he, as will appear, at his ease until the world decided on
its merit. He said again and again that I was going to get him into a
scrape with his old enemies, and that none of them would rejoice more
than the Edinburgh Reviewers at an opportunity to humble him. He said I
must not put his name to it. I entreated him to leave it to me, and
that I would answer for this poem silencing all his enemies."
The publication being now determined upon, there arose some doubts and
difficulty as to a publisher. Though Lord Byron had intrusted Cawthorn
with what he considered to be his surer card, the "Hints from Horace,"
he did not, it seems, think him of sufficient station in the trade to
give a sanction or fashion to his more hazardous experiment. The former
refusal of the Messrs. Longman[14] to publish his "English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers" was not forgotten; and he expressly stipulated with
Mr. Dallas that the manuscript should not be offered to that house. An
application was, at first, made to Mr. Miller, of Albemarle Street; but,
in consequence of the severity with which Lord Elgin was treated in the
poem, Mr. Miller (already the publisher and bookseller of this latter
nobleman) declined the work. Even this circumstance,--so apprehensive
was the poet for his fame,--began to re-awaken all the qualms and
terrors he had, at first, felt; and, had any further difficulties or
objections arisen, it is more than probable he might have relapsed into
his original intention. It was not long, however, before a person was
found willing and proud to undertake the publication. Mr. Murray, who,
at this period, resided in Fleet Street, having, some time before,
expressed a desire to be allowed to publish some work of Lord Byron, it
was in his hands that Mr. Dallas now placed the manuscript of Childe
Harold;--and thus was laid the first foundation of that connection
between this gentleman and the noble poet, which continued, with but a
temporary interruption, throughout the lifetime of the one, and has
proved an abundant source of honour, as well as emolument, to the other.
While thus busily engaged in his literary projects, and having, besides,
some law affairs to transact with his agent, he was called suddenly away
to Newstead by the intelligence of an event which seems to have affected
his mind far more deeply than, considering all the circumstances of the
case, could have been expected. Mrs. Byron, whose excessive corpulence
rendered her, at all times, rather a perilous subject for illness, had
been of late indisposed, but not to any alarming degree; nor does it
appear that, when the following note was written, there existed any
grounds for apprehension as to her state.
[Footnote 5: It is, however, less wonderful that authors should thus
misjudge their productions, when whole generations have sometimes fallen
into the same sort of error. The Sonnets of Petrarch were, by the
learned of his day, considered only worthy of the ballad-singers by whom
they were chanted about the streets; while his Epic Poem, "Africa," of
which few now even know the existence, was sought for on all sides, and
the smallest fragment of it begged from the author, for the libraries of
the learned.]
[Footnote 6: Gray, under the influence of a similar predilection,
preferred, for a long time, his Latin poems to those by which he has
gained such a station in English literature. "Shall we attribute this,"
says Mason, "to his having been educated at Eton, or to what other
cause? Certain it is, that when I first knew him, he seemed to set a
greater value on his Latin poetry than on that which he had composed in
his native language."]
[Footnote 7: One of the manuscript notes of Lord Byron on Mr.
D'Israeli's work, already referred to.--Vol. i. p. 144.]
[Footnote 8: "Mac Flecknoe, the Dunciad, and all Swift's lampooning
ballads.--Whatever their other works may be, these originated in
personal feelings and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the
ability of these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts
from the personal, character of the writers."]
[Footnote 9: "Harvey, the _circulator_ of the _circulation_ of the
blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration, and say
'the book had a devil.' Now, such a character as I am copying would
probably fling it away also, but rather wish that the devil had the
book; not from a dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of
hexameters. Indeed, the public-school penance of 'Long and Short' is
enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life,
and perhaps so far may be an advantage."]
[Footnote 10: "'Hell,' a gaming-house so called, where you risk little,
and are cheated a good deal: 'Club,' a pleasant purgatory, where you
lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all."]
[Footnote 11: "As Mr. Pope took the liberty of damning Homer, to whom he
was under great obligations--'And Homer (damn him) calls'--it may be
presumed that any body or any thing may be damned in verse by poetical
license; and in case of accident, I beg leave to plead so illustrious a
precedent."]
[Footnote 12: "This well-meaning gentleman has spoilt some excellent
shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the
industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set
all Somersetshire singing. Nor has the malady confined itself to one
county. Pratt, too (who once was wiser), has caught the contagion of
patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow, named Blackett, into poetry; but
he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of
'Remains' utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical
twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well, but the
'Tragedies' are as rickety as if they had been the offspring of an Earl
or a Seatonian prize-poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly
answerable for his end, and it ought to be an indictable offence. But
this is the least they have done; for, by a refinement of barbarity,
they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what
he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes, these
rakers of 'Remains' come under the statute against resurrection-men.
What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in
Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? is it so bad to unearth his bones as
his blunders? is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath than his
soul in an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may
be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed
through life with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the
other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock
of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child. Now,
might not some of this 'sutor ultra crepidam's' friends and seducers
have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And
then, his inscriptions split into so many modicums! 'To the Duchess of
So Much, the Right Honble. So-and-so, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these
volumes are,' &c. &c. Why, this is doling out the 'soft milk of
dedication' in gills; there is but a quart, and he divides it among a
dozen. Why, Pratt! hadst thou not a puff left? dost thou think six
families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a
book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the
grocer, and the dedication to the d-v-l."]
[Footnote 13: That he himself attributed every thing to fortune, appears
from the following passage in one of his journals: "Like Sylla, I have
always believed that all things depend upon fortune, and nothing upon
ourselves. I am not aware of any one thought or action worthy of being
called good to myself or others, which is not to be attributed to the
good goddess, FORTUNE!"]
[Footnote 14: The grounds on which the Messrs. Longman refused to
publish his Lordship's Satire, were the severe attacks it contained upon
Mr. Southey and others of their literary friends.]
* * * * *
"Reddish's Hotel, St. James's Street, London, July 23. 1811.
"My dear Madam,
"I am only detained by Mr. H * * to sign some copyhold papers, and
will give you timely notice of my approach. It is with great
reluctance I remain in town. I shall pay a short visit as we go on
to Lancashire on Rochdale business. I shall attend to your
directions, of course, and am,
"With great respect, yours ever,"
"BYRON.
"P.S.--You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine; and me
only as a visitor."
* * * * *
On his going abroad, she had conceived a sort of superstitious fancy
that she should never see him again; and when he returned, safe and
well, and wrote to inform her that he should soon see her at Newstead,
she said to her waiting-woman, "If I should be dead before Byron comes
down, what a strange thing it would be!"--and so, in fact, it happened.
At the end of July, her illness took a new and fatal turn; and, so sadly
characteristic was the close of the poor lady's life, that a fit of
rage, brought on, it is said, by reading over the upholsterer's bills,
was the ultimate cause of her death. Lord Byron had, of course, prompt
intelligence of the attack. But, though he started instantly from town,
he was too late,--she had breathed her last.
The following letter, it will be perceived, was written on his way to
Newstead.
LETTER 55. TO DR. PIGOT.
"Newport Pagnell, August 2. 1811.
"My dear Doctor,
"My poor mother died yesterday! and I am on my way from town to
attend her to the family vault. I heard _one_ day of her illness,
the _next_ of her death. Thank God her last moments were most
tranquil. I am told she was in little pain, and not aware of her
situation. I now feel the truth of Mr. Gray's observation, 'That we
can only have _one_ mother.' Peace be with her! I have to thank you
for your expressions of regard; and as in six weeks I shall be in
Lancashire on business, I may extend to Liverpool and Chester,--at
least I shall endeavour.
"If it will be any satisfaction, I have to inform you that in
November next the Editor of the Scourge will be tried for two
different libels on the late Mrs. B. and myself (the decease of
Mrs. B. makes no difference in the proceedings); and as he is
guilty, by his very foolish and unfounded assertion, of a breach of
privilege, he will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour.
"I inform you of this as you seem interested in the affair, which
is now in the hands of the Attorney-general.
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