Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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[Footnote 71: He here alludes to an odd fancy or trick of his
own;--whenever he was at a loss for something to say, he used always
to gabble over "1 2 3 4 5 6 7."]
[Footnote 72: Notwithstanding the abuse which, evidently more in sport
than seriousness, he lavishes, in the course of these letters, upon
Southwell, he was, in after days, taught to feel that the hours which
he had passed in this place were far more happy than any he had known
afterwards. In a letter written not long since to his servant,
Fletcher, by a lady who had been intimate with him, in his young days,
at Southwell, there are the following words:--"Your poor, good master
always called me 'Old Piety,' when I preached to him. When he paid me
his last visit, he said, 'Well, good friend, I shall never be so happy
again as I was in old Southwell.'" His real opinion of the advantages
of this town, as a place of residence, will be seen in a subsequent
letter, where he most strenuously recommends it, in that point of
view, to Mr. Dallas.]
[Footnote 73: It may be as well to mention here the sequel of this
enthusiastic attachment. In the year 1811 young Edleston died of a
consumption, and the following letter, addressed by Lord Byron to the
mother of his fair Southwell correspondent, will show with what
melancholy faithfulness, among the many his heart had then to mourn
for, he still dwelt on the memory of his young college friend:--
"Cambridge, Oct. 28. 1811.
"Dear Madam,
"I am about to write to you on a silly subject, and yet I cannot well
do otherwise. You may remember a _cornelian_, which some years ago I
consigned to Miss ----, indeed _gave_ to her, and now I am going to
make the most selfish and rude of requests. The person who gave it to
me, when I was very young, is _dead_, and though a long time has
elapsed since we met, as it was the only memorial I possessed of that
person (in whom I was very much interested), it has acquired a value
by this event I could have wished it never to have borne in my eyes.
If, therefore, Miss ---- should have preserved it, I must, under these
circumstances, beg her to excuse my requesting it to be transmitted to
me at No. 8. St. James's Street, London, and I will replace it by
something she may remember me by equally well. As she was always so
kind as to feel interested in the fate of him that formed the subject
of our conversation, you may tell her that the giver of that cornelian
died in May last of a consumption, at the age of twenty-one, making
the sixth, within four months, of friends and relatives that I have
lost between May and the end of August.
"Believe me, dear Madam, yours very sincerely,
"BYRON.
"P.S. I go to London to-morrow."
The cornelian heart was, of course, returned, and Lord Byron, at the
same time, reminded that he had left it with Miss ----]
[Footnote 74: In the Collection of his Poems printed for private
circulation, he had inserted some severe verses on Dr. Butler, which
he omitted in the subsequent publication,--at the same time explaining
why he did so, in a note little less severe than the verses.]
[Footnote 75: This first attempt of Lord Byron at reviewing (for it
will be seen that he, once or twice afterwards, tried his hand at this
least poetical of employments) is remarkable only as showing how
plausibly he could assume the established tone and phraseology of
these minor judgment-seats of criticism. For instance:--"The volumes
before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has
not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The
characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are simple and flowing,
though occasionally inharmonious, verse,--strong and sometimes
irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments.
Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the
poems possess a native elegance," &c. &c. &c. If Mr. Wordsworth ever
chanced to cast his eye over this article, how little could he have
suspected that under that dull prosaic mask lurked one who, in five
short years from thence, would rival even _him_ in poetry.]
[Footnote 76: This plan (which he never put in practice) had been
talked of by him before he left Southwell, and is thus noticed in a
letter of his fair correspondent to her brother:--"How can you ask if
Lord B. is going to visit the Highlands in the summer? Why, don't
_you_ know that he never knows his own mind for ten minutes together?
I tell _him_ he is as fickle as the winds, and as uncertain as the
waves."]
[Footnote 77: We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters,
that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too common a
folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood
persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily,
this boyish desire of being thought worse than he really was, remained
with Lord Byron, as did some other feelings and foibles of his
boyhood, long after the period when, with others, they are past and
forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but beginning to outgrow them,
when he was snatched away.]
[Footnote 78: The poem afterwards enlarged and published under the
title of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." It appears from this
that the ground-work of that satire had been laid some time before the
appearance of the article in the Edinburgh Review.]
[Footnote 79: Sept. 1807. This Review, in pronouncing upon the young
author's future career, showed itself somewhat more "prophet-like"
than the great oracle of the North. In noticing the Elegy on Newstead
Abbey, the writer says, "We could not but hail, with something of
prophetic rapture, the hope conveyed in the closing stanza:--
"Haply thy sun, emerging, yet may shine,
Thee to irradiate with meridian ray," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 80: The first number of a monthly publication called "The
Satirist," in which there appeared afterwards some low and personal
attacks upon him.]
[Footnote 81: "Look out for a people entirely destitute of religion:
if you find them at all, be assured that they are but few degrees
removed from brutes."--HUME.
The reader will find this avowal of Hume turned eloquently to the
advantage of religion in a Collection of Sermons, entitled, "The
Connexion of Christianity with Human Happiness," written by one of
Lord Byron's earliest and most valued friends, the Rev. William
Harness.]
[Footnote 82: The only thing remarkable about Walsh's preface is, that
Dr. Johnson praises it as "very judicious," but is, at the same time,
silent respecting the poems to which it is prefixed.]
[Footnote 83: Characters in the novel called _Percival_.]
[Footnote 84: This appeal to the imagination of his correspondent was
not altogether without effect.--"I considered," says Mr. Dallas,
"these letters, _though evidently grounded on some occurrences in the
still earlier part of his life_, rather as _jeux d'esprit_ than as a
true portrait."]
[Footnote 85: He appears to have had in his memory Voltaire's lively
account of Zadig's learning: "Il savait de la metaphysique ce qu'on en
a su dans tous les ages,--c'est a dire, fort peu de chose," &c.]
[Footnote 86: The doctrine of Hume, who resolves all virtue into
sentiment.--See his "Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals."]
[Footnote 87: See his Letter to Anthony Collins, 1703-4, where he
speaks of "those sharp heads, which were for damning his book, because
of its discouraging the staple commodity of the place, which in his
time was called _hogs' shearing_."]
[Footnote 88: Hard, "Discourses on Poetical Imitation."]
[Footnote 89: Prologue to the University of Oxford.]
[Footnote 90: "'Tis a quality very observable in human nature, that
any opposition which does not entirely discourage and intimidate us,
has rather a contrary effect, and inspires us with a more than
ordinary grandeur and magnanimity. In collecting our force to overcome
the opposition, we invigorate the soul, and give it an elevation with
which otherwise it would never have been acquainted."--Hume, _Treatise
of Human Nature._]
[Footnote 91: "The colour of our whole life is generally such as the
three or four first years in which we are our own masters make
it."--Cowper.]
[Footnote 92: "I refer to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master,
John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism, who I trust still retains the
strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour
and athletic, as well as mental, accomplishments."--_Note on Don Juan,
Canto II_.]
[Footnote 93: Thus addressed always by Lord Byron, but without any
right to the distinction.]
[Footnote 94: The Journal entitled by himself "Detached Thoughts."]
[Footnote 95: Few philosophers, however, have been so indulgent to the
pride of birth as Rousseau.--"S'il est un orgueil pardonnable (he
says) apres celui qui se tire du merite personnel, c'est celui qui se
tire de la naissance."--_Confess._]
[Footnote 96: This gentleman, who took orders in the year 1814, is the
author of a spirited translation of Juvenal, and of other works of
distinguished merit. He was long in correspondence with Lord Byron,
and to him I am indebted for some interesting letters of his noble
friend, which will be given in the course of the following pages.]
[Footnote 97: He had also, at one time, as appears from an anecdote
preserved by Spence, some thoughts of burying this dog in his garden,
and placing a monument over him, with the inscription, "Oh, rare
Bounce!"
In speaking of the members of Rousseau's domestic establishment, Hume
says, "She (Therese) governs him as absolutely as a nurse does a
child. In her absence, his dog has acquired that ascendant. His
affection for that creature is beyond all expression or
conception."--_Private Correspondence._ See an instance which he gives
of this dog's influence over the philosopher, p. 143.
In Burns's elegy on the death of his favourite Mailie, we find the
friendship even of a sheep set on a level with that of man:--
"Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed:
A friend mair faithful ne'er came nigh him,
Than Mailie dead."
In speaking of the favourite dogs of great poets, we must not forget
Cowper's little spaniel "Beau;" nor will posterity fail to add to the
list the name of Sir Walter Scott's "Maida."]
[Footnote 98: In the epitaph, as first printed in his friend's
Miscellany, this line runs thus:--
"I knew but one unchanged--and here he lies."
]
[Footnote 99: We are told that Wieland used to have his works printed
thus for the purpose of correction, and said that he found great
advantage in it. The practice is, it appears, not unusual in Germany.]
[Footnote 100: See his lines on Major Howard, the son of Lord
Carlisle, who was killed at Waterloo:--
"Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And _partly that I did his sire some wrong_."
CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO III.]
[Footnote 101: In the fifth edition of the Satire (suppressed by him
in 1812) he again changed his mind respecting this gentleman, and
altered the line to
"I leave topography to _rapid_ Gell;"
explaining his reasons for the change in the following
note:--"'Rapid,' indeed;--he topographised and typographised King
Priam's dominions in three days. I called him 'classic' before I saw
the Troad, but since have learned better than to tack to his name what
don't belong to it."
He is not, however, the only satirist who has been thus capricious and
changeable in his judgments. The variations of this nature in Pope's
Dunciad are well known; and the Abbe Cotin, it is said, owed the
"painful pre-eminence" of his station in Boileau's Satires to the
unlucky convenience of his name as a rhyme. Of the generous change
from censure to praise, the poet Dante had already set an example;
having, in his "Convito," lauded some of those persons whom, in his
Commedia, he had most severely lashed.]
[Footnote 102: In another letter to Mr. Harness, dated February, 1809,
he says, "I do not know how you and Alma Mater agree. I was but an
untoward child myself, and I believe the good lady and her brat were
equally rejoiced when I was weaned; and if I obtained her benediction
at parting, it was, at best, equivocal."]
[Footnote 103: The poem, in the first edition, began at the line,
"Time was ere yet, in these degenerate days."
]
[Footnote 104: Lady Byron, then Miss Milbank.]
[Footnote 105: In the MS. remarks on his Satire, to which I have
already referred, he says, on this passage--"Yea, and a pretty dance
they have led me."]
[Footnote 106: "Fool then, and but little wiser now."--_MS. ibid_.]
[Footnote 107: Dated, in his original copy, Nov. 2. 1808.]
[Footnote 108: Entitled, in his original manuscript, "To Mrs. ----, on
being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." The date
subjoined is Dec. 2. 1808.]
[Footnote 109: In his first copy, "Thus, Mary."]
[Footnote 110: Thus corrected by himself in a copy of the Miscellany
now in my possession;--the two last lines being, originally, as
follows:--
"Though wheresoe'er my bark may run,
I love but thee, I love but one."
]
[Footnote 111: I give the words as Johnson has reported them;--in
Swift's own letter they are, if I recollect right, rather different.]
[Footnote 112: There is, at least, one striking point of similarity
between their characters in the disposition which Johnson has thus
attributed to Swift:--"The suspicions of Swift's irreligion," he says,
"proceeded, in a great measure, from his dread of hypocrisy; _instead
of wishing to seem better, he delighted in seeming worse than he
was_."]
[Footnote 113: Another use to which he appropriated one of the skulls
found in digging at Newstead was the having it mounted in silver, and
converted into a drinking-cup. This whim has been commemorated in some
well-known verses of his own; and the cup itself, which, apart from
any revolting ideas it may excite, forms by no means an inelegant
object to the eye, is, with many other interesting relics of Lord
Byron, in the possession of the present proprietor of Newstead Abbey,
Colonel Wildman.]
[Footnote 114: Rousseau appears to have been conscious of a similar
sort of change in his own nature:--"They have laboured without
intermission," he says, in a letter to Madame de Boufflers, "to give
to my heart, and, perhaps, at the same time to my genius, a spring and
stimulus of action, which they have not inherited from nature. I was
born weak,--ill treatment has made me strong."--Hume's _Private
Correspondence_.]
[Footnote 115: "It was bitterness that they mistook for
frolic."--Johnson's account of himself at the university, in Boswell.]
[Footnote 116: The poet Cowper, it is well known, produced that
masterpiece of humour, John Gilpin, during one of his fits of morbid
dejection; and he himself says, "Strange as it may seem, the most
ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood,
and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at
all."]
[Footnote 117: The reconciliation which took place between him and Dr.
Butler, before his departure, is one of those instances of placability
and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from
the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his
note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously
retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is
renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it had been
ever entertained.
Not content with this private atonement to Dr. Butler, it was his
intention, had he published another edition of the Hours of Idleness,
to substitute for the offensive verses against that gentleman, a frank
avowal of the wrong he had been guilty of in giving vent to them. This
fact, so creditable to the candour of his nature, I learn from a loose
sheet in his handwriting, containing the following corrections. In
place of the passage beginning "Or if my Muse a pedant's portrait
drew," he meant to insert--
"If once my Muse a harsher portrait drew,
Warm with her wrongs, and deem'd the likeness true,
By cooler judgment taught, her fault she owns,--
With noble minds a fault, confess'd, atones."
And to the passage immediately succeeding his warm praise of Dr.
Drury--"Pomposus fills his magisterial chair," it was his intention to
give the following turn:--
"Another fills his magisterial chair;
Reluctant Ida owns a stranger's care;
Oh may like honours crown his future name,--
If such his virtues, such shall be his fame."
]
[Footnote 118: Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story,
which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the
passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his
berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his
limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he
thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time
in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and
stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the
senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the
same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take
another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position.
To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he
found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet.
On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out
in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he
received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had
been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this
appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest
doubt.]
[Footnote 119: The baggage and part of the servants were sent by sea
to Gibraltar.]
[Footnote 120: "This sort of passage," says Mr. Hodgson, in a note on
his copy of this letter, "constantly occurs in his correspondence. Nor
was his interest confined to mere remembrances and enquiries after
health. Were it possible to state _all_ he has done for numerous
friends, he would appear amiable indeed. For myself, I am bound to
acknowledge, in the fullest and warmest manner, his most generous and
well-timed aid; and, were my poor friend Bland alive, he would as
gladly bear the like testimony;--though I have most reason, of all
men, to do so."]
[Footnote 121: The filthiness of Lisbon and its inhabitants.]
[Footnote 122: Colonel Napier, in a note in his able History of the
Peninsular War, notices the mistake into which Lord Byron and others
were led on this subject;--the signature of the Convention, as well as
all the other proceedings connected with it, having taken place at a
distance of thirty miles from Cintra.]
[Footnote 123: We find an allusion to this incident in Don Juan:--
"'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes--that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 124: The postscript to this letter is as follows:--
P.S. "So Lord G. is married to a rustic! Well done! If I wed, I will
bring you home a sultana, with half a dozen cities for a dowry, and
reconcile you to an Ottoman daughter-in-law with a bushel of pearls,
not larger than ostrich eggs, or smaller than walnuts."]
[Footnote 125: The following stanzas from this little poem have a
music in them, which, independently of all meaning, is enchanting:--
"And since I now remember thee
In darkness and in dread,
As in those hours of revelry,
Which mirth and music sped;
"Do thou, amidst the fair white walls,
If Cadiz yet be free,
At times, from out her latticed halls,
Look o'er the dark blue sea;
"Then think upon Calypso's isles,
Endear'd by days gone by;
To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh," &c. &c.
]
[Footnote 126: The following is Mr. Hobhouse's loss embellished
description of this scene;--"The court at Tepellene, which was
enclosed on two sides by the palace, and on the other two sides by a
high wall, presented us, at our first entrance, with a sight something
like what we might have, perhaps, beheld some hundred years ago in the
castle-yard of a great feudal lord. Soldiers, with their arms piled
against the wall near them, were assembled in different parts of the
square: some of them pacing slowly backwards and forwards, and others
sitting on the ground in groups. Several horses, completely
caparisoned, were leading about, whilst others were neighing under the
hands of the grooms. In the part farthest from the dwelling,
preparations were making for the feast of the night; and several kids
and sheep were being dressed by cooks who were themselves half armed.
Every thing wore a most martial look, though not exactly in the style
of the head-quarters of a Christian general; for many of the soldiers
were in the most common dress, without shoes, and having more wildness
in their air and manner than the Albanians we had before seen."
On comparing this description, which is itself sufficiently striking,
with those which Lord Byron has given of the same scene, both in the
letter to his mother, and in the second Canto of Childe Harold, we
gain some insight into the process by which imagination elevates,
without falsifying, reality, and facts become brightened and refined
into poetry. Ascending from the representation drawn faithfully on the
spot by the traveller, to the more fanciful arrangement of the same
materials in the letter of the poet, we at length, by one step more,
arrive at that consummate, idealised picture, the result of both
memory and invention combined, which in the following splendid stanzas
is presented to us:--
Amidst no common pomp the despot sate,
While busy preparations shook the court,
Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;
Within, a palace, and without, a fort:
Here men of every clime appear to make resort.
"Richly caparison'd, a ready row
Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
Circled the wide-extending court below;
Above, strange groups adorn'd the corridore;
And oft-times through the area's echoing door
Some high-capp'd Tartar spurr'd his steed away:
The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor,
Here mingled in their many-hued array,
While the deep war-drum's sound announced the close of day.
"The wild Albanian, kirtled to his knee,
With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
And gold-embroider'd garments, fair to see;
The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon;
The Delhi, with his cap of terror on,
And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek;
And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son;
The bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,
Master of all around--too potent to be meek,
"Are mix'd, conspicuous: some recline in groups,
Scanning the motley scene that varies round;
There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
And some that smoke, and some that play, are found;
Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground;
Half whispering there the Greek is heard to prate;
Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound,
The Muezzin's call doth shake the minaret,
There is no god but God!--to prayer--lo! God is great!'"
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto II.
]
[Footnote 127: In the shape of the hands, as a mark of high birth,
Lord Byron himself had as implicit faith as the Pacha: see his note on
the line, "Though on more _thorough-bred_ or fairer fingers," in Don
Juan.]
[Footnote 128: A few sentences are here and elsewhere omitted, as
having no reference to Lord Byron himself, but merely containing some
particulars relating to Ali and his grandsons, which may be found in
various books of travels.
Ali had not forgotten his noble guest when Dr. Holland, a few years
after, visited Albania:--"I mentioned to him, generally (says this
intelligent traveller), Lord Byron's poetical description of Albania,
the interest it had excited in England, and Mr. Hobhouse's intended
publication of his travels in the same country. He seemed pleased with
these circumstances, and stated his recollections of Lord Byron."]
[Footnote 129: I have heard the poet's fellow-traveller describe this
remarkable instance of his coolness and courage even still more
strikingly than it is here stated by himself. Finding that, from his
lameness, he was unable to be of any service in the exertions which
their very serious danger called for, after a laugh or two at the
panic of his valet, he not only wrapped himself up and lay down, in
the manner here mentioned, but, when their difficulties were
surmounted, was found fast asleep.]
[Footnote 130: In the route from Ioannina to Zitza, Mr. Hobhouse and
the secretary of Ali, accompanied by one of the servants, had rode on
before the rest of the party, and arrived at the village just as the
evening set in. After describing the sort of hovel in which they were
to take up their quarters for the night, Mr. Hobhouse thus
continues:--"Vasilly was despatched into the village to procure eggs
and fowls, that would be ready, as we thought, by the arrival of the
second party. But an hour passed away and no one appeared. It was
seven o'clock, and the storm had increased to a fury I had never
before, and, indeed, have never since, seen equalled. The roof of our
hovel shook under the clattering torrents and gusts of wind. The
thunder roared, as it seemed, without any intermission; for the echoes
of one peal had not ceased to roll in the mountains, before another
tremendous crash burst over our heads; whilst the plains and the
distant hills (visible through the cracks of the cabin) appeared in a
perpetual blaze. The tempest was altogether terrific, and worthy of
the Grecian Jove; and the peasants, no less religious than their
ancestors, confessed their alarm. The women wept, and the men, calling
on the name of God, crossed themselves at every repeated peal.
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