Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)

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"LIST OF HISTORICAL WRITERS WHOSE WORKS I HAVE PERUSED IN
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES."

_"History of England._--Hume, Rapin, Henry, Smollet, Tindal,
Belsham, Bisset, Adolphus, Holinshed, Froissart's Chronicles
(belonging properly to France).

_"Scotland._--Buchanan, Hector Boethius, both in the Latin.

_"Ireland._--Gordon.

_"Rome._--Hooke, Decline and Fall by Gibbon, Ancient History
by Rollin (including an account of the Carthaginians, &c.),
besides Livy, Tacitus, Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Julius
Caesar, Arrian. Sallust.

"_Greece._--Mitford's Greece, Leland's Philip, Plutarch,
Potter's Antiquities, Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus.

"_France._--Mezeray, Voltaire.

"_Spain._--I chiefly derived my knowledge of old Spanish
History from a book called the Atlas, now obsolete. The
modern history, from the intrigues of Alberoni down to the
Prince of Peace, I learned from its connection with European
politics.

"_Portugal._--From Vertot; as also his account of the Siege
of Rhodes,--though the last is his own invention, the real
facts being totally different.--So much for his Knights of
Malta.

"_Turkey._--I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut, and Prince
Cantemir, besides a more modern history, anonymous. Of the
Ottoman History I know every event, from Tangralopi, and
afterwards Othman I., to the peace of Passarowitz, in
1718,--the battle of Cutzka, in 1739, and the treaty between
Russia and Turkey in 1790.

"_Russia._--Tooke's Life of Catherine II., Voltaire's Czar
Peter.

"_Sweden._--Voltaire's Charles XII., also Norberg's Charles
XII.--in my opinion the best of the two.--A translation of
Schiller's Thirty Years' War, which contains the exploits of
Gustavus Adolphus, besides Harte's Life of the same Prince.
I have somewhere, too, read an account of Gustavus Vasa, the
deliverer of Sweden, but do not remember the author's name.

"_Prussia._--I have seen, at least, twenty Lives of
Frederick II., the only prince worth recording in Prussian
annals. Gillies, his own Works, and Thiebault,--none very
amusing. The last is paltry, but circumstantial.

"_Denmark_--I know little of. Of Norway I understand the
natural history, but not the chronological.

"_Germany._--I have read long histories of the house of
Suabia, Wenceslaus, and, at length, Rodolph of Hapsburgh and
his _thick-lipped_ Austrian descendants.

"_Switzerland._--Ah! William Tell, and the battle of
Morgarten, where Burgundy was slain.

"_Italy._--Davila, Guicciardini, the Guelphs and
Ghibellines, the battle of Pavia, Massaniello, the
revolutions of Naples, &c. &c.

"_Hindostan_--Orme and Cambridge.

"_America._--Robertson, Andrews' American War.

"_Africa_--merely from travels, as Mungo Park, Bruce.

"BIOGRAPHY.

"Robertson's Charles V.--Caesar, Sallust (Catiline and
Jugurtha), Lives of Marlborough and Eugene, Tekeli, Bonnard,
Buonaparte, all the British Poets, both by Johnson and
Anderson, Rousseau's Confessions, Life of Cromwell, British
Plutarch, British Nepos, Campbell's Lives of the Admirals,
Charles XII., Czar Peter, Catherine II., Henry Lord Kaimes,
Marmontel, Teignmouth's Sir William Jones, Life of Newton,
Belisaire, with thousands not to be detailed.

"LAW.

"Blackstone, Montesquieu.

"PHILOSOPHY.

"Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drummond, Beattie, and
Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest.

"GEOGRAPHY.

"Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie.

"POETRY.

"All the British Classics as before detailed, with most of
the living poets, Scott, Southey, &c.--Some French, in the
original, of which the Cid is my favourite.--Little
Italian.--Greek and Latin without number;--these last I
shall give up in future.--I have translated a good deal from
both languages, verse as well as prose.

"ELOQUENCE.

"Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, Austin's
Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates from the Revolution to
the year 1742.

"DIVINITY.

"Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker,--all very tiresome. I
abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God,
without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in
their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and
Thirty-nine Articles.

"MISCELLANIES.

"Spectator, Rambler, World, &c. &c.--Novels by the thousand.

"All the books here enumerated I have taken down from
memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote passages
from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my
catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused
before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have
become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making
love to women. B.--Nov. 30. 1807.

"I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand
novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet,
Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, &c. &c. The
book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the
reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is "Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy," the most amusing and instructive medley of
quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial
reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If,
however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more
improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty
other works with which I am acquainted,--at least, in the English
language."

To this early and extensive study of English writers may be attributed
that mastery over the resources of his own language with which Lord
Byron came furnished into the field of literature, and which enabled
him, as fast as his youthful fancies sprung up, to clothe them with a
diction worthy of their strength and beauty. In general, the
difficulty of young writers, at their commencement, lies far less in
any lack of thoughts or images, than in that want of a fitting organ
to give those conceptions vent, to which their unacquaintance with the
great instrument of the man of genius, his native language, dooms
them. It will be found, indeed, that the three most remarkable
examples of early authorship, which, in their respective lines, the
history of literature affords--Pope, Congreve, and Chatterton--were
all of them persons self-educated,[63] according to their own
intellectual wants and tastes, and left, undistracted by the worse
than useless pedantries of the schools, to seek, in the pure "well of
English undefiled," those treasures of which they accordingly so very
early and intimately possessed themselves.[64] To these three
instances may now be added, virtually, that of Lord Byron, who, though
a disciple of the schools, was, intellectually speaking, _in_
them, not _of_ them, and who, while his comrades were prying
curiously into the graves of dead languages, betook himself to the
fresh, living sources of his own,[65] and from thence drew those
rich, varied stores of diction, which have placed his works, from the
age of two-and-twenty upwards, among the most precious depositories of
the strength and sweetness of the English language that our whole
literature supplies.

In the same book that contains the above record of his studies, he has
written out, also from memory, a "List of the different poets,
dramatic or otherwise, who have distinguished their respective
languages by their productions." After enumerating the various poets,
both ancient and modern, of Europe, he thus proceeds with his
catalogue through other quarters of the world:--

"_Arabia._--Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime
poetical passages, far surpassing European poetry.

"_Persia._--Ferdousi, author of the Shah Nameh, the Persian
Iliad--Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal Hafiz, the oriental
Anacreon. The last is reverenced beyond any bard of ancient
or modern times by the Persians, who resort to his tomb near
Shiraz, to celebrate his memory. A splendid copy of his
works is chained to his monument.

"_America._--An epic poet has already appeared in that
hemisphere, Barlow, author of the Columbiad,--not to be
compared with the works of more polished nations.

"_Iceland, Denmark, Norway_, were famous for their Skalds.
Among these Lodburgh was one of the most distinguished. His
Death Song breathes ferocious sentiments, but a glorious and
impassioned strain of poetry.

"_Hindostan_ is undistinguished by any great bard,--at least
the Sanscrit is so imperfectly known to Europeans, we know
not what poetical relics may exist.

"_The Birman Empire._--Here the natives are passionately
fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown.

"_China._--I never heard of any Chinese poet but the Emperor
Kien Long, and his ode to _Tea_. What a pity their
philosopher Confucius did not write poetry, with his
precepts of morality!

"_Africa._--In Africa some of the native melodies are
plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; but whether
their rude strains of nature can be classed with poetry, as
the songs of the bards, the Skalds of Europe, &c. &c., I
know not.

"This brief list of poets I have written down from memory,
without any book of reference; consequently some errors may
occur, but I think, if any, very trivial. The works of the
European, and some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in
the original or translations. In my list of English, I have
merely mentioned the greatest;--to enumerate the minor poets
would be useless, as well as tedious. Perhaps Gray,
Goldsmith, and Collins, might have been added, as worthy of
mention, in a _cosmopolite_ account. But as for the others,
from Chaucer down to Churchill, they are 'voces et praeterea
nihil;'--sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with
advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on
him, I think obscene and contemptible:--he owes his
celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve
so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune. English
living poets I have avoided mentioning;--we have none who
will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us;
and another century will sweep our empire, our literature,
and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind.

"November 30. 1807.

BYRON."

Among the papers of his in my possession are several detached poems
(in all nearly six hundred lines), which he wrote about this period,
but never printed--having produced most of them after the publication
of his "Hours of Idleness." The greater number of these have little,
besides his name, to recommend them; but there are a few that, from
the feelings and circumstances that gave rise to them, will, I have no
doubt, be interesting to the reader. When he first went to Newstead,
on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in
some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so
should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he
found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this
circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left
Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five
stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient
specimen:--

"Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground,
I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine;
That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.

"Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy's years,
On the land of my fathers I rear'd thee with pride;
They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,--
Thy decay, not the weeds that surround thee can hide.

"I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour,
A stranger has dwelt in the hall of my sire," &c. &c.

The subject of the verses that follow is sufficiently explained by the
notice which he has prefixed to them; and, as illustrative of the
romantic and almost lovelike feeling which he threw into his school
friendships, they appeared to me, though rather quaint and elaborate,
to be worth preserving.

"Some years ago, when at H----, a friend of the author engraved on a
particular spot the names of both, with a few additional words as a
memorial. Afterwards, on receiving some real or imagined injury, the
author destroyed the frail record before he left H----. On revisiting
the place in 1807, he wrote under it the following stanzas:--

"Here once engaged the stranger's view
Young Friendship's record simply traced;
Few were her words,--but yet though few,
Resentment's hand the line defaced.

"Deeply she cut--but, not erased,
The characters were still so plain,
That Friendship once return'd, and gazed,--
Till Memory hail'd the words again.

"Repentance placed them as before;
Forgiveness join'd her gentle name;
So fair the inscription seem'd once more
That Friendship thought it still the same.

"Thus might the record now have been;
But, ah, in spite of Hope's endeavour,
Or Friendship's tears, Pride rush'd between,
And blotted out the line for ever!"

The same romantic feeling of friendship breathes throughout another of
these poems, in which he has taken for the subject the ingenious
thought "L'Amitie est l'Amour sans ailes," and concludes every stanza
with the words, "Friendship is Love without his wings." Of the nine
stanzas of which this poem consists, the three following appear the
most worthy of selection:--

"Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine,
Affection is _not_ dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,
One firm record, one lasting truth
Celestial consolation brings;
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat,
Where first my heart responsive beat,--
'Friendship is Love without his wings!'

"Seat of my youth! thy distant spire
Recalls each scene of joy;
My bosom glows with former fire,--
In mind again a boy.
Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill,
Thy every path delights me still,
Each flower a double fragrance flings;
Again, as once, in converse gay,
Each dear associate seems to say,
'Friendship is Love without his wings!'

"My Lycus! wherefore dost thou weep?
Thy falling tears restrain;
Affection for a time may sleep,
But, oh, 'twill wake again.
Think, think, my friend, when next we meet,
Our long-wish'd intercourse, how sweet!
From this my hope of rapture springs,
While youthful hearts thus fondly swell,
Absence, my friend, can only tell,
'Friendship is Love without his wings!'"

Whether the verses I am now about to give are, in any degree, founded
on fact, I have no accurate means of determining. Fond as he was of
recording every particular of his youth, such an event, or rather era,
as is here commemorated, would have been, of all others, the least
likely to pass unmentioned by him;--and yet neither in conversation
nor in any of his writings do I remember even an allusion to it.[66]
On the other hand, so entirely was all that he wrote,--making
allowance for the embellishments of fancy,--the transcript of his
actual life and feelings, that it is not easy to suppose a poem, so
full of natural tenderness, to have been indebted for its origin to
imagination alone.

"TO MY SON!

"Those flaxen locks, those eyes of blue,
Bright as thy mother's in their hue;
Those rosy lips, whose dimples play
And smile to steal the heart away,
Recall a scene of former joy,
And touch thy Father's heart, my Boy!

"And thou canst lisp a father's name--
Ah, William, were thine own the same,
No self-reproach--but, let me cease--
My care for thee shall purchase peace;
Thy mother's shade shall smile in joy,
And pardon all the past, my Boy!

"Her lowly grave the turf has prest,
And thou hast known a stranger's breast.
Derision sneers upon thy birth,
And yields thee scarce a name on earth;
Yet shall not these one hope destroy,--
A Father's heart is thine, my Boy!

"Why, let the world unfeeling frown,
Must I fond Nature's claim disown?
Ah, no--though moralists reprove,
I hail thee, dearest child of love,
Fair cherub, pledge of youth and joy--
A Father guards thy birth, my Boy!

"Oh, 'twill be sweet in thee to trace,
Ere age has wrinkled o'er my face,
Ere half my glass of life is run,
At once a brother and a son;
And all my wane of years employ
In justice done to thee, my Boy!

"Although so young thy heedless sire,
Youth will not damp parental fire;
And, wert thou still less dear to me,
While Helen's form revives in thee,
The breast, which beat to former joy,
Will ne'er desert its pledge, my Boy!

"B----, 1807."[67]

But the most remarkable of these poems is one of a date prior to any I
have given, being written in December, 1806, when he was not yet
nineteen years old. It contains, as will be seen, his religious creed
at that period, and shows how early the struggle between natural piety
and doubt began in his mind.

"THE PRAYER OF NATURE.

"Father of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?
Father of Light, on thee I call!
Thou see'st my soul is dark within;
Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall,
Avert from me the death of sin.
No shrine I seek, to sects unknown,
Oh point to me the path of truth!
Thy dread omnipotence I own,
Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.
Let bigots rear a gloomy fane,
Let superstition hail the pile,
Let priests, to spread their sable reign,
With tales of mystic rites beguile.
Shall man confine his Maker's sway
To Gothic domes of mouldering stone?
Thy temple is the face of day;
Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne.
Shall man condemn his race to hell
Unless they bend in pompous form;
Tell us that all, for one who fell,
Must perish in the mingling storm?
Shall each pretend to reach the skies,
Yet doom his brother to expire,
Whose soul a different hope supplies,
Or doctrines less severe inspire?
Shall these, by creeds they can't expound,
Prepare a fancied bliss or woe?
Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground,
Their great Creator's purpose know?
Shall those who live for self alone,
Whose years float on in daily crime--
Shall they by Faith for guilt atone,
And live beyond the bounds of Time?
Father! no prophet's laws I seek,--
_Thy_ laws in Nature's works appear;--
I own myself corrupt and weak,
Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!
Thou, who canst guide the wandering star
Through trackless realms of AEther's space;
Who calm'st the elemental war,
Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:
Thou, who in wisdom placed me here,
Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence,
Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere,
Extend to me thy wide defence.
To Thee, my God, to Thee I call!
Whatever weal or woe betide,
By thy command I rise or fall,
In thy protection I confide.
If, when this dust to dust restored,
My soul shall float on airy wing,
How shall thy glorious name adored,
Inspire her feeble voice to sing!
But, if this fleeting spirit share
With clay the grave's eternal bed,
While life yet throbs, I raise my prayer,
Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.
To Thee I breathe my humble strain,
Grateful for all thy mercies past,
And hope, my God, to thee again
This erring life may fly at last.

"29th Dec. 1806.

BYRON."

In another of these poems, which extends to about a hundred lines, and
which he wrote under the melancholy impression that he should soon
die, we find him concluding with a prayer in somewhat the same spirit.
After bidding adieu to all the favourite scenes of his youth,[68] he
thus continues,--

"Forget this world, my restless sprite,
Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heav'n:
There must thou soon direct thy night,
If errors are forgiven.
To bigots and to sects unknown.
Bow down beneath the Almighty's throne;--
To him address thy trembling prayer;
He, who is merciful and just,
Will not reject a child of dust,
Although his meanest care.
Father of Light, to thee I call,
My soul is dark within;
Thou, who canst mark the sparrow fall,
Avert the death of sin.
Thou, who canst guide the wandering star,
Who calm'st the elemental war,
Whose mantle is yon boundless sky,
My thoughts, my words, my crimes forgive;
And, since I soon must cease to live,
Instruct me how to die.

1807."

We have seen, by a former letter, that the law proceedings for the
recovery of his Rochdale property had been attended with success in
some trial of the case at Lancaster. The following note to one of his
Southwell friends, announcing a second triumph of the cause, shows how
sanguinely and, as it turned out, erroneously, he calculated on the
results.

"Feb. 9. 1807.

Dear ----,

"I have the pleasure to inform you we have gained the Rochdale cause a
second time, by which I am, L60,000 plus. Yours ever,

"BYRON."

In the month of April we find him still at Southwell, and addressing
to his friend, Dr. Pigot, who was at Edinburgh, the following
note[69]:--

"Southwell, April, 1807.

"My dear Pigot,

"Allow me to congratulate you on the success of your first
examination--'_Courage_, mon ami.' The title of Doctor will do wonders
with the damsels. I shall most probably be in Essex or London when you
arrive at this d----d place, where I am detained by the publication of
my rhymes.

"Adieu.--Believe me yours very truly,

"BYRON.

"P.S. Since we met, I have reduced myself by violent exercise, much
physic, and hot bathing, from 14 stone 6 lb. to 12 stone 7 lb. In all I
have lost 27 pounds. Bravo!--what say you?"

His movements and occupations for the remainder of this year will be
best collected from a series of his own letters, which I am enabled,
by the kindness of the lady to whom they were addressed, to give.
Though these letters are boyishly[70] written, and a good deal of
their pleasantry is of that conventional kind which depends more upon
phrase than thought, they will yet, I think, be found curious and
interesting, not only as enabling us to track him through this period
of his life, but as throwing light upon various little traits of
character, and laying open to us the first working of his hopes and
fears while waiting, in suspense, the opinions that were to decide, as
he thought, his future fame. The first of the series, which is without
date, appears to have been written before he had left Southwell. The
other letters, it will be seen, are dated from Cambridge and from
London.

LETTER 12.

TO MISS ----.

"June 11. 1807.

"Dear Queen Bess,

"_Savage_ ought to be _immortal_:--though not a _thorough-bred
bull-dog_, he is the finest puppy I ever _saw_, and will answer much
better; in his great and manifold kindness he has already bitten my
fingers, and disturbed the _gravity_ of old Boatswain, who is
_grievously discomposed_. I wish to be informed what he _costs_, his
_expenses_, &c. &c., that I may indemnify Mr. G----. My thanks are
_all_ I can give for the trouble he has taken, make a _long speech_,
and conclude it with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.[71] I am out of practice, so
_deputize_ you as legate,--_ambassador_ would not do in a matter
concerning the _Pope_, which I presume this must, as the _whole_ turns
upon a _Bull_.

"Yours,

"BYRON.

"P.S. I write in bed."

LETTER 13.

TO MISS ----.

"Cambridge, June 30. 1807.

"'Better late than never, Pal,'" is a saying of which you know the
origin, and as it is applicable on the present occasion, you will
excuse its conspicuous place in the front of my epistle. I am almost
superannuated here. My old friends (with the exception of a very few)
all departed, and I am preparing to follow them, but remain till
Monday to be present at three _Oratorios_, two _Concerts_, a _Fair_,
and a Ball. I find I am not only _thinner_ but _taller_ by an inch
since my last visit. I was obliged to tell every body my _name_,
nobody having the least recollection of my _visage_, or person. Even
the hero of _my Cornelian_ (who is now sitting _vis-a-vis_, reading a
volume of my _Poetics_) passed me in Trinity walks without recognising
me in the least, and was thunderstruck at the alteration which had
taken place in my countenance, &c. &c. Some say I look _better_,
others _worse_, but all agree I am _thinner_--more I do not require. I
have lost two pounds in my weight since I left your _cursed_,
_detestable_, and _abhorred_ abode of _scandal_,[72] where, excepting
yourself and John Becher, I care not if the whole race were consigned
to the _Pit of Acheron_, which I would visit in person rather than
contaminate my _sandals_ with the polluted dust of Southwell.
_Seriously_, unless obliged by the _emptiness_ of my purse to revisit
Mrs. B., you will see me no more.

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