Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

V >> Various >> Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4




In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron.
Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of
Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822. She was in her sixth year, an
interesting and attractive child, and he had hoped that her companionship
would have atoned for his enforced separation from Ada. She is buried in a
nameless grave at the entrance of Harrow church. Soon after the death of
Allegra, Byron wrote the last of his eight plays, _The Deformed
Transformed_ (published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824). The "sources" are
Goethe's _Faust_, _The Three Brothers_, a novel by Joshua Pickersgill, and
various chronicles of the sack of Rome in 1527. The theme or _motif_ is the
interaction of personality and individuality. Remonstrances on the part of
publisher and critic induced him to turn journalist. The control of a
newspaper or periodical would enable him to publish what and as he pleased.
With this object in view he entered into a kind of literary partnership
with Leigh Hunt, and undertook to transport him, his wife and six children
to Pisa, and to lodge them in the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this
arrangement was _The Liberal--Verse and Prose from the South_. Four numbers
were issued between October 1822 and June 1823. _The Liberal_ did not
succeed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure.
_Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries_ (1828) was Hunt's
revenge for the slights and indignities which he suffered in Byron's
service. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at
Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat,
the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the
1st of July. On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's
account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named
Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his
companions were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the
"burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that
"all of Shelley was consumed but the _heart_." Whilst the fire was burning
Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot sun and the
violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which weakened his
constitution and shortened his life.

The Austrian government would not allow the Gambas or the countess
Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them
at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied
they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on the last day of
September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at
the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay,"
and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa
was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and
though his still unpublished poems were at the service of _The Liberal_, he
did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly
received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903]
was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering _Don
Juan_ (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_, he
meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of _Childe Harold_.
There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics
and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire
entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said,
"stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and
most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had
completed _The Island; or Christian and his Comrades_ (published June 26,
1823). The sources are Bligh's _Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, and
Mariner's _Account of the Tonga Islands_. Satire and tale are a reversion
to his earlier method. The execution of _The Island_ is hurried and
unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the
recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic
faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.

When _The Island_ was finished, Byron went on with _Don Juan_. Early in
March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek
Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause
of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and
after some hesitation on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece."
His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and to
purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On the 23rd of
July the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn and anchored off Cephalonia on the
3rd of August. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba,
Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or seven servants. The next four months
were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour
of Argostoli and afterwards at Metaxata. The object of this delay was to
ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks
were split up into parties, not to say factions, and there were several
leaders. It was a question to which leader he would attach himself. At
length a message reached him which inspired him with confidence. He
received a summons from Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, a man of birth and
education, urging him to come at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a
request from the legislative body "to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the
organization of western Greece." Byron felt that he could act with a "clear
conscience" in putting himself at the disposal of a man whom he regarded as
the authorized leader and champion of the Greeks. He sailed from Argostoli
on the 29th of December 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at
Missolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. He met with a royal reception.
Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier's grave." During his
three months' residence at Missolonghi he accomplished little and he
endured much. He advanced large sums of money for the payment of the
troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision of
medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served as a
link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and the
"prince" Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but he never got the
chance. A revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of his Suliote
guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto, an exploit
which he had reserved for his own leadership. He was beset with
difficulties, but at length events began to move. On the 18th of March he
received an invitation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend a
conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the
government to appoint him "governor-general of the enfranchised parts of
Greece." He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself to
the immediate acceptance of office. But to Salona he never came. "Roads and
rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably postponed.

His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that his
life was in danger. On the 15th of February he was struck down by an
epileptic fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He
recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill the
troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest,
and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter
convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his
death. For the first week of April the weather confined him to the house,
but on the 9th a letter from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him
to ride out with Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to
the skin he insisted on dismounting and returning in an open boat to the
quay in front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and
violent rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the
olive groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last
time. Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting
made recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of
his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his
delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian,
"Forward--forward--courage! follow my example--don't be afraid!" and that
he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died at
six o'clock in the evening of the 19th of April 1824, aged thirty-six years
and three months. The Greeks were heartbroken. Mavrocordato gave orders
that thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired at daylight and decreed a
general mourning of twenty-one days. His body was embalmed and lay in
state. On the 25th of May his remains, all but the heart, which is buried
at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally laid beneath
the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on the 16th of July
1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in Westminster Abbey, and
there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in Poets' Corner.

The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the subsequent
barons were descended. The poet's daughter Ada (d. 1852) predeceased her
mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs. She was the first
wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had
two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace)
and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (_q.v._). On the
death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only
child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by the 1st earl's
second wife.

Great men are seldom misjudged. The world passes sentence on them, and
there is no appeal. Byron's contemporaries judged him by the tone and
temper of his works, by his own confessions or self-revelations in prose
and verse, by the facts of his life as reported in the newspapers, by the
talk of the town. His letters, his journals, the testimony of a dozen
memorialists are at the disposal of the modern biographer. Moore thinks
that Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility,
that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished
to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not
chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled
his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim
and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He
would subject even fate if he could. He has two main objects in view,
_glory_, in the French rather than the English use of the word, and
passion. It is hard to say which was the strongest or the dearest, but, on
the whole, within his "little life" passion prevailed. Other inclinations
he could master. Poetry was often but not always an exaltation and a
relief. He could fulfil his tasks in "hours of gloom." If he had not been a
great poet he would have gained credit as a painstaking and laborious man
of letters. His habitual temperance was the outcome of a stern resolve. He
had no scruples, but he kept his body in subjection as a means to an end.
In his youth Byron was a cautious spendthrift. Even when he was "cursedly
dipped" he knew what he was about; and afterwards, when his income was
sufficient for his requirements, he kept a hold on his purse. He loved
display, and as he admitted, spent money on women, but he checked his
accounts and made both ends meet. On the other hand, the "gift of
continency" he did not possess, or trouble himself to acquire. He was, to
use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger
than his will. There are points of Byron's character with regard to which
opinion is divided. Candid he certainly was to the verge of brutality, but
was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies?
Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the
bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow
and his despair would excite public interest, and that he was not ashamed
to exhibit "the pageant of a bleeding heart." But it does not follow that
he was a hypocrite. His quarrel with mankind, his anger against fate, were
perfectly genuine. His outcry is, in fact, the anguish of a baffled will.
Byron was too self-conscious, too much interested in himself, to take any
pleasures in imaginary woes, or to credit himself with imaginary vices.

Whether he told the whole truth is another matter. He was naturally a
truthful man and his friends lived in dread of unguarded disclosures, but
his communications were not so free as they seemed. There was a string to
the end of the kite. Byron was kindly and generous by nature. He took
pleasure in helping necessitous authors, men and women, not at all _en
grand seigneur_, or without counting the cost, but because he knew what
poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set
aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that
neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb
of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often
quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked
for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not
correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant
and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly
religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief
in an Invisible Power. "A fearful looking for of judgment" haunted him to
the last.

There is an increasing tendency on the part of modern critics to cast a
doubt on Byron's sanity. It is true that he inherited bad blood on both
sides of his family, that he was of a neurotic temperament, that at one
time he maddened himself with drink, but there is no evidence that his
brain was actually diseased. Speaking figuratively, he may have been "half
mad," but, if so, it was a derangement of the will, not of the mind. He was
responsible for his actions, and they rise up in judgment against him. He
put indulgence before duty. He made a byword of his marriage and brought
lifelong sorrow on his wife. If, as Goethe said, he was "the greatest
talent" of the 19th century, he associated that talent with scandal and
reproach. But he was born with certain noble qualities which did not fail
him at his worst. He was courageous, he was kind, and he loved truth rather
than lies. He was a worker and a fighter. He hated tyranny, and was
prepared to sacrifice money and ease and life in the cause of popular
freedom. If the issue of his call to arms was greater and other than he
designed or foresaw, it was a generous instinct which impelled him to begin
the struggle.

With regard to the criticism of his works, Byron's personality has always
confused the issue. Politics, religion, morality, have confused, and still
confuse, the issue. The question for the modern critic is, of what
permanent value is Byron's poetry? What did he achieve for art, for the
intellect, for the spirit, and in what degree does he still give pleasure
to readers of average intelligence? It cannot be denied that he stands out
from other poets of his century as a great creative artist, that his canvas
is crowded with new and original images, additions to already existing
types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only
represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The
Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single
personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but
nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for
his suffering. None the less, with whatever limitations as artist or
moralist, he invented characters and types of characters real enough and
distinct enough to leave their mark on society as well as on literature.
These masks or replicas of his own personality were formative of thought,
and were powerful agents in the evolution of sentiment and opinion. In
language which was intelligible and persuasive, under shapes and forms
which were suggestive and inspiring, Byron delivered a message of
liberation. There was a double motive at work in his energies as a poet. He
wrote, as he said, because "his mind was full" of his own loves, his own
griefs, but also to register a protest against some external tyranny of law
or faith or custom. His own countrymen owe Byron another debt. His poems
were a liberal education in the manners and customs of "the gorgeous East,"
in the scenery, the art, the history and politics of Italy and Greece. He
widened the horizon of his contemporaries, bringing within their ken
wonders and beauties hitherto unknown or unfamiliar, and in so doing he
heightened and cultivated, he "touched with emotion," the unlettered and
unimaginative many, that "reading public" which despised or eluded the
refinements and subtleties of less popular writers.

To the student of literature the first half of the 19th century is the age
of Byron. He has failed to retain his influence over English readers. The
knowledge, the culture of which he was the immediate channel, were speedily
available through other sources. The politics of the Revolution neither
interested nor affected the Liberalism or Radicalism of the middle classes.
It was not only the loftier and wholesomer poetry of Wordsworth and of
Tennyson which averted enthusiasm from Byron, not only moral earnestness
and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial
prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was
brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his
constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that
his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and
blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's
spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the rhetoric the
thoughts and ideas were mean and commonplace. There was a suspicion of
artifice, a questioning of the passion as genuine. Poetry came to be
regarded more and more as a source of spiritual comfort, if not a religious
exercise, yet, in some sort, a substitute for religion. There was little or
nothing in Byron's poetry which fulfilled this want. He had no message for
seekers after truth. Matthew Arnold, in his preface to _The Poetry of
Byron_, prophesied that "when the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes
to recount the poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, her
first names with her will be those of Byron and Wordsworth."

That prophecy still waits fulfilment, but without doubt there has been a
reconsideration of Byron's place in literature, and he stands higher than
he did, say, in 1875. His quarrel with orthodoxy neither alarms nor
provokes the modern reader. Cynical or flippant turns of speech, which
distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant,
for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion
_revolt_. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his
single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism
recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches"
have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the
Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book,
but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is "for ever warm," the "sound
of revelry" on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon
and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, "as from the stroke
of an enchanter's wand." It was, however, in another vein that Byron
achieved his final triumph. In _Don Juan_ he set himself to depict life as
a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more
accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan"
in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to
"unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or
political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism
and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as
an analyser of human nature, he comes, at whatever distance, after and yet
next to Shakespeare. It is a test of the greatness of _Don Juan_ that its
reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of its supposed immoral
tendency, in spite of occasional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come
to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. _Don Juan_ will be read for its
own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to
the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted."

[v.04 p.0905] In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of
Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were
translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the
stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The _Bride of Abydos_ has
been translated into ten, _Cain_ into nine languages. Of _Manfred_ there is
one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German,
three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four
Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe
that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain
that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the
keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature
is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo,
Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Boerne, Mueller and Heine
in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov
among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles--more or less,
as eulogists or imitators or disciples--were of the following of Byron.
This fact is beyond dispute, that after the first outburst of popularity he
has touched and swayed other nations rather than his own. The part he
played or seemed to play in revolutionary politics endeared him to those
who were struggling to be free. He stood for freedom of thought and of
life. He made himself the mouthpiece of an impassioned and welcome protest
against the hypocrisy and arrogance of his order and his race. He lived on
the continent and was known to many men in many cities. It has been argued
that foreigners are insensible to his defects as a writer, and that this
may account for an astonishing and perplexing preference. The cause is
rather to be sought in the quality of his art. It was as the creator of new
types, "forms more real than living man," that Byron appealed to the
artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slav. That "he
taught us little" of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the
sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of
literary criticism. "It is a mark," says Goethe (_Aus meinem Leben:
Dichtung und Wahrheit_, 1876, iii. 125), "of true poetry, that as a secular
gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon
us, by inward serenity, by outward charm." Now of this "secular gospel" the
redemption from "real woes" by the exhibition of imaginary glory, and
imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.

Byron was 5 ft. 8 in. in height, and strongly built; only with difficulty
and varying success did he prevent himself from growing fat. At
five-and-thirty he was extremely thin. He was "very slightly lame," but he
was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom
as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or
auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His
eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight
and well-shaped, but "from being a little too thick, it looked better in
profile than in front face." Moore says that it was in "the mouth and chin
that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay."
The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His
complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of "his beautiful pale
face--like a spirit's good or evil." Charles Matthews said that "he was the
only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful." Coleridge said that
"if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him... his eyes the open
portals of the sun--things of light and for light." He was likened to "the
god of the Vatican," the Apollo Belvidere.

The best-known portraits are: (1) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of
Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (1808);
(3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809); (4) a miniature by Sanders
(1812); (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813); (6) a
portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813);
(7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813); (8-9) a sketch for a miniature,
and a miniature by James Holmes (1815); (10) a sketch by George Henry
Harlow (1818); (11) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the
Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W.H. West (1822); (13) a
sketch by Count D'Orsay (1823). Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen
(1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (1829) in the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust taken in 1817.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.