Book: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474
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Various >> The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474
_To Mr. Moore._
"January 2nd, 1820.
"My Dear Moore,
"'To-day it is my wedding-day,
And all the folks would stare
If wife should dine at Edmonton,
And I should dine at Ware.'
Or _thus_--
"Here's a happy new year! but with reason
I beg you'll permit me to say--
Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_,
But as _few_ as you please of the _day_.
"My this present writing is to direct you that, _if she chooses_, she may
see the MS. Memoir in your possession. I wish her to have fair play, in
all cases, even though it will not be published till after my decease. For
this purpose, it were but just that Lady B. should know what is their said
of her and hers, that she may have full power to remark on or respond to
any part or parts, as may seem fitting to herself. This is fair dealing, I
presume, in all events.
"To change the subject, are you in England? I send you an epitaph for
Castlereagh.
* * * * *
Another for Pitt--
"With death doom'd to grapple
Beneath this cold slab, he
Who lied in the Chapel
Now lies in the Abbey.
"The gods seem to have made me poetical this day--
"In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,
Will. Cobbett has done well:
You visit him on earth again,
He'll visit you in hell.
Or--
"You come to him on earth again,
He'll go with you to hell.
"Pray let not these versiculi go forth with _my_ name, except among the
initiated, because my friend H. has foamed into a reformer, and, I greatly
fear, will subside into Newgate; since the Honourable House, according to
Galignani's Reports of Parliamentary Debates, are menacing a prosecution
to a pamphlet of his. I shall be very sorry to hear of any thing but good
for him, particularly in these miserable squabbles; but these are the
natural effects of taking a part in them."
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.
"Ravenna, May 8, 1820.
"Sir Humphry Davy was here last fortnight, and I was in his company in the
house of a very pretty Italian lady of rank, who, by way of displaying her
learning in presence of the great chemist, then describing his fourteenth
ascension of Mount Vesuvius, asked 'if there was not a similar volcano in
_Ireland_?' My only notion of an Irish volcano consisted of the lake of
Killarney, which I naturally conceived her to mean; but on second thoughts
I divined that she alluded to _Ice_land and to Hecla--and so it proved,
though she sustained her volcanic topography for some time with all the
amiable pertinacity of 'the feminie.' She soon after turned to me, and
asked me various questions about Sir Humphry's philosophy, and I explained
as well as an oracle his skill in gasen safety lamps, and ungluing the
Pompeian MSS. 'But what do you call him?' said she. 'A great chemist,'
quoth I. 'What can he do?' repeated the lady 'Almost any thing,' said I.
'Oh, then, mio caro, do pray beg him to give me something to dye my
eyebrows black. I have tried a thousand things, and the colours all come
off; and besides, they don't grow. Can't he invent something to make them
grow?' All this with the greatest earnestness; and what you will be
surprised at, she is neither ignorant nor a fool, but really well educated
and clever. But they speak like children, when first out of their convents;
and, after all, this is better than an English bluestocking."
POPE--AND OTHER MATTERS.
_To Mr. Moore._
"Ravenna, July 5th, 1821.
"How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that _could_ be
said on your account to weigh with _me_? I only regret that Bowles had not
_said_ that you were the writer of that note until afterwards, when out he
comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which Murray sends to me.
D--n the controversy!
"D--m Twizzle,
D--n the bell,
And d--n the fool who rung it--Well!
From all such plagues I'll quickly be deliver'd.
"I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England (I never saw
her) who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the
world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for several years,
&c. &c. &c. It is signed simply N.N.A., and has not a word of 'cant' or
preachment in it upon _any_ opinions. She merely says that she is dying,
and that as I had contributed so highly to her existing pleasure, she
thought that she might say so, begging me to _burn_ her _letter_--which,
by the way, I can _not_ do, as I look upon such a letter, in such
circumstances, as better than a diploma from Gottingen. I once had a
letter from Drontheim, in _Norway_ (but not from a dying woman) in verse,
on the same score of gratulation. These are the things which make one at
times believe oneself a poet. But if I must believe that ----, and
such fellows, are poets, also, it is better to be out of the corps.
"I am now in the fifth act of 'Foscari,' being the third tragedy in twelve
months, besides _proses_; so you perceive that I am not at all idle. And
are you, too, busy? I doubt that your life at Paris draws too much upon
your time, which is a pity. Can't you divide your day, so as to combine
both? I have had plenty of all sorts of worldly business on my hands last
year--and yet it is not so difficult to give a few hours to the _Muses_.
This sentence is so like ---- that--
"Ever, &c."
FROM "DETACHED THOUGHTS."
"What a strange thing is life and man! Were I to present myself at the
door of the house where my daughter now is, the door would be shut in my
face--unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter; and if I
had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest town in
Norway), or into Holstein, I should have been received with open arms into
the mansion of strangers and foreigners, attached to me by no tie but by
that of mind and rumour.
"As far as _fame_ goes, I have had my share: it has indeed been leavened
by other human contingencies, and this in a greater degree than has
occurred to most literary men of a decent rank of life; but, on the whole,
I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity."
"A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He
was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old,
according to appearances; a little romantic, but that sits well upon youth,
and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in
my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe
Murray), and told me that _he_ (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my
bust from Thorwaldsen, at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more
flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary Trans-Atlantic traveller,
than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen
emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time,
and Grattan's name razed from the street called after him in Dublin); I
say that I was more flattered by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_,
and was without motive or ostentation--the pure and warm feeling of a boy
for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;--_I_ would
not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders,
except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some '_absurd womankind's_,' as
Monkbarn's calls them--or my sister's. If asked _why_, then, I sate for my
own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq.,
and for no one else. A _picture_ is a different matter;--every body sits
for their picture;--but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to
permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather
than private remembrance.
"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently) I
comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by
their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic
visits, 'few and-far between' make me feel as if talking with posterity
from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the new English and
Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all
probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older
or earlier ages, as they are called."
EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON, 1821.
"Ravenna, January 12th, 1821.
"I have found out the seal cut on Murray's letter. It is meant for Walter
Scott--or _Sir_ Walter--he is the first poet knighted since Sir Richard
Blackmore. But it does not do him justice. Scott's--particularly when he
recites---is a very intelligent countenance, and this seal says nothing.
"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a
new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any--if not better
(only on an erroneous system)--and only ceased to be so popular, because
the vulgar learned were tired of hearing 'Aristides called the Just,' and
Scott the Best, and ostracised him.
"I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme
pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature towards myself,
personally. May he prosper!--for he deserves it. I know no reading to
which I fall with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give the
seal, with his bust on it, to Madame la Contesse G. this evening, who will
be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.
"January 20th, 1821.
"To-morrow is my birthday--that is to say, at twelve o' the clock,
midnight, i.e. in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three
years of age!!!--and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having
lived so long, and to so little purpose.
"It is three minutes past twelve.--''Tis the middle of night by the castle
clock, and I am now thirty-three!
'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni;--'
but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might
have done.
"Through life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing--except thirty-three.
"January 22nd, 1821.
1821.
Here lies
interred in the Eternity
of the Past,
from whence there is no
Resurrection
for the Days--whatever there may be
for the Dust--
the Thirty-Third Year
of an ill-spent Life,
Which, after
a lingering disease of many months,
sunk into a lethargy,
and expired,
January 22nd, 1821, A.D.
Leaving a successor
Inconsolable
for the very loss which
occasioned its
Existence."
LORD CLARE.
On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend, Lord
Clare, and the following description of their short interview is given in
his "Detached Thoughts."
"Pisa, November 5th, 1821.
"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not,) and so I have
often found it.
"Page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord
Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two
afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not
having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home
just as I set out in 1816.
"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present
time and the days of _Harrow_. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like
rising from the grave, to me. Clare too was much agitated--more in
_appearance_ than myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers'
ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so.
He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We
were obliged to part for our different journeys, he for Rome, I for Pisa,
but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes
together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my
existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was
coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people
with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.
"Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every
thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me
to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for
society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of
the leaven of bad passions.
"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
heard of him from others, during absence and distance."
On the subject of intimacies formed by Lord Byron, not only at the period
of which we are speaking, but throughout his whole life, it would be
difficult to advance any thing more judicious, or more demonstrative of a
true knowledge of his character, than is to be found in the following
remarks of one who had studied him with her whole heart, who had learned
to regard him with the eyes of good sense, as well as of affection, and
whose strong love, in short, was founded upon a basis the most creditable
both to him and herself,--the being able to understand him.[1]
[1] "My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"--such was
the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her
deathbed, and there is implied in these few words all that a
man of morbid sensibility must be dependent for upon the
tender and self-forgetting tolerance of the woman with whom he
is united.
"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
society. However, as there were a good many English in Pisa, he could not
avoid becoming acquainted with various friends of Shelley, among which
number was Mr. Medwin. They followed him in his rides, dined with him, and
felt themselves happy, of course, in the apparent intimacy in which they
lived with so renowned a man; but not one of them was admitted to any part
of his friendship, which, indeed, he did not easily accord. He had a great
affection for Shelley, and a great esteem for his character and talents;
but he was not his friend in the most extensive sense of that word.
Sometimes, when speaking of his friends and of friendship, as also of love,
and of every other noble emotion of the soul, his expressions might
inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and the goodness of his heart.
The feeling of the moment regulated his speech, and besides, he liked to
play the part of singularity,--and sometimes worse, more especially with
those whom he suspected of endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real
character; but it was only mean minds and superficial observers that could
be deceived in him. It was necessary to consider his actions to perceive
the contradiction they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness
of certain moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced
him to give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him
then, became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his
noble heart was full.
"Among the many occasions I had of seeing him thus overpowered, I shall
mention one relative to his feelings of friendship. A few days before
leaving Pisa, we were one evening seated in the garden of the Palazzo
Lanfranchi. A soft melancholy was spread over his countenance;--he
recalled to mind the events of his life; compared them with his present
situation and with that which it might have been if his affection for me
had not caused him to remain in Italy, saying things which would have made
earth a paradise for me, but that even then a presentiment that I should
lose all this happiness tormented me. At this moment a servant announced
Mr. Hobhouse. The slight shade of melancholy diffused over Lord Byron's
face gave instant place to the liveliest joy; but it was so great, that it
almost deprived him of strength. A fearful paleness came over his cheeks,
and his eyes were filled with tears as he embraced his friend. His emotion
was so great that he was forced to sit down.
"Lord Clare's visit also occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great
affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that
he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy
one for Lord Byron. 'I have a presentiment that I shall never see him
more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came
over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's departure,
whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this friend."
Of his feelings on the death of his daughter Allegra, this lady gives the
following account:--"On the occasion also of the death of his natural
daughter, I saw in his grief the excess of paternal tenderness. His
conduct towards this child was always that of a fond father; but no one
would have guessed from his expressions that he felt this affection for
her. He was dreadfully agitated by the first intelligence of her illness;
and when afterwards that of her death arrived, I was obliged to fulfil the
melancholy task of communicating it to him. The memory of that frightful
moment is stamped indelibly on my mind. For several evenings he had not
left his house, I therefore went to him. His first question was relative
to the courier he had despatched for tidings of his daughter, and whose
delay disquieted him. After a short interval of suspense, with every
caution which my own sorrow suggested, I deprived him of all hope of the
child's recovery. 'I understand,' said he,--'it is enough, say no more.' A
mortal paleness spread itself over his face, his strength failed him, and
he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed, and the expression such that I
began to fear for his reason; he did not shed a tear, and his countenance
manifested so hopeless, so profound, so sublime a sorrow, that at the
moment he appeared a being of a nature superior to humanity. He remained
immovable in the same attitude for an hour, and no consolation which I
endeavoured to afford him seemed to reach his ears, far less his heart.
But enough of this sad episode, on which I cannot linger, even after the
lapse of so many years, without renewing in my own heart the awful
wretchedness of that day. He desired to be left alone, and I was obliged
to leave him. I found him on the following morning tranquillized, and with
an expression of religious resignation on his features. 'She is more
fortunate than we are,' he said; 'besides her position in the world would
scarcely have allowed her to be happy. It is God's will--let us mention it
no more.' And from that day he would never pronounce her name; but became
more anxious when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when
the usual accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."
The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind less
with grief for the actual loss of his friend than with bitter indignation
against those who had, through life, so grossly misrepresented him; and
never certainly was there an instance where the supposed absence of all
religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly as an excuse for the
entire absence of truth and charity in judging him. Though never
personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
most loved him in admiring the various excellencies of his heart and
genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of bright,
erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it proceeded,
though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had full time been
allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have been tempered down
by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve, the world at large
would have been taught to pay that high homage to his genius which those
only who saw what he was capable of can now be expected to accord to it.
It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting together
one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they thought, walk,
into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as they afterwards
discovered, he was far away, in quite a different direction. "This," added
Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of voice, "was but ten days before
poor Shelley died."
HIS SERVICE IN THE GREEK CAUSE.
With that thanklessness which too often waits on disinterested actions, it
has been some times tauntingly remarked, and in quarters from whence a
more generous judgment might be expected, that, after all, Lord Byron
effected but little for Greece: as if much _could_ be effected by a single
individual, and in so short a time, for a cause which, fought as it has
been almost incessantly through the six years since his death, has
required nothing less than the intervention of all the great powers of
Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded.
That Byron himself was under no delusion, as to the importance of his own
solitary aid--that he knew, in a struggle like this, there must be the
same prodigality of means towards one great end as is observable in the
still grander operations of nature, where individuals are as nothing in
the tide of events--that such was his, at once, philosophic and melancholy
view of his own sacrifices, I have, I trust, clearly shown. But that,
during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all that
man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is an
assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and triumphantly
disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures, to be wise, must
be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds thus sown by him, the
benefits that were to be expected must be judged. To reconcile the rude
chiefs to the government and to each other;--to infuse a spirit of
humanity, by his example, into their warfare;--to prepare the way for the
employment of the expected loan, in a manner most calculated to call forth
the resources of the country--to put the fortifications of Missolonghi in
such a state of repair as might, and eventually _did_, render it proof
against the besieger;--to prevent those infractions of neutrality, so
tempting to the Greeks, which brought their government in collision with
the Ionian authorities, and to restrain all such license of the press as
might indispose the courts of Europe to their cause:--such were the
important objects which he had proposed to himself to accomplish, and
towards which, in this brief interval, and in the midst of such
dissensions and hindrances, he had already made considerable and most
promising progress. But it would be unjust to close even here the bright
catalogue of his services. It is, after all, _not_ with the span of mortal
life that the good achieved by a name immortal ends. The charm acts into
the future--it is an auxiliary through all time; and the inspiring example
of Byron, as a martyr of liberty, is for ever freshly embalmed in his
glory as a poet.
HIS PORTRAIT.
Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the highest
order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most varied
and interesting expression.
The same facility, indeed, of change observable in the movements of his
mind was seen also in the free play of his features, as the passing
thoughts within darkened or shone through them. His eyes, though of a
light grey, were capable of all extremes of expression, from the most
joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness--from the very sunshine of
benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage. Of this latter passion,
I had once an opportunity of seeing what fiery interpreters they could be,
on my telling him, thoughtlessly enough, that a friend of mine had said to
me--"Beware of Lord Byron, he will, some day or other, do something very
wicked." "Was it man or woman said so?" he exclaimed, suddenly turning
round upon me with a look of such intense anger as, though it lasted not
an instant, could not easily be forgot, and of which no better idea can be
given than in the words of one who, speaking of Chatterton's eyes, says
that "fire rolled at the bottom of them."
But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty, as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay. "Many pictures have been painted
of him (says a fair critic of his features) with various success; but the
excessive beauty of his lips escaped every painter and sculptor. In their
ceaseless play they represented every emotion, whether pale with anger,
curled in disdain, smiling in triumph, or dimpled with archness and love."
It would be injustice to the reader not to borrow from the same pencil a
few more touches of portraiture. "This extreme facility of expression was
sometimes painful, for I have seen him look absolutely ugly--I have seen
him look so hard and cold, that you must hate him, and then, in a moment,
brighter than the sun, with such playful softness in his look, such
affectionate eagerness kindling in his eyes, and dimpling his lips into
something more sweet than a smile, that you forget the man, the Lord Byron,
in the picture of beauty presented to you, and gazed with intense
curiosity--I had almost said--as if to satisfy yourself, that thus looked
the god of poetry, the god of the Vatican, when he conversed with the sons
and daughters of man."