LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS : 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY AND ESSAY, 
 
 BY CESARE CANTU. 
 
 EDITED, WITH NOTES AND APPENDIX, 
 
 BY 
 
 A. KINLOCH, 
 Latk Capt. 3eTH Regiment. 
 
 .... •* The biosfTftpber of B^Ton has yet to arise ; the work o( Moort, 
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PREFACE. 
 
 Adverting to the most recent attempts in the present 
 day to revive the interest in a life which the Memoirs 
 by Moore might be supposed sutticiently to perpetuate, 
 we may, in this brief epitome of Lord Byron's career 
 and works, merely say, that neither Professor Elze, 
 Castelar, Madame de Boissy, nor Mrs. Stowe seem to 
 have entirely exhausted the subject. 
 
 To indite, however, much that is new regarding a 
 Poet, v/ho, if not the gi'eatest of English Bards, is one 
 who, from his chequered life and ahnost matchless 
 rhyme, has interested this country and perhaps the 
 world more than any writer— save, it may be, Homer or 
 Shakespeare — has not now been attempted. The records 
 of his Hfe and the universality of his works may be 
 found in the Folio Catalogue of the National Library in 
 the British Museum, where 112 pages attest the facts 
 above averred. In this little voknne, some indulgent 
 criticism of Lord Byron's poetry and some mild censure 
 of his moral delinquencies have apparently been essayed 
 by the Italian legislator and historian, Cantu, whose 
 work, originally nierelv a printed lecture, has been 
 amplilied, through the kindness of subscribers, by the 
 Editor of this volume. We may trust, therefore, that 
 with all its imperfections, voids, or repetitions, the 
 present little work may be found by the reader both useful 
 and acceptable as a kind of compendium of the life and 
 works of Lord Byron. 
 
 Cesare Cantu, the writer of the brilliant essay now 
 given, was born, it seems, in the first decade of this 
 century, at Brescia, in Northern Italy, though some 
 biographers assign Cantu, near Milan, as his birthplace.* 
 
 Ho became Professor of Belles Lcttres, at Sondrio; 
 
 * Vide Appendix. 
 
PREFACE. ii 
 
 afterwards, as a member of the Italian Parliament, ho 
 was one of the few belonging to the Ultramontane 
 party, who, in spite of liberal and patriotic ideas, sided 
 with Papal Rome in politics. As a literary man, he has 
 greatly contributed to the education of his country, and 
 is the author of some popular religious hymns, whilst as 
 a writer of tiction he has even more celebrity. 
 
 Ilis greatest work is the Storia Universale^ a General 
 History, 35 vols., pubhshed in Turin in 1837, though ho 
 has besides written much on Italy and its literature. 
 
 His last work appears to have been Storia del Popolo 
 c pel Popolo, 1871. 
 
 A. K, 
 
SUBSCRIBERS 
 
 MuftHoa. Hii Esoellenoy The Mabquis of Rxfov, K.Q., Vioeroy o| 
 
 India. 
 Most Hon. His Excellency The Mabquis of Loune, K.T., Qoveruor* 
 
 General of Canada. (2 copies). 
 Rt. Hon. The Eael of Nobtubeook, G. C.S.I. 
 Field Marshal Lobd Natiub, of Magdula, G.C.B. (2 copies). 
 General Sib NVk. F. Williams, Bart., G.C.B. (2 copies). 
 General C. E. Fobd, R.E. 
 General SiE Abtuub Phayee, G.C.M.Q., C.S.I. 
 Colonel The Hon. C. H. Lindsay, C.B. 
 CiiAS. W. KiNLOCH, Esq., late B. C. S. 
 Mrs. HiTCUixas. 
 Mrs. KiTSON. 
 
 C.jI. J. J. Gbaiiam, R.M.L.I., C.B. (2 copies). 
 Capt. KicuAED BuETON, F.R.G.S., i:c. 
 R. DUENFOED, Eaq. 
 
 Feancis Campdkll, Esq., Foreign Oflice. 
 
 Right Hon. A. J. Mundella, M.P. 
 
 Messrs. Stephenson, Tuckee, Bassett, Tabob, 
 
 Couethope, Joyce, Ritcuie, (2 copies), 
 
 Sandfoes, Pooley, R. B. Summkefobd 
 
 (Private Secretary), Palqeave (Assistant 
 
 Secretary), R. Nelmes, Hodgson, Milleb, 
 
 WiiiTE, Lindsell, Butlee, Levy, Appeeson, 
 
 Hendebson, Slatee, Giebs, Haevey, and 
 
 Weight. > 
 
 General Wynyaed. 
 
 J. R. Dasent, Esq., Private Secretary. 
 C. L. Peel, Esq., C.li. 
 H. a. Kinlolu, Esq. 
 Dr. Hood. 
 V. Wing, Esq. 
 Mrs. Macnaohten. 
 Mrs. Randall. 
 RoBLET Andbeson, Esq., M.A. 
 
 M. P. MOLESWOETH, Esq. 
 
 Wm. Dealtbey. Esq., C.M.G. 
 
 Educatioh 
 Dei'abtkent. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Paok. 
 
 1. Childhood of Byron I 
 
 2. His First Pooras 2 
 
 3. Dissipation 4 
 
 4. Appearance in the House of Lords • 
 
 5. Departure from England <i 
 
 6. His Portrait T 
 
 7. Fame t> 
 
 S. First Love 10 
 
 0. Travels 11 
 
 10. Childo Harold's Pilgrimage 12 
 
 11. Contemporary Poets 14 
 
 12. The Corsair and other Tales l.S 
 
 13. Marriage 22 
 
 14. Leaves England again 26 
 
 l.j. Travels 28 
 
 10. Italy . . . ■ 30 
 
 17. Mode of Life in Venice 31 
 
 18. La Fornarina 33 
 
 19. Manfred and Parisina i 37 
 
 20. Beauties of his Poems 39 
 
 21. Beppo and Don Juan 42 
 
 22. Dramas 46 
 
 23. Other Works , 49 
 
 24. The Guiccioli • 63 
 
 25. His Memoirs * .. 66 
 
 26. The Italians and. Fame 60 
 
 27. Proceeds to Greece 64 
 
 28. Religious Belief 66 
 
 29. His Death 69 
 
 30. The General Grief 71 • 
 
 31. His Cliaracter 73 • 
 
 32. Concluding Summary 79 * 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 12. lu the concluding phrase of last line, tranipote, in reading, the 
 
 words ttream and cohyh^ 
 ,, 28. In extract from " ChiUle Harold," iottH)»tractedr(aA eontraaUd. 
 „ 32. In Foot-note (4) for Moceuiga read Murceuig». 
 „ 33. In line 17. a dash — has been omitted before the words " the 
 
 vesta Zendale." 
 
 „ 37. In the third Foot-note, the reference number (1) }aM been 
 omitted. 
 
 „ 50, In line 12, for time read crime. 
 
 „ 69. In line 9, for editor read Editor. 
 
 „ 62. In fourteenth line from foot, for Montf read Monti. 
 
 „ 69. In eighth line from foot, for exampes road examples. 
 
 „ 71. In fifteenth line from foot, for virgim read the virgint, 
 
 „ 77. In serenteenth line from foot, at the end of the lino, the final / 
 has been omitted from infrequent. 
 
 N.B.—The small Jignres above the words in the text indicate fo^t'HOtes ; 
 the larger Jiynres refer to notes at the end^ preceding the Jpptndix, 
 
BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 George Byron (0 Nvas born in London (^, January 22nd, 
 1788, of a race illustrious by ancestry, but decayed in 
 fortune (1). Have wo to tell you of his boyhood ? 
 Obstinate, moody in temper, an obdurate enemy, adverse 
 at first to study, th^n devoted to books (especially 
 history,) at play eager, passionately fond of the beauties 
 of nature — and, in ; particular of the sublime scenery of 
 Scotland, where his mother left him, that in a keen 
 air and with hardy exercise he might invigorate a 
 feeble body — such was young Byron. 
 
 An uncle meanwhile died, and George, at ten years of 
 age, found himself master and lord at Newstead Abbey. 
 Tliere, with a renowned title came those tilings, its 
 concomitants, domestics, scholastic fame, the appellation 
 of "my lord ;" and ho demanded of his mother, " Havo 
 you discovered in me any difference since I havo become 
 a lord, for really I do not myself perceive it." Tho 
 young peer took up his abode at Newstead (2), in 
 Nottinghamsliire, 136 miles from London, altogether 
 without a care. And there, in idle tranquillity, he grew 
 to youth under the mouldering tapestries of the old 
 abbey ; amid boyish passions, at one time sad, at 
 another gay, tho' why he knew not— passing in a 
 moment from merriment to grief, from idleness to the 
 most vigorous exercises. Dogs, horses, hunting and 
 coursing, swimming, boxing, wrestling, and fencing, 
 such were the occupations of the youthful peer. 
 
 Peel, who afterwards took so great a part in public 
 affairs, was one day beaten with great cruelty by a 
 bigger boy. Byron accosted the tyrant with indignation. 
 
 The baptismal names of Lord Brron were Oeorgo Gordon No«'. 
 *' Moore."-(It is believed in HoUes stmt. £d.) Mr. DallM mv| 
 
 T«." 
 
 B 
 
 ..I 
 
2 LORD BYRON AND EIS WORKS. 
 
 " How much more do you intend giving him ?" " What is 
 that to you, you little rascal ?" answered the other. 
 " Because," replied Byron, " if you like, I will take half for 
 him." Another schoolfellow, deformed in body, was sub- 
 jected to derision and worse. "Harness," said Lord 
 Byron, " if any one illtrcats you, lot me know, and I will 
 thrash him if I can." And he kept his word. Boyish 
 traits these, perhaps, but which, just because they are 
 unnoticed by tutors, may become the germs of great 
 actions. 
 
 II. 
 
 HIS FIRST POEMS. 
 
 The poetic fire was meanwhile developed in him, nor 
 could be long undiscovered. At college, where he 
 attended classes, his companions and masters perceived in 
 the youth something extraordinary, and he himself felt 
 born to fame. Seized with fits of deep melancholy, averse 
 to any intercourse with his fellows, he would often seat 
 himself on a tombstone in Harrow churchyard, and this 
 his comrades called ♦' Byron's Tomb." Here he wrote, 
 '• My epitaph (1), shall be my name alone." 
 
 Thus at 15 he wrote. Yet a little while, and, unable to 
 restrain his boyish impatience, he gave to the world his 
 first stanzas, *' Hours of Idleness." Look not there for 
 the great poet Childe Harold, but it would denote a 
 want of perception of the beautiful, not to discover 
 how great was the promise of these poems, some lines 
 of which, as a sample and a picture of his youth, 
 we cite. None, however, but the mountaineer by birth, 
 or one whose first recollections and affections are thus 
 associated, will enjoy their beauty. 
 
 When I rovod a young Highlander, o'er the dark heath, 
 
 And climb'd thy steep auiumit, oh, Morven, (l) of snow, 
 To gaze on the torrent that thuuder'd beneath, 
 
 Or the mist of the ter^pest that g ither'd below ; 
 Untutor'd by science, a stranger to fear, 
 
 And rude as the rocks whore my infancy grew. 
 No fooling save one, to my bosom was dear, 
 
 Need I say, my sweet Mary, t'was centred in you, &e. iSrc. 
 
 ID An Ossiauic expiudsiou— M,.rvcu is a moantain la Aberdeenshire. 
 
LOni) BYEON AND HIS JVOBKS. 8 
 
 These poems he published with the confident boldness 
 of a youth who looks for applause, or at least encourage- 
 ment. Have you never experienced how bitter it is to 
 receive instead censure and ridicule? This grief was 
 Lord Byron's. The Edinburgh Eevicxu, which, in its 
 exemption from the routine of ordinary minds, instead 
 of there discerning the beams of a bright intellect, 
 discovered only the ravings of a degraded fancy, with 
 impertinent irony tears to pieces these youthful poems, 
 dissects them, analyses them with eye of lynx and 
 heart of stone— treats the peer of England no otherwise 
 than as a lad escaped from school, and of the future bard 
 attempts to clip the wings. 
 
 •• The poesy of this young Lord," says the Eeview, (i) 
 " belongs to the class which neither men nor Gods are said 
 to permit. Indeed we do not recollect to have seen a 
 quantity of verse with so few de\'iations in either direction 
 from that exact standard. His effusions are spread over 
 a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the 
 level than if they wore so much stagnant water. As an 
 extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly 
 forward in pleading minority 
 
 " But alas, we all remember the poetry of Cowley at 
 ten, and Pope at twelve ; and so far from hearing, with any 
 degree of surprise, that very poor verses were written by 
 a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college 
 inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common 
 of all occurrences ; that it happens in the life of nino 
 men in ten who are educated in England, and that the 
 
 tenth man writes better verse than Lord Byron " 
 
 Oh ! such a moment is for a youth the crisis of his life. 
 Doubt it not. If under the torture of liis Moevii (3), he 
 succumbs, then adieu fame, adieu to study; he will 
 abandon himself to idleness, to an indolent silence, use- 
 less if not noxious, to himself and others. Happy he who 
 has sufficient strength of mind to acquire greater powers 
 from opposition and the impulse to do better. 
 
 Long afterwards. Lord Byron said : •' I recollect the 
 effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem. It was 
 rage and resistance and redress — but not despondency 
 
 (l) Edinburgh Review of January, 1808. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 LOBD B7B0N AND BIS WOBKS. 
 
 nor despair. I grant that those are not amiahle feelings, 
 but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the 
 career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers 
 of reaistance before he goes into the arena. 
 
 " Expect not life from pain nor danger free, 
 
 Nor deem the doom of man reversea for thee." (S) 
 
 In revenge, Byron wrote the " English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers," in which he tore to shreds the matured fame 
 of his country's writers. 
 
 His satire has all the verve of rage, ho strikes friend 
 and foe ; you might compare him to a baited bull which 
 plunges ainidst the crowd, trampling and goring without 
 distinction both his tormentors and the unofifending 
 spectators. England applauded the new Juvenal ; Byron 
 triumphed. In after years he repented what he had 
 written, as is always the case with the writer of a 
 libel (4). 
 
 III. 
 
 LOIID BYnoX'S DISSIPATION. 
 
 But, before launching himself into the career of letters, 
 Byron had yet to go through a course of sensual enjoy- 
 ment and of dissipation — riotous orgies where reason 
 became lost, duels for a trifle, a torn garment or a mis- 
 quoted verse. Newstead Abbey was converted into a 
 scene of voluptuous deliglits. There were the clearest 
 heads, the most renowned bo7is vivans of London ; there, 
 the tirst poets (?) of the day, the most courted actresses, 
 were assembled. Exquisite wines, dehcious perfumes, 
 splendid illuminations, garlands of flowers, intertwined, 
 you might say, with dishevelled locks, convert the holy 
 cells of the monks into boudoirs most profane. And oh! 
 refectory, where still siloitium remains inscribed, with 
 what toasts did thy walls resound I 
 
 "But if the place appear rather strange to you, the 
 wtiys of the inhabitants will not appear much less so. 
 
 C^) Letter to Shelley, Ravenna, April 2G, 1821. Moort'i Life^ 1847, 
 p. 501. 
 
LOBD BYEON AND HIS WOUKS, 6 
 
 Ascend then with me, the hall steps, that I may intro- 
 duce you to my Lord and his visitants. But have care 
 how you proceed ; be mindful to go there in broad 
 daylight, and with your eyes about you. For should 
 you make any blunder, should you go to the right 
 of the hall steps, you are laid hold of by a bear; 
 and should you go the left, your case is still worse, 
 for you run against a wolf ! — nor, when you have 
 attained the door, is your danger over, for the 
 hall being decayed, and therefore standing in need of 
 repair, a bevy of inmates are probably hanging at one 
 end of it with their pistols, so that if you enter without 
 giving loud notice of your approach, you have only 
 escaped the wolf and the bear, to expire by the pistol 
 
 shots of the merry monks of Newstead (1) &c." 
 
 I must not omit the custom of handing round after 
 dinner, on the removal of the cloth, a human skull filled 
 with Burgundy. Then, turning into mockery the 
 tradition of the dead, who, wrapped in funereal shroud, 
 arose as ghosts at midnight from their graves, these 
 jovial companions traversed the long corridors, disguised 
 as monks, and descending to the vaults, burst open the 
 sepulchres of the dead. Nor then did they rise from 
 their unholy banquet until the sparkling Burgundy had 
 first gone round in a cup formed from a disentombed 
 skull. On that skull the lines composed by Byron— who 
 adorned even his own studio with crania and skeletons, a 
 fantasy which some practice, as if fond not of being, but 
 of appearing, melancholy— were written : 
 
 Start not, nor deem my spirit fled ! 
 
 In me behold the only skull. 
 From which, unlike a livine head, (2) 
 
 Whatever flows ia never dull." &c. 
 
 Such were the orgies with which the poet prepared 
 himself for his appearance in Parliament, and his travels 
 * in Greece and Italy. 
 
6 LOBD BYnON AND HIS WOBKS, 
 
 IV. 
 
 APPEARS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 
 
 In the House of LonlH ho presented himself alono, 
 without a friend to introduce or welcome him, without 
 a kinsman to motion him to a seat by his side. There, 
 the interests of all Europe were then in discussion in 
 connection with Napoleon, whose mind, gigantic as it 
 ever was, had again turned to the overthrow of the 
 factitious power of England. Most ardently desirous 
 of instruction in the affairs of the country, Lord Byron 
 there gave utterance to ideas too strange to that House, 
 or that were then premature ; there, he at once with 
 vehemence expressed the most liberal sentiments. How 
 was he first received as a poet ? With virulent censure. 
 How in Parliainent ? With indifference, which is even 
 worse (1). Discouraged, then, or unable in dissipation 
 to stifle his chagrin, which arose from the collision be- 
 twixt the desire of action and impotence to act ; sated 
 with the life of a wanderer at home, with an isolation 
 amidst friends, mortitied in his ambition at finding his 
 wealth inadequate to his position, deceived in his first 
 affections, ho abandons his country, " a voluntary exile, 
 lleeing his own heart." 
 
 V. 
 
 DEPARTUUE FROM EKGLAN'D. 
 
 Scarcely on the ocean, the mighty ocean, whereon more 
 especially than elsewhere the Deity has stamped tho 
 type of his power and of eternity, and again the poet 
 revives. 
 
 Adieu ! adieu I my native shore (1) 
 
 Fades o'er the waters blue: 
 The night winds sigh, the breakers roar, 
 
 And shrieks the wild sea-mew. 
 Yon sun that sets upon the sea, 
 
 We follow in his flight ; 
 Farewell alike to him and thee. 
 
 My native land— good night ! &0« 
 
 (1) ChUde Harold. Canto 1. 
 
LOUD BYWN AND HIS WOUKS. 7 
 
 VI. 
 
 rORTRAIT OF LORD CYRON. (1.) 
 
 "Whilst on his travels let us contemplate and sketch 
 the poet. He is handsunic, and on his brow is read the 
 iDipress of an extraordinaiy mind. The predominating 
 characteristic of his countenance is an expression of 
 deep pensive meditation, which, in conversation, changes 
 to a rapid animation, on which follow in succession 
 flashes of joy, indipiation, or satirical mirth. Eich 
 curls of luxuriant brown hair surround a spacious brow ; 
 eyes of U^ht blue sparkle with a brilliant lire ; his cheek 
 is pale, but subsequently sunburned to a deeper hue ; 
 the finest teeth— in fine, the whitest neck, shaped so 
 perfectly as to form a real model for the sculptor {^). 
 Of his good looks he was most careful, even indeed to 
 vanity. He never left his house but with hair and 
 person most carefully dressed, the finest linen, white as 
 snow, and clothes of the choicest materials; he used the 
 most exquisite perfumes, and took the most particular 
 care of his teeth. *' The death of Waite," (2) he writes, 
 " is a shock to the teeth, as well as to the feelings of all 
 who knew him. Good God ! he and Blake both (3) gone. 
 I left them both in the most robust health, and little 
 thought of the national loss in so short a time as five 
 
 years Where is tooth powder, viild and yet 
 
 eflicacious — where is tincture — where are cleamng roots 
 and brushes now to be obtained ?" . . . . Else- 
 where he writes for tooth powder, magnesia, tincture of 
 myrrh, brushes, &c. In fact, in his dressing case might 
 have been found all the minute appurtenances of a lady's 
 toilet. 
 
 He took a singular pride in the extreme whiteness of 
 his hands ; when he swam he wore gloves. He wrote to 
 his mother that the Pasha of Janina had told him that 
 he recognised him as a person of quality by the small- 
 ness of his ears, his curling hair, and his little white 
 hands (2). And elsewhere he says (»), ** There is 
 
 (1) " Hi§ neck seemod to have been formed in a moold/*— Madame T< 
 A., JfooVa Life. 
 
 {^ and S) Koto to Staota, 106« Don Joas, Oanto 6, 
 
8 LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 nothing perhaps more distinctive of birth than the hand. 
 It is almost tho only sign of blood which aristocracy 
 can generate." 
 
 It will bo easy to surmise how dreadful to his mind 
 must have been the defect of lameness in his feet, bo 
 w^hich from his birth he was subject ; and this was the 
 greatest annoy an 3e — one might almost say tho deepest 
 remorse— of his life. On that account was it that his 
 clothes were always made long — that he generally rode 
 on horseback, and went into society but little — while it 
 may be affirmed thac during the whole time he remained 
 in Venice he scarcely went forth on foot, and never 
 crossed the piazza of St. Mark (4), or entered its church, 
 A deformity of this kind was ever before his eyes, so that 
 in fact it appeared to him that this, rather than his good looks 
 or his fame, drew upon him the public gaze. One day 
 his friend Beecher, with the view of driving away the 
 dejection which more than usually oppressed him, was 
 setting forth in briglit colours the various advantages 
 wherewith Providence had endowed him. " Ah ! my 
 friend," mournfully responded Byron," if that (laying his 
 hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of man- 
 kind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far below 
 them" (-1). 
 
 Another day he was on the course at Newmarket, 
 and a little boy, addressing him by his title, offered 
 him a standing chair. *' You see," said Shelley to him, 
 " you are so famous that even the boys on the course 
 know you." "Yes," replied Byron, "because I am 
 deformed" (5). 
 
 A tendency to flesh also displeased him greatly, and 
 he tried every means to reduce himself (5). But the 
 embonpoint to which he was inclined in no way inter- 
 fered with his bodily activity, so that in every athletic 
 exercise he was among the very first. " I am able," ho 
 afterwards wrote from Ravenna, in 1820, " to back a horse 
 and fire a pistol without tliinking or blinking like Major 
 Sturgeon ; I have fed at times for two months together 
 on sheer biscuit and water (without metaphor) ; I can 
 get over seventy or eighty miles a day riding post, and 
 
 (■t) Moore's Life, 1817. 
 
 (6) Moore tells nearly tho same anecdote, p. 357, Vol. I, 1830, of 
 Byron and Rogers, 
 
LOBD BYBON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 stoim five at a stretch, as at Venice in 1818, or at least I 
 coidd do, and have done it once,'* {^) 
 
 VII. 
 
 LORD r.YRON'S FA:\rE. 
 
 Thus much for the body ; as to tho mind, throughout 
 life it was actUcated by tlireo idols — fame, love, liberty. 
 Whilst still a youth he gave forth his feelings in verse (*). 
 
 The firo in the cavern of JEtna concealed 
 
 Still mantles unseen in its secret recess ; 
 At longth, in a volume terrific revealed, 
 
 No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress. 
 
 Oh I thus, the desire in my bosom for fame 
 Bids mo live but to hope for Posterity's praise ; 
 
 Could I soar, with the Plupuix, on pinions of flame, 
 With him would I wish to expire in the blaze. 
 
 In tho life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, 
 What censure, what danger, wliat woe I would brave ; 
 
 Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath, — 
 Their glory illumines the gloom of tho grave ! &c. 
 
 How many events were yet to harass this existence, 
 and dispel so many illusions before he could write a3 
 follows, with sentiments so opposite C-^). 
 
 What is the end of fame, 'tis but to fill 
 A certain portion of uncertain paper ; 
 Some liken it to climbing up a hill 
 
 Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour : 
 For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill. 
 And bards bum what they call their '* midnight taper.'* 
 To have, when the original is dust— 
 A name, a wretchei picture, and worse bust. 
 
 (8) Moore's Lift, 1830, p. 379, Vol II.— Letter to Mr. Murray, 
 h) Moore'a Lift, 1830, p. 89. 
 (2) Don Juan, Canto 1, 
 
10 LOBD BYBON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 VIII, 
 
 BYRON'S FIRST LOVE. 
 
 Love in him, like every other passion, was premature. 
 Ho had not completed eiylit years when he became 
 enamoured of Mary Duff. At about sixteen, the poet, 
 after having been in love fifty tunes, recorded in unpas- 
 sioned verse the charms of Mary, her face, her brown 
 dark hair, her hazel eyes, her very dress (i). Such 
 precocious feelings will not surprise the countrymen of 
 Dante and of Canova, of whom the former at nine became 
 amorous of Beatrice, who was to lead him to Paradise (^), 
 whilst the latter remembered a love passion at five years 
 old (•'*). Alfieri anticipated the age of love, and describes 
 its effects, which few understand and still fewer ex- 
 perience, but to how very few in all human arts is it per- 
 mitted to leave behind the common crowd (^). 
 
 Afterwards, at twelve, his first verses were inspired by 
 !Miss Parker, his cousin, "one of the most beautiful of 
 evanescent beings." ♦• She looked," he wrote (^), " as if 
 she had been made out of a rainbow — all beauty and 
 peace" (^). She died about a year after (^). For three years 
 nearly he lived fond to distraction of Mary Chaworth ; 
 it made him angry to see her dancing with another ; he 
 was in ecstasies when she touched the strings of herhai-p. 
 But she was to wed another, and to him was she 
 married (1). 
 
 Tims began the series of Byron's amours, which soon 
 sadly persuaded him that love had nothing precious about 
 it but its wings ; and thus, through a host of transient 
 passions, affording him no real happiness, we shall 
 hereafter see him attached to an object more worthy 
 of him. 
 
 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7,) Moore's Li/'c, vol. 1, 2, pp. 17, 36, &o., &o. 
 
lOBD BYBON AND HIS WORKS, li 
 
 IX. 
 
 TR.U-ELS IN SPAIN, Etc.. Etc. 
 
 Liberty ^vas his dream tliroii^'hoiit his life's pilgrimage, 
 from the (lay when he roved over the liillsof Annesley, (^) 
 a giddy youth, until its final termination at Missolonghi, 
 In pursuit of tliis, leaving the shores of England with 
 Ilobhousc, wliom he ever held his dearest friend, 
 he sailed over the ocean and the Mediterranean, and 
 traveiscd Spain and Portugal, then beheld Greece, a land 
 whose beauty, if not whose liberty or glory, lives yet 
 intact ; hailed the savage heights of Albania, the dark 
 rocks of Suli, the stormy sununits of Pindus, amidst 
 whose recesses, undisturbed by song, dwell the eaglo 
 and wild animals, and still more ferocious men. With tho 
 '• Albanian kirtled to his knee," •• with shawl-girt sword 
 and ornamented gun," he conversed, with the"crimson- 
 Bcarfed men of Macedon," '• the Delhi with his cap of 
 terror and crooked glaive," " the lively, supple Greek," 
 and "proud imperious Turk." There how great tho 
 diversity of mundane scenes and things within his ken ; 
 and the memorable field of Marathon is offered to him for 
 ninety pounds sterling ! Amid tho groves, tho fabled 
 abode of nymphs, in the harmonious recesses where sang 
 tho muses, shall not the lyre of Byron again awake ? 
 Hark! What strain of melodious song is heard? 
 Perchance the vocal harmony of the poets who, as in 
 piore joyous days, to tho sound of lyres intone the praises 
 of the Olympian conquerors, or of him who put to rout 
 the Persian hosts ! It is the harp of the English bard 
 which pours forth tho vigorous song of beauty and of 
 valour. (2) 
 
 Fair clime ! where every season smiles 
 Benignant o'er those blessed isles, 
 Which, seen from far Colonna's height. 
 Ma ke glad the heart that bails the sight, 
 And lend to loneliness delight, &c., &o. 
 
 (1) The residence of the Chaworths, and scene of passages in tht 
 
 Dream," one of his che/t d^cBuvr$t, 
 (S) The Oiaour. 
 
12 LO^D BYWN AND ms WORKS. 
 
 CHILDE HAKOLD'S PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 How long had it been declared that poetry had passed 
 away, that the epic lyre had lost its sound ! And, lo I 
 amid the tunnoil of Europe, disturbed by the restless 
 genius of Napoleon, appeared a poem, at once an lUad 
 and an Odyssey, a poem which stands alone in our age, 
 which might yet have furnished subjects for so many 
 poems. Ancient poetry no longer lived. A stroke of 
 imagination and a touch of style were ingredients enough 
 for the day to form a poet. A poet resided at Court, was 
 a member of the magistracy, owned houses and property, 
 possessed friends and family ; as other men he rose and 
 slept, and, whilst luxuriously reclining, in dressing gown 
 arrayed, before his fire, withdrew from the walls his 
 disused lyre, and wrote an epic according to the rules of 
 Aristotle — a vade inecum of the true sublime — imagining 
 men, costumes, laws, countries, names, poi triying then the 
 whole with the marvels of antiquated beliefs, neither true 
 nor even credible. 
 
 Tlie iEneid, a poem of Italian antiquity, was written 
 under the smiling sky of Calabria, or at the Augustan 
 Court, perfuming the monarch with the incense which 
 impairs so much the vivid colouring of that divine poem. 
 Arisoto wrote his verses often when seated at the table 
 of the Duke, (1) ''betwixt the latter and Lucrezia Borgia, 
 or after kissing the Pope's feet, or whilst governing 
 Garfagnana, (2), amid accusations and law pleadings. 
 Little otherwise was con.posed the Henriade, (3). 
 Telemachus was written through a translation (4). And 
 Tasso, of whose name the city of his birth is so justly 
 proud, sought not tlie sacred scenes for truth or inspira- 
 tion, or the hills and woods mindful of the muses of 
 song famed in Helicon, "but thus, from a height above 
 Ferrara, addressed his invocation : See ye these fields, 
 these Campaniles, these streams, this people ! Behold I 
 there is my poem l" 
 
 In juxtaposition with these regard Homer : limping 
 along, step by step, all Greece he visited ; he knew its 
 every path, its smallest hill, of every course the streaii^ 
 
LOUD BYRON AND HIS WOIiKS. 13 
 
 he tracecl, from every part he gathered the dialogue, in 
 his tongue to be inimortahzed ; he suffers want for bread, 
 and begs through the cities, afterwards to dispute 
 the honour of his cradle. Behold the Homer of tho 
 Middle Ages, Dante, Q) exiled, condemned to die, who 
 wields a patriot's anns, who, leaving all he cherished 
 most, goes from land to land, experiencing how bitter is 
 the bread of strangers. He reposes in a convent, asking 
 peace from the Church, he seeks instruction. in tho 
 line Tuscan tongue, and, a traveller tliro' all cities, in none 
 reposes. Thus genius rises amidst dilliculties, thus 
 emerge the great whom then the world adores. 
 
 And a poet such as this did Byron wish to be. Already 
 all that in the belief of men and in fiction could inspire 
 a poet was lost ; the destructive hand of the Revolution 
 had torn away all tho veils of Isis but the last, and that 
 removed, a carcase was revealed ; and a cry, which, 
 under Tiberius, had already resounded over the seas, had 
 announced— the Gods are dead ! Meantime, the exercise 
 of thought, more active than ever, had become a passion, 
 nay, a tonnent — the progress of knowledge, the daily dis- 
 coveries, the more rapid events of history, more stupendous 
 than the fancy could have imagined, demanded other poets 
 and other hearers, a poetry inspired, effective, equal to 
 tlie impulsion which portentous events had conununicated 
 to men's minds. No longer were desired descriptions at 
 caprice, nor imaginary heroes, ideal, shadow-like, nor 
 conventional discourses, but truth ; tho true, perfected 
 in action, seen and felt. It had become necessary to 
 penetrate the innermost recesses of man's mind, to re- 
 veal his passions, to lay bare his heart. This would 
 Byron do. Tho age that had said to Cooper, " Tell mo 
 of tho sea ;" to Walter Scott, " Paint me Scotland ; " said 
 to' Byron, " Speak to mo of thyself. Reveal to me a 
 mind above the crowd ; bo thou thyself thino own 
 Achilles, thy own Godfrey ; or when thou speakest not 
 of thyself, relate to me what thou hast thyself seen." 
 
 Byron understood this, and gave himself to the study of 
 man's destruction ; of nature and art's decay ; contemplated 
 man contending no longer with giants or with gods but 
 with his own passions, with anguish, with death. He 
 
 (1) Dante was condenined, first, to confiscation of all his property; 
 •eoondly, to be burned alive. -^Ed. and Translator. 
 
14 LOBD BYBON AND EIS WOBKS. 
 
 meditated on himself; and melancholy, if already it 
 had before inspired at times his verse, was by him 
 invoked as his only muse. 
 
 This was it that dictated for him the Pilgrimage of 
 Childe Harold, the narrative of his travels, from whence 
 returned, he scarcely, or with difficulty, found a printer 
 for his verse. Yet a little while, and every line was pur- 
 chased at a guinea. Rarely had so powerful a voice 
 been heard amid the feeble tones of those the so-called 
 great writers of the day, and the old generation revolted 
 against a novelty or an innovation it comprehended not. 
 The ago coming, or to come, found it adapted to its 
 understanding. In short, admiration gained the day ; 
 Childe Harold appeared the most natural production of 
 the age. All strove to praise the author, all desired to 
 gain his friendship. '* I awoke," he wrote, *' one 
 morning and found myself famous." (^'). 
 
 And the Edinhavfili lievicw ! Not even could this 
 gainsay his title to fame ; but it would still affirm that 
 the marvels which so deliglited the world were void oi 
 all which usually pleases and attracts. 
 
 XI. 
 
 CONTEMPORAUY POETS. 
 
 The scene on which the poet had with such brilliancy 
 just appeared, was worthy of his greatness. England, 
 itself astounded at having overthrown the Colossus 
 which held the dagger to her breast, at having 
 entered in triumpli the Metropolis of the French Empire, 
 whilst it restored order to Europe by arms and gold, \ya9 
 likewise insinuating the essence of its spirit into foreign 
 literature. Hundreds of new celebrities arose. Crabbe, 
 young and free from care or want, had entered the lists 
 of song. Lewis had thrown down the gauntlet to tlie. 
 most impassioned lovers of the terrible. Coleridge was 
 
 (-) Memorauda.— J/c/t^r^'i Life. 
 
LOED BYBON AND HIS WORKS, 15 
 
 preparing all the powers of a thoughtful imagination, 
 which he then abandoned to a careless indol- 
 ence. Canning, still a youth, was proving in satire 
 the eloquence which was afterwards to give him sway in 
 Parhament and a premature end. Campbell, already 
 supremo in didactics, had promised himself fresh 
 triumphs in Odes, and " was the only contemporary 
 poet," said Byron, *' who could be reproached with 
 having written too little." {^). Thomas Moore, with a 
 style thoroughly brilliant, had transplanted to England 
 the fairy tales of the East. Rogers brought back to 
 remembrance the harmony of Pope. Wordsworth, if at 
 times childish— if (as Byron, somewhat disposed against 
 him, declared) he placed a r7?/^c between his ov>^n intellect 
 and others, had yet learned to wield a language magni- 
 ficent as the scenes ho contemplated. Southey, the 
 constant butt for the raillery of Byron, by dint of 
 intellect, imagination, grace, and style, was sustaining 
 the fame of the old school, or, as it was styled, the Lake 
 School C'^). But above the others soared Walter Scott, 
 who, drawing his models from the middle ages, and 
 reviving the minstrels, had ascended to the pinnacle of 
 poetic fame, and was soon about to rise, if possible, still 
 higher as a novelist. 
 
 I3y different paths Scott and Byron aspired to fame. 
 The former varied to infinity his characters ; the latter 
 produced again and again the same, changing somewhat 
 perhaps the outlines. The first describes the dress and 
 contour of the person and countenance ; the second 
 analyses the mind. The former, of a landscape or of a 
 mansion will give you a topography or description that 
 might enable you to sketch it with your pencil ; the 
 latter studies the inhabitants and their passions. Walter 
 Scott ponders well the choice of his subject ; to Byron 
 anything and everything is alike a theme. Scott is more 
 picturesque, Byron more impassioned ; in the first is 
 more of order and symmetry ; in the second, more of 
 impetuosity and inspiration. 
 
 The romance writer thus depicted the poet :— " It was 
 in the spring of 1815 that, chancing to be in London, I 
 
 n) Except Rogera.—Spe ^/oorrN life, p. 444, 1847. 
 (2) See dictionary of 10,000 li?ing English 
 
 writers, of whom 1,987 are 
 poets. 
 
18 LORD BYnON AND EIS WORKS. 
 
 hod tho advantage of a personal introduction to Lord 
 Byron. Report had prepared nio to meet a man of 
 peculiar habits and a quick temper, and I had some 
 doubts whether we were hkely to suit each other in 
 society. I was most disagreeably disappointed in this 
 respect. I found Byron in the highest degree courteous 
 and even kind. We met for an hour or two almost 
 daily in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, and found a great 
 deal to say to each other. We also met frequently in 
 parties and evening society, so that for about two 
 months I had the advantage of a considerable intimacy 
 with this distinguished individual. Our sentiments 
 agreed a good deal, except upon the subjects of religion 
 and politics, upon neither of which I was inclined to 
 believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed opinions. 
 I remember saying to him that I really thought that if 
 he lived a few years longer he would alter his sentiments. 
 lie answered, rather sharply, * I suppose you are one of 
 those who prophecy I will turn Methodist ! ' I replied, 
 " No, I don't expect your conversion to be of such an 
 ordinary kind. I would rather look to see you retreat 
 ui)on the Catholic faith, and distinguish yourself by the 
 austerity of your penances (1). The species of religion 
 to which you nmst, or may, attach yourself nmst exercise 
 a strong power on the imagination. ' He smiled gravely, 
 and seemed to allow I must be right. On politics ho 
 used sometimes to express a high strain of what is now 
 called Liberalism ; but it appeared to me that the 
 pleasure it alforded him as a vehicle of displaying his 
 wit and satire against individuals in olhco, was at the 
 bottom of this habit of thinking, rather than any real 
 conviction of the political principles on which he talked. 
 lie was certainly proud of his rank and ancient family, 
 and in that respect as much an aristocrat as was con- 
 sistent with good sense and good breeding. Some 
 disgusts, how adopted I know not, seemed to me to have 
 given rise to this peculiar, and, as it appeared to mo 
 contradictory cast of mind ; but, at heart, I would have 
 termed Byron a patrician on principle. Lord Byron's 
 reading does not seem to have been very extensive, 
 either in poetry or history. Having the advantage of 
 him in that respect, and possessing a good competent 
 share of such reading as is little read, I was sometimoa 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 17 
 
 able to put under his eye objects which had for him the 
 interest of novelty." 
 
 Subsequent to this year (1815), Scott never saw Byron 
 again, but he continues : — " Several letters passed 
 between us — one perhaps every half-year. Like the old 
 heroes in Homer, we exchanged gifts — I gave Byron a 
 beautiful dagger, mounted with gold, which had been the 
 property of the renowned Elti Bey. But I was to play 
 the part of Diomed in the Iliad ; for Byron sent me 
 some time after a large sepulchral vase of silver. It was 
 full of dead men's bones, and had inscriptions on two 
 sides of the vase. One ran thus:—' The bones contained 
 in this urn were found in certain ancient sepulchres 
 within the land walls of Athens in the month of 
 February, 1811.* The other face bears the lines of 
 Juvenal (3) :— 
 
 Expende— quot libras in duce summo iuTenies. 
 Mors sola fatetur quantula miuimum oorpuscula.* 
 
 Byron was often melancholy almost 
 
 gloomy. When I observed him in this humour, I used 
 rather to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till 
 some natural and easy mode occurred of leading him into 
 conversation, when the shadows almost always left his 
 countenance like the mists arising from a landscape. In 
 
 conversation he was very animated I think 
 
 I also remarked in Byron's temper starts of suspicion, 
 when he seems to pause and consider whether there had 
 not been a secret and perhaps offensive meaning in some- 
 thing casually said to him. In this case I also judged 
 it best to let his mind, Uke a troubled spring, work itself 
 clear, which it did in a minute or two. I was considered 
 older, you will recollect, than my noble friend, and had 
 no reason to fear his misconstruing my sentiments 
 towards him, nor had I ever the slightest reason to 
 doubt that they were kindly returned on his part. If 
 I had occasion to be mortified by the display of genius 
 which threw into the shade such pretensions as I was 
 then supposed to possess, I might console myself that 
 in my own case the materials of mental happiness had 
 been mingled in greater proportion. I rummage my 
 
 (s) X. 4. (See also heHdiDg to the *<Ode to Kapoleon.") 
 
18 LOBD BYBON AND EIS WORKS. 
 
 brains in vain for what often rushes into my head 
 unbidden — little traits and sayings which recall his looks, 
 inanner, tone, and gestures ; and I have always con- 
 tinued to think that a crisis of his life was arrived, in 
 which a new career of fame was opened to him, and 
 that had he been permitted to start upon it, he would 
 soon have obliterated the memory of such parts of his 
 life as friends would wish to forget. (*) . . 
 
 With still more of heart did Byron speak of Walter 
 Scott; — " I have never met with any one with the same 
 power of making me forget my own troubles, and with- 
 draw my thoughts from myself. After passing somo 
 thno with Walter Scott I felt myself again restored to 
 youth, and relieved of a heavy burthen. To him only, 
 perhaps, can I be under obligations for having aroused 
 within me the feelings of unalloyed enjoyment, unmingled 
 with bitterness." (^). 
 
 Such then were the contemporaries amongst whom Byron 
 pursued his way to fame, with the applause of friends, 
 and the tacit consent of enemies. A style rich in thought 
 and imagery, a vivifying power over all that came to his 
 hand— a creative cojiibination or grouping, altogether 
 new, and the awakening of emotions till then unknown, 
 caused a greedy rush for his works, which yet seemed 
 directly opposed to the doctrines most commonly re- 
 ceived. At lirst, the passions he depicted seemed to the 
 reader contrary to truth, but, diving deeper into the heart 
 of man, we there at last find their truth, though at the 
 outset neither perceived nor sought. Strangely it flattered 
 us to find ourselves identified with the poet, with such a 
 poet, living with his breath, respiring with his greatness 
 only, carried along by the vortex of his thoughts. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE COnS.vm AND OTHER TALES. 
 
 Filled with the inspiiations of the East — that then un- 
 trodden region, and the which Goethe and Moore, Hugo 
 
 (t uud 6). Life of Walter Scott. Moon's Life of Byron^ 1847. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 10 
 
 and Lamartincharl also then imbibed — from thence Byron 
 drew also the subject of many poems. Zuleika, Tho 
 Corsair, The Giaour, tho Siege of Corinth — you might 
 stylo them all exquisite pictures tapestried upon the same 
 canvas. Throughout all we have a man, heroic only in 
 resolution or in misdeeds and peril; for his virtue, pride; 
 his only human sentiment, love, but this of lire, and to 
 excess and to exaggeration. "Oh! youth," exclaims 
 Nodier, " treasure up your love ; it is the divinity of 
 your age." We have ourselves often felt that it is time 
 to give over depicting the passion of love, and that this 
 age, ever more greedy of the truth and of utility, is 
 weary of such strains. But, since the passion of love is 
 tho sentiment the most general amongst men ; sinco 
 from it arise most follies and most tine actions ; sinco 
 from it we see poets, even, the greatest of every climo 
 and age, select their theme, why seek to proclaim a law 
 of exclusion which, like all things unreasonable, will 
 certainly be infringed ? Nor should we strive to extin- 
 guish the passions. They are the natural consequences 
 of our nature, but let them bo directed by reason, and to 
 a good end. 
 
 Therefore has the writer of these pages congratulated 
 himself, albeit in youthful verse, at having got nd of 
 those ever-recurring strains of love wherewith Arcadians 
 and Petrarchists have wearied tho ears and cajoled tho 
 public imagination, nor yet believes it a reflection on 
 him who makes of love the moving spring of tragedy and 
 romance. Why not, in fact, if it be the moving spring 
 of real life? Or has, perchance, the greatest of living 
 poets desired to be untrannnelled by it? And hero 
 would this same writer wish his voice had powder to 
 make itself heard, that he might exhort tho youth of 
 Italy not to be deluded into following the models of 
 those, particularly among the French, who know not 
 how to divest their love-scenes of the most exuberant 
 exaggeration, and crimes, and convulsions. 
 
 Oh 1 is not woman the most attractive ornament in 
 our state of being? Do wo not owe to her the content- 
 ments of our childhood, of which, through life, wo retain 
 tl\o soothing recollection ? Is not with woman tho most 
 delicious moments of our youth ? Is not with woman our 
 
 C 2 
 
20 LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 consolation in our troubles; the relief of our maladies? 
 But woman, we would say, with her most prominent 
 characteristics, modesty and sweetHess of temper, ^1) 
 to be loved and esteemed as she deserves. Who otherwise 
 depicts her travesties her ideality equally with him 
 who brings her out a strolling player in the public 
 square, adancer on the tight-rope, or an equestrian in 
 the circus. 
 
 Neither shall we lament over the perpetual coulexir de 
 rose wherewith poets from time inmiemorial have tinged 
 their sweet measures, of which wo know but the 
 golden locks, eyes tremulous with love, and the tout 
 ensemble of an insipid face reprinted on the inanimate 
 
 Erofile of Laura. But that of Herminia, who, on tlie 
 ark of the beech and the laurel, carves the cherished 
 name in endless forms of love, is an unage that we prefer. 
 Wo love, too, the meditative Julia on Lake Leman's 
 shores, and fearful not so much of the love of her beloved, 
 as of her own. 
 
 We love in Rinaldo, the Amelia, who, from nature, had 
 received divine and indescribable attractions : " her mind 
 possessed the same ingenuous gi*aces as her person ; 
 exquisite sweetness of thought, and in her disposition 
 all that was delightful and likewise pensive. Slie pos- 
 sessed the timidity and love of woman, and the purity 
 and harmony of the angels." The Lauretta and 
 Theresa of Ortis likewise must please, and the Laura 
 of Manzoni, who, you may say, perhaps, could neither 
 love nor hate, and wo reply — she ia true to hfe— she is 
 nature. 
 
 This digression on our part will appear perhaps only 
 useless to those who have not discovered in every-day 
 literature a tendency to caricature, to exaggeration, 
 which, if the well-disposed will not oppose, much evil 
 may result to letters and the sacred characteristics of 
 beauty, truth, and civilization, which they are destined 
 to perfect I No ! Italian fancy, guided ever only by a 
 calm and truthful observation, never, we trust, will con- 
 sent to place woman amid scenes of horror and revenge, 
 amidst villanies, and beside its concomitant, the 
 executioner, as are wont to do the highest intellects of 
 another nation, but to whom can certainly accrue neither 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 21 
 
 fame nor advantage from such disordered fantasies {^), 
 Ah ! sad is that man's fate who, in the craving for 
 strong emotions, knows only how to recover himself on 
 the bed of sin, or at the foot of the scaffold I 
 
 But to such a school would ever have given encourage- 
 ment the poet of whom we speak ? Alas ! too truly we 
 believe it ; although perhaps little otherwise than Tasso 
 contributed to deprave the taste of the Sci-cento. Certain 
 enough is it that Byron strives to excite emotion, to 
 sway by his genius the imagination of his reader, with- 
 out caring for the moral consequences ; that he even 
 makes a vaunt of inspiring us witli sympathy for beings 
 with whom we never wish conformity of sentiment. 
 He always considers women solely under the aspect of 
 the passion of love, and not in their individuality, from 
 whence it is they are not portrayed as natural and true, 
 but fashioned by his taste and caprice. 
 
 In the Siege of Corinth (2), the Venetian Alp, a 
 renegade who, through animosity, abjured his country 
 and his faith, himself leads the Turks to the siege of 
 Corinth, in which is then beleaguered the Christian 
 damsel whom he loves. And she, Francesca, .visits him 
 to persuade him to become a convert, in vain (3). The 
 next day Alp attacks and takes the city. He encounters 
 Minotti, the father of his beloved, and as he hears from 
 his lips that she is dead, and that her spirit alope had 
 appeared to him, ho leaves his breast unguarded to the 
 death wound, whilst Minotti, setting fire to the magazine, 
 buries himself and his enemies under the ruins of the 
 captured city. 
 
 Lara is enveloped altogether in mystery, into the abyss 
 of which the imagination of the reader does not 
 penetrate ; mysterious crimes torment him with remorse, 
 the secret and remedy of which is know^n only to his 
 Pago (4). 
 
 The Corsair was perhaps a man of virtuous instincts, 
 but circumstances have made him the leader of a band of 
 pirates ; have rendered him an enemy of the human 
 race ; greedy of fame, but unable to acquire it by great 
 actions, he seeks it in the savage indulgence of revenge 
 
 (^ The writinn of the famous Balzac, the not loM famous Victor 
 HogOi Borel, and othen, an here referred to.— Ed. 
 
22 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 and destruction, until he dies a man ** of one virtue and 
 a thousand crimes." (-). 
 Love and hatred form the existence of the Giaour. 
 
 My days, though few, have passed below 
 
 In much of joy, but more of woe ; 
 
 Yet still in hours of love and strife, 
 
 I've 'scaped the weariness of life ; 
 
 Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes, 
 
 I loathed the languor of repose, 
 
 Now nothing left to love or hate, 
 
 No more with hope or prido eluto. 
 
 But place again before my eyes, 
 Auglit that I deem a wortliy prize ; 
 The maid I love, the man I hate, 
 And I will hunt the steps of fate, 
 To savo or slay, as these require. 
 Through roudmg steel aud rolling fire, &o. 
 
 Here throughout we find again an intensity of grief 
 and of desire, whence gusli forth violent passions that, 
 amidst the smiling scenes where they occur, assimilate 
 the poet to a volcano, when, over the verdant landscape, 
 it vomits forth ashes and stones and torrents of lava. 
 Here, however, wo liave not the truth pictured but 
 rather an ideal, a study, in fact, which materially 
 deviates from the natural and true. 
 
 Nor is it the duty of the poet who knows perfectly his 
 vocation to cause undiuj emotion, or disturb the mind's 
 tranquility, or transport it to a sphere beyond the limits 
 of nature, even be it one of virtue, but from which, 
 descending or expelled, it wanders guideless ; rather 
 should he design to develop the moral powers, so that 
 by liis instrunientaUty the paasions may be governed or 
 truly directed. 
 
 xni. 
 
 BYRON'S MARRUGE. 
 
 Amidst such scenes Byron abandoned not the reckless 
 habits of his youth, until at last ho himself felt the 
 
 {2) The Corsair, 
 
LOBD DYEON AND HIS WOBKS, 23 
 
 craving for domestic happiness, and sought a wife,— 
 Byron a wife 1 To put liis house in order, send away 
 his dogs, horses, monkeys, pay ofY his debts, arrange his 
 books— no disphiy henceforth of pistols or of foils — 
 sheathed must be liis Albanian scimitar — no longer his 
 aspect or appearance that of one inspired ! He cliooses 
 a tranquil moment, and deinands as his wife the daughter 
 of Sir Ralph ^lilbank Noel, heiress to the title and 
 revenues of the Wentworths ; leads her to the altar, and 
 promises himself a happy and domestic life (1). But 
 what if the man of pleasure should again appear? If 
 the poet should again revive? If the sated youth, tho 
 melancholy dreamer, tho adventurous Harold, should 
 again return ? Where then the husband, the father ? 
 
 And thus it came to pass. That felicity— how happy 
 he who enjoys it ! — was not for Byron's mind : tho 
 caresses of a wife, the smiles of an infant, of which 
 a year after ho was tho fortunato father, the 
 tranquillity of tho domestic hearth, were not to 
 relax tho poetical sinews of a mind strained by real 
 or fancied wrongs. What and how much has not 
 been said of tho unforeseen and mysterious separation 
 of Lord Byron from his wife 1 A day comes, and she 
 goes to her father's house on the pretext of a visit, and 
 thence writes to her husband that she will never return 
 to him. Wo do not attempt to lose ourselvefi in a 
 labyrinth of accusations and retorts : it has been said 
 that great men should be admired, but cannot be loved ; 
 we, however, who are acquainted with Romagnosi (2) 
 and Manzoni (3), wo say, that this is the plea of men 
 too petty and too malicious, of those, too numerous, 
 alas 1 who cannot forgive him who raises himself above 
 the crowd (4), and who may bo compared to the disin- 
 herited, whose hatred or virulence w^ould seize or keep 
 back tho property of their brethren. 
 
 The excessive expenditure entailed by espousing a 
 wealthy heiress; the continual claims of creditors, 
 carried to the seizure of property and furniture (5) ; the 
 fact of being watched in his own house, and out 
 of doors ; the existence of domestic disorder excluding 
 Lord Byron almost from society ; the self-imposed duty 
 of maintaining acquaintance with actresses (6) ; all this, 
 
U LOBD BYB017 AND EIS WORKS. 
 
 combined with an essential difference of habits and 
 disposition between a rich heiress desirous of hving as a 
 groat lady and a man of genius who was willing neither 
 to rule in his own house nor bo ruled ; all this, fomented 
 by the perfidious suggestions of the lady's companion 
 or governess(^) — was it not enough to explain the aiscord 
 between both? Where, in fact, the marvel 
 that a marriage arranged by calculations of rank 
 and of opinions (or of convcnancc) without re- 
 gard to the hqart's affections and sympathy of 
 disposition and inclinations, should turn out ill ? Is it 
 not daily the case ? 
 
 But the English, with whom marriage occupies a 
 position so different from that it holds with us ; the English, 
 who so frequently are witnesses of the recurrence of 
 scandalous trials where witnesses are cited who have 
 listened by the nuptial couch, or spied through the 
 bath door, and who testify exactly how much and what 
 they saw and heard ; the English, who fix a tariff for 
 payment of such injuries, could never pardon Byron for 
 separating from his wife (7) without assigning a cause, 
 without appearing in court to satisfy the greed of the 
 lawyers and the curiosity of the public. They, therefore, 
 vented their spleen in satirical on dits, in caricatures, 
 in charging the poet with every possible kind of phrenzy 
 and misdeed C^). ** My case was supposed to comprise all 
 the crimes wnich could, and several which could not, be 
 committed, and little less than an auto-da-J^ was 
 anticipated as the result (8). But let no man say that ' 
 we are abandoned by our friends in adversity — it was 
 just the reverse. Mine thronged around me to condemn, 
 advise, and console me with their disapprobation. They 
 told me all that was, would, or could be said on the . 
 subject. They shook their heads — they exhorted me-n- \ 
 deplored me, with tears in their eyes, and — went tb v^ 
 dinner." 
 
 And yet how meanly was the posthumous work, 
 which should have revealed the whole affair, denied to 
 public expectation. All who have read the poetry of 
 
 (I) Mrs. Clermont (or Charlemont) whom he anathematize! in tht 
 sketch from priviito life. 
 C^) Moore\ Life, 1830, p. 622, Vol. 2. 
 
Lonn BYEON Al^D ms WORKS. 25 
 
 Byron well know how affectionately he often recurs to 
 his wife. 
 
 Fare thee well 1 and if for ever, 
 
 Still for ever, fare t/iec vrll: 
 
 E'en though unforgiving, never 
 
 'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel, 
 "Would that breast were bared before theo, 
 
 Where thy head so oft hath lain ; 
 While that placid sleep came o'er thee, 
 
 Which thou ne'er canst know again ! 
 Would that breast, by thee glanced over, 
 
 Every inmost thought could show ! 
 Then thou wouldst at last discover 
 
 'Twas not well to spurn it so. 
 Though the world for this commend theo, 
 
 Though it smile upon the blow ; 
 E'en its praises must offend thee. 
 
 Founded ou another's woe. &c., &c. 
 
 This poem, which drew from ^ladamc do Stacl p) 
 the expression " I would wilHngly suffer what Lady 
 Byron has done, to have inspired my husband with such 
 beautiful verse," moved not the lady. The lyre of Oi-phcus 
 will soften the pangs of hell, but not the heart of a proud 
 woman. Had she not otherwise been wrong, we would 
 not forgive her for having refused forgiveness to a liusband 
 who asked it, and such a husband. Such conduct could not 
 but embitter his lot, and here we would introduce two 
 compositions wherein is revealed the anguish of his 
 mind. When, in 1816, he learned that Lady Byron was 
 ill, it grieved him much, and he threw into the fire a 
 satirical romance founded on the well-known story of 
 Belphegor, but he afterwards wrote a poem (9) of which 
 the prudence of Moore gave us only the first verses, but 
 which is now usually published entire. 
 
 And thoti wer't sad—yet I was not with thee ! 
 
 And thou wer't sick, and yet I was not near ; 
 Methought that joy and health alone could be 
 
 Where I was not— and pain and sorrow here ! &c. 
 
 In 1821, from Pisa, he thus wrote to his wife :— 
 
 risa, Nov. 17, 1821. 
 I hare to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's hair, which is very soft 
 tnd pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at 12 years old, if 
 I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's possession, taken 
 at that age. But it dou't curl— perhaps from its being let grow. I also 
 thank you for the inscription of the date and name ; and I will tell you 
 why ; I beliere they 9s^ the only two or three words of your haa4* 
 
 (8) MadAzae de Stael (See Memoirtf. 
 
96 LOBD BYBON AND EIS WOBKS. 
 
 writing in my poueuion ; for your letters I returned, and ezoept th« 
 two words, or rather the one word, *' Household," written twioe in an 
 old account book, I have no other. I burut your last note, for two 
 reasons— firstly, as it was written in a style not very agreeable ; and 
 secondly, I wished to take your word without documents, which are the 
 worldly resources of suspicious people. 
 
 I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's birth- 
 day—the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six, so that in 
 about twelve more. I shall have some chance of meeting her — perhaps 
 sooner if I am obliged to go to England by business or otherwise. 
 Recollect, however, one thing, either in distunce or otherwise ; every day 
 which keeps us asunder should, after so long a period, rather soften our 
 mutual feelings, which must always have one rallying point as long as 
 our child exists, which I presume we both hope will bo long after either 
 of her parents. 
 
 The time which has elapsed since the separation has been consider- 
 ably more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much 
 •onger one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake, 
 but now it is over, and irrecoverably so. For, at 33 on ray part, and a 
 few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of life, still 
 it is one when the habits and thoughts are generally so formed as to 
 admit of no modification ; and as we could not agree when younger, we 
 should with difficulty do so now. I say all this because I own to you 
 that, notwithstanding everytliing, I considered our re-union as not im- 
 
 1)osiblo for more than a year after the separation ; but then, I gave up the 
 lOpe entirely and for ever. But this very impossibility of re-union 
 seemed to me at least a reason v\hy, on all the few points of discussion 
 which can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and 
 as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve 
 ])erhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own part, I am 
 violent, but not malignant, for only fresh provocations can awaken my 
 resentments. 
 
 To you, who are colder and more concentrate, I would iust hint that 
 you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold anger for dignity and a 
 worse feeling for duty. I assure you that I boar you noiv (whatever 
 I may have dona) no resentment wfiatever. 
 
 llQinomher that if ;/oii /latc ii/Jmrti me in aught, this forgiveness is 
 Bomethin»- ; and that if I have 'uijund t/ou, it is something more still, if 
 it be true, as the moralists say, that the most oft'eudmg are the least 
 forgiving. 
 
 Whether the olYeuce has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or 
 on yours chietly, I have ceased to rcllect upon any but two things — viz. : 
 that you are the mother of my child and that we shall never meet again. 
 I think if you also consider these two corresponding points with reference 
 to myself it will bo better for all three.— Yours ever, 
 
 NOEL BYRON. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 LORD BYRON AGAIN LEAVES ENGLAND. 
 
 Tims wrote the man whom the fops of London, 
 ftftectud young ladies, and exclusive society there— olleuded 
 
LOBD BYEON AND HIS WOBKS, 27 
 
 with his plain speaking and undisguised contempt — would, 
 with an hypocritical affectation of honourable feeling, have 
 exposed as a monster to the horror of the married world. 
 Proud islanders ! Their trivial prating, so much the 
 more tiresome since it was masked by gravity, wearied 
 the mind of Byron, who, too great a poet to become a 
 philosopher, could not oppose a heart hardened to the 
 wounds of malice, the storm of libels, verses, journals, and 
 caricatures of which he became the object, and which 
 are an unfortunate concomitant of the more vaunted than 
 real liberty of his country. Therefore had he declared 
 himself subdued ; and, departing from his home — his home 
 no more, for without the heart's affection there is no 
 home (i) — he broke all ties which yet bound him to his 
 natal soil (April 25, 1816) ; again ho bids adieu to his 
 native land and his child, and departs to return no 
 more. 
 
 Is thy face like thy mother's, ray fair child ? (2) 
 Ada ! sole daughter of my house and heart; 
 
 When late I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled, 
 And when we parted,— not as now we part, 
 But with a hope— ic I depart. 
 
 Whither I know not, . . . • 
 
 I see thoe not,— I hear thct not, but none 
 Can be so wrapt up in thee ; . . . 
 
 Albeit mv brow thcu never shouldst behold, 
 My voice shall with thy future visions blend. 
 
 And reach into thy heart,— when mine is cold ; — 
 
 A token and a tone, e'en from thy father's mould. 
 
 To aid thy mind's development,— to watch 
 
 Thy dawn of little joys— to sit and see — 
 Almost thy very growth, — to view thee catch 
 
 Knowledge of objects, — wonders yet to theo! 
 
 To hold thee lightly on & gentle knee. 
 And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss— 
 
 This, it should seem, was not reserved for me ; 
 Yet this was in my nature,— as it is, 
 I know not what is there, yet something like to this. 
 
 
 Don Juan, Canto 3. 
 Childe Harold, Canto 3. 
 
28 ionn BYRON AND BIS WOUkS. 
 
 XV. 
 
 TRAVELS OP LORD BYRON. 
 
 An exile from his country, without the consolation of 
 the martyr, discontented with himself and those about 
 him, and at war with the world, which he fancied he 
 could do without, behold him again the poet, the head- 
 strong, sombre, pensive poet, and regard the poetry he 
 is writing and which he shall hereafter write. 
 
 He visits the field of Waterloo, trampling on the dust 
 of a great empire ; from Belgium to Coblenz, thence to 
 Switzerland, where he visits the field of Morat, one of 
 the few sites where man can contemplate the horrid 
 trophies of victory without feeling shame for the victors ; 
 climbs to the Dent de Oannan, traverses the Rhine, sails 
 along the lakes, converses with Madame de Stael, 
 searches for traces of the memory of Voltaire, of Rousseau, 
 of Gibbon, and amid the woods, still mindful of the 
 melancholy loves of the " Nouvelle Heloise," composes 
 the " Prisoner of Chillon." The tranquil innocence of 
 the landscape here is soothing to his stormy but wearied 
 spirit. 
 
 Clear placid Leman, thy contracted lake, (I) 
 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing 
 Which warns me with its stillness'to forsake 
 
 £arth'B troubled waters for a purer spring. 
 
 Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, 
 
 The apostle ef affliction, he who threw 
 Enchantment over passion, and from woe 
 
 Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew 
 
 The breath which made him wretched ; yet who 
 Knew how to make madness beautiful, and cast 
 
 O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue 
 Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed 
 The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. 
 
 His life was one long war with self-sought foes. 
 Or friends by himself banish'd ; for his mind 
 
 Had grown suspicion's sanctuary, and chose 
 For its own cruol sacrifice the kind 
 'Gainst whom he raged with fury, strange and blind, 
 
 But he was frenzied,— wherefore, who may know 1* 
 
 &0. 
 
 (I) Childe Harold, Canto 3, 
 
LOBD BYEON AND HIS WOEKS, 29 
 
 However often Byron would deny the resemblance said 
 to exist between himself and the Genevese (1), we must 
 yet confess that in many points they were strangely akin 
 m their egotism, and in the effect they produced on 
 others ; in the exaggeration also of their own misfortunes, 
 governed by which sentiment the young lord flies hia 
 native land, everywhere dragging along with him his 
 antipathy to his wandering countrymen, in whose 
 presence he everywhere finds himself. He meets 
 them on the field of Waterloo, purchasing fragments of 
 French anns and speculating in the bones of the unburied. 
 At Rome he sees them hurrying past the masterpieces 
 for which the study of a day should scarce suffice. In 
 Switzerland, at one of those stupendous prospects, never 
 effaced from the mind of him who once has contemplated 
 them, he encountered a family of these new-fashioned 
 gipsies, who, were journeying whilst asleep in their 
 travelHng caldchc. He met them trafficking even amidst 
 the ruiu8 of Athens, where Lord Elgin, proud of having 
 robbed Greece of those msmorials of art the barbarians 
 had spared, carved his name on a column of a ruined 
 temple, a column which still proudly towers, a remnant 
 amidst the sacred dust of ancient freedom — an outrage, 
 however, which the poet avenged by erasing that name 
 with his own hand. A little later, and he will again 
 meet them in awakened Greece, when, asked for arms 
 and bread, they offer music and band instruments. 
 
 Thenceforth, the poet wanted no motive for exasperation 
 against them, and one might say lived in a perpetual 
 abnegation of the land of his birth. Hence the affectation 
 of hatred of his countrymen, which was refuted by his 
 hospitaUty towards them. Hence no longer was cele- 
 brated in song his native isle, the favourite or usual theme 
 of British poets. Hence strove he to rob them of tho 
 laurels acquired in Spain and at Waterloo. Hence 
 spontaneously he rose to denounce the atrocious selfish- 
 ness wherewith nations sell and thus betray the new 
 Themistocles, who came a suppliant for their Hospitality, 
 and found chains on the land that claims to be hospitable 
 and free (2). 
 
 Hence why, even in his style of writing, he followed not 
 
 (s) The anthor'a rather than the editor's sentiments ! 
 
80 LOBD BYEON AND HIS W0BK8. 
 
 any of the English classic writers, but composed with a 
 mixture of bitternosd and grace, negligence and precision, 
 gravity and mockery, which might perhaps find a parallel 
 only in the **Pulci"*of AHosto, in Dante, or other ItaUan 
 poets. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 The land and ashes of these bards he came to moum over, 
 to venerate that lovely Italy, which now, for the fourth 
 time, held its pre-eminence in the world, the primacy 
 of power with the Romans — that of religion under the 
 Popes,— that of commerce with the Republics— and lastly 
 that of arts and learning. 
 
 Descending the Simplon, where he regards with 
 wonder both nature and art (1), one can scarcely say 
 which the most stupendous, ' he visits the channing 
 delights of Lago Maggiore. Thence, in Milan, admires 
 the wonders of the Duomo, and the courtesy of the in- 
 habitants (2) ; at Garda he contemplates the Benaco (3) 
 surging with the noise of the sea ; at Verona, so many 
 recollections of love and grandeur. 
 
 Then he descends the Po, and amidst the wide and 
 grassworn streets of Ferrara, indites a sonnet to the 
 good Torquato, whose name finds everywhere an echo 
 of applause in this Athenooum of his country : 
 
 Hail to the bard divine .... 
 
 Hark to the atruiu : and theu survey his cell ! 
 And 800 how dearly earned Torquato's fame, 
 
 And where Alphouso bade hia poet dwell !'* 
 
 Peace to Torquato's injured shade ! 'twas his 
 
 In life and death to be the mark where wrong 
 Aim'd with his poisoned arrows but to miss. 
 
 Ho then passes to the happy banks of the Amo and to 
 Eomc, the "Niobcof nations;" at length repairs to 
 
LOUD nynoN and iiis works, 31 
 
 Vonico, of all places but tho East tho most courted 
 of his fancy (*) : 
 
 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs : 
 
 A palace and a prison on each band ; 
 I saw from out the wave her structures rise, 
 
 As from the stroke of the Enchanter's Wand ; 
 A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
 
 Around mo, and a dying glory r.niiles 
 O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
 
 Looked to the wingi-d Lion's marbled piles, 
 
 Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred Islea ! 
 
 She looks a Sea-Cybelo, fresh from ocean ; 
 
 Kising, with her tiara of proud towers 
 At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
 
 A ruler of tho waters and their powers. 
 And such she was,— her daughters had their dowcra 
 
 From spoils of nations : and tho exhaustless East 
 Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers ; 
 
 In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
 
 Mouarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 
 
 XVIL 
 
 MODE OF LIFi: IN VllXIcn. 
 
 At Venice, Byron shut himself in his chaiuhcr, and 
 nothing was more strange than his mode of hfu. IIo 
 questions the memories of tlie past, revives tho ruins of 
 a people who once were what the English now are ; 
 studies Armenian in tlio Convent of San Lazaro (1), 
 prostrates himself before the Helen of Canova (2), visits 
 tho galleries of art, but without indication of due ap- 
 preciation for the beautiful (3). " Depend upon it, of all 
 the arts, it (painting) is the most artificial and unnatural, 
 and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most im- 
 posed upon. I never yet saw the picture or statue which 
 c.a,iuo a league within my conception, or cxptctation, but 
 1 hftVQ seen many mountains, and seas, and views, and 
 iwo qr three w^omen who went far beyond it — besidea 
 nomo horses, and a lion (at Veli Pacha's) in the Morea, 
 and a tiger'aHi supper in Exeter Change (4)," 
 
 (1) Childe Harold, Canto 4. 
 
32 LOBh BYRON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 At the same time he seems to have dictated to 
 himself the Epicurean maxim ** eat, drink, and be merry, 
 for to morrow we die." His mother was no more ; a 
 coal mine had been discovered on his estates; large 
 remuneration had been given for the pubhcation of his 
 works (5) so that, no longer straitened in circmnstances, 
 he found himself liberally provided with everything 
 suitable to his position. Strange caprice 1 He had hia 
 horses brought to Venice, and there, on the strand of the 
 Lido, he took his gallop. After passing the entire day 
 in a city where no blade of grass or shrub grows, 
 Byron, nurtured amidst mountains, must needs have 
 the illusive pleasure of again bounding over a verdant 
 soil ; and, in presence of the innnensity of the ocean, 
 gallop from the ruined fort as far as the rock he had 
 selected as his tomb, with the epitaph, ** Byron imi^^lorat 
 jyacem." To the rides succeed the gondola, then 
 swinnning, and then training his monkeys and dogs, and 
 castigation of the raven for devouring the magpie's food, 
 and pistol shooting. In this exercise he was very 
 skilful, and prided himself on it (i). •• I think there are 
 three things I can do which you cannot," he had said 
 to Dr. Polidori, who defied him to name them. ** I can 
 swim across that river (^) — I can snuff out that candle 
 with a pistol shot at 20 paces— and I have written a 
 poem of which 14,000 copies were sold in one day." (3) 
 The air of Venice intoxicated lum. Scarcely arrived, 
 he falls in love with the wife of a merchant, in whose 
 liouse he had taken up his abode : then, he abandons the 
 house and love of Marianna (6) to occupy a marble 
 palace on the Grand Canal (4) : he next buys a villa on 
 the banks of the Brenta (^) lovely by nature and art, and 
 worthy of a Doge, and here abandons himself to all the 
 deHghts of a Southern cHme. 
 
 There, he has theatricals, the Ridotto, the music of 
 Rossini, and the hautta rosa, and the frantic enjoyments 
 of the Mardi Gras, inebriating himself with wines and 
 (ujiLardicnte, surrounded by swaggering and brawhng 
 
 (1) Moore'a Life, 1830, p. 104, vol. II. 
 
 (2) The Ilhiue, Mooir'n life, IbuO, p. 30, vol. II. 
 (,^) '« The Corsair." Ibid. 
 
 ('4) The Paliuzo Moceuigu. 
 (5) La Mira. 
 
LOBD DYIiON AND HIS WORKS, 33 
 
 retainers ; and, amidst maddening play, and women, 
 and challenges, and rivalries, and all the ribaldry of 
 disorder, Venice believes the carnival' and gala days of 
 the past are revived, and follows after this Cavalier. 
 Every one talks of the young English nobleman with tJie 
 odd name, who lavishes so profuse an expenditure : every 
 conversazione desires to fete him : every traveller seeks 
 him out : all the women look for a glance from his eye, 
 —a favour, indeed, it was not difficult to obtain. From 
 the high-born dame he passes to the market wench, from 
 the palace to the fisherman's hut. "Venice pleases me as 
 much as I expected, and I expected much. ♦ * » * It 
 is a very good place for women. I like the dialect and 
 their manner very much. There is a naivete about them 
 which is very winning, and the romance of the place is 
 a mighty adjunct; the bel sangue, is not, however, now 
 amongst the dame or higher orders, but all under i 
 fazzioli, or kerchiefs (a white kind of veil which the 
 lower orders wear upon their heads " the vesta Zendale, 
 or old national female costume, is no more. [The city, 
 however, is decaying daily, and does not gain m popula- 
 tion. 6] However, I prefer it to any other in Italy ; and 
 here I pitched my staft, and here I do purpose to reside 
 for the remainder of my life ♦ * &c., &c." (7) 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 LA FORNARINA. 
 
 The most romantic being whom the poet encountered 
 was the Fornarina. He thus speaks of her : 
 
 Since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni you shall be told it, though 
 it may be lengthy. 
 
 Her face is of the fine Venetian cast of the old time ; her figure, though 
 perhaps too tall, is not less tine— and taken altogether in the natioiud 
 dress. 
 
 («) The Italian author has not thought it needful to repeat the lines withiBr 
 
 brackets. 
 (7) Moore' » L\fe, 1830, pp. 60 k 167.— Letters to Mr. Murray & Rogfbri. 
 
 D 
 
3i LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 la thA summer of 1817, Hobhouse and myself weresaanceringon horM- 
 back along the Brenta one eveniug, wheu, amongst a group of peaaanti. 
 we remarked tveo girla as the prettiest we had seen for some time. About 
 this period there had been great distress in the country, and I had a littla 
 relieved some of the people. Generosity makes a great figure at very 
 little cost iu Venetian lire, and mine had probably been exaggerated as 
 tux Englishman's. Whether they remarked us looking at them or no, I 
 know not ; but one of them called out to me, in Venetian, ** Why do not 
 you, who relieve others, think of us also?" I turned round and 
 answered her, "Cara, tu sei troppo bella e giovane per aver bisogna del 
 ioccorso mio." She answered, " If you saw my hut and my food, you 
 would not say so." All this passed half jestingly, and I saw no more of 
 her for some days. 
 
 A few evenings after, we met with thf-se two girls again, and they 
 addressed us more seriously, asauriug us of the truth of their statements. 
 They were cousins ; Margarita married, the other single. As I doubted 
 still of the circumstances, I took the business in a different light, and 
 made an appointment with them for the next evening. la short, in a 
 few evenings, we arranged our affairs, and for a long space of time shs 
 was the only one who preserved over me an ascendancy which was often 
 disputed and never impaired. The reasons of this were— firstly, her 
 person, very dark, tall, the Venetian face, very fine black eyes. She was 
 22 years old. . . . She was, besides a thorough Venetian in her 
 dialect, in her thoughts, in her countenance, in everything, with all their 
 naivetP ))nd pantaloon humour. 
 
 Besides, she could neither read nor write, and could not plague me 
 with her letters, except twice that she paid sixpence to a public scribe 
 under the Piazza to make a letter for her, upon some occasion when I was 
 ill, and could not see her. In other respects she was somewhat fierce, 
 and prepotcnte, that is, overbearing, and used to walk iu whenever it 
 suited her, with no very groat regard to time, place, nor persons, and if 
 she found any women in her place, she knocked them down 
 
 When I first knew her I was in rdazione fliaisou) with La Signor* 
 Logati, who was silly enough, one evening at Dulo, accompanied by some 
 of her female friends, to threaten her ; for the gossips of the Villeggiatura 
 had already found out, by the neighing of my horse one evening, that I 
 useil to ride late in the night to mo -t the Fornariua. Margarita threw 
 back her veil (fdzziolo), and replied, in very exi)licit Venetian, " You are 
 not his wife. / am uot his wife. You are his Dunna, and I am his 
 Donna. Your husband is a becco, and raiue is another. For the rest, 
 what t'iijiht have you to roproiich mo r* If ho prefers ma to you, is it ray 
 fault? If you wish to secure him, tie him to your petticoat string. But 
 do not think to speak to mo without a reply, becaucie you happen to be 
 richer than I am." Having delivered this pretty piece of eloquence 
 (which I translated as it was related to mo by a bystander) she went on 
 her way, leaving a numerous audience, with Madame ... to ponder 
 at her leisure 'I the dialogue between thetn. When I came to Venice 
 for the winter, she followed, and as she found herself out to be a favourite, 
 she came to mo pretty often. But she had inordinate self-love, and wan 
 not tolerant of other women. At the "Cavalchina," the masqucd ball 
 on the last night of the Carnival, where all the world goes, she snatched 
 off the m ibk of Madame Contarini, a lady noble by birth and decent iu 
 conduct, for no other reason but because she was leaning on my arm. 
 You may suppose what a cursed noise this made, but this is only one of 
 her pranks. 
 
 At last, she quarrelled with her husband, and one evening ran away to 
 my house. I told her this would not do. She said she would lie in the 
 street, but not go back in him; that he beat her (the gentle tigress !), 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 35 
 
 spent her money, and scmdalously neglected her. As it wa? raidaight I 
 let her stay, ami next day there was no moving her at all. Her husband 
 came, roaring and crying, and entreating h t to come back — not she. 
 He then apnlied to the police, and they applied to m^. I tol 1 them and 
 her husbaul to take her. I did not want her; she had come, and I could 
 not fling her out of the window, but they might conduct her through 
 that or the dior if they chose it. She went bsfore the Commissary, but 
 was obliged to return with that becco ettico, as she called the poor man, 
 who had a pthisic. In a few days she ran away again. After a precious 
 piece of work she fixed herself in my house, really and truly without my 
 consent, but o ving to my indolence and not being able to keep ray 
 couutenance— for if I began in a rage, she always finish'^d by making mo 
 laugh with some Venetian buffoonery or another ; and the gipsy knew 
 this well enough as well as her other powers of persuasion, and exerted 
 them with the usual tact and success of all sha-things— high and low, 
 thev are all alike for that. 
 
 ^tadame Beuzoni also took her under her protection, and then her 
 head turned. She was always in extremes, either angry or liughing, 
 and so fierce when angered that she was the terror of men, women, and 
 children— for she had the strength of an Amazon, with the temper of 
 Medea. She wis a fiue animal, but quite uutxmoable. I was the only 
 person that could at all keep her in any order, and when she saw me 
 really angry (which they tell me is a savage sight) she subsided. But 
 she had a thousand fooleries. In her fazziolo, the dress of the lower 
 orders, »he looked beautiful; but, alas! she longed for a hat and 
 feathers, and all I could say or do (and I said much) could not prevent 
 this travestie. I put the first into the fire, but I got tired of burning 
 them before she did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure — 
 for they did not at all become her. 
 
 Then she would have her gowns with n ^^(7— like a lady, forsooth, 
 nothing would serve her but Vnh'ito col/a conn, or cua (that is the 
 Venetian for la coin, the tail or train), and as her cursod pronunciation of 
 the word made me laugh, there was an end of all controversy, and she 
 dragged this diabolical tail after her everywhere. 
 
 In the moan ime, she boat the women and stopped my letters. I found 
 her on ' day pmdering over one. She used to try to find otit by their 
 •hape whether they wore feminine or no, and she use I to lam^Mit her 
 ignorance, an I actually studied her alphabet on purpose (as she declared) 
 to open all letters addressed to me, and read their contents. 
 
 I must tiot omit to do justice to her housekeeping qualities. After she 
 came into my house as *' donna di govemo " the expenses were reduced 
 to less than naif, and everyoody did their dutv better. The apartments 
 were kept in order, and everything and everybody else, except herself. 
 
 That she had a sufficient icgard for me in her wild way I had many 
 reasons to believe. I will mention one. In the autnmn, one day, going 
 to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall 
 and the gondola put in peril— hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, 
 tumbling sea, thunder, ram in torrents, nigKt coming on, and wind in- 
 creasing. On our return, after a tight strutjgle, I fouud her on the open 
 steps of the Mocenigo Palace, on the Grand Canal, with her great black 
 eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was 
 streaming, drenched with rain, over her brow and breast. She was per- 
 fectly exposed to the storm ; and the wind blowing her hair and dress 
 about her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing around h^r. and the 
 waves rolling at her feet, made her look Tike Medea alighted from her 
 chariot, or the Sybil of the tempest that was rolling around her — the 
 only liring thing within hail at the moment except ourselves. Oa 
 
 D 2 
 
86 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 ■eeing me sale, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected,, 
 but calling out to me—*' Ah ! oair delta Madonna, xe esto il tempo per 
 andar al' Lido" (Ah ! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to Lido) — 
 ran into the house ; and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not 
 foreseeiug the temporale. I am told by the servants that she had only 
 been prevented from coming in a boat to look alter me by the refusal of 
 all the gondoliers of the canal to pat out into the harbour at such a 
 moment, ard that then she sate down on the steps, in all the thickest of 
 the squall, and would neither be removed nor comforted. Her joy at 
 seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the 
 idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs. 
 
 But her reign drew to a close. She became quite ungovernable some 
 months after, and a concurrence of complaiuts, some true, aud many 
 false — '*a favourite has no friends" — determined me to part with her. 
 I told her quietly that she must return home (she had acquired a suffi- 
 cient provision for herself aud her mother, &c., in my service), and she 
 refused to quit the house. I was firm, and she threatening knives aud 
 revenge. I told her that I had seen knives drawn before her time, and 
 that if she chose to begin there was a ki.ife and fork also at her service 
 on the table, and that intimidation would not do. The next day, while 
 I was at dinner, sh'' walked in (haviuf» broken open a glass door that led 
 from the hall below to the staircase by way of prologue), and idvancing 
 straight up to the table, snatched the knifo from my hand, cutting me 
 slightly in the thumb in the operation. Whether she meant to use this 
 against herself or me I know not— probably against neither— but Fletcher 
 seized her by the arms and disarmed her. I then called my boatmen 
 aud desired them to get the gondola ready and conduct her to her own 
 house again, seeing carefully that she did herself no mischief by the way. 
 She seemed quite quiet, and walked downstairs. I resumed my dinner. 
 
 We heard a great uoiso, and went out, and met them on the staircase 
 carrying her upstairs. She had thrown herself into the canal. That she 
 intended to destroy herself, I do not believe ; but when wo consider the 
 fear women and men, who can't swim, have of deep or even of shallow 
 watt-r (and the Venetians in particidar, though they live on the waves), 
 and that it was also night, and dark and very cold^ it shows that she had 
 a devilish spirit of some sort within her. They hud got her out without 
 much diiRculty or damage, excepting the salt water she had swallowed 
 aqd tbe wetting she had undergone. 
 
 I foresaw her intention to re-tix herself, and sent for a surj^con, en- 
 quiring how many hours it would require to restore her from her agita- 
 tion ; and he named the time. I then said, " I givo you that time, and 
 more if you require it ; but at the expiration of this prescribed peiiod if 
 she does not leave the house I will." All my people wore consternated. 
 They had always b en frightened at her, aud were now paralywod. They 
 •wanted me to apply to the police to guard myself, &c., <S:c., like a pack 
 of snivelling servile boobies as they were. 1 did nothing of the kind, 
 thinking that I might as well end that way as another ; besides, I had 
 been used to s.ivago women, and I know their ways. 
 
 I h td her sent homo quietly after her recovery, and never saw her 
 since, except twice at the opera at a distance amongst the audience. 
 She made many attempts to return, but no more violent ones. Aud this 
 is the story of Margarita Cogni us far as it relates to me. 
 
 [I forgot to mention that she was very devout, and would crosj herself 
 if she heard the prayer time strike. ..... 
 
 She was quick in reply ; as for instauce : one day, when she had made 
 me very angry with beating somebody or other, I called her a cow {coxCy 
 in Italian, is a sad affront). I called her " Vacca." She turned round. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 37 
 
 <urt8ied, and and answered: *' Wacca. tuo, *celenza** (i.e., ccceknza). 
 " Your cow, please your excellency." In short, she was, as I said before, 
 a very fine animal, (1) of considerable beauty and energy, with many 
 
 good and several amusing qualities, but wild as a witch and fierce as a 
 emon. She used to boast publicly of her ascendancy over me, contrast- 
 ing it with that of other women, and assigning for it sundry reasons. 
 
 True it was that they all tried to get her away, and no 
 
 one succeeded till her own absurdity helped them, (l.)] 
 
 I omitted to tell vou her answer when I reproached her for snatching 
 Madame Contarini s ma«k at the Cavalchina. I represented to her that 
 she was a X^^y of high birth, '• una daraa, &c." She answered '• Se ella 
 ^ dama mi (io) son Veneziana." *' If she is a lady, I am a Venetian ! " 
 This would have been fine a hundred years ago. [The pride of the nation 
 rising up against the pride of aristocracy. But, alas ! Venice and her 
 people and her nobles are alike returning fast to the ocean ; and where 
 viere is no independence there can be no real self-respect. (2)] 
 
 XIX. 
 
 MANFRED AND PARISINA, &c. 
 
 The poet's noble heart was not, however, formed to 
 l}ecome brutaUzed in shameless orgies and amidst facile 
 amours, nor in dissolute banquets : — 
 
 Where revel calls, and laughter, vainly loud, 
 False to the heart, distorts the hollow cfieek. 
 To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak ; 
 
 Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, 
 To feign the pleasure, or conceal the pique ; 
 
 Smiles from the channel of a future tear. 
 
 Or raise the writhing lip with ill -dissembled sneer. (1) 
 
 He turned then more unto himself, and became again the 
 great poet. Then w^as it he completed " Ghilde Harold's 
 Pilgrimage," where we may have to censure a disordered, 
 often an unbridled, imagination ; frequent negligence, a 
 confusion of ideas, vague, incoherent, without connec- 
 tion, and at times obscure. But the impartial reader will 
 admire the vivid sentiments, and the vigour of thought, 
 allied to a magic style, which causes one of his most 
 declared enemies to pronounce the Pilgrimage the most 
 truly sublime poem ever traced by mortal pen. 
 
 (1) The paragraphs within brackets hare been omitted by the Italian 
 S^nthor.-Ed. 
 
 Moore't Life^ 1830, pp. 183 to 189. 
 Childe Harold, Ganto 2. 
 
 « 
 
38 LOBD BYEON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Meantime from every object he derives flashes of 
 imagination. He remarks one day, in the Doges' palace, 
 the empty picture frame of one of them who had been 
 beheaded. (1) That glance suffices, and we have 
 Marino Faliero. Another day Lewis translates him, 
 vivd voce, some passages of Goethe's Faust (he was 
 ignorant of the German tongue) ; Manfred follows. But 
 to say truth, the sin of plagiarism C-^), with which Goethe 
 charged him in his eulogy of that play, appears scarcely 
 well-founded, since, in fact, Goethe himself has taken 
 both the title and the story of his drama from others. (2) 
 Byron professed to have derived his chief inspiration 
 from the sight of the Swiss Alps. (3) For in Manfred 
 there is no descent into the trivialities of every-day life. 
 Very differently is the subject treated from the mode 
 in which Goethe portrays the being duped by the malice 
 of Mephistopheles. 
 
 Byron places his hero in a scene of unsurpassable 
 magnilicence, and suited to the mind of Manfred. 
 Goethe brings on the stage the very dregs of the people, 
 and their language is that of the market place and tho 
 cabaret. Tho love of Faust is that of a villain; ho 
 destroys the innocence of poor Marguerite, who, on his 
 account, is brought to tho scaffold. Alas ! and she, 
 
 In uusurpassing iunocenca a child 
 
 Hard by that torrent's brink, in tiny cot, 
 
 Upon her little patch and mountain lea, 
 With uU hor homely joys and cares, boRot 
 
 And bounded in that Uttlu world. 
 And I, tho abhorr'd of God,— 'twas not 
 
 Enough that down with mo, I whirl'd 
 The rilled rocks and shattor'd them. I must 
 Drag her— her and her peaie, into the dust ! 
 
 Byron instead adorned Astarte with every perfection : her 
 flhado appears but as a dream, and, passing by, only touhces 
 on tho cruno of Manfred. Tho German, with a boldness 
 of thought without parallel, but at the expense of 
 moraUty and religious sentiment, curses hope, faith, and 
 above all, endurance ; denudes reason and knowledge of 
 their honour ; disdains the supreme energy of man, and 
 would destroy not only all the consolations of the present 
 existence, by showing how man is ever destined from 
 the cradle to misfortune, but even those which in suffer- 
 
 (3) Utber Kuntt uml AlUrtfiumy ISIO. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 39 
 
 ing bring such healing bahn by indicating a reward and 
 repose beyond the grave. Byron, on the other hand, 
 tells us of other beings superior to man. The Abbot of 
 St. Maurice directs the mind of Manfred to Heaven, 
 though the heart of the latter was already hardened, 
 and, as he beholds him expiring, he exclaims: "He's 
 gone — his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight — whither, 
 I dread to think — but he is gone." 
 
 Faust is a magician alike with Manfred ; his boundless 
 knowledge saves him not from wearisome of life : he 
 *• passes, reeling, from lusting to enjoyment, and in enjoy- 
 ments languishes with desire." To escape, he makes a 
 compact with the evil one, who, in the sequel, will bear 
 him away. With Manfred, the conflict of a noble in- 
 telligence with his own thoughts is most terrible ; nor 
 with the new Prometheus does his own strength assist 
 him otherwise than to render him more and more sensible 
 of the sufferings of his punishment. Sole actor is Man- 
 fred, his punisliment the only action of the drama. No 
 superior power rules him but that of an implacable con- 
 science ; tiie abuse of tlie gift of intellect and misguided 
 passions, above all pride, drag him to perdition. And 
 truly is it a sublime lesson, that of a being of boundless 
 wealth, wisdom, and power, and who yet is miserable 
 through remorse. 
 
 To this period of the poet's life belongs also Parisina, 
 a poem not of horror, but of which the characteristic is 
 pity, a theme less of sensual delight than of sorrow. It 
 is, perhaps, the most powerful of Byron's productions, 
 and that wherein the exquisite sense of the beautiful is 
 most to be admired. (4) 
 
 XX. 
 
 BEAUTIES OF BYRON'S POEMS. 
 
 But, in the portrayal of the beautiful, it seems the 
 ancients, who were in that respect so great, followed 
 altogether a different mode from the poets of modem days. 
 Since they, illumined by a sun for ever unclouded, in a 
 
40 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 land perpetually smiling, depicted merely the nature 
 before them, without striving to search deeper ; they 
 portrayed it solely for the pleasure of so doing, and regaled 
 us with pictures soft and pleasing to our imagination. The 
 poets of the present day, those especially of the north, 
 either less favoured in clime or because they have come 
 after, feared comparison, sought the more hidden beauty 
 and nature of things, and studied deeply the proofs of these. 
 Less disinterested, therefore, was their portraiture ; nor 
 with rapid conception did they grasp the surface merely, 
 but with exquisite depth of research dived into the more 
 hidden arcana of life. In vain would you seek amongst 
 the arcients for profound knowledge of the heart and 
 analysis of the affections. 
 
 Now, Lord Byron, a native of the north, but who for 
 inspiration came to the ardent climes of the So^th and 
 East, together with a harmony the rarest and most 
 difficult of combination, was supreme in both these 
 faculties, the most certain proof of a boundless intellect. 
 Already, from numerous extracts here and there intro- 
 duced, we must have manifested how he depicts the 
 scenes of nature so that we actually see them before us ; 
 yet we cannot refrain from giving space to other citations, 
 and first, to the opening lines of the " Bride of Abydos," 
 one of the most truly impassioned of poems. Examples 
 of the beautiful are never superfluous. 
 
 Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle, 
 Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime ; 
 
 Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 
 Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime ? 
 
 Know ye the land of the cedar and vine. 
 
 Where the tiow'rs ever blossom, the beams ever shine ; 
 
 Where the light wings of zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, 
 
 Wax faint o'er the gardens of Qui in her bloom ; 
 
 Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
 
 And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ; 
 
 Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the aky 
 
 In colour though varied, in beauty may vie. 
 
 And tlio purple of ocean is deepest in dye. 
 
 Where the virgins are soft as tne roses they twine, 
 
 And all save the spirit of man is divine ! 
 
 'Tis the clime of the East : 'tis the land of the Sua — 
 
 Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done P 
 
 Oh ! wild as the accents of lovers farewell, 
 
 Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell. . &c. 
 
 Such the commencement of the " Bride of Abydos/' 
 
LORD BYEON AND HIS WORKS, 41 
 
 .•and scarcely less beautiful, the death of Selim and 
 2uleika having been told, is the conclusion :— 
 
 Within the place of thousand tombs 
 
 That Rhine beneath, though dark above, 
 The sad but living cypreas gloowa, 
 
 And withers not, though branch and leaf 
 Are stamp' d with an eternal grief. 
 Like early unrequited love. . . &c. 
 
 Would you have a scene of horror? — read the descrip- 
 tion of the shipwreck in " Don Juan," Canto 2. 
 
 Contrast with such scenes a picture of the heart's 
 workings, as portrayed in the mien and character of the 
 ** Corsair":— 
 
 Unlike the heroes of each ancient race, 
 
 Demons in act, but gods at least in face ; 
 
 In Courad's form seems little to admire. 
 
 Though his dark eyebrow shades a glance of fire. 
 
 Robust, but not Herculean— to the sight 
 
 No giant frame sets forth his common height ; 
 
 Yet, on the whole, who paused to look again, 
 
 Saw more than marks the crowd of vulgar men. 
 
 They gaze and marvel how — and still confess 
 
 That thus it is, but why, thev cannot guess. 
 
 Sunburnt his cheek ; his forehead, high and pale, 
 
 The sable curls in wild profusion vril ; 
 
 And oft perforce his rising lip reveals 
 
 The haughtier thought it curbs, but scarce conceals. . . &c. 
 
 Such extracts, however lengthy, are not wearisorne, 
 and they are produced because many have main- 
 tained that the author therein would depict himself. 
 Now, let us observe how " Manfred " reveals the recesses 
 'Of his soul to the Destiny of the Alps : — 
 
 Well, though it torture me, 'tis but the same ; 
 
 My pangs shall find a voice. From my youth upwards 
 
 My spirit walked not with the souls of men, 
 
 Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes. 
 
 The thirst of their ambition was not mine ; 
 
 The aim of their existence was not mine. 
 
 My joys, ray grief, my passions, and my powers 
 
 Made me a stranger ; though I wore the form, 
 
 I had no sympathy with breathing flesh ; 
 
 Nor, midst the creatures of clav that girded me, 
 
 Was there but one who— but of her anon. 
 
 I said with men, and with the thoughts of men 
 
 I held but slight communion ; but instead, 
 
 My joy was in the wilderness to breathe 
 
 The difficult air of the iced mountain's top, 
 
 Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing 
 
 Flit o'er the herbless granite ; or to plunge 
 
 Into the torrent, and to roll aloni? 
 
 On the swift whirl of the new breaking ware 
 
 Of rirer, stream, or ocean, in their flow. . * &c. 
 
d2 LORD BYIiON AND HIS WOEKS. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 BEPPO AND PARISINA, 4c. 
 
 But here tenninates Lord Byron's first style. Strange 
 as may, liowever, appear to some the conception of the 
 preceding poems, there yet abound in them splendour 
 and vigour, lamentation the most solemn, and ideas of 
 faith the most consoUng. The poet displays himself the 
 sceptic, we allow, but not to the extent of a cold con- 
 tempt, and amid the eloquence of grief is manifested a 
 desire forinnnortahty. You might liken him to anangeU 
 banish'd from heaven, but still mindful of his celestial 
 origin : — 
 
 I look upon the peopled desert past (i) 
 
 As on a place of agony and Btrife, 
 Where, for some sin, to sonow I was cast, 
 
 To act and suffer, but re-mount at last. 
 With a fresh pinion, which I feel to spring. 
 
 Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast 
 Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, 
 Spuming the clay cold bonds which round our being cling. 
 
 Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part 
 
 Of me and of my soul, as I of them ? 
 Is not the love of these deep in my heart 
 
 With a pure passion 'r 
 
 . &0. 
 
 But now, to a vivid, inspired, free poesy, colored with 
 memories and by hope, from which breathes forth a 
 freshness of feeling as yet untarnished by the bitter 
 blast of experience, succeeds one inspired by animosity 
 and pitiless sarcasm, which delights in denuding virtue 
 itself of its charm, which covers itself with the mask of 
 Aristophanes to mock with angry derision at all, whether 
 Socrates or Sophist. 
 
 Beppo, a Venetian tale, wherein he depicts cicisbeism, 
 first betrays this tendency to aberration. In "Don 
 Juan," he plunges headlong into the offending vortex. 
 
 That " Don Juan," whom wo have all seen on the 
 public stage hurried away by the demon before his time, 
 the Spanish Don Juan (!^), in whom Moliere found the 
 only type of contrast for his Tartutfe, and whom Mozart 
 
 (1) Childe Harold, Canto 3. 
 
 (•2) De Stendhahl. bee Appendix. 
 
LORD BYIION AND HIS WORKS. 43 
 
 re-cmbcllishcd with the harmonious strains of a glorious 
 music, — tliis character would Byron revive. Nor is ho 
 now that effeminate libertine and triumphant egotist who 
 would create vice into a system and make a display of 
 it, as vulgar tradition has given us to suppose. 
 
 Byron's hero indulges in his amours in the series ; 
 allowing himselt to bo borne along on the torrent of his 
 pleasures or of opinion ; nothing unsavoury deters him ; 
 he analyses not too closely ; for the rest, he is brave and 
 daunted by no peril, but on occasions can doubt or 
 blaspheme, as if he had studied Diderot (1) and his 
 school. In the main, this character is not so well-drawn 
 or sustained throughout as the others Byron has por- 
 trayed ; and we may easily believe Mr. Hunt that the 
 poet himself would write off his stanzas without very 
 well knowing how they would end (^). In fact, after tho 
 Third Canto, he drags his hero into most startling adven- 
 tures, and Byron is not great when he depicts adventure, 
 but rather when he analyses man, when his world is the 
 human heart. ]3ul, good God ! vmder what aspect does 
 the noble lord set liimself to contemplate human nature I 
 
 It is no longer the recluse of Geneva, who sadly regards 
 the vices of society, with the desire of probing its wounds 
 and then curing them ; you encounter rather the 
 philosoplier of Ferney (from whose delineations this 
 poem might seem suggested), who opposes sensibility and 
 ridicules noble actions by showing their secret, motives 
 —a philosophy which will not lead to crime, but which 
 tends to wither the highest virtues and all social charity, 
 to destroy, moreover, respect for tho human species, 
 which, whether founded on illusions or not, we trust to 
 heaven we (and those around us) shall never lose, so 
 deplorable would be tho result of the disenchantment. 
 
 The idol of love before which he had burned incense, he 
 here despoils of every adornment ; here, with cold irony, 
 he scorns all enthusiasm, respecting not even patriotism, 
 nor liberty, nor valour ; all is illusion, all vanity, all folly ; 
 he laughs at all, but with the laughter of a man crowned 
 with roses, under which the thorns transfix him; he 
 laughs like one who would thus spare himself the bitter- 
 ness of execration. A doctrine, in fact, so to speak, which, 
 
 (8) A« is often the case with authors. See Life <^ CharU» Levtr^ &o. —Ed. 
 
44 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 should a cynic come to preach it to you in its naked 
 deformity, would cause you only a shudder and nothing 
 more ; but which becomes dangerous, identified as it is 
 with a person who likewise attracts our regard, who dis- 
 plays himself to us with all the most noble and consoling 
 illusions, but divests himself of them a moment after- 
 wards to turn them into ridicule, who pays, in fact, ' 
 court to virtue only to say it is but falsehood, or ex- 
 cites good and generous sentiments but to declare them 
 rediculous and vain (2). No ! it is not possible to make 
 war on enthusiasm in a more cruel mode, than with such 
 an admixture of gravity and buffoonery. 
 
 Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow (4), 
 His home deserted for the lonely wood, 
 Tormented with a wound he rould not know 
 His, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude ; 
 I'm fond myself of solitude or so, 
 But then I beg it may be understood, 
 , By Bohtude I mean a Sultan's, not 
 
 A hermit's, with a harem for a grot. . . &o. 
 
 On Greece, revived again, he pours forth a lay abound- 
 ing in the noblest of sentiments — but how ? He places 
 it in the mouth of a poet at a banquet — who sings for 
 every faction, who Hatters all in power, who knows not 
 either vice or virtue if it be not self-interest (3). 
 
 Do you remember how in his " Pilgrimage " he depicted 
 the Castihan maids when speaking of the war which, 
 with their countrymen, they waged against the French 
 invader ? 
 
 Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused (5), 
 Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar, 
 And, all unsex'd, the anlace hath espous'd. 
 
 Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war, 
 And bhe, whom once the semblance of a scar 
 Appalled, an owlet's larum chilled with dread, 
 Now views the column scattering, bay'net jar, 
 
 The f.ilchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead 
 Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to trMcL 
 Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale. 
 
 Oh ! hud you known her in hor softer hour, 
 Mark'jl her black eye that mocks her coal.bluck veil, 
 Heard her *ight lively tones in lady's bower, 
 Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power, , 
 Her fairy form, with more than female grace, 
 
 Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower 
 Beheld her smile in danger's Gorgon face 
 Thin the closed ranks, and lead in glory's fearful chase (4). 
 
 S 
 
 4^ Don Juan, Canto 1. 
 
 6) Don Juan, Canto 3, Stanza 8G. 
 
LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 45 
 
 Now, mark how he depicts her in " Don Juan." 
 
 And such swoet girls— I mean such graceful ladies, 
 Their very walk would make your boaora swell ; 
 
 I can't describe it, though so much it strike, 
 
 Nor liken it— I never saw the like. 
 
 An Arab horse, a stately stag, a barb 
 
 New broke, a cameleopard, a gazelle. 
 No— none of these will do— and then their garb ! 
 
 Their veil and petticoat— Alas! to dwell 
 Upon such things would very near absorb 
 A Canto— theu their feet and ancles -well 
 Thank Heaven I've got no metaphor quite ready. 
 And so, my sober muse— come, let's bo steady— 
 ..... &c. 
 
 You will willingly spare me, kind reader, the further 
 contrasting of ideas that may bo too sacred. After the 
 first two cantos, the intercourse with Italians, who 
 recalled him to the reality of life and greater tranquillity 
 of mind, tempered not a little his bitterness. In the 
 succeeding cantos he conducts Don Juan through the 
 luxurious and thoroughly sensual existence of the 
 harems of the East, then to the Court of Catherine 
 the Second of Russia, thence to England, to form 
 acquaintance with its exclusive society, to deride its 
 prejudices, to lead a life of dissipation in the Abbey at 
 Newstead. Thus were filled up the sixteen Cantos of 
 his poem (.5). And it is said he intended to have added 
 more, conducting his hero through the great crimes and 
 great virtues of the French Revolution (6). 
 
 This singular poem, which has beauties and defects 
 quite peculiar to itself, where poetry makes trial of 
 every chord, with endless variety of intonation, with an 
 ever wondrous and original expression, with verse easy 
 and spontaneous and also harmonious, with the finest 
 perception varied to infinity in its most minute grada- 
 tions, was in his own land pitilessly persecuted. Not so 
 much, I believe, for the weapons with which he assailed 
 virtue, as for the lasting injury he gives, and ever will, 
 give, to the moral, religious, political, and poetical cant 
 of his country (7). And this, with power greater than 
 would be believed in a land we are accustomed to call 
 par excellence free, loaded the author with the purchased 
 abuse of the Reviews, and combined to place Don Juan 
 beyond the pale of protection — that is to say, to endanger 
 
46 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 the publisher, wlio, notwithstanding, did his best to 
 circulate the work by numerous editions and at a low 
 price (8). 
 
 To a young man, I would recommend Childe Harold; 
 but, alas 1 let him not approach the frigid anatomy of 
 Don Juan; it cannot, moreover, be in unison with the 
 feehngs of young hearts, which, following virtue by 
 instinct rather than calculation, have fortunately not 
 acquired, as yet, the sad discrimination which sees the 
 secret end of every action. An Italian lady one day 
 made some observations to Lord Byron on this poem, 
 and he agreed with her, but replied that he suspected 
 it would live longer than Childe Harold. " Ah, but," 
 said she, "I would rather have the fame of Childe 
 Harold for three years, than an iiuniortality of Don 
 Juan." (^). 
 
 XXII. 
 
 liYUOX'S DllAMAS. 
 
 Many other compositions were completed by the poet 
 about this time. The Rev. Mr. J3owles, a Protestant 
 clergyman, in reprinting the works of Pope, had taxed 
 the latter with immorality by the publication of some of 
 his ineditcd letters, and laid down as a canon law of 
 poetry that ** all the imagery drawn from that which is 
 beautiful and sublime in any work of nature, is more 
 beautiful and sublime than are the images drawn from* 
 art, and in consequence more poetical " (1). By which 
 rule judging Pope, he found in his poetry more of art 
 than nature. Here ensued a contest betwixt himself 
 and Canipbell, betwixt the classic and the romantic 
 school, in which Byron interposed his voice. And first, 
 he defends Pope from the stigma of innnorality, because 
 of the justice of judging of a man in accordance with the 
 
 (6) Letter to Murray, p. 351. Mooye's Life, vol. 2, p. 1830. 
 
LORD BYBON AND HIS WOBKS. 47 
 
 tenor of his life, and not from some isolated fact. Pass 
 ing thence to literary doctrine, he goes on to say that 
 the painter and the poet ought not to observe things too 
 minutely, but through the medium of the sensations they 
 awaken ; that the existence of man or of the arts increases 
 the poetry of the world's wonders ; in fine, he rails 
 against the herd of poetasters who erected a mosque 
 by the side of a noble Greek temple, and as he is 
 ashamed to figure among the constructors of. this Tower 
 of Babel, though certainly he has given no help towards 
 demolishing the ancient structure, he continues his 
 diatribe in violent language, which proves how much 
 man's reason may bo peiTerted if, from love of sophistry, 
 he combats that which has been the opinion of his whole 
 life, the essence of all his compositions. 
 
 But, so that these new operations should not be with- 
 out the support of examples, he composed tragedies with 
 all the unities. He, Byron, in the language of Shaks- 
 pere, composes tragedies according to the rules of Aris- 
 totle. You might liken him to one of those skilful 
 dancers, who, enveloped in, or rather suspended on 
 cords, Sec, thus test tlieir expertness in tours eh force, or 
 fearful leaps. In all his dramas the dialogues and 
 speeches are too frequent ; every action, every sentiment, 
 is produced by external means. The heart is there 
 analysed and depicted in words, instead of being, as is 
 nearly always the case in Shakspere, revealed by a sign, 
 a word, or silence. We have too many cvihroglios or 
 counterplots ; too little of real life is there. In his plays 
 sway not those passions with power to transport the 
 audience beyond themselves ; to c?ntre their feelings in 
 the sufferings and their causes before them. 
 
 Marino Faliero, a Doge of Venice, outraged in the 
 honour of his wife, refused justice by the Council of Ten, 
 conspires to destroy the Republic, and his plot being dis- 
 covered, is beheaded on the Giants' Stairs, predicting, as 
 he dies, the degradation of Venice. (2) Although the 
 magnanimous sentiments with which the play abounds 
 cannot but please, this drama is cold and labored, and 
 the characters, if we except the dignified tenderness of 
 Angiolina, and the vigorous action of the conspirator, 
 Bertuccio, are insipid ; there is too little action ; too 
 many dialogues ; toa much of art. 
 
48 LOBD BYBON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 In the ''Two Foscari," Jacopo, the son o! the Doge 
 Foscari, from his exile writes to the Duke of Milan^ 
 invoking his aid against his own country. The letter ia 
 intercepted ; as a state criminal, he is summoned to 
 Venice ; he hastens to return, confessing to have acted 
 thus, designedly, with the hope of again beholding hig 
 birthplace and beloved parents. But a ppwerful enemy 
 pursues him. Loredano, who, believing the Foscari 
 guilty of having poisoned his kinsmen, has inscribed on 
 the list of his debtors the Doge *'for the death of my 
 fatlicr and uncle," and has done thus much that he might 
 afterwards note against it: *' he has 2)aid vie" (3). In 
 fact, at his instigation, Jacopo is again condemned to 
 exile, but such anguish seizes him at again abandoning 
 his country that his heart breaks ; then the Doge, full 
 of years and virtues, is deposed from his throne, and 
 also dies. The patriotic love of Jacopo, the affection of 
 Marina his wife, the premeditated vengeance of Loredano, 
 the restrained anguish of the Doge, embellish here and 
 there this drama, in which, however, the action proceeds 
 too slowly (i). 
 
 In " Sardanapalus ** we find not the effeminate Assyrian. 
 He is a man passionately devoted to the enjoyment of 
 sensual pleasures, it is true, but, does danger approach, 
 his equanimity is disturbed not— he feels no fear. 
 He is capable of virtue. In place of saying to his subjects, 
 " Bring me gold, soldiers, the sacrifice of your blood ; 
 worship, adore me, and labour for me;" or of dragging 
 them where it might then be written : " Here Sardana2)alus 
 slaiightered 50,000 of his enemies — heJwld their graves and 
 his trojjhies," (4) he allows them instead to live in such 
 tranquillity that tliey become tired of contentment and 
 favor an ambitious rival, who drives him from the throne 
 to the funeral pile. This Sardanapalus is so noble that 
 his character begets as it were a weariness or monotony. 
 The dramatic interest is scanty ; the priests and warriors 
 are placed in an obscure light ; here and there some 
 superlatively beautiful passages recompense us C-^). 
 
 But from self-imposed trammels Byron soon freed 
 himself in *• Werner (5), or the Inheritance," a romance 
 
 (l) See Dam. liintoire de Venise. 
 
 iS) Tue *' Dream*' may bo said to be without parallel in our language. 
 
LOBB DYHON and his works. 49=^ 
 
 in dialogue, where the characters arc copied from some 
 previously dehneated. The plot is taken from a tale 
 by Miss Lee. 
 
 In the '• Deformed Transformed," Arnoldo, crippled 
 from his birth, is transformed by the Evil One into a 
 young and handsome Ctcsar Borgia, and led to witness 
 the sacking of Rome by the soldiers of Charles V. The 
 Demon, accompanying his pro<<^f7r, employs himself in the 
 discouraging task of revealing to him the secret springs 
 of human action ; the vice concealed under the guise of 
 virtue (^). 
 
 Everyone can doubtless call to mind the " Mysteries, '* 
 those representations of sacred events, which, in the 
 Middle Ages, attracted the multitude, and excited its 
 devotion as also its disorders, and which were the first 
 steps toward the revival of the dramatic art. From 
 these it was that Byron actually took the title of two 
 Mysteries, ** Cain " and " Heaven and Earth." 
 
 31-123548 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 BYRON'S OTHER WORKS. 
 
 This last depicts to us the eve of the Deluge,' and how- 
 all men were terror-stricken thereat, except two dau<^hters 
 of Cain, beloved of two angels, who, according to the 
 Hebrew traditions, (i) for them descended to earth. 
 Amid the exultation of the evil spirits, the lamentations 
 of mortals, and the desolation of nature, arrived the f ital 
 hour. Raphael summons back the two angels, but they 
 prefer the loss of beatitude rather than forsake mortal 
 delights, and with these they transpose themselves into 
 other spheres, whilst the waters submerge the world. 
 
 The *♦ Cain " might be defined the doctrine, in 
 dialogue, of the origin of evil. Therein, the poet des- 
 cribes the growth of society, and the first-born of man, 
 
 (3) The story is founded partly on that of a novel, "The Thre© 
 Brothers," and partly on the ** Faust" of Goethe. 
 
 (1) Gene<«is, chap. 6. E 
 
50 LOBD BYBON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 tormented by the insatiable thirst of knowledge, by fear 
 of death and life ; human only, in fact, because he loves 
 most affectionately his wife and sister Adah ; and, for the 
 rest, possessed by an overwhelming pride, which causes 
 him to murmur against the Deity and his parents. 
 With his blasphemy accords that of Lucifer, who would 
 persuade him to adore him, and who guides him beyond 
 the limits of the world to contemplate the souls of those 
 who inhabited the earth before Adam (1) until he leads 
 him back to earth, persuaded that the highest wisdom is 
 the knowledge of the nullity of human nature and pre- 
 disposed for the first tiino, which stained the earth with 
 blood. This work was deemed scandalous ; outcries 
 were raised at the impiety uttered by the two rebels 
 against the Divine goodness and providence, to which 
 none replied. The author was styled eitlier Manichean 
 or Atheist, nor was deemed valid the excuse he adduced 
 of having been right in making the actors of his drama 
 Bpeak according to their nature ; or because the Satan 
 of Milton was allowed to alUrm that evil is good. (2) 
 
 In the " Island," the poet transports Christian far 
 from the evils of civilisation, into the midst of the 
 verdant isles of the Pacific, as yet uncontaminated by 
 arts and the crimes of man, and to an existence where 
 the thoughts are developed but for love only, where man, 
 amid tlie gifts which are poured upon him by an invisible 
 hand, lives a life of prolonged youth. 
 
 Everyone has been honified at tho unheard-of punish- 
 ments of •' Mazeppa," who, bound to a furious horse, goes 
 for many days (how wonderful, how inimitable is the 
 harmony and variety of the verse !) (3) tearing along over 
 deserts and through forests until the steed falls lifeless, 
 and ilie agonised rider is then saved to become Hetman 
 of tile Ukraine, and to relate his dire mishap to Charles 
 XII after his defeat at Pultowa. 
 
 The ♦* Vision of Dante " is a lament over Italy. In 
 tlie Lament of Tasso we see not exaggerated and fanciful 
 ideas but a solemn restrained grief; the real minstrel of 
 Goilfrey, who consoles himself for a past of love in a 
 futui'u of fame. 
 
 Worthy of Dante and Micliael Angelo is the conception 
 of" Darkness," wherein is imaged the earth at the moment 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 51 
 
 the sun is extinguished ; a calamity so immeasurablo 
 that it is painful to contemplate it even through the 
 medium of the most dazzling poetry. 
 
 Oftentimes he infuses into lyrics the impressions which 
 either his own misfortunes or the stupendous events 
 agitating the world produced in his mind. In the " Age 
 of Bronze " (^^) he bitterly inveighs against the 
 Continental Powers, stripping off the laurels of Europe, 
 and rending the purple of its rulers, to reveal the naked 
 deformity beneath. To Napoleon, with whom he has 
 often been compared (4), he burned not incense in the 
 days of his glory ; but when he fell, he reproached him 
 with the vices of his reign (b) ; when he died, he forgot 
 his ambition, and deplored him, as one consecrated by 
 the majesty of misfortune. 
 
 The opening stanzas of the Napoleon Ode, if so we may 
 stylo it, are of great force. 
 
 Yes ! where is he, the Champion and the Child 
 
 Of all that's great or little, wise or mild, 
 
 Whose game was empires, and whose stakas were thrones ; 
 
 Whoso table earth— whose dice were human bones. . . &c. 
 
 "We intend not — too long the tale would be — to follow 
 closely and singly all the author's minor works. He 
 contributed to a journal (^), The Liberal (5), in the first 
 number of which he inserted the " Vision of Judgment,'* 
 turning into ridicule the Apotheosis of King George III., 
 composed by Southey ; a satirical caricature unworthy 
 of the greatness of one, who, with giant's steps, should 
 have pursued his way, without caring for the petty 
 disturbances raised by the envious pigmies at his feet. 
 But Byron was in this far beneath himself. He ought 
 to have imitated his countryman Pope, who, sorely 
 vexed at a most bitter critique, allowed himself to be 
 persuaded by Addison to answer no otherwise than by a 
 
 (2; "The Age of Bronze," or Carmen Seculare et annua hand 
 "mirabili8,"1821. 
 
 (3) The •♦ Ode to Napoleon " :— 
 
 'Tis done ! but yesterday a kinsr, 
 And now thou art a nameless thing, 
 So abject, yet alive, &c. 
 
 (4) The liberal (see note at end of Vol.), which lasted only to tho 
 fourth number. 
 
 E 2 
 
62 LOED BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 fresh composition, and he published the " Essay on 
 Man." But the periodical insults which the English and 
 even Italian journals, with dauntless fatuity, launched 
 incessantly a^'aiiist him upon whom they waged war 
 as against a proscribed school, disturbed the equanimity 
 of Byron, who would contend against them, and honour 
 with his indignant replies these miserable scribblers. 
 A bitter literary conflict he waged with Southey, the 
 Poet Laureate, who boasted of liaving with his sling 
 smitten on the brow the Goliath whom he denounced 
 as the head of a Satanic scJujol, subversive of political 
 and moial order. Byron, in fact, was once on the point 
 of starting from Italy to return to England, for no other 
 purpose than to call to a deadly account that avowed 
 champion of the aristocracy ; but a friend induced him 
 to reilect that the English iio^'ility would have purchased 
 all the poets to enjoy the satisfaction of having disturbed 
 the tranquillity of the author of Don Juan. 
 
 But, to compose works thus diversilied, or even merely 
 to finish •• Don Juan,* where so great is the variety, so 
 versatile the power, of creative genius, that with ditliculty 
 we believe it the work of one hand, was required, (it 
 would seem) precisely an existence of that character 
 which Byron led, betwixt annoyances, caprices, dissipa- 
 tion and antipathies, trivial vices and sublime virtues, 
 elevated sentiments and shameless inclinations. Now the 
 misanthrope, and now agreeable and gallant ; now a despot, 
 now affable and kmd ; here the seducer, there the pro- 
 tector of innocence and misfortune ; now the egotist and 
 the miser, then disinterested and generous; now credulous 
 as a cavalier of the Middle Ages, and then sceptical as 
 an Encyclopaedist ; to-day he blusters and deties like a 
 swaggerer and a bully, to-morrow he is the peacemaker 
 bocwixt opponents. On one occasion the desperate 
 gambler, on another the patient explorer of antiquities ; 
 from the crowded Ridotto he passes to the study of 
 Armenian with the monks (i) ; from carousals and dissi- 
 pation ho retires to his study to meditate on the vain 
 illusions of youth, on dreams of domestic felicity, a country, 
 a political existence, friends, his daughter, a life he had 
 already exhausted, when ye but thirty years of age. 
 
 (1) lu the Anneuian Couveut. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 53 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE GUICCIOLI. 
 
 To divert his mind from this fatiguing inaction, from an- 
 ticipations of death, what did he still desire? His ever cher- 
 ished idols, love and liberty. To better habits and another 
 mode of life he in fact returned when he became acquainted 
 withSignoraGambaGuiccioli. Unfortunately, neither with 
 him nor her could a love passion escape without reproach. 
 And truly then might the poet have repeated in his own 
 lines : — 
 
 O God i that wo had met in time, 
 Our hearts as fond, thy hand more free ; 
 
 When thou hadat loved without a crime 
 And I been less unworthy thee V (i) 
 
 Would ye that I sliould describe to you the merits of 
 Countess Guiccoli ? Is it not enough to say that she could 
 enchain an irreclaimable being, and one long disused to 
 seek another heart, another mind, a sympathizing language 
 — one too, who was the author of ** Don Juan? " She was 
 scarcely eighteen years of age, and had shortly before left 
 a convent to espouse Count Guiccioli. 
 
 "I became acquainted," (2) says Madame Guiccioli, 
 "with Lord Byron in April, 1819 ; he was introduced to 
 me at Venice by the Countess Benzoni at one of that lady's 
 parties. This introduction, w^iich had so much influence 
 on the lives of us both, took place contrary to our wishes, 
 and had been permitted by us only from courtesy. For my- 
 self, more fatigued than usual on account of the late hours 
 they keep in Venice, I went with great reluctance to this 
 party, and purely in obedience to Count Guiccioli. Lord 
 Byron, who was averse to forming new acquaintances,— 
 alleging that he had entirely renounced all attachments and 
 was unwilling any more to expose himself to their conse- 
 quences — on being requested by the Countess Benzoni to 
 allow himself to be presented to mo, refused, and at last 
 only assented from a desire to oblige her. His noble and ex- 
 
 (1) " Remember him, whom passion's ^o^er.''— Occasional Pieces. 
 
 (2) Moore's Life, &c.— Byron had, however, seen the Countess Teresa 
 Oamba at Countess Albrizzi's, in 1818, just after her nuptials.— Ed. 
 
64 LORD BYRON AND EIS WORKS. 
 
 quisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his 
 manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, 
 rendered him so different and so superior a being to any 
 whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should 
 not have left the most profound impression upon me. Froin 
 that evening, during the whole of my subsequent stay in 
 Venice, we met every day, cfcc." It boots not to relate here 
 the story of their loves, nor need we repeat any of his let- 
 ters to her — they are, according to custom, variations only, 
 of the perpetual theme, ** ti amo." 
 
 Scandal resulted from the connection ; for, as Byron had 
 been obliged to forsake his wife — a cold and passionless lady 
 — so the Guiccioli was to separate from her aged husband'; 
 and the poet and this lady clung only the closer in their 
 affection for each other. He abandoned Venice to follow 
 her to Bologna, to Kavenna. At Ravenna the lady was 
 brought by illness to the point of death : the presence of 
 Byron restored her to life. And here the fear of losing her, 
 the satisfaction of beholding her recovery, gratitude, reci- 
 procal attentions, walks in each other's company — if ever 
 Byron had a moment's contentment, it was here. His 
 thoughts full of her, he now visited the tomb of Gaston 
 de Foix, now that of Dante; or he wandered pensive 
 througli the pine forests on the Chiassi, and tuned his lyre 
 to responses of unwonted sounds of plaintive sweetness. 
 
 Avo Maria ! o'er tho earth and sea. 
 That heaveuliest hour of Hoaveu is worthiest thee ! 
 Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour, 
 
 The time, the cHmo, the spot, where I so oft 
 Have felt tliat moment in its fullest power, 
 Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft ; 
 While swung tho deep bell in the distant tower. 
 Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, 
 And not a breath crept through the rosy air. 
 And yet the forest leaves seemed stirr'd with prayer. &o. 
 
 One would say that these are the impassioned verses 
 of Childe Harold, not of the scornful and sceptical Don 
 Juan. But '* Don Juan," that poem of which the exhorta- 
 tions of all his friends had not induced him to change a 
 single line, remained uncompleted. Could the perpetual 
 sarcasm, wherewith it pleased him to denude woman of 
 every illusion, be now betitting him, when he 
 acknowledged the empire of one? Or, could that 
 hysterical mockery of laughter, so akin to grief, be now 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 55 
 
 the greeting for one then so favored ? Henceforth, the 
 entreaties of the lady stopped his pen, (1) nor did he 
 resume the poem till long afterwards, • and then, as is 
 clearly apparent, he changed its tenor. 
 
 One day (it was at Bologna, the 24th of August, 1819) ^ 
 he found his mistress absent from the house. Alone, 
 pensive, he wanders through her apartments, thug 
 re\'iving all his cherished recollections ; then he pauses 
 to seat himself beside a fountain, and meditates and 
 weeps. There, where often they had been seated 
 together side by side, he finds the " Corinne" of Madamo 
 de Stael, left on this spot by her he loves, and thus he 
 writes upon its leaves :— 
 
 My dearest Theresa,—! have read this book in your garden— my 
 love, you were abs»'nt, or else I couM not have read it. It 13 a favorite 
 book of yours, and the writt-r was a friend of mine. You will not under- 
 stand these English words, others will not understand them— which is the 
 reason I have not scrawl -d them in It^ilian. But you will recognise the 
 handwriting of him who passionately lo^ed you, and vou will divine that 
 over a book, which was yours, he could only think of love. In that 
 word, beautiful in all languagws, but ra 'St so in yonra—amor mio—ia 
 comp«S'd my existence hero and hereafter (4) [I feel I exist here, and I 
 fear that I shall exist hereaft-^r — to what purpose you will decide; my 
 destiny restj^ with vou, and you area woman, 18 years of ago, and two 
 out of a convent. I wish you had utaid there with all my h^-art— or at 
 least that I had never met you in your married sta^e. But all this is 
 too late.l I love you and you Itve me— at least you say so, and act as 
 If you did so, which last is a greaf oonso'ation in all events. But I more 
 than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of rae sometimes 
 whf'n the Alps and Ocean divide us— they never will, unless you 
 wish it. 
 
 BTRON (6). 
 Bologna, August 2.5, 1819. 
 
 To the splendid English edition of Lord Byron's 
 works is attached the portrait of the Guiccioli. Lady 
 Byron, solicited to give her picture also, refused to 
 appear thus in a work along with the Italian lady. The 
 editors then maliciously displayed to her a frightful por- 
 trait, saying that, since they were obliged to keep faith 
 with the public, they would insert that as her picture. 
 The lady, to avoid appearing thus to disadvantage in a 
 work wherein the beauty of Guiccioli was so con- 
 spicuously displayed, allowed herself to be persuaded to 
 have her picture taken again. 
 
 Without wishing to test the truth of this anecdote, we 
 
 (4) The paragraphs in brackets are omitted by the author, Cant\^. 
 (6) Moort't Life. 
 
and there '▼as a Bimplicity, a retired modesty, about her which was very 
 aud formed a happy contrast to the cold and artificial 
 formality aud studied stiffuess which is called fashion. Sho interested 
 
 £6 LOBB BYRON AND HIS WOEKS. 
 
 think Lady Byron's scruples proper and natural. (6) We 
 give below a sketch of both ladies :— 
 
 There was something piquant, and what we term pretty, in Miss Mill- 
 bank; her features were small and feminine, though not regular. She 
 had the finest skin imaginable ; her figure was perfect for ner height ; 
 and there -vas a simplicity, a retired i » - ' - • • • • 
 
 cl^aructeristic, and formed a happy 
 formality aud studied stiffuess which 
 Die exceedingly, &c. — Lord liyron^a own C'unvtrsutiona. 
 
 The Couutess Guiccioli is 23 years of age, though she appears no more 
 than 17 or 18. Uulike most of the Italian women, her complexion is 
 delicately ^air. Hor eyes, large, dark, aud languishing, are shaded by 
 the longest eyelashes iu the world ; aud her hair, which is ungathered 
 on her head, plays over her falliug shoulders iu a profusion of natural 
 ringlets of the darkest auburu. Her figure is perhaps too much embon- 
 poiut for her heij/ht ; but her bust is perfect. Her features want little 
 of post^essing a Grecian regularity of outline ; aud she has the most 
 beautiful mouth aud teeth imaginable. It is impossible to see without 
 admiring — to hear the Guiccioli speak without beiug fascinated, &c. 
 — Extracts from Lifv hj Lulatr. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 HIS MEMOIRS. 
 
 And yet of this man such evil rumours spread as of 
 one both brutal and ferocious. That puerile curiosity 
 wliich attaches to the steps of the great sought out 
 every minute circumstance of his life, and he was dis- 
 played without mask to the world, just, we may say, 
 as so many things which he has himself denuded, and 
 over which a veil had been better cast. Certainly, 
 from the delineations of so many friends and enemies, the 
 nmltitude of which might almost form a library, tlie poet 
 gain«jd nothing : so much so, that none could distinguish 
 what was real in him from that which was but the bold 
 and ostentatious assumption of vice and cynicism. But 
 the entire revelation of his real mind, the display of the 
 soiu'ce of his virtues, the excuse for his vices (since often 
 that which appears crime is but misfortune), could be 
 only the work of Byron himself. For this cause he 
 dreaded biographies, and when La Theotochi Albrizzi (i) 
 at Venice made known to him that she had sketched 
 
 («) Editor. 
 
 (I) A native of Corfu, styled by Byron " The Venetian De Stael." 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 57 
 
 him in one of her portraits (" Ritratti ") ho refused to 
 see it and begged her to destroy it. To Lady Blessing- 
 ton, however, he confessed to have been twice under 
 obhgation to such friends, since they had preserved him 
 from suicide. ('■^) " It is a fact," said he, seeing me look 
 grave, " I assure you I should positively have destroyed 
 
 myself, but I guessed that would write my life, and 
 
 with this fear before my eyes, I have lived on. I know 
 80 well the sort of things they would write of me — the 
 excuses, lame as myself, that they would offer for my 
 delinquencies while they were unnecessarily exposing 
 them, and all this done with the avowed intention of 
 justifying what, God help me! cannot be justified, iny 
 un poetical reputation, with which the world can have 
 nothing to do I One of my friends would dip liis pen in 
 clarilied honey, and the other in vinegar, to describe my 
 manifold transgi-essions, and as I do not wish my poor 
 fame to be either preserved or pickled, I have lived on and 
 written my memoirs, where facts will speak for them- 
 selves without the editorial candour of excuses such as 
 * we cannot excuse this unhappy error, or defend that 
 impropriety,' — the mode in which friends exalt their own 
 prudence and virtue, by exhibiting the want of those 
 qualities in the dear departed, and by marking their 
 disapproval of his errors. I have written my memoirs," 
 said Byron, " to save the necessity of their being written 
 by a friend, or friends, and have only to hope they will 
 not add notes." 
 
 Thomas Moore, the poet, who has depicted the East, 
 whom Byron honored more than most persons with his 
 friendship, was dining one day at Venice, in the latter's 
 house. 13efore the repast is over, his Lordship leaves the 
 room and returns laden with an enormous bundle of 
 papers (in a white leather bag.) (1) " Look here," ho 
 said, holding it up, •' this would be something to make 
 John Murray (his publisher) laugh." " What papers are 
 those?" demanded the Anacreon. " Nothing less than 
 my memoirs," replied Byron. " I give them to you, let who 
 will read them, but they ought not to be published while 
 I am alive." (3) And Moore received the sacred deposit. 
 
 (2) Convcrsatiom of Lad\f Bleuingtwi with lord Byron^ p. 57, 
 (8) It was decided that tbey were not soitable for pablication. 
 
58 LORD BYBON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Afterwards, Byron wrote to Murray more than once. 
 ** Buy my memoirs of Moore, buy them at a good price ; 
 since, in the first place, he wants money, and next, they 
 will repay you well. I have not very long to live." (4) 
 
 Conceive the importance of these papers. To men of let- 
 ters the exquisite delight of a new prose work by Byron ; 
 for the biographer, the men and occurrences of the day and 
 contemporary literature ; for the philosopher, the analysis 
 of the human heart, a narration resembling the Confessions 
 of Jean Jacques, or the Life of Alfieri, in resemblance to 
 whom he had been exiled from his native home, wandered 
 from land to land, maintained a stud of horses, (2) loved 
 another man's wife, and deplored fair Italy. Those 
 memoirs are in the hands of a friend. So that, when 
 Europe had to lament the untimely loss of the poet, it 
 yet found a kind of consolation in the knowledge that he 
 would then re-appear to the world as depicted by himself. 
 But what? Moore, the friend, the confidant, the inheritor 
 of Byron, betrays his friend, his country, the world. For 
 we know not what trivial reasons, in deference to Lady 
 Byron, possibly on account of a consideration received 
 from a certain set to whom they might cause miibrage, 
 he burns these memoirs. No ! he who does not feel 
 himself capable of preserving as he ought the heritage 
 of a gi-eat man, renounces it, or should draw upon 
 himself opprobrium and execration. But, as from the 
 publication of so important a work Moore must have 
 looked for large profits, doubt not that he knew how to 
 consummate the treason without throwing away the 
 thirty pieces. For six thousand pounds he stipulates 
 with the bookseller — and behold in five volumes appear 
 the " Memoirs of Byron." The greedy public rushes to 
 obtain them : it is but a perpetual commentary of this 
 same Irish Anacreon. But the numerous letters, altho* 
 the facts be there nmtilated a!id the names suppressed— 
 the few fragments of Byron's Journal, as they still are 
 much for him who would again restore that monument 
 with the zeal and good faith which Moore lacked — 
 render still more ardent the desire for the original 
 papers where Byron, Byron himself, was his own 
 
 (4) Moore received two thousand pounds or guineas from Mr. Murray 
 for the MS. See Anou. 
 
LORD BYllON AND HIS WORKS. 59 
 
 biographer, and which are irreparably lost. We know 
 not if the name of Moore as a poet will descend to far 
 poscority, nor care we ; but if so, it should be in company 
 with that Erostratus who obtained an infamous notoriety 
 by burning the most celebrated temple of Greece. (3) 
 
 The world has probably been satisfied with the 
 compilation by Moore of Lord Byron's letters and 
 journals, if not with his biography of the poet. The 
 editor here, however, gives, from Sir H. L. Bulwer's Life 
 of Byron, an extract touching Mr. Moore's conduct with 
 regard to the memoirs. " Several years ago, Lord Byron 
 presented his friend, Mr. Thos. Moore, with his memoirs, 
 written by himself, with an understanding that they were 
 not to be published until after his death. Mr. Moore, 
 with the consent and at the desire of Lord Byron, sold 
 the MS. to Mr. Murray, the bookseller, for the sum of two 
 thousand guineas. The following statement by ^Ir. ^loore, 
 will, however, show its fate : — ' Witliout entering into 
 the respective claims of Mr. Murray and myself to the 
 property in these memoirs (a question which, now that 
 they are destroyed, can be but of little moment to any 
 one), it is sullicient to say, that, believing the IMS. still 
 to bo mine, I placed it at the disposal of Lord Byron's 
 sister, ^Irs. Leigh, witli the sole reservation of a protest 
 against its total destruction ; at least, without previous 
 perusal and consultation among the parties. The 
 majority of the persons present disagreed ' with this 
 opinion, and it was the onli/ ])oint upon which there did 
 exist any difference between us. The ^IS. was accordingly 
 torn and burnt before our eyes, and I innnediately paid 
 to Mr. Murray, in the presence of gentlemen assembled, 
 the two thousand guineas, with interest, &c., being the 
 amount of what I owed him upon the security of Mr. Bond, 
 and for which I now stand indebted to my publishers, 
 Messrs. Longman and Co. Since then, the family of 
 Lord Byron have, in a manner highly honorable to 
 themselves, proposed an arrangement by which the sum 
 thus paid to ^Ir, Murray might be reimbursed to me ; 
 but from feelings and considerations which it is 
 unnecessary here to explain, I have respectfully but 
 peremptorily, declined their offer.'" (^) 
 
 (6) Jobnson^B Lives of the Poets, continued by Hazlitt. 
 
60 LOIW BYIWN AND HIS WOIiKS. 
 
 XXYI. 
 
 THE ITALUNS AND FAME. 
 
 But our business is with the poet himself, who, from 
 Venice, where he had beheved his home was fixed, 
 became compelled, either by affection or from motives of 
 security, to wander to various parts of Italy. 
 
 He was lon«^ at Ravenna, then at Pisa, where he 
 inhabited the Lanfranchi Palace, formerly the residence 
 of the ancient persecutor of Ugolino ; from thence, 
 through a quarrel with a military otiicer, he was obliged 
 to change his abode to Genoa, having thus occasion to 
 observe various portions of our beautiful land. In- 
 deed, he vaunted liis thorough knowledge of it, but we 
 nmst not believe him, nor would our readers, if they 
 would give attention to the prejudiced opmions be pro- 
 nounced upon it. Here, in addition to those that precede 
 it, are some amongst them : — 
 
 To Mr. Murray. 
 
 Raveuua, Ist February, 1820. 
 ...... Their 
 
 luoral is not yoar moral ; their life ia uot your life ; you would not 
 uuderBtuud it [t it) uot Eu^li^h, nor French, nor Gormun]. The 
 convoutuul educutiuu, the cavuLeri airvutUi^ the liubitH of thought aud 
 living, a>e so entirely diliereut, iind the diiTerence becuinea bo much the 
 more tti iking tli-- more you live intimately with them, that I know uot 
 how to make you comprehend a i)eoi»lo who are at once tempt rute and 
 protiigute, serious in th- ir characttrs md buiroons in their unmseuionta, 
 capable of ini})ro8bion8 and pubbious wiiith are at once hidden and 
 durable (what we could call so), us you may see by their comedies; they 
 have no real comedy, not even iu Goldoui, aud that itt because they have 
 no society to draw it from. 
 
 Their cuiiccrstcioiti are not society at all. They go to the theatre to 
 talk, and into company to hold their t' ugues. The noi/u/i sit iu a circle, 
 aud the men gather into groups, or they play at dreary y</>o or iot(o reale 
 for small sums. Their uiudthiic are C(/nceits like our own, with better 
 music and mt^re form. Their b st tilings are the carnival balls and 
 masqU' rades, when everybody runs mad f(*r six weeks. After their 
 dinners and suppers, they make extempore verses and butVoon one another, 
 but it is in a humour which you would not » nter into, ye of the north. 
 
 In their houses, it is better. I should know sometliing of the matter, 
 having had a })retty general experience among their womeu, from the 
 libherm m'a wife up to the Hhhil dninu whom 1 servo. Their system 
 has its rules and its tituesses, and its deoorums, so as to be reduc^'d to a 
 kind of tlisciitliiie or game at hearts, which admits few deviations, unless 
 you wish to loau it. Tlicy are extremely tenaciou-, and jealous as furies, 
 
LOPxD nrnoN a^d his works. gi 
 
 not permitting their lovpr? even to marry if they can help it, and keeping. 
 them always close to them in public as in private wliouever they can. 
 . . . . The reason is, they marry for their parents, and love for 
 themsplves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honor, while 
 they pay the husband as a tradesman ; that is, not at all 
 
 Elsewhere he renders them greater justice. 
 
 With our men of letters he also made acquaintance ; 
 besides ^lonte and il Pellico at Milan he saw at Venice 
 Pindemonte Ippolito ; *• lie is a little thin man, with 
 acute and pleasing features ; his address good and 
 gentle ; his appearance altogether very philosophical ; 
 his age about GO, or more. Ho is one of their best 
 
 ^oing " — McmoirSy p. 273. Letter to 
 
 Mm-ray. 
 
 The commendations of Ugo Foscolo, who, for political 
 causes and the desire of fame, had sought tranquillity in 
 England, whilst Byron had taken refuge in the land 
 abandoned by Ugo, flattei'cd him much, "because," he 
 said, ** he is a man of genius, and next because he is an 
 Italian, i^c. ; besides, he's more an antique Roman than 
 a Dane ; that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than 
 of the modern Italian. Though, somewhat, as Dugald 
 Dalgetty says, ' too wild and salvage (like Ronald of the 
 "Mist), 'tis a wonderful man [and both my friends, Hob- 
 house and Rose, swear by him, (^c] ' " 0) He writes 
 again to Murray C-') : — " So you and Mr. Foscolo want 
 me to undertake what you call a gi'eat workr! An epic 
 poem, I suppose, or some such pyramid ? I'll try no 
 such thing; I hate tasks. And then, seven or eight 
 years ! God send us well this day three months, let 
 
 alone years And Foscolo too ! Why 
 
 does not ho do something more than the ' Letters of 
 Ortis,' and a tragedy and pamphlets? He has good 
 fifteen years more at his connnand than I have. What 
 has ho done all that time ?- -proved his genius, doubtless, 
 but not fixed its fame, nor done his utmost, <fcc." 
 
 In the same letter he adds : — " If one's years can't bo 
 better employed than in writing poetry a man had better 
 be a ditcher. And work too I Is Childe Harold nothing ? 
 You have so many divine poems ; is it nothing to have 
 written a human one? . . . Why, man, I could 
 
 (1) Letter to Murray, August 8, 1820. 
 
 (2) Ibid, April 6, 1819. 
 
62 LORD BYBON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 have spun the thoughts of the four cantos of that poem 
 into twenty . . and its passion into as many modem 
 tragedies, &c." 
 
 In another place he writes (3), " In general I do not 
 draw well with literary men ; not that I dislike them, 
 but I never know what to say to them after I have 
 praised their last publication. There are several ex- 
 ceptions, to be sure ; but then, they have either been ' 
 men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, &c., or 
 visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, &c. ; but your 
 literary every-day man and I never went well in company, 
 
 especially and and and (I really can't 
 
 name any other) . I don't remember a man amongst them 
 whom I ever wished to see twice, except Mezzofanti, who 
 is a monster of languages, the BriaroDus of pacts of speech, 
 a walking Polyglot and more, who ought to have existed 
 at the time of the Tower of Babel as an universal interpre- 
 ter. He is indeed, a marvel — unassmning also. I tried him 
 in all the tongues of which I knew a single oath (or adjura- 
 tion to the Gods against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boat- 
 men, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, 
 vetturini, postmasters, post-horses, post-houses, post 
 everything), and, 'egad, he astounded me — even to my 
 English." 
 
 Elsewhere he says, however ('*) : " Italy has gi'eat 
 names still — Canova, Monte, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte 
 Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzofanti, 
 Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the 
 present generation an honourable place in most of the 
 departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres, and in 
 bome the very highest. Europe — the World— has but 
 one Canova." 
 
 It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, " Man is a 
 plant that attains to a more vigorous growth in Italy 
 than anywhere else — and the atrocious crimes there com- 
 mitted are proof of this." (6) 
 
 Without subscribing to the latter part of this propo- 
 sition : a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be 
 disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians 
 
 (3) Moore, Edition 1847 (p. 654). 
 
 (4) Dedication, Canto 4, ChilUe Harold. 
 
 (5) Jbid. Seo also Alfieri. 
 
LOUD BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 63 
 
 are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours-— 
 that man nmst be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, 
 who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of 
 this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their 
 capahiliiics, their facility of acquisition, the rapidity of 
 their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of 
 beauty, and amidst all the disadvantages of repeated 
 revolutions, the desolation of battle, and the despair of 
 ages, their still unquenched longing for immortality— 
 the immortality of independence. And we ourselves, in 
 riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament 
 of the labourer's chorus: "Roma! Roma 1 Roma I 
 Roma non e piu come era prima 1 " &c. 
 
 Byron was amongst the few foreigners who distrusted 
 not pur national valour. '• The courage of the French," 
 he said, " springs from vanity, that of the Germans from 
 phlegm, the Turk's from fanaticism and opium, the 
 Spaniard's from pride, that of the English from a cold 
 temperament ; but the courage of the Italians arises 
 from anger." 
 
 He also studied deeply the Italian language, translated 
 into his own ton^ tio tlie episode of Francesca da 
 Rimini, and (on '? lie plumed himself greatly) the 
 
 first CftnJn nj l))' f Mmini(^ Maggiore, verse for verse ; 
 and ho said that if lui livetl nine or ten years longer 
 (which he doubted), having become versed in Italian, 
 he would have composed in that tongue his best 
 work. 
 
 And this future, in inospcctn, he greatly caressed, 
 promising that he would then have done things at which 
 the world would have been amazed. He now also 
 became disturbed in his imagination by a presentiment 
 which announced to him his approaching end, or by 
 thoughts of the warfare to which from time to time 
 he was excited by his aristocratic companions, who 
 alternately lauded to the skies and levelled to the dust 
 his poetic compositions. 
 
 And thus it was that from happy dreams of fame he 
 often awoke in disgust, and inscribed in his diary : " The 
 only pleasure of fame is that it paves the way to pleasure; 
 and the more intellectual our pleasure the better for the 
 pleasure and for us too." 
 
64 LOBD BYEON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Afterwards, travelling one day from Florence to Pisa^ 
 he composed the verses, commencing : — 
 
 Oh ! talk not to me of a name great in story, 
 
 The days of our youth are the days of our glory ; 
 
 And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-aud-tweuty 
 
 Are worth all your laurels, though ever so pleuty. . . &c. 
 
 But can we believe him ? Fame yet flattered (and how 
 greatly flattered ! ) the poet ; and not seldom was it a 
 happiness to him. With what satisfaction do we find 
 him describing an American lady who at Leghorn took 
 from him a rose, saying that she wished to carry away 
 with her to the other hemisphere something that had 
 belonged to so great a poet. How transparent his joy 
 through the aftected disparagement with which he dis- 
 cussed the eulogies awarded him by the American 
 journals. In Scotland, an outbreak occuriing, the rioters 
 resolved to cross the lands of Byron, but in single file 
 only, so as to open merely a pathway through his 
 estate, whilst they consigned to destruction his neigh- 
 bours' property. Thus did genius extort consideration 
 for its superiority over rank and wealth ("). 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 PROCEEDS TO GREECE. 
 
 But Lord Byron had been always persuaded that man 
 was bound to do more for society than make verses* 
 When still a boy, he was accustomed to say, " I will 
 some day or other raise a troop, the men of which shall 
 be dressed in black and ride on black horses. They shall 
 be called 'Byron's Blacks,' and you will hear of their 
 performing prodigies of valour (i)." And the moment is 
 now come to realise that dream. After so many poems 
 and some prose writings, so much said in Parliament, 
 and such articles in journals, so many dithyrambic 
 lamentations, and so much lukewarm enthusiasm seen 
 and heard for Greece, what could be more to Byron's 
 
 (6) I». this anecdote usually known P—Ed. 
 (I) Moore's Life. 
 
LOUD BYRON AND HIS IVOBKS. 6j 
 
 heart than to f^o to its aid ? Nor did he ^o there dazzled 
 by that poetic ardour which had led liim to depict so 
 to the hfe the fervid regions of the East. Too well, indeed, 
 he knew the ditticulties of the case ; without treasure, 
 without aUies, without laws, and, worse than all, without 
 union ; threatened by superior force, yet, like Curtius, 
 who precipitated himself into the gulf where he knew 
 he must perish, he does not recoil from exposing him- 
 self to the risk of so many mishaps, and for it he 
 abandons Italy, this beautiful Italy, and a mistress. 
 He embraced liis friends. " Something within tells me," 
 he said, " that I may not again return from Greece," 
 and he wept. Ho turned to her he 1ov(h1. The fair 
 Italian mingled her grief with his, and would have 
 followed him ; but, feeble in health as she still was, 
 Byron would not consent. 
 
 On the 14th of July, the "Hercules" (-) set sail for 
 Greece; the sacred 'shores of Italy faded from the 
 poet's sight : the sea, his ancient companion, exults 
 around tlie ship, like a steed which knows its rider. 
 
 Roll on, thou (loop and dark blue ocean, roll, 
 Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
 
 Man marks the earth with ruin, his control 
 Stops with the shore : upon the watery plain 
 The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
 
 A shadow of man's ravase, save his own, 
 When for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
 
 He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling ^roan. , 
 
 Without a grave, unknell'd, uncolHn'd, and unknown. . &:c. 
 
 Thus he sails over the Ionian so a, in rocky Ithaca 
 visits the grotto of Ulysses and there is lulled to sleep. 
 He bathes in the baths of Penelope and takes his repast 
 at Arcthiisa's fountains. At Chios, over the wretched 
 ruins which are still named the School of Homer, ho 
 enters into a long discourse with an aged bishop who had 
 there sought to recover his health. Alas 1 what joy 
 reigns throughout unhappy Greece, when the people learn 
 that Byron has arrived ; that the poet has come in their 
 defence. Again return to their minds the days of 
 triumphant art. Hail to the new Tyrtoeus ! Hero 
 he diffuses his beneficence around him, he quenches 
 tears, he succours want, supports tottering old age ; his 
 name is held in veneration. A few days after his 
 
 CO Commanded by Captain Scott. F 
 
66 LOUD BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 an'ival, he receives from the mountains of Agrafa this 
 missive : " Your letter and that of the venerable Ignazio 
 have filled me with joy. Your Excellency is exactly the 
 person whom we need. Let nothing prevent you from 
 coming into this part of Greece. The enemy threatens 
 us in great numbers, but, by the help of God and your 
 Excellency, they shall meet a suitable resistance. I 
 shall have something to do to-night against a corps of 
 6,000 or 7,000 Albanians, encamped close to this place. 
 The day after to-morrow I will set out, with a few 
 chosen companions, to meet your Excellency. Do not 
 delay. I tliank you for the good opinion you have of 
 my fellow-citizens, which God grant you will not find 
 ill-founded ; and I thank you still more for the care you 
 have so kindly taken of them." Know you by whom 
 this letter was written ? By Marco Bozzaris (•') ; and 
 written upon tlie day on the night of which he was to 
 shed his blood for the cause of Christ and his country. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 
 
 Byron having come with the declared object of 
 fighting, under the banner of Chnst, amidst a people 
 who, in the very savageness of their nature, feel to the 
 lieart's core the enthusiasm of religion, and display it in 
 their rites, their songs, their mode of life, what moment 
 could have been more opportune for a return of thoughts 
 to things above, which, throughout life, he appeared to 
 luxve forgotten! Kot that he would be an Atheist; 
 he had himself many times declared the falsehood of 
 that assertion ; but, even in his heart, inditferenco 
 stagnated — indifference, the most connnon evil of our 
 state of being. Most affectionate is the prayer which 
 a pious lady from Hastings addressed to tlie Deity, that 
 
 (3). In a night attack against the Talks, Boz/aiis afterwards fell. 
 
LOUD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 67 
 
 in his mercy ho would reclaim the soul of the poet, in 
 wliom forgetfulnoss of God was nearly as great, perhaps, 
 as were the gifts of genius he had received from heaven ; 
 and that lie would teach him to seek, in the comforts of 
 religion, that peace of mind which the world and its 
 vanities cannot give. At which prayer, when brought 
 to Byron's knowledge by the husband of the deceased 
 lady, Byron was touched to the quick. Here is an 
 extract from his letter to Mr. Sheppard : — " Indisputably, 
 the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage 
 over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they 
 will have their reward — liereafter, and if there be no 
 hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal 
 sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hopo 
 through life, without subsequent disappointment, since 
 (to the worst of themj, ' out of nothing, nothing can 
 arise,' not even sorrow. I can assure you that all the 
 fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions 
 of its own importance, would never weigh in my mind 
 against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous 
 being may be pleased to take in my welfare. I would 
 not exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf 
 for the united glory of Homer, Caisar, and Napoleon, 
 could such be accumulated upon a living heart. Do me 
 at least the justice to suppose, that ' Video meliora 
 proboque,' however the * deteriora sequor' may have 
 been applied to my conduct. — Byron." (i) 
 
 We have seen how Walter Scott predicted to him that 
 he would end by turning to Catholicism ; and, in fact, 
 to the Roman Catholic faith, towards the end of his 
 days, ho more than inclined. His natural daughter 
 (Allegra), who, dying shortly after, left him almost in- 
 consolable, he had placed for education in the Convent 
 of Bagno Cavallo, that she might there imbibe religious 
 ideas ; and, said he : — " It is, besides, ir.y wish that sho 
 should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as tho 
 best reHgion, as it is the oldest, assuredly, of the branches 
 of Christianity." The bold ideas on the ancient worM 
 and the religious opinions which he vauntingly put forth 
 in Cain, he declared to his friends were not his own, bub 
 he had been obliged to identify himself with his 
 
 (1). Letter to Mr. Sheppard, Pisa, December 8, 1821. F 2 
 
68 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 personages, according as they were Abel or Lucifer, Cain 
 or Adam. "I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. 
 As a proof, I am educating my natural daughter a strict 
 Catholic in a Convent of Romagna ; for I think people 
 can never have enough of religion if they are to have 
 any. I incline myself very much to the Catholic 
 doctrines ; but, if I am to write a drama, I must make 
 my iduiracters speak as I conceive them likely to 
 argiKi (,.).'• 
 
 Arrived in Greece, during the hours of liberty that 
 the d'lties of the cause for which he was to fight allowed 
 him, he held conversations with Dr. Kennedy, who had 
 charged himself with the task of making him a good 
 Clnistian, and of him he demanded the solution of things 
 of wliich he was still doubtful in mind. The relation of 
 thes(! colloquies is most curious. To the faith he was 
 disposed to give to the Holy Scriptures he opposed the 
 opinions of the few men he had met who could have had 
 a thill and conscientious belief. Every day he read the 
 Bibles he asked his preceptor, ''Then you still think mo 
 in a very bad way. ... I am, however, in a fairer 
 way. I already believe in predestination, which I know 
 you believe, and in the depravity of the human heart in 
 general, and of my own in particular. ... I shall 
 get at the others bye and bye, S:c.'* And, reasoning on 
 a work of Dr. Southwood on the " Divine Government," he 
 says: ** I cannot decide the point; but, to my present 
 appr(;hension,it would be a most desirable thing could it be 
 proved that ultimately all created beings were happy. 
 This would appear to bo most consistent with God, 
 whose power is omnipotent, and whose chief attribute is 
 Love, &c." 
 
 And the God of Love, let us hope, will have gathered 
 to his bosom and to that peace which here below is 
 never enjoyed, a soul so profoundly inspired by his 
 creative breath. (1) Thus much do we dwell upon the 
 setting of that star which, now movin;^ in a new sphere 
 of action and of virtue, shone with j^reater lustre when 
 just about to be extinguished. 
 
 (2). Letter to Moore (No. 482), 1847, Pisa, March, 1822. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 69 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 niS DEATH. 
 
 Unhappy Greece ! Byron had courted it in the bright- 
 est dreams of his verse ; and now beheld it in the 
 most deplorable abandonment and distress. On every 
 side disunion — all leaders, not one a soldier: torn by 
 factions in turns ; a dearth of treasure and of counsel, 
 against an ever-increasing foe ; uo other defence tnan 
 mountains, rivers, marshes, and men's hearts. Misso- 
 longhi threatened ; the Suliotes, armed and all powerful, 
 demand pay and pay there is not : the fleet dispersed ; 
 artillery who refused to serve their guns. The rest, who, 
 if worse could be, alas ! were even worse. Amid such, 
 Byron all but alone' to lavish wealth and life, to scatter 
 the accumulations of his economy (he had been, 'twas 
 Bald, a miser), the produce of his works and his credit, 
 and yet without deceiving himself as to the result of an 
 unreasonable warfare. All the qualities of a good 
 soldier ho possessed : courage, hardihood, coohiess, 
 humanity. Conducting aftairs in a liberal and compas- 
 sionate spirit, he succeeded in checking, both amongst 
 his own followers and among the Turks, the commission 
 of acts of ruthless barbarity in an art of itself murderous, 
 however pompous and high-sounding the names with 
 which the sophisms of the ambitious may bedeck it. 
 To Greece, therefore, he appeared more than mortal. By 
 him that herdsman's hut, destroyed by fire, was rebuilt ; 
 through him that fatherless family found bread, and an 
 honoured existence ; by him that soldier, that troop, tnat 
 entire ship, was saved from the ruthless hands of the 
 Turks, to whom he had given lessons and exampcs in 
 generosity. On one occasion, his vessel is delayed It 
 is made known that she is in the hands of the Turks, 
 and the consternation is universal. At last, she comes, 
 she comes 1 At the momentous intelligence, all Miss- 
 olonghi crowd the shore. The guns from tht fortress 
 and ships in harbour salute the happy return ; all tue 
 troops, all the officials, with Mavrocordato at their head, 
 
70 LOBD BYBON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 receive her with acclamations and salvoes of artillery^ 
 according to their custom, bands of music accompanying 
 the national air, **cevT£ iraihg Tutv 'Ih\X>/»'wi'." 
 
 Conceive, then, the universal lamentation when it is 
 known that fatigues of the body, or rather those of the 
 mind, had overwhelmed him ; that he was ill, growing 
 worse ; that he was at the point of death I Death had 
 more than once summoned him ; had, as it is said, more 
 than once tried to accelerate its approach, on some one 
 of those days of sorrow when grief itself is cherished to 
 fill the mind's void. Now, when the time of action had 
 arrived, when his powerful will, amid so many obstacles, 
 found at length a scope whereon to direct the combina- 
 tion of virtue, of genius, and of glory, Byron, far from 
 his country, his friends, liis mistress, his Ada— Byron, at 
 thirty-six years of age, died. 
 
 The physicians know not at first his malady.; then, he 
 refused their prescriptions, nor would he again allow them 
 to draw blood from him until too late. The last day of 
 his life, Fletcher, his own faithful valet, attended him ; 
 to whom, feeling himself at the point of death, he strove 
 to explain his last wishes. 
 
 "Shall I fetch pens and paper?" said the latter to 
 him. 
 
 '* Oh ! no," replied the dying man, ♦' there is no time ; 
 it is now nearly over — go to my sister Augusta — tell her 
 —go to Lady Byron — you will see her, and say — " 
 
 Here his voice faltered, and became gradually 
 indistinct; notwithstanding which, he still continued to 
 murmur to himself for nearly twenty minutes with much 
 earnestness of manner, but in such a tone that only a 
 few words could be distinguished. These, too, were only 
 names — " Augusta " — ** Ada " — " Hobhouse " — " Kin- 
 naird." He then said, " Now I have told you all." 
 *♦ My Lord," replied Fletcher, •* I have not understood a 
 word your Lordship has been saying." " Not under- 
 stand me?" exclaimed Lord Byron, with a look of the 
 most inteJQse distress." "What a pity !— then it is toa 
 late, all is over." " I hope not," answered Fletcher, 
 " but the Lord's will be done." 
 
 He then tried to utter a few words, of wliich none 
 were intelligible, except " My sister, my child." 
 
LOED BYEON AND HIS WORKS. 71 
 
 It was the 19th of April, 1824, the Day of Passover, of 
 devout rejoicinf:^, but the hymn was unheard in the 
 desolate city of Missolonghi ; the cry of exultation — 
 *' Christ is risen" — rested unspoken on the lips — the 
 churches were crowded with people who propitiated the 
 Deity ; no other question was asked by those who met, 
 but •' How is Lord Byron?" At a quarter past six in 
 the evening, a furious w^hirlwind swept over the city. 
 The aftrighted inhabitants rushed in crowds from their 
 homes, in their superstitious grief exclaiming "The great 
 man is gone." 
 
 He opened his eyes once again, and then closed them 
 for ever. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 TUB GENERAL GRIEF. 
 
 Throughout the land was one universal sob of grief, of 
 discouragement; Greece honored the hero, the benefactor, 
 the fellow-soldier ; they were not aware, poor Greeks , 
 how nmch they should lament the poet. At his obsequies, 
 celebrated on the Thursday after his death, Spiridione 
 Tricoupi addressed the assembled multitude. Overcome 
 •with sincere grief, and interrupted by no mercenary 
 lamentations, he summed up the virtues of .the deceased, 
 concluding thus: "When your exertions, my friends, 
 shall have liberated us from the hands which have so 
 long held us down in chains ; from the hands which have 
 torn from us our anns, our property, our brothers, our 
 children, then will his spirit rejoice, then will his shade 
 be satisfied ! Yes, in that blessed hour of our- freedom, 
 the Archbishop will extend his sacred and free hand, and 
 pronounce a blessing over his venerated tomb ; the young 
 warrior, sheathing his sword, red with the blood of his 
 tyrannical oppressors, will bedeck it with laurel ; the 
 statesman will consecrate it with his oratory, and the poet, 
 upon the marble, will become doubly inspired; virgins of 
 Greece (whose beauty our illustrious fellow-citizen 
 Byron has celebrated in so many of his poems) with- 
 out fearing any longer contamination from the rapacious 
 hands of our oppressors, crowning their heads with garlands. 
 
72 LOBD BYBON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 will dance around it and sing of the beauty of our land 
 which the poet of our age, has already commemorated with 
 such grace and truth. But what sorrowful thought now 
 presses upon my mind. My fancy has carried me away. 
 I had imagined the blessings of our bishops, the hymns 
 and laurel crowns, and the dance of the virgins of 
 Greece around the tomb of the benefactor of Greece, 
 — but this tomb will not contain his precious remains, 
 will remain void. For a few days only will hia 
 body remain on the face of our land — of his chosen 
 country ; it cannot be given to us ; it must be borne 
 to his own, his native, land which is honoured 
 by his birth. Oh ! daughter most dearly beloved by 
 him, your arms will receive him, your tears will 
 bathe the tomb which shall contain his body : and 
 the tears of the orphans of Greece will be shed over 
 the urn containing his precious heart. Missolonghi, his 
 country, will ever watch over and protect with all her 
 strength the urn containing his venerated heart, as a 
 symbol of his love towards us. All Greece, clothed in 
 mourning, and inconsolable, accompanies the procession, 
 in which it is to be borne; all ecclesiastical, civil, and mili- 
 tary lienors attend it. . . Learn, noble lady, learn that 
 chieftains bore it on their shoulders, and carried it to 
 the clmrch ; tliousands of Greek soldiers lined the way 
 through which it passed, with their muskets, which had 
 destroyed so many tyrants, pointed towards the ground. 
 . . . All this crowd of soldiers, ready to march at a 
 moment against the implacable enemy of Christ and 
 man, surrounded the funeral car, and swore never to 
 forget the sacrifices made by your father for us, and 
 never to allow the spot where his heart is placed to be 
 trampled upon by barbarous and tyrannical feet. 
 Thousands of Christian voices were in a moment heard, 
 and the temple of the Almighty resounded with suppHca- 
 tions and prayers that his venerated remains might be 
 safely conveyed to his native land, and that his soul 
 might rest where the righteous alone find rest." 
 
 The urn was in fact raised upon the walls of Misso- 
 longhi, those walls which were ere long to fall in ruins, 
 sacrificed by its own citizens, as Byron had sacrificed 
 his own existence. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 73 
 
 Along every shore of the Archipelago were celebrated 
 the hero's funeral rites. Lepanto taken, the Greek 
 warriors consecrated one of its bastions to their fellow- 
 soldier, thrice inscribing it with his name. The Governor 
 decreed him the title of Father of the Nation ; a title 
 than which none could be more illustrious, were it not 
 sometimes the guerdon of adulation or of cowardice. 
 The daughter of Byron was hkewise addressed in the 
 language of Homer. 
 
 As, in ancient times, the ashes of Themistocles were 
 carried back to Athens, so the remains of the poet, after 
 being embalmed, were conveyed to London. There, for 
 some days, the body lay exposed to the view of the 
 multitude. The indignation against him had ceased. 
 England laid aside her haughty pride, and turned with 
 eagerness to honour with her tears and eulogies the 
 remains of the great poet, who, in his lifetime, she had 
 persecuted. With a funeral cortege suitable to 
 such a man and such a country, he was borne to his 
 ancestral vault at Newstead, and the torch of fame, as 
 happens oft, blazed most briUiantly beside the sepulchre. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 HIS CHARACTER. 
 
 It is maintained that the character of Byron is to be 
 recognised in the heroes of his compositions ; in the 
 dizziness of Manfred's intellectual ambition; in the sated 
 dissipation of Childe Harold, who tears himself from 
 social life through craving for material activity ; in Lara, 
 who vainly strives to stifle the remorse of a soul steeped 
 in crime, but cannot. He has been converted into a Don 
 Juan, even a Cain. And truly, in these portraitures, 
 here and there, he has left some traits which appear to 
 reveal, under the hero's mask, the author (1). The 
 wicked indubitably wish not to reveal their own misdeeds, 
 though an exaggerated contempt for pubUc opinion 
 may indeed cause them to let others believe of them 
 both vices and crimes. Certainly, regarding Byron 
 
74 LOBD BYRON AND HIS WOBKS, 
 
 strange things were told; the most extraordinary 
 adventures in his travels were related of him ; that he 
 was stained with the guilt of assassination — killing a 
 husband who had sacriticed a faithless wife. In all his 
 writings was discernible, it was said, an habitual tingo 
 of blood; a remorse which continued to persecute him. 
 Who could interrogate his ashes? We know well, 
 indeed, that having declared open war upon many classts 
 of society, in a satire more poignant perhaps than true, 
 the latter were ready to oppose his shafts by lowering 
 the poet in public estimation. But how comes it that vt 
 a man who ever, from his youth upwards, had fixed upon 
 him the scrutinizing eye of envy and admiration, these 
 offences could never be proved — the time or place given ? 
 On the other hand, in hisvory first stanzas, occurs this tinge 
 of remorse, this note of woe from tlie man who found 
 himself under the ban of condemnation. Strange 
 singularity ! The poet who ever showed himself so 
 deeply sensitive to the censure of his works, affected to 
 heed little, or not at all, those directed against his 
 character, and he not so much neglected only as he defied 
 public opinion. To his romantic fancy it was perhaps 
 pleasing to see himself held up as a being different from 
 his fellow-men, at a time when civilization levelbd all 
 grades : he trusted, moreover, that his works would speak 
 for him, that after his death his whole soul would bo 
 revealed in the memorials entrusted to the dearest of 
 his friends — Poor Byron ! The very confidence with 
 which he relied on a friend best reveals his innermost 
 soul. 
 
 To those around him, indeed, he was affectionate and 
 compassionate. To his mother, his sister Augusta, his 
 daughter, he displayed ever the most cordial affection ; 
 with domestics kind, so that he rendered them entirely 
 devoted to him ; even to animals (a thing not to be over- 
 looked) he was humane, and most particular affection 
 he bore to a dog, whose death he deplored in verse. (2) 
 Amid the babble of crowded assemblies he was dis- 
 couraged and kept himself apart; nor wonder was it, 
 since, on his appearance in society, all eyes were fixed 
 upon him, every lip repeated his name ; he was sensible 
 of being, as it were, on the stage, where his every word 
 
LOUD PATiON AND HIS WORKS. 75 
 
 was noted. But, when he found himself among a few 
 trusted friends, you could not iinaf^ine how sincere the 
 full expansion of his heart, how truly great his generous 
 hospitality. The charge of misanthropy displeased him, 
 yet in reality there was visible in him, if not scorn, yet 
 an inclination to avoid society ; and this, at first vague 
 and general, afterwards, amid the persecutions and woes 
 caused by others' perversity, became personal antipathy. 
 
 I have not loved the world, nor the world me (1) ; 
 
 I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow'd 
 To its idolatries a patient kneo. 
 
 Nor coin'd ray cheek in smilea-^uor cried aloud 
 
 In worship of an echo ; in the crowd 
 They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
 
 Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud 
 Of thoughts which wore not their thoughts, and Rtill could, 
 Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself aubduod. 
 
 I have not loved the world, nor the world me— 
 
 But let us part fair foes ; I do believe, 
 • Though I have found them not, that there may bo 
 
 Words which avo things— hopes which will not deceive, 
 
 And virtues which are merciful, nor weave 
 Snares for the falling, kc. 
 
 Lines such as tliese portray his feelings : even to his 
 native land he declared his hatred ; but there, ho ever 
 retained his dearest friends : no Englishman approached 
 his presence who received not from him the most 
 perfect courtesy. 
 
 Yet was I born where men are proud to be. 
 
 Not without cause ; and should I leave behind ' 
 The inviolate island of the sage and free, 
 And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, 
 
 Perhaps I loved it well ; and should I lay 
 My ashes in a soil which is not mine ; 
 My spirit shall resume it— if we may 
 XJubodied choose a sanctuary (i). '. 
 
 His benevolence studied only the opportunity of being 
 exercised with delicacy : he also had sutfered. Many 
 times he smoothed with his largesses the young 
 students' path : to young girls who could not marry for 
 want of means he awarded a suflicient dowry. At 
 Venice, they will tell you of his benefaccions ; a poor 
 fisherman's hut was destroyed, and he caused it to be 
 rebuilt ; a printer's work-shop was burned, and he 
 liberally assisted him. And with heart-felt delight he 
 
 (1) 4th Canto, Childe Hartld. 
 
 (2) 4th Canto, Childe Harold. 
 
76 LORD BYRON AND HIS WORKS, 
 
 related his charity to an aged female who, in her 
 gratitude, knew no better return to make him than a 
 bunch of spring violets, which he cherished most 
 dearly. When political events endangered the tranquillity 
 of his residence at Ravenna, the poor of the place 
 petitioned the Legate there that he would be pleased to 
 entreat Lord Byron to remain, and guarantee his security. 
 
 At Cefalonia, an embankment fell in, burying the 
 workmen with it : Byron learns it, hurries to the spot, 
 and, seeing that the operation of disinterring the sufferers 
 is proceeding slowly, reproves the workmen, even chas- 
 tises them, and himself gives a hand to rescue the 
 unfortunates from their entombment. 
 
 Nor, without indignation, could he contemplate the 
 wrongs inflicted on humanity ; and hence it was that 
 he would never forgive the egotistical misdeeds of his 
 country, in tratlicking with every people and every nation. 
 In Athens, when he first resided there, he sees a young 
 girl whohad been guilty of an intercourse with a Christian, 
 whom the Turks (according to custom) were about to 
 cast into the sea. Byron, first with arguments, then 
 with threats, and finally with pistol in hand, induced the 
 Governor to desist from his legalised atrocity, and to 
 consign to him the delinquent, whom he then 4)laced in 
 a convent. 
 
 Afterwards, when he repaired to Greece, there to find 
 the most glorious of tombs- -a soldier's grave — he used 
 every effort to instil into the Hellenes all the humanity 
 compatible with war, the scourge of God, and justified 
 only by absolute necessity. 
 
 On his arrival, he fell in with a Turk who had but 
 just escaped from the hands of some Greek sailors ; he 
 gives him refuge in his own house, and protests to his 
 incensed pursuers that while he lived they should do 
 him no injury. Some Turkish prisoners incarcerated 
 at Missolonghi ho sends to the Pacha Yussuf, entreating 
 liim, for pity's sake, that he would henceforth refrain 
 from the useless execution of his captives. 
 
 The freedom of twen'y-four captive women and 
 children he obtained also, and, sending them to Prevesa, 
 w rote to the Englisli Consul there on their behalf : — (*') 
 
 (3) Letter to Mr. Meyer.-Moorc, 1817, p. 623". 
 
LOUD BYRON AND HIS WOEKS. 77 
 
 ** Coming to Greece, one of my principal objects was to 
 alleviate as much as possible the miseries incident to a 
 warfare as cruel as the present. When the dictates 
 of humanity are in question, I know no difference 
 
 between Turks and Greeks The best 
 
 recompense I can hope for would be to find that I had 
 inspired the Ottoman commanders with the same 
 sentiments towards those unliappy Greeks who may 
 hereafter fall into their hands." 
 
 With such splendid qualities was Byron happy ? Did he 
 rightly fulfil the high mission of a great man upon earth ? 
 In truth is it that, considering the misfortunes of the poet, 
 man is consoled amid his own unhappiness ; and there- 
 fore, it appears that nothing could have been more 
 injurious to him than the superfluity of his own means. 
 Had he grown to manhood in the narrow circumstances 
 in which he was born, we should have found him com- 
 pelled to struggle with necessity, the stinudus of the 
 strong ; then, having overcome diihculties, raising himself 
 to eminence, in peace with himself and the human race. 
 Had he found a country to conquer, a path to open for 
 himself in the midst of tumult, a cause for which to 
 triumph, either in the tribune or in the camp, as general 
 or as deputy, he would have attained the liighest success, 
 for ho possessed all the necessary qualiiications. He 
 would perhaps have added to the too. itifrequen, 
 miracles of the human race; but the sudden wealth 
 acquired without an effort in his youth, soon changed 
 his nature, and those who, in educating a boy, should 
 have paid attention to his heart, in educating a lord, 
 neglected morality, or looked only to the intellect. 
 We know not if it has befallen anyone on his way 
 through life, to find himself the sport of every mishap, 
 to experience a multitude of failures, a myriad of desires, 
 a void unfilled by a variety of objects, a longing for rest 
 even there. It appears that this was exactly Byron's 
 case. From his family he was, as it were, a branch cut 
 off; he could not hope for the felicity of domestic affection, 
 the welcome of a father returning to his.home, a welcome 
 to "which all that the proud monarch and the conqueror 
 receive is but the shadow of a shade. From his country 
 he exiled himself, as likewise from the whole human race ; 
 
78 LOPiD BYRON AND IIIS WORKS. 
 
 whilst, in order to excuse himself, he was interested in 
 depicting man as wicked. Far from those whose voice, 
 even presence, would have sufficed to bring him back to 
 the right path, he is to be pitied if he strayed, if, 
 abandoned by every soothing thought, he was driven to 
 
 phrensy — 
 
 Why marvel ye if they who lose 
 
 TUia present joy, this future hope, 
 No more with sorrow meekly cope, 
 lu phreusy then their fate accuse, (l) . . &c. 
 
 — if, in fine, in tasting pleasure after pleasure, he sought 
 that forgetfulness he had in vain invoked from domestic 
 consolations. And, when he pours forth the blackness 
 of his choler in loud notes of woe, the poignancy of 
 which he loved to exaggerate to himself, the query 
 comes to tlie lips which the Abbot put to Manfred ; 
 *• And why not live, and act with other men.? " 
 
 Whenever, in fact, he approached real life, mingled 
 with his equals, made acquaintance with real wants, 
 virtues, vices, and sulierings, and not through the medium 
 of a deceitful prism, he then became a man capable of 
 every virtue, and the poet of truth. Intercourse with 
 Italians, all his biographers confess, effected great good, 
 in restoring his mind to tranquillity and a right train of 
 thought. " His genius," observes a discerning writer, 
 *• needed the necessity of managing and discussing his 
 own affairs." Certain it is that had he returned from 
 Greece his genius would have largely expanded. In 
 striving to effect an union between ^lavrocordato and 
 Colocotroni, C^) he would have ac(]uired actual ac<iuain- 
 tance with the human heart; then, perchance, he would 
 have been enabled to raise himself to the sublimity of 
 real tragedy, he would have suffered less from misan- 
 thropy, nor dwelt upon the thought how much that 
 surrounded him was occupied with him, and that only 
 to envy or to deceive him. Thus, as it were, betrayed, 
 he turned upon the whole human race his glance of 
 scorn and of desperation : then, strove to drown thought 
 in pleasure. But pleasuie could not suffice a mind like 
 his. Action he needed, the necessity of action he felt ; 
 and whilst he would have wished to find it in influencing 
 
 (I) The Giaour. 
 
 {:>) The two leaders of the Greeks. 
 
LOBD BYRON AND HIS WORKS. 79 
 
 the destinies of his country, he felt ever a condition of 
 inferiority of position, beyond which he had not even the 
 hope of a disaster. Hence the weariness of existence, — 
 
 the most incurable of the mind's maladies — assailed him 
 
 • 
 
 It is not love, it is not hate, 
 
 Nor low ambition's honors lost. 
 That bids me loathe my present state. 
 
 And fly from all I prized the most ; 
 
 It is that weariness which springs 
 
 From all I meet, or hear, or see ; 
 To me no pleasure beauty brings. 
 
 Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me (6) , . &c. 
 
 The moment of action at length came : he appeared 
 then great as lie really was, — and then — he died. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 CONCLUDING SUMMARY. 
 
 But this ennui, this weariness of existence, is a malady 
 too common in our age. It may be seen consuming the 
 Italian in his siesta, and it makes havoc with the 
 Parisian in tlie vortex of his pleasures. In vain is it to 
 strive to avoid it in the whirl of thought or the madden- 
 ing enjoyment of dissipation. It enters the gilded 
 palace, tlie voluptuous boudoir, mingles with the exulta- 
 tion of the dance, is seated at the most sumptuous 
 banquets, accompanies the joys of love, and attaches 
 itself especially to the imprudent who would eschew or 
 neglect its real remedy. Is there not for every human 
 being a sublime goal on which to direct his efforts ? Havt) 
 we not a family, a country ? Is there not assigned to us a 
 position, a post, in the ways of Ufe ? That post let us not 
 vilely desert, either through flattery or through threats. 
 Beyond that is weariness, is discontent, the mournful 
 inheritance of impotence. But brotherly love, the 
 soothing effect of influence, this is the fount whence 
 consolation and comfort most abundantly flow. 
 
 Thus have wo endeavoured to trace the lineaments of 
 
 {(i) Ch tide HaroM, Canto I, 
 
80 LOED BYBON AND HIS WOEKS. 
 
 a great man, because we believe that there is more 
 instruction in the errors of great men than in the more 
 ordinary miseries of the human race. What influence 
 had he upon society? Should morality or taste cut 
 short the newly essayed chord which he attached to his 
 lyre ? Is the great poet or the benevolent citizen to be 
 imitated, or are we to bewail only the misguided 
 libertine? Those whom the bitter disencliantment of 
 experience has taught to separate from the mere mass 
 that bright substance— the fire of generosity which shines 
 BO brightly in the eyes of youth : those in whose mind 
 is exhausted, along with the source of evil that also of 
 good, will find too much for which to condemn the poet 
 and the man. Should we not desire rather there to 
 seek a lesson? Evenness of disposition, my readers, 
 peace of mind, the interchange of benefits and of 
 benevolent actions, are a happiness that Byron, in the 
 aggregate, knew not. 
 
 Ho was unable to reside in his own country, because 
 to live there, in his proper sphere, he must have been of 
 use to it, he must have exerted himself. Now, how can 
 he exert himself worthily who abandons himself a prey 
 to doubt ? A great x^ersuasion, an absolute confidence, can 
 alone be our guide to worthy and successful etforts. 
 Unhappy he, who, like Byron, sacrifices his peace of 
 mind to discouraging doubt ; imprudent the man who, 
 from the study of letters, seeks his own eulogy, not the 
 general weal ; who receives not the gift of genius from 
 on high, a mission to mankind, a social, a patriotic 
 mission. Byron, it is true, brought into his compositions 
 a freedom of thought which rendered him independent 
 ot the petty desires, the mean animosities, of coteries ; 
 but then, he sacrificed to his own antipathies and to 
 his own sympathies. 
 
 Vice, indeed, he could not depipt as enviable ; he 
 never depicted felicity as resulting from the sway of the 
 passions ; he preached not egotism ; but the continual 
 creation of the ideal of vice may habituate man to it ; if 
 he combatted sin, yet he did not confidently defend 
 virtue. Nor is abstinence from evil enough, when we 
 wish to excite to virtue, to the noble sentimens 
 which adorn mankind. And yet Byron had written :—" In 
 
LOPxD BYUOX AND HIS WOBKS. 81 
 
 my mind, the hi;^licst of all poetry is ethical poetry, as 
 the highest of all earthly subjects must be moral truth. 
 Reli<,'ion does not make a part of our subjects ; it is^ 
 something beyond human powers, and has failed in all 
 human hands except Milton's and Dante's, and even 
 Dante is involved in his delineations of human passions, 
 though in supernatural circumstances. What mado 
 Socrates the greatest man? His moral truth, his ethics. 
 What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God, hardly less than 
 His miracles — His moml precepts ? " Thus Byron wrote, 
 but in fact, if he had considered the internal voice which 
 interprets what in us is divine, he would not so often 
 have sacrificed genius to caprice, to doubt, to sarcasm, 
 to personal resentment. Oh 1 had he but laboured to a 
 greater end ; oh ! had he but poured forth lamentations 
 useful to the real griefs of humanity ! Alas 1 we can but 
 deplore I To reclaim the past is beyond our powers I 
 
 '*=G^S^2^^^^^t^ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CUAPTER L 
 
 (!•) 
 •'Lord Byron waa deaceuded from au illuBtrious line of ancestry. 
 From the period of the Conquest, his family, who posaessed extensivtt 
 manors in Lancashire and other parts of the kiugdom, were highly dis- 
 tinguished for their prowess in arms. . , . Two fell at Cressy . . . 
 another fought at Bosworth. Seven sons of Sir John Byron fought at 
 Marston Moor on the king's side, and four fell in defence of the royal 
 cause. Sir John, one of the survivors, was created Lord Byron, October 
 20, 1043. . . . William, Lord Byrou, in 1703, was made Master of 
 the Staghounds, and in 1706 was sent to ihe Tower for killing Mr. 
 Chaworth in a duel John, next brother to William, accom- 
 panied Lord Anson in his voyages, and his narratives of his sufferings 
 and the hardships encountered ho is well known. *' Mud Jock Byrou," of 
 the Guards, celebrated for his beauty, and notorious for his dissipation, 
 was his son, and born in 17") I. llo married Miss Catherine Gordon, au 
 Aberdeenshire heiress, and lineal descendant from the Earl of Huntley 
 and Princess Jane, daughter of James I. Haviug run through his 
 l)roperty, he left her and hii only child, and retired to Yulencieunes, 
 ^vhere he died in 17D1. This was Byrou's f.itlier— the poet, George 
 (tordou Byron having been born at Dover," ^c— (Abridged from 
 Jialair^s Life). 
 
 (2 ; 
 " Nevvstead Abbey was founded m 1170 bv Henry II., as a J'riory 
 of Black Cuuous, aud dedicated to the Virgin Mary, It coutiiuied iu the 
 family till the time of the poet, who sold it to Mr. Clau^'htoa for 
 .iHU.OOO, who, failing iu his agr emeut, and paying IJO.OOU lurfeit, it 
 was sold again, and most of the proceeds vested in trustees for thu 
 jointure of the Hon. Mrs. Byron." . . . Walpolo says, '* 1 saw bi^h 
 Newbtoad and Althorp. 1 like both, the former is the very Abbey. The 
 great east window remains. . . . the liall entire— the refectory 
 entire, the cloisters untouched. ... it has a private chapel, quite 
 )>erfect. Iu the park, which is still channing, .{JJ.OOd worth of the 
 timber (old oaks) were cut by the old lord. ... In the hall is a very 
 good cuUectiou of pictures, all animals. The refectory, now the great 
 drawiu;,' room, is full of Byrons, the vaulted ro;)f remaining, but the 
 windows have new dresses making fer them by a Venetian tailor." 
 
 Do.K liUluif^S Lift. 
 
 CHAPTER U. 
 
 *' My epitaph shall bo my name alone 
 It that with honour fail to crown my clav, 
 Oh ! may )io wther fame my deeds repay 1 
 That, only that, shall single out the spot, 
 By that remomber'd, or with that forgot." * 
 • " Cbiidiah liecollec.tioiis," as printed iu lirst uniiuolished volume ;— 
 
 " Oil when oppressM with .»uil, fuiebodiug glooai, 
 I sat recliuc'd upou oui laYoiitc t«-mli." 
 
 Vide Virgil, Eel. 3 v. 90. Horace. 10th Epodo, v. 2. 
 
 Muivius was an obscure poet, of the timu of Aui^u.stus, whose envious 
 tliatribes on Virgil and others of celebrity amungst the fuuious of that 
 day, gained him an uueuviable notoriety.— Ed. 
 
 (D 
 
 Elsewhere he says (Medwiu, p. 21;J) :— *' When I fii^ saw the review 
 
NOTES. H 
 
 of my 'Ilourg of Idleness' (1S08), I was furious; in such a ra^o as 1 
 never have been iu since. I dined Uiat day with Scrope Davies, and 
 Urank three bottles of claret to drovrn it, but it only boiled the more," &c. 
 On the first leaf of the copy retained by himself, now in Mr. 
 Murray's possession, ho had written :—" The binding of this volume is 
 considerably too valuable for its contents. Nothing but the considera- 
 tion of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning 
 the miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to 
 the flames."— Letter to Harness, 1809, Moore's Life. 
 
 VH AFTER III, 
 
 (1) 
 Lctterof C. S. Matthews to MissT. M.,May 12,\^m.— Moore's Ujc, 1817. 
 **\Vo went down to Nowstoad togothor, where I had got a famous 
 cellar, and monks dressed from a masquerade warehouse. We were 
 a company of some 7 or S, with an occasional neighbour or so, for a 
 visitor, and used to sit up late in our fnars' dresses, drinking burgundy, 
 claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull cup, and all sorts 
 of glasses. . . Matthews always denominated me the ' Abbot '; " 
 ^z,.— Moore's Life, p. GO. Letter to Murray, Ilaveuua, Nov. 12, 1S20. 
 
 (2) 
 Lines on a Cup formed from a Skull (Miscellaneous Poems).* 
 
 • ( Goethe's /'(""')• And from /"'M,«,r wo hive : - 
 
 " \V1»y (lo^t thou sriu at tno, ?riin ompty sknU ? 
 Is't tlmt tliy br.iin, like rninf. mistook its way ? 
 8o»'kin!r tor noonduy in tli'- l\vili<.'ht dull— 
 Lustin? for truth, wrnt wKilchodly astray ! " 
 
 CUAVTEIl IV. 
 
 (1) 
 "The Earl of Carlisle (his Guardian*) having declined to iutroduco 
 him to the House of Lords, he resolved to introduce himself, and 
 accordingly went there a little before the usual hour, when ho knew few 
 of the Lords would be present. On entering ho appcare 1 rather abashed, 
 and looked very pale, but jiassing the Woolsack, where the Chancellor 
 (Lord Eldon) was engaged in some of the ordinary routine of the House, 
 he went directly to the table, where the oaths were administered to him. 
 The Lord Chancellor then approached, and offered his hand in the most 
 f liendly manner, congratulating him on his taking possession of his seat. 
 Lord Lyron only placed the tips of his fmgers iu the Chancellor's hand. 
 Tlie lattt^r returned to his seat, aiid Byron, after lounging a few minutes 
 on one of the Opposition benches, retired. To Mr. Dallas, who followed 
 him out, he gave, as a reason for not entering into the spirit of the 
 Chancellor, *that it might have been supposed he would join the Court 
 party, whereas ho intended to have nothing at all to do with politics.' 
 He only addressed the House three times. The first of his speeches was on 
 the Framework Bill, the second iu favour of the Catholic claims, which 
 gave good hojKss of his becoming an orator, and fho other related to a 
 petition from Major Cartwright. I3yron himself says, 'Tho Lords told 
 liin) his manner was not dignified enough for them, and would bettor suit 
 the Lower House.' Others say they gathered round him while speaking, 
 listening with the greatest attontiou—a sif^i, at any rate, that he was 
 interesting. He always voted with the Opposition, but evinced no 
 
 • The Karl's father havlnj? married the proceetline Lad/ BjTon, IsftboUa, ft 
 poeteai, who afterwards secludcl herself from the world. 
 
 G 2 
 
iii NOTES. 
 
 likelihood of bocouiing the partisan of either side."— Zi/e by Sir S. L. 
 Jiuluey, 1831 ; Juhtnoit'ii Liven of the Poets^ Sfc. 
 
 CU AFTER VI, 
 
 (1) 
 
 Amongst the manv portraits of Byrou the most true to life is that 
 of Phillips, fiuely lithographed by Seuefolder. Thorwaldseu'a bust of 
 the poet IS mean. 
 
 "Thorwaldseu has done a bust of me at Rome for Mr. Hobhouse, 
 which is reckonod vorv f,'ood. llo is thoir Lost after Cauova, and by some 
 preferred to him." — Letter to Murray, Veuice, Juue 4, 1817. 
 
 The fashionable deutist of Old Bond Street. "Went," says the 
 Byron Journal^ ISl 1, " to Waito. Teeth all rij^ht and white, but he 
 savs that I grind them iu my sleep, aiid chip the edges." 
 
 Of Blake he writes : 
 
 '* Wiite but like Wordsworth, live beside a lake, 
 And kcoj) your bushy locks a year from Blake." 
 *' As famous a tensor as Liciuius himself, and hotter paid, and may like 
 him be one day a Seiiutor, hivinj^ a bett'^r (nuilirtcatiou than one half of 
 the heads he crops— vi;^., ihdepeudence." — " Hints from Horace," JJi/ioh'a 
 irorki. 
 
 (1) 
 Madame Albrizzi (Ritratti). 
 
 *'Inev()r walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of 
 the ' Ghost Seer,' by Schiller, .Sec."— Letter to Murray, Venice, April 2. 
 
 " Rinco our last meeting I am reduced 4st in weight. I then 
 weighed 14 1st., and now only lOlst. I have disponed of my superfluities 
 by means of hard exerciso au'd abstinence.' —Letter to Mr. Drury, 
 Dorant's Hotel, Januurv Li, 1808. 
 
 CUArTKU VII f. 
 
 (1) 
 
 " Wt'll, thou art happy, and I feel 
 
 Tliat I should thus bo hajjpy too : 
 For still my heart regards thy weal, 
 
 Warmly a"* it was wont to do. 
 Thy husband's blest— and 'twill impart 
 
 Some pangs to view his happier lot ; 
 But let them pass — Oh ! how my heart 
 
 Woidd hate him, if he loved tlioo not ! 
 Wht'U late I saw thy favorite child, 
 
 I thcught my jealous heart would break ; 
 But when the unconscious infant smiled 
 
 I kiised it for its mother's sake." l:c. 
 
 ClIAPTKn X. 
 
 (1) 
 When Ariosto first showed his versos to the Cardinal d* Este, the 
 latter is said to have nplied •.—Dove, diarolo, Mtasur Ludovico, avene 
 p'njhuto tnnte coalio/nric'i " Where the devil, Siguor Ludovico, did you 
 get hold of all this foolery r" 
 
 (2). 
 La Qarfagnana was u district iu the Appeuincs, lufcstod by robbori, 
 
NOTES. iv 
 
 of wliicli Duke Ali)hon«n. of Fonara, miulo Ariosto CJovcrnor, as a means 
 of relieving his necessitous condition.— Ed. 
 
 The "Hcnnado" was printed in England, it would appear, Voltaire 
 himself allowing that when he ccniposed it, it was v/'.s- snvoir cc que 
 i-\'t(iii qx'ini pu(ii>r r/ju/'O'. Mereover, as it wa8 tlieu said, Lis Frant;aiH 
 11* out pan la titc n}ii/>ii\ — Ed. 
 
 (1). 
 
 The "Telemaqne" was said fo bo a satire on the French Court. 
 *'LikeEmilo, the Plebeian Telemachus of J. J. Roui-aeau, this work 
 is exclusively social and political. It is at oiicn tlie critic and theorist of 
 society and governments. It was intended to furnish the progratnme of a 
 future reign, in which the Duke of li urgundy was to be the Telemachus, 
 and Ftm' Ion the Mentor."— /"^''"//(''r'.v A»f >•(;;>»< (f?/ (\h hrith n( Translntivn J . 
 
 C 11 APT Eli XI y 
 (I). 
 ••When I turn "0 I will turn devout. I fool a great vocation that 
 way in Catholic Churches, and when I hear the organ.''— Lord B. to Mr. 
 Murray, Aprils, 1817. 
 
 CIIAPTEll XI L 
 
 (1). 
 "I am taking a wife," said a fiiend to Ro'issoau. "What good 
 qualities has she r" he replir-d. *' Sh^ i« handsome :" and the philosopher 
 wrote down /<i-i) (0)." She is rich;" and ho inscribed another /r/fl. 
 ••And young;" ii third (0^. ''And of noble birth;" again another ((>)• 
 "And good tempered." And the pliilosopher placed a 1 before the four 
 Zcro^, to show that fr<?m this quality alone all the others received 
 value.—ED. 
 
 Some of the opening stanzas of tliis poem arc of great beauty and 
 merit. 
 
 *' Many a vanish'd j'ear and day, 
 
 And battle's breath and tempest's rsge. 
 Have passed o'er Corinth, yet she stands 
 A fortress formed to freedom's hands ; 
 The keystone of a land that still, 
 Though fall'u, looks proudly from that hill." 
 
 .kc.—!bieneof Coilnth. 
 
 *' Around him some mysterious circle thrown, 
 Repcll'd approac h, and show'd him still alone : 
 Witli thougiit of years in phantom-cliaae misspent, 
 And wasteful powers for better purpose lent ; 
 And fiery passions that had jioured their wrath 
 lu hurried desolation o'er his path."— Za/rt. 
 
 CHAPTElfxiII. 
 
 (I). 
 
 ** The day before yesterday I proposed to Lady Byron. I had no idea of 
 doing 80." — Life Ixj Bnlwrr. — S:e also Moore. 
 
 •' It had been predicted by Mrs. Williams that 27 was to be a dangerous 
 age for me : The fortune-telling witeh was right ; it was destined to 
 prove so. I shall never forget the 2nd of January ! Lady Byron was the 
 only unconcenied person present ; Lady Noel, her mother, cried ; I 
 trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony, 
 called her Miss Millbauk."— Zf/J? by Jiulucr.—iSee also Moore, 
 
T NOTES. 
 
 (2). 
 Olovauul, D. O. J., the famous publicUt, who died at Milan lu 1835. 
 HU Life haM beeu wdtten by Cautn. 
 
 (3). 
 Manzom, author of the boat ItuUau Romance, the famous " I Promessi 
 Spoai." 
 
 (4). 
 *' S'opre d'arte e d 'ingegno, amore e zelo. 
 D'oDore, hau premiu ovver perdouo in terra, 
 Doh nou Boa, progo, il niio piegur dulutto." 
 
 . (•'). 
 *' His home was almost daily beset by duns ; and his house, nine times 
 duiing 1815, in possession of bailiffs," i^c.—Moore*s Life^ (IS30), vol. I, 
 p. G5(). 
 
 (G) 
 As one of the Drury Lane Committoo, and referring to Mrs. Martyn. 
 — '* To the fuloohottds concorniug his grouuroom intimacies, and 
 particularly with oue beautiful actress with whom he had hardly even 
 
 exchuugod a single word, I have already adverted," tS:o 
 
 —Moorv^n Life (1830), vol. 1, p. 0.')3. 
 
 (7). 
 Seei/o(»v'« Z//<'.—" You asked me if no cause was assigned for this 
 sudden resolution (Lady Byron's resolve) — if .1 formed no conjecture 
 about the cause? I will tell you. I have prejudices about women. I 
 do not like to see them eat; Rousseau makes Julie un pcnr/o>(nna)i(le\ but 
 that is not at all according to my taste. I do not like to be interrupted 
 when 1 am writing. Lady Byron did not attend to these whims of 
 mine. The only harsh thing I ever rurneraber saying to her was one 
 fveuing shortly before our partin*. I was standing before the fire, 
 ruminutiug upon the embarrassment of my atVairs, and other annoyances, 
 when Lady Byron r ime up and said—" Byrou, am I in your way:" to 
 which I replied, " Daninubly I" I was afterwards sorry, and reproached 
 myself for the expression ; but it escaped mo uucousciously — 
 iuvolmitarily : I hardly kuew what I said. I heard afterwards that 
 Mrs. Charlemont had been the means ot poisoning Lady Xoel's mind 
 agamst mo. .... that she had employed herself and others ia 
 
 watchiug me in London Hcc. There was one act of which 
 
 I might justly have complained, and which was unworthy of anyone 
 but such a coiijidtntc. I allude to the breaking open my writing 
 desk . . . . ." ^-c. — CoHi'cr.sfidons irif/i T. Jfiificd/, Esij. {on yfhich 
 after-dinner confidences, some doubts have been expressed). 
 
 (8). 
 Thus, in a Quixotic romance, which remained unfinished and unpub- 
 lished, where, under the mask of an Audalusiau, he alluded to his own 
 case. And in Don Juan, Canto 1 :— 
 
 "And then, this best and meekest woman bore 
 With such serenity her husband's woes. 
 Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore, 
 
 Who saw tludr spouses killed, and nobly ,chose 
 Never to say a word about them more— 
 Calmly she hoard each calumny that rose ; 
 And 8 iw his agonies with such sublimity. 
 That all the world exclaimed ' What magnamimity !' " &e. 
 
NOTES. Ti' 
 
 CO. 
 Tills poem is taken from the Coiiirrscfions of Lfi(hi Bfcsxinfffon with Lord 
 litjio)! at O'ci/cra, and published iu the Nov Monthhj Magoziue. 
 
 In the Mystery of Cain, when this first of homicides, accursed of all 
 would tleo to the desert, he says to his sister Adah :— 
 
 *' Dost thou not fear to dwell with one who hath done this? 
 Adah ; I fear no thin^ except to leave thee, much as I 
 
 Shrink from the deed which leaves thee brotherless— 
 I must not speak of this— it is between thee and 
 The Great God!" 
 Those verses were written immediately after the failure of the 
 negotiation for reconciliation, and were not intended for publication. — 
 Note to Jl^roh's Iforks, Murray, ISoO. 
 
 CHArTKR XV. 
 
 (I). 
 Amonpjst other discrcpo-ucies, so to speak, he himself say? :— "He 
 (Rousseau) could never ride nor swim, nor was * cunning of fence.' I 
 am an excellent swimmer, a decent though not at all a dashing rider, 
 (ha\'ing staved in a rib at IS, in the coiirse of scampering), and was 
 sufficient of fence, particularly of the Highland broadsword, — not a 
 bad boxer, when I could keen my tomner, which was difficult, but which 
 I swore to do ever sineo I knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his 
 kueepan out (with the gloves on), iu Angelo and Jackson's sparriuR 
 rooms in 180(5, during the sparring. I w<s, besides, a very fair cricketer 
 — one of the Harrow Eleven, when we played against Eton iu 180*).'^ 
 —Moore's Life (1817)—'* Detached Thoughts." 
 
 CIIAPTER XVI. 
 
 (I). 
 •'Simplon is magnificent in its nature and art— both God and man 
 have done wonders— to say nothing of tho devil,' ^ &c.-— Letter to 
 Murray, Milan, Oct. 15, 1816. 
 
 (2). 
 "The Italians T have encountered are very intelligent and agreeable. 
 In a few days I am to meet Monti," kc.—Ibitf, from Moore's LifCf 
 p. 44, vol. 2. 
 
 (3). 
 "The Benacus with {is/ncdhi's ct frcmHu.'^— Letter to Moore, Verona, 
 Nov. C, 181G. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 0)- 
 
 " Did I tell you that I have translated from the Armenian two epistles 
 between St. Paul and the Corinthians, not to bo found in our version? "— 
 Letter to Moore, Venice, March 31, 1S17. 
 
 (2). . 
 
 "The 'Helen' of Canova (in tho possession of Madame Albrizzi), is, 
 without exception, the most perfectly beautiful of human conceptions, 
 &c."— Letter to Murray, Nov. 25, 1810. 
 
vii NOTES. 
 
 (3). 
 
 •' Of painting I know nothing ; but like a Guercino— a picture of 
 Abraham putting away Hagar and Isbmuel — which seems to be natural 
 and t^oodly."— ^tter to Murray, Milan, Oct. lo, I81G. 
 
 Yet a perfectly competent judge, Mons. Beyle (do Stendhahl), in a 
 letter to Mdlle. L. S. Belloc, relates :—"Siguor di B. induced me 
 to accompany Lord Byron to the Brera Gallery; I witnessed with 
 udniiratiou the depth of feeling with which this great poet mastered the 
 beauties of painters the most oi)i)osite in style: Raphael, Guercino, 
 Zuini, Titian, i:e. The 'Hagar put away by Abraham' of Guercino 
 electrified him ; from that moment admiration rendered us silent; he 
 improvised Cor the space of one hour, and better, I thiuk, than Madame 
 do Stuel."--C/sVr/rji rosthuiHn tic Sttudhahl (V. Appendix), Paris, 1824. 
 
 (1). 
 Moore's Life, 1830, p. 104, vol. II. 
 
 For the 4th Canto of Childo Harold, Lord Byron received .£2,000; but 
 it can hardly bo deemed an excess of generosity on the part of the 
 publisher, Murray. 
 
 " Mariauna, then in her 22nd year, is, in her appearance, altogether 
 like an antelope. She has the large, black, oriental eyes, with that pecu- 
 liar exjuession in them, »kc."— Letter to Moore, Venice, Nov. 11, ISll). 
 
 CUAVTER XVIII. 
 
 (1). 
 ** Byron's dinner, when the Foruurina was his companion, consisted, 
 he was assured, of but four brcvafnhi^ of which the Fornariua ate three, 
 ^ leaving him hungry."— J/yc//i 'a Lift., vol. 2, p. 2G8. 
 
 CHArTER XIX, 
 
 (1). 
 "There is still in the Doge's Palace the Black Veil painted over 
 Faliuro's picture, ice."— Letter to Murray, April 2, 1817. 
 
 (2). 
 
 Dr. Faustus, the •' Don Juan," it may be said of the north, lived, it 
 appears, in the beginning of the Kith century. His adventures were 
 related in an old Gorman book, translated into many languages, and 
 from which Marlow (Shakesi)eare'8 contemporary), 'derived his play, 
 *' Th" Tragic History of Dr. Faust." Leasing also intended to compose 
 1 wo tragedies from it, but they did not see the light. Kliugeme, how- 
 ever, worked out or upon it a philosophic romance, "The life and actions 
 of Faust, and his visit to the luforual Regions." One would rather say 
 that from Goethe's "Faust" was taken Byron's "Deformed Transformed." 
 
 (3). 
 
 "Goethe's 'Faust' I never read, fori don't know German; but Mr. 
 Lewis, in 181G, translated most of it to me, and I was naturally much 
 struck by it ; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungf rau and somethmg 
 t'lse, more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, 
 however, and that of Faustus are very similar."--Letter to Murray, 
 M»un\ Life, vol. 2, p. 230.-Again, Byron says — " I wrote a sort of 
 luiid drama, for tlie sake of iutroduciug the Alpine scenery, ice."— Letter 
 to Murray, Venice, March 25, 1817. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 W. 
 The opeuiDg lines certainly bear out this panegyric :— 
 *' It is the hour, when from the boughs, 
 The nightingale's high note is heard, 
 It is the hour, wheu lovers' vows 
 Seem sweet in every whianer'd word, 
 And gentle winds and waters near 
 Make music to the lonely ear," &o. 
 
 CHAPTFAl XXI. 
 
 0)- 
 The great object which Diderot and the Encycloprcdists had in view, 
 
 according to the biographical judgment of the day, was to sap the 
 foundation of all religion. 
 
 (2). 
 '• Now, my sere fancy falls into the yellow leaf, 
 And imagination droops his pinion, 
 And the sad truth, which hovers o'er my desk. 
 Turns what was once romantic to burlesque." 
 Don Juan, Canto 4. 
 Only oO copies of this poem were first intended to be printed for private 
 circulation.— Ed. 
 
 (3). 
 In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t'ye : 
 " The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ! 
 Where burning Sappho loved and sung 
 Where grew the Arts of War and peace—! 
 Whence Delos rose, and Phabus sprung," &c., &c. 
 (4). 
 The maid of Saragoza used to walk on the Prado during Byron's tour 
 in Spain, by order olthc Junta, adorned with medals and orders.— Ed. 
 
 (o). 
 «»«♦*♦ xiio ')th Canto is so far from being the last of Don Juan, that 
 it is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the tour of Europe, with 
 a proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure, and to make him 
 finish as Anacharsis Cloots in the French Ilnvolution." — Letter to 
 Murray, July, G, 1821.-J/oo;f'*' Lift, vol. 2, 4'J8, 1830. ' 
 
 (G). 
 Again: "Poor Juan shall bo guillotined in the French Revolution ! 
 What do you think of my plot'r It shall have 24 books, too, the 
 legitimate number."— Co»tr>\<fff^<o;/.v ■trith Mcdivin, 
 
 (7). 
 "The truth is that in these days iha ^?im\ pn 1,1 xm mobile of England is 
 cant; cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral ; but always 
 cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life."— Letter to Mr. Murray 
 from Ilavouua. 
 
 (8). 
 "In the preface to Cantos G, 7, 8, Byron gives, amongst much that is 
 argumentative, if not convincing, two quotations from Voltaire: 
 *• Lapudeurs'est enfuite des ccrurs, ets'est refugiOe sur les ItVTCs; . . . . 
 Plus les mnmrs sont depravi'es, plus les expressions deviennont mcsurcee. 
 ... on croit regaguer en langage ce qu'ou a perdu en vertu," 
 
 CUAPTERXXII, 
 
 (1). 
 The works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in verse and prose, containing the 
 principal notes of Drs. Warburtou and Warton, &c. &c. 
 
is NOTES. 
 
 (2). 
 The auathema and the ball room scene are probably both maiterpiecea^ 
 in their way, and aoaroely to be rivalled in any language.— £d. 
 
 (3). 
 " BarhariQO, la it true that you have written in your books of commerce 
 —the wealthy practice of your highest nobles—* Doge Foscari, my debtor 
 for the death oi Marco and Pietro Loredauo, my sire and uncle ? ' 
 ^^Loredano : It ia written thus. 
 ^^liarbarigo : And will you leave it unerased ? 
 ^'■Loyedano : Till balanced." 
 
 *' Oh ! thou would' st doubtless have mo set up edicts,— 
 *Obey the King— contribute to his treasure— 
 Recruit his phalanx— spill your blood at bidding, 
 Fall down and worship, or get up and toil.' 
 Or this—* Sardauapalus on this spot. 
 Slew hfty thousand of his enemies. 
 These are their sepulchres, aud this his trophy,' " 
 
 — ISardauapalus. Act 1. Scene 2. 
 
 *♦ Listen, the Churdi was throng'd 
 The hymn was raised 
 
 Te Dcum pealed from Nations, 
 
 Rather than from Choirs, in one great cry 
 Of God be praised 
 
 For one day's peace after thrice ten years 
 Each bloodier than the former, i:c." 
 
 CHAPTER XXII L 
 
 Adopting the opinion of Cuvicr that the world had been destroyed 
 many times before the creation of AJum. 
 
 (■•^•) 
 **If 'Cain' be blasphemous,* Paradise Lost' is blasphemous; and the 
 very words of the Oxford gentleman ' Evil, be thou mv g«od', are from that 
 poem, from the mouth of Satan, aud is there anything more in that of 
 Lucifer in the Mystery ':* •Ciin ' is nothing more than a drama, not a piece 
 of argument. If Lucifer aud Cain speak as the first murderer or the first 
 rebel may be supposed to speak, surely all the rest of the personages talk 
 also according to their characters— and the stronger passions have ever 
 been permitted to the drama, &:c. I have eveu avoided introducing the 
 Deity as in Scripture (though Milfou does and not very wisely,^ but have 
 adopted his Angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking 
 any feelings, key— Letter to JInrnii/, who had been threatened with a 
 prosecution on account of ihiaY>\xh\xcii.tion.—Co/iVC'isatto)is with Mcdwiit, 
 note, pp. 192—3. 
 
 (3) 
 *' Bring forth the horse I— the horse was brought. 
 In truth he was a noble steed 
 A Tartar of the Ukraine breed 
 Who look'd as though the speed of thought 
 
 Were in his limbs, but he was wild 
 Wild as tlie wild deer aud untaught! 
 With bit and bridle undefiled." 
 Or:—'* But let me on. Theresa's form, 
 
 Methiuks it glides before me now, 
 Between me aud yon chestnut's bough. 
 The m^-'mory is so quick aud warm— 
 
NOTE^. X 
 
 Ami yet I fiu'l no wnnls to t<>n 
 The ah.ipe of her I lovoil so woll." 
 •* Sho had the Asiatic cyo, 
 Such as our Turkish neighbourhood 
 Hath mingled with our Turkish blood." . &c., &c. 
 (1). 
 *' And I was looked upon somowhnt as the i^reat Napoleon of the realms 
 of rhyme:— but Juan wis my >[o?cow, and Faliero my Lcipsic, and my 
 Mont St. Jean* seems C:\in. — D'^u Jiimi, Canto II. 
 
 And in a letter, " Poor Napoleon ! Little could ho havo divined to 
 what a turn of the wlieel mi^ht reduce him." 
 •The French name f<ir Waterloo. 
 
 0)- 
 
 •' I have promised to contribute, and f-hall probably make it a vehicle 
 for some occasional poems : for instance, I mean to translate Ariosto 
 (3fnhrin, p 403). I was stron;Tly advised by Tom Moore, long aj^o, not 
 to havo any connection with such a company as Hunt, and Shelley, and 
 Co. : but I have pledged myself, and, besides, could not now, if I had 
 ever so great a disinclination for the scheme, disappoint all Hunt's hopes. 
 He has a large family, has undertaken a long journey (to Pisa), and 
 undergone a long series of persecutions."— '•Hunt, wheni)artv feeling ran 
 high against Byron, was the only editor of a paper, the only literary man, 
 who dared say a word in his justification."— J/tr^iyt^i, pp. 402-3. 
 
 CUAPTER XXIV. 
 
 (I). 
 At the particular ret^uest of the Countess GuiccioH, he wrote, '* I have 
 
 yromiscd not to contiuuo Don Juan, i:c." — Letter to Murray, Pisa, 
 ulyG, 1821. 
 
 *' Lord Byron told me that La Contessa Guiccioli had repeatedly 
 asked him to discontinue Don Juan, as its immorality shocked her,'' 
 &e. *'To please her," said Byron, "I gave it up for some time, 
 and have only got permission to continue it on condition of making my 
 hero a more moral peison. I shall end by making him turn Methodist ; 
 this will please the English and be an rnnoxfr ho))orfthIe for his sins and 
 mine." — Con'osadons xcith Laibj Ii/c>^i)if/(on. — p. 200. 
 
 Af;aiu : Letter to Murray, Ravenna, Sept. 4, p. 134 :— " You say nothing 
 of the note* I enclosed to you, which will explain why I agreed to 
 discontinue Don Juan, (at Madame G's request), but you are so grand 
 and sublime, and occupied, that one would think, instead of publishing 
 for the Board of Longitude, that you were trying to discover it." 
 
 " In this note, so hiRhly honourable to the fair writer, she says •• Remember, 
 my BjTon, the rromi'^e you have made me ... . Never shall I be able to 
 tell you the satisfaction whicli I feel for your sacrifice," .... She adds, in a 
 note : •' Mi rincrcsce solo che Don Oiovani non resta all Inferno." 
 
 CHAPTER XX J\ 
 
 (I.) 
 Lftter to Murray, Venice, Oct. 21). 1810.— " I gave to Moore, who is 
 gone to Rome, my Life, in MS. in 78 folio sheets, brought down to 1810. 
 But this I put into his hands for his care, as he has some other MSS. 
 of mine— a journal kept in 181 1, &c. Neither are for publication during 
 my life, but when I am cold, you may do what you please. In the 
 meantime, if you like to read them, you may show them to anybody 
 
 fou like— I care not. The life is Memoranda and not confessions. 
 have left out all my lovrs (except in a general way), and many 
 other of the roost important things, &c. 
 
xJ NOTES. 
 
 •' Fiually, I gave them to Moore, or rather to Moore's little boy at 
 V»!uice. .1 remember eayiug * There are .€2,000 for you, my youug 
 uieud.' I made one reservatiou in the gift — that they were not (o be 
 iiublished till alter my death.**— Meduin'a Ccnccnations ulth Lord Byron, 
 ~p. 40. 
 
 (2). 
 Alfieri bought in Eugland, it is said, not less than 14 horses. 
 
 (3). 
 The Dumiug of the Temple of Diuua of Ephesus, 35G B.C. 
 
 chapYerxxviil 
 
 (1). 
 •'To my mind, in fact, praise it who will, the conception introduced iu 
 the lust Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, m ver^itiud by Lamurtiue, appears 
 uuchribtiau. The poet, at the point of death, is summoned by the AHgel 
 of Judgment to choose between two urns, the one of life (mortal), the 
 other of death (fatal), and with no other lights sivo those of reason, 
 genius, and faith. But the torch of faith he rejects; that of reason is 
 extinguished by the wings of the ni;^ht birds; wliila that of genius is put 
 out in the attemjjt to revive it. In the obscurity, then, he chooses the urn 
 of evil, andjis lost. Oh ! the religion of love, oi our Christ that wished 
 uot the doaih of a sinner, and 
 
 * Dullo stanclie coneri 
 Spende ogui ria parola.' "" 
 
 CUAPTER XXXI. 
 
 (1). 
 Perhaps the linos on Lara bear out this view : — 
 
 *' Left by his sire, too young .sucli lors to know, 
 Lord of liimself, — that heri'ace of woo. 
 That fearful empire which the human breast. 
 But holds to rob the heart within of rest ! 
 With none to cho(;k, and fow to point, in time, 
 The thousand i)athd that slope the way to crime ; 
 Then, when he most reijuired commandment, then 
 Hid Lara's daring boyhood goveru'd men." 
 &c., &c. 
 
 *'^^^len some proud son of man returns to earth, 
 Unknown to glory, but uphold by birth, 
 The sculptor'6 art exhausts the i)omp of woe, 
 And storied urns record who rest below ; 
 "When all in douo, u})on the tomb is ,soen. 
 Not what ho was, but wliat ho should have been ; 
 But the poor dog, in life the tirmest friend, 
 The tirst to welcome, foremost to defend, 
 Whose houcst heart is still his master's own, 
 "Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, 
 Unhonor'd falls, unnoticed all his worth, 
 Denied in heaven tho soul ho held on earth. 
 
 Ye I who perchance behold this simple urn, 
 Pass ou — it honours nono you wish to mourn : 
 To mark a friend's remains, these stones arise ; 
 1 never knew but one, and here he lies." 
 —■Insirtptiou OH the mouumtnt vf '■' Boatmcain** a New* 
 foanilUuid dog. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 No I. Preface. 
 
 Tho Dizioiintio 7i!ofp-/rf7ro of Cafnrdi, 1870, assi'fyns Brivio, Castcllo 
 Milanese, as tho lurtli-nl.'icG of Cautu. in Decrnibor, 1807. It mentions 
 also that he is Chovulipr fuul Chancellor of the Italian order of Civil 
 Mtrit. From the Imperiiil Dictionary of Biofrraphy wo gather that he 
 has been decorated })y many European soveroij^ns, and that his name is 
 enrolled in most Academics and Societies in Europe. 
 
 No. 2. Chap. 13, p. 22. 
 
 On Lord Byron's conjugal infelicity, and the public scandal, so to 
 apeak, resultinr; then-from," Macaulay has written : — (Essay — il/bo>r'.» 
 J.i/r of ]t>irii».) "We tnow no spectacle so ridiculous as the British 
 
 l)ublic in one r.f its periodical fits of morality, &c But 
 
 we are not aware thnt there is before tho world, substantiated by 
 credible or even taupible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord 
 Byron was more to blnmetlian any other man who is on bad terms with 
 his wife, (S:c." . . Tlie gieat essayist finally adds : . . . . ''It 
 iscertaiji that the interest which Byron excited during his life is without 
 a parallel in literary history." 
 
 No. 3. Chap. 21, p. 42. 
 
 For a minute disquisition, and observations on tho characteristics of 
 Lord Bvron's (lis])osition and temperament, during at least his sojourn in 
 Italy, the euquiriug reader is refeired to the works of Henry Beyli 
 (De Stendhnlii), his letters to Louise S. du Belloc and his friends, au'l 
 
 li* liisioirc lit l<i rtintutr. 
 
 No. 4. Chap. 22,p4G. 
 Marino Faliero. Lord Byron acknowledges to have slightly altered 
 the tragic history of this Di^gn, though he had studied tho subject ff)r 
 four years, and )iad consulted thereon Sanuto, Vettor, Darn, Siamondi, 
 and others. A brief account of the melancholy story of Faliero, taken, 
 it would seem, from the ('lirn.iirh's of (ri'is(inin>n, may be read iu tho 
 Lives of the Ihj'H by Eric M'Kay, published in Venice iu 1878. 
 
 No. T). Chap. 24, p. 03. 
 
 La Contessa GuiccioH, afterwards married to the Marquis de Boissy, is 
 the author of the work Lonl Jii/ron jugc par Ics tcinoina dc sa Vi(\ 
 published in Paris in 18GS. 
 
 No. G. Chap. 2G, p. 62. 
 Alfieri, of historical note as the second husband of the widow of Prince 
 Charles Edward Stuart, styled the '• Young Pretender," and besides his 
 linjifuistic attainments and notoriety as a man of gallantry, was of high 
 re|)ute as a dramatist. He enjoyed the singular reputation of having 
 written a tragody— Cleopatra , and a burlesque thereon, both alike 
 ■ncccssful. 
 
 No. 7. Chap. 31, p. 73. 
 
 Lamartim :— " Le dernier chant de Childe Harold :— 
 
 " Ecoute ! et recommence ! 
 Mais tremble ! car tu vas tirer ton dernier sort I 
 
xiii APPENDIX. 
 
 Aulleu le plui obscur, oi\ aur ces champs de mort, 
 la uuit senible epaisair Ics ombres tacituiiies ; 
 L'ouge du j ugemQUt vicut de placer deux urues, 
 Dout 1' umlorme aspect trompe IVil et la main.** 
 
 No. 8. 
 
 UNES ON THE DEATH OP LOED BYnON. 
 Byron ! with feeliugs deep I trace these views : 
 
 Here, o'er this awful mouutaiu sceue, so rude, 
 Oft thy young eagle fancy loved to muse, 
 
 Rapt in the sad stern joys of solitude. 
 
 Here, lonely wandering 'mid these barren rocks, 
 
 Thy mighty soul imbibed celestial tire- 
 Here, in this wild abode of f oldloss flocks, 
 
 Did early genius thy proud heart insjure, — 
 Hero would'st thou linger on this frowuiug peak, 
 
 Ga/ing with rupture at the fearful stona — 
 All fearless thou— thy godlike mind would seek 
 
 To give the lightning's Hash embodied form. 
 
 And thou art gone I Thy earthly race is run 
 
 And thou art gone ! — too eoou for hapless Greece— 
 Too soon for liberty— has set thy gloiious sun I 
 
 That trampled land ! when shall her bondage cease 't' 
 To thee, like Homer, time's stern self shall how, 
 I Thy fame, thy cherished name, shall deathless be, 
 AVhen Britain has become, wliat Troy is now, 
 A blank, a doubt, on vast Eternity. 
 
 F. C. 
 Lord Byron passed some portion of his boyhood in the vicinity of Loch- 
 ua-Garr mountain, and ireqviently remained on that mountain, and 
 the neighbouring hills, whole days alone. 
 
 Isle of $kye, November, 1826. 
 See also* the poem, "Lachin-y-Gair."— Ed. 
 
 No. 9. 
 Honours in Western Greece— paid to Byron at nis deatb. 
 Provisional Government of Greece. 
 Art. 118'j. 
 
 18. 4. 1824. 
 
 Until, therefore, the final determination of the National Government 
 be known, and by virtue of the powers with which it has boeu pleased to 
 invest me, I hereby decree:— 
 
 1st.— To-morrow morning, at daylight, thirty-seven minute guns will 
 be fired from tlie Grand Battery, being the number which corresponds 
 with the age of the illustrious deceased. 
 
 2nd.— All the public otUces, even the Tribunals, are to remain closed 
 for three successive days. 
 
 3rd. — All the shops, except those in which provisions or medicines are 
 sold, will also bo shut ; and it is strictly enjoined that every species of 
 j)ublic ammusement, and other demonstrations of festivity at Easter, shall 
 be suspended. 
 
 4th.— A general mourning will bo observed for twenty-one days. 
 
 5th. — Prayers and general service are to be ollered up in all the 
 churches. 
 
 (Signed) A. MAVROCORDATO. 
 
 Given at Missolonghi, 
 
 ISth April, 1S24. 
 
The Editor of the little tvork notu offered for i^truml has 
 cndeavouredt in ahmst all caseSt to verify the statements 
 (jf the Italian legislator, historian, and author; but he 
 cannotf consider himself responsible for statements or 
 opinions enunciated by Signor Cantii, and which lack 
 the authority of Lord Byron's biographers or 
 correspondents. 
 
 Finally, the Editor of Signor Canius instructive Essay 
 has not deemed it necessary to advert to the historic doubts 
 on the Life of Homer, as portrayed in Chapter* X.; 
 nor to the somewhat obscure reference to tJie ^lysteries 
 of Jsis on a page following : hd has preferred to leave 
 such paragraphs, as are left some passages of Scripture, to 
 ihc belief or nndcrstaridin^ or learning of the reader, 
 
 A,K, 
 
Mr. Redway's Publications 
 
 Printed on large hand-made paper, with India Proof Illustra- 
 tions mounted as Frontispiece and Tailpiece. Price los. 6d. 
 
 The Worship of Priapus. 
 
 Being an account of the Fete of St. Cosmo and Damiano, 
 celebrated at Isernia. In a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, 
 President of the Royal Society. By Sir William Hamilton, 
 Minister at the Court of Naples. To which is added Some 
 Account of Phallic Worship, principally derived from the 
 Work of Richard Payne Knight. Edited, with Preface and 
 Notes, by Hargrave Jennings, author of "The Rosicrucians." 
 ♦#* Only loo copies printed ^ each numbered. After 75 copies have 
 been subscribed for, the price will be raised to One Guinea, 
 
 In demy 8vo, elegantly printed on Dutch hand-made paper, and 
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 The Scope and Charm of Antiquarian 
 
 Study. 
 
 By John Batty, F.R.Hist.S., Member of the Yorkshire 
 Archaeological and Topographical Association. 
 
 " Mr. Batty, who is one of those folks Mr. Dobson style' * gleaners after 
 time,* has clearly and concisely summed up, in the space of a few pages, all 
 the various objects which may legitimately be considered to come within the 
 scope of antiquarian study." — Academy. 
 
 THACKERAY AND CRUIK SHANK. 
 
 An Essay on the Genius of George 
 Cruikshank. 
 
 By " Theta" (William Makepeace Thackeray), reprinted 
 with Illustrations from the Westminster Review, with a new Portrait 
 of Cruikshank engraved on Wood, and a Prefatory Essay on 
 Thackeray as an Art Critic, by W. E. Church, Secretary of 
 the Urban Club. In preparation. 
 
 Some Passages in the Early Life of 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 By Hargrave Jennings, Author of '• The Rosicrucians," &c. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 Tobacco Talk and Smokers' Gossip. 
 
 An Amusing Miscellany of Fact and Anecdote relating to 
 ** The Great Plant *' in all its Forms and Uses, including a 
 Selection from Nicotian Literature; the whole interspersed 
 with Woodcuts and Engravings. Compiled and arranged by 
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xiii APPENDIX. 
 
 Aulieu le plus obscur, oi^, sur ces champs de mort, 
 I<a uuit somble epaissir Jes ombres tacituiiies ; 
 L'auge du jugemeut vieut de placer deux urues^ 
 Dout 1' uniforme aspect trompe I'uil et la main." 
 
 No. 8. 
 
 LINES ON THE DEATU OF LOED BYRON. 
 
 Bvrou ! with feeliugs deep I trace these views : 
 llere, o'er this awful raouutain sceue, so rude, 
 
 Oft thy youug eagle fancy loved to muse, 
 Rapt iu the sad steru joys of solitude. 
 
 Here, lonely wandering 'mid tlioso barren rocks, 
 
 Thy mighty soul imbibed celestial tire- 
 Here, iu this wild abode of foldlcss flocks, 
 
 Did early gouius thy proud heart inspire, — 
 Hero woulo'st thou linger on this frowning peak, . 
 
 Ga/.ing with rapture at tlie f tearful stonn — 
 All fearless thou— thy godlike mind would seek 
 
 To give the lightning's Hash embodied form. 
 
 And thou art gone ! Thy eartlily race is run 
 
 And thou art gone !— too toctn for hapless Greece— 
 Too soon for liberty— has set tliy glorious svin I 
 
 That trami)U'd land ! when shall hnr bcndugo cease f 
 To thee, like Homer, time's stern self shall bow. 
 
 Thy fame, thy cherislu.'d name, shall iltathless be, 
 When Britain has become, wliat Troy is now, 
 A blank, a doubt, ou vast Eternity. 
 
 F. C. 
 Lord Byron passed some portion of his boyhood in tlie vicinity of Loch- 
 tia-Garr mountain, and iriMpifntly remained ou that mouutaiu, and 
 the neighbouring hills, whole days alone. 
 
 Isle of Skyc, November, 1826. 
 See also the poem, "Lachiu-y-Gair."— Ed. 
 
 No. 9. 
 HONOUBS IN Western Greece— paid to Byron at his death. 
 rrovisioual Government of Greece. 
 Art. 118'>. 
 
 18. 4. IN24. 
 
 Until, therefore, the final determination of the National Government 
 be known, and by virtue of the powers with which it has been pleased to 
 invest mo, I hereby decree: — 
 
 1 St.— To-morrow morning, at daylight, thirty-seven minute guns will 
 be fired from the Grand Battery, being the number which corresponds 
 with the ago of the illustrious deceased. 
 
 2nd.— All the public otUces, even the Tribunals, are to remain closed 
 for three successive days. 
 
 3rd.— All the shops, except tliose in which provisions or medicines are 
 sold, will also bo shut ; and it is strictly enjoined tliat every species of 
 public ammusemeut, and other demoustrations of festivity at Easter, shall 
 be suspended. 
 
 4tli._A general mourning will be observed for twenty-oue days. 
 
 Oth.— Prayers and general service are to be oli'ered up in all the 
 churches. 
 
 (Signed) A. MAVROCORDATO. 
 
 Given at Missolonghi, 
 
 18th April, 1821. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 t^/8iG#0 
 
 
 JUN 8 1962 
 
 
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 ^^ 
 
 JSECTDLD 
 
 DEC H-69-EAM i 
 
 MAYS 1977 4 1 
 
 
 
 
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 — i-VJ-ilL 4,j 
 
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 General Library 
 L» 21A-50m-3,'62 University of California 
 (O7097slO)476B Berkeley 
 
1 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
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