Volume Xiii Part 4 (1/2)

This completes the list of Scott's greater productions; but it should be remembered that during all the years of his creative work he was incessantly doing critical and historical writing,--producing numerous reviews, essays, ballads; introductions to divers works; biographical sketches for Ballantyne's ”Novelist's Library,”--the works of fifteen celebrated English writers of fiction, Fielding, Smollett, etc.; letters and pamphlets; dramas; even a few religious discourses; and his very extensive and interesting private correspondence. He was such a marvel of productive brain-power as has seldom, if ever, been known to humanity.

The illness and death of Scott's beloved wife, but four short months after his commercial disaster, was a profound grief to him; and under the exhausting pressure of incessant work during the five years following, his bodily power began to fail,--so that in October, 1831, after a paralytic shock, he stopped all literary labor and went to Italy for recuperation. The following June he returned to London, weaker in both mind and body; was taken to Abbotsford in July; and on the 21st September, 1832, with his children about him, the kindly, manly, brave, and tender spirit pa.s.sed away.

At the time of his death Sir Walter had reduced his great indebtedness to $270,000. A life insurance of $110,000, $10,000 in the hands of his trustees, and $150,000 advanced by Robert Cadell, an Edinburgh bookseller, on the copyrights of Scott's works, cleared away the last remnant of the debt; and within twenty years Cadell had reimbursed himself, and made a handsome profit for his own account and that of the family of Sir Walter.

The moneyed details of Scott's literary life have been made a part of this brief sketch, both because his phenomenal fecundity and popularity offer a convenient measure of his power, and because the fiscal misfortune of his later life revealed a simple grandeur of character even more admirable than his mental force. ”Scott ruined!” exclaimed the Earl of Dudley when he heard of the trouble. ”The author of Waverley ruined! Good G.o.d! let every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!” But the st.u.r.dy Scotchman accepted no dole; he set himself to work out his own salvation. William Howitt, in his ”Homes and Haunts of Eminent British Poets,” estimated that Scott's works had produced as profits to the author or his trustees at least 500,000,--nearly $2,500,000: this in 1847, over fifty years ago, and only forty-five years from Scott's first original publication. Add the results of the past fifty years, and, remembering that this gives but the profits, conceive the immense sums that have been freely paid by the intelligent British public for their enjoyment of this great author's writings.

Then, besides all this, recall the myriad volumes of Scott sold in America, which paid no profit to the author or his heirs. There is no parallel.

Voltaire's renown and monetary rewards, as the master-writer of the eighteenth century, offer the only case in modern times that approaches Scott's success; yet Voltaire's vast wealth was largely the result of successful speculation. As a purely popular author, whose wholesome fancy, great heart, and tireless industry, has delighted millions of his fellow-men, Scott stands alone; while, as a man, he holds the affection and respect of the world. Even though it be that the fas.h.i.+on of his workmans.h.i.+p pa.s.seth away, wonder not, lament not. With Mithridates he could say, ”I have lived.” What great man can say more?

LORD BYRON.

1788-1824.

POETIC GENIUS.

It is extremely difficult to depict Lord Byron, and even presumptuous to attempt it. This is not only because he is a familiar subject, the triumphs and sorrows of whose career have been often portrayed, but also because he presents so many contradictions in his life and character,--lofty yet degraded, earnest yet frivolous, an impersonation of n.o.ble deeds and sentiments, and also of almost every frailty which Christianity and humanity alike condemn. No great man has been more extravagantly admired, and none more bitterly a.s.sailed; but generally he is regarded as a fallen star,--a man with splendid gifts which he wasted, for whom pity is the predominant sentiment in broad and generous minds. With all his faults, the English-speaking people are proud of him as one of the greatest lights in our literature; and in view of the brilliancy of his literary career his own nation in particular does not like to have his defects and vices dwelt upon. It blushes and condones.

It would fain blot out his life and much of his poetry if, without them, it could preserve the best and grandest of his writings,--that ill-disguised autobiography which goes by the name of ”Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,” in which he soars to loftier flights than any English poet from Milton to his own time. Like Shakespeare, like Dryden, like Pope, like Burns, he was a born poet; while most of the other poets, however eminent and excellent, were simply made,--made by study and labor on a basis of talent, rather than exalted by native genius as he was, speaking out what he could not help, and revelling in the richness of unconscious gifts, whether for good or evil.

Byron was a man with qualities so generous, yet so wild, that Lamartine was in doubt whether to call him angel or devil. But, whether angel or devil, his life is the saddest and most interesting among all the men of letters in the nineteenth century.

Of course, most of our material comes from his Life and Letters, as edited by his friend and brother-poet, Thomas Moore. This biographer, I think, has been unwisely candid in the delineation of Byron's character, making revelations that would better have remained in doubt, and on which friends.h.i.+p at least should have prompted him to a discreet silence.

Lord Byron was descended from the Byrons of Normandy who accompanied William the Conqueror in his invasion of England, of which ill.u.s.trious lineage the poet was prouder than of his poetry. In the reign of Henry VIII., on the dissolution of the monasteries, a Byron came into possession of the old mediaeval abbey of Newstead. In the reign of James I., Sir John Byron was made a knight of the Order of the Bath. In 1784 the father of the poet, a dissipated captain of the Guards, being in embarra.s.sed circ.u.mstances, married a rich Scotch heiress of the name of Gordon. Handsome and reckless, ”Mad Jack Byron” speedily spent his wife's fortune; and when he died, his widow, being reduced to a pittance of 150 a year, retired to Scotland to live, with her infant son who had been born in London. She was plain Mrs. Byron, widow of a ”younger son,”

with but little expectation of future rank. She was a woman of caprices and eccentricities, and not at all fitted to superintend the education of her wayward boy.

Hence the childhood and youth of Byron were sad and unfortunate. His temper was violent and pa.s.sionate. A malformation of his foot made him peculiarly sensitive, and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and harsh by turns, destroyed maternal authority. At five years of age, he was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen, where he made but slim attainments. Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have been affectionate and generous, and perfectly fearless. A fit of sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was sent to a summer resort among the Highlands. His early impressions were therefore favorable to the development of the imagination, coming as they did from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes, near the sources of the Dee. At the age of eight, he wrote verses and fell in love, like Dante at the age of nine.

On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron in 1794, this unpromising youth became the heir-apparent to the barony. Nor did he have to wait long; for soon after, his grand-uncle died, and the young Byron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, became a ward of Chancery; and the Earl of Carlisle--one of the richest and most powerful n.o.blemen of the realm, a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer--was appointed his guardian. This cold, formal, and politic n.o.bleman took but little interest in his ward, leaving him to the mismanagement of his mother, who, with her boy, at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead, the seat of his ancestors,--the government, meanwhile, for some reason which is not explained, having conferred on her a pension of 300 a year.

One of the first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead was to intrust her son to the care of a quack in Nottingham, in order to cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful, the boy was removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his education thus far had been sadly neglected, although it would appear that he was an omnivorous reader in a desultory kind of way. The lameness was never cured, and through life was a subject of bitter sensitiveness on his part. Dr. Glennie of Dulwich, to whose instruction he was now confided, found him hard to manage, because of his own undisciplined nature and the perpetual interference of his mother. His progress was so slow in Latin and Greek that at the end of two years, in 1801, he was removed to Harrow,--one of the great public schools of England, of which Dr. Drury was head-master. For a year or two, owing to that const.i.tutional shyness which is so often mistaken for pride, young Byron made but few friends.h.i.+ps, although he had for school-fellows many who were afterwards distinguished, including Sir Robert Peel. Before he left this school for Cambridge, however, he had made many friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read a great many books. He read in bed, read when no one else read, read while eating, read all sorts of books, and was capable of great sudden exertions, but not of continuous drudgeries, which he always abhorred.

In the year 1803, when a youth of fifteen, he formed a strong attachment for a Miss Chaworth, two years his senior, who, looking upon him as a mere schoolboy, treated him cavalierly, and made some slighting allusion to ”that lame boy.” This treatment both saddened and embittered him.

When he left school for college he had the reputation of being an idle and a wilful boy, with a very imperfect knowledge of Latin and Greek.

Young Byron entered Trinity College in 1805, poorly prepared, and was never distinguished there for those attainments which win the respect of tutors and professors. He wasted his time, and gave himself up to pleasures,--riding, boating, bathing, and social hilarities,--yet reading more than anybody imagined, and writing poetry, for which he had an extraordinary facility, yet not contending for college prizes. His intimate friends were few, but to his chosen circle he was faithful and affectionate. No one at this time would have predicted his future eminence. A more unpromising youth did not exist within the walls of his college. He had a most unfortunate temper, which would have made him unhappy under any circ.u.mstances in which he could be placed. This temper, which he inherited from his mother--pa.s.sionate, fitful, defiant, restless, wayward, melancholy--inclined him naturally to solitude, and often isolated him even from his friends and companions. He brooded upon supposed wrongs, and created in his soul strong likes and dislikes. What is worse, he took no pains to control this temperament; and at last it mastered him, drove him into every kind of folly and rashness, and made him appear worse than he really was.

This inborn tendency to moodiness, pride, and recklessness should be considered in our estimate of Byron, and should modify any harshness of judgment in regard to his character, which, in some other respects, was interesting and n.o.ble. He was not at all envious, but frank, warm-hearted, and true to those he loved, who were, however, very few.

If he had learned self-control, and had not been spoiled by his mother, his career might have been far different from what it was, and would have sustained the admiration which his brilliant genius called out from both high and low.

As it was, Byron left college with dangerous habits, with no reputation for scholars.h.i.+p, with but few friends, and an uncertain future. His bright and witty bursts of poetry, wonderful as the youthful effusions of Dryden and Pope, had made him known to a small circle, but had not brought fame, for which his soul pa.s.sionately thirsted from first to last. For a n.o.bleman he was poor and embarra.s.sed, and his youthful extravagances had tied up his inherited estate. He was cast upon the world like a s.h.i.+p without a rudder and without ballast. He was aspiring indeed, but without a plan, tired out and disgusted before he was twenty-one, having prematurely exhausted the ordinary pleasures of life, and being already inclined to that downward path which leadeth to destruction. This was especially marked in his relations with women, whom generally he flattered, despised, and deserted, as the amus.e.m.e.nts of an idle hour, and yet whose society he could not do without in the ardor of his impulsive and ungoverned affections. In that early career of unbridled desire for excitement and pleasure, nowhere do we see a sense of duty, a respect for the opinions of the good, a reverence for religious inst.i.tutions, or self-restraint of any kind; but these defects were partly covered over by his many virtues and his exalted rank.

Thus far Byron was comparatively unknown. Not yet was he even a favorite in society, beautiful and brilliant as he was; for he had few friends, not much money, and many enemies, whom he made by his scorn and defiance,--a born aristocrat, without having penetrated those exclusive circles to which his birth ent.i.tled him. He was always quarrelling with his mother, and was treated with indifference by his guardian. He was shunned by those who adhered to the conventionalities of life, and was pursued by bailiffs and creditors,--since his ancestral estates, small for his rank, were enc.u.mbered and mortgaged, and Newstead Abbey itself was in a state of dilapidation.

Within a year from leaving Cambridge, in 1807, Byron published a volume of his juvenile poems; and although they were remarkable for a young man of twenty, they were not of sufficient merit to attract the attention of the public. At this time he was abstemious in eating, wis.h.i.+ng to reduce a tendency to corpulence. He could practise self-denial if it were to make his person attractive, especially to ladies. Nor was he idle. His reading, if desultory, was vast; and from the list of books which his biographer has noted it would seem that Macaulay never read more than Byron in a given time,--all the noted historians of England, Germany, Rome, and Greece, with innumerable biographies, miscellanies, and even divinity, the raw material which he afterwards worked into his poems.

How he found time to devour so many solid books is to me a mystery.

These were not merely European works, but Asiatic also. He was not a critical scholar, but he certainly had a pa.s.sing familiarity with almost everything in literature worth knowing, which he subsequently utilized, as seen in his ”Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.” A college reputation was nothing to him, any more than it was to Swift, Goldsmith, Churchill, Gibbon, and many other famous men of letters, who left on record their dislike of the English system of education. Among these were even such men as Addison, Cowper, Milton, and Dryden, who were scholars, but who alike felt that college honors and native genius did not go hand in hand,--which might almost be regarded as the rule, but for a few remarkable exceptions, like Sir Robert Peel and Gladstone. And yet it would be unwise to decry college honors, since not one in a hundred of those who obtain them by their industry, aptness, and force of will can lay claim to what is called genius,--the rarest of all gifts. Moreover, how impossible it is for college professors to detect in students, with whom they are imperfectly acquainted, extraordinary faculties, more especially if the young men are apparently idle and negligent, and contemptuous of the college curriculum.

It was a bitter pill for Lord Byron when his juvenile poems, called ”Hours of Idleness,” were so severely attacked by the Edinburgh Review.