Volume Xiii Part 4 (2/2)

They might have escaped the searching eyes of the critics had the author not been a lord. At that time the great Reviews had just been started; and it was the especial object of the Edinburgh Review to handle authors roughly,--to condemn and not to praise. Criticism was not then a science, as it became fifty years later, in the hands of Sainte-Beuve, who endeavored to review every production fairly and justly. There was nothing like justice entering into the head of Jeffrey or Sydney Smith or Brougham, or later on of Macaulay, whose articles were often written for political party effect. Critics, from the time of Swift down to the middle of the century, aimed to demolish enemies, and to make party capital; hence, as a general thing, their articles were not criticisms at all, but attacks. And as even an Achilles was vulnerable in his heel, so most intellectual giants have some weak point for the shafts of malice to penetrate. Yet it is the weaknesses of great men that people like to quote.

If Byron was humiliated, enraged, and embittered by the severity of the Edinburgh Review, he was not crushed. He rallied, collected his unsuspected strength, and shattered his opponents by one of the wittiest, most brilliant, and most unscrupulous satires in our literature, which he called ”English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” At the height of his fame he regretted and suppressed this youthful production of malice and bitterness. Yet it was the beginning of his great career, both as to a consciousness of his own powers and in attracting the public attention. It was doubtless unwise, since he attacked many who were afterwards his friends, and since he sowed the seeds of hatred among those who might otherwise have been his admirers or apologists. He had to learn the truth that ”with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.” The creators of public opinion in reference to Byron have not been women of fas.h.i.+on, or men of the world, but literary lions themselves,--like Thackeray, who detested him, and the whole school of pharisaic ecclesiastical dignitaries, who abhorred in him sentiments which they condoned in Fielding, in Burns, in Rousseau, and in Voltaire.

Before his bitter satire was published, however, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, not knowing any peer sufficiently to be introduced by him. His guardian, Lord Carlisle, treated him very shabbily, refusing to furnish to the Lord Chancellor some important information, of a technical kind, which refusal delayed the ceremony for several weeks, until the necessary papers could be procured from Cornwall relating to the marriage of one of his ancestors. Unfriended and alone, Byron sat on the scarlet benches of the House of Lords until he was formally admitted as a peer. But when the Lord Chancellor left the woolsack to congratulate him, and with a smiling face extended his hand, the embittered young peer bowed coldly and stiffly, and simply held out two or three of his fingers,--an act of impudence for which there was no excuse.

It is difficult to understand why Lord Byron should have had so few friends or even acquaintances at that time among people of his rank. At twenty-one, he was a lonely and solitary man, mortified by the attack of the Edinburgh Review, exasperated by injustice, morose even to misanthropy, and decidedly sceptical in his religious opinions. Newstead Abbey was a burden to him, since he could not keep it up. He owed 10,000. He had no domestic ties, except to a mother with whom he could not live. His poetry had not brought him fame, for which of all things he most ardently thirsted. His love affairs were unfortunate, and tinged his soul with sadness and melancholy. Nor had fas.h.i.+on as yet marked him for her own. He craved excitement, and society to him was dull and conventional.

It is not surprising that under these circ.u.mstances Byron made up his mind to travel: he did not much care whither, provided he had new experiences. ”The grand tour” which educated young men of leisure and fortune took in that day had no charm for him, since he wished to avoid rather than to seek society in those cities which the English frequented. He did not care to see the literary lions of France or Germany or Italy, for though a n.o.bleman, he was too young and unimportant to be much noticed, and he was too shy and too proud to make advances which might be rebuffed, wounding his _amour propre._

He set out on his pilgrimage the latter part of June, 1809, in a s.h.i.+p bound for Lisbon, with a small suite of servants. Going to a land where Nature was most enchanting, he was sufficiently enthusiastic over the hills and vales and villages of Portugal. As for comfort, he expected little, and found less; but to this he was indifferent so long as he could swim in the Tagus, and ride on a mule, and procure eggs and wine.

He was delighted with Cadiz, to him a Cythera, with its beautiful but uneducated women, where the wives of peasants were on a par with the wives of dukes in cultivation, and where the minds of both had but one idea,--that of intrigue. He hastily travelled through Spain on horseback, in August, reaching Gibraltar, from which he embarked for Malta and the East.

It was Greece and Turkey that Byron most wished to see and know; and, favored by introductions, he was cordially received by governors and pashas. At Athens, and other cla.s.sical spots, he lingered enchanted, yet suppressing his enthusiasm in the contempt he had for the affected raptures of ordinary travellers. It was not the country alone, with its cla.s.sical a.s.sociations, which interested him, but also its maidens, with their dark hair and eyes, whom he idealized almost into G.o.ddesses.

Everything he saw was picturesque, unique, and fascinating. The days and weeks flew rapidly away in dreamy enchantment.

After nearly three months at Athens, Byron embarked for Smyrna, and explored the ruins of the old Ionian cities, thence proceeding to Constantinople, with a view of visiting Persia and the farther East. In a letter to Mr. Henry Drury, he says:--

”I have left my home, and seen part of Africa and Asia, and a tolerable portion of Europe. I have been with generals and admirals, princes and pashas, governors and ungovernables. Albania, indeed, I have seen more than any Englishman, except Mr. Leake,--a country rarely visited, from the savage character of the natives, but abounding more in natural beauties than the cla.s.sical regions of Greece.”

A glimpse of Byron's inner life at this time is caught in the following extract from a letter to another friend:

”I have now been nearly a year abroad, and hope you will find me an altered personage,--I do not mean in body, but in manners; for I begin to find out that nothing but virtue will do in this d--d world. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have tried in its agreeable varieties, and mean on my return to cut all my dissolute acquaintance, leave off wine and carnal company, and betake myself to politics and decorum.”

One thing we notice in most of the familiar letters of Byron,--that he makes frequent use of a vulgar expletive. But when I remember that the Prince of Wales, the Lord Chancellor, the judges, the lawyers, the ministers of the Crown, and many other distinguished people were accustomed to use the same expression, I would fain hope that it was not meant for profanity, but was a sort of fas.h.i.+onable slang intended only to be emphatic. Fifty years have seen a great improvement in the use of language, and the vulgarism which then appeared to be of slight importance is now regarded, almost universally with gentlemen, to be at least in very bad taste. How far Byron transgressed beyond the frequent use of this expletive, does not appear either in his letters or in his biography; yet from his irreverent nature, and the society with which he was a.s.sociated, it is more than probable that in him profanity was added to the other vices of his times.

Especially did he indulge in drinking to excess in all convivial gatherings. It was seldom that gentlemen sat down to a banquet without each despatching two or three bottles of wine in the course of an evening. No wonder that gout was the pervading disease among county squires, and even among authors and statesman. Morality was not one of the features of English society one hundred years ago, except as it consisted in a scrupulous regard for domesticity, truth, and honor, and abhorrence of meanness and hypocrisy.

It would be difficult to point out any defects and excesses of which Byron was guilty at this period beyond what were common to other fas.h.i.+onable young men of rank and leisure, except a spirit of religious scepticism and impiety, and a wanton and inexcusable recklessness in regard to women, which made him a slave to his pa.s.sions. The first alienated him, so far as he was known, from the higher respectable cla.s.ses, who generally were punctilious in the outward observances of religion; and the second made him abhorred by the virtuous middle cla.s.s, who never condoned his transgressions in this respect. But at this time his character was not generally known. It was not until he was seated on the pinnacle of fame that public curiosity penetrated the scandals of his private life. He was known only as a young n.o.bleman in quest of the excitements of foreign travel, and his letters of introduction procured him all the society he craved. Not yet had he expressed bitterness and wrath against the country which gave him birth; he simply found England dull, and craved adventures in foreign lands as unlike England as he could find. The East stimulated his imagination, and revived his cla.s.sical a.s.sociations. He saw the Orient only as an enthusiastic poet would see it, and as Lamartine saw Jerusalem. But Byron was more curious about the pagan cities of antiquity than concerning the places consecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. He cared more to swim across the h.e.l.lespont with Leander than to wander over the sacred hills of Judaea; to idealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins of Greece, than converse with the monks of Palestine in their gloomy retreats.

The result of Byron's travels was seen in the first two cantos of ”Childe Harold,” showing alike the fertility of his mind and the aspirations of a lofty genius. These were published in 1812, soon after his return to England, at the age of twenty-four. They took England by storm, creating both surprise and admiration. Public curiosity and enthusiasm for the young poet, who had mounted to the front ranks of literature at a single leap, was unbounded and universal. As he himself wrote: ”I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

Young Byron was now sought, courted, and adored, especially by ladies of the highest rank. Everybody was desirous to catch even a glimpse of the greatest poet that had appeared since Pope and Dryden; any palace or drawing-room he desired to enter was open to him. He was surfeited with roses and praises and incense. He alone took precedence over Scott and Coleridge and Moore and Campbell. For a time his pre-eminence in literature was generally conceded. He was the foremost man of letters of his day, and the greatest popular idol. His rank added to his _eclat_, since not many n.o.blemen were distinguished for genius or literary excellence. His singular beauty of face and person, despite his slight lameness, attracted the admiring gaze of women. What Abelard was in the schools of philosophy, Byron was in the drawing-rooms of London. People forgot his antecedents, so far as they were known, in the intoxication of universal admiration and unbounded wors.h.i.+p of genius. No poet in English history was ever seated on a prouder throne, and no heathen deity was ever more indifferent than he to the incense of idolaters.

Far be it from me to attempt an a.n.a.lysis of the merits of the poem with which the fame of Byron will be forever identified. Its great merits are universally conceded; and while it has defects,--great inequalities in both style and matter; some stanzas supernal in beauty, and others only mediocre,--on the whole, the poem is extraordinary. Byron adopted the Spenserian measure,--perhaps the most difficult of all measures, hard even to read aloud,--in which blank verse seems to blend with rhyme. It might be either to the ear, though to the eye it is elaborate rhyme,--such as would severely task a made poet, but which this born poet seems to have thrown off without labor. The leading peculiarity of the poem is description,--of men and places; of the sea, the mountain, and the river; of Nature in her loveliness and mysteries; of cities and battle-fields consecrated by the heroism of brave and gifted men, in Greece, in Rome, in mediaeval Europe,--with swift pa.s.sing glances at salient points in history, showing extensive reading and deep meditation.

As to the spirit of ”Childe Harold,” it is not satirical; it is more pensive than bitter, and reveals the loneliness and sorrows of an unsatisfied soul,--the unrest of a pilgrim in search for something new.

It seeks to penetrate the secrets of struggling humanity, at war often with those cert.i.tudes which are the consolation of our inner life. It everywhere recognizes the soul as that which gives greatest dignity to man. It invokes love as the n.o.blest joy of life. The poem is one of the most ideal of human productions, soaring beyond what is material and transient. It is not religious, not reverential, not Christian, like the ”Divine Comedy” and the ”Paradise Lost;” and yet it is lofty, aspiring, exulting in what is greatest in deed or song, destined to immortality of fame and admiration. It is a confession, indirectly, of the follies and shortcomings of the author, and of their retribution, but complains not of the Nemesis that avenges everything. It is sensitive of wrongs and injustices and misrepresentations, but does not hurl anathemas,--speaking in sorrow rather than in anger, except in regard to hypocrisies and shams and lies, when its scorn is intense and terrible.

The whole poem is brilliant and original, but does not flash like fire in a dark night. It was written with the heart's blood, and is as earnest as it is penetrating. It does not ascend to the higher mysteries forever veiled from mortal eye, nor descend to the deepest depths of hatred and despair, but confines itself to those pa.s.sions which have marked gifted mortals, and those questionings in which all thoughtful minds have ever delighted. It does not make revelations like ”Hamlet” or ”Macbeth;” it does not explore secrets hidden forever from ordinary minds, like ”Faust;” but it muses and meditates on what Fate and Time have brought to pa.s.s,--such events as have been revealed in history. It invokes the neglected but impressive monuments of antiquity to tell the tales of glory and of shame. In moral wisdom it is vastly inferior to Shakspeare, and it is not rich in those wise and striking lines which pa.s.s into the proverbs of the world; but it has the glow of a poetic soul, longing for fame, craving love, and not unmindful of immortality.

Its most beautiful stanzas are full of tenderness and sadness for lost or unrequited affections; of reproachless sorrow for broken friends.h.i.+ps, in which the soul would fain have lived but for inconsistencies and contradictions which made true and permanent love impossible. The poem paints a paradise lost, rather than a paradise regained. I wonder at its popularity, for it seems to me too deep and learned for popular appreciation, except in those stanzas where pathos or enthusiasm, expressed in matchless language, appeal to the heart and soul.

Of all modern poets, Byron is the most human and outspoken, daring to say what many would fear or blush to meditate upon. He fearlessly reveals the infirmities and audacities of a double and mysterious nature, made up of dust and deity, now grovelling in the mire, then borne aloft to the skies,--the football of the eternal powers of good and evil, enslaved and yet to be emanc.i.p.ated, as we may hope, in the last and final struggle, when the soul is rescued by Omnipotence.

I have alluded to the triumphs of Byron on the publication of ”Childe Harold,”--but his joys were more than balanced by his sorrows. His mother died suddenly without seeing him. His dearest friend Mathews was drowned. He was hampered by creditors. He made no mark in the House of Lords, and was sick of what he called ”parliamentary mummeries.” His habits became more and more dissipated among the boon companions who courted his society. His reputation after a while began to wane, for people became ashamed of their enthusiasm. Some critics disparaged his poetry, and conventional circles were shocked by his morals. Three years of London life told on his const.i.tution, and he was completely disenchanted. He sought retirement and solitude, for not even the most brilliant society satisfied him. He wearied of such a woman and admirer as Madame de Stael. He went to Holland House--that resort of all the eminent ones of the time--as seldom as he could. He buried himself with a few intimate friends, chiefly poets, among whom were Moore and Rogers.

He saw and liked Sir Walter Scott, but did not push his acquaintance to intimacy. The larger part of his letters were written to Murray, the publisher, who treated him generously; but Byron gave away his literary gains to personal friends in need. He seemed to scorn copyrights for support. He would write only for fame.

At the age of twenty-seven, in January, 1815, Byron married Miss Milbanke,--a lady whom he did not love, but to whom he was attracted by her supposed wealth, which would patch up his own fortunes. He had great respect for this lady and some friends.h.i.+p; but with all her virtues and attainments she was cold, conventional, and exacting. A mystery shrouds this unfortunate affair, which has never been fully revealed. The upshot was that, to Byron's inexpressible humiliation, in less than a year she left him, never to return. No reasons were given. It was enough that both parties were unhappy, and had cause to be; and both kept silence.

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