I saw two beings in the hues of youth This boyish idolatry nursed the spirit of poetry in Byron's mind. He was recalled, however, from his day-dreams and disappointment, by his removal to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1805. At Harrow he had been an idle irregular scholar, though he eagerly devoured all sorts of learning, excepting that which was prescribed for him; and at Cambridge he pursued the same desultory course of study. In 1807 appeared his first volume of poetry, printed at Newark, under the title of Hours of Idleness. There were indications of genius in the collection, but many errors of taste and judgment. The vulnerable points were fiercely assailed, the merits overlooked, in a short critique in the Edinburgh Review-understood to be written by Lord Brougham-and the young poet replied by his vigorous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which disarmed, if it did not discomfit, his opponent. While his name was thus rising in renown, Byron left England for a course of foreign travel, and in two years visited the classic shores of the Mediterranean, and resided some time in Greece and Turkey. In the spring of 1812 appeared the two first cantos of Childe Harold, the fruit of his foreign wanderings, and his splendidly enriched and matured poetical taste. 'I awoke one morning,' he said, 'and found myself famous.' A rapid succession of eastern tales followed-the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos in 1813; the Corsair and Lara in 1814. In the Childe, he had shewn his mastery over the complicated Spenserian stanza: in these he adopted the heroic couplet, and the lighter verse of Scott, with equal freedom and success. No poet had ever more command of the stores of the English language. At this auspicious and exultant period, Byron was the idol of the gay circles of London. He indulged in all their pleasures and excesses studying by fits and starts at midnight, to maintain the splendour of his reputation. Satiety and disgust succeeded to this round of heartless pleasures, and in a better mood, though without any fixed attachment, he proposed and was accepted in marriage by a northern heiress, Miss Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, a baronet in the county of Durham. The union cast a shade on his hitherto bright career. A twelvemonth's extravagance, embarrassments, and misunderstandings, dissolved the union, and the lady retired to the country seat of her parents from the discord and perplexity of her own home. She refused, like the wife of Milton, to return, and the world of England seemed to applaud her resolution. One child-afterwards Countess of Lovelace-was the fruit of this unhappy marriage. Before the separation took place, Byron's muse, which had been lulled or deadened by the comparative calm of domestic life, was stimulated to activity by his deepening misfortunes, and he produced the Siege of Corinth and Parisina. Miserable, reckless, yet conscious of his own newly awakened strength, Byron left England Once more upon the waters, yet once more!— and visiting France and Brussels, pursued his course along the Rhine to Geneva. Here, in six months, he had composed the third canto of Childe Harold, and the Prisoner of Chillon. His mental energy gathered force from the loneliness of his situation, The and his disgust with his native country. scenery of Switzerland and Italy next breathed its inspiration: Manfred and the Lament of Tasso were produced in 1817. In the following year, whilst residing chiefly at Venice, and making one memorable visit to Rome, he completed Childe Harold, and threw off his light humorous poem of Beppo, the first-fruits of the more easy and genial manners of the continent on his excitable temperament. At Venice, and afterwards at Ravenna, Byron resided till 1821, writing various worksMazeppa, the first five cantos of Don Juan, and his dramas of Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, thể Two Foscari, Werner, Cain, the Deformed Transformed, &c. The year 1822 he passed chiefly at Pisa, continuing Don Juan, which ultimately extended to fifteen cantos. We have not touched on his private history or indulgences. At Venice he plunged into the grossest excesses, and associated (says Shelley) with 'wretches who seemed almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man.' From this state of debasement he was partly rescued by an attachment to a young Romagnese lady of twenty, recently married to an old and wealthy nobleman, Count Guiccioli. The licence of Italian manners permitted the intercourse until the lady took the bold step of deserting her husband. She was then thrown upon Byron, and they continued to live together until the poet departed for Greece. His genius had begun to 'pale its fire:' his dramas were stiff, declamatory, and undramatic; and the successive cantos of Don Juan betrayed the downward course of the poet's habits. The wit and knowledge of that wonderful poem-its passion, variety, and originality-were now debased with inferior matter; and the world saw with rejoicing the poet break away from his Circean enchantments, and enter upon a new and nobler field of exertion. He had sympathised deeply with the Italian Carbonari in their efforts for freedom, but a still more interesting country and people claimed his support. His youthful travels and poetical enthusiasm still endeared the 'blue Olympus' to his recollection, and in the summer of 1823 he set sail for Greece, to aid in the struggle for its independence. His arrangements were made with judgment, as well as generosity. Byron knew mankind well, and his plans for the recovery and regeneration of Greece evinced a spirit of patriotic freedom and warm sympathy with the oppressed, happily tempered with practical wisdom and discretion. He arrived, after some danger and delay, at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the 4th of January 1824. All was discord and confusion -a military mob and contending chiefs-turbulence, rapacity, and fraud. In three months he had done much, by his influence and money, to compose differences, repress cruelty, and introduce order. His fluctuating and uncertain health, however, gave way under so severe a discipline. On the 9th of April he was overtaken by a heavy shower whilst taking his daily ride, and an attack of fever and rheumatism followed. Prompt and copious bleeding might have subdued the inflammation, but to this remedy Byron was strongly opposed. It was at length resorted to after seven days of increasing fever, but the disease was then too powerful for remedy. The patient sank into a state of lethargy, and, though conscious of approaching death, could only mutter some indistinct expressions about his wife, his sister, and child. He lay insensible for twenty-four hours, and, opening his eyes for a moment, shut them for ever, and expired on the evening of the 19th of April 1824. The people of Greece publicly mourned for the irreparable loss they had sustained, and the sentiment of grief was soon conveyed to the poet's native country, where his name was still a talisman, and his early death was felt by all as a personal calamity. The body of Byron was brought to England, and after lying in state in London, was interred in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead. Byron has been sometimes compared with Burns. Death and genius have levelled mere external distinctions, and the peer and peasant stand on Lord Byron's Tomb. the same elevation, to meet the gaze and scrutiny of posterity. Both wrote directly from strong personal feelings and impulses; both were the slaves of irregular, uncontrolled passion, and the prey of disappointed hopes and constitutional melancholy; and both died, after a life of extraordinary intellectual activity and excitement, at nearly the same age. We allow for the errors of Burns's position, and Byron's demands a not less tender and candid construction. Neglected in his youththwarted in his first love-left without control or domestic influence when his passions were strongest Lord of himself, that heritage of woe intoxicated with early success and the incense of almost universal admiration, his irregularities must be regarded more with pity than reprehension. After his unhappy marriage, the picture is clouded with darker shadows. The wild licence of his continental life it would be impossible to justify. His excesses became habitual, and impaired both his genius and his strength. He struggled on with untamed pride and trembling susceptibility, but he had almost exhausted the springs of his poetry and his life; and it is too obvious that the pestilential climate of Missolonghi only accelerated an event which a few years must have consummated in Italy. The genius of Byron was as versatile as it was energetic. Childe Harold and Don Juan are perhaps the greatest poetical works of this century, and in the noble poet's tales and minor poems there is a grace, an interest, and romantic picturesqueness, that render them peculiarly fascinating to youthful readers. The Giaour has passages of still higher description and feeling-particularly that fine burst on modern Greece contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exquisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the same country to the human frame bereft of life: [Picture of Modern Greece.] He who hath bent him o'er the dead, The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, And marked the mild angelic air, The rapture of repose that's there The fixed yet tender traits that streak That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now, We start-for soul is wanting there. Hers is the loveliness in death, That parts not quite with parting breath; But beauty with that fearful bloom, That hue which haunts it to the tomb- A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling past away! Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birthWhich gleams-but warms no more its cherished earth! The Prisoner of Chillon is also natural and affecting: the story is painful and hopeless, but it is told with inimitable tenderness and simplicity. The reality of the scenes in Don Juan must strike every reader. Byron, it is well known, took pains to collect his materials. His account of the shipwreck is drawn from narratives of actual occurrences, and his Grecian pictures, feasts, dresses, and holiday pastimes, are literal transcripts from life. Coleridge thought the character of Lambro, and especially the description of his return, the finest of all Byron's efforts; it is more dramatic and lifelike than any other of his numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his Corsairs and dark mysterious personages Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes- are monstrosities in nature, and do not possess one tithe of the interest or permanent poetical beauty that centres in the lonely residence in the Cyclades. The English descriptions in Juan are greatly inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical power, and the peculiar prejudices and forced illnatured satire of the poet are brought prominently forward. Yet even here we have occasionally a flash of the early light that 'led astray.' The sketch of Aurora Raby is graceful and interesting -compared with Haidee, it is something like Fielding's Amelia coming after Sophia Westernand Newstead Abbey is described with a clearness and beauty not unworthy the author of Childe Harold. The Epicurean philosophy of the Childe is visible in every page of Don Juan, but it is no longer grave, dignified, and misanthropical: it is mixed up with wit, humour, the keenest penetration, and the most astonishing variety of expression, from colloquial carelessness and ease, to the highest and deepest tones of the lyre. The poet has the power of Mephistophiles over the scenes and passions of human life and society-disclosing their secret workings, and stripping them of all conventional allurements and disguises. Unfortunately, his knowledge is more of evil than of good. The distinctions between virtue and vice had been broken down or obscured in his own mind, and they are undistinguishable in Don Juan. Early sensuality had tainted his whole nature. He portrays generous emotions and moral feelings-distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humour, wild profanity, and unseasonable mockery. In Childe Harold we have none of this moral anatomy, or its accompanying licentiousness; but there is abundance of scorn and defiance of the ordinary pursuits and ambition of mankind. The fairest portions of the earth are traversed in a spirit of bitterness and desolation by one satiated with pleasure, contemning society, the victim of a dreary and hopeless scepticism. Such a character would have been repulsive if the poem had not been adorned with the graces of animated description and original and striking sentiment. The poet's sketches of Spanish and Grecian scenery, and his glimpses of the life and manners of the classic mountaineers, are as true as were ever transferred to canvas; and the meditations of the Pilgrim on the particular events which adorned or cursed the soil he trod, are marked with fervour and sublimity. Thus on the field of Albuera, he conjures up an image of war, one of the noblest creations in poetry: [Image of War.] Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note? Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath? Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands, Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done; In surveying the ruins of Athens, the spirit of Byron soars to its loftiest flight, picturing its fallen glories, and indulging in the most touching and magnificent strain of his sceptical philosophy. [Ancient Greece.] Ancient of days! august Athena! where, First in the race that led to Glory's goal, tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs 't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not, to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound: Far on the solitary shore he sleeps: He fell, and falling, nations mourned around; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps: Is that a temple where a god may dwell? Why, even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell. Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall, The dome of thought, the palace of the soul: Behold through each lack-lustre eyeless hole, The gay recess of wisdom and of wit, ! And passion's host, that never brooked control: Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! 'All that we know is, nothing car be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath his pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron : There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But silence spreads the couch of ever-welcome rest. Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be With those who made our mortal labours light! The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! The third canto of Childe Harold is more deeply imbued with a love of nature than any of his previous productions. A new power had been imparted to him on the shores of the 'Leman lake.' He had just escaped from the strife of London and his own domestic unhappiness, and his conversations with Shelley might have turned him more strongly to this pure poetical source. The poetry of Wordsworth had also unconsciously lent its influence. An evening scene by the side of the lake is thus exquisitely described: It is the hush of night; and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seenSave darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood: on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more; He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill ! At intervals, some bird from out the brakes, Starts into voice a moment-then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hillBut that is fancy, for the star-light dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues. A forcible contrast to this still scene is then given in a brief description of the same landscape during a thunder-storm: The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night, And this is in the night: most glorious night! In the fourth canto there is a greater throng of images and objects. The poet opens with a sketch of the peculiar beauty and departed greatness of Venice, rising from the sea, 'with her tiara of proud towers' in air distance. He then resumes his pilgrimage-moralises on the scenes of Petrarch and Tasso, Dante and Boccaccio-and visits the lake of Thrasimene and the temple of Clitumnus. [Temple of Clitumnus.] But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave And most serene of aspect and most clear! And on thy happy shore a temple still, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps The Greek statues at Florence are then inimitably described, after which the poet visits Rome, and revels in the ruins of the Palatine and Coliseum, and the glorious remains of ancient art. His dreams of love and beauty, of intellectual power and majesty, are here realised. The lustre of the classic age feel that in this intense appreciation of ideal beauty seems reflected back in his glowing pages, and we and sculptured grace-in passionate energy and ecstasy-Byron outstrips all his contemporaries. The poem concludes abruptly with an apostrophe to the sea, his joy of youthful sports,' and a source of lofty enthusiasm and pleasure in his solitary wanderings on the shores of Italy and Greece. The greatness of Byron's genius is seen in Childe Haroldits tenderness in the tales and smaller poems-its rich variety in Don Juan. A brighter garland few poets can hope to wear-yet it wants the unfading flowers of hope and virtue. [The Gladiator.] I see before me the gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand; his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low: And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him; he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire! [Apostrophe to the Ocean.] There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep 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 ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groanWithout a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray, And howling to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war: These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear; For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. [An Italian Evening on the Banks of the Brenta.] [From Childe Harold.] The moon is up, and yet it is not nightSunset divides the sky with her a sea Of glory streams along the alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains: heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be Melted to one vast Iris of the west, Where the day joins the past eternity; While on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air-an island of the blest. A single star is at her side, and reigns Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows. Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse : And now they change; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray. [Midnight Scene in Rome-the Coliseum.] The stars are forth, the moon above the tops I learned the language of another world. |