GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. Scott retreated from poetry into the wide and open field of prose fiction as the genius of Byron began to display its strength and fertility. A new, or at least a more finished, nervous, and lofty style of poetry was introduced by the noble author, who was as much a mannerist as Scott, but of a different school. He excelled in painting the strong and gloomy passions of our nature, contrasted with feminine softness and delicacy. Scott, intent upon beauty and splendour-by haunted streams and mountains, enriched with the glories of ancient poetry and valour; but the same dark shadow was ever by his side-the same scorn and mockery of human hopes and ambition. The sententious force and elevation of his thoughts and language, his eloquent expression of sentiment, and the mournful and solemn melody of his tender and pathetic passages, seemed, however, to do more than atone for his want of moral truth and reality. The man and the poet were so intimately blended, and the spectacle presented by both was so touching, mysterious, and lofty, that Byron concentrated a degree of interest and anxiety on his successive public appearances, which no author ever before was able to boast. Scott had created the public taste for animated poetry, and Byron, taking advantage of it, soon engrossed the whole field. For a few years it seemed as if the world held only one great poet. The chivalry of Scott, the philosophy of Wordsworth, the abstract theory and imagination of Southey, and even the lyrical beauties of Moore and Campbell, were for a time eclipsed by this new and greater light. The rank, youth, and misfortunes of Byron, his exile from England, the mystery which he loved to throw around his history and feelings, the apparent depth of his sufferings and attachments, and his very misanthropy and scepticism-relieved by bursts of tenderness and pity, and by the incidental expression of high and holy feelings-formed a combination of personal circumstances in aid of the legitimate effects of his passionate and graceful poetry, which is unparalleled 6 for the ambitious few; his genius will be a source of wonder and delight to all who love to contemplate the workings of human passion, in solitude and society, and the rich effects of taste and imagination. in the history of modern literature. Such a result is even more wonderful than the laurelled honours awarded to Virgil and Petrarch, if we consider the difference between ancient and modern manners, and the temperament of the northern nations compared with that of the 'sunny south.' Has the The incidents of Byron's life may be briefly spell yet broke? Has the glory faded into the related. He was born in Holles Street, London, on common light of day?' Undoubtedly the later the 22d of January 1788, the only son of Captain writings of the noble bard helped to dispel the John Byron of the Guards, and Catherine Gordon illusion. To competent observers, these works added of Gight, an Aberdeenshire heiress. The lady's to the impression of Byron's powers as an original fortune was soon squandered by her profligate huspoet, but they tended to exorcise the spirit of band, and she retired to the city of Aberdeen, to romance from his name and history; and what Don bring up her son on a reduced income of about £130 Juan failed to effect, was accomplished by the per annum. The little lame boy, endeared to all in biography of Moore. His poetry, however, must spite of his mischief, succeeded his grand-uncle, always have a powerful effect on minds of poetical William Lord Byron, in his eleventh year; and the and warm sensibilities. If it is a 'rank unweeded happy mother sold off her effects-which realised garden,' it also contains glorious fruits and plants just £74, 17s. 4d.—and left Aberdeen for Newstead of celestial seed. The art of the poet will be a study | Abbey. The seat of the Byrons was a large and ancient, but dilapidated structure, founded as a priory in the twelfth century by Henry II., and situated in the midst of the fertile and interesting district once known as Sherwood Forest. On the dissolution of the monasteries, it was conferred by Henry VIII. on Sir John Byron, steward of Manchester and Rochdale, who converted the venerable convent into a castellated mansion. The family was ennobled by Charles I., in consequence of high and honourable services rendered to the royal cause during the Civil War. On succeeding to the title, Byron was put to a private school at Dulwich, and from thence he was sent to Harrow. During his minority, the estate was let to another party, but its youthful lord occasionally visited the seat of his ancestors; and whilst there in 1803, he conceived a passion for a young lady in the neighbourhood, who, under her name of Mary Chaworth, has obtained a poetical immortality. So early as his eighth year, Byron fell in love with a simple Scottish maiden, Mary Duff; and hearing of her marriage, several years afterwards, was, he says, like a thunder-stroke to him. He had also been captivated with a boyish love for his cousin, Margaret Parker, 'one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings,' who died about a year or two afterwards. He was fifteen when he met Mary Chaworth, and 'conceived an attachment which, young as he was even then for such a feeling, sunk so deep into his mind as to give a colour to all his future life.' The father of the lady had been killed in a duel by Lord Byron, the eccentric grand-uncle of the poet, and the union of the young peer with the heiress of Annesley Hall would,' said Byron, 'have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers; it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill-matched in years-she was two years my elder-and-andand-what has been the result?' Mary Chaworth saw little in the lame boy, and became the betrothed of another. They had one parting interview in the following year, which, in his poem of the Dream, Byron has described in the most exquisite colours of descriptive poetry. 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 excessesstudying 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, and his disgust with his native country. The 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, the 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 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 same age. 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, 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 The languor of the placid cheek And-but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now, And curdles to the gazer's heart, The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon- 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, 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, And passion's host, that never brooked control: Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! 'All that we know is, nothing can be known.' |