Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  Such a passion, indeed, had he for arms of every description, that there generally lay a small sword by the side of his bed, with which he used to amuse himself, as he lay awake in the morning, by thrusting it through his bed-hangings. The person who purchased this bed at the sale of Mrs. Byron’s furniture, on her removal to Newstead, gave out — with the view of attaching a stronger interest to the holes in the curtains — that they were pierced by the same sword with which the old lord had killed Mr. Chaworth, and which his descendant always kept as a memorial by his bedside. Such is the ready process by which fiction is often engrafted upon fact; — the sword in question being a most innocent and bloodless weapon, which Lord Byron, during his visits at Southwell, used to borrow of one of his neighbours.

  His fondness for dogs — another fancy which accompanied him through life — may be judged from the anecdotes already given, in the account of his expedition to Harrowgate. Of his favourite dog Boatswain, whom he has immortalised in verse, and by whose side it was once his solemn purpose to be buried, some traits are told, indicative, not only of intelligence, but of a generosity of spirit, which might well win for him the affections of such a master as Byron. One of these I shall endeavour to relate as nearly as possible as it was told to me. Mrs. Byron had a fox-terrier, called Gilpin, with whom her son’s dog, Boatswain, was perpetually at war, taking every opportunity of attacking and worrying him so violently, that it was very much apprehended he would kill the animal. Mrs. Byron therefore sent off her terrier to a tenant at Newstead; and on the departure of Lord Byron for Cambridge, his “friend” Boatswain, with two other dogs, was intrusted to the care of a servant till his return. One morning the servant was much alarmed by the disappearance of Boatswain, and throughout the whole of the day he could hear no tidings of him. At last, towards evening, the stray dog arrived, accompanied by Gilpin, whom he led immediately to the kitchen fire, licking him and lavishing upon him every possible demonstration of joy. The fact was, he had been all the way to Newstead to fetch him; and having now established his former foe under the roof once more, agreed so perfectly well with him ever after, that he even protected him against the insults of other dogs (a task which the quarrelsomeness of the little terrier rendered no sinecure), and, if he but heard Gilpin’s voice in distress, would fly instantly to his rescue.

  In addition to the natural tendency to superstition, which is usually found connected with the poetical temperament, Lord Byron had also the example and influence of his mother, acting upon him from infancy, to give his mind this tinge. Her implicit belief in the wonders of second sight, and the strange tales she told of this mysterious faculty, used to astonish not a little her sober English friends; and it will be seen, that, at so late a period as the death of his friend Shelley, the idea of fetches and forewarnings impressed upon him by his mother had not wholly lost possession of the poet’s mind. As an instance of a more playful sort of superstition I may be allowed to mention a slight circumstance told me of him by one of his Southwell friends. This lady had a large agate bead with a wire through it, which had been taken out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking one day what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet, and the charm was, that as long as she had this bead in her possession, she should never be in love. “Then give it to me,” he cried, eagerly, “for that’s just the thing I want.” The young lady refused; — but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She taxed him with the theft, and he owned it; but said, she never should see her amulet again.

  Of his charity and kind-heartedness he left behind him at Southwell — as, indeed, at every place, throughout life, where he resided any time — the most cordial recollections. “He never,” says a person, who knew him intimately at this period, “met with objects of distress without affording them succour.” Among many little traits of this nature, which his friends delight to tell, I select the following, — less as a proof of his generosity, than from the interest which the simple incident itself, as connected with the name of Byron, presents. While yet a school-boy, he happened to be in a bookseller’s shop at Southwell, when a poor woman came in to purchase a Bible. The price, she was told by the shopman, was eight shillings. “Ah, dear sir,” she exclaimed, “I cannot pay such a price; I did not think it would cost half the money.” The woman was then, with a look of disappointment, going away, — when young Byron called her back, and made her a present of the Bible.

  In his attention to his person and dress, to the becoming arrangement of his hair, and to whatever might best show off the beauty with which nature had gifted him, he manifested, even thus early, his anxiety to make himself pleasing to that sex who were, from first to last, the ruling stars of his destiny. The fear of becoming, what he was naturally inclined to be, enormously fat, had induced him, from his first entrance at Cambridge, to adopt, for the purpose of reducing himself, a system of violent exercise and abstinence, together with the frequent use of warm baths. But the embittering circumstance of his life, — that, which haunted him like a curse, amidst the buoyancy of youth, and the anticipations of fame and pleasure, was, strange to say, the trifling deformity of his foot. By that one slight blemish (as in his moments of melancholy he persuaded himself) all the blessings that nature had showered upon him were counterbalanced. His reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected, endeavoured to cheer and rouse him, by representing, in their brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence had endowed him, — and, among the greatest, that of “a mind which placed him above the rest of mankind.”— “Ah, my dear friend,” said Byron, mournfully,— “if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far, far below them.”

  It sometimes, indeed, seemed as if his sensitiveness on this point led him to fancy that he was the only person in the world afflicted with such an infirmity. When that accomplished scholar and traveller, Mr. D. Baillie, who was at the same school with him at Aberdeen, met him afterwards at Cambridge, the young peer had then grown so fat that, though accosted by him familiarly as his school-fellow, it was not till he mentioned his name that Mr. Baillie could recognise him. “It is odd enough, too, that you shouldn’t know me,” said Byron— “I thought nature had set such a mark upon me, that I could never be forgot.”

  But, while this defect was such a source of mortification to his spirit, it was also, and in an equal degree, perhaps, a stimulus: — and more especially in whatever depended upon personal prowess or attractiveness, he seemed to feel himself piqued by this stigma, which nature, as he thought, had set upon him, to distinguish himself above those whom she had endowed with her more “fair proportion.” In pursuits of gallantry he was, I have no doubt, a good deal actuated by this incentive; and the hope of astonishing the world, at some future period, as a chieftain and hero, mingled little less with his young dreams than the prospect of a poet’s glory. “I will, some day or other,” he used to say, when a boy, “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 have already adverted to the exceeding eagerness with which, while at Harrow, he devoured all sorts of learning, — excepting only that which, by the regimen of the school, was prescribed for him. The same rapid and multifarious course of study he pursued during the holidays; and, in order to deduct as little as possible from his hours of exercise, he had given himself the habit, while at home, of reading all dinner-time. In a mind so versatile as his, every novelty, whether serious or light, whether lofty or ludicrous, found a welcome and an echo; and I can easily conceive the glee — as a friend of his once described it to me — with which he brought to her, one evening, a copy of Mother Goose’s Tales, which he had bought from a hawker that morning, and read, for the first time, while he dined.

  I shall now give, from a memorandum-book begun by him this year, the accou
nt, as I find it hastily and promiscuously scribbled out, of all the books in various departments of knowledge, which he had already perused at a period of life when few of his school-fellows had yet travelled beyond their longs and shorts. The list is, unquestionably, a remarkable one; — and when we recollect that the reader of all these volumes was, at the same time, the possessor of a most retentive memory, it may be doubted whether, among what are called the regularly educated, the contenders for scholastic honours and prizes, there could be found a single one who, at the same age, has possessed any thing like the same stock of useful knowledge.

  “LIST OF HISTORICAL WRITERS WHOSE WORKS I

  HAVE PERUSED IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.”

  “History of England. — Hume, Rapin, Henry, Smollet, Tindal, Belsham, Bisset, Adolphus, Holinshed, Froissart’s Chronicles (belonging properly to France).

  “Scotland. — Buchanan, Hector Boethius, both in the Latin.

  “Ireland. — Gordon.

  “Rome. — Hooke, Decline and Fall by Gibbon, Ancient History by Rollin (including an account of the Carthaginians, &c.), besides Livy, Tacitus, Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Julius Cæsar, Arrian. Sallust.

  “Greece. — Mitford’s Greece, Leland’s Philip, Plutarch, Potter’s Antiquities, Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus.

  “France. — Mezeray, Voltaire.

  “Spain. — I chiefly derived my knowledge of old Spanish History from a book called the Atlas, now obsolete. The modern history, from the intrigues of Alberoni down to the Prince of Peace, I learned from its connection with European politics.

  “Portugal. — From Vertot; as also his account of the Siege of Rhodes, — though the last is his own invention, the real facts being totally different. — So much for his Knights of Malta.

  “Turkey. — I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut, and Prince Cantemir, besides a more modern history, anonymous. Of the Ottoman History I know every event, from Tangralopi, and afterwards Othman I., to the peace of Passarowitz, in 1718, — the battle of Cutzka, in 1739, and the treaty between Russia and Turkey in 1790.

  “Russia. — Tooke’s Life of Catherine II., Voltaire’s Czar Peter.

  “Sweden. — Voltaire’s Charles XII., also Norberg’s Charles XII. — in my opinion the best of the two. — A translation of Schiller’s Thirty Years’ War, which contains the exploits of Gustavus Adolphus, besides Harte’s Life of the same Prince. I have somewhere, too, read an account of Gustavus Vasa, the deliverer of Sweden, but do not remember the author’s name.

  “Prussia. — I have seen, at least, twenty Lives of Frederick II., the only prince worth recording in Prussian annals. Gillies, his own Works, and Thiebault, — none very amusing. The last is paltry, but circumstantial.

  “Denmark — I know little of. Of Norway I understand the natural history, but not the chronological.

  “Germany. — I have read long histories of the house of Suabia, Wenceslaus, and, at length, Rodolph of Hapsburgh and his thick-lipped Austrian descendants.

  “Switzerland. — Ah! William Tell, and the battle of Morgarten, where Burgundy was slain.

  “Italy. — Davila, Guicciardini, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the battle of Pavia, Massaniello, the revolutions of Naples, &c. &c.

  “Hindostan — Orme and Cambridge.

  “America. — Robertson, Andrews’ American War.

  “Africa — merely from travels, as Mungo Park, Bruce.

  “BIOGRAPHY.

  “Robertson’s Charles V. — Cæsar, Sallust (Catiline and Jugurtha), Lives of Marlborough and Eugene, Tekeli, Bonnard, Buonaparte, all the British Poets, both by Johnson and Anderson, Rousseau’s Confessions, Life of Cromwell, British Plutarch, British Nepos, Campbell’s Lives of the Admirals, Charles XII., Czar Peter, Catherine II., Henry Lord Kaimes, Marmontel, Teignmouth’s Sir William Jones, Life of Newton, Belisaire, with thousands not to be detailed.

  “LAW.

  “Blackstone, Montesquieu.

  “PHILOSOPHY.

  “Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drummond, Beattie, and Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest.

  “GEOGRAPHY.

  “Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie.

  “POETRY.

  “All the British Classics as before detailed, with most of the living poets, Scott, Southey, &c. — Some French, in the original, of which the Cid is my favourite. — Little Italian. — Greek and Latin without number; — these last I shall give up in future. — I have translated a good deal from both languages, verse as well as prose.

  “ELOQUENCE.

  “Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, Austin’s Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates from the Revolution to the year 1742.

  “DIVINITY.

  “Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker, — all very tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and Thirty-nine Articles.

  “MISCELLANIES.

  “Spectator, Rambler, World, &c. &c. — Novels by the thousand.

  “All the books here enumerated I have taken down from memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote passages from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making love to women. B. — Nov. 30. 1807.

  “I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, &c. &c. The book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is “Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy,” the most amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If, however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty other works with which I am acquainted, — at least, in the English language.”

  To this early and extensive study of English writers may be attributed that mastery over the resources of his own language with which Lord Byron came furnished into the field of literature, and which enabled him, as fast as his youthful fancies sprung up, to clothe them with a diction worthy of their strength and beauty. In general, the difficulty of young writers, at their commencement, lies far less in any lack of thoughts or images, than in that want of a fitting organ to give those conceptions vent, to which their unacquaintance with the great instrument of the man of genius, his native language, dooms them. It will be found, indeed, that the three most remarkable examples of early authorship, which, in their respective lines, the history of literature affords — Pope, Congreve, and Chatterton — were all of them persons self-educated, according to their own intellectual wants and tastes, and left, undistracted by the worse than useless pedantries of the schools, to seek, in the pure “well of English undefiled,” those treasures of which they accordingly so very early and intimately possessed themselves. To these three instances may now be added, virtually, that of Lord Byron, who, though a disciple of the schools, was, intellectually speaking, in them, not of them, and who, while his comrades were prying curiously into the graves of dead languages, betook himself to the fresh, living sources of his own, and from thence drew those rich, varied stores of diction, which have placed his works, from the age of two-and-twenty upwards, among the most precious depositories of the strength and sweetness of the English language that our whole literature supplies.

  In the same book that contains the above record of his studies, he has written out, also from memory, a “List of the different poets, dramatic or otherwise, who have distinguished their respective languages by their productions.” After enumerating the various poets, both ancient and modern, of Europe, he thus proceeds with his catalogue through other quarters of the world: —

  “Arabia.
— Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime poetical passages, far surpassing European poetry.

  “Persia. — Ferdousi, author of the Shah Nameh, the Persian Iliad — Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal Hafiz, the oriental Anacreon. The last is reverenced beyond any bard of ancient or modern times by the Persians, who resort to his tomb near Shiraz, to celebrate his memory. A splendid copy of his works is chained to his monument.

  “America. — An epic poet has already appeared in that hemisphere, Barlow, author of the Columbiad, — not to be compared with the works of more polished nations.

  “Iceland, Denmark, Norway, were famous for their Skalds. Among these Lodburgh was one of the most distinguished. His Death Song breathes ferocious sentiments, but a glorious and impassioned strain of poetry.

  “Hindostan is undistinguished by any great bard, — at least the Sanscrit is so imperfectly known to Europeans, we know not what poetical relics may exist.

  “The Birman Empire. — Here the natives are passionately fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown.

  “China. — I never heard of any Chinese poet but the Emperor Kien Long, and his ode to Tea. What a pity their philosopher Confucius did not write poetry, with his precepts of morality!

  “Africa. — In Africa some of the native melodies are plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; but whether their rude strains of nature can be classed with poetry, as the songs of the bards, the Skalds of Europe, &c. &c., I know not.

  “This brief list of poets I have written down from memory, without any book of reference; consequently some errors may occur, but I think, if any, very trivial. The works of the European, and some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in the original or translations. In my list of English, I have merely mentioned the greatest; — to enumerate the minor poets would be useless, as well as tedious. Perhaps Gray, Goldsmith, and Collins, might have been added, as worthy of mention, in a cosmopolite account. But as for the others, from Chaucer down to Churchill, they are ‘voces et præterea nihil;’ — sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible: — he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune. English living poets I have avoided mentioning; — we have none who will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us; and another century will sweep our empire, our literature, and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind.