by Thomas Moore
Sometimes, however, he shows a disposition to stand by his original decisions. Thus, on the passage relating to a writer of certain obscure Epics (v. 793.), he says,— “All right;” adding, of the same person, “I saw some letters of this fellow to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions (which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of) he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly regret assailing him; — even were it unjust, which it is not; for, verily, he is an ass.” On the strong lines, too (v. 953.), upon Clarke (a writer in a magazine called the Satirist), he remarks,— “Right enough, — this was well deserved and well laid on.”
To the whole paragraph, beginning “Illustrious Holland,” are affixed the words “Bad enough; — and on mistaken grounds besides.” The bitter verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces “Wrong also: — the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;” — and of a subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, “Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be.” Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he tells us, “She has since married the Morning Post, — an exceeding good match.” To the verses, “When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,” &c., he has appended the following interesting note:— “This was meant at poor Blackett, who was then patronised by A.I.B.; — but that I did not know, or this would not have been written; at least I think not.”
Farther on, where Mr. Campbell and other poets are mentioned, the following gingle on the names of their respective poems is scribbled: —
“Pretty Miss Jacqueline Had a nose aquiline; And would assert rude Things of Miss Gertrude; While Mr. Marmion Led a great army on, Making Kehama look Like a fierce Mamaluke.”
Opposite the paragraph in praise of Mr. Crabbe he has written, “I consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times in point of power and genius.” On his own line, in a subsequent paragraph, “And glory, like the phoenix mid her fires,” he says, comically, “The devil take that phoenix — how came it there?” and his concluding remark on the whole poem is as follows: —
“The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written; not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such as I cannot approve.
Byron”.
“Diodata, Geneva, July 14. 1816.”
While engaged in preparing his new edition for the press, he was also gaily dispensing the hospitalities of Newstead to a party of young college friends, whom, with the prospect of so long an absence from England, he had assembled round him at the Abbey, for a sort of festive farewell. The following letter from one of the party, Charles Skinner Matthews, though containing much less of the noble host himself than we could have wished, yet, as a picture, taken freshly and at the moment, of a scene so pregnant with character, will, I have little doubt, be highly acceptable to the reader.
LETTER FROM CHARLES SKINNER MATTHEWS, ESQ. TO MISS I.M. “London, May 22. 1809.
“My dear —— ,
“I must begin with giving you a few particulars of the singular place which I have lately quitted.
“Newstead Abbey is situate 136 miles from London, — four on this side Mansfield. It is so fine a piece of antiquity, that I should think there must be a description, and, perhaps, a picture of it in Grose. The ancestors of its present owner came into possession of it at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, — but the building itself is of a much earlier date. Though sadly fallen to decay, it is still completely an abbey, and most part of it is still standing in the same state as when it was first built. There are two tiers of cloisters, with a variety of cells and rooms about them, which, though not inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state, might easily be made so; and many of the original rooms, amongst which is a fine stone hall, are still in use. Of the abbey church only one end remains; and the old kitchen, with a long range of apartments, is reduced to a heap of rubbish. Leading from the abbey to the modern part of the habitation is a noble room seventy feet in length, and twenty-three in breadth; but every part of the house displays neglect and decay, save those which the present Lord has lately fitted up.
“The house and gardens are entirely surrounded by a wall with battlements. In front is a large lake, bordered here and there with castellated buildings, the chief of which stands on an eminence at the further extremity of it. Fancy all this surrounded with bleak and barren hills, with scarce a tree to be seen for miles, except a solitary clump or two, and you will have some idea of Newstead. For the late Lord being at enmity with his son, to whom the estate was secured by entail, resolved, out of spite to the same, that the estate should descend to him in as miserable a plight as he could possibly reduce it to; for which cause, he took no care of the mansion, and fell to lopping of every tree he could lay his hands on, so furiously, that he reduced immense tracts of woodland country to the desolate state I have just described. However, his son died before him, so that all his rage was thrown away.
“So much for the place, concerning which I have thrown together these few particulars, meaning my account to be, like the place itself, without any order or connection. But if the place itself appear rather strange to you, the ways of the inhabitants will not appear much less so. Ascend, then, with me the hall steps, that I may introduce you to my Lord and his visitants. But have a care how you proceed; be mindful to go there in broad daylight, and with your eyes about you. For, should you make any blunder, — should you go to the right of the hall steps, you are laid hold of by a bear; and should you go to the left, your case is still worse, for you run full against a wolf! — Nor, when you have attained the door, is your danger over; for the hall being decayed, and therefore standing in need of repair, a bevy of inmates are very probably banging at one end of it with their pistols; so that if you enter without giving loud notice of your approach, you have only escaped the wolf and the bear to expire by the pistol-shots of the merry monks of Newstead.
“Our party consisted of Lord Byron and four others, and was, now and then, increased by the presence of a neighbouring parson. As for our way of living, the order of the day was generally this: — for breakfast we had no set hour, but each suited his own convenience, — every thing remaining on the table till the whole party had done; though had one wished to breakfast at the early hour of ten, one would have been rather lucky to find any of the servants up. Our average hour of rising was one. I, who generally got up between eleven and twelve, was always, — even when an invalid, — the first of the party, and was esteemed a prodigy of early rising. It was frequently past two before the breakfast party broke up. Then, for the amusements of the morning, there was reading, fencing, single-stick, or shuttle-cock, in the great room; practising with pistols in the hall; walking — riding — cricket — sailing on the lake, playing with the bear, or teasing the wolf. Between seven and eight we dined; and our evening lasted from that time till one, two, or three in the morning. The evening diversions may be easily conceived.
“I must not omit the custom of handing round, after dinner, on the removal of the cloth, a human skull filled with burgundy. After revelling on choice viands, and the finest wines of France, we adjourned to tea, where we amused ourselves with reading, or improving conversation, — each, according to his fancy, — and, after sandwiches, &c. retired to rest. A set of monkish dresses, which had been provided, with all the proper apparatus of crosses, beads, tonsures, &c. often gave a variety to our appearance, and to our pursuits.
“You may easily imagine how chagrined I was at being ill nearly the first half of the time I was there. But I was led into a very different reflection from that of Dr. Swift, who left Pope’s house without ceremony, and afterwards informed him, by letter, that it was impossible for two sick friends to live together; for I found my shivering and invalid frame so perpetually annoyed by the thoughtless and tumultuous health of every one about me, that I heartily wished every soul in the house to be as ill as myself.
“The journey back I performed on foot, togeth
er with another of the guests. We walked about twenty-five miles a day; but were a week on the road, from being detained by the rain.
“So here I close my account of an expedition which has somewhat extended my knowledge of this country. And where do you think I am going next? To Constantinople! — at least, such an excursion has been proposed to me. Lord B. and another friend of mine are going thither next month, and have asked me to join the party; but it seems to be but a wild scheme, and requires twice thinking upon.
“Addio, my dear I., yours very affectionately,
“C.S. MATTHEWS.”
Having put the finishing hand to his new edition, he, without waiting for the fresh honours that were in store for him, took leave of London (whither he had returned) on the 11th of June, and, in about a fortnight after, sailed for Lisbon.
Great as was the advance which his powers had made, under the influence of that resentment from which he now drew his inspiration, they were yet, even in his Satire, at an immeasurable distance from the point to which they afterwards so triumphantly rose. It is, indeed, remarkable that, essentially as his genius seemed connected with, and, as it were, springing out of his character, the developement of the one should so long have preceded the full maturity of the resources of the other. By her very early and rapid expansion of his sensibilities, Nature had given him notice of what she destined him for, long before he understood the call; and those materials of poetry with which his own fervid temperament abounded were but by slow degrees, and after much self-meditation, revealed to him. In his Satire, though vigorous, there is but little foretaste of the wonders that followed it. His spirit was stirred, but he had not yet looked down into its depths, nor does even his bitterness taste of the bottom of the heart, like those sarcasms which he afterwards flung in the face of mankind. Still less had the other countless feelings and passions, with which his soul had been long labouring, found an organ worthy of them; — the gloom, the grandeur, the tenderness of his nature, all were left without a voice, till his mighty genius, at last, awakened in its strength.
In stooping, as he did, to write after established models, as well in the Satire as in his still earlier poems, he showed how little he had yet explored his own original resources, or found out those distinctive marks by which he was to be known through all times. But, bold and energetic as was his general character, he was, in a remarkable degree, diffident in his intellectual powers. The consciousness of what he could achieve was but by degrees forced upon him, and the discovery of so rich a mine of genius in his soul came with no less surprise on himself than on the world. It was from the same slowness of self-appreciation that, afterwards, in the full flow of his fame, he long doubted, as we shall see, his own aptitude for works of wit and humour, — till the happy experiment of “Beppo” at once dissipated this distrust, and opened a new region of triumph to his versatile and boundless powers.
But, however far short of himself his first writings must be considered, there is in his Satire a liveliness of thought, and still more a vigour and courage, which, concurring with the justice of his cause and the sympathies of the public on his side, could not fail to attach instant celebrity to his name. Notwithstanding, too, the general boldness and recklessness of his tone, there were occasionally mingled with this defiance some allusions to his own fate and character, whose affecting earnestness seemed to answer for their truth, and which were of a nature strongly to awaken curiosity as well as interest. One or two of these passages, as illustrative of the state of his mind at this period, I shall here extract. The loose and unfenced state in which his youth was left to grow wild upon the world is thus touchingly alluded to: —
“Ev’n I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng, Just skill’d to know the right and choose the wrong, Freed at that age when Reason’s shield is lost To fight my course through Passion’s countless host, Whom every path of Pleasure’s flowery way Has lured in turn, and all have led astray — Ev’n I must raise my voice, ev’n I must feel Such scenes, such men destroy the public weal: Although some kind, censorious friend will say, ‘What art thou better, meddling fool, than they?’ And every brother Rake will smile to see That miracle, a Moralist, in me.”
But the passage in which, hastily thrown off as it is, we find the strongest traces of that wounded feeling, which bleeds, as it were, through all his subsequent writings, is the following: —
“The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall From lips that now may seem imbued with gall, Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise The meanest thing that crawl’d beneath my eyes. But now so callous grown, so changed from youth,” &c.
Some of the causes that worked this change in his character have been intimated in the course of the preceding pages. That there was no tinge of bitterness in his natural disposition, we have abundant testimony, besides his own, to prove. Though, as a child, occasionally passionate and headstrong, his docility and kindness towards those who were themselves kind, is acknowledged by all; and “playful” and “affectionate” are invariably the epithets by which those who knew him in his childhood convey their impression of his character.
Of all the qualities, indeed, of his nature, affectionateness seems to have been the most ardent and most deep. A disposition, on his own side, to form strong attachments, and a yearning desire after affection in return, were the feeling and the want that formed the dream and torment of his existence. We have seen with what passionate enthusiasm he threw himself into his boyish friendships. The all-absorbing and unsuccessful love that followed was, if I may so say, the agony, without being the death, of this unsated desire, which lived on through his life, and filled his poetry with the very soul of tenderness, lent the colouring of its light to even those unworthy ties which vanity or passion led him afterwards to form, and was the last aspiration of his fervid spirit in those stanzas written but a few months before his death: —
“’Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it has ceased to move; Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love!”
It is much, I own, to be questioned, whether, even under the most favourable circumstances, a disposition such as I have here described could have escaped ultimate disappointment, or found any where a resting-place for its imaginings and desires. But, in the case of Lord Byron, disappointment met him on the very threshold of life. His mother, to whom his affections first, naturally with ardour, turned, either repelled them rudely, or capriciously trifled with them. In speaking of his early days to a friend at Genoa, a short time before his departure for Greece, he traced the first feelings of pain and humiliation he had ever known to the coldness with which his mother had received his caresses in infancy, and the frequent taunts on his personal deformity with which she had wounded him.
The sympathy of a sister’s love, of all the influences on the mind of a youth the most softening, was also, in his early days, denied to him, — his sister Augusta and he having seen but little of each other while young. A vent through the calm channel of domestic affections might have brought down the high current of his feelings to a level nearer that of the world he had to traverse, and thus saved them from the tumultuous rapids and falls to which this early elevation, in their after-course, exposed them. In the dearth of all home-endearments, his heart had no other resource but in those boyish friendships which he formed at school; and when these were interrupted by his removal to Cambridge, he was again thrown back, isolated, on his own restless desires. Then followed his ill-fated attachment to Miss Chaworth, to which, more than to any other cause, he himself attributed the desolating change then wrought in his disposition.
“I doubt sometimes (he says, in his ‘Detached Thoughts,’) whether, after all, a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me; yet I sometimes long for it. My earliest dreams (as most boys’ dreams are) were martial; but a little later they were all for love and retirement, till the hopeless attachment to M —— C —— began and continued (though sedulously concealed) very early in my teens; and so upwards for
a time. This threw me out again ‘alone on a wide, wide sea.’ In the year 1804 I recollect meeting my sister at General Harcourt’s, in Portland Place. I was then one thing, and as she had always till then found me. When we met again in 1805 (she told me since) that my temper and disposition were so completely altered, that I was hardly to be recognised. I was not then sensible of the change; but I can believe it, and account for it.”
I have already described his parting with Miss Chaworth previously to her marriage. Once again, after that event, he saw her, and for the last time, — being invited by Mr. Chaworth to dine at Annesley not long before his departure from England. The few years that had elapsed since their last meeting had made a considerable change in the appearance and manners of the young poet. The fat, unformed schoolboy was now a slender and graceful young man. Those emotions and passions which at first heighten, and then destroy, beauty, had as yet produced only their favourable effects on his features; and, though with but little aid from the example of refined society, his manners had subsided into that tone of gentleness and self-possession which more than any thing marks the well-bred gentleman. Once only was the latter of these qualities put to the trial, when the little daughter of his fair hostess was brought into the room. At the sight of the child he started involuntarily, — it was with the utmost difficulty he could conceal his emotion; and to the sensations of that moment we are indebted for those touching stanzas, “Well — thou art happy,” &c., which appeared afterwards in a Miscellany published by one of his friends, and are now to be found in the general collection of his works. Under the influence of the same despondent passion, he wrote two other poems at this period, from which, as they exist only in the Miscellany I have just alluded to, and that collection has for some time been out of print, a few stanzas may, not improperly, be extracted here.
