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Art. I.—1. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: with Notices of his Life
2. The National Library. Conducted by
the The Life of Lord
Byron
We do not know whether the public is one half so sick as we are of
the apparently interminable inquest which has been sitting upon the case of this noble
“Martyr of Genius,
” (as National
Library” is prepared for the edification of the people of England, under the conduct
of a minister of the national church: and the very first number of the miscellany is, what?—a
history of some eventful period, big with the Martyr of Genius
” has, of course, the first claim on
the admiration of the most intellectual public in the world. This claim being once satisfied,
it was to be hoped that the public might have leisure for attending to a “History of the
Bible,” and to the labours and the lives of men of whom, the Bible tells us,
“the world was not worthy.
” What can be more meet and right than that
With regard to * Page 268. fine gold may
conceal a variety of much less precious materials. What the crowd of worshippers will say to
this we know not. The fiery furnace is blazing before him; and, perhaps, he may not escape
without a slight experience of its fierceness. It is not our business, however, to bind him and
cast him in. If his prostrations are not sufficiently humble, we must turn him over to the
tender mercies of his brother hierophants, whose faith and zeal appear to be of much more
unquestionable purity. For ourselves, we have only to say that the service in which he is
engaged does not appear to us very happily adapted to his powers. Among the writers of fiction,
indeed, who are now actually swarming about the warm shallows of our modern literature, he
holds a rank of no ordinary distinction. Of one of his achievements, in particular, he has
ample reason to be proud. With an egotism entirely pardonable, he informs us, that read his novel of
”* We cannot forbear to pause one moment to express our own full and
cordial assent to this encomium. We do honestly think that it would scarcely be too much to
pronounce this character to be among the most extraordinary creations in the whole range of
modern fiction. Our judgment has been formed chiefly from the effect we ourselves experienced
from its powers of entertainment. After once be-entry on the stage, without feeling a sort of
tickling anticipation of delight; a gentle agitation of the diaphragm, preparatory to its
subsequent convulsions. At the very mention of her name our lungs were instantly in readiness
to crow; just as the pit and gallery are always in readiness to go off,
the moment that
“There is no account of any great poet, whose genius was of
that dreamy and
” cartilaginous kind, which hath its being in haze,
and draws its nourishment from lights and shadows; which ponders over the mysteries of
trees, and interprets the oracles of bubbling waters.
A dreamy genius is not, perhaps, altogether beyond
comprehension. But what in the name of all that is dreamy and fantastical is a cartilaginous kind of genius? Again:
“It
”—(the ‘was the
first burst of that
” dark, diseased ichor, which afterwards coloured
his effusions; the overflowing suppuration of that satiety and loathing, which rendered
How could any writer think of patching up his composition with these vile rags
from the hospital; these
And then, just conceive a poem rendered original, incomprehensible, and anti-social, by an
effusion of pus and gore! But this is nothing to what follows. The author is speaking of
“He was often strangely rapt—it may have been from his
genius; and—had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged—
” susceptible
of explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amidst the shrouds and rattlings, in
the tranquillity of moonlight, churming an inarticulate melody, he
seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding sheet, crowned with a
halo!
Now what on earth can be the meaning of all this? A moody, silent, and somewhat
unsociable young man is humming a tune to himself on the deck of a packet: whereupon his
companion invests him at once with the sackcloth of a penitent criminal.
” this most
“susceptible of explanationincomprehensible phantasma
”—(to use the author’s own words)—which
“hovered”—(not “about the Leddy say to all this? Would she not be more hopelessly lost in it, than ever she
was even in “the bottomless pit of
” We should, truly, desire no
better sport than that
We must, however, do him the justice to declare, that there is nothing else in
the volume quite so bad as this. The work is, nevertheless, deformed, and rendered sometimes
insufferably tedious, by a perpetual affectation of saying all manner of fine, and deep, and
original things; by a resolution to speculate and analyze through thick and thin, until the
ultimate texture of the mind and character of the poet is laid bare to the inspection of the
reader. One would imagine that it were possible to trace the whole process of assimilation,
through which all the multifarious elements upon which it dieted, were converted into nutriment
by this mighty genius. His lordship himself once asked his friend murk
and the mist, and the abysm of the storm, and the hiding places of guilt,
” and a
vast many other articles of mental luxury, might not contribute to render his hero a prodigy of
all that is incomprehensible and anti-social. All that is gloomy or
terrible in nature, or in man, is supposed to have been mixed up as it were by a sort of
digestive energy, in the mental temperament and constitution of the bard. And the critic
appears to be, throughout, so much in the secret of the whole proceeding, that he is
continually interrupting his narrative in order to tell us how all this is; how it is that the
ingredients of sublimity and grandeur are imperceptibly absorbed into the intellectual system;
till we begin almost to fancy that we are on the very point of seeing the process by which a
genius may become “dreamy and cartilaginous,
” or firm and vigorous, and full
of muscle and tendon. The end, however, usually is, that we carry away with us about as much
satisfaction and instruction as we should from an anatomical lecture which should attempt to
follow the fibres of the bullock’s rump
But what shall we say to good graceful and
humane.
” Happily, however, our vigilance and caution turns out to be much less
needful than we had anticipated. It is true that he has poured out, in vindication of his
friend, many a sentence of most sonorous melody, in ambitious imitation of a certain celebrated
orator, the founder of that noble art which “makes the worse appear the better
reason.
” But then, with matchless effrontery, or infatuation, he has provided us,
in abundant measure, with the most infallible of all antidotes to this “delicious
poison.
” The correspondence, and the journals, and the secret memoranda of the
hero, are perpetually confronting themselves with the pleadings of his apologist. The documents
of the advocate are eternally giving the lie to his sophistry. The features and attributes of
the client are constantly peeping forth, in most sinister contrast with the florid graces of
his devoted rhetorician. And what is the inevitable result of all this, but to render indelible
the very worst impressions which the public have ever received respecting this extraordinary
being? If time was beginning to spread its moss over the characters which speak of his infamy,
here is a sort of old (or middle-aged) Mortality, with his hammer and his chisel, to pick it
out, and deepen the letters, till they challenge every eye by their sharpness and freshness.
And who can rise from their perusal without a full persuasion that genius has rarely been seen
in more degrading combination with selfish and odious passions. It is to no purpose whatever
for Never accustom yourself, Sir, to confound right and wrong; the
woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on’t.
” Even so, (while our
liberal biographer is showing us that men of great intellectual powers are naturally haunted by
ungovernable passions, and that stupendous genius may be allowed to the man’s a profligate, and
there’s an end on’t.
” That there was in his original nature much that
is amiable and generous, it might be unjust and absurd to question. But the hideous part of his
history is, that he outlived this better portion of himself, just as other people outlive their
frailties and their faults; nay, that he seemed, at last, with the frightful perverseness of a
maniac, to cauterize or cut away whatever was healthful in his system, and carefully to
preserve whatever had been touched by the leprosy or the gangrene. He appeared to get more and
more ashamed of virtue as he grew older; till, in his latter days, he used her as his bye word.
“As ugly as virtue
” was, in his mouth, a description of all that is
homely and repulsive. The form of every thing that is morally beautiful and grand, indeed,
never ceased to live in his mind; just as perfection lives in the imagination of any other
artist. But in his own person, he came to shrink from the imputation of respectability and
worth, as he would from that of mediocrity and dulness. We have been told, indeed, that there
runs throughout his character “
”
We can perceive nothing of all this in the pages before us. If he repented of any thing, it was
of the weakness of his early prepossessions in favour of what is a vein of repentance.just and
lovely, and of good report. He resembled those persons who, receding constantly
further from the excellence they once revered, were decorated by some ancient fathers with the
unceremonious title of “
”
But let us, with the materials now supplied to us, venture on a rapid survey of the career of
this singularly and most unhappily gifted being. the Devil’s penitents.
The founder of his family, under circumstances which have few
parallels in the licentiousness of fashionable life. The meanness with which he obliged his
wretched victim to supply him with money would have been disgraceful to the basest
adulteries of the cellar or the garret. A divorce ensued; the guilty pair were married; but
within two years after, such was the brutal and vicious conduct of
”—(l. a year. On the 22nd January, 1788, she gave birth to her only
child,
His mother was excessively fond of him, but nevertheless, it would seem,
tormented him almost beyond endurance. Her passions were often absolutely incontrollable; and,
in her paroxysms, she would sometimes taunt the unhappy boy with his deformity, thus adding
venom to the sting of a misfortune which rankled bitterly in his mind till the end of his
existence. At eight years old he was violently in love—so violently, that when he heard of the
marriage of the young lady many years afterwards, the intelligence nearly choked him, to the
horror of his mother, his own astonishment, and the incredulity of every one else. His other
emotions were equally vehement; for
In 1798 his granduncle died, upon which his mother removed with the young Lord
to Newstead Abbey, which then presented an aspect of grievous desolation. After the fatal
affray with * It is, however, the opinion of Memoirs on Greece
” Worse than all
this, he converted the estate into an inheritance of ruinous litigation, and consigned its
grounds to a state of neglect which rendered them unfit for any but crickets to inhabit. What,
therefore, with a vixen of a mother,—a mad capricious savage for his predecessor,—and a
dilapidated property,—together with a keen sense of the honours of high ancestry, it must be
confessed that his lot was cast in an atmosphere and a soil much less happily fitted for the
cultivation of the gentler qualities, than for the development of those moody eccentricities
which afterwards separated him from his country, and almost from his species.
It may as well be noticed here, once for all, that his unfortunate lameness was
probably at the bottom of those waters of bitterness which were in after life perpetually
overflowing in his character. The anguish and humiliation occasioned by this deformity were
such as he never had magnanimity enough to overcome. In one of his own memoranda, he describes
the horror and mortification which came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of
passion, called him a lame brat. The same agony was constantly breaking
forth throughout the rest of his days. It may be said that he never forgave Nature or
Providence this fatal injury. It was one main, though secret cause, which armed his hand
against every man, and every man’s hand against him. He felt it as other people feel a
wrong. It kept him, we are persuaded, in an almost perpetually vindictive frame of mind. It was the thorn in the flesh sent,
like the messenger of
In 1799, Byron was sent to school at as little prepared,
” says as it is natural to suppose from two years of elementary instruction, thwarted by
every act which could estrange the mind of youth from preceptor, from school, and from all
serious study.
” But here we must pause a moment, that we may not lose the benefit
of silent rages, moody sullenness, and revenge,
are the general characteristics of his conduct as a boy,
” he proceeds to enrich
the world with certain ingenious speculations on the mental character of the poet.
“Genius,
” he tells us, “of every kind,
belongs to some innate temperament, and is an ingredient of mind more easily described by
its effects than its qualities. It is as the fragrance, independent of the freshness and
complexion of the rose; as the light in the cloud; as the bloom on the cheek of beauty, of
which the possessor is unconscious, until the charm has been seen by its influence on
others; it is the internal golden flame of the opal; a something that may be abstracted
from the thing in which it appears, without changing the quality of the substance, its
form, or its affinities.
”
It is to be presumed that the reader, by this time, has a very distinct and
vivid conception of what is to be understood when we talk of genius. If not, he must be
pronounced to be absolutely metaphor-proof: and in that case we can do nothing for him. If,
however, the above figures have duly discharged their office, it can hardly be doubted that
they will enable him easily to see his way to obvious conclusion.
“I, therefore,
”—(that is, because genius is like the fragrance of the rose, and the bloom of beauty, and the
light on the cloud, and the flame of the opal)—“I,
” therefore,
am not disposed to consider the idle and reckless childhood of
From all which, it clearly appears how thankful we ought to be that
At Harrow, according to his own account, what
no one else thought of reading; betraying, to all appearance, the embryo powers of an orator
rather than a poet; passionate alike in his friendships and aversions; but throwing out
occasional flashes of magnanimity and heroism. In 1803, during his schoolboy days, he was
seized with another violent fit of love, being the third affair of the
heart with which he had been visited. The object of this attachment was do you
think I care any thing for that lame boy?
” This speech, as may well be imagined,
was like a shot through his heart. Though the hour was late, he instantly darted out of the
house, and scarcely knowing whither he ran, never stopped till he found himself at Newstead.
One would suppose that this was a chilling blast, strong enough to extinguish the hottest
passion. But it was not so. There is reason to believe that the fire was in his heart for the
remainder of his days. “Our union,
” he says in one of his memorandum books,
“would 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;—and—and—and—what has been the result?
” The result, if
we are to believe him, was, that her marriage was anything but a happy one; and that his early
disappointment gave a darker and more cheerless colouring to his whole existence.
There is something at once ludicrous and frightful in the accounts preserved to
us of his own temper about this period, especially when brought into collision with that of his
lady mother. The explosions produced by the encounter of these hostile elements were
occasionally quite terrific. Each, it seems, was fully aware of the presence of the electric
principle in the other: and as a proof of this, it is told, that one evening, after a
tempestuous eruption of tremendous violence, each party went, privately, to the apothecary,
anxiously inquiring whether the other had been to purchase poison, and cautioning the vendor of
drugs on no account to attend to such an application, if made. On one occasion, the poker and
tongs became the winged messengers of the maternal wrath, and nothing but a precipitate retreat
could save the filial cranium from fracture. Of his residence at the university little is known
that is eminently worthy of remark. It is said that he kept a bear, as a sort of satirical
emblem of certain venerable personages levant and couchant in those retreats. Of his pursuits and recreations
at this period of his life, however, this much at least is clearly ascertained;—that they
betrayed a most incredible coarseness of taste. To use his own language, “the flash
and the swell
” seem to have exercised a most ignoble dominion over his fancy.
Cock-fighting, pugilism, pistol-firing, and revelry, were the things which formed the chief
solace of this haughty patrician. There was, even then, a taint of lowness about his pleasures,
which we know not how to describe, but by applying to them the technical appellation of verminism; and which indicated a grossness and a rankness, at strange
variance with that sensitive delicacy which has, sometimes, been described as the prevailing
attribute of his character. It was at the university, too, that he surrendered up his faculties
to the predominance of a well-known atheist and libertine, before whom, he confesses that his
own genius stood rebuked, and whom, in one of his letters he describes as formed “to
display what the Creator
” as
having “could make his creatures,the stamp of immortality in all he did or said,
”—and the loss of
whom he regarded as a bewildering dispensation, enough of itself to shake our trust in
Providence! In 1807, he quitted Cambridge without any emotions of regret or gratitude; nay,
with feelings of bitter aversion and contempt, if we may judge from a letter to his friend
injusta novercahave required impudence at least equal
to his other powers.
” It is tolerably well known that his “Beldam
Stepmother” was the never-failing object of his contumely and insult during the whole of
his residence. What might be the wrongs she inflicted on him it would puzzle the keenest
ingenuity to divine, unless they were, that she refused to abandon her usages, or to remodel
her institutions, in conformity with his profound wisdom and commanding range of experience.
But he appears, very early in life, to have contracted a silly notion that every thing
instituted must be wrong—the privileges of the aristocracy, and the established latitude of fashionable morality, always excepted.
But, however loose and desultory his intellectual habits may have been, he
appears at this time to have amassed a stock of information that would have been extraordinary
even for a youth of the most stubborn diligence. This may be learned from a list, scribbled
hastily into his memorandum book, of the various writers he had then perused, in various
departments of literature. The compass of his historical reading, more especially, is truly
sur-all,
” he says, “very tiresome.
”
And then he adds, “I abhor all 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;
” a pretty vigorous excussion of all systems, for a mere stripling! The same sentiment is
still more largely, though certainly not more powerfully developed in a poem of his dated 29th
December, 1806, entitled the
“Forget this world, my restless sprite, Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heav’n: There must thou soon direct thy flight, If errors are forgiven. To bigots and to sects unknown, Bow down beneath th’ Almighty’s Throne;— To him address thy trembling prayer; He, who is merciful and just, Will not reject a child of dust, Although his meanest care. Father of Light! to thee I call, My soul is dark within; Thou, who canst mark the sparrow fall, Avert the death of sin. Thou, who canst guide the wandering star, Who calm’st the elemental war, Whose mantle is yon boundless sky, My thoughts, my words, my crimes forgive; And, since I soon must cease to live, Instruct me how to die. 1807.”
Both these are, assuredly, most remarkable performances. They exhibit that
strange unnatural phenomenon an infidel or sceptical boy. At that early age, as the canker shewed itself in the morn and dew of youth,
” when the
effect of such “blastments
” is, for every “reason, most
fatal.
” With regard to the spirit of “fervid adoration
” displayed
in these addresses to the Deity, strangely mingled up with his “defiance of
creeds,
” we apprehend it to be much the same thing with that, which is elsewhere
termed by
” and which is well known to be a feeling entirely compa-poetry of
religion;swift witnesses against him, if he
suffer their influences to waste themselves upon his nervous system, instead of taking them
into the deepest recesses of his heart? As for the “defiance of creeds,
” it
generally means neither more nor less than a defiance of the opinions, and a contempt for the
understandings of mankind, coupled with a fixed purpose to live after the sight of one’s
own eyes and the devices of one’s own heart. Such, most indisputably, was the meaning of
the phrase in the present instance. The “spirit of adoration
” soon began to
“pale its ineffectual fires,
” while the spirit of resistance to creeds,
and to every moral or mental restraint, continued to grow with his growth and to strengthen
with his strength. Where the wind is sown, what but the whirlwind can be reaped? Let the
harvest be described by
“To have anticipated the worst experiments both of the
voluptuary and the reasoner, to have reached, as he supposed, the boundary of this
world’s pleasures, and see nothing but clouds and darkness beyond, was the doom—the
anomalous doom—which a nature, premature in all its passions and powers, inflicted on
”—p. 184.
The state of his feelings with regard to the university and its studies, and of
his opinions—if he can be said to have had opinions—respecting the
national superstition, will be seen from the following letter:—
Whenever leisure and inclination permit me the pleasure of
a visit, I shall feel truly gratified in a personal acquaintance with one whose mind has
been long known to me in his writings.
“You are so far correct in your conjecture, that I am a
member of the University of Cambridge, where I shall take my degree of A. M. this term; but
were reasoning, eloquence, or virtue, the objects of my search, Granta is not their
metropolis, nor is the place of her situation an ‘El Dorado,’ far less an
Utopia. The intellects of her children are as stagnant as her Cam, and their pursuits
limited to the church—not of Christ, but of the nearest benefice.
“As to my reading, I believe I may aver, without
hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical; so that few nations exist, or
within the statute
’—to use the poacher’s vocabulary. I
did study the ‘
“I once thought myself a philosopher, and talked nonsense
with great decorum: I defied pain, and preached up equanimity. For some time this did very
well, for no one was in pain for me but my friends, and none lost their patience but my
hearers. At last, a fall from my horse convinced me bodily suffering was an evil: and the
worst of an argument overset my maxims and my temper at the same moment, so I quitted
” &c.,—vol. i. pp. 134, 135. feeling, not a principle. I believe truth the prime attribute of the
Deity; and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body. You have here a brief compendium
of the sentiments of the wicked
This precious epistle is illustrated by a sage and ample commentary of the
biographer. Its odious flippancy upon sacred subjects, nursing mother
” was entertained by his Lordship, in common
with some of the most illustrious names of English literature. his constant and
superstitious study of the old classics.
” Besides, that a large
subduction must be made from the sphere of that nursing influence which the universities
are supposed to exercise over the genius of the country.
”
Now how it is that poets; and that factious, moody, and self-willed young men may be intolerable
nuisances, even though
But we must hasten to the period which brought Byron before the public, and
placed him eventually among the most splendid names of English literature. In 1808 came forth
the “A friend, who found
him in the first moments of excitement, inquired anxiously if he had received a
challenge—not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of his looks.
”
The agony of the moment demanded immediate relief. The wrathful minor
accordingly called for claret, and swallowed three bottles to his own share! This, however, was
only a transient mitigation of the anguish. Nothing could effectually assuage it but deeds of
vengeance. He found himself considerably
better
”! The blow he had received was like that of the hammer on the detonating
pulvil. It brought out the fiery element that was latent in his composition; and the explosion
which followed was heard throughout the realm. The critics had soon reason to repent of their
rash severity; and, what is still more remarkable, the poet himself lived to repent of his
revenge! On a copy of the satire, now in the possession of
“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, but the tone and temper are such as I cannot approve.
His satire, smart and successful as it was, afforded but slender promise of the
wonders that followed it. The secret of hie own strength was at that time probably unrevealed
even to himself. It was amid influence of foreign scenery and manners that he first began to
explore the depths of his genius. sweet bells jangled out of tune.
” His early disadvantages and
mortifications had turned the original harmonies of his character into discord; his very
virtues and excellencies ministered to the violence of the change. The ardour that burned
through his friendships and loves, now fed the fierce explosions of his indignation and scorn;
and—and—a great deal more to the same purpose. In all this we are able to discern little but
the workings of intense egotism and undisciplined passion; and we suspect that many others will
be tempted to the same view of the matter when they see the result of all this furious
fermentation, exhibited to us as it is by martyr of genius
” was hurried at last, “
” It by his hatred of hypocrisy, and his horror of all pretensions to
virtue, into the still more dangerous boast and ostentation of vice.of exceeding good command;
” eminently serviceable and
full of excellent “accommodation,
” whenever we get weary of the restraints
of virtue. We have then only to look upon those who maintain a form of righteousness and
godliness, while they deny the power thereof: and what shall we do to avoid the guilt of that
odious masquerade? what, but cast away both the form and the power together? We shall then be
no hypocrites, but brave and gallant spirits, superior to vile artifice and contemptible
dissimulation. And who can grudge that such spirits should obey the noble energies inherent in
their very composition?
It is needless to dwell on the peregrination of the bard. The
“Having traversed Acarnania, the travellers passed to the
Ætolian side of the Achelous, and on the 21st of November reached Missolonghi. And here,—it
is impossible not to pause, and send a mournful thought forward to the visit which, fifteen
years after, he paid to this same spot,—when, in the full meridian both of his age and
fame, he came to lay down his life as the champion of that land, through which he now
wandered a stripling and a stranger. Could some Spirit have here revealed to him the events
of that interval,—have shown him, on the one side, the triumphs that awaited him, the power
his varied genius would acquire over all hearts, alike to elevate or depress, to darken or
illuminate them,—and then place, on the other side, all the penalties of this gift, the
waste and wear of the heart through the imagination, the havoc of that perpetual fire
within, which, while it dazzles others, consumes the possessor,—the invidiousness of such
an elevation in the eyes of mankind, and the revenge they take on him who compels them to
look up to it,—
”—vol. i. pp.
211, 212. would he, it may be asked, have welcomed glory on
such conditions? would he not rather have felt that the purchase was too costly, and that
such warfare with an ungrateful world, while living, would be ill
recompensed even by the immortality it might award him afterwards.
We confess that there is a good deal more in all this than has ever been dreamed
of in our narrow and antiquated philosophy. For instance, we doubt whether we correctly
apprehend what can be meant by “the waste and wear of the heart through the ima-
” We are apt to surmise that this is an
audaciously dithyrambic version of the plain fact—stated by the biographer himself
elsewhere—that “all that was bad and irregular in the nature of this individual burst
forth together with all that was most energetic and grand.
” If his imagination
had power to waste his heart, it probably was because it was lighted up by the “strange fire” of unhallowed passions. The flame of genius seldom
destroys or injures the shrine in which it burns, unless it be nourished by some ingredients of
most deadly and corrosive quality. Minds of the very highest order experience but little of
this internal havoc. Whenever tempestuous desires are united with mighty powers of conception,
we may indeed reasonably expect volcanic heavings, and “lava floods,” and all those
terrible phenomena which minister so amply to the eloquence of
“These abilities,
” says are the inspired gift of God, rarely
bestowed; and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and
public civility—to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in a right
tune—to celebrate, in glorious and lofty hymns, the throne and equipage of God’s
Almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought, with high providence,
in his Church—to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of
just and pious nations doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ—to
deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God’s true
worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime—in virtue amiable or grave—
”*
Such are the oracles which came forth from the sanctuary of the heart of
But the most prodigiously impudent and absurd sentence, in the paragraph above
cited from ungrateful world! We should be glad to learn
what ingratitude. This strain of “poor,
unmanly, melancholy
” whining, was reserved for his biographer; and if the defunct
bard were to chastise the indiscretion of his friend, by haunting him a
little, as he is said to have threatened to haunt his valet, old
* forte; and
he
” From that moment he was numbered among the grandest luminaries
in the firmament of our modern literature—a wandering star of lurid and most disastrous
brightness, whose appearance was he awoke one fine morning and found himself
famous.
The appearance of
unchilled, indeed, by the “icy precepts of respect,
” but not without
frequent disturbance from fits of insufferable weariness and disgust. By these he was driven
occasionally back into the solitude which he naturally loved, and from which he continued to
fling, with careless profusion, a succession of splendours which kept the world perpetually on
the gaze. The period of his familiarity with the Paradise of Folly, into which his fame had
introduced him, was an important one in his history. It was in this limbo of “vain and
transitory things,
” that he seems chiefly to have wrought himself into that
bitter contempt for his species, that scornful and incurable disbelief of the reality of
virtue, which was at length engrained into his whole constitution, and became, as it were,
“bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
” It is melancholy to think,
that the mysteries of fashionable and patrician life should have made him an accomplished adept
in the vile freemasonry of this heartless scepticism. In the world of dukes, and duchesses, and
exquisites, and exclusives, and senators, and statesmen, it was, that he contrived to collect
the materials of his eternal libels on human nature, and to prepare his genius for tricks of
audacity and desperation which finally made him “an astonishment” and, almost,
“a curse.” One thing, however, is shabby-genteelness,—there is little doubt that he had, at bottom, a sneaking
kindness, if not an inveterate passion, for coarseness and blackguardism, respecting which he observes, in one of his letters,* that “it
comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense, at times.
” And hence it is that, with
so much haughtiness and fastidiousness, there never was, perhaps, a character with so little of
genuine dignity and delicacy.
We pause here a moment to notice an event to which * Vol. ii. p. 470. Can none remember?—yes, we know all
must,
”—the tremendous critico-martial encounter at Chalk Farm, hitched into rhyme
by the provoking pleasantry of the Noble Satirist. Relative to this matter, some
correspondence, of rather a polemical cast, ensued; and the whole of it is here printed, for
the purpose of honouring the good sense, self-possession, and manly frankness of Their hearts were mighty,
their skins were whole, and burnt sack,
”—or, at least, abundance of good
companionship,—“was the issue.
” The high contracting parties exchanged
assurances of their most distinguished consideration. From that time
In one of
“I have gotten,” he says, “a book by and I confess, to me, it is worth fifty Watsons
Of course, it was worth fifty superstition! This incredible sally of impudence and folly,
be it remembered, is addressed to a gentleman designed for holy orders; and it finds a place in
a publication put forth by an intimate of the Noble Genius, with the express purpose of
disabusing the public mind of its prepossessions to his disadvantage. All this irresistibly
reminds us of the text, “Let the dead bury their dead;
” and not only bury
them, but pronounce their funeral oration, and embalm their memory, and hand down their
excellence to the imitation of a grateful posterity; yea, let them do this, after that very
fashion, of which a noble specimen is to be found some pages onward.
“The world,
” says the biographer, “had
yet to witness what he was capable of when emancipated from this restraint
”—(the
prejudices of society). “For graceful and powerful as were
his flights, while society had still a hold of him, it was not till let loose from the
leash that he rose into the true region of his strength
”—(the region peopled with
and though, almost in proportion to that strength
was, too frequently, the abuse of it, yet so magnificent are the very excesses of such
energy, that it is impossible, even while we condemn, not to admire.
”—vol. i. p.
351.
Why, aye,
For the controul imposed upon him by the “meddling world
”
during his confinement within its rules, he partially and imperfectly
indemnified himself by pouring out the secrets of his spirit in his Journal, which was to him
as a confidential and familiar friend, and afforded him vast relief when his soul was labouring
with the magnanimities of impiety. And this is the fashion in which, as
appears from his log-book, (as he terms it,) he communeth with his own
heart:
“All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a
lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise,—in which, from description, I see nothing very
tempting. My restlessness tells me I have something within that ‘passeth show.’ It
is for Him, who made it, to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates, yet burns,
this frail tenement; but I see no such horror in a ‘dreamless sleep,’ and I have no
conception of any existence which duration would not render tiresome. How else ‘fell the
angels,’ even according to your creed? They were immortal, heavenly, and happy as their
apostate Abdiel
Again—
“To-day responded to qualis ab inceptocentre of circles, wide or narrow—the ibid. p. 58.
The exquisitely ludicrous comparison of
” and so forth. Shades of virtue, that empty
name,
Let us take another specimen of these comfortable and high-minded soliloquies:
“I wonder how the deuce any body could make such a world;
for what purpose dandies, for instance, were ordained—and kings—and fellows of colleges—and
women of ‘a certain age’—and many men of any age—and myself, most of all!
“Is there any thing beyond?—
”—vol. i. p. 500. who
knows? He that can’t tell. Who tells that there is? He who don’t know. And when shall he know? Perhaps, when
he don’t expect, and generally, when he don’t wish it. In this last respect,
however, all are not alike: it depends a good deal upon education,—something upon nerves
and habits—but most upon digestion.
Much in the same spirit of almost fiendish mockery is a good deal of his communing with his friend and biographer, whom he appears to have used
quite as unceremoniously and confidentially as he did his Journal: for instance—
“I have also, more or less, been breaking a few of the
favourite commandments; but I mean to pull up and marry,—if any one will have me. In the
mean time, the other day, I nearly killed myself with a collar of brawn, which I swallowed
for supper, and indigested for I don’t know how long. All this
”—vol. i.
p. 540. gourmandise was in honour of Lent; for I am forbidden meat all the rest of the
year,—but it is strictly enjoined me during your solemn fast.
“My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have
wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have
flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me. They
can’t say I have truckled to the times, nor to popular topics (as
”—vol.
i. p. 541. personal favour as possible; for I do believe never was a bard
more unpopular, quoad homo
Here again be “excesses of energy which it is impossible,even while we
condemn, not to admire!!!
”
The log-book, however, has occasionally better things than these. For example,
we find there the following very just censura of
“
”—(the poet was
sometimes ambitious of spelling better than his neighbours)—“ReddeRedde a good deal, but desultorily. My head is crammed with the most useless
lumber. It is odd that when I do read, I can only bear the chicken broth of—any thing but Novels. It is many a year since I looked into one
(though they are sometimes ordered, by way of experiment, but never taken) till I looked
yesterday at the worst parts of the philtred
ideas of a jaded voluptuary. It is to me inconceivable how they could have been composed by
a man only twenty—his age when he wrote them. They have no nature—all the sour cream of
cantharides. I should have suspected
Here, we suppose, there follows something in the MS. quite unfit to be redde or uttered. It may be remarked here that these mysterious lacuna
are of very frequent occurrence, both in the extracts from the log-book and the correspondence.
They are often found where the writer seems advancing towards the regions of blasphemy or
obscenity; and, in such cases, our conductor generally brings us just to the
“fauces graveolentis Averni
The following passage is worth citing, as recording a curious fact, and containing a just observation.
“
“It seems strange; a true voluptuary will never abandon
his mind to the grossness of reality. It is by exalting the earthly, the material, the
”—vol. i. p. 469. physique of our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, by forgetting
them altogether, or, at least, never naming them hardly to one’s self, that we alone
can prevent them from disgusting.
This remark shows how deeply, even at that early age, philosophy of vice. The above
fragment contains the best explanation that, perhaps, can be given of the anomalous and
monstrous union which sometimes we see exemplified of gross sensuality with the highest powers
of intellect. It is
“The fact notorious, nor obscure the cause, We wear the chains of Pleasure and of Pride. These share the man, and these distract him too. Pride, like an eagle, builds among the stars; But Pleasure, lark-like, nests upon the ground. Joys shared by brute-creation, Pride resents, Pleasure embraces. Man would both enjoy, And both at once: a point how hard to gain! But what can’t Wit, when stung by strong desire? Wit dares attempt this arduous enterprise. * * * * Wit calls the Graces the chast zone to loose, Nor less than a plump god to fill the bowl. * * * * Pleasure and Pride, by nature mortal foes, At war eternal, which in man shall reign, By Wit’s address patch up a fatal peace, And hand in hand, lead on the rank debauch, From rank, refined to delicate and gay. Art, cursed Art wipes off the indebted blush From Nature’s cheek, and bronzes every shame. Man smiles in ruin, glories in his guilt, And Infamy stands candidate for praise!”— Nightv.
One more dip into the log-book!
“Last night I supped with
”—p. 460. the rest will probably follow. Let it: I only wish the pain over. The ‘leap in the dark’ is the least to be
dreaded.
Such are the feelings with which a being—gifted with powers which must have
continually spoken to him of immortality—could stand upon “this bank and shoal of
time,
” and look upon the stupendous ocean of eternity that surrounds it! And
then—think of the self-denial which this scorner of human virtue could exercise, in order to
avoid the horrors of obesity. He could entirely destroy his stomach by
abstinence rather than endure the slightest loss of personal activity and grace. And
yet he had always a sardonic sneer in readiness to wither the hypocrisy
which could cant and prose about counting all things as loss compared with that hope which is
the only anchor of the soul! Of a truth, the martyrs of incredulity are but a feeble and
unsteady folk when brought to the stake of common sense. And fitly, indeed, are they rewarded,
even here, for the base fidelity they show to their
“Finding invariably lively when we were together, I often rallied him on the gloomy tone
of his poetry, as assumed; but his constant answer was—(and I soon ceased to doubt of its
truth)—that, though thus merry and full of laughter with those he liked, he was at heart,
one of the most melancholy wretches living.
”—vol. i. p. 356.
The truth is, that he knew nothing of what perpetual festivities
” of a heart at peace
with itself. Hence the volcanic fires within, and the superficial bloom and verdure without.
This contrast was afterwards very clearly discerned by one who was most interested in observing
it, as will appear from a fragment of his own:
“People have wondered at the melancholy which runs through
my writings. Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recollect once, after an
hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay, and rather brilliant in company,
my wife replying to me when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits), ‘And yet,
“—Moore
This is the blessedness of him who has, on one hand, a genius that can work
miracles at his capricious bidding, and, on the other hand, passions that laugh at all
restraints, divine and human! These are the wages of the adventurer who takes service with
those noted and inseparable brethren,
It was thought by several of a wife would be the salvation of me.
” It was hoped, at least,
that marriage might do for him what a legitimate despotism sometimes does for a nation harassed
and torn to pieces by a rapid succession of revolutionary tyrannies. That he thought the
experiment, at all events, worth trying, is evident from the fact, that he had once already
offered his neck to the yoke of wedlock. He had, actually, been a suitor to periculosæ
plenum
opus aleæfriendship, with young ladies, is but love full-fledged, and only
waiting for a fine day to fly. This intercourse of friendship was kept
up for about two years; during which period the sentiment had been gaining strength of pinion
for its adventurous and most disastrous flight. At last, the critical moment arrived, and in
Sept. 1814 the lady was addressed with a renewed offer of allegiance. The circumstances which
led to this step shall be described by
“A person, who had for some time stood high in his
affection and confidence, observing how cheerless and unsettled was the state both of his
mind and prospects, advised him strenuously to marry; and, after much discussion, he
consented. The next point for consideration was—who was to be the object of his choice: and
while his friend mentioned one lady, he himself named
”—You see,
’ said that, after all,
’ He accordingly wrote on the moment, and as soon as he had
finished, his friend, remonstrating still strongly against his choice, took up the
letter,—but on reading it over, observed, ‘Well, really, this is a very pretty
letter;—it is a pity it should not go. I never read a prettier one.
’
‘Then it
’ said shall go,Moore
Now is not this, we would ask, a right merry-conceited and most delectable
scene? What might not be made of it, in the hands of an artist of any dramatic powers? A young
gentleman wants to be married. His guide, philosopher, and friend, for the time being,
violently remonstrates against his choice, because the lady has plenty of learning in
possession, but fortune only in expectancy. The lover, however, sits down and writes; his sage
and faithful counsellor, retaining all his objections to the person addressed, nevertheless
gives his sanction and approbation to the dispatch; and pretty letter should not go!—Could the genius of urbane
comedy have suggested a happier incident? How shall the laughter-loving portion of the most
discerning public in the world express their obligations to the candour and impartiality which
has furnished them with it;—and this, too, in magnanimous disregard of certain tragic
reminiscences which the situation, it would be to have placed the lady behind a
skreen, where she might have witnessed the extremely pleasant consultation which was to dispose
of her future destinies; and then, to exhibit the enviable feelings of the noble adventurer, on
being consigned—(as, in that case, he most undoubtedly would have been consigned)—for the
second time, to the long list of rejected aspirants! The affair, however, was ordained to have
a different termination.
“On the day of the arrival of the lady’s answer, he
was sitting at dinner, when his gardener came in and presented him with his mother’s
wedding ring, which she had lost many years before, and which the gardener had just found
in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from
”—If it contains a consent, I will be married
with this very ring.
’ It did contain a very flattering acceptance of his
proposal, and a duplicate of the letter had been sent to London, in case this should have
missed him.Memoranda, Moore
The following is one of the various letters in which he announces his success. It would be amusing and laughable enough, if one could but dismiss all recollection of the sequel.
“Your recollection and invitation do me great honour; but
I am going to be ‘married, and can’t come.’ My intended is two hundred
miles off, and the moment my business here is arranged, I must set out in a great hurry to
be happy.
“You perhaps know the lady. She is niece to
“Pray forgive me for scribbling all this nonsense. You
know I must be serious all the rest of my life, and this is a parting piece of buffoonery,
which I write with tears in my eyes, expecting to be agitated. Believe me most seriously
and sincerely your obliged servant,
“P.S. My best rems. to
”—Moore
filled with a foreboding anxiety as to his fate, which the
unfortunate events that followed but too fully justified.
” And the discovery of
the calm affections and comforts which form the cement of domestic
life
” seems to have led to a still wider range of speculation; the result of which
is, that “men of the higher order of genius
” have, in all ages and in all
countries, been found to labour under a similar sort of inaptitude. The most illustrious sages,
we are reminded, have all lived single lives; married poets have seldom been happy in their
homes; and, to the most conspicuous instances of this infelicity—we have now to add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed
beside the greatest of them—
” What may be the
authority for numbering
With these illustrious authorities for the domestic infelicity of genius, we are duly fortified and prepared for the issue of the adventure in question.
“
” Accordingly, at the end of
December, accompanied by his friend,
The poetical history of this event is as follows:—
———“I saw him stand Before an altar with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique Oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then— As in that hour—a moment o’er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,—and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reel’d around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been— But the old mansion and the accustom’d hall, And the remember’d chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her, who was his destiny, came back, And thrust themselves between him and the light:— What business had they there at such a time)”* , vol. i. p. 599. Moore
The above visionary representation of the matter is here “introduced
historically,
” as closely agreeing with the prose account of the same affair in
the Memoranda of the bridegroom, in which he describes himself
“ * as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most
melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood
he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for
the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down—he repeated the words
after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes—his thoughts were elsewhere; and
”
About a month after this most joyous enterprize, we find him writing thus from Seaham.
“Since I wrote last I have been transferred to my
father-in-law’s, with my lady, and my lady’s maid, &c. &c.; and the
treacle-moon is over, and I am awake, and find
myself married. My spouse and I agree to—and in—admiration. no wise man ever married;
’
but, for a fool, I think it the most ambrosial of all possible future states.
“I wish you would respond, for I am here
obitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis
“My papa,
”—“I must go to tea: d— tea! I wish it was
”
Now here we must pause, for one moment, to contemplate the glorious liberty
wherewith the sons of genius are made free from the yoke which hangs about the neck of
quotidian and prosaic respectability! Of the dissolute levity of this epistle we say nothing;
but here is a man, received with confidence and hospitality by the father of the woman whose
feelings he is bound by every tie to spare and to respect; and yet, within a little month, he is found making himself merry, with his familiar friend, at the
expense of his unsuspecting host. But this, it may be said, is nothing more than a transient
sally of humour, or of spleen, bursting out in the unrestrained flow of confidential and
private correspondence. Well—on this point we are all liberality and acquiescence! Be it even
so. But what, then, shall we say of the violation of this privacy and confidence? What shall we
say of this exposure, which, while the widow is still surviving, holds up the deceased parent
to public derision? We do not ask the world to abide by the sentence of ancient and censorious
dotards like ourselves; but we appeal to every man, every woman, and every child, brought up
with the commonest feelings of delicacy and kindliness, whether they can contemplate this
disclosure without
It will be some relief to introduce here, from the “Detached
Thoughts” of
“When I belonged to the Drury Lane Committee, and was one
of the Sub-Committee of Management, the number of plays upon the shelves were about
five hundred. Conceiving that amongst these there must be some of
merit, in person and by proxy I caused an investigation. I do not think that of those which
I saw there was one which could be conscientiously tolerated. There never were such things
as most of them! without his address, so that at
first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his residence, I sent him a
favourable answer and something more substantial. His play succeeded, but I was at that
time absent from England.
“I tried
tepidness on the part of
“Then the scenes I had to go through!—the authors, and the
authoresses, and the milliners, and the wild Irishmen—the people from Brighton, from
Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, from Dublin, from Dundee—who came in upon me! to
all of whom it was proper to give a civil answer, and a hearing, and a reading.
not laughing at him was only to be got over by reflecting upon the
probable consequences of such cachinnation.
“As I am really a civil and polite person, and
do hate giving pain when it can be avoided, I sent them up to
“Players are said to be an impracticable people. They
are so; but I managed to steer clear of any disputes with them, and excepting one debate
with the elder
pas de—(something—I forget the technicals), I do not remember any
litigation of my own. I used to protect
“Then the Committee!—then the Sub-Committee!—we were but few, but never
agreed. There was UptonMoore
We have neither the right nor the wish to dwell in any detail upon the
disastrous issue of perturbed spirit
” is mentioned by
On receiving this additional information, my opinion was entirely changed: I
considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared my opinion, and added, that if such an
idea should be entertained, I could not, either professionally or otherwise, take any part
towards effecting it. Believe me, very faithfully yours,
We will give no utterance to the various surmises which irresistibly rush into
the mind on the perusal of this letter. Thus
For ourselves, forbearing all further inquiry into the causes of on
” The prudence of deferring his
marriage.prudence of deferring it! We should rather say,
the imperative and irresistible duty of deferring it—unless, indeed, the lady, on a full and
frank disclosure of circumstances, should generously choose to insist on an immediate
completion of the engagement. But, in our judgment, the peculiar turpitude of the transaction
lies much deeper than this. For our lives we cannot understand how a ruined man can dare to
propose an alliance with any woman on earth, whether an heiress or not, without first telling
her that he is a ruined man. Now it is evident from the tenor of the narrative before us, that
at the very time of his offering himself to His marriage (from the reputation, no doubt, of
the lady being an heiress) was, at once, a signal for all the arrears and claims of a long
accumulating state of embarrassment to explode upon him. His door was almost daily beset by
duns,
” And what other earthly result was to be expected? Is it credible that
the “thriving wooer
” himself can, at any moment of his wooing, have been
wholly blind to the futurity which awaited his success? Can he have supposed it possible that
the faintest rumour of his prosperity would fail to environ him with the
to shiver his household gods around him?
” And yet, with these
certainties before his eyes, he invites a virtuous, exemplary and happy woman to share his
destinies, and to stand exposed to “the slings and arrows of his own outrageous
fortune!
” We care not one single rush whether the man who does this be an
illustrious bard, or the most empty-headed walking gentleman, who burdens and afflicts with his
leaden presence the routs and the club-houses of the metropolis. It is the vilest and stupidest
of all despicable cant to tell us that grand and capacious faculties are to exempt a man from
the dominion of those rules, the breach of which exposes all the ordinary sons of men to
contempt and reprobation. If any obscure individual were to carry into the daily transactions
of human life such principles as these, or rather, such utter disregard and oblivion of all
principles, what would be his portion but ignominy and scorn? But the aristocracy of rank and
of genius, it seems, are to pursue their glorious trajectory far beyond the disturbing force of
all vulgar moralities:
All the world knows the tempest which burst on the head of “the
martyr” on his rupture with his wife. The winds of obloquy seemed to be let loose to
fight against him from every corner of the heavens. In the first place there was the
deep-mouthed indignation of wise and virtuous men. The cry, however, it may be allowed, was
probably much aggravated by the yells of envious, malignant and despairing mediocrity, and by
the vile yelpings of low ill-nature and reptile uncharitableness. But, however that may be, the
clamour at last became utterly intolerable, and drove the illustrious delinquent from his ungrateful country, secretly exclaiming, perhaps, like
Who now asks,
” says whether
” Why,
then, should any friend of During the lifetime of a man of genius, the world is but too much
inclined to judge him rather by what he wants than by what he possesses
”—(as if
any thing could supply the place of virtue!)—“and, even where conscious, as in the
present case, that his defects are among the sources of his greatness, to require of him,
unreasonably, the one without the other. If
” Why then,
would to Heaven, we say, that his conformation of a poet like conformation had never taken place at
all! The curse of his example never can be redeemed by the splendour of his genius; nay, the
curse and the splendour, in this case, unhappily go together; for the genius has here been too
often employed to perpetuate the pestilence of the example. Really, if poetry cannot spring up
in a soil that is not blasted by volcanic fires, and scorched by “
” if it languishes and dies under the sunshine of goodness
and of piety; if it cannot live and ripen under the milder influences which gladden our homes,
and shed peace and comfort lava floods;about our path and about our bed; if this be
so, it were devoutly to be wished that all Christian states, like the materials
of order and of happiness
” are not to be found in a bosom from which genius is
constantly pouring forth its rivers of flame! But all this is not true. Poetry is not a
exchange his own soul. To talk thus, is to slander the
highest endowments of our nature, and, in truth, but little less than to blaspheme the Giver of
them. It was, literally, no more necessary to the poetical triumphs and achievements of
We are accustomed to hear a great deal of the cant of hypocrisy, and the cant
of bigotry, and prejudice; but we think it may very safely be averred, that the cant and the
pedantry of liberalism are, to say the least, quite as intolerable. If, however, there must be
canting, we do not see why the men of liberality should, on this occasion, have it all to
themselves. We shall accordingly produce a sample of that commodity, which we hope will be
found at least as palatable as that which has been, so elaborately prepared for us by
“Strong links and mutual sympathies connect The moral powers, and powers of intellect. Still these on those depend by union fine, Bloom as they bloom, and as they fade decline. Talents, ’tis true, gay, quick, and bright, has God To virtue oft denied, on vice bestowed: Just as fond nature lovelier colours brings To paint the insect’s than the eagle’s wings. But, of our souls the high-born loftier part, Th’ ethereal energies that touch the heart, Conceptions ardent, labouring thought intense Creative Fancy’s wild magnificence, And all the dread sublimities of song, These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong. These are celestial all; nor kindred hold With aught of sordid or debasing mould. Chilled by the breath of Vice, their radiance dies, And brightest burns when lighted at the skies. Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given, And kindled only by a ray from heaven.”*
And so much in answer to the raptures of *
and, as we trust, somewhat more to the purpose. For our own part, we fear not to avow
that, in our judgment, the highest glories of creative fancy belong not
to invention he never climbed. No characteristic action
distinguishes one of his heroes from another;
” All this sameness, and
monotony, and indistinctness, is the consequence of his inability to penetrate into the various
depths and recesses of human character; and he who is unable to do this, has no title to the
very first honours of genius. He may read and transcribe nature, as she has impressed herself
on the face of the material creation; or he may trace the lines and furrows which have been ploughed into the character by the force of the more impetuous and keen
emotions; but he has never been initiated into those greater mysteries
which impart to the mightiest adepts almost the stamp and aspect of divinity.
The second of * driven by the excommunicating voice of society to an
exile which had not even the dignity of appearing voluntary.
” He had often felt a
sort of perverse gratification in representing himself as a being formed in a different mould
from other men; as having the elements so strangely mixed in him, that he “could
neither love the world, nor the world him.
” He now found, with rankling
mortification, that the world was abundantly ready to take him at his word; and he accordingly
went forth from his country bristling all over with fierce resentment; resolved that, like a
coiled hedgehog, he would present nothing but his prickles to the nostrils and the jaws of his
persecutors. In this comfortable mood it was that he visited the plain of Waterloo, and climbed
the “giant-snouted crags
” of Switzerland; but he found that “the
mountain-palaces of nature
” could afford no asylum to a haunted heart;* and
during this period it was that the perilous stuff which weighed upon his bosom vented itself in
the third canto of unbend his noble courage,
” that he actually signified to a friend in
England his readiness still to be reconciled to his lady. The attempt failed. His words of
peace were suffered to fall to the ground—(additional proof of her bitter sense of injury and
outrage)—and they sprung up again, it would appear, in the
The life of his Lordship at Venice is matter of general notoriety. Every one
knows the ostentatious aversion which he there professed for the society of his countrymen. For
this feeling there might, perhaps, be some faint excuse. The sight,—nay, the very thought of an
Englishman, was sure to environ him with painful and humiliating reminiscences, from which he
might pardonably shrink. But then, there was something insufferably disgusting in the tone of
insolence with which he avowed his “ * P. 51. utter abhorrence of the travelling
English,
” and in the denunciations of their stupidity and coarseness which are
prodigally scattered over his correspondence. It is not, perhaps, quite so generally known that
in this “Sea-Sodom,
”—as he himself entitles it,—he broke out into a course
of degrading profligacy which even he is said to have afterwards contemplated with loathing, if
not remorse. If this, however, was imperfectly known before, the witching time
” of his early popularity in England. He is, however,
extremely anxious that the world should duly peculiar sense of decorum in this country,
which makes the mention of such frailties hardly a less crime than the commission of
them.
” He does not, however, hesitate broadly to avow, that he very deeply regrets the hard necessity which imposes this forbearance! The
disclosures in question, he conceives, are devoutly to be desired, inasmuch as they would help
to illustrate “the strange history of his Lordship’s mind
” Fortunately, the world is not
condemned to a total loss of the edification and delight to be derived from the contemplation
of his Lordship’s softer moments. His life in Venice happily furnishes another in
one of its most interesting chapters!interesting chapter, abounding in similar instruction, against the
publication of which, very wrong in Italy. They there, as not out of the seventh commandment;
and, accordingly, with perfect “gaiety of conscience,
” let heaven see the
tricks which they dare not actually show their husbands. All this was exceedingly convenient to
the hero; and it is no less to his biographer, since it relieves him from all scruples towards
the frail individuals involved in these little affairs; or at all events, “whatever
delicacy we may think it right to exercise in speaking of their frailties, must be with
reference rather to our
”*
Nothing in the world can be more clear and satisfactory! As the people of the Continent have a
different and much more agreeable edition of the Decalogue than ourselves, it would be the
extravagance of prudery for any Englishman to refuse himself the benefit of its various
readings; or for any historian to abstain from presenting us with a distinct view of its
inestimable and manifold advantages. Under these favourable circumstances, therefore, and
“views and usages than theirs.availing himself of the latitude thus allowed him,
” with but
little suppression, the noble poet’s letters relative to his Italian adventures. To
throw a veil over the irregularities of his private life would be to afford but a partial
portraiture of his character—to rob him of the advantage of being himself the historian of
his own errors—to deprive him of the softening light thrown round such transgressions by
vivacity and fancy—by passionate lore of beauty and strong
” To be sure, some little danger
might, at first sight, be apprehended to the youthful imaginations of weak brethren or sisters,
from the seduction of such an example; but these alarms will be found, on examination, to be
quite unworthy of any liberal or enlightened understanding; especially when we look upon the
barricadoes of tough gossamer and impenetrable muslin which have been raised by our cautious
and exemplary moralist, between the virtue of his readers, and the perilous influence of his
hero’s achievements:
“They,
” says he, “who would dare to
plead the authority of
”—p. 52.
We hold it impossible to be sufficiently grateful for the incomparable moral
safety lamp which our philosopher has here so skilfully and so considerately constructed for
us, and by which he has contrived to throw a sort of ingenious wire-gauze round the flame which
he exhibits, thus securing to us the benefit of light, without the danger of combustion! We do
trust that all grandmothers and maiden aunts will now toss to the winds their apprehensions,
lest the fire-damp of youthful fancies should burst into explosion from the contact of this
perilous and subtle element. The most nervous of moralists must perceive that the precautions
of our conductor have rendered such a crisis plainly impossible. Let all approach, then, and
contemplate, without scruple or alarm, the splendours of that “interesting chapter in
the history of the Poet’s heart and mind
” which exhibits his intoxicating
successes, first with the bonnes fortuneshiatus, excellently calculated to keep curiosity alive, and
imagination active. The in the history of the
poet’s heart and mind!
” So much for this glorious illustration of his
vivacity and fancy, his admiration of beauty, and his insatiable yearning after affection!
Never, we verily believe, was the cause of vice rendered much more exquisitely ridiculous and
contemptible.
These most delectable adventures were followed up by a somewhat more august
specimen of adultery; we allude to his intimacy with the celebrated For some time,
” he tells us, “she was an Angiolina, and
he (the
”—nor any other young women that we ever heard of. But then,
other young women have not always the invaluable privilege enjoyed by those of Italy, namely,
that of having husbands who, whether old or young, are a sort of trustees to shifting uses;
retaining in themselves a legal estate and property in the persons of their wives, while the
beneficial interest and usufruct seems to belong to the rest of the world. His Lordship’s
residence at Ravenna was rendered exceedingly delightful, partly by the society of this lady,
and partly by the opportunity it gave him of indulging his taste for turbulence and revolution.
Italy, it will be remembered was, at that time, agitated by the plots of the Carbonari.
Elements were abroad in wonderful harmony with the restless temperament of the bard. His time
was accordingly pretty much divided between poetry, adultery, and insurrection. He entered
deeply into the views and designs of the mal-contents, and assisted them largely by his
counsels and his purse. And yet, after all, never, it must surely be confessed, since the world
began, was there a much more ridiculous or miserable specimen of a conspirator! He knew
perfectly well that all letters were opened by the government; and yet the following is the
style in which he writes to England:
“Be assured there are troublous times brewing for Italy;
”—and as I never could keep out of a row in my life, it will be my
fate, I dare say, to be over head and ears in it. But no matter; these are the
stronger reasons for coming to see me soon.Moore
“I have besides another reason for desiring you to be
speedy, which is,
”—p. 316—317. that
brewing in Italy which will speedily cut off all security of communication, and set all
your Anglo-travellers flying in every direction, with their usual fortitude in foreign
tumults. The Spanish and French affairs have set the Italians in a ferment; and no wonder:
they have been too long trampled on. This will make a sad scene for your exquisite
traveller, but not for the resident, who naturally wishes a people to redress itself. I
shall, if permitted by the natives, remain to see what will come of it, and perhaps to take a turn with them, like Dugald
Dalgetty and his horse, in case of business; for I shall think it
by far the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence, to see the Italians send the
barbarians of all nations back to their own dens. I have lived long enough among them to
feel more for them as a nation than for any other people in existence. But they want union,
and they want principle; and I doubt their success. However, they will try, probably, and
if they do, it will be a good cause. No Italian can hate an Austrian more than I do: unless
it be the English, the Austrians seem to me the most obnoxious race under the
sky.
“I am in the third act of my tragedy; but whether it will
be finished or not, I know not; I have, at this present, too many passions of my own on
hand to do justice to those of the dead. Besides the vexations mentioned in my last, I have
incurred a quarrel with the Pope’s carabiniers, or gens-d’armerie, who have
petitioned the Cardinal against my liveries, as resembling too nearly their own lousy
uniform. They particularly object to the epaulettes, which all the world with us have on
upon gala days. My liveries are of the colours conforming to my arms, and have been the
family hue since the year 1066.
“I have sent a tranchant reply, as you may suppose; and
have given to understand that, if any soldados of that respectable corps insult my
servants, I will do likewise by their gallant commanders; and I have directed my
ragamuffins, six in number, who are tolerably savage, to defend themselves, in case of
aggression; and, on holidays and gaudy days, I shall arm the whole set, including myself,
in case of accidents or treachery. I used to play pretty well at the broad-sword, once upon
a time at
’”—p. 334. wink and hold out mine iron.
’ It makes me think (the
whole thing does) of smashing blow.
“Politics here still savage and uncertain. However, we
are all in our ‘bandaliers’ to join the ‘
”—p.
347. Highlanders if they cross the
Forth,
’ i. e. to crush the Austrians if they pass the Po. The rascals!—and
that dog happy!—If ever I come back, I’ll work some of these ministers.
“I can’t say any thing to you about Italy, for the
government here look upon me with a suspicious eye, as I am well informed. Pretty
fellows!—as if I, a solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It is because I am fond of
rifle and pistol shooting, I believe; for they took the alarm at the quantity of cartridges
I consumed,—the wiseacres!
”—p. 359.
“Of the state of things here it would be difficult and
not very pru-
”—p. 382. most legible hand, that I think them damned scoundrels and
barbarians, and their emperor a fool, and themselves more fools than he; all which they may send to Vienna, for
any thing I care. They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are bullying
away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may not be very soon, because these
unhappy Italians have no consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
get tired of them at last.
Now is it possible for mortal gravity to contemplate all this without being
tempted to invoke the spirit of
” of the sedition he was helping to brew within
their territories! With an enthusiasm so “scoundrels and barbarians,stirring, audible, and full of
vent,
” it would have been the consummation of folly to expect any thing else than
that which actually happened—namely, that his savour should be abhorred
by the government under which he was living, and that the land would speedily vomit him forth.
Had he been anxious to bring sentence of banishment, ruin, and proscription, on himself and his
friends, it would be hard to show how he could have laboured more effectually for the
accomplishment of that purpose. But this was one of the incorrigible puerilities of riches are power, and that
poverty is slavery all the world over, and that one sort of establishment or government is
no better for the people than another.
” It would be idle to ascribe the faculty
of judging, upon such matters, to one who was capable of venting such whimsical and silly
contradictions. In fact, he was just about as much impelled by hatred of tyranny, and ardour
for the cause of national independence, as a fox-hunting squire is carried over five-barred
gates by a virtuous abhorrence of vermin, and a tender regard for the poultry-yards of his
neighbours. No one who has ever studied his character can doubt that, to him, the whole game
was little more than a source of pleasurable excitement. It was poetry reduced to action. It
filled his mind with splendid images; it absorbed much of the corrosive inquietude of his
nature; it animated him with the hope of a new career of eminence and renown; it afforded him,
as he thought, an opportunity of showing the world that, after all, he was born for some higher
purpose than that of writing verses. And therefore, probably, it was that, when rebellion lay
in his way, he was very glad to take it up. In short, it verily was his good pleasure to take
the diversion of insurrection: and he seems to have thought it a matter of profound
indifference whether he followed the sport in his own country or any other.
When driven from Ravenna his first migration was to Pisa: and thither the
* “usages
” of Italy, were
”—Millingen’s Memoirs on
Greece
“I have got,
” he says, “into a famous
old feudal palazzo, on the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below, and
cells in the walls, and so full of ghosts, that the learned
”
From this place of perturbed spirits he was soon driven, not by the ghosts, but
by powers of flesh and blood, which proved to be much more awkward customers. In consequence of
a casual encounter with the guard at Pisa, he found it necessary to remove for a time to Monte
Nero, a country house in the vicinity of Leghorn; and it was at this period that he formed his
memorable coalition with in the first place, his wish
to second the views of his friend
” He was in want, it seems, of some such
vomitory, for discharging, without restraint, or obstruction, the villainous congestions of
spleen, and ribaldry, of sedition and profaneness, that were now habitually forming in his
mind. His temper had long been growing more and more intractable and wayward, more impatient of
counsel and remonstrance, and more inflexibly resolved on outraging and defying the public
opinion. This arrogant wilfulness is perpetually betraying itself in his correspondence, more
especially that with his publisher
“These (pecuniary) matters must be arranged with
“You can also state them more freely to a third person,
as between you and me they could only produce some smart postscripts, which would not adorn
our mutual archives.
“I am sorry for the
”—Moore
Finding, therefore, that the explosions he prepared did not go off so freely
and rapidly as he desired, under the management of his operatives in London, he was glad to set
up, on the spot, a sort of infernal machine of his own, into which he might cram all the
mephitic and combustible materials he could muster, and keep the match in his own hand. But the
inexplicable part of the history is, that he should ever think of
* * * * *
upon system,
or some such cant; and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless: so I said no more
to him, and very little to any one else.
“He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into
compound barbarisms to be old English; and we may say of it as
old corps,’—‘the oldest in
Europe, if I may judge by your uniform.
’ He sent out his ‘He (himself in the Vates in both senses,
or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the translations of his own which he prefers to
profession, in the eyes
of those who followed it? I thought that Poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession;—but be it one, is that * * * * * * at the head of your profession in your eyes? I’ll be
curst if he is of mine, or ever shall be. He is the only one of us
(but of us he is not) whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take soi-disant
“But
”—Moore
The man,* be it observed, upon whom his lordship is here pouring out derision
and contempt, was the martyr whom he had visited in prison; the worthy whom he had compared to
the rotten
privilege and custom
” of all that was held venerable and sacred in the world. It
should, however, in all fairness be mentioned that his own account of the project and the
confederacy is somewhat different from that which is given by his biographer. In a letter to
Mrs. Somebody, the date of which is not given, though he speaks more respectfully of the oracle
of Cocaigne, he seems, by implication, to disclaim all hope of finding him a valuable and
effective confederate, and represents himself as impelled to the scheme mainly by his anxiety
to raise up the fallen fortunes of the literary adventurer, and political martyr.
“* * * * I presume that you, at least, know enough of me
to be sure that I could have no intention to insult
* It is entirely alien from our office to enter into any discussion of
the conduct of
“I have always treated him, in our personal intercourse,
with such scrupulous delicacy, that I have forborne intruding advice, which I thought might
be disagreeable, lest he should impute it to what is called ‘taking advantage of a
man’s situation.
’—Moore
We shall abstain from all attempt to unravel the mazes of this poor mystery:
Thus much, however, appears undeniable,—that the torrent of
It was during this glorious coalition, and while
“You can have no idea,
” says his lordship,
“what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has on a desolate shore, with
mountains in the back ground, and the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and
frankincense gave to the flame.
”—Moore
Neither can we have any adequate idea of the scene that followed these classic
obsequies. It is thus described by
“When the duty was done, and the ashes collected,
they—(the
” mourners)—dined and drank much together, and bursting from
the calm mastery with which they had repressed their feelings during the solemnity, gave
way to frantic exultation. They were all drunk; they sang, they
shouted, and their barouche was driven like a whirlwind through the forest.
We know not whether the silence of dæmoniac revelry
” is to be understood
as indicative of any doubts respecting the fact, or whether it is to be ascribed to his
considerate care for the reputation of his hero. Be that as it may, every one must agree with
The next migration of the exile was to Genoa. The encounter with the military
at Pisa, and a subsequent affray between the young The caravan consisted of five carriages, seven servants, nine horses, a
monkey, a bull-dog, two cats, three pea-fowl, a harem of hens, books, saddles, and fire
arms, with a chaos of furniture;
” all followed up by had unfortunately contracted the habit of drinking immoderately
”* Here, then, we have the melancholy
certainty, that one of the finest geniuses of the age had sunk to almost the lowest deep of
human degradation, the habit of solitary intemperance; and that the muse that dictated every evening. Almost at every page (of his reading) he would take a
glass of wine, and often undiluted Hollands, till he felt himself
under the full influence of liquor. He would then pace up and down the room till three or
four o’clock in the morning; and these hours, he often confessed, were most
propitious to the inspirations of his muse.half-dust, half-deity
;” what can be more miserable than thus to see the
mire and dirt gradually usurping upon the deity, and, at last, completely overwhelming and
engulfing it?
*
The most robust constitution must have ultimately sunk under this frightful
course of violence. But there was yet another cause of decay. He was making perpetual inroads
on his stamina by the immoderate use of drastic medicine. The two evils which he dreaded worse
than death were insanity and corpulence. His apprehensions of the first of these calamities
were constantly plunging him into wretched meditation on the suicides which had occurred in his
own family; and thus were rapidly destroying the healthful tone of his mind. His abomination of
fatness, on the other hand, was incessantly tempting him to measure his wrists and waist, and
to keep them within due compass by a course of discipline and diet which was equally fatal to
the energies of his body. All these causes conspired to make him, during his later years,
perhaps one of the most comfortless of hypochondriacs. had melted down his youth
” in all the varieties of voluptuousness. His
manhood had been drugged to intoxication by the new wine of popular
applause. In spite of himself, his heart must perpetually have been echoing, with sepulchral
hollowness, the words of the Preacher—“
” In short, the spirit of life was well nigh gone. What was to be
done to work the vapid remainder into something like effervescence and agitation? If any thing
could do this, it would be the breath that stirs in the regions of martial and political
adventure. This he had already tried in Italy, and it probably afforded him some partial and
transient relief. Whither was he to look now for a repetition of the excitement, become of late
more than ever necessary to his very existence? At one time his thoughts had been directed
towards the South American continent; at another time to Spain; but, at the present moment,
Greece seemed to offer precisely the sphere of enterprise which his restless spirit was in need
of. He accordingly provided himself with three splendid helmets, formed after the most approved
classical model, and “Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity.out he went a colonelling
” against his old friends the
Osmanlis.
It is very curious to see the different aspects under which the same course of action will present itself to different minds.
“In the breeze that now bore him towards his beloved
Greece,
” (chanteth the voice of his youth seemed again to speak. Before the titles of hero, of
benefactor, to which he now aspired, that of poet, however pre-eminent, faded into nothing.
His love of freedom, his generosity, his thirst for the new and adventurous,—all were
re-awakened; and even the bodings that still lingered at the bottom of his heart but made
the course before him more precious from his consciousness of its
”—vol. ii. p. 669.
“It was expected,” says the less courtly when he sailed for Greece, (nor was the
expectation unreasonable with those who believe imagination and passion to be of the same
element,) that the enthusiasm which flamed so highly in his verse was the spirit of action,
and would prompt him to undertake some great enterprise. But he was only an artist; he
could describe bold adventures and represent high feeling, as other gifted individuals give
eloquence to canvass and activity to marble; but he did not possess the wisdom necessary
for the instruction of councils. I do, therefore, venture to say, that in embarking for
Greece, he was not entirely influenced by such exoterical motives as the love of glory or
the aspirations of heroism. His laurels had for some time ceased to flourish; the sear and
yellow, the mildew and decay, had fallen upon them, and he was aware that the bright round
of his fame was ovalling from the full, and showing the dim rough edge of
waning.
”—Galt
Now let us hear his Lordship’s own account of the matter to
“Heartily weary of the monotonous life I had led in Italy
for several years; sickened with pleasure; more tired of scribbling than the public,
perhaps, is of reading my lucubrations;—I felt the urgent necessity of giving a completely
new direction to the course of my ideas; and the active, dangerous, yet glorious scenes of
the military career struck my fancy, and became congenial to my taste. After all, should
this new mode of existence fail to afford me the satisfaction I anticipate, it will, at
least, present me with the means of making a dashing exit from the scene of this world,
where the part I was acting had grown excessively dull.
”—Millingen
In August, 1823, he accordingly embarked for Cephalonia, where he lingered for
a considerable time, waiting, apparently, until the dissensions of the Greeks should subside
into unanimity. He might almost as reasonably have waited until the ruins of the Parthenon
should re-arrange themselves into their original symmetry and grandeur. It was during his stay
in this island that his life was varied by the curious episode of a series of religious He that is willing to do the will of my Father, shall know
of the doctrine whether it be of God.
” Instead of this, he suffered the
controversy to run to waste upon points of subordinate moment, far removed from the centre and
the core of the grand question; whether, for instance, the Doctor had read
But to return from the moral regeneration of The
whole population,
” says presented such a fermenting mass of insubordination and discord as was far more
likely to produce warfare among themselves than with the enemy.
” And the person
on whom every eye was fixed as the Grand Pacificator and Deliverer was—what?—a man bred in
camps, or in cabinets? one practised in military adventure, or regularly trained in the
business of political agitation, or graduated in the arduous craft of moulding the conflicting
passions, tempers, and interests of men to his own purposes? No-Would to heaven,
” he said, “the day were
arrived in which, rushing, sword in hand, on a body of Turks, and fighting like one weary
of existence, I shall meet immediate, painless death—the object of my wishes!
”
We are miserable judges of military or revolutionary operations, and shall,
therefore, abstain from all attempt to detail or to criticise the measures pursued by the
leaders of the insurrection. We shall, accordingly, content ourselves with stating that the
expedition to Lepanto was abandoned, in consequence of the mutiny and dismissal of the
Suliotes, who constituted a chief part of the force intended for that enterprize, and that
part in the world was nearly done,
” and “that his mind was
passing
” His first great step, we have seen, was
“from poesy to heroism;
” his next was to be from heroism to diplomacy.
When Greece had wrought out her deliverance, he was to leave her to settle her own government;
he was then to purchase, or build, a schooner, (as if, says dies nefastusShall I sue for mercy?
” Then, after a long pause, he added,
“Come, come, no weakness! let’s be a man to the last!
” Soon after
this, he expired. When his remains were examined, the frequent complaint which he had been
heard to make of having “an old feel,
” was clearly interpreted. The ravages
of intemperance were then fearfully manifested.* The heart was flaccid, and its muscular fibres
pale; the cranium exhibited all the appearances usually incident to advanced age; and the liver
betrayed the commencement of those changes uniformly produced by an immoderate indulgence in
spirituous liquors. The tenement was in effect prematurely ruinous. Nothing but the most dismal
wretchedness could, in all human probability, have been the consequence of a protracted
occupation of it.
Thus terminated the career of a man who, beyond all controversy, has made
magnificent contributions towards the mere intellectual wealth and grandeur of his country. And
yet, in spite of our admiration for all this mental power, we can scarcely give utterance to
the painful emotions with which we rise from the contemplation of the whole work before us. On
the one hand we have the life, and the deeds, and the correspondence, and the journalizing
soliloquies, of one who may really be said to have deified his own ungovernable passions; and
on the other, we have the * melliti verborum globuliluscious vices,
” after the first yearnings of self-complacency were
over. Honey, we believe, has sometimes been em-
We have already adverted to the artifices which have been so prodigally
resorted to by shivering of his household gods
”; his habitual scorn for sacred things,
to his abhorrence of bigotry and priestcraft, and to his disgust at the unblushing effrontery
with which the practice of men too frequently gives the lie to their professions; his distaste
for all the decencies and sanctities of life, to the fastidious impatience of a towering and
transcendent intellect. These are the topics which, with “most damnable
iteration,
” are perpetually paraded before us throughout this blessed
“labour of love
”! We hear of nothing but lacerated sensibilities, and
withered hopes—of volcanic fires which ravage while they illuminate—and of self-tormenting
energies which consume and tear the energumen, while they astonish the world with feats of
superhuman strength. In the midst of the “wanton heed and giddy cunning
” of
this melodious maze of sophistry, a correct and attentive ear may always discern one subject, which is decorated and disguised by this tedious concerto, and its everlasting variations. It is true that, occasionally,
the mighty maestro will change his hand for a moment; and then a few notes are heard of
righteousness, and temperance, and judgment! But one can generally perceive that the voice is,
here, faint, constrained, and unnatural. He can never keep up the strain long together. He soon
falls back into his old tune; and when he is descanting on the worst excesses of this idol, the
whole burden of his song will be found, literally, resolvable into this:—“Not quite
correct or defensible, these things, it must be confessed; but then, you know, his
stupendous and eccentric genius!
” To all which, we presume, the proper response may be equally concise:—“Superlative abilities, to be
sure; but then, you know, his pernicious abuse and vile prostitution of the
gift!
”
The correspondence printed in the second volume is described by costly treasure, equal, if not
superior, in vigour, variety, and liveliness, to any that have yet adorned this branch of
our literature.
” These are large words, which the writer of them does not,
perhaps, expect to have very accurately measured. They will be found, however, on examination,
not to be very much too big for the truth. There is, undoubtedly, in these letters a prodigal
exhibition of various talent—a masterly freedom of hand—a wonderful command of the English
language—a matchless versatility—and extraordinary powers of entertainment. With the exception
of a very large amount of unimportant and worthless scraps—(which, however, swell the volume
and its price)—the collection is evidently the produce of a most original and capacious mind:
and yet the perusal of them leaves behind an impression, on the whole, decidedly revolting. The
letters are full of a dashing, reckless, desperate vivacity, which sometimes degenerates into
flippancy, and sometimes swells into insolence and swagger. They perpetually remind us of the
there is a laughing
devil in their sneer.
” They are, moreover, frequently broken by those ominous
lacunæ, which we have already remarked in the previous portions of his lordship’s
correspondence, and which give very intelligible notice that much has been omitted of which
this canting, fastidious, hypocritical world is not worthy. Enough, however, is preserved to
exhibit the meteorology of a mind wayward, capricious, and unmanageable
as the elements. His friends, it appears, sometimes attempted to lash these winds, and to chain
these waters. But they all found that
as seek to controul the current of such headstrong self-will. Whenever they ventured to
administer advice, they generally found him ready to
They repeatedly protested against the shameful licentiousness of his writings, but all in
vain. “’Tis my vocation, Hal,
” was the substance of his reply. If they
told him he was voluptuous, he said that he could not help it.
“As to the cant of the day,
” he added,
“I despise it, as I do all its other
”—“finical fashions,
which become you as paint became the ancient Britons.If they had told
me that the poetry (of
” morality—the first time I ever heard the word from any body that was not
a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain it is the most moral of poems; but
if people won’t discover the moral, that is their fault, and not mine.
Again—
“You talk of refinement: are you at all more moral? are
you so moral? No such thing. I know what the world is in England, by my own proper
experience of the best of it—at least, of the
” loftiest; and I have
described it every where as it is found in all places.
It was this sort of refinement and prudery, he affirmed,
which had banished the comedies of I plead guilty to all thoughts and expressions of
mine that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality and profaneness, and retract them.
If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, he will be glad of my
repentance.
” Not so he could not understand why he was
accused of irreligion; he was no enemy to religion—he thought that people could never have
enough, if they had any; he was a
” All this was said by a man whose life was almost one perpetual
outrage upon every moral and religious sanction, and whose habitual propensity for mockery was
such, that even when he did a generous or charitable act, he used to call it purchasing a shilling’s worth of salvation! Nothing could well be more hopeless
than the endeavour to make any impression on such a mind by reasoning or expostulation. He had
burst away from all the restraints of society, and seemed to feel a sort of rabid delight in
making wild sport with “things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the
earth.
” We literally do not perceive what there was (except the terrors of the
law) to have withheld him, had he been a painter, from publishing the most bestially obscene
drawings, if it had happened to “jump with his humour,
” or to promise the
slightest advancement of his professional renown—for “who was ever altered by a
picture?
”
There is one extract from his papers which we are satisfied will be perused
with the bitterest disgust by every one who has not prostituted his better judgment to a
slavish idolatry for mere intellectual power. In December, 1820, he saw the following paragraph
in a newspaper:—“
” The occasion which this occurrence offered of venting his vindictive
spleen against his wife was too tempting to be resisted. He accordingly solaced himself by the
composition of a Charity Ball;
” and the train-thought
that predominates through the whole may be collected from the two opening stanzas.
“What matter the pangs of a husband and father, If his sorrows in exile be great or be small, So the Pharisee’s glories around her she gather, And the Saint patronizes her ‘Charity Ball.’ “What matters—a heart, which though faulty was feeling, Be driven to excesses which once could appal— That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, As the Saint keeps her charity back for ‘the Ball.’” Vol. ii. p. 540.
Now the first question which will occur to any reasonable man, on perusing
these venomous lines, is this. Is it to be concluded that every woman who is separated from her
husband, for no guilt of her own, is bound to alienate herself from all open participation certainty that the lady was, from the
beginning to the end of their calamitous dissension, the culpable and aggressive party—that she
was a heartless prude, a malicious vixen, who had wantonly sacrificed her husband’s peace
and reputation upon the altar of her own vindictive passions. Pharisee
and saint, indeed! and all because she emerged, for a moment, from the
shade of her widowhood, and took the station to which her rank entitled her, in promoting a
design for the relief of her fellow-creatures—and this too from a man who spent half the income
of her property, when once he could legally lay hands on it. The pages of have gone a whoring, if not after the Mammon of unrighteousness, at
least after the Baalim of his friend’s sublime but most unhallowed intellectual
capacities; and the spirit of this vile idolatry hath caused him to err; it
hath taken away his heart.
But we are weary of our task, and must bring it to a close. We have little to
add, except that, in the estimate of every unperverted mind, the character of log-book and correspondence, have
done his memory this good office. After squeezing out from the mass of these volumes the
cloying I have been
reading,
” he says in his journal, “
”—(we
hold it to be most egregious cant); “but if it were, I should be a poet
. How far this may be true, I know not,une ame qui se tourmente, un esprit
violentpar eccelenza;un ame,not only tormented itself,
but every body else in contact with it; and an esprit
violentesprit
That he was amply gifted with qualities and graces which fitted him for the brightest
sphere of social refinement, is beyond all dispute. But it is also evident that there were
elements in his nature which could combine into the worst varieties of grossness and impurity;
and one portion of his history seems potently to have exemplified the truth, that
Some powerfully redeeming properties he certainly appears to have possessed. He
was accessible to frequent visitations of the spirit of gentleness; and there is something in
the depth of his attachment to his sister, * genius; and of the permanence
of all such intimacies he held distance and infrequency of intercourse to be the only true
secrets. He was in a remarkable degree compassionate and humane; and liberal, sometimes even to
munificence. It must nevertheless be stated, that generosity seems to have had much more of his
respect than justice. At Ravenna, for instance, his charities were such, that the poor of the
place petitioned against his removal; and yet, all this while he had debts at home for Moore
“They soon perceived,
” says that he was not a theoretical, but a
practical friend to their country; and the repeated acts of kindness and charity which he
performed, in relief of the poor and distressed, and the heavy expenses which he daily
incurred for the furtherance of every plan and institution which he thought might advance
the general good, showed them that he was not less alive to their private than he was to
their public interests.
”—p. 102.
The vagueness and indistinctness of his notions on the subjects of politics and
religion is almost pitiable. In politics, agitation seems to have been his favourite principle;
no matter what was the cause, provided it were sufficiently turbulent and revolutionary. He
had, at one time, a prodigious longing to come over and join the Luddites; and it is not at all
clear to us, that, if he were living at this moment, he would not be in Ireland, by the side of
that mighty hunter
“To say the truth,
” he confessed, “I
find it equally difficult to know what to believe in this world, and what not to believe.
There are as many plausible reasons for inducing me to die a bigot, as there have been to
make me hitherto live a free-thinker.
”—Millingen
It is pretty clear that he never attentively studied the evidences of our
faith; and it may reasonably be doubted whether he had patience for that or any other painful
course of investigation. wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores,
”
to the public gaze. They will take no pleasure in seeing the spread of the infection. They will
be anxious to prevent their leprosy from extending itself. They will shudder at the thought of
rushing into the midst of crowds hitherto free from the contagion. They will constantly bear in
mind that a time may come when the plague shall depart from them; and they will remember that
the prevalence of their disease must render the world one vast lazar-house, one scene of
universal despair to themselves, even should they ever be mercifully visited by a season of
convalescence.
That he had in his nature some prime rudiments of greatness it would be absurd
to question. There is, however, one indication of genuine grandeur of which he was wholly
destitute: he was without that serenity and simplicity which are the surest marks of a
commanding spirit. He never exhibited that repose which is among the most awful and sublime
symptoms of conscious strength. His mind was in a perpetual state of fermentation and unrest;
and, though it may appear a hard and bitter saying, we have very little doubt that a tremendous
intensity of selfishness was the principle which occasioned this incessant and boiling
commotion. In souls of the very highest order there is little of this “double, double,
toil and trouble.
” There is nothing in them which reminds us of the cauldron of
sorcery, with its vile ingredients and its infernal “gruel
.” The might of
the ocean depths, in their stern and calm magnificence, is the proper image of such supreme
intelligences. There was that in the temper of
Our words are well nigh ended; and, for aught we can tell, there may be numbers
who will be ready to exclaim, that they are just such words as might be expected from
“ * “scoundrel priests,
” or abusive and virulent old wives. Why, it will be
asked, this ungenerous and uncharitable blazon of the failings and transgressions of a mighty
spirit? Why this ruthless dragging forth of the vices of a great mind from the “dread
abode
” of the sepulchre? To all who may put this question to us, we shall only
reply, by telling them to ask it of his biographer. We could have been well content to admire
all that was truly admirable in his writings—to avert our eyes, as much as might be, from all
that was odious and pernicious there—to gaze on the dazzling miracles of his genius—and to
banish from our thoughts the black and fetid smoke out of which they too often issued forth. We
could have been well content to look upward at the blazing glories of the volcano, without a
wish to explore the secrets of its foul and sulphurous entrails. We could have been content, in
short, to think only of the poet, and to forget the man. But his friend and chronicler was not
content to have it so. It is he who has chosen to rake and stir from its depths this noisome
Camarina; and since it has been his pleasure so to do, it is the duty of all who tender the
public health, to counteract and neutralize its steaming pestilence with the most pungent and
drastic fumigations which their moral alchemy can possibly supply. “Peace”* was the
only wish which disquiet him, to bring him up,—they must
not look to have him greeted as “a spirit of health,
” at least by those who
desire to be, themselves, visited by “airs from heaven.
” The name of
astrologers, and
Chaldeans, and wise men among us, who loudly invite us to look upon these portentous
splendours, as if they betokened little else than peace and joy. What, then, have we to do, but
to call back the minds of men from this treacherous wisdom, and to fix them Implora
pacefrustrateth the tokens of the
liars, and maketh the diviners mad, and turneth their knowledge into folly!
Of the poetry of sounded all the depths and
shoals
” of human passion. He has spoken, too, in the language of every rank and
gradation of society, from the sovereign to the artificer and peasant, just as if he had been
intimately conversant with every class and variety of men; or rather, as if he had been gifted
with the power of summoning their spirits, at will, to inhabit his own bosom: and, having
exhausted this world, he “then imagined new.
” All this implies a faculty of
intuition which closely approximates to that of a supernatural intelligence, and places its
possessor first among the children of men. And, then, if any one desires to see intellectual
comparison rendered striking, even to awfulness, by depth of moral contrast, let him look upon
let die;
” and then let them think
of the sickening, jaded, and shattered sensualist, in the Capreas of his Italian exile—rebel to
God and slanderer of God’s creatures—infesting the world with the outpourings of
blasphemy and vice, and courting immortal infamy in the cantos of