Life of Lord Byron Volume I Part 28

[Footnote 59: Though always fond of music, he had very little skill in the performance of it. "It is very odd," he said, one day, to this lady,--"I sing much better to your playing than to any one else's."--"That is," she answered, "because I play to your singing."--In which few words, by the way, the whole secret of a skilful accompanier lies.]

[Footnote 60: Cricketing, too, was one of his most favourite sports; and it was wonderful, considering his lameness, with what speed he could run. "Lord Byron (says Miss ----, in a letter, to her brother, from Southwell) is just gone past the window with his bat on his shoulder to cricket, which he is as fond of as ever."]

[Footnote 61: In one of Miss ----'s letters, the following notice of these canine feuds occurs:--"Boatswain has had another battle with Tippoo at the House of Correction, and came off conqueror. Lord B.

brought Bo'sen to our window this morning, when Gilpin, who is almost always here, got into an amazing fury with him."]

[Footnote 62: "It was the custom of Burns," says Mr. Lockhart, in his Life of that poet, "to read at table."]

[Footnote 63: "I took to reading by myself," says Pope, "for which I had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm;... I followed every where, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life." It appears, too, that he was himself aware of the advantages which this free course of study brought with it:--"Mr. Pope," says Spence, "thought himself the better, in some respects, for not having had a regular education. He (as he observed in particular) read originally for the sense, whereas we are taught, for so many years, to read only for words."]

[Footnote 64: Before Chatterton was twelve years old, he wrote a catalogue, in the same manner as Lord Byron, of the books he had already read, to the number of seventy. Of these the chief subjects were history and divinity.]

[Footnote 65: The perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote their own language, was, with justice, perhaps, attributed by themselves to their entire abstinence from the study of any other. "If they became learned," says Ferguson, "it was only by studying what they themselves had produced."]

[Footnote 66: The only circ.u.mstance I know, that bears even remotely on the subject of this poem, is the following. About a year or two before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as I have been told by a person to whom Mrs. Byron herself communicated the circ.u.mstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself, after his death, in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord Byron was the father of her child. This, he positively a.s.sured his mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the child belonged to Curzon, it was his wish that it should be brought up with all possible care, and he, therefore, entreated that his mother would have the kindness to take charge of it. Though such a request might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper more mild than Mrs. Byron's, she notwithstanding answered her son in the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired.

Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus spared the being a tax on the good nature of any body.]

[Footnote 67: In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), "by affixing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own compositions to the notice of posterity."

The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never, as far as I know, appeared in print:--

"EPITAPH ON JOHN ADAMS, OF SOUTHWELL, A CARRIER,

"WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS.

"John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, A _Carrier_, who _carried_ his can to his mouth well; He _carried_ so much, and he _carried_ so fast, He could _carry_ no more--so was _carried_ at last; For, the liquor he drank being too much for one, He could not _carry_ off,--so he 's now _carri-on_.

"B----, Sept. 1807."

[Footnote 68: Annesley is, of course, not forgotten among the number:--

"And shall I here forget the scene, Still nearest to my breast?

Rocks rise and rivers roll between The rural spot which pa.s.sion blest; Yet, Mary, all thy beauties seem Fresh as in Love's bewitching dream," &c. &c.

[Footnote 69: It appears from a pa.s.sage in one of Miss ----'s letters to her brother, that Lord Byron sent, through this gentleman, a copy of his poems to Mr. Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling:--"I am glad you mentioned Mr. Mackenzie's having got a copy of Lord B.'s poems, and what he thought of them--Lord B. was so _much_ pleased!"

In another letter, the fair writer says,--"Lord Byron desired me to tell you that the reason you did not hear from him was because his publication was not so forward as he had flattered himself it would have been. I told him, 'he was no more to be depended on than a woman,' which instantly brought the softness of that s.e.x into his countenance, for he blushed exceedingly."]

[Footnote 70: He was, indeed, a thorough boy, at this period, in every respect:--"Next Monday" (says Miss ----) "is our great fair. Lord Byron talks of it with as much pleasure as little Henry, and declares he will ride in the round-about,--but I think he will change his mind."]

[Footnote 71: He here alludes to an odd fancy or trick of his own;--whenever he was at a loss for something to say, he used always to gabble over "1 2 3 4 5 6 7."]

[Footnote 72: Notwithstanding the abuse which, evidently more in sport than seriousness, he lavishes, in the course of these letters, upon Southwell, he was, in after days, taught to feel that the hours which he had pa.s.sed in this place were far more happy than any he had known afterwards. In a letter written not long since to his servant, Fletcher, by a lady who had been intimate with him, in his young days, at Southwell, there are the following words:--"Your poor, good master always called me 'Old Piety,' when I preached to him. When he paid me his last visit, he said, 'Well, good friend, I shall never be so happy again as I was in old Southwell.'" His real opinion of the advantages of this town, as a place of residence, will be seen in a subsequent letter, where he most strenuously recommends it, in that point of view, to Mr. Dallas.]

[Footnote 73: It may be as well to mention here the sequel of this enthusiastic attachment. In the year 1811 young Edleston died of a consumption, and the following letter, addressed by Lord Byron to the mother of his fair Southwell correspondent, will show with what melancholy faithfulness, among the many his heart had then to mourn for, he still dwelt on the memory of his young college friend:--

"Cambridge, Oct. 28. 1811.

"Dear Madam,

"I am about to write to you on a silly subject, and yet I cannot well do otherwise. You may remember a _cornelian_, which some years ago I consigned to Miss ----, indeed _gave_ to her, and now I am going to make the most selfish and rude of requests. The person who gave it to me, when I was very young, is _dead_, and though a long time has elapsed since we met, as it was the only memorial I possessed of that person (in whom I was very much interested), it has acquired a value by this event I could have wished it never to have borne in my eyes.

If, therefore, Miss ---- should have preserved it, I must, under these circ.u.mstances, beg her to excuse my requesting it to be transmitted to me at No. 8. St. James's Street, London, and I will replace it by something she may remember me by equally well. As she was always so kind as to feel interested in the fate of him that formed the subject of our conversation, you may tell her that the giver of that cornelian died in May last of a consumption, at the age of twenty-one, making the sixth, within four months, of friends and relatives that I have lost between May and the end of August.

"Believe me, dear Madam, yours very sincerely,

"BYRON.

"P.S. I go to London to-morrow."

The cornelian heart was, of course, returned, and Lord Byron, at the same time, reminded that he had left it with Miss ----]

[Footnote 74: In the Collection of his Poems printed for private circulation, he had inserted some severe verses on Dr. Butler, which he omitted in the subsequent publication,--at the same time explaining why he did so, in a note little less severe than the verses.]

[Footnote 75: This first attempt of Lord Byron at reviewing (for it will be seen that he, once or twice afterwards, tried his hand at this least poetical of employments) is remarkable only as showing how plausibly he could a.s.sume the established tone and phraseology of these minor judgment-seats of criticism. For instance:--"The volumes before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are simple and flowing, though occasionally inharmonious, verse,--strong and sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments.

Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance," &c. &c. &c. If Mr. Wordsworth ever chanced to cast his eye over this article, how little could he have suspected that under that dull prosaic mask lurked one who, in five short years from thence, would rival even _him_ in poetry.]

[Footnote 76: This plan (which he never put in practice) had been talked of by him before he left Southwell, and is thus noticed in a letter of his fair correspondent to her brother:--"How can you ask if Lord B. is going to visit the Highlands in the summer? Why, don't _you_ know that he never knows his own mind for ten minutes together?

I tell _him_ he is as fickle as the winds, and as uncertain as the waves."]

[Footnote 77: We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters, that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too common a folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily, this boyish desire of being thought worse than he really was, remained with Lord Byron, as did some other feelings and foibles of his boyhood, long after the period when, with others, they are past and forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but beginning to outgrow them, when he was s.n.a.t.c.hed away.]

[Footnote 78: The poem afterwards enlarged and published under the t.i.tle of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." It appears from this that the ground-work of that satire had been laid some time before the appearance of the article in the Edinburgh Review.]

[Footnote 79: Sept. 1807. This Review, in p.r.o.nouncing upon the young author's future career, showed itself somewhat more "prophet-like"

than the great oracle of the North. In noticing the Elegy on Newstead Abbey, the writer says, "We could not but hail, with something of prophetic rapture, the hope conveyed in the closing stanza:--

"Haply thy sun, emerging, yet may shine, Thee to irradiate with meridian ray," &c. &c.

[Footnote 80: The first number of a monthly publication called "The Satirist," in which there appeared afterwards some low and personal attacks upon him.]

[Footnote 81: "Look out for a people entirely dest.i.tute of religion: if you find them at all, be a.s.sured that they are but few degrees removed from brutes."--HUME.

The reader will find this avowal of Hume turned eloquently to the advantage of religion in a Collection of Sermons, ent.i.tled, "The Connexion of Christianity with Human Happiness," written by one of Lord Byron's earliest and most valued friends, the Rev. William Harness.]

[Footnote 82: The only thing remarkable about Walsh's preface is, that Dr. Johnson praises it as "very judicious," but is, at the same time, silent respecting the poems to which it is prefixed.]

[Footnote 83: Characters in the novel called _Percival_.]

[Footnote 84: This appeal to the imagination of his correspondent was not altogether without effect.--"I considered," says Mr. Dallas, "these letters, _though evidently grounded on some occurrences in the still earlier part of his life_, rather as _jeux d'esprit_ than as a true portrait."]

[Footnote 85: He appears to have had in his memory Voltaire's lively account of Zadig's learning: "Il savait de la metaphysique ce qu'on en a su dans tous les ages,--c'est a dire, fort peu de chose," &c.]

[Footnote 86: The doctrine of Hume, who resolves all virtue into sentiment.--See his "Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals."]