My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 55

When Sh.e.l.ley saw him again at Venice, in 1818, and painted him under the name of Count Maddalo, he said:--

"In social life there is not a human being _gentler, more patient, more natural, and modest_, than Lord Byron. He is gay, open, and witty; his graver conversations steep you in a kind of inebriation. He has travelled a great deal, and possesses ineffable charm when he relates his adventures in the different countries he has visited."

Mr. Hoppner, English consul at Venice, and Lord Byron's friend, who was living constantly with him at this time, sums up his own impressions in these remarkable terms:--

"Of one thing I am certain, that I never met with goodness more real than Lord Byron's."

And some years later, when Sh.e.l.ley saw Lord Byron again at Ravenna, he wrote to Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley:--

"Lord Byron has made great progress in all respects; in genius, _temper_, moral views, health, and happiness. His intimacy with the Countess G---- has been of inestimable benefit to him. A fourth part of his revenue is devoted to beneficence. He has conquered his pa.s.sions, and become what nature meant him to be, _a virtuous man_."

In concluding these quotations, no longer requisite, I hope, I will only make one last observation, _that all which infallibly changes in a bad nature never did change in him_. Friendship, real love, all devoted feelings, lived on in him _unchanged_ to his last hour. If he had had a bad disposition, been capricious, irritable, or given to anger, would this have been the case?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 106: Count Delladecima, to whom he gives this name in consequence of a habit which that gentleman had of using the phrase "in ultima a.n.a.lise" frequently in conversation.]

[Footnote 107: See the account given by Mr. Bruno, his physician.]

[Footnote 108: Alexander the Great imprudently bathed in the Cydnus, etc.]

[Footnote 109: "Life in Italy." See how he was received at Missolonghi.]

[Footnote 110: Parry, 215.]

[Footnote 111: Jules Simon.]

[Footnote 112: Kennedy, 330.]

[Footnote 113: Moore, vol. iii, p. 159.]

[Footnote 114: _Now_ alludes to the ungenerous treatment received from many of these persons at the time of his separation.]

[Footnote 115: See his "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 116: Ibid.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

LORD BYRON'S MOBILITY.

So much has been said of Lord Byron's mobility that it is necessary to a.n.a.lyze it well, and examine it under different aspects, so as to define and bring it within due limits. In the first place, we may ask on what grounds his biographers rested their opinion of this extraordinary mobility, which, according to them, went beyond the scope of intellectual qualities rather into the category of faults of temper?

Evidently it was again through accepting a testimony the small value of which we have already shown; namely, Lord Byron's own words at twenty-three years of age--that period when pa.s.sion is hardly ever a regular wind, simply swelling sails, but rather a gusty tempest, tearing them to pieces; and then again they grounded their opinion on verses in "Don Juan," where he explains the meaning of these expressions,--versatility and mobility. Moore, from motives we shall examine hereafter, found it expedient to take Lord Byron at his word, and to make a great fuss about this quality. In summing up his character, he reasons very cleverly on the unexampled extent, as he calls it, of this faculty, and the consequences to which it led in Lord Byron. Following in Moore's wake, other biographers have proclaimed Lord Byron versatile. Moore exaggerates so far as to pretend that this faculty made it almost impossible to find a dominant characteristic in Lord Byron. As if mobility were not, in reality, a universal quality or defect,--as if men could so govern themselves throughout life as to resemble the hero of a drama, where the action is confined within cla.s.sical rules.

"A man possessing the highest order of mind is, nevertheless, unequal,"

says La Bruyere. "He suffers from increase and diminution; he gets into a good train of thought, and falls out of it likewise.

"It is different with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,--a spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes.

Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At best, he is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird whistling; he is fixed and stamped by nature, and I may say by species. What shows least in him is his soul; that never acts,--is never brought into play,--perpetually reposes. Such a man will be a gainer by death."

La Bruyere also says, "There is a certain mediocrity that helps to make a man appear wise."

And what says Montaigne, that great connoisseur of the human heart?--

"Our usual custom is to go right or left, over mountains or valleys, just as we are drifted by the wind of opportunity. We change like that animal which a.s.sumes the color of the spots where it is placed. All is vacillation and inconstancy. We do not walk of ourselves; we are carried away like unto things that float now gently and now impetuously, according to the uncertain mood of the waters. Every day some new fancy arises, and our tempers vary with the weather. This fluctuation and contradiction ever succeeding in us, has caused it to be imagined by some that we possess two souls; by others, that two faculties are perpetually at work within us, one inclining us toward good, and the other toward evil."

Montaigne also says:--"I give my soul sometimes one appearance, and sometimes another, according to the side on which I look at it; if I speak variously of myself, it is because I look at myself variously: all contrarieties, in one degree or other, are found in me, according to the number of turns given. Thus I am shamefaced, insolent, chaste, sensual, talkative, taciturn, laborious, delicate, ingenious, stupid, sad, good-natured, deceitful, true, learned, ignorant, liberal, avaricious, and prodigal, just according to the way in which I look at myself; and whoever studies himself attentively, will find this _variety and discordancy_ even in his judgment.

"We are all _parts of a whole_, and formed of such shapeless, mixed materials, that every part and every moment does its own work."

If, then, we all experience the varied influences of our pa.s.sions a hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twenty-four hours; if we are sensible of a thousand physical and moral causes, perpetually modifying our dispositions, and our words, making us differ to-day from what we were yesterday; if even the coldest and most stoical temperaments do not wholly escape from these influences, how could Moore be surprised that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of pa.s.sion, so hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove invulnerable? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is true; he only made-believe to be so, and that because Lord Byron was wanting in some of those virtues called peculiarly English. Lord Byron had no superst.i.tious patriotism; he did not love his country through sentiment or pa.s.sion, but on duty and principle. He loved her, but justice also!

and he loved justice best. And in order to do homage to truth, he had committed the fault of saying a host of irreverential truths concerning that country, and also many individuals belonging to it; consequently he had made many enemies for himself. Indeed, his enemies might be found in every camp: among the orthodox, in the literary world, and the world of fashion, among the fair s.e.x, and in the political world. Moore, for his part, wished to live in peace with all these potentates,--the warm, comfortable, and brilliant atmosphere of their society had become a necessity for him; and wishing also, perhaps, to obtain pardon for his friend's boldness, he probably thought to conciliate all things by sparing the susceptibility of the great. Instead, then, of attributing Lord Byron's severe appreciations to observation, experience, and serious reflection, he preferred declaring them the result of capricious and inconsistent mobility. But more just in the depths of his soul than he was in words, Moore, it is easy to see, felt painfully conscious of the wrong done to his ill.u.s.trious friend, and ardently wished to make his own weakness tally with truth. What was the result? The brilliant edifice he had raised was so unstable of basis, that it could not stand the logic of facts and conclusions. While appearing to consider the excess of this quality as a defect, and calling it dangerous, he was all the time showing that Lord Byron had strength to overcome any real danger it contained; he was giving it to be understood that this versatility of intellect might exist without the least mobility of principle; he made out that mobility was the ornament of his intelligence, just as he had shown constancy to be the ornament of his soul. Then, after having reasoned cleverly on this quality, yclept versatility when applied to the intelligence, and mobility when applied to conduct; after having shown how predominant it must have been in Lord Byron through his great impressionability; Moore says that Lord Byron did yield to his versatile humor, without scruple or resistance, in all things attracting his mind, in all the excursions of reason or fancy a.s.suming all the forms in which his genius could manifest its power, transporting himself into all the regions of thought where there were any new conquests to make; and that thereby he gave to the world a grand spectacle, displayed a variety of unlimited and almost contradictory powers, and finally achieved a succession of unexampled triumphs in every intellectual field. Then, in order to characterize completely this quality of Lord Byron, Moore further adds:--

"It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and particularly by those who, being gifted with but a small portion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace with his changes, that the suddenness with which he pa.s.ses from one strain of sentiment to another, from the gay to the sad, from the cynical to the tender,--begets a distrust in the sincerity of one or both moods of mind which interferes with, if not chills, the sympathy that a more natural transition would inspire. In general, such a suspicion would do him injustice; as among the singular combinations which his mind presented, that of uniting at once versatility and depth of feeling was not the least remarkable."

But, throughout this a.n.a.lysis by Moore, do we see aught save an intellectual quality? Does it not stand out in relief, a pure, high attribute of genius? For this to be a defect, it would be necessary that, leaving the domain of intelligence, it should become mobility, by entering into the course of his daily life in _extraordinary_ proportions. And how does it, in reality, enter there? Were his principles in politics, in religion, in all that const.i.tutes the man of honor in the highest acceptation of the term, at all affected by it? Did his true affections, or even his simple tastes, suffer from the varied impresses of his versatile genius? In short, was Lord Byron inconstant?

Moore has sufficiently answered, since all he remarked and said oblige us to rank _constancy_ among Lord Byron's most shining virtues.[117] And as a human heart can not at the same time be governed by a virtue and its opposite vice, what must we say to those who should persist (for there are some, doubtless, who will), despite all axioms, in considering Lord Byron as a changeable, capricious, fickle man? I reply, that Lord Byron proved, once more, the truth of the observation made by that moralist, who said: "The most beautiful souls are those possessing the greatest variety and pliancy," and that he realized in himself, after a splendid fashion, the moral phenomenon remarked in _Cato the Elder_, who, according to Livy, possessed a mind at once so versatile and so comprehensive, that whatever he did it might be thought he was born solely for that.

I will acknowledge, then, the intellectual versatility and the mobility of Lord Byron, but on condition of their being reduced to their real proportions; of their being shown as they ever existed in him, that is to say, under subjection to duty, honor, and feeling. Through his extreme impressionability, and his power of combining, in the liveliest manner, the greatest contrasts, through the pleasure he took in exercising such extraordinary faculties, and in manifesting them to others, Lord Byron sometimes a.s.sumed such an appearance of skeptical indifference and caprice, that he might almost be said to show a certain intermission of faculties, and even of ideas. But if his words and writings are examined, it will be seen that this mobility was only skin-deep. It might affect his nerves and muscles, but did not penetrate into his system. It animated his writings occasionally, and oftener his words, _but never his actions!_ for, if in some rare moments of life, he abandoned his will to the sway of light breezes, that was only for very evanescent fancies of youth, in which neither heart nor honor were at stake. And even then it was rather by word than by deed, as occurred at Newstead, when he was twenty years of age, and at Venice when he was twenty-eight. His energetic soul did not, like feebler natures, require inconstancy to awaken it. As to ideas, they were only changeable in him, when they were by nature open to discussion or _accessory_; and they remained floating, until having been elaborated by his great reason, he could admit them into the small number of such as he considered chosen and indisputable. Then they found a sort of sanctuary in his mind, remaining there sacred and unmoved, just like his true sentiments of heart.

His mobility, thus limited and circ.u.mscribed within due bounds by unswerving principles and the dictates of an excellent heart, _was thus shorn of all danger_, and had for its first result to contribute toward producing that amiability and that wonderful fascination which he exercised over all those who came near him. Moore quotes, on this head, the words of Cooper, who, speaking of persons with a changeful intellectual temperament, says, that their society "_ought to be preferred in this world, for, all scenes in life having two sides, one dark and the other brilliant, the mind possessing an equal admixture of melancholy and vivacity, is the one best organised for contemplating both._" Moore adds:--"It would not be difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet, but those powers of _fascination_ which he possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him were so active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, and brought whatever was most agreeable in his nature into play."

All those who knew him have said the same thing. This charm was the immediate consequence of his qualities; but they produced another result, that justice requires to be mentioned. Mobility being united in him with constancy and the most heroic firmness, added l.u.s.tre to his soul through that great difficulty overcome which amounts to virtue.

Moralists of all ages have generally found the virtue of constancy so rare, that they have said,--

"Wait for death to judge a man."

"In all antiquity," says Montaigne, "it would be difficult to find a dozen men who shaped their lives in a certain steady course which is the chief end of wisdom."

This is true as regards the generality of minds; but to overcome this difficulty, when one has a mind eager for emotion, variable, with width and depth capable of discerning simultaneously the for and against of every thing, and thus being necessarily exposed to perplexity of choice, it is surely marvellous if a mind so const.i.tuted be also constant. Now, Lord Byron personified this marvel. In him was seen the realization of that rare thing in nature, intellectual versatility combined with unswerving principle; mobility of mind united to a constant heart. In short, to sum up:--He possessed the amount of versatility requisite to manifest his genius under all its aspects; a degree of mobility most charming in social intercourse; and such constancy as is always estimable, always a virtue, and which, united to a temperament like his,[118] becomes positively wonderful.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 117: See the chapter on "Constancy."]

[Footnote 118: See the chapter on "Constancy."]

CHAPTER XIX.

LORD BYRON'S MISANTHROPY AND SOCIABILITY.