My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 56

Lord Byron has also been accused of misanthropy. But what is a misanthrope? Since Lucian, this name has been bestowed on the man who owns no friend but himself; who looks upon all others as so many rogues, for whom relatives, friends, country, are but empty names; who despises fame, and aims at no distinction except that conferred by his strange manners, savage anger, and inhumanity.

When those who have known Lord Byron, and studied his life, compare him to this type, it may well be asked whether such persons be in their right understanding. The famous tower of Babel, and all the confusion ensuing, rise up to view.

The excess of absurdity may give way, however, to some little moderation in judgment. It will be said, for instance, that there are different kinds of misanthropy. Lucian's "Timon" does not at all resemble Moliere's "Alceste:" Lord Byron's misanthropy was not like either of theirs; his was only of the kind that mars sociability, good temper, and other amiable qualities. In short, we shall be given to understand that Lord Byron is only accused of _having liked solitude too much, of having shunned his fellow-creatures too much, and thought too ill of humanity_.

But these modifications can not satisfy our conscience. Still too many reasons of astonishment may be offered to allow us to resist the desire of adding other facts and indisputable proofs to those already adduced in the chapter where we examined the nature and limits of his melancholy at all periods of life, and throughout all its phases.[119] This chapter might even suffice as a response to the above strange accusation.

A better answer still would be found in all the proofs we have given of his goodness, generosity, and humanity. Nevertheless, we think it right rather to appeal to the patience of our readers; so that they may consider with us, more especially, one of the peculiar aspects of Lord Byron's character; namely, his sociability.

That Lord Byron loved solitude, and that it was a want of his nature who can doubt? As a child, we know, his delight was to wander alone on the sea-sh.o.r.e, on the Scottish strand. At school, he was wont to withdraw from his beloved companions, and the games he liked so well, in order to pa.s.s whole hours seated on the solitary stone in the church-yard at Harrow, which has been fitly called _Byron's Tomb_. He himself describes these inclinations of his childhood in the "Lament of Ta.s.so:"--

"Of objects all inanimate I made Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise, Where I did lay me down within the shade Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours, Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said, Of such materials wretched men were made."

Arrived at adolescence, he showed so little inclination to mix in society that his friends reproached him with his over-weening love for solitude. Amid the gay dissipation of university life, he was often a prey to vague disquietude. Like the majority of great spirits that had preceded him at Cambridge,--Milton, Gray, Locke, etc.,--he did not enjoy his stay there. He even made a satire upon it in his early poems. At a later period, when he had acquired fame, at the very height of his triumphs, when he was _the observed of all observers_, he often caught himself dreaming on the happiness of escaping from fashionable society, and getting home; for, like Pope, he greatly preferred quiet reading to the most agreeable conversation.

All his life there were hours and days wherein his mind absolutely required this repose.

It may, then, truly be said that he loved solitude, and felt a real attraction for it. But would it be equally just to attribute this taste to melancholy, and then to call his melancholy _misanthropy_? Those who have deeply studied the nature of a certain order of genius, and the phases of its development, will discover something very different in the impulse that attracted the child Byron to the sea-sh.o.r.e in Scotland, and to the sepulchral stone shaded over by the tall trees of Harrow? They will see therein, not the melancholy apparent to vulgar eyes, but the forecast of genius, to be revealed sooner or later, and with a further promise, in the antipathy shown for the routine of schools, and especially of the University of Cambridge,--a suffocating atmosphere for genius, equally uncongenial to Milton, Dryden, Gray, and Locke, who all, like Lord Byron, and more bitterly than he, exercised their satiric vein on it. As for the slight attraction he sometimes showed for the world in his youth--in his seventeenth year--and which the excellent Mr. Beecher reproached him with, his feelings are too well defined by the n.o.ble boy himself for us to dare to subst.i.tute any words of ours in lieu of those used by him, in justification to his friend.

Dear Beecher, you tell me to mix with mankind; I can not deny such a precept is wise; But retirement accords with the tone of my mind; I will not descend to a world I despise.

Did the senate or camp my exertions require, Ambition might prompt me at once to go forth; And, when infancy's years of probation expire, Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.

The fire in the cavern of Etna concealed Still mantles unseen in its secret recess: At length in a volume terrific revealed, No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.

Oh! thus the desire in my bosom for fame Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise.

Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame, With him I would wish to expire in the blaze.

For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave!

Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath; Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave.

Yet why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd?

Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules?

Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd, Why search for delight in the friendship of fools?

I have tasted the sweets and the bitters of love; In friendship I early was taught to believe; My pa.s.sion the matrons of prudence reprove; I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.

To me what is wealth?--it may pa.s.s in an hour, If tyrant's prevail, or if Fortune should frown: To me what is t.i.tle? the phantom of power; To me what is fashion?--I seek but renown.

Deceit is a stranger as yet to my soul: I still am unpracticed to varnish the truth: Then why should I live in a hateful control?

Why waste upon folly the days of my youth? 1806.

Thus it was the desire of fame that then engrossed his whole soul; the wish of adding some great action to ill.u.s.trate a name already enn.o.bled by his ancestors.

Subsequently, this ardent desire may have become weakened. Alas! he had been made to pay so dearly for satisfying it. But at the outset of his career this aspiration after glory, that belongs to the n.o.blest souls, was the strongest impulse he had,--the one that often made him prefer the solitary exercise of intelligence to even the usual dissipation of youth, and when he did yield, like others, he punished himself by self-inflicted blame and contempt, often expressed in an imprudent, exaggerated manner.

Nevertheless, the paths that lead to glory are various, and trod by many; which should he choose? Then did he feel the further torment of uncertainty. His faculties were various, and he was to learn this to his cost. He was to feel, though vaguely, that he might just as well aspire to the civic as to the military crown; be an orator in the senate, or a hero on the field of battle.

Among all the careers presenting themselves before him, the one that flattered him least was to be an author or a literary man. But he was living in the midst of young men well versed in letters. Most of them amused themselves with making verses. To tranquillize his heart, and exercise his activity of mind, he also made some, but without attaching any great importance to them. These verses were charming; the first flower and perfume of a young, pure soul, devoted to friendship and other generous emotions. Nevertheless, a criticism that was at once malignant, unjust, and cruel, fell foul of these delightful, clever inspirations. The injustice committed was great. The modest, gentle, but no less sensitive mind of the youth was both indignant and overwhelmed at it. Other sorrows, other illusions dispelled, further increased his agitation, making a wound that might really have become misanthropy, had his heart been less excellent by nature. But it could not rankle thus in him, and his sufferings only resulted in making him quit England with less regret, and throw into his verses and letters misanthropical expressions, no sooner written than disavowed by the general tone of cordiality and good-humor that reigned throughout them; and, lastly, by suggesting the imprudent idea of choosing a misanthrope as the hero of the poem in which he was to sing his own pilgrimage.

This necessity of essaying and giving expression to his genius also made him desire solitude yet more. He found poetic loneliness beneath the bright skies of the East, where he pitched his tent, slowly to seek the road to that fame for which his soul thirsted. But when he arrived at it,--when he became transformed, so to say, into an idol,--did this necessity for solitude abandon him? By no means.

"_April 10th._--I do not know that I am happiest when alone," he writes in his memoranda; "but this I am sure of, I never am long in the society even of her I love--and G.o.d knows how I love her--without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. Even in the day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it."

This desire, this craving for his lamp and his library,--this absence of taste for certain realities of life,--show affinities between Lord Byron and another great spirit, Montaigne. One might fancy one hears Lord Byron saying, with the other:--

"The continual intercourse I hold with ancient thought, and the ideas caught from those wondrous spirits of by-gone times, disgust me with others and with myself."

He also felt _ennui_ at living in an age that _only produced very ordinary things_.

But whether he felt happy or sad, it was always in silence, in retirement, and contemplation of the great visible nature, carrying his thought away to what does not the less exist though veiled from our feeble sight and intellect; it was there, I say, that his mind and heart sought strength, peace, and consolation.

His soul was bursting with mighty griefs when he arrived in Switzerland, on the borders of Lake Leman. He loved this beautiful spot, but did not deem himself sufficiently alone to enjoy it fully.

"There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold,"

said he; and he promised himself soon to arrive at that beloved solitude, so necessary to him for enjoying well the grand spectacle presented by Helvetian nature; but, he added:--

"To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: * * * * * * *

Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it over boil In the hot throng."

And then he continues:--

"I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling."

Thus, even in the midst of the beloved solitude so necessary to him, there was no misanthropy in his thoughts or feelings, but simply the desire of not being disturbed in his studies and reveries. Lord Byron often said, that solitude made him better. He thought, on that head, like La Bruyere:--"_All the evil in us_," says that great moralist, "_springs from the impossibility of our being alone. Thence we fall into gambling, luxury, dissipation, wine, women, ignorance, slandering, envy, forgetfulness of self, and of G.o.d._" If the satisfaction of this n.o.ble want were to be called _misanthropy_, few of our great spirits, whether philosophers, poets, or orators, could escape the accusation. For, with almost all of them, the taste for retirement and solitude has been likewise a necessity: a condition without which we should have lost their greatest _chefs-d'oeuvre_. The biography of the n.o.blest minds leaves no doubt on this head. But if Lord Byron did not use solitude like a misanthrope, if he loved it solely as a means, and not as an end, so that we may even say it was with him an antidote to misanthropy, can we equally give proof of his sociability? To clear up this point, we have only to glance at his whole life. For the sake of avoiding repet.i.tion, let us pa.s.s over his childhood, so full of tenderness, and ardor for youthful pastimes; his boyhood, all devoted to feelings affectionate and pa.s.sionate; his university life, where sociability seemed to predominate over regular study; the vacations, when it was such pleasure to act plays, and he was the life of amateur theatres,--a time that has left behind it such an enthusiastic memory of him, that when Moore, some years after Lord Byron's death, went to obtain information about it from the amiable Pigott family, not one member could be found to admit that Lord Byron _had the smallest defect_. Let us also pa.s.s over his sojourn at Newstead, when his sociability and gayety appear even to have been too noisy; and let us arrive at that period of his life when he began to be called a misanthrope, because he gave himself that appellation, because real sorrows had cast a shade over his life, and because, wishing to devote himself to graver things, his object was to withdraw from the society of gay, noisy companions, and then to mature his mind in distant travel. He left his native land, but in company with his friend Hobhouse, a man distinguished for his intelligence, and who, instead of testifying to his fellow-traveller's misanthropy, bears witness, on the contrary, to his amiable, sociable disposition.

When this friend was obliged to take leave of him in Greece, and return to England, Lord Byron frequented the society of pleasant persons like Lord Sligo, Mr. Bruce, and Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he met at Athens, alleviating his studious solitude by intercourse with them.

When he also returned to England, after two years of absence, great misfortunes overwhelmed him. He lost successively his mother, dear friends, and other loved ones. Not to sink beneath these acc.u.mulated blows, and mistrusting his own strength, he called in to aid him the society of his friends.

"My dear Scroope," wrote he, "if you have an instant, come and join me, I entreat you. I want a friend; I am in utter desolation. Come and see me; let me enjoy as long as I can the company of those friends that yet remain."

Some time after, having attained the highest popularity, and his mind being soothed by friendship even more than by fame, he entered into the fashionable society in which his rank ent.i.tled him to move.

He frequented the world very much at this period, cultivating it a.s.siduously. A moment even came when he seemed to be completely absorbed by gayety. Sometimes going to as many as fourteen a.s.semblies, b.a.l.l.s, etc., in one evening. "He acknowledged to me," says Dallas, "that it amused him." Did not his genius suffer then from the new infatuation? So courted, flattered, and surrounded by temptations, did not this worldly life prove too seductive, hurtful to his mind, heart, and independence of character? Did he draw from the world's votaries his rules of judgment, his ways of thought? Did he yield when brought in contact with that terrible _English law of opinion_? No; Lord Byron was safe from all such dangers. Amid the vortex in which he allowed himself to be whirled along, his mind was never idle. In the drawing-rooms he frequented, his intellectual curiosity found field for exercise. Though so young, he had already reflected much on human nature in general; but he still required to study individuals. It was in society that his extraordinary penetration could find out true character, discover the reality lurking under a borrowed mask. The great world formed an excellent school to discipline his mind. There he found subjects for observation that he afterward put in order, and brought to maturity in retirement.

"Wherever he went," says Moore, "Lord Byron found field for observation and study. To a mind with a glance so deep, lively, and varied, every place, and every occupation, presented some view of interest; and, whether he were at a ball, in the boxing-school, or the senate, a genius like his turned every thing to advantage."

And if _salons_ in general were powerless to exercise any bad influence over him, this impossibility was still greater with regard to London _salons_. Without adopting as exact the picture drawn of them by a learned academician,[120] in a book more witty than true, wherein we read:--"that under pain of pa.s.sing for eccentric, of giving scandal or exciting alarm, English people are forbidden to speak of others or themselves, of politics, religion, or intellectual things or matters of taste; but only of the environs, the roundabouts, a picnic, a visit to some ruin, a fashionable preacher, a fox-hunt, and the rain,--that never-ending theme kindly furnished by the inconstant climate;" without, I say, adopting this picture as true, for in England it must be considered a clever caricature, it is nevertheless certain, that the discipline of fashionable London _salons_ requires independence of mind to be in a measure sacrificed. The tone reigning in these _salons_, which are only opened during the season, is quite different from that produced by the open-hearted hospitality which renders English country residences so very agreeable. Could Lord Byron long take pleasure in the salons of the metropolis, where every thing is on the surface and noisy, where one may say that people are content with simply showing themselves, intending concealment all the while; or where they show themselves _what they are not_; where set forms, or a vocabulary of their own, so far limits allowable subjects of conversation, that fools may easily have the advantage over clever men (for intellect is looked upon as suspicious, dangerous, bold, and called an eccentricity). Lord Byron, so frank, and open-hearted, loving fame, and having a sort of presentiment that Heaven would not accord him sufficient time to reap his full harvest of genius, consequently regretting the moments he was forced to lose; must he not, after seeking amus.e.m.e.nt in these a.s.semblies, soon have found that they lasted too long, and were too fatiguing? Must he not often have well-nigh revolted against himself, felt something cold and heavy restraining his outburst of soul, something like a sort of slavery; must he not have understood that it was requisite for him to escape from such useless pastimes in order to re-invigorate himself by study, in the society of his own thoughts, and those of the master-spirits of ages? Yes, Lord Byron did experience all that. _Ennui_ of the world called him back to solitude. We can not doubt it, he said so himself:--

"Last night, _party_ at Lansdowne House; to-night, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's--_deplorable waste of time_, and loss of _temper, nothing imparted, nothing acquired_--_talking without ideas_--if any thing like thought were in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho! and in this way half London pa.s.s what is called life. To-morrow, there is Lady Heathcote's--shall I go? Yes; to punish myself for not having a pursuit."

And, elsewhere:--

"Shall I go to Lansdowne's? to the Berry's? They are all pleasant; but I don't know, I don't think that _soirees_ improve one."

He will not go into the world:--