"CHILDE HAROLD'S LAST PILGRIMAGE. "BY THE REV. W.L. BOWLES.

By his Lordship's Will, a copy of which will be found in the Appendix, he bequeathed to his executors in trust for the benefit of his sister, Mrs. Leigh, the monies arising from the sale of all his real estates at Rochdale and elsewhere, together with such part of his other property as was not settled upon Lady Byron and his daughter Ada, to be by Mrs. Leigh enjoyed, free from her husband's control, during her life, and, after her decease, to be inherited by her children.

We have now followed to its close a life which, brief as was its span, may be said, perhaps, to have comprised within itself a greater variety of those excitements and interest which spring out of the deep workings of passion and of intellect than any that the pen of biography has ever before commemorated. As there still remain among the papers of my friend some curious gleanings which, though in the abundance of our materials I have not hitherto found a place for them, are too valuable towards the illustration of his character to be lost, I shall here, in selecting them for the reader, avail myself of the opportunity of trespassing, for the last time, on his patience with a few general remarks.

It must have been observed, throughout these pages, and by some, perhaps, with disappointment, that into the character of Lord Byron, as a poet, there has been little, if any, critical examination; but that, content with expressing generally the delight which, in common with all, I derive from his poetry, I have left the task of analysing the sources from which this delight springs to others.[1] In thus evading, if it must be so considered, one of my duties as a biographer, I have been influenced no less by a sense of my own inaptitude for the office of critic than by recollecting with what assiduity, throughout the whole of the poet's career, every new rising of his genius was watched from the great observatories of Criticism, and the ever changing varieties of its course and splendour tracked out and recorded with a degree of skill and minuteness which has left but little for succeeding observers to discover. It is, moreover, into the character and conduct of Lord Byron, as a man, not distinct from, but forming, on the contrary, the best illustration of his character, as a writer, that it has been the more immediate purpose of these volumes to enquire; and if, in the course of them, any satisfactory clue has been afforded to those anomalies, moral and intellectual, which his life exhibited,—still more, should it have been the effect of my humble labours to clear away some of those mists that hung round my friend, and show him, in most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in all, of admiration, then will the chief and sole aim of this work have been accomplished.

[Footnote 1: It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo), and either labouring to point out to us why it has triumphed, or still more unprofitably contending that it ought to have failed. The well-known passage of La Bruyère, which even Voltaire's adulatory application of it to some work of the King of Prussia has not spoiled for use, puts, perhaps, in its true point of view the very subordinate rank which Criticism must be content to occupy in the train of successful Genius:—"Quand une lecture vous élève l'esprit et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherehez pas une autre règle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de l'ouvrier: La Critique, après ça, peut s'exercer sur les petites choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, parler de syntaxe," &c. &c.]

Having devoted to this object so large a portion of my own share of these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and, out of the features, already separately described, combining one complete portrait. The task, however, is by no means so easy as it may appear. There are few characters in which a near acquaintance does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found. Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,—though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,—all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this simple mode of tracing character to its sources must be often wholly at fault; and if, as is not impossible, in trying to solve the strange variances of his mind, I should myself be found to have fallen into contradictions and inconsistencies, the extreme difficulty of analysing, without dazzle or bewilderment, such an unexampled complication of qualities must be admitted as my excuse.

So various, indeed, and contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that led the world, during his short wondrous career, to compare him with that medley host of personages, almost all differing from each other, which he thus playfully enumerates in one of his Journals:—

"I have been thinking over, the other day, on the various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals, English and foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turning over a foreign one lately,—for I have made it a rule latterly never to search for any thing of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal, if presented by chance.

"To begin, then: I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maître, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to 'oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, &c. &c. &c.

"The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an Italian who had known him in his younger days. It of course related merely to our apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert it to me (for we were not then good friends), but in society.

"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or any body else."

It would not be uninteresting, were there either space or time for such a task, to take a review of the names of note in the preceding list, and show in how many points, though differing so materially among themselves, it might be found that each presented a striking resemblance to Lord Byron. We have seen, for instance, that wrongs and sufferings were, through life, the main sources of Byron's inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt to the "oppressor's wrong," for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante!—"quum illam sub amarâ cogitatione excitatam, occulti divinique ingenii vim exacuerit et inflammarit."[1]

[Footnote 1: Paulus Jovius.—Bayle, too, says of him, "Il fit entrer plus de feu et plus de force dans ses livres qu'il n'y en eût mis s'il avoit joui d'une condition plus tranquille."]

In that contempt for the world's opinion, which led Dante to exclaim, "Lascia dir le genti," Lord Byron also bore a strong resemblance to that poet,—though far more, it must be confessed, in profession than reality. For, while scorn for the public voice was on his lips, the keenest sensitiveness to its every breath was in his heart; and, as if every feeling of his nature was to have some painful mixture in it, together with the pride of Dante which led him to disdain public opinion, he combined the susceptibility of Petrarch which placed him shrinkingly at its mercy.

His agreement, in some other features of character, with Petrarch, I have already had occasion to remark[1]; and if it be true, as is often surmised, that Byron's want of a due reverence for Shakspeare arose from some latent and hardly conscious jealousy of that poet's fame, a similar feeling is known to have existed in Petrarch towards Dante; and the same reason assigned for it,—that from the living he had nothing to fear, while before the shade of Dante he might have reason to feel humbled,—is also not a little applicable[2] in the case of Lord Byron.

[Footnote 1: Some passages in Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch may be applied, with equal truth, to Lord Byron.—For instance, "It was hardly possible with Petrarch to write a sentence without portraying himself"—"Petrarch, allured by the idea that his celebrity would magnify into importance all the ordinary occurrences of his life, satisfied the curiosity of the world," &c. &c.—and again, with still more striking applicability,—"In Petrarch's letters, as well as in his Poems and Treatises, we always identify the author with the man, who felt himself irresistibly impelled to develope his own intense feelings. Being endowed with almost all the noble, and with some of the paltry passions of our nature, and having never attempted to conceal them, he awakens us to reflection upon ourselves while we contemplate in him a being of our own species, yet different from any other, and whose originality excites even more sympathy than admiration."]

[Footnote 2: "II Petrarca poteva credere candidamente ch'ei non pativa d'invidia solamente, perché fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non poteva sentirsi umiliato, fuorchè dall' ombra di Dante."]

Between the dispositions and habits of Alfieri and those of the noble poet of England, no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the versatile author of Don Juan,—

"Or stimandome Achille ed or Tersite."

By the extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, "ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character, is, in itself, the true clue through all that fabric's mazes,—is in itself the solution of whatever was most dazzling in his might or startling in his levity, of all that most attracted and repelled, whether in his life or his genius. A variety of powers almost boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them,—a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius, and an uncontrolled impetuosity, as well from habit as temperament, in yielding to them,—such were the two great and leading sources of all that varied spectacle which his life exhibited; of that succession of victories achieved by his genius, in almost every field of mind that genius ever trod, and of all those sallies of character in every shape and direction that unchecked feeling and dominant self-will could dictate.

It must be perceived by all endowed with quick powers of association how constantly, when any particular thought or sentiment presents itself to their minds, its very opposite, at the same moment, springs up there also:—if any thing sublime occurs, its neighbour, the ridiculous, is by its side;—across a bright view of the present or the future, a dark one throws its shadow;—and, even in questions respecting morals and conduct, all the reasonings and consequences that may suggest themselves on the side of one of two opposite courses will, in such minds, be instantly confronted by an array just as cogent on the other. A mind of this structure,—and such, more or less, are all those in which the reasoning is made subservient to the imaginative faculty,—though enabled, by such rapid powers of association, to multiply its resources without end, has need of the constant exercise of a controlling judgment to keep its perceptions pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxtapositions—as that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime—should at last vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in finding reasons for every side of a question may end, if not in the choice of the worst, at least in a sceptical indifference to all.

In picturing to oneself so awful an event as a shipwreck, its many horrors and perils are what alone offer themselves to ordinary fancies. But the keen, versatile imagination of Byron could detect in it far other details, and, at the same moment with all that is fearful and appalling in such a scene, could bring together all that is most ludicrous and low. That in this painful mixture he was but too true to human nature, the testimony of De Retz (himself an eye-witness of such an event) attests:—"Vous ne pouvez vous imaginer (says the Cardinal) l'horreur d'une grande tempête;—vous en pouvez imaginer aussi pen le ridicule." But, assuredly, a poet less wantoning in the variety of his power, and less proud of displaying it, would have paused ere he mixed up, thus mockingly, the degradation of humanity with its sufferings, and, content to probe us to the core with the miseries of our fellow-men, would have forborne to wring from us, the next moment, a bitter smile at their baseness.

To the moral sense so dangerous are the effects of this quality, that it would hardly, perhaps, be generalising too widely to assert that wheresoever great versatility of power exists, there will also be found a tendency to versatility of principle. The poet Chatterton, in whose soul the seeds of all that is good and bad in genius so prematurely ripened, said, in the consciousness of this multiple faculty, that he "held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of a question;" and it was by acting in accordance with this principle himself that he brought one of the few stains upon his name which a life so short afforded time to incur. Mirabeau, too, when, in the legal warfare between his father and mother, he helped to draw up for each the pleadings against the other, was influenced less, no doubt, by the pleasure of mischief than by this pride of talent, and lost sight of the unnatural perfidy of the task in the adroitness with which he executed it.

The quality which I have here denominated versatility, as applied to power, Lord Byron has himself designated by the French word "mobility," as applied to feeling and conduct; and, in one of the Cantos of Don Juan, has described happily some of its lighter features. After telling us that his hero had begun to doubt, from the great predominance of this quality in her, "how much of Adeline was real," he says,—

"So well she acted, all and every part,

By turns,—with that vivacious versatility,

Which many people take for want of heart.

They err—'tis merely what is called mobility,

A thing of temperament and not of art,

Though seeming so, from its supposed facility;

And false—though true; for surely they're sincerest,

Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest."

That he was fully aware not only of the abundance of this quality in his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and singleness of character, did not require the note on this passage, where he calls it "an unhappy attribute," to assure us. The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was not only for ever present in his mind, but,—aware as he was of the suspicion of weakness attached by the world to any retractation or abandonment of long professed opinions,—had the effect of keeping him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects, which, notwithstanding occasional fluctuations and contradictions as to the details of these very subjects, he continued to preserve throughout life. A passage from one of his manuscripts will show how sagaciously he saw the necessity of guarding himself against his own instability in this respect. "The world visits change of politics or change of religion with a more severe censure than a mere difference of opinion would appear to me to deserve. But there must be some reason for this feeling;—and I think it is that these departures from the earliest instilled ideas of our childhood, and from the line of conduct chosen by us when we first enter into public life, have been seen to have more mischievous results for society, and to prove more weakness of mind than other actions, in themselves, more immoral."

The same distrust in his own steadiness, thus keeping alive in him a conscientious self-watchfulness, concurred not a little, I have no doubt, with the innate kindness of his nature, to preserve so constant and unbroken the greater number of his attachments through life;—some of them, as in the instance of his mother, owing evidently more to a sense of duty than to real affection, the consistency with which, so creditably to the strength of his character, they were maintained.

But while in these respects, as well as in the sort of task-like perseverance with which the habits and amusements of his youth were held fast by him, he succeeded in conquering the variableness and love of novelty so natural to him, in all else that could engage his mind, in all the excursions, whether of his reason or his fancy, he gave way to this versatile humour without scruple or check,—taking every shape in which genius could manifest its power, and transferring himself to every region of thought where new conquests were to be achieved.

It was impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. It was impossible that, among the spirits he invoked from all quarters, those of darkness should not appear, at his bidding, with those of light. And here the dangers of an energy so multifold, and thus luxuriating in its own transformations, show themselves. To this one great object of displaying power,—various, splendid, and all-adorning power,—every other consideration and duty were but too likely to be sacrificed. Let the advocate but display his eloquence and art, no matter what the cause;—let the stamp of energy be but left behind, no matter with what seal. Could it have been expected that from such a career no mischief would ensue, or that among these cross-lights of imagination the moral vision could remain undisturbed? Is it to be at all wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried away, we should find,—wholly, too, without any prepense design of corrupting on his side,—a false splendour given to Vice to make it look like Virtue, and Evil too often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to Good?

Among the less serious ills flowing from this abuse of his great versatile powers,—more especially as exhibited in his most characteristic work, Don Juan,—it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of his poetry is sometimes not a little injured by the capricious and desultory flights into which this pliancy of wing allures him. 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 passes from one strain of sentiment to another,—from the frolic 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, on the whole, favourable as was all this quickness and variety of association to the extension of the range and resources of his poetry, it may be questioned whether a more select concentration of his powers would not have afforded a still more grand and precious result. Had the minds of Milton and Tasso been thus thrown open to the incursions of light, ludicrous fancies, who can doubt that those solemn sanctuaries of genius would have been as much injured as profaned by the intrusion?—and it is at least a question whether, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, so totally under the dominion of

"A fancy, like the air, most free,

And full of mutability,"

he would not have been less wonderful, perhaps, but more great.

Nor was it only in his poetical creations that this love and power of variety showed itself:—one of the most pervading weaknesses of his life may be traced to the same fertile source. The pride of personating every description of character, evil as well as good, influenced but too much, as we have seen, his ambition, and, not a little, his conduct; and as, in poetry, his own experience of the ill effects of passion was made to minister materials to the workings of his imagination, so, in return, his imagination supplied that dark colouring under which he so often disguised his true aspect from the world. To such a perverse length, indeed, did he carry this fancy for self-defamation, that if (as sometimes, in his moments of gloom, he persuaded himself,) there was any tendency to derangement in his mental conformation[1], on this point alone could it be pronounced to have manifested itself.[2] In the early part of my acquaintance with him, when he most gave way to this humour,—for it was observable afterwards, when the world joined in his own opinion of himself, he rather shrunk from the echo,—I have known him more than once, as we have sat together after dinner, and he was, at the time, perhaps, a little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously into this sort of dark and self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past life with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken curiosity and interest. He was, however, too promptly alive to the least approaches of ridicule not to perceive, on these occasions, that the gravity of his hearer was only prevented from being disturbed by an effort of politeness, and he accordingly never again tried this romantic mystification upon me. From what I have known, however, of his experiments upon more impressible listeners, I have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended by the relater but to mystify and surprise, the hearer so little understood him as to take in sober seriousness.

[Footnote 1: We have seen how often, in his Journals and Letters, this suspicion of his own mental soundness is intimated. A similar notion, with respect to himself, seems to have taken hold also of the strong mind of Johnson, who, like Byron, too, was disposed to attribute to an hereditary tinge that melancholy which, as he said, "made him mad all his life, at least not sober." This peculiar feature of Johnson's mind has, in the late new edition of Boswell's Life of him, given rise to some remarks, pregnant with all the editor's well known acuteness, which, as bearing on a point so important in the history of the human intellect, will be found worthy of all attention.

In one of the many letters of Lord Byron to myself, which I have thought right to omit, I find him tracing this supposed disturbance of his own faculties to the marriage of Miss Chaworth;—"a marriage," he says, "for which she sacrificed the prospects of two very ancient families, and a heart which was hers from ten years old, and a head which has never been quite right since."]

[Footnote 2: In his Diary of 1814 there is a passage (vol. ii. page 270.) which I had preserved solely for the purpose of illustrating this obliquity of his mind, intending, at the same time, to accompany it with an explanatory note. From some inadvertence, however, the note was omitted; and, thus left to itself, this piece of mystification has, with the French readers of the work, I see, succeeded most perfectly; there being no imaginable variety of murder which the votaries of the new romantic school have not been busily extracting out of the mystery of that passage.]

This strange propensity with which the man was, as it were, inoculated by the poet, re-acted back again upon his poetry, so as to produce, in some of his delineations of character, that inconsistency which has not unfrequently been noticed by his critics,—namely, the junction of one or two lofty and shining virtues with "a thousand crimes" altogether incompatible with them; this anomaly being, in fact, accounted for by the two different sorts of ambition that actuated him,—the natural one, of infusing into his personages those high and kindly qualities he felt conscious of within himself, and the artificial one, of investing them with those crimes which he so boyishly wished imputed to him by the world.

Independently, however, of any such efforts towards blackening his own name, and even after he had learned from bitter experience the rash folly of such a system, there was still, in the openness and over-frankness of his nature, and that indulgence of impulse with which he gave utterance to, if not acted upon, every chance impression of the moment, more than sufficient to bring his character, in all its least favourable lights, before the world. Who is there, indeed, that could bear to be judged by even the best of those unnumbered thoughts that course each other, like waves of the sea, through our minds, passing away unuttered, and, for the most part, even unowned by ourselves?—Yet to such a test was Byron's character throughout his whole life exposed. As well from the precipitance with which he gave way to every impulse as from the passion he had for recording his own impressions, all those heterogeneous thoughts, fantasies, and desires that, in other men's minds, "come like shadows, so depart," were by him fixed and embodied as they presented themselves, and, at once, taking a shape cognizable by public opinion, either in his actions or his words, either in the hasty letter of the moment, or the poem for all time, laid open such a range of vulnerable points before his judges, as no one individual perhaps ever before, of himself, presented.

With such abundance and variety of materials for portraiture, it may easily be conceived how two professed delineators of his character, the one over partial and the other malicious, might,—the former, by selecting only the fairer, and the latter only the darker, features,—produce two portraits of Lord Byron, as much differing from each other as they would both be, on the whole, unlike the original.

Of the utter powerlessness of retention with which he promulgated his every thought and feeling,—more especially if at all connected with the subject of self,—without allowing even a pause for the almost instinctive consideration whether by such disclosures he might not be conveying a calumnious impression of himself, a stronger instance could hardly be given than is to be found in a conversation held by him with Mr. Trelawney, as reported by this latter gentleman, when they were on their way together to Greece. After some remarks on the state of his own health[1], mental and bodily, he said, "I don't know how it is, but I am so cowardly at times, that if, this morning, you had come down and horsewhipped me, I should have submitted without opposition. Why is this? If one of these fits come over me when we are in Greece, what shall I do?"—"I told him (continues Mr. Trelawney) that it was the excessive debility of his nerves. He said, 'Yes, and of my head, too. I was very heroic when I left Genoa, but, like Acres, I feel my courage oozing out at my palms.'"

[Footnote 1: "He often mentioned," says Mr. Trelawney, "that he thought he should not live many years, and said that he would die in Greece." This he told me at Cephalonia. He always seemed unmoved on these occasions, perfectly indifferent as to when he died, only saying that he could not bear pain. On our voyage we had been reading with great attention the life and letters of Swift, edited by Scott, and we almost daily, or rather nightly, talked them over; and he more than once expressed his horror of existing in that state, and expressed some fears that it would be his fate.]

It will hardly, by those who know any thing of human nature, be denied that such misgivings and heart-sinkings as are here described may, under a similar depression of spirits, have found their way into the thoughts of some of the gallantest hearts that ever breathed;—but then, untold and unremembered, even by the sufferer himself, they passed off with the passing infirmity that produced them, leaving neither to truth to record them as proofs of want of health, nor to calumny to fasten upon them a suspicion of want of bravery. The assertion of some one that all men are by nature cowardly would seem to be countenanced by the readiness with which most men believe others so. "I have lived," says the Prince de Ligne, "to hear Voltaire called a fool, and the great Frederick a coward." The Duke of Marlborough in his own times, and Napoleon in ours, have found persons not only to assert but believe the same charge against them. After such glaring instances of the tendency of some minds to view greatness only through an inverting medium, it need little surprise us that Lord Byron's conduct in Greece should, on the same principle, have engendered a similar insinuation against him; nor should I have at all noticed the weak slander, but for the opportunity which it affords me of endeavouring to point out what appears to me the peculiar nature of the courage by which, on all occasions that called for it, he so strikingly distinguished himself.

Whatever virtue may be allowed to belong to personal courage, it is, most assuredly, they who are endowed by nature with the liveliest imaginations, and who have therefore most vividly and simultaneously before their eyes all the remote and possible consequences of danger, that are most deserving of whatever praise attends the exercise of that virtue. A bravery of this kind, which springs more out of mind than temperament,—or rather, perhaps, out of the conquest of the former over the latter,—will naturally proportion its exertion to the importance of the occasion; and the same person who is seen to shrink with an almost feminine fear from ignoble and every-day perils, may be found foremost in the very jaws of danger where honour is to be either maintained or won. Nor does this remark apply only to the imaginative class, of whom I am chiefly treating. By the same calculating principle, it will be found that most men whose bravery is the result not of temperament but reflection, are regulated in their daring. The wise De Wit, though negligent of his life on great occasions, was not ashamed, we are told, of dreading and avoiding whatever endangered it on others.

Of the apprehensiveness that attends quick imaginations, Lord Byron had, of course, a considerable share, and in all situations of ordinary peril gave way to it without reserve. I have seldom seen any person, male or female, more timid in a carriage; and, in riding, his preparation against accidents showed the same nervous and imaginative fearfulness. "His bridle," says the late Lord B——, who rode frequently with him at Genoa, "had, besides cavesson and martingale, various reins; and whenever he came near a place where his horse was likely to shy, he gathered up these said reins and fixed himself as if he was going at a five-barred gate." None surely but the most superficial or most prejudiced observers could ever seriously found upon such indications of nervousness any conclusion against the real courage of him who was subject to them. The poet Ariosto, who was, it seems, a victim to the same fair-weather alarms,—who, when on horseback, would alight at the least appearance of danger, and on the water was particularly timorous,—could yet, in the action between the Pope's vessels and the Duke of Ferrara's, fight like a lion; and in the same manner the courage of Lord Byron, as all his companions in peril testify, was of that noblest kind which rises with the greatness of the occasion, and becomes but the more self-collected and resisting, the more imminent the danger.

In proposing to show that the distinctive properties of Lord Byron's character, as well moral as literary, arose mainly from those two great sources, the unexampled versatility of his powers and feelings, and the facility with which he gave way to the impulses of both, it had been my intention to pursue the subject still further in detail, and to endeavour to trace throughout the various excellences and defects, both of his poetry and his life, the operation of these two dominant attributes of his nature. "No men," says Cowper, in speaking of persons of a versatile turn of mind, "are better qualified for companions in such a world as this than men of such temperament. Every scene of life has two sides, a dark and a bright one; and the mind that has an equal mixture of melancholy and vivacity is best of all qualified for the contemplation of either." 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 was so active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, by giving to those who were, at the moment, present, such ascendant influence, that they alone for the time occupied all his thoughts and feelings, and brought whatever was most agreeable in his nature into play.[1]

[Footnote 1: In reference to his power of adapting himself to all sorts of society, and taking upon himself all varieties of character, I find a passage in one of my early letters to him (from Ireland) which, though it might be expressed, perhaps, in better taste, is worth citing for its truth:—"Though I have not written, I have seldom ceased to think of you; for you are that sort of being whom every thing, high or low, brings into one's mind. Whether I am with the wise or the waggish, among poets or among pugilists, over the book or over the bottle, you are sure to connect yourself transcendently with all, and come 'armed for every field' into my memory."]

So much did this extreme mobility,—this readiness to be "strongly acted on by what was nearest,"—abound in his disposition, that, even with the casual acquaintances of the hour, his heart was upon his lips[1], and it depended wholly upon themselves whether they might not become at once the depositories of every secret, if it might be so called, of his whole life. That in this convergence of all the powers of pleasing towards present objects, those absent should be sometimes forgotten, or, what is worse, sacrificed to the reigning desire of the moment, is unluckily one of the alloys attendant upon persons of this temperament, which renders their fidelity, either as lovers or confidants, not a little precarious. But of the charm which such a disposition diffuses through the manner there can be but little doubt,—and least of all among those who have ever felt its influence in Lord Byron. Neither are the instances in which he has been known to make imprudent disclosures of what had been said or written by others of the persons with whom he was conversing to be all set down to this rash overflow of the social hour. In his own frankness of spirit, and hatred of all disguise, this practice, pregnant as it was with inconvenience, and sometimes danger, in a great degree originated. To confront the accused with the accuser was, in such cases, his delight,—not only as a revenge for having been made the medium of what men durst not say openly to each other, but as a gratification of that love of small mischief which he had retained from boyhood, and which the confusion that followed such exposures was always sure to amuse. This habit, too, being, as I have before remarked, well known to his friends, their sense of prudence, if not their fairness, was put fully on its guard, and he himself was spared the pain of hearing what he could not, without inflicting still worse, repeat.

[Footnote 1: It is curious to observe how, in all times, and all countries, what is called the poetical temperament has, in the great possessors, and victims, of that gift, produced similar effects. In the following passage, the biographer of Tasso has, in painting that poet, described Byron also:—"There are some persons of a sensibility so powerful, that whoever happens to be with them is, at that moment, to them the world: their hearts involuntarily open; they are prompted by a strong desire to please; and they thus make confidants of their sentiments people whom they in reality regard with indifference."]

A most apt illustration of this point of his character is to be found in an anecdote told of him by Parry, who, though himself the victim, had the sense and good temper to perceive the source to which Byron's conduct was to be traced. While the Turkish fleet was blockading Missolonghi, his Lordship, one day, attended by Parry, proceeded in a small punt, rowed by a boy, to the mouth of the harbour, while in a large boat accompanying them were Prince Mavrocordato and his attendants. In this situation, an indignant feeling of contempt and impatience at the supineness of their Greek friends seized the engineer, and he proceeded to vent this feeling to Lord Byron in no very measured terms, pronouncing Prince Mavrocordato to be "an old gentlewoman," and concluding, according to his own statement, with the following words:—"If I were in their place, I should be in a fever at the thought of my own incapacity and ignorance, and should burn with impatience to attempt the destruction of those rascal Turks. But the Greeks and the Turks are opponents worthy, by their imbecility, of each other."

"I had scarcely explained myself fully," adds Mr. Parry, "when his Lordship ordered our boat to be placed alongside the other, and actually related our whole conversation to the Prince. In doing it, however, he took on himself the task of pacifying both the Prince and me, and though I was at first very angry, and the Prince, I believe, very much annoyed, he succeeded. Mavrocordato afterwards showed no dissatisfaction with me, and I prized Lord Byron's regard too much, to remain long displeased with a proceeding which was only an unpleasant manner of reproving us both."

Into these and other such branches from the main course of his character, it might have been a task of some interest to investigate,—certain as we should be that, even in the remotest and narrowest of these windings, some of the brightness and strength of the original current would be perceptible. Enough however has been, perhaps, said to set other minds upon supplying what remains:—if the track of analysis here opened be the true one, to follow it in its further bearings will not be difficult. Already, indeed, I may be thought by some readers to have occupied too large a portion of these pages, not only in tracing out such "nice dependencies" and gradations of my friend's character, but still more uselessly, as may be conceived, in recording all the various habitudes and whims by which the course of his every-day life was distinguished from that of other people. That the critics of the day should think it due to their own importance to object to trifles is naturally to be expected; but that, in other times, such minute records of a Byron will be read with interest, even such critics cannot doubt. To know that Catiline walked with an agitated and uncertain gait is, by no mean judge of human nature, deemed important as an indication of character. But far less significant details will satisfy the idolaters of genius. To be told that Tasso loved malmsey and thought it favourable to poetic inspiration is a piece of intelligence, even at the end of three centuries, not unwelcome; while a still more amusing proof of the disposition of the world to remember little things of the great is, that the poet Petrarch's excessive fondness for turnips is one of the few traditions still preserved of him at Arqua.

The personal appearance of Lord Byron has been so frequently described, both by pen and pencil, that were it not the bounden duty of the biographer to attempt some such sketch, the task would seem superfluous. Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the highest order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most varied and interesting expression. The same facility, indeed, of change observable in the movements of his mind was seen also in the free play of his features, as the passing thoughts within darkened or shone through them.

His eyes, though of a light grey, were capable of all extremes of expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from the very sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage. Of this latter passion, I had once an opportunity of seeing what fiery interpreters they could be, on my telling him, thoughtlessly enough, that a friend of mine had said to me—"Beware of Lord Byron; he will some day or other do something very wicked."—"Was it man or woman said so?" he exclaimed, suddenly turning round upon me with a look of such intense anger as, though it lasted not an instant, could not easily be forgot, and of which no better idea can be given than in the words of one who, speaking of Chatterton's eyes, says that "fire rolled at the bottom of them."

But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay. "Many pictures have been painted of him," says a fair critic of his features, "with various success; but the excessive beauty of his lips escaped every painter and sculptor. In their ceaseless play they represented every emotion, whether pale with anger, curled in disdain, smiling in triumph, or dimpled with archness and love." It would be injustice to the reader not to borrow from the same pencil a few more touches of portraiture. "This extreme facility of expression was sometimes painful, for I have seen him look absolutely ugly—I have seen him look so hard and cold, that you must hate him, and then, in a moment, brighter than the sun, with such playful softness in his look, such affectionate eagerness kindling in his eyes, and dimpling his lips into something more sweet than a smile, that you forgot the man, the Lord Byron, in the picture of beauty presented to you, and gazed with intense curiosity—I had almost said—as if to satisfy yourself, that thus looked the god of poetry, the god of the Vatican, when he conversed with the sons and daughters of man."

His head was remarkably small[1],—so much so as to be rather out of proportion with his face. The forehead, though a little too narrow, was high, and appeared more so from his having his hair (to preserve it, as he said,) shaved over the temples; while the glossy, dark-brown curls, clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is added, that his nose, though handsomely, was rather thickly shaped, that his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion colourless, as good an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words to convey may be conceived of his features.

[Footnote 1: "Several of us, one day," says Colonel Napier, "tried on his hat, and in a party of twelve or fourteen, who were at dinner, not one could put it on, so exceedingly small was his head. My servant, Thomas Wells, who had the smallest head in the 90th regiment (so small that he could hardly get a cap to fit him), was the only person who could put on Lord Byron's hat, and him it fitted exactly."]

In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet eight inches and a half, and to the length of his limbs he attributed his being such a good swimmer. His hands were very white, and—according to his own notion of the size of hands as indicating birth—aristocratically small. The lameness of his right foot[1], though an obstacle to grace, but little impeded the activity of his movements; and from this circumstance, as well as from the skill with which the foot was disguised by means of long trowsers, it would be difficult to conceive a defect of this kind less obtruding itself as a deformity; while the diffidence which a constant consciousness of the infirmity gave to his first approach and address made, in him, even lameness a source of interest.

[Footnote 1: In speaking of this lameness at the commencement of my work, I forbore, both from my own doubts on the subject and the great variance I found in the recollections of others, from stating in which of his feet this lameness existed. It will, indeed, with difficulty be believed what uncertainty I found upon this point, even among those most intimate with him. Mr. Hunt, in his book, states it to have been the left foot that was deformed, and this, though contrary to my own impression, and, as it appears also, to the fact, was the opinion I found also of others who had been much in the habit of living with him. On applying to his early friends at Southwell and to the shoemaker of that town who worked for him, so little prepared were they to answer with any certainty on the subject, that it was only by recollecting that the lame foot "was the off one in going up the street" they at last came to the conclusion that his right limb was the one affected; and Mr. Jackson, his preceptor in pugilism, was, in like manner, obliged to call to mind whether his noble pupil was a right or left hand hitter before he could arrive at the same decision.]

In looking again into the Journal from which it was my intention to give extracts, the following unconnected opinions, or rather reveries, most of them on points connected with his religious opinions, are all that I feel tempted to select. To an assertion in the early part of this work, that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed unbeliever," it has been objected, that many passages of his writings prove the direct contrary. This assumption, however, as well as the interpretation of most of the passages referred to in its support, proceed, as it appears to me, upon the mistake, not uncommon in conversation, of confounding together the meanings of the words unbeliever and sceptic,—the former implying decision of opinion, and the latter only doubt. I have myself, I find, not always kept the significations of the two words distinct, and in one instance have so far fallen into the notion of these objectors as to speak of Byron in his youth as "an unbelieving school-boy," when the word "doubting" would have more truly expressed my meaning. With this necessary explanation, I shall here repeat my assertion; or rather—to clothe its substance in a different form—shall say that Lord Byron was, to the last, a sceptic, which, in itself, implies that he was, at no time, a confirmed unbeliever.

"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it were for—not to have lived at all.[1] All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.

[Footnote 1: Swift "early adopted," says Sir Walter Scott, "the custom of observing his birth-day, as a term, not of joy, but of sorrow, and of reading, when it annually recurred, the striking passage of Scripture, in which Job laments and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house 'that a man-child was born.'"—Life of Swift.]

"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind: it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body—in dreams, for instance;—incoherently and madly, I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should not act separately, as well as jointly, who can pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state 'a soul which drags a carcass,'—a heavy chain, to be sure, but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our future life will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong; and when the world is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here;—but the whole thing is inscrutable.

"It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

"Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms.

"Matter is eternal, always changing, but reproduced, and, as far as we can comprehend eternity, eternal; and why not mind? Why should not the mind act with and upon the universe, as portions of it act upon, and with, the congregated dust called mankind? See how one man acts upon himself and others, or upon multitudes! The same agency, in a higher and purer degree, may act upon the stars, &c. ad infinitum.

"I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded upon the soul. For this reason Priestley's Christian Materialism always struck me as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a soul. The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul, (as surely the mind, or whatever you call it, is,) in this world, we must part with it in the next, even for an immortal materiality! I own my partiality for spirit.

"I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day, as if there was some association between an internal approach to greater light and purity and the kindler of this dark lantern of our external existence.

"The night is also a religious concern, and even more so when I viewed the moon and stars through Herschell's telescope, and saw that they were worlds.

"If, according to some speculations, you could prove the world many thousand years older than the Mosaic chronology, or if you could get rid of Adam and Eve, and the apple, and serpent, still, what is to be put up in their stead? or how is the difficulty removed? Things must have had a beginning, and what matters it when or how?

"I sometimes think that man may be the relic of some higher material being wrecked in a former world, and degenerated in the hardship and struggle through chaos into conformity, or something like it,—as we see Laplanders, Esquimaux, &c. inferior in the present state, as the elements become more inexorable. But even then this higher pre-Adamite supposititious creation must have had an origin and a Creator—for a creation is a more natural imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms: all things remount to a fountain, though they may flow to an ocean.

"Plutarch says, in his Life of Lysander, that Aristotle observes 'that in general great geniuses are of a melancholy turn, and instances Socrates, Plato, and Hercules (or Heraclitus), as examples, and Lysander, though not while young, yet as inclined to it when approaching towards age.' Whether I am a genius or not, I have been called such by my friends as well as enemies, and in more countries and languages than one, and also within a no very long period of existence. Of my genius, I can say nothing, but of my melancholy, that it is 'increasing, and ought to be diminished.' But how?

"I take it that most men are so at bottom, but that it is only remarked in the remarkable. The Duchesse de Broglio, in reply to a remark of mine on the errors of clever people, said that 'they were not worse than others, only, being more in view, more noted, especially in all that could reduce them to the rest, or raise the rest to them.' In 1816, this was.

"In fact (I suppose that) if the follies of fools were all set down like those of the wise, the wise (who seem at present only a better sort of fools) would appear almost intelligent.

"It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us: a year impairs; a lustre obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory. Then, indeed, the lights are rekindled for a moment; but who can be sure that imagination is not the torch-bearer? Let any man try at the end of ten years to bring before him the features, or the mind, or the sayings, or the habits of his best friend, or his greatest man, (I mean his favourite, his Buonaparte, his this, that, or t'other,) and he will be surprised at the extreme confusion of his ideas. I speak confidently on this point, having always passed for one who had a good, ay, an excellent memory. I except, indeed, our recollection of womankind; there is no forgetting them (and be d—d to them) any more than any other remarkable era, such as 'the revolution,' or 'the plague,' or 'the invasion,' or 'the comet,' or 'the war' of such and such an epoch,—being the favourite dates of mankind who have so many blessings in their lot that they never make their calendars from them, being too common. For instance, you see 'the great drought,' 'the Thames frozen over,' 'the seven years' war broke out,' 'the English, or French, or Spanish revolution commenced,' 'the Lisbon earthquake,' 'the Lima earthquake,' 'the earthquake of Calabria,' 'the plague of London,' ditto 'of Constantinople,' 'the sweating sickness,' 'the yellow fever of Philadelphia,' &c. &c. &c.; but you don't see 'the abundant harvest,' 'the fine summer,' 'the long peace,' 'the wealthy speculation,' 'the wreckless voyage,' recorded so emphatically! By the way, there has been a thirty years' war and a seventy years' war; was there ever a seventy or a thirty years' peace? or was there even a DAY'S universal peace? except perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let philosophers decide. I am none.

"In general, I do not draw well with literary men; not that I dislike them, but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication. There are several exceptions, to be sure, but then they have either been men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, &c. or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, &c.: but your literary every-day man and I never went well in company, especially your foreigner, whom I never could abide; except Giordani, and—and—and—(I really can't name any other)—I don't remember a man amongst them whom I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzophanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking Polyglott and more, who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel as universal interpreter. He is indeed a marvel—unassuming, also. I tried him in all the tongues of which I knew a single oath, (or adjuration to the gods against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-horses, post-houses, post every thing,) and egad! he astounded me—even to my English.

"'No man would live his life over again,' is an old and true saying which all can resolve for themselves. At the same time, there are probably moments in most men's lives which they would live over the rest of life to regain. Else why do we live at all? because Hope recurs to Memory, both false—but—but—but—but—and this but drags on till—what? I do not know; and who does? 'He that died o' Wednesday.'"

In laying before the reader these last extracts from the papers in my possession, it may be expected, perhaps, that I should say something,—in addition to what has been already stated on this subject,—respecting those Memoranda, or Memoirs, which, in the exercise of the discretionary power given to me by my noble friend, I placed, shortly after his death, at the disposal of his sister and executor, and which they, from a sense of what they thought due to his memory, consigned to the flames. As the circumstances, however, connected with the surrender of that manuscript, besides requiring much more detail than my present limits allow, do not, in any respect, concern the character of Lord Byron, but affect solely my own, it is not here, at least, that I feel myself called upon to enter into an explanation of them. The world will, of course, continue to think of that step as it pleases; but it is, after all, on a man's own opinion of his actions that his happiness chiefly depends, and I can only say that, were I again placed in the same circumstances, I would—even at ten times the pecuniary sacrifice which my conduct then cost me—again act precisely in the same manner.

For the satisfaction of those whose regret at the loss of that manuscript arises from some better motive than the mere disappointment of a prurient curiosity, I shall here add, that on the mysterious cause of the separation, it afforded no light whatever;—that, while some of its details could never have been published at all[1], and little, if any, of what it contained personal towards others could have appeared till long after the individuals concerned had left the scene, all that materially related to Lord Byron himself was (as I well knew when I made that sacrifice) to be found repeated in the various Journals and Memorandum-books, which, though not all to be made use of, were, as the reader has seen from the preceding pages, all preserved.

[Footnote 1: This description applies only to the Second Part of the Memoranda; there having been but little unfit for publication in the First Part, which was, indeed, read, as is well known, by many of the noble author's friends.]

As far as suppression, indeed, is blamable, I have had, in the course of this task, abundantly to answer for it; having, as the reader must have perceived, withheld a large portion of my materials, to which Lord Byron, no doubt, in his fearlessness of consequences, would have wished to give publicity, but which, it is now more than probable, will never meet the light.

There remains little more to add. It has been remarked by Lord Orford[1], as "strange, that the writing a man's life should in general make the biographer become enamoured of his subject, whereas one should think that the nicer disquisition one makes into the life of any man, the less reason one should find to love or admire him." On the contrary, may we not rather say that, as knowledge is ever the parent of tolerance, the more insight we gain into the springs and motives of a man's actions, the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed, and the influences and temptations under which he acted, the more allowance we may be inclined to make for his errors, and the more approbation his virtues may extort from us?

[Footnote 1: In speaking of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life of Henry VIII.]

The arduous task of being the biographer of Byron is one, at least, on which I have not obtruded myself: the wish of my friend that I should undertake that office having been more than once expressed, at a time when none but a boding imagination like his could have foreseen much chance of the sad honour devolving to me. If in some instances I have consulted rather the spirit than the exact letter of his injunctions, it was with the view solely of doing him more justice than he would have done himself, there being no hands in which his character could have been less safe than his own, nor any greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he affected to be for what he was. Of any partiality, however, beyond what our mutual friendship accounts for and justifies, I am by no means conscious; nor would it be in the power, indeed, of even the most partial friend to allege any thing more convincingly favourable of his character than is contained in the few simple facts with which I shall here conclude,—that, through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend;—that those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants, remained attached to him to the last;—that the woman, to whom he gave the love of his maturer years, idolises his name; and that, with a single unhappy exception, scarce an instance is to be found of any one, once brought, however briefly, into relations of amity with him, that did not feel towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a fondness for his memory.

I have now done with the subject, nor shall be easily tempted to recur to it. Any mistakes or misstatements I may be proved to have made shall be corrected;—any new facts which it is in the power of others to produce will speak for themselves. To mere opinions I am not called upon to pay attention—and still less to insinuations or mysteries. I have here told what I myself know and think concerning my friend; and now leave his character, moral as well as literary, to the judgment of the world.