Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  That unfortunate gentleman was undoubtedly a man of genius — full of ideal beauty and enthusiasm. And yet there was some defect in his understanding by which he subjected himself to the accusation of atheism. In his dispositions he is represented to have been ever calm and amiable; and but for his metaphysical errors and reveries, and a singular incapability of conceiving the existing state of things as it practically affects the nature and condition of man, to have possessed many of the gentlest qualities of humanity. He highly admired the endowments of Lord Byron, and in return was esteemed by his Lordship; but even had there been neither sympathy nor friendship between them, his premature fate could not but have saddened Byron with no common sorrow.

  Mr Shelley was some years younger than his noble friend; he was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., of Castle Goring, Sussex. At the age of thirteen he was sent to Eton, where he rarely mixed in the common amusements of the other boys; but was of a shy, reserved disposition, fond of solitude, and made few friends. He was not distinguished for his proficiency in the regular studies of the school; on the contrary, he neglected them for German and chemistry. His abilities were superior, but deteriorated by eccentricity. At the age of sixteen he was sent to the University of Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself by publishing a pamphlet, under the absurd and world-defying title of The Necessity of Atheism; for which he was expelled from the University.

  The event proved fatal to his prospects in life; and the treatment he received from his family was too harsh to win him from error. His father, however, in a short time relented, and he was received home; but he took so little trouble to conciliate the esteem of his friends, that he found the house uncomfortable, and left it. He then went to London; where he eloped with a young lady to Gretna Green. Their united ages amounted to thirty-two; and the match being deemed unsuitable to his rank and prospects, it so exasperated his father, that he broke off all communication with him.

  After their marriage the young couple resided some time in Edinburgh. They then passed over to Ireland, which being in a state of disturbance, Shelley took a part in politics, more reasonable than might have been expected. He inculcated moderation.

  About this tune he became devoted to the cultivation of his poetical talents; but his works were sullied with the erroneous inductions of an understanding which, inasmuch as he regarded all the existing world in the wrong, must be considered as having been either shattered or defective.

  His rash marriage proved, of course, an unhappy one. After the birth of two children, a separation, by mutual consent, took place, and Mrs Shelley committed suicide.

  He then married a daughter of Mr Godwin, the author of Caleb Williams, and they resided for some time at Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, much respected for their charity. In the meantime, his irreligious opinions had attracted public notice, and, in consequence of his unsatisfactory notions of the Deity, his children, probably at the instance of his father, were taken from him by a decree of the Lord Chancellor: an event which, with increasing pecuniary embarrassments, induced him to quit England, with the intention of never returning.

  Being in Switzerland when Lord Byron, after his domestic tribulations, arrived at Geneva, they became acquainted. He then crossed the Alps, and again at Venice renewed his friendship with his Lordship; he thence passed to Rome, where he resided some time; and after visiting Naples, fixed his permanent residence in Tuscany. His acquirements were constantly augmenting, and he was without question an accomplished person. He was, however, more of a metaphysician than a poet, though there are splendid specimens of poetical thought in his works. As a man, he was objected to only on account of his speculative opinions; for he possessed many amiable qualities, was just in his intentions, and generous to excess.

  When he had seen Mr Hunt established in the Casa Lanfranchi with Lord Byron at Pisa, Mr Shelley returned to Leghorn, for the purpose of taking a sea excursion; an amusement to which he was much attached. During a violent storm the boat was swamped, and the party on board were all drowned. Their bodies were, however, afterwards cast on shore; Mr Shelley’s was found near Via Reggio, and, being greatly decomposed, and unfit to be removed, it was determined to reduce the remains to ashes, that they might be carried to a place of sepulture. Accordingly preparations were made for the burning.

  Wood in abundance was found on the shore, consisting of old trees and the wreck of vessels: the spot itself was well suited for the ceremony. The magnificent bay of Spezzia was on the right, and Leghorn on the left, at equal distances of about two-and-twenty miles. The headlands project boldly far into the sea; in front lie several islands, and behind dark forests and the cliffy Apennines. Nothing was omitted that could exalt and dignify the mournful rites with the associations of classic antiquity; frankincense and wine were not forgotten. The weather was serene and beautiful, and the pacified ocean was silent, as the flame rose with extraordinary brightness. Lord Byron was present; but he should himself have described the scene and what he felt.

  These antique obsequies were undoubtedly affecting; but the return of the mourners from the burning is the most appalling orgia, without the horror of crime, of which I have ever heard. When the duty was done, and the ashes collected, they dined and drank much together, and bursting from the calm mastery with which they had repressed their feelings during the solemnity, gave way to frantic exultation. They were all drunk; they sang, they shouted, and their barouche was driven like a whirlwind through the forest. I can conceive nothing descriptive of the demoniac revelry of that flight, but scraps of the dead man’s own song of Faust, Mephistophiles, and Ignis Fatuus, in alternate chorus.

  The limits of the sphere of dream,

  The bounds of true and false are past;

  Lead us on, thou wand’ring Gleam;

  Lead us onwards, far and fast,

  To the wide, the desert waste.

  But see how swift, advance and shift,

  Trees behind trees — row by row,

  Now clift by clift, rocks bend and lift,

  Their frowning foreheads as we go;

  The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!

  How they snort, and how they blow.

  Honour her to whom honour is due,

  Old mother Baubo, honour to you.

  An able sow with old Baubo upon her

  Is worthy of glory and worthy of honour.

  The way is wide, the way is long,

  But what is that for a Bedlam throng?

  Some on a ram, and some on a prong,

  On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along.

  Every trough will be boat enough,

  With a rag for a sail, we can sweep through the sky.

  Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly?

  CHAPTER XL

  “The Two Foscari” — ”Werner” — ”The Deformed Transformed” — ”Don Juan” — ”The Liberal” — Removes from Pisa to Genoa

  I have never heard exactly where the tragedy of The Two Foscari was written: that it was imagined in Venice is probable. The subject is, perhaps, not very fit for a drama, for it has no action; but it is rich in tragic materials, revenge and affection, and the composition is full of the peculiar stuff of the poet’s own mind. The exulting sadness with which Jacopo Foscari looks in the first scene from the window, on the Adriatic, is Byron himself recalling his enjoyment of the sea.

  How many a time have I

  Cloven with arm still lustier, heart more daring,

  The wave all roughen’d: with a swimmer’s stroke

  Flinging the billows back from my drench’d hair,

  And laughing from my lip th’ audacious brine

  Which kiss’d it like a wine-cup.

  The whole passage, both prelude and remainder, glows with the delicious recollections of laying and revelling in the summer waves. But the exile’s feeling is no less beautifully given and appropriate to the author’s condition, far more so, indeed, than to that of Jacopo Fos
cari.

  Had I gone forth

  From my own land, like the old patriarchs, seeking

  Another region with their flocks and herds;

  Had I been cast out like the Jews from Zion,

  Or like our fathers driven by Attila

  From fertile Italy to barren islets,

  I would have given some tears to my late country,

  And many thoughts; but afterward address’d

  Myself to those about me, to create

  A new home and first state.

  What follows is still more pathetic:

  Ay — we but hear

  Of the survivors’ toil in their new lands,

  Their numbers and success; but who can number

  The hearts which broke in silence of that parting,

  Or after their departure; of that malady

  Which calls up green and native fields to view

  From the rough deep with such identity

  To the poor exile’s fever’d eye, that he

  Can scarcely be restrained from treading them?

  That melody which out of tones and tunes

  Collects such pastime for the ling’ring sorrow

  Of the sad mountaineer, when far away

  From his snow-canopy of cliffs and clouds,

  That he feeds on the sweet but poisonous thought

  And dies. — You call this weakness! It is strength,

  I say — the parent of all honest feeling:

  He who loves not his country can love nothing.

  MARINA

  Obey her then, ‘tis she that puts thee forth.

  JACOPO FOSCARI

  Ay, there it is. ‘Tis like a mother’s curse

  Upon my soul — the mark is set upon me.

  The exiles you speak of went forth by nations;

  Their hands upheld each other by the way;

  Their tents were pitch’d together — I’m alone —

  Ah, you never yet

  Were far away from Venice — never saw

  Her beautiful towers in the receding distance,

  While every furrow of the vessel’s track

  Seem’d ploughing deep into your heart; you never

  Saw day go down upon your native spires

  So calmly with its gold and crimson glory,

  And after dreaming a disturbed vision

  Of them and theirs, awoke and found them not.

  All this speaks of the voluntary exile’s own regrets, and awakens sympathy for the anguish which pride concealed, but unable to repress, gave vent to in the imagined sufferings of one that was to him as Hecuba.

  It was at Pisa that Werner, or The Inheritance, a tragedy, was written, or at least completed. It is taken entirely from the German’s tale, Kruitzner, published many years before, by one of the Miss Lees, in their Canterbury Tales. So far back as 1815, Byron began a drama upon the same subject, and nearly completed an act when he was interrupted. “I have adopted,” he says himself, “the characters, plan, and even the language of many parts of this story”; an acknowledgment which exempts it from that kind of criticism to which his principal works are herein subjected.

  But The Deformed Transformed, which was also written at Pisa, is, though confessedly an imitation of Goethe’s Faust, substantially an original work. In the opinion of Mr Moore, it probably owes something to the author’s painful sensibility to the defect in his own foot; an accident which must, from the acuteness with which he felt it, have essentially contributed to enable him to comprehend and to express the envy of those afflicted with irremediable exceptions to the ordinary course of fortune, or who have been amerced by nature of their fair proportions. But save only a part of the first scene, the sketch will not rank among the felicitous works of the poet. It was intended to be a satire — probably, at least — but it is only a fragment — a failure.

  Hitherto I have not noticed Don Juan otherwise than incidentally. It was commenced in Venice, and afterward continued at intervals to the end of the sixteenth canto, until the author left Pisa, when it was not resumed, at least no more has been published. Strong objections have been made to its moral tendency; but, in the opinion of many, it is the poet’s masterpiece, and undoubtedly it displays all the variety of his powers, combined with a quaint playfulness not found to an equal degree in any other of his works. The serious and pathetic portions are exquisitely beautiful; the descriptive have all the distinctness of the best pictures in Childe Harold, and are, moreover, generally drawn from nature, while the satire is for the most part curiously associated and sparklingly witty. The characters are sketched with amazing firmness and freedom, and though sometimes grotesque, are yet not often overcharged. It is professedly an epic poem, but it may be more properly described as a poetical novel. Nor can it be said to inculcate any particular moral, or to do more than unmantle the decorum of society. Bold and buoyant throughout, it exhibits a free irreverent knowledge of the world, laughing or mocking as the thought serves, in the most unexpected antitheses to the proprieties of time, place, and circumstance.

  The object of the poem is to describe the progress of a libertine through life, not an unprincipled prodigal, whose profligacy, growing with his growth, and strengthening with his strength, passes from voluptuous indulgence into the sordid sensuality of systematic debauchery, but a young gentleman, who, whirled by the vigour and vivacity of his animal spirits into a world of adventures, in which his stars are chiefly in fault for his liaisons, settles at last into an honourable lawgiver, a moral speaker on divorce bills, and possibly a subscriber to the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The author has not completed his design, but such appears to have been the drift of it, affording ample opportunities to unveil the foibles and follies of all sorts of men — and women too. It is generally supposed to contain much of the author’s own experience, but still, with all its riant knowledge of bowers and boudoirs, it is deficient as a true limning of the world, by showing man as if he were always ruled by one predominant appetite.

  In the character of Donna Inez and Don José, it has been imagined that Lord Byron has sketched himself and his lady. It may be so; and if it were, he had by that time got pretty well over the lachrymation of their parting. It is no longer doubtful that the twenty-seventh stanza records a biographical fact, and the thirty-sixth his own feelings, when,

  Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him,

  Let’s own, since it can do no good on earth;

  It was a trying moment that which found him

  Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,

  Where all his household gods lay shiver’d round him:

  No choice was left his feelings or his pride,

  Save death or Doctors’ Commons.

  It has been already mentioned, that while the poet was at Dr Glennie’s academy at Dulwich, he read an account of a shipwreck, which has been supposed to have furnished some of the most striking incidents in the description of the disastrous voyage in the second canto in Don Juan. I have not seen that work; but whatever Lord Byron may have found in it suitable to his purpose, he has undoubtedly made good use of his grandfather’s adventures. The incident of the spaniel is related by the admiral.

  In the licence of Don Juan, the author seems to have considered that his wonted accuracy might be dispensed with.

  The description of Haidee applies to an Albanian, not a Greek girl. The splendour of her father’s house is altogether preposterous; and the island has no resemblance to those of the Cyclades. With the exception of Zea, his Lordship, however, did not visit them. Some degree of error and unlike description, runs indeed through the whole of the still life around the portrait of Haidee. The fête which Lambro discovers on his return, is, however, prettily described; and the dance is as perfect as true.

  And farther on a group of Grecian girls,

  The first and tallest her white kerchief waving,

  Were strung together like a row of pearls,r />
  Link’d hand in hand and dancing; each too having

  Down her white neck long floating auburn curls.

  Their leader sang, and bounded to her song,

  With choral step and voice, the virgin throng.

  The account of Lambro proceeding to the house is poetically imagined; and, in his character, may be traced a vivid likeness of Ali Pasha, and happy illustrative allusions to the adventures of that chief.

  The fourth canto was written at Ravenna; it is so said within itself; and the description of Dante’s sepulchre there may be quoted for its truth, and the sweet modulation of the moral reflection interwoven with it.

  I pass each day where Dante’s bones are laid;

  A little cupola, more neat than solemn,

  Protects his dust; but reverence here is paid

  To the bard’s tomb and not the warrior’s column.

  The time must come when both alike decay’d,

  The chieftain’s trophy and the poet’s volume

  Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth,

  Before Pelides’ death or Homer’s birth.

  The fifth canto was also written in Ravenna. But it is not my intention to analyze this eccentric and meandering poem; a composition which cannot be well estimated by extracts. Without, therefore, dwelling at greater length on its variety and merits. I would only observe that the general accuracy of the poet’s descriptions is verified by that of the scenes in which Juan is placed in England, a point the reader may determine for himself; while the vagueness of the parts derived from books, or sketched from fancy, as contrasted with them, justifies the opinion, that invention was not the most eminent faculty of Byron, either in scenes or in characters. Of the demerits of the poem it is only necessary to remark, that it has been proscribed on account of its immorality; perhaps, however, there was more of prudery than of equity in the decision, at least it is liable to be so considered, so long as reprints are permitted of the older dramatists, with all their unpruned licentiousness.