Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) by Thomas Moore

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The first step taken, before any decision as to its ultimate
disposal, was to have the body conveyed to Zante; and every facility
having been afforded by the Resident, Sir Frederick Stoven, in
providing and sending transports to Missolonghi for that purpose, on
the morning of the 2d of May the remains were embarked, under a
mournful salute from the guns of the fortress:--"How different," says
Count Gamba, "from that which had welcomed the arrival of Byron only
four months ago!"

At Zante, the determination was taken to send the body to England;
and the brig Florida, which had just arrived there with the first
instalment of the Loan, was engaged for the purpose. Mr. Blaquiere,
under whose care this first portion of the Loan had come, was also
the bearer of a Commission for the due management of its disposal in
Greece, in which Lord Byron was named as the principal Commissioner.
The same ship, however, that brought this honourable mark of
confidence was to return with him a corpse. To Colonel Stanhope, who
was then at Zante, on his way homeward, was intrusted the charge of
his illustrious colleague's remains; and on the 25th of May he
embarked with them on board the Florida for England.

In the letter which, on his arrival in the Downs, June 29th, this
gentleman addressed to Lord Byron's executors, there is the following
passage:--"With respect to the funeral ceremony, I am of opinion that
his Lordship's family should be immediately consulted, and that
sanction should be obtained for the public burial of his body either
in the great Abbey or Cathedral of London." It has been asserted, and
I fear too truly, that on some intimation of the wish suggested in
this last sentence being conveyed to one of those Reverend persons
who have the honours of the Abbey at their disposal, such an answer
was returned as left but little doubt that a refusal would be the
result of any more regular application.[1]

[Footnote 1: A former Dean of Westminster went so far, we know, in
his scruples as to exclude an epitaph from the Abbey, because it
contained the name of Milton:--"a name, in his opinion," says
Johnson, "too detestable to be read on the wall of a building
dedicated to devotion."--_Life of_ MILTON.]

There is an anecdote told of the poet Hafiz, in Sir William Jones's
Life, which, in reporting this instance of illiberality, recurs
naturally to the memory. After the death of the great Persian bard,
some of the religious among his countrymen protested strongly against
allowing to him the right of sepulture, alleging, as their objection,
the licentiousness of his poetry. After much controversy, it was
agreed to leave the decision of the question to a mode of divination,
not uncommon among the Persians, which consisted in opening the
poet's book at random and taking the first verses that occurred. They
happened to be these:--

"Oh turn not coldly from the poet's bier,
Nor check the sacred drops by Pity given;
For though in sin his body slumbereth here,
His soul, absolved, already wings to heaven."

These lines, says the legend, were looked upon as a divine decree;
the religionists no longer enforced their objections, and the remains
of the bard were left to take their quiet sleep by that "sweet bower
of Mosellay" which he had so often celebrated in his verses.

Were our Byron's right of sepulture to be decided in the same manner,
how few are there of his pages, thus taken at hazard, that would not,
by some genial touch of sympathy with virtue, some glowing tribute to
the bright works of God, or some gush of natural devotion more
affecting than any homily, give him a title to admission into the
purest temple of which Christian Charity ever held the guardianship.

Let the decision, however, of these Reverend authorities have been,
finally, what it might, it was the wish, as is understood, of Lord
Byron's dearest relative to have his remains laid in the family vault
at Hucknall, near Newstead. On being landed from the Florida, the
body had, under the direction of his Lordship's executors, Mr.
Hobhouse and Mr. Hanson, been removed to the house of Sir Edward
Knatchbull in Great George Street, Westminster, where it lay in state
during Friday and Saturday, the 9th and 10th of July, and on the
following Monday the funeral procession took place. Leaving
Westminster at eleven o'clock in the morning, attended by most of his
Lordship's personal friends and by the carriages of several persons
of rank, it proceeded through various streets of the metropolis
towards the North Road. At Pancras Church, the ceremonial of the
procession being at an end, the carriages returned; and the hearse
continued its way, by slow stages, to Nottingham.

It was on Friday the 16th of July that, in the small village church
of Hucknall, the last duties were paid to the remains of Byron, by
depositing them, close to those of his mother, in the family vault.
Exactly on the same day of the same month in the preceding year, he
had said, it will be recollected, despondingly, to Count Gamba,
"Where shall we be in another year?" The gentleman to whom this
foreboding speech was addressed paid a visit, some months after the
interment, to Hucknall, and was much struck, as I have heard, on
approaching the village, by the strong likeness it seemed to him to
bear to his lost friend's melancholy deathplace, Missolonghi.

On a tablet of white marble in the chancel of the Church of Hucknall
is the following inscription:--

IN THE VAULT BENEATH,
WHERE MANY OF HIS ANCESTORS AND HIS MOTHER ARE
BURIED,
LIE THE REMAINS OF
GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON,
LORD BYRON, OF ROCHDALE,
IN THE COUNTY OF LANCASTER,
THE AUTHOR OF "CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE."
HE WAS BORN IN LONDON ON THE
22D OF JANUARY, 1788.

HE DIED AT MISSOLONGHI, IN WESTERN GREECE, ON THE
19TH OF APRIL, 1824,
ENGAGED IN THE GLORIOUS ATTEMPT TO RESTORE THAT
COUNTRY TO HER ANCIENT FREEDOM AND RENOWN.

* * * * *

HIS SISTER, THE HONOURABLE
AUGUSTA MARIA LEIGH,
PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS MEMORY.

From among the tributes that have been offered, in prose and verse,
and in almost every language of Europe, to his memory, I shall select
two which appear to me worthy of peculiar notice, as being, one of
them,--so far as my limited scholarship will allow me to judge,--a
simple and happy imitation of those laudatory inscriptions with which
the Greece of other times honoured the tombs of her heroes; and the
other as being the production of a pen, once engaged controversially
against Byron, but not the less ready, as these affecting verses
prove, to offer the homage of a manly sorrow and admiration at his
grave.

[Greek:

Eis
Ton en te Helladi teleutesanta
Poieten

* * * * *

Ou to zen tanaon biou euklees oud' enarithmein
Arxaiax progonon eunxneon aretas
Ton d' eudaimonias moir' amphepei, hosper apanton
Aien aristeuon gignetai athanatos.--
Eudeis oun su, teknon, xariton ear? ouk eti thallei
Akmaios meleon hedupnoon stephanos?--
Alla teon, tripophete, moron penphousin Aphene,
Mousai, patris, Ares, Ellas, eleupheria.[1]]

[Footnote 1: By John Williams, Esq.--The following translation of
this inscription will not be unacceptable to my readers:--

"Not length of life--not an illustrious birth,
Rich with the noblest blood of all the earth;--
Nought can avail, save deeds of high emprize,
Our mortal being to immortalise.

"Sweet child of song, thou deepest!--ne'er again
Shall swell the notes of thy melodious strain:
Yet, with thy country wailing o'er thy urn,
Pallas, the Muse, Mars, Greece, and Freedom mourn."

H.H. JOY.]

"CHILDE HAROLD'S LAST PILGRIMAGE.

"BY THE REV. W.L. BOWLES.

"SO ENDS CHILDE HAROLD HIS LAST PILGRIMAGE!--
Upon the shores of Greece he stood, and cried
'LIBERTY!' and those shores, from age to age
Renown'd, and Sparta's woods and rocks replied
'Liberty!' But a Spectre, at his side,
Stood mocking;--and its dart, uplifting high,
Smote him;--he sank to earth in life's fair pride:
SPARTA! thy rocks then heard another cry,
And old Ilissus sigh'd--'Die, generous exile, die!'

"I will not ask sad Pity to deplore
His wayward errors, who thus early died;
Still less, CHILDE HAROLD, now thou art no more,
Will I say aught of genius misapplied;
Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride:--
But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave,
Pluck the green laurel from Peneus' side,
And pray thy spirit may such quiet have,
That not one thought unkind be murmur'd o'er thy grave.

"SO HAROLD ENDS, IN GREECE, HIS PILGRIMAGE!--
There fitly ending,--in that land renown'd,
Whose mighty genius lives in Glory's page,--
He, on the Muses' consecrated ground,
Sinking to rest, while his young brows are bound
With their unfading wreath!--To bands of mirth,
No more in TEMPE let the pipe resound!
HAROLD, I follow to thy place of birth
The slow hearse--and thy LAST sad PILGRIMAGE on earth.

"Slow moves the plumed hearse, the mourning train,--
I mark the sad procession with a sigh,
Silently passing to that village fane,
Where, HAROLD, thy forefathers mouldering lie;--
There sleeps THAT MOTHER, who with tearful eye,
Pondering the fortunes of thy early road,
Hung o'er the slumbers of thine infancy;
Her son, released from mortal labour's load,
Now comes to rest, with her, in the same still abode.

"Bursting Death's silence--could that mother speak--
(Speak when the earth was heap'd upon his head)--
In thrilling, but with hollow accent weak,
She thus might give the welcome of the dead:--
'Here rest, my son, with me;--the dream is fled;--
The motley mask and the great stir is o'er:
Welcome to me, and to this silent bed,
Where deep forgetfulness succeeds the roar
Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more.'"

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 Bruyere, 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 eleve l'esprit
et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherehez pas une
autre regle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de
l'ouvrier: La Critique, apres ca, 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, AEschylus, 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-maitre, 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 amara 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 eut 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, perche fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi
non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non
poteva sentirsi umiliato, fuorche 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 tempete;--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.

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