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

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




"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.




APPENDIX.

* * * * *

TWO EPISTLES FROM THE ARMENIAN VERSION.

THE EPISTLE OF THE CORINTHIANS TO ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE.[1]

1 STEPHEN[2], and the elders with him, Dabnus, Eubulus, Theophilus,
and Xinon, to Paul, our father and evangelist, and faithful master in
Jesus Christ, health.[3]

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