“To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what we are worth.” PARADOL, Study on Moralists.

From all that we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the contrary, that Lord Byron was often melancholy; but that, in order to judge well the nature and shades of his melancholy, it is necessary to analyze and observe it, not only in his writings, but also in his conduct through life. Whence arose his melancholy? Was it one of those moral infirmities, incurable and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like that of Rene, whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful; who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mysteries; who knowing not how to be young, will no more know how to be old; who in all things wanted order, proportion, harmony, truth; who had nothing to produce equilibrium between the power of genius and the indolence of will? This kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue, and seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it a melancholy like Werther’s, whose senses, stimulated by passion, of which society opposed the development, carried perturbation also into the moral regions? Was it the deep mysterious ailment of Hamlet, at once both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that “masculine breast with feeble arms;” “of that philosopher who only wanted strength to become a saint;” “of that bird without wings,” said a woman of genius, “that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels depart, and where only shivered remnants return;” the melancholy of an Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity? No; the striking characteristics that exist in all these sorts of melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron’s. His was not a melancholy that had become chronic, like Rene’s, ere arriving at life’s maturity. For, whereas, the child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection, and circumstances. Nor was it Werther’s kind of melancholy; for, even at intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord Byron’s energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied passion.

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant’s dissimulation would have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university, where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the darker heroes he has described in Lara and Manfred, for he never knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all these identifications between himself and his heroes.

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary, melancholy always originated from some moral external cause, which would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid glance at his whole life.

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England, that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in “Tasso’s Lament:”

“From my very birth my soul was drunk with love,” etc.

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so affirms:

“Eagles fly alone,” exclaims Sydney, “while sheep are ever to be found in flocks.”

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great intellects, have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and games of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferior to him in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of that fatal kind of melancholy that which is hereditary and causeless. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse. Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems, but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart, the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held, that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself, and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young cousin, who beneath an angels guise on earth, first awakened the fire of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another affection, was deceived, met with no return, but, on the contrary, was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no longer feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821:

“It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to feel that I was no longer a child.”

He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, arising from palpable avowed causes, having their origin in the heart, might equally find their cure in the heart. Already did imagination transport him toward his beloved Ida, and he consoled himself by saying, that if love has wings, friendship ought to have none. If this were an illusion, he completed it by writing that charming poem of his youth, Friendship is Love without Wings."

At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long as these dear friends remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge. But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them. Long, with whom he had passed such happy days, left the first to go into the guards. Eddlestone remained, but Lord Byron himself was already about to quit Cambridge. During the vacation, we see him modestly preparing his first poems intended as an offering to Friendship; then going to a watering-place with some respectable friends; devoting himself with ardor to dramatic representations at the amateur theatre at Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; and thus he remained a whole year away from Cambridge, often seeing his dear Long again in London, and visiting Harrow with him. When he returned, in 1807, to Cambridge, Long had already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to go; thus, he no longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the flute of his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him. Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. Besides, he was already nineteen years of age, had made some progress in the journey of life, probably leaving some illusions behind him on the bushes that lined the roadside, and perhaps his soul had already lost somewhat of its early purity. He had certainly seen that many things in the moral world were far removed from the ideal forms with which he had invested them; that love, even friendship, virtue, patriotism, generosity, and goodness, by no means attained the height of his first convictions. A year before, he had said: “I have tasted the joy and the bitterness of love.” Willingly again would he have given way to the emotions of the heart; but he too soon perceived that to do so were a useless, dangerous luxury, a language scarcely understood in the world in which he moved; that the idols he had believed of precious metal, were, in reality, made of vile clay. Then he also resolved on taking his degrees in vice; but, unlike others, he did so with disgust, and he called satiety, not the quantity, but the quality of the aliment. A year before he had also said: “I have found that a friend may promise and yet deceive.”

Magnanimous as he was, he made advances to the guilty friend, and took half the blame on himself; but in vain was he generous, saying, with tears that flowed from his heart to his pen:

“You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence,
If danger demanded, were wholly your own;
You knew me unalter’d by years or by distance,
Devoted to love and to friendship alone.”

And then:

“Repentance will cancel the vow you have made.”

And again:

“With me no corroding resentment shall live:
My bosom is calm’d by the simple reflection,
That both may be wrong, and that both should forgive.”

The friend did not return, and Lord Byron’s generous, pure, delicate nature fearful lest he might be in the wrong could only find peace in trying to offer reparation. He wrote to Lord Clare:

“I have, therefore, made all the reparation in my power, by apologizing for my mistake, though with very faint hopes of success. His answer has not arrived, and, most probably, never will. However, I have eased my own conscience by the atonement, which is humiliating enough to one of my disposition; yet I could not have slept satisfied with the reflection of having, even unintentionally, injured any individual. I have done all that could be done to repair the injury, and there the affair must rest. Whether we renew our intimacy or not is of very trivial consequence.”

But although he could no longer rely entirely upon his heart for defending his loved illusions so cruelly attacked by reality, yet it was not possible for him to put out of sight his ideal of all the beauties of soul whose presence was a condition of his being. And it was this presence that made material dissipated life, and also the intellectual routine existence at Granta, both appear so unattractive to him. He wrote a satire on them, and the blame inflicted shows his fine nature. When evil was thus judged, thus condemned, alike by pen and heart, there could be no real danger; not even had it power to sadden him. A more formidable peril menaced him from another side. Sadness might now reach his heart through his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze, meditate, generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of life. It has been seen that he began to worry even his nurses with childish questions, and afterward much more to embarrass his tutors, masters etc., and especially the excellent Dr. Glenny at Dulwich. A natural tendency fortified by early religious education evidently drew his heart to God; but, on the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating every thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his grounds of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to him on great questions could not satisfy him; he required to discuss their basis. Already the increasing play of his faculties had been revealed in that beautiful Prayer to the Divinity which constitutes his profession of faith and worship, “every line of which,” says Moore, “is instinct with fervent sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions.”

On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a circle of intellectual companions which Moore calls “a brilliant pleiad,” a young man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a mind that had, perhaps, some affinity to his own, but which, devoid of his sensibility and logic, surpassed him in hardihood; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the inscrutable, and, not content with analysis, desirous to arrive at conclusions. Through the natural influence of example, and more especially the irresistible fascination exercised by a great intelligence, uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron because so like his own; from all these causes, Matthews exercised an immense influence over him. This young man loved to plunge his head into depths from whence he emerged all dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too reasonable a mind to arrive at such results. He refused to follow where deformity and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking upward. Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic glass, where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined with a host of doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathetic to his soul, but perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the doubts. And, being no longer alarmed at sounding such depths, he imbibed seeds of doctrine capable of producing incredulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these seeds required a dry soil to fructify, and his, being so rich, they perished, after a short period of wretched existence. All these influences, and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a sort of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing serious consequences; for in the main his belief was not deeply shaken. It had no other effect than to throw him, for a time, into uncertainty on points necessary to him, “and to teach him,” says Moore, “to feel less embarrassed in a sort of skepticism.”

This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations becoming deeper and wider, his mind ceased always to follow his heart. But the latter following rather the former, though with sadness and fatigue, and all the problems of life becoming more and more enveloped in darkness, it is possible that he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal expressions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he was not equally fortunate with regard to ennui.

“Ennui,” says the clever Viscomte D’Yzarn de Freissinet, in his deep and delightful book, “Les Pensees grises,” “ennui is felt by ordinary minds because they can not understand earth, and by superior ones because they can not understand heaven.”

Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees at the university, and when about to enter into possession of his estates. On seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all trace of melancholy.

But it was not so; the responsibilities of life began too soon for him, and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year was already dotted with black marks indicative of the approaching tempest. In the first place, the cassock of a real priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive, endowed with feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind. Moreover, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in his heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early poems had already inflicted a deep wound. Lord Byron, it is true, thought to heal this by writing a satire; still, despite the vein of pleasantry indulged, he continued to discipline his mind by serious study of the great masters of literature and of the deepest thinkers.

It must be acknowledged that the balm he sought in satire, was a dangerous caustic which, while closing one wound, might well cause others to open. At the same time, the money embarrassments inherited from his predecessor in the estate went on accumulating, and the period was approaching when the cassock, donned in boyish fun, was to be exchanged for the grave ermine of a peer of the realm. Who should present him, then, to the noble assembly, if not his guardian, and near relative, the Earl of Carlisle? The young lord had always met his coldness with deference and respect, even dedicating his early poems to him. But the noble earl now still further aggravated his unkind conduct toward his ward by abandoning him at this solemn moment. Not only did he refuse to lend countenance himself, but he even hurt and wounded Lord Byron by interposing delays so as to prevent or put off his reception in the House of Peers, and that solely because he did not like the young man’s mother! It would be impossible for the most loving heart, the one most susceptible of family affections, not to have felt cruelly, under such circumstances, the absence of near ties, and Lord Byron did not then know his sister. Suffer he did, of course; and, had it not been for a distant relative, despite his high birth and wondrous gifts, he must have entered the august assembly accompanied only by his title. However frivolous the young man might have appeared, he was not so in reality; and he hesitated at this time between a project of travelling for information, and the desire to take part immediately in the labors of the Senate. Some months before, attaining his majority, when the wish of travelling predominated, after having informed his mother of a thousand arrangements, all equally affectionate, wise, and generous, that he was about to take for her during his absence, he wrote that he proposed visiting Persia, India, and other countries.

“If I do not travel now,” said he, “I never shall, and all men should, one day or other. I have, at present, no connections to keep me at home; no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, etc. I shall take care of you, and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years’ knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a fair chance: it is from experience, not books, we ought to judge of them. There is nothing like inspection and trusting to our senses.”

But while cherishing these ideas, his mind at the same time wavered between the two projects, Parliament attracted him greatly. Despite his light words, the love of true and merited glory, of the beautiful and the good, ever inflamed his heart. What he wrote a year or two before, to his counsellor and friend, the Rev. Mr. Beecher, had not ceased to be his programme. He said to his mother, a short time before his majority, that he thought it indispensable, “as a preparation for the future, to make a speech in the House, as soon as he was admitted.” He wrote the same thing still more explicitly to Harness; for he then thought seriously of entering upon politics without delay, and his rights as a hereditary legislator paved the way for it. Nevertheless, being hurt, disappointed, and indignant at his guardian’s conduct, and feeling himself isolated, he not only renounced taking any active part in the debates of his colleagues, but, according to Moore, appeared to consider the obligation of being among them painful and mortifying. Thus, a few days after entering Parliament, he returned disgusted to the solitude of his abbey, there to meditate on the bitterness of precocious experience, or upon scenes that appeared more vast to his independent spirit, than those which his country presented.

The final decision soon came. He resolved on leaving England and taking a long journey with his friend Hobhouse, on seeking sunshine, experience, and forgetfulness for his wounded soul. It seemed really at that moment as if, through an accumulation of disappointment, injustice and grief, the result of lost illusions (he had already written the epitaph on “Boatswain"), as if, I say, some germs of misanthropy were beginning to appear. But his bitterness did not reach, or rather, did not change his heart: every thing proves this. One of his friends, Lord Faulkland, was killed in a duel about this time; and our misanthrope not only was inconsolable, but, despite the embarrassment of his own affairs, generously assisted the family of the deceased, who had been left in distress. Dallas, who, through his prejudices, personal susceptibilities, and exaggerated opinions, shows so little indulgence to Lord Byron, thus describes however the impression made on him, and his conduct under the circumstances:

“Nature had gifted Lord Byron with most benevolent sentiments, which I had frequent opportunities of perceiving; and I sometimes saw them give to his beautiful countenance an expression truly sublime. I paid him a visit the day after Lord Faulkland’s death; he had just seen the lifeless body of one in whose society he had lately passed a pleasant day. He was saying to himself aloud, from time to time ’Poor Faulkland! His look was more expressive than his words. But, he added, his wife! tis she that is to be pitied! I read his soul full of the kindest intentions, nor were they sterile. If ever there were a pure action, it was the one he meditated then; and the man who conceived and accomplished it was at that moment advancing through thorns and briers toward the free but narrow path that leads to heaven."

He was setting out then on a long journey. And at that period long journeys were serious things. His first desire was to have a farewell meeting at Newstead, of all his old school-fellows. And that not sufficing, he even wished to carry their image away with him, so as to enjoy a sensible means of recalling tender remembrances of the past. But his heart found an aliment for misanthropy in the selfish answer given by one of his comrades, who was alarmed at the expense of getting a portrait taken. We see the impression made by this ungenerous reply, in the letter he addressed to his friend Harness:

“I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before I depart I am collecting the pictures of my most intimate school-fellows. I want yours; I have commissioned one of the first miniature painters of the day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow any to incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused to sit, under the idea that he was to disburse on the occasion, you will see that it is necessary to state these preliminaries, to prevent the recurrence of any similar mistake. It will be a tax on your patience for a week, but pray excuse it, as it is possible the resemblance may be the sole trace I shall be able to preserve of our past friendship. Just now it seems foolish enough, but in a few years, when some of us are dead, and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will be a kind of satisfaction to retain, in these images of the living, the idea of our former selves, and to contemplate, in the resemblances of the dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, and a host of passions.”

If misanthropy had not been an element heterogeneous to his character, it might well have assumed larger proportions at this moment; for, on the very eve of his departure from England, his heart had yet to suffer one of those chilling shocks to which sensitive natures, removed far above the usual temperature of the world, says Moore, are only too much exposed. And this proof of coldness, which he complains of with indignation in a note to the second canto of “Childe Harold,” was given precisely by one of the friends he most loved. Mr. Dallas, who witnessed the immediate effect produced by this mark of coldness, thus describes it:

I found him bursting with indignation. Will you believe it? said he, I have just met and asked him to come and sit an hour with me; he excused himself; and what do you think was his excuse? He was engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping! And he knows I set out to-morrow to be absent for years, perhaps never to return? Friendship! I do not believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and family excepted, and perhaps my mother, a single being who will care what becomes of me!"

The conduct of this friend gave him so much pain, that a year after he wrote again about it, from Constantinople, to Dallas:

“The only person I counted would feel grieved at my departure took leave of me with such coldness, that if I had not known the heart of man I should have been surprised. I should have attributed it to some offenses on my part, had I ever been guilty of aught save too much affection for him.”

Dallas thought that some lady, from a spirit of vengeance, had excited this young man to slight Lord Byron.

I will not here seek to discover whether he was right or wrong. It suffices that he could believe it, for me to say, that this singular misanthropy, born of heart-deceptions, was in reality nothing else but grief, the causes of which might each be enumerated, but the intensity of which we do not really know, since that deep capacity is the sad privilege of beings highly endowed.

In any case, it is certain that when he left England the measure of disappointments capable of producing real melancholy in such a sensitive heart was quite filled up. Is it, then, surprising that he, like his hero, “Childe Harold,” should see with indifference the shores of his native land recede? But if, unhappily, the gloomy ideas he welcomed for a moment brought about a regrettable habit, no more to be lost, of adopting, in his language spoken and written, expressions and mystifications that too often concealed his real feelings, only letting them be seen through the medium of his mind (a sure way of making him misunderstood), he could not long stand against the proofs of real attachment shown him by his fellow-traveller, and, indeed, by all who came near him. Even before setting sail, the influence of this sentiment, combined with his natural disposition to gayety, became visible; all annoyances seemed forgotten in the agreeable sensation of a first voyage that was to bear him away from the country where he had suffered so much, and which would probably show him, in other lands, more favorable specimens of the human race. Indeed, this is quite evident in the letters and gay verses sent off from Falmouth to his friends Drury and Hodgson, as well as in the more serious strain, though still gay and affectionate, in which he, at the same time, addressed his mother.

Hardly had he landed at Lisbon, when his heart, yearning after the beautiful, expanded into admiration at sight of the Tagus and the beauties of Cintra; displaying alike his high moral sense of things, whether he expressed admiration or inflicted blame.

We see his whole nature revolt at baseness, ingratitude, cowardice, ferocity, all kinds of moral deformity; just as much as it was attracted and delighted by patriotism, courage, devotion, sacrifice, love carried to heroism, grace, and beauty. We perceive, in the poet’s soul, a freshness and a moral vigor, that shine all the more brightly, contrasted with the misanthropical melancholy of the hero of his legend. But this personage had been imprudently chosen to typify a state of mind into which youth often falls, and which, perhaps, Lord Byron himself went through during a few short hours of disenchantment. The impressions thus gathered, were treasured in his memory until they came to maturity some months later; then they issued from his pen in flowing numbers, whose magic power he then ignored: but assuredly the fine sentiments expressed came from the soul of the minstrel, not from the satiated feelingless hero, who was incapable of experiencing them. Let people only make the distinction between the two personages whom malice has taken pleasure in confounding, an error willingly adopted by a certain set and imposed on credulous minds.

The relation between the two is not one of family or race, but a purely accidental external resemblance; the result of some strange fancy and intellectual want in the poet, whose powerful imagination, while having recourse only to his own spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings and types, yet required to rest always on reality, for painting the material world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions.

Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the same vessel, to make the same voyage, and meet with the same adventures. Both have the same family relations, a mother, a sister; yes, but their souls are not in the same state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good faith; since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two cantos of “Childe Harold,” there are 112 wherein the poet forgets his hero, speaks in his own name, and shows his real soul a soul full of energy and beauty, becoming enthusiastic at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of grandeur, virtue, and love.

Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was corrupted, satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such enthusiasm. In reality, these emotions betokened the future poet, then unknown to the world and to himself. Let us return to the man, the best justification for the poet. From Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend Hodgson. Already he found all well; better than in England. Already he declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrimage: the sight of the Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent, fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every thing; “and we find him,” says Moore, “in this charming, gay, sportive, schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that ‘Childe Harold’ is about to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, and insensibility. Lord Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, going seventy miles a day on horseback in the heat of a Spanish July, always delighted, complaining of nothing (in a country where all was wanting), and he arrived in perfect health. There, in that beautiful city of serenades and love-making courtships, his handsome face and person immediately attracted the attention of the fair sex. He was not insensible to the lively demonstrations of two sisters, and especially of the beauteous Dona Josefa, who declared, with naïve Spanish frankness, how much she liked him. This young girl and her sister, who was equally charming, made him all kinds of offers, saying, when he left: ’Adieu, handsome creature, I like thee much; and Josefa asked to have at least a lock of his beautiful hair. On arriving at Cadiz, the lovely daughter of an admiral of high birth, with whom he was thrown in contact, could not hide from her parents or himself her partiality for him. She wished to teach him Spanish, never thought he could be near enough to her at the theatre, called him to her side in crowds, made him accompany her home, invited him to return to Cadiz, and, in short,” Moore says:

“Knowing the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled by the attraction of several, was on the point of being held captive by one.”

He escaped this danger from being obliged to set out for Gibraltar, where he also met with many attentions from persons of rank among his countrymen; but he encountered another peril at the island of Calypso (Malta). For he met there a real Calypso, a young woman of extraordinary beauty (the daughter and the wife of an ambassador), and no less remarkable for her qualities of mind than for her singular position. All his time at Malta was passed between studying a language and the society of this goddess. And the true account of the attraction with which he inspired this beautiful heroine, and which he amply returned, is not certainly to be found in the stanzas of “Childe Harold,” but in the verses addressed from the monastery of Zitza to the beautiful Florence, who had carried off at the same time (says he) both the ring he had refused to the Seville beauty and likewise his heart. On arriving in Albania (ancient Epirus), he went to visit Ali Pasha at Tepeleni, his country-seat; and the sight of this beautiful, amiable young man so softened the heart of the ferocious old Moslem, that he wished to be considered as Lord Byron’s father, treated him like a son, caused his palaces to be opened to him, surrounding him with the most delicate attentions, sending him fresh drinks and all the delicacies of an Oriental table; he also ordered the Albanian selected to accompany Lord Byron to defend him if requisite at the peril of his life. This Albanian, named Basilius, would not leave Lord Byron afterward. Wherever any English residents, consuls, or ambassadors could be found, Lord Byron was the object of a thousand attentions and kindnesses. At Constantinople, the English ambassador, Adair, wished him to lodge at his palace; Mr. S proposed the same thing at Patras. When he fell ill, he was taken care of, most affectionately even, by the Albanese. All the sympathies enlisted during his travels (and those who knew him thought them most natural) must certainly have acted on his loving, grateful heart, banishing misanthropy if he had experienced it. But did it really exist? Must not even his peace of conscience have counterbalanced bitter remembrances?

His conscience was unburdened, for the griefs he had had were not merited by him. If a young girl had deceived him, he on his side had deceived no one; if a guardian had neglected and failed in duties toward him, he had always behaved respectfully toward this bad guardian. If hard-hearted critics had insulted, and tried to stifle his budding genius, modest and timid withal, he had already taken his revenge, sure to repent some day of the harshness and injustice which passion had, perhaps, led him into; if his affairs were embarrassed, they had come to him thus by inheritance. If he had taken a share in some youthful dissipation, disgust had quickly followed; not a tear or a seduction had he wherewith to reproach himself. All these testimonies furnished by his conscience, and so consoling in every case, must have been doubly so to a heart like his, which, by his own avowal, could not go to rest with the weight of any remorse upon it. And, truly, all his correspondence certifies this.

Already at Gibraltar, Lord Byron began writing letters full of clever pleasantry, either to his mother or his friends, and his correspondence always continued in the same tone, with nothing that betrayed melancholy, far less misanthropy like Childe Harold’s, although he was composing that poem at this time.

At Malta, it was impossible to find shelter. His companions grew impatient, but Lord Byron retained his good-humor, laughing and joking. On the mountains of Epirus, which were infested by brigands, the Albanian escort, given him by Ali Pasha, lost their way in the middle of the night, and were surprised by a terrific storm. For nine hours he advanced on horseback under torrents of rain; and when at last he reached his companions his gayety was still the same. Assailed by a frightful tempest while going by sea from Constantinople to Athens, shipwreck seemed impending. Every one was crying out in despair; Lord Byron alone consoled and encouraged the rest, then he wrapped himself up in his Albanian capote, and went to sleep quietly, until his fate should be decided. On visiting a cavern with his friend Hobhouse, they lost their way, their torch went out, and they had no prospect but to remain there, and perish with hunger. Hobhouse was in despair; but Lord Byron kept up his courage with jests, and presence of mind fit to save them, and which did so in effect. Privations, rigor of seasons, sufferings that drew complaints from the least delicate, and from his own servants, had no effect on his good-humor.

All this does not simply show his courage and good natural dispositions, it likewise proves that there was not the making of a misanthrope in him. And besides, his fellow-traveller Hobhouse says so positively, in his account of their journey, when relating why Lord Byron could not accompany him in an excursion to Negropont; for he energetically expresses his regret at being obliged to separate, even for so short a time, from a companion, who, according to him, united to perspicacity of wit and originality of observation, that gay and lively temper which keeps attention awake under the pressure of fatigue, softening every difficulty and every danger.

Truly it might be said that Lord Byron was superior to the weaknesses of humanity. He was evidently patient and amiable in the highest degree. Greece appeared to him delightful, an enchanting country with a cloudless sky. He liked Athens so much that, on quitting it for the first time, he was obliged to set off at a gallop to have courage enough to go. And when he returned there, though from the cloister of the Franciscan monastery, where he had fixed his abode, he could no longer even perceive the pretty heads of the three Graces entre les plantes embaumees de la cour; he felt himself just as happy, because he devoted his time to study, and mixed with persons of note such as the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope, Lord Sligo, and Bruce: souvenirs which he has consecrated in his memoirs, saying Lady Hester’s was the most delightful acquaintance he had made in Greece.

He saw Greeks, Turks, Italians, French, and Germans, and was delighted. Now could he observe the character of persons of all nations, and he became more than ever persuaded that travelling is necessary to complete a man’s education; he was happy at being able to verify the superiority of his own country, and to increase his knowledge by finding the contrary. He was never either disappointed or disgusted. He lived with both great and small; passing days in the palaces of pashas, and nights in cow-stables with shepherds; always temperate, he never enjoyed better health. “Truly,” said he, “I have no cause to complain of my destiny.” At Constantinople he found the inhabitants good and peaceable; the Turks appeared superior to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Spaniards, and the Spaniards to the Portuguese. It was the man wearied of all, the misanthrope, who wrote all this to his mother, concluding thus: “I have gone through a great deal of fatigue, but have not felt wearied for one instant!”

All the letters addressed to his friends Drury and Hodgson, from Greece or Turkey, were equally devoid of misanthropy, and, indeed, generally full of jokes. It was only when too long a silence on their part awakened painful remembrances, causing a sort of nostalgia of friendship, that a cry of pain once escaped him in these words: “Truly, I have no friends in the world!” But one feels that he did not believe it, and only spoke as coquettish women do, knowing they are beloved, and willing to hear the old tale repeated.

Again, it was this same man of worn-out feeling, who, despite the embarrassed state of his affairs, showed such unexampled generosity to his mother, and to friends requiring aid both in England and Greece; who likewise displayed touching solicitude toward servants left behind him at home, or even sent away so as not to over-fatigue their youth or their old age: and, finally, who, on learning that one of his dependents was about to commit a bad action, abandoning a young girl whom he had seduced, wrote to his mother:

“My opinion is that B ought to marry Miss N ; our first duty is not to do evil, our second to repair it. I will have no seducers on my estates, and will not grant my dependents a privilege I would not take myself: namely, of leading astray our neighbors’ daughters.

“I hope this Lothario will follow my example, and begin by restoring the girl to society, or by my father’s beard he shall hear of me.”

And then he also recommends a young servant to her:

“I pray you to show kindness to Robert, who must miss his master; poor boy! he would scarcely go back.”

This letter alone shows a freshness of feeling quite consolatory; certainly “Childe Harold” was not capable of it.

But despite all these proofs of his good-humor, gayety, and antimisanthropical dispositions, we could cite persons who, even at this period, thought him melancholy. Mr. Galt, for instance, whom chance had brought in contact with him, having met on the same vessel going from Gibraltar to Greece; and then the British ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Adair, and even Mr. Bruce, at Athens. How then shall we reconcile these opposite testimonies? It may be done by analyzing his fits of melancholy, observing the time and places of their manifestation.

I have said that Lord Byron’s melancholy had always real or probable causes (only capable of aggravation from his extremely sensitive temperament), and it has been seen that superabundant causes existed when he left England. That during the whole period of his absence, they may, from time to time, have cast some shade over him, notwithstanding his natural gayety and his strength of mind, is at least very probable. But did Mr. Galt, Mr. Adair, and Mr. Bruce, really witness the return of these impressions? or would it not be more natural to believe, since that better agrees with the observations made by those living constantly with him, that, through some resemblance of symptoms, they may have taken for melancholy another psychological phenomenon generally remarked namely, the necessity of solitude, experienced by a high meditative and poetic nature like his? Indeed, what does Galt say?

“When night arrived and there were lights in the vessel, he held himself aloof, took his station on the rail, between the pegs on which the sheets are belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence, enamored, as people say, of the moon. He was often strangely absent it may have been from his genius; and, had its sombre grandeur been then known, this conduct might have been explained; but, at the time, it threw as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed in his mind, he seemed almost an apparition, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet crowned with a halo.

“The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him. That he sometimes descended from the clouds, and was familiar and earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and the home of his spirit in the abyss of the storm and the hiding-places of guilt. He was at the time of which I am speaking scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a clever satire; and yet it was impossible, even then, to reflect on the bias of his mind, as it was revealed by the casualties of conversation, without experiencing a presentiment, that he was destined to execute extraordinary things. The description he has given of “Manfred” in his youth, was of himself:

’My spirit walk’d not with the souls of men,
Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger.’”

All that is very well, but the only astonishing part is Mr. Galt’s astonishment. The incomprehensible phantom of melancholy and caprice then hanging over Lord Byron, was especially his genius seeking an outlet; it was the melancholy that lays hold of so many great minds, because, having a vision of beauty and fame before their eyes, they fear not attaining to it. That it was which one day led Petrarch, all tearful, to his consoler John of Florence. If almost all great geniuses, ere carving out their path, have experienced this fever of the soul, falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that put on all sorts of forms, sometimes noisy, sometimes capricious, sometimes misanthropical, was there not greater reason for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis at a period when energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by confidence in his own genius? For he had not met with a John of Florence; he had been so much hurt at the cruel reception given to his first attempts, that it appeared to him he ought to seek another direction for the employment of his energetic faculties, and turn to active life, as many of his tastes invited. But his genius, unknown to the world as to himself, was, however, fermenting within his brain, feeding on dreams; now pacing a deck, now beneath a starry sky, anon by moonlight, and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogeneous to his nature; and thus “Childe Harold” came to light. When Lord Byron took his pen, the mechanical part of the work alone remained to be done. The elaboration and meditation of it had taken place almost unknown to himself, so that his conceptions remained latent, and took their shape by degrees in his brain, before being fixed in his writings. He penned “Childe Harold” at Janina and Athens; but it was on the vessel’s deck, in that dreamy attitude just seen by Mr. Galt, that he had moulded the clay of his first statue, and given it an immortal form. Could he have done so, if he had always remained in society on deck, laughing, joking, giving way to all his charming, witty bursts of gayety, as he did while coasting the shores of Sicily, when, from time to time, his playful nature enabled him not only to forget the wounds of his heart, and the disagreeable remembrances left behind, but also to impose silence on the severe requirements of his genius?

The same causes must have produced the same opinions from the British ambassador at Constantinople. Without even speaking of the irksomeness of etiquette, always so distasteful to Lord Byron, that Moore looks upon it as one of the causes of the apparent sadness remarked by Adair, we ought to remember that he left Constantinople on board the same frigate as the ambassador, making a sea-voyage of four days with him. During these four days, it is likely that Lord Byron did not deny himself solitude, and that he also courted the secret influences exercised by starry nights on the Bosphorus as he had done under similar circumstances on the AEgean Sea. But he had yet another motive for sadness during this passage, since he was then about to separate from his friend and fellow-traveller, Hobhouse, who was obliged to go back to England. Thus, for the first time, Lord Byron would soon find himself alone in a foreign land. The effect produced by this situation must have shown itself in his countenance; for he was experiencing beforehand quite a new sensation, wherein any satisfaction at perfect independence and solitude must have been more than counterbalanced in his feeling, grateful, and in reality most sociable nature, by real grief at such a separation. And I doubt not that when setting foot on the barren isle of Chios, with its jutting rocks and tall rugged-looking mountains, just after having bade Hobhouse adieu, I doubt not that his heart experienced one of those burning suffocating feelings that belong equally to intense sorrow and joy. When, then, a few days later, he wrote to his mother for the evident purpose of calming the uneasiness she must have felt at knowing him to be alone, and when he mentioned with indifference the departure of his friend, he was exaggerating, except in what he said of loving solitude. That he did not even sufficiently express, for he might have boldly declared that it was positively requisite to him; and, indeed, his resignation at loss of a friend so thoroughly appreciated is the best proof we could have of it.

In the workings of Lord Byrons intellect, observation, reflection, and solitary meditation were brought into play much more than imagination. Every thing with him took its source from facts; and the vital flame that circulates in every phase of his writings is the very essence of this reality, first elaborated in his brain and then stamped on his verse. As long as this first kind of work of observation was going on, as long as he was only occupied in imbibing truths of the visible world that were sure to strike him, and storing them in his memory, society, and especially intellectual society, suited him. But when he began to shape his observations into form, by dint of reflection and meditation, generalizing and making deductions, then constant society forced upon him fatigued him, and solitude became indispensable. Now it was more particularly at the period of which we are speaking that his mind was in the situation described. He had just visited Albania, whose inhabitants were a violent, turbulent race, animated with a passionate love of independence, who were ever rising in rebellion against authority, and whose every sentiment, passion, and principle, formed a perfect contrast with all existing in his own country. He had become familiar with their usages, and recognized in them the possession of virtues which he loved, though mixed up with vices which he abhorred. He had gone through strange emotions and adventures among them; his life had often been in danger from the elements, from pirates and brigands; on the throne sat a prince who united monstrous vices to a few virtues, who, wearing gentleness on his countenance, was yet so ferocious in soul, that Byron, despite the favors lavished on himself, felt constrained to paint the tyrant in his real colors. He found in these contrasts, in this moral phenomenon, that which made him shudder, and precisely because it did cause shuddering, the source of soul-stirring, most original poetry, the type of his Eastern verses of “Conrad,” “The Giaour,” and “Lara” which, having been admitted into the fertile soil of his brain, were one day to come forth in all their terrible truth, though softened down by some of his own personal qualities; and having gone through, unknown to him, a long process of warm fertilization, while nursed in solitary reflection. Thus solitude was necessary to him; and this want, I again repeat, was an intellectual one, and had nothing to do with melancholy. From Chios Lord Byron went to Athens, a residence so sad and monotonous at this period, that it was well calculated to give rather than cure the spleen. But as he had no malady of this kind, after an excursion into the Morea with Lord Sligo, a college friend and companion to whom nothing could be refused, he returned to Athens; and here, in order to enjoy his cherished independence, would not even give himself the distraction of seeing those lovely young faces he used to admire behind the geraniums at their windows, and which had charmed him some months before he took up his abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the silence of the cloister, he could commune freely with his own mind, allow it full expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary contemplation to the most varied studies, especially to that he always so much appreciated the study of mankind in general.

“Here,” he wrote to his mother, “I see and have conversed with French, Italians, Germans, Danes, Greeks, Turks, Americans, etc.; and, without losing sight of my own, I can judge of the countries and manners of others. When I see the superiority of England (which, by-the-by, we are a great deal mistaken about in many things) I am pleased, and where I find her inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might have staid, smoked in your towns, or fogged in your country a century without being sure of this, and without acquiring any thing more useful or amusing at home.”

And then he adds:

“I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life; but God knows and does best for us all; at least so they say, and I have nothing to object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to complain of my lot. I trust this will find you well, and as happy as one can be; you will, at least, be pleased to hear I am so.”

It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went from Athens to Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, washed by the blue waves of the AEgean Sea, immortalized by Plato, who here taught his half-Christian philosophy, Lord Byron took his seat at the celestial banquet spread by the great master, and entered into full possession of his genius. For, although he ignored its great power and extent, it is impossible that he should not have had in hours like these, some vision of the future, some presentiment of coming glory, which, piercing through the veils that yet shrouded his genius, gave moments of ineffable delight. When he bathed in some solitary spot, he tells us in his memoranda that one of his greatest delights was to sit on a rock overlooking the waves, and to remain there whole hours lost in admiration of sky and sea, “absorbed,” says Moore, “in that sort of vague reverie, which, however formless and indistinct at the moment, settled afterward on his pages into those clear, bright pictures which will endure forever.”

One day, while he was swimming under the rocks of Cape Colonna, a vessel from the coast of Attica drew near. On board, going from London to Athens, were two celebrated personages Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr. Bruce. The first object that greeted their eyes, on nearing Sanium, was Lord Byron, playing all alone with his favorite element. Some days after, his friend Lord Sligo wished him to make their acquaintance, and he saw a great deal of them at Athens. In his memoranda the following words are applied to them: “It was the commencement (their meeting at Cape Colonna) of the most delightful acquaintance I have made in Greece.” And he wished to assure Mr. Bruce, in case these lines should ever fall under his notice, of the pleasure he experienced in recalling the time they had passed together at Athens. Now I do not see any symptom of melancholy in all this, nor in all preceding, and yet Bruce thought there was. Did he, then, also consider the joy Lord Byron felt in solitude, and his indifference for the false conventional enthusiasm his countrymen affected to display at sight of the ruins of Greece, as so many other tokens of melancholy? In reality Lord Byron was averse to all kinds of affectation, made no exception in favor of the artistic pretensions which constitute the hypocrisy of taste, and only gave the sincere, ardent homage of his soul to those things of antiquity that recall great names or great actions, and to sublime scenes in nature. Notwithstanding his fine intelligence, it is not impossible that Mr. Bruce also may have shared the errors of superficial minds; and it is likewise possible that Lord Byron may really, during the last period of his sojourn at Athens, have sometimes been melancholy, for causes of grief were certainly not wanting. His man of business wished Lord Byron at this time to sell Newstead, so as to get his affairs into some definite order. Perhaps it would have been wise, but such a determination was extremely repugnant to him, for he was very fond of Newstead, and had even written to his mother, before leaving, that she might be quite easy on this head, as he would never part with it. However, his agent, wishing to get him back to England, then affected negligence, would not write, and made him wait for money. Lord Byron grew uneasy and alarmed, was out of humor, and often seemed capricious, because these circumstances obliged him to change his travelling plans, and finally left him no other alternative but to return to England, where, as he wrote to a friend, his first interview would be with a lawyer, the second with a creditor; and then would come discussions with miners, farmers, stewards and all the disagreeables consequent on a ruined property and disputed mines.

After having resisted all these fears for some time, he was obliged to decide on returning. Behold him, then, on the road to England.

At Malta he had attacks of fever to which his state of mind was certainly not wholly foreign. “We have seen,” says Moore, “from the letters written by him on his passage homeward (on board the ‘Volage’ frigate) how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was quite enough in the discomfort that now awaited him in England to sadden its hopes and check its buoyancy.”

And yet in these letters, melancholy at bottom, which he addressed to his mother and friends during this tiresome voyage of more than six weeks, we still perceive, overriding all, his kind, sensitive, playful nature. He told them that if one can not be happy, one must at least try to be a little gay; that if England had ceased to smile on him, there were other skies more serene; that he was coming back shaken by fever morally and physically, but with a firm, intrepid spirit. And, in short, pleasantry never failed him.

Always admirable toward his mother, he spoke of his apathy, but re-assured her directly, adding:

“Dear mother” (he wrote to her on the ‘Volage’ frigate), “within that apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I will prove by every means in my power.

“P.S. You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine, and me only as a visitor."

He had hardly arrived in London when Mr. Dallas hastened to greet him, and instead of finding him changed, thought he was in excellent health, with a countenance that betrayed neither melancholy nor any trace of discontent at his return. The truth is, that those sorrows which did not reach his heart were never very deep with Lord Byron. But already a most formidable tempest was gathering on the horizon of his fate, for it was one that would cruelly wound his heart. Perhaps it was some vague, inexplicable presentiment of what was threatening him that saddened his return to his native country. The storm burst as soon as he set foot in London; for he was summoned in haste to Newstead, his mother’s life being declared in danger. He set out instantaneously, but on arriving found only a corpse! This spectacle was still before his eyes; he had hardly quitted the chamber of death, where, in the obscurity of night and alone, believing himself free from all observation, he had given way in silence and darkness to the real sentiments of his heart, weeping bitterly the loss of a mother who had idolized him, when in rapid succession news arrived of the deaths of his dearest friends. Matthews, his mind’s idol, had just been drowned in the river Cam, at Cambridge; Wingfield, one of his heart-idols, was dying of fever at Coimbra; his dear Eddlestone was in the last stage of consumption; and, finally, he learned the death of another loved, mysterious being. Six deaths within a few short weeks!

“If to be able,” says Moore, “to depict powerfully the painful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery.”

This was certainly a most painful crisis in his existence. What he felt then can not be called melancholy; it was truly desolation, agony of heart. Seeing himself alone in his venerable but gloomy abode, beside the dead body of his mother, solitude was for the first time intolerable to him, and, despite his strength of mind, he experienced moments of weakness. In his agony he wrote a letter to his friend Scroope Davies that is truly painful to read, so much does it bear the impress of intense suffering.

“Some curse hangs over me and mine,” says he. “My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do?

“My dear Davies, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a friend. Come to me, Scroope, I am almost desolate, left almost alone in the world. I must enjoy the survivors while I can. Write or come, but come if you can, or one or both.”

Hardly had he allowed himself this heartrending expression of grief, most touching for those who knew his repugnance to showing any sensibility of heart, when a new calamity overtook him. His dear friend, Wingfield, died at Coimbra at the age of twenty-one. Thoughts of death even took possession of Lord Byron’s soul, influencing and directing all his actions. Neither self-love, nor the hope of great success with “Childe Harold,” which had been announced to him as he passed through London, any longer could charm; tears dimmed the lustre of fame; he could only occupy himself with the fate of the surviving, and resolved on making his will in case of his own death. We find him then at this time solely engaged in making out this new deed. He destroyed the old will, rendered useless by the death of his mother, and took care to forget no one in the new one; all his servants were mentioned with admirable solicitude; and, in short, his last testament fully displayed the beautiful, generous soul that had dictated it.

Some weeks after, he wrote to Dallas:

“At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at seventy? It is true that I am young to begin again, but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of life?”

“Indeed,” writes he at the same time to Hodgson, “the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.

“Davies has been here; his gayety (death can not mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter! You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before.”

His moral sufferings had never been so great; and what he said and experienced under these circumstances, amply prove that solitude was good for him, when not unhappy. “I can do nothing,” writes he to Dallas, “and my days pass, except for a few bodily exercises, in uniform indolence and idle insipidity.”

The task of publishing “Childe Harold” was left to Dallas, and the certainty of its success found him pretty nearly indifferent. When his heart was in pain, Lord Byron’s self-love always lay dormant. But destiny was still far from granting him any respite. Eddlestone, that dear friend, on whose true affection he most relied, as well as another beloved one, whose name ever remained locked within his breast, both died about this time; so that, as he says in his preface, during the short space of two months, he lost six persons most dear. In announcing this new misfortune to Dallas, he expresses himself in the following words:

“I have almost forgot the taste of grief; and supped full of horrors, till I have become callous; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems to me as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall round me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered.

“Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am, indeed, very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.”

But if tears no longer flowed from his eyes, they did from his pen; for it was then he wrote his elegies to “Thyrza,” whose pathetic sublimity is so well characterized by Moore; and that he added those melancholy stanzas in “Childe Harold” on the death of friends, which we find at the end of the second canto.

“Indeed,” he wrote again to Hodgson, “I am growing nervous, ridiculously nervous, I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any society, and when I have, I run out of it. At this present writing, there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to write this grumbling letter. I don’t know that I sha’n’t end with insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness, as Scroope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner. I must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament would suit me well, any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed verb ennuyer.”

Distractions did come to him, but of a kind to make him conjugate verbs equally disagreeable; for they came caused by grief and irritation. In an infamous, ignoble publication, called “The Scourge,” an anonymous author, probably making himself the organ of those who wished to avenge Lord Byron’s satires, attacked his birth, and the reputation of his mother, who, despite her faults, was a very respectable, excellent woman.

“During the first winters after Lord Byron had returned to England,” says Mr. Galt, “I was frequently with him. At that time, the strongest feeling by which he appeared to be actuated was indignation against a writer in a scurrilous publication, called ‘The Scourge,’ in which he was not only treated with unjustifiable malignity, but charged with being, as he told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer. I had not read the work; but the writer who could make such an absurd accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the very circumstances from which he derived the materials of his own libel. When Lord Byron mentioned the subject to me, and that he was consulting Sir Vicary Gibbs with the intention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I advised him, as well as I could, to desist simply because the allegations referred to well-known occurrences. His grand-uncle’s duel with Mr. Chaworth, and the order of the House of Peers to produce evidence of his grandfather’s marriage with Miss Trevannion, the facts of which being matter of history and public record, superseded the necessity of any proceeding.

Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that time, I was not surprised at the sequestration in which he held himself, and which made those who were not acquainted with his shy and mystical nature apply to him the description of his own Lara."

Lord Byron’s conduct at this period, led those who did not know his timid mystery-loving nature, to fancy that they recognized him in the portrait drawn of “Lara.” Probably they were unaware how his hard fate was now not sparing him one single grief or mortification; how he was struggling between the necessity of putting up Newstead for sale and the extreme repugnance he felt to such a step.

“Before his resolve was taken on this head,” says Mr. Galt, “he was often so troubled in mind, as to be unable to hide his sadness; and he often spoke of leaving England forever.”

Already, long absence had made him lose sight of several early comrades; his mother was dead, and he scarcely saw his sister, who lived in quite another circle; through his antecedents, his youth, and his travels abroad, he was still a stranger among his fellow-peers; the only persons he saw much of were five or six college friends, whom death had spared, and to whom he was extremely attached; but they were his sole affections. His ideal standard of perfection which, being brought in contact with reality, had always a little spoilt women for him, had ended by making them almost disagreeable.

“I have one request to make,” wrote he at this time to H , “never again speak to me in your letters of a woman; do not even allude to the existence of the sex. I will not so much as read a word about them; it must be propria que maribus.”

It was in this state of relative isolation that he came to London, about the end of the year, and found Dallas preparing to have “Childe Harold” published; a task in which Lord Byron half unwillingly joined.

“He seemed more inclined,” says Dallas, “at that time to seek more solid fame, by endeavoring to become an active, eloquent statesman.”

But, notwithstanding this perspective, despite his genius and his youth, Lord Byron often fell into a sort of mental prostration, which was, says Dallas again, “rather the result of his particular situation, feeling himself out of his sphere, than that of a gloomy disposition received from nature.”

We have seen, in effect, that there were circumstances then existing well calculated to darken his noble brow, and give him those nervous movements that may have seemed like caprice to those who were ignorant of their cause; and I wished to enter into these details so as to characterize well the epoch when his melancholy was greatest, and to show that it had its chief source in the anguish of his heart. It was to this time he alluded, when, in other days of suffering (at the period of his separation from Lady Byron), wherein his heart had smaller share, he wrote to Moore: “If my heart could have broken, it would have done so years ago, through events more afflicting than this.”

I also wished to enter into these details, because, desiring to prove that Lord Byron’s melancholy almost always arose from palpable causes, it was necessary to make these causes known; and thus those who have declared his griefs to be rather imaginary than real, may find in this chapter abundant reason for rectifying their ideas. Among the number of such persons we may rank Mr. Macaulay, the eloquent historian, whose opinion, however, has no weight, as regards Lord Byron’s character. For it is evident that he made use of this great name by way of choosing a good theme for his eloquence, a sort of mould for fine phrases. Besides, Macaulay did not know Lord Byron personally, nor did he study him impartially; facts which are his fault and his excuse.

After having paid this great tribute to grief during six months, the storm appeared to subside, and a ray of sunshine penetrated into Lord Byron’s mind. It was then that he made Moore’s acquaintance, and that of other clever men, among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore especially, introduced under circumstances that brought out strongly the most amiable and estimable qualities of heart and mind, was to Lord Byron as a beacon-light amid the clouds external and internal harassing him then; and their sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord Byron wrote directly to Harness:

“Moore is the epitome of every thing exquisite in poetic and personal perfections.”

On his side, Moore, after having praised the manly, generous, pleasing refinement of his new friend, sums up by saying: “Frank and manly as I found his nature then, so did I ever find it to his latest hour.” And in describing the effect produced on him by his first meeting with Lord Byron, he says:

“Among the impressions which this meeting left upon me, what I chiefly remember to have remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manners. Being in mourning for his mother, the color, as well of his dress as of his glossy, curling, and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual character when in repose.”

But this melancholy, having become habitual to him through accident, began then to disperse, as snow melts beneath the soft and warm breath of spring. The first symptom was that he judged better of himself; for, writing to his friend Harness, to express his general opinion on human selfishness, he said, “But I do not think we are born of this disposition.”

“From the time of our first meeting,” says Moore, “there seldom elapsed a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each other, and our acquaintance ripened into intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have seldom known an example."

Moore’s company was a great consolation to him then, and Providence willed that the first balsam applied to his wounds, after that of time, should come from the hand of one whom he had lashed in his satire. He passed in this way the last months of 1811, and the first two of the following year. Meanwhile his star was about to rise, soon to transform, without any transition, his misty sky into brightest light, too dazzling, alas! to endure. For the sun, when it shines so radiantly in early morning, absorbs too many bad vapors. But we will not anticipate events which I am not relating here.

The parliamentary session being opened, Lord Byron resumed his seat in the upper House. But he was only known there by the satire that had raised him up such a host of enemies; otherwise, the handsome young man who had come among them three years before, but who had since appeared to disdain their labors, preferring foreign travel in Spain and the East, was scarcely remembered. When they saw him return, still so young and handsome, but with a grave melancholy brow, and that he immediately distinguished himself as an orator, general admiration was excited. Even those he had offended generously forgot their anger in sympathy for a fellow-countryman, and pride in such a colleague; pride and enthusiasm were so general that both parties, Tories and Whigs, shared it equally. Lord Holland told him that as an orator he would beat them all, if he persevered. Lord Grenville remarked that for the construction of his phrases he already resembled Burke. Sir Francis Burdett declared that his discourse was the best pronounced by a lord in parliamentary memory. Several other noblemen asked to be presented, and even those he had offended came round to shake hands. Generous natures showed themselves on this occasion. The success of the orator heralded that of the poet, for “Childe Harold” appeared a few days after.

“The effect was,” said Moore, “accordingly electric; his fame had not to wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but seemed to spring up like the palace of a fairy tale, in a night. As he himself briefly described it in his memoranda: ’I awoke one morning, and found myself famous.’

“The first edition of his work was disposed of instantly; and, as the echoes of its reputation multiplied on all sides, ‘Childe Harold’ and ‘Lord Byron’ became the theme of every tongue. At his door most of the leading names of the day presented themselves. From morning till night the most flattering testimonies of his success crowded his table from the grave tributes of the statesman and the philosopher down to (what flattered him still more) the romantic billet of some incognita, or the pressing note of invitation from some fair leader of fashion; and, in place of the desert which London had been to him but a few weeks before, he now not only saw the whole splendid interior of high life thrown open to receive him, but found himself among its illustrious crowds the most distinguished object.”

I may also mention Dallas, who in speaking of this unexampled success, says:

“Lord Byron had become the subject of every conversation in town.

“He was surrounded with honors. From the regent and his admirable daughter, down to the editor and his clerk; from Walter Scott and Jeffrey down to the anonymous authors of the ‘Satirist’ and the ‘Scourge,’ all and each extolled his merits. He was the admiration of the old, and the marvel of the fashionable circles of which he had become the idol.”

This adoration of a whole nation did not turn his head, but it touched and rejoiced his heart. When he knew himself forgiven and loved by those even whom he had most offended in his satire, toward whom he felt most guilty, as, for instance, the excellent Lord Holland, who asked for his friendship, predicting his future fame as an orator, and already placing him beside Walter Scott as a poet; then by Lord Fitzgerald, who declared himself incapable of feeling angry with “Childe Harold,” and many, many others; when all this occurred, Lord Byron’s heart expanded to the better feelings he had long kept under control and hidden. He gave way to his innate kindness, to generous forgiveness; his own good qualities were stimulated by the kindness and generosity of others; this, rather than any satisfaction of self-love, dispelled the clouds from his soul, changed the sky and atmosphere, and his melancholy of that period, which owed its source to the heart, became neutralized by the heartfelt satisfaction he experienced. His letters, and particularly those to Moore, are full of life and animation at this time; and such as he appeared in his letters, such did Moore describe him in his habitual frame of mind. Dallas, who before had so often seen him melancholy, says:

“I am happy to think that the success with which he has met, and the object of universal attention which he has become, have already produced upon his soul that softening influence which I had expected and foreseen; and I trust, that all his former grief will now have passed forever.”

Galt himself, despite the effort he seems to make in praising him, can not help owning that at this period, when every body was kind to Lord Byron, he, on his side, displayed the utmost gentleness, kindness, amiability, and desire of obliging, combined with habitual gayety and pleasantry. The general tone of his memoranda at this time, particularly in 1813, shows him pleased with every body and every thing.

After having praised Moore, he speaks highly of Lord Ward, afterward Lord Dudley:

“I like Ward,” he says, and adds, “by Mohammed! I begin to fear getting to like every body; a disposition not to be encouraged. It is a sort of social gluttony, that makes one swallow all one comes in contact with. But I do like Ward.”

Nevertheless, this serenity, by lasting over the interval that elapsed between his twenty-third and twenty-sixth year, at which period his marriage took place, was traversed by many clouds, more or less evanescent, and he still had hours and days of melancholy. Assuredly, Lord Byron could not avoid those oscillations of heart and mind that belong to the very essence of the human heart. But, at least, it is easy to assign a palpable cause for all the fits of ennui or melancholy experienced at this time. All his tendencies then show indifference, if not dislike, to female society. His ideal of perfection had spoilt him for women, in the first instance, and the unfortunate experience he had of them still further lowered his opinion of them. But if he did not care about them, it was presumptuous to think he could put aside the sex altogether.

By adopting an anchorite’s regimen, he strengthened, it is true, the spiritual part of his nature; and certainly seemed to believe his heart would be satisfied with friendship. His acquaintance with Moore, especially, gave to his daily existence the intellectual and spiritual aliment so necessary to him. But he reckoned on setting woman aside, and his presumptuous heart numbered only twenty-three summers! Among the letters and tokens of homage that piled his table in those days figured many rose-colored notes, written on gilt-edged perfumed paper. Such incense easily ascends, and it was not surprising that his head should also suffer. “Childe Harold,” of course, acted most on the imagination of women of powerful intellect and ardent nature, and thus his own peril grew afresh, involuntarily evoked by himself. For, if the prestige of position and circumstance adding lustre to genius, could act strongly even upon men, what must have been their combined influence when added to his personal beauty, upon women?

" ... These personal influences acted with increased force, from the assistance derived from others, which, to female imaginations especially, would have presented a sufficiency of attraction, even without the great qualities joined with them. His youth, the noble beauty of his countenance, and its constant play of light and shadow the gentleness of his voice and manner to women, and his occasional haughtiness to men, the alleged singularities of his mode of life, which kept curiosity constantly alive; all these minor traits concurred toward the quick spread of his fame; nor can it be denied that, among many purer sources of interest in his poem, the allusions which he makes to instances of ‘successful passion’ in his career, were not without their influence on the fancies of that sex whose weakness it is to be most easily won by those who come recommended by the greatest number of triumphs over others.... Altogether, taking into consideration the various points I have here enumerated, it may be asserted, that there never before existed, and, it is most probable, there never will exist again, a combination of such vast mental powers and such genius, with so many other of those advantages and attractions by which the world is in general dazzled and captivated.”

This rare combination of advantages were so many means of seduction on his side, involuntarily exercised, and the sole ones he would have condescended to employ; meanwhile all advances were spared him on the other. There were fine ladies whom nothing daunted, if only they could find favor in his sight; who forgot for him their rank, their duties, their families, braving the whole world, donning strange costumes to get at him, carrying jealousy to the verge of madness, to attempted suicide, or to the conception, at least, of crime. One distinguished herself by excessive daring; another, who had not been happy in married life, but who had tried to make up for want of affection by securing her husband’s friendship and esteem, was now willing to sacrifice all to her wild passion for the youthful peer.

Whatever the sentiment which in his breast responded to all the feelings he excited, it is certain that they possessed, at least, the power of disturbing his tranquillity. They were like so many beautiful plants, all showy and perfumed, yet distilling poison. The woman whose passion he bore with, rather than shared, could not fail to compromise him; they had exchanged parts, so to say, and he had to suffer from that jealousy, which more frequently falls to the lot of woman. The ennui he thus experienced was tinctured with irritation, while the emotions to which the other lady gave rise, were softer, truer, and more ardent. If we examine well his memoranda and confidential letters of this time, and confront his expressions with facts, we shall always find therein the cause and palpable explanation of those mysterious though short-lived sadnesses then experienced. We shall find the expression of peace sacrificed, or sadness produced, sometimes couched in language indicative of affection or regret; then, again, in words that betray fear or irritation. For instance, we read in a passage of his memoranda:

“I wish I could settle to reading again, my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it, because the scene ran into reality; a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through.... Yes, yes; through.”

And we have in these two words the precise explanation of this feeling of ennui.

He was at this time contemplating a voyage:

“Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly discussed an expedition together.... And why not?... is far away.... No one else, except Augusta (his sister), cares for me no ties no trammels andiamo dunque se torniamo bene se no che importa?"

He was evidently sad that day; but, is not the nature of his sadness revealed in those words: “She is far away?”

According to his memoranda, he again fell into this vein of sadness some months later, in February, 1814; but then, also, its causes are very evident. An accumulation of painful things, united to overwhelm him. He had sought to satisfy the longings of his heart by extraordinary intellectual activity, writing the “Bride of Abydos” in four nights, and the “Corsair” in a few days; he had also fought against them, by endeavoring to make a six months’ journey into Holland; but this project failed, from obstacles created by a friend who was to accompany him; and, besides, the plague was then prevalent in the East; he was, moreover, embarrassed with the difficulty of selling Newstead, and the necessity of such a painful measure; all which circumstances united to keep him in England. And a host of other irritating annoyances, the work of irreconcilable enemies, who were jealous of his success and his superiority, then fell upon him, as they could not fail to do; for his sun had risen too brightly not to call forth noxious vapors.

After having passed a month away from London, he wrote in his memoranda:

I see all the papers are in a sad commotion with those eight lines.... You have no conception of the ludicrous solemnity with which these two stanzas have been treated, ... of the uproar the lines on the little Royaltys Weeping, in 1812 (now republished) have occasioned. The Morning Post gave notice of an intended motion in the House of my brethren on the subject, and God knows what proceedings besides.... This last piece of intelligence is, I presume, too laughable to be true, etc., etc."

The first blow to his popularity was now given; and soon the whole nation rose up in arms against him. All jealousies, and all resentments now ranged themselves under one hostile banner, distorting Lord Byrons every word, calumniating his motives, making his most generous and noble actions serve as pretexts for attack; reproaching him with having given up enmities from base reasons (while he had done so in reality from feelings of justice and gratitude), pretending that he had pocketed large sums for his poems, and rendering him responsible for the follies women chose to commit about him. This war, breaking out against him like an unexpected hurricane amid radiant sunshine, must naturally have caused irritation. And if we add to it the embarrassment of his affairs, the deplorable events in his opinion then going on in the world, the fall of the great Napoleon, whom he admired, the invasion of France by the Allied Powers, which he disapproved of, the policy pursued by his country, and the evils endured by humanity spectacles that always made his heart bleed, we may well understand how all these causes may have given rise to some moments of misanthropy, such as are betrayed by a few expressions in his journal; but it was a misanthropy that existed only in words, a plant without roots, of ephemeral growth, and most natural to a fine nature. We feel, notwithstanding all these real palpable causes of ennui, that his principal sufferings still came from the heart.

“Lady Melbourne,” writes Lord Byron in his memoranda, in 1814, “tells me that it is said that I am ‘much out of spirits.’ I wonder if I am really or not? I have certainly enough of ’that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart’ and it is better they should believe it to be the result of these attacks than that they should guess the real cause.”

And this real cause was a grief he wished to keep secret. Separation from friends, their departure, even when he was to meet them again, likewise caused him sadness. Especially was this the case with regard to Moore, whom he loved so much, and whose society had an unspeakable charm for him: I can only repeat, he said, that I wish you would either remain a long time with us, or not come at all, for these snatches of society make the subsequent separations bitterer than ever."

And in the next letter he says: “I could be very sentimental now, but I won’t. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded though there are great hopes and you do not know how it sunk with your departure.”

This influence is ever visible. The English climate was always distasteful to him, and its fogs displeased him more since he had revelled in the splendor of Eastern suns; moreover, mists grew darker and colder when his imagination was still more influenced by his heart. At those moments his first thought ever was “Let me depart, let me seek a bright sun, a blue sky.” When to his great regret, the East was closed against him by the plague of 1813, in his disdain for northern countries, he exclaimed:

“Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my heaven is as easily made as your Persian’s.” Making allusions to this verse

“A Persian’s heaven is easily made,
’Tis but black eyes and lemonade.”

But we know that he was thinking of this voyage, in order to divert his mind from the regret of having been obliged, from motives of honor and prudence, to give up accompanying into Sicily a family he liked very much. However, the sight of a camel sufficed to carry him back to Asia and the Euxine Sea, and to make him cry out: “Quando te aspiciam!”

It was also at this time that he wrote to Moore, “All convulsions with me end in rhyme.” To overcome certain agitations of heart, he wrote the “Bride of Abydos,” and directly afterward the “Corsair.”

But if the melancholy, more or less deep, that cast its shadows over this brilliant period of his triumphs, wore specially the above character, it changed somewhat after his marriage. Thenceforward his melancholy sprang less from the heart, than from bitter disenchantment; from the suffering of a proud nature, cruelly wounded in its sentiment of justice by indignities, calumnies, persecutions, unexampled under such circumstances. Having already spoken of this marriage, I shall leave to regular biographers the detailed account of this painful period, so as only to consider it here under the sole aspect of the griefs it caused. I will not even stop to mention the unaccountable melancholy occasioned by a presentiment before marriage, nor the mysterious sort of agony that seized upon him just as he was about to kneel for the nuptial ceremony in church, nor even the sadness brought about by his first experience of the disposition of the person with whom he had so imprudently linked his fate. I will say, rather, that the melancholy caused and produced by this marriage was really grief; and of the kind that most harshly tries, not only firmness of soul, but likewise true virtue. For all the baseness, cowardice and spirit of revenge that had lain hidden a moment while his triumphal car passed on, united at this moment to overwhelm and cast him down. And the means employed were, instinct with such perversity, that his great moral courage, always so powerful in helping him to bear contradictions, disappointments, and personal misfortunes, were no longer of any assistance, threatened as he was with the greatest calamity that can possibly befall a man of honor namely, to be misjudged, calumniated, accused, thought capable of deeds quite contrary to his high nature. Neither his courage, firmness, nor even the testimony of conscience could shield him from great unhappiness. And he suffered all the more that the blame incurred proceeded from worthy persons who had been mischievously led into error; nor could he conceal from himself that he had voluntarily contributed to produce this unhappy state of things, by not sufficiently avoiding certain appearances, by not attaching sufficient importance to the opinion of his fellow-men, and having lent himself, too easily, to misinterpretation.

The thorns which I have reaped, said he later (but he thought it much earlier), are of the tree I planted, they have torn me, and I bled; I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."

In addition to all this, Lord Byron had to experience the effects of a phenomenon of a terrible character, a phenomenon almost peculiar to England, the tyrannical power of its public opinion. This power, that gives form and movement to what is called the great world in England, weighed so heavily on the weak minds of several persons calling themselves friends, that, with few exceptions, and though all the while persuaded of the injustice of such opinion, after a few feeble efforts at changing it, and showing the wrong done to Lord Byron, they lost courage to declare their belief. Not only did they no longer protest, but they even pretended to believe part of the stupid calumnies spread abroad. To a heart firm and devoted as his, which, under similar circumstances, would have fought to the death in defense of outraged justice and a persecuted friend, this was one of the most cruel trials imposed on him by adverse destiny. What he must have suffered at this period has been already spoken of in another chapter. I will only say here, that, despite time, and the philosophy, which, subsequently, restored partial serenity, this wound never quite closed, since, even in the fourteenth canto of “Don Juan,” written shortly before his last journey into Greece, he still made allusion to it, saying ironically:

“Without a friend, what were humanity,
To hunt our errors up with a good grace?
Consoling us with ’Would you had thought twice!
Ah! if you had but followed my advice!’
O Job! you had but two friends: one’s quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease.”

Moore adds: “Lord Byron could not have said, at this time, whether it was the attacks of his enemies, or the condolences of his friends that most lacerated his heart.”

It was in this state of mind that he quitted England. He visited Belgium, and its battle-plains, still coming across fields of blood; went up the Rhine, and spent some months in Switzerland, where the glaciers, precipices, and the Alps, presented him with a splendid framework for new poems. All the melancholy to be found in “Childe Harold” (third canto), in “Manfred,” and in his memoranda at that time, is evidently caused by grief, either of fresh occurrence or renewed by memory. A smile still sometimes wreathed his lip; but, when the gayety natural to his age and disposition would fain have taken possession of his heart, the remembrance of all the indignities he had undergone, rose up before him as the words Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, did to Belshazzar. And often his fit of gayety ended in a sigh, which even became habitual after it had ceased to express sorrow. All those who knew Lord Byron have remarked this singular and touching sigh, attributing it to a melancholy temperament. But it was especially produced by a crowd of painful indistinct remembrances, intruding upon him at some moment when he would and could have been happy. So he has told us in those exquisite lines of his fourth canto of “Childe Harold;” and he often repeated the same in prose. Thus, for instance, at the time of his excursions to Mont Blanc and the Glaciers, which, had his heart been lighter, would have made him so happy, he finished his memoranda with these melancholy words:

“In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have been very fortunate fortunate in a companion (Hobhouse), fortunate in our prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But, in all this, the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and, more, home desolation which must accompany me through life have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty and the power and the glory around, above, and beneath me.”

After having passed eleven months in Switzerland, in about the same frame of mind, he crossed the Alps, and entered Italy. Who can breathe the soft air of that beautiful land, without feeling a healing balm descend on wounds within? The clear atmosphere, and the serene sky, were to him like the indulgent caresses of a sister, bringing a hope a promise that peace, and even happiness were about to visit his stricken soul. His first halt was at Milan. There he met with sympathetic, noble minds, instead of the envious, hypocritical, intolerant spirits that had caused him so much suffering; sweet and pleasant was it for him to live with such. Every evening he took his place in a box at the Scala, where the flower of the young intellects of Milan assembled, and where he met with other persons of note, such as Abbe de Breme and Silvio Pellico: gentle, beautiful souls, burning with love of country, and sighing after its independence. From them he learnt more than ever to detest the humiliating yoke of foreign despotism that weighed on Italy; with the independence and frankness of character that belonged to him, he did not scruple to deplore it openly; and his imprudent generosity became a source of annoyance, persecution and calumny for himself. There he heard that passionate music which appeals so strongly to imagination and heart, because it harmonizes so naturally with all its surroundings in Italy. It was listening to this music, at times so pathetic and sweet, that emotion would often lend almost supernatural beauty to his countenance, so that even Mr. Stendhall, the least enthusiastic of men, was wont to say with enthusiasm, that never, in his whole life, had he seen any thing so beautiful and expressive as Lord Byron’s look, or so sublime as his style of beauty. There he gave himself freely up to all the fine emotions that art can raise. Stendhall accompanied him to the Brera Museum, “and I admired,” says he, “the depth of sentiment with which Lord Byron understood painters of most opposite schools, Raphael, Guercino, Luini, Titian. Guercino’s picture of Hagar dismissed by Abraham quite electrified him, and, from that moment the admiration he inspired rendered every body mute around him.”

“He improvised for at least an hour, and even better than Madame de Stael,” says Stendhall again. “One day Monti was invited to recite before Lord Byron one of his (Monti’s) poems which had met in Italy with most favor, the first canto of the ‘Mascheroniana.’” The reading of these lines gave such intense pleasure to the author of “Childe Harold” that Stendhall adds, he shall never forget the divine expression of his countenance on that occasion. “It was,” says he, “the placid air of genius and power.”

Thus taking interest and pleasure in all around him, if he did experience hours of melancholy (which is very probable, his wounds being so recent and so deep), he had, at the same time, strength to hide it from the public eye, and to express it only with his pen.

The single symptom that might be considered to betray, at this time, a continual malady of soul, was the indifference he showed toward the fair ladies of Milan, who, on their side, were full of enthusiasm about him, and with whom he refused to become acquainted, despite all their advances. But this reserve (though probably more marked and commented on at this particular moment of which we speak) belonged, nevertheless to his nature. After having visited Lake Garda with that pleasure he always experienced from the beauties of nature, and then the tomb of Juliet at Verona, with the interest excited by a true story even more than by Shakspeare’s poetry (since he could only take real interest in what was true), he went from Milan to Venice. I have mentioned in another chapter the impression made on him by Venice in particular, and Italy in general; how, aided by exterior circumstances, by the sympathies growing up around him, the severe studies he underwent, so as to keep his heart calm, and bridle an imagination too liable to be influenced by bitter memories; in a few months he began a new existence there, with a more vigorous and healthy impulse for his genius.

When first victimized by the most senseless persecution, he was so surprised and confounded by the noise and violence of calumny, that his keen sentiment of injustice underwent a sort of numbness. On seeing himself thus brutally attacked on the one hand, and so feebly defended on the other, by lukewarm, pusillanimous friends, he may have questioned if he were not really in fault, and hesitated, perhaps, how to reply; for he almost spoke of himself as guilty in the farewell addressed to his cold-hearted wife, and also in the lines composed for his more deserving sister. This situation of mind shows itself without disguise, sadly depicted in the third canto of “Childe Harold.” Manfred himself, that wondrous conception of genius, whose lot was cast amid all the sublimities of nature, despite his pride and his strength of will, yet was made to wear the sackcloth of penance. But, on arriving at Venice when months had rolled on, and the Alps were between him and the injustice undergone, after Lady Byron’s new, incredible, and strange refusal to return, he felt his conscience disencumbered of all morbid influences. The testimony given, the absolution awarded by this impartial, incorruptible judge, whom he had never ceased to consult, became sufficient for him. And by degrees, as he succeeded in forgetting, so as to have power to forgive, peace and tranquillity revisited his mind. Venice was the city of his dream; he had known her, he said, ere he visited her, and after the East she it was that haunted his imagination. Reality spoiled nothing of his dream; he loved every thing about her, the solemn gayety of her gondolas, the silence of her canals, the late hours of her theatres and soirees, the movement and animation reigning on St. Mark’s, where the gay world nightly assembled. Even the decay of the town (which saddened him later), harmonizing then with the whole scene, was not displeasing. He regretted the old costumes given up; but the Carnival, though waning, still recalled ancient Venice, and rejoiced his heart. Familiar with the Italian language, he took pleasure in studying, also, the Venetian dialect, the naïvete and softness of which charmed him, especially on woman’s lips. Stretched in his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, especially at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their splendor in Venice. In summer and autumn he delighted to give the rein to his horse along the solitary banks of the Lido, or beside the flower-enamelled borders of the Brenta. He loved the simplicity of the women, the freedom from hypocrisy of the men. Feeling himself liked by those among whom chance or choice had thrown him, frequenting theatres and society that could both amuse and instruct, though powerless to fill his thoughts, for these latter required more substantial food, and some hard difficult study to occupy them, being free from all disquieting passions, and wishing to remain thus, sociable as he was by temperament, though loving solitude for the sake of his genius; under all these circumstances, he could satisfy, in due proportion, the double exigency of his nature; for he lived, as we have seen, amid a small circle of sympathetic acquaintances, and of friends arriving from England, who clustered round him without interfering with the independence he had regained, and which formed the natural necessary element for his mind; though he had been deprived of it in England by the cant and pusillanimity of his friends. If, then, he was not exactly happy at this time, at least he was on the road leading to happiness. For he was beginning to make progress in the path of philosophy, a gentle, indulgent, generous philosophy, as deep as it was clever and pleasing, and which afterward ruled his life, and inspired his genius. All those who saw him at this period are unanimous in saying that melancholy then held aloof from him. In all his letters we find proof of the same. “Venice and I go on well together,” wrote he to Murray.

And elsewhere, “I go out a great deal, and am very well pleased.”

Mr. Rose, who visited him at Venice, in the spring of 1818, began a poem which he addressed to him from Albano, where he was taking baths for his health, by alluding to the gayety which Byron spread around him at the reunions which he liked.

But while those living near him, and at Venice, where his poetry was not known, would never have imagined him to be melancholy, in England and other places where people read the sorrow-breathing creations of his genius, he continued to be considered the very personification of melancholy or misanthropy. He knew, and laughed about it sometimes.

“I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sable, in public imagination, more particularly since my moral wife demolished my reputation. However, not that, nor more than that, has yet extinguished my spirit, which always rises with the rebound.”

And as he did not wish to be considered a misanthrope, he added to Moore, in the same letter:

“I wish you would also tell Jeffrey what you know, that I was not, and indeed, am not, even now, the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman for which he takes me, but a facetious companion, getting on well with those with whom I am intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a much cleverer fellow.”

And at the same time, to disabuse the public also, and show that he could write gayly, he set himself to study a kind of poetry thoroughly Italian in its spirit, and of which Berni is the father; poetry replete with wit, and somewhat free, but devoid of malice, even when it merges from gayety into satire; a style unknown to England in its varied shades, and which it was easier for him to introduce than to make popular. “Beppo” was his first essay in this line, and it contains too much genuine fun not to have been a natural product of his humor ere flowing from his pen.

On sending it to Murray as a mere sample of the style he thought it possible to introduce into the literature of his country, he said:

“At least, this poem will show that I can write gayly, and will repel the accusation of monotony and affectation."

But the gayety visible at this period in his writings and his conduct was not, however, uninterrupted. For such cheerfulness to be constant, neither a continuation of the causes producing it, nor yet the absence of English papers and reviews could quite suffice. It was necessary that no letters should come, awakening painful remembrances that had slumbered awhile, that there should be no necessity for selling his property in England, a matter always complicated, and difficult of execution at a distance, and which forced upon him cares and occupations most opposed to his character, while affording sad proof of the negligence, ingratitude, and other faults of those intrusted with the management of his affairs. It would have required that friends who had neglected to prevent his departure, should not, when weary of seeing him no more, have conspired to bring about his return, devising a good means of so doing by obstacles thrown in the way of a successful issue to his affairs, which happy conclusion was absolutely necessary for his peace and independence. We see by his letters, written during the summer of 1818, that he was tormented in a thousand ways; sometimes not receiving any accounts, sometimes being advised to come nearer London, then, again, having no tidings of how several thousands had been disposed of. Besides that, he had constantly before his eyes a spectacle most painful for a generous heart to witness. That was Venice choked and expiring in the grip of her foreign rulers. The humiliation thus inflicted on the city of his dreams, and its noble race of inhabitants, and which was every instant repeated and proclaimed by the brutal voice of drums and cannons, with a thousand added vexations (necessary, perhaps, for keeping up an abhorred sway), caused infinite suffering to his just and liberal nature, raising emotions of anger and pitying regret, that flowed from his pen in sublimely indignant language. Thereupon, the despots, unable to impose silence upon him, revenged themselves in various ways, echoing reports spread in London, and inventing new fables, which the idle people of Venice, more idle than elsewhere, and even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to strangers, to amuse and gain a few pence. We pass over any details of the persecution inflicted on him by English tourists, who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of sheer curiosity and eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales in circulation, were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of course, displeased him, and accordingly in the summer of 1818 we find traces of ill-humor visible in his correspondence, and even in the first two cantos of Don Juan. Afterward, when he had been laid hold of and absorbed by a great passion, his irritation merged into sadness, melancholy, disquietude, and irresolution.

But if all this proves that sadness wearing the garb of melancholy sometimes approached him, even at Venice; we see too clearly its real and accidental causes to be able to ascribe it to a permanent and fatal disposition of temperament.

Many signs of suffering escaped his pen at this time. For instance, writing to Moore from Venice in 1818, and wishing to give him a picturesque description of a creature full of savage energy, who forced herself upon him in a thousand extravagant ways, refusing to leave his house, he said:

“I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me when I stood alone upon my hearth with my household gods shivered around me.... Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I shall remain only a spectator upon this earth until some great occasion presents itself, which may come yet. There are others more to be blamed than , and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly.”

Meanwhile, until Providence should present him with this opportunity, another feeling took involuntary possession of his whole soul. But would not the sentiment which was about to swallow up or transform all others, and which was at last to bring him some happiness, also destroy the peace so carefully preserved in his heart by indifference since he left London? He seemed at first to have dreaded such a result himself; for, in one of the earliest letters addressed to the person beloved (letters which fully unveil his beautiful soul, and where one would vainly seek an indelicate or sensual expression), he tells her “that he had resolved, on system, to avoid a great passion,” but that she had put to flight all his resolutions, that he is wholly hers, and will become all she wishes, happy perhaps in her love, but never more at peace, “ma tranquillo mai piú.”

And he ends the letter with a verse quoted from Guarini’s Pastor Fido."

His heart assuredly was satisfied, but precisely because he truly loved, and felt himself beloved; therefore did he also suffer from the impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of his heart with circumstances. In one of these beautiful letters, so full of simplicity and refinement, he tells her:

“What we shall have to suffer is of common occurrence, and we must bear it like many others, for true love is never happy; but we two shall suffer still more because we are placed in no ordinary circumstances.”

His real sentiments of soul are likewise displayed in that beautiful satirical poem, “Don Juan,” in the third canto of which he exclaims:

“Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah, why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?”

Nevertheless, when he had left Venice, which became altogether distasteful to him, and gone to live at Ravenna, his heart grew calmer. To Murray he writes:

“You inquire after my health and spirits in large letters; my health can’t be very bad, for I cured myself of a sharp tertian ague in three weeks, with cold water, which had held my stoutest gondolier for months, notwithstanding all the bark of the apothecary, a circumstance which surprised D’Aglietti, who said it was a proof of great stamina, particularly in so epidemic a season. I did it out of dislike to the taste of bark (which I can’t bear), and succeeded, contrary to the prophecies of every body, by simply taking nothing at all. As to spirits, they are unequal, now high, now low, like other people’s, I suppose, and depending upon circumstances.”

Having grown intimate with the Count and Countess G , he was requested by the former to accompany his young wife into society, to the play, everywhere, in short; soon Lord Byron took up his abode in their palace, and the repose of heart and mind he thus attained was so great, that no sadness seemed able to come near him, as long as this tranquil, regular, pleasing sort of existence lasted, and it seemed destined to endure forever.

But nothing is permanent here below, and especially happiness, be its source regular or irregular; such is the mysterious eternal law of this earthly life, doubtless one of probation. To this period of tranquillity succeeded one of uneasiness and grief, which ended by awakening a little melancholy. Let us examine the causes of it in his position at that time.

The object of Lord Byron’s love had obtained from His Holiness Pope Pius VII., at the solicitation of her parents, permission to leave her husband’s house, and return home to her family. Consequently she had left in the month of July, and was leading a retired life in a country-house belonging to her parents. Thus Lord Byron, who had been accustomed to feel happy in her society, was now reduced to solitude in the same place her presence had gladdened. In order not to compromise her in her delicate position, he was obliged even to deny himself the gratification of calling upon her in the country. Ravenna, which is always a sad kind of abode, becomes in autumn quite a desert, liable to fever. Everybody had gone into the country. Even if taste had not inclined Lord Byron to be alone, necessity would have compelled it; for there was no longer a single being with whom he could exchange a word or a thought. Equinoctial gales again swept the sea; and thus the wholesome exercise of swimming, so useful in restoring equilibrium to the faculties and calming the mind, was forbidden. If at least he could have roamed on horseback through the forest of pines! But no; the autumn rains, even in this lovely climate, last for weeks. In the absolute solitude of a town like Ravenna, imprisoned, so to say, within his own apartment, how could he avoid some emotions of sadness? He was thus assailed; and, as it always happened where he himself was concerned, he mistook its causes. Engrossed by an affection that was amply returned, feeling strong against the injustice of man and the hardships of fate, having become well-nigh inaccessible to ennui, he was astonished at the sadness that always seemed to return in autumn, and imagined that it might be from some hereditary malady inherent to his temperament.

“This season kills me with sadness,” he wrote to Madame G , on the 28th of September; “when I have my mental malady, it is well for others that I keep away. I thank thee, from my heart, for the roses. Love me! My soul is like the leaves that fall in autumn, all yellow.”

And then, as if he almost reproached himself with being sad without some cause existing in the heart, and, above all, not wishing to pain Madame G , he wound up with a joke, saying: “Here is a cantator;” a conventional word recalling some buffooneries in a play, and which signified: “Here is a fine sentence!”

Certainly, the autumnal season, sad and rainy as it is, must have had great influence over him. Could it be otherwise with an organization like his? From this point of view, his melancholy, like his temperament, might be considered as hereditary. But would it have been developed without the aid of other causes?

Let us observe the date of the letter, wherein he blames the season, and the dates of those received from London, or those he addressed thither. The coincidence between them will show clearly that when he called himself melancholy, and accused the season, it occurred precisely on the day when he was most wearied and overwhelmed by a host of other disagreeable things. For instance, Murray, whose answers on several points he had been impatiently expecting, was seized with a new fit of silence. There you are at your tricks."

And then, when the silence was broken, the letters almost always brought him disagreeable accounts. Wishing to disgust him with Italy, they sent him volumes full of unjust, stupid attacks on Italy and the Italians whom he liked.

“These fools,” exclaimed he, “will force me to write a book myself on Italy, to tell them broadly they have lied.”

Nothing was more disagreeable, and even hurtful to him, at this time, than the report of his return to England; and they wrote him word that his presence in London was asserted on all sides, that many persons declared that they had seen him, and that Lady C. L had been to call at his house fully persuaded that he was there.

“Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to England. They may say what they please, any loathsome abuse but that. Contradict it.”

In consequence of this invention, even his newspapers were no longer sent to him; and when he spoke of the harm and annoyance thus occasioned, annoyance increased by Murray’s silence, his displeasure certainly amounted to anger. At this time also he was informed by letter that some English tourists, on returning home, had boasted that they could have been presented to him at Venice, but would not.

The trial of the unfortunate queen was just coming on at this time, and the whole proceeding, accompanied as it was with so many cruel, indecent circumstances, revolted him in the highest degree.

“No one here,” said he, “believes a word of all the infamous depositions made.”

The article in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” which was so abominably libellous as to force him out of the silence he had adopted for his rule, was often present to his thought; for he dreaded lest his editor should for the sake of lucre publish “Don Juan” with his name, and lest the Noëls and other enemies, out of revenge, should profit thereby to contest his right of guardianship over his child, as had been the case with Shelley.

“Recollect, that if you put my name to ‘Don Juan’ in these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian-right of my daughter in chancery, on the plea of its containing the parody. Such are the perils of a foolish jest. I was not aware of this at the time, but you will find it correct, I believe; and you may be sure that the Noëls would not let it slip. Now, I prefer my child to a poem at any time.”

Moreover, amid all these pre-occupations, Hobhouse wrote him word that he should be obliged to go to England for the queen’s trial; and we know how repugnant this necessity was to Lord Byron. His little Allegra had just fallen rather dangerously ill; Countess G , notwithstanding the sentence pronounced by His Holiness, continued to be tormented by her husband, who refused to accept the decision of Rome, because he did not wish for a separation. The Papal Government, pushed on by the Austrian police, had recourse to a thousand small vexatious measures, to make Lord Byron quit Ravenna, where he had given offense by becoming too popular with the liberal party.

Lastly, we may further add that, even in those days, he was suffering from some jealous susceptibility, though knowing well how he was beloved. For in the letter, dated 28th of September, where he says “his soul is sick,” he also complains of Madame G ’s having passed some hours at Ravenna without letting him know, and of her having thought fit to hide from him certain steps taken.

This autumn was followed by a winter still more disagreeably exceptional than the preceding one. The most inclement weather prevailed during the month of January, and generally throughout the winter.

“Bad weather, this 4th of January,” he writes in his memoranda, “as bad as in London itself.”

The sirocco, a wind that depresses even people without nerves, was blowing and melting the ice. The streets and roads were transformed into pools of half-congealed mud. He was somewhat “out of spirits.” But still he hoped:

“If the roads and weather allow, I shall go out on horseback to-morrow. It is high time; already we have had a week of this work: snow and sirocco one day, ice and snow the other. A sad climate for Italy; but these two winters have been extraordinary.”

The next day, he got up “dull and drooping.” The weather had not changed. Lord Byron absolutely required to breathe a little fresh air every day, to take exercise on horseback. His health was excellent, but on these two conditions; otherwise, it failed. His temper clouded over, without air and exercise. During the wretched days he was obliged to remain at home, he had not even the diversion letters and newspapers might have afforded, since no post came in. His sole amusement consisted in stirring the fire, and playing with Lion, his mastiff, or with his little menagerie. So much did he suffer from it all, that his kind heart bestowed pity even on his horses:

" ... Horses must have exercise get a ride as soon as weather serves; deuced muggy still. An Italian winter is a sad thing, but all the other seasons are charming.”

On the 7th of January, he adds:

“Still rain, mist, snow, drizzle, and all the incalculable combinations of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery.”

If the weather cleared up one day, it was only to become more inclement the next.

On the 12th he wrote in his journal:

“The weather still so humid and impracticable, that London, in its most oppressive fogs, were a summer bower to this mist and sirocco, which has now lasted (but with one day’s interval), checkered with snow or heavy rain only, since the 30th of December, 1820. It is so far lucky that I have a literary turn; but it is very tiresome not to be able to stir out, in comfort, on any horse but Pegasus, for so many days. The roads are even worse than the weather, by the long splashing, and the heavy soil, and the inundations.”

And on the 19th:

“Winter’s wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise.... Rather low in spirits certainly hippish liver touched will take a dose of salts.”

There was, however, too much elasticity of spirits in him, and his melancholy was not sufficiently deep for it to last. His evening visit to Countess G at eight o’clock (the day’s event consoling for all else), a few simple airs played by her on the piano, some slight diversion, such as a ray of sunshine between two showers, or a star in the heavens raising hopes of a brighter morrow, sufficed to clear up his horizon. What always raised his spirits was the prospect of some good or great and generous action to perform, such, in those days, as contributing to the deliverance of a nation. Then, not only did the sirocco and falling rain cease to act on his nerves, as he himself acknowledged, but his genius would start into fresh life, making him snatch a pen, and write off in a few days admirable poems, worthy to be the fruit of long years of meditation.

We may, then, believe that if his melancholy had been left solely to the physical and moral influences surrounding him at this time, it would never have become much developed, or at least would have soon passed away, like morning mists that rise in the east to be quickly dissipated by the rays of the sun.

But just as these slight vapors may form into a cloud, if winds arise in another part of the sky, bringing fresh moisture to them, so a slight and fugitive sadness in him might be deepened and prolonged through circumstances. And this was exactly what happened in the year of which we speak, for it was full of disappointments and grief for him. To arrive at this persuasion, it is sufficient to remark the coincidence of dates. For example, we find in his memoranda, under the date of 18th of January, 1821:

“At eight proposed to go out. Lega came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice, which I thought paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint. I have not been well ever since. I deserve it for being such a fool but it was provoking a set of scoundrels! It is, however, but five-and-twenty pounds.”

Then, again, on the 19th we find:

“Rode. Winter’s wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise. At least I am so much more accustomed to meet with ingratitude than the north wind, that I thought the latter the sharper of the two. I had met with both in the course of twenty-four hours, so could judge.”

And on the same day he wrote to Murray a letter, in which, after mentioning a host of vexations and worries, he ends by saying:

“I am in bad humor some obstructions in business with those plaguing trustees, who object to an advantageous loan, which I was to furnish to a nobleman (Lord B ) on mortgage, because his property is in Ireland, have shown me how a man is treated in his absence.”

Between the 19th and the 22d, his physical and moral indisposition seemed to last; for he makes reflections in his memoranda, upon melancholy bilious people, and says that he has not even sufficient energy to go on with his tragedy of “Sardanapalus,” and that he has ceased composing for the last few days. Now, it was precisely the 20th that he was more than ever annoyed by the obstinacy of the London Theatre managers, for, despite his determination and his clear right, his protestations and entreaties, they were resolved, said the newspapers that came to hand, on having “Marino Faliero” acted. He had already written to Murray:

“I must really and seriously request that you will beg of Messrs. Harris or Elliston to let the Doge alone: it is not an acting play; it will not serve their purpose; it will destroy yours (the sale); and it will distress me. It is not courteous, it is hardly even gentlemanly, to persist in this appropriation of a man’s writings to their mountebanks.”

He wrote thus, on the 19th; but on the 20th his fears had increased to such a pitch that he also addressed the lord-chamberlain, requesting him to forbid this representation. Indeed, so great was his annoyance, that he wrote to Murray twice in the same day:

“I wish you would speak to Lord Holland, and to all my friends and yours, to interest themselves in preventing this cursed attempt at representation.

“God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I was a fool to think any better of them than of the rest of mankind.”

On the 21st his melancholy does not appear to have worn off. This is to be attributed to the additions to all the causes of the previous day; and to the news of the illness of Moore, whom he loved so much, there came, in addition, the following event, which we give in his own words:

“To-morrow is my birthday that is to say, at twelve o’ the clock, midnight i.e., in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty-three years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose.”

Let me be allowed here to make some comment on the beauty of the sentiment causing this sadness; for certainly he was not actuated by a common sensual, selfish regret at youth departing. Beauty, youth, love, fortune, and celebrity, all smiled on him then; he possessed every one of them to a degree capable of satisfying any vanity, or any pride, but they were inadequate, for a modesty so rare and so admirable as his! His regrets certainly did not apply to youth; he was only thirty-three years of age! Nor yet to beauty, for he possessed it in the highest degree; nor to fame, that had only too much been his; nor to love, for he was the object of real idolatry; nor to any actions that called for repentance. To what, then, did they apply? To his aspirations after greater things, after ideal perfections, that neither he nor any one else can arrive at here below. It was a soaring after the infinite!

The cause, noble in itself, of this sadness consisted then in a sort of nostalgia for the great, the beautiful, the good. The simple words in which he expressed it enable us to well understand its nature. “I do not regret this year,” said he, “for what I have done, but for what I have not done!”

I will not further multiply proofs; suffice it to say, that this year having been one of incessant annoyances to him, not only can not we be surprised that he should have experienced moments of sadness, but we might rather be astonished at their being so few, if we did not know that living above all for heart, and his heart being then satisfied, he found therein compensation for all the rest. “Thanks for your compliments of the year. I hope that it will be pleasanter than the last. I speak with reference to England only, as far as regards myself, where I had every kind of disappointment lost an important lawsuit and the trustees of Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made from my property to Lord Blessington, etc., by way of closing the four seasons. These, and a hundred other such things, made a year of bitter business for me in England. Luckily things were a little pleasanter for me here, else I should have taken the liberty of Hannibal’s ring.”

The political and revolutionary events then taking place in Romagna and throughout Italy, caused emotions and sentiments of too strong a nature in Lord Byron to be confounded with sadness; but they may well have contributed to develop largely certain melancholy inclinations discoverable toward autumn. By degrees, as the first strength of grief passes away, it leaves behind a sort of melancholy current in the soul, which, without being the sentiment itself, serves as a conductor for it, making it gush forth on occurrence of the smallest cause. Causes with him were not so slight at this period, although he considered them such out of the superabundance of his philosophical spirit; and the year that began with so many contradictions, ended in the same manner. The hope of seeing the Counts Gamba back again at Ravenna was daily lessening. All the letters Madame G wrote to him from Florence and Pisa, penned as they were amid the anguish of fear lest Lord Byron should be assassinated at Ravenna, were necessarily pregnant with alarm and affliction.

Meanwhile his interests were being neglected in London. Murray irritated him by his inexplicable negligence or worried him with sending foolish publications and provoking reviews. Gifford, a critic he loved and revered, from whom no praise, he said, could compensate for any blame, Gifford, whose ideas on the drama were quite opposite to his own, had just been censuring his beautiful dramatic compositions. Moreover, Italy having failed in her attempts at independence, was insulted in her misfortune by that world which smiles only on success, and thus, indirectly, the persons loved and esteemed by Lord Byron came in for their share of outrage. And all these contradictions, where and when did he experience them? At Ravenna, in a solitude and isolation that would have made the bravest stoic shudder, and that was prejudicial to him without his being aware of it. For there were two distinct temperaments in Lord Byron, that of his genius and that of his humanity, and the wants of one were not always those of the other. The first, from its nature and manifestations, required solitude. The second, eminently sociable, while yielding to the tyranny of the first, or bearing it from force of circumstance, suffered nevertheless when solitude became too complete. It was not the society of the great world, nor what are called its pleasures, that Lord Byron required; but a society of friends and clever persons capable of affording a little diversion to his monotonous life. When this twofold want did not meet with reasonable satisfaction, a certain degree of melancholy necessarily developed itself. “When he was not thrown into some unbearable sort of solitude, like that in which he found himself at Ravenna,” says Madame G ,” his good-humor and gayety only varied when letters from England came to move and agitate him, or when he suffered morally.

“I must, however, add that all sensitive agents, all atmospherical impressions, acted on him more than on others, and it might almost be said that his sky was mirrored in his soul, the latter often taking its color from the former; and if by that is understood the hereditary malady spoken of by others and himself, then they are right, for he had truly inherited a most impressionable temperament.”

Moreover, the absolute, inexorable solitude caused by the absence of all his friends from Ravenna, was still further augmented by the occurrence of intermittent marshy fevers, which every body endeavors to avoid by flying from Ravenna at the close of summer, and to which he fell a prey. This fever, that seized hold of him, and even prevented his departure, might alone have sufficed to render him melancholy, for nothing more inclines to sadness. But so intimate was his persuasion that when sadness does not proceed from the heart it has no cause for existence, and so little was he occupied with self, that he would not allow there could be sufficient cause for melancholy in all the sufferings weighing upon him.

I ride, I am not intemperate in eating or drinking, and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree."

But so little was it the necessary product of his temperament alone, so much, on the contrary, did it result from a host of causes accidentally united, that he had scarcely arrived at Pisa, where most of the causes either ceased or were neutralized, than his mind recovered its serenity, and he could write to Moore:

“At present, owing to the climate (I can walk down into my garden and pluck my own oranges, indulging in this meridian luxury of proprietorship), my spirits are much better.”

Whenever, then, his heart was happy in the happiness of those he loved, wherever he found an intellectual society to animate the mind, diverting and amusing him without imposing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek the faintest trace of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him at Pisa, for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might we say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the privilege of his great superiority, by all the sufferings he endured. Soon after his arrival at Pisa, his little daughter Allegra, whom he was having educated at a convent in Romagna, died of fever, and shortly afterward Shelley was drowned! About the same time the publication of “Cain,” then going on, raised a perfect storm, furnishing his enemies with pretexts for attacking and slandering him more than ever. They did it in a manner so violent and unjust, bringing in likewise his publisher Murray, that Lord Byron thought it incumbent on him to send a challenge to the poet laureate, the most perfidious among them all. At this same period, Hunt, who had lost all means of existence by the death of Shelley, forced himself on Lord Byron in such a disagreeable way as to become the plague of his life. Lastly, in consequence of a quarrel that arose between Sergeant Masi and Lord Byron’s riding companions, an arbitrary measure was taken, which again compelled his friends the Counts Gamba to leave Pisa for Genoa; and he, though free to remain, resolved on sharing their fate and quitting Pisa likewise. For the Government, though subservient to Austrian rule, did not dare to apply the same unjust decree to an English subject of such high rank. Nevertheless, if we except the death of his little girl, which caused him profound sorrow although he bore it with all the fortitude belonging to his great soul and the death of Shelley, which also afflicted him greatly, none of the other annoyances had power to grieve him or to create melancholy.

“It seems to me,” he wrote to Murray, “that what with my own country and other lands, there has been hot water enough for some time.” This manner of announcing so many disagreeables, shows what self-possession he had arrived at, and how he viewed all things calmly and sagely, as Disraeli portrays him with truth in “Venetia,” when he makes him say: “’As long as the world leaves us quiet, and does not burn us alive, we ought to be pleased. I have grown callous to all they say,’ observed Herbert. ‘And I also,’ replied Lord Cadurcis.” Cadurcis and Herbert both represent Lord Byron; for Disraeli, like Moore, having felt that Lord Byron had enough in him to furnish several individualities, all equally powerful, thought it necessary to call in the aid of this double personification, in order to paint his nature in all its richness, with the changes to be wrought by time and events.

If the war waged against Lord Byron by envy, bigotry, and wickedness, had had power to create emotion during youth, and even later, the gentle, wise philosophy he afterward acquired in the school of adversity, so elevated his mind, that he could no longer suffer, except from wounds of heart, provided his conscience were at rest. When the stupid persecution raised against him on the appearance of “Cain” took place, he wrote to Murray from Pisa, on the 8th of February:

“All the row about me has no otherwise affected me than by the attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State.... I can only say, ’Me, me; en adeum qui feci;’ that any proceedings directed against you, I beg may be transferred to me, who am willing, and ought, to endure them all.”

And then he ends his letter, saying, “I write to you about all this row of bad passions and absurdities, with the summer moon (for here our winter is clearer than your dog-days), lighting the winding Arno, with all her buildings and bridges, so quiet and still! What nothings are we before the least of these stars!”

Soon after, and while still suffering under the same persecution from his enemies and weak fools, he wrote to Moore from Montenero, recalling in his usual vein of pleasantry, their mutual adventures in fashionable London life, and saying, that he should have done better while listening to Moore as he tuned his harp and sang, to have thrown himself out of the window, ere marrying a Miss Milbank.

“I speak merely of my marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I have been much more happy, on the whole, since, than I ever could have been with her.”

And some time after, conversing with Madame G , examining and analyzing all he might have done as an orator and a politician, if he had remained in England, he added:

“That then he would not have known her, and that no other advantages could have given him the happiness which he found in real affection.”

This conversation, interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Mr. Hobhouse, and which, but for the inexplicable sadness arising from presentiments, would have made earth a paradise for the person to whom it was addressed, took place at Pisa, in Lord Byrons garden, a few days before his departure for Genoa. At Genoa he continued to lead the same retired, studious, simple kind of life; and, although the winter was this year again extremely rigorous, and although his health had been slightly affected since the day of Shelleys funeral, and his stay at Genoa made unpleasant by the ennui proceeding from Mr. Hunts presence there, still he had no fit of what can be called melancholy until he decided on leaving for Greece. Then the sadness that he would fain have concealed, but could not, which he betrayed in the parting hour, acknowledged while climbing the hill of Albano, and which often brought tears to his eyes on board the vessel this sadness had its source in the deepest sentiments of his heart. In Greece, we know, by the unanimous and constant testimony of all who saw him there, that the rare fits of melancholy he experienced, all arose from the same cause. During his sojourn in the Ionian Islands, as soon as letters from Italy had calmed his uneasiness, finding himself surrounded by general esteem, affection, and admiration, seeing justice dawn for him, and confusion for his enemies, being consoled also with the prospect of a future, and that, with heart at ease, he might at last shed happiness around him; then he was ever to be found full of serenity and even gayety, only intent on noble virtuous actions. One day, however, a great melancholy seized upon him, and all the good around suddenly appeared to vanish. Whence did this arise? His letters tell us:

“Poor Byron!” wrote Count Gamba, to his sister, on the 14th of October, “he has been much concerned by the news which reached him some fortnight ago about the headache of his dear Ada. You may imagine how triste were the workings of his fancy, to which he added the fear of having to spend several months without hearing any further tidings of her; besides the suspicion that the truth was either kept back from him or disguised. Happily, another bulletin has reached him, to say that she is all right again, and one more, to announce that the child is in good health, with the exception of a slight pain in the eyes. His melancholy is, therefore, a little mitigated, though it has not completely disappeared.”

The pre-occupation, disquietude, and anxiety, which he experienced more or less continuously in Greece, and above all, at Missolonghi, and which I have mentioned elsewhere, certainly did agitate, trouble, and even irritate him sometimes; but then it was in such a passing way, on account of the great empire he had acquired over himself, that every one during his sojourn in the islands, and often even at Missolonghi, unanimously pronounced gayety to be his predominant disposition. And, truly, it was only to griefs proceeding from the heart that he granted power to cloud his brow with any kind of melancholy.

After this long analysis, and before summing up, it still remains for us to examine a species of melancholy that seems not to come within our limits, but which occasionally seized upon him on his first waking in the morning:

“I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits I may say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects even of that which pleased me over-night. In about an hour or two, this goes off, and I compose myself either to sleep again, or at least, to quiet.... What is it? liver?... I suppose that it is all hypochondriasis.”

What name shall we give to this physiological phenomenon? Was it hypochondriasis, as he imagined? That Lord Byron’s temperament, so sensitive to all moral causes, so vulnerable to all atmospherical influences, should likewise have contained a vein of hypochondriasis, is not only possible, but likely. And were we as partial as we wish to be just, there would certainly be no reason for denying it. Hypochondriasis is an infirmity, not a fault. Lord Byron himself, when informed that such a one complained of being called hypochondriacal, replied somewhat to the following effect: “I can not conceive how a man in perfect good health can feel wounded by being told that he is hypochondriacal, since his face and his conduct refute the accusation. Were this accusation ever to prove correct, to what does it amount, except to say that he has a liver complaint?

“‘I shall publish it before the whole world,’ said the clever Smelfungus. ‘I should prefer telling my doctor,’ said I. There is nothing dishonorable in such an illness, which is more especially that of people who are studious. It has been the illness of those who are good, wise, clever, and even light-hearted. Regnard, Moliere, Johnson, Gray, Burns, were all more or less given to it. Mendelssohn and Bayle were often so afflicted with it, that they were obliged to have recourse to toys, and to count the slates on the roof of the houses opposite, in order to distract their attention. Johnson says, that oftentimes he would have given a limb to raise his spirits.”

But, nevertheless, when we seek truth for itself, and not for its results, nor to make it help out a system, we must go to the bottom of things, and reveal all we discover. Thus, after having spoken of this physiological phenomenon, which he suspects to be hypochondriasis, Byron adds, that he came upon him, accompanied with great thirst, that the London chemist, Mann, had cured him of it in three days, that it always yielded to a few doses of salts, and that the phenomenon always recurred and ended at the same hours. It appears, then, to me, that all these symptoms are far from indicating a serious and incurable hereditary malady, which would not be likely to have yielded to doses of salts, and which his general good health would seem to exclude. I consider them rather to point, for their cause, to his diet, which was quite insufficient for him, and even hurtful, likely to affect the most robust health, and much more that of a man whose organization was so sensitive and delicate. And, as this system of denying his body what was necessary for it increased the demands of his mind, which in its turn revenged itself on the body, the result was that Lord Byron voluntarily failed in the duties which every man owes to himself. Therefore, I think it more just to rank the melancholy arising from such causes, among his faults, and not among the accidents of life, or his natural disposition.

Now, having examined his melancholy under all its phases, having proved more what it was not than what it was, we shall sum up with saying, that Lord Byron really experienced, during his short life, every kind of sadness. First, in early youth, he had to encounter disappointments, mortifications, disenchantments, deep moral suffering; then the constant warfare of envy, resulting in cruel, unceasing slanders: then, all the philosophical sadness arising in great minds, the best endowed and the noblest, from the emptiness of earthly things; then that unslakable thirst for the true, the just, the perfect; that sort of nostalgia which the noblest souls experience, because their home is not here, because reality disgusts them, from the striking contrast it presents with the ideal type, in their mind, especially at our epoch, and in our present social condition, when men can with difficulty preserve interior calm by dint of compulsory occupations requiring much energy. And, lastly, there was the sadness inherent to a physical temperament of such exquisite sensibility. Yet, notwithstanding all the above, and though Lord Byron was condemned to drain the cup of bitterness to its dregs, we think he ought not to be classed among geniuses exclusively swayed by the melancholy in their nature, since almost all his sadness sprang from accident, and from a sort of fictitious temperament produced by circumstances. Thus his melancholy, being fictitious, remained generally subject in real life to his fine natural temperament, only gaining the mastery when he was under the influence of inspiration, and with pen in hand.

“All is strange,” says La Bruyere, “in the humor, morals, and manners of most men.... The wants of this life, the situation in which we are, necessity’s law, force nature, and cause great changes in it. Thus such men can not be defined, thoroughly and in themselves; too many external things affect, change, and overwhelm them; they are not precisely what they are, or rather, what they appear to be.”

Thus, then, having a natural disposition for gayety received from God, and which I shall call interior, which always had the upper hand in all important actions of his life, but which was only truly known by those who approached him closely, I conclude that gayety often predominated, and ought to have predominated much more, in Lord Byron’s life.

But through the fictitious character, which I will call exterior, derived from education, from circumstances of family, country, and association, which (apparently) modified the first, and gave the world sometimes a reason, and sometimes a pretext for inventing that dark myth called by his name, and which really only influenced his writings, melancholy often predominated in his life. However, its sway was less in reality than in the imagination of those who wished to identify the man with the poet, and to find the real Lord Byron in the heroes of his early poems.