An Irish Poet.

“Tries some work, forgets it, and thinks on,Wishing with perfect love the time were gone,And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,Taps on the casement-ledge with idle fingers.”

“Tries some work, forgets it, and thinks on,

Wishing with perfect love the time were gone,

And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,

Taps on the casement-ledge with idle fingers.”

No—this is not a Greek maiden listening for the surge of the water before the stalwart swimmer of Abydos; it is a London girl, whom the poet has seen in a second-story back window, meditating what color she shall put to the trimming of her Sunday gown!

Far better and more beautiful is this fathoming of the very souls of the flowers:

“We are the sweet Flowers,Born of sunny showers,Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith:Utterance mute and bright,Of some unknown delight,We feel the air with pleasure, by our simple breath;All who see us, love us;We befit all places;Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces.“Mark our ways—how noiselessAll, and sweetly voiceless,Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;Not a whisper tellsWhere our small seed dwells,Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.We tread the earth in silence,In silence build our bowers,And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers!…“Who shall say that flowersDress not Heaven’s own bowers?Who its love, without them, can fancy—or sweet floor?Who shall even dareTo say we sprang not there,And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?Oh, pray believe that angelsFrom those blue DominionsBrought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”

“We are the sweet Flowers,

Born of sunny showers,

Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith:

Utterance mute and bright,

Of some unknown delight,

We feel the air with pleasure, by our simple breath;

All who see us, love us;

We befit all places;

Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces.

“Mark our ways—how noiselessAll, and sweetly voiceless,Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;Not a whisper tellsWhere our small seed dwells,Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.We tread the earth in silence,In silence build our bowers,And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers!

“Mark our ways—how noiseless

All, and sweetly voiceless,

Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;

Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.

We tread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers!

…

“Who shall say that flowersDress not Heaven’s own bowers?Who its love, without them, can fancy—or sweet floor?Who shall even dareTo say we sprang not there,And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?Oh, pray believe that angelsFrom those blue DominionsBrought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”

“Who shall say that flowers

Dress not Heaven’s own bowers?

Who its love, without them, can fancy—or sweet floor?

Who shall even dare

To say we sprang not there,

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?

Oh, pray believe that angels

From those blue Dominions

Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”

No poet of this—or many a generation past—has said a sweeter or more haunting word for the flowers.

We will not forget the “Abou-ben-Adhem;” norshall its commonness forbid our setting this charmingly treated Oriental fable, at the end of our mention of Hunt—a memorial banderole of verse:—

“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,And saw within the moonlight in his room,Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,An Angel, writing in a book of gold.Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;And to the presence in the room, he said,—‘What writest thou?’ The Vision raised its head,And with a look made of all sweet accordAnswered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so;’Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.’The Angel wrote and vanished. The next nightIt came again, with a great wakening light,And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,And lo!—Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”

“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,

An Angel, writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;

And to the presence in the room, he said,—

‘What writest thou?’ The Vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord

Answered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’

‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so;’

Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.’

The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night

It came again, with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,

And lo!—Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”

Among those who paid their visits of condolence to Leigh Hunt in the days of his prisonhood,was Moore[51]the author ofLalla Rookhand ofThe Loves of the Angels. He was not used to paying visits in such quarters, for he had an instinctive dislike for all uncanny things and disagreeable places; nor was he ever a great friend of Hunt; but he must have had a good deal of sympathy with him in that attack upon the Prince Regent which brought about Hunt’s conviction. Moore, too, had his gibes at the Prince—thinking that great gentleman had been altogether too neglectful of the dignities of his high estate; but he was very careful that his gibes should be so modulated as not to put their author in danger.

Lalla Rookhmay be little read nowadays; but not many years have passed since this poem and others of the author’s used to get into the finest of bindings, and have great currency for bridal and birthday gifts. Indeed, there is a witching melody in Moore’s Eastern tales, and a delightful shimmer and glitter of language, which none but the most cunning of our present craft-masters in verse could reach.

Moore was born in Dublin, his father having kept a wine-shop there; and his mother (he tells us) was always anxious about the quality of his companions, and eager to build up his social standing—an anxiety which was grafted upon the poet himself, and which made him one of the wariest, and most coy and successful of society-seekers—all his life.

He was at the Dublin University—took easily to languages, and began spinning off some ofAnacreon’snumbers into graceful English, even before he went up to London—on his old mother’s savings—to study law at the Temple. He was charmingly presentable in those days; very small, to be sure, but natty, courteous, with a pretty modesty, and a voice that bubbled over into music whenever he recited one of his engaging snatches of melody. He has letters to Lords, too, and the most winning of tender speeches and smiles for great ladies. He comes to an early interview with the Prince of Wales—who rather likes the graceful Irish singer, and flatters him by accepting the dedication ofAnacreonwith smiles of condescension—whichMr. Moore perhaps counted too largely upon. Never had a young literary fellow of humble birth a better launch upon London society. His Lords’ letters, and his pretty conciliatory ways, get him a place of value (when scarce twenty-four) in Bermuda. But he is not the man to lose his hold on London; so he goes over seas only to put a deputy in place, and then, with a swift run through our Atlantic cities, is back again. It is rather interesting to read now what the young poet says of us in those green days:—In Philadelphia, it appears, the people quite ran after him:

“I was much caressed while there.… and two or three little poems, of a very flattering kind, some of their choicest men addressed to me.” [And again.] “Philadelphia is the only place in America which can boast any literary society.” [Boston people, I believe, never admired Moore overmuch.]

Here again is a bit from his diary at Ballston—which was the Saratoga of that day:—

“There were about four hundred people—all stowed in a miserable boarding-house. They were astonished at our asking for basons and towels in our rooms; and thought we might condescend to come down to the Public Wash, with the other gentlemen, in the morning.”

Poor, dainty, Moore! But he is all right when he comes back to London, and gives himself to old occupations of drawing-room service, and to the coining of new, and certainly very sweet and tender, Irish melodies. He loved to be tapped on the shoulder by great Dowagers, sparkling in diamonds, and to be entreated—“Now, dear Mr. Moore,dosing us one more song.”

And it was pretty sure to come: he delighted in giving his very feeling and musical voice range over the heads of fine-feathered women. The peacock’s plumes, the shiver of the crystal, the glitter of Babylon, always charmed him.

Nor was it all only tinkling sound that he gave back. For proof I cite one or two bits:—

“Then I sing the wild song, ’twas once such a pleasure to hear,When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;And, as Echo far off thro’ the vale, my sad orison rolls,I think, O my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of SoulsFaintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.”

“Then I sing the wild song, ’twas once such a pleasure to hear,

When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;

And, as Echo far off thro’ the vale, my sad orison rolls,

I think, O my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls

Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.”

And again:—

“Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine.Go sleep, with the Sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers,Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine.“If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or loverHave throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;I wasbutas the wind, passing heedlessly over,And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.”

“Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,

This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine.

Go sleep, with the Sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers,

Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine.

“If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or loverHave throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;I wasbutas the wind, passing heedlessly over,And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.”

“If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover

Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;

I wasbutas the wind, passing heedlessly over,

And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.”

This is better than dynamite to stir Ireland’s best pulses, even now.

Mr. Moore had his little country vacations—among them, that notable stay up in the lovely county of Derbyshire, near to Ashbourne and Dovedale, and the old fishing grounds of Walton and of Cotton—where he wrote the larger part of his first considerable poem,Lalla Rookh—which had amazing success, and brought to its author the sum of £3,000. But I do not think that what inspiration is in it came to him from the hollows or the heights of Derbyshire; I should rather trace its pretty Oriental confusion of sound and scenes to the jingle of London chandeliers. Yet the web, the gossamer, the veils andthe flying feet do not seem to touch ground anywhere in England, but shift and change and grow out of his Eastern readings and dreams.

Moore married at thirty-two—after he was known for the Irish melodies, but before the publication ofLalla Rookh; and in hisLetters and Diary(if you read them—though they make an enormous mass to read, and frighten most people away by their bulk), you will come upon very frequent, and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”—the wife. It is true, there were rumors that he wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. Doubtless there was many a day and many a week when she was guarding the cottage and the children at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships who loved music and literature in London; but how should he refuse the invitations of his Lordship this or that? Or how should she—who has no robes that will stand alone—bring her pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? Always, too (if his letters may be trusted), he is eager to make his escape between whiles—wearied of thistintamarre—and to rush away to his cottageat Sloperton[52]for a little slippered ease, and a romp with the children. Poor children—they all drop away, one by one—two only reaching maturity—then dying. The pathetic stories of the sickening, the danger and the hush, come poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that the winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon his wrenched heart over-quickly again. But what right have you or I to judge in such matters?

There are chirrupy little men—and women, too,—on whom grief does not seem to take a hard grip; all the better for them! Moore, I think, was such a one, and was braced up always and everywhere by his own healthy pulses, and, perhaps, by a sense of his own sufficiency. His vanities are not only elastic, but—by his own bland and child-like admissions—they seem sometimes almost monumental. He writes in hisDiary,“Shiel (that’s an Irish friend) says I am the first poet of the day, and join the beauty of the Bird-of-Paradise’s plumes to the strength of the eagle’s wing.” Fancy a man copying that sort of thing into his ownDiary, and regaling himself with it!

Yet he is full of good feeling—does not cherish resentments—lets who will pat him on the shoulder (though he prefers a lord’s pat). Then he forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so out with Jeffrey that a duel nearly came of it; but afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend for years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain—far more than his artificialities of make-up would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue with the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), he determines on good advisement to be away with it; and so goes smack into the den of the great publisher and gives him his hand: such action balances a great deal of namby-pambyism.

But what surprises more than all about Moore, is the very great reputation that he had in his day. We, in these latter times, have come to reckon him (rather rashly, perhaps) only an arch gossipper of letters—a butterfly of those metropolitangardens—easy, affable, witty, full of smiles, full of good feeling, full of pretty little rhythmical utterances—singing songs as easy as a sky-lark (and leaving the sky thereafter as empty); planting nothing that lifts great growth, or tells larger tale than lies in his own lively tintinnabulation of words.

Yet Byron said of him: “There is nothing Moore may not do, if he sets about it.” Sydney Smith called him “A gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honorable.” Leigh Hunt says: “I never received a visit from him, but I felt as if I had been talking with Prior or Sir Charles Sedley.” It is certain that he must have been a most charming companion. Walter Scott says: “It would be a delightful addition to life if Thomas Moore had a cottage within two miles of me.” Indeed, he was always quick to scent anything that might amuse, and to store it up. His diaries overflow with these bright specks and bits of talk, which may kindle a laugh, but do not nestle in the memory.

But considered as a poet whose longish work ought to live and charm the coming generations,his reputation certainly does not hold to the old illuminated heights. Poems of half a century ago, whichLalla Rookheasily outshone, have now put the pretty orientalisms into shade. Nor can we understand how so many did, and do, put such twain of verse-makers as Byron and Moore into one leash, as if they were fellows in power. In the comparison the author of theLoves of the Angelsseems to me only a little important-looking, kindly pug—nicely combed, with ribbons about the neck—in an embroidered blanket, with jingling bells at its corners; and Byron—beside him—a lithe, supple leopard, with a tread that threatens and a dangerous glitter in the eye. Milk diet might sate that other; but this one, if occasion served, would lap blood.

In the pages that follow we shall, among others, more or less notable, encounter again that lithe leopard in some of his wanton leaps—into verse, into marriage, into exile, and into the pit of death at Missolonghi.

We opened our budget in the last chapter with theQuarterly Review, which was just getting upon its legs through the smart, keen, and hard writing of Mr. William Gifford. It throve afterward under the coddling of the most literary of the Tory gentlemen in London, and its title has always been associated with the names of John Wilson Croker, of Dr. Southey, and of Mr. Lockhart. It is a journal, too, which has always been tied by golden bonds to the worship of tradition and of vested privilege, and which has always been ready with its petulant, impatient bark of detraction at reform or reformers, or at any books which may have had a scent of Liberalism. Leigh Hunt, of course, came in for periodic scathings—some of them deserved; some not deserved. Indeed, I am half-disposedto repent what may have seemed a too flippant mention of this very graceful poet and essayist. Of a surety, there is an abounding affluence of easy language—gushing and disporting over his pages—which lures one into reading and into dreamy acquiescence; but read as much as we may, and as long as we will, we shall go away from the reading with a certain annoyance that there is so little to keep out of it all—so little that sticks to the ribs and helps.

As for the poet Moore, of whom also we may have spoken in terms which may seem of too great disparagement to those who have loved to linger in his

“Vale of CashmereWith its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave.Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clearAs the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,”

“Vale of Cashmere

With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave.

Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear

As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,”

no matter what may become of these brilliant orientalisms, or of his life of Byron, or of his diaries, and his “Two-penny Post Bag,” it is certain that his name will be gratefully kept alive by his sparkling, patriotic, and most musical Irishmelodies; and under that sufficient monument we leave him.

As for Landor—surely the pages in which we dealt with him were not too long: a strange, strong bit of manhood—as of one fed on collops of bear’s meat; a big animal nature, yet wonderfully transfused by a vivid intellectuality—fine and high—that pierced weighty subjects to their core; and yet—and yet, singing such heart-shivering tributes as that to Rose Aylmer: coarse as the bumpkins on the sheep wolds of Lincoln, and yet with as fine subtleties in him as belonged to the young Greeks who clustered about the writer of theŒdipus Tyrannus.

King George IV. was an older man than any of those we have commented on; indeed, he was a prematurely old man at sixty-five—feeling the shivers and the stings of his wild life: I suppose no one ever felt the approaches of age more mortifyingly. He had counted so much on being the fine gentleman to the last—such a height,such a carriage, such a grace! It was a dark day for him when his mirror showed wrinkles that his cosmetics would not cover, and a stoop in the shoulders which his tailors could not bolster out of sight. Indeed, in his later years he shrunk from exposure of his infirmities, and kept his gouty step out of reach of the curious, down at Windsor, where he built a cottage in a wood; and arranged his drives through the Park so that those who had admired this Apollo at his best should never know of his shakiness. Thither went his conclave of political advisers—sometimes Canning, the wonderful orator—sometimes the Duke of Wellington, with the honors of Waterloo upon him—sometimes young Sir Robert Peel, just beginning to make his influence felt; oftener yet, Charles Greville, whose memoirs are full of piquant details about the royal household—not forgetting that army of tailors and hair-dressers who did their best to assuage the misery and gratify the vanities of the gouty king. And when he died—which he hated exceedingly to do—in 1830, there came to light such a multitude of waistcoats, breeches, canes, snuff-boxes, knee-buckles, whips, and wigs, as Isuppose were never heaped before around any man’s remains. The first gentleman in Europe could not, after all, carry these things with him. His brother, William IV., who succeeded him, was a bluff old Admiral—with not so high a sense of the proprieties of life as George; but honester even in his badnesses (which were very many) and, with all his coarseness and vulgarity, carrying a brusque, sailor-like frankness that half redeemed his peccadilloes. In those stormy times which belonged to the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, he showed nerve and pluck, and if he split the air pretty often with his oaths, he never offended by a wearying dilettanteism, or by foppery. In the year 1837 he died; and then and there began—within the memory of a good many of us old stagers—that reign of his young niece Victoria, daughter of his brother, the Duke of Kent (who had died seventeen years before)—which reign still continues, and is still resplendent with the virtues of the Sovereign and the well-being of her people.

Under these several royal hands, the traditional helpfulness to men of letters had declared itself inpensions and civil appointments; Southey had come to his laureateship, and his additional pension; we found the venerable Wordsworth making a London pilgrimage for a “kissing of hands,” and the honor of a royal stipend; Walter Scott had received his baronetcy at the hands of George IV., and that dilettante sovereign would have taken Byron (whom we shall presently encounter) patronizingly by the hand, except the fiery poet—scenting slights everywhere—had flamed up in that spirit of proud defiance, which afterward declared itself with a fury of denunciation in theIrish Avatar(1821).

Another noticeable author of this period, whose cynicism kept him very much by himself, was William Hazlitt;[53]he was the son of a clergymanand very precocious—hearing Coleridge preach in his father’s pulpit at Wem in Shropshire, and feeling his ambition stirred by the notice of that poet, who was attracted by the shrewd speech and great forehead of the boy. Young Hazlitt drifts away from such early influences to Paris and to painting—he thinking to master that art. But in this he does nothing satisfying; he next appears in London, to carve a way to fame with his pen. He is an acute observer; he is proud; he is awkward; he is shy. Charles Lamb and sister greatly befriend him and take to him; and he, with his hate of conventionalisms, loves those Lamb chambers and the whist parties, where he can go, in whatever slouch costume he may choose; poor Mary Lamb, too, perceiving that he has a husband-ish hankering after a certain female friend of hers—blows hot and cold upon it, in her quaint little notelets, with a delighted and an undisguised sense of being a party to their little game. It ended in a marriage at last; not without its domestic infelicities; but these would be too long, and too dreary for the telling. Mr. Hazlitt wrote upon a vast variety of topics—uponart, and the drama, upon economic questions, upon politics—as wide in his range as Leigh Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, more shrewd, more disputatious, more thoughtful, he did lack Hunt’s easy pliancy and grace of touch. Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt does not contend or criticise by conventional rules; his law of measurement is not by old syntactic, grammatic, or dialectic practices; there’s no imposing display of critical implements (by which some operators dazzle us), but he cuts—quick and sharp—to the point at issue. We never forget his strenuous, high-colored personality, and the seething of his prejudices—whether his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or of Burke’s brilliant oratorical apostrophes. But with fullest recognition of his acuteness, and independence, there remains a disposition (bred by his obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusionscum grano salis. He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as a man whofound little worth the living for in this world, and counted upon very little in any other.

The historian, Henry Hallam,[54]on the other hand, who was another notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of character—even under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling. He was studious, honest, staid—with a great respect for decorum; he would have gravitated socially—as he did—rather to Holland House than to the chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think, upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ageswithout taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and the path that he has scored.

And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead shapes. He had not the art—perhaps he would have disdained the art—to touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the world’s history glow and palpitate with life.

Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps familiar—I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishments—counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young Englishman of his time—yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer’s travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson’s wonderful memorial poem.

I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines “out of which” (says Dr. John Brown), “as out ofthe well of the living waters of Love, flows forth allIn Memoriam.”

“Break—break—breakAt the foot of thy crags, O sea:But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;But O, for the touch of a vanished handAnd the sound of a voice that is still.”

“Break—break—break

At the foot of thy crags, O sea:

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O, for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still.”

I have purposely set before you two strongly contrasted types of English literary life in that day—in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallam—the first representing very nearly what we would call the Bohemian element—ready to-day for an article in theEdinburgh Review, and to-morrow for a gibe in theExaminer, or a piece of diablerie in theLondon Magazine; Hallam, on the other hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions, colored by the life and work of such men as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon.

Another group of literary people, of a very varied sort, we should have found in the salonsof my Lady Blessington,[55]who used to hold court on the Thames—now by Piccadilly, and again at Gore House—in the early part of this century. She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history without its significance, as an outgrowth of times when George IV. was setting the pace for those ambitious of social distinction.

She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish country gentleman of the Lucius O’Trigger sort—nicknamed Beau Power. He loved a whip and fast horses—also dogs, powder, and blare. He wore white-topped boots, with showy frills and ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder—wasted his fortune, abused his wife, but was “very fine” to the end. He was as cruel as he was fine; shot a peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home after his saddle beast. He worried his daughter, Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into marrying, at fifteen, a man whom she detested. Itgave relief, however, from paternal protection, until the husband proved worse than the father, and separation ensued—made good (after some years of tumultuous, uneasy life) by the violent and providential death of the recreant husband. Shortly after, she married Lord Blessington, a rich Irish nobleman, very much blasé, seven years her senior, but kind and always generous with her. Then came travel in a princely way over the Continent, with long stays in pleasant places, and such lavish spendings as put palaces at their disposal—of all which a readable and gossipy record is given in herIdler in ItalyandIdler in France—books well known, in their day, in America. Of course she encountered in these ramblings Landor, Shelley, Byron, and all notable Englishmen, and when she returned to London it was to establish that brilliant little court already spoken of. She was admirably fitted for sovereign of such a court; she was witty, ready, well-instructed; was beautiful, too, and knew every art of the toilet.[56]

More than this, she was mistress of all the pretty and delicate arts of conciliation; had amazing aptitude for accommodating herself to different visitors—flattering men without letting them know they were flattered—softening difficulties, bringing enemies together, magnetizing the most obstinate and uncivil into acquiescence with her rules of procedure. Withal she had in large development those Irish traits of generosity and cheer, with a natural, winning way, which she studied to make more and more taking. One of those women who, with wit, prettiness, and grace, count it the largest, as it is (to them) the most agreeable duty of life, to be forever making social conquests, and forever reaping the applause of drawing-rooms. And if we add to the smiles and the witty banter and the persuasive tones of our lady, the silken hangings, the velvet carpets, the mirrors multiplying inviting alcoves, with paintings by Cattermole or Stothard, and marbles, maybe by Chantrey or Westmacott, and music in its set time by the best of London masters, andcooking in its season as fine as the music,—and we shall be at no loss to measure the attractions of Gore House, and to judge of the literary and social aspects which blazed there on the foggy banks of the Thames. No wonder that old Samuel Rogers, prince of epicures, should love to carry his pinched face and his shrunk shanks into such sunny latitudes. Moore, too, taking his mincing steps into those regions, would find banquets to remind him of the Bowers of Bendemeer. Possibly, too, the Rev. Sydney Smith, without the fear of Lady Holland in his heart or eyes, may have pocketed his dignity as Canon of St. Paul’s and gone thither to taste the delights of the table or of the talk. Even Hallam, or Southey (on his rare visits to town), may have gone there. Lady Blessington was always keenly awake for such arrivals. Even Brougham used to take sometimes his clumsy presence to her brilliant home; and so, on occasion, did that younger politician, and accomplished gentleman, Sir Robert Peel. Procter—better known as Barry Cornwall—the song-writer, was sure to know his way to those doors and to be welcomed; and LeighHunt was always eager to play off his fine speeches amid such surroundings of wine and music.

The Comte d’Orsay, artist and man of letters, who married (1827) a daughter of Lord Blessington (step-daughter of the Countess), was a standing ornament of the house; and rivalling him in their cravats and other millinery were two young men who had long careers before them. These were Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Lytton Bulwer.

It was some years before the passage of the Reform bill, and before the death of George IV., that Bulwer[57]blazed out inPelham(1828),The Disowned, andDevereux, making conquest of the novel-reading town, at a time whenQuentin Durward(1823) was not an old book, andWoodstock(1826) still fresh. And if Pelhamism had its speedy subsidence, the same writer put such captivating historic garniture and literary graces about the Italian studies ofRienzi, and of theLast Days of Pompeii, as carry them now into most libraries, and insure an interested reading—notwithstanding a strong sensuous taint and sentimental extravagances.

He had scholarship; he had indefatigable industry; he had abounding literary ambitions and enthusiasms, but he had no humor; I am afraid he had not a very sensitive conscience; and he had no such pervading refinement of literary taste as to make his work serve as the exemplar for other and honester workers.

Benjamin Disraeli[58]in those days overmatched him in cravats and in waistcoats, and was the veriest fop of all fop-land. No more beautiful accessory could be imagined to the drawing-room receptions over which Lady Blessington presided,and of which the ineffable Comte d’Orsay was a shining and a fixed light, than this young Hebraic scion of a great Judean house—whose curls were of the color of a raven’s wing, and whose satin trumpery was ravishing!

And yet—this young foppish Disraeli, within fifty years, held the destinies of Great Britain in his hand, and had endowed the Queen with the grandest title she had ever worn—that of Empress of India. Still further, in virtue of his old friendship for his fellow fop Bulwer, he sends the son of that novelist (in the person of the second Lord Lytton) to preside over a nation numbering two hundred millions of souls. Whoever can accomplish these ends with such a people as that of Great Britain must needs have something in him beyond mere fitness for the pretty salons of my Lady Blessington.

And what was it? Whatever you may count it, there is surely warrant for telling you something of his history and his antecedents: Three or more centuries ago—at the very least—a certain Jew of Cordova, in Spain, driven out by the terrors of the Inquisition, went to Venice—establishedhimself there in merchandise, and his family throve there for two hundred years. A century and a half ago,—when the fortunes of Venice were plainly on the wane—the head of this Jewish family—Benjamin Disraeli (grandfather of the one of whom we speak) migrated to England. This first English Benjamin met with success on the Exchange of London, and owing to the influences of his wife (who hated all Jewry) he discarded his religious connection with Hebraism, went to the town of Enfield, a little north of London—with a good fortune, and lived there the life of a retired country gentleman. He had a son Isaac, who devoted himself to the study of literature, and showed early strong bookish proclivities—very much to the grief of his father, who had a shrewd contempt for all such follies. Yet the son Isaac persisted, and did little else through a long life, save to prosecute inquiries about the struggles of authors and the lives of authors and the work of authors—all ending in that agglomeration which we know as theCuriosities of Literature—a book which sixty years since used to be reckoned a necessary part of all well-equippedlibraries; but which—to tell truth—has very little value; being without any method, without fulness, and without much accuracy. It is very rare that so poor a book gets so good a name, and wears it so long.

Oddly enough, this father, who had devoted a life to the mere gossip of literature, as it were, warns his son Benjamin against literary pursuits (he wrote three or four novels indeed,[59]but they are never heard of), and the son studied mostly under private tutors; there is no full or trustworthy private biography of him: but we know that in the years 1826-1827—only a short time before the Lady Blessington coterie was in its best feather—he wrote a novel calledVivian Grey,—the author being then under twenty-two—which for a time divided attention withPelham. In club circles it made even more talk. It is full of pictures of people of the day; Brougham and Wilson Croker, and Southey, and George Canning, and Mrs. Coutts and Lady Melbourne (Caroline Lamb), all figure in it. He never gave over, indeed,putting portraits in his books—as Goldwin Smith can tell us. The larger Reviews were coy of praise and coy of condemnation: indeed ’twas hard to say which way it pointed—socially or politically; but, for the scandal-mongers, there was in it very appetizing meat. He became a lion of the salons; and he enjoyed the lionhood vastly. Chalon[60]painted him in that day—a very Adonis—gorgeous in velvet coat and in ruffled shirt.

But he grew tired of England and made his trip of travel; it followed by nearly a score of years after that of Childe Harold, and was doubtless largely stimulated by it; three years he was gone—wandering over all the East, as well as Europe. He came back with an epic (published 1834), believing that it was to fill men’s minds, and to conquer a place for him among the great poets of the century. In this he was dismally mistaken; so he broke his lyre, and that was virtually the last of his poesy. There came, however, out of these journeyings, besides the poem, the stories ofContariniFleming, ofThe Young Duke, andThe Wondrous Tale of Alroy. These kept his fame alive, but seemed after all only the work of a man playing with literature, rather than of one in earnest.

With ambition well sharpened now, by what he counted neglect, he turned to politics; as the son of a country gentleman of easy fortune, it was not difficult to make place for himself. Yet, with all the traditions of a country gentleman about him, in his first moves he was not inclined to Toryism; indeed, he startled friends by his radicalism—was inclined to shake hands at the outset with the arch-agitator O’Connell; but not identifying himself closely with either party; and so, to the last it happened that his sympathies were halved in most extraordinary way; he had the concurrence of the most staid, Toryish, and conservative of country voters; and no man could, like himself, bring all the jingoes of England howling at his back. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable in his career than his shrewd adaptation of policy to meet existing, or approaching tides of feeling; he does not avow great convictions of duty, andstand by them; but he toys with convictions; studies the weakness, as he does the power, of those with him or against him; shifts his ground accordingly; rarely lacking poise, and the attitude of seeming steadfastness; whipping with his scourge of a tongue the little lapses of his adversaries till they shrill all over the kingdom; and putting his own triumphs—great or small—into such scenic combination, with such beat of drum, and blare of trumpet, as to make all England break out into bravos.[61]There was not that literary quality in his books, either early or late, which will give to them, I think, a very long life; but there was in the man a quality of shrewdness and of power which will be long remembered—perhaps not always to his honor.

I do not yield to any in admiration for the noble and philanthropic qualities which belong to the venerable, retired statesman of Hawarden; yet Icannot help thinking that if such a firm and audacious executive hand as belonged to Lord Beaconsfield, had—in the season of General Gordon’s stress at Khartoum—controlled the fleets and armies of Great Britain, there would have been quite other outcome to the sad imbroglio in the Soudan. When war is afoot, the apostles of peace are the poorest of directors.

I go back for a moment to that Blessington Salon—in order to close her story. There was a narrowed income—a failure of her jointure—a shortening of her book sales; but, notwithstanding, there was a long struggle to keep that brilliant little court alive. One grows to like so much the music and the fêtes and the glitter of the chandeliers, and the unction of flattering voices! But at last the ruin came; on a sudden the sheriffs were there; and clerks with their inventories in place of the “Tokens” and “annuals”—with their gorgeous engravings by Finden & Heath—which the Mistress had exploited; and she hurried off—after the elegant D’Orsay—to Paris, hoping to rehabilitate herself, on the Champs Elysées, under the wing of LouisNapoleon, just elected President. I chanced to see her in her coupé there, on a bright afternoon early in 1849—with elegant silken wraps about her and a shimmer of the old kindly smile upon her shrunken face—dashing out to the Bois; but within three months there was another sharp change; she—dead, and her prettydecolletécourt at an end forever.

The reminiscences and conversations of Lord Byron, which we have at the hands of Lady Blessington, belong to a time, of course, much earlier than her series of London triumphs, and date with her journeys in Italy. A score of years at least before ever the chandeliers of her Irish ladyship were lighted in Gore House, Byron[62]hadgone sailing away from England under a storm of wrath; and he never came back again. Indeed it is not a little extraordinary that one of the most typical of English poets, should—like Landor, with whom he had many traits in common—have passed so little of his active life on English ground. Like Landor, he loved England most when England was most behind him. Like Landor, he was gifted with such rare powers as belonged to few Englishmen of that generation. In Landor these powers, so far as they expressed themselves in literary form, were kept in check by the iron rulings of a scrupulous and exacting craftsmanship; while in Byron they broke all trammels, whether of craftsmanship or reason, and glowed and blazed the more by reason of their audacities. Both were prone to great tempests of wrath which gave to both furious joys, and, I think, as furious regrets.

Byron came by his wrathfulness in good hereditary fashion—as we shall find if we look back only a little way into the records of that Newstead family. Newstead Abbey (more properly Priory, the archæologists tell us) is the name of that great English home—half a ruin—associated with the early years of the poet, but never for much time or in any true sense a home of his own. It is some ten miles north of Nottingham, in an interesting country, where lay the old Sherwood Forest, with its traditions of Robin Hood; there is a lichened Gothic front which explains the Abbey name; there are great rambling corridors and halls; there is a velvety lawn, with the monument to “Boatswain,” the poet’s dog; but one who goes there—with however much of Byronic reading in his or her mind—will not, I think, warm toward the locality; and the curious foot-traveller will incline to trudge away in a hunt for Annesley, and the “Antique Oratory.”

Well, in that ancient home, toward the end of the last century, there lived, very much by himself, an old Lord Byron, who some thirty years before, in a fit of wild rage, had killed a neighborand kinsman of the name of Chaworth; there was indeed a little show of a duel about the murder—which was done in a London tavern, and by candle-light. His peerage, however, only saved this “wicked lord,” as he was called, from prison; and at Newstead his life smouldered out in 1798, under clouds of hate, and of distrust. His son was dead before him; so was his grandson, the last heir in direct line; but he had a younger brother, John, who was a great seaman—who published accounts of his voyages,[63]which seem always to have been stormy, and which lend, maybe, some realistic touches to the shipwreck scenes in “Don Juan.” A son of this voyager was the father of the poet, and was reputed to be as full of wrath and turbulence as his uncle who killed the Chaworth; and his life was as thick with disaster as that of the unlucky voyager. His first marriage was a runaway one with a titled lady, whose heart he broke, and who died leaving that lone daughter who became the most worthy Lady AugustaLeigh. For second wife he married Miss Gordon, a Scotch heiress, the mother of the poet, whose fortune he squandered, and whose heart also he would have broken—if it had been of a breaking quality. With such foregoers of his own name, one might look for bad blood in the boy; nor was his mother saint-like; she had her storms of wrath; and from the beginning, I think, gave her boy only cruel milk to drink.

His extreme boyhood was passed near to Aberdeen, with the Highlands not far off. How much those scenes impressed him, we do not know; but that some trace was left may be found in verses written near his death:—

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