Early Verse and Marriage.

“He who first met the Highland’s swelling blueWill love each peak that shows a kindred hue;Hail in each crag a friend’s familiar faceAnd clasp the mountain in his mind’s embrace.”

“He who first met the Highland’s swelling blue

Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue;

Hail in each crag a friend’s familiar face

And clasp the mountain in his mind’s embrace.”

When the boy was ten, the wicked lord who had killed the Chaworth died; and the Newstead inheritance fell to the young poet. We can imagine with what touch of the pride that shivers through so many of his poems, this lad—justlame enough to make him curse that unlucky fate—paced first down the hall at Newstead—thenceforth master there—a Peer of England.

But the estate was left in sorry condition; the mother could not hold it as a residence; so they went to Nottingham—whereabout the boy seems to have had his first schooling. Not long afterward we find him at Harrow, not far out of London, where he makes one or two of the few friendships which abide; there, too, he gives first evidence of his power over language.

It is at about this epoch, also, that on his visits to Nottingham—which is not far from the Chaworth home of Annesley—comes about the spinning of those little webs of romance which are twisted afterward into the beautiful Chaworth “Dream.” It is an old story to tell, yet how everlastingly fresh it keeps!

“The maid was on the eve of womanhood;The boy had fewer summers, but his heartHad far outgrown his years, and to his eyeThere was but one beloved face on earth,And that was shining on him; he had lookedUpon it till it could not pass away;He had no breath, nor being, but in hers,She was his voice … upon a tone,A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,And his cheek change tempestuously—his heartUnknowing of its cause of agony.”

“The maid was on the eve of womanhood;

The boy had fewer summers, but his heart

Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye

There was but one beloved face on earth,

And that was shining on him; he had looked

Upon it till it could not pass away;

He had no breath, nor being, but in hers,

She was his voice … upon a tone,

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,

And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart

Unknowing of its cause of agony.”

As a matter of fact, Miss Chaworth was two years older, and far more mature than he; she was gentle too, and possessed of a lady-like calm, which tortured him—since he could not break it down. Indeed, through all the time when he was sighing, she was looking over his head at Mr. Musters—who was bluff and hearty, and who rode to the hounds, and was an excellent type of the rollicking, self-satisfied, and beef-eating English squire—whom she married.

After this episode came Cambridge, and thoseHours of Idlenesswhich broke out into verse, and caught the scathing lash of Henry Brougham—then a young, but well-known, advocate, who was conspiring with Sydney Smith and Jeffrey (as I have told you) to renovate the world through the pages of theEdinburgh Review.

But this lashing brought a stinging reply; and the clever, shrewd, witty couplets of Byron’s satireupon the Scottish Reviewers (1809), convinced all scholarly readers that a new and very piquant pen had come to the making of English verse. Nor were Byron’s sentimentalisms of that day all so crude and ill-shapen as Brougham would have led the public to suppose. I quote a fragment from a little poem under date of 1808—he just twenty:

“The dew of the morningSunk chill on my browIt felt like the warningOf what I feel now,Thy vows are all brokenAnd light is thy fame;I hear thy name spoken,And share in its shame.“They name thee before me,A knell to mine ear;A shudder comes o’er me—Why wert thou so dear?They know not I knew thee,Who knew thee too well;Long, long shall I rue theeToo deeply to tell.”

“The dew of the morningSunk chill on my browIt felt like the warningOf what I feel now,Thy vows are all brokenAnd light is thy fame;I hear thy name spoken,And share in its shame.

“The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now,

Thy vows are all broken

And light is thy fame;

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

“They name thee before me,A knell to mine ear;A shudder comes o’er me—Why wert thou so dear?They know not I knew thee,Who knew thee too well;Long, long shall I rue theeToo deeply to tell.”

“They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o’er me—

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well;

Long, long shall I rue thee

Too deeply to tell.”

Naturally enough, our poet is beaming with the success of his satire, which is widely read, and which has made him foes of the first rank; but what cares he for this? He goes down with acompany of fellow roisterers, and makes the old walls of Newstead ring with the noisy celebration of his twenty-first birthday; and on the trail of that country revel, and with the sharp, ringing couplets of his “English Bards” crackling on the public ear, he breaks away for his first joyous experience of Continental travel. This takes him through Spain and to the Hellespont and among the isles of Greece—seeing visions there and dreaming dreams, all which are braided into that tissue of golden verse we know as the first two cantos ofChilde Harold.

On his return, and while as yet this poem of travel is on the eve of publication, he prepares himself for a newcoupin Parliament—being not without his oratorical ambitions. It was in February of 1812 that he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords—carefully worded, calm, not without quiet elegancies of diction—but not meeting such reception as his extravagant expectation demanded; whatever he does, he wishes met with a tempest of approval; a dignified welcome, to his fiery nature, seems cold.

But the publication ofChilde Harold, only ashort time later, brings compensating torrents of praise. His satire had piqued attention without altogether satisfying it; there was little academic merit in it—none of the art which madeAbsalom and Achitophelglow, or which gleamed upon the sword-thrusts of theDunciad; but its stabs were business-like; its couplets terse, slashing, and full of truculent, scorchingvires iræ. This other verse, however, ofChilde Harold—which took one upon the dance of waves and under the swoop of towering canvass to the groves of “Cintra’s glorious Eden,” and among those Spanish vales where Dark Guadiana “rolls his power along;” and thence on, by proud Seville, and fair Cadiz, to those shores of the Egean, where

“Still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields,—”[64]

was of quite another order. There is in it, moreover, the haunting personality of the proud, broken-spirited wanderer, who tells the tale and wraps himself in the veil of mysterious and piquant sorrows: Withal there is such dash and spirit, such mastery of language, such marvellous descriptive power, such subtle pauses and breaks, carrying echoes beyond the letter—as laid hold on men and women—specially on women—in a way that was new and strange. And this bright meteor had flashed athwart a sky where such stars as Southey, and Scott, and Rogers, and the almost forgotten Crabbe, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth had been beaming for many a day. Was it strange that the doors of London should be flung wide open to this fresh, brilliant singer who had blazed such a path through Spain and Greece, and who wore a coronet upon his forehead?

He was young, too, and handsome as the morning; and must be mated—as all the old dowagers declared. So said his friends—his sister chiefest among them; and the good Lady Melbourne (mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb)—not without discreet family reasons of her own—fixedupon her charming niece, Miss Milbanke, as the one with whom the new poet should be coupled, to make his way through the wildernesses before him. And there were other approvals; even Tom Moore—who, of all men, knew his habits best—saying a reluctant “Yes”—after much hesitation. And so, through a process of coy propositions and counter-propositions, the marriage was arranged at last, and came about down at Seaham House (near Stockton-on-Tees), the country home of the father, Sir Ralph Milbanke.

“Her face was fair, but was not that which madeThe starlight of his boyhood; as he stoodEven at the altar, o’er his brow there cameThe self-same aspect, and the quivering shockThat in the Antique Oratory shookHis bosom in its solitude; and then—As in that hour—a moment o’er his faceThe tablet of unutterable thoughtsWas traced; and then it faded as it came,And he stood calm and quiet, and he spokeThe fitting vows, but heard not his own words,And all things reeled around him.”[65]

“Her face was fair, but was not that which made

The starlight of his boyhood; as he stood

Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came

The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock

That in the Antique Oratory shook

His bosom in its solitude; and then—

As in that hour—a moment o’er his face

The tablet of unutterable thoughts

Was traced; and then it faded as it came,

And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke

The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,

And all things reeled around him.”[65]

Yet the service went on to its conclusion; and the music pealed, and the welcoming shouts broke upon the air, and the adieux were spoken; and together, they two drove away—into the darkness.

Our last chapter brought us into the presence of that vivacious specimen of royalty, George IV., who “shuffled off this mortal coil” in the year 1830, and was succeeded by that rough-edged, seafaring brother of his, William IV. This admiral-king was not brilliant; but we found brilliancy—of a sort—in the acute and disputatious essayist, William Hazlitt; yet he was far less companionable than acute, and contrasted most unfavorably with that serene and most worthy gentleman, Hallam, the historian. We next encountered the accomplished and showy Lady Blessington—the type of many a one who throve in those days, and who had caught somewhat of the glitter that radiated from the royal trappings of George the Fourth. We saw Bulwer, among others, in her salon; and we lingered longerover the wonderful career of that Disraeli, who died as Lord Beaconsfield—the most widely known man in Great Britain.

We then passed to a consideration of that other wonderful adventurer—yet the inheritor of an English peerage—who had made his futile beginning in politics, and a larger beginning in poetry. To his career, which was left half-finished, we now recur.

As we left him—you will remember—there was a jangle of marriage-bells; and a wearisome jangle it proved. Indeed Byron’s marriage-bells were so preposterously out of tune, and lent their discord in such disturbing manner to the whole current of his life, that it may be worth our while to examine briefly the conditions under which the discord began. It is certain that all the gossips of London had been making prey of this match of the poetic hero of the hour for much time before its consummation.

Was he seeking a fortune? Not the least in the world; for though the burden of debt uponhis estates was pressing him sorely, and his extravagances were reckless, yet large sums accruing from his swift-written tales of the “Corsair,” “Lara,” and “Bride of Abydos” were left untouched, or lavishly bestowed upon old or new friends; his liberality in those days was most exceptional; nor does it appear that he had any very definite notion of the pecuniary aid which his bride might bring to him. She had, indeed, in her own right, what was a small sum measured by their standards of living; and her expectancies, that might have justified the title of heiress (which he sometimes gives to her in his journal), were then quite remote.

As for social position, there could be by such marriage no gain to him, for whom already the doors of England were flung wide open. Did he seek the reposeful dignity of a home? There may have been such fancies drifting by starts through his mind; but what crude fancies they must have been with a man who had scarcely lived at peace with his own mother, and whose only notion of enjoyment in the house of his ancestors was in the transport to Newstead of a roistering company ofboon companions—followed by such boisterous revels there, and such unearthly din and ghostly frolics, as astounded the neighborhood!

The truth is, he marched into that noose of matrimony as he would have ordered a new suit from his tailor. When this whim had first seized him, he had written off formal proposals to Miss Milbanke—whom he knew at that time only slightly; and she, with very proper prudence, was non-committal in her reply—though suggesting friendly correspondence. In his journal of a little later date we have this entry:

“November 30, 1813 [some fourteen months before the marriage]. Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella [the full name was Anna Isabella], which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours! Without one spark of love on either side. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled … a girl of twenty, an only child and asavante, who has always had her own way.”

This evidently does not promise a very ardent correspondence. Nay, it is quite possible that the quiet reserve he encounters here, does offer a refreshing contrast to the heated gush of which he is the subject in that Babel of London; maybe,too, there is something in the reserve and the assured dignity which reminds him of that earlier idol of his worship—Miss Chaworth of Annesley.

However, three months after this last allusion to Miss Milbanke, we have another entry in his journal, running thus:

“January 16, 1814. A wife would be my salvation. I am getting rather into an admiration for C——, youngest sister of F——. [This is not Miss Milbanke—observe.] That she won’t love me is very probable, nor shall I love her. The business would probably be arranged between the papa and me.”

Perhaps it was in allusion to this new caprice that he writes to Moore, a few months later:

“Had Lady —— appeared to wish it, or even not to oppose it, I would have gone on, and very possibly married, with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black Sea of almost all my passions.… Obstacles the slightest even, stop me.” (Moore’s Byron, p. 255.)

And it is in face of some such obstacle, lifting suddenly, that he flashes up, and over, into new proposals to Miss Milbanke; these are quietly accepted—very likely to his wonderment; for he says, in a quick ensuing letter to Moore:

“I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, which it seems she has been for some time. I also thought her of a very cold disposition, in which I was also mistaken; it is a long story, and I won’t trouble you with it. As to her virtues, and so on, you will hear enough of them (for she is a kind ofpatternin the north) without my running into a display on the subject.”

A little over two months after the date of this they were married, and he writes to Murray in the same week:

“The marriage took place on the 2d inst., so pray make haste and congratulate away.” [And to Moore, a few days later.] “I was married this day week. The parson has pronounced it; Perry has announced it, and theMorning Post, also, under head of ‘Lord Byron’s marriage’—as if it were a fabrication and the puff direct of a new stay-maker.”

A month and a half later, in another Moore letter, alluding to the death of the Duke of Dorset (an old friend of his), he says:

“There was a time in my life when this event would have broken my heart; and all I can say for it now is—that it isn’t worth breaking.”

Two more citations, and I shall have done with this extraordinary record. In March, 1815 (the marriage having occurred in January), he writesto Moore from the house of his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbanke—a little northward of the Tees, in County Durham:

“I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read oldAnnual Registersand the daily papers, and gathering shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberries in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever—B.”

On leaving the country for a new residence in London, his growing cheer and spirits are very manifest:

“I have been very comfortable here. Bell is in health, and unvaried good humor. But we are all in the agonies of packing.… I suppose by this hour to-morrow I shall be stuck in the chariot with my chin upon a band-box. I have prepared, however, another carriage for the abigail, and all the trumpery which our wives drag along with them.”

Well, there follows a year or more of this coupled life—with what clashings we can imagine. Old Ralph Milbanke is not there to drawl through his after-dinner stories, and to intrude his restrainingpresence. The poet finds things to watch about the clubs and the theatres—quite other than the stunted gooseberries that grew in his father-in-law’s garden. Nothing is more sure than that the wilful audacities, and selfishness, and temper of the poet, put my lady’s repose and dignities and perfection to an awful strain. Nor is it to be wondered at, if the mad and wild indiscretions of the husband should have provoked some quiet and galling counter indiscretions on the part of her ladyship.

It is alleged, for instance, that on an early occasion—and at the suggestion of a lady companion of the august mistress—there was an inspection of my lord’s private papers, and a sending home to their writers of certain highly perfumed notelets found therein; and we can readily believe that when this instance of wifely zeal came to his lordship’s knowledge he broke into a strain of remark which wasnotprecisely that of the “Hebrew Melodies.” Doubtless he carries away from such encounter a great reserve of bottled wrath—not so much against her ladyship personally, as against the stolid proprieties, the unbendingscruples, the lady-like austerities, and the cool, elegant dowager-dignities she represents. Fancy a man who has put such soul as he has, and such strength and hope and pride as he has, into those swift poems, which have taken his heart’s blood to their making—fancy him, asked by the woman who has set out to widen his hopes and life by all the helps of wifehood, “When—pray—he means to give up those versifying habits of his?” No, I do not believe he resented this in language. I don’t believe he argued the point; I don’t believe he made defence of versifying habits; but I imagine that he regarded her with a dazed look, and an eye that saw more than it seemed to see—an eye that discerned broad shallows in her, where he had hoped for pellucid depths. I think he felt then—if never before—a premonition that their roads would not lie long together. And yet it gave him a shock—not altogether a pleasant one, we may be sure—when Sir Ralph, the father-in-law, to whose house she had gone on a visit, wrote him politely to the effect that—“she would never come back.” Such things cannot be pleasant; at least, I should judge not.

And so, she thinks something more of marriage than as some highly reckoned conventionality—under whose cover bickerings may go on and spend their force, and the decent twin masks be always worn. And in him, we can imagine lingering traces of a love for the feminine features in her—for the grace, the dignity, the sweet face, the modesties—but all closed over and buckled up, and stanched by the everlasting and all encompassing buckram that laces her in, and that has so little of the compensating instinctive softness and yieldingness which might hold him in leash and win him back. The woman who cannot—on occasions—put a weakness into her forgiveness, can never put a vital strength into her persuasion.

But they part, and part forever; the only wonder is they had not parted before; and still another wonder is, that there should have been zealous hunt for outside causes when so many are staringly apparent within the walls of home. I do not believe that Byron would have lived at peace with one woman in a thousand; I do not believe that Lady Byron would have lived at peace with one man in a hundred. The computation islargely in her favor; although it does not imply necessity for his condemnation as an utter brute. Even as he sails away from England—from which he is hunted with hue and cry, and to whose shores he is never again to return—he drops a farewell to her with such touches of feeling in it, that one wonders—and future readers always will wonder—with what emotions the mother and his child may have read it:

“Fare thee well and if for ever,[66]Still for ever—fare thee well!Even tho’ unforgiving—never’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.…Love may sink by slow decayBut, by sudden wrench, believe notHearts can thus be torn away.And when thou would’st solace gather,When our child’s first accents flow,Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father’Though his care she must forego?When her little hands shall press thee,When her lip to thine is prest,Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee;Think of him thy love has blessed.Should her lineaments resembleThose thou never more may’st see,Then thy heart will softly trembleWith a pulse yet true to me;All my faults perchance thou knowest,All my madness none can know,All my hopes where’er thou goestWither—yet, with thee they go.Every feeling hath been shaken;Pride which not a world could bow,Bows to thee—by thee forsaken,Even my soul forsakes me now.But ’tis done, all words are idle;Words frommeare vainer still;But the thoughts we cannot bridleForce their way, without the will.Fare thee well! thus disunited,Torn from every nearer tie,Seared in heart and lone, and blighted—More than this, I scarce can die.”

“Fare thee well and if for ever,[66]

Still for ever—fare thee well!

Even tho’ unforgiving—never

’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

…

Love may sink by slow decay

But, by sudden wrench, believe not

Hearts can thus be torn away.

And when thou would’st solace gather,

When our child’s first accents flow,

Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father’

Though his care she must forego?

When her little hands shall press thee,

When her lip to thine is prest,

Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee;

Think of him thy love has blessed.

Should her lineaments resemble

Those thou never more may’st see,

Then thy heart will softly tremble

With a pulse yet true to me;

All my faults perchance thou knowest,

All my madness none can know,

All my hopes where’er thou goest

Wither—yet, with thee they go.

Every feeling hath been shaken;

Pride which not a world could bow,

Bows to thee—by thee forsaken,

Even my soul forsakes me now.

But ’tis done, all words are idle;

Words frommeare vainer still;

But the thoughts we cannot bridle

Force their way, without the will.

Fare thee well! thus disunited,

Torn from every nearer tie,

Seared in heart and lone, and blighted—

More than this, I scarce can die.”

I should have felt warranted in giving some intelligible account of the poet’s infelicities at homewere it only to lead up to this exhibit of his wondrous literary skill; but I find still stronger reasons in the fact that the hue and cry which followed upon his separation from his wife seemed to exalt the man to an insolent bravado, and a challenge of all restraint—under which his genius flamed up with new power, and with a blighting splendor.

It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then in his twenty-eighth year), that he bade England adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his leave-takings was that from his sister, who had vainly sought to make smooth the difficulties in his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost respect. I cannot forbear quoting two verses from a poem addressed to this devoted sister:

“Though the rock of my last hope is shiveredAnd its fragments are sunk in the wave,Though I feel that my soul is deliveredTo pain—it shallnotbe its slave;There is many a pang to pursue me;They may crush—but they shall not contemn,They may torture, but shall not subdue me,’Tis oftheethat I think—not of them.“From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,Thus much I at least may recall,It hath taught me that what I most cherishedDeserved to be dearest of all;In the desert a fountain is springing,In the wide waste, there still is a tree,And a bird in the solitude singingWhich speaks to my spirit ofthee.”

“Though the rock of my last hope is shivered

And its fragments are sunk in the wave,

Though I feel that my soul is delivered

To pain—it shallnotbe its slave;

There is many a pang to pursue me;

They may crush—but they shall not contemn,

They may torture, but shall not subdue me,

’Tis oftheethat I think—not of them.

“From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,Thus much I at least may recall,It hath taught me that what I most cherishedDeserved to be dearest of all;In the desert a fountain is springing,In the wide waste, there still is a tree,And a bird in the solitude singingWhich speaks to my spirit ofthee.”

“From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,

Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherished

Deserved to be dearest of all;

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste, there still is a tree,

And a bird in the solitude singing

Which speaks to my spirit ofthee.”

Never was a man pelted away from his native shores with more anathemas; never one in whose favor so few appealing voices were heard. It was not so much a memory of his satirical thrusts, as a jealousy begotten by his late extraordinary successes, which had alienated nearly the whole literary fraternity. Only Rogers, Moore, and Scott were among the better known ones who had forgiven his petulant verse, and were openly apologetic and friendly; while such kind wishers as Lady Holland and Lady Jersey were half afraid to make a show of their sympathies. Creditors, too, of that burdened estate of his, had pushed their executions one upon another—in those days when his torments were most galling—into what was yet called with poor significance his home; only his title of peer, Moore tells us, at one date saved him from prison.

Yet when he lands in Belgium, he travels—true to his old recklessness—like a prince; with body servants and physician, and a lumbering family coach, with its showy trappings. Waterloo was fresh then, and the wreck and the blood, and the glory of it were all scored upon his brain, and shortly afterward by his fiery hand upon the poem we know so well, and which will carry that streaming war pennon in the face of other generations than ours. Then came the Rhine, with its castles and traditions, glittering afresh in the fresh stories that he wove; and after these his settlement for a while upon the borders of Lake Geneva—where, in some one of these talks of ours we found the studious Gibbon, under his acacia-trees, and where Rousseau left his footprints—never to be effaced—at Clarens and Meillerie. One would suppose that literature could do no more with such outlooks on lake and mountain, as seem to mock at language.

And yet the wonderful touch of Byron has kindled new interest in scenes on which the glowing periods of Rousseau had been lavished. Even the guide-books can none of them complete theirrecord of the region without stealing descriptive gems from his verse; and his story of thePrisoner of Chillonwill always—for you and for me—lurk in the shadows that lie under those white castle walls, and in the murmur of the waters that ebb and flow—gently as the poem—all round about their foundations. I may mention that at the date of the Swiss visit, and under the influences and active co-operation of Madame de Staël—then a middle-aged and invalid lady residing at her country seat of Coppet, on the borders of Geneva Lake—Byron did make overtures for a reconciliation with his wife. They proved utterly without avail, even if they were not treated with scorn. And it is worthy of special note that while up to this date all mention of Lady Byron by the poet had been respectful, if not relenting and conciliatory—thereafter the vials of his wrath were opened, and his despairing scorn knew no bounds. Thus, in the “Incantation”—thrust into that uncanny work ofManfred—with which he was then at labor—he says:

“Though thou seest me not pass by,Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,As a thing that, though unseen,Must be near thee, and hath been;And when, in that secret dread,Thou hast turned around thy head,Thou shalt marvel I am notAs thy shadow on the spot;And the power which thou dost feelShall be what thou must conceal.”

“Though thou seest me not pass by,

Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,

As a thing that, though unseen,

Must be near thee, and hath been;

And when, in that secret dread,

Thou hast turned around thy head,

Thou shalt marvel I am not

As thy shadow on the spot;

And the power which thou dost feel

Shall be what thou must conceal.”

Another episode of Byron’s Swiss life was his encounter there, for the first time, with the poet Shelley.[67]He, too, was under ban, for reasons that I must briefly make known. Like his brother poet, Shelley was born to a prospective inheritance of title and of wealth. His father was a baronet, shrewd and calculating, and livingby the harshest and baldest of old conventionalisms; this father had given a warm, brooding care to the estate left him by Sir Bysshe Shelley (the grandfather of the poet), who had an American bringing up—if not an American birth—in the town of Newark,[68]N. J. The boy poet had the advantages of a place at Eton[69]—not altogether a favorite there, it would seem; “passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love.” He carried thence to Oxford a figure and a beauty of countenance that were almost effeminate; and yet he had a capacity for doubts and negations that was wondrously masculine. His scholarship was keen, but not tractable; he takes a wide range outside the established order of studies; he is a great and unstinted admirer of the French philosophers, and makes such audacious free-thinking challenge to the church dignitaries of Oxford that he is expelled—like somethingvenomous. His father, too, gives him the cold shoulder at this crisis, and he drifts to London. There he contrives interviews with his sisters, who are in school at Clapham; and is decoyed into a marriage—before he is twenty—with a somewhat pretty and over-bold daughter of a coffee-house keeper, who has acted as a go-between in communications with his sisters. The prudent, conventional father is now down upon him with a vengeance.

But the boy has pluck under that handsome face of his. He sets out, with his wife—after sundry wanderings—to redeem Ireland; but they who are used to blunderbusses, undervalue Shelley’s fine periods, and his fine face. He is some time in Wales, too (the mountains there fastening on his thought and cropping out in after poems); he is in Edinboro’, in York, in Keswick—making his obeisance to the great Southey (but coming to over-hate of him in after years). Meantime he has children. Sometimes money comes from the yielding father—sometimes none; he is abstemious; bread and water mostly his diet; his home is without order or thrift orinvitingness—the lapses of the hoydenish girl-wife stinging him over and over and through and through.

But Shelley has read Godwin’sPolitical Justice—one of those many fine schemes for the world’s renovation, by tearing out and burning up most of the old furniture, which make their appearance periodically—and in virtue of his admiration of Godwin, Shelley counts him among the demi-gods of the heaven which he has conjured up. In reality Godwin[70]was an oldish, rather clumsy, but astute and clever dissenting minister, who had left preaching, and had not only writtenPolitical Justice, but novels—among them one calledCaleb Williams; by which you will know him better—if you know him at all. This gave him great reputation in its time. There were critics who ranked him with, or above, Scott—even in fiction. This may tempt you to readCalebWilliams;[71]and if you read it—you will not forget it. It pinches the memory like a vice; much reading of it might, I should think, engender, in one of vivid imagination, such nightmare stories as “Called Back” or “A Dark Day.”

But Mr. Godwin had a daughter, Mary (whose mother was that Mary Wollstonecraft, promoted now to a place amongst famous women), and our Shelley going to see Godwin, saw also the daughter Mary—many times over; and these two—having misty and mystic visions of a new order of ethics—ran away together.

It must be said, however, to the credit of Shelley (if credit be the word to use), that when this first wife killed herself—as she did some eighteen months afterward[72](whether from grief or othercause is doubtful)—he married Miss Godwin; and it was during the summer preceding this second marriage that Byron (1816) encountered Shelley on the shores of Lake Leman. Shelley had already written that wild screed ofQueen Mab(privately printed, 1813), giving poetic emphasis to the scepticism of his Oxford days. He had published that dreamy poem ofAlastor—himself its poet hero, as indeed he was in a large sense of every considerable poem he wrote. I cite a fragment of it, that you may see what waking and beguiling voice belonged to the young bard, who posed there on the Geneva lake beside the more masculine Byron. He has taken us into forest depths:

“One vast massOf mingling shade, whose brown magnificenceA narrow vale embosoms.The pyramidsOf the tall cedar, overarching, frameMost solemn domes within; and far below,Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,The ash and the acacia floating, hangTremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothedIn rainbow and in fire, the parasitesStarred with ten thousand blossoms flowed aroundThe gray trunks; and as gamesome infants’ eyes,With gentle meanings and most innocent wilesFold their beams round the hearts of those that love,These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs.… the woven leavesMake net-work of the dark blue lights of dayAnd the night’s noontide clearness, mutableAs shapes in the weird clouds.One darkest glenSends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmineA soul-dissolving odor, to inviteTo some more lovely mystery. Through the dellSilence and twilight here, twin sisters, keepTheir noonday watch, and sail among the shadesLike vaporous shapes half seen.”

“One vast mass

Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence

A narrow vale embosoms.

The pyramids

Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame

Most solemn domes within; and far below,

Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,

The ash and the acacia floating, hang

Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed

In rainbow and in fire, the parasites

Starred with ten thousand blossoms flowed around

The gray trunks; and as gamesome infants’ eyes,

With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles

Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,

These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs.

… the woven leaves

Make net-work of the dark blue lights of day

And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable

As shapes in the weird clouds.

One darkest glen

Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine

A soul-dissolving odor, to invite

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell

Silence and twilight here, twin sisters, keep

Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades

Like vaporous shapes half seen.”

And such mysteries and vaporous shapes run through all his poetic world. He wanders, with that rarely fine gift of rhythmic speech, as wide away from the compact sordid world—upon which Byron always sets foot with a ringing tread—as ever Spenser in his chase of rainbow creations. Yet there were penetrative sinuous influences about that young poet—defiant of law and wrapt in his pursuit of mysteries—which may well have given foreign touches of color to Byron’sManfredor to hisPrometheus. At any rate, these two souls lay quietly for a time, warped together—like two vessels windbound under mountain shelter.

Byron next goes southward, to riotous life in Venice; where—whether in tradesmen’s houses or in palaces upon the Grand Canal, or in country villas upon the Euganean hills—he defies priests and traditions, and order, and law, and decency.

To this period belongs, probably, the conception, if not the execution, of many of those dramas[73]—as non-playable as ever those of Tennyson—unequal, too, but with passages scattered here and there of great beauty; masterly aggregation of words smoking with passion, and full of such bullet-like force of expression as only he could command; but there is no adequate blending of parts to make either stately or well-harmonized march of events toward large and definite issues.

Out of the Venetian welter came, too, the fourth canto ofChilde Haroldand the opening parts ofDon Juan. The mocking, rollicking, marvellousVision of Judgment, whose daring license staggered even Murray and Moore, and which scarified poor Southey, belongs to a later phase of his Italian career. It is angry and bitter—and has an impish laughter in it—of a sort which our friend Robert Ingersoll might write, if his genius ran to poetry.Cainhad been of a bolder tone—perhaps loftier; with much of the argument that Milton puts into the mouth of Satan, amplified and rounded, and the whole illuminated by passages of wonderful poetic beauty.

His scepticism, if not so out-spoken and full of plump negatives as that of Shelley, is far more mocking and bitter. If Shelley was rich in negations—so far as relates to orthodox belief—he was also rich in dim, shadowy conceptions of a mysterious eternal region, with faith and love reigning in it—toward which in his highest range of poetic effusion he makes approaches with an awed and a tremulous step. But with Byron—evenwhere his words carry full theistic beliefs—the awe and the tremulous approaches are wanting.

Shelley went back from Switzerland to a home for a year or more, beyond Windsor, near to Bisham—amid some of the loveliest country that borders upon the Thames. Here he wrote that strange poem ofLaon and Cythna(orRevolt of Islam, as it was called on its re-issue), which, so far as one can gather meaning from its redundant and cumulated billows of rich, poetic language, tells how a nation was kindled to freedom by the strenuous outcry of some young poet-prophet—how he seems to win, and his enemies become like smoking flax—how the dreadful fates that beset us, and crowd all worldly courses from their best outcome, did at last trample him down; not him only, but the one dearest to him—who is a willing victim—and bears him off into the shades of night. Throughout, Laon the Victim is the poet’s very self; and the very self appears again—with what seems to the cautious, world-wise readera curious indiscretion—in the pretty jumping metre of “Rosalind and Helen”:—

“Joyous he was; and hope and peaceOn all who heard him did abide,Raining like dew from his sweet talk,As where the evening star may walkAlong the brink of the gloomy seas,Liquid mists of splendid quiver.His very gestures touched to tearsThe unpersuaded tyrant, neverSo moved before.…Men wondered, and some sneered, to seeOne sow what he could never reap;For he is rich, they said, and young,And might drink from the depths of luxury.If he seeks Fame, Fame never crownedThe champion of a trampled creed;If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feedWhich hungry wolves with praise and spoil,Those who would sit near Power must toil.”

“Joyous he was; and hope and peace

On all who heard him did abide,

Raining like dew from his sweet talk,

As where the evening star may walk

Along the brink of the gloomy seas,

Liquid mists of splendid quiver.

His very gestures touched to tears

The unpersuaded tyrant, never

So moved before.…

Men wondered, and some sneered, to see

One sow what he could never reap;

For he is rich, they said, and young,

And might drink from the depths of luxury.

If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned

The champion of a trampled creed;

If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned

’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed

Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,

Those who would sit near Power must toil.”

It was in 1818, four years before his death, that Shelley sailed away from English shores forever. There was not much to hold him there; those children of the Westbrook mother he cannot know or guide.[74]The Chancellor of England has decidedthat question against him; and Law, which he has defied, has wrought him this great pain; nay, he has wild, imaginary fears, too, that some Lord Chancellor, weaving toils in that web of orderly British custom, may put bonds on these other and younger children of the Godwin blood. Nor is it strange that a world of more reasonable motives should urge this subtle poet—whose head is carried of purpose, and by love, among the clouds—to turn his back on that grimy, matter-of-fact England, and set his face toward those southern regions where Art makes daily food, and where he may trail his robes without the chafings of law or custom. But do not let me convey the impression that Shelley then or ever lived day by day wantonly lawless, or doing violence to old-fashioned proprieties; drunkenness was always a stranger to him, to that new household—into which he had been grafted by Godwinian ethics—he is normally true; he would, if it were possible, bringinto the lap of his charities those other estrays from whom the law divides him; his generosities are of the noblest and fullest; he even entertains at one time the singular caprice of “taking orders,” as if the author ofQueen Mabcould hold a vicarage! It opens, he said, so many ways of doing kindly things, of making hearts joyful; and—for doctrine, one can always preach Charity! With rare exceptions, it is only in his mental attitudes and forays that he oversteps the metes and bounds of the every-day moralities around him. Few poets, even of that time, can or do so measure him as to enjoy him or to give him joy. Leigh Hunt is gracious and kindly; but there are no winged sandals on his feet which can carry him into regions where Shelley walks. Southey is stark unbeliever in the mystic fields where Shelley grazes. Wordsworth is conquered by the Art, but has melancholy doubts of the soul that seems caught and hindered in the meshes of its own craftsmanship. Landor, of a certainty, has detected with his keen insight the high faculties that run rampant under the mazes of the new poet’s language; but Landor, too, is in exile—drivenhither and thither by the same lack of steady home affinities which has overset and embroiled the domesticities of the younger poet.

Yet another singer of these days, in most earnest sympathy with the singing moods of Shelley—for whom I can have only a word now, was John Keats;[75]born within the limits of London smoke, and less than three-quarters of a mile from London Bridge—knowing in his boy days only the humblest, work-a-day ranges of life; getting some good Latinity and other schooling out of a Mr. Clarke (of the Cowden Clarke family)—reading Virgil with him, but no Greek. And yet the lad, who never read Homer save in Chapman, when he comes to write, as he does in extreme youth, crowds his wonderful lines with the delicate trills and warblings which might have broken out straight from Helicon—with a susurrus from the Bees of Hymettus. This makes a good argument—sofar as it reaches—in disproof of the averments of those who believe that, for conquest of Attic felicities of expression, the Greek vocables must needs be torn forth root by root, and stretched to dry upon our skulls.

He publishedEndymionin the very year when Shelley set off on his final voyagings—a gushing, wavy, wandering poem, intermeshed with flowers and greenery (which he lavishes), and with fairy golden things in it and careering butterflies; with some bony under-structure of Greek fable—loose and vague—and serving only as the caulking pins to hold together the rich, sensuous sway, and the temper and roll of his language.

I must snatch one little bit from that book ofEndymion, were it only to show you what music was breaking out in unexpected quarters from that fact-ridden England, within sound of the murmurs of the Thames, when Shelley was sailing away:—

Back to Index Next