Chapter 13

[1]Must be a mistranslation. In the last Danish edition (printed 1924) and in Brandes' collected writings (printed 1900) the text goes "and left it to the lady to consider her words." The translation in the English edition should probably read something like "leaving Madame—and a numerous audience to ponder at their leisure on the dialogue between them."—Transcriber's note.

[2]The long work,Lord Byron Jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie, which Countess Guiccioli published in 1868, though it does not really help us to understand either Byron's character or his art, bears touching evidence to the strength and depth of the Countess's love. The solution of the problem which the world calls Byron, is, for her, contained in one word: He was anangel—beautiful as an angel; good as an angel; an angel in everything. The 1100 pages of the book are divided into chapters bearing the titles of his different virtues; one is consecrated to his philanthropy, another to his modesty, &c., &c. The chapter upon his faults proves in the most satisfactory manner that he had none. The description given of his person corresponds to that of his character. We have separate disquisitions on the beauty of his voice, of his nose, of his lips. It is incomprehensible how such a shameful aspersion can have been spread abroad as that Lord Byron was lame or had a clubfoot. His limp was so slight that it was impossible to detect which foot caused it; and his lordship's shoemaker, who still owns the last on which his boots were made when he lived at Newstead, bears witness (his attestation being appended) to the slightness of the defect. It is equally incomprehensible how the foolish report can have found credence, that Lord Byron's hair had begun in his later years to recede from his forehead; certainly that part of his head was rather bare, but simply for the reason that he chose to have it shaved. Another unaccountable and foolish falsehood is the assertion that his legs grew very thin. Certainly they were thinner in the last years of his life than they had been when he was younger; but was that at all remarkable in a man who spent most of his leisure hours on horseback?—When we remember that this book was published forty-four years after Byron's death we cannot but acknowledge that the love which inspired it was strong and lasting.

In the period between 1818 and 1823 Byron wroteDon Juan. Immediately after the first part of the manuscript reached England, he was inundated by communications from friends and critics who had been allowed to see it—expressions of consternation, entreaties to omit this or that, deprecations of the immorality of the poem. Immorality!—that was the cry Byron had to hear at each step of his life, and which pursued him after death; their immorality was made the pretext for burning his memoirs, and his immorality the pretext for refusing his statue a place in Westminster Abbey. Byron replies in a letter to Murray: "If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced; but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality—the first time I ever heard the word from anybody who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain that it is the most moral of poems; but if people won't discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine ... I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please you may publishanonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine."

This poem, which, with its savage dedication to Southey, had to be published, not only anonymously, but actually without any publisher's name on the title-page, and which, as Byron said, had more difficulty in making its way into an English drawing-room than a camel in passing through the eye of a needle, is the one poem of the nineteenth century which can be compared with Goethe'sFaust; for it, and not the comparatively insignificantManfred, is Byron's poem of universal humanity. Its defiant motto is the famous speech inTwelfth Night: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth, too!"—a motto which promises nothing but offence and satiric pleasantry. Nevertheless it was with justifiable and prophetic pride that Byron said to Medwin: "If you must have an epic, there'sDon Juanfor you; it is an epic as much in the spirit of our day as theIliadwas in that of Homer." It was Byron who produced what Chateaubriand imagined he had produced inLes Martyrs, namely, the modern epic poem—which it was not possible to construct, as Chateaubriand had attempted to do, on a Christian-Romantic basis, or as Scott had thought it might be done, on the foundation of national history and manners. Byron succeeded because he took as his foundation nothing less than the most advanced civilisation of the century.

Juan is no Romantic hero; neither his mind nor his character raises him much above the average; but he is a favourite of fortune, an exceptionally handsome, proud, bold, lucky man, who is led more by his destiny than by intention or plan—the proper hero for a poem which is to embrace the whole of human life. It would never have done for him to have any special province; for, from the very beginning, there was no limit set to the scope and reach of the work.

The poem rises and falls like a ship borne upon sunlit and storm-tossed billows; it passes from one extreme to another. On the ardent love-scenes between Juan and Julia follows the shipwreck, with its horrors of starvation and its death agonies; on the shipwreck follows the splendid and melting harmony of youthful love—that highest, freest, sweetest happiness of life. Juan and Haidée are a study of the nude, as beautiful as an animate Amor and Psyche; above them the moonlit sky of Greece; in front of them the wine-coloured sea—the melodious lapping of its waves, the accompaniment of their words of love; around them the enchanting atmosphere of Greece; at their feet all the splendour of the East—scarlet and gold, crystal and marble. All this had followed upon peril and suffering; and now, upon the festival in Haidée's palace, follows such agony for Haidée that her heart breaks, and, as Juan's lot, a sabre gash on the forehead, crushing fetters, and sale as a slave. But it is to a seraglio he is sold, and presently we have the droll episode of his introduction, disguised as a girl, to the favourite sultana, and the mischievous night scene, with all its fire and fragrance, all its merry and voluptuous fun. Straight from this we are taken to the assault of Ismail—to human slaughter on the hugest scale, and to all the cruelty of a reckless war, carried on by a brutal soldiery—the whole described with more power and at greater length than any similar episode had been before in the poetry of any country. We next find Juan at the court of Catherine of Russia, among the "polished boors" of Eastern Europe, who are ruled by a gifted Messalina; and thence we follow him to England, the promised land of highway robbery, of morality, of the power of birth and wealth, of marriage, of virtue, and of hypocrisy.

This rough outline merely suffices to convey an idea of the capacious proportions of the poem. Not only does it contain, in extraordinary variety, representations of the strange contradictions in human life, but each of these contradictions is followed out to its extremest development. In each case the sounding-lead of the poet's imagination has been let down to the bottom, both in the psychological and in the external, tangible situation. Goethe's antique temperament inclined him, wherever it was possible, to moderation; even inFaust, where, in terrible earnest, he lifts the veil from human life, he lifts it with a careful hand. But the result of this moderation is often a deficiency in the highest potency of life. In Goethe's works the geniuses of life and death are seldom allowed unlimited space in which to spread their giant wings. Byron has never the desire to tranquillise his reader, never thinks of sparing him. He himself is not calm until he has said everything there is to say; he is a mortal enemy of the idealism which beautifies by selecting this, rejecting that; his art consists in pointing to reality and nature, and crying to the reader: Know these!

Take any one of his characters—take Julia, for instance. She is twenty-three; she is charming; almost without being aware of it, she is a little in love with Juan; she is contented with her husband of fifty, but also, almost unconsciously, has a faint wish that he could be divided into two of five-and-twenty. After a hard struggle to remain virtuous she gives way; but for a time there is nothing base or comical in the relations of the lovers. Then Byron shows her to us in a difficult position; the pair are surprised by the husband; and all at once we discover a new stratum of her nature—she lies, she deceives, she acts a part with astounding facility. She was not, then, good and amiable, as she at first appeared to be? We were mistaken? Not at all. Byron shows us yet another deeper-lying stratum of her soul, in the famous farewell letter she writes to Juan, an effusion of sincere womanly feeling, one of the gems of the poem. Mental agony does not incapacitate for devotion; love does not preclude deceit; nor deceit extreme delicacy and beauty of feeling at given moments. And the letter—what becomes of it? Juan reads it, sighing and weeping, on board ship; in the middle of its affecting comparison of the manner in which men love with that in which women love, he is interrupted—by sea-sickness. Poor letter, poor Julia, poor Juan, poor humanity!—for is not this human life? Once again, poor letter! After the shipwreck, when the crew of the boat have devoured their last ration and have long gazed hungrily at each other's famished figures, they agree to determine by lot which one of them shall be killed and eaten by the others. Search is made for paper, but not a scrap is to be found in the boat except Julia's poetical and loving letter; it is snatched from Juan and cut into squares, which are numbered. One of these numbered squares brings death to Pedrillo. Is there, then, really a sphere in the firmament of heaven where idealistic love and cannibal instincts are to be found side by side, nay, meet upon one square inch of paper? Byron answers that he knows one—the Earth.

From the shipwreck scene we are transported straight to Haidée. Compared with her, all the Greek maidens of Byron's earlier poems are immature attempts. Nowhere in the whole range of modern poetry had the love of a child of nature been so beautifully described. Goethe's best girl figures, Gretchen and Clärchen, charming as they are, are littlebourgeoises; we feel that their creator was a Frankfort citizen, to whom nature revealed herself in his position as a member of the middle class, and culture displayed itself at a small German court. In Byron's most beautiful female characters there is nothing bourgeois—no middle-class manners and customs have modified their free naturalness. We feel, when we read of Juan and Haidée, that Byron is a descendant of Rousseau; but we also feel that his high and independent social position, in combination with the character of the fortunes that had befallen him, had given him a much more emancipated view of human nature than Rousseau ever attained to.

"And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand,Over the shining pebbles and the shells,Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand,And in the worn and wild receptaclesWork'd by the storms, yet work'd as it were plann'd,In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,They turn'd to rest; and, each clasp'd by an arm,Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm.They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glowSpread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;They gazed upon the glittering sea below,Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;They heard the waves' splash, and the wind so low,And saw each other's dark eyes darting lightInto each other—and, beholding this,Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss;A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love,And beauty, all concentrating like raysInto one focus, kindled from above;Such kisses as belong to early days,Where heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,And the blood's lava, and the pulse a blaze,Each kiss a heart-quake..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Haidée spoke not of scruples, ask'd no vows,Nor offer'd any; she had never heardOf plight and promises to be a spouse,Or perils by a loving maid incurr'd"

What reader (especially if he comes straight from the erotic hypocrisy of the literature of the French reactionary period) but feels carried away by this strong current of warm youthful passion, by the poet's ardent enthusiasm for natural beauty, and by his profound scorn for the prudishness of conventional morality! Is there, then, a world, a world of law in which 2 and 2 make 4, an animal world in which all the lowest and most disgusting instincts may come to the surface at any moment, and yet in which such revelations of beauty in human life—revelations lasting for a moment, or a day, or a month, or a year, or an eternity of years—occur? Yes, answers Byron, there is such a world, and it is the world in which we all live. And now, away from these scenes to the slave market, to the seraglio, to the battlefield, to systematic murder and rape and the bayoneting of little children!

The poem is made up of such contrasts and contradictions. But it is not a sensuous, playfully satiric epic of the nature of Ariosto's; it is a passionate work, instinct with political purpose, full of wrath, scorn, threats, and appeals, with from time to time a loud, long blast on the revolutionary war trumpet.[1]Byron does not merely describe horrors; he interprets them. After quoting "the butcher" Suwarrow's rhymed despatch to Catherine announcing the capture of Ismail, he adds:

"He wrote this Polar melody, and set it.Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans,Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it—For I will teach, if possible, the stonesTo rise against earth's tyrants. Never let itBe said that we still truckle unto thrones;—But ye, our children's children I think how weShow'dwhat thingswere before the world was free!"

If, considering both from this point of view, we compareDon JuanwithFaust, the great poem of the beginning of the century, we feel that the strong, practical, historical spirit ofDon Juancarries, as it were, more weight with it than the philosophical spirit which inspiresFaust. And if we place it for a moment in imagination beside its Russian offspring, Pushkin'sJevgeni Onjœgin, and its Danish offspring, Paludan-Müller'sAdam Homo, the fresh sea breeze of nature and fact in the English poem seems to us all the stronger in contrast with the polish and the political feebleness of the Russian, and the narrow morality of the clever Danish, poem. InDon Juanwe have nature and fact; inFaust, nature and profound reflection.Don Juangives us in full, broad detail the human life whichFaustcondenses into a personification; and the whole work is the production of an indignation which has written where it can be read by the mighty of all ages its "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."

Not until he wrote this work was Byron completely himself. The thorough experience he had now had of life had cured him of all youthful credulity. He knew now exactly what went to the composition of the average man, and what regulated that man's life. He has been called misanthrope because of his savage satire of such lives. He himself gives the proper answer to the impeachment (ix. 21):—

"Why do they call me misanthrope?BecauseThey hate me, not I them?

There is no doubt that he is occasionally cynical, but it is where nature herself is shameless.

Is he very far wrong when he says (v. 48, 49):

"Some talk of an appeal unto some passion,Some to men's feeling, others to their reason;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .noMethod's more sure at moments to take holdOf the best feelings of mankind, which growMore tender, as we every day behold,Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,The tocsin of the soul—the dinner-bell."

Is he wrong when (ix. 73) he affirms love to be vain and selfish? Or does he let his satirical temper carry him too far when he says, in describing the happiness of family life (iii. 60):

"Yet a fine family is a fine thing(Provided they don't come in after dinner);'Tis beautiful to see a matron bringHer children up (if nursing them don't thin her)."

Alas! as long as there is a wrong side to the most beautiful things, it is in vain to forbid the poet to show it to us, let the moralist groan as he will. These passages are among the most cynical in the poem. And it is to be remarked that the bitter, Rousseau-like attacks on civilisation (as the joys of which the poet enumerates "war, pestilence, the despot's desolation, the kingly scourge") are always accompanied by ardent declarations of love for nature (see especially viii. 61-68).

Byron exclaims (iii. 104):

"Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,In nameless print—that I have no devotion;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .My altars are the mountain and the ocean,Earth, air, stars, all that springs from the great Whole,Who hath produced, and will receive the soul"

But, unfortunately, natural religion of this kind was not in accordance with theological ritual. Like a refrain fromChilde Haroldrecurs the glorification of liberty of thought (xi. 90):—

"I may stand alone,But would not change my free thoughts for a throne."

There are savage attacks on the theory of the origin of sin advanced by theology, and satire of orthodoxy and its doctrine that sickness and misfortune make us good. Of sin we read (ix. 19):—

"'But heaven,' as Cassio says, "is above all—No more of this, then, let us pray!' We haveSouls to save, since Eve's slip and Adam's fall,Which tumbled all mankind into the grave,Besides fish, beasts, and birds. 'The sparrow's fallIs special providence,' though how it gaveOffence, we know not; probably it perch'dUpon the tree which Eve so fondly search'd."

We observe how much freer and bolder the tone has become since the days whenCainwas written. On the subject of sick-bed orthodoxy Byron writes:—

"I don't know what the reason is—the airPerhaps; but as I suffer from the shocksOf illness, I grow much more orthodox.The first attack at once proved the Divinity(ButthatI never doubted, nor the Devil);The next, the Virgin's mystical virginity;The third, the usual origin of evil;The fourth at once established the whole TrinityOn so uncontrovertible a level,That I devoutly wish'd the three were fourOn purpose to believe so much the more."

Byron had now reached the stage in his literary career when he had difficulty in getting his works published. Murray was apprehensive, and drew back. Not even a bookseller was to be found who would sell the earlier cantos ofDon Juanat the author's risk. Byron says, when comparing his own fate with Napoleon's (Don Juan, xi. 56):—

"But Juan was my Moscow, and FalieroMy Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain:'La Belle Alliance' of dunces down at zero,Now that the Lion's fall'n, may rise again."

We have already noted what Southey dared to say in the preface to his servile poem,The Vision of Judgment. Adopting the rôle of informer, he called upon the Government to prevent the sale of Byron's works—for that his attack was upon Byron he plainly avowed in his rejoinder to Byron's answer, triumphantly boasting: "Of the work which Ihavedone, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, and its Coryphæus, the author ofDon Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of the country. I have given them a designationto which their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure.—Take it down who can!"

Thus wrote the retained and salaried scribbler, who, as Byron says, had lied himself into the post of Poet-laureate. Byron replied in his admirable satire, HISVision of Judgment. In it, as in Southey's vision, George the Third arrives at the gates of heaven and requests to be admitted. But Saint Peter is not at all willing to open for him. The locks and keys are rusty; there has been so little doing; since 1789 every one has been going to hell. Cherubs arrive to insist on the old man's being admitted—for all the angels are Tories. But Satan makes his appearance as accuser, and he and Saint Michael dispute possession of the dead man. Both produce witnesses, and amongst others Southey is called. Southey begins to read his own works aloud, and goes on so long that all, angels and devils, take flight, and in the general confusion the old King slips into heaven. Saint Peter upraises his keys and knocks the poet down with them:—

"Who fell, like Phaëthon, but more at ease,Into his lake, for there he did not drown;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .He first sank to the bottom—like his works,But soon rose to the surface—like himself;For all corrupted things are buoy'd like corks."

The little masterpiece is imposed on exactly the same lines as the poem of Southey's which it parodies.[2]The difficulty was to get it printed. Murray would not accept it, nor would any other London publisher.

It was while he was in this dilemma that Byron was guilty of the literary imprudence which injured him more than any other in the estimation of the English reading public. A talented, but not much respected man, the Radical author, Leigh Hunt, whom Byron as a young man, to show his politics, had (in company with Moore) visited when he was in prison for libelling the Prince Regent, and who was now on terms of intimacy with Shelley, conceived the idea of starting a Radical periodical in collaboration with Shelley and Byron. Shelley, out of modesty, held back himself, but no sooner had he intimated to Hunt that there was a possibility of his obtaining Byron's assistance, than Hunt gave up all his occupations and chances of earning a living in England, and landed, penniless and helpless, with wife and family, in Italy, where Byron generously gave them shelter under his roof. But it soon became evident that no real community was possible between two men of such different natures and different calibre; Byron could not stand Hunt's indiscreet familiarity; Hunt was offended by Byron's haughtiness. But the worst misfortune was, that Byron sank incredibly in the estimation of his countrymen by this alliance with such an inferior man.

In vain did Thomas Moore, when refusing to contribute to the proposed journal, write: "I deprecate such a plan with all my might.... You are, single-handed, a match for the world—which is saying a good deal, the world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,—but, to be so,you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St. Peter's almost seem to overtop itself." Byron had promised to help Hunt, and would not be induced to take back his word. He little thought that, after his death, Leigh Hunt's first action would be to write three volumes with the purpose of sullying his fame.[3]He gave himThe Vision of JudgmentandHeaven and Earth, the grand poem on the destruction of the world by the Flood, to which we Danes trace a likeness in Paludan-Müller'sAhasuerus. But the periodical, which it was originally proposed to callThe Carbonari, but which, from political reasons, came out under the feeble name ofThe Liberal, was received with such complete disapprobation that it was given up after only four numbers had appeared. The arena of literature was thus almost closed for Byron, and the only field that really remained open to him was that of action, of war, in the literal sense of the word, for his ideas.

But before embarking on this new venture he gave his revolutionary feelings vent inDon JuanandThe Age of Bronze. Shelley considered that Byron was qualified by his ambition and his powers to be "the redeemer of his degraded country." But he was mistaken; Byron was little suited to take part in the obstinate, slow struggle of the English Opposition for liberty. Besides, it was not the political predicament of England alone that aroused his sympathies and occupied his thoughts; in his revolt against all oppression and hatred of all hypocrisy he made himself the spokesman of the whole suffering world. His blood boiled when he thought of the slaves in America, of the ill-treatment of the Irish lower classes, of the martyrdom of the Italian patriots.

Of the French Revolution Byron had always approved. He admired Napoleon in the first stages of his career; but when the hero of the age passed

"The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,To herd with vulgar kings and parasites,"

and finally, at Fontainebleau, preferred abdication to suicide, he overwhelmed his quondam ideal leader with the fiercest satire. There is much resemblance between Byron's attitude towards Napoleon and Heine's. Both pour ridicule on the so-called wars of liberation waged against him by their respective countries. The great difference is, that the Englishman's inflexible pride and his devotion to liberty made it impossible for him to lose himself in the almost feminine admiration and enthusiasm by which the German was possessed. Napoleon's military fame made no impression on the man who has beautifully said (Don Juan, viii. 3) that

"The drying up a single tear has moreOf honest fame, than shedding seas of gore";

and who admired no warriors but those who, like Leonidas and Washington, fought for freedom.

Byron had long flourished his lash above the Prince Regent's head, and many a telling stroke had fallen upon that royal personage's fat body:—"Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone." "Charles to his people, Henry to his wife," &c. Now he took the country itself to task. His lash falls upon everything false and objectionable, from the legend of the Virgin Queen, "our own half-chaste Elizabeth," as he calls her inDon Juan(ix. 81), down to the latest requirements of public opinion (Don Juan, vii. 22):

"Then there were Frenchmen, gallant, young, and gay;But I'm too great a patriot to recordTheir Gallic names upon a glorious day;I'd rather tell ten lies than say a wordOf truth;—such truths are treason."

He is daring enough to attribute great part of the honour of Waterloo to the Prussians; to call (in imitation of Béranger) Wellington "Villainton," and to tell him that he has obtained great pensions and much praise for doing nothing but "repairing Legitimacy's crutch." And with a feeling and fervour far surpassing that displayed by Moore in his satirical letters, he tells England of the hatred of herself which she has aroused in other nations by her Tory politics. "I've no great cause," he writes (Don Juan, x. 66):

"I've no great cause to love that spot of earth,Which holds whatmight have beenthe noblest nation;But though I owe it little but my birth,I feel a mix'd regret and venerationFor its decaying fame and former worth.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Alas! could she but fully, truly knowHow her great name is now throughout abhorred;How eager all the earth is for the blowWhich shall lay bare her bosom to the sword;How all the nations deem her their worst foe,That worse thanworst of foes, the once adoredFalse friend, who held out freedom to mankind,And now would chain them, to the very mind;—Would she be proud, or boast herself the free,Who is but first of slaves? The nations areIn prison,—but the gaoler, what is he?No less a victim to the bolt and bar.Is the poor privilege to turn the keyUpon the captive, freedom? He's as farFrom the enjoyment of the earth and airWho watches o'er the chain, as they who wear."

Byron had now reached the altitude at which all ordinary conventions lost their hold upon him. He pursued the "Ministry of Mediocrities," as he called it, with his satire even after the death of its members. He would not let Castlereagh rest quietly in his grave, because, as he says in one of the prefaces toDon Juan, the system of oppression and hypocrisy with which that statesman's name is synonymous, endured long after his death. The watchword of the day, sovereignty "by the grace of God," was obnoxious to him, as was also the perpetual recurrence of the phrases: Britannia's rule of the waves, the glorious British constitution, the noble Emperors, and the pious Russian people. On the coins of gold appear once more, he writes after the fall of Napoleon, faces with the old "sterling, stupid stamp." The universal idolisation of the most uncivilised nation of Europe disgusted him. One could not go anywhere at that time without hearing the sentimental Cossack's song of farewell to his sweetheart, the first words of which, "Schöne Minka," are not yet forgotten.

Thus it was Byron who, towards the middle of the twenties, inaugurated the Radical campaign against political Romanticism and that Holy Alliance which was nothing but a systématisation of the political hypocrisy of Europe. Byron called it:

"An earthly trinity! which wears the shapeOf heaven's, as man is mimicked by the ape.A pious unity! in purpose one—To melt three fools to a Napoleon."

He jeered at "the coxcomb Czar, the autocrat of waltzes and of war." He ridiculed the "twenty fools" at Laybach, who imagined that their hypocritical proceedings could determine the destiny of the human race. He cried:

"O Wilberforce! thou man of black renown,Whose merit none enough can sing or say,Thou hast struck one immense Colossus down,Thou moral Washington of Africa!But there's another little thing, I own,Which you should perpetrate some summer's day,And set the other half of earth to rights;You have freed theblacks—now pray shut up the whites.Shut up the bald-coot bully Alexander!Ship off the Holy Three to Senegal;Teach them that 'sauce for goose is sauce for gander,'And ask them howtheylike to be in thrall?"

What language! What tones breaking the death-like silence of oppressed Europe! The political air rang with the shrill notes; for no word uttered by Lord Byron fell unheard to the ground. The legions of the fugitives, the banished, the oppressed, the conspirators, of every nation, kept their eyes fixed upon the one man who, amidst the universal debasement of intelligences and characters to a low standard, stood upright, beautiful as an Apollo, brave as an Achilles, prouder than all the kings of Europe together. Free, in his quality of English peer, from molestation everywhere, he made himself the mouthpiece of the dumb revolutionary indignation which was seething in the breasts of the best friends and lovers of liberty in Europe.

He himself had defined poetry as passion;[4]and inspired passion was what his own became. Listen to some of the thunders that pealed over Europe:

"You hardly will believe such things were trueAs now occur, I thought that I would pen you 'em;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .And when you hear historians talk of thronesAnd those that sate upon them, let it beAs we now gaze upon the mammoth's bones,And wonder what old world such things could see."(Don Juan, viii. 136, 137)."Think if then George the Fourth should be dug up!How the new worldlings of the then new EastWill wonder where such animals could sup!"(Don Juan, ix. 39)."But never mind;—'God save the king!' and kings!For ifhedon't, I doubt ifmenwill longer—I think I hear a little bird, who singsThe people by and by will be the stronger:The veriest jade will wince whose harness wringsSo much into the raw as quite to wrong herBeyond the rules of posting,—and the mobAt last fall sick of imitating Job.At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then,Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a giant;At last it takes to weapons such as menSnatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant.Then comes 'the tug of war;'—'twill come again,I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,'If I had not perceived that revolutionAlone can save the earth from hell's pollution."(Don Juan, viii. 50, 51)."And I will war, at least in words (and—shouldMy chance so happen—deeds), with all who warWith Thought;—and of Thought's foes by far most rude,Tyrants and sycophants have been and are.I know not who may conquer: if I couldHave such a prescience, it should be no barTo this my plain, sworn, downright detestationOf every despotism in every nation."(Don Juan, ix. 24).

[1]"I have pratedJust now enough; but by and by I'll prattleLike Roland's horn in Roncesvalles' battle."

[2]For other attacks on Southey, seeDon Juan, i 205; iii. 80, 93; ix. 35; x. 13.

[3]Thomas Moore aptly compares Hunt to the dog which was allowed by the lion to live in his cage, but which, after the lion's death, had nothing but evil to say of him:—"Though he roar'd pretty well—this the puppy allows—It was all, he says, borrow'd—all second-hand roar;And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wowsTo the loftiest war-note the lion could pour.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)With sops every day from the lion's own pan,He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcase,And—does all a dog, so diminutive, can."

[3]Thomas Moore aptly compares Hunt to the dog which was allowed by the lion to live in his cage, but which, after the lion's death, had nothing but evil to say of him:—

"Though he roar'd pretty well—this the puppy allows—It was all, he says, borrow'd—all second-hand roar;And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wowsTo the loftiest war-note the lion could pour.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)With sops every day from the lion's own pan,He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcase,And—does all a dog, so diminutive, can."

[4]Poetry, which is but passion."Don Juan, iv. 106.

He had prophesied revolution; he had sorrowfully witnessed the failure of the plans laid by the Carbonari; but now at last the expected revolution had begun.

"On Andes' and on Athos' peaks unfurl'd,The self-same standard streams o'er either world."

He had been expelled from the ranks of literature in England. He had been driven from town to town in Italy. It had long been a saying with him that a man ought to do more for his fellow-men than write poetry, and over and over again had he talked of art with the contempt of a Hotspur. Now everything conspired to urge him to action. Consideration for the Countess Guiccioli alone restrained him. He had thoughts of taking part in the Creoles' struggle for liberty; he made careful inquiries into the condition of matters in South America. HisOde on Veniceends with the words:

"Better beWhere the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,Than stagnate in our marsh,—or o'er the deepFly, and one current to the ocean add,One spirit to the souls our fathers had,One freeman more, America, to thee!"

The attraction to the country which had first inspired him to song proved the strongest. He tore himself away from the Countess Guiccioli, who was anxious to accompany him, but whom he dared not expose to the dangers and hardships of a campaign. The Committee of the English friends of Greece had elected him their representative, and supplied him amply with funds. On the day of his departure from Leghorn he received his first and last greeting from Goethe, in the shape of the old master's famous sonnet to him.

For five months he continued to reside on the island of Cephalonia, occupied in carefully investigating into the real state of matters in Greece, and besieged by the different Greek leaders, who were at enmity with each other, and each of whom was eager to enlist Byron on his side. The distribution of money, ammunition, and other materials of war necessitated an immense amount of correspondence, to which Byron attended with dogged industry. He at last made his choice among the Greek leaders, determining to join Prince Mavrocordato at Missolonghi. During his stay in Cephalonia proposals had been made to him which must have been most flattering to his ambition. The Greeks had a strong bias towards monarchical government, and Trelawny, who was in a position to know, was convinced that, if Byron had been alive at the time of the Congress of Salona, the crown of Greece would have been offered to him.

When Byron landed at Missolonghi he was received like a prince. The fortress fired a salute, bands played, the whole population crowded to the shore to welcome him. At the house prepared for his reception, Mavrocordato awaited him at the head of a staff of officers, both Greek and foreign. Five thousand armed men were quartered in the town. Byron took five hundred Suliotes (natives of Albania), who had been left leaderless by the death of Marco Bozzari, into his own pay. He selected for himself, as if death were what he desired, the most dangerous of the commands, that of the troops which were to proceed to Lepanto, hoping to compensate by energy and courage for his want of military experience; his staff were to be responsible for the strategical direction of the force. He had occasion, while holding this command, to be astonished by the powerful impression which personal accomplishments and personal intrepidity make upon half-savage natures; nothing produced such respect for him in the minds of his Suliotes, who themselves were bad marksmen, as his unerring aim and his indifference to danger. But he had undeniably become a nobler man. Though not free from attacks of his old melancholy, he saw the path of glory clear before him. Evidence of his feeling at this time is borne by the beautiful poem, one of the finest he ever wrote, which he composed on his thirty-sixth birthday. If we compare it with the despairing lines which bear the date of his thirty-third birthday, the difference is clearly perceptible. Along with premonition of his approaching death we have manly resolve:—

"'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,Since others it hath ceased to move:Yet, though I cannot be beloved,Still let me love!My days are in the yellow leaf;The flowers and fruits of love are gone;The worm, the canker, and the griefAre mine alone!. . . . . . . . . . . .But 'tis notthus—and 'tis nothere—Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,Where glory decks the hero's bier,Or binds his brow.The sword, the banner, and the field,Glory and Greece, around me see!The Spartan, borne upon his shield,Was not more free.. . . . . . . . . . . . .Seek out—less often sought than found—A soldier's grave, for thee the best;Then look around, and choose thy ground,And take thy rest."

Byron's very first endeavour was, as might have been expected of him, to modify, as far as possible, the barbarity of the method in which the war was being carried on. He released several Turkish officers, and sent them to Yussuf Pacha with a dignified and beautiful letter, in which he begs him in return to treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into his hands with humanity, since the horrors of war are sufficiently great without being aggravated by wanton cruelties on either side. Then he turned all his attention to the task he had set himself, and displayed a clear-sighted practicality which stood out in marked contrast to the poetical visionariness of those with whom he was associated.

The other Englishmen of the Committee, in their unworldly idealism, hoped to civilise Greece by means of a free press, newspaper articles, &c., &c.; but in Byron, the Carbonaro had made way for the practical politician. He built everywhere, energetically and firmly, upon the actually existing conditions—first and foremost upon the hatred of Turkey which existed in the breast of every Greek. He considered it much safer to reckon upon this than upon their devotion to freedom and republicanism. Stanhope wished to open schools. Byron demanded and distributed cannon. Stanhope endeavoured, through the agency of missionaries, to introduce Protestant Christianity. Byron, who saw that this foolishness would alienate the whole Greek priesthood, would have nothing introduced but weapons and money. And he left off making attacks upon the different European Governments. He had witnessed the collapse of Carbonarism when brought into contact with organised authority; hence his desire was to obtain for Greece recognition by the Great Powers.

Unfortunately his health was not equal to the carrying out of his great plans. At Missolonghi he rode out as usual every day, and, to impress the inhabitants, was always attended by a bodyguard of fifty Suliotes on foot. These men were such splendid runners that, though they carried their carbines, they were able to keep up with the horses galloping at full speed. On one of these rides Byron was drenched by a heavy shower. Count Gamba tried to persuade him to return home at once, but he refused, saying: "I should make a pretty soldier, indeed, if I were to care for such a trifle." The following day he was seized with violent convulsions—three men were hardly able to hold him—and the pain was so excessive that he said: "I do not care for death, but these agonies I cannot bear." While he was lying in an almost fainting condition after this attack, a band of rebellious Suliotes made their way into his room, brandishing their sabres, and demanding reparation for some supposed slight. Byron raised himself up in bed, and with a powerful exercise of will, ever calmer the more they raged and screamed, mastered them with his look and manner, and dismissed them.

He had written to Moore some months previously: "If anything in the way of fever, fatigue, famine, or otherwise, should cut short the middle age of a brother warbler, I pray you to remember me in 'your smiles and wine.' I have hopes that the cause will triumph; but whether it does or no, still 'honour must be minded as strictly as milk diet.' I trust to observe both." On the 12th of April he had again to take to bed, and from this date the fever never abated. The 18th was Easter Day, a holiday which the Greeks were accustomed to celebrate by firing off muskets and salvos of artillery; but out of consideration for their benefactor, the townspeople kept perfectly quiet. The 19th was the last day of Byron's life. During part of it he was delirious; he imagined himself to be commanding troops, and shouted: "Forwards—forwards—courage!" When he came to himself again, he began to give his last orders to his servant, Fletcher. "Go to my sister," he said; "tell her—go to Lady Byron—you will see her, and say——." Here his voice became indistinct, and only names could be made out—"Augusta—Ada—Hobhouse." He then said: "Now, I have told you all." "My lord," replied Fletcher, "I have not understood a word your lordship has been saying." "Not understood me?" exclaimed Lord Byron, with a look of the utmost distress. "What a pity! Then it is too late; all is over." He still continued to utter a few disconnected words: "Poor Greece!—poor town!—my poor servants!" Then his thoughts must have turned to Countess Guiccioli, for he murmured: "Io lascio qualche cosa di caro nel mondo." Towards evening he said: "Now I shall go to sleep," and, turning round, fell into that slumber from which he never awoke.

The announcement of Byron's death fell like a thunderbolt upon Greece. It affected the nation in the manner of a terrible natural catastrophe, the consequences of which were incalculable. On the day he died the following proclamation was issued:—

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF WESTERN GREECE.The present day of festivity and rejoicing has become one of sorrow and of mourning. The Lord Noel Byron departed this life at six o'clock in the afternoon, after an illness of ten days ... I hereby decree:—1st, To-morrow morning at daylight, thirty-seven minute guns will be fired from the grand battery, being the number which corresponds with the age of the illustrious deceased.2nd, All the public offices, even the tribunals, are to remain closed for three successive days.3d, All the shops, except those in which provisions or medicines are sold, will also be shut; and it is strictly enjoined that every species of public amusement, and other demonstrations of festivity at Easter, shall be suspended.4th, A general mourning will be observed for twenty-one days.5th, Prayers and a funeral service are to be offered up in all the churches.A. MAVROCORDATO.Given at Missolonghithis 19th day of April1824.

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF WESTERN GREECE.

The present day of festivity and rejoicing has become one of sorrow and of mourning. The Lord Noel Byron departed this life at six o'clock in the afternoon, after an illness of ten days ... I hereby decree:—

1st, To-morrow morning at daylight, thirty-seven minute guns will be fired from the grand battery, being the number which corresponds with the age of the illustrious deceased.

2nd, All the public offices, even the tribunals, are to remain closed for three successive days.

3d, All the shops, except those in which provisions or medicines are sold, will also be shut; and it is strictly enjoined that every species of public amusement, and other demonstrations of festivity at Easter, shall be suspended.

4th, A general mourning will be observed for twenty-one days.

5th, Prayers and a funeral service are to be offered up in all the churches.

A. MAVROCORDATO.

Given at Missolonghithis 19th day of April1824.

No other evidence is required of the impression which the news of Byron's death made upon all who were intimately connected with him. At Missolonghi people ran through the streets crying: "He is dead! The great man is gone!" The corpse was conveyed to England. The clergy refused it a place in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. But, dependent neither on the blame of England nor the praise of Greece, his renown established itself throughout the earth.

In the intellectual life of Russia and Poland, of Spain and Italy, of France and Germany, the seeds which he had strewn broadcast with such a lavish hand fructified—from the dragon's teeth sprang armed men. The Slavonic nations, who were groaning under tyrannical rule, who were by nature inclined to be melancholy, and in whom their history had developed rebellious instincts, seized on his poetry with avidity; and Pushkin's Onjœgin, Lermontoff'sA Hero of Our Own Days, Malczewski'sMarja, Mickiewicz'sConradandWallenrod, Slowacki'sLambroandBeniowskiwitness to the powerful impression made upon their authors. The Romance races, whose fair sinners his verses had celebrated, and who were now in the act of revolt, eagerly translated and studied his works. The Spanish and Italian exile-poets took up his war-cry; in Spain the "Myrtle" Society was formed; in Italy his influence was most plainly manifest in the writings of Giovanni Berchet, but hardly less so in those of Leopardi and Giusti. His death made an extraordinary impression in France. A week or two after it happened, Chateaubriand went over to the Opposition, and his first action after his fall was to become a member of the Greek Committee. Hugo'sLes Orientaleswas not a flight straight to the East, like the Oriental poetry of Germany; his way lay through Greece, and he had much to say of the heroes of the war of liberation. Delavigne devoted a beautiful poem to Byron; Lamartine added a last canto toChilde Harold; Mérimée allowed himself to be influenced by Byron's occasional spirit of savagery; Alfred de Musset attempted to take up the mantle which had fallen from the shoulders of the great poet; and even Lamennais began to employ a style in which many of the words and expressions recalled the language of Byron's sallies. Germany was still politically too far behind the other nations to have exiles and emigrants among its poets; but its philologists had, with quiet rejoicing, beheld in the rising of Greece the resurrection of ancient Hellas; poets like Wilhelm Müller and Alfred Meissner wrote beautiful verse in honour of Byron; and there were other writers who were still more deeply moved by Byron's poetry—men of Jewish extraction, whose feelings were those of the exiled and excommunicated—chief among them Börne and Heine. Heine's best poetry (notablyDeutschland, ein Wintermärchen) is a continuation of Byron's work. French Romanticism and German Liberalism are both direct descendants of Byron's Naturalism.

Naturalism as an intellectual tendency in England, makes its appearance in Wordsworth in the form of love of all the external phenomena of nature, a habit of storing up natural impressions, and piety towards animals, children, country people, and the "poor in spirit." With him as its representative, it strays for a moment into a blind alley, that of uninspired imitation of nature. In Coleridge, and even more in Southey, it approaches the German Romanticism of the day, follows it into the world of legend and superstition, but avoids its worst excesses by treating Romantic themes in a Naturalistic manner and keeping an open eye on land and sea and all the elements of reality. In Scott, Naturalism occupies itself with the character and history of a whole nation, and in vivid colours paints man as the son of a race and a period; in Keats, it takes possession of the whole world of the senses, and reposes for a moment on the neutral ground between tranquil contemplation of nature and the proclamation of a gospel of nature and of natural rights. In Moore it becomes erotic, and espouses Liberalism in politics; the sight of the sufferings of his native island drives this poet into the ranks of the lovers of liberty, intellectual and political. In Campbell, it becomes eulogy of England as Queen of the Sea and expression of English liberal views. In Landor, it takes the shape of pagan Humanism, of too repellent and proud a character to win the suffrage of Europe. It is transformed in Shelley into a soulful love of nature and a poetic Radicalism, which have at their command poetic gifts of the very highest order; but the incorporeal universality of Shelley's Naturalism, in combination with the circumstance that he is much too far ahead of his age, and with his early death, causes his song to die away unheard, Europe never learning what a poet she possesses and loses.

Then, like Achilles arising in his wrath after he has burned the body of Patroclus, Byron, after Shelley's death, arises and lifts up his mighty voice. European poetry was flowing on like a sluggish, smooth river; those who walked along its banks found little for the eye to rest on. All at once, as a continuation of the stream, appeared this poetry, under which the ground so often gave way that it precipitated itself in cataracts from one level to another—and the eyes of all inevitably turn to that part of a river where its stream becomes a waterfall. In Byron's poetry the river boiled and foamed, and the roar of its waters made music that mounted up to heaven. In its seething fury it formed whirlpools, tore itself and whatever came in its way, and in the end undermined the very rocks. But, "in the midst of the infernal surge," sat such an Iris as the poet himself has described inChilde Harold—a glorious rainbow, the emblem of freedom and peace—invisible to many, but clearly seen by all who, with the sun above them in the sky, place themselves in the right position.

It presaged better days for Europe.

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