struggle of oppressed men for freedom are very different things; and Lord Byron felt a military ardour in Greece which he was too wise a man ever to have felt under other circumstances. He was at one time, in Greece, absolutely soldier-mad; he had a helmet made, and other armour in which to lead the Suliotes to the storming of Lepanto, and thought of nothing but of guns and blunderbusses. It is very natural to suppose that a man of an enthusiastic turn, tired of every-day enjoyments, in succouring the Greeks, would look to the bustle, the adventure, the moving accidents by flood and field, as sources of great enjoyment: but allowing for the romantic character of guerilla warfare in Greece, for the excessively unromantic nature of projects for establishing schools and printing-presses in safe places, where the Turks never or very seldom reach; allowing for these, yet they were not the causes of his Lordship's hostility to these peaceful but important instruments in propagating happiness: he was ignorant of the science of civilization, and he was jealous of those who both knew it and practised it, and consequently were doing more good than himself, and began to be more thought about too, in spite of his Lordship's money, which in Greece is certainly very little short of being all-powerful. The Greeks, it is true, had a kind of veneration for Lord Byron, on account of his having sung the praises of Greece; but the thing which caused his arrival to make so great a sensation there was the report that he was immensely rich, and had brought a ship full of sallars (as they call dollars) to pay off all their arrears. So that as soon at it was understood he had arrived, the Greek fleet was presently set in motion to the port where he was stationed; was very soon in a state of the most pressing distress, and nothing could relieve it but a loan of four thousand pounds from his Lordship, which loan was eventually obtained (though with a small difficulty), and then the Greek fleet sailed away, and left his Lordship's person to be nearly taken by the Turks in crossing to Missolonghi, as another vessel which contained tion is effected, prevent the separation and dissolution of the country into petty kingdoms and governments, which was the bane of ancient Greece. It is becoming to the body politic what the nerves are to the body physical, and will bind a set of disjected members into one corresponding and sensitive frame. As a proof of Lord Byron's uncertainty and unfixedness, he at one moment gave a very handsome donation of (501.) to one paper, the Greek Chronicle, the most independent of them all, and promised to assist in its compilation. His friend and secretary, too, with his approbation, established a polyglot newspaper, the Greek Telegraph, with his countenance and support. The want of any fixed principles and opinions on these important subjects galled him excessively, and he could never discuss them without passion. About this same press, schools, societies for mutual instruction, and all other institutions for the purpose of educating and advancing the Greeks in civilization, he would express himself with scorn and disgust. He would put it on the ground that the present was not the time for these things; that the Greeks must conquer first, and then set about learning an opinion which no one could seriously entertain who knew as he well did the real situation of the Greeks, who are only now and then visited by the Turks, descending at particular seasons in shoals, like herrings, and like them too to be netted, knocked on the head and left to die in heaps till the whole country-side is glutted with their carcases.-The aptitude of the Greeks is as great as their leisure; and if even the men were actively engaged for the most part of their time, which they are not, surely no exertion of benevolence could be attended with more advantage than instructing the children at home. This, to be sure, is a quaker kind of warfare, and little likely to please a poet; though it must be confessed, that in respect to the pomp and circumstance of war, and all the sad delusions of milicary glory, no man could have more sane notions than Lord Byron. Mercenary warfare and the life-and-death ever, his suite and his stores actually was captured, though afterwards released. It was this money too which charmed the Prince Mavrocordato, who did not sail away with his fleet, but stayed behind, thinking more was to be obtained, as more indeed was, and the whole consumed nobody knows how. Howthe sums procured from his Lordship were by no means so large as has been supposed; five thousand pounds would probably cover the whole, and that chiefly by way of loan, which has, I hear, been repaid since his death. The truth is, that the only good Lord Byron did, or probably ever could have done to Greece was, that his presence conferred an eclat on the cause all over Europe, and disposed the people of England to join in the loan. The lenders were dazzled, by his cooperation with the Greeks, into an idea of the security of their money, which they ought to have been assured of on much better grounds; but it requires some time and labour to learn the real state of a country, while it was pleasant gossip to talk of Lord Byron in Greece. The fact is, that if any of the foreign loans are worth a farthing it is that to the Greeks, who are decidedly more under the controul of European public opinion than any other nation in the world; about their capability to pay no one can doubt, and their honesty is secured by their interest. Lord Byron was noted for a kind of poetical misanthropy, but it existed much more in the imagination of the public than in reality. He was fond of society, very good-natured when not irritated, and, so far from being gloomy, was, on the contrary, of a cheerful jesting temperament, and fond of witnessing even low buffoonery; such as setting a couple of vulgar fellows to quarrel, making them drunk, or disposing them in any other way to show their folly. In his writings he certainly dwelt with pleasure on a character which had somehow or other laid hold of his fancy, and consequently under this character he has appeared to the public: viz. that of a proud and scornful being, who pretended to be disgusted with his species, because he himself had been guilty of all sorts of crimes against society, and who made a point of dividing his time between cursing and blessing, murdering and saving, robbing and giving, hating and loving, just as the wind of his humour blew. This penchant for outlaws and pirates might naturally enough flow from his own character, and the circumstances of his life, without there being the slightest resemblance between the poet and the Corsair. He had a kind and generous heart, and gloried in a splendid piece of benevolence; that is to say, the dearest exercise of power to him was in unexpectedly changing the state of another from misery to happiness: he sympathized deeply with the joy he was the creator of. But he was in a great error with respect to the merit of such actions, and in a greater still respecting the reward which he thought awaited him. He imagined that he was laying up a great capital at compound interest. He reckoned upon a large return of gratitude and devotion, and was not content with the instant recompense which charity receives They who understand the principles of human action know that it is foolish in a benefactor to look further than the pleasure of consciousness and sympathy, and that if he does, he is a creditor, and not a donor, and must be content to be viewed as creditors are always viewed by their debtors, with distrust and uneasiness. On this mistake were founded most of his charges against human nature; but his feelings, true to nature, and not obeying the false direction of his prejudices and erroneous opinions, still made him love his kind with an ardour which removed him as far as possible from misanthropy. It is very remarkable that all your misanthropists as painted by the poets are the very best men in the world—to be sure, they do not go much into company, but they are always on the watch to do benevolent actions in secret, and no distress is ever suffered to remain long unrelieved in the neighbourhood of a hater of his fellow men. Another cause of Lord Byron's misanthropical turn of writing was his high respect for himself. He had a vast reverence for his own person, and all he did and thought of doing, inculcated into him, as into other lords, by mothers, governors, grooms, and nurse-maids. When he observed another man neglecting his wants for the sake of some petty gratification of his own, it appeared to him very base in the individual, and a general charge against all mankind-he was positively filled with indignation. He mentions somewhere in his works with becoming scorn, that one of his relatives accompanied a female friend to a milliner's, in preference to coming to take leave of him when he was going abroad. The fact is, no one ever loved his fellow man more than Lord Byron; he stood in continual need of his sympathy, his respect, his affection, his attentions, and he was proportionably disgusted and depressed when they were found wanting; this was foolish enough, but he was not much of a reasoner on these points, he was a poet. In his latter quality, it was his business to foster all these discontented feelings, for the public like in poetry nothing better than scorn, contempt, derision, indignation; and especially a kind of fierce mockery which distinguishes the transition from a disturbed state of the imagination to lunacy. Consequently, finding this mood take with the public, when he sat down to write he began by lashing himself up into this state, his first business being, like Jove, to compel all the black clouds together he could lay his hands on. Besides, there is much that is romantic and interesting in a moody and mysterious Beltenebros; it is not every body that can be sated with the most exquisite joys of society; a man to have had his appetite so palled must have had huge success, he must have been a man of consideration in the eyes of the beautiful and the rich. To scorn implies that you are very much better than those you scorn; that you are very good, or very great, or very wise, and that others are the direct contrary. To despise is another mark of superiority. To be sad and silent are proofs that much sensation, perhaps of the most impassioned kind, has been experienced, is departed, and is $3 ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d serics.. mourned: this is touching; and a man who wishes to attract attention cannot do better, if he be handsome and genteel, than look woeful and affect taciturnity. Lord Byron was well aware of all this, and chose, for the purpose, of exciting sympathy in his readers, to represent himself in the masquerade dress of Childe Harold. One day when Fletcher, his valet, was cheapening some monkeys, which he thought exorbitantly dear, and refused to purchase without abatement, his master said to him, "Buy them, buy them, Fletcher, I like them better than men ; they amuse and never plague me." In the same spirit is his epitaph on his Newfoundland dog, a spirit partly af fected and partly genuine. The genuine part he would certainly never have retained, if he had reflected a little more upon the nature of his own feelings, and the motives which actuate men in every the least action of their lives. Boys enter upon the world stuffed with school-boy notions which their tutors think it necessary to fill them with, about generosity, disinterestedness, liberty, honour, and patriotism; and when in life they find nobody acting upon these, and that they never did and never can, they are disgusted, and consider themselves entitled to despise mankind, because they are under a delusion with respect to themselves and every body else. Some of them, if men of genius, turn poets and misanthropists; some sink into mere sensualists; and some, convinced of the hollowness of the things they have been taught to declaim about, unwisely conclude that no better system of morality is to be had, that there is nothing real but place, power, and profit, and become the willing instruments of the oppressors of mankind. The fault lies in EDUCATION, and if there is any good to be done in the world that is the end to begin at. Much of Lord Byron's poetry took its peculiar hue from the circumstances of his life, such as his travels in Greece, which formed a most important epoch in the history of his mind. The "oriental twist in his imagination," was thence derived; his scene. ry, his imagery, his costume, and many of the materials of his stories, and a great deal of the character of his personages. That country was the stimulant which excited his greatest powers; and much of the form in which they showed themselves is to be attributed to it. His great susceptibility to external impressions, his intense sympathy with the appearances of nature, which distinguished him, were the fruits either of original conformation, or a much earlier stage of his experience; but it was in Greece, the most beautiful and picturesque of countries, that he came to the full enjoyment of himself. Certainly no poet either before or since so completely identified himself with nature, and gave to it all the animation and the intellection of a human being. Benjamin Constant, in his work on Religion, lately published in Paris, quotes this passage from the Island, and appends to it the observation which I shall copy at the end. How often we forget all time, when lone Reply of hers to our intelligence! Live not the stars and mountains! Are the waves Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore. The Island. On this fine passage Benjamin Constant observes: "On nous assure que certains hommes accusent Lord Byron d'athéisme et d'impiété. Il y a plus de religion dans ces douze vers que dans les ecrits passés, presents, et futurs, de tous ces denonciateurs mis ensemble." Such is the Frenchman's notion of religion; if it be correct, our poets must be as of old our priests again, and clergymen be dismissed for want of imagination. Lord Byron had not the dramatic talent, that is, he could not discriminate human characters and assume them; but he seems to have had this dramatic talent as applied, not to human beings, but to natural objects, in the greatest perfection. He could nicely discern their distinctive differences, adapt words and sentiments to them, and hold intercourse with them of a very refined and beautiful description. When he travelled, he communed with the hills, and the valleys, and the ocean. Certainly he did not travel for fashion's sake, nor would he follow in the wake of the herd of voyagers. As much as he had been about the Mediterranean, he had never visited Vesuvius or Ætna, because all the world had; and when any of the well-known European volcanic mountains were mentioned he would talk of the Andes, which he used to express himself as most anxious to visit. In going to Greece the last time, he went out of his way to see Stromboli; and when it happened that there was no eruption during the night his vessel lay off there, he cursed and swore bitterly for no short time. In travelling, he was an odd misture of indolence and capricious activ ity; it was scarcely possible to get him away from a place under six months, and very difficult to keep him longer. In the Westminster Review, there is an interesting paper formed out of his letters, and out of Fletcher's account of his last illness, which though written with fairness, has unhappily the usual fault of going upon stilts. All Lord Byron's movements are attributed to some high motive or other, or some deep deliberation, when bis friends well know that he went just as the wind did or did not blow. Among a deal more of bamboozlement about Lord Byron going to Greece or staying here or there, very sage reasons are given for his remaining in Cephalonia so long. The fact is, he had got set down there, and he was too idle to be removed; first, he was not to be got out of the vessel in which he had sailed, in which he dawdled for six weeks after his arrival, when the charter of his vessel expired and he was compelled to change his quarters; he then took up his residence in the little vil lage of Metaxata, where again he was not to be moved to Missolonghi, whi ther he had declared his resolution of proceeding: ship after ship was sent for him by Mavrocordato, and messen ger upon messenger; he promised and promised, until at length, either worn out by importunity, or weary of his abode, he hired a couple of vessels (refusing the Greek ships) and crossed. It is said that his intention was not to remain in Greece,- that he determined to return after his attack of epilepsy. Probably it was only his removal into some better climate that was intended. Certainly a more miserable and unhealthy bog than Missolonghi is not to be found out of the fens of Holland, or the Isle of Ely. He either felt or affected to feel a presentiment that he should die in Greece, and when his return was spoken of, considered it as out of the question, predicting that the Turks, the Greeks, or the Malaria, would effectually put an end to any designs he might have of returning. At the moment of his seizure with the epileptic fits prior to his last illness, he was jesting with Parry, an engineer sent out by the Greek committee, who, by dint of being his butt, had got great power over him, and indeed, became every thing to him. Besides this man, there was Fletcher, who had lived with him twenty years, and who was originally a shoemaker, whom his Lordship had picked up in the village where he lived, at Newstead, and who, after attending him in some of his rural adventures, became attached to his service: he had also a faithful Italian servant, Battista; a Greek secretary; and Count Gamba seems to have acted the part of his Italian secretary. Lord Byron spoke French very imperfectly, and Italian not correctly, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to make attempts in a foreign language. He would get any body about him to interpret for him, though he might know the language better than his interpreter. When dying, he did not know his situation till a very short time before he fell into the profound lethargy from he never awoke; and after he knew his danger, he could never speak intelligibly, but muttered his indistinct directions in three languages. He seems to have spoken of his wife and his daughter-chiefly of the latter; to this child he was very strongly attached, with indeed an intense parental feeling; his wife I do not believe he ever cared much for, and probably he married her from mercenary motives. I shall not attempt any summing up of the desultory observations which I have thrown together, in the hope of superseding the cant and trash that has and will be said and sung about the character of this great man. All that it is necessary to add by way of conclusion, may be condensed into a very few words. Lord Byron was a Lord of very powerful intellect and strong passions; these are almost sufficient data for a moral geometer to construct the whole figure; at least, add the following sentence, and sufficient is given: whether by early romantic experience, or by a natural extreme sensitiveness to external impressions, it was of all his intellectual faculties the imagination which was chiefly developed. Putting them together, we may conclude, as was the fact, that he was irritable, capricious, at times even childish, wilful, dissipated, infidel, sensual; with little of that knowledge which is got at school, and much of that acquired afterwards he was capable of enthusiasm; and though intensely selfish, that is, enjoying his own sensations, he was able to make great sacrifices, or, in other words, he had a taste for the higher kinds of selfishness, i. e. the most useful and valuable kinds; he was generous, fearless, open, veracious, and a cordial lover of society and of conviviality; he was ardent in his friendships, but inconstant; and, however generally fond of his friends, more apt to be heartily weary of them than people usually are. No more epithets need be heaped together; all that men have in general, he had in more than ordinary force; some of the qualities which men rarely have he possessed to a splendid degree of perfection. Such is the PERSONAL character of Lord Byron, as I have been able to draw it from having had access to peculiar sources of information, and from being placed in a situation best calculated, as I think, to form an impartial opinion. R. Y. |