Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, with Recollections of the Author’s and of his Visit to Italy. By Leigh Hunt. 1 vol. 4to. pp. 513. London, 1828. Colburn.

It rather heightens our interest in the subject we are about to discuss, that we commence such discussion on the anniversary of the birth of that splendid genius, upon whose personal character Mr. Leigh Hunt has thrown such unexpected and unwelcome light. We say unwelcome, because we cannot conceive that any class of individuals, not even excepting the systematic assailants of the illustrious poet, can derive pleasure from these disclosures, or feel satisfied that Mr. Leigh Hunt, of all people in the world, should make them. Having disposed of the question of the truth of these statements—and we see no reason to doubt the veracity of the author, only we consider that he has written under the influence of embittered and disappointed feelings, which have led him to view the failings of Byron less charitably than is consistent with his professed creed and acknowledged character,—we come to consider the necessity of giving these statements to the world, and here, we confess, we are inclined to think very unfavourably of the stimulating motive. We had given Mr. Hunt credit for a superiority to petty resentments and vindictive feelings, and here we find, as far at least as concerns Lord Byron, very little else. We, who have been refreshing our memories as to all that Mr. Hunt has, on various occasions, written of Lord Byron, in which his poetical genius, his liberal politics, his ‘rank worn simply,’ and his ‘total glorious want of vile hypocrisy,’ were earnestly applauded, cannot help persuading ourselves that the portrait now presented would have been more favorable, had the painter been freer from impulses, which it is very natural for him to possess, but which cannot tend to the interests of the public, or to the development of truth. Again we acknowledge our thorough conviction that Mr. Hunt has stated nothing that he does not believe to be the entire and simple truth, but we will not admit that these truths afford sufficient data to enable us to judge of the real disposition of Lord Byron. There were too few points of similarity between the two men, for either to appear long amiable in the eyes of the other; and we can easily conceive the possibility of Byron’s putting an ‘antic disposition’ on, for the passing annoyance of his companion. Mr. Shelley appears to have anticipated something of this, when he gave Mr. Hunt hints as to the mode of his behaviour to Lord Byron, and took such generous and delicate care in the first pecuniary arrangement. It is evident that Mr. Hunt and Lord Byron misunderstood each other from the moment of their meeting in Italy; and it is not attempted to be concealed that both Mr. and Mrs. H. hesitated in nowise to wound and irritate him. We are told, indeed, that Mrs. H. conceived an early dislike for Lord Byron, and that it continued with her is evidenced by the following anecdotes:

‘My wife knew nothing of Italian, and did not care to learn it. Madame Guiccioli could not speak English. They were subsequently introduced to one another during a chance meeting, but that was all. No proposition was made for an intimacy on either side, and the families remained separate. This, however, was perhaps the first local cause of the diminished cordiality of intercourse between Lord Byron and myself. He had been told, what was very true, that Mrs. Hunt, though living in all respects after the fashion of an English wife, was any thing but illiberal with regard to others; yet he saw her taking no steps for a farther intimacy. He learnt, what was equally true, that she was destitute, to a remarkable degree, of all care about rank and titles. She had been used to live in a world of her own, and was, and is, I really believe, absolutely unimpressible in that respect. It is possible, that her inexperience of any mode of life but her own, may have rendered her somewhat jealous in behalf of it, and not willing to be brought into comparison with pretensions, the defects of which she is acute to discern; but her indifference to the nominal and conventional part of their importance is unaffectedly real; and it partakes of that sense of the ludicrous, which is so natural to persons to whom they are of no consequence, and so provoking to those who regard them otherwise. Finally, Lord Byron, who was as acute as a woman in those respects, very speedily discerned that he did not stand very high in her good graces; and accordingly he set her down to a very humble rank in his own. As I oftener went to his part of the house, than he came to mine, he seldom saw her; and when he did, the conversation was awkward on his side, and provokingly self-possessed on her’s. He said to her one day, “What do you think, Mrs. Hunt? Trelawney has been speaking against my morals! What do you think of that?”—“It is the first time,” said Mrs. Hunt, “I ever heard of them.” This, which would have set a man of address upon his wit, completely dashed, and reduced him to silence. But her greatest offence was in something which I had occasion to tell him. He was very bitter one day upon some friends of mine, criticising even their personal appearance, and that in no good taste. At the same time, he was affecting to be very pleasant and good-humoured, and without any “offence in the world.” All this provoked me to mortify him, and I asked if he knew what Mrs. Hunt had said one day to the Shelleys of his picture by Harlowe? (It is the fastidious, scornful portrait of him, affectedly looking down.) He said he did not, and was curious to know. An engraving of it, I told him, was shown her, and her opinion asked; upon which she observed, that “it resembled a great school-boy, who had had a plain bun given him, instead of a plum one.” I did not add, that our friends shook with laughter at this idea of the noble original, because it was “so like him.” He looked as blank as possible, and never again criticised the personal appearance of those whom I regarded. It was on accounts like these, that he talked of Mrs. Hunt as being “no great things.” Myself, because I did not take all his worldly common-places for granted, nor enter into the merit of his bad jokes on women, he represented as a “proser:” >and the children, than whom, I will venture to say, it was impossible to have quieter or more respectable in the house, or any that came less in his way, he pronounced to be “impracticable.” But that was the reason. I very soon found that it was desirable to keep them out of his way; and although this was done in the easiest and most natural manner, and was altogether such a measure as a person of less jealousy might have regarded as a consideration for his quiet, he resented it, and could not help venting his spleen in talking of them. The worst of it was, that when they did come in his way, they were nothing daunted. They had lived in a natural, not an artificial state of intercourse, and were equally sprightly, respectful, and self-possessed. My eldest boy surprised him with his address, never losing his singleness of manner, nor exhibiting pretensions of which he was too young to know any thing, yet giving him his title at due intervals, and appearing, in fact, as if he had always lived in the world instead of out of it. This put him out of his reckoning. To the second, who was more struck with his reputation, and had a vivacity of temperament that rendered such lessons dangerous, he said, one day, that he must take care how he got notions in his head about truth and sincerity, for they would hinder his getting on in the world. This, doubtless, was rather intended to vent a spleen of his own, than to modify the opinions of the child; but the peril was not the less, and I had warning given me that he could say worse things when I was not present. Thus the children became “impracticable;” and, luckily, they remained so.’

Few people, we believe, will discover either delicacy or good taste in the conduct thus complacently described. In the lady we perceive a very unamiable penchant for saying disagreeable things, not quite so smart as her affectionate husband fancies them, and which could have lost none of their deformity when repeated by Mr. Hunt to his lordship. Then again, does it tell against Byron that he was vexed because the children were kept out of the way? We suspect not, and really cannot help thinking that many of the causes of difference must have originated with the party now complaining.

We hope we shall not be suspected of partaking in a certain senseless, uninquiring, and bigotted prejudice against Mr. Hunt, which we know to exist, and which has frequently excited our disgust. We have been indebted to him for many a delightful hour, not spent in toys, or lust, or wine, but search of deep philosophy, wit, eloquence, and poesy, arts which we love; and we have no envy for the mind or heart of any reader of the ‘Indicator,’ and similar papers, who has not shared our enjoyments, and felt, like ourselves, the better for their perusal. It is, therefore, more in sorrow than in anger, that we speak of the sketch of Lord Byron now before us,—a sketch abounding with the characteristic ability of the writer, but unfortunately without the graceful and comprehensive humanity which has usually distinguished him. How anxiously we have looked for a work of this kind, it would, we fear, be considered beneath the should be imperturbable dignity of a reviewer to confess. We had assigned to Leigh Hunt the office of Byron’s biographer, conceiving him on many accounts eminently calculated for the task. His acquaintance with Byron had been long and tolerably intimate, and, as a literary man, he was well qualified to draw forth and accurately estimate the essentially mental qualities of his subject. His style of composition too, seemed to us the more peculiarly adapted to the purpose, inasmuch as its very defects in this instance resolved themselves into positive advantages,—such, for example, as what is by many considered us over-fondness for minute details, his anatomy of the most trivial of circumstances. We expected him to give not a bold sketchy picture, ‘beslabbered o’er with haste,’ but an elaborate portrait in which ‘each particular hair’ should be apparent, which would he not merely pleasing to the eye, but in which the philosopher and the phrenologist might find ample materials for deep and correct speculation. We did not look for unqualified eulogium,—we were aware that truth would require anything but that,—but we imagined Mr. Hunt to possess too little ascerbity of disposition for the transmutation into vices worthy of record, what at most can be considered but insignificant overflowings of bile, and may frequently bear even an advantageous construction. We have been disappointed: in the present work, as far as it treats of Lord Byron, we trace nothing of that vein of genuine and warm-hearted philanthropy by which the writings of Leigh Hunt have been distinguished even more than by their fancy and originality.

It is now time that we should indulge in some extracts from a work which, though only just published, has been reviewed and quoted for several weeks past, and which piece-meal mode of proceeding has very naturally annoyed the author, who complained of it the other day, in a long letter to the editor of the Morning Chronicle. This mode of proceeding is on every account impolite and absurd, and even as a trick of trade, overshoots itself in an amusing manner.

We commence with a spirited description: Mr. Hunt had hastened to Monte Nero, Lord Byron’s country residence for the season, and there he found him—

‘Dressed in a loose nankin jacket and white trowsers, his neckcloth open, and his hair in thin ringlets about his throat; altogether presenting a very different aspect from the compact, energetic, and curly-headed person, whom I had known in England.

‘He took me into an inner room, and introduced me to a young lady in a state of great agitation. Her face was flushed, her eyes lit up, and her hair (which she wore in that fashion) looking as if it streamed in disorder. This was the daughter of Count Gamba, wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli, since known as Madame, or the Countess, Guiccioli,—all the children of persons of that rank in Italy bearing the title of their parents. The Conte Pietro, her brother, came in presently, also in a state of agitation, and having his arm in a sling. I then learned, that a quarrel having taken place among the servants, the young Count had interfered, and been stabbed. He was very angry; Madame Guiccioli was more so, and would not hear of the charitable comments of Lord Byron, who was for making light of the matter. Indeed there was a look in the business a little formidable; for, though the stab was not much, the inflictor of it threatened more, and was at that minute keeping watch under the portico with the avowed intention of assaulting the first person that issued forth. I looked out of window, and met his eye glaring upward, like a tiger. The fellow had a red cap on, like a sans-culotte, and a most sinister aspect, dreary and meagre, a proper caitiff. Thus, it appeared, the house was in a state of blockade; the nobility and gentry of the interior all kept in a state of impossibility by a rascally footman.

‘How long things had continued in this state I cannot say; but the hour was come when Lord Byron and his friends took their evening ride, and the thing was to be put an end to somehow. Fletcher, the valet, had been despatched for the police, and was not returned. It was wondered, among other things, how I had been suffered to enter the house with impunity. Somebody conceived, that the man might have taken me for one of the constituted authorities; a compliment which few Englishmen would be anxious to deserve, and which I must disclaim any pretensions to. At length we set out, Madame Guiccioli earnestly entreating “Bairon” to keep back, and all of us waiting to keep in advance of Conte Pietro, who was exasperated. It was a curious moment for a stranger from England. I fancied myself pitched into one of the scenes in “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” with Montoni and his tumultuous companions. Every thing was new, foreign, and violent. There was the lady, flushed and dishevelled, exclaiming against the “scelerato;” the young Count, wounded and threatening; the assassin, waiting for us with his knife; and last, not least, in the novelty, my English friend, metamorphosed, round-looking, and jacketed, trying to damp all this fire with his cool tones, and an air of voluptuous indolence. He had now, however, put on his loose riding-coat of mazarin blue, and his velvet cap, looking more lordly than before, but hardly less foreign. It was an awkward moment for him, not knowing what might happen; but he put a good face on the matter; and as to myself, I was so occupied with the novelty of the scene, that I had not time to be frightened. Forth we issue at the door, all squeezing to have the honour of being the boldest, when a termination is put to the tragedy by the vagabond’s throwing himself on a bench, extending his arms, and bursting into tears. His cap was half over his eyes; his face gaunt, ugly, and unshaved; his appearance altogether more squalid and miserable than an Englishman would conceive it possible to find in such an establishment. This blessed figure reclined weeping and wailing, and asking pardon for his offence; and to crown all, he requested Lord Byron to kiss him.

‘The noble Lord conceived this excess of charity superfluous. He pardoned him, but said he must not think of remaining in his service; and the man continued weeping, and kissing his hand. I was then amused with seeing the footing on which the gentry and their servants stand with each other in Italy, and the good-nature with which the fiercest exhibitions of anger can be followed up. Conte Pietro, a generous good-humoured fellow, accepted the man’s hand, and shook it with great good-will; and Madame Guiccioli, though unable to subside so quickly from her state of indignant exaltation, looked in relenting sort, as if the pitying state of excitement would be just as good as the other. In fine, she concluded by according the man her grace also, seeing my Lord had forgiven him. The man was all penitence and wailing, but he was obliged to quit. The police would have forced him, if he had not been dismissed. He left the country, and called in his way on Mr. Shelley, who was shocked at his appearance, and gave him some money out of his very disgust; for he thought nobody would help such a fellow if he did not.’

Mr. Hunt considers this to have been one of the causes of Lord Byron’s departure from Italy, ‘as it increased the awkwardness of his position with the Tuscan government, and gave a further unsteadiness to his restless temper.’ here is another and pleasanter picture:—

‘Our manner of life was this. Lord Byron, who used to sit up at night, writing Don Juan (which he did under the influence of gin and water), rose late in the morning. He breakfasted; read; lounged about, singing an air, generally out of Rossini, and in a swaggering style, though in a voice at once small and veiled; then took a bath, and was dressed; and coming down-stairs, was heard, still singing, in the court-yard, out of which the garden ascended at the back of the house. The servants at the same time brought out two or three chairs. My study, a little room in a corner, with an orange-tree peeping in at the window, looked upon this court-yard. I was generally at my writing when he came down, and either acknowledged his presence by getting up and saying something from the window, or he called out “Leontius!” and came halting up to the window with some joke, or other challenge to conversation. (Readers of good sense will do me the justice of discerning where any thing is spoken of in a tone of objection, and where it is only brought in as requisite to the truth of the picture.) His dress, as at Monte-Nero, was a nankin jacket, with white waistcoat and trowsers, and a cap, either velvet or linen, with a shade to it. In his hand was a tobacco-box, from which he helped himself like unto a shipman, but for a different purpose; his object being to restrain the pinguifying impulses of hunger. Perhaps also he thought it good for the teeth. We then lounged about, or sat and talked, Madame Guiccioli with her sleek tresses descending after her toilet to join us. The garden was small and square, but plentifully stocked with oranges and other shrubs; and, being well watered, looked very green and refreshing under the Italian sky. The lady generally attracted us up into it, if we had not been there before. Her appearance might have reminded an English spectator of Chaucer’s heroine— “Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise. Her yellow hair was braided in a tress Behind her back, a yardè long, I guess: And in the garden (as the sun uprist) She walketh up and down, where as her list:” And then, as Dryden has it: “At every turn she made a little stand, And thrust among the thorns her lily hand.” Madame Guiccioli, who was at that time about twenty, was handsome and lady-like, with an agreeable manner, and a voice not partaking too much of the Italian fervour to be gentle. She had just enough of it to give her speaking a grace. None of her graces appeared entirely free from art; nor, on the other hand, did they betray enough of it to give you an ill opinion of her sincerity and good-humour. I was told, that her Romagnese dialect was observable; but to me, at that time, all Italian in a lady’s mouth was Tuscan pearl; and she trolled it over her lip, pure or not, with that sort of conscious grace, which seems to belong to the Italian language as a matter of right. I amused her with speaking bad Italian out of Ariosto, and saying speme for speranza; in which she goodnaturedly found something pleasant and pellegrino; keeping all the while that considerate countenance, for which a foreigner has so much reason to be grateful. Her hair was what the poet has described, or rather blond, with an inclination to yellow; a very fair and delicate yellow at all events, and within the limits of the poetical. She had regular features, of the order properly called handsome, in distinction to prettiness or to piquancy; being well proportioned to one another, large rather than otherwise, but without coarseness, and more harmonious than interesting. Her nose was the handsomest of the kind I ever saw; and I have known her both smile very sweetly, and look intelligently, when Lord Byron has said something kind to her. I should not say, however, that she was a very intelligent person. Both her wisdom and her want of wisdom were on the side of her feelings, in which there was doubtless mingled a good deal of the self-love natural to a flattered beauty. She wrote letters in the style of the “Academy of Compliments;” and made plentiful use, at all times, of those substitutes for address and discourse, which flourished in England at the era of that polite compilation, and are still in full bloom in Italy. ‘————————“And evermore She strewed a mi rallegro after and before.” In a word, Madame Guiccioli was a kind of buxom parlour-boarder, compressing herself artificially into dignity and elegance, and fancying she walked, in the eyes of the whole world, a heroine by the side of a poet. When I saw her at Monte-Nero, she was in a state of excitement and exaltation, and had really something of this look. At that time also she looked no older than she was; in which respect a rapid and very singular change took place, to the surprise of every body. In the course of a few months she seemed to have lived as many years. It was most likely in that interval that she discovered she had no real hold on the affections of her companion. The portrait of her by Mr. West, “In Magdalen’s loose hair and lifted eye,” is flattering upon the whole; has a look of greater delicacy than she possessed; but it is also very like, and the studied pretension of the attitude has a moral resemblance. Being a half-length, it shows her to advantage; for the fault of her person was, that her head and bust were hardly sustained by limbs of sufficient length. I take her to have been a good-hearted zealous person, capable of being very natural if she had been thrown into natural circumstances, and able to show a companion, whom she was proud of, that good-humoured and grateful attachment, which the most brilliant men, if they were wise enough, would be as happy to secure, as a corner in Elysium. But the greater and more selfish the vanity, the less will it tolerate the smallest portion of it in another. Lord Byron saw, in the attachment of any female, nothing but what the whole sex were prepared to entertain for him; and instead of allowing himself to love and be beloved for the qualities which can only be realized upon intimacy, and which are the only securers at last of all attachment, whether for the illustrious or the obscure, he gave up his comfort, out of a wretched compliment to his self-love. He enabled this adoring sex to discover, that a great man might be a very small one. It must be owned, however, as the reader will see presently, that Madame Guiccioli did not in the least know how to manage him, when he was wrong.’

‘In the course of an hour or two, being an early riser, I used to go in to dinner. Lord Byron either stayed a little longer, or went up stairs to his books and his couch. When the heat of the day declined, we rode out, either on horseback or in a barouche, generally towards the forest. He was a good rider, graceful, and kept a firm seat. He loved to be told of it; and being true, it was a pleasure to tell him. Good God! what homage might not that man have received, and what love and pleasure reciprocated, if he could have been content with the truth, and had truth enough of his own to think a little better of his fellow-creatures! But he was always seeking for uneasy sources of satisfaction. The first day we were going out on horseback together, he was joking upon the bad riding of this and that acquaintance of his. He evidently hoped to have the pleasure of adding me to the list; and finding, when we pushed forward, that there was nothing particular in the spectacle of my horsemanship, he said in a tone of disappointment, “Why, Hunt, you ride very well!” Trelawney sometimes went with us, on a great horse, smoking a cigar. We had blue frock-coats, white waistcoats and trowsers, and velvet caps, à la Raphael; and cut a gallant figure. Sometimes we went as far as a vineyard, where he had been accustomed to shoot at a mark, and where the brunette lived, who came into his drawing-room with the basket of flowers. The father was an honest-looking man, who was in trouble with his landlord, and heaved great sighs; the mother a loud swarthy woman, with hard lines in her face. There was a little sister, delicate-looking and melancholy, very different from the confident though not unpleasing countenance of the elder, who was more handsome. They all, however, seemed good-humoured. We sat under an arbour, and had figs served up to us, the mother being loud in our faces, and cutting some extraordinary jokes, which made me anything but merry. Upon the whole, I was glad to come away.

‘Madame Guiccioli was very curious on these occasions, but could get no information. Unfortunately, she could not see beyond a common-place of any sort, nor put up with a distressing one in the hope of doing it away. The worst thing she did (and which showed to every body else, though not to herself, that she entertained no real love for Lord Byron) was to indulge in vehement complaints of him to his acquaintances. The first time she did so to me, I shocked her so excessively with endeavouring to pay a compliment to her understanding, and leading her into a more generous policy, that she never made me her confidant again. “No wonder,” she said, “that my Lord was so bad, when he had friends who could talk so shockingly.” “Oh, Shelley!” thought I, “see what your friend has come to with the sentimental Italian whom he was to assist in reforming our Don Juan!” When Lord Byron talked freely to her before others, she was not affected by what would have startled a delicate Englishwoman, (a common Italian defect), but when he alluded to any thing more pardonable, she would get angry, and remonstrate, and “wonder at him;” he all the while looking as if he enjoyed her vehemence, and did not believe a word of it. A delicate lover would have spared her this, and at the same time have elevated her notions of the behaviour suitable for such occasions; but her own understanding did not inform her any better; and in this respect I doubt whether Lord Byron’s could have supplied it; what is called sentiment having been so completely taken out of him by ill company and the world.’

‘Byron’s taste in Poetry.—It would have been impossible to persuade him, that Sandys’s Ovid was better than Addison’s and Croxall’s. He wanted faith in the interior of poetry, to relish it, unpruned and unpopular. Besides, he himself was to be mixed up somehow with every thing, whether to approve it or disapprove. When he found Sandys’s “Ovid” among my books, he said, “God! what an unpleasant recollection I have of this book! I met with it on my wedding-day; I read it while I was waiting to go to church.” Sandys, who is any thing but an anti-bridal poet, was thenceforward to be nobody but an old fellow who had given him an unpleasant sensation. The only great writer of past times, whom he read with avowed satisfaction, was Montaigne, as the reader may see by an article in the “New Monthly Magazine.” In the same article may be seen the reasons why, and the passages that he marked in that author. Franklin he liked. He respected him for his acquisition of wealth and power; and would have stood in awe, had he known him, of the refined worldliness of his character, and the influence it gave him. Franklin’s Works, and Walter Scott’s, were among his favourite reading. His liking for such of the modern authors as he preferred in general, was not founded in a compliment to them; but Walter Scott, with his novels, his fashionable repute, and his ill opinion of the world whom he fell in with, enabled him to enter heartily into his merits; and he read him over and over again with unaffected delight. Sir Walter was his correspondent, and appears to have returned the regard; though, if I remember, the dedication of “The Mystery” frightened him. They did not hold each other in the less estimation, the one for being a lord, and the other a lover of lords: neither did Sir Walter’s connexion with the calumniating press of Edinburgh at all shock his noble friend. It added rather “a fearful joy” to his esteem; carrying with it a look of something “bloody, bold, and resolute:” at the same time, more resolute than bold, and more death-dealing than either;—a sort of available other-man’s weapon, which increased the sum of his power, and was a set-off against his character for virtue.

‘His Friends.—The manners of such of his Lordship’s friends as I ever happened to meet with, were, in fact, with one exception, nothing superior to their birth, if two such unequal things may be put on a level. It is remarkable (and, indeed, may account for the cry about gentility, which none are so given to as the vulgar,) that they were almost all persons of humble origin; one of a race of booksellers; another the son of a grocer; another, of a glazier; and a fourth, though the son of a baronet, the grandson of a linen-draper. Readers who know any thing of me, or such as I care to be known by, will not suspect me of undervaluing tradesmen or the sons of tradesmen, who may be, and very often are, both as gentlemanly and accomplished as any men in England. It did not require the Frenchman’s discovery, (that, at a certain remove, every body is related to every body else,) to make a man think sensibly on this point now-a-days. Pope was a linen-draper’s son, and Cowley a grocer’s. Who would be coxcomb enough to venture to think the worse on that account of either of those illustrious men, whether for wit or gentility; and both were gentlemen as well as wits. But when persons bring a charge upon things indifferent, which, if it attaches at all, attaches to none but themselves who make it, the thing indifferent becomes a thing ridiculous. Mr. Shelley, a baronet’s son, was also of an old family: and, as to his manners, though they were in general those of a recluse, and of an invalid occupied with his thoughts, they were any thing but vulgar. They could be, if he pleased, in the most received style of his rank. He was not incapable, when pestered with moral vulgarity, of assuming even an air of aristocra-tic pride and remoteness. Some of Lord Byron’s friends would have given him occasion for this twenty times in a day. They did wisely to keep out of his way.’

We need scarcely say that we shall resume our examination of this volume in our next.