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Lord Byronl., and
had intended to have left her 25,000l., but that she had suspected
his intentions, and urged him so strongly not to do so, or indeed to leave her anything,
that he had changed the sum to 10,000l. He said that this was one,
of innumerable instances, of her delicacy and disinterestedness, of which he had repeated
proofs; that she was so fearful of the possibility of having interested motives attributed
to her, that he was certain she would prefer the most extreme poverty to incurring such a
suspicion. I observed, that were I he, I would have left her the sum I had originally
intended, as, in case of his death, it would be a flattering proof of his esteem for her,
and she had always the power of refusing the whole, or any part of the bequest she thought
proper. It appeared to me, that the more delicacy and disinterestedness she displayed, the
more decided ought he to be, in marking his appreciation of her conduct. He appeared to
agree with me, and passed many encomiums on
He talked to-day of en masse, are everywhere
the same, but he denied this, on the plea that, as civilization had arrived at a greater
degree of perfection in England than elsewhere, egoism
its
concomitant, there flourished so luxuriantly, as to overgrow all generous and kind
feelings. He quoted various examples of friends, and even the nearest relations, deserting
each other in the hour of need, fearful that any part of the censure heaped on some less
fortunate connexion might fall on them. I am unwilling to believe that his pictures are not
overdrawn, and hope I shall always think so.
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
“Talking of friends,
” said
” I observed that the epithet impartial was the applicable one; but he
denied it, saying that unpartial of all
my friends; he me, and not to
others.unpartial, to have discerned all the errors he had pointed out;
“but,
” he added, laughing, “I could have told him of some
more which he had not discovered, for, even then,
” avarice had
made itself strongly felt in my nature.
Only fancy my receiving to-day a
” We were astonished at witnessing the annoyance
this circumstance gave him, and more than ever convinced, that the pride of aristocracy is
one of the peculiar features of his character. If he sometimes forgets his rank, he never
can forgive any one else’s doing so; and as he is not naturally dignified, and his
propensity to flippancy renders him still less so, he often finds himself in a false
position, by endeavouring to recover lost ground. We endeavoured to console him by telling
him that we knew this could not be the man’s feelings,
as he reduced him (
” It is strange to see a person of such brilliant and powerful genius
sullied by such incongruities. Were he but sensible how much the Lord is overlooked in the Poet he would be less vain of
his rank: but as it is, this vanity is very prominent, and resembles more the pride of a
parvenu than the calm dignity of an ancient
aristocrat. It is also evident that he attaches importance to the appendages of rank and
station. The trappings of luxury, to which a short use accustoms every one, seem to please
him; he observes, nay, comments upon them, and oh! mortifying conclusion, appears, at least
for the moment, to think more highly of their possessors. As his own mode of life is so
extremely simple, this seems the more extraordinary; but every thing in him is
contradictory and extraordinary. Of his friends he remarks, “
this or that person is a man of family, or he is a” We were not prepared for this; we expected to meet a man more disposed to respect the nobility of genius than that of rank; but we have found the reverse. In talking ofthe marks of which character, in spite of all his affected gentility, break out in a thousand ways.parvenu ,
This, again, proceeds from a want of self-respect; but we may well pardon it, when we reflect on the abuse, calumny, envy, hatred, and malice, that, in spite of all his genius, have pursued him from the country that genius must adorn.
Talking of tête montée Italian Principessa,
or Duchessa, who had long been an enthusiastic admirer of his works, having heard that he
was to pass within fifty miles of her residence, set of to encounter him; and having
arrived at the inn where he sojourned, was shown into a room where she was told
The poor
He talked to-day of a very different kind of letter, which appears to have
made a profound impression on him; he has promised to show it to me; it is from a
The following is the copy of the letter and prayer, which
“More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken from me, by a lingering disease, after a very short union. She possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so retiring as rarely to disclose itself in words, but so influential as to produce uniform benevolence of conduct. In the last hour of life, after a farewell look on a lately-born and only infant, for whom she had evinced inexpressible affection, her last whispers were, ‘God’s happiness!—God’s happiness!’
”Since the second anniversary of her decease, I have read some papers which no one had seen during her life, and which contain her most secret thoughts. I am induced to communicate to your Lordship a passage from these papers, which there is no doubt refers to yourself, as I have more than once heard the writer mention your agility on the rocks at Hastings.
“‘Oh, my God, I take encouragement from the assurance of thy word, to pray to Thee in behalf of one for whom I have lately been much interested. May the person to whom I allude (and who is now, we fear, as much distinguished for his neglect of Thee as for the transcendant talents thou hast bestowed on him), be awakened to a sense of his own danger, and led to seek that peace of mind in a proper sense of religion, which he has found this world’s enjoyment unable to procure! Do Thou grant that his future example may be productive of far more extensive benefit than his past conduct and writings have been of evil; and may the Sun of righteousness, which we trust will, at some future period, arise on him, be bright in proportion to the darkness of those clouds which guilt has raised around him, and the balm which it bestows, healing and soothing in proportion to the keenness of that agony which the punishment of his vices has inflicted on him! May the hope that the sincerity of my own efforts for the attainment of holiness, and the approval of my own love for the Great Author of religion, will render this prayer, and every other for the welfare of mankind, more efficacious.—Cheer me in the path of duty; but, let me not forget, that while we are permitted to animate ourselves to exertion
by every innocent motive, these are but the lesser streams which may serve to increase the current, but which, deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ’s death for the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of every virtue as before.— Hastings, July31, 1814.’
“There is nothing, my Lord, in this extract which, in a
literary sense, can at all interest you; but it may, perhaps, appear to you how
worthy of reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the happiness of
others the Christian faith can awaken in the midst of youth and prosperity.
Here is nothing poetical and splendid, as in the expostulatory homage of
sublime, my Lord; for this intercession was offered on
your account, to the supreme Source of happiness. It
sprang from a faith more confirmed than that of the French poet; and from a
charity which, in combination with faith, showed its power unimpaired amidst
the languors and pains of approaching dissolution. I will hope that a prayer,
which, I am sure, was deeply sincere, may not always be unavailing.
“It would add nothing, my Lord,
to the fame with which your genius has surrounded you, for an unknown and
obscure individual to express his admiration of it. I had rather be numbered
with those who wish and pray, that ‘wisdom from above,’ and
‘peace,’ and ‘joy,’ may enter such a mind.
“Here were two most amiable and exalted minds offering prayers
and wishes for the salvation of one considered by three parts of his countrymen to be
beyond the pale of hope, and charitably doomed to everlasting torments. The religion
that prays and hopes for the
” erring is the true religion, and
the only one that could make a convert of me; and I date (continued
“When Religion supports the sufferer in affliction and sickness, even unto death,
its advantages are so visible, that all must wish to seek such a consolation; and when
it speaks peace and hope to those who have strayed from its path, it softens feelings
that severity must have hardened, and leads back the wanderer to the fold; but when it
clothes itself in anger, denouncing vengeance, or shows itself in the pride of superior
righteousness, condemning, rather than pitying, all erring brothers, it repels the
wavering, and fixes the unrepentant in their sins. Such a religion can make few
converts, but may make many dissenters to its tenets; for in Religion, as in everything
else, its utility must be apparent, to encourage people to adopt its precepts; and the
utility is never so evident as when we see professors of religion supported by its
consolations, and willing to extend these consolations to those who have still more
need of them—the misguided and the erring.
”
They who accuse sceptical, but not unbelieving; and it
appears not unlikely to me that a time may come when his wavering faith in many of the
tenets of religion may be as firmly fixed as is now his conviction of the immortality of
the soul,—a conviction that he declares every fine and noble impulse of his nature renders
more decided. He is a sworn foe to Materialism, tracing every defect to which we are
subject, to the infirmities entailed on us by the prison of clay in which the heavenly
spark is confined. Conscience, he says, is to him another proof of
the Divine Origin of Man, as is also his natural tendency to the love of good. A fine day,
a moonlight night, or any other fine object in the phenomena of nature, excites (said
There is a seriousness in I seldom
” talk of religion, but I feel it, perhaps,
more than those who do. I speak to you on this topic freely, because I know you will
neither laugh at nor enter into a controversy with me. It is strange, but true, that
of, and praying for, me, who was
deemed by all an outcast. Her purity—her blameless life—and the deep humility expressed
in her prayer—render her, in my mind, the most interesting and angelic creature that
ever existed, and she mingles in all my thoughts of a future state. I would give
anything to have her portrait, though perhaps it would destroy the beau idéal I have formed of her. What
strange thoughts pass through the mind, and how much are we influenced by adventitious
circumstances! The phrase
the morrow
comes,
” and he is no longer the same being. Some disagreeable letter, review,
or new example of the slanders with which he has been for years assailed, changes the whole
current of his feelings—renders him reckless, Sardonic, and as unlike the Byron of the day
before as if they had nothing in common,—nay, he seems determined to efface any good
impression he might have made, and appears angry with himself for having yielded to the
kindly feelings that gave birth to it. After such exhibitions, one feels perplexed what
opinion to form of him; and the individual who has an opportunity of seeing Byron very
often, and for any length of time, if he or she stated the daily impressions candidly,
would find, on reviewing them, a mass of heterogeneous evidence, from which it would be
most difficult to draw a just conclusion. The affectionate manner in which he speaks of
some of his juvenile companions has a delicacy and tenderness resembling the nature of
woman more than that of man, and leads me to think that an extreme sensitiveness, checked
by coming in contact with persons incapable of appreciating it, and affections chilled by
finding a want of sympathy, have repelled, but could not eradicate, the seeds of goodness
that now often send forth blossoms, and, with culture, may yet produce precious fruit.
I am sure, that if ten individuals undertook the task of describing
During our rides in the vicinity of Genoa, we frequently met several
persons, almost all of them English, who evidently had taken that route purposely to see
Which is he?
”
“That’s he,
” I have frequently heard whispered, as the
different groups extended their heads to gaze at him, while he has turned to me—his pale
face assuming, for the moment, a warmer tint—and said, “How very disagreeable it
is to be so stared at. If you knew how I detest it, you would feel how great must be my
desire to enjoy the society of my friends at the Hotel de la Ville, when I pay the
price of passing through the town, and exposing myself to the gazing multitude on the
stairs and in the ante-chambers.
” Yet there were days when he seemed more
pleased than displeased at being followed and stared at. All depended on the humour he was
in. When gay, he attributed the attention he excited to the true cause—admiration of his
genius; but when in a less good-natured humour, he looked on it as an impertinent
curiosity, caused by the scandalous histories circulated against him, and resented it as
such.
He was peculiarly fond of flowers, and generally bought a large bouquet every day of a gardener whose grounds we passed. He told me that he liked to have them in his room, though they excited melancholy feelings, by reminding him of the evanescence of all that is beautiful, but that the melancholy was of a softer, milder character, than his general feelings.
Observing No, nothing new; the old wounds are still unhealed, and bleed afresh on
the slightest touch, so that God knows there needs nothing new, and yet can I reflect
on my present position without bitter feelings? Exiled from my country by a species of
ostracism—the most humiliating to a proud mind, when
” daggers and
not shells were used to ballot, inflicting one who will not live with me, and live
with one to whom I cannot give a legal right to be my companion, and who, wanting that
right, is placed in a position humiliating to her and most painful to me. Were the
liaison has all
of marriage but its forms, then it is that we wish to give it the respectability of
wedlock. It is painful (said
I feel this keenly, reckless as I appear, though there are few to whom I would
avow it, and certainly not to a man.
“With all my faults,
” said and they are, as you will readily believe,
innumerable, I have never traduced the only two women with whom I was ever
domesticated,
”
I observed in Well,
does not that give you hopes of my amendment?
” My reply was, “No; I
fear, by continually recapitulating them, you will get so accustomed to their
existence, as to conquer your disgust of them. You remind me of
” He laughed, and said,
“‘No
Well, only wait, and you will see me one day become all that I ought to be; I
am determined to
” leave my sins, and not wait until they leave me: I have reflected seriously on all my faults, and
that is the first step towards amendment. Nay, I have made more progress than people
give me credit for; but, the truth is, I have such a detestation of cant, and am so
fearful of being suspected of yielding to its outcry, that I make myself appear rather
worse than better than I am.
“You will believe me, what I sometimes believe myself,
mad,
” said when I
tell you that I seem to have
” I
answered, “two states of existence, one purely contemplative, during which the crimes, faults, and
follies of mankind are laid open to my view, (my own forming a prominent object in the
picture,) and the other active, when I play my part in the drama
of life, as if impelled by some power, over which I have no control, though the
consciousness of doing wrong remains. It is as though I had the faculty of discovering
error, without the power of avoiding it. How do you account for this?That, like all the phenomena of thought, it was unaccountable; but that
contemplation, when too much indulged, often produced the same effect on the mental
faculties that the dwelling on bodily ailments effected in the physical powers—we might
become so well acquainted with diseases, as to find all their symptoms, in ourselves
and others, without the power of preventing or curing them; nay, by the force of
imagination, might end in the belief that we were afflicted with them to such a degree
as to lose all enjoyment of life, which state is termed hypochondria; but the
hypochondria which arises from the belief in mental diseases is still more
insupportable, and is increased by contemplation of the supposed crimes or faults, so
that the mind should be often relaxed from its extreme tension, and other and less
exciting subjects of reflection presented to it. Excess in thinking, like all other
excesses, produces reaction, and add the two words ‘too much’ before the
word thinking, in the two lines of the admirable
”
and instead of parody, it becomes true philosophy.
We both laughed at the abstract subject we had fallen upon; and How few would guess the general
topics that occupy our conversation!
” I added, “It may not, perhaps
be very amusing, but, at all events, it is better than scandal.
” He shook his
head, and said, “All subjects are good in their way, provided they are
sufficiently diversified; but scandal has something so piquant,—it is a sort of cayenne
to the mind,—that I confess I like it, particularly if the objects are one’s own
particular friends.
”
“Of course you know
” said He is a most
” apropos. His bon mots are only brought forth when
perfectly applicable, and then are given in a tone of good breeding which enhances
their value.
“
Moore is very sparkling in a choice or chosen society (saidByron ); with lord and lady listeners he shines like a diamond, and thinks that, like that precious stone, his brilliancy should be reserved.pour le beau monde Moore has a happy disposition, his temper is good, and he has a sort of fire-fly imagination, always in movement, and in each evolution displaying new brilliancy. He has not done justice to himself in living so much in society; much of his talents are frittered away in display, to support the character of ‘a man of wit about town,’ andMoore was meant for something better. Society and genius are incompatible, and the latter can rarely, if ever, be in close or frequent contact with the former, without degenerating; it is otherwise with wit and talent, which are excited and brought into play by the friction of society, which polishes and sharpens both. I judge from personal experience; and, as some portion of genius has been attributed to me, I suppose I may, without any extraordinary vanity, quote my ideas on this subject. Well, then (continuedByron ), if I have any genius (which I grant is problematical), all I can say is, that I have always found it fade away, like snow before the sun, when I have been living much in the world. My ideas became dispersed and vague, I lost the power of concentrating my thoughts, and became another being: you will perhaps think a better, on the principle that any change in me must be for the better; but no—instead of this, I became worse, for the recollection of former mental power remained, reproaching me with present inability, and increased the natural irritability of my nature. It must be this consciousness of diminished power that renders old people peevish, and I suspect, the peevishness will be in proportion to former ability. Those who have once accustomed themselves to think and reflect deeply in solitude, will soon begin to find society irksome; the small money of conversation will appear insignificant, after the weighty metal of thought to which they have been used, and like the man who was exposed to the evils of poverty while in possession of one of the largest diamonds in the world, which, from its size, could find no purchaser, such a man will find himself in society unable to change his lofty and profound thoughts into the conventional small-talk of those who surround him. But, bless me, how I have been holding forth! (saidByron )Madame de Staël herself never declaimed more energetically, or succeeded better, inher auditors than I have done, as I perceive you lookennuyant dreadfully bored. I fear I am grown a sad proser, which is a bad thing, more especially after having been, what I swear to you I once heard a lady call me, a sad poet. The whole of my tirade might have been comprised in the simple statement of my belief that genius shuns society, and that, except for the indulgence of vanity, society would be well disposed to return the compliment, as they have little in common between them.
“Who would willingly possess genius? None, I am persuaded, who
knew the misery it entails, its temperament producing continual irritation, destructive
alike to health and happiness—and what are its advantages?—to be envied, hated, and
persecuted in life, and libelled in death. Wealth may be pardoned (continued
” We hear the errors of men of genius continually brought
forward, while those that belong to mediocrity are unnoticed; hence people conclude that
errors peculiarly appertain to genius, and that those who boast it not, are saved from
them. Happy delusion! but not even this belief can induce them to commiserate the faults
they condemn. It is the fate of genius to be viewed with severity instead of the indulgence
that it ought to meet, from the gratification it dispenses to others; as if its endowments
could preserve the possessor from the alloy that marks the nature of mankind. Who can walk
the earth, with eyes fixed on the heavens, without often stumbling over the hinderances
that intercept the path? while those who are intent only on the beaten road escape. Such is
the fate of men of genius: elevated over the herd of their fellow men, with thoughts that
soar above the sphere of their physical existence, no wonder that they stumble when
treading the mazes of ordinary life, with irritated sensibility, and mistaken views of all
the common occurrences they encounter.
Moreover, when he is not a poet, or even prose writer, by whom you can
hope to be repaid by being handed down to posterity, as his defender.
”