Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore. Volume I. 4to. pp. 670. London, 1830. Murray.

Under this modest title we have now before us—whether we consider the subject, the writer, or the performance itself—one of the most interesting pieces of biography that has ever adorned the literature of England. To the general reader the work will be found to be one of unflagging attractions; while to the more philosophical inquirer it will present the curious phenomenon of exhibiting the minds and characters of two of the most distinguished Poets of the age;—for it is as much the life and opinions of Moore as it is of Byron. In his estimates of the latter we trace his own modes of thinking and powers; and the exposition of the wide difference that existed between the natural ideas and poetical conceptions of these two celebrated men gives scope to very striking reflections, and imparts an inestimable value and charm to this book. With regard to its style and manner, also, it is a delightful production. Ease, the absence of pretension, clearness, entertaining anecdote, judicious selection, and acute remark, are its obvious qualities throughout; and though it has much to engage the deepest attention, we never perused a narrative of which it could more truly be said, in the most favourable sense,—“He that runs might read.” With this brief preface we shall hasten to offer a summary analysis of what has pleased us so much; following the course of time, and illustrating our Review as Mr. Moore has illustrated his Notices, with quotation and occasional observations.

Of Lord Byron, the author remarks, it might more justly, and in a far greater degree, be said than it was of Petrarch, that “his correspondence and verses together afford the progressive interest of a narrative in which the poet is always identified with the man;”—and in his opening paragraph he allows that there was some foundation for another assertion, namely, that his Lordship was prouder of being descended from the Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied the Conqueror, than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred. This, indeed, is not unlikely—and the pride of birth is an ennobling sentiment, which ought not to be disrespected: on the contrary, it is much to be desired that it were more common among the higher ranks. Then would many a mean action be avoided, and many an honourable action performed, which we fear the existing state of society does not warrant us in concluding are to be discovered tn its annals. Next to the pride of birth (we are treating of moral, and not of religious motives), the best guide and regulator of human conduct is a fine feeling of the worth of exalted approbation in the wise and good: to be esteemed by the estimable is a most excellent standard at which to aspire; and the man possessed of this ambition has in himself a principle similar to that which splendour of race allots to the scion of an illustrious line. Thus the poorest and the humblest amongst the various classes into which the British community is subdivided, may happily stand upon as sure and glorious an eminence as the first-born of the land—one of the best blessings of our free constitution! Does not Moore go side by side with Byron—the one from the middle ranks, and the other with all his Norman blood through haughty generations?

Another casual circumstance appears to have had a wonderful effect on the destinies of Lord Byron;—we allude to his having a lame or club-foot, of which Mr. Moore makes frequent mention.

“By an accident (he tells us) which, it is said, occurred at the time of his birth, one of his feet was twisted out of its natural position, and this defect (chiefly from the contrivances employed to remedy it) was a source of much pain and inconvenience to him during his early years. The expedients used at this period to restore the limb to shape were adopted by the advice, and under the direction, of the celebrated John Hunter, with whom Doctor Livingstone of Aberdeen corresponded on the subject; and his nurse; to whom fell the task of putting on these machines or bandages, at bedtime, would often, as she herself told my informant, sing him to sleep, or tell him stories and legends, in which, like most other children, he took great delight. She also taught him while yet an infant, to repeat a great number of the Psalms; and the first and twenty-third Psalms were among the earliest that he committed to memory. It is a remarkable fact, indeed, that through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of a very religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more intimate acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the lot of most young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. Murray, from Italy, in 1821, after requesting of that gentleman to send him, by the first opportunity, a Bible, he adds—‘Don’t forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old,—that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak, as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen, in 1796.’ The malformation of his foot was, even at this childish age, a subject on which he showed peculiar sensitiveness. I have been told by a gentleman of Glasgow, that the person who nursed his wife, and who still lives in his family, used often to join the nurse of Byron when they were out with their respective charges, and one day said to her, as they walked together, ‘What a pretty boy Byron is! what a pity he has such a leg!’ On hearing this allusion to his infirmity, the child’s eyes flashed with anger, and striking at her with a little whip which he held in his hand, he exclaimed impatiently, ‘Dinna speak of it!’ Sometimes, however, as in after life, he could talk indifferently and even jestingly of this lameness: and there being another little boy in the neighbourhood, who had a similar defect in one of his feet, Byron would say, laughingly, ‘Come and see the twa laddies with the twa club feet going up the Broad-street.’”

“Even under the most favourable circumstances, such an early elevation to rank would be but too likely to have a dangerous influence on the character; and the guidance under which young Byron entered upon his new station was, of all others, the least likely to lead him safely through its perils and temptations. His mother, without judgment or self-command, alternately spoiled him by indulgence, and irritated, or—what was still worse,—amused him by her violence. That strong sense of the ridiculous, for which he was afterwards so remarkable, and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud of being able to outstrip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all her menaces. In the few anecdotes of his early life which he related in his ‘Memoranda,’ though the name of his mother was never mentioned but with respect, it was not difficult to perceive that, the recollections she had left behind—at least, those that had made the deepest impression—were of a painful nature. One of the most striking passages, indeed, in the few pages of that Memoir which related to his early days, was where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness, on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him ‘a lame brat’ As all that he had felt strongly through life was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it was not likely that an expression such as this should fail of being recorded. Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama, ‘The Deformed Transformed,’

“ Bertha. Out, hunchback! Arnold. I was born so, mother!”

It may be questioned, indeed, whether that whole drama was not indebted for its origin to this single recollection.

We are ourselves aware of a remarkable circumstance of the same nature. In one of the unhappy altercations to which Mrs. Byron’s violence of temper gave rise, she covered George with many reproaches; and among other things said, “You ought at least to recollect that I am your mother; that you owe your birth to me!” To which he flashed out the bitter reply, “Yes, I have to thank you for giving birth to a monster!”

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THE LITERARY GAZETTE, AND

The following anecdotes relating to the same topic are from Mr. Moore: speaking of his attachment, at the age of little more than sixteen, to Miss Chaworth (afterwards Mrs. Musters), he says:

“His time at Annesley was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth and her cousin,—sitting in idle reverie, as was his custom, pulling at his handkerchief, or in firing at a door which opens upon the terrace, and which still, I believe, bears the marks of his shots. But his chief delight was in sitting to hear Miss Chaworth play; and the pretty Welsh air, ‘Mary Anne,’ was (partly, of course, on account of the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain of knowing that the heart of her he loved was occupied by another;—that, as he himself expresses it,

‘Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother—but no more.’

Neither is it, indeed, probable, had even her affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, ‘on the eve of womanhood,’ an advance into life, with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. He was in his manners, too, at that period, rough and odd, and (as I have heard from more than one quarter) by no means popular among girls of his own age. If, at any moment, however, he had flattered himself with the hope of being loved by her, a circumstance mentioned in his ‘Memoranda,’ as one of the most painful of those humiliations to which the defect in his foot had exposed him, must have let the truth in, with dreadful certainty, upon his heart. He either was told of, or overheard, Miss Chaworth saying to her maid, ‘Do you think I could care any thing for that lame boy?’ This speech, as he himself described it, was like a shot through his heart. Though late at night when he heard it, he instantly darted out of the house, and scarcely knowing whither he ran, never stopped till he found himself at Newstead. The picture which he has drawn of this youthful love, in one of the most interesting of his poems, ‘The Dream,’ shows how genius and feeling can elevate the realities of this life, and give to the commonest events and objects an undying lustre. The old hall at Annesley, under the name of ‘the antique oratory,’ will long call up to fancy the ‘maiden and the youth’ who once stood in it; while the image of the ‘lover’s steed,’ though suggested by the unromantic race-ground of Nottingham, will not the less conduce to the general charm of the scene, and share a portion of that light which only Genius could shed over it. He appears already, at this boyish age, to have been so far a proficient in gallantry as to know the use that may be made of the trophies of former triumphs in achieving new ones; for he used to boast, with much pride, to Miss Chaworth, of a locket which some fair favourite had given him, and which probably may have been a present from that pretty cousin, of whom he speaks with such warmth in one of the notices already quoted. He was also, it appears, not a little aware of his own beauty, which, notwithstanding the tendency to corpulence derived from his mother, gave promise, at this time, of that peculiar expression into which his features refined and kindled afterwards. With the summer holidays ended this dream of his youth.”

“In his attention to his person and dress, to the becoming arrangement of his hair, and to whatever might best show off the beauty with which nature had gifted him, he manifested, even thus early, his anxiety to make himself pleasing to that sex, who were from first to last, the ruling stars of his destiny. The fear of becoming, what he was naturally inclined to be, enormously fat, had induced him, from his first entrance at Cambridge, to adopt, for the purpose of reducing himself, a system of violent exercise and abstinence, together with the frequent use of warm-baths. But the embittering circumstance of his life,—that, which haunted him, like a curse, amidst the buoyancy of youth, and the anticipations of fame and pleasure, was, strange to say, the trifling deformity of his foot. By that one slight blemish (as in his moments of melancholy he persuaded himself) all the blessings that nature had showered upon him were counterbalanced. His reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected, endeavoured to cheer and rouse him by representing, in their brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence had endowed him,—and, among the greatest, that of ‘a mind which placed him above the rest of mankind.’ ‘Ah, my dear friend,’ said Byron, mournfully,—‘if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far, far below them.’”

We have dwelt perhaps too much on this point; but it had so momentous an influence on Byron’s fate and genius, that it becomes a matter of great interest. Exempt from the mortifications to which his lameness subjected his sensitive spirit, he might have been a gay and heedless reveller in the fashionable circles, instead of the immortal bard: indeed, it is evident that he never would have been the latter, but for the morbid and misanthropic temperament, and the actual consequences at home and abroad, of which this defect laid the foundations. We now revert to other matters.

“In reference to the circumstance of his being an only child, Lord Byron, in one of his journals, mentions some curious coincidences in his family, which to a mind disposed as his was to regard every thing connected with himself as out of the ordinary course of events, would naturally appear even more strange and singular than they are. ‘I have been thinking,’ he says, ‘of an odd circumstance. My daughter (1), my wife (2), my half-sister (3) my mother (4), my sister’s mother (5), my natural daughter (6), and myself (7), are, or were, all only children. My sister’s mother (Lady Conyers) had only my half-sister by that second marriage (herself, too, an only child), and my father had only me, an only child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only child too. Such a complication of only children, all tending to one family, in singular enough, and looks like fatality almost,’ He then adds, characteristically, ‘But the fiercest animals have the fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants, which are mild in comparison.’ * * *

“In addition to the natural tendency to superstition, which is usually found connected with the poetical temperament, Lord Byron had also the example and influence of his mother, acting upon him from infancy, to give his mind this tinge. Her implicit belief in the wonders of second sight, and the strange tales she told of this mysterious faculty, used to astonish not a little her sober English friends; and it will be seen, that, at so late a period as the death of his friend Shelley, the idea of fetches and forewarnings, impressed upon him by his mother, had not wholly lost possession of the poet’s mind. As an instance of a more playful sort of superstition, I may be allowed to mention a slight circumstance told me of him by one of his Southwell friends. This lady had a large agate bead, with a wire through it, which had been taken out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking, one day, what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet, and the charm was, that, as long as she had this bead in her possession, she should never be in love. ‘Then give it to me,’ he cried, eagerly, ‘for that’s just the thing I want.’ The young lady refused;—but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She taxed him with the theft, and he owned it; but said, she never should see her amulet again. * * *

“When he first went to Newstead, on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient specimen:—

‘Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground, I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine; That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around, And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.

Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy’s years, On the land of my fathers I rear’d thee with pride; They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,— Thy decay not the weeds, that surround thee, can hide.

I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour, A stranger has dwelt in the Hall of my Sire,’ &c. &c.

“At Newstead (when he arrived there at ten years of age), both the mansion and the grounds around it were suffered to fall helplessly into decay; and among the few monuments of either care or expenditure which their lord left behind, were some masses of rockwork, on which much cost had been thrown away, and a few castellated buildings on the banks of the lake and in the woods. The forts upon the lake were designed to give a naval appearance to its waters, and frequently, in his more social days, he used to amuse himself with sham fights,—his vessels attacking the forts, and being cannonaded by them in return. The largest of these vessels had been built for him at some seaport on the eastern coast, and, being conveyed on wheels over the Forest to Newstead, was supposed to have fulfilled one

JOURNAL OF THE BELLES LETTRES.

35

of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, which declared that ‘when a ship laden with ling should cross over Sherwood Forest, the Newstead Estate would pass from the Byron family.’ In Nottinghamshire, ‘ling’ is the term used for heather; and, in order to bear out Mother Shipton and spite the old lord, the country people, it is said, ran along by the side of the vessel, heaping it with heather all the way.”

Elsewhere we have other examples of this disposition. Of Captain Kidd, with whom he sailed to Lisbon in 1809, he used to mention a strange story.

Of his Lordship’s infancy, Mr. M. says: “That, as a child, his temper was violent, or rather sullenly passionate, is certain. Even when in petticoats he shewed the same uncontrollable spirit with his nurse, which he afterwards exhibited, when an author, with his critics. Being angrily reprimanded by her, one day, for having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had been just dressed, he got into one of his ‘silent rages’ (as he himself has described them), seized the frock with both his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and Mood in sullen stillness, setting his censurer and her wrath at defiance. But, notwithstanding this, and other such unruly outbreaks—in which he was but too much encouraged by the example of his mother, who frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her caps, gowns, &c.—there was in his disposition, as appears from the concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him then, as in his riper years, easily manageable, by those who loved and understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle and firm enough for the task. * * *

“His love of solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led him not unfrequently so far as to excite serious apprehensions for his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived;—sometimes he would find his way to the seaside; and once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he was unable to extricate himself. In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands than even the neighbourhood of their residence at Ballatrech afforded,—having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the Linn of Dee. Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life. As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall, some heather caught his lame foot and he fell. Already he was rolling downward when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but just in time to save him from being killed. It was about this period, when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling partaking more of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible in so young a child, took, according to his own account, entire possession of his thoughts and showed how early, in this passion, as in most others, the sensibilities of his nature were awakened.* The name of the object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage from a Journal, kept by him in 1813, will show how freshly, after an interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love still lived in his memory. ‘I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect!—My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, ‘Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Coe.’ And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that, after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject—to me—and contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother’s faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother’s at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother’s maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children’s apartment, at their house not far from the Plainstones at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sate gravely making love, in our way. How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke—it nearly choked me—to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or remember her pitying sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory—her brown, dark hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see her now; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months. I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well acquainted with my childish penchant, and had sent the news on purpose for me,—and, thanks to her! Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus, others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.’”

“It was about this period, according to his nurse, May Gray, that the first symptom of any tendency towards rhyming showed itself in him; and the occasion which she represented as having given rise to this childish effort was as follows. An elderly lady, who was in the habit of visiting his mother, had made use of some expression that very much affronted him, and these slights, his nurse said, he generally resented violently and implacably. The old lady had some curious notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before it proceeded further. One day, after a repetition, it is supposed, of her original insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a violent rage. ‘Well, my little hero,’ she asked, ‘what’s the matter with you now?’ Upon which the child answered, that ‘this old woman had put him in a most terrible passion—that he could not bear the sight of her,’ &c. &c.—and then broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his rage:—

‘In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green, As curst an old lady as ever was seen; And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, She firmly believes she will go to the moon.’

It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught up at second-hand; and he himself, as will presently be seen, dated his ‘first dash into poetry,’ as he calls it, a year later:—but the anecdote altogether, as containing some early dawnings of character, appeared to me worth preserving.”

“It was, probably, during one of the vacations of this year (1800), that the boyish love for his young cousin, Miss Parker, to which he attributes the glory of having first inspired him with poetry, took possession of his fancy. ‘My first dash into poetry (he says) was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker (daughter and granddaughter of the two Admirals Parker), one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget her—her dark eyes

* “Dante, we know, was but nine years old when, at a May-day festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri, who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts:— ‘Effetti (he says, in describing the feelings of his own first love) che poche persone intendono, e pochissime provano: ma a quel soli pochissimi è concesso l’uscir dalla folla volgare in tutte le umane arti.’ Canova used to say, that he perfectly well remembered having been in love when but five years old.”

—her long eyelashes—her completely Greek cast of face and figure! I was then about twelve—she rather older, perhaps a year. She died about a year or two afterwards, in consequence of a fall, which injured her spine, and induced consumption. Her sister Augusta (by some thought still more beautiful) died of the same malady; and it was, indeed, in attending her, that Margaret met with the accident which occasioned her own death. My sister told me, that when she went to see her, shortly before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my name, Margaret coloured through the paleness of mortality to the eyes, to the great astonishment of my sister, who (residing with her grandmother, Lady Holderness, and seeing but little of me, for family reasons) knew nothing of our attachment, nor could conceive why my name should affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness, being at Harrow and in the country, till she was gone. Some years after, I made an attempt at an elegy—a very dull one. I do not recollect scarcely any thing equal to the transparent beauty of my cousin, or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbow—all beauty and peace. My passion had its usual effects upon me—I could not sleep—I could not eat—I could not rest; and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could meet again—being usually about twelve hours of separation! But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser now.’”

At Aberdeen till ten years old; thence to Newstead, on succeeding to his title; two years with Dr. Glennie, at his academy at Dulwich; Harrow school till seventeen; and Trinity College, Cambridge, for about three years,—are data which we need only indicate, as more important matters demand our regards. Of his school life he has preserved many notes, whence his biographer has made many interesting selections.

“Coming, as they do, from his own pen, it is needless to add, that they afford the liveliest and best records of this period that can be furnished. ‘Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a Review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much information from Reviews, because I was never seen reading, but always idle, and in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never met with a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them. But it is true; for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking them ‘What is a Review?’ To be sure, they were then less common. In three years more, I was better acquainted with that name; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7. At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the extent and readiness of my general information; but in all other respects idle, capable of great sudden exertions (such as thirty or forty Greek hexameters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God), but of few continuous drudgeries. My qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our head master), had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action*. I remember that my first declamation astonished him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal. My first Harrow verses (that is, English, as exercises), a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Æschylus, were received by him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy. Peel, the orator and statesman (‘that was, or is, or is to be’), was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove (a public-school phrase). We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst us all, masters and scholars—and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never; and in school, he always knew his lesson, and I rarely,—but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c. &c. I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing. The prodigy of our school-days was George Sinclair (son of Sir John); he made exercises for half the school (literally), verses at will, and themes without it. * * * He was a friend of mine, and in the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise,—a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others, when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise;—or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me from school, still. Clayton was another school-monster of learning, and talent, and hope; but what has become of him I do not know. He was certainly a genius. My school-friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent), but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare begun one of the earliest and lasted longest—being only interrupted by distance—that I know of. I never hear the word ‘Clare’ without a beating of the heart even now, and I write it with the feelings of 1803-4-5 ad infinitum.’ * * *

“The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who would never learn any thing; and, as far as regarded his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not ill founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsily interlined translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English signification scrawled under them,—showing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarized with their meaning to trust himself without this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find νεοι, young—σομασιν, bodies—ανϑζωποις τοις αγαϑοις good men, &c. &c.—and even in the volumes of Greek Plays, which he presented to the library on his departure, we observe, among other instances, the common word χρυσος provided with its English representative in the margin. But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted*, in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge, which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes, with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study which he caught in this way gave to a mind like his an impulse forwards, which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to startle belief,—comprising, as it does, a range and variety of study, which might make much older “helluones librorum” hide their heads. * * *

“To a youth like Byron, abounding with the most passionate feelings, and finding sympathy with only the ruder parts of his nature at home, the little world of school afforded a vent for his affections, which was sure to call them forth in their most ardent form. Accordingly, the friendships which he contracted both at school and college were little less than what he himself describes them, ‘passions.’ The want he felt at home of those kindred dispositions, which greeted him among ‘Ida’s social band,’ is thus strongly described in one of his early poems:†—

‘Is there no cause beyond the common claim, Endear’d to all in childhood’s very name? Ah! sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, Which whispers, friendship will be doubly dear To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, And seek abroad the love denied at home; Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee, A home, a world, a paradise to me.’

This early volume, indeed, abounds with the most affectionate tributes to his school-fellows. Even his expostulations to one of them, who had given him some cause for complaint, are thus tenderly conveyed:—

‘You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, If danger demanded, were wholly your own; You knew me unalter’d by years or by distance, Devoted to love and to friendship alone.

‘You knew—but away with the vain retrospection, The bond of affection no longer endures. Too late you may droop o’er the fond recollection, And sigh for the friend who was formerly yours.’

The following description of what he felt after leaving Harrow, when he encountered in the world any of his old schoolfellows, falls far short of the scene which actually occurred but

* “For the display of his declamatory powers, on the speech-days, be selected always the most vehement passages,—such as the speech of Zanga over the body of Alonzo, and Lear’s address to the storm. On one of these public occasions, when it was arranged that he should take the pert of Drances, and young Peel that of Turnus, Lord Byron suddenly changed his mind, and preferred the speech of Latinus,—fearing, it was supposed, some ridicule from the inappropriate taunt of Turnus, ‘Ventosâ in linguâ, pedibusque fugacibus istis.’” † “Even previously to any of these school friendships, he had formed the mine sort of romantic attachment to a boy of his own age, the son of one of his tenants at Newstead; and there are two or three of his most juvenile poems, in which he dwells no less upon the inequality than the warmth of this friendship. Thus;— ‘Let Folly smile, to view the names Of thee and me in friendship twined; Yet Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with Vice combined. ‘And though unequal is thy fate, Since title deck’d my higher birth, Yet envy not this gaudy state, Thine is the pride of modest worth. ‘Our souls at least congenial meet, Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace; Our intercourse is not less sweet Since worth of rank supplies the place. November, 1820.’”

JOURNAL OF THE BELLES LETTRES.

37

a few years before his death, in Italy,—when, on meeting with his friend, Lord Clare, after a long separation, he was affected almost to tears by the recollections which rushed on him.

—‘If chance some well remember’d face, Some old companion of my early race, Advance to claim his friend with honest joy, My eyes, my heart proclaim’d me still a boy; The glittering scene, the fluttering groups around, Were all forgotten when my friend was found.’”

Of his parting with Miss Chaworth (1805)* we have also some early poetical records.

“With the summer holidays ended this dream of his youth. He saw Miss Chaworth once more in the succeeding year, and took his last farewell of her (as he himself used to relate) on that hill near Annesley† which, in his poem of ‘the Dream,’ he describes so happily as ‘crowned with a peculiar diadem.’ No one, he declared, could have told how much he felt—for his countenance was calm and his feelings restrained. ‘The next time I see you,’ said he, in parting with her, ‘I suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth;‡ and her answer was, ‘I hope so.’ It was before this interview that he wrote, with a pencil, in a volume of Madame de Maintenon’s letters belonging to her, the following verses, which have never, I believe, before been published:

“Oh Memory, torture me no more, The present’s all o’ercast; My hopes of future bliss are o’er, In mercy veil the past. Why bring those images to view I henceforth must resign? Ah! why those happy hours renew, That never can be mine? Past pleasure doubles present pain, To sorrow adds regret, Regret and hope are both in vain, I ask but to—forget.”

In the following year, 1805, Miss Chaworth was married to his successful rival, Mr. John Musters; and a person who was present when the first intelligence of the event was communicated to him, thus describes the manner in which he received it.—‘I was present when he first heard of the marriage. His mother said, ‘Byron, I have some news for you.’—‘Well, what is it?’—‘Take out your handkerchief first, for you will want Nonsense!’—‘Take out your handkerchief, I say.’ He did so, to humour her. ‘Miss Chaworth is married.’ An expression, very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket, saying, with an affected air of coldness and nonchalance, ‘Is that all?’—‘Why, I expected you would have been plunged in grief!’—He made no reply, and soon began to talk about something else.’”

“Whether the verses (says the author) I am now about to give are, in any degree, founded on fact, I have no accurate means of determining. Fond as he was of recording every particular of his youth, such an event, or rather era, as is here commemorated, would have been, of all others, the least likely to pass unmentioned by him;—and yet neither in conversation nor in any of his writings do I remember even an allusion to it.‖ On the other hand, so entirely was all that he wrote,—making allowance for the embellishments of fancy,—the transcript of his actual life and feelings, that it is not easy to suppose a poem, so full of natural tenderness, to have been indebted for its origin to imagination alone.

‘To my Son. Those flaxen locks, those eyes of blue, Bright as thy mother’s in their hue; Those rosy lips, whose dimples play And smile to steal the heart away, Recall a scene of former joy, And touch thy father’s heart, my Boy!

And thou canst lisp a father’s name— Ah, William, were thine own the same, No self-reproach—but, let me cease My care for thee shall purchase peace; Thy mother’s shade shall smile in joy, And pardon all the past, my Boy!

Her lowly grave the turf has prest, And thou best known a stranger’s breast. Derision sneers upon thy birth, And yields thee scarce a name on earth; Yet shall not these one hope destroy,— A Fathers heart is thine, my Boy!

Why, let the world unfeeling frown, Must I fond Nature’s claim disown? Ah, no—though moralists reprove, I hail thee, dearest child of love, Fair cherub, pledge of youth and joy— A Father guards thy birth, my Boy!

Oh, ’twill be sweet in thee to trace, Ere age has wrinkled o’er my face, Ere half my glass of life is run, At once a brother and a son; And all my wane of years employ In justice done to thee, my Boy!

Although so young thy heedless sire, Youth will not damp parental fire; And, wert thou still less dear to me, While Helen’s form revives in thee, The breast, which beat to former joy, Will ne’er desert its pledge, my Boy! ‘B——, 1807.’‖‖

But the most remarkable of these poems is one of a date prior to any I have given, being written in December 1800, when he was not yet nineteen years old. It contains, as will be seen, his religious creed at that period, and shews how early the struggle between natural piety and doubt began in his mind.

“The Prayer of Nature. “Father of Light! great God of Heaven! Hear’st thou the accents of despair? Can guilt like man’s be e’er forgiven? Can vice atone for crimes by prayer? Father of Light, on thee I call! Thou see’st my soul is dark within; Thou who must mark the sparrow’s fall, Avert from me the death of sin. No shrine I seek, to sects unknown, Oh point to me the path of truth! Thy dread omnipotence I own, Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth. Let bigots rear a gloomy fane, Let superstition hail the pile, Let priests, to spread their sable reign, With tales of mystic rites beguile. Shall man confine his Maker’s sway To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? Thy temple is the face of day; Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne. Shall man condemn his race to hell Unless they bend in pompous form; Tell us that all, for one who fell, Must perish in the mingling storm? Shall each pretend to reach the skies, Yet doom his brother to expire, Whose soul a different hope supplies, Or doctrines less severe inspire? Shall these, by creeds they can’t expound, Prepare a fancied bliss or woe? Shall reptiles, groveling on the ground, Their great Creator’s purpose know? Shall those, who live for self alone, Whose years float on in daily crime— Shall they by Faith for guilt atone, And live beyond the bounds of Time? Father! no prophet’s laws I seek,— Thy laws in Nature’s works appear;— I own myself corrupt and weak, Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear! Then, who canst guide the wandering star Through trackless realms of Æther’s space; Who calm’st the elemental war, Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:— Thou, who in wisdom placed me here, Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence, Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere, Extend to me thy wide defence. To Thee, my God, to Thee I call! Whatever weal or woe betide, By thy command I rise or fall, In thy protection I confide. If, when this dust to dust restored, My soul shall float on airy wing, How shall thy glorious name adored Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

* Of the formation of this attachment, Mr. Moore says: “To the family of Miss Chaworth, who resided at Annesley, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newstead, he had been made known, some time before, in London, and now renewed his acquaintance with them. The young heiress herself combined with the many worldly advantages that encircled her, much personal beauty, and a disposition the most amiable and attaching. Though already fully alive to her charms, it was at the period of which we are speaking that the young poet, who was then in his sixteenth year, while the object of his adoration was about two years older, seems to have drunk deepest of that fascination whose effects were to be so lasting;—six short summer weeks which he now passed in her company being sufficient to lay the foundation of a feeling for all life. He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths,—that he fancied ‘they had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from their frames at night to haunt him.’ At length, one evening, he said gravely to Miss Chaworth and her cousin, ‘In going home last night I saw a bogle;’—which Scotch term being wholly unintelligible to the young ladies, he explained that he had seen a ghost, and would not therefore return to Newstead that evening. From this time, he always slept at Annesley during the remainder of his visit, which was interrupted only by a short excursion to Matlock and Castleton, in which he had the happiness of accompanying Miss Chaworth and her party, and of which the following interesting notice appears in one of his memorandum-books:— ‘When I was fifteen years of age, it happened that, in a cavern in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could lie down), a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who wades at the sterns stooping all the time. The companion of my transit was M. A. C., with whom I had been long in love and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well. We were a party, a Mr. W., two Miss W.s, Mr. and Mrs. Cl—ke, Miss R., and my M. A. C. Alas! why do I say my? Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers, it would have joined lands broad and rich, it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder), and—and—and—what has been the result?’” † “Among the unpublished verses of his in my possession I find the following fragment written not long after this period: Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren, Where my thoughtless childhood stray’d, How the northern tempests, warring, Howl above thy tufted shade! “Now no more, the hours beguiling, Former favourite haunts I see; Now no more my Mary smiling Makes ye seem a Heaven to me.” ‡ The lady’s husband, for some time, took her family name. ‖ “The only circumstance I know, that bears even remotely on the subject of this poem, is the following. About a year or two before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as I have been told by a person, to whom Mrs. Byron herself communicated the circumstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself after his death in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord Byron was the father of her child. This, he positively assured his mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the child belonged to Curson, it was his wish that it should be brought up with all possible care, and he therefore entreated that his mother would have the kindness to take charge of it. Though such a request might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper more mild than Mrs. Byron’s, she notwithstanding answered her son in the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired. Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus spared the being a tax on the good-nature of any body.”

‖‖ “In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), ‘by affixing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own compositions to the notice of posterity.’ The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never as far as I know, appeared in print:— ‘Epitaph on John Adams, of Southwell, a Carrier, who died of drunkenness. John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, A Carrier, who carried his can to his mouth well; He carried so much, and he carried so fast, He could carry no more—so was carried at last; For, the liquor he drank, being too much for one, He could not carry off,—so he’s now carri-on. “B——, Sept. 1807.”

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THE LITERARY GAZETTE, AND

But, if this fleeting spirit share With clay the grave’s eternal bed, While life yet throbs I raise my prayer, Though doom’d no more to quit the dead. To Thee I breathe my humble strain, Grateful for all thy mercies past, And hope, my God, to thee again This erring life may fly at last.’

In another of these poems, which extends to about a hundred lines, and which he wrote under the melancholy impression that he should soon die, we find him concluding with a prayer in somewhat the same spirit. After bidding adieu to all the favourite scenes of his youth,* he thus continues,—

‘Forget this world, my restless sprite, Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heav’n: There must thou soon direct thy flight, If errors are forgiven. To bigots and to sects unknown, Bow down beneath th’ Almighty’s Throne;— To him address thy trembling prayer; He, who is merciful and just, Will not reject a child of dust, Although his meanest care. Father of Light! to thee I call, My soul is dark within; Thou, who canst mark the sparrow fall, Avert the death of sin. Thou, who canst guide the wandering star, Who calm’st the elemental war, Whose mantle is yon boundless sky, My thoughts, my words, my crimes forgive; And, since I soon must cease to live, Instruct me how to die.’

Into the discussion of Lord Byron’s early religious infidelity we cannot follow his biographer, who, we think, is rather harsh on this point, as the habit of Lord Byron to exaggerate his own faults might have suggested some modification of the charge; but must indeed conclude, which, for the sake of variety, we do with an account of his departure from England to travel: it is given in a letter to Mr. Hodgson.

“‘My dear Hodgson,—Before this reaches you, Hobhouse, two officers’ wives, three children, two waiting-maids, ditto subalterns for the troops, three Portuguese esquires and domestics, in all nineteen souls, will have sailed in the Lisbon packet, with the noble Captain Kidd, a gallant commander as ever smuggled an anker of right Nantz. We are going to Lisbon first, because the Malta packet has sailed, d’ye see?—from Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, and ‘all that,’ as Orator Henley said, when he put the Church, and ‘all that,’ in danger. This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St. Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management at six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite side of the Channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are suspected of having already taken St. Maws by a coup de main. The town contains many quakers and salt-fish—the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country—the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart’s tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor. * * * Hodgson! remember me to the Drury, and remember me to yourself, when drunk:—I am not worth a sober thought. Look to my Satire at Cawthorne’s, Cockspur-street. * * * I don’t know when I can write again, because it depends on that experienced navigator, Captain Kidd, and the ‘stormy winds that (don’t) blow’ at this season. I leave England without regret—I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict, sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab;—and thus ends my first chapter. Adieu. Yours, &c.’

“In this letter the following lively verses were enclosed:

‘Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809. ‘Huzza, Hodgson! we are going; Our embargo’s off at last; Favourable breezes blowing, Bend the canvas o’er the mast. From aloft the signal’s streaming— Hark! the farewell-gun is fired; Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time’s expired. There’s a rascal, Come to task all Prying from the Custom-house! Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking; Not a corner for a mouse ’Scapes unsearched amid the racket, Ere we sail on board The Packet!’

Now our boatmen quit their mooring, And all hands must ply the oar; Baggage from the quay is lowering; We’re impatient push from shore. “Have a care! that case holds liquor.”— “Stop the boat! I’m sick oh, Lord!”— “Sick, Ma’am? damme! you’ll be sicker Ere you’ve been an hour on board.” Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; Here entangling, All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax. Such the general noise and racket, Ere we reach The Lisbon Packet!

Now we’ve reached her! Lo! the captain, Gallant Kidd, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. “Heyday! call you that a cabin? Why, ’tis hardly three feet square— Not enough to stow Queen Mab in! Who the deuce can harbour there?”— “Who, Sir? plenty; Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill.”— “Did they? Jesus! How you squeeze us!— Would to God they did so still! Then I’d ’scape the heat and racket Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet!

Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? Stretched along the deck like logs! Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you! Here’s a rope’s-end for the dogs. Hobhouse, muttering fearful curses, As the hatchway down he rolls; Now his breakfast, now his verses, Vomits forth, and damns our souls. Here’s a stanza On Braganza. “Help!” “A couplet?” “No, a cup Of warm water.”— “What’s the matter?”— “Zounds! my liver’s coming up: I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet!”

Now at length we’re off for Turkey— Lord knows when we may come back; Breezes foul, and tempests murky, May unship us in a crack: But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is; Then laugh on, as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we’re quaffing, Let’s have laughing; Who the devil cares for more? Some good wine! and who would lack it, E’en on board The Lisbon Packet?’

On the 2d of July the packet sailed from Falmouth, and, after a favourable passage of four days and a half, the voyagers reached Lisbon, and took up their abode in that city.”

* “Annesley is, of course, not forgotten among the number:— ‘And shall I here forget the scene, Still nearest to my breast? Rocks rise and rivers roll between The rural spot which passion blest; Yet, Mary, all thy beauties seem Fresh as in Love’s bewitching dream,’ &c. &c.”