The Life of Lord Byron
Preface
THE
LIFE
OF
LORD BYRON:
BY JOHN GALT, ESQ.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1830.
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PREFACE.
The letters and journals of Lord Byron,
with the interwoven notes of
Mr. Moore, should have
superseded the utility of writing any other account of that extraordinary man. The
compilation has, however, not proved satisfactory, and the consequence, almost of
necessity, is, that many other biographical portraits of the noble poet may yet be
expected; but will they materially alter the general effect of Mr.
Moore’s work? I think not; and have accordingly confined myself, as
much as practicable, consistent with the end in view, to an outline of his Lordship’s
intellectual features—a substratum only of the general mass of his character.
If
Mr. Moore has evinced too
eager an anxiety to set out the best qualities of his friend to the brightest advantage, it
ought to be recollected that no less was expected of him. The spirit of the times ran
strong against Lord Byron, as a man; and it was natural, that
Mr. Moore should attempt to stem the tide. I respect the
generosity with which he has executed his task. I think that he has made no striking
misre-
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presentation; I even discern but little exaggeration,
although he has amiably chosen to paint only the sunny side: the limning is correct; but
the likeness is too radiant and conciliatory.
There is one point with respect to the subsequent pages, on which I
think it unnecessary to offer any explanation—the separation of Lord and
Lady Byron. I have avoided, as much as I well could, every
thing like the expression of an opinion on the subject.
Mr.
Moore has done all in his power to excuse his Lordship; and Lady
Byron has protested against the correctness of his statement, without
however assigning any reason for her own conduct, calculated to satisfy the public, who
have been too indecorously, I conceive, made parties to the question.
But I should explain that in omitting to notice the rancour with which
Lord Byron was pursued by
Dr.
Southey, I have always considered his Lordship as the first aggressor. The
affair is therefore properly comprehended in the general observations respecting the
enemies whom the satire of
English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers provoked. I may add further, in explanation, that I did not conceive
any particular examination was required of his Lordship’s minor poems, nor of his
part in the controversy concerning the poetical genius of
Pope.
Considering how much the conduct of Lord Byron has
been in question, perhaps I ought to state, that I never stood on such a footing with his
Lordship as to
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inspire me with any sentiment likely to bias my
judgment. I am indebted to him for no other favours than those which a well-bred person of
rank bestows in the interchange of civility on a man who is of none, and that I do not
undervalue the courtesy with which he ever treated me, will probably be apparent. I am
gratified with the recollection of having known a person so celebrated, and I believe
myself incapable of intentional injustice. I can only regret the impression he made upon
me, if it shall be thought I have spoken of him with prejudice.
It will be seen by a note, relative to a circumstance which took place
in Lord Byron’s conduct towards the
Countess Guiccioli, that
Mr.
Hobhouse has enabled me to give two versions of an affair not regarded by
some of that lady’s relations as having been marked by generosity; but I could not
expunge from the text what I had stated, having no reason to doubt the authenticity of my
information. The reader is enabled to form his own opinion on the subject.
I cannot conclude without offering my best acknowledgements to the
learned and ingenious
Mr. Nicolas, for the curious
genealogical fact of a baton sinister being in the escutcheon of the Byrons of Newstead.
Lord Byron, in his pride of birth, does not appear to have been
aware of this stain.
N. B. Since this work was completed, a
small pamphlet, judiciously suppressed, has been
placed in
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my hands, dated from the Chateau de Blonai, 20th August,
1825, in which
Mr. Medwin vindicates the correctness
of those statements in his conversations with Lord Byron, which
Mr. Hobhouse had impugned in
The Westminster Review. Had I seen it before expressing
my opinion of Mr. Medwin’s publication, I am not sure it would
have in any degree affected that opinion, which was formed without reference to the errors
imputed by Mr. Hobhouse.
London, 12th August, 1830.
Leigh Hunt,
Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (London: Henry Colburn, 1828)
An article was
written in “The Westminster
Review” (Medwin says
by Mr. Hobhouse) to show that the Conversations were altogether unworthy of
credit. There are doubtless many inaccuracies in the latter; but the spirit remains
undoubted; and the author of the criticism was only vexed, that such was the fact. He
assumes, that Lord Byron could not have made this or that statement to
Captain Medwin, because the statement was erroneous or untrue; but
an anonymous author has no right to be believed in preference to one who speaks in his own
name: there is nothing to show that Mr. Hobhouse might not have been
as mistaken about a date or an epigram as Mr. Medwin; and when we find
him giving us his own version of a fact, and Mr. Medwin asserting that
Lord Byron gave him another, the only impression left upon the
mind of any body who knew his Lordship is, that the fault most probably lay in the loose
corners of the noble Poet’s vivacity. Such is the impression made upon the author of
an unpublished Letter to Mr.
Hobhouse, which has been shown me in print; and he had a right to it. The
reviewer, to my knowledge, is mistaken upon some points, as well as the person he reviews.
The assumption, that nobody can know any thing about Lord Byron but
two or three persons who were conversant with him for a certain space of time, and whom he
spoke of with as little ceremony, and would hardly treat with more confidence than he did a
hundred others, is ludicrous; and can only end, as the criticism has done, in doing no good
either to him or them. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
“Dear Sir;—Amongst the
agreeable things which you say of me in your life of Lord Byron, you conjecture that I
‘condemned’
Childe Harold
previously to its publication. There is not the slightest foundation for this
supposition—nor is it true as you state, ‘that I was the only person
who had seen the poem in manuscript, as I was with Lord
Byron whilst he was writing it.’ I had left
Lord Byron before he had finished the two cantos, and,
excepting a few fragments, I had never seen them until they were printed. My own
persuasion is, that the story told in Dallas’s Recollections of some
person, name unknown, having dissuaded Lord Byron from
publishing Childe Harold, is a
mere fabrication, for it is at complete variance with all Lord
Byron himself told me on the subject. At any rate, I was not that
person; if I had been, it is not very likely that the poem which I had endeavoured
to stifle in its birth, should, in its complete, or, as Lord
Byron says, in its ‘concluded state,’ be dedicated to
me. I must, therefore, request you will take the earliest opportunity of relieving
me from this imputation, which, so far as a man can be written down by any other
author than himself, cannot fail to produce a very prejudicial effect, and to give
me more uneasiness than I think it can be your wish to inflict on any man who has
never given you provocation or excuse for injustice. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I am glad to find my college
stories administered relief to your nerves, when we were together in the Malta
packet some one and twenty years ago; and I am not sorry that my wearing a red
coat at Cagliari, and cutting my finger in the quarries of Pentelicus, should
have furnished materials for your present volume; but to repay me for having
supplied these timely episodes, as well as for your copious extracts from my
travels in Albania, and also for inserting my note about Madame Guiccioli without my leave, you must
positively cancel the passage respecting Childe Harold
in page 161 of your little volume. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I wonder that even common policy did not induce you to be
more cautious in making statements which might be so easily disproved, and
which have, indeed, been already incontrovertibly refuted. The very
conversation, which you have judiciously selected from Medwin, as one of those parts of his trumpery book to the truth of which you
can speak, I know to be a lie; for I never went the tour of the lake of Geneva
with Lord Byron. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
You tell me that your wish has
been to give only an outline of his intellectual character. I am at a loss to
understand how your gossip about him and me, and the silly anecdotes you have
copied from very discreditable authorities, can be said to be fairly comprised
in such an outline. But your plan ought certainly to have compelled you to make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with his poetry, and to quote him just as he
wrote. Nevertheless, you have misrepresented him at least nine times in the ten
stanzas of that poem which you call the last, and which was not the last, he
ever wrote. Oh, for shame! stick to your acknowledged fictions—there you
are safe—you may deal with Leddy
Grippy and Laurie Todd as
you please, but not with those who have really lived, or who are still
alive. . . .
[John Wilson et. al.],
“Noctes Ambrosianae XVII” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Vol. 16
No. 94 (November 1824)
And there was another funny thing o’ his, till a queer looking lad, one
Mr. Skeffington, that wrote a tragedy, that was called
“The Mysterious Bride,” the whilk
thing made the Times newspaper for once witty—for it
said no more o’t, than just “Last night a play called The Mysterious
Bride, by the Honorable Mr. Skeffington, was performed at Drury Lane.
The piece was damned.” Weel, ye see it happened that there was a masquerade some nights after,
and Mr. Cam Hobhouse gaed till’t in the disguise
o’ a Spanish nun, that had been ravished by the French army— . . .
Teresa Guiccioli (1800-1873)
Byron's lover, who in 1818 married Alessandro Guiccioli. She composed a memoir of Byron,
Lord Byron,
Jugé par les Témoines de sa Vie (1868).
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
Thomas Medwin (1788-1869)
Lieutenant of dragoons who was with Byron and Shelley at Pisa; the author of
Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) and
The Life of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (1847).
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1799-1848)
English antiquary and editor; he contributed extensively to the
Gentleman's Magazine and co-edited the
Retrospective
Review with Henry Southern.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
Thomas Medwin (1788-1869)
Hobhouse Pamphlet. (London: Colburn, 1825). Medwin's response to Hobhouse's review of his
Conversations was
printed by Henry Colburn and then suppressed. Although it was seen by Leigh Hunt and John
Galt, no copy appears to have survived.
