Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE

WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

APRIL, 1830.

ART. I.-Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore. 2 Vols. 4to. Vol. I. London. 1830. Murray, THIS first volume takes us at some disadvantage. Respice

finem is especially applicable to biography. Much of the pleasure, as well as of the utility, arising from works of this description, consists in the study of character: and in this point of view, the last act of the drama of life often throws light on the first. Few men are so ingenuous as to enable their most intimate friends to discriminate very accurately the artificial from the real in their characters: we mean by the artificial, the assumed semblance, which, on an adequate occasion, would be thrown aside as easily as a mask and domino, as easily as the character of priest was thrown aside in the French Revolution by many of the dignified persons to whom it ceased to bring revenue. Extreme cases of this artificial character are to be found in the stolidity of the elder Brutus, in the madness of Edgar, and the folly of Leon. In a minor degree, this assumption of an unreal exterior exists more or less in all men few have been so fortunate in this world's transactions, as never to see an old friend with a new face: it is time alone, (ò πaVTÉAεyxos xoóvos, as Sophocles most happily says,) that shews whether the young popularity-carping senator, is a true Patriot, or a Whig, acting patriotism; whether the young soldier of a republic is, at heart, a Napoleon or a Washington. By the real in character, we mean those qualities, moral and intellectual, which remain unchanged through the entire course of "man's maturer years;" and which the collision of events, however adVOL. XII.-Westminster Review.

T

verse, only serves to develope and confirm. For examples of these qualities in their worst and best forms, we need look no further than, on the one hand, to the love of excitement in gamblers and drunkards, whom it conducts to ruin and the grave and on the other, to the love of country and mankind in the characters of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and their principal coadjutors in the North American Revolution.

Solon bade Croesus look to the end of life, before he could pronounce on individual happiness: it is not less necessary to do so before pronouncing a final judgment on individual character. The principal attraction of this work is the light which it has been expected to throw on the character of Lord Byron. So far, it has, to us at least, thrown little new light upon it, and much of that little by no means calculated to render any essential service to his memory.

Lord Byron was always "himself the great sublime he drew." Whatever figures filled up the middle and back ground of his pictures, the fore-ground was invariably consecrated to his own. As somebody, on a different occasion, said of Mr. Coleridge, "he made the public his confidant:" but his confidences were only halfconfidences, more calculated to stimulate than to satisfy curiosity. He gave full vent to his feelings: but he hinted, rather than communicated, the circumstances of their origin: and he mixed up in his hints shadowy self-accusations of imaginary crimes, on which, of course, the liberal public put the worst possible construction. Indeed, both in his writings and conversation he dealt, in his latter years especially, very largely in mystification ; and said many things which have brought his faithful reminiscents into scrapes, by making them report, what others, knowing he could not have believed, think he never could have asserted which are very different matters. His confidences to Captain Medwin and Mr. Leigh Hunt, were many of them of this mystificatory class. They were of that sort of confidences which are usually reposed in the butt of an Italian opera buffa; where the words " In confidenza" invariably signify, that there is not a word of truth in any thing the party is going to say. Lord Byron was early distinguished by a scrupulous regard to truth but the attrition of the world blunts the fine edge of veracity, even in the most ingenuous dispositions and making the most liberal allowance for misapprehension and misrepresentation, we still think it impossible to read Medwin's and Hunt's reminiscences, without perceiving that those two worthy gentlemen had been very egregiously mystified. Lord Byron talked to them in the same spirit in which he wrote much of his badinage in Don Juan: such for instance as the passage:

:

:

'I've bribed my grandmother's review, the British.
I sent it in a letter to the editor,

Who thanked me duly by return of post :

I'm for a handsome article his creditor, &c.'

The editor took this as a serious charge, and most pathetically implored Lord Byron, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to disavow it. He was handsomely laughed at for his pains : for nobody believed the charge, or regarded it as having been seriously made.

Mr. Moore bears testimony to Lord Byron's disposition in this way, He says of a letter to Mr. Dallas:

'In addition to the temptation, never easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well-meaning, was evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify. The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous quacks, whom his celebrity and sociability drew around him."-p. 135.

It must be evident that a person, who would write in this vein, would also talk in it, especially to persons whom he did not much respect. We shall not enter into the casuistry of the question, nor endeavour to decide how far this same weapon of mystification may be justifiably employed, either for the purpose of playing with self-conceited credulity, or for that of parrying or misleading impertinent curiosity. Great men have used it, and great men have justified it:

[ocr errors]

Quantunque il simular sia le più volte
Ripreso, e dia di mala mente indici,

Si trova pur' in molte cose e molte

Aver fatti evidenti benefici,

E danni, e biasmi, e morti aver già tolte,
Che non conversiam sempre con gli amici,
In questa, assai più oscura, che serena,
Vita mortal, tutta d'invidia piena.'*

For ourselves, we hope we shall never adopt, we certainly shall not justify, the practice. We are for the maxim of the old British bards: "The Truth against the World." But if there be any one case of human life, in which this practice is justifiable, it is in the case of an individual living out of society, and much talked of in it, and haunted in his retirement by varieties. of the small Boswell or eavesdropping genus, who, as a very

*Ariosto: Canto IV.

little penetration must shew him, would take the first opportunity of selling his confidences to the public, if he should happen to drop any thing for which the prurient appetite of the reading rabble would present a profitable market. Some light will be thrown on this point by Mr. Hunt's naïve observation, that the "natural Byron" was never seen but when he was half-tipsy, and that the said Byron was particularly careful not to get tipsy in Mr. Hunt's company. The "artificial Byron" was all mockery and despair; and allowed himself to be regularly set down, half a dozen times a day, by the repartees of Mr. Hunt, and Mrs. Hunt, and all the little Master Hunts. In short, “Man but a rush against Othello's breast, And he retired.”*

* The following extracts from Mr. Hunt's publication will substantiate what we have said in the text.

"Lord Byron, who was as acute as a woman in those respects, very speedily discerned that he did not stand very high in her (Mrs. Hunt's) good graces; and accordingly he set her down to a very humble rank in his own. As I oftener went to his part of the house, than he came to mine, he seldom saw her; and when he did, the conversation was awkward on his side, and provokingly self-possessed on her's. He said to her one day, "What do you think, Mrs. Hunt? Trelawney has been speaking against my morals! What do you think of that?"-"It is the first time," said Mrs. Hunt, "I ever heard of them." This, which would have set a man of address upon his wit, completely dashed and reduced him to silence. But her greatest offence was in some thing which I had occasion to tell him. He was very bitter one day upon some friends of mine, criticising even their personal appearance, and that in no good taste. At the same time, he was affecting to be very pleasant and good-humoured, and without any "offence in the world." All this provoked me to mortify him, and I asked if he knew what Mrs. Hunt had said one day to the Shelleys, of his picture by Harlowe? (It is the fastidious, scornful portrait of him, affectedly looking down.) He said he did not, and was curious to know. An engraving of it, I told him, was shown her, and her opinion asked; upon which she observed, that "it resembled a great school-boy, who had a plain bun given him, instead of a plum-one." I did not add, that our friends shook with laughter at this idea of the noble original, because it was "so like him." He looked as black as possible, and never again criticised the personal appearance of those whom I regarded. It was on accounts like these, that he talked of Mrs. Hunt as being "no great things." Myself, because I did not take all his worldly common-places for granted, nor enter into the merits of his bad jokes on women, he represented as a proser;" and the children, than whom I will venture to say it was impossible to have quieter or more respectable in the house, or any that came less in his way, le pronounced to be "impracticable." But that was the reason. I very soon found that it was desirable to keep them out of his way; and although this was done in the easiest and most natural manner, and was altogether such a measure as a person of less jealousy might have regarded as a consideration for his quiet, he resented it, and could not help venting his spleen in talking of them. The worst of it was, that when they did come in his way, they were nothing daunted. They had lived in a natural, not

66

We did not review Mr. Hunt's publication. The Quarterly Review did it ample justice; and though that Review left unsaid some things which we should have said, and said some things

an artificial state of intercourse, and were equally sprightly, respectful, and self-possessed. My eldest boy surprised him with his address, never losing his singleness of manner, nor exhibiting pretensions of which he was too young to know any thing, yet giving him his title at due intervals, and appearing, in fact, as if he had always lived in the world instead of out of it. This put him out of his reckoning. To the second, who was more struck with his reputation, and had a vivacity of temperament that rendered such lessons dangerous, he said, one day, that he must take care how he got notions in his head about truth and sincerity, for they would hinder him getting on in the world. This, doubtless, was rather intended to vent a spleen of his own, than to modify the opinions of the child; but the peril was not the less, and I had warning given me that he could say worse things when I was not present. Thus the children became "impracticable ;" and, luckily, they remained so."-pp. 27, 28.

"It is a credit to my noble acquaintance, that he was by far the pleasantest when he had got wine in his head. The only time I'invited myself to dine with him, I told him I did it on that account, and that I meant to push the bottle so, that he should intoxicate me with his good company. He said he would have a set-to; but he never did it. I believe he was afraid. It was a little before he left Italy; and there was a point in contest between us (not regarding myself) which he thought perhaps I should persuade him to give up.

"When in his cups, which was not often, nor immoderately, he was inclined to be tender; but not weakly so, nor lachrymose. I know not how it might have been with every body, but he paid me the compliment of being excited to his very best feelings; and when I rose late to go away, he would hold me down, and say with a look of entreaty, Not yet."

،،

"Then it was that I seemed to talk with the proper natural Byron, as he ought to have been; and there was not a sacrifice I could not have made to keep him in that temper, and see his friends love him, as much as the world admired. Next morning it was all gone. His intimacy with the worst part of mankind, had got him again in its chilling crust; and nothing remained, but to despair and joke.”—p. 68.

"With men I have seen him hold the most childish contests for superiority; so childish, that had it been possible for him to divest himself of a sense of his pretensions and public character, they would have exhibited something of the conciliating simplicity of Goldsmith. He would then lay imaginary wagers; and in a style which you would not have looked for in high life, thrust out his chin, and give knowing, self-estimating nods of the head, half-nod and half-shake, such as boys playing at chuck-farthing give when they say, "Come, I tell you what now." A fat dandy who came upon us at Genoa, and pretended to be younger than he was, and to wear his own hair, discomposed him for the day. He declaimed against him in so deploring a tone, and uttered the word "wig" so often, that my two eldest boys, who were in the next room, were obliged to stifle their laughter."-p. 77.

"The love of money, the pleasure of receiving it, even the gratitude he evinced when it was saved him, had not taught him the only virtue upon which lovers of money usually found their claims to a good construction : he did not like paying a debt, and would undergo pestering and pursuit to avoid it. "But what," cries the reader, "becomes then of the stories of

« PreviousContinue »