swim five at a stretch, as at Venice in 1818, or at least I could do, and have done it once." (6) VII. LORD BYRON'S FAME. Thus much for the body; as to the mind, throughout life it was actuated by three idols-fame, love, liberty. Whilst still a youth he gave forth his feelings in verse (1). The fire in the cavern of Etna concealed At length, in a volume terrific revealed, No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress. Oh! thus, the desire in my bosom for fame Bids me live but to hope for Posterity's praise; Could I soar, with the Phoenix, on pinions of flame, In the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, What censure, what danger, what woe I would brave; How many events were yet to harass this existence, and dispel so many illusions before he could write as follows, with sentiments so opposite (2). What is the end of fame, 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper; Some liken it to climbing up a hill Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. Don Juan, Canto 1, VIII. BYRON'S FIRST LOVE. Love in him, like every other passion, was premature. He had not completed eight years when he became enamoured of Mary Duff. At about sixteen, the poet, after having been in love fifty times, recorded in impassioned verse the charms of Mary, her face, her brown dark hair, her hazel eyes, her very dress (1). Such precocious feelings will not surprise the countrymen of Dante and of Canova, of whom the former at nine became amorous of Beatrice, who was to lead him to Paradise (2), whilst the latter remembered a love passion at five years old (). Alfieri anticipated the age of love, and describes its effects, which few understand and still fewer experience, but to how very few in all human arts is it perinitted to leave behind the common crowd (4). Afterwards, at twelve, his first verses were inspired by Miss Parker, his cousin, "one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings." "She looked," he wrote (5), "as if she had been made out of a rainbow-all beauty and peace" ("). She died about a year after (7). For three years nearly he lived fond to distraction of Mary Chaworth; it made him angry to see her dancing with another; he was in ecstasies when she touched the strings of her harp. But she was to wed another, and to him was she married (1). Thus began the series of Byron's amours, which soon sadly persuaded him that love had nothing precious about it but its wings; and thus, through a host of transient passions, affording him no real happiness, we shall hereafter see him attached to an object more worthy of him. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,) Moore's Life, vol. 1, 2, pp. 17, 35, &c., &c. IX. TRAVELS IN SPAIN, ETC., ETC. Liberty was his dream throughout his life's pilgrimage, from the day when he roved over the hills of Annesley, (1) a giddy youth, until its final termination at Missolonghi. In pursuit of this, leaving the shores of England with Hobhouse, whom he ever held his dearest friend, he sailed over the ocean and the Mediterranean, and traversed Spain and Portugal, then beheld Greece, a land whose beauty, if not whose liberty or glory, lives yet intact; hailed the savage heights of Albania, the dark rocks of Suli, the stormy summits of Pindus, amidst whose recesses, undisturbed by song, dwell the eagle and wild animals, and still more ferocious men. With tho "Albanian kirtled to his knee," "with shawl-girt sword and ornamented gun," he conversed, with the "crimsonscarfed men of Macedon," "the Delhi with his cap of terror and crooked glaive," "the lively, supple Greck," and "proud imperious Turk." There how great the diversity of mundane scenes and things within his ken; and the memorable field of Marathon is offered to him for ninety pounds sterling! Amid the groves, the fabled abode of nymphs, in the harmonious recesses where sang the muses, shall not the lyre of Byron again awake? Hark! What strain of melodious song is heard? Perchance the vocal harmony of the poets who, as in more joyous days, to the sound of lyres intone the praises of the Olympian conquerors, or of him who put to rout the Persian hosts! It is the harp of the English bard which pours forth the vigorous song of beauty and of valour. (2) Fair clime! where every season smiles (1) The residence of the Chaworths, and scene of passages in the Dream," one of his chefs d'œuvres. (8) The Giaour. X. CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. How long had it been declared that poetry had passed away, that the epic lyre had lost its sound! And, lo! amid the turmoil of Europe, disturbed by the restless genius of Napoleon, appeared a poem, at once an Iliad and an Odyssey, a poem which stands alone in our age, which might yet have furnished subjects for so many poems. Ancient poetry no longer lived. A stroke of imagination and a touch of style were ingredients enough for the day to form a poet. A poet resided at Court, was a member of the magistracy, owned houses and property, possessed friends and family; as other men he rose and slept, and, whilst luxuriously reclining, in dressing gown arrayed, before his fire, withdrew from the walls his disused lyre, and wrote an epic according to the rules of Aristotle-a vade mecum of the true sublime-imagining men, costumes, laws, countries, names, poi traying then the whole with the marvels of antiquated beliefs, nefther true nor even credible. The Eneid, a poem of Italian antiquity, was written under the smiling sky of Calabria, or at the Augustan Court, perfuming the monarch with the incense which impairs so much the vivid colouring of that divine poem. Arisoto wrote his verses often when seated at the table of the Duke, (1) "betwixt the latter and Lucrezia Borgia, or after kissing the Pope's feet, or whilst governing Garfagnana, (2), amid accusations and law pleadings. Little otherwise was composed the Henriade, (3). Telemachus was written through a translation (4). And Tasso, of whose naine the city of his birth is so justly proud, sought not the sacred scenes for truth or inspiration, or the hills and woods mindful of the muses of song famed in Helicon, "but thus, from a height above Ferrara, addressed his invocation: See ye these fields, these Campaniles, these streams, this people! Behold! there is my poem!" In juxtaposition with these regard Homer: limping along, step by step, all Greece he visited; he knew its every path, its smallest hill, of every course the stream he traced, from every part he gathered the dialogue, in his tongue to be immortalized; he suffers want for bread, and begs through the cities, afterwards to dispute the honour of his cradle. Behold the Homer of the Middle Ages, Dante, (1) exiled, condemned to die, who wields a patriot's arms, who, leaving all he cherished most, goes from land to land, experiencing how bitter is the bread of strangers. He reposes in a convent, asking peace from the Church, he seeks instruction in the fine Tuscan tongue, and, a traveller thro' all cities, in none reposes. Thus genius rises amidst difficulties, thus emerge the great whom then the world adores. And a poet such as this did Byron wish to be. Already all that in the belief of men and in fiction could inspiro a poet was lost; the destructive hand of the Revolution had torn away all the veils of Isis but the last, and that removed, a carcase was revealed; and a cry, which, under Tiberius, had already resounded over the seas, had announced the Gods are dead! Meantime, the exercise of thought, more active than ever, had become a passion, nay, a torment-the progress of knowledge, the daily discoveries, the more rapid events of history, more stupendous than the fancy could have imagined, demanded other poets and other hearers, a poetry inspired, effective, equal to the impulsion which portentous events had communicated to men's minds. No longer were desired descriptions at caprice, nor imaginary heroes, ideal, shadow-like, nor conventional discourses, but truth; the true, perfected in action, seen and felt. It had become necessary to penetrate the innermost recesses of man's mind, to reveal his passions, to lay bare his heart. This would Byron do. The age that had said to Cooper, "Tell me of the sea;" to Walter Scott, "Paint me Scotland;" said to Byron, "Speak to me of thyself. Reveal to me a mind above the crowd; be thou thyself thine own Achilles, thy own Godfrey; or when thou speakest not of thyself, relate to me what thou hast thyself seen.' Byron understood this, and gave himself to the study of man's destruction; of nature and art's decay; contemplated man contending no longer with giants or with gods but with his own passions, with anguish, with death. He (1) Dante was condemned, first, to confiscation of all his property; secondly, to be burned alive.-Ed. and Translator. : |