PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS MEMORY.

From among the tributes that have been offered, in prose and verse, and in almost every language of Europe, to his memory, I shall select two which appear to me worthy of peculiar notice, as being, one of them, so far as my limited scholarship will allow me to judge, — a simple and happy imitation of those laudatory inscriptions with which the Greece of other times honoured the tombs of her heroes; and the other as being the production of a pen, once engaged controversially against Byron, but not the less ready, as these affecting verses prove, to offer the homage of a manly sorrow and admiration at his grave.

"CHILDE HAROLD'S LAST PILGRIMAGE. " BY THE REV. W. L. BOWLES.

"SO ENDS CHILDE HAROLD HIS LAST PILGRIMAGE!Upon the shores of Greece he stood, and cried LIBERTY!' and those shores, from age to age Renown'd, and Sparta's woods and rocks replied 'Liberty !' But a Spectre, at his side,

Stood mocking ; - - and its dart, uplifting high, Smote him he sank to earth in life's fair pride; SPARTA! thy rocks then heard another cry,

And old Ilissus sigh'd-' Die, generous exile, die !'

"I will not ask sad Pity to deplore

His wayward errors, who thus early died;

Still less, CHILDe Harold, now thou art no more,
Will I say aught of genius misapplied;

Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride:
But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave,
Pluck the green laurel from Peneus' side,

And pray thy spirit may such quiet have,

That not one thought unkind be murmur'd o'er thy grave.

"SO HAROLD ENDs, in Greece, his pILGRIMAGE ! —
There fitly ending, — in that land renown'd,
Whose mighty genius lives in Glory's page, —

He, on the Muses' consecrated ground,
Sinking to rest, while his young brows are bound
With their unfading wreath !-To bands of mirth,
No more in TEMPE let the pipe resound!
HAROLD, I follow to thy place of birth

The slow hearse-and thy LAST sad PILGRIMAGE on earth.
"Slow moves the plumed hearse, the mourning train,-
I mark the sad procession with a sigh,
Silently passing to that village fane,

Where, HAROLD, thy forefathers mouldering lie; -
There sleeps THAT MOTHER, who with tearful eye,
Pondering the fortunes of thy early road,

Hung o'er the slumbers of thine infancy;
Her son, released from mortal labour's load,
Now comes to rest, with her, in the same still abode.
"Bursting Death's silence-could that mother speak-
(Speak when the earth was heap'd upon his head)
In thrilling, but with hollow accent weak,
She thus might give the welcome of the dead :-
'Here rest, my son, with me; - the dream is filed ;-
The motley mask and the great stir is o'er :
Welcome to me, and to this silent bed,
Where deep forgetfulness succeeds the roar
Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more.'”

By his Lordship's Will, a copy of which will be found in the Appendix, he bequeathed to his executors, in trust for the benefit of his sister, Mrs. Leigh, the monies arising from the sale of all his real estates at Rochdale and elsewhere, together with such part of his other property as was not settled upon Lady Byron and his daughter Ada, to be by Mrs. Leigh enjoyed, free from her husband's control, during her life, and, after her decease, to be inherited by her children.

CHAPTER LVII.

CONCLUSION.

WE have now followed to its close a life which, brief as was its span, may be said, perhaps, to have comprised within itself a

Nought can avail, save deeds of high emprise,
Our mortal being to immortalise.

Sweet child of song, thou sleepest !-ne'er again
Shall swell the notes of thy melodious strain:
Yet, with thy country wailing o'er thy urn,

Pallas, the Muse, Mars, Greece, and Freedom mourn."
H. H. JOY.

greater variety of those excitements and interest which spring out of the deep workings of passion and of intellect than any that the pen of biography has ever before commemorated. As there still remain among the papers of my friend some curious gleanings which, though in the abundance of our materials I have not hitherto found a place for them, are too valuable towards the illustration of his character to be lost, I shall here, in selecting them for the reader, avail myself of the opportunity of trespassing, for the last time, on his patience with a few general remarks.

It must have been observed, throughout these pages, and by some perhaps with disappointment, that into the character of Lord Byron, as a poet, there has been little, if any, critical examination; but that content with expressing generally the delight which, in common with all, I derive from his poetry, I have left the task of analysing the sources from which this delight springs to others. In thus evading, if it must be so considered, one of my duties as a biographer, I have been influenced no less by a sense of my own inaptitude for the office of critic than by recollecting with what assiduity, throughout the whole of the poet's career, every new rising of his genius was watched from the great observatories of Criticism, and the ever changing varieties of its course and splendour tracked out and recorded with a degree of skill and minuteness which has left but little for succeeding observers to discover. It is, moreover, into the character and conduct of Lord Byron, as a man, not distinct from, but forming, on the contrary, the best illustration of his character, as a writer, that it has been the more immediate purpose of these volumes to enquire; and if, in the course of them, any satisfactory clue has been afforded to those anomalies, moral and intellectual, which his life exhibited, still more should it have been the effect of my humble labours to clear away some of those mists that hung round my friend, and show him, in most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in all, of admiration, then will the chief and sole aim of this work have been accomplished.

Having devoted to this object so large a

1 It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray, that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo), and either labouring to point out to us why it has triumphed, or still more unprofitably contending that it ought to have failed. The well-known passage of La Bruyère, which even Voltaire's adulatory application of

portion of my own share of these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and, out of the features, already separately described, combining one complete portrait. The task, however, is by no means so easy as it may appear. There are few characters in which a near acquaintance does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found. Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly, though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others, all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this simple mode of tracing character to its sources must be often wholly at fault; and if, as is not impossible, in trying to solve the strange variances of his mind, I should myself be found to have fallen into contradictions and inconsistencies, the extreme difficulty of analysing, without dazzle or bewilderment, such an unexampled complication of qualities must be admitted as my excuse.

So various, indeed, and contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that led the world, during his short wondrous career, to compare him with that medley host of personages, almost all

it to some work of the King of Prussia has not spoiled for use, puts, perhaps, in its true point of view the very subordinate rank which Criticism must be content to occupy in the train of successful Genius: -“Quand une lecture vous élève l'esprit et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherchez pas une autre règle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de l'ouvrier: La Critique, après ça, peut s'exercer sur les petites choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, parler de syntaxe," &c. &c.

differing from each other, which he thus playfully enumerates in one of his Journals:

"I have been thinking over the other day, on the various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals, English and foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turning over a foreign one lately, for I have made it a rule latterly never to search for any thing of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal, if presented by chance.

"To begin, then I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, &c. &c. &c. | "The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an Italian who had known him in his younger days. It of course related merely to our apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert it to me (for we were not then good friends), but in society.

"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or any body else."

It would not be uninteresting, were there either space or time for such a task, to take a review of the names of note in the preceding list, and show in how many points, though differing so materially among themselves, it might be found that each presented a striking resemblance to Lord Byron. We have seen, for instance, that wrongs and sufferings were, through life, the main sources

1 Paulus Jovius. Bayle, too, says of him, "Il fit entrer plus de feu et plus de force dans ses livres, qu'il n'y en eût mis s'il avoit joui d'une condition plus tranquille."

Some passages in Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch may be applied, with equal truth, to Lord Byron. - For instance, "It was hardly possible with Petrarch to write a sentence without portraying himself"-"Petrarch, allured by the idea that his celebrity would magnify into importance all the ordinary occurrences of his life, satisfied the curiosity of the world," &c. &c. and again, with still more striking applicability, -" In Petrarch's letters, as well as in his Poems and Treatises, we always identify

Where the hoof of

of Byron's inspiration. the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt of the " oppressor's wrong," for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante!" quum illam sub amarâ cogitatione excitatam, occulti divinique ingenii vim exacuerit et inflammarit."

In that contempt for the world's opinion, which led Dante to exclaim, “ Lascia dir le genti," Lord Byron also bore a strong resemblance to that poet, — though far more, it must be confessed, in profession than reality. For, while scorn for the public voice was on his lips, the keenest sensitiveness to its every breath was in his heart; and, as if every feeling of his nature was to have some painful mixture in it, together with the pride of Dante which led him to disdain public opinion, he combined the susceptibility of Petrarch which placed him shrinkingly at its mercy.

His agreement, in some other features of character, with Petrarch, I have already had occasion to remark 2; and if it be true, as is often surmised, that Byron's want of a due reverence for Shakspeare arose from some latent and hardly conscious jealousy of that poet's fame, a similar feeling is known to have existed in Petrarch towards Dante; and the same reason assigned for it, that from the living he had nothing to fear, while before the shade of Dante he might have reason to feel humbled, is also not a little applicables in the case of Lord Byron.

Between the dispositions and habits of Alfieri and those of the noble poet of England no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the versatile author of Don Juan,

"Or stimandome Achille, ed or Tersite."

By the extract just given from his Journal,

the author with the man, who felt himself irresistibly impelled to develope his own intense feelings. Being endowed with almost all the noble, and with some of the paltry passions of our nature, and having never attempted to conceal them, he awakens us to reflection upon ourselves while we contemplate in him a being of our own species, yet different from any other, and whose originality excites even more sympathy than admiration."

3 "Il Petrarca poteva credere candidamente ch'ei non pativa d'invidia solamente, perche fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non poteva sentirsi umiliato, fuorchè dall' ombra di Dante."

it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, " ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character, is, in itself, the true clue through all that fabric's mazes, -is in itself the solution of whatever was most dazzling in his might or startling in his levity, of all that most attracted and repelled, whether in his life or his genius. A variety of powers almost boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them, -a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius, and an uncontrolled impetuosity, as well from habit as temperament, in yielding to them, such were the two great and leading sources of all that varied spectacle which his life exhibited; of that succession of victories achieved by his genius, in almost every field of mind that genius ever trod, and of all those sallies of character in every shape and direction that unchecked feeling and dominant self-will could dictate.

:

It must be perceived by all endowed with quick powers of association how constantly, when any particular thought or sentiment presents itself to their minds, its very opposite, at the same moment, springs up there also if any thing sublime occurs, its neighbour, the ridiculous, is by its side; across a bright view of the present or the future, a dark one throws its shadow; and, even in questions respecting morals and conduct, all the reasonings and consequences that may suggest themselves on the side of one of two opposite courses will, in such minds, be instantly confronted by an array just as cogent on the other. A mind of this structure, and such, more or less, are all those in which the reasoning is made subservient to the imaginative faculty, - though enabled, by such rapid powers of association, to multiply its resources without end, has need of the constant exercise of a controlling judgment to keep its perceptions pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxtapositions as that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime - should at last vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in finding reasons for every side of a question may end, if not in the choice of the worst, at least in a sceptical indifference to all.

In picturing to oneself so awful an event as a shipwreck, its many horrors and perils are what alone offer themselves to ordinary fancies. But the keen, versatile imagination of Byron could detect in it far other details, and, at the same moment with all that is fearful and appalling in such a scene, could bring together all that is most ludicrous and low. That in this painful mixture he was but too true to human nature, the testimony of De Retz (himself an eye-witness of such an event) attests : "Vous ne pouvez vous imaginer (says the Cardinal) l'horreur d'une grande tempête; -vous en pouvez imaginer aussi peu le ridicule." But, assuredly, a poet less wantoning in the variety of his power, and less proud of displaying it, would have paused ere he mixed up, thus mockingly, the degradation of humanity with its sufferings, and, content to probe us to the core with the miseries of our fellow-men, would have forborne to wring from us, the next moment, a bitter smile at their baseness.

To the moral sense so dangerous are the effects of this quality, that it would hardly, perhaps, be generalising too widely to assert that wheresoever great versatility of power exists, there will also be found a tendency to versatility of principle. The poet Chatterton, in whose soul the seeds of all that is good and bad in genius so prematurely ripened, said, in the consciousness of this multiple faculty, that he "held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of a question;" and it was by acting in accordance with this principle himself that he brought one of the few stains upon his name which a life so short afforded time to incur. Mirabeau, too, when, in the legal warfare between his father and mother, he helped to draw up for each the pleadings against the other, was influenced less, no doubt, by the pleasure of mischief than by this pride of talent, and lost sight of the unnatural perfidy of the task in the adroitness with which he executed it.

The quality which I have here denominated versatility, as applied to power, Lord Byron has himself designated by the French word "mobility," as applied to feeling and conduct; and, in one of the cantos of Don Juan, has described happily some of its lighter features. After telling us that his hero had begun to doubt, from the great predominance of this quality in her, "how much of Adeline was real," he says,

"So well she acted, all and every part,

By turns, with that vivacious versatility, Which many people take for want of heart. They err-'tis merely what is called mobility, A thing of temperament and not of art,

Though seeming so, from its supposed facility; And false though true; for surely they 're sincerest, Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest."

That he was fully aware not only of the abundance of this quality in his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and singleness of character, did not require the note on this passage, where he calls it "an unhappy attribute," to assure us. The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was not only for ever present in his mind, but,-aware as he was of the suspicion of weakness attached by the world to any retractation or abandonment of long pro

fessed opinions, - had the effect of keeping him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects, which, notwithstanding occasional fluctuations and contradictions as to the details of these very subjects, he continued to preserve throughout life. A passage from one of his manuscripts will show how sagaciously he saw the necessity of guarding himself against his own instability in this respect. "The world visits change of politics or change of religion with a more severe censure than a mere difference of opinion would appear to me to deserve. But there must be some reason for this feeling; - and I think it is that these departures from the earliest instilled ideas of our childhood, and from the line of conduct chosen by us when we first enter into public life, have been seen to have more mischievous results for society, and to prove more weakness of mind than other actions, in themselves, more immoral."

The same distrust in his own steadiness, thus keeping alive in him a conscientious self-watchfulness, concurred not a little, I have no doubt, with the innate kindness of his nature, to preserve so constant and unbroken the greater number of his attachments through life; - some of them, as in the instance of his mother, owing evidently more to a sense of duty than to real affection, the consistency with which, so creditably to the strength of his character, they were maintained.

But while in these respects, as well as in the sort of task-like perseverance with which the habits and amusements of his youth were held fast by him, he succeeded in conquering the variableness and love of novelty so natural to him, in all else that could engage his

mind, in all the excursions, whether of his reason or his fancy, he gave way to this versatile humour without scruple or check,taking every shape in which genius could manifest its power, and transferring himself to every region of thought where new conquests were to be achieved.

It was impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. It was impossible that, among the spirits he invoked from all quarters, those of darkness should not appear, at his bidding, with those of light. And here the dangers of an energy so multifold, and thus luxuriating in its own transformations, show themselves. To this one great object of displaying power, — various, splendid, and all-adorning power, every other consideration and duty were but too likely to be sacrificed. Let the advocate but display his eloquence and art, no matter what the cause; let the stamp of energy be but left behind, no matter with what seal. Could it have been expected that from such a career no mischief would ensue, or that among these cross-lights of imagination the moral vision could remain undisturbed? Is it to be at all wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried away, we should find,-wholly, too, without any prepense design of corrupting on his side, false splendour given to Vice to make it look like Virtue, and Evil too often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to Good?

- a

Among the less serious ills flowing from this abuse of his great versatile powers, more especially as exhibited in his most characteristic work, Don Juan,—it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of his poetry is sometimes not a little injured by the capricious and desultory flights into which this pliancy of wing allures him. It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and particularly by those who, being gifted with but a small portion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace with his changes, that the suddenness with which he passes from one strain of sentiment to another,- from the frolic to the sad, from the cynical to the tender, - begets a distrust in the sincerity of one or both moods of mind which interferes with, if not chills, the sympathy that a more natural transition would inspire. In general such a suspicion would do him injustice; as, among the singular combinations which his mind present

Of melancholy merriment, to quote

Too much of one sort would be soporific; Without, or with, offence to friends or foes,

I sketch your world exactly as it goes."

Don Juan, c. viii. st. 89.]