:

It was about the middle of April that his two celebrated copies of verses, Fare thee well," and "A Sketch," made their appearance in the newspapers :- and while the latter poem was generally, and, it must be owned, justly condemned, as a sort of literary assault on an obscure female, whose situation ought to have placed her as much beneath his satire as the undignified mode of his attack certainly raised her above it, with regard to the other poem, opinions were a good deal more divided. To many it appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness, a kind of appeal, which no woman with a heart could resist while by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the subject. To this latter opinion, I confess my own to have, at first, strongly inclined; and suspicious as I could not help regarding the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him injustice. He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of

[See Works, p. 469.]

2["Was this obscure female innocent, or was she guilty? If innocent, then was there an unhappy mistake, and, no matter what her rank, reparation was due. If guilty, the rank to which she had been raised put her on a level with Lord Byron. Her situation, therefore, if it was what he says it was, and he must have known that better than any one, ought not to have placed her bencath his satire. And as for an undignified attack rais

tender recollections under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced, — the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them. Neither, from that account, did it appear to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye.

The appearance of these poems gave additional violence to the angry and inquisitorial feeling now abroad against him; and the title under which both pieces were immediately announced by various publishers, as "Poems by Lord Byron on his Domestic Circumstances," carried with it a sufficient exposure of the utter unfitness of such themes for rhyme. It is, indeed, only in those emotions and passions of which imagination forms a predominant ingredient, such as love, in its first dreams, before reality has come to embody or dispel them, or sorrow, in its wane, when beginning to pass away from the heart into the fancy,-that poetry ought ever to be employed as an interpreter of feeling. For the expression of all those immediate affections and disquietudes that have their root in the actual realities of life, the art of the poet, from the very circumstance of its being an art, as well as from the coloured form in which it is accustomed to transmit impressions, cannot be otherwise than a medium as false as it is feeble.

To so very low an ebb had the industry of his assailants now succeeded in reducing his private character, that it required no small degree of courage, even among that class who are supposed to be the most tolerant of domestic irregularities, to invite him into their society. One distinguished lady of fashion, however, ventured so far as, on the eve of his departure from England, to make a party for him expressly; and nothing short, perhaps, of that high station in society which a life as blameless as it is brilliant has secured to her, could have placed beyond all reach of misrepresentation, at that moment, such a compliment to one marked with the world's censure so deeply. At this assembly of Lady Jersey's he made his last appearance, publicly, in England; and the amusing account given of some of the company in his Memo

ing the object of it above it - that is a mistake; for the object of an attack sinks under and rises above it, not according as the attack is dignified or undignified, but according as it is merited or unmerited—the charge true or false."-WILSON, 1830.]

3 [The appearance of the MS. confirms this account of the circumstances under which it was written. It is blotted all over with the marks of tears.]

ET. 28.

randa,―of the various and characteristic ways in which the temperature of their manner towards him was affected by the cloud under which he now appeared,-wa was one of the passages of that Memoir it would have been most desirable, perhaps, to have preserved; though, from being a gallery of sketches, all personal and many satirical, but a small portion of it, if any, could have been presented to the public till a time when the originals had long left the scene, and any interest they might once have excited was gone with themselves. Besides the noble hostess herself, whose kindness to him, on this occasion, he never forgot, there was also one other person (then Miss Mercer, now Lady Keith), whose frank and fearless cordiality to him on that evening he most grate fully commemorated, adding, in acknowledgment of a still more generous service, “She is a high-minded woman, and showed me more friendship than I deserved from her. I heard also of her having defended me in a large company, which at that time required more courage and firmness than most women possess."

As we are now approaching so near the close of his London life, I shall here throw together the few remaining recollections of that period with which the gleanings of his Memorandum-book, so often referred to, furnish me.

"I liked the Dandies; they were always very civil to me, though in general they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madame de Stael, Lewis, Horace Twiss, and the like, damnably. They per

1["Our present ephemeral dandy' is akin to the 'maccaroni' of my earlier days. The expression has become classical by the use of it in one of Lord Byron's poems

"But I am but a nameless sort of person,

A broken Dandy lately on my travels.'"

GLENBERVIE, 1822.] ["Libertine,' as Brummel baptized her, though the poor girl was and is as correct as maid or wife can be; and very amiable withal."- MS.]

3 Petrarch was, it appears, also in his youth, a Dandy. "Recollect," he says, in a letter to his brother, "the time when we wore white habits, on which the least spot, or a plait ill placed, would have been a subject of grief; when our shoes were so tight we suffered martyrdom," &c.

4 To this masquerade he went in the habit of a Caloyer, or Eastern monk, -a dress particularly well calculated to set off the beauty of his fine countenance, which was accordingly, that night, the subject of general admiration.

5 [The Alfred Club was established in Albemarle Street, in 1808. "The Alfred, like all other clubs, was much haunted with boars - tusky monsters, which delight to range where men most do congregate; as they are kept at the spear's point pretty much in private so

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suaded Madame de Stael that Alvanley had a hundred thousand a year, &c. &c., till she praised him to his face for his beauty! and made a set at him for Albertine, and a hundred fooleries besides. The truth is, that, though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of dandyism 3 in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones at five-and-twenty. I had gamed, and drunk, and taken my degrees in most dissipations; and having no pedantry, and not being overbearing, we ran quietly together. I knew them all more or less, and they made me a member of Watier's (a superb club at that time), being, I take it, the only literary man (except two others, both men of the world, Moore and Spenser) in it. Our masquerade was a grand one; so was the dandy-ball too, at the Argyle, but that (the latter) was given by the four chiefs, Brummel, Mildmay, Alvanley, and Pierrepoint, if I err not.

"I was a member of the Alfred, too, being elected while in Greece. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis D'Ivernois; but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season.

ciety. A boar, or bore, is always remarkable for something respectable; such as wealth, character, high birth, acknowledged talent-or, in short, for something that forbids people to turn him out by the shoulders, or in other words to cut him dead. Much of this respectability is supplied by the mere circumstance of belonging to a society of clubbists within whose districts the boar obtains free warren and may wallow or grunt at pleasure. Old stagers in the club know and avoid the fated corner and arm chair which he haunts; but he often rushes from his lair on the unexperienced."- WALTER SCOTT: MS.]

6 [In St. James's Street; one of the oldest clubs in London. It is thus described by Gibbon, in 1762:"This respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fortune and fashion, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch. At present we are full of king's counsellors and lords of the bed-chamber; who, having jumped into the ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language with their modern ones."— Misc. Works, vol. i. p. 154.]

"When I met H ** L** [Hudson Lowe], the gaoler, at Lord Holland's, before he sailed for St. Helena, the discourse turned upon the battle of Waterloo. I asked him whether the dispositions of Napoleon were those of a great general? He answered, disparagingly, that they were very simple.' I had always thought that a degree of simplicity was an ingredient of greatness."

"I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private life; they were odd, but they were natural. 1 Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and thanking God that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly ludicrous; and * * [Rogers] used to call him a Sentimental Harlequin.'

"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such imagination! there never was any thing like it that I ever saw or heard of. His published life-his published speeches, give you no idea of the man none at all.

He was a machine of imagination, as some one said of Piron that he was an epigrammatic machine.

["There is nobody so odd, so gentle, and so admirable; his sayings are not to be separated from his manner. Plunket never addresses Grattan without Sir,' with a respectful voice. This mark of respect, or almost reverence, is common amongst the Irish, and certainly most amply due to this amiable and venerable person."- SIR J. MACKINTOSH, 1818.]

2 In his Memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises of Curran. "The riches," said he, "of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever seen written,-though I saw him seldom and but occasionally. I saw him presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's; - it was the grand confluence between the Rhone and the Saone, and and they were both so d-d ugly, that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences."

In another part, however, he was somewhat more fair to Madame de Stael's personal appearance :-" Her figure was not bad; her legs tolerable; her arms good. Altogether, I can conceive her having been a desirable woman, allowing a little imagination for her soul, and so forth. She would have made a great man."

3 [ When Charles Mathews first began to imitate Curran in Dublin in society I mean Curran sent for him, and said, the moment he entered the room," Mr. Mathews, you are a first-rate artist; and since you are to do my picture, pray allow me to give you a sitting." Every one knows how admirably Mathews succeeded in

"I did not see a great deal of Curran only in 1813; but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh's, Holland House, &c. &c.; and he was wonderful even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time.">

"Baillie (commonly called long Baillie, a very clever friend Scrope B. Davies, in riding, that he man, but odd) complained to our had a stitch in his side. I don't wonder at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride like a tailor.' Whoever had seen Baillie on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee.”

finishing the portraiture begun under these circumstances. No one was more aware of the truth of the representation than Curran himself. In his latter and feeble days he was riding in Hyde Park one morning, bowed down over Mathews the saddle and utterly dejected in his air. happened to observe and saluted him. Curran stopped his horse for a moment, squeezed Charles by the hand, and said, in that deep whisper which the comedian so exquisitely mimicked, "Don't speak to me, my dearyou are the only Curran now."— LOCKHART.]

4 ["Crush'd was Napoleon by the northern Thor, Who knock'd his army down with icy hammer, Stopp'd by the clements, like a whaler, or

A blundering novice in his new French grammar."
Works, p. 150.]

["Byron occasionally said what are called good things, but never studied for them. They came naturally and easily, and mixed with the comic or the serious as it happened. A professed wit is of all earthly companions the most intolerable. He is like a schoolboy with his pockets stuffed with crackers."- WALTER SCOTT : MS.

"No first-rate author was ever what one understands by a great conversational wit. Swift's wit in common society was either the strong sense of a wonderful man uncon. sciously exerting his powers; or that of the same being wilfully unbending, wilfully in fact degrading himself. Who ever heard of any fame for conversational wit lingering over the memory of a Shakspeare, a Milton, -even of a Dryden or Pope? Johnson is, perhaps, a solitary ex

Ær. 28.

Sotheby is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me, notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love, and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time,) — Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither. William Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; for,' said he, I see it is all over with you.' Sotheby then went away. Sic me servavit Apollo."

"I remember seeing Blucher in the London assemblies, and never saw any thing of his age less venerable. With the voice and manners of a recruiting sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero,—just as if a stone could be worshipped because a man had stumbled over it."

We now approach the close of this eventful period of his history. In a note to Mr. Rogers, written a short time before his departure for Ostend 2, he says, "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow: we shall not meet again for some time, at all events—if ever; and, under these circumstances, I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening."

This was his last interview with his sister, almost the only person from whom he now parted with regret; it being, as he said, doubtful which had given him most pain, the enemies who attacked or the friends who condoled with him. Those beautiful and most tender verses, Though the day of my destiny's over," were now his parting tribute to her who, through all this bitter trial, had been his sole consolation; and, though known to most readers, so expressive are they of his wounded feelings at this

ception. More shame to him! He was the most indolent great man that ever lived, and threw away in his talk more than he ever took pains to embalm in his writings. It is true that Boswell has in a great measure counteracted all this. But here is no defence. Few great men can expect to have a Boswell, and none ought to wish to have one, far less to trust to having one. A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest, only that his valet may occasionally show off in them: no, nor yet strut about in them in his chamber but that his valet may puff him and his finery abroad. What might not he have done who wrote Rasselas in the evenings of eight days to get money enough for his mother's funeral ex

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crisis, that there are few, I think, who will object to seeing some stanzas of them here.

"Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me :

They may crush, but they shall not contemn-
They may torture, but shall not subdue me-
'Tis of thee that I think—not of them.
"Though human, thou didst not deceive me ;
Though woman, thou didst not forsake;
Though lov'd, thou foreborest to grieve me ;
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me;
Though parted, it was not to fly;
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me;
Nor mute, that the world might belie.
"From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee."

On a scrap of paper, in his handwriting, dated April 14. 1816, I find the following list of his attendants, with an annexed outline of his projected tour :- -"Servants, Berger, a Swiss, William Fletcher, and Robert Rushton John William Polidori, M. D.-Switzerland, Flanders, Italy, and (perhaps) France." The two English servants, it will be observed, were the same "yeoman" and "page" who had set out with him on his youthful travels in 1809; and now, - for the second and last time taking leave of his country,—on the 25th of April he sailed for Ostend.

The circumstances under which Lord Byron now took leave of England were such as, in the case of any ordinary person, could not be considered otherwise than disastrous and humiliating. He had, in the course of one short year, gone through every variety of domestic misery :- had seen his hearth eight or nine times profaned by the visitations of the law, and been only saved

penses? As it is, what has not Johnson done? Is it nothing to be the first intellect of an age? And who seriously talks even of Burke, as having been more than a clever boy in the presence of old Samuel?"- Anon. MS.] ["Ink. For God's sake let's go, or the bore will be here, Come, come: nay, I'm off. Tra. You are right, and I'll follow; 'Tis high time for a Sic me servavit Apollo.' The Blues, a Literary Eclogue: Works, p. 509.] 2 Dated April 16.

"

3 It will be seen, from a subsequent letter, that the first stanza of that most cordial of Farewells, " My boat is on the shore," was also written at this time.

from a prison by the privileges of his rank. He had alienated, as far as they had ever been his, the affections of his wife; and now, rejected by her, and condemned by the world, was betaking himself to an exile which had not even the dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice of society seemed to leave him no other resource. Had he been of that class of unfeeling and self-satisfied natures from whose hard surface the reproaches of others fall pointless, he might have found in insensibility a sure refuge against reproach; but, on the contrary, the same sensitiveness that kept him so awake to the applauses of mankind rendered him, in a still more intense degree, alive to their censure. Even the strange, perverse pleasure which he felt in painting himself unamiably to the world did not prevent him from being both startled and pained when the world took him at his word; and, like a child in a mask before a lookingglass, the dark semblance which he had, half in sport, put on, when reflected back upon him from the mirror of public opinion, shocked even himself.

Thus surrounded by vexations, and thus deeply feeling them, it is not too much to say, that any other spirit but his own would have sunk under the struggle, and lost, perhaps irrecoverably, that level of selfesteem which alone affords a stand against the shocks of fortune. But in him,-furnished as was his mind with reserves of strength, waiting to be called out, the very intensity of the pressure brought relief by the proportionate re-action which it produced. Had his transgressions and frailties been visited with no more than their due portion of punishment, there can be little doubt that a very different result would have ensued. Not only would such an excitement have been insufficient to waken up the new energies still dormant in him, but that consciousness of his own errors, which was for ever livelily present in his mind, would, under such circumstances, have been left, undisturbed by any unjust provocation, to work its usual softening and, perhaps, humbling influences on his spirit. But,-luckily, as it proved, for the further triumphs of his genius, -no such moderation was exercised. The storm of

1 In one of his letters to Mr. Hunt, he declares it to be his own opinion that " an addiction to poetry is very generally the result of an uneasy mind in an uneasy body; ' disease or deformity," he adds, "have been the attendants of many of our best. Collins mad-Chatterton, I think, mad- Cowper mad-Pope crooked - Milton blind," &c. &c.

invective raised around him, so utterly out of proportion with his offences, and the base calumnies that were every where heaped upon his name, left to his wounded pride no other resource than in the same summoning up of strength, the same instinct of resistance to injustice, which had first forced out the energies of his youthful genius, and was now destined to give a still bolder and loftier range to its powers.

It was, indeed, not without truth, said of him by Goethe, that he was inspired by the Genius of Pain; for, from the first to the last of his agitated career, every fresh recruitment of his faculties was imbibed from that bitter source. His chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was, as we have seen, that mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first stung into the ambition of being great.' As, with an evident reference to his own fate, he himself describes the feeling,—

"Deformity is daring.

It is its essence to o'ertake mankind
By heart and soul, and make itself the equal,—
Ay, the superior of the rest. There is
A spur in its halt movements, to become
All that the others cannot, in such things
As still are free to both, to compensate
For stepdame Nature's avarice at first."

Then came the disappointment of his youthful passion,-the lassitude and remorse of premature excess, -the lone friendlessness of his entrance into life, and the ruthless assault upon his first literary efforts,

all links in that chain of trials, errors, and sufferings, by which his great mind was gradually and painfully drawn out; -all bearing their respective shares in accomplishing that destiny which seems to have decreed that the triumphal march of his genius should be over the waste and ruins of his heart. He appeared, indeed, himself to have had an instinctive consciousness that it was out of such ordeals his strength and glory were to arise, as his whole life was passed in courting agitation and difficulties ; and whenever the scenes around him were too tame to furnish such excitement, he flew to fancy or memory for "thorns” whereon to "lean his breast."

But the greatest of his trials, as well as triumphs, was yet to come. The last stage of this painful, though glorious, course, in

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