ÆT. 21. games, LETTER TO MR. WILLIAM BANKES. that is to say, of hazard, for I hate all card -even faro. When macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle and dash of the box and dice, and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often to decide at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally; but I had no coolness, or judgment, or calculation. It was the delight of the thing that pleased me. Upon the whole, I left off in time, without being much a winner or loser. Since oneand-twenty years of age I played but little, and then never above a hundred, or two, or three." To this, and other follies of the same period, he alludes in the following note 66 "Twelve o'clock, Friday night. 87 which clouded, as has been shown, his boyish thoughts, and, at the time of which I am speaking, gathered still more darkly over his mind. In general we find the young too ardently occupied with the enjoyments which this life gives or promises to afford either leisure or inclination for much inquiry into the mysteries of the next. But with him it was unluckily otherwise; and to have, at once, anticipated the worst experience both of the voluptuary and the reasoner,―to have reached, as he supposed, the boundary of this world's pleasures, and see nothing but "clouds and darkness" beyond, was the doom, the anomalous doom, which a nature, premature in all its passions and powers, inflicted on Lord Byron. When Pope, at the age of five-and-twenty, complained of being weary of the world, he was told by Swift that he "had not yet acted or suffered enough in the world to have become weary of it." But far different was the youth of Pope and of Byron ; what the former but anticipated in thought, the latter had drunk deep of in reality;at an age when the one was but looking forth on the sea of life, the other had plunged in, and tried its depths. Swift himself, in whom early disappointments and wrongs had opened a vein of bitterness that never again closed, affords a far closer parallel to the fate of our noble poet, as well in the untimeliness of the trials he had been doomed to encounter, as in the traces of their havoc which they left in his character. I have just received your note; believe me I regret most sincerely that I was not fortunate enough to see it before, as I need not repeat to you that your conversation for half an hour would have been much more agreeable to me than gambling or drinking, or any other fashionable mode of passing an evening abroad or at home.-I really am very sorry that I went out previous to the arrival of your despatch: in future pray let me hear from you before six, and whatever That the romantic fancy of youth, which my engagements may be, I will always post-courts melancholy as an indulgence, and pone them. Believe me, with that deference which I have always from my childhood paid to your talents, and with somewhat a better opinion of your heart than I have hitherto entertained, "Yours ever," &c. Among the causes-if not rather among the results of that disposition to melancholy, which, after all, perhaps, naturally belonged to his temperament, must not be forgotten those sceptical views of religion, Scott has written-"A man must like money well, or play very deep, to admire gambling."] I give the words as Johnson has reported them ;in Swift's own letter they are, if I recollect right, rather different. ["I have no very strong faith in your pretenders to retirement: you are not of an age for it, nor have gone through either good or bad fortune enough to go into a corner, and form conclusions de contemptu mundi et fugå sæculi, unless a poet grows weary of too much applause, as ministers do of too much weight of business."- Swift to Pope, Sep. 20. 1723.] There is, at least, one striking point of similarity between their characters in the disposition which John loves to assume a sadness, it has not had time to earn, may have had some share in, at least, fostering the gloom by which the mind of the young poet was overcast, I am not disposed to deny. The circumstance, indeed, of his having, at this time, among the ornaments of his study, a number of skulls highly polished, and placed on light stands round the room, would seem to indicate that he rather courted than shunned such gloomy associations. Being a sort of boyish mimickry, too, of the use to which the poet son has thus attributed to Swift:-"The suspicions of Swift's irreligion," he says, " proceeded, in a great measure, from his dread of hypocrisy; instead of wishing to seem better, he delighted in seeming worse than he was.” 3 Another use to which he appropriated one of the skulls found in digging at Newstead was the having it mounted in silver, and converted into a drinking-cup. This whim has been commemorated in some well-known verses of his own; and the cup itself, which, apart from any revolting ideas it may excite, forms by no means an inelegant object to the eye, is, with many other interesting relics of Lord Byron, in the possession of the present proprietor of Newstead Abbey, Colonel Wildman. Young is said to have applied a skull ', such a display might well induce some suspicion of the sincerity of his gloom, did we not, through the whole course of his subsequent life and writings, track visibly the deep vein of melancholy which nature had imbedded in his character. Such was the state of mind and heart, as, from his own testimony and that of others, I have collected it, in which Lord Byron now set out on his indefinite pilgrimage; and never was there a change wrought in disposition and character to which Shakspeare's fancy of "sweet bells jangled out of tune more truly applied. The unwillingness of Lord Carlisle to countenance him, and his humiliating position in consequence, completed the full measure of that mortification towards which so many other causes had concurred. Baffled, as he had been, in his own ardent pursuit of affection and friendship, his sole revenge and consolation lay in doubting that any such feelings really existed. The various crosses he had met with, in themselves sufficiently irritating and wounding, were rendered still more so by the high, impatient temper with which he encountered them. What others would have bowed to, as misfortunes, his proud spirit rose against, as wrongs; and the vehemence of this re-action produced, at once, a revolution throughout his whole character, in which, as in revolutions of the political world, all that was bad and irregular in his nature burst forth with all that was most energetic and grand. The very virtues and excellences of his disposition ministered to the violence of this change. The same ardour that had burned through his friendships and loves now fed the fierce explosions of his indignation and scorn. His natural vivacity and humour but lent a fresher flow to his bitterness, till he at last revelled in it as an indulgence; and that hatred of hypocrisy, which had hitherto only shown itself in a too shadowy colouring of his own youthful frailties, now hurried him, from his horror of all false pretensions to virtue, into the still more dangerous boast and ostentation of vice. 'Dear Mother, "Falmouth, June 22. 1809. "I am about to sail in a few days; probably before this reaches you. Fletcher begged so hard, that I have continued him in my service. If he does not behave well abroad, I will send him back in a transport. I have a German servant, (who has been with Mr. Wilbraham in Persia before, and was strongly recommended to me by Dr. Butler, of Harrow,) Robert and William ; they constitute my whole suite. I have letters in plenty :- you shall hear from me at the different ports I touch upon; but you must not be alarmed if my letters miscarry. The Continent is in a fine statean insurrection has broken out at Paris, and the Austrians are beating Buonaparte-the Tyrolese have risen. "There is a picture of me in oil, to be sent down to Newstead soon. I wish the 1 [When Young was writing one of his tragedies, Grafton, according to Spence, sent him a human skull, with a candle in it as a lamp; and the poet is said to have used it. — Spence's Anecdotes.} 2 Rousseau appears to have been conscious of a similar sort of change in his own nature:-" They have laboured without intermission," he says, in a letter to Madame de Boufflers, "to give to my heart, and, perhaps, at the same time to my genius, a spring and stimulus of action, which they have not inherited from nature. I was born weak, ill treatment has made me strong."— HUME'S Private Correspondence. 3 [" Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, was a gay and frolicsome fellow ;' but this is a striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently. When I mentioned to him this account, he said, ' Ah, sir, I was mad and violent: it was bitterness which they mistook for frolic.'"- BOSWELL, vol. i. p. 74.] Miss Pigots had something better to do than carry my miniatures to Nottingham to copy. Now they have done it, you may ask them to copy the others, which are greater favourites than my own. As to money matters, I am ruined at least till Rochdale is sold; and if that does not turn out well, 1 shall enter into the Austrian or Russian service — perhaps the Turkish, if I like their manners. The world is all before me, and I leave England without regret, and without a wish to revisit any thing it contains, except yourself, and your present residence. "Believe me, yours ever sincerely. "P. S. Pray tell Mr. Rushton his son is well, and doing well; so is Murray, indeed better than I ever saw him; he will be back in about a month. I ought to add the leaving Murray to my few regrets, as his age perhaps will prevent my seeing him again. Robert I take with me; I like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal." To those who have in their remembrance his poetical description of the state of mind in which he now took leave of England, the gaiety and levity of the letters I am about to give will appear, it is not improbable, strange and startling. But in a temperament like that of Lord Byron, such bursts of vivacity on the surface are by no means incompatible with a wounded spirit underneath 1; and the light, laughing tone that pervades these letters, but makes the feeling of solitariness that breaks out in them the more striking and affecting. The poet Cowper, it is well known, produced that masterpiece of humour, John Gilpin, during one of his fits of morbid dejection; and he himself says, "Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at all." [See Southey's Life of Cowper, vol. ii. p. 38.] 2 The reconciliation which took place between him and Dr. Butler, before his departure, is one of those instances of placability and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his notebooks, that the reconcilement was of that generously retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hos.tility is renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it had been ever entertained. Not content with this private atonement to Dr. Butler, it was his intention, had he published another edition of the Hours of Idleness, to substitute for the offensive being at last procured, by this time tomorrow evening we shall be embarked on the vide vorld of vaters, vor all the vorld like Robinson Crusoe. The Malta vessel not sailing for some weeks, we have determined to go by way of Lisbon, and, as my servants term it, to see that there Portingale'thence to Cadiz and Gibraltar, and so on our old route to Malta and Constantinople, if so be that Captain Kidd, our gallant commander, understands plain sailing and Mercator, and takes us on our voyage all according to the chart. 66 'Will you tell Dr. Butler 2 that I have taken the treasure of a servant, Friese, the from his recommendation. He has been all native of Prussia Proper, into my service and has seen Persepolis and all that. among the Worshippers of Fire in Persia, "Hobhouse has made woundy preparations for a book on his return; 100 pens, two gallons of japan ink, and several volumes of best blank, is no bad provision for a discernhave promised to contribute a chapter on ing public. I have laid down my pen, but the state of morals, &c. &c. verses against that gentleman a frank avowal of the wrong he had been guilty of in giving vent to them. This fact, so creditable to the candour of his nature, I learn from a loose sheet in his hand-writing, containing the following corrections. In place of the passage beginning" Or if my Muse a pedant's portrait drew," he meant to insert "If once my Muse a harsher portrait drew, Warm with her wrongs, and deem'd the likeness true, By cooler judgment taught, her fault she owns,With noble minds a fault, confessed, atones." And to the passage immediately succeeding his warm praise of Dr. Drury-" Pomposus fills his magisterial chair," it was his intention to give the following turn: "Another fills his magisterial chair; Reluctant Ida owns a stranger's care; Oh may like honours crown his future name, - "This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St. Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management of six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite side of the Channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are suspected of having already taken St. Maws by a coup de main. The town contains many Quakers and salt fish-the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country — the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was perti nacious in her behaviour, and damned the Stuck together close as wax. — Such the general noise and racket, Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet. "Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain, Gallant Kidd, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. 'Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why 'tis hardly three feet square; Did at once my vessel fill' - How you squeeze us! "Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? On Braganza. Help!'-A couplet ?'-' No, a cup What's the matter?' I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet.' "Now at length we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, -to teach in one year what schools or universities teach in five;" and he furthermore pledged himself to per severe in his bold scheme, until he had “put the Church, and all that, in danger."] Ær. 21. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, Let's have laughing Who the devil cares for more?Some good wine! and who would lack it, Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet? "BYRON." On the 2d of July the packet sailed from Falmouth, and, after a favourable passage of four days and a half, the voyagers reached Lisbon, and took up their abode in that city.' The following letters, from Lord Byron to his friend Mr. Hodgson, though written in his most light and schoolboy strain, will give some idea of the first impressions that his residence in Lisbon made upon him. Such letters, too, contrasted with the noble stanzas on Portugal in "Childe Harold," will show how various were the moods of his versatile mind, and what different aspects it could take when in repose or on the wing. LETTER 37. TO MR. HODGSON. "Lisbon, July 16. 1809. "Thus far have we pursued our route, and seen all sorts of marvellous sights, palaces, convents, &c. ; which, being to be heard in my friend Hobhouse's forthcoming Book of Travels, I shall not anticipate by smuggling any account whatsoever to you in a private and clandestine manner. I must just observe, that the village of Cintra in Estremadura is the most beautiful, perhaps, in the world. "I am very happy here, because I loves oranges, and talk bad Latin to the monks, who understand it, as it is like their own,and I goes into society (with my pocketpistols), and I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got a diarrhea and bites from the musquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring. "When the Portuguese are pertinacious, I say, 'Carracho!'-the great oath of the grandees, that very well supplies the place 1 Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story, which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, 91 of Damme,' — and, when dissatisfied with my neighbour, I pronounce him 'Ambra di merdo.' With these two phrases, and a third, Avra bouro,' which signifieth 'Get an ass,' I am universally understood to be a person of degree and a master of languages. How merrily we lives that travellers be! if we had food and raiment. But, in sober sadness, any thing is better than England, and I am infinitely amused with my pilgrimage as far as it has gone. "To-morrow we start to ride post near 400 miles as far as Gibraltar, where we embark for Melita and Byzantium. A letter to Malta will find me, or to be forwarded, if I am absent. Pray embrace the Drury and Dwyer, and all the Ephesians you encounter. I am writing with Butler's donative pencil, which makes my bad hand worse. Excuse illegibility. Hodgson! send me the news, and the deaths and defeats and capital crimes and the misfortunes of one's friends; and let us hear of literary matters, and the controversies and the criticisms. All this will be pleasant-Suave mari magno,' &c. Talking of that, I have been sea-sick, and sick of the sea. "Adieu. Yours faithfully," &c. LETTER 38. TO MR. HODGSON. "Gibraltar, August 6. 1809. I have just arrived at this place after a journey through Portugal, and a part of Spain, of nearly 500 miles. We left Lisbon and travelled on horseback to Seville and Cadiz, and thence in the Hyperion frigate to Gibraltar. The horses are excellent we rode seventy miles a day. Eggs and wine, and hard beds, are all the accommodation we found, and, in such torrid weather, quite enough. My health is better than in England. "Seville is a fine town, and the Sierra Morena, part of which we crossed, a very sufficient mountain; but damn description, it is always disgusting. Cadiz, sweet Cadiz! -it is the first spot in the creation. The beauty of its streets and mansions is only excelled by the loveliness of its inhabitants. For, with all national prejudice, I must con he saw the figure lying across him in the saine position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt. 2 The baggage and part of the servants were sent by sea to Gibraltar. |