regiment he spent a considerable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in which art they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coins from a depth of fourteen feet-incidents recalled to the poet's mind by reading Milton's invocation to Sabrina. During the same period he distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm.* He professed a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge as Scott, and more ready to send one. Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to say. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he commends the head of his College, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanor in his office and a past reputation for convivial wit. His attentions to Professor Hailstone at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received; but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account of Porson, "hiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was first introduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most of whom are interesting on their own account as well as from their connection with the subsequent phases of his career. By common consent Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, was the most remarkable of the group. Distinguished alike for scholarship, physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humor of fancy, and fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impression on the undergraduates of his own similar to that left by Charles Austin on those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron always regarded as an incalculable calamity. In a note to Childe Harold he writes: "I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in the attainment of greater honors, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority." He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of the Cam, in the summer of 1811. very door with caution, and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner. He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Irishman named F., one evening beginning to say something at a large supper. Matthews roared, 'Silence!' and then, pointing to F., cried out, in the words of the oracle, Orson is endowed with reason.'' The whole letter, written in the poet's mature and natural style, gives a vivid picture of the social life and surroundings of his Cambridge days: how much of the set and sententious moralizing of some of his formal biographers might we not have spared, for a report of the conversation on the road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the same centre, Scrope Davies enlisted the largest share of Byron's affections. To him he wrote after the catastrophe: "Come to me, Scrope; I am almost desolate-left alone in the world. I had but you, and H., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors while I can. Later he says, "Matthews, Davies, Hobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beaten us all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S. D." The last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once, when the poet, in one of his fits of petulance, exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, “I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much more like silliness than madness!" He was the only man who ever laid Byron under any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him $24,000 in some time of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat up over champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scrope could not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy and pious on his knees." Davies was much disconcerted at the influence which the skeptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron's mind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life, the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor of his will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability is abundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, his published description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary and political career. Byron bears witness tc the warmth of his affections and the charms of his conversation, and to the candor which, as he confessed to Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubt that they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was a passing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits that Hobhouse was his best friend; and when he unexpectedly walked up the stairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli forms us that Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excess of joy, that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sit wn in tears. In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much autobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead he writes: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant. 'Come,' said he, 'don't let us break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;' and so he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had viously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones (the gyp), in his odd way, had said, in putting him in, 'Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your atten- ges of Lord Byron's life. The views entertained tion not to damage any of the movables, for Lord che friends on literary matters were almost identiByron, sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.' cal; they both fought under the standards of the clasMatthews was delighted with this, and whenever any-sic school; they resented the same criticism, they apbody came to visit him, begged them to handle the * See poem and foot-note, page 313. pre- 1 of the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects ted with it, was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a olar, good translator, a sound critic, a fluent of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, whose correspondence, recently edited with a connectnarrative by his son, has thrown light on disputed ir P b plauded the same successes, and were bound together by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson's verses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the Bards and Reviewers and the early cantos of Childe Harold the promise of Manfred and Cain. Among the associates who strove to bring the poet back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of his thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the most judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultified by pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank and unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to characterize the negations of a youthful skeptic. In September, 1811, Byron writes from Newstead: "I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulmen, shall shame you all in goodwill towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson to Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza; and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything." But his early attitude on matters on religion is best set forth in a letter to Gifford, of 1813, in which he says: "I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria." Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which had for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. To no one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge in more reckless sallies of humor; to no one did he more readily betray his little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to him the prevention of what might have been a must foolish and disastrous encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of the poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence-a gift or $5000, to pay off debts to which he had been left he In a letter to his uncle, the former gratefully all to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew the exultan of heart, aye, and of head too, I feel at being free from those depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and brother, B" The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a fit that was neither sooner nor later resented by the e ceiver. Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry Drury-long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law, to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are addressed -and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with various associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and, after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This gentleman, a connection by marriage, and author of some now forgotten novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808. Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron had made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and Southwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once a refuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman minster. Here Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was frequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medical student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth,* both endowed with talents above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a number of John Cam Hobhouse. From a drawing by Wivell. his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J. T. Becher,t author of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he found dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals!" and adding that his sole satisfaction during his residence there was having pared off some pounds of flesh. Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inland wateringplace he passed, on the whole, a pleasant time-listening to the music of the simple ballads in which he delighted, taking part in the performances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses. otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of * See poems and foot-note, page 324. † See poems and foot-note, page 332. This violence on the part of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one more outrageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the neighboring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage with stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as he calls her, followed: on their meeting, a truce was patched, and they withdrew in opposite directions, she back to Southwell, he to refresh himself on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) he again rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description of a trip to Harrowgate, when his lordship's favorite Newfoundland, Boatswain,* whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, or Maida to Scott, sat on the box. the free exercise of his highest faculties. Byron had not yet done this, when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and Newstead-shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling with disguised companions,† patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master, Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his "old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms dishonor. We can well believe the poet's later assertion, backed by all evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of leading any one astray-a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moral worshippers of In November Byron printed for private circulation Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name. the first issue of his juvenile poems. Mr. Becher having Though much of this year of his life was passed uncalled his attention to one which he thought objection- profitably, from it dates the impulse that provoked able, the impression was destroyed; and the author set him to put forth his powers. The Edinburgh, with to work upon another, which, at once weeded and ampli- the attack on the Hours of Idleness, appeared in March, fied, saw the light in January, 1807. He sent copies, 1808. This production, by Lord Brougham, is a speciunder the title of Juvenilia, to several of his friends, and men of the tomahawk style of criticism prevalent in among others to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feel- the early years of the century, in which the main moing), and to Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. En- tive of the critic was not to deal fairly with his author, couraged by their favorable notices, he determined to but to acquire for himself an easy reputation for clevappeal to a wider audience, and in March, 1807, the erness, by a series of smart, contemptuous sentences. Hours of Idleness, still proceeding from the local press Taken separately, the strictures of the Edinburgh are at Newark, were given to the world. In June we find sufficiently just, and the passages quoted for censure the poet again writing from his college rooms, dwell- are all bad. Byron's genius as a poet was not remarking with boyish detail on his growth in height and ably precocious. The Hours of Idleness seldom rise, reduction in girth, his late hours and heavy potations, either in thought or expression, very far above the his comrades, and the prospects of his book. From average level of juvenile verse; many of the pieces in July to September he dates from London, excited by the collection are imitations; others, suggested by cirthe praises of some now obscure magazine, and plan- cumstances of local or temporary interest, had served ning a journey to the Hebrides. In October he is again their turn before coming into print, and it must be adsettled at Cambridge, and in a letter to Miss Pigot,mitted their prevailing sentiment is an affectation of makes a humorous reference to one of his fantastic misanthropy, conveyed in such lines as freaks: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world-a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was, 'He should sit for a fellowship.' This answer delighted them not." The greater part of the spring and summer of 1808 was spent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seems during this period, for the first time, to have freely indulged in dissipations, which are in most lives more or less carefully concealed. But Byron was perpetually taking the public into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the strange additions of his imaginations, have been thrust before us in a manner which even Théophile Gautier might have thought indelicate. Nature and circumstances conspired to the result. With passions which he is fond of comparing to the fires of Vesuvius and Hecla, he was, on his entrance into a social life, which his rank helped to surround with temptations, unconscious of any sufficient motive for resisting them; he had no one to restrain him from the whim of the moment, or with sufficient authority to give him effective advice. A temperament of general despondency, relieved by reckless outbursts of animal spirits, is the least favorable to habitual self-control. The absurdity of Mr. Moore's frequent declaration, that all great poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused by the modesty which, in the saying so, obviously excludes himself from the list. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessant irritation to their possessor, until they have found their proper vent in *See poem and foot-note, page 425. "Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen, But even in this volume there are indications of force and command. The Prayer of Nature,§ indeed, though previously written, was not included in the edition before the notice of the critic; but the sound of Loch-na-Gair,|| and some of the stanzas on Newstead, ought to have saved him from the mistake of his impudent advice. The poet, who through life waited with feverish anxiety for every verdict on his work, is reported, after reading the review, to have looked like a man about to send a challenge. In the midst of a transparent show of indifference, he confesses to have drunk three bottles of claret on the evening of its appearance. But the wound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings' blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collecting his strength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by its delay, twelve months later made it impossible for him to be contemned. The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, vacated by the tenant, who had left the building in the tumble-down condition in which he found it. In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter from Mr. Minto to the Athenæum in the year 1876, in which, with considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavors to identify the girl with "Thyrza" (see poem, page 432), and with "Astarté," whom he regards as the same person. + See Appendix, note 47, page 634, also foot-note, page 338. § See poem, page 334. I See poem and foot-note, page 324. See poems and foot-notes, pages 305, 326. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; and the inscription on the monument that still remains dictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correction of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame. The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the only good thing of its kind since Churchill for in the Baviad and Maviad only butterflies were broken upon the wheel-and to its being the first promise of a new power. The Bards and Reviewers also enlisted sympathy, from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed the prerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own milk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakers fared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war, only once relaxed, with Southey. Wordsworth-though against this passage is written "unjust," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn-is dubbed an idiot, who On January 22, 1809, his lordship's coming of age was celebrated with festivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early in spring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to and the publisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, on the death of Lord Falkland, who had been killed in a duel, and expresses a sympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom he proceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of the manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, he proceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, "Come what may, Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot-I have fixed my heart on it, and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance." He was building false hopes on the result f the suit for the Rochdale property, which, being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with no satisfactory result. He took his seat in the House of Lords on the 18th of March, and Mr. Dallas, who accompanied him to the bar of the House, has left an account of his demeanor. "His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and that he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a hand and countenance in his introduction. There were very few persons in the House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When Lord Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat, while Lord Byron carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in opposition. When, on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said, “If I had shaken hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I will have nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and now I will go abroad."" A few days later the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers appeared before the public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; a second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wont at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many of his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have been * See poem and foot-note, page 425. "Both by precept and example shows, That prose is verse and verse is only prose;" Coleridge, a baby "To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear." Lord Byron. From the Original Painting by Saunders, 1807. and Moore, are a fair specimen of the accuracy with The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey which the author had caught the ring of Pope's an tithesis:- "The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. The Tolbooth felt-for marble sometimes can, On such occasions, feel as much as manThe Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, If Jeffrey died, except within her arms." Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited some choice spirits to hold a few weeks of farewell revel. Matthews, one of these, gives an account of the place, and the time they spent there entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo of pistol-shots; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy, poetry; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the Black Brother; drinking their wine out of the skull-cup which the owner had made out of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden; breakfasting at two, then read ing, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, and playing with the bear or teasing the wolf. The party broke up without having made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which Childe Harold speaks in its opening verses,* and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, when the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way "outre mer." CHAPTER IV. TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL. [1809-1811.] THERE is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of his intrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particular of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one of them, which have all the same relation to reality as the Arabian Nights to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid. Byron had far more than an average share of the émigré The Maid of Saragossa. From a sketch taken from life by F. Stone. spirit, the counterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. He held with Wilhelm Meister "To give space for wandering is it, That the earth was made so wide;" and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to send *See page 3, stanza iii. our young men abroad for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us." On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mind with information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattained goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton, the son of one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in Childe Harold. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar. Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full of Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a slight he received at parting from a schoolcompanion, who had excused himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he at one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving England without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain of boisterous buffoonery. On the 2d of July, the packet by which he was bound sailed for Lisbon, and arrived there about the middle of the month, when the English fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of his stanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolate dirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which were at that time rendered dangerous by the frequency of religious and political assassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, save the statement of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more perilous, though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing the Hellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle. Byron praises the neighboring Cintra as "the most beautiful village in the world," though he joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Convention, and extols the grandeur of Mafra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent of which a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the English had any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants by sea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through the south-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles, performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty-four hours, was Seville, where they lodged for three days in the house of two ladies, to whose attractions as well as the fascination he seems to have exerted over them, the poet refers.† Here, too, he saw, promenading on the Prado, the famous Maid of Saragossa, whom he celebrates in his equally famous stanzas (Childe Harold, page 8, stanza liv). Of Cadiz, the next stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a modern Cythera, describing the bull-fights in his verse, and the beauties in glowing prose. The belles of this city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain (page 11), and by reason of them, rather than the sea-shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is the first spot in creation." Hence, by an English frigate, they sailed to Gibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had no sympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in the great struggle with the tyranny of the First Empire, he may almost be said to have sympathized with Napoleon. The ship stopped at Cagliari, in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti, on the Sicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks-time enough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs. Spencer Smith, wife of the British minister at † See foot-note, page 485. |