Vol. ii. p. 355. "Byron's vanity, or to give it a milder and perhaps more appropriate term, his love of fame, was excessive; but it was erroneous, as well as un "Risorga dalla tomba avara e lorda La putrida tua salma, o donna cruda, E ti stai fitta, fitta per dispetto, Come animal immondo al laccio stretto. Da l'ombra lunga e nera E se il di porterai Per dove passerai, O pur se spargerai tenebre e lezzo, Tal che a ti stessa verrai in disprezzo.” Rise from the loathsome and devouring tomb, Give up thy body, woman without heart, Now that its worldly part Is over; and deaf, blind, and dumb, Thou servest worms for food, And from thine altitude Fierce death has shaken thee down, and thou dost fit Thy bed within a pit. Night, endless night hath got thee, To clutch and to englut thee; And rottenness confounds Thy limbs and their sleek rounds, And thou art stuck there, stuck there in despite, Like a foul animal in a trap at night. Come in the public path and see how all Shall fly thee, as a child goes shrieking back That mocks along the wall. 'See if the kind will stay To hear what thou would'st say; generous, to attribute to him so inordinate a thirst for it, as to wish to monopolise it all to himself. It has been stated that he was exorbitantly desirous of being the sole object of interest, whether in the circle in which he was living, or in the wider sphere of the world; he could bear no rival; he could not tolerate the person who attracted attention from himself; he instantly became animated with a bitter interest, and hated, for the time, every greater or more celebrated man than himself. He carried his jealousy up even to Buonaparte; and it was the secret of his contempt of Wellington. It was dangerous for his friends to rise in the world; if they valued not his friendship more than their own fame, he hated them. All this is a gross misrepresentation." There is a great deal of truth in it. "Eager as was his appetite for fame, the consciousness of his own excellence set him above the meanness of envy or jealousy; and he was ever ready to give every candidate for popularity his due share of merit." A mistake, as I have shown before. It is the same with his jealousy. But the above passages have suggested a farther remark or two. I believe he would not have been so jealous, had he not taken it for a strength, instead of a weakness, to give way to every thing in the extreme. He might have allowed it to be a weakness in one sense; but he thought these kind of excesses indicative of greatness; and out of the concession, the vindication, or whatever else it might be according to circumstances, he extracted, above all, food for his love of astonishing. Southey hit him rightly there. He did not care what he did to astonish the world, but then he was shocked if the world did not think the best of it. He thought they would, because he did it; and was much mortified to discover, that every body, whose good word he thought See if thine arms can win Thou 'It carry, now, the day; Or whether thou wilt spread not such foul night, worth having, was not of that opinion. He then, in his spleen, was for thinking himself unjustly diminished in reputation; and so he went on, between excessive confidence and resenting doubt, playing the spoiled child of fame, and alternately lording it over the public, or sulking in a corner. I have no doubt he was jealous at times of every body who interested the world; but as he thought nobody really greater than himself, he became reconciled the next minute, and could like the favourites of the public, and relish their works as much as any body, / partly because their acceptance of the world reminded him of his own greater acceptance. For this reason, he was not so jealous of writers whom he thought popular, as of some, Mr. Wordsworth for instance, whose claims he could not so well define, and who, he suspected, might turn out some day or other to be the greater men. In his anxiety, also to identify his admirers with those who conferred existing reputation, he was as anxious to acknowledge the merits of all the writers in fashion, as he was careful of not committing himself with the rest. All his public praises, it is to be observed, were bestowed upon Scott, Moore, Campbell, and others, not excepting Rogers; in short, every body who pleased "the town. In his eulogies of these, he was warm. Shelley he did not dare to acknowledge, even as a visiter. Keats he would never have said a word of, had he not discovered, that the author of "Hyperion," besides being dead, was (an an admirer of "Don Juan;" and then he was afraid of committing himself too much. He must couple his good word with a sarcasm. His latter connexion with myself arose out of circumstances; out of the secret influence that Shelley had over him, his immediate quarrel with his publishers and advisers, and his hope of getting money, and striking a new blow that should astonish both friends and enemies. But this I have explained before. Connected with me or not, he would never have said a word to my advantage unless we had carried all before us, and the côteries themselves had been conquered. He was so cautious of turning the public attention upon any body whom he considered as not in fashion, and at the same time so jealous of being thought indebted to any such person for a hint, that he was disconcerted at the mention I made, in "The Liberal," of the Specimen of an intended National Poem, since called, The Monks and the Giants, the precursor of "Beppo" and "Don Juan." In vain had "Don Juan" avoided the mistake which hindered the Specimen from succeeding: in vain it was, in every sense of the word, a greater work: and in vain, great as it was, were the readers of Italian aware, that twenty poems existed in that language, which hindered it from being an original in point of style. He did not like that any thing should be mentioned, which deprived him of a particle of fame, well or ill grounded. A reference to the Specimen did not please him: I doubt whether he was not sorry that a specimen of Ricciar detto was given at the same time; and (with the exception of Coleridge, who had visited and complimented him, and whom he thought too unpopular to be made otherwise) the only instance in which I ever knew him to volunteer the mention of an author, not in repute, or to recommend it to another, was a request he made me to speak well, on the same occasion, of Lord Glenbervie's translation of the First Canto of that Poem!-an honour to "The Liberal," to the "National Poem," and to myself, which I was obliged to decline. Lord Glenbervie, who, I believe, was a very good old gentleman, had done two good things in the eyes of his recommender; he had quoted a couplet of "Don Juan," and written a harmless version. Such were the little things, which Lord Byron, in his false estimate of humán nature; thought it great to do. -- At p. 20, vol. iii. is a pleasant letter from an American,-one of the best that has been written about Lord Byron, and describing him in one of his pleasantest moments. I have explained why he was partial to the Americans, and felt at his ease in their company. ....." I intend to visit America as soon as I can arrange my affairs in Italy. Your morals are much purer than those of England (there, says the American, I laughed;) those of the higher classes of England are become very corrupt (I smothered my laugh.) Do you think, if I were to live in America they would ever make me a Judge of the Ten Pound Court?" Upon this passage our compiler says, "Whether or A not Brother Jonathan intended to quizz Lord Byron, it seems pretty evident that his Lordship was quizzing Brother Jonathan. His expressing a doubt whether the Americans would make him a Judge of the Ten Pound Court, conveyed his Lordship's opinion, that literary merit met with but very poor encouragement in the United States; and when he talked of their morals being much purer than those of England, Brother Jonathan laughed, and well he might; for, take the United States, from northward to southward (we speak of the coast, not of the inland parts, there is not more licentiousness to be found in any part of England, not excepting those sinks of vice, the sea-port towns of Plymouth, Portsmouth, or the Wapping district of London. A residence of some years, in all those eastern parts of the United States, authorizes us to speak pretty decidedly on that point." "Now Brother Jonathan" did not laugh because the -Americans were more or less moral than the English, but because Lord Byron talked about morals at all. He thought it was like a bon-vivant shaking his head at the gourmands. His Lordship, however, affected nothing on that point. He might have appeared to over-do the gravity of his ethics, and to intend something mock-heroical; but he was as little in the habit of defending his own morals, as he did those of high life in general. He philosophized very ill upon both. On the latter he was accustomed to express himself very broadly. I have heard him say many times, that for all their farce-making, the morals of the English aristocracy were not a whit better than those of France or any other nation. At the same time it must be recollected, that he had not been in the habit of associating with the staider part of it. Nevertheless, I believe it will not be denied by any body acquainted with the world, that the upper classes are still less restrained in their conduct on certain points, than their countrymen suppose them to be. The truth is, that leisure, luxury, and the cultivation of the graces, naturally tend to a relaxation of the received notions of morality; and hypocrisy being more immediately convenient than plain-dealing, and therefore in the long run pronounced necessary (which is an opinion prevalent in more classes than one,) it is not considered how far the |