No. XCVII.

VOL. XVII.

THERE has been a good deal of writing about Lord Byron since his death in our periodicals; but very little of it much to the purpose. The Quarterly Review has as yet been silent; the Edinburgh Review has contained only one or two insignificant paragraphs. The subject, now at last complete, has hitherto been in the hands of comparatively unauthoritative scribes; and we are constrained to say, that it has not been dealt with in a manner at all likely to increase their authority. We are sorry to be obliged to notice with particular condemnation the style in which Lord Byron's character and genius have been handled in the Universal Review. That talented, and on the whole respectable Journal, is said to be chiefly conducted by a person of very considerable rank in our modern letters-a scholar, a poet, and a gentleman: and if this be the fact, (which we certainly by no means take for granted,) the tone and temper in which Lord Byron has been treated by the Journal in question is doubly and trebly to be regretted. Whether the accomplished person we allude to, be, or be not, the Editor of this Review, we are quite sure he is not the author of the article we speak of. He (if it be he) has been seduced into admitting the criticism of some totally inferior mind some mind either not large enough to regard the great ness of the dead poet's fame without envy-or small enough to remember, in the pages of Mr Whitaker's Review, that the proprietor of the Quarterly Review had been also the pub. lisher of that illustrious poet's most successful performances. The article is a splenetic, a malevolent, and, we fear we must add, a mean tirade. It must have been written by an unhappy man, and can be read with pleasure by

none.

VOL. XVIL

Far more reprehensible, because far more lengthened and elaborate-and despicable to boot, because evidently written by a person, who, with friendship in his mouth, had never felt any real friendship for the departed poetis the attempt towards a whole-length portraiture of Lord Byron's character, which appeared some months ago in the London Magazine. The writer of that production must be indeed a miserable. He derives all the vices of Byron-real or supposed-from the fact of his being a Lord. When he is to be commended for anything, "this, in short, is as well as could be expected from a Lord." What a picture of Grub-street bile! The same tone (here is a compliment!) has, we observe, been taken up by the distinguished author of the Liber Amoris, in a new octavo (chiefly, ut mos est, made up of old materials,) which he has published under the modest title of "The Spirit of the Age!!!" The Hero of Southampton-row is exceedingly bitter with Lord Byron, because he had a pedigree. He cannot away with the patrician soul that breaks out continually even in the most radical ravings of Byron's muse. It is evident, that if Mr Hazlitt had seen the living Lion down, he would have rejoiced in kicking him: he now does his pleasure with the dead. And it was for this sort of recompence, say rather retribution, that Lord Byron suffered, for a time at least, his noble name to be coupled in the mouths of men, with these abject souls-these paltry and contemptible caitiffs, who, while they would fain have derived some skulking benefit from his name, never regarded either the poet or the man, but with all the rancours of despairing imbecility and plebeian spite.

The truth is, that Byron's literary success had all along been regarded S

with infinite gall by the minor Tories, and that the elevation of his personal manners and feelings had always prevented him from being an object of anything like real attachment among ⚫ the miserable adherents of that degraded faction to which he sometimes too much lent himself. The feelings of this last class were, of course, kept in check so long as he lived; those of the former rarely durst break silence so long as Mr John Murray was his publisher in ordinary-and they also have spoken out with wonderfully more courage since there was an end of the lash that played about the pages of Don Juan.* There was on either side a great accumulation of spleen and envy lying in wait for a fair opportunity of eruption-and we have seen the eruption at least begin. We can scarcely turn over the pages of any insignificant Magazine or Review without coming in contact with long melancholy diatribes-all of them the grumblings of the same long-pent devil. One proves Byron to have been the most audacious of plagiarists-another is at great pains to shew, that he was not a poet of the truly high order -that he had little "invention"-that his merit lay only in " intensity”—and Heaven knows how much more stuff of the same sort! A third says, he never wrote any good poem after the Corsair. A fourth considers Don Juan as a mere imitation of Faublas. A whole chorus resounds in your ears, that Byron was, at all events, a perfect villain-the lewdest, the basest, the most unprincipled of men-and that, ergo, the subject ought to be dropped! -So far from suffering it to be dropt, however, we now intend, and that for the first time, to take it up.

We certainly cannot reproach ourselves with having, at any period of our career, either neglected or ill-treated the great poet who is now no more. We were, from the beginning, open,

sincere, and enthusiastic worshippers of his genius; we spoke out on that score in a way that most of our contemporaries can reflect upon with few feelings of self-gratulation-and we always so spoke out-which certainly cannot be said of any one among them. When he began to entertain the world with his Beppo and Don Juan, on the other hand, we were undoubtedly the first and the most efficient of all that rebuked him for teaching his muse to stoop her wing. We did this so boldly and so well, that we created for ourselves in many quarters a vast deal of ill will on this very account. John' Murray, for example, never forgave us, and the whole of the inferior working band of his Quarterly Reviewers have hated us, as in duty bound, from that time, and have shewn their servile hatred in a thousand ways, and by a thousand means, all alike pitiful and servile. We continued to lament the indiscretions of his Don Juan, but we could not be blind to the extraordinary merits of that poem, as it grew up and expanded itself into one of the most remarkable works of English genius; and seeing these, we were quite above keeping our thumb upon the whole affair, merely because there was some difficulty in managing it, after the laudable example of the Edinburgh and Quarterly critics. Finally, since Byron died, various contributors have been allowed to express, in their own several styles, their opinions, about particular points connected with his character and genius, because the notion of unity of mind, in a Journal like this, is a thing quite below our contempt, and because it was wished to make our pages reflect, as to this subject, the feelings and opinions floating about in society in regard to it— with this one proviso only, that we should have nothing to do with the opinions of dulness, or the feelings of envy. And now, all this being done,

we propose to take up the subject as one and complete,—not to exhaust it surely, but to speak out clearly as to some of the most important questions that have been put in agitation. We make no mighty pretensions. A little common sense, common honesty, and common feeling, shall serve our turn. We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin sans apologie, with his personal character. This is the great object of attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers, shrugs, groans, to another. Two widely different matters, however, are generally, we might say universally, mixed up here-the personal character of the man as proved by his course of life, and his personal character as revealed in, or guessed from, his books. Nothing can be more unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of. Is there a noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception in the book?-Ah! yes, is the answer. But what of that? It is only the roué Byron that speaks! Is a kind, a generous action of the man mentioned? "Yes, yes," comments the sage, "but only remember the atrocities of Don Juan; depend on it, this, if it be true, must have been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy." Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance: The poet damns the man, and the man the poet.

Nobody will suspect us of being so absurd, as to suppose that it is possible for people to draw no inferences as to the character of an author from his book, or to shut entirely out of view, in judging of a book, that which they may happen to know about the man who writes it. The cant of the day supposes such things to be practicable, but they are not; and we have always laughed our loudest at the impudence of those who pretend to be capable of such things, and the idiocy of those who believe in their pretences. But what we complain of and scorn, is the extent to which these matters are carried in the case of this particular individual, as compared with others; the impudence with which things are at once assumed to be facts in regard to the man's private history, and the absolute unfairness of never arguing from the writings to the man, but for

evit.

Take the man, in the first place, as unconnected, in so far as we can thus consider him, with his works ;-and ask, what, after all, are the bad things we know of him? Was he dishonest or dishonourable?-had he ever done anything to forfeit, or even endanger, his rank as a gentleman? Most assuredly no such accusations have ever been maintained against Lord Byron, the private nobleman-although something of the sort may have been insinuated against the author. But he was such a profligate in his morals, that his name cannot be mentioned with anything like tolerance. Was he so indeed? We should like extremely to have the catechizing of the individual man who says so. That he indulged in sensual vices to some extent is certain -and to be regretted and condemned. But was he worse as to those matters than the enormous majority of those who join in the cry of horror upon this occasion? We most assuredly believe exactly the reverse: and we rest our belief upon very plain and intelligible grounds. First, we hold it impossible that the majority of mankind, or that anything beyond a very small minority, are or can be entitled to talk of sensual profligacy as having formed a principal part of the life and character of the man, who, dying at six-and-thirty, bequeathed a collection of works such as Byron's to the world. 2dly, We hold it impossible that, laying the extent of his intellectual labours out of the question, and looking only to the nature of the intellect which generated, and delighted in generating, such beautiful and noble conceptions as are to be found in almost all Lord Byron's workswe hold it impossible that very many men can be at once capable of comprehending these conceptions, and entitled to consider sensual profligacy. as having formed the principal, or even a principal trait in Lord Byron's character. 3dly and lastly, We have never been able to hear any one fact established, which could prove Lord Byron to deserve anything like the degree or even the kind of odium which has, in regard to matters of this class, been heaped upon his name. We have no story of base unmanly seduction, or false and villainous intrigue, against him-none whatever. It seems to us quite clear, that, if he had been at all what is called in society

an unprincipled sensualist, there must have been many such stories-many such authentic and authenticated stories. But there are none such-absolutely none. His name has been coupled with the names of three, four, or more women of some rank: but what kind of women?-every one of them, in the first place, about as old as himself in years, and therefore a great deal older in character-every one of them utterly battered in reputation long before he came into contact with them-licentious, unprincipled, characterless women. What father has ever reproached him with the ruin of his daughter?What husband has denounced him as the destroyer of his peace?

Let us not be mistaken. We are not defending the offences of which Lord Byron unquestionably was guilty: neither are we finding fault with those who, after looking honestly within and around themselves, condemn those offences-no matter how severely. But we are speaking of society in general, as it now exists; and we say that there is vile hypocrisy in the tone in which Lord Byron is talked of there. We say that, although all offences against purity of life are miserable things and condemnable things, the degrees of guilt attached to different offences of this class are quite as widely different as are the degrees of guilt between an assault and a murder and we confess our belief that ; no man of Byron's station and age could have run much risk of gaining a very bad name in society, had a course of life similar (in so far as we know anything of that) to Lord Byron's been the only thing chargeable against him.

But his conduct in regard to his wife? -ay, there's the rub. For many years this was the most fruitful theme of unmitigated abuse against Lord Byronof late we have perceived considerable symptoms of another way of thinking as to this matter gaining ground. The press begins to avow, that there are two ways of telling this story, as well as other stories. In the upper circles of society there never wanted some who on the whole defended the Lord and blamed the Lady; but it is only of late that this line has begun to be taken up by any part of the press

except, indeed, one small part of it, whose general character, and the sus picion, perhaps unjust, of mean private motives, prevented its opinions, as to this particular matter, from having any weight whatever.

We have no sort of doubt, that in this, and in almost all cases of the sort, there must have been blame on both sides. We believe, in the first place, that Lord and Lady Byron were never well suited to each other as to character and temper. We believe that Lady Byron, with many high and estimable qualities, had a cold and obstinate mathematical sort of understanding, than which nothing could be more unlike, or less likely to agree well with, the imaginative, enthusiastic, and capricious temperament of her lord. She, however, was the cooler person of the two, and should not have married a man whose temper she at least might have known to be so diametrically opposite to her own. Having married him, most surely it was her duty to bear with the consequences of that temperament to a much greater extent than we have any proof, aye, or any notion, of her realÎy having borne with them. No woman of sense should, on any grounds but those of absolute necessity, sepa rate herself from her husband and the father of her child. Now, that there was no reason of this kind for the step which her Ladyship took, is proved by the well-known facts, that she parted from him in London in a most affectionate manner; that even after she had completed her journey to KirkbyMallory, she wrote an affectionate, even playfully affectionate, letter to him, inviting him to join her there; and that, immediately after that letter, Lord Byron received a letter from her. Ladyship's father, beginning "My Lord,' and announcing her Ladyship's fixed, final, unalterable resolution never to live with Lord Byron as his wife again;-all this, too, be it observed, happened precisely at the moment when Lord Byron's pecuniary affairs were most disagreeably and miserably involved and perplexed-when he was annoyed with executions in his very house-in short, when any flights of mere temper on his part-nay, any offences of any kind, that could be in reason attributed to a state of mind

*

harassed and tormented, and thereby, to a certain extent, rendered reckless, -ought to have been regarded with the highest indulgence, and when any symptom, or anything taken for a symptom, of a wish to shrink from the partaking of his injured fortunes, must have been regarded, above all by a man of his feelings, as the most cruel and unpardonable want of generosity.

But be it so that Lady Byron was more to blame than her Lord in the separation, what can excuse his publishing then, and continuing to publish, writings in which his wife's character and conduct were placarded for the amusement of the whole world? This, indeed, is no trivial question, nor can we answer it in any quite satisfactory manner-just yet. People, however, will be good enough to recollect, that Lord Byron had at least this much to say for himself, that he was not the first to make his domestic differences a topic of public discussion. On the contrary, from the moment that his separation from Lady Byron was known, he, and he only, was attacked with the most unbounded rancour, not only in almost all circles of society, but in every species of print and pamphlet. He saw himself, ere any fact but the one undisputed and tangible one was or could be known, held up everywhere, and by every art of malice, by the solemn manufacturer of cant, and the light-headed weaver of jeux-d'esprit, by tory and whig, saint and sinner all alike as the most infamous of men, because he had parted from his wife." Peasants bring forth in safety;" nay, almost any other gentleman in the country might have been involved in a domestic misfortune of this kind, without the least fear of exposure to the millionth part of what he suffered for suffer he did. He was the most sensitive man alive witness the keen torture, which, even to his last, could be inflicted on him by a single stupid letter of the Laureate. He was exquisitively sensitive; —and he was attacked and wounded at once by a thousand arrows; and this with the most perfect and most indignant knowledge, that of all who were assailing him NOT ONE knew anything about the real facts and merits of the case. Did he right, then, in publishing those squibs and tirades? No, certainly; it would have been nobler, better, wiser far, to have utterly scorn

ed the assaults of such enemies, and taken no notice of any kind of them. But because this young hot-blooded, proud Patrician poet did not, amidst the exacerbation of feelings which he could not control, act in precisely the most dignified and wisest of all possible manners of action-are we entitled, is the world at large entitled, to issue a broad sentence of vituperative condemnation? Do we know all that he had suffered ?-have we imagination enough to comprehend what he suffered under circumstances such as these ?-have we been tried in similar circumstances, whether we could feel the wound unflinchingly, and keep the weapon quiescent in the hand, that trembled with all the excitements of insulted privacy, honour, and faith?

As it is, thus stands the fact. Lady Byron's friends abused Lord Byron in all societies, and that abuse found its way through a thousand filthy channels to the public. Lord Byron retaliated :-but how? Did he attack his wife's character?-Did he throw the blame upon her?-No such thing. He at the time merely poured some vials of his wrath on the heads of those whom he believed to have influenced his wife to her own injury, and to the ruin of his peace and permitted himself, subsequently, to hint in a way, by no means obtrusively intelligible, at some of those in themselves quite innocent little peculiarities of education and temper, by which, as he thought, (and who shall say unjustly?) Lady Byron was prevented from being to him all that he had expected when he made her his wife.

Goethe has said somewhere, that the man of genius who proposes to himself to be happy in this world, must lay down to himself the fixed and unalterable rule, to consider his genius as one thing, and his personal life as another-never to suffer the feelings of the author to interfere with the duties of the man-to forget altogether when his pen is not in his fingers, that it has been, and will again be, in their grasp. This is very well said, but we fear the history of literature will furnish but few examples in which the good old poet's theory has been reduced to practice-his own case, we believe, approaches as near to an example, as almost any one in recent times. No spectacle, certainly,