Beacon Lights of History Volume Xiii Part 5

But the voice of rumor and scandal was not silent. All the failings of Byron were now exaggerated and dwelt upon by those who envied him, and by those who hated him,--for his enemies were more numerous than his friends. Those whom he had snubbed or ridiculed or insulted now openly turned against him. The conventional public had a rare subject for their abuse or indignation. Proper people, religious people, and commonplace people, joined in the cry against a man with whom a virtuous woman could not live. Indeed, no woman could have lived happily with Byron; and very few were the women with whom he could have lived happily, by reason of that irritability and unrest which is so common with genius. The habits of abstraction and contemplation which absorbed much of his time at home were not easily understood by an ordinary woman, to whom social life is necessary.

Byron lived much in his library, which was his solitary luxury. In the revelry of the imagination his heart became cold. "To follow poetry,"

says Pope, "one must leave father and mother, and cleave to it alone,"--as Dante and Petrarch and Milton did. Not even Byron's intense craving for affection could be satisfied when he was dwelling on the ideals which his imagination created, and which scarcely friends.h.i.+p could satisfy. Even so good a man as Carlyle lived among his books rather than in the society of his wife, whom he really loved, and whose virtues and attainments he appreciated and admired. An affectionate woman runs a great risk in marrying an absorbed and preoccupied man of genius, even if his character be reproachless. Unfortunately, the character of Byron was anything but reproachless, and no one knew this better than his wife, which knowledge doubtless alienated what little affection she had for him. He seems to have sought low company even after his marriage, and Lady Byron has intimated that she did not think him altogether sane. Living with him as his wife was insupportable; but though she separated from him, she did not seek a divorce.

Byron would not have married at all if he had consulted his happiness, and still more his fame. "In reviewing the great names of philosophy and science, we shall find that those who have most distinguished themselves have virtually admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy,--Newton, Ga.s.sendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke, Leibnitz, Boyle, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, and a host of others."

The scandal which Byron's separation from his wife created, and his known and open profligacy, at last shut him out from the society of which he had been so bright an ornament. It is a peculiarity of the English people, which redounds to their honor, to exclude from public approbation any man, however gifted or famous, who has outraged the moral sense by open and ill-disguised violation of the laws of morality.

The cases of Dilke and Parnell in our own day are ill.u.s.trations known to all. What in France or Italy is condoned, is never pardoned or forgotten in England. Not even a Voltaire, a Rousseau, or a Mirabeau, had they lived in England, could have been accepted by English society,--much less a man who scorned and ridiculed it. Even Byron--for a few years the pet, the idol, and the glory of the country--was not too high to fall. To quote one of his own stanzas,--

"He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpa.s.ses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.

Though high above the sun of glory glow, And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head."

Embarra.s.sed in his circ.u.mstances; filled with disgust, mortification, and shame; excluded from the proudest circles,--Byron now resolved to leave England forever, and bury himself in such foreign lands as were most congenial to his tastes and habits. But for his immorality he might still have s.h.i.+ned at an exalted height; for he had not yet written anything which shocked the practical English mind. The worst he had written was bitter satire, yet not more bitter than that of Swift or Pope. No defiance, no blasphemous sentiments, or what seemed to many to be such, had yet escaped him. His "Corsair" and his "Bride of Abydos"

appeared soon after the "Childe Harold," and added to his fame by their exquisite melody of rhyme and sentimental admiration for Oriental life,--though even these were tinged with that _abandon_ which afterwards made his latter poems a scandal and reproach. "The disappointment of youthful pa.s.sion, the la.s.situde and remorse of premature excess, the lone friendlessness of his life," and, I may add, the reproaches of society, induced him to fly from the scene of his brilliant successes, filled with blended sentiments of scorn, hatred, defiance, and despair.

In the Spring of 1816, at the age of twenty-eight, Byron left England forever,--a voluntary exile on the face of the earth, saddened, embittered, and disappointed. It was to Italy that he turned his steps, pa.s.sing through Brussels and Flanders, lingering on the Rhine, enamored with its ruined castles, still more with Nature, and making a long stay in Switzerland. Here he visited the Castle of Chillon, all the spots made memorable by the abodes of Rousseau, Gibbon, and Madame de Stael, and all the most interesting scenery of the Bernese Alps,--Lake Leman, Interlaken, Thun, the Jungfrau, the glaciers, Brientz, Chamouni, Berne, and on to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Sh.e.l.ley and his wife. The Sh.e.l.leys he found most congenial, and stayed with them some time. While in the neighborhood of Geneva he produced the third canto of "Childe Harold," "The Prisoner of Chillon," "A Dream," and other things.

In October, he pa.s.sed on to Milan, Verona, and Venice; and in this latter city he took up his residence.

Oh that we could blot out Byron's life in Venice, made up of love adventures and dissipation and utter abandonment to those pleasures that appealed to his lower nature, as if he were possessed by a demon, utterly reckless of his health, his character, and his fame! Venice was then the most immoral city in Italy, given over to idleness and pleasure. It was here that Byron's contempt for woman became fixed, seeing only her weaknesses and follies; and it was this contempt of woman which intensified the abhorrence in which his character was generally held, in the most respectable circles in England. Even in distant Venice his baleful light was not under a bushel, and the scandals of his life extended far and wide,--especially that in reference to Margherita Cogni, an illiterate virago who could neither read nor write, and whom he was finally compelled to discard on account of the violence of her temper, after living with her in the most open manner.

And yet, in all this degradation, he was not idle. How could so prolific a writer be idle! Byron did not ordinarily rise till two o'clock in the afternoon, and spent the interval between his breakfast and dinner in riding on the Lido,--one of those long narrow islands which lie between the Adriatic and the Lagoon, in the midst of which Venice is built, on the islets arising from its shallow waters. Yet he found time to begin his "Don Juan," besides writing the "Lament of Ta.s.so," the tragedy of "Manfred," and an Armenian grammar, all which appeared in 1817; in 1818, "Beppo," and in 1819, "Mazeppa." He also made a flying trip to Florence and Rome, and some of the finest stanzas of "Childe Harold" are descriptions of the cla.s.sic ruins and the masterpieces of Grecian and mediaeval art,--the beauties and the a.s.sociations of Italy's great cities.

"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand!

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!"

Byron's correspondence was small, being chiefly confined to his publisher, to Moore, and to a few intimate friends. These letters are interesting because of their frankness and wit, although they are not models of fine writing. Indeed, I do not know where to find any specimens of masterly prose in all his compositions. He was simply a poet, facile in every form of measure from Spenser to Campbell. No remarkable prose writings appeared in England at all, at that time, until Sir Walter Scott's novels were written, and until Macaulay, Carlyle, and Lamb wrote their inimitable essays. Nothing is more heavy and unartistic than Moore's "Life of Byron;" there is hardly a brilliant paragraph in it,--and yet Moore is one of the most musical and melodious of all the English poets. Milton, indeed, was equally great in prose and verse, but very few men have been distinguished as prose writers and poets at the same time. Sir Walter Scott and Southey are the most remarkable exceptions. I think that Macaulay could have been distinguished as a poet, if he had so pleased; but he would have been a literary poet like Wordsworth or Tennyson or Coleridge,--not a man who sings out of his soul because he cannot help it, like Byron or Burns, or like Whittier among our American poets.

It was not until 1819, when Byron had been three years in Venice, that he fell in love with the Countess Guiccioli, the wife of one of the richest n.o.bles of Italy,--young, beautiful, and interesting. This love seems to have been disinterested and lasting; and while it was a violation of all the rules of morality, and would not have been allowed in any other country than Italy, it did not further degrade him. It was pretty much such a love as Voltaire had for Madame de Chatelet; and with it he was at last content. There is no evidence that Byron ever afterward loved any other woman; and what is very singular about the affair is that it was condoned by the husband, until it became a scandal even in Italy.

The countess was taken ill on her way to Ravenna, and thither Byron followed her, and lived in the same palace with her,--the palace of her husband, who courted the poet's society, and who afterward left his young countess to free intercourse with Byron at Bologna,--not without a compensation in revenue, which was more disgraceful than the amour itself. About this time Byron would probably have returned to England but for the enchantment which enslaved him. He could not part from the countess, nor she from him.

The Pope p.r.o.nounced the separation of the count from his wife, and she returned to her father's house on a pittance of 200 a year. She sacrificed everything for the young English poet,--her splendid home, her relatives, her honor, and her pride. Never was there a sadder episode in the life of a man of letters. If Byron had married such a woman in his early life, how different might have been his history! With such a love as she inspired, had he been faithful to it, he might have lived in radiant happiness, the idol and the pride of all admirers of genius wherever the English language is spoken, seated on a throne which kings might envy. So much have circ.u.mstances to do with human destinies! Since Abelard, never was there a man more capable of a genuine fervid love than Byron; and yet he threw himself away. He was his own worst enemy, and all from an ill-regulated nature which he inherited both from his father and his mother, with no Mentor to whom he would listen. And thus his star sunk down in the eternal shades,--a fallen Lucifer expelled from bliss.

I would not condone the waywardness and vices of Byron, or weaken the eternal distinctions between right and wrong. The impression I wish to convey is that there were two very distinctly marked sides to his character; that his conduct was not without palliations, in view of his surroundings, the force of his temptations, and his wayward nature, uncurbed by parental care or early training, indeed rather goaded on by the unfortunate conditions of his youth to find consolation in doing as he liked, without regard to duty or the opinions of society. Born with the keenest sensibilities, with emotive powers of tremendous sweep and force; neglected, crossed, mortified, with no wise guidance,--he was driven in upon himself, and developed an intense self-will, which would endure no control. Unhappy will be the future of that man, however amiable, affectionate, and generous, who, whether from neglect in youth, like Byron, or from sheer wilfulness in manhood, determines to act as the mood takes him, because he has freedom of will, without regard to the social restraints imposed upon conscience by the unwritten law, which pursues him wherever he goes, even should he fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. No one can escape from moral accountability, whether in a seductive paradise, or in a dungeon, or in a desert. The only stability, for society must be in the character of its individual members. Before pleasure comes duty,--to family, to friends, to country, to self, and to the Maker.

This sense of moral accountability Byron seems never to have had, in regard to anybody or anything, his self-indulgence culminating in an egotism melancholy to behold. He would go where he pleased, say what he pleased, write as he pleased, do what he pleased, without any constraint, whether in opposition or not to the customs and rules of society, his own welfare, or the laws of G.o.d. It was moral madness pursuing him to destruction,--the logical and necessary sequence of unrestrained self-will, sometimes a.s.suming the form of angelic loveliness and inspiration in the eyes of his idolaters. No counsellor guided him wiser than Moore or Sh.e.l.ley. Even the worldly advice of Rogers and Madame de Stael was thrown away, whenever they presumed to counsel him. n.o.body could influence him. His abandonment to fitful labors or pleasures was alike his glory and his shame. After a day of frivolity he would consume the midnight hours in the intensest studies, stimulated by gin, to awake in the morning in la.s.situde or pain,--for work he must, as well as play. The consequence of this burning the candle at both ends was failing health and diminished energies, until his short race was run. He had produced more poetry at thirty-four years of age than any other English poet at the age of fifty,--some of almost transcendent merit, but more of questionable worth, though not of questionable power. Aside from the "Childe Harold," the "Hebrew Melodies," the "Prisoner of Chillon," and perhaps the "Corsair," the "Bride of Abydos," "Lara," and the "Siege of Corinth," the rest, excepting minor poems, however beautiful in measure and grand in thought, give a shock to the religious or to the moral sentiments.

"Cain" and "Manfred" are regarded as almost blasphemous, though probably not so meant to be by the poet, in view of the stirring questions of Grecian tragedy; while the longest of his poems, "Don Juan," is an insult to womanhood and a disgrace to genius; for although containing some of the most exquisite touches of description and finest flights of poetic feeling, its theme is along the lowest level of human pa.s.sion.

Whatever Byron wrote was unhesitatingly published and read, whether good or evil, whatever were those follies and defiances which excluded him from the best society; and it is a matter of surprise to me that any noted and wealthy publisher could be found, in respectable and conventional England, venal enough to publish perhaps the most corrupting poem in our language,--worse than anything which Boccaccio wrote for his Italian readers, or anything which plain-spoken Fielding and the dramatists of the reign of Charles II. ever allowed to go into print; for though they were coa.r.s.er in their language, they were not so seductive in their spirit, and did not poison the soul like "Don Juan,"

the very name of which has become a synonym for extreme depravity. That abominable poem was read because Lord Byron wrote it, and because its immorality was slightly veiled by the beauty of the language, even when a copy could not be found on the table of any respectable drawing-room, and the name of the author was seldom mentioned except with stern and honest censure. It is perhaps fair to quote Murray's own words, throwing the responsibility on the public: "They talked of his immoral writings; but there is a whole row of sermons glued to my shelf. I hate the sight of them. Why don't they buy those?" A fair enough retort; and yet, like the newspaper purveyors of the records of vice in our own day, the publisher was responsible for making the vile stuff accessible, and thus debasing the public taste.

How different was Byron's painting of Spanish life from that of the immortal Cervantes, whom Lowell places among the five master geniuses of the world! In "Don Quixote" there is not a sentence which does not exalt woman, or which degrades man. A lofty ideal of purity and chivalrous honor permeates every page, even in the most ludicrous scenes. The whole work blazes with wit, and with the wisdom of a proverbial philosophy, uttered by the ignorant squire of a fanatical and bewildered knight; but amidst the practical jokes and follies of all the characters in that marvellous work of fiction, we see also a moral beauty, idealized of course, such as was rivalled only in Spanish art in the Madonnas of Murillo. I believe that in the imaginary sketches of Spanish life as portrayed by Byron, slanders and lies deface the poem from beginning to end. Who is the best authority for truthfulness in the description of Spanish people, Cervantes or Byron? The spiritual loftiness portrayed in the lives of Spanish heroes and heroines, mixed up as it was with the most ludicrous pictures of common life, has made the Spaniard's work of fiction one of the most treasured and enduring monuments of human fame; whereas the insulting innuendoes of the English poet have gone far to rob him of the glory which he had justly won in his earlier productions, and to make his name a doubt. If, in the course of generations yet to come, the evil which Byron did by that one poem alone shall be forgotten in the services he rendered to our literature by other works, which cannot die, then he may some day be received into the Pantheon of the benefactors of mind.

I would speak with less vehemence in reference to those poems which are generally supposed to be permeated with defiance, scorn, and misanthropy. In "Manfred" and "Cain," it was with Byron a work of art to describe the utterances of impious spirits against the sovereign rule of G.o.d. Had he not fallen from high estate as an interpreter of the soul, the critics might have seen here nothing more to condemn than in some of the Grecian tragedies, many pa.s.sages in the "Paradise Lost," and in the general spirit of "Faust." It is no proof that he was a blasphemer in his heart because he painted blasphemy. To describe a wanderer on the face of the earth, driven hither and thither by pursuing vengeance as the first recorded murderer, the poet was obliged by all the rules of art to put such sentiments into his mouth as accorded with his unrepented crime and his dreadful agonies of mind and soul. Where is the proof that they were _his own_ agonies, remorse, despair? Surely, we may pardon in Byron what we excuse in Goethe in the delineation of unique characters,--the great creations which belong to the realm of the imagination alone. The imputation that the sayings of his fallen fiends were the cherished sentiments of the poet himself, may have been one cause of his contempt for the average intelligence of his countrymen, and for their inveterate and incurable prejudices. Nothing in Dante is more intense and concentrated in language than the malediction of Eve upon her fratricidal son:--

"May the gra.s.s wither from thy feet! the woods Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust A gravel the Sun his light! and Heaven her G.o.d!"

Yet the reader feels the naturalness of this bitter cursing of her own son by the frenzied mother. How could a great artist like Byron put sentiments into the mouth of Cain such as would be harmless in the essays of a country parson? If he painted Lucifer, he must make him speak like Lucifer, not like a theological professor. Nothing could be more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in which some of his characters were fiends rather than men. We have no more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer blasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an atheist because Mephistopheles denied G.o.d.

If Byron had avowed atheistical opinions in letters or conversations, that would be another thing; but there is no evidence that he did, and much to the contrary. A few months before he died he was visited by a pious crank, who out of curiosity or Christian zeal sought to know his theological views. Byron treated him with the greatest courtesy, and freely communicated his opinions on religious subjects,--from which it would appear that he differed from church people generally only on the matter of eternal punishment, which he did not believe was consistent with infinite love or infinite justice. Perhaps it would have been wiser if he had not written "Cain" at all, considering how many readers there are without brains, and how large was the cla.s.s predisposed to judge him harshly in everything. No doubt he was irreligious and sceptical, but it does not follow from this that he was atheistical or blasphemous.

There is doubtless a misanthropic vein in all Byron's later poetry which is not wholesome for many people to read,--especially in "Manfred," one of the bitterest of his productions by reason of sorrows and disappointments and misrepresentations. It was Byron's misfortune to appear worse than he really was, owing to his unconcealed contempt for the opinions of mankind. Yet he could not complain that he reaped what he had not sown. Some of his biographers thought him to be at this time even morbidly desirous of a bad reputation,--going so far as to write paragraphs against himself in foreign journals, and being filled with glee at the joke, when they were republished in English newspapers. He despised and defied all conventionalities, and conventional England dropped him from her list of favorites.

The life of Byron, strange to say, was less exposed to scandal after he made the acquaintance of the countess who enslaved him, and who was also enslaved in turn. His heart now opened to many n.o.ble sentiments. He returned, in a degree, to society, and gave dinners and suppers. He a.s.sociated with many distinguished patriots and men of genius. He had a strong sympathy with the Italians in their struggle for freedom. One quarter of his income he devoted to charities. He was regular in his athletic exercises, and could swim four hours at a time; he was always proud of swimming across the h.e.l.lespont. He was devoted to his natural daughter, and educated her in a Catholic school. He studied more severely all works of art, though his admiration for art was never so great as it was for Nature. The glories and wonders of Nature inspired him with perpetual joys. There is nothing finer in all his poetry than the following stanza:--

"Ye stars! which are the poetry of Heaven, If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires,--'t is to be forgiven That in our aspirations to be great Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."

There never was a time when Byron did not seek out beautiful retreats in Nature as the source of his highest happiness. Hence, solitude was nothing to him when he could commune with the works of G.o.d. His biographer declares that in 1821 "he was greatly improved in every respect,--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness.

He has had mischievous pa.s.sions, but these he seems to have subdued." He was always temperate in his diet, living chiefly on fish and vegetables; and if he drank more wine and spirits than was good for him, it was to rally his exhausted energies. His powers of production were never greater than at this period, but his literary labors were slowly wearing him out. He could not live without work, while pleasure palled upon him.

In a letter to a stranger who sought to convert him, he showed anything but anger or contempt. "Do me," says he, "the justice to suppose, that _Video meliora proboque_, however the _deteriora sequor_ may have been applied to my conduct." Writing to Murray in 1822, he says: "It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of 'Don Juan' ready by autumn, as I obtained a permission from my dictatress [the Countess Guiccioli] to continue it,--provided always it was to be more guarded and decorous in the continuation than in the commencement." Alas, he could not undo the mischief he had done!

About this time Byron received a visit from Lord Clare, his earliest friend at Cambridge, to whom through life he was devotedly attached,--a friends.h.i.+p which afforded exceeding delight. He never forgot his few friends, although he railed at his enemies. He was ungenerously treated by Leigh Hunt, to whom he rendered every kindness. He says,--

"I have done all I could for him since he came here [Genoa], but it is all most useless. His wife is ill, his six children far from tractable, and in worldly affairs he himself is a child. The death of Sh.e.l.ley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what means were in my power, to set them afloat again.... As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion between him and me there is little or none; but I think him a good-principled man, and must do as I would be done by."

Toward Sh.e.l.ley, Byron entertained the greatest respect and affection for his suavity, gentleness, and good breeding; and Sh.e.l.ley's accidental death was a great shock to him. Among his other intimate acquaintances in Italy were Lord and Lady Blessington, with whom he kept up a pleasant correspondence. The most plaintive, sad, and generous of all his letters was the one he wrote to Lady Byron from Pisa, in 1821, in acknowledgment of the receipt of a tress of his daughter Ada's hair:--

"The time which has elapsed since our separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union and of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and irrecoverably so.... But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me at least a reason why on all the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve more easily than nearer connections.... I a.s.sure you I bear you now no resentment whatever. Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things,--that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again."

At this period, about a year before Byron's death, Moore thus writes:--

"To the world, and more especially England, he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished from the society of men, and most of all from that of Englishmen. The more beautiful and genial inspirations of his muse were looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature. But how totally all this differed from the Byron of the social hour, they who lived in familiar intercourse with him may be safely left to tell. As it was, no English gentleman ever approached him with the common forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy of his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation, and on nearer intercourse the frank, youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with such zest as to produce the impression that gaiety was after all the true bent of his disposition."

Scott, writing of him after his death, says,--

"In talents he was unequalled; and his faults were those rather of a bizarre temper, arising from an eager and irritable nervous habit, than any depravity of disposition. He was devoid of selfishness, which I take to be the basest ingredient in the human composition. He was generous, humane, and n.o.ble-minded, when pa.s.sion did not blind him."

About this time, 1823, the great struggle of the Greeks to shake off the Ottoman yoke was in progress. I have already in another volume[1]

attempted to give the facts in relation to that memorable movement.

Christendom sympathized with the gallant but apparently hopeless struggle of a weak nation to secure its independence, both from a sentiment of admiration for the freedom of ancient Greece in the period of its highest glories, and from the love of liberty which animated the liberal cla.s.ses amid the political convulsions of the day. But the governments of Europe were loath to complicate the difficulties which existed between nations in that stormy period, and dared not extend any open aid to struggling Greece, beyond giving their moral aid to the Greek cause, lest it should embroil Europe in war, of which she was weary. Less than ten years had elapsed since Europe had combined to dethrone Napoleon, and some of her leading powers, like Austria and Russia, had a detestation of popular insurrections.

In this complicated state of political affairs, when any indiscretion on the part of friendly governments might kindle anew the flames of war, Lord Byron was living in Genoa, taking such an interest in the Greek struggle that he abandoned poetry for politics. He had always sympathized with enslaved nations struggling for independence, and was driven from Ravenna on account of his alliance with the revolutionary Society of the Carbonari. A new pa.s.sion now seized him. He entered heart and soul into the struggles of the Greeks. Their cause absorbed him. He would aid them to the full extent of his means, with money and arms, as a private individual. He would be a political or military hero,--a man of action, not of literary leisure.

Every lover of liberty must respect Byron's n.o.ble aspirations to a.s.sist the Greeks. It was a new field for him, but one in which he might retrieve his reputation,--for it must be borne in mind that his ruling pa.s.sion was fame, and that he had gained all he could expect by his literary productions. Whether loved or hated, admired or censured, his poetry had placed him in the front rank of literary geniuses throughout the world. As a poet his immortality was secured. In literary efforts he had also probably exhausted himself; he could write nothing more which would add to his fame, unless he took a long rest and recreation. He was wearied of making poetry; but by plunging into a sea of fresh adventures, and by giving a new direction to his powers, he might be sufficiently renovated, in the course of time, to write something grander and n.o.bler than even "Childe Harold" or "Cain."

Lord Byron at this time was only thirty-five years old, a period when most men begin their best work. His const.i.tution, it is true, was impaired, but he was still full of life and enterprise. He could ride or swim as well as he ever could. The call of a gallant people summoned him to arms, and of all nations he most loved the Greeks. He was an enthusiast in their cause; he believed that the day of their deliverance was at hand. So he made up his mind to consecrate his remaining energies to effect their independence. He opened a correspondence with the Greek committee in London. He selected a party, including a physician, to sail with him from Geneva. He raised a sum of about 10,000, and on the 13th of July, 1823, embarked with his small party and eight servants, on board the "Hercules" for Greece.

After a short delay at Leghorn the poet reached Cephalonia on the 24th of July. He was enthusiastically received by the Greeks of Argostoli, the princ.i.p.al port, but deemed it prudent to remain there until he could get further intelligence from Corfu and Missolonghi,--visiting, in the interval, some of the neighboring islands consecrated by the muse of Homer.

The dissensions among the Greek leaders greatly embarra.s.sed Byron, but did not destroy his ardor. He saw that the people were degenerate, faithless, and stained with atrocities as disgraceful as those of the Turks themselves. He dared not commit himself to any one of the struggling, envious parties which rallied round their respective chieftains. He lingered for six weeks in Cephalonia without the ordinary comforts of life, yet, against all his habits, rising at an early hour and attending to business, negotiating bills, and corresponding with the government, so far as there was a recognized central power.

At last, after the fall of Corinth, taken from the Turks, and the arrival at Missolonghi of Prince Mavrocordato, the only leader of the Greeks worthy of the name of statesman, Byron sailed for that city, then invested by a Turkish fleet, and narrowly escaped capture. Here he did all he could to produce union among the chieftains, and took into his pay five hundred Suliotes, acting as their leader. He meditated an attack on Lepanto, which commanded the navigation of the Gulf of Corinth, and received from the government a commission for that enterprise; but dissensions among his men, and intrigues between rival generals, prevented the execution of his project.

It was in Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824, that, with the memorandum, "On this day I completed my thirty-sixth year," Byron wrote his latest verses, most pathetically regretting his youth and his unfortunate life, but arousing himself to find in a n.o.ble cause a glorious death:--

"The fire that in my bosom preys Is like to some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze,-- A funeral pile."