Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 15

[Footnote 35: "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c.

&c.]

[Footnote 36: I had not, when I wrote, _seen_ this pamphlet, as he supposes, but had merely heard from some friends, that his pen had "run a-muck" in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its career.]

[Footnote 37: It may be sufficient to say of the use to which both Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles thought it worth their while to apply my name in this controversy, that, as far as my own knowledge of the subject extended, I was disposed to agree with _neither_ of the extreme opinions into which, as it appeared to me, my distinguished friends had diverged;--neither with Lord Byron in that spirit of partisans.h.i.+p which led him to place Pope _above_ Shakspeare and Milton, nor with Mr. Bowles in such an application of the "principles" of poetry as could tend to sink Pope, on the scale of his art, to any rank below the very first.

Such being the middle state of my opinion on the question, it will not be difficult to understand how one of my controversial friends should be as mistaken in supposing me to differ altogether from his views, as the other was in taking for granted that I had ranged myself wholly on his side.]

It was at this time that he began, under the t.i.tle of "Detached Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious ill.u.s.trations of his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:--

"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. which I have kept in the course of my living, I began one about three months ago, and carried it on till I had filled one paper-book (thinnish), and two sheets or so of another. I then left off, partly because I thought we should have some business here, and I had furbished up my arms and got my apparatus ready for taking a turn with the patriots, having my drawers full of their proclamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms of their hidden weapons, of most calibres,--and partly because I had filled my paper-book.

"But the Neapolitans have betrayed themselves and all the world; and those who would have given their blood for Italy can now only give her their tears.

"Some day or other, if dust holds together, I have been enough in the secret (at least in this part of the country) to cast perhaps some little light upon the atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy into barbarism: at present, I have neither the time nor the temper.

However the _real_ Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at the _heel of the boot_, which the _Hun_ now wears, and will trample them to ashes with for their servility. I have risked myself with the others _here_, and how far I may or may not be compromised is a problem at this moment. Some of them, like Craigengelt, would 'tell all, and more than all, to save themselves.' But, come what may, the cause was a glorious one, though it reads at present as if the Greeks had run away from Xerxes. Happy the few who have only to reproach themselves with believing that these rascals were less 'rascaille' than they proved!--_Here_ in Romagna, the efforts were necessarily limited to preparations and good intentions, until the Germans were fairly engaged in _equal_ warfare--as we are upon their very frontiers, without a single fort or hill nearer than San Marino. Whether 'h.e.l.l will be paved with' those 'good intentions,' I know not; but there will probably be good store of Neapolitans to walk upon the pavement, whatever may be its composition. Slabs of lava from their mountain, with the bodies of their own d.a.m.ned souls for cement, would be the fittest causeway for Satan's 'Corso.'"

LETTER 423. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, May 10. 1821.

"I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr.

Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He is to write, and you to publish, what you please,--_motto_ and subject. I desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course, after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will _not_ publish my _defence of Gilchrist_: it would be brutal to do so after his urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon Gilchrist. You may tell him what I say there of _his Missionary_ (it is praised, as it deserves). However, and if there are any pa.s.sages _not personal_ to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of my first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all, don't let any thing be added which can _personally_ affect Mr.

Bowles.

"In the enclosed notes, of course what I say of the _democracy_ of poetry cannot apply to Mr. Bowles, but to the c.o.c.kney and water was.h.i.+ng-tub schools.

"I hope and trust that Elliston _won't_ be permitted to act the drama. Surely _he_ might have the grace to wait for Kean's return before he attempted it; though, _even then_, _I_ should be as much against the attempt as ever.

"I have got a small packet of books, but neither Waldegrave, Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are excellent. Think of this--they are all for _Pope_.

"Yours," &c.

The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however, may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result antic.i.p.ated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command rarely exercised by wit, there are some pa.s.sages, of a general nature, too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for the reader.

"Pope himself 'sleeps well--nothing can touch him further;' but those who love the honour of their country, the perfection of her literature, the glory of her language, are not to be expected to permit an atom of his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be stripped from the laurel which grows over it. * * *

"To me it appears of no very great consequence whether Martha Blount was or was not Pope's mistress, though I could have wished him a better.

She appears to have been a cold-hearted, interested, ignorant, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing whither to turn, as he drew towards his premature old age, childless and lonely,--like the needle which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and ceasing to tremble, rusts.

She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness of Pope's heart to have been able to love such a being. But we must love something. I agree with Mr. B. that _she_ 'could at no time have regarded _Pope personally_ with attachment,' because she was incapable of attachment; but I deny that Pope could not be regarded with personal attachment by a worthier woman.

It is not probable, indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love with him as he walked along the Mall, or in a box at the opera, nor from a balcony, nor in a ball-room: but in society he seems to have been as amiable as una.s.suming, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure, his head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his eyes. He was adored by his friends--friends of the most opposite dispositions, ages, and talents--by the old and wayward Wycherley, by the cynical Swift, the rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorney-bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the 'cankered Bolingbroke.' Bolingbroke wept over him like a child; and Spence's description of his last moments is at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of Addison. The soldier Peterborough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve and the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst, were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men of the most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remarkable or a celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the attachment which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable woman.

"Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood the s.e.x well. Bolingbroke, 'a judge of the subject,' says Warton, thought his 'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' And even with respect to the grosser pa.s.sion, which takes occasionally the name of '_romantic_,' accordingly as the degree of sentiment elevates it above the definition of love by Buffon, it may be remarked, that it does not always depend upon personal appearance, even in a woman. Madame Cottin was a plain woman, and might have been virtuous, it may be presumed, without much interruption. Virtuous she was, and the consequences of this inveterate virtue were that two different admirers (one an elderly gentleman) killed themselves in despair (see Lady Morgan's 'France'). I would not, however, recommend this rigour to plain women in general, in the hope of securing the glory of two suicides apiece. I believe that there are few men who, in the course of their observations on life, may not have perceived that it is not the greatest female beauty who forms the longest and the strongest pa.s.sions.

"But, apropos of Pope.--Voltaire tells us that the Marechal Luxembourg (who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valiere, the pa.s.sion of Louis XIV. had an unsightly defect. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip the Second of Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry the Third of France, had each of them lost an eye; and the famous Latin epigram was written upon them, which has, I believe, been either translated or imitated by Goldsmith:

"'Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro, Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos: Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori, Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'

"Wilkes, with his ugliness, used to say that 'he was but a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;' and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circ.u.mstances. Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary pa.s.sions upon record, Vanessa's and Stella's.

"'Vanessa, aged scarce a score.

Sighs for a gown of _forty-four_.'

He requited them bitterly; for he seems to have broken the heart of the one, and worn out that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants.

"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon Fortune. 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in aegina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea; and near here there is a winged Love. The meaning of this is, that the success of men in love affairs depends more on the a.s.sistance of Fortune than the charms of beauty. I am persuaded, too, with Pindar (to whose opinion I submit in other particulars), that Fortune is one of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than her sisters.'--See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii. chap. 26 page 246.

'Taylor's Translation.'

"Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune and family (a Miss Strafford) runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and pa.s.sionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid.

If I recollect rightly, this remark was also repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm's Correspondence, seven or eight years ago.

"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes _profane_ levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,' and which so much shocks the tone of _Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of the period have come down to us; but those, such as they are--a few scattered sc.r.a.ps from Farquhar and others--are more indecent and coa.r.s.e than any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &c. which naturally attempted to represent the manners and conversation of private life, are decisive upon this point; as are also some of Steele's papers, and even Addison's. We all know what the conversation of Sir R. Walpole, for seventeen years the prime-minister of the country, was at his own table, and his excuse for his licentious language, viz. 'that every body understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less common topics.' The refinement of latter days,--which is perhaps the consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilisation,--had not yet made sufficient progress. Even Johnson, in his 'London,' has two or three pa.s.sages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison's 'Drummer' some indelicate allusions."

To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and violence with which the gentleman here commemorated a.s.sailed Lord Byron, at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.

"Poor Scott is now no more. In the exercise of his vocation, he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest.

But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly. Although several years my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the 'grammar-schule' (or, as the Aberdonians p.r.o.nounce it, '_squeel_') of New Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely in his capacity of editor a few years ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. The moment was too tempting for many friends and for all enemies. At a time when all my relations (save one) fell from me like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my few friends became still fewer--when the whole periodical press (I mean the daily and weekly, _not_ the _literary_ press) was let loose against me in every shape of reproach, with the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of 'The Courier' and 'The Examiner,'--the paper of which Scott had the direction, was neither the last, nor the least vituperative. Two years ago I met him at Venice, when he was bowed in griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the bitterness of domestic privation. He was then earnest with me to return to England; and on my telling him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he replied to me,'that he and others had been greatly misled; and that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to excite them. Scott is no more, but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very considerable talents, and of great acquirements. He had made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy at some appointment which he had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevented the further extension (unless by a rapid run to Rome) of his travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would conduct him. Peace be with him!

and may all such other faults as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him, as the little injury which he had done to one who respected his talents and regrets his loss."

In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought against him by his a.s.sailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the n.o.ble writer thus proceeds:--

"I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount?--to an impeachment of a liver complaint. 'I will tell it to the world,' exclaimed the learned Smelfungus: 'you had better (said I) tell it to your physician. 'There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students. It has been the complaint of the good and the wise and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Moliere, was atrabilarious, and Moliere himself saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs. But even were it so,

"'Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee; Folly--Folly's only free.' PENROSE.

"Mendelsohn and Bayle were at times so overcome with this depression as to be obliged to recur to seeing 'puppet-shows,' and 'counting tiles upon the opposite houses,' to divert themselves. Dr. Johnson, at times, 'would have given a limb to recover his spirits.'

"In page 14. we have a large a.s.sertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is sufficient to convict him (Pope) of _gross licentiousness_.' Thus, out it comes at last--Mr. B. does accuse Pope of 'gross licentiousness,' and grounds the charge upon a poem. The _licentiousness_ is a 'grand peut-etre,' according to the turn of the times being:--the _grossness_ I deny. On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy mingled with, at the same time, such true and intense pa.s.sion. Is the 'Atys' of Catullus _licentious_? No, nor even gross; and yet Catullus is often a coa.r.s.e writer. The subject is nearly the same, except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the victim.

"The 'licentiousness' of the story was _not_ Pope's,--it was a fact. All that it had of gross he has softened; all that it had of indelicate he has purified; all that it had of pa.s.sionate he has beautified; all that it had of holy he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. 'I fear,'

says he, 'that had the subject of 'Eloisa' fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given us but a _coa.r.s.e_ draft of her pa.s.sion.'

Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts and the letters of 'Eloisa' he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)--all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production.

"Let us hear no more of this trash about 'licentiousness.' Is not 'Anacreon' taught in our schools?--translated, praised, and edited? and are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire, it will be time to denounce the moderns. 'Licentiousness!'--there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned or poured forth since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quant.i.ty of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles by _reasoning_ upon the _pa.s.sions_; whereas poetry is in itself pa.s.sion, and does not systematise. It a.s.sails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not a.s.sume pretensions to optimism."

Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the circ.u.mstance.