Life of Lord Byron Volume I Part 9

"Blackstone, Montesquieu.

"PHILOSOPHY.

"Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drummond, Beattie, and Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest.

"GEOGRAPHY.

"Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie.

"POETRY.

"All the British Cla.s.sics as before detailed, with most of the living poets, Scott, Southey, &c.--Some French, in the original, of which the Cid is my favourite.--Little Italian.--Greek and Latin without number;--these last I shall give up in future.--I have translated a good deal from both languages, verse as well as prose.

"ELOQUENCE.

"Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, Austin's Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates from the Revolution to the year 1742.

"DIVINITY.

"Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker,--all very tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my G.o.d, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in their absurd and d.a.m.nable heresies, mysteries, and Thirty-nine Articles.

"MISCELLANIES.

"Spectator, Rambler, World, &c. &c.--Novels by the thousand.

"All the books here enumerated I have taken down from memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote pa.s.sages from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making love to women. B.--Nov. 30. 1807.

"I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, &c. &c. The book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is "Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy," the most amusing and instructive medley of quotations and cla.s.sical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If, however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty other works with which I am acquainted,--at least, in the English language."

To this early and extensive study of English writers may be attributed that mastery over the resources of his own language with which Lord Byron came furnished into the field of literature, and which enabled him, as fast as his youthful fancies sprung up, to clothe them with a diction worthy of their strength and beauty. In general, the difficulty of young writers, at their commencement, lies far less in any lack of thoughts or images, than in that want of a fitting organ to give those conceptions vent, to which their unacquaintance with the great instrument of the man of genius, his native language, dooms them. It will be found, indeed, that the three most remarkable examples of early authors.h.i.+p, which, in their respective lines, the history of literature affords--Pope, Congreve, and Chatterton--were all of them persons self-educated,[63] according to their own intellectual wants and tastes, and left, undistracted by the worse than useless pedantries of the schools, to seek, in the pure "well of English undefiled," those treasures of which they accordingly so very early and intimately possessed themselves.[64] To these three instances may now be added, virtually, that of Lord Byron, who, though a disciple of the schools, was, intellectually speaking, _in_ them, not _of_ them, and who, while his comrades were prying curiously into the graves of dead languages, betook himself to the fresh, living sources of his own,[65] and from thence drew those rich, varied stores of diction, which have placed his works, from the age of two-and-twenty upwards, among the most precious depositories of the strength and sweetness of the English language that our whole literature supplies.

In the same book that contains the above record of his studies, he has written out, also from memory, a "List of the different poets, dramatic or otherwise, who have distinguished their respective languages by their productions." After enumerating the various poets, both ancient and modern, of Europe, he thus proceeds with his catalogue through other quarters of the world:--

"_Arabia._--Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime poetical pa.s.sages, far surpa.s.sing European poetry.

"_Persia._--Ferdousi, author of the Shah Nameh, the Persian Iliad--Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal Hafiz, the oriental Anacreon. The last is reverenced beyond any bard of ancient or modern times by the Persians, who resort to his tomb near s.h.i.+raz, to celebrate his memory. A splendid copy of his works is chained to his monument.

"_America._--An epic poet has already appeared in that hemisphere, Barlow, author of the Columbiad,--not to be compared with the works of more polished nations.

"_Iceland, Denmark, Norway_, were famous for their Skalds.

Among these Lodburgh was one of the most distinguished. His Death Song breathes ferocious sentiments, but a glorious and impa.s.sioned strain of poetry.

"_Hindostan_ is undistinguished by any great bard,--at least the Sanscrit is so imperfectly known to Europeans, we know not what poetical relics may exist.

"_The Birman Empire._--Here the natives are pa.s.sionately fond of poetry, but their bards are unknown.

"_China._--I never heard of any Chinese poet but the Emperor Kien Long, and his ode to _Tea_. What a pity their philosopher Confucius did not write poetry, with his precepts of morality!

"_Africa._--In Africa some of the native melodies are plaintive, and the words simple and affecting; but whether their rude strains of nature can be cla.s.sed with poetry, as the songs of the bards, the Skalds of Europe, &c. &c., I know not.

"This brief list of poets I have written down from memory, without any book of reference; consequently some errors may occur, but I think, if any, very trivial. The works of the European, and some of the Asiatic, I have perused, either in the original or translations. In my list of English, I have merely mentioned the greatest;--to enumerate the minor poets would be useless, as well as tedious. Perhaps Gray, Goldsmith, and Collins, might have been added, as worthy of mention, in a _cosmopolite_ account. But as for the others, from Chaucer down to Churchill, they are 'voces et praeterea nihil;'--sometimes spoken of, rarely read, and never with advantage. Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible:--he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune. English living poets I have avoided mentioning;--we have none who will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us; and another century will sweep our empire, our literature, and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind.

"November 30. 1807.

BYRON."

Among the papers of his in my possession are several detached poems (in all nearly six hundred lines), which he wrote about this period, but never printed--having produced most of them after the publication of his "Hours of Idleness." The greater number of these have little, besides his name, to recommend them; but there are a few that, from the feelings and circ.u.mstances that gave rise to them, will, I have no doubt, be interesting to the reader. When he first went to Newstead, on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this circ.u.mstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient specimen:--

"Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground, I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine; That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around, And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.

"Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy's years, On the land of my fathers I rear'd thee with pride; They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,-- Thy decay, not the weeds that surround thee can hide.

"I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour, A stranger has dwelt in the hall of my sire," &c. &c.

The subject of the verses that follow is sufficiently explained by the notice which he has prefixed to them; and, as ill.u.s.trative of the romantic and almost lovelike feeling which he threw into his school friends.h.i.+ps, they appeared to me, though rather quaint and elaborate, to be worth preserving.

"Some years ago, when at H----, a friend of the author engraved on a particular spot the names of both, with a few additional words as a memorial. Afterwards, on receiving some real or imagined injury, the author destroyed the frail record before he left H----. On revisiting the place in 1807, he wrote under it the following stanzas:--

"Here once engaged the stranger's view Young Friends.h.i.+p's record simply traced; Few were her words,--but yet though few, Resentment's hand the line defaced.

"Deeply she cut--but, not erased, The characters were still so plain, That Friends.h.i.+p once return'd, and gazed,-- Till Memory hail'd the words again.

"Repentance placed them as before; Forgiveness join'd her gentle name; So fair the inscription seem'd once more That Friends.h.i.+p thought it still the same.

"Thus might the record now have been; But, ah, in spite of Hope's endeavour, Or Friends.h.i.+p's tears, Pride rush'd between, And blotted out the line for ever!"

The same romantic feeling of friends.h.i.+p breathes throughout another of these poems, in which he has taken for the subject the ingenious thought "L'Amitie est l'Amour sans ailes," and concludes every stanza with the words, "Friends.h.i.+p is Love without his wings." Of the nine stanzas of which this poem consists, the three following appear the most worthy of selection:--

"Why should my anxious breast repine, Because my youth is fled?

Days of delight may still be mine, Affection is _not_ dead.

In tracing back the years of youth, One firm record, one lasting truth Celestial consolation brings; Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat, Where first my heart responsive beat,-- 'Friends.h.i.+p is Love without his wings!'

"Seat of my youth! thy distant spire Recalls each scene of joy; My bosom glows with former fire,-- In mind again a boy.

Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill, Thy every path delights me still, Each flower a double fragrance flings; Again, as once, in converse gay, Each dear a.s.sociate seems to say, 'Friends.h.i.+p is Love without his wings!'

"My Lycus! wherefore dost thou weep?

Thy falling tears restrain; Affection for a time may sleep, But, oh, 'twill wake again.

Think, think, my friend, when next we meet, Our long-wish'd intercourse, how sweet!

From this my hope of rapture springs, While youthful hearts thus fondly swell, Absence, my friend, can only tell, 'Friends.h.i.+p is Love without his wings!'"