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CHAPTER XIII.

Lord Byron's Character misunderstood, or misrepresented.— Though emulous of Fame himself, he was not envious of it in others. His Opinions of eminent Literary Characters.— Moore.-Scott.-The Great Unknown, and the Scotch Novels. Washington Irving.-Dallas.-Rogers.-Hobhouse.

Trelawney.-Shelley.-Keats.-Millman.-Heber.-The Reviewing Squad.—Leigh Hunt.—Coleridge.-Wordsworth, and Southey. The Lakists in a rapid decline.

NEVER was character more misunderstood, or more misinterpreted than that of the subject of these biographical memoirs! His foibles were those of education, and a natural timidity and shyness, the consequence of a want of early introduction into that rank of society, to which he was so suddenly and unexpectedly elevated. His temper was, as he acknowledges, aristocratical, and yet he wanted the firmness and confidence to support the character with dignity,—his heart was kind and benevolent; yet he was ashamed of betraying its feelings, as if humanity were a weak. ness he could not exist without friendships; and yet he was too proud to let his friends imagine that they were necessary to his happiness; never was man more ardently attached to the fair sex, and yet he affected to despise them; he lived but

BYRON'S CHARACTER.

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in the sunshine of public admiration and applause; and though from irritation, or to display an independence of spirit, he acted in opposition to its received opinions, yet no man was ever more alive to its censure. The flippant hypercriticisms of a few insolent reviewers and journalists he mistook for the general sense of the nation; he believed himself to be an object of detestation, and in return, he fancied that he despised his country; yet no man was more sincerely attached to it; its admiration was his only aim; its prosperity, superiority, and glory, his constant theme, his boast, his pride! The disgraceful convention of Cintra, and the congress (or rather conspiracy) at Verona, always stuck in his throat as national disgraces. The latter pursued him wherever he went; he saw its dreadful effects in the sacrifice of Venice to Austria; it haunted him at Pisa, and pursued him to Genoa. It was the real cause of his dislike to Castlereagh and Wellington. Great Britain, when she had the power in her hands, should have insisted on the absolute independence of Italy.

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 ungenerous, to attribute to him that inordinate thirst for it, as to wish to monopolize it all to himself. It has been stated that he was exorbitantly desirous of being the sole object of interest,

856

BYRON MISREPRESENTED.

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 jealousy, 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 his friendship more than their own fame, he hated them. All this is a gross misrepresentation. 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 to every candidate for popular applause his due share of merit. True, as he himself acknowledged, he was rather cynical, even in speaking to, or concerning his most intimate friends; but they knew him, and that it was rather the indulgence of a natural propensity than a consequence of any envy, jealousy, or malignant wish to depreciate. He could not refrain from displaying his wit, but he had no heart to inflict a wound. His opinions of contemporary authors will be the best test of his powers of discrimination of their respective merit, and the justice he was ever ready to do them. His quarrel with Moore, and the mode of its adjustment has been already detailed. "We have

since," said Byron, "ever been the best friends in the world. There is no man I correspond so regularly with as Moore." Among the circle of his acquaintance, perhaps, there was not one who was more suited to allay his irritation, or to cheer up the despondency of mind, to which his Lordship was so subject, as Moore. He was, as Byron said, too social a soul to be insincere, and possessed of too independent a spirit to render it necessary for a man to be on his guard against him. When Byron was asked whether it was true, as had been suspected, that Moore assisted Lord Strangford in his translation of "Camoen's Poems," and other effusions: Byron denied it.

They

are great cronies," said he, "and when Moore was embarrassed by his Bermuda affairs, in which he was not well treated, Lord Strangford offered him £500; but Moore had too independent a spirit to lay himself under an obligation. I know no man I would go further to serve than Moore." At another time, speaking of his poetical genius, he expressed himself in the following terms: "Moore is one of the few writers who will survive the age in which he so deservedly flourishes. He will live in his Irish Melodies ;' they will go down to posterity accompanied with the music; and both will last as long as the world will retain a taste for poetry and music." A more unqualified praise could not have been bestowed by one man on another, and that other, too, the only man in

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SIR WALTER SCOTT.

his age and country, who, as is universally acknowledged, could ever enter into any competition or rivality with his encomiast, in the popular approbation. A more forcible refutation could not have been given of the calumny, that he hated those friends who endeavoured to attract any attention from himself. He also has given another remarkable instance of his generous mode of speaking, concerning another eminently successful writer and candidate for popularity, Sir Walter Scott. In a letter addressed to M. H. Beyle, Rue de Richelieu, Paris, dated Genoa, May 29, 1823, respecting the publication of a work, intitled "Rome, Naples, and Florence, in 1817," by M. Shendhal, and some other literary productions, Lord Byron expresses himself in the following terms: "There is one part of your observations in the pamphlet which I shall venture to remark upon; it regards Walter Scott. You say that

his character is little worthy of enthusiasm,' at the same time that you mention his productions in the manner they deserve. I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character-and I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration-that of all men he is the most open, the

* An extract from this work, respecting the author's introduction to Lord Byron at Venice, has been already given in vol. i, pages 398, et seq. His Lordship recognized the author as a Milan acquaintance, in 1816.