fall in the barometer; but it was never down doctor said afterwards he had been told that at zero. I always looked down when Lady Byron bent "A curious thing happened to me shortly her eyes on me, and exhibited other symptoms after the honey-moon, which was very awk- equally infallible, particularly those that mark ward at the time, but has since amused me ed the late king's case so strongly. I do not, much. It so happened that three married however, tax Lady Byron with this transacwomen were on a wedding visit to my wife, tion: probably she was not privy to it; she (and in the same room at the same time), was the tool of others. Her mother always whom I had known to be all birds of the same detested me; she had not even the decency to nest. Fancy the scene of confusion that en- conceal it in her own house. Dining one day sued. at Sir Ralph's (who was a good sort of man, The world says I married Miss Millbank and of whom you may form some idea, when for her fortune, because she was a great heir-I tell you that a leg of mutton was always ess. All I have ever received, or am likely served at his table, that he might cut the same to receive, (and that has been twice paid back joke upon it) I broke a tooth, and was in great too), was 10,000l. My own income at this pain, which I could not avoid showing. It period was small, and somewhat bespoke. will do you good,' said Lady Noel; 'I am glad Newstead was a very unprofitable estate, and of it!' I gave her a look! brought me in a bare 15007. a-year; the Lan- "Lady Byron had good ideas, but could cashire property was hampered with a law-never express them; wrote poetry too, but it suit, which has cost me 14,000l. and is not yet was only good by accident; her letters were finished. always enigmatical, often unintelligible. She "I heard afterwards that Mrs. Charlment was easily made the dupe of the designing, had been the means of poisoning Lady Noel's for she thought her knowledge of mankind mind against me; that she had employed her- infallible. She had got some foolish idea of self and others in watching me in London, Madame de Stael's into her head, that a perand had reported having traced me into a son may be better known in the first hour than house in Portland-Place. There was one act in ten years. She had the habit of drawing unworthy of any one but such a confidante; people's characters after she had seen them I allude to the breaking open my writing- once or twice. She wrote pages on pages desk: a book was found in it that did not do about my character, but it was as unlike as much credit to my taste in literature, and some possible. She was governed by what she letters from a married woman, with whom I called fixed rules and principles, squared had been intimate before my marriage. The mathematically. She would have made an use that was made of the latter was most un- excellent wrangler at Cambridge. It must justifiable, whatever may be thought of the be confessed, however, that she gave no proof breach of confidence that led to their discov- of her boasted consistency; first. she refused ery. Lady Byron sent them to the husband me, then she accepted me, then she separated of the lady, who had the good sense to take herself from me-so much for consistency. I no notice of their contents. The gravest ac-need not tell you of the obloquy and opprocusation that has been made against me, is brium that were cast upon my name when that of having intrigued with Mrs. Mardyn in our separation was made public; I once made my own house, introduced her to my own ta- a list from the journals of the day of the difble, etc.; there never was a more unfounded ferent worthies, ancient and modern, to whom calumny. Being on the Committee of Drury- I was compared: I remember a few, Nero, Lane Theatre, I have no doubt that several Apicius, Epicurus, Caligula, Heliogabalus, actresses called on me; but as to Mrs. Mar- Henry the Eighth, and lastly, the dyn, who was a beautiful woman, and might my former friends, even my cousin George have been a dangerous visitress, I was scarcely Byron, who had been brought up with me, acquainted (to speak) with her. I might even and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife's make a more serious charge against than part; he followed the stream when it was employing spies to watch suspected amours. strongest against me, and can never expect I had been shut up in a dark street in Lon- any thing from me; he shall never touch a don, writing The Siege of Corinth,' and had sixpence of mine. I was looked upon as the refused myself to every one till it was finished. worst of husbands, the most abandoned and I was surprised one day by a doctor and a wicked of men; and my wife as a suffering lawyer almost forcing themselves at the same angel, an incarnation of all the virtues and time into my room; 1 did not know till after-perfections of the sex. I was abused in the wards the real object of their visit. I thought public prints, made the common talk of pritheir questions singular, frivolous, and some-vate companies, hissed as I went to the House what importunate, if not impertinent; but of Lords, insulted in the streets, afraid to go what should I have thought if I had known to the theatre, whence the unfortunate Mrs. that they were sent to provide proofs of my Mardyn had been driven with insult. The insanity? I have no doubt that my answers to Examiner was the only paper that dared say these emissaries' interrogations were not very rational or consistent, for my imagination was heated by other things; but Dr. Baillie could not conscientiously make me out a certificate for Bedlam, and perhaps the lawyer gave a nore favourable report to his employers. The All a word in my defence, and Lady Jersey the only person in the fashionable world that did not look upon me as a monster." "In addition to all these mortifications, my affairs were irretrievably involved, and almost so as to make me what they wished. A was compelled to part with Newstead, which I borne onward on the wings of society with never could have ventured to sell in my moth-little personal expense. er's lifetime. As it is, I shall never forgive "Lord Byron was of another quality and myself for having done so, though I am told temperament. If the world would not conthat the estate would not bring half as much form to him, still less would he conform to the as I got for it: this does not at all reconcile world. He had all the manly, baronial pride me to having parted with the old Abbey. I of his ancestors, though he had not all their did not make up my mind to this step but from wealth, and their means of generosity, hospithe last necessity; I had my wife's portion to tality, and patronage. He had the will, alas! repay, and was determined to add 10,000l. without the power. more of my own to it, which I did: I always hated being in debt, and do not owe a guinea. The moment I had put my affairs in train, and in little more than eighteen months after my marriage, I left England, an involuntary exile, intending it should be for ever." "With this temper, these feelings, this genius, exposed to a combination of such untoward and trying circumstances, it would indeed have been inimitably praiseworthy if Lord Byron could have been always wise, prudent, calm, correct, pure, virtuous, and We shall here avail ourselves of some ob- unassailable:-if he could have shown all the servations by a powerful and elegant critic,' force and splendour of his mighty poetical enwhose opinions on the personal character of ergies, without any mixture of their clouds. Lord Byron, as well as on the merits of his their baneful lightnings, or their storms:-if poems, are, from their originality, candour, he could have preserved all his sensibility to and keen discrimination, of considerable every kind and noble passion, yet have reweight. mained placid, and unaffected by the attack of any blameable emotion;—that is, it would have been admirable if he had been an angel, and not a man! The charge against Lord Byron," says this writer, “is, not that he fell a victim to excessive temptations, and a combination of circumstances, which it required a rare and "Unhappily, the outrages he received, the extraordinary degree of virtue, wisdom, pru-gross calumnies which were heaped upon him, dence, and steadiness to surmount; but that even in the time of his highest favour with the he abandoned a situation of uncommon ad-public, turned the delights of his very days vantages, and fell weakly, pusillanimously, of triumph to poison, and gave him a sort of and selfishly, when victory would have been moody, fierce, and violent despair, which led easy, and when defeat was ignominious. In to humours, acts, and words, that mutually reply to this charge, I do not deny that Lord aggravated the ill-will and the offences beByron inherited some very desirable, and even tween him and his assailants. There was a enviable privileges in the lot of life which fell daring spirit in his temper and his talents, to his share. I should falsify my own senti-which was always inflamed rather than corments, if I treated lightly the gift of an an- rected by opposition. cient English peerage, and a name of honour "In this most unpropitious state of things, and venerable antiquity; but without a for- every thing that went wrong was attributed tune competent to that rank, it is not a bed to Lord Byron, and, when once attributed, of roses,' nay, it is attended with many and was assumed and argued upon as an undeniaextreme difficulties, and the difficulties are ble fact. Yet, to my mind, it is quite clear,exactly such as a genius and temper like Lord quite unattended by a particle of doubt,-that Byron's were least calculated to meet-at any in many things in which he has been the most rate, least calculated to meet under the pecu-blamed, he was the absolute victim of misforliar collateral circumstances in which he was tune; that unpropitious trains of events (for placed. His income was very narrow; his I do not wish to shift the blame on others) led Newstead property left him a very small disposable surplus; his Lancashire property was, in its condition, etc., unproductive. A profession, such as the army, might have lessened, or almost annihilated the difficulties of his peculiar position; but probably his lameness "It is not easy to conceive a character less rendered this impossible. He seems to have fitted to conciliate general society by his manhad a love of independence, which was noble, ners and habits, than that of Lord Byron. It and probably even an intractability; but this is probable that he could make his address temper added to his indisposition to bend and and conversation pleasing to ladies, when he adapt himself to his lot. A dull, or supple, chose to please; but, to the young dandies of or intriguing man, without a single good fashion, noble and ignoble, he must have been quality of head or heart, might have managed very repulsive: as long as he continued to be it much better; he might have made himself the ton,-the lion,-they may have endured subservient to government, and wormed him- him without opening their mouths, because he self into some lucrative place; or he might had a frown and a lash which they were not have lived meanly, conformed himself stu- willing to encounter; but when his back was pidly or cringingly to all humours, and been 1 Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart, who has written so diffusely and so ably on Lord By on's genius and character to explosions and consequent derangements, which no cold, prudent pretender to extreme propriety and correctness could have averted or met in a manner less blameable than that in which Lord Byron met it. turned, and they thought it safe, 1 do not improbable that there may have been some exert a moral force continually and effectively foundation for these complaints: I am sorry to accomplish the same purpose. Nobody can for it if there was; I regret such littlenesses. escape this force but those who are too high, And then another part of the story is proba-or those who are too low, for public opinion to bly left untold: we hear nothing of the provo- reach; or those hypocrites who are, before cations given him;-sly hints, curve of the others, the loudest in their approbation of the lip, side looks, treacherous smiles, flings at empty and unmeaning forms of society, that poetry, shrugs at noble authors, slang jokes, they may securely indulge all their propensi idiotic bets, enigmatical appointments, and ties in secret. I have suffered amazingly from boasts of being senseless brutes! We do not this interference; for though I set it at defihear repeated the jest of the glory of the Jew, ance, I was neither too high nor too low to be that buys the ruined peer's falling castle; the reacked by it, and I was not hypocrite enough d-d good fellow, that keeps the finest stud to guard myself from its consequences. and the best hounds in the country out of the "What do they say of my family affairs in snippings and odds and ends of his contract; England, Parry? My story, I suppose, like and the famous good match that the duke's other minor events. interested the people for a daughter is going to make with Dick Wigly, day, and was then forgotten?" I replied, no; the son of the rich slave-merchant at Liver- I thought, owing to the very great interest the pool! We do not hear the clever dry jests public took in him, it was still remembered whispered round the table by Mr. -, eldest and talked about. I mentioned that it was son of the new and rich Lord -, by young generally supposed a difference of religious Mr. -, only son of Lord the ex-lords sentiments between him and Lady Byron had A., B., and C., sons of the three Irish Union caused the public breach. "No, Parry," was earls, great borough-holders, and the very the reply; "Lady Byron has a liberal mind, grave and sarcastic Lord who believes particularly as to religious opinions; and I that he has the monopoly of all the talents, wish, when I married her, that I had possessand all the political and legislative knowledge ed the same command over myself that I now of the kingdom, and that a poet and a bell-do. Had I possessed a little more wisdom, man are only fit to be yoked together. and more forbearance, we might have been "Thus, then, was this illustrious and mighty happy. I wished, when I was first married, poet driven into exile! Yes, driven! who to have remained in the country, particularly would live in a country in which he had been till my pecuniary embarrassments were over. so used, even though it was the land of his I knew the society of London; I knew the nativity, the land of a thousand noble ances- characters of many of those who are called tors, the land of freedom, the land where his ladies, with whom Lady Byron would neceshead had been crowned with laurels,-but sarily have to associate, and I dreaded her where his heart had been tortured, where all contact with them. But I have too much of his most generous and most noble thoughts my mother about me to be dictated to: I like had been distorted and rendered ugly, and freedom from constraint; I hate artificial reguwhere his slightest errors and indiscretions lations: my conduct has always been dictated had been magnified into hideous crimes." by my own feelings, and Lady Byron was Lord Byron's own opinions on the connu- quite the creature of rules. She was not perbial state are thus related by Captain Parry:-mitted either to ride, or run, or walk, but as "There are," said his lordship, "so many the physician prescribed. She was not sufundefinable, and nameless, and not-to-be- fered to go out when I wished to go; and then named causes of dislike, aversion, and disgust, the old house was a mere ghost-house; 1 in the matrimonial state, that it is always im- dreamed of ghosts, and thought of them waking. possible for the public, or the best friends of It was an existence I could not support." the parties, to judge between man and wife. Here Lord Byron broke off abruptly, saying, Theirs is a relation about which nobody but "I hate to speak of my family affairs; though themselves can form a correct idea, or have I have been compelled to talk nonsense con any right to speak. As long as neither party cerning them to some of my butterfly visitors, commits gross injustice towards the other; as glad on any terms to get rid of their importulong as neither the woman nor the man is nities. I long to be again on the mountains. I guilty of any offence which is injurious to the am fond of solitude, and should never talk noncommunity; as long as the husband provides sense if I always found plain men to talk to." for his offspring, and secures the public against In the spring of 1816, Lord Byron quitted the dangers arising from their neglected edu- England, to return to it no more. He crossed cation, or from the charge of supporting them; over to France, through which he passed by what right does it censure him for ceasing rapidly to Brussels, taking in his way a surto dwell under the same roof with a woman, vey of the field of Waterloo. He then prowho is to him, because he knows her, while ceeded to Coblentz, and up the Rhine to others do not, an object of loathing? Can any Basle. He passed the summer on the banks thing be more monstrous than for the public of the lake of Geneva. With what enthusivoice to compel individuals who dislike each asm he enjoyed, and with what contemplations other to continue their cohabitation? This is he dwelt among its scenery, his own poetry at least the effect of its interfering with a re-soon exhibited to the world. His third canto of lationship, of which it has no possible means Childe Harold his Manfred, and his Prisoner of judging. It does not indeed drag a man to of Chillon.ere composed at the Campagno a woman's bed by physical force; but it does Diodati, at Coligny, à mile from Geneva These productions evidently proved, that five carriages, nine horses, a monkey, a bullthe unfortunate events which had induced dog and mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls, and Lord Byron to become a voluntary exile from some hens, (I do not know whether I have his native land, however they might have ex- classed them in order of rank), formed part acerbated his feelings, had in no measure chill- of his live stock; these, and all his books, ed his poetical fire. consisting of a very large library of modern The anecdotes that follow are given as his works, (for he bought all the best that came lordship related them to Captain Medwin: out), together with a vast quantity of furni"Switzerland is a country I have been satis-ture, might well be termed, with Cæsar, "imfied with seeing once; Turkey I could live in pediments." for ever. I never forget my predilections. I From about the commencement of the yea. was in a wretched state of health, and worse 1817 to that of 1820, Lord Byron's principal spirits, when I was at Geneva; but quiet and residence was Venice. Here he continued to the lake, physicians better than Polidori, soon employ himself in poetical composition with set me up. I never led so moral a life as during an energy still increasing. He wrote the Lamy residence in that country; but I gained ment of Tasso, the fourth canto of Childe no credit by it. Where there is a mortifica- Harold, the dramas of Marino Faliero, and tion, there ought to be reward. On the con- the Two Foscari; Beppo, Mazeppa, and the trary, there is no story so absurd that they did earlier cantos of Don Juan, etc. not invent at my cost. I was watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses too that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening drives-I was accused of corrupting all the griseltes in the rue Basse. I believe that they looked upon me as a man-monster worse than the piqueur." Considering these only with regard to intellectual activity and force, there can be no difference of opinion; though there may be as to their degree of poetical excellence, the class in the scale of literary merit to which they belong, and their moral, religious, and political tendencies. The Lament of Tasso, which in every line abounds in the most per"I knew very few of the Genevese. Hentsh fect poetry, is liable to no countervailing obwas very civil to me; and I have a great re-jection on the part of the moralist. spect for Sismondi. I was forced to return In the third canto of the "Pilgrimage," the the civilities of one of their professors by ask-discontented and repining spirit of Harold ing him, and an old gentleman, a friend of had already become much softened: Gray's, to dine with me. I had gone out to sail early in the morning, and the wind prevented me from returning in time for dinner. I understand that I offended them mortally. Polidori did the honours. "Joy was not always absent from his face, But o'er it in such scenes would steal with tranquil grace." He is a being of still gentler mould in the "Among our countrymen I made no new fourth canto; his despair has even sometimes acquaintances; Shelley, Monk Lewis, and assumed a smilingness, and the lovely and Hobhouse, were almost the only English peo-lively creations of the poet's brain are less ple I saw. No wonder; I showed a distaste for painfully alloyed, and less suddenly checked society at that time, and went little among the by the gloomy visions of a morbid imaginaGenevese: besides, I could not speak French. tion. He represented himself, from the beWhat is become of my boatman and boat? Iginning, as a ruin; and when we first gazed suppose she is rotten; she was never worth upon him, we saw indeed in abundance the much. When I went the tour of the lake in black traces of recent violence and convulher with Shelley and Hobhouse, she was nearly sion. The edifice was not rebuilt; but its wrecked near the very spot where Saint- hues were softened by the passing wings of Preux and Julia were in danger of being Time, and the calm slow ivy had found leisure drowned. It would have been classical to to wreath the soft green of its melancholy have been lost there, but not so agreeable. among the fragments of the decay. In so far Shelley was on the lake much oftener than I, the pilgrim became wiser, as he seemed to at all hours of the night and day: he almost think more of others, and with a greater spirit lived on it; his great rage is a boat. We are of humanity. There was something fiendish both building now at Genoa, I a yacht, and in the air with which he surveyed the first he an open boat." scene of his wanderings; and no proof of the "Somebody possessed Madame de Stael with strength of genius was ever exhibited so an opinion of my immorality. I used occa-strong and unquestionable as the sudden and sionally to visit her at Coppet; and once she entire possession of the minds of men by such invited me to a family-dinner, and I found the a being as he then appeared to be. He looked room full of strangers, who had come to stare upon a bull-fight and a field of battle with no at me as at some outlandish beast in a raree-variety of emotion. Brutes and men were, show. One of the ladies fainted, and the rest in his eyes, the same blind, stupid victims of looked as if his satanic majesty had been the savage lust of power. He seemed to shut among them. Madame de Stael took the his eyes to every thing of that citizenship and liberty to read me a lecture before this crowd, patriotism which ennobles the spirit of the to which I only made her a low bow." soldier, and to delight in scattering the dust His lordship's travelling equipage was and ashes of his derision over all the most sarather a singular one, and afforded a strange cred resting-places of the soul of man. Even catalogue for the Dogana: seven servants, then, we must allow, the original spirit of the Englishman and the poet broke triumphantly, The first idea of the descriptive passages of at times, through the chilling mist in which it this beautiful poem will be easily recognised had been spontaneously enveloped. In Greece, in the following extract from Lord Byron's above all, the contemplation of Actium, Sa- travelling memorandum book: lamis, Marathon, Thermopyla, and Platæa, Sept. 22, 1816. Left Thun in a boat, subdued the prejudices of him who had gazed which carried us the length of this lake in unmoved, or with disdain, upon fields of more three hours. The lake small, but the banks recent glory. The nobility of manhood ap- fine-rocks down to the water's edge-landed peared to delight this moody visitant; and he at Newhouse. Passed Interlachen-entered accorded, without reluctance, to the shades upon a range of scenes beyond all description of long departed heroes that reverent homage or previous conception. Passed a rock bearwhich, in the strange mixture of envy and ing an inscription-two brothers-one murscorn wherewith the contemplative so oftendered the other-just the place for it. After regard active men, he had refused to the liv-a variety of windings, came to an enormous ing, or to the newly dead. rock-arrived at the foot of the mountain (the But there would be no end of descanting Jungfraw)—glaciers-torrents-one of these on the character of the Pilgrim, nor of the 900 feet visible descent-lodge at the curate's moral reflections which it awakens; we there--set out to see the valley-heard an avalanche fore take leave of Childe Harold in his own fall, like thunder!-glaciers enormous-storm beautiful language: comes on-thunder and lightning, and hail! all in perfection and beautiful. The torrent is in shape, curving over the rock, like the tail of the white horse streaming in the wind -just as might be conceived would be that of the Pale Horse,' on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; its immense height gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condension there-wonderful-indescribable. Manfred was the first of Lord Byron's dra- "Sept. 23. Ascent of the Wingren, the matic poems, and, we think, the finest. The Dent d'argent shining like truth on one side, spirit of his genius seems there wrestling with on the other the clouds rose from the opposite the spirit of his nature, the struggle being for valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, the palm of sublimity. Manfred has always ap- like the foam of the ocean of hell during a peared to us one of the most genuine creations spring tide! It was white and sulphury, and of the noble bard's mind. The melancholy is immeasurably deep in appearance. The side more heartfelt: the poet does not here seem we ascended was of course not of so precipito scowl his brows, but they drop under the tous a nature, but on arriving at the summit weight of his thoughts; his intellect, too, is we looked down on the other side upon a boilstrongly at work in it, and the stern haughti- ing sea of cloud, dashing against the crag on ness of the principal character is altogether which we stood. Arrived at the Greenderof an intellectual cast: the conception of this wold; mounted and rode to the higher glacier character is Miltonic. The poet has made-twilight, but distinct-very fine--glacier him worthy to abide amongst those "palaces like a frozen hurricane-starlight beautifulof nature," those "icy halls," "where forms the whole of the day was fine, and, in point and falls the avalanche." Manfred stands up of weather, as the day in which Paradise was against the stupendous scenery of the poem, made. Passed whole woods of withered pines and is as lofty, towering, and grand as the -all withered-trunks stripped, and lifelessmountains: when we picture him in imagina- done by a single winter." tion, he assumes a shape of height and inde- Of Lord Byron's tragedies we shall merely pendent dignity, shining in its own splendour remark, with reference to the particular naamongst the snowy summits which he was ac- ture of their tragic character, that the effect customed to climb. The passion, too, in this of them all is rather grand, terrible, and tercomposition, is fervid and impetuous, but at rific, than mollifying, subduing, or pathetic. the same time deep and full, which is not al-As dramatic poems, they possess much beauty ways the case in Byron's productions; it is and originality. serious and sincere throughout. The music The style and nature of the poem of Don of the language is as solemn and as touching Juan forms a singularly felicitous mixture of as that of the wind coming through the bend- burlesque and pathos, of humorous 'observa ing ranks of the inaccessible Alpine forests; tion, and the higher elements of poetical com and the mists and vapours rolling down the position. Never was the English language gullies and ravines that yawn horribly on the festooned into more luxurious stanzas than in eye, are not more wild and striking in their Don Juan: like the dolphin sporting in its na appearance than are the supernatural crea- tive waves, at every turn, however grotesque, tions of the poet's fancy, whose magical agen-displaying a new hue and a new beauty, so cy is of mighty import, but is nevertheless the noble author there shows an absolute concontinually surmounted by the high intellec- trol over his means, and at every cadence, tual power, invincible will, and intrepid phi- rhyme, or construction, however whimsical losophy of Manfred. delights us with novel and magical associa |