It was while sojourning
near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union
with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs.
near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union
with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
Lomax by gift of his father, G.
Lomax,” confirms the
tradition that this Cromwellian colonel was the original of Hudibras.
The elder Lomax is said to have been an intimate friend of Butler.
Another name on the list of candidates for this humorous honor –
the honor of contributing with Don Quixote to the increase of lan-
guage – is that of Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey, Devonshire.
But it is unnecessary to limit to an individual sample the satirist
and poet of the whole breadth of human nature. A presumption
that Butler was in France and Holland for a time arises from certain
references in his writings. It was about 1659, when the decline of
the Cromwells became assured, that Butler ventured, but anony-
mously, into print with a tract warmly advocating the recall of the
King. At the Restoration, and probably in reward for this evidence
of loyalty, he was made secretary to the Earl of Carbury, President
of Wales, by whom he was appointed steward of Ludlow Castle.
About this time he married a gentlewoman of small fortune, and is
said to have lived comfortably upon her money until it was lost by
bad investments. The King having come to his own again, Butler
obtained permission in November 1662 to print the first part of 'Hudi-
bras. ' The quaint title of this poem has attracted much curious
cavil. The name is used by Milton, Spenser, and Robert of Glouces-
ter for an early king of Britain, the grandfather of King Lear; and
by Ben Jonson — from whom Butler evidently adopted it — for a
swaggering fellow in the Magnetic Lady):
«Rut — Where is your captain
Rudhudibrass de Ironside ? >
Act iii. , Scene 3.
Charles II. was so delighted with the satire that he not only read
and reread it, but gave many copies to his intimates.
The royal
## p. 2929 (#501) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2929
generosity, lavish in promises, never exerted itself further than to
give Butler - or Boteler, as he is writ in the warrant - a monopoly
of printing his own poem.
The second part of Hudibras' appeared in 1664, and the third
and last in 1678.
The Duke of Buckingham was, we are told by Aubrey, well dis-
posed towards Butler, and Wycherley was a constant suitor in his
behalf; but the fickle favorite forgot his promises as easily as did
the King. Lord Clarendon, who had the witty poet's portrait painted
for his library, was no better at promise-keeping. It is natural that
such neglect should have provoked the sharp but just satires which
Butler wrote against the manners of Charles's dissolute court.
"Hudibras) was never finished; for Butler, who had been confined
by his infirmities to his room in Rose Court, Covent Garden, since
1676, died on September 25th, 1680. William Longueville, a devoted
friend but for whose kindness the poet might have starved, buried
the remains at his own expense in the churchyard of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden. In 1721 John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, set up
in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey an inscription to Butler's
memory, which caused later satirists to suggest that this was giving
a stone to him who had asked for bread.
Butler was a plain man of middle stature, strong-set, high-colored,
with a head of sorrel hair. He possessed a severe and sound judg-
ment, but was “a good fellow,” according to his friend Aubrey.
Many of Butler's writings were not published in his lifetime, dur-
ing which only the three parts of Hudibras' and some trifles
appeared. Longueville, who received his papers, left them, unpub-
lished, to his son Charles; from whom they came to John Clarke of
Cheshire, by whose permission the (Genuine Remains) in two vol-
umes were published in 1759. The title of this book is due to the
fact that poor Butler, as is usual with his kind, became very popular
immediately after his death, and the ghouls of literature supplied the
book-shops with forgeries. Butler's manuscripts, many of which have
never been published, were placed in the British Museum in 1885.
V-184
## p. 2930 (#502) ###########################################
2930
SAMUEL BUTLER
HUDIBRAS DESCRIBED
WHEN
HEN civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For dame Religion as for Punk,
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Tho' not a man of them knew wherefore;
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a-colonelling.
A Wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood,
That never bent his stubborn knee
To anything but chivalry;
Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right worshipful on shoulder-blade;
Chief of domestic knights, and errant,
Either for chartel or for warrant;
Great on the bench, great in the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle:
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styl'd of War as well as Peace.
So some rats of amphibious nature
Are either for the land or water.
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise, or stout.
Some hold the one, and some the other;
But howsoe'er they make a pother,
The diff'rence was so small, his brain
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain;
Which made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool;
And offer'd to lay wagers that
As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
Much more she wou'd Sir Hudibras:
## p. 2931 (#503) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2931
For that's the name our valiant knight
To all his challenges did write.
But they're mistaken very much;
'Tis plain enough he was no such:
We grant, although he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out;
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holy-days, or so,
As men their best apparel do.
He was in Logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in Analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a Lord may be an owl;
A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice,
And rooks Committee-Men or Trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.
All this by syllogism true,
In mood and figure, he would do.
For Rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope:
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to shew why
And tell what rules he did it by.
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk.
For all a Rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
His ordinary rate of speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;
A Babylonish dialect,
Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a parti-color'd dress
Of patch'd and piebald languages.
## p. 2932 (#504) ###########################################
2932
SAMUEL BUTLER
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone,
As if h’ had talk'd three parts in one;
Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th’ had heard three laborers of Babel;
Or Cerberus himself pronounce
A leash of languages at once.
This he as volubly would vent
As if his stock would ne'er be spent :
And truly, to support that charge,
He had supplies as vast and large,
For he could coin or counterfeit
New words with little or no wit:
Words so debas'd and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch them on;
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em -
That had the orator who once
Did fill his mouth with pebble-stones
When he harangu'd, but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.
In Mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o'th' day
The clock does strike, by Algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd Philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over:
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b'implicit faith:
Whatever Skeptic could inquire for;
For every WHY he had a WHEREFORE:
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go.
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion serv'd, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong,
They might be either said or sung.
## p. 2933 (#505) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2933
His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell,
But oftentimes mistook the one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.
He could reduce all things to acts,
And knew their natures by abstracts;
Where entity and quiddity,
The ghost of defunct bodies, fly;
Where Truth in person does appear,
Like words congealed in northern air.
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
For his religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit:
'Twas Presbyterian, true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true church militant:
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carry'd on,
And still be doing, never done,
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies:
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss:
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way:
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worship'd God for spite.
## p. 2934 (#506) ###########################################
2934
SAMUEL BUTLER
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow.
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin.
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly:
Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend — plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
His puissant sword unto his side,
Near his undaunted heart, was ty'd,
With basket-hilt, that would hold broth,
And serve for fight and dinner both.
In it he melted lead for bullets,
To shoot at foes, and sometimes pullets;
To whom he bore so fell a grutch,
He ne'er gave quarter t'any such.
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.
The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt
The rancor of its edge had felt.
This sword a dagger had, his page,
That was but little for his age:
And therefore waited on him so,
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.
It was a serviceable dudgeon,
Either for fighting or for drudging:
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread,
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse-trap, 'twould not care:
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth:
It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this, and more, it did endure;
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done, on the same score.
## p. 2934 (#507) ###########################################
## p. 2934 (#508) ###########################################
LORD GEORGE GORDON BYRON.
## p. 2935 (#509) ###########################################
2935
LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
OETHE, in one of his conversations with Henry Crabb Robin-
son about Byron, said “There is no padding in his poetry)
(“Es sind keine Flickwörter im Gedichte"). This was in
1829, five years after Byron died. “This, and indeed every evening,
I believe, Lord Byron was the subject of his praise. He com-
pared the brilliancy and clearness of his style to a metal wire
drawn through a steel plate. ” He expressed regret that Byron
should not have lived to execute his vocation, which he said was “to
dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands
would the Tower of Babel have been ! » Byron's views of nature he
declared were “equally profound and poetical. ” Power in all its
forms Goethe had respect for, and he was captivated by the indom-
itable spirit of Manfred. He enjoyed the Vision of Judgment
when it was read to him, exclaiming “ Heavenly! » «Unsurpassable! ”
“Byron has surpassed himself. ” He equally enjoyed the satire on
George IV. He did not praise Milton with the warmth with which
he eulogized Byron, of whom he said that “the like would never
come again; he was inimitable. ”
Goethe's was the Continental opinion, but it was heightened by
his conception of “realism ”; he held that the poet must be matter-
of-fact, and that it was the truth and reality that made writing
popular: «It is by the laborious collection of facts that even
poetical view of nature is to be corrected and authenticated. ”
Tennyson was equally careful for scientific accuracy in regard to all
the phenomena of nature. Byron had not scientific accuracy, but
with his objectivity Goethe sympathized more than with the reflection
and introspection of Wordsworth.
Byron was hailed on the Continent as a poet of power, and the
judgment of him was not influenced by his disregard of the society
conventions of England, nor by his personal eccentricities, nor
because he was not approved by the Tory party and the Tory
writers. Perhaps unconsciously-certainly not with the conviction of
Shelley – Byron was on the side of the new movement in Europe;
the spirit of Rousseau, the unrest of (Wilhelm Meister,' the revolu-
tionary seething, with its tinge of morbidness and misanthropy, its
brilliant dreams of a new humanity, and its reckless destructive
a
## p. 2936 (#510) ###########################################
2936
LORD BYRON
theories. In France especially his influence was profound and lasting.
His wit and his lyric fire excused his morbidness and his sentimental
posing as a waif, unfriended in a cold and treacherous world of women
and men; and his genius made misanthropy and personal recklessness
a fashion. The world took his posing seriously and his grievances
to heart, sighed with him, copied his dress, tried to imitate his ad-
ventures, many of them imaginary, and accepted him as a perturbed,
storm-tost spirit, representative of an age of agitation.
So he was, but not by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for
his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false
education, an undisciplined temper, and a changing mind. He was
guided by the impulse of the moment. I think it a supportable
thesis that every age, every wide and popular movement, finds its
supreme expression in a Poet.
Byron was the mouthpiece of a certain
phase of his time. He expressed it, and the expression remains and
is important as a record, like the French Revolution and the battle
of Waterloo. Whatever the judgment in history may be of the value
to civilization of this eighteenth-century movement extending into
the nineteenth, in politics, sociology, literature, with all its reckless-
ness, morbidness, hopefulness, Byron represented it. He was the
poet of Revolt. He sounded the note of intemperate, unconsidered
defiance in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. This satire
was audacious; many of its judgments were unjust; but its wit and
poetic vigor announced a new force in English literature, and the
appearance of a man who was abundantly able to take care of him-
self and secure respectful treatment. In moments afterward he
expressed regret for it, or for portions of it, and would have liked
to soften its personalities. He was always susceptible to kindness,
and easily won by the good opinion of even a declared enemy. He
and Moore became lifelong friends, and between him and Walter
Scott there sprang up a
warm friendship, with sincere reciprocal
admiration of each other's works. Only on politics and religion did
they disagree, but Scott thought Byron's Liberalism not very deep:
« It appeared to me,” he said, that the pleasure it afforded him as a
vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office
was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At heart I would have
termed Byron a patrician on principle. ” Scott shared Goethe's opin-
ion of Byron's genius:-"He wrote from impulse, never for effect, and
therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine
poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century before me. We
have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing
and perennial fountain of natural waters. It has been a fashion of
late years to say that both Byron and Scott have gone by; I fancy it
is a case of “not lost, but gone before. Among the men satirized
## p. 2937 (#511) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2937
in the Bards) was Wordsworth. Years after, Byron met him at a
dinner, and on his return told his wife that the one feeling he had
for him from the beginning to the end of the visit was reverence. ”
Yet he never ceased to gird at him in his satires. The truth is,
that consistency was never to be expected in Byron. Besides, he
inherited none of the qualities needed for an orderly and noble life.
He came of a wild and turbulent race.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, the sixth of the name, was born in
London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, April
19th, 1824. His father, John Byron, a captain in the Guards, was a
heartless profligate with no redeeming traits of character. He eloped
with Amelia D'Arcy, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and after
her divorce from her husband married her and treated her like a
brute. One daughter of this union was Augusta, Byron's half-
sister, who married Colonel Leigh, and who was the good angel of
the poet, and the friend of Lady Byron until there was a rupture of
their relations in 1830 on a matter of business. A year after the
death of his first wife, John Byron entrapped and married Catherine
Gordon of Gicht, - a Scotch heiress, very proud of her descent from
James I. of Scotland, — whose estate he speedily squandered. In less
than two years after the birth of George, John Byron ran away from
his wife and his creditors, and died in France.
Mrs. Byron was a wholly undisciplined and weak woman, proud
of her descent, wayward and hysterical. She ruined the child, whom
she alternately petted and abused. She interfered with his educa-
tion and fixed him in all his bad tendencies. He never learned
anything until he was sent away from her, to Harrow. He was pas-
sionate, sullen, defiant of authority, but very amenable to kindness;
and with a different mother his nobler qualities, generosity, sense of.
justice, hatred of hypocrisy, and craving for friendship would have
been developed, and the story of his life would be very different
from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the
careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and
loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad
temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him
from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embit-
tered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet
was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, and the evil was
aggravated by surgical attempts to straighten the limb. His sensi-
tiveness was increased by unfeeling references to it. His mother
used to call him “a lame brat,” and his pride received an incurable
wound in the heartless remark of Mary Chaworth, «Do you think I
could care for that lame boy? ”Byron was two years her junior,
but his love for her was the purest passion of his life, and it has the
## p. 2938 (#512) ###########################################
2938
LORD BYRON
sincerest expression in the famous Dream. Byron's lameness, and
his morbid fear of growing obese, which led him all his life into
reckless experiments in diet, were permanent causes of his discon-
tent and eccentricity. / In 1798, by the death of its incumbent, Byron
became the heir of Newstead Abbey and the sixth Lord Byron He
had great pride in the possession of this crumbling and ruinous old
pile. After its partial repair he occupied it with his mother, and
from time to time in his stormy life; but in 1818 it was sold for
£90,000, which mostly went to pay debts and mortgages. Almost all
the influences about Byron's early youth were such as to foster his
worst traits, and lead to those eccentricities of conduct and temper
which came at times close to insanity. But there was one exception,
his nurse Mary Gray, to whom he owed his intimate knowledge of
the Bible, and for whom he always retained a sincere affection. It
is worth noting also, as an indication of his nature, that he always
had the love of his servants.
A satisfactory outline of Byron's life and work is found in Mr.
John Nichol's (Byron' in the English Men of Letters) series. Owing
to his undisciplined home life, he was a backward boy in scholarship.
In 1805 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he resided
irregularly for three years, reading much in a desultory manner, but
paying slight attention to the classics and mathematics; so that it
was a surprise that he was able to take his degree. But he had
keen powers of observation and a phenomenal memory. Notwith-
standing his infirmity he was distinguished in many athletic sports,
he was fond of animals and such uncomfortable pets as bears and
monkeys, and led generally an irregular life. The only fruit of this
period in literature was the Hours of Idleness,' which did not
promise much, and would be of little importance notwithstanding
many verses of great lyric skill, had it not been for the slashing
criticism on it, imputed to Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review,
which provoked the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. ' This
witty outburst had instant success with the public.
In 1809 Byron came of age, and went abroad on a two-years' pil-
grimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein
to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the lands of the sun,"
and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems.
He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,- a handsome,
willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native
land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world
was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his
diablerie, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return in 1811
and the publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of Childe Harold. ?
All London was at his feet. He had already made his first speech
## p. 2939 (#513) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2939
)
in the House of Lords espousing the Liberal side. The second
speech was in favor of Catholic emancipation. The fresh and novel
poem, which Byron himself had not at first thought worth offering
a publisher, fell in with the humor and moral state of the town. It
was then that he made the oft-quoted remark, “I awoke one morning
and found myself famous. ” The poem gave new impetus to the
stories of his romantic life, and London seemed to idolize him as
much for his follies and his liaisons as for his genius. He plunged
into all the dissipation of the city. But this period from 181 to 1815
was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succes-
sion he gave to the press poems and romances, — The Giaour,' (The
Bride of Abydos,' «The Corsair,) Lara,' the Hebrew Melodies,' (The
Siege of Corinth,' and Parisina. ' Some of the Hebrew Melodies
are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives,
full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portrait-
ures of female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody,
but melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they
still impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of
versification, and their frequent beauty.
Sated with varied dissipation, worn out with the flighty adora-
tion of Lady Caroline Lamb, and urged by his friends to marry and
settle down, Byron married (January 20, 1815) Anne Isabella, daughter
of Sir Ralph Milbanke. He liked but did not love her; and she was
no doubt fascinated by the reputation of the most famous man in
Europe, and perhaps indulged the philanthropic hope that she could
reform the literary Corsair. On the oth of December was born
Augusta Ada, the daughter whom Byron celebrates in his verse and
to whom he was always tenderly attached. On the 15th of January,
five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home with the
child to pay a visit to her family, dispatching to her husband a play-
fully tender letter. Shortly after, he was informed by her father and
by herself that she did not intend ever to return to him. It is use-
less to enter into the controversy as to the cause of this separation.
In the light of the latest revelations, the better opinion seems to be
that it was a hopeless incongruity that might have been predicted
from the characters of the two. It seems that Lady Byron was not
quite so amiable as she was supposed to be, and in her later years she
was subject to hallucinations. Byron, it must be admitted, was an
impossible husband for any woman, most of all for any woman who
cared for the social conventions. This affair brought down upon
Byron a storm of public indignation which drove him from England.
The society which had petted him and excused his vagaries and vio-
lations of all decency, now turned upon him with rage and made
the idol responsible for the foolishness of his worshipers. To the
## p. 2940 (#514) ###########################################
2940
LORD BYRON
end of his life, neither society nor the critics ever forgave him, and
did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular
cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the free-
dom of speculation in such masterly works as Cain? brought upon
him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England
his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This
vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George
III. , and to expose mercilessly in Don Juan' the hypocrisy of Eng-
·lish life.
On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron left England, never to return.
And then opened the most brilliant period of his literary career.
Instead of being crushed by the situation, Byron's warlike spirit
responded to it with defiance, and his suffering and his anger in-
voked the highest qualities of his extraordinary genius. His career
in Italy was as wild and dissipated as ever. Strange to say, the
best influence in his irregular life was the Countess Guiccioli, who
persuaded him at one time to lay aside the composition of Don
Juan,' and in whose society he was drawn into ardent sympathy
with the Italian liberals. For the cause of Italian unity he did
much when it was in its darkest period, and his name is properly
linked in this great achievement with those of Mazzini and Cavour.
It was in Switzerland, before Byron settled in Venice, that he met
Shelley, with whom he was thereafter to be on terms of closest inti-
macy. Each had a mutual regard for the genius of the other, but
Shelley placed Byron far above himself.
It was while sojourning
near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union
with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs. Clairmont, who became
William Godwin's second wife. The result of this intimacy was a
natural daughter, Allegra, for whose maintenance and education
Byron provided, and whose early death was severely felt by him.
Byron's life in Italy from 1816 to 1823 continued to be a romance
of exciting and dubious adventure. Many details of it are given in
Byron's letters,— his prose is always as vigorous as his poetry, and
as self-revealing, - and it was no doubt recorded in his famous
Diary, which was intrusted to his friend Tom Moore, and was burned
after Byron's death. Byron's own frankness about himself, his love
of mystification, his impulsiveness in writing anything that entered
his brain at the moment, and his habit of boasting about his wicked-
ness, which always went to the extent of making himself out worse
than he was, stands in the way of getting a clear narration of his
life and conduct. But he was always an interesting and commanding
and perplexing personality, and the writings about him by his inti-
mates are as various as the moods he indulged in. The bright light
of inquiry always shone upon him, for Byron was the most brilliant,
## p. 2941 (#515) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2941
the most famous, the most detested, the most worshiped, and the
most criticized and condemned man in Europe.
It was in this period that he produced the works that by their
innate vigor and power placed him in the front rank of English
poets. A complete list of them cannot be given in this brief notice.
The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold' attained a height
that the first two cantos had not prepared the world to expect.
Cain' was perhaps the culmination of his power. The lyrics and
occasional poems of this time add to his fame because they exhibit
his infinite variety. Critics point out the carelessness of his verse,
- and there is an air of haste in much of it; they deny his origi-
nality and give the sources of his inspiration, — but he had Shake-
speare's faculty of transforming all things to his own will; and they
deny him the contribution of thought to the ideas of the world.
This criticism must stand against the fact of his almost unequaled
power to move the world and make it feel and think. The Conti-
nental critics did not accuse him of want of substance. What did he.
not do for Spain, for Italy, for Greece! No interpretation of their
splendid past, of their hope for the future, no musings over the
names of other civilizations, no sympathy with national pride, hoe
ever so satisfied the traveling and reading world in these lands, as
Byron's. The public is not so good a judge of what poetry should
be, as the trained critics; but it is a judge of power, of what is
stirring and entertaining: and so it comes to pass that Byron's work
is read when much poetry, more finished but wanting certain vital
qualities, is neglected. I believe it is a fact that Byron is more
quoted than any English poet except Pope since Shakespeare, and
that he is better known to the world at large than any except the
Master. But whether this is so or not, he is more read now at the
close of this century than he was in its third quarter.
“The Dream' and 'Darkness are poems that will never lose their
value so long as men love and are capable of feeling terror. Man-
fred,' 'Mazeppa, Heaven and Earth,' The Prisoner of Chillon,
and the satire of the Vision of Judgment maintain their promi-
nence; and it seems certain that many of the lyrics, like “The Isles
of Greece) and the Maid of Athens,' will never pall upon any gen-
eration of readers, and the lyrics will probably outlast the others in
general favor. Byron wrote many dramas, but they are not acting
plays. He lacked the dramatic instinct, and it is safe to say that
his plays, except in certain passages, add little to his great reputa-
tion.
In the opinion of many critics, Byron's genius was more fully
displayed in 'Don Juan) than in Childe Harold. Byron was Don
Juan, mocking, satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all
## p. 2942 (#516) ###########################################
2942
LORD BYRON
conventional opinion. The ease, the grace, the diablerie of the poem
are indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a
microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of
thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most
wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended
by its satire of English hypocrisy had no difficulty in deciding that
it was not fit for English readers. I wonder what would be the
judgment of it if it were a recovered classic disassociated from the
personality of any writer.
Byron was an aristocrat, and sometimes exhibited a silly regard
for his rank; but he was a democrat in all the impulses of his
nature. His early feeling was that as a peer he condescended to
authorship, and for a time he would take no pay for what he wrote.
But later, when he needed money, he was keen at a bargain for his
poetry. He was extravagant in his living, generous to his friends
and to the popular causes he espoused, and cared nothing for money
except the pleasure of spending it. It was while he was living at
Ravenna that he became involved in the intrigues for Italian inde-
pendence. He threw himself, his fortune and his time, into it. The
time has come, he said, when a man must do something — writing
was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of the Carbonari;
he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation; his
political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and leader-
ship. When that dream faded under the reality of the armies
of despotism, his thoughts turned to Greece. Partly his restless
nature, partly love of adventure carried him there; but once in the
enterprise, he gave his soul to it with a boldness, a perseverance, a
good sense, a patriotic fervor that earn for him the title of a hero
in a good cause. His European name was a tower of strength to the
Greek patriots. He mastered the situation with a statesman's skill
and with the perception of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of
campaigning, and waited in patience to bring some order to the
wrangling factions. If his life had been spared, it is possible that
the Greeks then might have thrown off the Turkish yoke; but he
succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by the exposure of a
frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at Missolonghi in
his thirty-seventh year. He was adored by the Greeks, and his
death was a national calamity. This last appearance of Lord Byron
shows that he was capable of as great things in action as in the
realm of literature. It was the tragic end of the stormy career of a
genius whose life was as full of contradictions as his character.
It was not only in Greece that Byron's death was profoundly felt,
but in all Europe, which was under the spell of his genius. Mrs.
Anne Thackeray Ritchie, in her charming recollections of Tennyson,
## p. 2943 (#517) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2943
says: «One day the news came to the village — the dire news which
spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that
Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. Byron was
dead! I thought the whole world was at an end, he once said,
speaking of those bygone days. I thought everything was over and
finished for every one — that nothing else mattered. I remember I
walked out alone and carved “Byron is dead” into the sandstone. ) ”
Chus. Dukly Namer
MAID OF ATHENS
M
AID of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ. *
agopo
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
mon
Zon
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul :
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
* Zoë mou, sas agapo : «My life, I love you. ”
## p. 2944 (#518) ###########################################
2944
LORD BYRON
TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC SONG
I
ENTER thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidée,
Each morning where Flora reposes,
For surely I see her in thee.
O Lovely! thus low I implore thee,
Receive this fond truth from my tongue,
Which utters its song to adore thee,
Yet trembles for what it has sung:
As the branch, at the bidding of Nature,
Adds fragrance and fruit to the tree,
Through her eyes, through her every feature,
Shines the soul of the young Haidée.
But the loveliest garden grows hateful
When love has abandoned the bowers;
Bring me hemlock — since mine is ungrateful,
That herb is more fragrant than flowers.
The poison, when poured from the chalice,
Will deeply embitter the bowl;
But when drunk to escape from thy malice,
The draught shall be sweet to my soul.
Too cruel! in vain I implore thee
My heart from these horrors to save:
Will naught to my bosom restore thee?
Then open the gates of the grave.
As the chief who to combat advances
Secure of his conquest before,
Thus thou, with those eyes for thy lances,
Hast pierced through my heart to its core.
Ah, tell me, my soul, must I perish
By pangs which a smile would dispel ?
Would the hope, which thou once bad'st me cherish,
For torture repay me too well ?
Now sad is the garden of roses,
Beloved but false Haidée !
There Flora all withered reposes,
And mourns o'er thine absence with me.
## p. 2945 (#519) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2945
GREECE
From The Giaour)
H*
E who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled, -
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)-
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And – but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon —
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling passed away!
Spark of that flame - perchance of heavenly birth —
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!
Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
v—185
## p. 2946 (#520) ###########################################
2946
LORD BYRON
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free -
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough -no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
## p. 2947 (#521) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2947
THE HELLESPONT AND TROY
From The Bride of Abydos)
T"
He winds are high on Helle's wave;
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret torch was blazing high, .
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go:
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the light of love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
« Ye waves, divide not lovers long! ” –
That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true.
The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,
The desert of old Priam's pride,
The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All — save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!
Oh! yet — for there my steps have been;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore;
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne
Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,
To trace again those fields of yore,
Believing every hillock green
Contains no fabled hero's ashes,
And that around the undoubted scene
Thine own broad Hellespont” still dashes, -
Be long my lot! and cold were he
Who there could gaze denying thee!
## p. 2948 (#522) ###########################################
2948
LORD BYRON
GREECE AND HER HEROES
From «The Siege of Corinth)
Thr
HEY fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing :
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain:
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still, and theirs !
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
From Don Juan
TH
He isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phæbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
The Scian * and the Teiant muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ Islands of the Blest. ”
The mountains look on Marathon -
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
* Homer.
| Anacreon.
## p. 2949 (#523) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2949
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;- all were his!
He counted them at break of day -
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they ? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face:
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush - for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blest ?
Must we but blush ? - Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!
What, silent still ? and silent all ?
Ah, no; -- the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, “Let one living head,
But one, arise we come, we come! »
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain - in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ?
## p. 2950 (#524) ###########################################
2950
LORD BYRON
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one ?
You have the letters Cadmus gave –
Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these:
It made Anacreon's song divine;
He served — but served Polycrates.
A tyrant: but our masters then
Were still at least our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind !
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore:
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks –
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade:
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marble steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swan-like, let me sing and die!
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine -
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!
## p. 2951 (#525) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2951
GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage )
AN
NCIENT of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that
were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away — is this the whole ?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate ?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait-
Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain ?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carl can lord it o'er thy land:
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.
Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame.
## p. 2952 (#526) ###########################################
2952
LORD BYRON
When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a State;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendor renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ?
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now.
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh « Alas!
tradition that this Cromwellian colonel was the original of Hudibras.
The elder Lomax is said to have been an intimate friend of Butler.
Another name on the list of candidates for this humorous honor –
the honor of contributing with Don Quixote to the increase of lan-
guage – is that of Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey, Devonshire.
But it is unnecessary to limit to an individual sample the satirist
and poet of the whole breadth of human nature. A presumption
that Butler was in France and Holland for a time arises from certain
references in his writings. It was about 1659, when the decline of
the Cromwells became assured, that Butler ventured, but anony-
mously, into print with a tract warmly advocating the recall of the
King. At the Restoration, and probably in reward for this evidence
of loyalty, he was made secretary to the Earl of Carbury, President
of Wales, by whom he was appointed steward of Ludlow Castle.
About this time he married a gentlewoman of small fortune, and is
said to have lived comfortably upon her money until it was lost by
bad investments. The King having come to his own again, Butler
obtained permission in November 1662 to print the first part of 'Hudi-
bras. ' The quaint title of this poem has attracted much curious
cavil. The name is used by Milton, Spenser, and Robert of Glouces-
ter for an early king of Britain, the grandfather of King Lear; and
by Ben Jonson — from whom Butler evidently adopted it — for a
swaggering fellow in the Magnetic Lady):
«Rut — Where is your captain
Rudhudibrass de Ironside ? >
Act iii. , Scene 3.
Charles II. was so delighted with the satire that he not only read
and reread it, but gave many copies to his intimates.
The royal
## p. 2929 (#501) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2929
generosity, lavish in promises, never exerted itself further than to
give Butler - or Boteler, as he is writ in the warrant - a monopoly
of printing his own poem.
The second part of Hudibras' appeared in 1664, and the third
and last in 1678.
The Duke of Buckingham was, we are told by Aubrey, well dis-
posed towards Butler, and Wycherley was a constant suitor in his
behalf; but the fickle favorite forgot his promises as easily as did
the King. Lord Clarendon, who had the witty poet's portrait painted
for his library, was no better at promise-keeping. It is natural that
such neglect should have provoked the sharp but just satires which
Butler wrote against the manners of Charles's dissolute court.
"Hudibras) was never finished; for Butler, who had been confined
by his infirmities to his room in Rose Court, Covent Garden, since
1676, died on September 25th, 1680. William Longueville, a devoted
friend but for whose kindness the poet might have starved, buried
the remains at his own expense in the churchyard of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden. In 1721 John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, set up
in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey an inscription to Butler's
memory, which caused later satirists to suggest that this was giving
a stone to him who had asked for bread.
Butler was a plain man of middle stature, strong-set, high-colored,
with a head of sorrel hair. He possessed a severe and sound judg-
ment, but was “a good fellow,” according to his friend Aubrey.
Many of Butler's writings were not published in his lifetime, dur-
ing which only the three parts of Hudibras' and some trifles
appeared. Longueville, who received his papers, left them, unpub-
lished, to his son Charles; from whom they came to John Clarke of
Cheshire, by whose permission the (Genuine Remains) in two vol-
umes were published in 1759. The title of this book is due to the
fact that poor Butler, as is usual with his kind, became very popular
immediately after his death, and the ghouls of literature supplied the
book-shops with forgeries. Butler's manuscripts, many of which have
never been published, were placed in the British Museum in 1885.
V-184
## p. 2930 (#502) ###########################################
2930
SAMUEL BUTLER
HUDIBRAS DESCRIBED
WHEN
HEN civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For dame Religion as for Punk,
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Tho' not a man of them knew wherefore;
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a-colonelling.
A Wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood,
That never bent his stubborn knee
To anything but chivalry;
Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right worshipful on shoulder-blade;
Chief of domestic knights, and errant,
Either for chartel or for warrant;
Great on the bench, great in the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle:
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styl'd of War as well as Peace.
So some rats of amphibious nature
Are either for the land or water.
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise, or stout.
Some hold the one, and some the other;
But howsoe'er they make a pother,
The diff'rence was so small, his brain
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain;
Which made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool;
And offer'd to lay wagers that
As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
Much more she wou'd Sir Hudibras:
## p. 2931 (#503) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2931
For that's the name our valiant knight
To all his challenges did write.
But they're mistaken very much;
'Tis plain enough he was no such:
We grant, although he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out;
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holy-days, or so,
As men their best apparel do.
He was in Logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in Analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a Lord may be an owl;
A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice,
And rooks Committee-Men or Trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.
All this by syllogism true,
In mood and figure, he would do.
For Rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope:
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to shew why
And tell what rules he did it by.
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk.
For all a Rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
His ordinary rate of speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;
A Babylonish dialect,
Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a parti-color'd dress
Of patch'd and piebald languages.
## p. 2932 (#504) ###########################################
2932
SAMUEL BUTLER
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone,
As if h’ had talk'd three parts in one;
Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th’ had heard three laborers of Babel;
Or Cerberus himself pronounce
A leash of languages at once.
This he as volubly would vent
As if his stock would ne'er be spent :
And truly, to support that charge,
He had supplies as vast and large,
For he could coin or counterfeit
New words with little or no wit:
Words so debas'd and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch them on;
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em -
That had the orator who once
Did fill his mouth with pebble-stones
When he harangu'd, but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.
In Mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o'th' day
The clock does strike, by Algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd Philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over:
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b'implicit faith:
Whatever Skeptic could inquire for;
For every WHY he had a WHEREFORE:
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go.
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion serv'd, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong,
They might be either said or sung.
## p. 2933 (#505) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2933
His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell,
But oftentimes mistook the one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.
He could reduce all things to acts,
And knew their natures by abstracts;
Where entity and quiddity,
The ghost of defunct bodies, fly;
Where Truth in person does appear,
Like words congealed in northern air.
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
For his religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit:
'Twas Presbyterian, true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true church militant:
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carry'd on,
And still be doing, never done,
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies:
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss:
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way:
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worship'd God for spite.
## p. 2934 (#506) ###########################################
2934
SAMUEL BUTLER
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow.
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin.
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly:
Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend — plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
His puissant sword unto his side,
Near his undaunted heart, was ty'd,
With basket-hilt, that would hold broth,
And serve for fight and dinner both.
In it he melted lead for bullets,
To shoot at foes, and sometimes pullets;
To whom he bore so fell a grutch,
He ne'er gave quarter t'any such.
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.
The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt
The rancor of its edge had felt.
This sword a dagger had, his page,
That was but little for his age:
And therefore waited on him so,
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.
It was a serviceable dudgeon,
Either for fighting or for drudging:
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread,
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse-trap, 'twould not care:
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth:
It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this, and more, it did endure;
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done, on the same score.
## p. 2934 (#507) ###########################################
## p. 2934 (#508) ###########################################
LORD GEORGE GORDON BYRON.
## p. 2935 (#509) ###########################################
2935
LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
OETHE, in one of his conversations with Henry Crabb Robin-
son about Byron, said “There is no padding in his poetry)
(“Es sind keine Flickwörter im Gedichte"). This was in
1829, five years after Byron died. “This, and indeed every evening,
I believe, Lord Byron was the subject of his praise. He com-
pared the brilliancy and clearness of his style to a metal wire
drawn through a steel plate. ” He expressed regret that Byron
should not have lived to execute his vocation, which he said was “to
dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands
would the Tower of Babel have been ! » Byron's views of nature he
declared were “equally profound and poetical. ” Power in all its
forms Goethe had respect for, and he was captivated by the indom-
itable spirit of Manfred. He enjoyed the Vision of Judgment
when it was read to him, exclaiming “ Heavenly! » «Unsurpassable! ”
“Byron has surpassed himself. ” He equally enjoyed the satire on
George IV. He did not praise Milton with the warmth with which
he eulogized Byron, of whom he said that “the like would never
come again; he was inimitable. ”
Goethe's was the Continental opinion, but it was heightened by
his conception of “realism ”; he held that the poet must be matter-
of-fact, and that it was the truth and reality that made writing
popular: «It is by the laborious collection of facts that even
poetical view of nature is to be corrected and authenticated. ”
Tennyson was equally careful for scientific accuracy in regard to all
the phenomena of nature. Byron had not scientific accuracy, but
with his objectivity Goethe sympathized more than with the reflection
and introspection of Wordsworth.
Byron was hailed on the Continent as a poet of power, and the
judgment of him was not influenced by his disregard of the society
conventions of England, nor by his personal eccentricities, nor
because he was not approved by the Tory party and the Tory
writers. Perhaps unconsciously-certainly not with the conviction of
Shelley – Byron was on the side of the new movement in Europe;
the spirit of Rousseau, the unrest of (Wilhelm Meister,' the revolu-
tionary seething, with its tinge of morbidness and misanthropy, its
brilliant dreams of a new humanity, and its reckless destructive
a
## p. 2936 (#510) ###########################################
2936
LORD BYRON
theories. In France especially his influence was profound and lasting.
His wit and his lyric fire excused his morbidness and his sentimental
posing as a waif, unfriended in a cold and treacherous world of women
and men; and his genius made misanthropy and personal recklessness
a fashion. The world took his posing seriously and his grievances
to heart, sighed with him, copied his dress, tried to imitate his ad-
ventures, many of them imaginary, and accepted him as a perturbed,
storm-tost spirit, representative of an age of agitation.
So he was, but not by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for
his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false
education, an undisciplined temper, and a changing mind. He was
guided by the impulse of the moment. I think it a supportable
thesis that every age, every wide and popular movement, finds its
supreme expression in a Poet.
Byron was the mouthpiece of a certain
phase of his time. He expressed it, and the expression remains and
is important as a record, like the French Revolution and the battle
of Waterloo. Whatever the judgment in history may be of the value
to civilization of this eighteenth-century movement extending into
the nineteenth, in politics, sociology, literature, with all its reckless-
ness, morbidness, hopefulness, Byron represented it. He was the
poet of Revolt. He sounded the note of intemperate, unconsidered
defiance in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. This satire
was audacious; many of its judgments were unjust; but its wit and
poetic vigor announced a new force in English literature, and the
appearance of a man who was abundantly able to take care of him-
self and secure respectful treatment. In moments afterward he
expressed regret for it, or for portions of it, and would have liked
to soften its personalities. He was always susceptible to kindness,
and easily won by the good opinion of even a declared enemy. He
and Moore became lifelong friends, and between him and Walter
Scott there sprang up a
warm friendship, with sincere reciprocal
admiration of each other's works. Only on politics and religion did
they disagree, but Scott thought Byron's Liberalism not very deep:
« It appeared to me,” he said, that the pleasure it afforded him as a
vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office
was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At heart I would have
termed Byron a patrician on principle. ” Scott shared Goethe's opin-
ion of Byron's genius:-"He wrote from impulse, never for effect, and
therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine
poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century before me. We
have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing
and perennial fountain of natural waters. It has been a fashion of
late years to say that both Byron and Scott have gone by; I fancy it
is a case of “not lost, but gone before. Among the men satirized
## p. 2937 (#511) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2937
in the Bards) was Wordsworth. Years after, Byron met him at a
dinner, and on his return told his wife that the one feeling he had
for him from the beginning to the end of the visit was reverence. ”
Yet he never ceased to gird at him in his satires. The truth is,
that consistency was never to be expected in Byron. Besides, he
inherited none of the qualities needed for an orderly and noble life.
He came of a wild and turbulent race.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, the sixth of the name, was born in
London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, April
19th, 1824. His father, John Byron, a captain in the Guards, was a
heartless profligate with no redeeming traits of character. He eloped
with Amelia D'Arcy, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and after
her divorce from her husband married her and treated her like a
brute. One daughter of this union was Augusta, Byron's half-
sister, who married Colonel Leigh, and who was the good angel of
the poet, and the friend of Lady Byron until there was a rupture of
their relations in 1830 on a matter of business. A year after the
death of his first wife, John Byron entrapped and married Catherine
Gordon of Gicht, - a Scotch heiress, very proud of her descent from
James I. of Scotland, — whose estate he speedily squandered. In less
than two years after the birth of George, John Byron ran away from
his wife and his creditors, and died in France.
Mrs. Byron was a wholly undisciplined and weak woman, proud
of her descent, wayward and hysterical. She ruined the child, whom
she alternately petted and abused. She interfered with his educa-
tion and fixed him in all his bad tendencies. He never learned
anything until he was sent away from her, to Harrow. He was pas-
sionate, sullen, defiant of authority, but very amenable to kindness;
and with a different mother his nobler qualities, generosity, sense of.
justice, hatred of hypocrisy, and craving for friendship would have
been developed, and the story of his life would be very different
from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the
careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and
loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad
temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him
from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embit-
tered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet
was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, and the evil was
aggravated by surgical attempts to straighten the limb. His sensi-
tiveness was increased by unfeeling references to it. His mother
used to call him “a lame brat,” and his pride received an incurable
wound in the heartless remark of Mary Chaworth, «Do you think I
could care for that lame boy? ”Byron was two years her junior,
but his love for her was the purest passion of his life, and it has the
## p. 2938 (#512) ###########################################
2938
LORD BYRON
sincerest expression in the famous Dream. Byron's lameness, and
his morbid fear of growing obese, which led him all his life into
reckless experiments in diet, were permanent causes of his discon-
tent and eccentricity. / In 1798, by the death of its incumbent, Byron
became the heir of Newstead Abbey and the sixth Lord Byron He
had great pride in the possession of this crumbling and ruinous old
pile. After its partial repair he occupied it with his mother, and
from time to time in his stormy life; but in 1818 it was sold for
£90,000, which mostly went to pay debts and mortgages. Almost all
the influences about Byron's early youth were such as to foster his
worst traits, and lead to those eccentricities of conduct and temper
which came at times close to insanity. But there was one exception,
his nurse Mary Gray, to whom he owed his intimate knowledge of
the Bible, and for whom he always retained a sincere affection. It
is worth noting also, as an indication of his nature, that he always
had the love of his servants.
A satisfactory outline of Byron's life and work is found in Mr.
John Nichol's (Byron' in the English Men of Letters) series. Owing
to his undisciplined home life, he was a backward boy in scholarship.
In 1805 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he resided
irregularly for three years, reading much in a desultory manner, but
paying slight attention to the classics and mathematics; so that it
was a surprise that he was able to take his degree. But he had
keen powers of observation and a phenomenal memory. Notwith-
standing his infirmity he was distinguished in many athletic sports,
he was fond of animals and such uncomfortable pets as bears and
monkeys, and led generally an irregular life. The only fruit of this
period in literature was the Hours of Idleness,' which did not
promise much, and would be of little importance notwithstanding
many verses of great lyric skill, had it not been for the slashing
criticism on it, imputed to Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review,
which provoked the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. ' This
witty outburst had instant success with the public.
In 1809 Byron came of age, and went abroad on a two-years' pil-
grimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein
to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the lands of the sun,"
and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems.
He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,- a handsome,
willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native
land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world
was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his
diablerie, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return in 1811
and the publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of Childe Harold. ?
All London was at his feet. He had already made his first speech
## p. 2939 (#513) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2939
)
in the House of Lords espousing the Liberal side. The second
speech was in favor of Catholic emancipation. The fresh and novel
poem, which Byron himself had not at first thought worth offering
a publisher, fell in with the humor and moral state of the town. It
was then that he made the oft-quoted remark, “I awoke one morning
and found myself famous. ” The poem gave new impetus to the
stories of his romantic life, and London seemed to idolize him as
much for his follies and his liaisons as for his genius. He plunged
into all the dissipation of the city. But this period from 181 to 1815
was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succes-
sion he gave to the press poems and romances, — The Giaour,' (The
Bride of Abydos,' «The Corsair,) Lara,' the Hebrew Melodies,' (The
Siege of Corinth,' and Parisina. ' Some of the Hebrew Melodies
are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives,
full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portrait-
ures of female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody,
but melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they
still impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of
versification, and their frequent beauty.
Sated with varied dissipation, worn out with the flighty adora-
tion of Lady Caroline Lamb, and urged by his friends to marry and
settle down, Byron married (January 20, 1815) Anne Isabella, daughter
of Sir Ralph Milbanke. He liked but did not love her; and she was
no doubt fascinated by the reputation of the most famous man in
Europe, and perhaps indulged the philanthropic hope that she could
reform the literary Corsair. On the oth of December was born
Augusta Ada, the daughter whom Byron celebrates in his verse and
to whom he was always tenderly attached. On the 15th of January,
five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home with the
child to pay a visit to her family, dispatching to her husband a play-
fully tender letter. Shortly after, he was informed by her father and
by herself that she did not intend ever to return to him. It is use-
less to enter into the controversy as to the cause of this separation.
In the light of the latest revelations, the better opinion seems to be
that it was a hopeless incongruity that might have been predicted
from the characters of the two. It seems that Lady Byron was not
quite so amiable as she was supposed to be, and in her later years she
was subject to hallucinations. Byron, it must be admitted, was an
impossible husband for any woman, most of all for any woman who
cared for the social conventions. This affair brought down upon
Byron a storm of public indignation which drove him from England.
The society which had petted him and excused his vagaries and vio-
lations of all decency, now turned upon him with rage and made
the idol responsible for the foolishness of his worshipers. To the
## p. 2940 (#514) ###########################################
2940
LORD BYRON
end of his life, neither society nor the critics ever forgave him, and
did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular
cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the free-
dom of speculation in such masterly works as Cain? brought upon
him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England
his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This
vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George
III. , and to expose mercilessly in Don Juan' the hypocrisy of Eng-
·lish life.
On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron left England, never to return.
And then opened the most brilliant period of his literary career.
Instead of being crushed by the situation, Byron's warlike spirit
responded to it with defiance, and his suffering and his anger in-
voked the highest qualities of his extraordinary genius. His career
in Italy was as wild and dissipated as ever. Strange to say, the
best influence in his irregular life was the Countess Guiccioli, who
persuaded him at one time to lay aside the composition of Don
Juan,' and in whose society he was drawn into ardent sympathy
with the Italian liberals. For the cause of Italian unity he did
much when it was in its darkest period, and his name is properly
linked in this great achievement with those of Mazzini and Cavour.
It was in Switzerland, before Byron settled in Venice, that he met
Shelley, with whom he was thereafter to be on terms of closest inti-
macy. Each had a mutual regard for the genius of the other, but
Shelley placed Byron far above himself.
It was while sojourning
near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union
with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs. Clairmont, who became
William Godwin's second wife. The result of this intimacy was a
natural daughter, Allegra, for whose maintenance and education
Byron provided, and whose early death was severely felt by him.
Byron's life in Italy from 1816 to 1823 continued to be a romance
of exciting and dubious adventure. Many details of it are given in
Byron's letters,— his prose is always as vigorous as his poetry, and
as self-revealing, - and it was no doubt recorded in his famous
Diary, which was intrusted to his friend Tom Moore, and was burned
after Byron's death. Byron's own frankness about himself, his love
of mystification, his impulsiveness in writing anything that entered
his brain at the moment, and his habit of boasting about his wicked-
ness, which always went to the extent of making himself out worse
than he was, stands in the way of getting a clear narration of his
life and conduct. But he was always an interesting and commanding
and perplexing personality, and the writings about him by his inti-
mates are as various as the moods he indulged in. The bright light
of inquiry always shone upon him, for Byron was the most brilliant,
## p. 2941 (#515) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2941
the most famous, the most detested, the most worshiped, and the
most criticized and condemned man in Europe.
It was in this period that he produced the works that by their
innate vigor and power placed him in the front rank of English
poets. A complete list of them cannot be given in this brief notice.
The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold' attained a height
that the first two cantos had not prepared the world to expect.
Cain' was perhaps the culmination of his power. The lyrics and
occasional poems of this time add to his fame because they exhibit
his infinite variety. Critics point out the carelessness of his verse,
- and there is an air of haste in much of it; they deny his origi-
nality and give the sources of his inspiration, — but he had Shake-
speare's faculty of transforming all things to his own will; and they
deny him the contribution of thought to the ideas of the world.
This criticism must stand against the fact of his almost unequaled
power to move the world and make it feel and think. The Conti-
nental critics did not accuse him of want of substance. What did he.
not do for Spain, for Italy, for Greece! No interpretation of their
splendid past, of their hope for the future, no musings over the
names of other civilizations, no sympathy with national pride, hoe
ever so satisfied the traveling and reading world in these lands, as
Byron's. The public is not so good a judge of what poetry should
be, as the trained critics; but it is a judge of power, of what is
stirring and entertaining: and so it comes to pass that Byron's work
is read when much poetry, more finished but wanting certain vital
qualities, is neglected. I believe it is a fact that Byron is more
quoted than any English poet except Pope since Shakespeare, and
that he is better known to the world at large than any except the
Master. But whether this is so or not, he is more read now at the
close of this century than he was in its third quarter.
“The Dream' and 'Darkness are poems that will never lose their
value so long as men love and are capable of feeling terror. Man-
fred,' 'Mazeppa, Heaven and Earth,' The Prisoner of Chillon,
and the satire of the Vision of Judgment maintain their promi-
nence; and it seems certain that many of the lyrics, like “The Isles
of Greece) and the Maid of Athens,' will never pall upon any gen-
eration of readers, and the lyrics will probably outlast the others in
general favor. Byron wrote many dramas, but they are not acting
plays. He lacked the dramatic instinct, and it is safe to say that
his plays, except in certain passages, add little to his great reputa-
tion.
In the opinion of many critics, Byron's genius was more fully
displayed in 'Don Juan) than in Childe Harold. Byron was Don
Juan, mocking, satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all
## p. 2942 (#516) ###########################################
2942
LORD BYRON
conventional opinion. The ease, the grace, the diablerie of the poem
are indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a
microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of
thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most
wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended
by its satire of English hypocrisy had no difficulty in deciding that
it was not fit for English readers. I wonder what would be the
judgment of it if it were a recovered classic disassociated from the
personality of any writer.
Byron was an aristocrat, and sometimes exhibited a silly regard
for his rank; but he was a democrat in all the impulses of his
nature. His early feeling was that as a peer he condescended to
authorship, and for a time he would take no pay for what he wrote.
But later, when he needed money, he was keen at a bargain for his
poetry. He was extravagant in his living, generous to his friends
and to the popular causes he espoused, and cared nothing for money
except the pleasure of spending it. It was while he was living at
Ravenna that he became involved in the intrigues for Italian inde-
pendence. He threw himself, his fortune and his time, into it. The
time has come, he said, when a man must do something — writing
was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of the Carbonari;
he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation; his
political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and leader-
ship. When that dream faded under the reality of the armies
of despotism, his thoughts turned to Greece. Partly his restless
nature, partly love of adventure carried him there; but once in the
enterprise, he gave his soul to it with a boldness, a perseverance, a
good sense, a patriotic fervor that earn for him the title of a hero
in a good cause. His European name was a tower of strength to the
Greek patriots. He mastered the situation with a statesman's skill
and with the perception of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of
campaigning, and waited in patience to bring some order to the
wrangling factions. If his life had been spared, it is possible that
the Greeks then might have thrown off the Turkish yoke; but he
succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by the exposure of a
frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at Missolonghi in
his thirty-seventh year. He was adored by the Greeks, and his
death was a national calamity. This last appearance of Lord Byron
shows that he was capable of as great things in action as in the
realm of literature. It was the tragic end of the stormy career of a
genius whose life was as full of contradictions as his character.
It was not only in Greece that Byron's death was profoundly felt,
but in all Europe, which was under the spell of his genius. Mrs.
Anne Thackeray Ritchie, in her charming recollections of Tennyson,
## p. 2943 (#517) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2943
says: «One day the news came to the village — the dire news which
spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that
Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. Byron was
dead! I thought the whole world was at an end, he once said,
speaking of those bygone days. I thought everything was over and
finished for every one — that nothing else mattered. I remember I
walked out alone and carved “Byron is dead” into the sandstone. ) ”
Chus. Dukly Namer
MAID OF ATHENS
M
AID of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ. *
agopo
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
mon
Zon
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul :
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
* Zoë mou, sas agapo : «My life, I love you. ”
## p. 2944 (#518) ###########################################
2944
LORD BYRON
TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC SONG
I
ENTER thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidée,
Each morning where Flora reposes,
For surely I see her in thee.
O Lovely! thus low I implore thee,
Receive this fond truth from my tongue,
Which utters its song to adore thee,
Yet trembles for what it has sung:
As the branch, at the bidding of Nature,
Adds fragrance and fruit to the tree,
Through her eyes, through her every feature,
Shines the soul of the young Haidée.
But the loveliest garden grows hateful
When love has abandoned the bowers;
Bring me hemlock — since mine is ungrateful,
That herb is more fragrant than flowers.
The poison, when poured from the chalice,
Will deeply embitter the bowl;
But when drunk to escape from thy malice,
The draught shall be sweet to my soul.
Too cruel! in vain I implore thee
My heart from these horrors to save:
Will naught to my bosom restore thee?
Then open the gates of the grave.
As the chief who to combat advances
Secure of his conquest before,
Thus thou, with those eyes for thy lances,
Hast pierced through my heart to its core.
Ah, tell me, my soul, must I perish
By pangs which a smile would dispel ?
Would the hope, which thou once bad'st me cherish,
For torture repay me too well ?
Now sad is the garden of roses,
Beloved but false Haidée !
There Flora all withered reposes,
And mourns o'er thine absence with me.
## p. 2945 (#519) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2945
GREECE
From The Giaour)
H*
E who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled, -
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)-
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And – but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon —
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling passed away!
Spark of that flame - perchance of heavenly birth —
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!
Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
v—185
## p. 2946 (#520) ###########################################
2946
LORD BYRON
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free -
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough -no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
## p. 2947 (#521) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2947
THE HELLESPONT AND TROY
From The Bride of Abydos)
T"
He winds are high on Helle's wave;
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret torch was blazing high, .
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go:
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the light of love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
« Ye waves, divide not lovers long! ” –
That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true.
The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,
The desert of old Priam's pride,
The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All — save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!
Oh! yet — for there my steps have been;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore;
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne
Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,
To trace again those fields of yore,
Believing every hillock green
Contains no fabled hero's ashes,
And that around the undoubted scene
Thine own broad Hellespont” still dashes, -
Be long my lot! and cold were he
Who there could gaze denying thee!
## p. 2948 (#522) ###########################################
2948
LORD BYRON
GREECE AND HER HEROES
From «The Siege of Corinth)
Thr
HEY fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing :
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain:
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still, and theirs !
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
From Don Juan
TH
He isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phæbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
The Scian * and the Teiant muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ Islands of the Blest. ”
The mountains look on Marathon -
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
* Homer.
| Anacreon.
## p. 2949 (#523) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2949
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;- all were his!
He counted them at break of day -
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they ? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face:
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush - for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blest ?
Must we but blush ? - Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!
What, silent still ? and silent all ?
Ah, no; -- the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, “Let one living head,
But one, arise we come, we come! »
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain - in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ?
## p. 2950 (#524) ###########################################
2950
LORD BYRON
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one ?
You have the letters Cadmus gave –
Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these:
It made Anacreon's song divine;
He served — but served Polycrates.
A tyrant: but our masters then
Were still at least our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind !
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore:
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks –
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade:
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marble steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swan-like, let me sing and die!
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine -
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!
## p. 2951 (#525) ###########################################
LORD BYRON
2951
GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage )
AN
NCIENT of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that
were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away — is this the whole ?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate ?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait-
Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain ?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carl can lord it o'er thy land:
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.
Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame.
## p. 2952 (#526) ###########################################
2952
LORD BYRON
When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a State;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendor renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ?
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now.
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh « Alas!
