Howe'er my future doom be cast, Friendship! that thought is all thine own, Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone"Friendship is Love without his wings!" Where yonder yew-trees lightly wave Which tells the common tale; From yonder studious mansion rings; But here when'er my footsteps move, My silent tears too plainly prove Friendship is Love without his wings!" Oh, Love! before thy glowing shrine My hopes, my dreams, my heart was thine, For thine are pinions like the wind, Except, alas! thy jealous stings. Thou shalt not haunt my coming hour; Seat of my youth! thy distant spire My bosom glows with former fire, Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill Thy every path delights me still, Each flower a double fragrance flings; Again, as once, in converse gay, Each dear associate seems to say, "Friendship is Love without his wings!" My Lycus! wherefore dost thou weep? Affection for a time may sleep, But, oh! 'twill wake again. Think, think, my friend, when next we meet, Our long-wish'd interview, how sweet! From this my hope of rapture springs; While youthful hearts thus fondly swell, "Friendship is Love without his wings!" In one, and one alone deceived, No-from oppressive bonds relieved, I turn'd to those my childhood knew, Ye few! my soul, my life is yours, From smooth deceit and terror sprung Fictions and dreams inspire the bard Friendship and truth be my reward- If laurell'd Fame but dwells with lies, Me the enchantress ever flies, Whose heart and not whose fancy sings; Simple and young, I dare not feign; December, 1806. These early poems are well characterized by the impression which they produced upon Sir Robert Dallas, a man of taste and talent, who, though a bigot and a prey to prejudices of all kinds, hastened, nevertheless, after reading them, to compliment the author in the following words :-"Your poems are not only beautiful as compositions, but they also denote an honorable and upright heart, and one prone to virtue." This eulogium is well deserved, and I pity those who could read the "Hours of Idleness" without liking their youthful writer. If we had space enough, we fain would follow the young man from Cambridge to the mysterious Abbey of Newstead, where he loved to invite his friends and institute with them a monastery of which he proclaimed himself the Abbot —an amusement really most innocent in itself, and which bigotry and folly alone could consider reprehensible. With what pleasure he would show that in the monastery of Newstead its abbot lived the simplest and most austere existence, "a life of study," as Washington Irving describes it, from what he heard Nanna Smyth say of it some years after Byron's death. How delighted we should be to follow him in his first travels in search of experience of life, and when his genius revealed itself in that light which was shortly to make him the idol of the public and the hatred of the envious. We could show him to have been always the same kind-hearted man, by whom severity and injustice were never had recourse to except against himself, and whose melancholy was too often the result of broken illusions and disappointments. His simple and noble character, having always before it an ideal perfection, perpetually by comparison, thought itself at fault; and the world, who could not comprehend the exquisite delicacy of his mind, took for granted the reputation he gave himself, and made him a martyr till heaven should give him time to become a saint. CHAPTER VI. THE FRIENDSHIPS OF LORD BYRON. THE extraordinary part which friendship played in Lord Byron's life is another proof of his goodness. His friendships may be divided into two categories: the friendships of his heart, and those of his mind. To the first class belong those which he made at Harrow and in his early Cambridge days, while his later acquaintances at the University matured into friends of the second category. These had great influence over his mind. The names of those of the first category who were dearest to him, and who were alive when he left Harrow for Cambridge (for he had lost some very intimate friends while still at Harrow, and among these Curzon), were— I will say a word of each, so as to show that Byron in the selection of his friends was guided instinctively by the qualities of those he loved. WINGFIELD. The Hon. John Wingfield, of the Coldstream Guards, was a brother of Richard, fourth Viscount Powerscourt, and died of fever at Coimbra, on the 14th of May, 1811, in his 20th year. "Of all beings on earth," says Byron, "I was perhaps at one time more attached to poor Wingfield than to any. I knew him during the best part of his life and the happiest portion of mine." When he heard of the death of this beloved companion of his youth, he added the two following stanzas to the first canto of "Childe Harold:" XCI. "And thou, my friend!-since unavailing woe By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest? 66 the XCII. "Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most! In dreams deny me not to see thee here! Writing to Dallas on the 7th of August, 1812, he says, Wingfield was among my best and dearest friends; one of very few I can never regret to have loved." And on the 7th of September, speaking of the death of Matthews, in whom he said he had lost a friend and a guide, he wrote to Dallas to say: "In Wingfield I have lost a friend only; but one I could have wished to precede in his long journey." TATTERSALL (Davus). The Rev. John Cecil Tattersall, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford, died on the 8th of October, 1812, aged 24. 99.66 "His knowledge," says a writer in the " Gentleman's Magazine," was extensive and deep; his affections were sincere and great. By his extreme aversion to hypocrisy, he was so far from assuming the appearance of virtue, that most of his good qualities remained hidden, while he was most anxious. to reveal the slightest fault into which he had fallen. He was a stanch friend, and a stranger to all enmity; he behaved loyally to men when alive, and died full of confidence and trust in God." |