CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MELANCHOLY OF LORD BYRON.

"To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what we are worth.”—PARADOL, Study on Moralists.

FROM all that we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the contrary, that Lord Byron was often melancholy; but that, in order to judge well the nature and shades of his melancholy, it is necessary to analyze and observe it, not only in his writ ings, but also in his conduct through life. Whence arose his melancholy? Was it one of those moral infirmities, incurable and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like that of René, whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful; who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mysteries; who knowing not how to be young, will no more know how to be old; who in all things wanted order, proportion, harmony, truth; who had nothing to produce equilibrium between the power of genius and the indolence of will? This kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue, and seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it a melancholy like Werther's, whose senses, stimulated by passion, of which society opposed the development, carried perturbation also into the moral regions? Was it the deep mysterious ailment of Hamlet, at once both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius, "that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels depart, and where only shivered rem

nants return;" the melancholy of an Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity? No; the striking characteristics that exist in all these sorts of melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron's. His was not a melancholy that had become chronic, like René's, ere arriving at life's maturity. For, whereas, the child René was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection, and circumstances. Nor was it Werther's kind of melancholy; for, even at intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord Byron's energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied passion.

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimulation would have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university, where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the darker heroes he has described in "Lara and "Manfred," for he never knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all these identifications between himself and his heroes.*

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary, melancholy always originated from some moral

*See the Introduction.

external cause, which would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid glance at his whole life.

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England, that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in "Tasso's Lament:"

"From my very birth my soul was drunk with love," etc.

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so affirms:

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Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney," while sheep are ever to be found in flocks."

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great intellects,

have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and games of dexterity he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferior to him in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of that fatal kind of melancholy that which is hereditary and causeless. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse. Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems, but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart, the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held, that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself, and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young cousin, who beneath an angel's guise on earth, first awakened the fire of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another affection, was deceived, met with no return,* but, on the contrary, was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no * See chapter on "Generosity."

longer feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821

"It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to feel that I was no longer a child.”

He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, arising from palpable avowed causes, having their origin in the heart, might equally find their cure in the heart. Already did imagination transport him toward his beloved Ida, and he consoled himself by saying, that if love has wings, friendship ought to have none. If this were an illusion, he completed it by writing that charming poem of his youth, "Friendship is Love without Wings."*

At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long as these dear friends. remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge. But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them. Long, with whom he had passed such happy days,t left the first to go into the guards. Eddlestone remained,

but Lord Byron himself was already about to quit Cambridge. During the vacation, we see him modestly preparing his first poems intended as an offering to Friendship; then going to a watering-place with some respectable friends; devoting himself with ardor to dramatic representations at the amateur theatre at Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; and thus he remained a whole year away from Cambridge, often seeing his dear Long again in London, and visiting Harrow with him. When he returned, in 1807, to Cambridge, Long had already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to go; thus, he no longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the flute of his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him. Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. Besides, he was already nineteen years of age, had made some progress in the journey of life, probably leaving some illusions behind him on the bushes that lined the roadside, and perhaps his soul had already lost somewhat of its early purity.

*See chapter on "Friendships."

† Ibid.