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THE

CONFESSIONS OF LORD BYRON

CHAPTER I

BYRON'S REFLECTIONS ON HIMSELF

(1) The Comparison of himself to Rousseau I HAVE been thinking over the other day on the various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals English and foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turning over a foreign one lately; for I have made it a rule latterly never to search for anything of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal if presented by chance.

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To begin then I have seen myself compared personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me), Italian and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau-Goëthe-Young [the famous eighteenth-century writer (1681-1765), who composed the gloomy and theatrical poem, NightThoughts and the well-known tragedies, Busiris and The Revenge-Aretino [Pietro Aretine (1492-1556), famous or infamous, as the author of sixteen sonnets -Carew calls them "the divine lectures of love's great

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master, Aretine"-which he composed to accompany some naturalistic "Postures "designed by Julio Romano, and engraved by Marc Antonio Raimondi] -Timon of Athens-"An Alabaster Vase lighted up within " -Satan-Shakespeare BuonaparteTiberius [the Tiberius of Capreæ whose monstrous vices are described in detail by Suetonius and mentioned summarily by Tacitus in the Annals, Book VI. cap. i.] Aeschylus-Sophocles - Euripides Harlequin-The Clown-Sternhold and Hopkins [cf. Chapter VI. Rogers, 1814, Sept. 15]-to the Phantasmagoria--to Henry the 8th [in the supposed inconstancy of his conjugal affections]-to Chenies-to Mirabeau -to young R. Dallas (the Schoolboy)-to Michael Angelo-to Raphael-to a petit maître-to Diogenes [in imagined surliness and misanthropy]-to Childe Harold to Lara-to the Count in Beppo-to Milton -to Pope-to Dryden [perhaps in the wide range of his poetic talent]-to Burns-to Savage [perhaps in respect of the affectional relations in which the poet had stood to his mother]-to Chatterton [in the precocity of his genius]-to "oft have I heard of thee my Lord Biron" in Shakespeare-to Churchill the poet [Charles Churchill, a free-living clergyman and a friend of John Wilkes, wrote the well-known satire, "The Rosciad," and along with Wilkes and Sir Francis Dashwood belonged to the society of the "Monks of Medmenham Abbey." He died in 1764, at the early age of thirty-three. In the likening of Byron to Churchill, here alluded to, a twofold resemblance is probably insinuated, of Byron as the author of a popular satire, (English Bards, etc.), and also as the companion of sham "monks"-the

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"Abbot" of Newstead Abbey. But Byron and his friends, it need hardly be said, were never Thelemites in the sense understood and realised by the "Franciscans."-to Kean the actor [by Mrs Piozzi, possibly, who in a letter written to D Gray, September 1st, 1820, says of Kean and of Byron, "They seem to be kindred souls, delighting in distortion, and mistaking it for pathos"]-to Alfieri, etc., etc., etc. The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an Italian, who had known him in his younger days: it of course related merely to our apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert it to me (for we were not then good friends), but in society.

The Object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or any body else. My Mother, before I was twenty, would have it that I was like Rousseau, and Madame de Staël used to say so too, in 1813, and the Edin". Review has something of the sort in its critique on the 4th Canto of Ch Had. I can't see any point of resemblance: he wrote prose, I verse: he was of the people, I of the Aristocracy: he was a philosopher, I am none he published his first work at forty, I mine at eighteen his first essay brought him universal applause, mine the contrary: he married his housekeeper, I could not keep house with my wife he thought all the world in a plot against him, my little world seems to think me in a plot against it, if I may judge by their abuse in print and coterie : he liked Botany, I like flowers, and herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees: he wrote Music,

I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by EarI never could learn any thing by study, not even a language, it was all by rote and ear and memory: he had a bad memory, I had at least an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet, a good judge, for he has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care, I with rapidity and rarely with pains: he could never ride nor swim" nor was cunning of fence," I am an excellent swimmer, a decent though not at all a dashing rider (having staved in a rib at eighteen in the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fenceparticularly of the Highland broad-sword; not a bad boxer when I could keep my temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I knocked down Mr Purling and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves on) in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806 during the sparring; and I was besides a very fair cricketer-one of the Harrow Eleven when we play[ed] against Eton in 1805. Besides, Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners, his whole character, were so very different, that I am at a loss to conceive how such a comparison could have arisen, as it has done three several times, and all in rather a remarkable manner. I forgot to say, that he was also short-sighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary to such a degree, that, in the largest theatre of Bologna, I distinguished and read some busts and inscriptions painted near the stage, from a box so distant, and so darkly lighted, that none of the company (composed of young and very bright-eyed people-some of them in the same box) could make out a letter, and thought it was a trick, though I had never been in the theatre before.

MRS BYRON'S "DIABOLICAL DISPOSITION" 5

Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the comparison not well-founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man, and the thing if true were flattering enough; but I have no idea of being pleased with a chimera.

(1821, October 15. Commencement of

"Detached Thoughts," Vol. V., p. 407.)

(2) His Disposition as warped by his Mother's
violent temper

I seize this interval of my amiable mother's absence this afternoon, again to inform you, or rather to desire to be informed by you, of what is going on. For my own part I can send nothing to amuse you, excepting a repetition of my complaints against my tormentor, whose diabolical disposition (pardon me for staining my paper with so harsh a word) seems to increase with age, and to acquire new force with Time. The more I see of her the more my dislike augments; nor can I so entirely conquer the appearance of it, as to prevent her from perceiving my opinion; this, so far from calming the Gale, blows it into a hurricane, which threatens to destroy everything, till exhausted by its own violence, it is lulled into a sullen torpor, which, after a short period, is again roused into fresh and revived phrenzy, to me most terrible, and to every other Spectator astonishing. She then declares that she plainly sees I hate her, that I am leagued with her bitter enemies, viz., Yourself, L Carlisle] and M H[anson], and, as I never Dissemble or contradict her, we are all honoured with a multiplicity of epithets, too numerous,

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