Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maître, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, 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."

It would not be uninteresting, were there either space or time for such a task, to take a review of the names of note in the preceding list, and show in how many points, though differing so materially among themselves, it might be found that each presented a striking resemblance to Lord Byron. We have seen, for instance, that wrongs and sufferings were, through life, the main sources of Byron's inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt to the แ oppressor's wrong," for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante ::----« quum illam sub amarâ cogitatione

excitatam, occulti divinique ingenii vim exacuerit et inflammarit."1

In that contempt for the world's opinion, which led Dante to exclaim, «Lascia dir le genti,» Lord Byron also bore a strong resemblance to that poet,-though far more, it must be confessed, in profession than reality. For, while scorn for the public voice was on his lips, the keenest sensitiveness to its every breath was in his heart; and, as if every feeling of his nature was to have some painful mixture in it, together with the pride of Dante which led him to disdain public opinion, he combined the susceptibility of Petrarch which placed him shrinkingly at its mercy.

His agreement, in some other features of character, with Petrarch, I have already had occasion to remark;2 and if it be true, as is often surmised, that Byron's want of a due reverence for Shakspeare arose from some latent and hardly conscious jealousy of that poet's fame,

'Paulus Juvius.—Bayle, too, says of him, « il fit entrer plus de feu et plus de force dans ses livres qu'il n'y en eût mis s'il avoit joui d'une condition plus tranquille.»

* Some passages in Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch may be applied, with equal truth, to Lord Byron.—For instance, "It was hardly possible with Petrarch to write a sentence without pourtraying himself »--« Petrarch, allured by the idea that his celebrity would magnify into importance all the ordinary occurrences of his life, satisfied the curiosity of the world,» etc. etc.—and again, with still more striking applicability,—« In Petrarch's letters, as well as in his Poems and Treatises, we always identify the author with the man, who felt himself irresistibly impelled to develop his own intense feelings. Being endowed with almost all the noble, and with some of the paltry passions of our nature, and having never attempted to conceal them, he awakens us to reflection upon ourselves while we contemplate in him a being of our own species, yet different from any other, and whose originality excites even more sympathy than admi

ration.»

a similar feeling is known to have existed in Petrarch towards Dante; and the same reason assigned for it,— that from the living he had nothing to fear, while before the shade of Dante he might have reason to feel humbled,—is also not a little applicable1 in the case of Lord Byron.

Between the dispositions and habits of Alfieri and those of the noble poet of England, no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the versatile author of Don Juan,—

Or stimandome Achille ed or Tersite.

By the extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, « ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character is, in itself, the true clue through all that fabric's mazes,— is in itself the solution of whatever was most dazzling in his might or startling in his levity, of all that most attracted and repelled, whether in his life or his genius. A variety of powers almost boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them,-a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius, and an uncontrolled impetuosity, as well from habit as temperament, in yielding to them,

« Il Petrarca poteva credere candidamente ch'ei non pativa d'invidia solamente, perché fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non poteva sentirsi umiliato, fuorchè dall' ombra di Dante.">

-such were the two great and leading sources of all that varied spectacle which his life exhibited; of that succession of victories achieved by his genius, in almost every field of mind that genius ever trod, and of all those sallies of character in every shape and direction that unchecked feeling and dominant self-will could dictate.

It must be perceived by all endowed with quick powers of association how constantly, when any particular thought or sentiment presents itself to their minds, its very opposite, at the same moment, springs up there also:-if any thing sublime occurs, its neighbour, the ridiculous, is by its side;-with a bright view of the present or the future, a dark one mixes also its shadow; --and, even in questions respecting morals and conduct, all the reasonings and consequences that may suggest themselves on the side of one of two opposite courses will, in such minds, be instantly confronted by an array just as cogent on the other. A mind of this structure, —and such, more or less, are all those in which the reasoning is made subservient to the imaginative faculty,—though enabled, by such rapid powers of association, to multiply its resources without end, has need of the constant exercise of a controlling judgment to keep its perceptions pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxta-positions

as that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime-should at last vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in finding reasons for every side of a question may end, if not in the choice of the worst, at least in a sceptical indifference to all.

In picturing to oneself so awful an event as a shipwreck, its many horrors and perils are what alone offer themselves to ordinary fancies. But the keen, versatile imagination of Byron could detect in it far other details, and, at the same moment with all that is fearful and appalling in such a scene, could bring together all that is most ludicrous and low. That in this painful mixture he was but too true to human nature, the testimony of De Retz (himself an eye-witness of such an event) attests: -« Vous ne pouvez vous imaginer (says the Cardinal) l'horreur d'une grande tempête;-vous en pouvez imaginer aussi peu le ridicule." But, assuredly, a poet less wantoning in the variety of his power, and less proud of displaying it, would have paused ere he mixed up, thus mockingly, the degradation of humanity with its sufferings, and, content to probe us to the core with the miseries of our fellow-men, would have forborne to wring from us, the next moment, a bitter smile at their baseness.

To the moral sense so dangerous are the effects of this quality, that it would hardly, perhaps, be generalizing too widely to assert that wheresoever great versatility of power exists, there will also be found a tendency to versatility of principle. The poet Chatterton, in whose soul the seeds of all that is good and bad in genius so prematurely ripened, said, in the consciousness of this multiple faculty, that he « held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of a question ;» and it was by acting in accordance with this principle himself that he brought one of the few stains upon his name which a life so short afforded time to incur. Mirabeau, too, when, in the legal warfare between his father and mother, he helped to draw up for each the pleadings against the other, was influenced less, no doubt, by the

!

« ПредишнаНапред »