the accusations which were heaped on him, he was charged with receiving enormous sums for his writings. Through Murray, and by a letter which Dallas of his own accord addressed to the Morning Post,' this accusation was speedily reduced to its proper measure. Dallas, indeed best knew with whom the honorarium arising from Byron's works remained. The labour of correction which he had performed on Childe Harold,' was transferred, with reference to the Poetical Tales, to William Gifford, whom in so many words Byron described as his editor. He gave this critic even carte blanche to correct the style of the 'Siege of Corinth' according to his mind. In spite of his antagonistic political principles, and his occasional bitterness, Byron always spoke of Gifford with respect; personally they appear never to have met. In the dedication of the 'Corsair' Byron again announced that with this poem his poetical career was to terminate; that, for some years at least, he would not trespass on the patience of the public. But next day this resolution was broken; the unexpected news of Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau furnished the occasion for a bitter ode on his 'Pagod,' which he published anonymously. He defended his inconsistency against Moore's raillery by pleading, that in this case it was impossible for him to be silent, and that by a mental reservation he had excluded anonymous authorship from the pact.' To Murray he wrote: No matter; they can but throw the old story of inconsistency in my teeth-let them-I mean, as to not publishing. However, now I will keep my word. Nothing but the occasion, which was physically irresistible, made me swerve." As if this protestation were not enough, he went a step further, he came to the unheard-of determina tion of suppressing all his writings. He actually forwarded, April 29, 1814, to Murray the requisite draft to repurchase all rights of publication and all copies in stock; the sale of his poems was to cease, and every copy of them, except two for Murray's own private possession,' was to be destroyed.' The smallest consideration might have convinced Byron, that even by such an unexampled proceeding his writings could never be destroyed. The many thousand copies which had been sold rendered destruction impossible, and further demands, as Byron must have well known, would be supplied by impressions published on the Continent, in America or elsewhere. When Mr. Murray, however, represented the extraordinary embarrassment and injury to which such a design, if carried out, would expose him, he readily consented to withdraw it. Even the silence which, as he had publicly announced, he meant to keep, his vacillating character could not maintain. On the contrary he began 'Lara' in May—which may be regarded as the continuation of the Corsair'and finished it June 24, 1814. This poem, written, like the 'Corsair,' in the heroic couplet, appeared without a dedication-a departure from his usual custom-and in the same volume with Rogers's graceful tale of 'Jacqueline.' Byron had proposed, that Moore should form a third in the brotherhood, but this dangerous honour' he declined. The somewhat unnatural marriage between 'Larry and Jacquy,' as Byron jestingly called the two tales, was divorced in the same year. Here also in the delineation of Lara the poet partially portrayed himself.2 In answer to the charge of Jeffrey and other critics, that the character of Lara was too elaborately drawn, Byron asks, What do the reviewers mean by "elaborate "? Lara I wrote while undressing, after coming home from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814.'1 The Siege of Corinth' and the year 1815, and published The two following tales, 'Parisina,' were written in in the beginning of 1816. The former is distinguished by the loose and irregular, the latter, on the contrary, by the careful and musical, structure of its verse. With 'Parisina' Byron took his leave of the soil of Greece. For the copyright of the two poems Murray offered, unasked, the sum of 1,000 guineas; the draft for this sum Byron, however, although in considerable straits, sent back torn through; the sum, he said, was far too much, and he wished that Murray would not throw temptation in his way. But when it was suggested to Byron, how with this large honorarium he might aid some meritorious but needy literary men (Godwin, Maturin, Coleridge), he most readily adopted the suggestion, and professed his readiness to accept payment from Mr. Murray. The latter, however, knowing the poet's straitened circumstances, now demurred, and retained the money for Byron's own use.1 In order to complete our connected review of the Poetical Tales, we anticipate the order of time, and mention here the two last, which conclude the series, 'Mazeppa,' written in the autumn of 1818 at Ravenna, and "The Island at Genoa at the beginning of 1823. In 'Mazeppa' we have the reflex of Byron's relation to the Countess Guiccioli; like her the object of Mazeppa's love is called Theresa, and the old Polish Count is evidently the old Count Guiccioli. In The Island,' the poet's predilection 1 Moore's Life, iii. 339, 341. Ibid. iii. 221. ▲ Ibid. 224. for nautical adventures is again manifest, and the poem is remarkable, as showing how enthusiasm for the state of nature, after the fashion of Rousseau, seizes and engages his fancy; it also recalls, in many respects, the gorgeous colouring of Wilson's 'Isle of Palms' (1812). Of all the Tales of Byron, The Island' is the only one which can claim artistic repose and harmonious finish. It is not like the others an outburst of passion, neither is it a dark picture of nocturnal horrors, nor a musical dissonance reduced to harmony. Mazeppa' also is more calm and composed than its predecessors, but it resembles a moon-lit landscape, while The Island' is like a scene illumined with the bright rays of the sun. Although these did not excite nearly the same interest as the earlier Tales, they are a brilliant refutation of a notion which Byron expressed to Moore: 'I know not,' he says, in a letter written in 1816 to Moore,' 'why I have dwelt so much on the same scenes, except that I find them fading, or confusing, (if such a word may be) in my memory, in the midst of present turbulence and pressure, and I felt anxious to stamp before the die was worn out. I now break it. With those countries, and events connected with them, all my really poetical feelings begin and end. Were I to try, I could make nothing of any other subject; and that I have apparently exhausted.' The groundlessness of his apprehension that he had written himself out is sufficiently transparent, though it is certainly true, that Greece had the same relation to Byron's romantic tales that Scotland had to those of Scott and to the Waverley romances: Greece was the soil that gave them birth. The wild and lawless war of passions on the sacred soil of classical beauty, her ardent longing after this departed 1 Moore's Life, iii. 206. beauty, her conscious impotence to call it into life again, the self-reproaches which this consciousness engendered,— these were the features in modern Greece, which most corresponded to the state of the poet's own mind, and references to himself are everywhere to be read between the lines; he would identify himself not only with the heroes of modern Greece, but with Greece itself. The hero of the tales is himself; the portrait he draws is his own, painted in the darkest possible colours-it is evermore Childe Harold, or, to speak more correctly, Childe Burun; his hero is constantly tortured by secret guilt and by the recollection of deeds of darkness, driven and goaded by untamable passions; he despises the world and men, and is at enmity with them and with himself. The continued treatment of the same, so little varied, theme, the constant production of the same scenery, would, in any hand less powerful and impassioned than Byron's, have degenerated into monotony. But next to the novelty and originality of these tales, it was their matchless force and vigour which magnetically attracted the reading world. Society demanded strong excitement and highly seasoned food. None of his later works therefore met with such undivided applause as 'Childe Harold' and the Greek Tales. So far he stood, during this period, at the summit of his glory, and left all his competitors far behind him. |