Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

LORD BYRON ON HIS EXILE.

71

home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me. - Journal, Sept. 29, 1816.

I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl-any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me. Do you suppose I have forgotten it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may come yet; there are others more to be blamed than * * * * and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly.— To Mr. Moore. Venice, Sept. 19, 1818.

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors]

"The life of a writer," has been said by Pope, I believe, "to be a warfare upon earth." As far as my own experience has gone, I have nothing to say against the proposition; and like the rest, having once plunged into this state of hostility, must, however reluctantly, carry it on. An article has appeared in a periodical work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan," which has been so full of this spirit, on the part of the writer, as to require some observations on mine. In the course of this article, amidst some extraordinary observations, there occur the following words :-"It appears in short as if this miserable man, having exhausted every

species of sensual gratification-having drained the cup of sin even to its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show us that he is no longer a human being even in his frailties,—but a cool unconcerned fiend, laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and worse elements of which human life is composed." In another place there appears "the lurking-place of his selfish and polluted exile."-" By my troth, these be bitter words."-With regard to the first sentence, I shall content myself with observing, that it appears to have been composed for Sardanapalus, Tiberius, the Regent Duke of Orleans, or Louis XV.; and that I have copied it with as much indifference as I would a passage from Suetonius, or from any of the private memoirs of the regency, conceiving it to be amply refuted by the terms in which it is expressed, and to be utterly inapplicable to any private individual. On the words, "lurking-place," and "selfish and polluted exile," I have something more to say.-How far the capital city of a government, which survived the vicissitudes of thirteen hundred years, and might still have existed but for the treachery of Buonaparte, and the iniquity of his imitators,-a city, which was the emporium of Europe when London and Edinburgh were dens of barbarians,—may be termed a "lurkingplace," I leave to those who have seen or heard of Venice to decide. How far my exile may have been "polluted," it is not for me to say, because the word is a wide one, and, with some of its branches, may chance to overshadow the actions of most men; but that it has been "selfish" I deny. If, to the extent of my means and my power, and my information of their calamities, to have assisted many miserable beings, reduced by the decay of the place of their birth, and their consequent loss of substance-if to have never rejected an appli

LORD BYRON ON HIS EXILE.

73

cation which appeared founded on truth-if to have expended in this manner sums far out of proportion to my fortune, there and elsewhere, be selfish, then have I been selfish. To have done such things I do not deem much; but it is hard indeed to be compelled to recapitulate them in my own defence, by such accusations as that before me, like a panel before a jury calling testimonies to his character, or a soldier recording his services to obtain his discharge. If the person who has made the charge of selfishness wishes to inform himself further on the subject, he may acquire, not what he would wish to find, but what will silence and shame him, by applying to the ConsulGeneral of our nation, resident in the place, who will be in the case either to confirm or deny what I have asserted.*

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

I neither make, nor have ever made, pretensions to sanctity of demeanour, nor regularity of conduct; but my means have been expended principally on my own gratification, neither now nor heretofore, neither in England nor out of it; and it wants but a word from me, if I thought that word decent or necessary, to call forth the most willing witnesses, and at once witnesses and proofs, in England itself, to show that there are those who have derived not the mere temporary relief of a wretched boon, but the means which led them to immediate happiness and ultimate independence, by my want of that very "selfishness," as grossly as falsely now imputed to my conduct.

Had I been a selfish man- -had I been a grasping

* Lord Byron was ever ready to assist the distressed, and he was most unostentatious in his charities; for, besides considerable sums which he gave away to applicants at his own house, he contributed largely, by weekly and monthly allowances, to persons whom he had never seen, and who, as the money reached them by other hands, did not even know who was their benefactor.-Hoppner.

man-had I been, in the worldly sense of the word, even a prudent man,-I should not be where I now am; I should not have taken the step which was the first that led to the events which have sunk and swoln a gulf between me and mine; but in this respect the truth will one day be made known in the meantime, as Durandearte says, in the Cave of Montesinos, "Patience, and shuffle the cards."

I bitterly feel the ostentation of this statement, the first of the kind I have ever made: I feel the degradation of being compelled to make it; but I also feel its truth, and I trust to feel it on my deathbed should it be my lot to die there. I am not less sensible of the egotism of all this; but, alas! who have made me thus egotistical in my own defence, if not they, who, by perversely persisting in referring fiction to truth, and tracing poetry to life, and regarding characters of imagination as creatures of existence, have made me personally responsible for almost every poetical delineation which fancy, and a particular bias of thought, may have tended to produce?

The writer continues :-" Those who are acquainted, as who is not? with the main incidents of the private life of Lord B." &c. Assuredly, whoever may be acquainted with these "main incidents," the writer of the "Remarks on Don Juan" is not, or he would use a very different language. That which I believe he alludes to as a "main incident," happened to be a very subordinate one, and the natural and almost inevitable consequence of events and circumstances long prior to the period at which it occurred. It is the last drop which makes the cup run over, and mine was already full. But, to return to this man's charge: he accuses Lord B. of " Ian elaborate satire on the character and

LORD BYRON ON HIS EXILE.

75

manners of his wife." From what parts of Don Juan the writer has inferred this he himself best knows. As far as I recollect of the female characters in that production, there is but one who is depicted in ridiculous colours, or that could be interpreted as a satire upon anybody. But here my poetical sins are again revisited upon me, supposing that the poem be mine. If I depict a corsair, a misanthrope, a libertine, a chief of insurgents, or an infidel, he is set down to the author; and if, in a poem by no means ascertained to be my production, there appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there be, it is in those who make it: I can see none. In my writings I have rarely described any character under a fictitious name: those of whom I have spoken have had their own-in many cases a stronger satire in itself than any which could be appended to it. But of real circumstances I have availed myself plentifully, both in the serious and the ludicrous-they are to poetry what landscapes are to the painter; but my figures are not portraits. It may even have happened, that I have seized on some events that have occurred under my own observation, or in my own family, as I would paint a view from my grounds, did it harmonise with my picture; but I never would introduce the likenesses of its living members, unless their features could be made as favourable to themselves as to the effect; which, in the above instance, would be extremely difficult.

My learned brother proceeds to observe, that "it is in vain for Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and now that he has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be

« ПредишнаНапред »