THE FEAR OF "DYING AT TOP" 61 the thirst; but the depression of spirits is no less violent. I read in Edgeworth's Memoirs of something similar (except that his thirst expended itself on small beer) in the case of Sir F. B. Delaval;-but then he was, at least, twenty years older. What is it ?—liver? In England, Le Man (the apothecary) cured me of the thirst in three days, and it had lasted as many years. I suppose that it is all hypochondria. What I feel more growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not earlier by accident, or some such termination), like Swift-"dying at top." I confess I do not contemplate this with so much horror as he apparently did for some years before it happened. But Swift had hardly begun life at the very period (thirty-three) when I feel quite an old sort of feel. Oh! there is an organ playing in the street—a waltz, too! I must leave off to listen. They are playing a waltz which I have heard ten thousand times at the balls in London, between 1812 and 1815. Music is a strange thing. "Extracts from a Diary," (1821, February 2. I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper and constitutional depression of Spirits, which, of course, I suppress in society; but which breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of myself. It has been deepened, perhaps, by some long past events (I do not allude to my marriage, etc. -on the contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a fillip to my Spirits); but I call it constitutional, as I have reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that my maternal Grandfather (a very clever man, and amiable, I am told) was strongly suspected of Suicide (he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that another very near relative of the same branch took poison, and was merely saved by antidotes. For the first of these events there was no apparent cause, as he was rich, respected, and of considerable intellectual resources, hardly forty years of age, and not at all addicted to any unhinging vice. It was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his death and to his melancholy temper. The second had a cause, but it does not become me to touch upon it; it happened when I was far too young to be aware of it, and I never heard of it till after the death of that relative, many years afterwards. I think, then, that I may call this dejection constitutional. I had always been told that in temper I more resembled my maternal Grandfather than any of my father's family-that is, in the gloomier part of the temper, for he was what you call a good-natured man, and I am not. (1821, September 20. Letter 937, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 370.) My ague bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause. I ride-I am not intem "OXFORD TO HIM A DEARER NAME" 63 perate in eating or drinking--and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree. How do you manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don't exhilarate-it makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of it without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of salts-I mean in the afternoon, after their effect. But one can't take them like champagne. Excuse this old woman's letter; but my lemancholy don't depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there. (1821, October 6. Letter 946, to Thomas Moore, Vol. V., p. 387.) When I first went up to College, it was a new and a heavy hearted scene for me. Firstly, I so much disliked leaving Harrow, that, though it was time (I being seventeen), it broke my very rest for the last quarter with counting the days that remained. I always hated Harrow till the last year and a half, but then I liked it. Secondly, I wished to go to Oxford [to Christ Church] and not to Cambridge. Thirdly, I was so completely alone in this new world, that it half broke my Spirits. My companions were not unsocial, but the contrary-lively, hospitable, of rank, and fortune, and gay far beyond my gaiety. I mingled with, and dined and supped, etc., with them; but I know not how, it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem; and in my esteem age is not estimable. I took my gradations in the vices with great promptitude, but they were not to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in the extreme, were concentrated, and hated division or spreading abroad. I could have left or lost the world with or for that which I loved; but though my temperament was naturally burning, I could not share in the commonplace libertinism of the place and time without disgust. And yet this very disgust, and my heart thrown back upon itself, threw me into excesses perhaps more fatal than those from which I shrunk, as fixing upon me (at a time) the passions, which, spread amongst many, would have hurt only myself. People have wondered at the Melancholy which runs through my writings. Others have wondered at my personal gaiety; but I recollect once, after an hour, in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay, and rather brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits) "and yet, Bell, I have been called and miscalled Melancholy-you must have seen how falsely, frequently." "No, B." (she answered), "it is not so at heart you are the most melancholy of mankind, and often when apparently gayest. If I could explain at length the real causes which have contributed to increase this perhaps natural temperament of mine, this Melancholy which hath BYRON'S PRECOCIOUS PASSIONS 65 made me a bye-word, nobody would wonder; but this is impossible without doing much mischief. I do not know what other men's lives have been, but I cannot conceive anything more strange than some of the earlier parts of mine. I have written my memoirs, but omitted all the really consequential and important parts, from deference to the dead, to the living, and to those who must be both. I sometimes think that I should have written the whole as a lesson, but it might have proved a lesson to be learnt rather than avoided; for passion is a whirlpool, which is not to be viewed nearly without attraction from its Vortex. I must not go on with these reflections, or I shall be letting out some secret or other to paralyze posterity. ("Detached Thoughts," 1821-22. "Thoughts" 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, Vol. V., p. 445.) My passions were developed very early-so early, that few would believe me, if I were to state the period, and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons which caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts-having anticipated life. My earliest poems are the thoughts of one at least ten years older than the age at which they are written: I don't mean for their solidity, but their Experience. The two first Cantos of C. Hd. were completed at twenty-two, and they are written as if by a man older than I shall probably ever be. ("Detached Thoughts," 1821-22. "Thought" 80, Vol. V., p. 450.) E |
