LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 313
Your absence, and the distance of your
abode, leave your name at the mercy of
every tatler and scribbler, who, even without
being personal enemies, attack character
for the mere pleasure of defamation, or for
gain; and the life you are said to lead,
and I grieve to say the work you have pub-
lished, leave you no defenders. However
you may stand with the world, I cannot
but believe that at your age you may
shake off all that clogs you in the career for
which you were born. The very determi-
nation to resume it would be an irresistible
claim to new attention from the world ; and
unshaken perseverance would effect all that
you could wish. Imagination has had an
ample range. No genius ever attained its
meed so rapidly, or more completely ; but
manhood is the period for reality and action.
Will you be content to throw it away for
Italian skies and the reputation of eccentri-
city? May God grant me power to stir
314 ilECOLLECTlONS OF THE
up ill your mind the resolution of living the
next twenty years in England, engaged in
those pursuits to which Providence seems
more directly to call every man who by
birth is entitled to take a share in the
legislation of his country. But what do I
say ? I believe that I ought first to wish
you to take a serious view of the subjects
on which legislation turns. Much has been
argued in favour of adopting and adhering
to a party — I have never been convinced of
this— but I am digressing. At all events,
I beseech you to think of reinstating your-
self in your own country. Preparatory
to this, an idea has come into my mind,
which it is time for me to state to you ; to
do which I must return to the seemingly
querulous style from which I have digressed.
Well then, my Lord, I did some time ago
think of your treatment of me with pain; and
reflection, v/ithout lessening my attachment,
showed me that you had acted towards me
I
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 315
very ungenerously, and, indeed, very un-
justly — jou ought to have made more of me.
I say this the more freely now because I have
lived till it is become indifferent to me. It
is true that I benefited not inconsiderably
by some of your works; but it was not in
the nature of money to satisfy or repay me.
I felt the pecuniary benefit as I ought, and
was not slow in acknowledging it as I
ought. The six or seven hundred pounds
paid by the purchaser of Childe Harold for
the copyright was, in my mind, nothing in
comparison with the honour that was due
to me for discerning the genius that lay
buried in the Pilgrimage, and for exciting
you to the publication of it, in spite of the
damp which had been thrown upon it in
the course of its composition, and in spite
of your own reluctance and almost deter-
mination to suppress it ; nothing in compa-
rison with the kindness that was due to me
for the part I took in keeping back your
3] 6 RECOLLFXTIONS OF THE
Hints from Horace, and the new edition of
the Satire, till the moment I impressed con-
viction on your mind that your fame and the
choice of your future career in life depended
upon the suppression of these, and on the
pubhcation of Childe Harold. I made an
effort to render you sensible that I was not
dead to that better claim, but it was un-
successful; and though you continued your
personal kindness whenever we met, you
raised in my mind a jealousy which I was
perhaps too proud, if not too mean-spirited,
to betray. The result of the feeling, how-
ever, wae, that I borrowed from you the
hint of a posthumous volume, for after
awhile I did not much care for the present,
and I have indulged meditations on 3^ou
and on myself for the amusement and judg-
ment of future generations, but with this
advantage over you, that I am convinced
that I shall participate in whatever effect
they produce ; and without this conviction
LIFE OF LORD BYROX. 317
I cannot conceive how the shghtest value
can be attached to posthumous fame. This
is a topic on which I feel an inclination to
dwell, but I will conquer the impulse, for
my letter is already advanced beyond the
limits I proposed. My Lord, my posthu-
mous volume is made up— I look into it
occasionally with much pleasure, and I
enjoy the thought of being, when it is
opened, in the year 1900, in company with
your spirit, and of finding you pleased, even
in the high sphere you may, if you will,
then occupy, which it is possible you would
not be, were you to see it now opened to
the public in your present sphere. I do
not know, my Lord, whether you are able
to say as much for your book, for if you
do live hereafter, and I have not the slight-
est doubt but you will, I suspect that you
will have company about you at the open-
ing of it, which may rather afford occasion
of remorse than of pleasure, however gra-
318 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
cious and forgiving you may find immortal
spirits. Of you I have written precisely
as I think, and as I have found you ; and
though I have inserted some things vs^hich I
vi^ould not give to the present generation,
the whole, as it stands, is a just portrait of
you during the time I knew you; for I
drop the pencil where you dropped the
curtain between us, and the picture is to
me an engaging one. I contemplate it
together with some parts of your works,
and I cannot help breaking forth into the
exclamation of ' And is this man to be
lost !' You, perhaps, echo, in a tone of
displeasure, ' Lost !'— Yes, lost. — Nay, un-
clench your hand — remember it is my ghost
that is addressing you ; not the being of
flesh and blood whom you may dash from
you at your will, as you have done. The
man whose place is in the highest council
of the first nation in the world, who pos-
sesses powers to delight and to serve his
LIFE OP LORD BYRON. 319
country, if he dissipates years between an
Italian country-house and opera-box, and
murders his genius in attempts to rival a
Rochester or a Cleland, — for I will not, to
flatter you, say a Boccacio or a La Fontaine,
who wrote at periods when, and in countries
where, indecency was wit— that man is lost.
Gracious Heaven ! on what lofty ground
you stood in the month of March, 1812!
The world was before you, not as it was to
Adam, driven in tears from Paradise to seek
a place of rest, but presenting an elysium,
to every part of which its crowded and
various inhabitants vied in their welcome
of you. ' Crowds of eminent persons,'
says my posthumous volume, ' courted an
introduction, and some volunteered their
cards. This was the trying moment of
virtue, and no wonder if that w^ere shaken,
for never was there so sudden a transition
from neglect to courtship. Glory darted
thick upon him from all sides ; from the
320 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE
Prince Regent, and his admirable daughter,
to the bookseller and his shopman ; from
Walter Scott to ; from Jeffrey to the
nameless critics of the Satirist and Scourge ;
he was the wonder of wits, and the show of
fashion.' I will not pursue the reverse; but
I must repeat, ' And is this man to be
lost !' My head is full of you, and whether
you allow me the merit or not, my heart
tells me that I was chiefly instrumental, by
my conduct, in 1812, in saving you from
perpetuating the enmity of the world, or
rather in forcing you, against your will,
into its admiration and love ; and that I once
afterwards considerably retarded your rapid
retrograde motion from the envied station
which genius merits, but which even genius
cannot preserve without prudence. These
recollections have actuated me, it may be
imprudently, to write you this letter, to
endeavour to impel you to reflect seriously
upon what you ought to be, and to beseech
LIFE OF LORD BYRON, 321
you to take steps to render your manhood
solidly and lastingly glorious. Will you
once more make use of me ? I cannot
believe that there is an insurmountable
bar to your return to your proper station
in life, — a station, which let me be bold
enough to say, you have no right to quit.
All that I have heard concerning you is
but vague talk. The breach v^ith Lady
Byron was evidently the ground of your
leaving England ; and I presume the causes
of that breach are what operate upon your
spirit in keeping you abroad. In recol-
lecting my principles, you will naturally
imagine that the first thing that would
occur to my mind in preparing the way for
your return, is an endeavour to close that
breach — but I am not sufiiciently acquainted
with her to judge of the force of her oppo-
sition. At any rate, I would make the
blame rest at her door, if reconciliation is
not obtainable ; I would be morally right ;
322 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
and this it is in your power to be, on which-
ever side the wrong at first lay, by a manly
severity to yourself, and by declaring your
resolution to forgive, and to banish from
your thought for ever all that could inter-
rupt a cordial reconciliation. This step,
should it not produce a desirable effect on
the mind of Lady Byron, would infallibly
lead to the esteem of the world. Is it too
much for me to hope that I might, by a
letter to her, and by a public account of
you, and of your intended pursuits in Eng-
land, make such a general impression, as
once more to fix the eyes of your country
upon you with sentiments of new admira-
tion and regard, and usher you again to a
glory of a nature superior to all you ever
enjoyed. It has, I own, again and again
come into my mind, to model my intended
posthumous work for present publication,
so as to have that effect ; could I but pre-
vail upon you to follow it up by a return to
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 323
England, with a resolution to lead a phi-
losophical life, and to turn the great powers
of your mind to pursuits worthy of them:
and, among those, to a candid search after
that religious Truth which often, as imagi-
nation sobers, becomes more obvious to
the ordinary vision of Reason. Once more,
my dear Lord Byron, forgive, or, rather,
let me say, reward, my warmth, by listen-
ing again to the affection which prompts
me to express my desire of serving you.
I do not expect the glory of making a re-
ligious convert of you. I have still a hope
that you will yourself have that glory if
your life be spared to the usual length—
but my present anxiety is to see you re-
stored to your station in this world, after
trials that should induce you to look seri-
ously into futurity."
Such was the affectionate interest with
which the author of this letter continued
Y 2
324 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
to regard Lord Byron ! But it was too late;
he had hardened his heart, and blunted his
perception of the real value of such a
friend. This was the last communication
that ever took place between them, al-
though an accidental circumstance afforded
the assurance that this letter had reached
its destination.
To return to the original character of
Lord Byron. Whoever has read these
pages attentively, or has seen the original
documents from whence they are drawn,
cannot fail to have perceived, that in his
Lordship's early character there were the
seeds of all the evil which has blossomed
and borne fmit with such luxuriance in
his later years. Nor will it be attempted
here, to shew that in any part of his life
he was without those seeds ; but I think
that a candid observer will also be ready
to acknowledge, after reading this work,
that there was an opposing principle of
LIFE OP LORD BYRON. 325
good acting in his mind, with a strength
which produced opinions that were after-
wards entirely altered. The coterie into
which he unfortunately fell at Cambridge
famiharized him with all the sceptical argu-
ments of human pride. And his acquaint-
ance with an unhappy atheist— who was
suddenly summoned before his outraged
Maker, while bathing in the streams of the
Cam, was rendered a severe trial, by the
brilliancy of the talent which he possessed,
and which imparted a false splendour to
the principles which he did not scruple to
avow. Yet, when Lord Byron speaks of
this man, as being an atheist, he considers
it offensive;— when he remarks on the work
of Mr. Townsend, who had attempted in
the sketch of an intended poem to give an
idea of the last judgment, he considered
his idea as too daring ;— in opening his heart
to his mother he shows that he beheved
that God knew, and did all things for the
326 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE
best; — after having seen mankind in many
nations and characters, he unrestrainedly
conveys his opinion, that human nature is
every v^^here corrupt and despicable. These
points are the more valuable, because they
flowed naturally and undesignedly from the
heart ; while, on the contrary, his sceptical
opinions were expressed only when the
subject was before him, and as it were by
way of apology.
When, in this period of his life, there is
any thing like argument upon this subject,
advanced by him in his correspondence,
it is miserably weak and confused. The
death of his atheistical friend bewildered
him : he thought there was the stamp of
immortality in all this person said and did—
that he seemed a man created to display
what the Creator could make — and yet,
such as he was, he had been gathered into
corruption, before the maturity of a mind
that might have been the pride of posterity.
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 327
And this bewildered him ! If his opinion of
his friend were a just one, ought not this
reasoning rather to have produced the
conviction, that such a mind could not be
gathered into the corruption which awaited
the perishable body? Accordingly, Lord
Byron's inference did not lead him to pro-
duce this death as a support to the doctrine
of annihilation ; but his mind being tinc-
tured previously with that doctrine, he
confesses that it bewildered him.
When about to publish Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage, containing sceptical opinions,
the decided expression of which he was
then induced to withdraw, he wrote a note
to accompany them, which has been in-
serted in this work. Its main object is to
declare, that his was not sneering, but des-
ponding scepticism — and he grounds his
opinions upon the most unlogical deduction
that could be formed : that, because he had
found many people abuse and disgrace
328 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
the religion they professed, that therefore
religion was not true. This is like saying,
that because a gamester squanders his
guineas for his own destmction, they are
therefore not gold, nor applicable for good
purposes. Weak as this was, he called it
an apology for his scepticism.
It cannot be said, that up to this period,
Lord Byron was decidedly an unbeliever ;
but, on the contrary, I think it may be said,
that there was a capability in his mind for
the reception of Divine Truth, — that he
had not closed his eyes to the light which
therefore forced its way in with sufficient
power to maintain some contest with the
darkness of intellectual pride ; and this
opinion is strengthened, by observing the
effects of that lingering light, in the colour-
ing which it gave to vice and virtue in his
mind. His conduct had been immoral and
dissipated ; but he knew it to be such, and
acknowledged it in its true colours. He
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 329
regretted the indulgence of his passions' as
producing criminal acts, and bringing him
under their government. He expressed
these feelings ; — he did more, he strove
against them. He scrupled not publicly to
declare his detestation of the immorality
which renders the pages of Mr. Moore inad-
missible into decent society; and he se-
verely satirizes the luxurious excitements
to vice which abound in our theatrical im-
portation of Italian manners*. When a
circumstance occurred in which one of his
tenants had given way to his passions.
Lord Byron s opinion and decision upon the
subject were strongly expressed, and his
remarks upon that occasion are particularly
worthy of notice. He thought our first
* Then let Ausonia, skilled in every art
To soften manners, but corrupt the heart,
Pour her exotic follies o'er the town,
To sanction vice, and hunt decorum dowTi.
English Bards.
330 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
duty was not to do evil, though he felt that
was impossible. The next duty was to re-
pair the evil we have done, if in our power.
He would not afford his tenants a privilege
he did not allow himself. — He knew he had
been guilty of many excesses, but had laid
down a resolution to reform, and latterly
kept it.
I mention these circumstances to call to
the reader's mind the general tenor of Lord
Byron's estimate of moral conduct, as it
appears in the present work; because I
think it may be said that he had a lively
perception of what was right, and a strong
desire to follow it ; but he wanted the re-
gulating influence of an acknowledged stan-
dard of sufficient purity, and, at the same
time, established by sufficient authority in
his mind. The patience of God not only
offered him such a standard in religion,
but kept his heart in a state of capabi-
lity for receiving it. In spite of his many
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 331
grievings of God's spirit, still, it would not
absolutely desert him as long as he allowed
a struggle to continue in his heart.
But the publication of Childe Harold was
followed by consequences which seemed to
have closed his heart against the long-tar-
rying spirit of God, and at once to have
ended all struggle. Never was there a
more sudden transition from the doubtings
of a mind to which Divine light was yet
accessible, to the unhesitating abandon-
ment to the blindness of vice. Lord Byron's
vanity became the ruling passion of his
mind. He made himself his own god ; and
no eastern idol ever received more ab-
ject or degrading worship from a bigotted
votary.
The circumstances which have been de-
tailed in this work respecting the publica-
tion of Childe Harold, prove sufficiently
how decided and how lamentable a turn
they gave to a character, which, though
332 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
wavering and inconsistent for want of the
guide I have referred to, had not yet passed
all the avenues which might take him
from the broad way that leadeth to des-
truction, into the narrow path of life. But
Lord Byrous unresisting surrender to the
first temptation of intrigue, from which all
its accompanying horrors could not affright
him, seems to have banished for ever from
his heart the Divine influence which could
alone defend him against the strength of
his passions and the weakness of his nature
to resist them ; and it is truly astonishing
to find the very great rapidity with which
he was involved in all the trammels of
fashionable vice.
With proportionable celerity his opinions
of moral conduct were changed ; his power
of estimating virtue at any thing like its
true value ceased; and his mind became
spiritually darkened to a degree as great
perhaps as has ever been known to take
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 333
place from the results of one step. Witness
the course of his life at this time, as de-
tailed in the conversations lately published,
to which I have before alluded. Witness
the fact of his being capable of detailing
such a course of life in familiar conversa-
tion to one almost a stranger.
What must have been the change in that
man v^ho could at one time write these
lines, —
Grieved to condemn, the muse must still be just.
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust ;
Pure is the flame that o''er her altar burns,
From grosser incense with disgust she turns ;
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o'er,
She bids thee mend thy line, and sin no more—
and at another become the author of Don
Juan, where grosser, more licentious, more
degrading images are produced, than could
have been expected to have found their
way into any mind desirous merely of pre-
serving a decent character in society ; — than
334 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
could have been looked for from any
tongue not habituated to the conversation
of the most abandoned of the lowest order
of society? What must have been the
change in him who, from animadverting
severely upon the licentiousness of a village
intrigue, could glory in the complication of
crimes which give zest to fashionable adul-
tery; and even in the excess of his glorying
could forego his title to be called a man of
honour or a gentleman, for which the
merest coxcomb of the world will commonly
restrain himself within some bounds after
he has overstepped the narrower limits of
religious restraint ! For who can venture to
call Lord Byron either one or the other after
reading the unrestrained disclosures he is
said, in his published Conversations, to have
made, " without any injunctions to secrecy."
Who could have imagined that the same man
who had observed upon the offensiveness
of the expression of another's irreligious
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 335
principles, should ever be capable of offend-
ing the world with such awfully fearless
impiety as is contained in the latter
Cantos of Don Juan, and boldly advanced
in Cain ? Who can read, in his own hand-
writing, the opinion that a sublime and
well intentioned anticipation of the Last
Judgment is too daring, and puts him in
mind of the line —
" And fools rush in where Angels fear to tread,"
and conceive that the same hand wrote his
Vision of Judgment ?
Yet such a change did take place, as any
one may be convinced of, who will take the
trouble to read the present work, and the
Conversations to which I have alluded, and
compare them together. For, let it be ob-
served, that the few pages in the latter
publication which refer to Lord Byron's
religious opinions, state only his old weak
reasoning, founded upon the disunion of
336 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
professing christians, some faint, and, I may-
say, childish wishes; and a disowning of
the principles of Mr. Shelley's school. So
also that solitary reference to a preparation
for death, when death stood visibly by his
bed-side ready to receive him, which is
related by his servant,* and upon which I
have known a charitable hope to be hung,
amounts to just as much — an assertion. It
can onlybethe most puerile ignorance of the
nature of religion, which can receive asser-
tion for proof in such a matter. The very
essence of real religion is to let itself be
seen in the life, when it is really sown in
the heart ; and a man who appeals to his
assertions to establish his religious charac-
ter, may be his own dupe, but can never
dupe any but such as are like him — ^just as
thelunatic inBedlam may call himself a king,
* Lord Byron is stated to have said to his servant, " I
am not afraid of dying — I am more fit to die tlian people
think."
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 337
and believe it ; but it is only those who
are as mad as himself who will think them-
selves his subjects. There is no possibility
of hermetically sealing up religion in the
heart ; if it be there it cannot be confined,—
it must extend its influence over the prin-
ciple of thought, of word, and of action.
When we see wonderful and rapid
changes take place in the physical world,
we naturally seek for the cause ; and it
cannot but be useful to trace the cause of
so visible a change in the moral world, as
that which appears upon the comparison I
have pointed out. It will not, I think, be
too much to say, that it took place imme-
diately that the resistance against evil
ceased in Lord Byron's mind. Temptation
certainly came upon him in an overpower-
ing manner ; and the very first temptation
was perhaps the worst, yet he yielded to it
almost immediately. I refer to the circum-
338 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE
stance recorded in these pages, which took
place Httle more than a week after the first
appearance of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
when he received an extraordinary anony-
mous letter, which led immediately to the
most disgraceful liaison of which he has
not scrupled to boast. There was some-
thing so disgusting in the forwardness of
the person who wrote, as well as deterring
in the enormity of the criminal excesses of
which this letter was the beginning, that he
should have been roused against such a
temptation at the first glance. But the
sudden gust of pubhc applause had just
blown upon him, and having raised him in
its whirlwind above the earth, he had
already began to deify himself in his own
imagination ; and this incense came to him
as the first offered upon his altar. He was
intoxicated with its fumes ; and, closing his
mind against the light that had so long
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 330