opportunity to give vent to all the opposition that was in him, by repeated strenuous utterances in Parliament, he would appear in a far better light as a poet." Don Juan is not a book for very young girls. Byron never deceived himself on that point, as these drastic words of his declare: "A camel will go through the eye of a needle, before my Don Juan will find its way into an English drawing-room." He writes on this point to Murray, his publisher: "I will not make 'Ladies' books' al dilettar le femine e la plebe. I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not for their sweet voices." However, it is not especially on moral grounds that Don Juan is not a poem for youth; but, rather, on account of the ruthlessness with which it mockingly destroys all the sweet delusions of youth. Don Juan is, according to Byron's own confession, "a Satire on abuses of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous; I can't help that. Ariosto is worse, Smollett ten times worse, and Fielding no better." Don Juan remains a fragment. The first two cantos appeared in 1819, and the sixteenth was finished in 1823, breaking off in the midst of one of the hero's most sensational adventures in pure, moral England. During his residence in Cephalonia (at the end of 1823), five more cantos are said to have been written, if we may believe a statement of the Countess Guiccioli, who can only have been informed of their existence by letter. At present as little of these cantos have been published, as of the Reminiscences of Byron, which Thomas Moore, with incredible meanness, burned; although, according to the testimony of all who read them, they contained nothing particularly shocking, or personally offensive. The fragments from his diaries which appeared in 1830, together with several letters, cannot, valuable as they are, make amends for what is apparently the final loss of the actual Reminiscences. In other respects Byron was not very fortunate in his friends. Hobhouse, for instance, with whom he was on most confidential terms, made up his mind, despite the cloud of repulsive scandal hanging over Byron's memory, to seal up, till the year 1900, those notes of his, which would undoubtedly have afforded a truthful explanation. Lord Byron's end, though tragic, made some amends at the last for his embittered life. In May, 1823, there was sent out to him a petition of the London Committee for the cause of Greek liberty. In July of the same year he sailed for Greece, in order to aid with his whole fortune, and with his life, the cause of a people who had been dear to him from the days of his youth. From Leghorn he had thanked Goethe for his beautiful political call to this military expedition in the well-known poem Ein freundlich Wort Kommt eines nach dem andern (one friendly word follows another); but he wrote in plain prose, touching in its modesty. "For," said he, "it would but ill become me to pretend to exchange verses with him who for fifty years has been the undisputed sovereign of European literature." It was at Missolonghi that a marsh fever carried off Byron (April 19th, 1824), after a short illness. He was in his thirty-seventh year, the same age as Raphael, Mozart, and Burns. A beautiful marble statue of the poet, dedicated to him by the grateful Greek nation, has been erected there. It was Goethe again who sang a dirge for the dead poet, in the second part of Faust:— Wüssten wir doch kaum zu klagen; Neidend singen wir dein Loos: Dir in Klar-und trüben Tagen Lied und Mut war schön und gross. Ach! zum Erdenglück geboren, Scharfer Blick, die Welt zu schauen, Mitsinn jedem Herzensdrang, Liebesglut der besten Frauen, Byron had long had a presentiment that his death was very near. His last poem, entitled, On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year, written three months before his death, breathes a foreboding of his quitting this life :— 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; The fire that on my bosom preys The hope, the fear, the jealous care, But 'tis not thus, and 'tis not here Where glory decks the hero's bier, The sword, the banner, and the field Awake! (not Greece, she is awake)! And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down, If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live? Seek out, less often sought than found, Byron's death was looked on by the Greeks as a great national calamity. Twenty-one days' public mourning did honour to the poet, as well as to the people who wore it on his account. The Greek chieftains wanted to bury the corpse of Byron in Hellenic soil, and it was proposed that the interment should take place in the Temple of Theseus at Athens; but his friends decided otherwise. His heart only rests at Missolonghi. In the church of this little town in the west of Greece a solemn funeral service was held, to which the corpse was borne through the streets on an open bier, draped with black, and with a helmet, sword, and wreath of laurels laid upon it, after which the ship, with flags lowered in token of mourning, bore the poet back to his last resting-place in England, eight years after he had quitted it in anger. The clergy of Westminster would not allow him to be buried in the Poet's Corner of the famous Abbey, where so many unworthy and obscure persons lie; and those of St. Paul's were equally narrowminded. And thus it was that the greatest English poet of modern times rests in the village churchyard of Hucknall Torkard, not far from Newstead Abbey, the former seat of the family. A simple memorial tablet, erected by his sister Augusta, tells who lies buried there. Nor was Byron's bust, by Thorwaldsen, allowed a space in any English temple of fame; it now adorns the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Some years ago a monument to him was erected in London at the instigation of Disraeli, but, unfortunately, it is but a lamentable production of English art, like most of the statues in the streets of London. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL.-There is no serviceable English work on the nineteenth century; Saintsbury's (1896) is not to be commended; Mrs. Oliphant's Victorian Age of English Literature (1892) is scanty. There is much that is good in Stedman's Victorian Poets (1876) and Frederic Harrison's Studies in Early Victorian Literature (1895); Wülker's Geschichte der englischen Litteratur (1896) is useless for this period; in G. Brandes' Hauptströmungen der Litteratur des 19 Jahrhunderts the section on the time of Byron and Shelley is excellent; a rich store of information in the Magazin für Litteratur; G. Körting's Grundriss der Geschichte der englischen Litteratur is to be avoided; Taine's work is very suggestive; O. Barot, Histoire de la littérature contemporaine en Angleterre 1830-1874; W. R. Nicoll, Literary Anecdotes of the 19th century. COLLECTIONS.-The fourth volume of Macmillan's English Poets (lyric); the collections of Asher, Heinemann. BYRON.-The best edition is by W. E. Henley (in progress); new critical edition (only for philologists), by E. Kölbing (1894); of the older editions T. Moore's is the most serviceable. Best Life by K. Elze; the Diaries and Letters, collected by T. Moore, are indispensable; E. Engel, Eine Autobiographie in Tagebüchern und Briefen; Jeaffreson, The real Lord Byron; Eberty's and Gottschall's Lives of Byron are worthless; Treitschke's Essay is superficial; Macaulay's Essay admirable; Nichol, Byron (in English Men of Letters, pharisaically narrowminded); W. M. Rossetti, Poetical Works of Byron; Works, Poetry edited by E. H. Coleridge, Letters and Journals by R. E. Prothero. CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS AND BIOGRAPHIES.-Countess Guiccioli, My Recollections of Lord Byron; John Galt, Life of Byron (highly praised by Goethe); Dallas, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron; E. Brydges, Letters on the Character of Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries (to be used with caution); Kennedy, Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron; Lady Blessington (a discarded favourite!), Conversations with Lord Byron; T. Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron; C. Gordon, Life and Genius of Lord Byron; Parry, The Last Days of Lord Byron; Count Gamba, Narrative of Lord Byron's Last Journey to Greece; Trelawney, Recollections of the Last Days of Byron; H. L. Bulwer, The Life of Lord Byron (1837); H. B. Stowe, Lady Byron Vindicated (a lying book), to be compared with the crushing essay in Quarterly Review (October, 1869); see further the numerous passages in Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann, Correspondence with Zelter and others; A. Brandl, Göthe und Byron (Oester. Rundschau, 1883); O. Schmidt, Rousseau und Byron; Weddigen, Byron's Einfluss auf die europäischen Litteraturen der Neuzeit. P CHAPTER II BYRON'S CONTEMPORARIES 1. SHELLEY (1792-1822) ERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY is the last of the fearfully long list of prominent English poets who were snatched away in the very prime of manhood. He ranks as the last, not the least, in that ghastly funeral procession, in which are found Surrey, Sidney, Marlowe, Chatterton, Burns, Byron, Keats. He was born August 4th, 1792, at Field Place, Sussex: and was drowned July 8th, 1822, while sailing in a boat in the Bay of Lerici, near Genoa, before he had quite completed his thirtieth year! From his youth upwards Percy Bysshe Shelley did not go the way of other men. At Eton he, the son of a country gentleman, was called "The Atheist"; the semi-barbarous bullying that prevailed in the school, especially the "fagging" system, aroused his indignation and strengthened his desire to fight against the ordinary usages of the world. In The Revolt of Islam he has strikingly described the first awakening of his hatred against tyranny in any form whatever : Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was, And then I clasped my hands, and looked around, Such power; for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check." I then controlled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. |