real or imagined injury on individuals, he looks on them as a part of that great whole, of which that world which he has waged war with, and that he fancies has waged war with him, is composed. He looks on himself like a soldier in action, who, without any individual resentment, strikes at all within his reach, as component parts of the force to which he is opposed. If this be indefensible, and all must admit that it is so, let us be merciful even while we are condemning; and let us remember what must have been the heart-aches and corroding thoughts of a mind so sensitive as Byron's, ere the last weapons of despair were resorted to, and the fearful sally, the forlorn, hope attack, on the world's opinions, made while many of those opinions had partisans within his own breast, even while he stood in the last breach of defeated hope, to oppose them. The poison in which he has dipped the arrows aimed at the world has long been preying on his own life, and has been produced by the deleterious draughts administered by that world, and which he has quaffed to the dregs, until it has turned the once healthful current of his existence into deadly venom, poisoning all the fine and generous qualities that adorned his nature. He feels what he might have been, and what he is, and detests the world that has marred his destiny. But, as the passions lose their empire, he will think differently: the veil which now obscures his reason will pass away, like clouds dispelled by the sun; he will learn to distinguish much of good, where he has hitherto seen only evil; and no longer braving the world, and, to enrage it, assuming faults he has not, he will let the good qualities he has, make themselves known, and gain that good will and regard they were formed to conciliate. "I often, in imagination, pass over a long lapse of years, (said Byron,) and console myself for present privations, in anticipating the time when my daughter will know me by reading my works; for, though the hand of prejudice may conceal my portrait from her eyes, it cannot hereafter conceal my thoughts and feelings, which will talk to her when he to whom they belonged has ceased to exist. The triumph will then be mine; and the tears that my child will drop over expressions wrung from me by mental agony, the certainty that she will enter into the sentiments which dictated the various allusions to her and myself in my works, consoles me in many a gloomy hour. Ada's mother has feasted on the smiles of her infancy and growth, but the tears of her maturity shall be mine.” I thought it a good opportunity to represent to Byron, which this thought alone should operate to prevent his ever writing a page that could bring the blush of offended modesty to the cheek of his daughter; and that, if he hoped to live in her heart, unsullied by aught that could abate her admiration, he ought never more to write a line of Don Juan. He remained silent for some minutes, and then said, "You are right; I never recollected this. I am jealously tenacious of the undivided sympathy of my daughter; and that work, (Don Juan,) written to beguile hours of tristesse and wretchedness, is well calculated to loosen my hold on her affection. I will write no more of it ;-would that I had never written a line!" There is something tender and beautiful in the deep love with which poor Byron turns to his daughter. This is his last resting-place, and on her heart has he cast his last anchor of hope. When one reflects that he looks not to consolation from her during his life, as he believes her mother implacable, and only hopes that, when the grave has closed over him, his child will cherish his memory, and weep over his misfortunes, it is impossible not to sympathize with his feelings. Poor Byron! why is he not always true to himself? Who can, like him, excite sympathy, even when one knows him to be erring? But he shames one out of one's natural and better feelings by his mockery of self. Alas! "His is a lofty spirit, turn'd aside From its bright path by woes, and wrongs, and pride; To pause one moment in the dread career, How unsatisfactory is it to find one's feelings with regard to Byron varying every day! This is because he is never two days the same. The day after he has awakened the deepest interest, his manner of scoffing at himself and others destroys it, and one feels as if one had been duped into a sympathy, only to be laughed at. "I have been accused (said Byron) of thinking ill of women. This has proceeded from my sarcastic observations on them in conversation, much more than from what I have written. The fact is, I always say whatever comes into my head, and very often say things to provoke people to whom I am talking. If I meet a romantic person, with what I call a too exalted opinion of women, I have a peculiar satisfaction in speaking lightly of them; not out of pique to your sex, but to mortify their champion; as I always conclude, that when a man over-praises women, he does it to convey the impression of how much they must have favoured him, to have won such gratitude towards them; whereas there is such an abnegation of vanity in a poor devil's decrying women, —it is such a proof positive that they never distinguished him, that I can overlook it. People take for gospel all I say, and go away continually with false impressions. Mais n'importe! it will render the statements of my future biographers more amusing; as I flatter myself I shall have more than one. Indeed, the more the merrier, say I. One will represent me as a sort of sublime misanthrope, with moments of kind feeling. This, par example, is my favourite rôle. Another will pourtray me as a modern Don Juan; and a third (as it would be hard if a votary of the Muses had less than the number of the Graces for his biographers) will, it is to be hoped, if only for opposition sake, represent me as an amiable, ill-used gentleman, more sinned against than sinning.' Now, if I know myself, I should say, that I have no character at all. By the by, this is what has long been said, as I lost mine, as an Irishman would say, before I had it. That is to say, my reputation was gone, according to the good-natured English, before I had arrived at years of discretion, which is the period one is supposed to have found one. But, joking apart, what I think of myself is, that I am so changeable, being every thing by turns and nothing long,-I am such a strange mélange of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me. There are but two sentiments to which I am constant,-a strong love of liberty, and a detestation of cant, and neither is calculated to gain me friends. I am of a wayward, uncertain disposition, more disposed to display the defects than the redeeming points in my nature: this, at least, proves that I understand mankind, for they are always ready to believe the evil, but not the good; and there is no crime of which I could accuse myself, for which they would not give me implicit credit. What do you think of me?" (asked he, looking seriously in my face.) I replied, "I look on you as a spoilt child of genius, an epicycle in your own circle." At which he laughed, though half disposed to be angry. "I have made as many sacrifices to liberty (continued Byron) as most people of my age; and the one I am about to undertake is not the least, though, probably, it will be the last; for, with my broken health, and the chances of war, Greece will most likely terminate my mortal career. I like Italy, its climate, its customs, and above all its freedom from cant of every kind, which is the primum mobile of England; therefore it is no slight sacrifice of comfort to give up the tranquil life I lead here, and break through the ties I have formed, to engage in a cause, for the successful result of which I have no very sanguine hopes. You will think me more superstitious than ever (said Byron) when I tell you, that I have a presentiment that I shall die in Greece; I hope it may be in action, for that would be a good finish to a very triste existence, and I have a horror of death-bed scenes; but as I have not been famous for my luck in life, most probably I shall not have more in the manner of my death, and that I may draw my last sigh, not on the field of glory, but on the bed of disease. I very nearly died when I was in Greece in my youth; perhaps, as things have turned out, it would have been well if I had; I should have lost nothing, and the world very little, and I should have escaped many cares, for God knows I have had enough of one kind or another; but I am getting gloomy, and looking either back or forward is not calculated to enliven me. One of the reasons why I quiz my friends in conversation is, that it keeps me from thinking of myself. You laugh, but it is true.” Byron had so unquenchable a thirst for celebrity, that no means were left untried that might attain it: this frequently led to his expressing opinions totally at variance with his actions and real sentiments, and vice versâ, and made him appear quite inconsistent and puerile. There was no sort of celebrity that he did not, at some period or other, condescend to seek, and he was not over-nice in the means, provided he obtained the end. This weakness it was that led him to accord his society to many persons whom he thought unworthy the distinction, fancying that he might find a greater facility in astonishing them, which he had a childish propensity to do, than with those who were more on an equality with him. When I say persons that he thought unworthy of his society, I refer only to their stations in life, and not to their merits, as the first was the criterion by which Byron was most prone to judge them, never being able to conquer the overweening prejudices in favour of aristocracy that subjugated him. He expected a deferential submission to his opinions from those whom he thought he honoured by admitting to his society; and if they did not seem duly impressed with a sense of his condescension, as well as astonished at the versatility of his powers and accomplishments, he showed his dissatisfaction by assuming an air of superiority, and by opposing their opinions in a dictatorial tone, as if from his fiat there was no appeal. If, on the contrary, they appeared willing to admit his superiority in all respects, he was kind, playful, and good-humoured, and only showed his own sense of it by familiar jokes, and attempts at hoaxing, to which he was greatly addicted. Dec.-VOL. XXXIX. NO. CLVI. 2 E An extraordinary peculiarity in Byron was his constant habit of disclaiming friendships, a habit that must have been rather humiliating to those who prided themselves on being considered his friends. He invariably, in conversing about the persons supposed to stand in that relation to him, drew a line of demarcation, and Lord Clare, with Mr. Hobhouse and Moore, were the only persons he allowed to be within its pale. Long acquaintance, habitual correspondence, and reciprocity of kind actions, which are the general bonds of friendship, were not admitted by Byron to be sufficient claims to the title of friend; and he seized with avidity every opportunity of denying this relation with persons for whom, I am persuaded, he felt the sentiment, and to whom he would not have hesitated to have given all proof but the name, yet who, wanting this, could not, consistently with delicacy, receive aught else. This habit of disclaiming friendships was very injudicious in Byron, as it must have wounded the amour propre of those who liked him, and humiliated the pride and delicacy of all whom he had ever laid under obligations, as well as freed, from a sense of what was due to friendship, those who, restrained by the acknowledgment of that tie, might have proved themselves his zealous defenders and advocates. It was his aristocratic pride that prompted this ungracious conduct, and I remember telling him, apropos to his denying friendships, that all the persons with whom he disclaimed them must have less vanity, and more kindness of nature, than fall to the lot of most people, if they did not renounce the sentiment which he disdained to acknowledge, and give him proofs that it no longer operated on them. His own morbid sensitiveness did not incline him to be more merciful to that of others; it seemed, on the contrary, to render him less so, as if every feeling was concentrated in self alone, and yet this egotist was capable of acts of generosity, kindness, and pity for the unfortunate; but he appeared to think, that the physical ills of others were those alone which he was called on to sympathize with; their moral ailments he entered not into, as he considered his own to be too elevated to admit of any reciprocity with those of others. The immeasurable difference between his genius and that of all others he encountered had given him a false estimate of their feelings and characters; they could not, like him, embody their feelings in language that found an echo in every breast, and hence he concluded they had neither the depth nor refinement of his. He forgot that this very power of sending forth his thoughts disburthened him of much of their bitterness, while others wanting it felt but the more poignantly what is unshared and unexpressed. I have told Byron, that he added ingratitude to his other faults, by scoffing at, and despising his countrymen, who have shared all his griefs, and enjoyed all his biting pleasantries. He has sounded the diapason of his own feelings, and found the concord in theirs, which proves a sympathy he cannot deny, and ought not to mock. He says, that he values not their applauses or sympathy; that he who describes passions and crimes touches chords which vibrate in every breast: not that either pity or interest is felt for him who submits to this moral anatomy; but that each discovers the symptoms of his own malady, and feels and thinks only of self, while analyzing the griefs or pleasures of another. When Byron had been one day repeating to me some epigrams and lampoons, in which many of his friends were treated with great severity, I observed that, in case he died, and these proofs of friendship came before the public, what would be the feelings of those so severely dealt by, and who previously had indulged the agreeable illusion of being high in his good graces! "That (said Byron) is precisely one of the ideas which most amuses me. I often fancy the rage and humiliation of my quondam friends at hearing the truth (at least from me) for the first time, and when I am beyond the reach of their malice. Each individual will enjoy the sarcasms against his friends, but that will not console him for those against himself. Knowing the affectionate dispositions of my soi-disant friends, and the mortal chagrin my death would occasion them, I have written my thoughts of each, purely as a consolation for them in case they survive me. Surely this is philanthropic, for a more effectual means of destroying all regret for the dead could hardly be found than discovering, after their decease, memorials in which the surviving friends were treated with more sincerity than flattery. What grief (continued Byron, laughing while he spoke) could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, to which flesh is heir, coming from one ostentatiously loved, lamented, and departed, and when reprisals or recantations are impossible! Tears would soon be dried, lamentations and eulogiums changed to reproaches, and many faults would be discovered in the dear departed that had previously escaped detection. If half the observations (said Byron) which friends make on each other were written down instead of being said, how few would remain on terms of friendship! People are in such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they are unconscious of the unkindness of it, which only comes home to their business and bosoms when they discover that they have been so treated, which proves that self is the only medium for feeling or judging of, or for, others. Now I write down, as well as speak, my sentiments of those who believe that they have gulled me; and I only wish (in case I die before them) that I could return to witness the effect my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce on their minds. What good fun this would be! Is it not disinterested in me to lay up this source of consolation for my friends, whose grief for my loss might otherwise be too acute? You don't seem to value it as you ought (continued Byron, with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing that I looked, as I really felt, surprized at his avowed insincerity). I feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of my soi-disant friends, at the discovery of my real sentiments of them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making a will which is to disappoint all the expectants who have been toading him for years. Then only think how amusing it will be, to compare my posthumous with my previously given opinions, one throwing ridicule on the other. This will be delicious, (said he, rubbing his hands,) and the very anticipation of it charms me. Now this, by your grave face, you are disposed to call very wicked, nay, more, very mean; but wicked or mean, or both united, it is human nature, or at least my nature." Should various poems of Byron that I have seen ever meet the public eye, and this is by no means unlikely, they will furnish a better criterion for judging his real sentiments than all the notices of him that have yet appeared. Each day that brought Byron nearer to the period fixed on for his departure for Greece seemed to render him still more reluctant to undertake it. He frequently expressed a wish to return to England, if |