spring only from the reckless buoyancy of young blood
and fiery passions; for impiety there might at least
be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious
soul equalled its darkness: but for offences
such as this, which cannot proceed either from the
madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered agonies
of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined
spite of an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic,
joyous sinner, there can be neither pity nor pardon.
Our knowledge that it is committed by one of the most
powerful intellects our island ever has produced lends
intensity a thousand-fold to the bitterness of our
indignation. Every high thought that was ever
kindled in our breasts by the Muse of Byron, every
pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within
us to the sweep of his majestic inspirations, every
remembered moment of admiration and enthusiasm, is
up in arms against him. We look back with a mixture
of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered
ourselves to be filled by one, who, all the while
he was furnishing us with delight, must, we cannot
doubt it, have been mocking us with a cruel mockery;
less cruel only, because less peculiar, than that
with which he has now turned him from the lurking-place
of his selfish and polluted exile to pour the pitiful
chalice of his contumely on the surrendered devotion
of a virgin bosom, and the holy hopes of the mother
of his child. It is indeed a sad and a humiliating
thing to know, that in the same year, there proceeded
from the same pen two productions in all things so
different as the fourth canto of “Childe Harold”
and his loathsome “Don Juan.”
’We have mentioned one, and, all will admit,
the worst instance of the private malignity which
has been embodied in so many passages of “Don
Juan;” and we are quite sure the lofty-minded
and virtuous men whom Lord Byron has debased himself
by insulting will close the volume which contains
their own injuries, with no feelings save those of
pity for him that has inflicted them, and for her
who partakes so largely in the same injuries.’—August,
1819.
* * * * *
’BLACKWOOD,’—iterum.
’We shall, like all others who say anything
about Lord Byron, begin, sans apologie, with his personal
character. This is the great object of attack,
the constant theme of open vituperation to one set,
and the established mark for all the petty but deadly
artillery of sneers, shrugs, groans, to another.
Two widely different matters, however, are generally,
we might say universally, mixed up here,—the
personal character of the man, as proved by his course
of life; and his personal character, as revealed in
or guessed from his books. Nothing can be more
unfair than the style in which this mixture is made
use of. Is there a noble sentiment, a lofty
thought, a sublime conception, in the book? “Ah,
yes!” is the answer. “But what of
that? It is only the roue Byron that speaks!”
Is a kind, a generous action of the man mentioned?
“Yes, yes!” comments the sage; “but
only remember the atrocities of ‘Don Juan:’
depend on it, this, if it be true, must have been a
mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy.”
Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance:
the poet damns the man, and the man the poet.