they walked, sailed, and talked-generally on philosophical subjects and thus began that intimacy which with some interruptions continued through life. Shelley visited Byron at Venice in 1818, and there planned "Julian and Maddalo," in which the latter character is a sketch of his friend. Soon after, Byron lent him his villa at Este, and during his residence there Shelley wrote the "Lines among the Euganean Hills," in which Byron is referred to as the "Swan of Albion," and in other reverential epithets. In 1821 Shelley fixed his abode at Pisa, and soon after Byron joined him there. Here Byron gave dinner-parties, at which Shelley, Count Gamba, Mr. Williams, Mr. Trelawney, and Captain Medwin were present. The last gentleman was accustomed to remain after the other guests had departed, and the conversation, which was prolonged far into the night, formed the basis of the volume published by Medwin soon after the poet's death. Of this distinguished group, which saw so much of one another at this time, Trelawney (author of "Recollections of Byron and Shelley") died in 1881, in England. In July, 1822, occurred the terrible tragedy of Shelley's death. While returning to his home in a boat with Captain Williams, a storm overtook them; the boat went down instantly, and both perished. In a letter to Moore, Byron writes: "You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly and ignorantly and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it." In accordance with the law of the country the bodies were cremated. This was done in the presence of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney. Shelley's remains were taken to Rome, and placed by those of Keats in the Protestant cemetery. For Byron Shelley had always an excessive admiration and veneration and love. Byron's feelings towards Shelley, as well as towards all his other friends, are expressed in the following lines: "As to friendship, it is a propensity to which my genius is very limited. I do not know the male human being, except Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything that deserves the name. All my others are men-ofthe-world friendships. I did not even feel it for Shelley, however much I admired and esteemed him; so that you see not even vanity could bribe me into it, for of all men Shelley thought highest of my talents and perhaps of my disposition." Venetian Acquaintances. During his first winter in Venice, Byron frequented the literary circles which gathered at the salon of the Countess Albrizzi, "the De Staël of Italy," where he met Ugo Foscolo and other eminent Italians. He afterwards abandoned these meetings for the less learned and more gay parties at the Countess Benzoni's. It was at one of her gatherings that he was introduced to the young and beautiful Madame Guiccioli, with whom his subsequent life in Italy was so intimately connected. The Blessingtons. - From Pisa, after the death of Shelley, Byron removed to Albaro. Here he had for neighbors the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley and Walter Savage Landor, but little intercourse passed between them. His only intimate associations were with the family of the Earl of Blessington, which was then passing several years abroad. He often accompanied them on riding excursions, and frequently visited their villa. Lady Blessington, a woman celebrated for her beauty, learning, and literary talents, afterwards wrote the well-known "Conversations with Lord Byron," which, though somewhat adorned with the fancy of the writer, is nevertheless an interesting record of the impressions made by the great poet on this illustrious lady. Fohann Wolfgang Goethe [see "Age of Revolution "Germany].-Though these two great poets never saw each other, there existed between them a mutual admiration and several exchanges of compliment. For many years Goethe had been watching the eccentric course of the English genius with much interest, so that when, in 1820, he received a manuscript Dedication of Byron's drama, "Sardanapalus," he felt deeply honored. In 1822 Byron again dedicated to him his tragedy of "Werner," and in the following year Goethe, hearing that his illustrious contemporary was about to embark for Greece, wrote some verses to him and sent them to Italy. Byron received them as he was about to sail from Leghorn, and hastily wrote to their author a letter of thanks, which Goethe preserved as a most precious relic. The communication closes with the lines: "I am returning to Greece, to see if I can be of any little use there; if ever I come back, I will pay a visit to Weimar, to offer the sincere homage of one of the many millions of your admirers." Goethe regarded Byron as the foremost writer of the age, and after his death published an account of the intercourse that had existed between them. See his dirge for Byron, "Faust," Part II.] Lord Byron's CHARACTER. Neither history nor literature can recall a man whose personal character has been so variously and contradictorily interpreted as that of Lord Byron. His contemporaries did not understand him, nor did he understand himself. " I have seen myself," writes Byron, in his journal, "compared personally or poetically in English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an alabaster vase lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Bonaparte, Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold, and Hopkins; to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the school-boy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maître, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, etc. The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or anybody else." And again he once said to Lady Blessington: "I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me. One will represent me a sort of sublime misanthrope, with moments of kind feeling-this, par exemple, is my favorite rôle; another will portray me as a modern Don Juan; and a third will, it is to be hoped, if only for opposition's 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" -a judgment which has been seconded by a late critic. In short, Byron's life and works exhibit him in so many different and inconsistent aspects that observers of his character, viewing him from different sides, have formed the most opposite judgments. Thus, while the Countess Guiccioli and Shelley portray him as an angel, Southey and Leigh Hunt would make him out a demon; while some, like Moore, endeavor to extenuate his faults by emphasizing his good qualities, others, as Galt and Trelawney, harshly denounce his wickedness as though constituting his whole being. But to characterize him as a man-to take in at one view all of his composite natureseems to be beyond human power. Of all the characterizations that have been made, perhaps Whipple's is the most comprehensive. Whipple's Characterization. The extraordinary popularity of Byron's poems and the notoriety of his life have led to various essays on his character and writings, differing in object and mode of treatment, and all more or less one-sided. Denunciation and panegyric have both been lavished upon his name. Those who represent him as a fiend, darting, with a sort of diabolical instinct, on all that is bad and impious, and overthrowing, with a kind of diabolical energy, all that is good and holy, and those who represent him as little less than a saint, seem equally to err; and the error of both arises in a great degree from an attempt to delineate a character which shall be consistent with itself. Byron may almost be said to have had no character at all. Every attempt to bring his virtues or his vices within the boundaries of a theory, or to represent his conduct as guided by any predominant principle of good or evil, has been accompanied by blunders and perversions. His nature had no simplicity. He seems an embodied antithesis a mass of contradictions-a collection of opposite frailties and powers. Such was the versatility of his mind and morals that it is hardly possible to discern the connection between the giddy goodness and the brilliant wickedness which he delighted to exhibit. His habit of mystification, of darkly hinting remorse for sins he never committed, of avowing virtues he never practised, increases the difficulty. From his actions, his private journals, and correspondence, his poems - from all those sources whence we derive a consistent idea of other writers-it is hard to sustain any theory of his character, good, bad, or indifferent, by numerous extracts from his writings and undoubted events of his life. From his life and works we obtain the impression that he was a glutton and an ascetic, a spendthrift and a miser, a misanthrope and a cosmopolite, an aristocrat and a radical, an infidel and a believer, a debauchee and a mystic, a cynic and a sentimentalist, a foul libeller of his species and an eloquent defender of its rights, and a more eloquent mourner over its wrongs; bewailing and denouncing the literary revolution which made his own writings popular; pandering to a public which he despised; pilfering from authors whom he ridiculed; lashing his own bosom sins when committed by others-in short, a man continually busy in giving the lie to his thoughts, opinions, tastes, and conduct. When we reflect upon this assemblage of clashing qualities, these odd irregularities of opinion and action, we are prone to consider him, what somebody calls Voltaire, "a miraculous child." He appears a mere collection of veering fancies and impulses, making the voyage of life aimless and rudderless, blown about by every breeze of desire, tossed about on every wave of passion. We can find in him no fixed principle of good or evil, no thorough-going worship of god or devil. |