CHAPTER XXXI. 66 BYRON CONTINUED. The biographer of a man like Byron is often little aware of the difficulty of the task he undertakes. It is one of the common eccentricities of genius to mystify its character for the capricious pleasure of bewildering the observation of those who are most familiar with its privacy. 'It cannot be denied," says Galt, "that there was an innate predilection in the mind of Lord Byron to mystify every thing about himself." If such was the case, how difficult was it for those who imagined themselves in his confidence to form a just opinion of his character, and how likely was the superficial observer to estimate his sentiments by his mode of conversing on any subject that he was wont to play with! If a literary man of celebrity converses without any restraint or affectation of singularity, even with his intimate acquaintances, he is fearful of endangering his confidence and diminishing the respect of his private circle. If Johnson had not been in the habit of perplexing Boswell by the paradoxical opinions he so gravely and sententiously maintained, the veneration of the latter might have declined in a ratio with the facility of comprehending the oracles of his idol. Burns, long before intemperance disordered his sensibility, was accustomed to astonish his correspondents at the expense of his character, by affecting remorse for imaginary errors, and by magnifying common cares into overwhelming troubles. Pope, we are told by Johnson, in the prime of life courted notoriety, by playing the fictitious part of a misanthrope before it became him: and even Swift was constrained to tell him he had not yet suffered or acted enough in the world to become weary of it. "The melancholy Cowley" had a similar propensity for visionary persecutions, and imaginary amours. "No man," says his biographer, "need squander his life in voluntary dreams or fictitious occurrences; the man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and beats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only in the unfrequency of his folly, from him who praises beauty which he never saw, and complains of jealousy which he never felt." Byron, in his early eagerness for notoriety, affected singularity so strongly, that by dint of deceiving others he actually became the dupe of his own delusions. Day after day he alludes in his journal to the recurrence of a dream, whose horrors would seem to be the fitting companions of the terrors of a murderer. "I awoke from a dream-well, have not others dreamed? Such a dream -but she did not overtake me! I wish the dead would rest for ever. Ugh! how my blood chilled-I do not like this dream! I hate its foregone conclusion !" In another page :-"No dreams last night of the dead or the living. So I am firm as the marble founded on the rock, till the next earthquake.' Elsewhere, speaking of the "Bride of Abydos," he says, "It was written in four days to distract my dreams from ****; were it not thus it had never been com posed: and had I not done something at the time, I must have gone mad by eating my own heart-bitter diet." In another place, speaking of the most tragical of his poems,-" "Had it not been for Murray it would never have been published, though the circumstances which are the groundwork of it-heigh ho!" Alluding to his state of mind at this period, he says, “My ostensible temper is certainly improved, but I must shudder, and must to my latest hour regret the consequences of it, and my passions combined. One eventbut no matter; there are others not much better to think of also to them I give the preference. But I hate dwelling upon incidents; my temper is now under management, rarely loud, and when loud, never deadly.” Even at seventeen the rage for fictitious misery was upon him. "Oh memory, torture me no more, Such are the lines of a boy at seventeen. In Stendhal's account of Byron in the "Foreign Literary Gazette," in speaking of the poet's fictitious remorse, he asks, "Is it possible that Byron might have had some guilty stain upon his conscience, similar to that which wrecked Othello's fame? Can it be, have we sometimes exclaimed, that in a frenzy of pride or jealousy he had shortened the days of some fair Grecian slave faithless to her vows? Be this as it may, (he adds,) a great man once known, may be said to have opened an account with posterity? Such questions can no longer be injurious but to them who have given them birth. After all, is it not possible that his conscience might have only exaggerated some youthful error? The just and charitable conclusion of the foreigner will be admitted by most people; some there may be who have a character for malignant consistency to preserve, and may therefore withhold that charity from the memory which they denied to the living man. It may not be wondered at if those who have exhausted a world of common crimes should now "imagine new," or still invest the character of Byron with every sombre hue which he gave to his own heroes. The recklessness, however, of his capricious nature furnished his enemies with this weapon against himself, in seeking to impersonate his own errors, or the crimes which others attributed to him, and affecting to stand before the world in all the dark Murillo-tints of his own fancy "Himself the dark original he drew." This weakness of endeavouring to appear to others worse than we really are, is a species of simulation, first practised for its singularity, but which ultimately becomes so fixed a habit as almost to border on insanity. Poets and religious enthusiasts are peculiarly prone to this apparent self-abasement; the fervid zeal of Cowper, the inspiration of Byron, tended to the same excitement of imagination, the same exaggerated views of their own errors. The fanatic feels a spiritual pride in humiliating humanity and himself, before an admiring multitude; the poet recreates his fancy in bewildering the world with the marvellous anamolies in his character. But even while he affects to immolate his vanity, self is ever the god of his idolatry; and whatever obloquy he may pretend to cast upon the idol, he still abjures it "with a certain loving respect," and even in his anxiety to be thought sincere, though he fling the censer at the head of the effigy he repudiates, it is only in order that the incense may ascend the higher. In a word, Byron's nature had no more to do with the misanthropy his gloomy mind delighted to depict, than Milton's humanity had to do with the malignity of the devils which it was the solace of his leisure so sublimely to describe. We doubt if the personal dispositions of an author are much more discernible in the productions of his imagination, than the qualities of an actor are discoverable in the characters he assumes. Is the moralist," says D'Israeli," a moral man? Is he malignant who publishes satires? Is he a libertine who composes loose poems? And is he, whose imagination delights in terrors and in blood, the very monster he paints?" A reference to the dissimilar character of men and authors, furnishes a reply to each question. "La Fontaine," he tells us, "wrote tales fertile in intrigues, yet has not left a single amour on record. Many of Smollet's descriptions were not only prurient but indelicate, yet his character was immaculate. Cowley loved to boast of the variety of his mistresses, but wanted the courage to address one." A living poet has left Catullus in the shade, and yet proved the most constant of husbands; and yet, on the other hand, behold "Seneca, an usurer of seven millions, writing on moderate desires. Sallust declaiming against the licentiousness of his age, yet accused in the senate of habitual debaucheries. Demosthenes, recommending the virtues of his ancestors, yet incapable, says Plutarch, of imitating them. Sir |