Mr. Lake, another biographer of Byron, says, "I have frequently asked the country people what sort of a man Lord Byron was. The impression of his eccentric but energetic character was evident in the reply. 'He's the devil of a fellow for comical fancies—He flogs th' oud laird to nothing, but he's a hearty good fellow for all that.'"
Here is Dallas's opinion, which can not be suspected of partiality, for reasons which we have elsewhere given; for he believed himself aggrieved, and considered as a great culprit the man who, ever so slightly, could depart from the orthodox religious teachings; who had not a blind admiration of his country; who could suffer his heart to be possessed by an affection which marriage had not legitimatized; who preferred to family pride the satisfaction of paying the debts bequeathed to him by his ancestors, and who could make use of his right of selling his lands. Yet, notwithstanding all this, Mr. Dallas expresses himself to the following effect:—"At this time (1809), when on the eve of publishing his first satire, and before taking his seat in the House of Lords, I saw Lord Byron every day. (This was the epoch of his misanthropy). Nature had gifted him with most amiable sentiments, which I frequently had occasion to notice, and I have often seen these imprint upon his fine countenance a really sublime expression. His features seemed made expressly to depict the conceptions of genius and the storms of passion. I have often wondered with admiration at these curious effects. I have seen his face lighted up by the fire of poetical inspiration, and, under the influence of strong emotions, sometimes express the highest degree of energy, and at others all the softness and grace of mild and gentle affection. When his soul was a prey to passion and revenge, it was painful to observe the powerful effect upon his features; but when, on the contrary, he was conquered by feelings of tenderness and benevolence (which was the natural tendency of his heart), it was delightful to contemplate his looks. I went to see Lord Byron the day after Lord Falkland's death. He had just seen the inanimate body of the man with whom, a few days before, he had spent such an agreeable time. At intervals, I heard him exclaim to himself, and half aloud, 'Poor Falkland!' His look was even more expressive than were his words. 'But his wife,' added he, 'she is to be pitied!' One could see his soul filled with the most benevolent intentions, which were sterile.[41] If ever pure action was done, it was that which he then meditated; and the man who conceived it, and who accomplished it, was then progressing through thorns and thistles, toward that free but narrow path which leads to heaven."
Several years later, Mr. Hoppner, English Consul at Venice, and who spent his life with Byron in that city, wrote in a narrative of the causes which created so much disgust in Byron for English travellers, that Byron's affected misanthropy, as observable in his first poems, was by no means natural to him; and he adds, that he is certain that he never met with a man so kind as Byron.
We might stop here, certain as we are that all loyal and reasonable readers are not only convinced of Byron's goodness, but experience a noble pleasure in admiring it. We can not, however, close this chapter, without calling the attention of our readers to the last and painful proofs given of this kindness and goodness of Byron's nature: we allude to the extraordinary grief, caused by his death.
"Never can I forget the stupefaction," says an illustrious writer, "into which we were plunged by the news of his death, so great a part of ourselves died with him, that his death appeared to us almost impossible, and almost not natural. One would have said that a portion of the mechanism of the universe had been stopped. To have questioned him, to have blamed him, became a remorse for us, and all our veneration for his genius was not half so energetically felt as our tenderness for him.
"'His last sigh dissolved the charm, the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains where? All darkened, down
To naked waste a dreary vale of years!
The great magician's dead!'"—Young.
Such griefs are certainly reasonable, just, and honorable: for the deaths which bury such treasures of genius are real public calamities. On hearing of Byron's death, one might repeat the beautiful and eloquent words of M. de Saint Victor:
"What a great crime death has committed! It is something like the disappearance of a star, or the extinction of a planet, with all the creation it supposed. When great minds have accomplished their task, like Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, their departure from the scene of the world leaves in the soul the sublime melancholy which presides over the setting of the sun, after it has poured out all its rays. But when we hear of the death of a Raphael, of a Mozart, and especially of Byron, struck down in their flight, just at the time when they were extending their course, we can not refrain from calling these an eternal cause for mourning, irreparable losses, and inconsolable regrets! A genius who dies prematurely carries treasures away with him! How many ideal existences were linked with his own! What sublime thoughts vanish from his brow! What great and charming characters die with him, even before they are born! How many truths postponed, at least, for humanity!"
And we will add: to how many great and noble actions his death has put an end!
Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience them as to those who give them rise. But it is not to the enthusiasm created by his genius, nor to the grief evinced by the Greek nation, for whom he died, that we will turn for a last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such regrets might almost be called interested,—emanating, as they do, from the knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart, which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask that last proof.