Instigated by a passion for truth, he exclaims in his first satire,—
"Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand
To drive this pestilence from out the land."
Certainly, he does not spare censure in this passionate satire; but, while inflicting it, he questions whether he should be the one to apply the lash:—
"E'en I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng,
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong."
It was during the time of his first travels that Lord Byron wrote his first chef-d'œuvre,[82] but so little was he aware of possessing great faculties that, while suffering from the exactions and torments they created within him, he only asked in return some amusement, an occupation for long hours of solitude.
Having begun "Childe Harold" as a memorial of his travelling impressions, he communicated it, on his return to England, to the friend who had been his companion throughout. But, instead of meeting with indulgence and encouragement, this friend only blamed the poem, and called it an extravagant conception.
He was, nevertheless, a competent judge and a poet himself. Why, then, such severity? Did he wish to sacrifice the poet to the man, fearing for his friend lest the allusions therein made should lend further weapons to the malice of his enemies? Did he dread for himself, and for those among their comrades who, two years before, had donned the preacher's garb at Newstead Abbey, lest the voice of public opinion should mix them up in the pretended disorders of which the Abbey had been the theatre, and which the poem either exaggerated or invented? Whatsoever his motive, this friend was not certainly then a John of Bologna for Lord Byron; but the modesty of the poet surpassed the severity of his judge; for, accepting the blame as if it were merited, he restored the poem to its portfolio with such humility that when Mr. Dallas afterward heard of it almost by chance, and, fired with enthusiasm on reading it, pronounced this extravagant thing to be a sublime chef-d'œuvre, he had the greatest difficulty in persuading Lord Byron to make it public.
Gifford's criticisms were always received by Lord Byron not only with docility and modesty but even with gratitude.
He never lost an occasion of blaming himself as a poet and of depreciating his genius. Living only for affection, more than once when he feared that the war going on against him might warp feeling, he was on the point of consigning all he had written to the flames; of destroying forever every vestige of it; and only the fear of harming his publisher made him at last withdraw the given order.
He knew only how to praise his rivals, and to assist those requiring help or encouragement.