And he declares his astonishment at seeing him submit to the lessons of morality, and the censures on his opinions and principles which Kennedy, in his extreme orthodoxy, made him undergo.[110]
I will also add, that Lord Byron was often heard to say that he had been in a frightful rage with his servants; but, if they were questioned, they knew nothing at all about it. It is known, moreover, that his toleration and gentleness with them almost exceeded due bounds, and that, even when he had serious cause for chiding them, his severest reprimands were conveyed in jests and pleasantries.
Persons who will not change their convictions, go so far as to say,—"Well, be it so. We admit that he may have been calumniated in his private life, and that his strange fancy of speaking against himself may have contributed toward it. But how do you explain the anger expressed by his pen? Do you forget his misanthropical invectives, his personal attacks, his 'Avatar,' his epigrams?"
And I answer them:—"Do you forget that there are different kinds of anger? some that can never be vicious, and others that can never be virtuous? The anger expressed by his pen—the sole kind that was real with him—requires to be explained, not excused or forgotten."
"Let us beware," says a great contemporary philosopher, "of him who is never irritated, and can not understand the existence of a noble anger."[111]
Be so good as to examine, without preconceived opinions, and without prejudice, the nature of every kind of anger he displayed; see if any were personal, egotistical, or whether they did not rather spring from some noble cause; whether they were not rather the generous explosions of a soul burning with indignation at evil and injustice, because it ever held in view the contrast afforded by an ideal of its own that was only too perfect?
It is impossible, for instance, not to see that his pen was guided by one of these generous impulses when he spoke of Lord Castlereagh. He had no personal, malevolent, interested antipathy toward this gay and fashionable nobleman. His pen was inspired simply by his conscience, that revolted at sight of the evils which he attributed to Lord Castlereagh's policy. It was not the colleague, but the minister, that he wished to stigmatize together with his policy, which appeared to Lord Byron inhuman, selfish, and unjust. It was this same policy that caused Pitt to say:—
"If we were just for one hour, we should not live a day." And again:—"Perish every principle rather than England!"
What other statesman did Lord Byron attack except Castlereagh? But him he did detest with a noble hatred.
"By what right do you attack Lord C——?" he was asked.