Let me, then, be permitted in this instance also to re-establish truth on its only sure basis, namely, facts.
Lord Byron was so often gay that several of his biographers had thought themselves justified in asserting that gayety and not melancholy predominated in his nature. Even Mr. Galt, who only knew him at that period of his life when melancholy certainly predominated, nevertheless uses these expressions:—"Singular as it may seem, the poem itself ('Beppo,' his first essay of facetious poetry) has a stronger tone of gayety than his graver works have of melancholy, commonly believed to have been (I think unjustly) the predominant trait in his character."[149]
Many others have said the same thing. The truth is, that if by giving way to reflection—which was a necessity of his genius—and through circumstances—which were a fatality of his destiny—he has shown himself melancholy in his writings and very often in his dispositions, it is no less certain that by temperament and taste, by the activity, penetration, and complex character of his mind, he very often showed himself to be extremely gay. No one better than he seized upon the absurd and ridiculous side of things or more easily found cause for laughter. His gayety—the result of a frank, open, volatile nature, full of varying moods—was easily excited by any absurdities, ridiculous pretensions, or witty sallies; and then he became so expansive and charming, body and soul with him both seemed to laugh in such unison, that it was impossible not to catch the contagion; but his laughter was ever devoid of malice. Slight defects of harmony in things, or proportion, or mutual relation, easily gave rise to mirthful sensations in him. Being full of admiration for the beautiful, and having, moreover, a great sense of mutual fitness, and much activity of mind, it was with extraordinary and instinctive promptitude that he seized upon the contradictory relations existing between objects, and indeed on all showing a voluntary absence of order and beauty in the conduct of free reasonable beings. His laughter was then quite as æsthetical as it was innocent. And even if it were not admitted, as it is by all philosophical moralists, that no sort of personal calculation enters into this entirely spontaneous emotion, no sentiment of superiority over the being we are laughing at—for selfishness and laughter never coexist—if it were possible, I say, to doubt all this, even then to see Lord Byron laugh would have sufficed to give the right conviction. For truly his mirth was a charming thing; the very air surrounding him appeared to laugh.
Then would his soul, that often required to emerge from its deep reflections, unbend itself, and alternately disport or repose in utter self-abandonment. It dismissed thought, as it were, in order to become a child again; to deliver itself over to all the caprices of those myriad changeful fugitive impressions that course through the brain at moments of excitement.
Moore often recurs to Byron's liveliness. "Nothing, indeed, could be more amusing and delightful.... It was like the bursting gayety of a boy let loose from school, and seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he was not capable." When Moore visited him at Mira, in the autumn of 1812, and accompanied him to Venice, the former expressed himself as follows in his memorandum of that occasion:—
"As we proceeded across the lagoon in his gondola the sun was just setting, and it was an evening such as Romance would have chosen for a first sight of Venice, rising 'with her tiara of bright towers' above the wave; while to complete, as might be imagined, the solemn interest of the scene, I behold it in company with him who had lately given a new life to its glories, and sung of that fair City of the Sea thus grandly:—
'I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles!'
"But whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene might, under other circumstances, have inspired me with, the mood of mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the reverse of what might have been expected. The exuberant gayety of my companion, and the recollections—any thing but romantic—into which our conversation wandered, put at once completely to flight all poetical and historical associations; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one of uninterrupted merriment and laughter till we found ourselves at the steps of my friend's palazzo on the Grand Canal. All that ever happened, of gay or ridiculous, during our London life together; his scrapes and my lecturings; our joint adventures with the Bores and Blues, the two great enemies, as he always called them, of London happiness; our joyous nights together at Walter's, Kinnaird's, etc.; and that 'd—d supper of Rancliffe's, which ought to have been a dinner;' all was passed rapidly in review between us, and with a flow of humor and hilarity on his side of which it would have been difficult for persons even far graver than even I can pretend to be, not to have caught the contagion."
Lord Byron was especially prone to mirth and fun in the society of those he liked; to jest and laugh with any one was a great proof of his sympathy for them. When he wrote to absent dear ones, he would constantly say, "I have many things to tell you for us to laugh over together." In several letters addressed from Greece to Madame G——, he informs her of these treasures of mirth, held in reserve for the day of meeting, that they might laugh together. Lord Byron rarely used flattering language to those he loved. It was rather by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and merits, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies of humor. The promptitude with which he discovered the slightest weakness, the faintest symptom of exaggeration or affectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became transparent for him, that he dived into their thoughts and feelings.
It was this state of mind especially that gave rise to those sallies of wit which formed such a striking feature of his intelligence. Then his conversation really became quite dazzling. In his glowing language all objects assumed unforeseen and picturesque aspects. New and striking thoughts followed from him in rapid succession, and the flame of his genius lighted up as if winged with wildfire. Those who have not known him at these moments can form no idea of what it was from his works. For, in the silence of his study, when, pen in hand, he was working out his grand conceptions, the lightning strokes lost much of their brilliant intensity; and although we find, especially in "Don Juan" and "Beppo," delightful pages of rich comic humor, only those who knew him can judge how superior still his conversation was. But in this gay exercise of his faculties, which was to him a real enjoyment in all his sallies or even in his railleries, not one iota of malice could be traced—unless we call by that name the amusement springing from mirth and wit indulged. Even if his shafts were finely pointed, they were at the same time so inoffensive that the most susceptible could not be wounded.