"It is matter of history," continues Count Gamba, "that Lord Byron, in consequence of vexations to which he was ever a victim, added to the rigorous diet which he followed (he only fed upon vegetables and green tea, to show that he could live as frugally as a Greek soldier), and from the impossibility which he found to take any exercise at Missolonghi, had a nervous fit, which deprived him of the power of speech and alarmed all his friends and acquaintances. When the crisis had worn off, he merely laughed over it."
"Even at Missolonghi," says Parry, who knew him there only in the midst of troubles and vexations of every description and quite at the close of his life, "he loved to jest in words and actions. These pleasantries lightened his spirits, and prevented him from dwelling on disagreeable thoughts."
Perhaps this disposition of character was the result of his French origin, for it is scarcely known or even appreciated in England.
"Yet," exclaims the greatest-minded woman of our day (Madame G. Sand), "it is that disposition which forms the charm of every delicate intimacy, and which often prevents our committing many follies and stupidities.
"To look for the ridiculous side of things is to discover their weakness. To laugh at the dangers in the midst of which we find ourselves is to get accustomed to brave them; like the French, who go into action with a laugh and a song. To quiz a friend is often to save him from a weakness in which our pity might perhaps have allowed him to linger. To laugh at one's self is to preserve one's self from the effects of an exaggerated self-love. I have noticed that the people who never joke are gifted with a childish and insupportable vanity."
Nevertheless, there are high and noble natures that never laugh, and are incapable of understanding the pleasures of gayety. But minds like these have some vacuum; they certainly lack what is called wit.
Lord Byron's gayety, full of dazzling wit and varied tints, like his other faculties, never went beyond the limits befitting its exercise in a beautiful soul. As much as the truly ridiculous, that which a great writer has defined, "the strength, small or great, of a free being, out of proportion with its end,"—as much, I say, as the truly ridiculous attracted and amused him, just as much did grave, moral, and physical disorders, produced by corruption of body or soul, sadden and repel his nature, so full of harmony. He could never laugh at these latter. The grave disorders of soul that exist in free beings, and that are therefore voluntary, raised sadness, anger, or indignation in him, according to the degree of vice or disorder. We need seek no other origin for his bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and physical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, consequent upon his passion for the beautiful; but, at the same time, involuntary misfortunes excited his liveliest compassion, often testified by the most generous deeds.
We know, for instance, that Lord Byron had a defect in one of his feet, but a defect so slight—although it has been greatly exaggerated—that people have never been able to say in which of the two feet it did exist. Nor did it in any way diminish the grace and activity all his movements displayed. If its existence were painful for him, that must have been because his sense of harmony looked upon this defect as detrimental to the perfection of his physical beauty. But whatever may have been the cause of this sensibility, it sufficed in any case to make him feel a generous compassion for all those afflicted with any defect analogous to his own. Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says:—
"Contrary to what we observe in most people, Lord Byron, who was always very sensitive to the sufferings of others, showed greatest sympathy for those who had any imperfection akin to his own." At Ravenna, his favorite beggar limped. And on him Lord Byron bestowed the privilege of picking up all the largest coins struck down by his dexterous pistol-shots in the forest of pines. We have said he never laughed at any involuntary defect, not even at a person falling (as is so often the case), for fear it might have been caused by bodily weakness, neither did he ridicule any of the weaknesses or shortcomings of intelligence.
He did not laugh at a bad poet on account of his bad verses. When he was at Pisa, an Irishman there was engaged in translating the "Divine Comedy." The translation was very heavy and faulty; but the translator was most enthusiastic about the great poet, and absolutely lived on the hope of getting his work published. All the English at Pisa, including the kind Shelley, were turning him into ridicule. Lord Byron alone would not join in the laugh. T——'s sincerity won for him grace and compassion. Indeed Lord Byron did still more; for he wrote and entreated Murray to publish the work, so as to give the poor poet this consolation. Not content with that step, he wrote to Moore to beg Jeffrey not to criticise him, undertaking himself to ask Gifford the same thing, through Murray. "Perhaps they might speak of the commentaries without touching on the text," said he; and then he added with his usual pleasantry, "However, we must not trust to it. Those dogs! the text is too tempting."[152]