This good feeling stealing over the public conscience alarmed Lord Byron's deadly enemies. They feared lest sentimental remorse should compromise their victory; and they manœuvred so well, that from that hour persecution took up permanent abode in England, under pretext of offense to religion or morals. It followed him on his heroic journey into Greece, and ceased not with his death. Even after that, the vengeance and rage of his enemies—the indiscretion and timidity of friends—the material or moral speculations of all, together with the assurance of impunity—continued to feed the fire which an end so glorious as his ought to have quenched.[207]
But if the war against him did not cease, his perseverance and courage in saying what he thought did not cease either. Who more than he despised popularity and literary success, if they were to be purchased at the cost of truth?
"Were I alone against the world," said he, "I would not exchange my freedom of thought for a throne." And again: "He who wishes not to be a despot, or a slave, may speak freely."
That such independence of mind, aided by such high genius, should have alarmed certain coteries—not to speak of certain political and religious sets, who were all powerful—may easily be conceived. We can not feel surprise at the scandals they got up in defense of their privileges, when attacked by a new power who made every species of baseness and hypocrisy tremble; nor can we wonder that, unknowing where it would stop, they should have sought to cast discredit on the oracle by slandering the man. That the bark bearing him to exile should have been pushed on by a wind of angry passions in coalition—by a breeze not winged by conscience—may also be conceived; but to conceive is not to absolve, and in using the above expression we only mean to allow due share to human nature in general—to the character, manners, and perhaps to the special requirements of England. And if we ought not to condone party spirit in politics, defending privileges to the death; nor the anti-Christian ferocity displayed by that portion of the clergy who, without reason or sincerity, attacked him from the pulpit; nor yet the malice and revenge displayed in the vile slanders that pursued him to his last hour; we can, on the other hand, comprehend, and even, up to a certain point, excuse this prosperous and noble country of England for not classing her great son among popular poets—for hiding her admiration cautiously: since it must be acknowledged that Lord Byron often acted and wrote rather as belonging to humanity, than merely as belonging to England.
But if he were treated with the same injustice by foreigners, could the same excuse be made for them? Would a man be excusable if laziness and carelessness made him accept, without examination, some type set up for Lord Byron by a country wounded in her self-love, as England had been, or the reserves made by hostile biographers, under the weighty influence of a society organized as English society then was? The vile system which consists in seeking to give a good opinion of one's own morality by being severe on the morality of others, is only too well known. Would it be excusable to apply it ruthlessly to Lord Byron?—to pretend to repeat that in attacking prejudice he wounded morals?—that he injured virtue by warring against hypocrisy?—that by using a right inherent to the human mind in some hypothetical lines of a poem, written at twenty-one years of age, and which is beyond the comprehension of the multitude, since the greater number of mankind neither read elevated poetry nor works of high taste; is it not absurd to pretend that he wished to upset them in their religious belief, and deprive them of truths which are at once their consolation, support, and refuge in time of sorrow and suffering?
Nevertheless, Frenchmen have spoken thus; and in this way, through these united causes, Lord Byron has remained unappreciated as a man and unfairly judged as a poet.
One calls him the poet of evil; another the bard of sorrow. But no! Lord Byron was not exclusively either one or the other. He was the poet of the soul, just as Shakspeare was before him.
Lord Byron, in writing, never had in view virtue rather than vice. To take his stand as a teacher of humanity, at his age, would have seemed ridiculous to him. After having chosen subjects in harmony with his genius, and a point of view favorable to his poetic temperament, which especially required to throw off the yoke of artificial passions and of weak, frivolous sentiments, what he really endeavored was to be powerfully and energetically true. He thought that truth ought always to have precedence over every thing else—that it was the source of the beautiful in art, as well as of all good in souls. To him lies were evil and vice; truth was good and virtue. As a poet, then, he was the bard of the soul and of truth; and as a man, all those who knew him, and all who read his works, must proclaim him the poet who has come nearest to the ideal of truth and sincerity.
And now, after having studied this great soul under every aspect, if there were in happy England men who should esteem themselves higher in the scale of virtue than Lord Byron, because having never been troubled in their belief, either through circumstances or the nature of their own mind, they never admitted or expressed any doubt; because they are the happy husbands of those charming, indulgent, admirable women to be found in England, who love and forgive so much; because, being rich, they have not refused some trifle out of their superfluity to the poor; because, proud and happy in privileges bestowed by their constitution, they have never blamed those in power: if these prosperous ones deemed themselves superior to their great fellow-citizen, would it be illiberal in them to express now a different opinion? Might we not without rashness affirm, that they should rather hold themselves honored in the virtue and glory of their illustrious countryman, humbly acknowledging that their own greater happiness is not the work of their own hands?