[18] The Rev. Mr. Hodgson and the Rev. Mr. Harness.
[19] Article on his Life in Italy and at Pisa.
CHAPTER V.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF LORD BYRON.
All Byron's biographers (at least all those who knew him) have borne testimony to his great goodness, but they have not dwelt sufficiently upon this principal feature in his character. Biographers generally wish to produce an effect. But goodness is not a sufficiently noticeable quality to be dilated upon; it would not repay ambition or curiosity. It is a quality mostly attributed to the saints, and a biographer prefers dilating upon the defects of his hero, upon some adventure or scandal—means by which it is easy, with a spark of cleverness, to make a monster of a saint: for, alas! the most rooted convictions are often sacrificed for the sake of amusing a reader who is difficult to please, and of satisfying an editor.
Lord Byron's goodness, however, was so exceptional, and contrasted so strongly with the qualities attributed to him by those who only knew him by repute, that, in making an exception of him, astonishment, at the very least, might have been the result. If we look at him conscientiously in every act of his life, in his letters, and in his poetry, we must sympathize particularly with him. We find that his goodness shines as prominently as does his genius, and we feel that it can bear any test at any epoch of, alas! his too short existence. As, however, I do not purpose here to write his biography, I shall confine myself merely to a few instances, and will give only a few proofs taken from his early life. To no one can the words of Alfieri be better applied than to Byron:—"He is the continuation of the child"—an idea which has been expressed even more elegantly of late by Disraeli, in his "Literary Characters:"—
"As the sun is seen best at its rising and its setting, so men's native dispositions are clearly perceived while they are children, and when they are dying."
LORD BYRON'S CHILDHOOD.
Of those who have written Byron's life, the best disposed among them have not sufficiently noticed his admirable perfection of character when a child, as revealed to us by sundry anecdotes and by his own poems, entitled "Hours of Idleness:"—