The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any literary merits,—a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all, when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library readers, it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read on that account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real genius has the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated few and the average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only examples. But there is a certain class of reading that sells and spreads, and exerts a vast influence, which the upper circles of literature despise too much ever to fairly estimate its power.
However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places of literature. The 'Blackwood'—the old classic magazine of England; the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs—was deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.
The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to it:—
'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Béranger is that addressed to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had been inspired by her vanished charms:—
'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspiré,
Des doux récits les jeunes gens avides,
Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleuré?
De mon amour peignez, s'il est possible,
L'ardeur, l'ivresse, et même les soupçons,
Et benne vieille, au coin d'un feu paisible
De votre ami répétez les chansons.
"On vous dira: Savait-il être aimable?
Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.
D'un trait méchant se montra-t-il capable?
Avec orgueil vous répondrez: Jamais!"'
'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been realised in the case of a poet greater than Béranger, and by a mistress more famous than Lisette. The Countess Guiccioli has at length given to the world her "Recollections of Lord Byron." The book first appeared in France under the title of "Lord Byron jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie," without the name of the countess. A more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected. The "witnesses of his life" told us nothing but what had been told before over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully mixed character of Byron.
'When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very faults.[26] There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.
'To her there has been no change, no decay. The god whom she worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is still the "Pythian of the age" to her at seventy. To try such a book by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'
This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to a very stupid book, simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress. That fact, we are assured, lends grace even to its faults.