Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byron landed on the European side, and swam, in company with Lieutenant Ekenhead, from Sestos to Abydos—a performance of which he boasts some twenty times. The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was a tempting theme for classical allusions. At length, on May 14, he reached Constantinople, exalted the Golden Horn above all the sights he had seen, and now first abandoned his design of travelling to Persia. Galt, and other more or less gossiping travellers, have accumulated a number of incidents of the poet's life at this period, of his fanciful dress, blazing in scarlet and gold, and of his sometimes absurd contentions for the privileges of rank—as when he demanded precedence of the English ambassador in an interview with the Sultan, and, on its refusal, could only be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian internuncio. In converse with indifferent persons he displayed a curious alternation of frankness and hauteur, and indulged a habit of letting people up and down, by which he frequently gave offence. More interesting are narratives of the suggestion of some of his verses, as the slave-market in Don Juan, and the spectacle of the dead criminal tossed on the waves, revived in the Bride of Abydos. One example is, if we except Dante's Ugolino, the most remarkable instance in literature of the expansion, without the weakening, of the horrible. Take first Mr. Hobhouse's plain prose: "The sensations produced by the state of the weather"—it was wretched and stormy when they left the "Salsette" for the city—"and leaving a comfortable cabin, were in unison with the impressions which we felt when, passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypress which rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." After this we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imagination brooding over the incident,—
And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their carnival:
Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,
They were too busy to bark at him.
From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunch'd on the whiter skull,
As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grow dull.
No one ever more persistently converted the incidents of travel into poetic material; but sometimes in doing so he borrowed more largely from his imagination than his memory, as in the description of the seraglio, of which there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance.
Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July, 1810—the latter to return direct to England, a determination which, from no apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incident of the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. Taking up, and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found on the quarter deck, ho remarked, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a murder." This harmless piece of melodrama—the idea of which is expanded in Mr. Dobell's Balder, and parodied in Firmilian—may have been the basis of a report afterwards circulated, and accepted among others by Goethe, that his lordship had committed a murder; hence, obviously, the character of Lara, and the mystery of Manfred! The poet parted from his friend at Zea, (Ceos): after spending some time in solitude on the little island, he returned to Athens, and there renewed acquaintance with his school friend, the Marquis of Sligo, who after a few days accompanied him to Corinth. They then separated, and Byron went on to Patras in the Morea, where he had business with the Consul. He dates from there at the close of July. It is impossible to give a consecutive account of his life during the next ten months, a period consequently filled up with the contradictory and absurd mass of legends before referred to. A few facts only of any interest are extricable. During at least half of the time his head-quarters were at Athens, where he again met his friend the Marquis, associated with the English Consul and Lady Hester Stanhope, studied Romaic in a Franciscan monastery—where he saw and conversed with a motley crew of French, Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and Americans,—wrote to his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to Harold, composed the Hints from Horace and the Curse of Minerva, and presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse romances. We hear no more of the, Maid of Athens, but there is no fair ground to doubt that the Giaour was suggested by his rescue of a young woman whom, for the fault of an amour with some Frank, a party of Janissaries were about to throw, sewn up in a sack, into the sea. Mr. Galt gives no authority for his statement, that the girl's deliverer was the original cause of her sentence. We may rest assured that if it had been so, Byron himself would have told us of it.
A note to the Siege of Corinth is suggestive of his unequalled restlessness. "I visited all three—Tripolitza, Napoli, and Argos—in 1810-11; and in the course of journeying through the country, from my first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight times on my way from Attica to the Morea." In the latter locality we find him during the autumn the honoured guest of the Vizier Valhi (a son of Ali Pasha), who presented him with a fine horse. During a second visit to Patras, in September, he was attacked by the same sort of marsh fever from which, fourteen years afterwards, in the near neighbourhood, he died. On his recovery, in October, he complains of having been nearly killed by the heroic measures of the native doctors: "One of them trusts to his genius, never having studied; the other, to a campaign of eighteen months against the sick of Otranto, which he made in his youth with great effect. When I was seized with my disorder, I protested against both these assassins, but in vain." He was saved by the zeal of his servants, who asseverated that if his lordship died they would take good care the doctors should also; on which the learned men discontinued their visits, and the patient revived. On his final return to Athens, the restoration of his health was retarded by one of his long courses of reducing diet; he lived mainly on rice, and vinegar and water. From that city he writes in the early spring, intimating his intention of proceeding to Egypt; but Mr. Hanson, his man of business, ceasing to send him remittances, the scheme was abandoned. Beset by letters about his debts, he again declares his determination to hold fast by Newstead, adding that if the place which is his only tie to England is sold, he won't come back at all. Life on the shores of the Archipelago is far cheaper and happier, and "Ubi bene ibi patria," for such a citizen of the world as he has become. Later he went to Malta, and was detained there by another bad attack of tertian fever. The next record of consequence is from the "Volage" frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811, when he writes in a despondent strain to Hodgson, that he is returning home "without a hope, and almost without a desire," to wrangle with creditors and lawyers about executions and coal pits. "In short, I am sick and sorry; and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence. I am sick of fops, and poesy, and prate, and shall leave the whole Castalian state to Bufo, or anybody else. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, of one kind or another, on my travels." With these, and a collection of marbles, and skulls, and hemlock, and tortoises, and servants, he reached London about the middle of July, and remained there, making some arrangements about business and publication. On the 23rd we have a short but kind letter to his mother, promising to pay her a visit on his way to Rochdale. "You know you are a vixen, but keep some champagne for me," he had written from abroad. On receipt of the letter she remarked, "If I should be dead before he comes down, what a strange thing it, would be." Towards the close of the month she had an attack so alarming that he was summoned; but before, he had time to arrive she had expired, on the 1st of August, in a fit of rage brought on by reading an upholsterer's bill. On the way Byron heard the intelligence, and wrote to Dr. Pigot: "I now feel the truth of Gray's observation, that we can only have one mother. Peace be with her!" On arriving at Newstead, all their storms forgotten, the son was so affected that he did not trust himself to go to the funeral, but stood dreamily gazing at the cortège from the gate of the Abbey. Five days later, Charles S. Matthews was drowned.
CHAPTER V.
SECOND PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP—IN LONDON—CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCOTT
The deaths of Long, Wingfield, Eddlestone, Matthews, and of his mother, had narrowed the circle of the poet's early companions; and, though he talks of each loss in succession as if it had been that of an only friend, we can credit a degree of loneliness, and excuse a certain amount of bitterness in the feelings with which he returned to London. He had at this time seen very little of the only relative whom he over deeply loved. He and his half-sister met casually in 1804, and again in the following year. After her marriage (1807), Byron writes from abroad (1810), regretting having distressed her by his quarrel with Lord Carlisle. In 1811 she is mentioned as reversionary heiress of his estate. Towards the close of 1813, there are two allusions which testify to their mutual affection. Next wo come to the interesting series of letters of 1815-16, published with the Memoir of Mr. Hodgson, to whom, along with Hobhouse and Scrope Davies, his lordship in a will and codicil leaves the management of his property. Harness appears frequently at this period among his surviving intimates: to this list there was shortly added another. In speaking of his Bards and Reviewers, the author makes occasional reference to the possibility of his being called to account for some of his attacks. His expectation was realized by a letter from the poet Moore, dated Dublin, Jan. 1, 1810, couched in peremptory terms, demanding to know if his lordship avowed the authorship of the insults contained in the poem. This letter, being entrusted to Mr. Hodgson, was not forwarded to Byron abroad; but shortly after his return, he received another in more conciliatory terms, renewing the complaint. To this he replied, in a stiff but manly letter, that he had never meant to insult Mr. Moore; but that he was, if necessary, ready to give him satisfaction. Moore accepting the explanation, somewhat querulously complained of his advances to friendship not being received. Byron again replied that much as he would feel honoured by Mr. Moore's acquaintance, he being practically threatened by the irate Irishman could hardly make the first advances. This called forth a sort of apology; the correspondents met at the house of Mr. Rogers, and out of the somewhat awkward circumstances, owing to the frankness of the "noble author," as the other ever after delights to call him, arose the life-long intimacy which had such various and lasting results. Moore has been called a false friend to Byron, and a traitor to his memory. The judgment is somewhat harsh, but the association between them was unfortunate. Thomas Moore had some sterling qualities. His best satirical pieces are inspired by a real indignation, and lit up by a genuine humour. He was also an exquisite musician in words, and must have been occasionally a fascinating companion. But he was essentially a worldling, and, as such, a superficial critic. He encouraged the shallow affectations of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to others on Manfred, and Cain, and Don Juan, are the expression of sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard to his opinions, and overestimated his genius. For the subsequent destruction of the memoirs, urged by Mr. Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh, he was not wholly responsible; though a braver man, having accepted the position of his lordship's literary legatee, with the express understanding that he would seue to the fulfilment of the wishes of his dead friend, would have to the utmost resisted their total frustration.
Meanwhile, on landing in England, the poet had placed in the hands of Mr. Dallas the Hints from Horace, which he intended to have brought out by the publisher Cawthorne. Of this performance—an inferior edition, relieved by a few strong touches, of the Bards and Reviewers—Dallas ventured to express his disapproval. "Have you no other result of your travels?" he asked; and got for answer, "A few short pieces; and a lot of Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to them." Dallas took the remark literally, saw they were a safe success, and assumed to himself the merit of the discovery, the risks, and the profits. It is the converse of the story of Gabriel Harvey and the Faery Queene. Tho first two cantos of Childe Harold bear no comparison with the legend of Una and the Red Cross Knight; but there was no mistake about their proof of power, their novelty, and adaptation to a public taste as yet unjaded by eloquent and imaginative descriptions of foreign scenery, manners, and climates.
The poem—after being submitted to Gifford, in defiance of the protestations of the author, who feared that the reference might seem to seek the favour of the august Quarterly—was accepted by Mr. Murray, and proceeded through the press, subject to change and additions, during the next five months. The Hints from Horace, fortunately postponed and then suspended, appeared posthumously in 1831. Byron remained at Newstead till the close of October, negotiating with creditors and lawyers, and engaged in a correspondence about his publications, in the course of which he deprecates any identification of himself and his hero, though he had at first called him Childe Byron. "Instruct Mr. Murray," he entreats, "not to allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage,' as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might." At the end of the month we find him in London, again indulging in a voyage in "the ship of fools," in which Moore claims to have accompanied him; but at the same time exhibiting remarkable shrewdness in reference to the affairs of his household. In February, 1812, he again declares to Hodgson his resolve to leave England for ever, and fix himself in "one of the fairest islands of the East." On the 27th he made in the House of Lords his speech on a Bill to introduce special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham. This effort, on which he received many compliments, led among other results to a friendly correspondence with Lord Holland. On April 21st of the same year, he again addressed the House on behalf of Roman Catholic Emancipation; and in June, 1813, in favour of Major Cartwright's petition. On all these occasions, as afterwards on the continent, Byron espoused the Liberal side of politics. But his role was that of Manlius or Caesar, and he never fails to remind us that he himself was for the people, not of them. His latter speeches, owing partly to his delivery, blamed as too Asiatic, were less successful. To a reader the three seem much on the same level. They are clever, but evidently set performances, and leave us no ground to suppose that the poet's abandonment of a parliamentary career was a serious loss to the nation.