"G.T. LECKIE."
With such facilities towards pacification, it is almost needless to add that there was but little delay in settling the matter amicably.
While upon this subject, I shall avail myself of the opportunity which it affords of extracting an amusing account given by Lord Byron himself of some affairs of this description, in which he was, at different times, employed as mediator.
"I have been called in as mediator, or second, at least twenty times, in violent quarrels, and have always contrived to settle the business without compromising the honour of the parties, or leading them to mortal consequences, and this, too, sometimes in very difficult and delicate circumstances, and having to deal with very hot and haughty spirits,—Irishmen, gamesters, guardsmen, captains, and cornets of horse, and the like. This was, of course, in my youth, when I lived in hot-headed company. I have had to carry challenges from gentlemen to noblemen, from captains to captains, from lawyers to counsellors, and once from a clergyman to an officer in the Life Guards; but I found the latter by far the most difficult,—
"'to compose
The bloody duel without blows,'—
the business being about a woman: I must add, too, that I never saw a woman behave so ill, like a cold-blooded, heartless b—— as she was,—but very handsome for all that. A certain Susan C * * was she called. I never saw her but once; and that was to induce her but to say two words (which in no degree compromised herself), and which would have had the effect of saving a priest or a lieutenant of cavalry. She would not say them, and neither N * * nor myself (the son of Sir E. N * *, and a friend to one of the parties,) could prevail upon her to say them, though both of us used to deal in some sort with womankind. At last I managed to quiet the combatants without her talisman, and, I believe, to her great disappointment: she was the damnedest b—— that I ever saw, and I have seen a great many. Though my clergyman was sure to lose either his life or his living, he was as warlike as the Bishop of Beauvais, and would hardly be pacified; but then he was in love, and that is a martial passion."
However disagreeable it was to find the consequences of his Satire thus rising up against him in a hostile shape, he was far more embarrassed in those cases where the retribution took a friendly form. Being now daily in the habit of meeting and receiving kindnesses from persons who, either in themselves, or through their relatives, had been wounded by his pen, he felt every fresh instance of courtesy from such quarters to be, (as he sometimes, in the strong language of Scripture, expressed it,) like "heaping coals of fire upon his head." He was, indeed, in a remarkable degree, sensitive to the kindness or displeasure of those he lived with; and had he passed a life subject to the immediate influence of society, it may be doubted whether he ever would have ventured upon those unbridled bursts of energy in which he at once demonstrated and abused his power. At the period when he ran riot in his Satire, society had not yet caught him within its pale; and in the time of his Cains and Don Juans, he had again broken loose from it. Hence, his instinct towards a life of solitude and independence, as the true element of his strength. In his own domain of imagination he could defy the whole world; while, in real life, a frown or smile could rule him. The facility with which he sacrificed his first volume, at the mere suggestion of his friend, Mr. Becher, is a strong proof of this pliableness; and in the instance of Childe Harold, such influence had the opinions of Mr. Gifford and Mr. Dallas on his mind, that he not only shrunk from his original design of identifying himself with his hero, but surrendered to them one of his most favourite stanzas, whose heterodoxy they had objected to; nor is it too much, perhaps, to conclude, that had a more extended force of such influence then acted upon him, he would have consented to omit the sceptical parts of his poem altogether. Certain it is that, during the remainder of his stay in England, no such doctrines were ever again obtruded on his readers; and in all those beautiful creations of his fancy, with which he brightened that whole period, keeping the public eye in one prolonged gaze of admiration, both the bitterness and the licence of his impetuous spirit were kept effectually under control. The world, indeed, had yet to witness what he was capable of, when emancipated from this restraint. For, graceful and powerful as were his flights while society had still a hold of him, it was not till let loose from the leash that he rose into the true region of his strength; and though almost in proportion to that strength was, too frequently, his abuse of it, yet so magnificent are the very excesses of such energy, that it is impossible, even while we condemn, not to admire.
The occasion by which I have been led into these remarks,—namely, his sensitiveness on the subject of his Satire,—is one of those instances that show how easily his gigantic spirit could be, if not held down, at least entangled, by the small ties of society. The aggression of which he had been guilty was not only past, but, by many of those most injured, forgiven; and yet,—highly, it must be allowed, to the credit of his social feelings,—the idea of living familiarly and friendlily with persons, respecting whose character or talents there were such opinions of his on record, became, at length, insupportable to him; and, though far advanced in a fifth edition of "English Bards," &c., he came to the resolution of suppressing the Satire altogether; and orders were sent to Cawthorn, the publisher, to commit the whole impression to the flames. At the same time, and from similar motives,—aided, I rather think, by a friendly remonstrance from Lord Elgin, or some of his connections,—the "Curse of Minerva," a poem levelled against that nobleman, and already in progress towards publication, was also sacrificed; while the "Hints from Horace," though containing far less personal satire than either of the others, shared their fate.
To exemplify what I have said of his extreme sensibility, to the passing sunshine or clouds of the society in which he lived, I need but cite the following notes, addressed by him to his friend Mr. William Bankes, under the apprehension that this gentleman was, for some reason or other, displeased with him.