"The modern world will smile, but should however beware of too hastily despising works that charmed Lady Mary Wortley in her youth, and were courageously defended by Madame de Sevigné even when hers was past, and they began to be sliding out of fashion. She, it seems, thought with the old woman just now mentioned, that they had a tendency to elevate the mind, and to instil honourable and generous sentiments. At any rate they must have fostered application and perseverance, by accustoming their readers to what the French term des ouvrages de longue haleine. After resolutely mastering Clelia, nobody could pretend to quail at the aspect of Mezeray, or even at that of Holinshed's Chronicle printed in black letter. Clarendon, Burnet, and Rapin, had not yet issued into daylight."
With the foregoing extract (and all critics should get rid of their bile as quickly as they can) all that is unpleasant is at rest. Let us give the following feeling, beautiful anecdote.
"The name of another young friend will excite more attention—Mrs. Anne Wortley. Mrs. Anne has a most mature sound to our modern ears; but, in the phraseology of those days, Miss, which had hardly yet ceased to be a term of reproach, still denoted childishness, flippancy, or some other contemptible quality, and was rarely applied to young ladies of a respectable class. In Steele's Guardian, the youngest of Nestor Ironside's wards, aged fifteen, is Mrs. Mary Lizard. Nay, Lady Bute herself could remember having been styled Mrs. Wortley, when a child, by two or three elderly visitors, as tenacious of their ancient modes of speech as of other old fashions. Mrs. Anne, then, was the second daughter of Mr. Sidney[20] Wortley Montagu, and the favourite sister of his son Edward. She died in the bloom of youth, unmarried. Lady Mary, in common with others who had known her, represented her as eminently pretty and agreeable; and her brother so cherished her memory, that, in after times, his little girl knew it to be the highest mark of his favour, when, pointing at herself, he said to her mother, "Don't you think she grows like my poor sister Anne?"
Lady Mary had Lord Byron's fate. She wrote a journal of her life; she became the historian of her own genius, her youthful love, and her young trials. It chanced to be her fate, that the one into whose hands her manuscript fell, considered it her duty (wisely and affectionately, or not, is immaterial for our purposes) to doom it to be a work of destruction. It is hard for genius that it cannot find an executor who regards the future in preference to the present; who cannot absolve himself from immediate ties, living incumbrances, pressing prejudices, conceived personalities,—to yield immortality its due!—who, in fact, in the blindness of temporary fears and temporary associations, classes that which he holds, erringly as that of the age,—which should be, and in its spirit was destined to be, "for all time." We have mentioned two immortal names; and before we pass into the three volumes, we cannot help endeavouring to connect them in the minds of our readers, as they are by their spirit connected in ours. Lord Byron was a moody, fiery, brooding child,—full of passion, obstinacy, and irregularity, in his teens;—Lady Mary was a single-thinking, classical, daring, inspired girl long under one-and-twenty. Lord Byron at a plunge formed his own spreading circles on the glittering still-life lake of fashionable society: Lady Mary with her beauty and her genius effected the same result by the same impetuosity. Lady Mary made, as it would appear, a cold unsatisfactory marriage, but, it must be admitted, with one possessed of a patience untainted by genius:—Lord Byron iced himself into the connubial state, but shuddered at its coldness. The press, and the poets, and the prosers united with serene ferocity against both. Both, alas! were
"Souls made of fire and children of the sun, With whom revenge was virtue!"
Their revenge was mutual-minded. Misunderstood, calumniated, they quitted the land which was not worthy of them. Genius-borne, they both passed to the east; and to them we owe the most sensible,—the most passioned,—the most voluptuous,—and the most inspired pictures of "the land of the citron and myrtle," that have ever waked the wish and melted the heart of us southron readers. A mysterious divorcement from the marital partner marked the absence—the long last absence—of each! Mind-banished,—person-expatriated,—they vented upon their country that revenge of which injured genius can alone be capable. And looking at the calumnies upon the one, and the female animosities towards the other,—regarding the banishment of mental beauty and magic power in both,—we cannot better convey to our readers the revenge which genius gave, and must ever give, than by making a common cause of the two, and explaining it in the inimitable lines of the one.
"And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now I shrink from what is suffered; let him speak Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Tho' I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fullness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse. That curse shall be forgiveness!"—
This is indeed the inspiration of forgiveness. We feel an awe after reading this humane and lofty imprecation, which calls for a pause. There is the same feeling upon us from which we cannot escape, as that to which we are subject when we wander under the arched roof and sculptured aisles,—in the breathing, breathless, cathedral silence,—in the awful stone repose,—in the contemplation of
"The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips!"