Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October 1852

by Various

Can aught that is new be said of Byron? Can aught that is new be written to sink him lower beneath the scorn of wisdom, in the ignominy of moral littleness; aught that is new, to lift him higher before the gaze of romance, within the fane of mystic and Satanic beauty: aught that is new, to evolve before the magisterial aspect of philosophy the tangled mass of passion, hate, sentiment and poetic conception, that so long has awed the semi-wise into ecstatic contemplation, and charmed the semi-foolish into vain, insipid emulation? Can any thing new that can tend to open to the view of the world Lord Byron’s utter earthliness be written, since all that has been denounced in holy horror from the pulpit; warned against from the paternal fire-side; lisped stealthily with the flush of maiden shame, or hymned in the Psalteria of poetasters, whose highest praise but evokes the wise man’s judgment in condemnation? The subject would appear exhausted; for few subjects, and no man, have elicited so much commentary, and of such divers kinds. No youthful aspirant after literary distinction essays his hand upon the world’s wide folio, but, in some moment of pleasurable pain, dips his pen into the horn of Byronic inspiration: there has been no critic, from the “Scotch Reviewers” down to our day, but has reduced to some fantastic analysis the sparkling effusions of the “English Bard.” Much, much has been written; yet to me it seems that concerning this extraordinary man something more need still be written. Never, I think, has the peculiar quality of his poetry been thoroughly analyzed, and the simplicity of its charm, the nature of its singularity been clearly precipitated. Never, I think, has the character of the man been fully delineated, and his double littleness held up to view. This task I assume. Never, I think, has his success and renown been shown attributable to the intrinsic merits of his productions, and traceable to the judgment of the good and the wise among learned men. Be this task for others: and until it be done I will now cease to say that such a task were futile.

To the intrinsic merits of Lord Byron’s poetry much, very much, of his success was due, and that chiefly to a peculiarity which I will hereafter point out; but not to them was due the gigantic temple of his popularity and fame. His mere poetic fame stands, and ever will stand, upon a poet’s solid basis—Genius: but this overgrown temple of popularity was built of the sparkling gems of romance, gathered on earthly shores, and piled into the brilliant structure more by the fired imaginations of the world of builders—the public—than according to the commanding dixit of the architect himself. Byron sketched not more than the outlines of his fame; he foresaw not distinctly more: but, like a cunning and artful woman who shrouds from gaze the distincter outlines of her form, and but assumes a posture, bares but a mere glance of voluptuousness to the pregnant imagination, he blazoned forth his youth and noble birth, the world’s hatred for him, and his hatred for the world; advertised that he had loved, deeply, ardently loved, and would not love again; boasted that he had been “sore given to revel and ungodly glee;” and then departed from Albion’s chill and murky twilight to sunny and classic climes, sated with the world, and the world with him. With a brilliant yet devilish poetic allurement he pictured his proud and noble self a victim to genius and tortured sensibilities, basking in the light of Spain’s bright skies, and the smiles of Spain’s loveliest daughters; bound ere long to the fairest of all lands, to the land of love, and art, and song, and scene, and highest classic fame; thence to the almost dreamy ruins of Grecian temples, of Grecian beauty and Grecian greatness; wandering alone, with “sandal shoon and scallop shell,” through the world, but not of it, through an etherealized path aloof from vulgar souls; eyeing afar repose amid the lofty grandeur of eternal snows which crown the downy verdure of the Alpine valleys, and trickle forever their glittering coolness into the lakes below. Thus far he bared to the world’s morbid imagination, craving incessantly for spicy food, then wrapped himself within the folds of his own romance: the world’s imagination did the rest.

Bulwer, in his “Life of Lord Byron,” says:—“Childe Harold succeeded more than I think the merits of the first two cantos deserved; and not only was the success extraordinary, but of a description most likely to please. It was not the poem that was admired only; it was the poet about whom an interest was excited. The fictitious hero of the tale, between whom and the writer of it, we must confess, there was some kind of resemblance, was considered at once as an accurate portrait of the mysterious young noble, who had just returned from the lands of romance and song which he had been describing. If Lord Byron had been known in the world before his travels, the world would have viewed both himself and his travels differently; but though a peer of England, he was unknown to English society.” A veil of mystery and singularity and romance being about him and the strange hero of his tale, and so he enjoyed the privilege of drawing upon his own imagination for the character in which the public should view him, and he created a fictitious and hellish light through which to be viewed; fictitious, ay, in most all save intentional malignity; I say intentional, for his morality was so far dead, that he would not have scrupled to become any one of his heroes in act, could such a complex of incident and circumstance become possible in a real bodily existence.

The more distinctly and substantially the author, if he be a man of originality and genius, be brought before the public gaze, the better will he be appreciated; the more will he be even overrated, by the public. It is creating a body for the dwelling of the poetic soul: the picture is more graphic. For the constant association of the creator with his ideal beauty, encircles him with a never-fading halo; and in those moments when our mind is too inert to rise to the contemplation of his ecstatic thought, it can gaze habitually and languidly upon the other partner of the firm, and tacitly credit him with a glory whose effulgence is acknowledged, still, at the time, but dimly seen. This intimacy with him, which could not exist otherwise, introduces him more familiarly into the society of our affective facilities, and the acquaintanceship improves and ripens. But when the garments by which we know him, are woven of originality, and beauty, and romance, and noble name and birth, and the soft velvet of our own sympathy for sorrow and misfortune; and we have to enter the enchanted fields of far-off lands, to snuff the perfume of southern vines and flowering figs, amid bright vistas at olden grandeur and modern voluptuousness, to enjoy communion; the heart expands, and the brain glows beneath the warmth of overpowering imagination: the individual, composed of humanity and its poetry, as body and soul, is enshrined in veneration a household god, among the contemplative affections. Such was Byron, there was he known, and so was he enshrined. Thus do I take leave of my assertion that, although to the intrinsic merits of Lord Byron’s poetry, much, very much was due, still, not to them was due the gigantic temple of his popularity and fame.

That much of Byron’s popularity was due to the intrinsic merits of his productions, may not seem strange. Had they possessed the same characteristic, the same singularity, and been far less brilliant they would have elicited immense admiration. Still, there is no mystery in this. No other poet, perhaps, ancient or modern, ever possessed the same happy blending of southern exuberance and vividness, with the deep-inspired, psychological mysticism of the north. Apart then from his originality, which is every poet’s inheritance, and a good command of words, this blending is, in its extraordinary degree, the chief among Lord Byron’s claims to merit; together with the—certainly in him unique and only too apparent—dash of Satanic leaven that raised unceasingly the frothy acid. Dante, perhaps, of all the southern poets, possessed most of the spiritualism that breathes in dark Druidical forests; but his heavy philosophy weighs down the mind, and it staggers along in pursuit of that sublime spiritualism, that is to most intellects, after all, but an ignis fatuus. From Byron’s poetic palace, from time to time, bursts forth, like a Bacchanalian, a round of untamed music, that revels nakedly in perfect abandonment: now leaping by long and rapid strides o’er chords of melody, towering up, up, up, through the vasty dome; new groaning through the double bass of trembling passion. Anon there unrolls a resplendent transparency of southern hues, that, at times, dart boldly into the endless fantasies of the kaleidoscope; again melt into blending prismata, or swimming circles unconceived of but through the distorted iris of a compressed eye-ball. At times, too, one strays through vast and sounding halls that reëcho but the wandering footsteps of a moody mind alone there by chance. At times, too, in some silent, sombre, far-distant recess, mid withe-bound, faggoty columns of Gothic mould, whose lofty branches are hung with ivy cold and mistletoe-bough, there glows suspended the blue ethereal flame of northern superstition, in a floorless chamber from whose mystic depths go forth the sinewy phantoms of the house of Woden. Anon there bursts an unearthly sound and glare that shakes and illumines the whole vast structure; and one almost hears the deliberate laugh of diabolic glee.

Lord Byron’s poetry is entirely a poetry of sentiment: there is no philosophy in it. After all, a man’s best study of the more intimate workings of the human heart, must find its materials within himself; and his productions will be moulded and colored by his principles; for it is they that supply the oil which feeds the habitual light in the chamber of the mind. When there exists no fixed principle, there exists no fixed light, no steady medium, no standard measure, then all is moral darkness, and vagaries, and dreamy riot. Now and then, it is true, solid thoughts and good may spring up from the mind’s fertility, but if they be not pretty, they are cast aside, and if they be pretty, they are doomed to association with ignobler ones, to be ranged indiscriminately with pretty thoughts and profane, upon the shelves of poetry. There is nothing in Byron’s poetry that can inspire any good. It is true there are good and noble sentiments woven in the mass; but it is so plain that only their beauty is turned toward us, to the entire neglect of intrinsic worth, that one cannot help associating them with the man, and they fade into vagaries. There are poets who, with vigorous and accustomed flight, transport us into more lofty realms of thought than Byron’s gaudy wing would dare aspire to lift us to. Such are Milton, and Dante, and Klopstock; men, before whose towering intellects Byron, like us, bowed down in astonishment and veneration. There are those, too, who have swept their harps to lays of richer melody; such is he, as we have just learned, the thrilling music of whose harp is o’er, for the hand that waked it moulders in the grave. Alas! Tom Moore, the glow of Oriental fire is extinguished forever in Britain; but thy memory shall endure, green as the green and lonely isle that gave thee birth; and the melting warmth of thy mellow melodies shall not grow cold forever! Such was Dryden, too, who, softly sweet in Lydian measures, could lull and soothe our soul to pleasures. Such at times was Collins; such was preëminently Petrarch; such, too, was the rollicking old Anacreon in his time. There are poets, too, who, with hard and honest hand, could lead us more at ease through the peasant’s humble door, and open to us freely there the gushing fount of simple love, and sincere and innocent and homely pleasure, and the sweet joys of peaceful rest. Such could Burns, and such could Florian. There are poets who, with measured tread, could lead us a more majestic walk upon classic terraces, and withdraw us further from the commonalities of life. Such is Homer, and Virgil, and Tasso, and Pope. There are poets of wiser and more practical philosophy, who could feel and appreciate the poetry of wisdom; like Schiller: and there are poets, too, like Ariosto, who could glide and curvet about his pen, performing strange feats of ideal legerdemain in a perfect gymnasium of poetry, from whom Byron, like almost all others, must turn away in helpless laughter. There is never a time when a mind at all appreciative of poetry, and unburthened of immediately oppressing cares, cannot seize upon some one of these styles, according to its passing humor, and enjoy it with infinite satisfaction, until its too unvaried strain becomes wearisome. How admired and popular, then, would be a poet, whose happy tone could blend these seemingly heterogeneous qualities in its material, and afford spicy food savory to every whim and phase of appetite! Such, in a great measure, is Horace, and hence, in a measure, his untiring popularity through all ages. Such was Shakspeare, who, though he did not possess the ultraism of Byron, was a thousand times more philosophical; and who, could he have exchanged conditions, accidental circumstances with Lord Byron, inherited his name and title, worn his garb of romance and his air of eccentricity among modern women who would but flatter it to a disease, had shone a luminous sun of poetry, whilst Byron but passed as a flashy meteor. Finally, such, too, was Byron, with this distinctive mark, that in him the melange is more perceptible, continuous, never ceases; and hence, in a great measure, his popularity to the end of time. He was always thoughtful, observant, meditative, verbose, and often wrote great poems under the inspiration of the moment. He was equally at home in grave and gay, in lively and severe, in tender and morose, in grand, in trifling, in voluptuous. He stood equally at home in his listless boat upon the stilly lake naveled among the hills, soothed by the softer influences afloat on Nature’s bosom; and on the heaving deck amid torn ocean’s roar, loving the unearthly terrors. He stood equally at home amid the bowers of a sunny and sea-girt isle, his soul melting for the moment, into ecstasies of voluptuous love; and amid bare mountain pates and wintry pyramids of snow, amid rugged rocks, and clefts, and crags, that rend the mighty thunder as it speeds; communing, with blanched face and swelling mind, with the angry spirits of Storm and Solitude. He was equally at home when, dejected and melancholy, he “poured through the mellow horn his plaintive soul,” and sighed and mourned in loneliness, making maidens weep; and when, fired by the poisoned cup and “carnal companie,” he reveled in profanity, and, to hear his ribald jests, made maidens blush. So far, indeed, would his nature bear contrast, that, he would have been equally at home when, wasted by the heat of an Asiatic sun and withering Siroc, he might repose in coolness beneath the broken arch and temple, conjuring up grim shadows of old armies past away, contrasting the proud glory of learned and heroic Greece with the shame of the cowardly vassals whose careless song is e’en now beguiling his ear with its lightness; when he might wander without a care or elevating thought amid the cinnamon groves of the Cingalese, embodying all thought in beautiful, redolent materiality, scenting even an immortal Paradise in the ravishing sweetness of a perfumed atmosphere; as when, standing alone at midnight, in the deep darkness of a polar season, when the moon rides high, and the stars shone unclouded, when the dry icicles crackle in the breeze, and sparkle as they fall shivered into tiny diamonds, the solemn spirit of metaphysical contemplation thrills a low symphony of feeling and of awe that the melting rays of a southern sun could never reach.

So great was Byron’s versatility; and, yielding ever to the influence of the moment, so did he throw off at times the characteristic poetry of all climes, all people, and all moods: and, if there is no one kind in which he has not been surpassed; through his versatility and boldness his fame has not dimmed in the contrast. The characteristic of southern poetry is a materialising even of the spiritual; that of northern poetry, a spiritualizing, an etherealizing even of the material. Even the northern and southern tongues, though all springing from the same root, are modified and characterized by the tone and natural feeling which climate and association have diversified. In southern tongues, sounds seem such as those that the soul of music and of feeling might give vent to, as through the lips it passes to liberty away; in northern tongues sounds seem each as the soul of thought and feeling might mutter when their confined power is aroused to action within us. How different and characteristic are Lord Byron’s descriptions where, in one, describing the voluptuous Dudù, he says with true southern softness:

“She was not violently lively, but

Stole on your senses like a May-day breaking.”

Ekeing out the materialised comparison with redundant melody; and when, with stern northern contemplation he realises that