“Remember me! Oh, pass not thou my grave,
Without one thought whose relics there recline.
The only pang my bosom dare not brave,
Would be to find forgetfulness in thine.”
But our chief concern is with the Poet Byron, not with the Philosopher or the Peer. It has been said that in reviewing the lives of the most illustrious poets—the class of intellect in which the characteristic features of genius are most strongly marked—we shall find that, from Homer to Byron, they have been restless and solitary spirits, with minds wrapped up, like silk-worms, in their own tasks, either strangers or rebels to domestic ties, and bearing about with them a deposit for posterity in their souls, to the jealous watching and enriching of which most all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed. In accordance with this theory, Pope said: “One misfortune of extraordinary geniuses is, that their very friends are more apt to admire than to love them.” True, they have often “dwelt apart,” have been so engaged in cultivating the imaginative faculty, as to become less sensible to the objects of real life, and have substituted the sensibilities of the imagination for those of the heart. Thus Dante is accused of wandering away from his wife and children to nurse his dream of Beatrice, Petrarch to have banished his daughter from his roof, while he luxuriated in poetic and impassioned ideals, Alfieri always kept away from his mother, and Sterne preferred, in the somewhat uncouth language of Byron, “whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.” But did not Milton love his daughter with an intense tenderness? Than Cowper who a more filial and devoted son to the memory of his mother? A fond father as well as faithful son was Campbell. Burns, too, delighted in his “fruitful vine,” and “tender olive plants.” In Wordsworth the beauty and purity of domestic life shone forth to the end. Southey had a home of love and peace. Scott was a model of a husband and father. Nothing can exceed the exquisite tenderness of some passages in his diary at the death of his wife. Goldsmith was neither husband nor father, yet his fine poetry never alienated his heart from the softer scenes and sympathies of life. It seemed rather to augment their claims, and the clear current from the fountain of the imagination is seen to flow right through the channel of the heart, sparkling with beauty and murmuring natural music in the enchanted ear. Even the voluptuous Moore is said to have repaired his fame and prolonged his days by settling down into the sobrieties of domestic life.
To return to Byron. He might be said to be unfortunate in his cradle. His young days were brought under sinister influences and associations. The youth that is deprived of a healthy maternal guardianship, is to be pitied. Such was Byron’s lot. Alternately indulged and abused, petted and irritated, his temper was formed in a bad mould. Never could he forget the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a “lame brat.”
Now, as men of genius, being by a law of genius itself susceptible of strong impressions, are in the habit of reproducing those impressions in their works, a man of a sensitive poetic temperament, like Byron, and one so highly, so dangerously endowed with intellect, and a vigorous power of expression, would give to all these thoughts and associations a local habitation, a living permanence in poetry, romance, and even in history, so far as it could be turned to such a purpose. In his Deformed Transformed, Bertha says: “Out, hunchback!” Poor Arnold replies: “I was born so, mother!” If, then, we find the traits of misanthropy, scorn, hate, revenge, and others of the serpent brood, so often obtruding themselves in his poetry as to compel us to believe they were combined with the very texture of his thoughts and the action of his imagination, imparting to it a sombre and menacing aspect, we must refer much of this melancholy idiosyncracy to his early education. He was always grieving over the malformation of his foot. Far more lamentable was the malformation of his mental habits. But this, unlike the other, could be corrected. He should have exerted himself to achieve so noble a victory. Instead of this he resigned himself to the strength of the downward current, and was finally dashed among the rocks, where other stranded wrecks uttered their warning voice in vain. There did he take up the affecting lamentation:
“The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted—they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”