For the rest, the little cavil which I have raised in these Memoirs against the greatest poet whom England has possessed since Milton proves only one thing: the high value which I would have attached to the recollection of his muse.
The real Byron.
Lord Byron started a deplorable school: I presume he has been as much distressed at the Childe-Harolds to whom he gave birth as I am at the Renés who rave around me.
The life of Lord Byron is the object of much investigation and calumny: young men have taken magic words seriously; women have felt disposed to allow themselves affrightedly to be seduced by that "monster," to console that solitary and unhappy Satan. Who knows? He had perhaps not found the woman he sought, a woman fair enough, a heart as big as his own. Byron, according to the phantasmagorial opinion, is the old serpent of seduction and corruption, because he sees the corruption of the human race; he is a fatal and suffering genius, placed between the mysteries of matter and mind, who is unable to solve the enigma of the universe, who looks upon life as a frightful and causeless irony, as a perverse smile of evil; he is the son of despair, who despises and denies, who, bearing an incurable wound within himself, seeks his revenge by leading through voluptuousness to sorrow all who approach him; he is a man who has not passed through the age of innocence, who has never had the advantage of being rejected and cursed by God: a man who, issuing reprobate from nature's womb, is the damned soul of nihility.
This is the Byron of heated imaginations: it is by no means, to my mind, the Byron of truth. Two different men are united in Lord Byron, as in the majority of men: the man of nature and the man of system. The poet, perceiving the part which the public made him play, accepted it and began to curse the world which at first he had only viewed dreamily: this progress can be traced in the chronological order of his works. His genius, far from having the extent attributed to it, is fairly reserved; his poetic thought is no more than a moan, a plaint, an imprecation; in that quality it is admirable: one must not ask the lyre what it thinks, but what it sings. His mind is sarcastic and diversified, but of an exciting nature and a baneful influence: the writer had read Voltaire to good purpose, and imitates him.
Gifted with every advantage, Lord Byron had little with which to reproach his birth; the very accident which made him unhappy and which allied his superiority to the infirmity of mankind ought not to have vexed him, since it did not prevent him from being loved. The immortal singer knew from his own case the truth of Zeno's maxim: "The voice is the flower of beauty."
A deplorable thing is the rapidity with which, nowadays, reputations pass away. At the end of a few years-what am I saying?—of a few months, the infatuation disappears and disparagement follows upon it. Already Lord Byron's glory is seen to pale; his genius is better understood by ourselves; he will have altars longer in France than in England. Since Childe-Harold excels mainly in the depicting of sentiments peculiar to the individual, the English, who prefer sentiments common to all, will end by disowning the poet whose cry is so deep and so sad. Let them look to it: if they shatter the image of the man who has brought them to life again, what will they have left?
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When, during my sojourn in London, in 1822, I wrote my opinion of Lord Byron, he had no more than two years to live upon earth: he died in 1824, at the moment when disenchantment and disgust were about to commence for him. I preceded him in life; he preceded me in death; he was called before his turn: my number was higher than his, and yet his was drawn first. Childe-Harold should have remained; the world could lose me without noticing my disappearance. On continuing my road through life, I met Madame Guiccioli[320] in Rome, Lady Byron[321] in Paris. Frailty and virtue thus appeared to me: the former had perhaps too many realities, the latter too few dreams.
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