contessa di Teresa Guiccioli

“ She can still see his looks of tenderness; she can judge what the struggle was, the combat that was going on in him as soft and stern glances chased each other; at length she sees honor gain the victory, and remain triumphant.
It is this spectacle of such great moral beauty, still before her eyes, that can be so well appreciated after the lapse of long years, and which justifies the words that begin and close her recital by divesting it of all semblance of exaggeration:—"There has been but one Byron!"
When we have known such beings, admiration and love outlive all else. ”

“ Thus Lord Byron allowed his pen to jest, to mark the follies of men: sometimes attacking them boldly in front, sometimes aiming light arrows aslant, ridiculing, chastising, as humor or fancy prompted; and he gave himself the same liberty of language in private conversation, according to the character of those with whom he conversed. On all these occasions his genius undoubtedly gave itself up to versatility. But let us not forget that all that which changes and becomes effaced in hearts of inconstant mood, and which ought not to change in men of honor and worth, never did vary in him. ”

“ If, as Moore observes, it be true that Byron never lost a friend, was their friendship a like friendship with his own? Has it ever gone so far as to make sacrifices for his sake, and has not Lord Byron ever given more as a friend than he ever received in return? Had he found in his friendship among men that reciprocity of feeling which he ever found among women, would so many injuries and calumnies have been heaped upon his head? Would not his friends, had they shown a little more warmth of affection, have been able to silence those numerous rivals who rendered his life a burden to him? ”

“ You censure my life, Harness: when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence—a walking statue—without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love—romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!"
Yes, Lord Byron never did respect the love that can be bartered for dollars. ”

“ But the obstacle to their happiness now arises, and Lady Annabel it is who becomes metamorphosed into a woman whose judgment is false, whose prejudices are great, whose principles are inexorable; who knows nothing of the world, nothing of her own heart nor of the human heart; who judges all things by certain arbitrary rules, and acts sternly in accordance with her inexplicable judgment. All the love which she would have had for Plantagenet at Cherbury is turned into hatred on learning that he has become a great poet, the admiration of his country, the observed of all observers ”

“ Disraeli then shows how, after three years, during which time his genius had been smouldering as it were, it at last appeared in a splendor quite unrivalled and unexampled, like a star equally strange and brilliant, which scarcely has it become visible in the horizon, than it already reaches its zenith. Not only is he distinguished by his writings, but by a thousand other ways, which fill the heart and dazzle the eyes. Where every thing is remarkable he is most noticed; and the most conspicuous where all is brilliant. He is envied by men, praised and sought after by women, admired by all. ”

“ There were fine ladies whom nothing daunted, if only they could find favor in his sight; who forgot for him their rank, their duties, their families, braving the whole world, donning strange costumes to get at him, carrying jealousy to the verge of madness, to attempted suicide, or to the conception, at least, of crime. One distinguished herself by excessive daring; another, who had not been happy in married life, but who had tried to make up for want of affection by securing her husband's friendship and esteem, was now willing to sacrifice all to her wild passion for the youthful peer. ”

“ The Almighty has created beings of such harmonious and ideal beauty that they defy description or analysis. Such a one was Lord Byron. His wonderful beauty of expression has never been rendered either by the brush of the painter or the sculptor's chisel. It summed up in one magnificent type the highest expression of every possible kind of beauty. If his genius and his great heart could have chosen a human form by which they could have been well represented, they could not have chosen another! Genius shone in his very looks. ”

“ Like Salvator Rosa, who, the meekest of men in private life, could only find a vent to his talent by painting scenes of brigandage and horror, so did Byron's genius require to go down into the darkest recesses of the passions which generate remorse, crime, and heroism, to find that spark which fired his genius. But it must be owned, that even his great qualities were causes of the false judgment of the world upon him. Thus, in describing Childe Harold, he no doubt wished to paint a side of nature which had not yet been seen. ”

“ Lord Byron, though a stanch spiritualist at heart, derived his doubts from other much less exalted authorities. Believing implicitly in the omnipotence of the Creator, could he not modestly fear that God, who had made his soul out of nothing, might cause it to return to nothing? Might he not imagine that the contrary belief was rather the result of our wishes, of our pride, and of the importance which we love to attach to ourselves? Can the conviction of the existence of immortality, unless founded upon revelation, be any thing else but a hope or a sentiment? ”

“ In this sacrifice on his part, no single feature of greatness is wanting. Lord Byron would have been great, had he sacrificed himself for his country; but how much greater was he in sacrificing himself for a foreign nation, for the general cause of humanity? He would still have remained great, had he been led into this noble sacrifice by his own enthusiasm, by his illusions, by personal hopes. But no illusion, no enthusiasm, impelled him toward Greece; naught save the satisfaction caused in a noble mind by the performance of a great action. ”

“ Presenting himself thus for the first time to the public, surrounded by all the prestige belonging to a handsome person, rank, and youth,—in a word, with such an assemblage of qualities as are seldom if ever found united in one person—he immediately became the idol of England. The enemies created by his boyish satire, and augmented by the jealousy his success could not fail to cause, now hid themselves like those vile insects that slink back into their holes on the first appearance of the sun's rays, ready to creep out again when fogs and darkness return. ”

“ Every thing that could stimulate, and every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamation of the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the love of lovely women,—all this world, and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. ”

“ At his early age can already be traced the germs of those qualities which foretell that brilliant mind which is to win some day the heart of a nation, and dazzle the fancy of a world of admirers. The sight of the fair hair and of the angelic beauty of the little Venetia is enough to dry his tears; and herein we not only perceive already the extreme impressionable disposition of his nature, but also the power and influence which beauty is destined to exercise over him. The love of solitude and meditation is already traceable in the child. ”

“ In England, Lord Byron triumphed over many jealous enemies whom his first satire earned for him, no less than the rapid and wonderful rise of his genius, which, instead of appearing by degrees, burst forth at once, as it were, and towering over many established reputations. The prestige which he acquired was such that every obstacle was surmounted, and in one day he saw himself raised against his will, and without his having ever sought the honor, to the highest pinnacle of fashion and literary fame. ”

“ A subject as well as an object may become commonplace by the quantity, but nevertheless remain new and rare, owing to its quality. A subject can not be exhausted before it has been seen under every one of its various aspects, and appreciated in all its points. If much has been said of Lord Byron, has his truly noble character been fairly brought to light? Has he not, on the contrary, been judged rather as the author than the man, and have not the imaginary creations of his powerful mind been too much identified with reality? ”

“ In the midst of the unexampled enthusiasm of a whole nation, Byron is neither touched by the adoration which his genius inspires, nor the endless praises which are bestowed upon him, nor the love declarations which crowd his table, nor the flattering expressions of Lord Holland, who ranks him next to Walter Scott as a poet, and to Burke as an orator; nor indeed by those of Lord Fitzgerald, who, notwithstanding a flogging at Harrow, can not bear malice against the author of "Childe Harold," but desires to forgive. ”

“ The public, without waiting to think, or even to inquire after the truth, instantly selected as genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty libellous narratives that were circulated of the transaction. Stories, inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly believed, and what evidence there might be for any one of them, the virtuous people, by whom they were repeated, neither knew nor cared. The public, in short, fell into a passion with their daring, and, ashamed of their past idolatry, nothing would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on the head. ”

“ If, in the war he waged against evil and its perpetrators, he did not outstep the limits of merited punishment, nevertheless he often did go beyond the limits of a quality (he possessed not) which is raised to the rank of a virtue, but which applied, despite conscience, to our personal interests, is but selfishness and cowardice. And therein was he truly sublime; for in attacking thus, not only the great men of the day, but likewise the prejudices, idolatries, and passions belonging to such a proud nation, he well knew the harm that would result to himself. But Lord Byron was a real hero. ”

“ For Moore appears to think that men are almost always swayed by one chief passion, round which, as round a pivot, life unrolls itself, just as we see in theatrical pieces. But even if this system were correct, intimate, as he was with Lord Byron, and so full of perspicacity, could he not have found, towering above the rich profusion of qualities in his friend, one dominant passion? Yes, he ought to have discovered it; but there was a struggle in Moore between the love of justice and his friendship for Lord Byron on one side, and the desire, alas! ”

“ Whenever, then, his heart was happy in the happiness of those he loved, wherever he found an intellectual society to animate the mind, diverting and amusing him without imposing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek the faintest trace of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him at Pisa, for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might we say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the privilege of his great superiority, by all the sufferings he endured. ”

“ He does see Venetia again, and he feels that the world's praises are no longer any thing to him, except to be placed at her feet, and that he would give up all the idolatry of which he is the object for one year of happiness spent at Cherbury. When Venetia sees her ideal realized, and that Lord Cadurcis unites in him all the qualities of her dear Plantagenet with those brilliant and imposing talents which command love and admiration; when she beholds in him the genius of her father linked with the heart of her earliest friend, to whom she is still so deeply attached ”

“ Harold, then, has ceased to be the weary blasé pilgrim of twenty-one, who in the first canto remains unmoved in presence of the attractions of Florence the beautiful, who inspired the poet with such different sentiments that in the midst even of a storm which threatens to swallow him up he actually finds strength enough to express his sentiments of real love for the lovely absent one—of a love, indeed, which is evidently returned. His heart, like the poet's, now beats with a pure love, and causes him to chant the absence of his friend in the most beautiful strain. ”

“ Why, then, necessarily conclude that a moralist is a moral man, or a sarcastic satirist a deceitful one, or the man who describes scenes of blood and carnage a monster of cruelty? Does not Montaigne say of authors that they must be judged by their merits, and not by their morals, nor by that show of works which they exhibit to the world? Why, then, does M. Lamartine appreciate Byron according to his satirical works, when all those who knew him assert that his real character was very different to his literary one? ”

“ Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience them as to those who give them rise. But it is not to the enthusiasm created by his genius, nor to the grief evinced by the Greek nation, for whom he died, that we will turn for a last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such regrets might almost be called interested,—emanating, as they do, from the knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart, which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask that last proof. ”

“ Lord Byron never despaired of mankind. In early youth, especially, he thought,—not like a Utopist, or even a poet, but like a sensible, humane, generous man, who deems that many of the evils that afflict his species, morally and physically, might be alleviated by better laws, under whose influence more goodness, sincerity, and real virtue might be substituted for the hypocrisy and other vices that now deprave our nature. Lord Byron saw in many vices and littlenesses the work of man rather than of nature. ”

“ The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased in proportion to the admiration excited by the poet, and often with the greatest injustice. The world offered up incense to the poet, while heaping ashes on the head of the man. He was indignant at such usage, and wounded pride avenged itself by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to give a deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forcing them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was their disapprobation of his supposed character. ”

“ If almost all great geniuses, ere carving out their path, have experienced this fever of the soul, falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that put on all sorts of forms,—sometimes noisy, sometimes capricious, sometimes misanthropical, was there not greater reason for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis—at a period when energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by confidence in his own genius? ”

“ On seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all trace of melancholy. ”

“ In those days, recalling the fine pictures of life and mankind that had been presented to him as realities, especially at his first onset, and perceiving how different things actually were, seeing men pursue their fellow-men, and ascribe vices to the good and virtues to the bad, not even finding in his friends the qualities that distinguished his own heart, indignant at seeing so many persons sought after for their attractions, despite the vices that defaced them, his soul revolted at the sight—saddened too—and he exclaimed, sorrowfully, in his memoranda:—"Yes, La Rochefoucault is right." ”