 Section 5 of Beacon Length of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Sir Walter Scott, Part 3. In 1812, the poet-lawyer was rewarded with the salary of a place whose duties he had for some years performed without pay. That of clerk of sessions worth 800 pounds per annum. Thus, having now about 1500 pounds as an income, independently of his earnings by the pen, Scott gave up his practice as an advocate and devoted himself entirely to literature. At the same time he bought a farm of somewhat more than a hundred acres on the banks of the beautiful tweed, about five miles from Ash Hestio, and, leaving to its owners the pretty place in which he had for six years enjoyed life and work, he removed to the cottage at Abbotsford. For thus he named his new purchase, in memory of the abbots of Melrose, who formerly owned all the region, and the ruins of whose lovely abbey stood not far away. Over the four thousand pounds for this purchase, half was borrowed from his brother, and the other half on the pledge of the profits of a poem that was projected but not written, Rokeby. Scott ought to have been content without Hestio, or, since every man wishes to own his home, he should have been satisfied with the comfortable cottage which he built at Abbotsford, and the modest improvements that his love for trees and shrubs enabled him to make. But his aspirations led him into serious difficulties. With all his sagacity and good sense, Scott never seemed to know when he was well off. It was a fatal mistake, both for his fame and happiness, to attempt to compete with those who are called great in England and Scotland, that is, peers and fast-landed proprietors. He was not alone in this era, for it has generally been the ambition of fortunate authors to acquire social as well as literary distinction, thus paying tributes to riches and virtually abdicating their own true position, which is higher than any that rank or wealth can give. It has too frequently been the misfortune of literary genius to bow down to vulgar idols, and the worldly sentiments which this idolatry involves are seen in almost every fashionable novel which has appeared for a hundred years. In no country is this melancholy social slavery more usual than in England, with all its political freedom, although there are notable exceptions. The only great flaw in Scott's character was this homage to rank and wealth. On the other hand, rank and wealth also paid homage to him as a man of genius. Both Scotland and England received him into the most select circles, not only of their literary and political, but of their fashionable life. In 1811, Scott published The Lord of the Isles and in 1813, Roqueby, neither of which was remarkable for either literary or commercial success, although both were well received. In 1814 he edited a 19 volume edition of Dean Swift's Works with a Life, and in the same year began, almost by accident, the real work of his own career in Waverly. If public opinion is far different today from what it was in Scott's time in reference to his poetry, we observe the same change in regard to the source of his whitest fame, his novels, but not to so market a degree, for it wasn't fiction that Scott's great gifts had their full fruition. Many a fine intellect still delights in his novels, though cultivated readers and critics differ as to their comparative merits. No two persons will unite in their opinions as to the three of those productions which they like most or least. It is so with all famous novels. Then too, what man of 70 will agree with a man of 30 as to the comparative merits of Scott, Dickens, Thackery, Trollup, George Elliott, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand. How few read Uncle Tom's Cabin compared with the multitudes who read that most powerful and popular book 40 years ago. How changing, if not transient, is the fame of the novelist as well as of the poet. With reference to him even the same generation changes its tastes. What filled us with the delight as young man or woman of 20 is at 50 spurned with contempt or thrown aside with indifference. No books ever filled my mind and soul with the delight I had when at 12 years of age I read The Children of the Abbey and Thaddeus of Warsaw. What man of 80 can forget the enthusiasm with which he read Old Mortality or Ivanhoe when he was in college. Perhaps one test of a great book is the pleasure derived from reading it over and over again as we read Don Quixote or the dramas of Shakespeare of whose infinite variety we never tire. Measured by this test the novels of Sir Walter Scott are among the foremost works of fiction which have appeared in our world. They will not all retain their popularity from generation to generation like Don Quixote or The Pilgrim's Progress or The Vicar of Wakefield, but these are single productions of their authors. While not a few of Scott's many novels are certainly still read by cultivated people. If not with the same interest they excited when first published yet with profit and admiration. They have some excellencies which are immortal, elevation of sentiment, chivalrous regard for women, fascination of narrative, after one has avoided through the learned historical introductory chapters, the absence of exaggeration, the vast variety of characters introduced and vividly maintained, and above all the freshness and originality of description both of nature and of man. Among the severest and most bigoted of New England Puritans none could find anything corrupting or demoralizing in his romances whereas Byron and Bulwer were never mentioned without a shutter and even Shakespeare was locked up in bookcases as unfit for young people to read and not particularly creditable for anybody to own. The unfavorable comments which the most orthodox ever made upon Scott were as to the repulsiveness of the old Coventanters as he describes them and his sneers at Puritan Perfections. Scott however had contempt not for the Puritans but for many of their peculiarities especially for their Kant when it degenerated into hypocrisy. One thing is certain that no works of fiction have had such universal popularity both in England and America for so long a period as the Waverly novels. Scott reigned as the undisputed monarch of the realm of fiction and romance for 25 years. He gave undiminished entertainment to an entire generation and not that merely but instruction in his historical novels although his views were not always correct as whosoever are. He who could charm millions of readers learned and unlearned for a quarter of a century must possess a remarkable genius. Indeed he was not only the central figure in English literature for a generation but he was regarded as peculiarly original. Another style of novels may obtain more passing favor with modern readers but Scott was justly famous. His works are today in every library and form a delightful part of the education of every youth and maiden who cares to read at all and he will as a novelist probably live after some who are now prime favorites will be utterly forgotten or ignored. About 1830 Bolwar was in his early successes about 1840 Dickens was the rage of his day. About 1850 Thackeray had taken his high grade and it was about 1860 that George Elliott's power appeared. These still retain their own peculiar lines of popularity. Bolwar with a romantic few, Thackeray with the appreciative intelligent, George Elliott with a still wider clientage and Dickens with everybody on account of his appeal to the universal sentiments of comedy and pathos. Scott's influence somewhat checked during the growth of these reputations and the succession of fertile and accomplished writers on both sides of the Atlantic including the introspective analysts of the past 15 years has within a decade been rising again and has lately burst forth in a new group of historical romancers who seem to have harked back from the subjective fad of our day to Scott's healthy adventurous objectivity. Not only so, but new editions of the Waverly novels are coming one by one from the shrewd publishers who keep track of the popular taste, one of the most attractive being ishered in Edinburgh at half a crown of volume. The first of Scott's remarkable series of novels, Waverly, published in 1814 when the author was 43 years of age and at the height of his fame as a poet, took the fashionable and literary world by storm. The novel had been partly written for several years but was laid aside as his edition of Swift and his essays for the supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica and other prose writings employed all the time he had to spare. This hack work was done by Scott without enthusiasm to earn money for his investment in real estate and is not of transcendent merit. Obscurer men then he had performed such literary drudgery with more ability but no writer was ever more industrious. The amount of work which he accomplished at this period was prodigious, especially when we remember that his duties as sheriff and clerk of sessions occupied eight months of the year. He was more familiar with the literary history of Queen Anne's reign than any subsequent historian, if we accept McCaulay, whose brilliant career had not yet begun. He took of course a different view of Swift from the writers of the Edinburgh Review and was probably too favorable in his description of the personal character of the Dean of St. Patrick's who is now generally regarded as inordinately ambitious, arrogant, and selfish of a morose vindictive and haughty temper, utterly destitute of generosity and magnanimity, as well as of tenor-ness, fidelity, and compassion. Lord Jeffery in his review attacked Swift's moral character with such consummate ability as to check materially the popularity of his writings, which are universally admitted to be full of genius. His superb intellect and his morality present a sad contrast, as in the cases of bacon, burns, and Byron, which Scott, on account of the force of his Tory prejudices, did not sufficiently point out. But as to the novel, when it suddenly appeared, it is not surprising that Waverly should at once have attained an unexampled popularity when we consider the mediocrity of all works of fiction at that time, if we accept the Irish tales of Maria Edgeworth. Scott received from Constable one thousand pounds for this romance, then deemed a very liberal remuneration for what cost him but a few months work. The second and third volumes were written in one month. He wrote with a remarkable rapidity when his mind was full of the subject, and his previous studies as an antiquary and as a collector of Scottish poetry and the legends fitted him for his work, which was in no sense a task, but a most lively pleasure. It is not known why Scott published this strikingly original work anonymously. Perhaps it was because of his unusual modesty and the fear that he might lose the popularity he had already enjoyed as a poet. But it immediately placed him on a higher literary elevation since it was generally suspected that he was the author. He could not altogether disguise himself from the keen eyes of Geoffrey and other critics. The book was received as a revelation. The first volume is not particularly interesting, but the story continually increases in interest to its close. It is not a dissection of the human heart. It is not even much of a love story but a most vivid narrative without startling situations or adventures. Its great charm is its quiet humor, not strained into witty expressions which provoke laughter, but a sort of amiable delineation of the character of a born gentleman with his weaknesses and prejudices, all leaning to virtue's sign. It is a description of manners peculiar to the Scottish gentry in the middle of the 18th century, especially among the Jacobite families then passing away. Of course, the popularity of this novel at that time was chiefly confined to the upper classes. In the first place, the people could not afford to pay the price of the book, and secondly, it was outside their sympathies and knowledge. Indeed, I doubt if any commonplace person without culture or extended knowledge can enjoy so refined a work with so many learned illusions and such exquisite humor, which appeals to a knowledge of the world in his higher aspects. It was one of the last books that an ignorant young lady brought up on the trash of ordinary fiction would relish or comprehend. Whoever turns uninterested from waverly is probably unable to see its excellencies or enjoy its peculiar charms. It is not a book for a modern schoolboy or schoolgirl, but for a man or woman in the highest maturity of mind with a poetic or imaginative nature, and with any leaning perhaps to aristocratic sentiments. It is a rebuke to vulgarity and ignorance, which the minute and exaggerated descriptions of low life in the pages of Dickens certainly are not. In February 1815, Guy Manoring was published, the second in the series of the Waverly novels, and it was received by the intelligent reading classes with even more a claw than Waverly, to which it is superior in many respects. It plunges at once in medias res, without the long and labored introductory chapters of its predecessor. It is interesting from first to last, and is an elaborate and well told tale, written conamore, when Scott was in the maturity of his powers. It is full of incident, and is delightful in humor. Its chief excellence is in the loftiness of its sentiments, being one of the healthiest and wholesomeest novels ever written, appealing to the heart as well as to the intellect, to be read over and over again like the vicar of Wakefield, without weariness. It may be too aristocratic in its tone to please everybody, but it portrays the sentiments of its age in reference to Squires and Scottish Lairds, who were more distinguished for uprightness and manly duties than for brains and culture. The fascination with which Scott always depicts the virtues of hospitality and trust in humanity makes a strong impression on the imagination. His heroes and heroines are not remarkable for genius, but shine in the higher glories of domestic affection and fidelity to trusts. Two characters in particular are original creations, Dominique Sampson and Meg Morills, whom no reader can forget, the one ludicrous for his simplicity, and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a symbol, but intensely human and capable of the strongest attachment for those she loved. The easy and transparent flow of the style of this novel, its beautiful simplicity, the wild magnificence of its sketches of scenery, the rapid and ever-brightening interest of the narrative, the unaffected kindness of feeling, the manly purity of thought, everywhere mingled with a gentle humor and homely sagacity, but above all the rich variety and skillful contrast of character and manners, at once fresh in fiction and stamped with the unforgivable seal of truth and nature, spoke to every heart and mind, and the few murmurs of pedantic criticism were lost in the voice of general delight, which never fails to welcome the invention that introduces to the sympathy of the imagination a new group of immortal realities. Scott received about two thousand pounds for this favorite romance, one entirely new in the realm of fiction, which enabled him to pay off his most pressing debts and indulge his taste for travel. He visited the field of Waterloo and became a social lion in both Paris and London. Prince of Wales sent him a magnificent snuff box set with diamonds and entertained him with admiring cordiality at Carleton House. For his authorship of Waverly was more than surmised, while his fame as a poet was second only to that of Byron. Then, in the spring of 1815, took place the first meeting of these two great bards and their successive interviews were graced with mutual compliments. Scott did not think that Byron's reading was extensive either in poetry or history, in which opinion the industrious Scottish bard was mistaken. But he did justice to Byron's transcendent genius and, with more charity than severity, mourned over his departure from virtue. After a series of brilliant banquets at the Houses of the Great, both of rank and fame, Scott returned to his native land to renew his varied and exhausting labors, having furnished his publishers with a volume of letters on the subjects which most interested him during his short tour. Everything he touched now brought him gold. Paul's letters to his kinfolk, as he called the volume concerning his tour, was well received, but not the enthusiasm which marked the publication of Guy Manoring. Indeed, it had no special claim to distinction. The antiquary followed in May of the next year, and though it lacked the romance of Waverly and the adventure of Guy Manoring, it had even a larger sale. Scott himself regarded it as superior to both, but an author is not always the best judge of his own productions and we do not accept his criticism. It probably cost him more labor, but it is an exhibition of his erudition rather than a revelation of his self or of nature. It is certainly very learned, but learning does not make a book popular, nor is a work of fiction the place for a display of learning. If the antiquary were published in these times, it would be pronounced pedantic. Readers are apt to skip names and learned illusions and scraps of Latin. As a story, I think it inferior to Guy Manoring, although it has great merits, a kind of simple unsought charm, and is a transcript of actual Scottish life. It had a great success. Scott says in a letter to his friend Terry. It is at press again, six thousand having been sold in six days. Before the novel was finished, the lawyer had already projected his tales of my landlord. Scott was now at the flood tide of his creative power, and his industry was as remarkable as his genius. There was but little doubt the public mind as to the paternity of the Waverly Nauticals, and whatever Scott wrote was sure to have a large sale, so that every publisher of note was eager to have a hand in bringing his productions before the public. In 1816 appeared the Edinburgh annual register containing Scott's sketch of the year 1814, which though very good, showed that the author was less happy in history than in fiction. The first series of Tales of My Landlord was published by Murray and not by Constable, who had bought out Scott's other's works, and the book was received with unbounded enthusiasm. Many critics place old mortality in the highest niche of merit and fame. Frere of the Quarterly Review, Hallam, Boswell Lamb, Lord Holland, all agree that it surpassed his other novels. Bishop Abeir said, there are only two men in the world, Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Lockhart regarded old mortality as the Marmian of Scott's novels, but the painting of the Coveninters gave offense to the more rigid of the Presbyterians. For myself, I have doubt as to the correctness of their criticisms. Old mortality, in contrast with the previous novels of Scott, has a place similar to the later productions of George Elliott as compared with her earlier ones. It is not so vivid a sketch of Scott's life as is given in Guy Manoring. Like the antiquary, it is bookish rather than natural. From a literary point of view, it is more artistic than Guy Manoring and more learned. The canvas is a broader one. Its characters are portrayed with great skill and power, but they lack the freshness which comes from actual contact with the people described and with whom Scott was familiar as a youth in the course of his wanderings. It is more historical than realistic. In short, old mortality is another creation of its author's brain rather than a painting of real life. But it is justly famous for it was the precursor of those brilliant historical romances from which so much is learned of great men already known to students. It was a new departure in literature. Before Scott arose, historical novels were comparatively unknown. He made romance instructive rather than merely amusing and added the charm of life to the dry annals of the past. Cervantes does not portray a single great character known in Spanish history in his Don Quixote, but he paints life as he has seen it. Solas Goldsmith, Solas George Eliot in Silas Marner, she presents life indeed in Ramallah. Not however as she had personally observed it, but as drawn from books, recreating the atmosphere of a long gone time by the power of imagination. The earlier works of Scott are drawn from memory and personal feeling rather than from knowledge he had gained by study. Of old mortality he writes to Lady Luisa Stewart, I am complete master of the whole history of these strange times, both of persecutors and persecuted, so I trust I have come decently off. The divisional grouping of these earlier novels by Scott himself is interesting. In the advertisements to the antiquary he says, the present work completes a series of fictitious narratives intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. Waverly embraced the age of our fathers, tis 60 years since, guy manoring that of our own youth and the antiquary refers to the last 10 years of the 18th century. The dedication of tales of my landlord describes them as tales illustrative of ancient Scottish manners and of the traditions of their, his countrymen's, respective districts. They were first series The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality, second series The Heart of Midlothian, third series The Bride of Lamermore and A Legend of Montrose, fourth series Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous. These all except the fourth series in 1832 appeared in the six years from 1814 to 1820 and besides these Rob Roy, Ivanhoe and The Monastery. End of section five. Section six of Beacon Lines of History volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Kay Hand. Sir Walter Scott part four. With the publication of Old Mortality in 1816 then Scott introduced the first of his historical novels, which had great fascination for students. Whoever painted the old Cameroonian with more felicity, whoever described the peculiarities of the Scottish Calvinist during the reign of the last of the stewards with more truthfulness. Their severity, their strict and judaical observance of the Sabbath, their hostility to popular amusements, their rigid and legal morality, their love of theological dogmas, their inflexible prejudices, their lofty aspirations. Where shall we find in literature a sterner fanatical Puritan than John Balfour of Burley, or a fiercer royalist than Graham of Claverhouse. As a love story, this novel is not remarkable. It is not in the description of passionate love that Scott anywhere excels. His heroines, with two or three exceptions, would be called rather tame by the modern reader, although they win respect for their domestic virtues and sterling elements of character. His favorite heroes are either Englishmen of Good Family or Scotchmen educated in England. Gallant, cultivated and reproachless, but without any striking originality or intellectual force. Rob Roy was published in the latter part of 1817 and was received by the public with the same unabated enthusiasm which marked the appearance of Guy Manning and the other romances. An edition of 10,000 was disposed of in two weeks and the subsequent sale amounted to 40,000 more. The scene of this story is laid in the Highlands of Scotland with an English hero and a Scottish heroine and in this fascinating work The Political History of the Times, 40 years earlier than the period of Waverly, is portrayed with great impartiality. It is a description of the first Jacobite rising against George I in the year 1715. In this novel one of the greatest of Scott's creations appears in the heroine Diana Vernon, rather wild and masculine but interesting for her courage and virtue. The character Bailey Jarvie is equally original and more amusing. The general effect of Rob Roy as well as of Waverly and old mortality was to make the Scottish Highlanders and Jacobites interesting to English readers of opposite views and feelings without arousing hostility to the reigning royal family. The Highlanders a hundred years ago were viewed by the English with sentiments nearly similar to those with which the Puritan settlers of New England looked upon the Indians at any rate as free booters robbers and murderers who were dangerous to civilization and the severities of the English government towards these lawless clans both as outlaws and as foes of the Hanoverian succession were generally condoned by public opinion. Scott succeeded in producing a better feeling among both the conquerors and the conquered. He modified general sentiment by his impartial and liberal views and allayed prejudices. The Highlanders thenceforth were regarded as a body of men with many interesting traits and capable of becoming good subjects of the crown while their own hatred and contempt of the lowland Saxon were softened by the many generous and romantic incidents of these tales. Two hitherto hostile races were drawn into neighborly sympathy. Travelers visited the beautiful Highland retreats and returned with enthusiastic impressions of the country. To no other man does Scotland owe so great a debt of gratitude as to Walter Scott not only for his poetry and novels but for showing the admirable traits of a barren country and a fierce population and contributing to bring them within the realm of civilization. A century or two ago the Highlands of Scotland were peopled by a race and a state of perpetual conflict with civilization, adverse to labor, gaining, except such of them as were enrolled in the English army, a precarious support by plunder, blackmailing, smuggling, and other illegal pursuits. Now they compose a body of hard working, intelligent, and law-abiding laborers, cultivating farms, raising cattle and sheep, and pursuing the various branches of industry which lead to independence, if not to wealth. The traveler among the Highlands feels as secure and is made as comfortable as in any part of the island, while revelations of their shrewd intelligence and unsuspected wit in the stories of Barry and Crockett show what a century of Calvinistic theology, as the chief mental stimulant, has done, has done in developing blossoms from that thistle-like stock. Scott had now all the fame and worldly prosperity which any literary man could attain to for his authorship of the novels, although unacknowledged, was more and more generally believed, and after 1821 not denied. He lived above the atmosphere of envy, honored by all classes of people, surrounded with admiring friends and visitors. He had an income of at least ten thousand pounds a year. Wherever he journeyed he was treated with the greatest distinction. In London he was cordially received as a distinguished guest in any circle he chose. The highest nobles paid homage to him. The king made him a baronet, the first purely literary man in England to receive that honor. He now became ambitious to increase his lands, and the hundred acres of farm at Abbotsford were enlarged by new purchases, picturesquely planted with trees and shrubberies, while the cottage grew to a mansion and the mansion to a castle, with its 1200 surrounding acres cultivated and made beautiful. Scott's correspondence with famous people was immense, besides his other labors as a farmer, lawyer, and author. Few persons of rank or fame visited Edinburgh without paying the respects to its most eminent citizen. His country house was invaded by tourists. He was on terms of intimacy with some of the proudest nobles of Scotland. His various works were the daily food not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. Station power, wealth, beauty, and genius strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship. And yet in the midst of this homage and increasing prosperity, one of the most fortunate of human beings, Scott's head was not turned. His habitual modesty preserved his moral health amid all sorts of temptation. He never lost his intellectual balance. He assumed no heirs of superiority. His manners were simple and unpretending to the last. He praised all literary productions except his own. His life in Edinburgh was plain, though hospitable and free, and he seemed to care for few luxuries aside from books of which life made a large collection. The furniture of his houses in Edinburgh and at Abbotsford was neither showy nor luxurious. He was extraordinarily fond of dogs and all domestic animals, who, sympathetic creatures as they are, unerringly sought him out and lavished affection upon him. When Scott lived in Castle Street, he was not regarded by Edinburgh society as particularly brilliant in conversation, since he never aspired to lead by learned disquisitions. He told stories while with great humor and pleasantry to amuse rather than to instruct. His talk was almost homely. The most notable thing about it was common sense. Lord Cockburn said of him that his sense was more wonderful than his genius. He did not blaze like Macaulay or Macintosh at the dinner table, nor absorb conversation like Coleridge and Sonny Smith. He disliked, says Lockhart, mere disquisitions in Edinburgh and prepared impromptu in London. A doctrinaire in society was to him an abomination. Hence, until his fame was established by the admiration of the world, Edinburgh professors did not see his greatness. To them he seemed commonplace, but not to such men as Hallam or Moore or Rogers or Crocker or Canning. Notwithstanding, Scott gave great dinners occasionally, and they appeared to have been a bore to him, as he very rarely went out to evening entertainments, although at public dinners his wit and sense made him a favorite chairman. He retired early at night and rose early in the morning, and his severest labors were before breakfast, his principal meal. He always dined at home on Sunday with a few intimate friends, and his dinner was substantial and plain. He drank very little wine and preferred a glass of whiskey toddy to champagne or port. He could not distinguish between Madeira and Sherry. He was neither an epicure nor a gourmand. After Scott had become world famous, his happiest hours were spent in enlarging and adorning his landed Abbotsford, and in erecting and embellishing his baronial castle. In this his gains were more than absorbed. He loved that castle more than any of his intellectual creations, and it was not completed until nearly all his novels were written. Without personal extravagance, he was lavish in the sums he spent on Abbotsford. Here he delighted to entertain his distinguished visitors of whom no one was more welcome than Washington Irving, whom he liked for his modesty and quiet humor and unpretending manners. Lockhart writes, it would hardly I believe be too much to affirm that Sir Walter Scott entertained under his roof in the course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most princely noblemen of his age ever did in the like space of time. One more unconscious, apparently, of his great powers has been rarely seen among literary men, especially in England and France, affording a striking contrast in this respect to Dryden, Pope, Voltaire, Byron, Bulwer, Macaulay, Carlyle, Hugo, Dumas, and even Tennyson. Great lawyers and great statesmen are rarely so egotistical and conceded as poets, novelists, artists, and preachers. Scott made no pretensions which were offensive or which could be controverted. His greatest aspiration seems to have been to be a respectable landed proprietor and to found a family. An English country gentleman was his beau-idial of happiness and contentment. Perhaps this was a weakness, but it was certainly a harmless and amiable one, not so offensive as intellectual pride. Scott indeed, while without vanity, had pride, but it was of a lofty kind, disdaining meanness and cowardice as worse even than transgressions which have their origin in unregulated passions. From the numerous expletives which abound in Scott's letters, such as are not now considered a good taste among gentlemen, I infer that like most gentlemen of his social standing in those times he was in the habit of using, when highly excited or irritated, what is called profane language. After he had once given vent to his feelings, however, he was amiable and forgiving enough for a Christian sage who never harbored malice or revenge. He had great respect for the military profession, probably because it was the great prop and defense of government and established institutions, for he was the most conservative of aristocrats. And yet his aristocratic turn of mind never conflicted with his humane disposition, never made him a snob. He abhorred all vulgarity. He admired genius and virtue in whatever garb they appealed. He was as kind to his servants and to poor and unfortunate people as he was to his equals in society, being eminently big-hearted. There's only fools who made great pretensions that he despised and treated with contempt. No doubt Scott was bored by the numerous visitors, whether invited or uninvited, who came from all parts of Great Britain, from America and even from Constantin until Europe to do homage to his genius or to gratify their curiosity. Sometimes as many as 30 guests sat down to his banqueting table at once. He entertained in baronial style but without ostentation or prodigality and on old-fashioned dishes. He did not like French cooking and his simple taste in the matters of beverage we have already noted. The people to whom he was most attentive were the representatives of ancient families, whether rich or poor. Scott was very kind to literary men in Miss Fortune and his chosen friends were authors of eminence, like Miss Edgeworth, Joanna Bailey, Thomas Moore, Crab, Salty, Wordsworth, Sir Humphrey Davy, Dr. Woliston the Chemist, Henry Mackenzie, etc. He was very intimate with the Duke of Buckley, Lord Montague and other noblemen. He was visited by dukes and princes as well as by ladies of franken fame. George IV sent him valuable presents and showed him every mark of high consideration. Cambridge and Oxford tendered to him honorary degrees. Wherever he traveled he was received with honor and distinction and flatteries, but he did not like flatteries and this was one reason why he did not openly acknowledge his authorship of his novels, until all doubt was removed by the masterly papers of John Leichester Adolphus in 1821. Scott's correspondence must have been enormous, for his postage bills amounted to 150 pounds per annum, besides the aid he received from fronks, which with his natural economy he made no screwball in liberally using. Perhaps his most confidential letters were, like Byron's, written to his publishers and printers, though many such were addressed to his son-in-law Lockhart and to his dearest friend William Erskine, but he had also some admirable women friends with whom he corresponded freely. Some of the choices of his recently published letters are to Lady Abercorn, who was an intimate and helpful friend, to Miss Anna Seward, a literary confidant of many years, to Lady Louisa Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Butte, and granddaughter of Mary Wortley Montague, one of the few who knew from the first of his waverly authorship, and to Mrs. John Hughes, an early and most affectionate friend whose grandson, Thomas Hughes, has made famous the commonplace name of Tom Brown in our own day. Scott's letters show the man, Frank, cordial, manly, tender, generous, finding humor in difficulties, pleasure in toil, satisfaction in success, a proud courage and adversity, and the purest happiness in the affection of his friends. How Scott found time for so much work is a mystery, writing nearly three novels a year, besides other literary labors, attending to his duties in the courts, overlooking the building of Abbotsford and the cultivation of his 1200 acres, and entertaining more guests than Voltaire did at Fearnay. He was too much absorbed by his legal duties and his literary labors to be much of a traveler, yet he was a frequent visitor to London, saw something of Paris, journeyed through Ireland, was familiar with the Lake region in England, and penetrated to every interesting place in Scotland. He did not like London and took little pleasure in the ovations he received from people of rank and fashion. As a literary lion at the tables of the great, he disappointed many of his admirers since he made no effort to shine. It was only in his modest then in Castle Street, or in rambles in the country or at Abbotsford, that he felt himself at home and appeared to the most advantage. It would be pleasant to leave this generally great man in the full flesh of health, creative power, and were delight and outward prosperity, but that were to leave unwritten the finest and noblest part of his life. It is to the misfortunes which came upon him that we owe both a large part of his splendid achievements in literature and our knowledge of the most admirable characteristics of the man. My running records of his novels last mentioned to the monastery issued in 1820 in the same year with perhaps the prime favorites of all his works Ivanhoe, the romantic tale of England in the crusading age of rich and the lionhearted. In 1821 he put forth the fascinating Elizabethan tale of Kenilworth. In 1822 came the pirate, the tale of sea and shore that inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write the pilot and his other sea stories. And the fortunes of Nigel. In 1823, Peverell of the Peak and Quentin Derward, both among his best. In 1824, St. Ronan's Well and Red Gauntlet. And in 1825, two more tales of the crusaders, the betrothed and the talisman, the latter probably sharing with Ivanhoe the greatest popularity. In the winter of 1825 to 1826 a widespread area of commercial distress resulted in the downfall of many firms. And among others to succumb were Hurst and Robinson publishers whose failure precipitated that of Constable and Company, Scott's publishers, and of the Ballantines, his printers with whom he was a secret partner who were largely indebted to the constables and so to the creditors of that house. The crash came January 16, 1826, and Scott found himself in debt to the amount of 147,000 pounds or nearly 735 dollars. Such a vast misfortune, overwhelming a man at the age of 55 might well crush out all life and hope and send him into hopeless bankruptcy with a poor consolation that though legally responsible, he was not morally bound to pay other people's debts. But Scott's own sanguine carelessness had been partly to blame for the Ballantine failure, and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowed to it in grief, but not in shame, and while not pretending to any stoicism, instantly resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the repayment of the creditors. The solid subsets of manliness, honor, and cheerful courage in his character, the genuine piety with which he accepted the dispensation and wrote, Blessed be the name of the Lord, the unexampled steadiness with which he comforted his wife and daughters while girding himself to the daily work of intellectual production amidst his many distresses, the sweetness of heart with which he acknowledged the sympathy and declined the otters of help that poured in upon him from every side, one poor music teacher offering his little savings of 600 pounds, and an anonymous admirer urging upon him a loan of 30,000 pounds, all this is the beauty that lighted up the black cloud of Scott's adversary. His efforts were finally successful, although at the cost of his bodily existence. Lockhart says he paid the penalty of health and life, but he saved his honor and his self-respect. The glory dies not, and the grief is passed. Woodstock, then about half done, was completed in 69 days and issued in March 1826, bringing in about $41,000 to his creditors. His Life of Napoleon, published in June 1827, produced $90,000. In 1827 also, Scott issued Chronicles of the Cannon Gate, first series, several minor stories, and the first series of Tales of the Grandfather in 1828, the Fair Maid of Perth, second series of the Chronicles, and More Tales of the Grandfather. In 1829, Anne of Geierstein, More Tales of the Grandfather, the first volume of A History of Scotland, and a collective edition of the Waverly Novels in 48 volumes with new introductions, notes and careful corrections and improvements of the text throughout. In itself, an immense labor. In 1830, More Tales of the Grandfather, a three-volume history of France and volume two of the History of Scotland. In 1831, and finally, a fourth series of Tales of my Landlord, including Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous. This completes the List of Scott's Greater Productions, but it should be remembered that during all the years of his creative work, he was incessantly doing critical and historical writing, producing numerous reviews, essays, ballads, introductions to diverse works, biographical sketches for Ballantine's Novelists Library, the works of 15 celebrated English writers of fiction, Fielding, Smollett, etc., letters and pamphlets, dramas, even a few religious discourses, and his very extensive and interesting private correspondence. He was such a marvel of productive brain power as has seldom, if ever, been known to humanity. The illness and death of Scott's beloved wife, but for short months after his commercial disaster, was a profound grief to him, and under the exhausting pressure of incessant work during the five years following, his bodily power began to fail. So then in October, 1831, after a paralytic shock, he stopped all literary labor and went to Italy for recuperation. The following June, he returned to London, weaker in both mind and body, was taken to Abbotsford in July, and on the 21st, September, 1832, with his children about him, the kindly, manly, brave, and tender spirit passed away. At the time of his death, Sir Walter had reduced his great indebtedness to $270,000, a life insurance of $110,000, $10,000 in the hands of his trustees, and $150,000 advanced by Robert Cadel, an Edinburgh bookseller, on the copyrights of Scott's works, cleared away the last remnant of the death, and within 20 years, Cadel had reimbursed himself and made a handsome profit for his own accounts and that of the family of Sir Walter. The moneyed details of Scott's literary life have been made a part of this brief sketch, both because his phenomenal fecundity and popularity offer a convenient measure of his power, and because the fiscal misfortune of his later life revealed a simple grandeur of character even more admirable than his mental force. Scott ruined, exclaimed the Earl of Dudley when he heard of the trouble, the author of Waverly ruined, Good God, that every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a six pence, and he will rise tomorrow morning richer than Rothschild. But the sturdy Scotchman accepted no dull, he set himself to work out his own salvation. William Howitz, in his home and haunts of eminent British poets, estimated that Scott's works had produced as profits to the author or his trustees at least five hundred thousand pounds, nearly two million five hundred thousand dollars. This in 1847, over 50 years ago, and only 45 years from Scott's first original publication. As a result of the past 50 years, and remembering that this gives but the profits, conceive the immense sums that have been freely paid by the intelligent British public for their enjoyment of this great author's writings. Then besides all this, recall the myriad volumes of Scott sold in America, which paid no profit to the author or his heirs. There is no parallel. Voltaire's renowned and monetary rewards as the master writer of the 18th century, offered the only case in modern times that approaches Scott's success. Yet Voltaire's vast wealth was largely a result of successful speculation. As a purely popular author, whose wholesome, fancy, great heart, and tireless industry has delighted millions of his fellow men, Scott stands alone, while as a man he holds the affection and respect of the world. Even though it be that the fascia of his workmanship passeth away, wonder not, lament not. With myth radotes, he could say, I have lived. What great man can say more? End of Section 6. Section 7 of Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Lord Byron, Part 1. 1788-1824. Poetic genius. It is extremely difficult to depict Lord Byron and even presumptuous to attempt it. This is not only because he is a familiar subject, the triumphs and sorrows of whose career have been often portrayed, but also because he presents so many contradictions in his life and character. Lofty yet degraded, earnest yet frivolous, an impersonation of noble deeds and sentiments, and also of almost every frailty which Christianity and humanity alike condemn. No great man has been more extravagantly admired, and none more bitterly assailed, but generally he is regarded as a fallen star, a man with splendid gifts which he wasted, for whom pity is the predominant sentiment in broad and generous minds. With all his faults, the English-speaking people are proud of him as one of the greatest lights in our literature, and in view of the brilliancy of his literary career, his own nation in particular does not like to have his defects and vices dwelt upon. It blushes and condones. It would feign blot out his life and much of his poetry if, without them, it could preserve the best and grandest of his writings, that ill-disguised autobiography which goes by the name of Child Harold's Pilgrimage, in which he soars to loftier flights than any English poet from Milton to his own time. Like Shakespeare, like Dryden, like Pope, like Burns, he was born a poet, while most of the other poets, however eminent and excellent, were simply made, made by study and labor on a basis of talent, rather than exalted by native genius as he was, speaking out what he could not help, and reveling in the richness of unconscious gifts, whether for good or evil. Byron was a man with qualities so generous, yet so wild, that Lamarntine was in doubt whether to call him an Angel or Devil. But whether Angel or Devil, his life is the saddest and most interesting among all the men of letters in the nineteenth century. Of course, most of our material comes from his life and letters, as edited by his friend and brother poet Thomas Moore. This biographer, I think, has been unwisely candid in the delineation of Byron's character, making revelations that would better have remained in doubt, and on which friendship at least should have prompted him to a discreet silence. Lord Byron was descended from the Byrons of Normandy who accompanied William the Conqueror in his Invasion of England, of which illustrious lineage the poet was prouder than of his poetry. In the reign of Henry VIII, on the Disillusion of the Monasteries, a Byron came into possession of the old medieval Abbey of Newstead. In the reign of James I, Sir John Byron was made a Knight of the Order of the Bath. In 1784, the father of the poet, a dissipated Captain of the Guards, being in embarrassed circumstances, married a rich Scotch heiress of the name of Gordon. Hanson in reckless, mad Jack Byron speedily spent his wife's fortune, and when he died, his widow, being reduced to a pittance of one hundred fifty pounds a year, retired to Scotland to live with her infant son who had been born in London. She was plain Mrs. Byron, widow of a younger son, with but little expectation of future rank. She was a woman of caprices and its centricities, and not at all fitted to superintend the education of her wayward boy. Hence, the childhood and youth of Byron were sad and unfortunate. His temper was violent and passionate. A malformation of his foot made him peculiarly sensitive, and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and harsh by turns, destroyed maternal authority. At five years of age he was sent to a day school in Aberdeen where he made butt-slim attainments. Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have been affectionate and generous and perfectly fearless. A fit of sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was sent to a summer resort among the Highlands. His early impressions were therefore favorable to the development of the imagination, coming as they did from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes, near the sources of the D. At the age of eight he wrote verses and fell in love, like Dante at the age of nine. On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron in 1784 this unpromising youth became the heir apparent to the barony. Nor did he have to wait long for soon after his grand-uncle died and the young Byron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, became a ward of chancery and the Earl of Carlisle, one of the richest and most powerful noblemen of the realm, a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer, was appointed his guardian. This cold, formal and politic noblemen took but little interest in his ward, leaving him to the mismanagement of his mother, who, with her boy at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead the seat of his ancestors. The government, meanwhile, for some reason which is not explained, having conferred on her a pension of three hundred pounds a year. One of the first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead was to entrust her son to the care of a quack in nodding him in order to cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful the boy was removed to London with the double purpose of affecting a cure under an eminent surgeon and of educating him according to his rank. For his education thus far had been sadly neglected, although it would appear that he was an omnivorous reader in a disultery kind of way. The lameness was never cured and through life was a subject of bitter sensitiveness on his part. Dr. Glenny of Dolwich, to whose instruction he was now confided, found him hard to manage because of his own undisciplined nature and the perpetual interference of his mother. His progress was so slow in Latin and Greek that at the end of two years, in 1801, he was removed to Harrow, one of the great public schools of England of which Dr. Druey was headmaster. For a year or two, owing to that constitutional shyness which is so often mistaken for pride, young Byron made but few friendships, although he had for school fellows many who were afterwards distinguished, including Sir Robert Tepeel. Before he left this school for Cambridge, however, he had made many friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar in the ordinary sense, although in his schoolboy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years and read a great many books. He read in bed, read when no one else read, read while eating, read all sorts of books, and was capable of great sudden exertions but not of continuous drudgeries which he always abhorred. In the year 1803, when a youth of 15, he formed a strong attachment for a Miss Choworth, two years his senior, who looking upon him as a mere schoolboy treated him cavalierly and made some sliding allusion to that lame boy. This treatment both saddened and embittered him. When he left school for college he had the reputation of being an idle and a willful boy with a very imperfect knowledge of Latin and Greek. Young Byron entered Trinity College in 1805, poorly prepared, and was never distinguished there for those attainments which win the respect of tutors and professors. He wasted his time and gave himself up to pleasures, writing, boating, bathing, and social hilarities, yet reading more than anybody imagined and writing poetry for which he had an extraordinary facility, yet not contending for college prizes. His intimate friends were few, but to his chosen circle he was faithful and affectionate, knowing at this time would have predicted his future eminence. A more unpromising youth did not exist within the walls of his college. He had a most unfortunate temper, which I would have made him unhappy under any circumstances in which he could be placed. This temper which he inherited from his mother, passionate, fitful, defiant, restless, wayward, melancholy, inclined him naturally to solitude and often isolated him even from his friends and companions. He brooded upon supposed wrongs and created in his soul strong likes and dislikes. What is worse he took no pains to control this temperament, and at last it mastered him, drove him into every kind of folly and rashness and made him appear worse than he really was. This inborn tendency to moodiness, pride, and recklessness should be considered in our estimate of Byron and should modify any harshness of judgment in regard to his character, which in some other respects was interesting and noble. He was not at all envious but frank, warmhearted, and true to those he loved, who were, however, very few. If he had learned self-control and had not been spoiled by his mother, his career might have been far different from what it was and would have sustained the admiration which his brilliant genius called out from both high and low. As it was, Byron left college with dangerous habits, with no reputation for scholarship, with but few friends, and an uncertain future. His bright and witty bursts of poetry, wonderful as the youthful effusions of Dryden and Pope, had maim him known to a small circle, but had not brought fame, for which his soul passionately thirsted from first to last. For a nobleman he was poor and embarrassed and his youthful extravagances had tied up his inherited estate. He was cast upon the world like a ship without a rudder and without ballast. He was aspiring indeed but without a plan, tired out and disgusted before he was twenty-one, having prematurely exhausted the ordinary pleasures of life and being already inclined to that downward path which leadeth to destruction. This was especially marked in his relations with women whom he generally flattered, despised, and deserted as the amusements of an idle hour, and yet whose society he could not do without in the ardor of his impulsive and ungoverned affections. In that early career of unbridled desire for excitement and pleasure, nowhere do we see a sense of duty, a respect for the opinions of the good, a reverence for religious institutions, or a self-restraint of any kind. But these defects were partly covered over by his many virtues and his exalted rank. Thus far Byron was comparatively unknown. Not yet was he even a favorite in society, beautiful and brilliant as he was, for he had few friends, not much money, and many enemies whom he made by his scorn and defiance. A born aristocrat without having penetrated those exclusive circles to which his birth entitled him. He was always quarreling with his mother and was treated with indifference by his guardian. He was shunned by those who adhered to the conventionalities of life and was pursued by bailiffs and creditors, since his ancestral estates, small for his rank, were encumbered and mortgaged, and Newstead Abbey itself was in a state of dilapidation. Within a year from leaving Cambridge in 1807 Byron published a volume of his juvenile poems, and although they were remarkable for a young man of twenty, they were not of sufficient merit to attract the attention of the public. At this time he was obstemious in eating, wishing to reduce a tendency to corpulence. He could practice self-denial if it were to make his person attractive, especially to ladies. Nor was he idle, his reading, if desultery was vast, and from the list of books which his biographer has noted, it would seem that Macaulay never read more than Byron in a given time. All the noted historians of England, Germany, Rome and Greece with innumerable biographies, miscellanies, and even divinity, the raw material which he afterwards worked into his poems. How he found time to devour so many solid books is to me a mystery. These were not merely European works, but Asiatic also. He was not a critical scholar, but he certainly had a passing familiarity with almost everything in literature worth knowing, which he subsequently utilized as seen in his Child Harold's Pilgrimage. A college reputation was nothing to him any more than it was to Swift, Goldsmith, Churchill, Gibbon, and many other famous men of letters who left on record their dislike of the English system of education. Among these were even such men as Addison, Calper, Milton and Dryden, who were scholars, but who alike felt that college honors and native genius did not go hand in hand, which might almost be regarded as the rule, but for a few remarkable exceptions like Sir Robert Peale and Gladstone. And yet it would be unwise to decry college honors since not one in a hundred of those who obtain them by their industry, aptness and force of will can lay claim to what is called genius, the rarest of all gifts. Moreover, how impossible it is for college professors to detect in-students with whom they are imperfectly acquainted, extraordinary faculties, more especially if the young men are apparently idle and negligent and contemptuous of the college curriculum. It was a bitter pill for Lord Byron when his juvenile poems called hours of idleness were so severely attacked by the Edinburgh Review. They might have escaped the searching eyes of the critics had the author not been a Lord. At that time the great reviews had just been started and it was the special object of the Edinburgh Review to handle authors roughly, to condemn and not praise. Criticism was not then a science as it became fifty years later in the hands of St. Boeuf who endeavored to review every production fairly unjustly. There was nothing like justice entering into the head of Jeffrey or Sidney Smith or Broham or later on of Macaulay whose articles were often written for political party effect. Critics from the time of Swift down to the middle of the century aimed to demolish enemies and to make party capital, hence as a general thing their articles were not criticisms at all but attacks. And as even in Achilles was vulnerable in his heel so most intellectual giants have some weak point for the shifts of malice to penetrate. Yet it is the weakness of great men that people like to quote. If Byron was humiliated enraged and embittered by the severity of the Edinburgh Review he was not crushed. He rallied, collected his unsuspected strength and shattered his opponents by one of the wittiest most brilliant and most unscrupulous satriors in our literature which he called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. At the height of his fame he regretted and suppressed this youthful production of malice and bitterness. Yet it was the beginning of his great career both as to a consciousness of his own powers and in attracting the public attention. It was doubtless unwise since he attacked many who were afterwards his friends and since he sewed the seeds of hatred among those who might otherwise have been his admirers or apologists. He had to learn the truth that with what measure you meet it shall be measured to you again. The creators of public opinion in reference to Byron have not been women of fashion or men of the world but literary lions themselves like Thackeray who detested him and the whole school of Pharisaic ecclesiastical dignitaries who abhorred in him sentiments which they condoned in Fielding, in Burns, in Rousseau and in Voltaire. Before his bitter satire was published however Byron took his seat in the House of Lords not knowing any peer sufficiently to be introduced by him. His guardian Lord Carlyle treated him very shabbily refusing to furnish to the Lord Chancellor some important information of a technical kind which refusal delayed the ceremony for several weeks until the necessary papers could be procured from Cornwall relating to the marriage of one of his ancestors. Unfriended and alone Byron sat on the scarlet benches of the House of Lords till he was formally admitted as a peer. But when the Lord Chancellor let the wool sack to congratulate him and with a smiling face extended his hand the embittered young peer bowed coldly and stiffly and simply held out two or three of his fingers an act of impudence for which there was no excuse. It is difficult to understand why Lord Byron should have had so few friends or even acquaintances at that time among people of his rank. At twenty-one he was a lonely and solitary man mortified by the attack of the Edinburgh Review exasperated by injustice morose even to misanthropy and decidedly skeptical in his religious opinions. Newstead Abbey was a burden to him since he could not keep it up. He owed ten thousand pounds. He had no domestic ties except to a mother with whom he could not live. His poetry had not brought him fame for which of all things he most ardently thirsted. His love affairs were unfortunate and tinged his soul with sadness and melancholy. Nor had fashion as yet marked him for her own. He craved excitement and society to him was dull and conventional. It is not surprising that under these circumstances Byron made up his mind to travel. He did not much care with her, provided he had new experiences. The grand tour which educated young men of leisure and fortune took in that day had no charm for him since he wished to avoid rather than to seek society in those cities which the English frequented. He did not care to see the literary lines of France or Germany or Italy. For though a nobleman he was too young and unimportant to be much noticed and he was too shy and too proud to make advances which might be rebuffed, wounding his amour pro-pay. He set out on his pilgrimage the latter part of June 1809 in a ship bound for Lisbon with a small suite of servants. Going to a land where nature was most enchanting he was sufficiently enthusiastic over the hills and veils and villages of Portugal. As for comfort he expected little and found less, but to this he was indifferent so long as he could swim in the taegus and ride on a mule and procure eggs and wine. He was delighted with Cadiz to him a santera with its beautiful but uneducated women where the wives of peasants were on a par with the wives of dukes in cultivation and where the minds of both had but one idea that of intrigue. He hastily traveled through Spain on horseback in August reaching Gibraltar from which he embarked for Malta and the East. It was Greece and Turkey that Byron most wished to see and know and favored by introductions he was cordially received by governors and pashas. At Athens and other classical spots he lingered enchanted yet suppressing his enthusiasm in the contempt he had for the affected raptures of ordinary travelers. It was not the country alone with its classical associations which interested him but also its maidens with their dark hair and eyes whom he idealized almost into goddesses. Everything he saw was picturesque, unique and fascinating. The days and weeks flew rapidly away in dreamy enchantment. After nearly three months at Athens, Byron embarked for Smyrna and explored the ruins of the old Ionian cities then proceeding to Constantinople with a view of visiting Persia and the Farther East. In a letter to Mr. Henry Drury he says, I have left my home and seen part of Africa and Asia and a tolerable portion of Europe. I have been with generals and admirals, princes and pashas, governors and ungovernables. Albania indeed I have seen more than any Englishman except Mr. Leek a country rarely visited from the savage character of the natives but abounding more natural beauties than the classical regions of Greece. A glimpse of Byron's inner life at this time is caught in the following extract from a letter to another friend. I have now been nearly a year abroad and hope you will find me an altered personage. I do not mean embody but in manners for I begin to find out that nothing but virtue will do in this damned world. I am tolerably sick of vice which I have tried in its agreeable varieties and mean on my return to cut all my disillusioned acquaintance leave off wine and carnal company and betake myself to politics and decorum. One thing we notice in most of the familiar letters of Byron that he makes frequent use of a vulgar expletive but when I remember that the Prince of Wales the Lord Chancellor the judges the lawyers the ministers of the crown and many other distinguished people were accustomed to use the same expression I would faint hope that it was not meant for profanity but was a sort of fashionable slang intended only to be emphatic. Fifty years have seen a great improvement in the use of language and the vulgarism which then appeared to be of slight importance is now regarded almost universally with gentlemen to be at least in very bad taste. How far Byron transgressed beyond the frequent use of this expletive does not appear either in his letter or in his biography yet from his irreverent nature and the society with which he was associated it is more than probable that in him profanity was added to the other vices of his times. Especially did he indulge in drinking to excess in all convivial gatherings it was seldom that gentlemen sat down to a banquet without each dispatching two or three bottles of wine in the course of an evening no wonder that gout was the pervading disease among county squires and even among authors and statesmen. Morality was not one of the features of English society 100 years ago except as it consisted in a scrupulous regard for domesticity truth and honor and abhorrence of meanness and hypocrisy. It would be difficult to point out any defects and excesses of which Byron was guilty at this period beyond that were common to the other fashionable young men of rank and leisure except a spirit of religious skepticism and impiety and a wanton and inexcusable recklessness in regard to women which made him a slave to his passions. The first alienated him so far as he was known from the higher respectable classes who generally were punctilious in the outward observances of religion and the second made him unhoored by the virtuous middle class who never condoned his transgressions in this respect. But at this time his character was not generally known. It was not until he was seated on the pinnacle of fame that public curiosity penetrated the scandals of his private life. He was known only as a young nobleman in quest of the excitement of foreign travel and his letters of introduction procured him all the society he craved. Not yet had he expressed bitterness and wrath against the country which gave him birth. He simply found England dull and craved adventures in foreign lands as unlike England and he could find. The East stimulated his imagination and revived his classical associations. He saw the Orient only as an enthusiastic poet would see it and as Lamartine saw Jerusalem. But Byron was more curious about pagan cities of antiquity than concerning the places consecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. He cared more to swim across the helispont with Leander than to wander over the sacred hills of Judea to idealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins of Greece. Then confers with the monks of Palestine in their gloomy retreats. The result of Byron's travels was seen in the first two cantos of child Harold showing alike the fertility of his mind and the aspirations of a lofty genius. These were published in 1812 soon after his return to England at the age of 24. They took England by storm, creating both surprise and admiration. Public curiosity and enthusiasm for the young poet who had mounted up to the front ranks of literature at a single leap was unbounded and universal. As he himself wrote I awoke one morning and found myself famous. Young Byron was now sought, courted and adored especially by ladies of the highest rank. Everybody was desirous to catch even a glimpse of the greatest poet that had appeared since Pope and Dryden. Any palace or drawing room he desired to enter was open to him. He was surfited with roses and praises and incense. He alone took precedence over Scott and Coleridge and Moore and Campbell. For a time his preeminence in literature was generally conceded. He was the foremost man of letters of his day and the greatest popular idol. His rank added to his a claw since not many noblemen were distinguished for genius or literary excellence. His singular beauty of face and person despite his slight lameness attracted the admiring gaze of women. What Abelard was in the schools of philosophy Byron was in the drawing rooms of London. People forgot his antecedents so far as they were known in the intoxication of the universal admiration and unbounded worship of genius. No poet in English history was ever seated on a prouder throne and no heathen deity was ever more indifferent than he to the incense of idolaters. End of section seven. Section eight of Beacon Lines of History volume 13 Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Lord Byron part two. Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of the merits of the poem with which the fame of Byron will be forever identified. Its great merits are universally conceded and while it has defects great inequalities in both style and matter some stands as supernal in beauty and others only mediocre. On the whole the poem is extraordinary. Byron adopted the Spensarian measure perhaps the most difficult of all measures hard even to read aloud in which blank verse seems to blend with rhyme. It might be either to the ear though to the eye it is elaborate rhyme such as would severely task a made poet but which this born poet seems to have thrown off without labor. The leading peculiarity of the poem is description of men and places of the sea the mountain and the river of nature in her loveliness and mysteries of cities and battlefields consecrated by the heroism of brave and gifted men in Greece in Rome in Medieval Europe with swift passing glances at salient points in history showing extensive reading and deep meditation. As to the spirit of child Herald it is not satirical it is more pensive than bitter and reveals the loneliness and sorrows of an unsatisfied soul the unrest of a pilgrim in search for something new it seeks to penetrate the secrets of struggling humanity at war often with those certitudes which are the consolation of our inner life it everywhere recognizes the soul as that which gives greatest dignity to man it invokes love as the noblest joy of life the poem is one of the most ideal of human productions soaring beyond what is material and transient it is not religious not reverential not Christian like the divine comedy and the paradise lost and yet it is lofty aspiring exalting in what is greatest indeed or song destined to immortality of fame and admiration it is a confession indirectly of the follies and shortcomings of the author and of their retribution but complains not of the nemesis that avenges everything it is sensitive of wrongs and injustices and misrepresentations but does not hurl anathemas speaking in sorrow rather than in anger except in regard to hypocrisies and shams and lies when its scorn is intense and terrible the whole poem is brilliant and original but does not flash like fire in a dark night it was written with the heart's blood and is as earnest as it is penetrating it does not ascend to the higher mysteries forever veiled from mortal eye nor descend to the deepest depths of hatred and despair but confines itself to those passions which have marked gifted mortals and those questionings in which all thoughtful minds have ever delighted it does not make revelations like Hamlet or Macbeth it does not explore secrets hidden forever from ordinary minds like Faust but it muses and meditates on what fate and time have brought to pass such events as have been revealed in history it invokes the neglected but impressive monuments of antiquity to tell the tales of glory and of shame in moral wisdom it is vastly inferior to Shakespeare and it is not rich in those wise and striking lines which pass into the proverbs of the world but it has the glow of a poetic soul longing for fame craving love and not unmindful of immortality its most beautiful stanzas are full of tenderness and sadness for lost or unrequited affections of reproachless sorrow for broken friendships in which the soul would fame have lived but for inconsistencies and contradictions which made true and permanent love impossible the poem paints a paradise lost rather than a paradise regained I wonder at its popularity for it seems to me too deep and learned for popular appreciation except in those stanzas where pathos or enthusiasm expressed in matchless language appealed to the heart and soul of all modern poets Byron is the most human and outspoken daring to say what many would fear or blush to meditate upon he fearlessly reveals the infirmities and audacities of a double and mysterious nature made up of dust and deity now groveling in the mire then born aloft to the skies the football of the eternal powers of good and evil enslaved and yet to be emancipated as we may hope in the last and final struggle when the soul is rescued by omnipotence I have alluded to the triumphs of Byron on the publication of Child Harold but his joys were more than balanced by his sorrows his mother died suddenly without seeing him his dearest friend Matthews was drowned he was hampered by creditors he made no mark in the house of lords and was sick of what he called parliamentary mummaries his habits became more and more dissipated among the boon companions who courted his society his reputation after a while began to wane for people became ashamed of their enthusiasm some critics disparaged his poetry and conventional circles were shocked by his morals three years of London life told on his constitution and he was completely disenchanted he sought retirement and solitude for not even the most brilliant society satisfied him he wearied of such a woman and admirer as Madame Distal he went to Holland House that resorts of all the eminent ones of the time as seldom as he could he buried himself with a few intimate friends chiefly poets among whom were more and Rogers he had saw and liked Sir Walter Scott but did not push his acquaintance to intimacy the larger part of his letters were written to Murray the publisher who treated him generously but Byron gave away his literary gains to personal friends in need he seemed to score on copyrights for support he would write only for fame at the age of 27 in January 1815 Byron married Miss Milbank a lady whom he did not love but to whom he was attracted by her supposed wealth which would patch up his own fortunes he had great respect for this lady and some friendship but with all her virtues and attainments she was cold conventional and exacting a mystery shrouds this unfortunate affair which has never been fully revealed the upshot was that to Byron's inexpressible humiliation in less than a year she left him never to return no reasons were given it was enough that both parties were unhappy and had cause to be and both kept silence but the voice of rumor and scandal was not silent all the failings of Byron were now exaggerated and dwelt upon by those who envied him and by those who hated him for his enemies were more numerous than his friends those whom he had snubbed or ridiculed or insulted now openly turned against him the conventional public had a rare subject for their abuse or indignation proper people religious people and commonplace people joined in the cry against a man with whom a virtuous woman could not live indeed no woman could have lived happily with Byron and very few were the women with whom he could have lived happily by reason of that irritability and unrest which is so common with genius the habits of abstraction and contemplation which absorbed much of his time at home were not easily understood by an ordinary woman to whom social life is necessary Byron lived much in his library which was his solitary luxury in the revelry of the imagination his heart became cold to follow poetry says pope one must leave father and mother and cleave to it alone as Dante and Petrarch and Milton did not even Byron's intense craving for affection could be satisfied when he was dwelling on the ideals which his imagination created and which scarcely friendship could satisfy even so good as man as Carlisle lived among his books rather than in the society of his wife whom he really loved and whose virtues and attainments he appreciated and admired an affectionate woman runs a great risk in marrying and absorbed and preoccupied man of genius even if his character be reproachless unfortunately the character Byron was anything but reproachless and no one knew this better than his wife which knowledge doubtless alienated what little affection she had for him he seems to have sought low company even after his marriage and Lady Byron has intimated that she did not think him altogether sane living with him as his wife was insupportable but though she separated from him she did not seek a divorce Byron would not have married at all if he had consulted his happiness and still more his fame in reviewing the great names of philosophy and science we shall find that those who have most distinguished themselves have virtually admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy Newton, Gisendi, Galileo, Descartes Bale, Locke, Leibniz, Boyle Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay and a host of others the scandal which Byron's separation from his wife created in his known and open profligacy at last shut him out from the society of which he had been so bright an ornament it is a peculiarity of the English people which redounds to their honor to exclude from public approbation any man however gifted or famous who has outraged the moral sense by open and ill disguised violation of the laws of morality the cases of Dilke and Parnell in our own day are illustrations known to all what in France or Italy is condoned is never pardoned or forgotten in England not even a Voltaire, a Rousseau or a Mirabeau had they lived in England could have been accepted by English society much less a man who scorned and ridiculed it even Byron for a few years the pet, the idol and the glory of the country was not too high to fall to quote one of his own stanzas he who ascends to mountain tops shall find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow he who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below though high above the sun of glory glow and far beneath the earth and ocean spread round him are icy rocks and loudly blow contending tempests on his naked head embarrassed in his circumstances filled with the disgust, mortification and shame excluded from the proudest circles Byron now resolved to leave England forever and bury himself in such foreign lands as were most congenial to his tastes and habits but for his immorality he might still have shined at an exalted height for he had not yet written anything which shocked the practical English mind the worst he had written was bitter satire yet not more bitter than that of swift or pope no defiance, no blasphemous sentiments or what seemed too many to be such had yet escaped him his corsair and his bride of Abados appeared soon after the child herald and added to his fame by their exquisite melody of rhyme and sentimental admiration for Oriental life though even these were tinged with that abandon which afterwards made his later poems a scandal and reproach the disappointment of youthful passion and the lassitude and remorse of premature excess the lone friendlessness of his life and I may add the reproaches of society induced him to fly from the scene of his brilliant successes filled with blended sentiments of scorn hatred defiance and despair in the spring of 1816 at the age of 28 Byron left England forever a voluntary exile on the face of the earth saddened embittered and disappointed it was to Italy that he turned his steps passing through Brussels and Flanders lingering on the Rhine enamored with its ruined castles still more with nature and making a long stay in Switzerland here he visited the castle of Ceylon and all the spots made memorable by the abodes of Rousseau, Gibbon and Madame de Stal and all the most interesting scenery of the Bernese Alps Lake Le Mans, Interlochen, Thune, the Jungfrau the glaciers, Barrens, Chamouni, Bern and on to Geneva where he made the acquaintance of Shelley and his wife the Shelleys he found most congenial and stayed with them some time while in the neighborhood of Geneva he produced the third canto of Child Herald the prisoner of Ceylon a dream and other things in October he passed on to Milan, Verona and Venice and in this latter city he took up his residence oh that we could blot out Byron's life in Venice made above love adventures and dissipation and utter abandonment to those pleasures that appealed to his lower nature as if he were possessed by a demon utterly reckless of his health his character and his fame Venice was then the most immoral city in Italy given over to idleness and pleasure it was here that Byron's contempt for woman became fixed seeing only her weaknesses and follies and it was this contempt for woman which intensified the abhorrence in which his character was generally held in the most respectable circles in England even in distant Venice his baleful light was not under a bushel and the scandals of his life extended far and wide especially that in reference to Margarita Cogni and a literate Viraggio who could neither read nor write and whom he was finally compelled to discard on account of the violence of her temper after living with her in the most open manner and yet in all this degradation he was not idle how could so prolific a writer be Byron did not ordinarily rise till two o'clock in the afternoon and spent the interval between his breakfast and dinner in riding on the Lido one of those long narrow islands which lie between the Adriatic and the Lagoon in the midst of which a Venice is built on the islets arising from its shallow waters yet he found time to be in his Don Juan besides writing The Lament of Tasso The Tragedy of Manfred and an Arminian Grammar all which appeared in 1817 in 1818 Beppo and in 1819 Mazzepa he also made a flying trip to Florence and Rome and some of the finest stanzas of child herald are descriptions of the classic ruins and the masterpieces of Grecian and medieval art the beauties and the associations of Italy's great cities I stood in Venice on the bridge of size a palace and a prison on each hand I saw from out the way of her structure's rise as from the stroke of the enchanter's wand a thousand years their cloudy wings expand around me and a dying glorious smiles or the far times when many a subject land looked to the winged lion's marble piles where Venice sat in state thrown on her hundred aisles Byron's correspondence was small being chiefly confined to his publisher to more and to a few intimate friends the letters are interesting because of their frankness and wit although they are not models of fine writing indeed I do not know where to find any specimens of masterly prose in all his compositions he was simply a poet facile in every form of measure from Spencer to Campbell no remarkable prose writings appeared in England at all at that time until Sir Walter Scott's novels were written and until McCaulay, Carlisle and Lamb wrote their inimitable essays nothing is more heavy and unartistic than Moore's life of Byron there is hardly a brilliant paragraph in it and yet Moore is one of the most musical and melodious of all the English poets Milton indeed was equally great in prose and verse but very few men have been distinguished as prose writers and poets at the same time Sir Walter Scott and Southie are the most remarkable exceptions I think that McCaulay could have been distinguished as a poet if he had so pleased but he would have been a literary poet like Wordsworth or Tennyson or Coleridge not a man who sings out of his soul because he cannot help it like Byron or Burns or like Whittier among our American poets it was not until 1819 when Byron had been three years in Venice that he fell in love with the Countess Guccioli the wife of one of the richest nobles of Italy young beautiful and interesting this love seems to have been disinterested and lasting and while it was a violation of all the rules of morality and would not have been allowed in any other country than Italy it did not further degrade him it was pretty much such a love as Voltaire had for Madame de Châtelet and with it he was at last content there's no evidence that Byron ever afterward loved any other woman and what is very singular about the affair is that it was condoned by the husband until it became a scandal even in Italy the Countess was taken ill on her way to Ravenna and the other Byron followed her and lived in the same palace with her the palace of her husband who courted the poet's society and who afterward left his young Countess to free order course with Byron at Bologna not without a compensation in revenue which was more disgraceful than the Amore itself but this time Byron would probably have returned to England but for the enchantment which enslaved him he could not part from the Countess nor she from him the Pope announced the separation of the Count from his wife and she returned to her father's house on a pittance of 200 pounds a year she sacrificed everything for the young English poet her splendid home, her relatives, her honor, and her pride never was there a sadder episode in the life of a man of letters if Byron had married such a woman in his early life how different might have been his history with such a love as she inspired had he been faithful to it he might have lived in radiant happiness the idol and the pride of all admirers of genius wherever the English language is spoken seated on a throne which kings might envy so much have circumstances to do with human destinies since Abelard never was there a man more capable of a genuine fervid love than Byron and yet he threw himself away he was his own worst enemy and all from an ill-regulated nature which he inherited both from his father and his mother with no mentor to whom he would listen and thus his star sunk down in the eternal shades a fallen Lucifer expelled from bliss I would not condone the waywardness and vices of Byron or weaken the eternal distinctions between right and wrong the impression I wish to convey is that there were two very distinctly marked sides to his character that his conduct was not without palliations in view of his surroundings the force of his temptations and his wayward nature uncurved by parental care or early training indeed rather goaded on by the unfortunate conditions of his youth to find consolation in doing as he liked without regard to duty or the opinions of society born with the keenest sensibilities the emotive powers of tremendous sweep and force neglected crossed mortified with no wise guidance he was driven in upon himself and developed an intense self-will which would endure no control unhappy will be the future of that man however amiable affectionate and generous who whether from neglect in youth like Byron or from sheer wilfulness and manhood determines to act as the mood takes him because he has freedom of will without regard to the social restraints imposed upon conscience by the unwritten law which pursues him wherever he goes even should he fly to the uttermost parts of the earth no one could escape from moral accountability whether in a seductive paradise or in a dungeon or in a desert the only stability for society must be in the character of its individual members before pleasure comes duty to family to friends to country to self and to the maker this sense of moral accountability Byron seems never to have had in regard to anybody or anything his self-indulgence culminating in an egotism melancholy to behold he would go where he pleased say what he pleased write as he pleased do what he pleased without any constraint whether in opposition or not to the customs and rules of society his own welfare or the laws of God it was moral madness pursuing him to destruction the logical and necessary sequence of unrestrained self-will sometimes assuming the form of angelic loveliness and inspiration in the eyes of his idolaters no counselor guided him wiser than Moore or Shelley even the worldly advice of Rogers and Madame Dostal was thrown away whenever they presumed to counsel him nobody could influence him his abandonment to fitful labors or pleasures was alike his glory and his shame after a day of frivolity he would consume them in night hours in the intense studies stimulated by gin to awake in the morning in lassitude or pain for work he must as well as play the consequence of this burning the candle at both ends was failing health and diminished energies until his short race was run he had produced more poetry at 34 years of age than any other English poet at the age of 50 some of almost transcendent merit but more of questionable worth though not of questionable power aside from the child herald the Hebrew melodies the prisoner of Chilon and perhaps the corsair the bride of Abidos Lara and the siege of Corinth the rest accepting minor poems however beautiful in measure and grand in thought give a shock to the religious or to the moral sentiments Cain and Manfred are regarded as almost blasphemous though probably not so meant to be by the poet in view of the stirring questions of Grecian tragedy while the longest of his poems Don Juan is an insult to womanhood and a disgrace to genius for although containing some of the most exquisite touches of description and finest flights of poetic feeling its theme is along the lowest level of human passion whatever Byron wrote was unhesitatingly published in red whether good or evil whatever were those follies and defiances which excluded him from the best society and it is a matter of surprise to me that any noted and wealthy publisher could be found in respectable and conventional England venal enough to publish perhaps the most corrupting poem in our language worse than anything which Boccaccio wrote for his Italian readers or anything which plain spoken fielding and the dramatists of the reign of Charles II ever allowed to go and to print for though they were coarser in their language they were not so seductive in their spirit and did not poison the soul like Don Juan the very name of which has become a synonym for extreme depravity that abominable poem was read because Lord Byron wrote it and because its immorality was slightly veiled by the beauty of the language even when a copy could not be found on the table of any respectable drawing room and the name of the author was seldom mentioned except with stern and honest censure it is perhaps fair to quote Murray's own words throwing the responsibility on the public they talked of his immoral writings but there is a whole row of sermons glued to my shelf I hate the sight of them why don't they buy those a fair enough retort and yet like the newspaper purveyors of the records of vice in our own day the publisher was responsible for making the vile stuff accessible and thus debasing the public taste end of section eight section nine of begin lines of history volume 13 great writers by john lord this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by k-hand lord Byron part three how different was Byron's painting of Spanish life from that of the immortal Cervantes whom Lowell places among the five master geniuses of the world in Don Quixote there is not a sentence which does not exalt woman or which degrades man a lofty ideal of purity and chivalrous honor permeates every page even in the most ludicrous scenes the whole work blazes with wit and with the wisdom of a proverbial philosophy uttered by the ignorant squire of a fanatical and bewildered knight but admits the practical jokes and follies of all the characters in that marvelous work of fiction we see also a moral beauty idealized of course such as were rivaled only in Spanish art in the Madonna's of Murillo I believe that in the imaginary sketches of Spanish life as portrayed by Byron slanders and lies deface the poem from beginning to end who is the best authority for truthfulness in the description of Spanish people Cervantes or Byron the spiritual loftiness portrayed in the lives of Spanish heroes and heroines mixed up as it was with the most ludicrous pictures of common life has made the Spaniard's work of fiction one of the most treasured and endearing monuments of human fame whereas the insulting innuendos of the English poet have gone far to rob him of the glory which he had justly won in his earlier productions and to make his name a doubt if in the course of generations yet to come the evil which Byron did by that one poem alone shall be forgotten in the services he rendered to our literature by other works which cannot die then he may someday be received into the pantheon of the benefactors of mind I would speak with less vehemence in reference to those poems which are generally supposed to be permeated with defiance scorn and misanthropy in Manfred and Cain it was with Byron a work of art to describe the utterances of impious spirits against the sovereign rule of God had he not fallen from high estate as an interpreter of the soul the critics might have seen here nothing more to condemn than in some of the Grecian tragedies many passages in the paradise lost and in the general spirit of Faust it is no proof that he was a blasphemer in his heart because he painted blasphemy to describe a wanderer on the face of the earth driven hither and thither by pursuing vengeance as the first recorded murderer the poet was obliged by all the rules of art to put such sentiments into his mouth as accorded with his unrepentant crime and his dreadful agonies of mind and soul where is the proof that they were his own agonies remorse despair surely we may pardon in Byron what we excuse in Gerta in the delineation of unique characters the great creations which belong to the realm of the imagination alone the imputation that the sayings of his fallen fiends were the cherished sentiments of the poet himself may have been one cause of his contempt for the average intelligence of his countrymen and for their inveterate and incurable prejudices nothing in Dante is more intense and concentrated in language than the malediction of Eve upon her fratricidal son may the grass wither from thy feet the woods deny thee shelter earth a home the dust a gravel the sun his light and heaven her god yet the reader feels the naturalness of this bitter cursing of her own son by the frenzied mother how could a great artist like Byron put sentiments into the mouth of Cain such as would be harmless in the essays of a country person if he painted Lucifer he must make him speak like Lucifer not like a theological professor nothing could be more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in which some of his characters were fiends rather than men we have no more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer blasphemed than to say that Gerta was an atheist because Mephistopheles denied God if Byron had avowed atheistical opinions in letters or conversations that would be another thing but there is no evidence that he did and much to the contrary a few months before he died he was visited by a pious crank who out of curiosity or Christian zeal sought to know his theological views Byron treated him with the greatest courtesy and freely communicated his opinions on religious subjects from which it would appear that he differed from church people generally only on the matter of eternal punishment which he did not believe was consistent with infinite love or infinite justice perhaps it would have been wiser if he had not written Cain at all considering how many readers there are without brains and how large was the class predisposed to judge him harshly in everything no doubt he was irreligious and skeptical but it does not follow from this that he was atheistical or blasphemous there is doubtless a misanthropic vein in all Byron's later poetry which is not wholesome for many people to read especially in Manfred one of the bitterest of his productions by reason of sorrows and disappointments and misrepresentations it was Byron's misfortune to appear worse than he really was owing to his unconcealed contempt for the opinions of mankind yet he could not complain that he reaped what he had not sown some of his biographers thought him to be at this time even morbidly desirous of a bad reputation going so far as to write paragraphs against himself in foreign journals and being filled with glee at the joke when they were republished in English newspapers he despised and defied all conventionalities and conventional England dropped him from her list of favorites the life of Byron, strange to say, was less exposed to scandal after he made the acquaintance of the Countess who enslaved him and who was also enslaved in turn his heart now opened to many noble sentiments he returned in a degree to society and gave dinners and suppers he associated with many distinguished patriots and men of genius he had a strong sympathy with the Italians in their struggle for freedom one quarter of his income he devoted to charities he was regular in his athletic exercises and could swim four hours at a time he was always proud of swimming across the helispond he was devoted to his natural daughter and educated her in a Catholic school he studied more severely all works of art though his admiration for art was never so great as it was for nature the glories and wonders of nature inspired him with perpetual joys there is nothing finer in all his poetry than the following stanza ye stars which are the poetry of heaven if in your bright leaves we would read the fate of men and empires it is to be forgiven that in our aspirations to be great our destinies or leap their mortal state and claim a kindred with you for ye are a beauty and a mystery and create in us such love and reverence from afar that fortune, fame, power, life have named themselves a star there was never a time when Byron did not seek out beautiful retreats in nature as the source of his highest happiness hence solitude was nothing to him when he could commune with the works of God his biographer declares that in 1821 he was greatly improved in every respect ingenious, intemper, and moral views in health and happiness he has had mischievous passions but these he seems to have subdued he was always temperate in his diet living chiefly on fish and vegetables and if he drank more wine and spirits then was good for him it was to rally his exhausted energies his powers of production were never greater than at this period but his literary labors were slowly wearing him out he could not live without work while pleasure paled upon him and he lettered to a stranger who sought to convert him he showed anything but anger or contempt do me, says he, the justice to suppose that vedeo meliora provoque however the deteriorora secor may have been applied to my conduct writing to Murray in 1822 he says it is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don Juan ready by autumn as I obtained a permission from my diktatris the countess Guccioli to continue it provided always it was to be more guarded and decorous in the continuation than in the commencement alas he could not undo the mischief he had done about this time Byron received a visit from Lord Clare his earliest friend at Cambridge to whom through life he was devotedly attached a friendship which afforded exceeding delight he never forgot his few friends although he railed at his enemies he was ungenerously treated by Lee Hunt to whom he rendered every kindness he says I've done all I could for him since he came here Genoa but it is all most useless his wife is ill his six children far from tractable and in worldly affairs he himself is a child the death of Shelley left them totally aground and I could not see them in such a state without using the common feelings of humanity and what means were in my power to set them afloat again as to any community of feeling thought or opinion between him or me there is little or none but I think him a good principled man and must do as I would be done by towards Shelley Byron entertained the greatest respect and affection for his suavity gentleness and good-breeding and Shelley's accidental death was a great shock to him among his other intimate acquaintances in Italy were Lord and Lady Bellesington with whom he kept up a pleasant correspondence the most plaintive sad and generous of all his letters was the one he wrote to Lady Byron from Pisa in 1821 in acknowledgement of the receipt of a tress of his daughter Ada's hair the time which has elapsed since our separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union and of our prior acquaintance we both made a bitter mistake but now it is over and irrecoverably so but this very impossibility of reunion seems to me at least a reason why on all the few points of discussion which can arise between us we should preserve the courtesies of life and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve more easily than nearer connections I assure you I bear you now no resentment whatever whether the offense has been solely on my side or reciprocal or on yours chiefly I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things that you are the mother of my child and that we shall never meet again at that period about a year before Byron's death more thus writes to the world and more especially England he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope self banished from the society of men and most of all from that of Englishmen the more beautiful and genial inspirations of his muse were looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature but how totally all this differed from the Byron of the social hour they who lived in familiar intercourse with him may be safely left to tell as it was no English gentleman ever approached him with the common forms of introduction that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy of his manners the unpretending play of his conversation and on nearer intercourse the frank youthful spirits to the flow of which he gave way with such zest as to produce the impression that gayety was after all the true bent of his disposition Scott writing of him after his death says in talents he was unequaled and his faults were those rather of a bizarre temper arising from an eager and irritable nervous habit than any depravity of disposition he was devoid of selfishness which I take to be the basest ingredient in the human composition he was generous humane and noble minded when passion did not blind him about this time 1823 the great struggle of the Greeks to shake off the Ottoman yoke was in progress I have already in another volume attempted to give the facts in relation to that memorable movement Christendom sympathized with the gallant but apparently hopeless struggle of a weak nation to secure its independence both from a sentiment of admiration for the freedom of ancient Greece in the period of its highest glories and from the love of liberty which animated the liberal classes amid the political convulsions of the day but the governments of Europe were loath to complicate the difficulties which existed between nations in that stormy period and dare not extend any open aid to struggling Greece beyond giving their moral aid to the Greek cause lest it should embroil Europe in a war of which she was weary less than 10 years had elapsed since Europe had combined to dethrone Napoleon and some of her leading powers like Austria and Russia had a detestation of popular insurrections in this complicated state of political affairs when any indiscretion on the part of friendly governments might kindle anew the flames of war Lord Byron was living in Genoa taking such an interest in the Greek struggle that he abandoned poetry for politics he had always sympathized with enslaved nations struggling for independence and was driven from Ravenna on account of his alliance with the revolutionary society of the Carbonari a new passion now seized him he entered heart and soul into the struggles of the Greeks their cause absorbed him he would aid them to the full extent of his means with money and arms as a private individual he would be a political or military hero a man of action not of literary leisure every lover of liberty must respect Byron's noble aspiration to assist the Greeks it was a new field for him but one in which he might retrieve his reputation for it must be borne in mind that his ruling passion was fame and that he had gained all that he could expect by his literary productions whether loved or hated admired or censured his poetry had placed him in the front rank of literary geniuses throughout the world as a poet his immortality was secured in literary efforts he had also probably exhausted himself he could write nothing more which would add to his fame unless he took a long rest and recreation he was weary of making poetry but by plunging into a sea of fresh adventures and by giving a new direction to his powers he might be sufficiently renovated in the course of time to write something grander and nobler than even Child Harold or Cain Lord Byron at this time was only 35 years old a period when most men begin their best work his constitution it is true was impaired but he was still full of life and enterprise he could ride or swim as well as he ever could the call of a gallant people summoned him to arms and of all nations he most loved the Greeks he was an enthusiast in their cause he believed that the day of their deliverance was at hand so he made up his mind to consecrate his remaining energies to affect their independence he opened a correspondence with the Greek committee in London he selected a party including a physician to sail with him from Geneva he raised a sum of about 10,000 pounds and on the 13th of July 1823 embarked with his small party and eight servants on board the Hercules for Greece after a short delay at Leghorn the poet reached Cephalonia on the 24th of July he was enthusiastically received by the Greeks of Argestoli the principal port but deemed it prudent to remain there until he could get further intelligence from Corfu and Missoloni visiting in the interval some of the neighboring islands consecrated by the Muse of Homer the dissensions among the Greek leaders greatly embarrassed Byron but did not destroy his ardor he saw that the people were degenerate, faithless and stained with atrocities as disgraceful as those of the Turks themselves he dared not commit himself to any one of the struggling envious parties which rallied round their respective chieftains he lingered for six weeks in Cephalonia without the ordinary comforts of life yet against all his habits rising at an early hour and attending to business negotiating bills and corresponding with the government so far as there was a recognized central power at last after the fall of Corinth taken from the Turks and the arrival at Missoloni of Prince Mavericato the only leader of the Greeks worthy of the name of statesman Byron sailed for that city then invested by a Turkish fleet and narrowly escaped capture here he did all he could to produce union among the chieftains and took into his pay 500 suliotes acting as their leader he meditated an attack on Lepanto which commanded the navigation of the gulf of Corinth and received from the government a commission for that enterprise but dissensions among his men and intrigues between rival generals prevented the execution of his project it was in Missoloni January 22nd 1824 that with the memorandum on this day I completed my 36th year Byron wrote his latest verses most pathetically regretting his youth and his unfortunate life but arousing himself to find in a noble cause a glorious death the fire that in my bosom prays is like to some volcanic isle no torches kindled at its blaze a funeral pile awake not Greece she is awake awake my spirit think through whom thy life blood tastes its parent lake and then strike home seek out less often sought than found a soldier's grave for thee the best then look around and choose thy ground and take thy rest vexations disappointments and exposure to the reigns of February so wrought upon Byron's eager spirit and weakened body that he was attacked by convulsive fits the physician in accordance with the custom of the time bled their patience several times against the protest of Byron himself which reduced him to extreme weakness he rallied from the attack for a time and devoted himself to the affairs of Greece hoping for the restoration of his health when spring should come he spent in three months thirty thousand dollars for the cause into which he had so cordially entered in April he took another cold from severe exposure and fever set in to relieve which bleeding was again resorted to and often repeated he was now confined to his room which he never afterwards left he at last realized that he was dying and sent incoherent messages to his sister to his daughter and to a few intimate friends the end came on the 19th of April the greek government rendered all the honor possible to the illustrious dead his remains were transferred to england he was not buried in westminster abbey however but in the church of Hucknell near newstead where a tablet was erected to his memory by his sister the honorable Augusta Maria Lee so herald ends in Greece his pilgrimage there fitly ending in that land renowned whose mighty genius lives in glories page he on the muses consecrated ground sinking to rest while his young brows are bound with their unfading wreath to bands of mirth no more in tempi let the pipe resound herald i follow to thy place of birth the slow hearse and thy last sad pilgrimage on earth i can add but little to what i've already said in reference to Byron either as to his character or his poetry the Edinburgh review which in brohams article on his early poems had stung him into satire and aroused him to a sense of his own powers in years later by jeffrey's hand gave a most appreciative account of his poems while mourning over his morbid gloom words that breathe and thoughts that burn are not merely the ornaments but the common stable of his poetry and he is not inspired or impressive only in some happy passages but through the whole body and tissue of his composition the keen insight and exceptional intellect of the philosopher poet gherta recognized in him the greatest talent of our century his marvelous poetic genius was universally acknowledged in his own day and more than that so human was it that it attracted the sympathies of all civilized nations and as la martine said made english literature known throughout europe byron's poetry was politically influential also by reason of its liberty loving spirit arousing italy inspiring the young revolutionists of germany and awakening a generous sympathy for greece without the consciousness of any mission beyond the expression of his own abolient nature this poet contributed no mean impulse to the general emancipation of spirit which has signalized the 19th century two generations have passed away since byron's mortal remains were committed to the dust and the verdict of his country has not since materially changed admiration for his genius alone the light of lesser stars than he shines with brighter radiance what the enlightened verdict of mankind may be two generations hence no living mortal can tell the worshippers of intellect may attempt to reverse or modify the judgment already passed but the impressive truth remains that no man however great his genius will be permanently judged aside from character when lord bacon left his name and memory to men's charitable judgments and the next age he probably had in view his invaluable legacy to mankind of earnest searchings after truth which made him one of the greatest of human benefactors how far the poetry of byron has proved a blessing to the world must be left to an abler critic than i lay claim to be in him the good and evil went hand in hand in the eternal warfare which ancient persian sages saw between the powers of light and darkness in every human soul a consciousness of which warfare may byron himself in his saddest hours which he had never lived at all if we could in his life and in his works separate the evil from the good and let only the good remain then his services to literature could hardly be exaggerated and he would be honored as the greatest english poet so far his native genius goes after shakespeare and milton end of section nine