LITERARY SPECTATOR.

MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON.*

THE Life of Lord BYRON, or as the eloquent author modestly terms it, the " Notices of the Life " of that great man, is an impor- tant addition to our national literature. The subject is full of interest and instruction, and Mr. MOORE has handled it with consummate ability. Although he is deeply impressed with the fond recollections of a warm friendship, honourably begun and honourably maintained, he speaks of the character and writings of the great author of Childe Harold in the language of honest and consistent impartiality. His work is a rare, and, with the exception of his own Life of SHERIDAN, we might say an unexampled combination of the minute tenderness of a biographer with the rigid fidelity of an historian. The style is simple and polished ; simple without meanness, and polished without glitter. Either the author of Lana Roohh has felt that the gaudy flowers which he scattered so profusely on the tomb of the orator and dramatist, were unsuited to the more solemn character of the departed bard, or the task he has so worthily accomplished has imparted to his own light and lively temperament a portion of its own essential, gravity. We can, within our straitened limits, give hut a very imperfect sketch of a quarto volume of seven hundred pages ; but this is little to be re- gretted : few readers will be so dull to the claims of genius, or so in- curious, and we may add, so unfashionable, as to receive at second- hand their knowledge of a life of BYRON from the per. of MOORE. The author, following the example so pleasingly set by HAYLEY in his life of COWPER, is content, where his materials admit, to allow the noble poet to tell his own story. The volume under our consi- deration contains no fewer than two hundred and forty-one of his letters, the far greater number of them now published for the first time, besides copious extracts from his journals+ and memoranda. But BYRON'S letters are more spirit-stirring than those of the author of the Task : the matter is-more varied, the style more vigorous. In- deed, in perusing his happiest epistolary effusions, we sometimes doubt whether the fame he might have acquired as a prose writer had he practised that form of composition more extensively, as doubtless he would have done had he lived, might not, as in the case of SCOTT, have equalled or outshone the reputation of his poetry. It is not so much, however, in the character of the letters, as in the value of the "thread of gold" which connects them, that the "Notices" of MOORE rise superior to the "Life" of HA.YLEY. The laboured and attenuated tinsel of COWpER'S eulogist is, for the most part, in painful contrast with the simple, lively graces of the poet whose virtues he comme- morates; but the intertissue of Mr. MOORE'S narrative will be con- templated with hardly less admiration than the beautiful and irregular fragments on which it bestows consistency and continuity. There is but one other living man whose style would not run a risk of appear- ing bald and feeble when placed in juxtaposition with the brilliant and masculine periods of BYRON. The lineage of BYRON, of which he was more proud than his great genius rendered altogether suitable, was ancient as well as noble : the first of his name came to England in the train of the Conqueror, and his lands are respectfully noted in Domesday-book. His father was the son of Admiral, or as he is more generally termed, Commodore BYRON, so well known from his interesting narrative of the loss of the Wager. The elder BYRON was a man of selfish and profligate charac- ter, without one redeeming virtue either of the heal or the heart. The mother of the poet was the heiress of Gight, a branch of the GORDON family, "not the SEYMOUR branch, but the auld GORDONS." She was a woman of most ungovernable temper and weak understand- ing. It would be hard to say whether the early years of her son were more embittered by the strength of her passions or by the weakness of her head. BYRON was born in Holies Street, on the 22d January 1788: in 1790 he was carried to Aberdeen, and he remained in Scot- land until he was ten years of age. The lameness of his foot is said to have been the result of an accident at the time of his birth. Through life it was to him a source of singular irritation and uneasiness. Even when a child, nothing offended him so deeply as the slightest allusion to it. His mother' who took a pleasure in tormenting, although she felt, so far as such a nature could feel, a kindness for -her gifted son, made use of it as a perpetual subject of annoyance. In the course of his first tour through Greece, he bitterly exclaims against the folly and wickedness of his parent, in thus reproaching him with a deformity for which he considered himself chiefly indebted to her obstinate rejec- tion of the proper methods of cure. Bathing in the Gulf of Lepanto, with the Marquis of SLIGO, he said—" Look there !—it is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that deformity ; and yet, as long as I can remember, she has never ceased to taunt and reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted, for the last time, on my leaving

* Letters and Journals of Lord Byron : with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore. In 2 vols 4to. Vol. I.

t Of the Journal, which was begun in November 1813, when the poet was in his twenty-sixth year, Mr. MOORE says :—" At this time Lord Byron com- menced a Journal, or Diary, from the pages of which I have already selected a few extracts, and of which I shall now lay as much more as is producible before the reader. Employed chiefly—as such a record from its nature must be—about persons still living and occurrences still recent, it would be im- possible of course to submit it to the public eye, without the omission of some portion of its contents; and unluckily, too, of that very portion which, • from its reference to the secret pursuits and feelings of the writer, would gratify the most lively and piquant curiosity of the reader. Enough, how- ever, will, I trust, still remain, even after all this necessary winnowing, to enlarge still further the view we have here opened into the interior of the poet's life and habits, and to indulge harmlessly that task, as general as it is natural, which leads us to contemplate with pleasure a great mind in its un- dress, and to rejoice in the discovery so consoling to human pride, that even the mightiest, in their moments of ease and weakness, resemble ourselves.",, England, she, in one of her fits of passion, uttered an imprecation upon me, praying that I might prove as ill-formed in mind as I am in body !" Yet he could at times, in childhood and manhood, both jest and bear to be jested with onbis misfortune. His excellent nurse, MAY GRAY, to whom he was much attached, and who communicated to Dr. EWING of Aberdeen many particulars of his early years, used to tell of his calling her out to see " the twa laddies with the twa club feet going oin up the Broad Street." There happened to be a child in the neighbourhood similarly afflicted with himself. It adds to the poin of young BYRON'S remark, that the Broad Street here spoken of is one of the narrowest of the lively little town of Aberdeen' and twa Club feet in it at one time were worth looking at. To MAY GRAY he was indebted for his knowledge of the Scriptures, which was intimate. When a boy, BYRON was readier to give a blow than take one ; and he seldom allowed an affront to pass unnoticed. " On his return home one day, breathless "—this was in Aberdeen—" the servant asked What he had been about ? and was answered, with a mixture of rage and humour, that he had beenk paying a debt, by beating a boy according to promise, for that he was a BYRON, and would never behe his motto, Trust Byron." The spirit which prompted the Modern Bards was already breathing and acting in the urchin of eight years old.

In the summer of 1796, Mrs. BYRON and her son (his father was then dead) went to the lovely little village of Ballater, on the Dee, with a view to the health of the latter, which had been weakened by an attack of scar- let fever. His residence there, and afterwards for a short time at Invercauld, yet farther up the Dee, is commemorated in the song en- titled " Loch-na-gar." Tit fir plantations, which the poet magnifies into pine forests, cover the southern bank of the river in front of Bal- later. The "hill of the garden" lies twelve or fourteen miles to the south-west of the village ; and it appears very doubtful if it ever was visited by him who has so fondly sung of its dark-frowning" beauties. On the subject of this poem, the following observations of Mr. MOORE appear to be equally original and just.

"To the wildness and grandeur of the scenes among which his childhood was passed, it is not unusual to trace the first awakening of his poetic talent. But it may be questioned whether this faculty was ever so produced. That the charm of scenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and associa- tion, should be much felt at an age when fancy is yet hardly awake, and associations but few, can with difficulty, even making every allowance for the prematurity of genius, be conceived. The light which the poet sees around the forms of nature, is not so much in the objects themselves, as in the eye that contemplates them ; and imagination must first be able to lend a gloryto such scenes, before she can derive inspiration from them. As materials, indeed, for the poetic faculty, when developed, to work upon, these impressions of the new and wonderful retained from childhood, and retained with all the vividness of [recollection which belongs to genius, may form, it is true, the purest and most precious part of that aliment with which the memory of the poet feeds his imagination. Bitt still, it is the newly-awakened power within him that is the source of the charm ;—it is the force of fancy alone that, acting upon his recollections, impregnates, as it were, all the past with poesy. • In this respect, such impressions of natural scenery as Lord Byron received in his childhood, must be classed with the various other remembrances which that period leaves behind—of its innocence, its sports, its first hopes and af- fections—all of them reminiscences which the poet afterwards converts to his use, but which no more make the poet than—to apply an illustration of Byron's own—the honey can be said to make the bee that treasures it."

This subject is afterwards resumed ; and as the biographer of BYRON may be allowed to speak on it as one "set under authority," his remarks are the more valuable. He is speaking of the poet's ' return to England after his first tour through Greece, when he was known only as the author of Hours of Idleness and Modern Bards.

-" Having landed the young pilgrim once more in England, it may be worth 'while, before we accompany him into the scenes that awaited him at home,

• to consider how far the general character of his mind and disposition rhay ' have been affected by the course of travel and adventure in which he had been for the last two years engaged. A life less savouring of poetry and ro- mance than that which he had pursued previously to his departure on his travels, it would be difficult to imagine. In his childhood, it is true, he had been a dweller and wanderer among scenes well calculated, according to the ordinary notion, to implant the first rudiments of poetic feeling. But, though the poet may afterwards feed on the recollection of such scenes, it is more than questionable, as has been already observed, whether he ever has been formed by them. If a childhood, indeed, passed among mountainous scenery, were so favourable to the awakening of the imaginative power, both the Welsh, among ourselves, and the Swiss, abroad, ought to rank much higher in the scale of poetic excellence than they do at present."

In his tenth year, the death first of the heir-apparent to the title, and secondly of its gloomy and ascetic possessor, raised young BYRON to the honours of the peerage, and a considerable fortune, with one yet greater in expectancy. The consequence of this event was his removal, with his mother, to 'England ; and it is a curious proof of the slender fortunes at that period of the poet's family, that the produce of the sale of his mother's effects, with the exception of her plate and linen, which she carried with her, netted only 74/. 17s. 7d! He never again visited Scotland, much as he talked and wrote of it. And although he boasts himself, in Don Juan, "half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one," so little was he disposed to identify himself with the peculiarities of that country, that one day a heedless girl having remarked that she thought he had a little of the Scotch accent, he exclaimed in a rage, "Good God! I hope not ! I'm sure I haven't. I would rather the whole damned country was sunk in the sea.—I the Scotch accent ! "

A short time after his arrival in England, he was placed under Dr. GLENNIE, at Dulwich. "I found him," says the Doctor, "playful, good-humoured, and beloved by his companions. His reading in his- tory and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of his age ; and in my study he found many books open to him both to please his taste and gratify his curiosity ; among others, a set of our poets, from CHAU- CER to CauacHILL, which I am almost tempted to say he had more • a OradeBrone,

•

than once perused from beginning to end." Rya= was indeed a helluo librorum ; and the list which he has preserved of his early reading is such as few students of advanced years will be able to equal. It contains about sixty historical works, several of them voluminous,

i

besides many others n biography, philosophy, geography, poetry,oratory, law, divinity, and an endless crowd of miscellanies. "I have also read," he says, " (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels." Yet his knowledge, as usual with great readers, was more extensive than accurate. He speaks of WALSH as only known by his ode to King WILLIAM (p. 128) ; though JOHNSON describes the pre- face to his letters and poems as very judicious. It was a preface that gave occasion to BYRON'S remark. He confounds the language of the New World and the Old, in talking of " Mohawk kraals," (p. 115); and on another occasion, he speaks of Cecilia as revised by Dr. JoHN- sox,—it was Evelina, Miss BURNEY'S first novel, that the philologist revised.

From Dr. GLENNIE young BYRON was soon removed, by the petu- lant impatience of his mother. She used to go down to Dulwich and give the doctor a hearty " flyting ;" and her tones on these occasions were none of the lowest " BYRON," said one of his class-fellows, in Dr. GLENNIE'S hearing, " your mother is a fool." " I know it," gloomily answered the young lord. His next place of abode was Harrow, where he became acquainted with Lord CLARE, Lord DELAWARE, the Duke of DORSET, Mr. PEEL, and a number of others, to whom he continued warmly attached ever afterwards. Of his affection for young PEEL, and of the magnanimity of his disposition, an interesting anecdote is given by his biographer. " While Lord Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant some

few years older, whose name was * *, claimed a right to fag little Peel ; which claim (whether rightly or wrongly, I know not) Peel resisted.

The resistance, however, was in vain: * * * not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave ; and proceeded forthwith to put his determination into practice, by inflicting a kind of bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's arm, which, during the operation, was twisted round with some degree of technical skill, to render the pain more acute. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend ; and, although he knew that he was not strong enough to fight * * * * with any hope of success, and that it was dangerous even to approach him, he advanced to • the scene of action, and with abblush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a voice • trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if' * * would be pleased to tell him, how many stripes he meant ,t0 inflict ? ' 'Why,' returned the executioner, you little rascal, what is that to you r— Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm,' I would take half BYRON'S first attempt in print appeared in November 1807. It was a quarto of very few pages, of which only two or three copies, says Mr. MOORE, remain. Lord STRANGFORD'S Camoens and Little's Poems were then his favourite study-, and his earliest compositions were strongly tinged with the luxuriance that marks those works. One of the poems in his first volume was so reprehensible in this respect, that his reverend friend Mr. BECHER could not avoid gently expostulating with him on the subject. The result displayed very strikingly the placa- bility and good sense of the young poet. The whole of the copies, except a very few that had travelled beyond his reach, were recalled and destroyed. The volume appeared some time after in an amended and augmented shape; and several of the poems, a few of them rather capriciously altered, were republished in the Hours of Idleness. The severe but hardly undeserved criticism on this his first published work, given in the Edinburgh Review, is familiar to most readers, from the tremendous severity with which it was resented. Other critics were more lenient. His account of one of these we quote, for the pur- pose of assigning the praise he bestows to its author, who, as well as the noble poet, has now passed, "the bourne whence no traveller returns." "I have now," he says, in a letter dated 21st of August 1807, "a review before me, entitled Literary Recreations, where my hardship is applauded far beyond my deserts. I know nothing about the critic, but think him a very discerning gentleman, and myself a devilish clever fellow. His critique pleases me particularly, because it is of great length, and a proper quantum of censure is administered, just to give an agreeable relish to the praise. You know I hate insipid, un- qualified, commonplace compliment. If you would wish to see it, order the 13th Number of Literary Recreations, for the last month." The critic here alluded to was the conductor of the Magazine, the late EUGENIUS ROCHE, who died about two months ago, editor of the Courier newspaper, himself a pleasing versifier, and a most amiable and worthy man. The alterations in various portions of the Modern Bards, partly before publication, and partly in the course of the five editions through which it rapidly ran, are noted by Mr. MOoRE with interesting minute- ness. The furious lines on his kinsman Lord CARLISLE, whose cold- ness and neglect he deeply resented, beginning- " No muse will cheer with renovating smile

The paralytic puling of Carlisle,"

stood originally thus- " On one alone Apollo deigns to smile, And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle."

In the manuscript he had designated Sir WILLIAM GELL, "cox- comb GELL." While it was printing, having got acquainted with Sir WILLIAM, he changed the epithet to "classic," and justified it by a note. He afterwards cooled to GELL, and changed the word once more to "rapid." In one of the notes to Modern Bards, he sneers at the Lay of the Last Minstrel: the following letter will show, that in this, and we may safely add in many other instances, his remarks were less the dictates of judgment than of boyish petulance, or of a desire, like ROCHESTER, to be of a different opinion from the town. The letter gives back honour even to the fountain whence all honour proceeds • and had his Majesty's fine taste been less universally ac- knowledged, still to please his Sovereign was to Sir WALTER no mean praise; principittus placuitss yids haud ultima taus est. 81R. WALTER SCOTT, BART. e St. James's Etr_ IV; 6th )812. 1 Sia,—I halelust been honoured with„your letter. feet t you • 'should have thought it worth while to notice the 4- . AS the thins is Sapprtssed voluntarily, and your explanaVioix'h*oleold.notIto• eve meptun. The satire was written when I was very yot1ugotalfffew_anet47, , and fully beat on displaying my, wrath and my wit ; and runt .IvirtJtaunted by the ghosts of my wholesale Assertions. ,I cannot suifieltjalr, for yout poise. And now, wiuying myself, let me talk to €13iinee . Regent.' He ordered me to be presented to' him at a ball ; ; saying's peculiarly pleasing from royal HO, as to my own at ., to me of you and your,. immortalities : • he preferred you,tov, and present, and asked which of' your WOlicS pleased rne.nioatk,,: Acult question. I answered, I thotight the Lay.' He s lus:o I. Was nearly, similar. „ In speaking of the others, I told him luitl 'more particulady the poet of Princes, as they-never appearedniorefiseifieting, - than in Marmion' and the ' lady of the Lake.' lie wasIdesiedtil datnkicre,' and to dwell on the description of your Jamescs aa no le.ss toystqllalL-Pnetical.' .7.eita4Kih ; so thatqwith the exception of the.Turks and your hatable' Servant) ; k.eidternately of Homer and yburself, and seemed ,well acquainted with - you were in very good Company. I defy Mutray ' to have et stgefritted: bis Royal Highness's opinion Of your powers; nor can I pretend to entrnietate all he said on the subject ; -but it may give you pleasureto heitethatit was . conveyed in language which would- only _suffer. by my attempting toktran- • • scribe it, and with, a tone and taste which gave me a very- high ideajof his' . abilities and adcdmplishmenth, which I had hitherto considered, as confined • to manners, certainly superior to these cif any livin g gentleman. ' • - This interview was 'accidental. I never went to theleyee; for having seen the courts of Musaulman and Catholic sovereigns, my .curiosity was sufficiently allayed; arid my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I' had, in fact, no business there.' To be thus praised by your Sovereign, must be 'tratifying to you ; 'and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communica- tion _being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very for- tunately and sincerely Your obliged 'and obedient servant, . " BYRON.", Lord BYRON was a Whig, but 'neither his tastes, nor, as he himself observes, his dislike of drudgery, permitted him-to be a politician: • He spoke only thrice in the House of Lords ; the third time, on a subject which, when rehearsing a-part of the speech to a friend, he ludicrously ' declared he had quite fagotten. His debut attracted some attention. Sir FRANCIS Buathirr,iaid it was the best speech spoken bya Lord since the Lord knew when. The poet says it put the old Chancellor . very, much: out- of humour; he did not admire Lord ELDON.. .. In 1810, 121vnoN began that tour through Greece and other parts of fhe'East,". of which Mr. HOEHOUSE has given so interesting an ac- count . It is pleasalit to contrast Mr. HOBHOUSE:S plain, nerspicuous narrative, with the rough, vigorous, and poetic touches which the letters of gynolv to his mother and others, given in. the present volume, , present.

On his return in 1812, he lost, almost at the same moment, his . mother, his greatest Cambridge favqurite, CHARLES S. MATTHEWS, brother.to the author of-- the Diary of an Invalid, and WINGFIELD, theroost cherishecl,of his Harrow friends. He was, indeed, singularly unfortunate in the fate of his most intimate associates—they almostfall . went off before. him.. It,iS not a, little curious, that the two most gifted of the band should, meet the same fate. MATTHEWS was drowned, bathing. in the Cam; and SHELLEY, boating in the Mediterranean.

Shortly after his return, the First Canto of Childe Harold, the history . of whichhas been already; Oxen by Mr..DaLLa.s, was published ; and in the splendour of the fame that it procured him, all his former literary laboms were soon forgotten. • The satire he suppressed, and the Hours . of Idleness would have died a natural death, had it not been for the subsequent reputation of the author. The Giaour, at first a poem of four hundred, but ultimately swelled to fourteen hundred lines, followed the Child,e.

The same year introduced Mr. MOORE to his Lordship. They met at Mr. ROGERS'S table ; the only other guest was the 'author of the Pleasures,of Hope. This was indeed a feast of Apollo. l3yitoN at that time was starving himself, to, avoid the obesity with which he was , at an early period of his life:threatened, and to which he, had a spe- 4401 abhorrence. His host was at a loss to.provida the noble ascetic • , with "food'. convenient for him •' " be was at ,length accommodated with "potatoes and vinegar," of which he made a hearty dinner. .Since„ the publication of Chiidellarold, the-name of Lord BYRON has become familiar to Englishmen as a household worch and jt is the less, necessary to trace his litevary or, personal adventures during tbe remaining four years, to which the Correspondence of the'first volume . his Life, comes down.* Tbere are some curious letters to .1 Lord HOLLAND, touching the prologue at the reopening of Drury • Laie,Theatre,in which-the poet shows- a patience under minute en- ticism, that, is highly edifying. . . Mr.-Moot:a enters at some length into what he terms the double . character, of Lord BYRON—that which he wore to his friends, and that 14 which he wore to the public. We suspect a great deal of his public character, was assumed, in the first place from the poet's works, and then by weak and fanciful people attempted to be proved from his con- duct. Every man is more or less one thin: to the woAdixid another to his friends: if in.BYRON'S case the contrast was stronger, this may be .easily accounted for by the peculiarities of hisrcums s—s-In high birth, and his higher fame. The' latter, it will notj ie ob- served, partly by reason... of the former, was more poolor ft well spited the delicacy and taste. Of a Man of genius. Everyt -about BinoN was stared at. He was fashionable' as well as s; so much a' lion with the Cockney mob both of the great an e, that he found it necessary, in order to keep the intI1ive at a-prOper dis lance,- to assume the lion's aspect .9,nd the lon'srvoice: 'Had he lived in a provincial- town, his shyness and hauteur would, soon' have disap- peared. SIR WALTER SCOTT, though a more "kenspeckle" person, never finds it necessary to look angry in order 10 'get rid Of fools, be- • - -cause he is so familiarly known and so often seen of' all: men, that rook& not presi,upoo ?lira. There is another point to. be noticed in .T8fRTA tO ByRONS public character : he was fond of mystifying,. not '90 b from vanity, as from humour. Common souls cannot nna- , timan should loo.k or act in any case like otherspeople. lost the grand while he won the olden f6firuon of thouaands,”,'heartiriessof his " guffaw." T poet had lem-a ‘'0-45#.1iY with the mirth of the millionliolisitnied a port of lOftisess„looked step), Cold, and distrait; and„Snaiiitr.to himself the while, :at the superpaial observers with- whom whOm Ahtage affectations passed for re.alities. • W,e:thnst DOW hive' done, for the present, with this pleasing and instructive book. The -picture which-it gives of Lord ihnoN, is ,upon the whole an amiable oirie. His faults were neither many: nor great, and sprimg from a defective edueation, rather than a wicked disposi. ; his virtues were :numerous, solid, ,and lasting. -He was irascible, proud,"vain ; but his anger Was without malice, his pride without ty- ranny; his VanitYwithout meanness. lie was a most respectful and 'kind son.ta a capricious and violent 'mother, an affectionate' brother, a-Constant and warm n friend:and a 'mist indulgent and considerate ,nia.ater. On his "attention to money matter's, in his later years, some .severe remarks have been iislied, we believe, by Mr. LEIGH MINT. No . censure "can be, imNined more 'unjust. Taken even'in the 'vulgar 'and' 'aceeptatiOn of-that virtue, BFribrr was the ,sou1 of generosity. His early works were all given away. To his • :friend:HoDdsoN, the elegant translator of Juvenal, he gave at one time a:thousand pOlinds Even for those who had the least claims on his 'kindness he had "a. hand open as day to melting charity.'' Of traits of good. feeling to his- servants and dependants; Mr. MOORE'S volunie full.: It is lite, he did not in his speech spare his best friends, and host Of all-did he Spar.e himself. But his "bark was waur than his bilk.)" and he was ever the first to apologize for any casual (offence , . into Which his infirmity of temper or capnee occasionally hurried him. Mr.: MOORE'S work is -dedicated to Sir WiLrEarScorr. The in- scription of the Life of the first of English Poets was a fitting honour to be paid bythe Bard of Erin to the Author of the Lay.