Chapter XII: Canto THE FOURTH: To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.M., F.R.S., etc

Venice, January 2, 1818.

MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,--After an interval of eight years between the
composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the
conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In
parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should
recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the
birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted
for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship,
than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to Childe Harold,
for any public favor reflected through the poem on the poet,--to
one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found
wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in
peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to
yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to
you, in its complete or at least concluded state, a poetical work
which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my
compositions, I wish to do honor to myself by the record of many
years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness,
and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive
flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to
the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for
others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately,
been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to
withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your
good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from
their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the
anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence,[25]
but which can not poison my future while I retain the resource of
your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a
more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us
of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such
as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without
thinking better of his species and of himself.

It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods,
the countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia
Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a
few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem
also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to
last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to
reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree
connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it
would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those
magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our
distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of
respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious,
it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I
part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that
events could have left me for imaginary objects.

With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found
less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little
slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own
person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line
which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese
in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to
be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I
had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and
the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at
finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the
composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have
done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that
subject, are _now_ a matter of indifference: the work is to depend
on itself and not on the writer; and the author, who has no
resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or
permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves
the fate of authors.

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in
the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of
Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within
the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the
labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and
for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am
indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the
elucidation of the text.

It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon
the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires
an attention and impartiality which would induce us--though perhaps
no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs
of the people among whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at
least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our
information. The state of literary as well as political party
appears to run, or to _have_ run, so high, that for a stranger to
steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be
enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own
beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che
vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte
le vie diverse si possouo tentare, e che sinche la patria di
Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa
dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still: Canova,
Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara,
Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will
secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the
departments of art, sciences, and belles-lettres; and in some the
very highest. Europe--the World--has but one Canova.

It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce
piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli
stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova."
Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition--a
dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better
grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious
than their neighbors--that man must be willfully blind, or
ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary
capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their
_capabilities_, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of
their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty,
and amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still
unquenched "longing after immortality"--the immortality of
independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of
Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma!
Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to
contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs
of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the
carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of
France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have
exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For
me,--

"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were
useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that
England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a
suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For
what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily
they _will have_ their reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself,
I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once
more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,

BYRON.

MATTHEWS.

"Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews," says Moore, "I have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler tribute to his memory.

"There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Among all these young men of learning and talent, the superiority in almost every department of intellect seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to Matthews.... Young Matthews appears--in spite of some little asperities of temper and manner, which he was already beginning to soften down when snatched away--to have been one of those rare individuals who, while they command deference, can at the same time win regard, and who, as it were, relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by blending it with love."

Matthews died while bathing in the Cam.

On the 7th of September, 1811, Byron wrote to Dallas as follows:--"Matthews, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of our own at Cambridge and elsewhere.... Davies, who is not a scribbler, has always beaten us all in the war of words. H---- and myself always had the worst of it with the other two, and even M---- yielded to the dashing vivacity of S. D----."

And in another letter:--"You did not know M----: he was a man of the most astonishing powers."

And again, speaking of his death to Mr. Hodgson, he writes:--

"You will feel for poor Hobhouse; Matthews was the god of his idolatry: and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one would refuse him pre-eminence."

Matthews died at the time when he was offering himself to compete for a lucrative and honorable position in the University. As soon as his death was known, it was said that if the highest talents could be sure of success, if the strictest principles of honor, and the devotion to him of a multitude of friends could have assured it, his dream would have been realized.

Besides a great superiority of intellect, Matthews was gifted with a very amusing originality of thought, which, joined to a very keen sense of the ridiculous, exercised a kind of irresistible fascination. Lord Byron, who loved a joke better than any one, took great pleasure in all the amusing eccentricities of him who was styled the Dean of Newstead; while Byron had been christened by him the Abbot of that place.

Shortly before his death, in 1821, Byron wrote a very amusing letter from Ravenna to Murray, recalling a host of anecdotes relating to Matthews, and which well set forth the clever eccentricity of the man for whom Byron professed so much esteem and admiration.

SCROOPE DAVIES.

We have already seen what Byron thought of Davies. His cleverness, his great vivacity, and his gayety, were great resources to Byron in his moments of affliction. When, in 1811, Byron experienced the bitterest loss of his life--that of his mother--he wrote from Newstead to beg that Davies would come and console him.

Shortly after, he wrote to Hodgson to say, "Davies has been here. His gayety, which death itself can not change, has been of great service to me: but it must be allowed that our laughter was very false."

We must not forget to mention, among the friends of Byron, William Banks, Mr. Pigott, of Southwell, and Mr. Hodgson, a writer of great merit, who was one of his companions at Newstead, and with whom he corresponded even during his voyage in the East. For all these he maintained throughout life the kindest remembrance, as also for Mr. Beecher, for whom he entertained a regard equal to his affection. Mr. Beecher having disapproved of the moral tendency of his early poems, Lord Byron destroyed in one night the whole of the first edition of those poems, in order to prove his sense of esteem for Mr. Beecher's opinion. In the same category we should place Lord Byron's friendship for Dr. Drury, his tutor at Harrow; but this latter friendship is so marked with feelings of respect, veneration, and gratitude, that I had rather speak of it later, when I shall treat of the last-named quality, as one of the most noticeable in Lord Byron's character.

GRIEF WHICH HE EXPERIENCED AT THE LOSS OF HIS FRIENDS.

The grief which the loss of his friends occasioned to him was proportioned to the degree of affection which he entertained for them. By a curious fatality he had the misfortune to lose at an early age, almost all those he loved. This grief reached its climax on his return from his first travels.

"If," says Moore, "to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. In the short space of one month," he says in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable." Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favorites, died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at Cambridge, was drowned while bathing in the Cam. The following letter, written shortly after, shows so powerful a feeling of regret, and displays such real grief, that it is almost painful to peruse it:

"MY DEAREST DAVIES,--Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews? Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had but you and H---- and M----, and let me enjoy the survivors while I can."

Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says:--

"Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, has perished miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam; my poor school-fellow Wingfield, at Coimbra, within a month: and while I had heard from all three, but not seen one. But let this pass; we shall all one day pass along with the rest; the world is too full of such things, and our very sorrow is selfish."

To Hodgson he writes:--

"Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.

"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before."

Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Eddleston, of which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms:

"I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times. But 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered."

On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a prey to such grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advising him to banish all cares and to find in pleasure the distraction he needed. Lord Byron replied by some lines which Moore has reproduced; but the last of which he omitted to give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every one in a bright light, and whom Byron wished to frighten.

Here are the first lines:--

"Oh! banish care, such ever be
The motto of _thy_ revelry!
Perchance of _mine_ when wassail nights
Renew those riotous delights,
Wherewith the children of Despair
Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care,'
But not in morn's reflecting hour."

Two days after replying in verse, he answered him in prose.

"I am growing nervous--it is really true--really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless."

The same day, 11th October, 1811, one of the darkest in his life, he wrote also his first stanza, addressed to Thyrza, of which the pathetic charm seems to rise to the highest pitch.

"To no other but an imaginary being," says Moore, "could he have addressed such tender and melancholy poetical lines."

BYRON'S FRIENDSHIP FOR MOORE.

At this time of his life, whether from the numerous injuries inflicted on him by men and by fate, or from some other circumstance, Byron seemed to be less given to friendships than formerly. He felt the force of friendship as deeply as before, but he became less expansive. Death, in taking so many of his friends away from him, had endeared those who remained still more to his heart, and caused him to seek among these the consolation he wanted. It is not true to say that Lord Byron was left alone entirely, at any time of his life: quite the contrary, he at all times lived in the midst of friends more or less devoted to him. Dallas and Moore pretend that there was a time in his early youth when he had no friends at all; but this time can not be stated, unless one forgets the names of Hobhouse, Hodgson, Harness, Clare, and many others who never lost sight of him, and unless one forgets the life of devotion which he led at Southwell and at Newstead both before and after his travels in the East.

Dallas and Moore, in speaking of this momentary isolation, in all probability adopted a common prejudice which causes them to believe that a lord must ever be lonely unless he is surrounded by a circle of rich and fashionable companions. The truth is that Byron, having left England immediately on quitting college, only had college connections, with all of whom he renewed his friendship on his return to the mother-country. But it is equally true, and this is to his credit, that he long hesitated to replace departed friends by new ones.

To conquer this repugnance he required a very high degree of esteem for the friend he was about to make, a similarity of tastes, and above all a sympathy based upon real goodness. This was the time of his greatest mental depression. It preceded that splendid epoch in his life, when his star shone with such brilliancy in the literary sphere, thanks to "Childe Harold," and in the world of politics through his parliamentary successes, which had earned for him the praises of the whole nation. Then did friends present themselves in scores, but out of these few were chosen.

Among the great men of the day who surrounded him, he took to several, and in particular to Lord Holland, a Whig like himself, and a man equally distinguished for the excellence of his heart as for his rare intellect. Lord Holland's hospitality was the pride of England. Byron also conceived a liking for Lord Lansdowne,--the model of every virtue, social and domestic; for Lord Dudley, whose wit so charmed him; for Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, brother to Lord Kinnaird, whom Byron called his most devoted friend in politics and in literature; for all those first notabilities of the day, Rogers, Sheridan, Curran, Mackintosh, for all of whom he may be said to have entertained a feeling akin to friendship. But all these were friends of the moment; friends whom the relations of every-day life in the world of fashion had brought together, and whose talents exacted admiration, and hence he formed ties which may be styled friendship, provided the strict sense of that word is not understood. Byron felt this more than any one.

One man, however, contrived to get such a hold on his mind and heart, that he became truly his friend, and exercised a salutary influence over him. This man, who contributed to dispel the dark clouds which hung over Byron's mind, and was the first to charm him in his new life of fashion, was no other than Thomas Moore.

This new intimacy had not, it is true, the freshness of his early friendships, formed, as these were, in the freshness of a young heart, and therefore without any worldly calculations. Moore was even ten years his senior. But his affection for Moore, founded as it was upon a similarity of tastes, upon mutual reminiscences, esteem and admiration, soon developed itself into a friendship which never changed. The circumstances under which Byron and Moore became friends speak too highly for the credit of both not to be mentioned here, and we must therefore say a few words on the subject.

Byron, as the reader knows, had in his famous satire of "English Bards," etc., attacked the poems of Moore as having an immoral tendency. Instead of interpreting the beautiful Irish melodies in their figurative sense, Byron had taken the direct sense conveyed in their love-inspiring words, and considered them as likely to produce effeminate and unhealthy impressions.

"Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd,
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd?
'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!
* * * * * * *
Yet kind to youth,...
She bids thee 'mend thy line and sin no more.'"

Lord Byron was always of opinion that literature, when it tends to exalt the more tender sentiments of our nature, pure as these may be, is ever injurious to the preservation of those manly and energetic qualities which are so essential for the accomplishment of a noble mission here below. This opinion is illustrated by the occasional extreme energy of his heroes, and by his repugnance to introduce love into his dramas. If this reproach offended Moore a little, Lord Byron's allusion to his duel with Jeffrey at Chalk Farm in 1806, where it was said that the pistols of each were not loaded, must have wounded him still more, and he wrote a letter to Lord Byron which must, it would seem, have brought on a duel.

Lord Byron was then travelling in the Levant, and the letter remained with his agent in London. It was only two years after, on his return from his travels, that he received it. An exchange of letters with Moore took place, and such was the "good sense, self-possession and frankness" of Byron's conduct in the matter, that Moore was quite pacified, and all chances of a duel disappeared with the reconciliation of both, at the request of each.

The reconciliation took place under the auspices of Rogers, and at a dinner given by the latter for that purpose. After speaking of his extraordinary beauty, and of the delicacy and prudence of his conduct, Moore, in referring to this dinner, ends by saying, "Such did I find Lord Byron on my first experience of him, and such, so open and manly-minded did I find him to the last."

Byron, too, was influenced by the charm of Moore's acquaintance, and so dear to him became the latter's society through that kind of electric current which appears to run through some people and forms between them an unbounded sympathy, that it actually succeeded in dispelling the sombre ideas which then possessed his soul.

Their similarity of tastes, and at the same time those differences of character which are so essential to the development of the intellect of two sympathetic minds, were admirably adapted to form the charm which existed in their relations with one another.

This sympathy, however, would never have found a place in the mind of Lord Byron had it not sprung from his heart. Amiability was essential in his friends before he could love them; and though Moore had not that quality in its highest degree, still he had it sufficiently for Lord Byron to say in one of his notes, "I have received the most amiable letter possible from Moore. I really think him the most kind-hearted man I ever met. Besides which, his talents are equal to his sentiments."

His sympathy for Moore was such that the mention of his name was enough to awaken his spirits and give him joy. This is palpable in his letters to Moore, which are masterpieces of talent.

His cordial friendship for Moore was never once affected by the series of triumphs which followed its formation, and which made the whole world bow before his genius. "The new scenes which opened before him with his successes," says Moore, "far from detaching us from one another, multiplied, on the contrary, the opportunities of meeting each other, and thereby strengthening our intimacy."

This excessive liking for Moore was kept up by all the force which constancy lends to affection. One of Byron's most remarkable qualities was great constancy in his likes, tastes, and a particular attachment to the recollections of his childhood. At the age of fifteen, Moore's "Melodies" already delighted him. "I have just been looking over Little Moore's Melodies, which I knew by heart at fifteen." In 1803 he wrote from Ravenna: "Hum! I really believe that all the bad things I ever wrote or did are attributable to that rascally book."

We have seen that at Southwell he used even to ask Miss Chaworth and Miss Pigott to sing him songs of Moore. At Cambridge, what reconciled him to leaving Harrow were the hours which he spent with his beloved Edward Long, with whom he used to read Moore's poetry after having listened to Long's music.

He already then had a sympathy for Moore, and a wish to know him. The latter's place was therefore already marked out in Byron's heart, even before he was fortunate enough to know him.

Moore's straitened means often obliged him to leave London. Then Byron was seized with a fit of melancholy.

"I might be sentimental to-day, but I won't," he said. "The truth is that I have done all I can since I am in this world to harden my heart, and have not yet succeeded, though there is a good chance of my doing so.

"I wish your line and mine were a little less parallel, they might occasionally meet, which they do not now.

"I am sometimes inclined to write that I am ill, so as to see you arrive in London, where no one was ever so happy to see you as I am, and where there is no one I would sooner seek consolation from, were I ill."

Then, according to his habitual custom of ever depreciating himself morally, he writes to Moore, in answer to the latter's compliments about his goodness: "But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company."

His sympathy for Moore went so far as to induce him to believe that he was capable of every thing that is good.

"Moore," says he, in his memoranda of 1813, "has a reunion of exceptional talents--poetry, music, voice, he has all--and an expression of countenance such as no one will ever have.

"What humor in his poet's bag! There is nothing that Moore can not do if he wishes.

"He has but one fault, which I mourn every day--he is not here."

He even liked to attribute to Moore successes which the latter only owed to himself. Byron had, as the reader knows, the most musical of voices. Once heard, it could not be forgotten.[26] He had never learned music, but his ear was so just, that when he hummed a tune his voice was so touching as to move one to tears.

"Not a day passes," he wrote to Moore, "that I don't think and speak of you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, waiving personal friendship for the present. I have you by rote and by heart, of which _ecce signum_."

He then goes on to tell him his adventure when at Lady O----'s:--

"I have a habit of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh, breathe not,' and others; they are my matins and vespers. I did not intend them to be overheard, but one morning in comes not la Donna, but il Marita, with a very grave face, and said, 'Byron, I must request you not to sing any more, at least of those songs.'--'Why?'--'They make my wife cry, and so melancholy that I wish her to hear no more of them.'

"Now, my dear Moore, the effect must have been from your words, and certainly not my music."

To give Moore the benefit of effecting a great success with an Oriental poem, Byron gave up his own idea of writing one, and sent him some Turkish books.

"I have been thinking of a story," says he, "grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal, something like Cayotte's 'Diable Amoureux.' Tenderness is not my _forte_; for that reason I have given up the idea, but I think it a subject you might make much of."

Moore actually wished to write a poem on an Oriental subject, but dreaded such a rival as Byron, and expressed his fears in writing to him. Byron replied:--

"Your Peri, my dear Moore, is sacred and inviolable. I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But it really puts me out of humor to hear you talk thus."

Not only did Byron encourage Moore in his task, but effaced himself completely in order to make room for him.

When he published the "Bride of Abydos," Moore remarked that there existed some connection in that poem with an incident he had to introduce in his own poem of "Lalla Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron to say that he would stop his own work, because to aspire after him to describe the energy of passion would be the work of a Caesar.

Byron replied:--

"I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of your own powers, which I can not account for, and which must be unaccountable when a Cossack like me can appall a cuirassier.

"Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with you. The success of mine is yet problematical ... Come out, screw your courage to the sticking-place--no man stands higher, whatever you may think on a rainy day in your provincial retreat."

To Moore he dedicated his "Corsair," and to read the preface is to see how sincerely attached Byron was to his friend.

When at Venice he heard of some domestic affliction which had befallen Moore; he wrote to him with that admirable simplicity of style which can not be imitated, because the true accents of the heart defy imitation.

"Your domestic afflictions distress me sincerely; and, as far as you are concerned, my feelings will always reach the furthest limits to which I may still venture. Throughout life your losses shall be mine, your gains mine also, and, however much I may lose in sensibility, there will always remain a drop of it for you."

When Moore obtained his greatest success, and arrived at the summit of popularity, by the publication of "Lalla Rookh," Byron's pleasure was equal to the encouragements he had given him. But of his noble soul, in which no feeling of jealousy could enter, we shall speak elsewhere. Here, in conclusion, I must add that his friendship for Moore remained stanch through time and circumstances, and even notwithstanding Moore's wrongs toward him, of which I shall speak in another chapter.

In treating of Byron's friendships, I have endeavored to in set forth the wrongs which some of his friends, and Moore particular, have committed against him both before and after his death.

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

"I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve,
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."

And later, in "Don Juan," Byron would not have said with a smile, but also with a pain which sprang from the heart:--

"O Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease;
They are but bad pilots when the weather's rough,
Doctors less famous for their cures than fees.

Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze;
When your affairs come round, one way or t'other,
Go to the coffee-house and take another."

It is, however, also true that he would not have had the opportunity of showing us so perfectly the beauty of his mind, and his admirable constancy, notwithstanding the conduct of those on whom he had bestowed his friendship. This constancy is shown even by his own words, for immediately after the lines quoted above, he adds:--

"But this is not my maxim; had it been,
Some heart-aches had been spared me."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Mossop, a contemporary of Garrick, famous for his performance of Zanga.]

[Footnote 25: His marriage.]

[Footnote 26: Lord Holland's youngest son, in speaking of Byron, styled him "the gentleman with the beautiful voice."]