The Press.
London, England, 1855-11-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

bourhood of Geneva. They all refer to the unhappy sepa-
ration of which the precise causes are still a mystery, and
which he declared to the last were never disclosed to him-
self. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disor-
dered health, and dislike to family restraints, had
aggravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to
excesses. He suspected that his mother -in - law had
fomented the discord—which Lady Byron denies—and
that more was due to the malignant offices of the female
dependant who is the subject of the bitterly satirical
" Sketch." To these general statements there can only be
added the still vaguer allegations of Lady Byron—that she
conceived his conduct to be the result of insanity, that the
physician pronouncing him responsible for his actions she
could submit to them no longer, and that Dr. Lushington,
her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation was neither
proper nor possible. No weight can be attached to the
opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by
one party behind the back of the other, who urgently
demanded, and was pertinaciously refused, the least oppor-
tunity of denial or defence. He rejected the proposal for
an amicable separation, but consented when threatened
with a suit in Doctors' Commons. This rupture, against
his will, of the marriage bond produced the pathetic
remonstrance "Fare thee well," which Sir Walter Scott
termed " a very sweet dirge indeed." Unknown to Lord
Byron, it was sent to a newspaper, together with the
" Sketch," about the middle of April, by a too zealous
friend, and was thought by some to be the honest outbreak
of natural feeling, and by others the artifice of a practised
poet. Moore at first took the latter view, but changed his
opinion on reading in Lord Byron's memoranda that a
swell of tender recollections, as he sat musing in his
study, gave birth to the stanzas, which were penned, he
said, weeping. The tear-blotted manuscript confirms this

account.
Lady Byron is still alive, having survived
" Ada"; and we have always heard her spoken
of with high respect. We fancy that no wife
could have agreed with so wayward and pas-
sionate a nature as Byron. He never was
suited for " domestic " life.
The monody on Sheridan is verbose and
unequal. But there are a few couplets which
derive additional power from the way in which
Tom Moore has stabbed at the corpse of the
dead man of genius :
Behold the host ! delighting to deprave,
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave,
Watch every fault that daring Genius owes
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie,
And pile the pyramid of Calumny!
It is said, forsooth, that Sheridan had no
ready wit, and that he had to prepare for
society. What was Lord Byron's opinion in
his social powers ? The editor has preserved
it in a note :
In society I have met Sheridan frequently. He was
superb ! I have seen him cut up Whitbread, quiz Madame
de Steel, annihilate Colman, and do little less by some
others of good fame and ability. I have met him at all
places and parties, and always found him convivial and
delightful.
What pages of miserable detraction are over
turned in those emphatic words from such a
gifted being as Byron !
" The Dream' is a beautiful poem, and
could never have been written except by a
man of genius. It is in such pieces of blended
feeling and thought that we see where genius
begins and talent ends. In the brief intro-
duction to it the editor states, alluding to Mary
Chaworth
She was two years his senior at a period when the dif-
ference made her a woman, and left him a boy. He had
nothing beyond his rank to compensate for the disadvan-
tage—his genius was not so much as in the bud, his beauty
undeveloped, his manners rough, and his temper ungo-
vernable. The succeeding year he bade her farewell on the
hill which is celebrated in " The Dream." " The next time
I see you," he said, " I suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth,"
—for her husband originally took her name,—and she an-
swered " I hope so." She naturally numbered Lord Byron's
attachment among the fickle ebullitions of juvenile suffeep.
tibility, and would have treated it with coldness, even if
her heart had not been already won. In 1805 she was
united to Mr. Musters, a gentleman of a noble appearance
and of an ancient family. There was no sympathy between
their characters, and his conduct to her was reported to he
harsh and capricious. He never relished Lord Byron's
allusions to her, and after the publication of " The Dream"
he cut down the celebrated " diadem of trees" which grew
on his estate. Hie beautiful and accomplished bride be-
came the victim of her cares, and she sunk into lunacy.
In 1832 she closed her tragic life by a mournful death. A
party of Nottingham rioters sacked Colwick-hall, and she
and her daughter took refuge in the shrubbery, where her
constitution received a fatal shock from the combined
effects of cold and terror. Lord Byron always kept the
conviction that the lady of Annesley would have averted
his destiny. In 1822 having called her in his diary "my
M. A. C.," he suddenly exclaims, " Alas! why do I say my?
Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had
been shed by our fathers,—it would have joined lands
broad and rich, it would have joined at least one heart, and
two persons not ill-matched in years, and—and—and—
wnat has been the result?" The consideration of his
character leads us to think that the result would not have
been widely different if he had prospered in his suit; and
the romance that must always linger round the mutt of

1123

Miss Chaworth is probably none the leas that it comes to
us invested with the hues of imagination instead of the

light of experience.
We did not know that Mrs. Musters " sunk

into lunacy," but the other statements in that
paragraph we have often heard. As to whe
ther Byron wuuld have been a happier man
if he had married Miss Chaworth, the editor's

concluding sentence in the foregoing passage

is perfectly just.
Passing by several inferior poems, we come
to "The 'Vision of Judgment," which is, un-

..
doubtedly, a masterpiece of poignant satire,
though unequal in its merits. The attack on
Southey is most effective. The weak points of
that amiable but inconsistent character are
struck with force :

He had written praises cf a regicide ;
He had written praises of all kings whatever ;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever ;
For pantisocracy he once had cried
Aloud, a scheme less mural than 'twas clever;

Then grew a hearty anti-Jacobin—
Had turn'd his coat—and would have turn'd his akin.
He had sung against all battles, and again
In their high praise and glory ; he had csll'd
Reviewing " the ungentle craft," and then
Became as base a critic as e'er cmwl'd—
Fed, paid, and pamper'd by the very men
By whom his muse and morals had been maul'd ;
He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,
And more of both than any body knows.
The editor of this edition seems to enjoy the
way in which Byron lacerates the Laureate.
These verses, and others of the same sort, ho
characterises as " superlative of their kind."
But we think that he might have put in a few
kind words on behalf of Southey, who was
often the dupe of his own fine talent for lan-
guage, and whose judgment was in no degree
proportional to his facility for writing a smooth
and pure English style. As a professional
man of letters, toiling hard, and preserving a
soul unspotted by the world, Southey is
entitled to respect. There are deep and last-
ing stains on the moral characters of Byron,
Coleridge, and Moore. There was something
worse than reprehensible in some of Shelley 's
actions; and sonic others of his distinguished
contemporaries have been animated with low
motives unworthy of men gifted with the
highest faculties. Southey toiled with the
labour of a drudge, and saw men without half
of his abilities ascend to the highest social
positions, while for want of means he was
compelled to decline a proffered baronetcy.
He may have been weak, but he was not
vicious; he may not have reached the sublime
heights of speculation in his wordy philosophy,
but he never consciously degraded his powers ;
he may not have been consistent in his politics.
but he was never the parasite of office, and
what he wrote was sincere in its purpose.
That he was able to strike hard at an adver-
sary might be seen in his letter to Smith tthe
Unitarian of Norwich), and also in the letter
to Lord Byron, in which occurs the following

passage :
His lordship has thought it not unbecoming for him to
call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler
pass; it is an appellation that will not stick, like that of
the Satanic School. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of
all work ? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled
—what kind of work I have nut done. I have never pub-
lished libels upon my friends and acquaintance. expressed
my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a
mood of better mind—and then reissued them, when the
evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned
and taken possession, with seven others more wicked than
himself. I have never abused the power, of which every
author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character
of a man or the heart of a woman. I have never sent
into the world a book to which 1 did not dare to tax in 7
name ; or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, it it
were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufac-
tured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I
done ; none of the foul work by which literature is per-
verted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean ;
there is no " damned spot' upon them— no taint, which
"all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten."
The editor has printed the whole of this letter,
as introductory to Byron's " Vision of Judg-
ment."
Passing " The Age of Bronze," which has
only one fine passage (the characterisation of
Napoleon in the spleen, at St. Helena), we
come to the "Occasional Pieces," which till
nearly half of the present volume. They
exhibit nearly all the moods of the Byronic
Muse, and not ono of his contemporatied
could have so prodigally scattered so many
wreathe of verseis. The various lines to

1124

" Thyrza " have rending pathos, and are in-
spired by the divine gloom of poetry. There
is a wail in their cadence that recals some old
Highland air, and there is an agony of spirit
discernible in their tuneful and most musical
wretchedness. They arc the elegiacs of a
lover, and have nothing maundering or un-
manly in their effusions of poetical misery.
The masculine utterance of grief is not often
truly seen in literature, but in these " Occa-
sional Pieces " Byron exhibits it in full
power.
We have read these miscellaneous poems
with even increased admiration of Byron's
genius. They bear a critical reperusal, and
some of them can never pass from the memory
of a reader of any feeling. The lines for
music, " There's not a joy the world can give,"
could have been written by no one else. In
vain have his swarm of imitators tried to play
upon the chord struck with so much power in
those stanzas :

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of
happiness
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess :
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch
again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself
comes down ;
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own ;
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice
appears.

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract
the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former
hope of rest ;
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreath,
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey
beneath.
The most mournful verses to " Thyrza " are
preceded by the following note, in which the
able editor summarily disposes of tho fallacy
of Moore :

Mr. Moore considers " Thyrza," to be a creature of the
poet's brain. "It was," he says, " about the time when be
was thus bitterly feeling the blight which his heart had
suffered from a real object of affection, that his poems on
the death of an imaginary one were written ;—nor is it any
wonler when we consider the peculiar circumstances under
which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that,
of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touch.
ing and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the
abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs;—a confluence of
sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and
warmed in their passage through his fancy, and forming
thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling." It is a pity
to disturb a sentiment thus beautifully expressed ; but
Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Dallas, bearing the exact
date of these lines, viz., Oct. 11, 1811, writes as follows:
' 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 my head to the
earth." Several years after the poems on Thyrza were
written, Lord Byron, on being asked to whom they re•
ferred, by a person in whose tenderness he never ceased to
confide, refused to answer, with marks of agitation, such as
rendered recurrence to the subject impossible.
Moore was one of the worst biographers that
ever wrote. He wanted a sense of sober
reality, and looked at life through the prismatic
hues of fancy. His supposing that "Thyrza"
was not a real personate exhibits that want of
faith in true passion which detracts so much
from the brightness of Moore's genius. No-
thing but a living soul could have inspired
the strains to " Thyrza." We do not know
which of these poems most to admire; but
whoever has lost in early life some gentle and
beloved being, whose memory remains in the
worship of the heart, must be thrilled to the
cure on reading those affecting strains :

'Tis silent all l—but on niy ear
Thu well remember'd echoes thrill;
1 hear a voice I would not hear,
A voice that now might well be still:
Yet oft my doubting soul 'twill shake;
Even slumber owns its gentle time,
Till consciousness will vainly wake
To listen, though the dream be flown.
Sweet Thyme! waking as in sleep,
Thou art but now a lovely dream ;
A star that trembled o'er the deep,
Then turn'd from earth its tender beam.
But he who through life's dreary way
Must pass, when heaven is veiled in wrath,
Will long lament the vanish'd ray
That scatter'd gladness o'er his path.

And again it,} another poem the same chord
touched:—

THE PRESS.

My Thyrza's pledge in better days,
When love and life alike were new !
How different now thou meet'st my gaze !
How tinged by time with sorrow's hue!
The heart that gave itself with thee
Is silent—ah, were mine as still!
Though cold as e'en the dead can be,
It feels, it sickens with the chill.

Thou bitter pledge ! thou mournful token !
Though painful, welcome to my breast !
Still, still, preserve that love unbroken,
Or break the heart to which thou'rt press'd.
Time tempers love, but not removes,
More hallow'd when its hope is fled:
Oh! what are thousand living loves
To that which cannot quit the dead ?

We have lingered over these poems with
increased wonder at the mind of Bymn.
There is much to be said on his exact place
amongst the poets of the world; and now that
thirty years have passed since his death, an
opportunity presents itself for a calm estimate
of his genius. At a more advanced part of
this edition w•e shall critically discuss the
value of the more permanent portions of his
works.

The Life of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre.
By Martha Walker Freer. London : Hurst
and Blackett.
JUST now, and for some years past, there is
and has boen a rage for biography. Those
who can write nothing else, seem to think they
can at least write this ; and the consequence
is that more literary failures have issued from
the press within the last ten years than we
care to enumerate. Not but what there is
some show of reason, after all, in the choice of
these laborious compilers ; for the very worst
biography that ever was written will always
have about it something to interest us. But
it is taking an unfair advantage of human
curiosity to inveigle us into the perusal of
volume after volume which are in reality
nothing but annals, and contain so small a
fraction of what is personal or peculiar, that
to call them biography is a fraud. Authors of
this class should never forget what constitutes
the distinctive charm of this species of litera-
ture. It is the record of a man's little actions,
as history is the record of his great ones—the
portraiture of those elements which make him
one of ourselves, not of those which make him
an exception. Biography, therefore, becomes
interesting in proportion to the fidelity with
which this object is accomplished ; and the
writer will be successful in proportion to the
judgment with which he has selected a subject
with a capacity of such illustration. We can-
not but think that Miss Freer has chosen
an unfortunate theme for the exercise of her
peculiar talents ; and the more so because we
believe the latter to be very considerable.
The mother of Henry IV is a most important
and interesting public personage, but she did
not possess those traits which lend attraction
to the history of private life. She was a strong
and stately woman, who ruled her husband,
her children, and her subjects in an equally
exemplary and respectable manner ; but she is
too far removed from us for her daily ordinary
life to be either interesting or accessible;
while the beauty and the gallantries, the
crimes and the intrigues, of her two contempo-
raries, Marie Stuart and Catherine de Medtei,
were totally alien to the severe and simple cha-
racter of Jeanne d'Albret. The most interesting
portions of the work are those which relate to
the days of her own youth and those of her son,
the young Prince Henry. When Jeanne was
comparatively a child she was in the habit of
administering corporal punishment to her
young companions :
Sometimes Jeanne's vivacity of disposition surpassed
her courtesy to her gentle cousin ; and iu their childish
pastimes Francoise used often to receive severe chastise-
ment from the hand of the princess, for her want of self-
command and energy. When the Queen of Navarre
returned into Bearn, she generally visited Plessis to take
leave of the princess. On one of these occasions, before
Marguerite's departure, a poetical epistle of farewell was
composed to present to the princess, each lady of the
Queen's suite writing a verse. Mademoiselle de Rohan,
who was to return with the Queen, also contributed her
share ; she there alludes to her cousin's propensity for
administering wholesome castigation. But for the youth
of " la petite Francoise," her lines might be considered as
written with satirical point. She
_says in het address to
the princess :

SATURDAY,

Plus j'ay de toy souvent este battue,
Plus mon amour s'esforee et s'evertue
De regreter caste main, qul me bat:
Car ce mall 3 m'estoit plaisant esbat.
Or adieu done la main, dont la riguer,
Je preferois a tout bien et honneur
Sho was soon after threatened with the same
ludicrous sort of castigation herself, when she
refused to be affianced to the Duke of Cleves;
and in the secret protest which she drew up
against this proceeding she avers that—
All I may say and do hereafter, by which it may be at-
tempted to prove that I have given my consent, will be
forcibly extorted against my wish and desire from my
dread of the King, of the King my father, and of the Queen
my mother, who has threatened to have me whipped by the
baillive of Caen, my governess.
- - -

- - -
The young prince, who derived from his
mother his courage, generosity, and talents
for government, and from his father kthoso
gayer qualities which . have rendered him
scarcely less famous, very early betrayea his
propensities to profitaion and love-making :
The object of Henry's chivalrous gallantry at this season
was the beautiful Corisandre d'Andoins, the youthful
bride of the Count De Guiche, who had followed in Queen
Jeanne's train to La Rochelle. The ardour of the Prince's
court, and the manner in which his overtures were re-
ceived by the Countess, occasioned much disquietude to
Jeanne d'Albret, as it greatly offended the Count De
Grammont, her old and attached servant, to reward whose
fidelity she had bestowed the heiress of d'Andoins on his
son. As an instance of the influence exercised by the
versatile gifts of Henry over the minds of his friends, the
following anecdote is recorded. The young Prince was
addicted to habits of great profusion. As he never pre-
sumed to apply for pecuniary aid from his mother, who,
having assigned the Prince a sufficient revenue, reserved
her treasures for higher purposes than to defray the cost of
his dissipation, Henry several times resorted to the extra•
ordinary expedient of addressing a letter, signed by him-
self, to the principal nobles and ladies of Guyentie and
Beam, in which he requested the loan of a certain sum,
specified therein, in consideration of which the lender was
at liberty to keep the billet; if, on the contrary, the loan
were refused, the Prince desired that the letter might be
returned.
" Such was the affection borne towards the Prince," says
the historian Le Grain, " that no one ever thought of re-
fusing his demand ; for there was not a house that felt it
not an honour to possess among its records the writing
and autograph of this noble prince."
It would be doing the Queen of Navarre great injury to
suppose that this clever ruse on the part of the Prince of
Hearn was countenanced by herself. Jeanne would have
regarded her son's extravagant expenditure with indigna-
tion, so frugal and seltdenying were her own habits.
Henry was at this time only in his sixteenth
year, but Miss Freer informs us that in less
than two years afterwards " the beautiful
"Corisandre became the avowed mistress of
" the King of Navarre." In love and in war
the young prince was equally precocious,
though not by any means equally satisfactory
to the moral eye of his mother.
We believe we have presented to our readers
the most attractive aspect of Miss Freer's
volumes. They are rather, we must repeat,
history than biography ; and we certainly
think it a pity that the boundary line between
the two has not been more carefully preserved
than has lately been the custom.

The Fur Hunters of the Far West. By
Alexander Ross. London : Smith, Elder,
and Co. _ _

THERE is undeniably a peculiar and powerful
charm in the free life of the bush, which com-
pletely destroys all respect or care for the
restraints of artificial society. Let a man once
take heartily to the bush, or once become a
wanderer, and he can never again thoroughly
submit to be cribbed, cabined, or confined
within the limits of a town. The excitement of
fresh adventures, the constant supply of sport,
the perpetual change of scene, the novelty
of the life, the variety of incident, and the
frequent perils and dangers to bo encountered
have possessed at all times a powerful attrac-
tion for adventurous minds; and although Dr.
Johnson once likened the man who preferred
a free life to a bull in a meadow—a bad simile
at the best—yet few men who for fresh air
and freedom have ever thrown over civilisation
and conventionality, care much to return
to them, in spite of the simile of the groat
lexicographer. But the learned doctor was one
of those men who looked upon fresh air and
flowers as an amiable delusion, and, like
Syndey Smith in later times, would much
rather see the valleys paved and crowded
with passengers, than lying in sweet re-
pose under the shadows of their own moun-
tains. Yet the palefaced inhabitants of towns.

NOVEMBER 24, 1855.

and streets are not the men to enter upon a
life of hardship and adventure—to be the
pioneers of civilisation—to penetrate through
unknown regions—to face unknown foes, and
brave innumerable perils. The men who
undertake by choice such a life as this are
men born to the healthy, manly influence of
country life—men made of a sterner stuff than
we find among citizens or mechanics; and to
the race of all such bold adventurers much
honour is due.
Among the hardiest of such men we should
suppose the fur trappers and traders of the
Rocky Mountains and the Far West stand pre-
eminent. To their courage and endurance it is
due that the whole of the vast country lying be
tweeu the Pacific and the Rocky Mountains is
known and was explored ; that commercial com-
panies, with immense capital embarked in the
enterprise, were formed to supply the fur trade ;
that chains of communication were kept up
from the Frozen Ocean to the Pacific; that
forts were built and military outposts formed
throughout the lines, governors and sub-
governors appointed, small colonies of traders
and trappers created, and influence and
friendship sought among the native tribes
by kindness and considerate treatment. But,
one after the other, the two first companies—
the Great Pacific Fur and the North-
West Company—both powerful in political
importance and commercial greatness—have
passed away before the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, which alone has stood the test of time ;
while the fiir trade, its legitimate enterprise,
has almost perished, and the axe and the
plough, with village and settlement, church
and school, now fast crowd upon the steps of
the trapper and the haunts of the aboriginal
Indian.
In a book such as this, extending back some
forty years, the sketches and adventures
given, it must be remembered, belong to the
last generation. Most of the country travelled
over by the writer, then little else but forest
and river and the home of the Indian and wild
buffalo, is now cultivated, and peopled with
numerous settlements. Yet the interest of the
adventures, and their animated and graphic
detail, lose nothing by their age. They must
be accepted as the memoirs of a fur-hunter
of forty years' service, and as such will be
very welcome to young and old of the present
day. Amid such a variety of adventures it is
impossible to give any detailed sketch of the
wauderinga of' the writer, and as the fur trade
is now comparatively extinct, we select only
a few incidents here and there such as are
common to life in the Indian districts, Here
is an instance of how vital a consequence it is
to preserve your temper among savages, and
endeavour by a happy turn to ward off their
sullen treachery. In this case, the trappers
had entered the Indian territory to trade.
The Indians were sulky, and hostilely dis-
posed :
The moment we dismounted we were surrounded, and
the savages, giving two or three war whoops and yells,
drove the animals we had ridden out of our sight ; this of
itself was a hostile movement. We had to judge from ap•
pearances, and be guided by circumstances. My first care
was to try and direct their attention to something new,
and to get rid of the temptation there was to dispose of my
goods ; so, without a moment's delay, I commenced a
trade in horses ; but every horse I bought during that and
the following day, as well as those we had brought with us,
were instantly driven out of sight, in the midst of yelling
and jeering ; nevertheless, I continued to trade while an
article remained, putting the best face on things i could,
and taking no notice of their conduct, as no insult or
violence had as yet been offered to ourselves personally.
Two days and nights had now elapsed since our arrival,
without food or sleep; the Indians refused us the former,
our own anxiety deprived us of the latter.
The next morning, being famished, they
endeavour to cook some venison, but no
sooner is the kettle put on the fire than a
dozen spears bear it off with a shout, and
thirty or forty move, fire a volley into the
ashes :
At this time the man who had put the kettle on the lire
took the knife with which he had cut the venison to lay it
by, when one of the Indians, called Eyacktana, a bold and
turbulent chief, snatched it out of his hand ; the man, in
an angry tone, demanded his knife, saying to me,"
helve my knife from the villain, life or death." " No,"
said I. The chief, seeing the man angry, threw down his
robe, and grasping the knife in his fist, with the point
downwards, raised his arm, making a motion in advance
as if he intended using it. The crisis had now )trrived I
. At this moment there was a dead silence. The Indians
were flocking in from ail quarters: a dense crowd stir-

.